Rough Trail

Jane Manning James was a Mormon Pioneer and also one of the first black members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. As part of the article I am illustrating for BYU Magazine, I am illustrating little known stories from the lives of church members. The story is told of how Jane travelled several hundred miles of the journey with inadequate footwear. In an autobiographical sketch she wrote,

“We walked until our shoes were worn out, and our feet became sore and cracked open and bled until you could see the whole print of our feet with blood on the ground. We stopped and united in prayer to the Lord, we asked God the Eternal Father to heal our feet and our prayers were answered and our feet were healed forthwith.”

For this illustration I wanted to portray the hardship but also inject hope. The sage sparrow represents the Bible verse which teaches that not a sparrow shall fall without our Father knowing. (Matthew 10:29). Hopefully I struck the right balance of strength and faith here.