From the Memoirs of President WW Blair November 3. Soon after we had crossed the Mississippi River I lost my Book of Mormon, which I had been reading at intervals as opportunity offered, and I felt keenly my loss, because I had prepared in it a copious index of subjects and made many marginal notes and references also. All the way across the state of Iowa, a distance of nearly three hundred miles, I had mourned my book as lost for ever. But on Sunday, at our meeting in Galland's Grove, Father Holcomb came to me and said, "Is this your book, Brother Blair?" "Yes," said I, "that is my Book of Mormon. Where did you get it?" "My son, Zach, found it in the road between here and Harlan," he replied. Here was a mystery, indeed; for we had searched every nook and corner in and about our carriage, time and time again; but all in vain. At the close of the meeting Father William Jordan came forward and urgently requested me to visit his neighborhood and preach, for a family from Illinois had just settled there, and the man, an infidel, had found a Book of Mormon soon after crossing the Mississippi at Davenport, had read it by the way coming across the State, and said he found it the best religious book he ever read, one he could give his family without fear of their being hurt by its contents, but that he had lost it after leaving Harlan, and he now desired to learn more about it and the people who believed in and taught it. Now the mystery was solved. My Book of Mormon, by* the providence of heaven, had been doing mission work when and where I least suspected; and good work it did, for this gentleman and his family were no little profited by it, the Saints finding in him and his family good friends and neighbors, some of them uniting with the church, I believe. Return to Parables for Today