Ooo! two things that I forgot that were really cool stories from the Whitmer tour: so Mary Whitmer was having a hard time keeping up with all the house work/cooking/being the hostess not only to her large family but to Joseph and Oliver and eventually Emma and Joseph's parents too. One day while she was milking the cows a man came to her and after reminding her that her service was not going unnoticed showed her the plates so that she would have a testimony to cling to when she was having a hard time/ to further motivate her. she is often referred to as the fourth witness. How cool is that? I just loved this story cause it's so touching to me when Heavenly Father, in His own way, lets us know that he knows and appreciates all we struggle through and sends us tender mercies to give us the strength and resolve we need to keep going.
The other cool story/fact/whatever was that after the church was officially organized and Joseph and Oliver were named as first and second elders they were re-baptized in the Seneca Lake. the first time they were baptized the church wasn't organized yet and they were baptized for the remission of sins and the second time they were baptized and confirmed members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. (of course now we are baptized for both all at once.) Just interesting.
Ok, so after the Whitmer farm we drove up to Palmyra stopping on the way to see the Hill Cumorah. I was surprised at how big and dramatically steep it was. Up on the top they had a monument to the angel moroni recognizing that this was where Joseph Smith received the gold plates-tho obviously we don't know exactly where on the hill :)
Man, I'm tellin' ya, I was huffing and puffing up that hill.
After this we went to Palmyra and on main street found the printing press where the book of mormon was published. It was kind of cool cause right there, there were four different churches-each on a corner of the same intersection (pres, meth, cath, and I forget the fourth...baptists?). I guess Joseph wasn't kidding when he wrote his history about the religious furver of the time haha.
We had a cool tour from a senior missionary and it was really amazing to see just how much monotonous work went into creating the first 5,000 copies. A cool random fact, the printer who took on the job had a cool new press that made it faster than what it used to be and was only in the printing business for the duration of the publishing of the Book of Mormon and then went on to other business ventures-just interesting how the Lord gets just what He needs to finish His work.
After the printing press we drove a few minutes over to the Smith family farm. It still is out in the middle of nowhere but now you can see the palmyra temple from their homestead which is pretty cool. It was amazing to see where they walked and talked and where all those different miraculous things happened. It was especially cool to stand in the upper room of their log cabin where Joseph was first visted by the angel moroni after having the first vision to learn about the book of mormon and his mission etc. It's such a small room. It's truly a miracle that the others stayed asleep. Code said it best when he said that this trip helped him to feel the reality of all of those events, and the humanside of Joseph. Not that we worship him or think him a god, just...we focus on his mission as a prophet so it was fun to see his humble beginnings and realize that he was just a little boy, teenager, man like everybody else etc.
The sacred grove is right up against their property-literally their backyard. It was so peaceful and beautiful and serene. We walked through the paths that they had established and sat on a bench and just soaked in the quiet and our thoughts, and then we read from Joseph's account of what happened there which was unique and special.
(this was when he was around 15 years old btw)
"While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads: If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.
At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God.
So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.
After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.
But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.
It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!"
(Joseph went on to ask which church to join and was told to join none of them for they were all in one way or another no longer the complete church that Christ had set up while He was on the earth and learned that it would be through him (joseph) that the restoration of that church would be brought about).
Sorry if you find these next pics boring (feel free to skip them ) but I love forests-the colors and how the light changes through the trees, seriously, we have a painting of a forest scene in our family room and I felt like I was walking through it the whole time :)
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