| 518 CHAPTER 19.
1834.
IN the absence of Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon presided over the church at Kirtland and took the general oversight of the affairs of the church. The principal work to which attention was given was the erection of the Temple, on which all worked under most adverse circumstances and at great sacrifice.
Heber C Kimball records in his journal that he returned from Missouri to Kirtland on July 26, 1834. He then states:-
"At this time the brethren were laboring night and day building the house of the Lord. Our women were engaged in spinning and knitting in order to clothe those who were laboring at the building, and the Lord only knows the scenes of poverty, tribulation, and distress which we passed through in order to accomplish this thing. My wife toiled all summer in lending her aid towards its accomplishment. She had a hundred pounds of wool, which, with the assistance of a girl, she spun in order to furnish clothing for those engaged in the building of the Temple; and although she had the privilege of keeping half the quantity of wool for herself, as a recompense for her labor, she did not reserve even so much as would make her a pair of stockings, but gave it for those who were laboring at the house of the Lord. She spun and wove, and got the cloth dressed and cut and made up into garments, and gave them to those men who labored on the Temple. Almost all the sisters in Kirtland
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