Despite having traveled during the cold of winter, every member of the group felt near death from thirst. A baby was racked with convulsions from dehydration. At the height of their anguish, a man suddenly appeared ahead of them on the path. He greeted them, and when they asked where they might find water, he pointed out a small patch of green on the mountain. “If you will camp near there,” he said, “you will find enough water to supply all of your needs, until you reach the next spring, which is forty miles away.”

The pioneers advised the stranger not to head in the direction they had come, for there was no water that way.  He seemed unconcerned, walked past one wagon, then disappeared before reaching the second. “He’s gone!” one man exclaimed.  “He was one of the Three Nephites!”

In a similar story told in recent times, the owner of an A & W Restaurant near the Brigham Young University campus in Provo, Utah, was working in the drive–in one summer afternoon when a bearded old man approached him and asked for something to eat.  Noting that the old man seemed to be both hungry and poor, the owner offered him an ice-cream cone.  After finishing the treat, the old man said, “You’ll always have all that you need if you share what you have and live righteously.”

The owner turned away to comment to one of his employees, and when he turned back, he saw that the man had disappeared.  Rushing out of the store toward the street, he searched for but could not find the stranger.  Looking in every direction, he realized there was no way for the man to vanish so quickly from the open space that surrounded the freestanding drive-in.  He concluded that his visitor was one of the Three Nephites.

For more than a century, hundreds of stories of the Three Nephites have been told in settings ranging from solemn religious assemblies to late-night campfires to root beer restaurants.  In localities in Utah, Idaho, and other states where the Mormon faith is prevalent, and also in other areas of the world, one frequently hears accounts of the miraculous appearance and disappearance of kindly, white-bearded old men who bring messages of the greatest spiritual importance.  Their manifestations are sudden and supernatural. 

They give blessings in exchange for hospitality, lead lost people to safety, bring assistance or spiritual comfort in time of danger or mental anguish, heal the sick, and offer promises or blessings in exchange for hospitality, generosity, or help given to these transcendental strangers.