Featured on my Facebook page, and posted here for archiving.
Even non-Mormon women and girls have played roles in advancing the mission of the Church.
Nova Belle Lovell of Florence, Colorado was 13 or 14 when her family met Elder Zebulan N. Skousen of Raymond, Alberta and Dublan, Mexico. She and her family became such good friends of the missionaries that Nova wrote to Elder Skousen after he returned to Canada in 1909 to tell him that she was learning to play hymns from the Mormon hymn book he had given her.
She told him this, too: “One day in school we were talking about the Mormons. Our teacher was making remarks about them. The next day she told us to write a composition on a man mentioned in history that we liked and to tell why we liked him. Most of the others wrote about Lincoln or Washington, but I wrote of Joseph Smith. I wrote a longer one than I meant too, but she told so many things that I thought were stories, that I had to let her know that I knew they were stories. She took up our papers to grade them, but I never heard her say any more about Mormons or those papers. I suppose she thought I was one.”
Nova and her family never joined the Church – but she didn’t hesitate to speak up and tell the truth as she knew it.
(Couldn’t find a picture of Nova, so here is her family’s listing in the 1910 census.)
Oh, wouldn’t it be great to see the paper she wrote? I’d love to read what she had to say about Joseph Smith (which might give an indication of the sources she had at her disposal, too).