I have stumbled across perhaps the most interesting thing that has happened to me all summer. While working on a sunday lesson, my mom was given a stack of papers from my cousin, and therein lied the history of our ancestors. Late last night, after returning from dinner with some good friends, I came downstairs and asked to look at the documents of our predecessors. In the lamplight I poured over them, and was soon enamored by the beauty of my heritage. I searched late into the night for pictures and primary documents that would contain any information on the type of people I am descended from.
Here is their story:
The Piedmont Valley in Italy is surrounded by the Cottian Alps, which serves as a border between Italy and France. Three valleys run to the Piedmont plains, which are the valleys of Lucerna, Perouse, and San Martino. In all they are about sixteen square miles. And nestled in this Piedmont Valley are a wondrous sort of people. The Vaudois, a race that has existed there since long before any historian could have archived their arrival, were striking in both appearance and attitude. Their description goes as follows:
Within this little area has...existed from remote times a peculiar race of people, rarely numbering more than twenty thousand. They have retained their primitive appearance and manners to a greater degree than almost any other European community. They have always been noted for the simplicity and purity of their lives, and their absolute freedom from the ignorance superstition and vice which have cursed the countries around them. The men are tall, well-made, graceful in section, vigorous and hardy. The women are fair, endowed with a native grace and refinement and have always been noted for their chastity and modest deportment. Both sexes are frank, hospitable Peaceful and forbearing in disposition.
How beautiful, don't you think? They were persecuted for not joining the Catholic church and instead remaining faithful to the New Testament apostles. And for this they fought an 800 year war against the Duke of Savoy and the pope. Children were torn from their mother's arms and brutally murdered. Bodies were skewered and left to demonstrate what being faithful would cause. However, they never gave in. After being scattered about Europe numerous times, they always returned to their home in the Piedmont Valley. And after many unwavering generations, eventually were granted religious freedom.Traditionally these Vaudois or people of the Valleys belong to a church which is held to be the direct result of the teachings of the Apostles of early Christianity, never having belonged to the Roman Catholic religion. Thus they were the forerunners of the Reformation, having preserved their ancient faith, through the centuries, "in the Vaudois Valleys simple, free, and pure, as in the time of persecution."
In the early 1800s, President Snow (who was then Elder Snow) came to the Piedmont Valley to restore the everlasting gospel to the people of Italy. He was inspired to do so, and found a humble and strong people who were open to the words of our future prophet. My ancestors, the Cardons, were then baptized and later traveled to Utah in the pursuit of establishing Zion.
Marie Madelaine, daughter of Philippe Cardon and sister to Louis Philip, recounts having had a dream at a very young age, in which three men came to her and told her they were the servants of God. They then proceeded to tell her all about the restored gospel. When she awoke, she was acting very strange, and recounted the entire dream to her parents. Being so young, she soon forgot the dream, but her parents always remembered. And when their daughter was eighteen years old, the father heard of men in La Tour who were teaching a strange and new doctrine. He walked all day and all night to the place where the men were, and recognized that their teachings were the same of those in his daughter's dream. He invited the men back, offering his home to them as their new headquarters. They accepted his offer. And upon returning to his home, his daughter looked upon their faces, and suddenly recollected her entire childhood dream. She knew that they were the same men. All were later baptized.
◆How moving this is for me to see, and how I hope that they look down on us now, and see that their efforts have been paid in full. Such gratitude I feel, that words cannot convey it. I will see their faces again, and look forward to that day. But for now, I will live the way that they have taught me.◆
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