Welcome.

I love the man called Dan Jones.

Of him, President Hinckley said, “In terms of the number of converts, Dan Jones must certainly be included in the half dozen or so most productive missionaries in the history of the Church.” 1

But before he was a missionary, he wasn’t even a member of the restored church. He hailed from Wales. Born into a mining family and having chance for education, he forsook ongoing college training and found his passion as a mariner; in that capacity, Dan traveled the world.

In 1840, he immigrated to the United States. In 1843, he and his wife, Jane, joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He was one heck of an addition! The Prophet Joseph had so few loyal friends, but Dan Jones was one of them – devoted to the bitter end. In addition to being a close friend, Dan also became a business partner with the Prophet and “purchased a half-share in Jones’s steamboat, the Maid of Iowa.” 2

In fact, it was the Maid of Iowa that caused Dan to meet the prophet, Joseph. “One day [Dan] landed a boatload of Saints in Nauvoo, and the Prophet came to the wharf to meet him. He walked up to the little captain, put his hand on his shoulder, and said, ‘God bless this little man.’ Dan Jones never forgot that benediction.” 3

So beautifully, that was the year Dan and his wife joined the church.

“[Dan] was with his beloved Prophet in the Carthage Jail the night before the martyrdom when the Prophet asked, ‘Brother Jones, are you afraid to die?’ Dan Jones replied, ‘Has it come to that, Brother Joseph? Being engaged in such a work as we’re engaged in, I don’t think death would have any terror for me.’ The Prophet said, ‘Brother Jones, you shall not die, but you shall go to Wales and fulfill the mission assigned you.’…” 4

And he did.

The next morning, Joseph asked Dan to run some errands, and so he was gone when Joseph and Hyrum were murdered.

And Joseph’s last known prophecy was fulfilled when, in 1845, Dan and Jane were called to Whales to preach the gospel there.

And preach he did! So well and with so much zeal that no matter if he was speaking in Welsh or English (he was fluent in both), “witnesses recorded that he spoke so captivatingly that he could hold his audience’s attention in either language for hours.” 5

Spanning more than a decade, Jones preached to those of Welsh descent, those of his homeland. God blessed him incredibly. “Under Dan Jones’s direction, missionaries in Wales established 29 branches and baptized nearly 1,000 people each year of his first mission. He was called on a second mission to Wales in 1852, and despite growing persecution of the Church, some 2,000 people were baptized in four years.” 6

Hurrah for Israel, and hurrah for Dan Jones!

When he returned to Utah, he kept right on working for the Lord and His cause among Welsh converts. He was instrumental in helping “an estimated 5,000 people [come] to the western United States…”

Besides all his missionary labors, he also served as the mayor of Manti, Utah and oversaw the translation of the Book of Mormon into Welsh.

What a man! What a missionary! What a soldier for the Lord.

He died at 51 from tuberculosis. Surviving him were 6 children and two of his three wives. What a loss for earth and a tremendous gain for the spirit world. As one of the “faithful elders,” he labors and loves on, “preaching…the gospel of repentance and redemption, through the sacrifice of the Only Begotten Son of God, among those who are in darkness and under the bondage of sin in the great world of the spirits of the dead.” 8

Truly, death held no terror for Dan Jones. It gave him a place change but no alteration in that which mattered the most to him.

I’m so glad he’s with Joseph again laboring in the work they both loved.

Unto all the world: I love the man called Dan Jones.

1. Gordon B. Hinckley, “The Thing of Most Worth,” Tambuli, Mar. 1994, 8; Ensign, Sept. 1993, 7.
2. Church History: Global Histories: Dan Jones
3. Barrett, Ivan. Joseph Smith – the Chosen of God and Friend of Man, August 12, 1975, BYU Speeches
4. Ibid
5. Dan Jones: Great Lives Remembered, October 2012
6. Ibid
7. Ibid
8. Doctrine and Covenants 138:57