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Nellie A. Ray

RAY

Posted By: Lisa Walden (email)
Date: 9/27/2020 at 22:06:28

RAY. Died at her earthly home, Lamoni, Iowa, and in the seventeenth year of her age, Sr. Nellie A. Ray.

This event, a source of present happiness to the departed, and one which gives to her the sweet assurance of ever-continuing love, has clouded the atmosphere of her former home; and though upon the edges of the somber cloud they see the glory fringes that indicate the beauty of her new home, that cloud interposes between them and the light she dwells in whom they loved most fondly here below.

Nellie is gone; her departure was conducted by the heavenly gardeners under the Master's direction. She was a lily too fragile for earth, too tender for its stormy atmosphere.

Yet as the earth life was necessary to the higher life of a redeemed world, she was sent, she filled her place, and before passion's corrupting forces bad chance or time to stain her purity, the Master had this delicate lily transplanted to the garden of Paradise. There unbroken and not hindered from development by storm or want, it shall garner and exhale the sweets made its own by heavenly soil and angelic culture.

An orphan, the God of the orphans noticed her. He also prepared the hearts of Bro. [William] and Sr. [Emily Knight] Ray to receive from him the gift of a child's affection, and then transferred the chosen little one to the tender care of those dear ones to it. Who would have, who could have suspected this child to be other than their own? Surely no one without evidence.

And she "grew in stature" and in favor with man and woman. Never physically strong, something more than a year ago the strong power decay marked her as his prey, and on June 13, 1896, soon after the midday hour, her spirit left its earthly tenement for the heavenly one awaiting her beyond.

She was born at Roxville, Marion County, Iowa, on June 27, 1879, and was, therefore, on the day of her death, fourteen days less than seventeen years of age.

The elders often administered and relief came at each administration, but cure never. It was not so designed. She refused to take any medicine. "God has directed his sick people to trust in him, and to prove it by sending for the elders to anoint them and pray over them. If they live, they shall live unto the Lord: if they die, they shall die unto him. In either case, they will be the Lord's." This was Nellie's faith, in it she lived, in it she died.

She adorned the home and her own character by a truly Christian walk, by pureness of speech, and by gentleness of manners. She proved the truth of her claim that she was a child of God, by her perfect trusting of self and all to him; by her patience in suffering; by her thoughtfulness for others, by avoiding those fretful and complaining moods that so often make the task of an attendant on the sick an almost insufferable one.

The great esteem shown for her was manifest by the overcrowded condition of the large church in every part of it on Sunday morning, June 15, when Elder M. H. Forscutt preached her funeral sermon from the words of 2 Corinthians 5:16, 17. The theme was, Man's duality, outward, the body; inward, the spirit: The trials of time and the glories of eternity. The speaker was assisted by Elder Asa Cochran; both in the church and at the grave.

Source: The Saints Herald - volume 43 (1896) p. 415 [Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints]


 

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