July 4^th, 2023.  Independence Day.  Much was said in testimony meeting two days ago about our independence and freedom.

I am truly free.  I am free from debt.  I can do each day as I please.  No one is persecuting me.  I can worship as I please.  I am free from sin.  I have no addictions.  I am not subservient to anyone or anything.  I live in the United States of America, the only country in the world governed by a Constitution written by men who were raised up by God for that very purpose.  (D&C 101:80)

I am free, and I am grateful.

A powerful thought came to me in sacrament meeting which compels me to write this article.  The thought was the realization that I am a descendant of slaves.  All of my ancestors before about the year 1600 were slaves.  Nephi saw them in vision more than a thousand years in the future, and referred to them as “the Gentiles who went forth out of captivity.”  In the 13^th chapter of First Nephi he used that phrase five times.  He could have simply referred to them as Gentiles, but he wanted to make a point:  they were in captivity.  They were escaping captivity.

My wonderful ancestors were slaves and captives in England, Ireland, Germany, France, and Scotland.  They were paupers, serfs, and religious dissenters.  They were oppressed, beaten, persecuted, hunted, abused, imprisoned , and massacred.

In England William Brewster was forced to pay taxes to support priests and bishops who did nothing.  He was forbidden to leave the country without permission from the king.  He was arrested as “a stirrer of sedition,” and for being “disobedient in matters of religion.”  His fellow dissenters were put in pillories, had their ears sliced off, their noses slit, and were burned along with their English translations of the Bible.  William was a wanted man for publishing tracts outlawed by the Catholic Church and its successor, the Anglican Church.  He escaped captivity by boarding the Mayflower.  He was my 11^th great grandfather.  He was surely one of the Gentiles going forth out of captivity that Nephi saw in vision.

In Germany my ancestors lived under the feudal system where all land was owned by nobles.  The Bauers, Lanciscos, etc. lived in one- or two-room huts with little or no furniture.  They had to pay taxes to the nobles who owned the land.  Nobles weren't taxed, only the commoners.  Never mind that they had little or nothing to eat.  They were taxed so that the nobles and priests could eat.  Warfare swept up and down through their area as the Catholic Church fought the rising Protestant wave in the Thirty Years' War.  That was preceded by the Peasant's Rebellion in which 100,000 dissenters were massacred by the superior-armed nobles and church.

In France my ancestors were Huguenots, dissenters from the Catholic Church.  The 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre saw many thousands of them killed in 12 cities across France.  The survivors were faced with having to choose between forced conversion to the Catholic Church, or to flee to safer cities or countries.

In Ireland my Condon ancestors were Catholic.  They maintained a large, defensive castle for many hundreds of years, but were finally overpowered and displaced by Oliver Cromwell.  The Condons became paupers, forced to live on small plots of land owned by absentee English, Protestant landlords.  Famine and accompanying disease were rampant.  Warfare was frequent.  Scorched-earth tactics were used by both sides to cause famine.  Many died in the wars, but many millions died in the famines.

These people were slaves in fact.  I am a descendant of slaves.  Am I owed reparations?  The thought is ludicrous.  Reparations should go to the ones who suffered the afflictions.  I am making great headway in paying those reparations as I do temple work for these people who suffered so that I could live in peace and freedom and have the opportunity to do their temple work.

I am grateful for what they did.