Palmyra

Last Wednesday after Dan got home from school, we loaded up the car and headed out for a week long road trip. Our first stop: Upstate New York. We spent Wednesday night and Thursday night with our friends, the Storey’s, who live in Geneva. It was so fun staying with them in their new house that they had just moved into the day before we got there!

Geneva is about 25 minutes from Palmyra, so with Nessie in tow, we spent most of Thursday in Palmyra. We first visited the Hill Cumorah. We took the path up the hill and walked around the Angel Moroni statue. We had fun playing on the hill and reflecting on the events that once took place here.



Then we drove a few minutes up the road to the Smith log home, the Smith frame house, and the Visitor's Center. The log home is a replica on the exact footprint of the original home, but the frame house is 85% original. So neat to walk on the floorboards where Joseph walked, see the actual bricks of the fireplace hearth where he hid the gold plates, and be inside the walls that witnessed so many hisorical moments. The sister missionaries took us on the tour, and they did a great job of inviting the spirit through their stories and singing.

The tour ended at the path leading to the sacred grove and we were left on our own to explore this significant place. We loved that we were here in the spring . . . . we imagined it looked just like this for Joseph. We also loved that we were the only ones there. It was a beautiful day. The bees were humming, sweet birds were singing, and the woods were so peaceful.

We ended our church sites tour with a visit to the E. B. Grandin printing shop in downtown Palmyra where The Book of Mormon was first published. It was so neat to see how much work and labor went into printing those first 5,000 copies.