Ingvald Conrad Thoresen was three years old in 1855 when his parents, Hans and Karen Andersen Thoresen, were converted to the Church in Christiania (now Oslo), Norway, and it wasn’t long before the small boy was called upon to make his first sacrifices for the gospel: Norwegians had not yet been granted religious freedom, and Hans, who was soon appointed baptist for the Saints in Christiania, was arrested for illegally baptizing converts. After each arrest, he served six- to ten-day prison sentences. Because his family was dependant on Hans’s daily labor as a cabinet-maker, these sentences meant hunger and want for the family. Hans, limited to a bread and water prison diet, hoarded his prison bread so that he could bring it home to his hungry children to tide them over until he could earn more.

Ingvald was baptized by his father while still in Norway, and the family emigrated to Deseret in 1863, when Ingvald was 11. They settled in Hyrum, Cache County, Utah – the place Ingvald called home for the rest of his long life. He completed the district school in Hyrum, equivalent to our modern eighth grade, and at age 16 began to work at farming, mining, and on the railroad in order to earn the money to put himself through high school at Logan. He succeeded, and became a school teacher, a profession he followed as he married and he and his wife Margaret began raising the first of their eventual 14 children.

At a local conference of the Church at Logan, Utah, held August 26, 1876 [Ingvald wrote in old age], I was called by President [Brigham] Young to take a mission to Scandinavia. President Young told me confidentially that President Ole N. Liljenquist of the said mission requested my assistance, especially in financial matters, as I had been bookkeeper and treasurer of the Hyrum United Order, when Brother Liljenquist was Bishop of that city. I was set apart by President George Q. Cannon at the close of said conference meeting and left Utah September 22, 1876, for said mission.

Ingvald did serve for about a year as mission bookkeeper. Then in September 1877, Elder John C. Sandberg, who had been presiding over the Goteborg Conference in Sweden and publishing the Swedish Nordstjarnan (the Swedish equivalent of the Millennial Star), was summoned home to take care of urgent family troubles.

That evening, after President Liljenquist had meditated on whom among all our Utah missionaries he should choose as a successor to Brother Sandberg, the president looked at me and said: “I know who must go to Goteborg, if the Lord does not change my mind before morning.”

That night I did not sleep much, with my Norwegian prejudice against Swedes, and my inability to fill President Sandberg’s place.

When President Liljenquist did appoint Ingvald to that position the next morning, Ingvald’s response was “I am not qualified.” President Liljenquist assured him, “The Lord can qualify you.”

“Accepting this call,” Ingvald wrote, “was the hardest trial I had ever met.”

He received a few hours’ crash course in managing a Swedish conference and publishing a magazine as President Sandberg passed through Copenhagen on his way home, then he headed to his new assignment.

I left for Goteborg by steamer, and after a rough passage landed in that city at 10 p.m., and found a couple of native Elders awaiting me. The next evening I met the Saints of the branch, received a hearty welcome, and dismissed my national prejudice forever. Felt okeh.

At his first district conference in Stockholm, Ingvald discovered that a great many of the Swedish converts, as well as at least one of the hardest working local elders, had come from the Vingaker area of Sweden – yet the Church had no missionaries working there in what was obviously a fruitful mission field (in Ingvald’s terms,”there were many Israelites there”). Carl A. Ek, the local missionary, explained that while he had “many friends in Vingaker, they dared not entertain me overnight, fearing that mob.” Nevertheless, after several days’ contemplation, Ingvald decided that it was time to proselyte in Vingaker, regardless of its history as being very hard on missionaries.

I asked Brother Ola Hanson, of Logan, an inoffensive elderly man [he was 60], to go to Vingaker and quietly get names and addresses of as many friendly farmers as possible. He went, but was ordered out the second day, and complied. But as I could not get the opening up of Vingaker off my mind, I immediately called on Brother Hanson to go back to Vingaker to finish the work assigned, and to take Brother John F. Olson, of Salt Lake City, with him, as companion and body guard, who had consented to go, being a stronger and younger man than Brother Ola Hanson.

