Church History

When we awoke in Cooperstown, here was the snowy scene.

We had a beautiful drive through many small towns on our way to church history sites.  The water in the lake below was so high that some of the houses were partially submerged.

Our first stop was in Fayette, New York, which is the site of the Whitmer Farm.  They have a visitor's center there where they have missionaries who showed us an amazing movie about some of the miracles the Whitmer's experienced as they decided whether or not to host Joseph Smith as he performed some of the translation of the Book of Mormon.  It was a good reminder of how the Lord prepared this work to go forward.

We were able to go into a replica of the original log house where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was restored.  It began with six members and now there are more than 16 million.

After the tour of the Whitmer home and the visitor's center, the sister missionaries told us about a great grocery store where we could get lunch.  When we got there, we saw this Dutch Bakery sign and thought of Parker speaking Dutch on his mission.

The grocery store is called Sauders and is run by a Mennonite group.  They had huge and amazing sandwiches along with huge ice cream cones that we enjoyed.  The whole store was really neat.

We went to the Hill Cumorah visitor's center and they told us to start at the Smith Family Farm so we went there and went on the tour of the houses on the farm.  It was cool to hear the stories of places where Joseph hid the plates to preserve them from those who wanted to steal them.  They lived in such humble circumstances -- in one of these homes, the angel Moroni appeared to Joseph several times to tell him about the location of the Book of Mormon.

We were able to go into the Sacred Grove and spend time pondering.  Since we were then in April, this is likely very similar to how it would have looked (even though the movies depict lots of greenery).

I wonder if this is the view Joseph had as he looked up and saw the Father and the Son appear to him?

We headed back to the Hill Cumorah visitor's center and took a few pictures.  They told us we should go to the Grandin Press where the Book of Mormon was printed since that closed at 5 so that's where we headed next. 

The Grandin Press was awesome -- they took us on a tour and described how the printing press worked back then.  What a difficult task it was to set the press for each page.  We are so lucky today to be able to print with such ease.

Calissa said it would be awesome if we had one of these editions of the Book of Mormon so we had to remind her we actually do have one, thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Burr!

We made it back to the Hill Cumorah visitor's center late in the day and took some beautiful pictures on top of the Hill Cumorah, including the various monuments and plaques.

We found the Dutch translation of the Book of Mormon in Parker's honor.

What a fascinating time we had at these church history sites.  It's such a testimony to see the Lord's hand in this great work.  We then headed to Niagara Falls for the night.

It was getting late but we were told we had to see the Falls at night when the lights are on it so we made the short drive and walk down there and got a few pictures while trying not to freeze!