Emma Smith: My Story is coming to Las Vegas May 30 – June 5 at the Regal Village Square Stadium 18 theater at 9400 W. Sahara Ave. Rearrange your schedule to see it! The movie is a way to honor Emma Smith and her divine role, and to bring the descendants of Joseph Smith Jr. and Emma Hale Smith back to the Church of Jesus Christ after more than a century’s absence.

The genesis of this movie actually started with Gary Cook, writer and director of Praise to the Man and Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration (which plays in visitors’ centers around the world). Brother Cook was pleased with his work depicting the life, mission, and death of Joseph Smith, but upon conclusion, he felt compelled to tell Emma’s story as well—because Joseph’s life story could never be complete without Emma. Not willing to rely on just any resource, he began searching for the facts about Emma Hale Smith, her life, her conversion, her marriage to Joseph Smith Jr., her sacrifices during their seventeen year marriage, her loves, her losses, and the journey to the end of her life.

This quest, which became the movie, is but a small part of the miracle the Lord has been orchestrating for half a century or more. In 1956, a young Gracia Jones became the first descendent of Joseph and Emma to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The heritage with which she was blessed was kept silent through her growing years, but once this discovery was made and she embraced her new found faith, she became engrossed in a thorough research of her ancestry. She since has written four books about the Prophet and Emma and has been a pivotal person in the establishment of the Joseph Smith Jr. and Emma Hale Smith Historical Society as well as their Family Organization; as well as Historian for this movie.

Less than twenty years after Gracia’s baptism, a second descendent of the Prophet was being positioned for a great cause. Michael Kennedy was a junior in high school in Tonapah, Nevada when he was given an assignment to search out an ancestor who may have had a part in the building up of America. When he asked his father about the possibility, his father produced a box of artifacts handed down to him which contained memorabilia from Joseph Smith (“who founded the State of Utah”) and Emma and his great grandfather (and sixth naturally-born son), Alexander. To that point, Joseph Smith and Mormonism had never been mentioned in his home. While working on his assignment, Michael answered the knock of two young missionaries—few of whom were ever sent to work in small desert towns, but who happened to be assigned to Tonopah temporarily.

Michael Kennedy was subsequently baptized and with advisement from then President Harold B. Lee and other general authorities including Bruce R. McConkie and Gordon B. Hinckley, was charged with building a family organization for the descendants of Joseph and Emma Smith. It was through this endeavor that he met his cousin Gracia Jones, and eventually became executive producer of Emma Smith: My Story. It was their sincere desire to eliminate the misunderstandings surrounding Emma and instead portray the truth, to help fulfill the promises made in the Doctrine and Covenants Section 109: 68-70.

This beautiful movie is retrospective, portraying Emma several decades after the martyrdom sharing her story with her adopted daughter, Julie Murdock Smith. Much of the material in the movie about Emma’s personality came from family journals, giving the audience a new perspective. If you’ve seen Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration, you’ll recognize the main characters as the same actors.

What remains as the credits roll is a reverent awe for this remarkable woman, her love for the husband of her youth and the father of her children, her strength and her endurance in the face of unmentionable sorrow, and her abiding testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and a Prophet of God.

Be sure to see the movie…and for more on Joseph and Emma, go to www.josephsmithjr.com, www.josephsmithjr.org. or read “Joseph and Emma: Their Divine Mission”, “Emma & Lucy”, or “Holidays with Joseph & Emma”.