They went, but were soon ordered out; Brother Hanson obeyed, and the next day Bro. Olson was “taken out” by a force of ten or twelve stout men, who abused him severely. Four or six of the ruffians lifted him up high and then slammed him down on the hard rolled gravel road two or three times; the last time Brother Olson failed to get up, and they left him, perhaps for dead. But he soon revived, got up and walked away, not feeling much injured. (This was his own story to me.)

Vingaker was let alone for a few months, then in early April, 1878, Ingvald asked John A. Quist, an elder newly arrived from Salt Lake City, to accompany him to Vingaker.

After having fully explained the Vingaker situation to him, I said: “If you will go with me up there, we will go and open the gospel door to those people.” He said he would go with me, and on April 2, 1878, we entered the district, held a good meeting that same evening and another one the following evening.

After the meeting we had a long conversation with a Johan Lund and his wife, where we stayed over night. They were very friendly.

They held more meetings, and soon announced that baptisms would be held in a creek near the Lund home. Four women, who had already become familiar with Mormonism through their friends and work elsewhere, were baptized. The mob took no action.

They held another meeting the day after the baptism, and opened the floor to questions. Mrs. Lund, with whom they had stayed earlier, asked, “Can you heal the sick?”

I answered: “Yes, with the help of the Lord.”

Then she related: “We have a very sick daughter, who is covered with sores, and who, the doctor has said, can not be cured.” She continued: “I believe you have power from God, and I intend to join your Church, but my husband, Johan Lund, is still doubting. But if you heal our daughter, he will also join.”

I replied: “We will be at your home tomorrow afternoon about 3 o’clock with consecrated oil and heal your daughter.”

After the meeting, Brother Quist “called” me for having answered the lady so direct. I said: “Excuse me, I am not proficient in the Swedish language, but if I said ‘we will heal your daughter,’ it must be done, and we must fast and pray to the Lord until it is accomplished.” Which we did.

We bought oil, went into the woods and consecrated it, pleaded with the Lord, jointly and singly, for about two hours, and received consolation very definitely.

We repaired to the home of Johan Lund, a very prominent farmer, where we found Mrs. Lund with a three-year-old daughter on her lap, in which position she said she had been most of the time for more than three months, the girl being very sick. I asked Brother Quist to anoint her head as well as exposed parts of the body freely, and I confirmed the anointing in a few words, adding: “You shall overcome this disease, live long and be healthy, and your whole family shall receive the gospel and soon be gathered with the Saints of God in Zion.”

When we took our hands off her head, she wanted to get down on the floor, where she had not been for months. She came across the room to us strangers, and I gave her a little pocket mirror, which she used in picking the sores off her face. We all shed tears of joy and thanksgiving.

Ingvald stayed in Vingaker for another two weeks, baptizing several more people. Within a year, a branch with more than 200 members had been established there. “We received no orders from the mob, but were served with a notice to meet before the combined church and school boards after ten days, to show cause why we should not leave the district.” (He did not record the outcome of that meeting.)

Ingvald had a busy life once he returned to Hyrum. He served as counselor and then president of the Hyrum Stake YMMIA, principal of the theological department in the Hyrum Sunday Schools, home teacher, home missionary, and other positions. In 1901 he was set apart as counselor to William C. Parkinson, president of the Hyrum Stake.

A Democrat, he served in several territorial legislatures and represented his county in the 1895 convention that wrote the constitution for the new State of Utah. He served as mayor of Hyrum, as well as, at different times, its judge, surveyor, city attorney, and school trustee, and served Cache County as prosecuting attorney, county surveyor, deputy assessor and tax collector, and commissioner.

Last year, 1937, a lady called me on the telephone from Sugar House [Salt Lake City] and asked if I was the Thoresen who had healed a little girl in Vingaker, Sweden, some sixty years ago?

I answered: “Yes.”

“Well,” she said, “I am that girl, and have not been sick to speak of, since. But my mother died yesterday and will be buried here at 10 a.m. tomorrow, and one of her last wishes was that you would speak at her funeral and tell of the conversion and my healing.”

I did so, and a splendid spirit prevailed.

Ingvald died on 15 April 1938, a few weeks after recording his mission experiences for assistant church historian Andrew Jenson.