I shall never forget the kindness of the citizens of Lexington in caring for the living and burying the dead. The Lord certainly inspired them to do all that sympathy and benevolence could suggest in aid of the afflicted. The city council set apart a piece of ground in which to bury the Saints who had died, and William H. Russell, the great government freighter, and many other prominent citizens did all they could to comfort and help the afflicted survivors. Besides their devoted attention, their contributions in aid of the Saints amounted to thousands of dollars.
The disaster described is really the only accident of any consequence by water that has befallen a company of Latter-day Saints in emigrating from the old countries, and there was much reason to believe that Providence was in their favor to a great extent even in that case, or a much greater number would certainly have lost their lives.
I remained at Lexington about eight days looking after the interests of the Saints and purchasing stock, after which I returned to St. Louis, where I met the company of Saints I was to conduct across the plains. On reaching Atchison, our starting point for the overland journey, the company was stricken with the cholera. There were over forty cases, and of these some fifteen proved fatal. Numbers were healed instantaneously through the prayer of faith when the Elders laid their hands upon them, although apparently near death's door; others gave way entirely to fear, failed to exercise faith and soon died. After we had started upon our journey and when the last person who had been afflicted had recovered, I was prostrated with the same dread disease. The train was stopped and the whole company fasted and prayed for two days for my recovery, but I continued growing worse until my limbs and the lower portion of my body were apparently dead, but then the faith of the Saints and the power of the Almighty prevailed in my behalf and I recovered. I had, however, lost seventy-five pounds in weight within a few days.
Another remarkable instance in which the providence of the Almighty was manifest in my preservation occurred in the following May. I was emptying a small keg of powder and standing in a stooping position right over it, and as it did not run out very freely I shook the keg, when it exploded. The staves and pieces of hoops were scattered in every direction, some pieces being afterwards found at least eight rods distant. I was blown into the air and my face and hands most terribly burned. It was a marvel that the staves of the keg were not driven through my body, but it did not appear that a single one had struck me. The whole of the skin came from my face and hands, yet, wonderful to relate, there is not now a mark of powder about my face, and my eyesight, the loss of which I was most fearful of, was not at all impaired by it.
This series of narrow escapes which I have related I passed through within a little over a year; and it really seemed to me that Satan was bent upon my destruction. The fact that my life was preserved through them was an evidence to me of the power of God and that He had a purpose in allowing me to live.
I have witnessed the power of God displayed in the healing of persons who were sick in hundreds of instances, in some cases that would probably be considered by the world as very wonderful, but to which the Saints, whose experience has been similar to my own, had become accustomed. I think Elder David W. Patten possessed the gift of healing to a greater degree than any man I ever associated with. I remember on one occasion when I was laboring with him as a missionary in Tennessee, he was sent for to administer to a woman who had been sick for five years and bed-ridden for one year and not able to help herself. Brother Patten stepped to her bedside and asked her if she believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. She replied that she did. He then took her by the hand and said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, arise!"
She immediately sat up in bed, when he placed his hands upon her head and rebuked her disease, pronounced blessings upon her head and promised that she should bear children. She had been married for seven years and had never had any children, and this promise seemed very unlikely ever to be fulfilled. But she arose from her bed immediately, walked half a mile to be baptized and back again in her wet clothes. She was healed from that time, and within one year became a mother, and afterwards bore several children.