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Precious Highlights in President Spencer W. Kimball’s Journal
Located, described, linked, and dated by Dennis B. Horne

Pearls . . . gems . . . nuggets . . . whatever you want to call them. Probably 98% of President Kimball’s diary (thousands of pages) is tedious in the general sense of being notations about meeting itinerary, travelogue, mission tours, ordination names, and weather reports. But the remaining fraction is more precious than jewels to the spiritually literate and appreciative, and to those that love the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Finding pearls made wading through the rest of it worth it. A church email account is needed to access the diary.

The below pages contain a date, then a brief description of a journal item, followed by a link to the page it is on. These often run into more than one page, sometimes many. So keep reading or clicking the right arrow until you are sure you have exhausted the subject. Sometimes this means clicking that right arrow to get past a letter, pictures, newspaper clippings, or other intervening items. Sometimes words, lines, paragraphs, and even entire pages are redacted (blacked out; this is material considered sacred, private, and confidential). I have had some links change on me, so I also included dates to find if the links don’t quite get you there.

The entries can be candid. Elder Kimball called sin just what it is, sin. A running theme in the diary is Elder Kimball’s constant counseling of members with moral problems, especially homosexual activity, adultery, and other marriage problems. I have noted a few of the more detailed instances below, but the problems he faced in working with these people were constant and an emotional and spiritual strain and drain on him more than all else he did.

Not all items below are of lofty spiritual significance. Some are merely of interest as church history and administration. We get to be the fly on the wall for certain meetings where sacred and sublime things are said or done as only prophets can. In my judgment, a few of them reach to such heights as could offer the possibility of canonization if the Lord so desired. To me, one cannot read such things without being inspired and knowing the restored Church is led by prophets and apostles and is indeed God’s restored work.

I had not planned on posting this highlights index until I noticed that some enemies of the Church were slandering everything they read, doing their utmost to cast a negative slant on a prophet’s (actually) superb record. These doubters just don’t understand. This Apostolic record-keeper was a Special Witness whose belief was contagious. He lifted and blessed everyone around him (that would be) all his life. While he counseled and worked with doubters and unbelievers, he strove to help them rid themselves of such and replace it with faith and repentance and cleanliness.

President Kimball did create something of an index himself that he put at the front of most journal volumes, but one could argue about how useful it is according to what one is looking for. I could wish the diaries contained less of his movements and more of what went on and was said in temple meetings.

I estimate that only a tiny percentage of church members and historians will ever read any significant portion of the diaries, which makes this highlights index helpful as a way to find what I, and perhaps others, would consider the best parts—sifted from so many thousands of pages. And with this index being as long as it is, perhaps only a small percentage of it will be reviewed—but for those who love the same sweet things I do, I hope it will be of some use in delivering precious pearls, gems, and nuggets of the highest value:

 

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