James and Agnes Flake

 James Madison Flake (1815-1850) and Agnes Haley Love Flake(1819--1855)            

Each lived only to be 35 years old

What if James and Agnes Flake would not have opened their Mississippi door to the missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Saints?

What if James and Agnes would have decided to not be baptized yielding to pressure of family and friends to not do so?

What if James and Agnes would have not sold their home and land at a sacrificed price and freed their slaves to move more than 670 miles to join the Saints in Nauvoo?

What if James and Agnes, after two years in Nauvoo, would not have left a new home to move again over 300 miles to Winter Quarters, Iowa?

What if James and Agnes would have said in Winter Quarters after losing three of their six children, “We won’t move again, more than 900 miles to the Salt Lake Valley.

What if James and Agnes would have said to Brigham Young after two years in the Salt Lake Valley, “We are just getting started and James can’t accept your call to look for where Church members can settle in California”?

What if Agnes, when informed of the death of James would have said, “That exempts me and my children from the prophet’s call to relocate in San Bernardino; another move of more than 600 miles?”

What if Agnes would have accepted the offer of her brother to return, with her children, to the family home in North Carolina agreeing to, “All you have to do is give up your Mormonism.”  She assured him that would never happen.  Her dying counsel to her children was to always live true to the faith.

Now, nearly 175 years later, more than 15,000 descendants honor James Madison and Agnes Haley Love Flake for being steadfast and immovable, for keeping their covenants, and becoming the foundation of our eternal Flake Family.

Will we, their posterity, carry the torch they so brightly carried?  Will our testimony of the gospel continue to sustain us as it did them?