J. Golden Kimball - Service As A Missionary

Service As A Missionary

After two profitable years of education, he was called as a missionary to the southern United States on April 6, 1883 by LDS President John Taylor. Kimball remembered that he:

… left Chattanooga, Tennessee, with twenty-seven elders assigned to the Southern States. There were all kinds of elders in the company--farmers, cowboys, few educated--a pretty hard-looking crowd, and I was one of that kind. The elders preached, and talked, and sang, and advertised loudly their calling as preachers. I kept still for once in my life; I hardly opened my mouth. I saw a gentleman on the train. I can visualize that man now. I didn't know who he was. He knew we were a band of Mormon elders. The elders soon commenced a discussion and argument with the stranger, and before he got through they were in grave doubt about their message of salvation. He gave them a training that they never forgot. That man proved to be (LDS Mission) President B. H. Roberts. (Conference Report, October 1933, page 42)

For the first year of his mission Kimball served in Virginia.

Kimball served in a time of great persecution and some violence in the South. He was serving in the mission office in Chattanooga, as mission secretary, when three LDS elders were killed by a mob as they held services on Sunday, August 10, 1884. Although he developed a case of malaria, which troubled him for many years, Kimball remained active in the mission until his release in the spring of 1885.

Kimball returned to ranching in the Bear Lake Valley and married Jennie Knowlton, a daughter of John Q. and Ellen Smith Knowlton. The couple had six children, three boys and three girls. While living in the Bear Lake area Kimball served as a home missionary, somewhat like modern ward missionaries. Shortly later Kimball was made the head of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association for the Bear Lake Stake (which included the far South-east corner of Idaho, as well as some of Rich County, Utah). A short time later Kimball along with his brothers Newel Kimball and Elias Kimball set up a business called Kimball Brothers with branches in Montepelier, Idaho and Logan, Utah and at this time Kimball moved to Logan.

Due to his distinguished record as a missionary, he was called to return as president of the Southern States mission in 1891. In a conference address in 1927, he summarized his experiences in the southern states:

I was in the South three years, presiding over the mission, under the greatest hardships and the greatest difficulties I have ever endured in all my life...yet I have had the greatest joy and the greatest peace and happiness.