There was a piece of ground on Father’s side of the homestead that was ideal clay for brick, so we all decided to go in together and build a kiln of brick. Father [Niels Joseph Nielsen] did the bookwork and kept account of all the time each put in, and Uncle George was in charge of the brick kiln, its building, and burning. Father and George did the molding of the adobes; the rest of us helped mix the mud for the adobes, turn them, and wheel them to the kiln.

We all worked our spare time during the summer, and in the fall, the job was completed. The wood for burning was hauled and stacked around the brick kiln until Uncle George said we had enough. We used cedar wood, and the surrounding hills were full of cedar.

There were seventy-five thousand adobes in that kiln of bricks, our whole summer’s work. How happy we all were when the fires were started in the arches and the job was nearing completion.

As well as I can remember, it takes three weeks to burn a kiln of bricks. They must be kept at a certain heat and watched continually night and day. How Uncle George stood the ordeal, I don’t know; he was the one that watched night and day. If he ever slept it was only a cat-nap. He watched that brick kiln like a cat watches a mouse.

We took turns helping him, cutting the wood and firing the arches; then the rains came. It rained night and day for a week, and we finally ran out of wood. We had burned every stick of wood we [could] find on the place—corrals, fenceposts, an outhouse—everything.

We couldn’t get off the place for a load of wood as the whole country would mire a saddleblanket. I shall never forget the discouraged look on Uncle George’s face when he put in the last stick of wood, looked at the color of the arches, and said, “It will be nothing but a pile of smoked mud.”

Father was not a brickmaker, but he insisted we seal up the arches as though the kiln was completed and that we all go home to get some sleep.

The next morning George and I were setting by the brick kiln moaning the blues, when we missed father and went looking for him. We found him on the east side of the kiln with hands above his head, blessing that kiln of bricks. He was just talking to the Lord and telling Him how we had all worked and did everything we possibly could, and he sealed that kiln into the hands of the Lord.

George and I quietly withdrew; father never saw us, but the effect it had on us, and has again when I write this story, I shall never forget.

When the time was up to open the kiln, most of us were depressed, but father never turned a hair. They opened up the top, and the brick was beautiful and rang like a bell when clicked together; they were highly colored and sold like hotcakes. They even bought the broken bricks and hauled everything away.

Uncle George said, and most people thought, that the wet weather held the heat in and completed the job, but we children know that it was done by the priesthood father held and the power of prayer.