I apologize for neglecting Keepa so badly this week — it may be the end of next week before I catch up with myself and can get back on schedule. In the meantime, here is something I posted last night on the Facebook page for She Shall Be an Ensign. (All other sketches posted there are shorter versions of stories that have been posted earlier to Keepa.

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World War I erupted with startling rapidity in the late summer of 1914. Latter-day Saint missionaries were withdrawn from active war zones as quickly as possible, although a few missionaries would remain in Great Britain and Scandinavia throughout the war. As the elders – and they were all elders, not sisters – left from Germany, Austria, Poland, Lithuania, and other parts of Europe, they appointed priesthood holders in each branch to keep the Saints together and continue the Church organization as well as they could.

In Vienna, Austria, there was no priesthood holder who could be called to guide the small branch there. Instead, the elders appointed Sister Maria Either, a woman in her early 60s, to safeguard the branch records and to do what she could to stay in touch with her fellow Saints until missionaries returned after the war.

I have been unable to learn much about Sister Either – I am uncertain even whether she was married or single, or how long she had been a member of the Church. The official mission history garbles her name (she is called “Mathilda Esther” there), and, as is common in histories written from the perspective of the American elders, information about local Saints during times of war is practically non-existent – if mission records were our only source, it would appear that the Church disappeared in war zones when the missionaries left, and then reappeared when the elders returned.

But of course the few Saints in Vienna passed through the war years, regardless of whether missionaries were there to report their existence. One thin record tells us that the Saints met in each other’s homes, and specifically mentions that the women continued to meet in the absence of priesthood leadership. Exactly who was there, and what role Maria Either played, is, for the time being, unknown to me.

Austria, and particularly its capital, Vienna, continued to suffer after the war. Food was scarce to the point that thousands, especially children, starved to death. Clothing and bedding were utterly unavailable.

The Saints in Switzerland, who themselves had little surplus, were aware that there were Latter-day Saints in Vienna, gathered a great stock of food and clothing and watched for an opportunity to send those goods to their fellow Saints in Austria. That opportunity finally came late in 1919, a full year after the war’s end, when the Red Cross found room in one of its relief trains for the Saints to ship their goods. They entrusted those cartons to Elder Festus M. Fuhriman, the son of Swiss converts and the first elder “from Zion” to return after the war.

He accompanied the Swiss goods to Vienna, and on his arrival began hunting for Latter-day Saints. There were no cabs or streetcars or other means of transportation other than the elder’s shoe leather, and he walked for many hours searching for the Saints at their old addresses …

… and when he finally found them, he found the Sunday School meeting with Sister Maria Either, who had indeed kept the branch together and functioning, and who had kept the records safe. As he reported to his mission president, “She has kept everything in good order, notwithstanding the horrible conditions.” Missionaries returned to Vienna later that year, a Relief Society was organized, and Sister Either served as first counselor in its presidency.

Maria Either died in 1933, at age 80.

What she did, what she endured, who she was, even, remains to be uncovered. What we do know so far is that she was a Latter-day Saint woman, one who was deemed capable of ministering to a group of Latter-day Saints under exceptionally trying circumstances, and one who proved faithful to that trust.

Kickstarter link.