We live in a small world where everyone is interconnected in some degree. When we ask God to help us in our lives, He does not personally come down and help us. He uses this interconnection to help us more than we may realize.

People who live or have lived in the Gridley area just seem to be more closely interconnected and influenced by God than others. What is the evidence?

Every town is supported by a basic industry. Gold discovery and mining was the basic industry God used to cause men and their families to settle the Wild West to expand His new nation created to provide freedom of religion under an inspired and unique Constitution.

When gold miners filed their claims along rivers and streams they were told by government agents that only the land along the river banks had value, so they could add as much land off the river to their claim as they were able to homestead.

Gold miners along the Feather River in East Gridley who were farmers back home recognized the farm value of the “worthless” land so they extended their mining claims for long distances off the river creating farms of 720 acres of fertile soil in a better climate than they were from. Many “gold miners” were soon making more money on their claims as farmers raising food for other miners.

Agriculture is now the basic industry that supports all the people, businesses and services in the Gridley area. Agriculture is God's favorite industry.

Note how many times Christ referred to agriculture in his parables and teaching. Faith grows like a mustard seed which is the smallest of seeds but grows into a large bush... The same seeds are sown but they prosper differently based on a variety of conditions, the best being when they are watered and nourished in good soil... The wheat and the tares... Good fruit comes only from good trees and bad fruit from bad trees... Olive trees are pruned and grafted with new branches... The vineyard parables, etc.

An Ag sheepman named Gridley owned a lot of land. He felt inspired to donate some of his land to the Railroad if they would create a station to stop in the town, which was then named Gridley after him.

Other men felt inspired to create a system of canals to irrigate farm lands. This created a need for farmers who knew how to take turns using water from canals to irrigate their crops and orchards. So, the canal creators went to Utah to recruit farmers who knew how to use the canals to settle in Gridley. Thus, many farmers from Utah settled in the Gridley area at the beginning of the 1900s and their children learned to swim in the canals.

There are a lot of churches in the Gridley area. More residents are church members than in big cities. November 4, 1934 was a very big day in Gridley. On that day there were so many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the densely populated Sacramento-Roseville area and down the valley through Stockton, Manteca, Tracy, Modesto, Turlock, and Merced, enough to create a stake (diocese) of about 3000 members.

On that same day, there were a comparable number of members in this valley area north of Sacramento to create another large stake centered in rural Gridley. John C. Todd was the first stake president while being the manager of the local Bank of America. 1934 was exactly 100 years since the very first stake of this church was created in Kirtland, Ohio.