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Show Page 41 also active in the region. Orson's themes were made unique by the peculiar claims of connection with the source of New Testament and revelation. Where others pored over the Bible with the technical exactitude of the numerologist, looking for keys to the millennial code, and others spiritualized the scripture as a great parable, the elders emphasized a new light, new miracles and a new covenant. St. Johnsbury, Vermont, saw another miraculous healing by the ministrations of Orson Pratt on June 15, 1833. Again, Elder Johnson was thirty miles away, in Charleston, when Orson met the Harveys, a family who had shown some interest in Mormonism. Young Emily Harvey, sick three months with a malady which caused her to vomit blood, was believed at the point of death - she requested Orson to pray for her and was healed at the instant his hands touched her. Three days later, Orson baptized her along with three more members of the Snow family, Gardner, Willard, and 28 Lucina, who were native to St. Johnsbury.- The Snow barn was used as a meetinghouse for the east village neighborhood, and in branch meetings the elders would sit along the high beams while the women sat in the "bay" - onlookers and investigators packed in haphazardly in large numbers. Hearing the Mormons preach of a Sunday was considered "a regular holiday for 29 everybody." After many schoolhouse audiences and about fifty new converts, Orson returned to Kirtland, September 28, 1833, to find church members hard at work building the house mandated in the December 27 "Olive Leaf" revelation. The Kirtland temple offered employment to the young missionary, and he spent about thirty days working on the limestone foundations before being ordered back to the East. For this mission, he was given a pair of cowhide boots worth $3.50 from the "committee" (presumably the United Firm of Kirtland) and preached before he left on the gathering of the Jews and the |