My Church Site Thoughts

 

A couple Sundays ago I was asked to speak about my experiences at the various church sites I have visited.   In preparing for this talk I was amazed at how much insight the Spirit added.  I hope I can capture that same Spirit here in my writings.

In 2021 I went to the Sacred Grove.  As I walked past the Smith home I heard Michael S Wilcox share his experience as he was touring there many years ago.  He had placed his head against the same fireplace Joseph had when he shared with his mother, “none of the churches are correct…For I have seen a vision.”  As I continued on the path to the Sacred Grove, I observed a wooden fence and once again I was taken to the Jospeh Smith story where he had fallen over the fence and the angel Moroni had appeared him to him and instructed him to “tell his father all that had transpired.  As I entered the grove I felt as if I was entering the temple.  It is truly a sacred place.  I wandered all around the pathways and sat on the benches and reflected on what had transpired there so many years ago.  “Oh, How Lovely was the Morning” played out in my mind.  I came across some benches as if they had been set up for a church service and I sat there wondering how cool it would have been to have been there to listen to the Prophet teach.  Then “Praise to the Man” started playing out in my mind.

I then made my way to the Hill Cumorah where Kenneth Copes song “Come with me” played in my mind.  My definition of hill is totally different than what I climbed.  I found myself on a steep trail.  As I huffed and puffed with multiple breaks, I found myself wondering, “Brother Jospeh how did you do this?”  The Spirit responded, “He was a young man.”  (Hinting that I was an old woman.”  At the top I was greeted with a circular statue with a golden Moroni on top with various pictures of the prophet all around it.

On my flight home I decided I wanted to go to Nauvoo, so April of this year I made the drive to Nauvoo.  My first stop was the Winter Quarters temple.  Behind the temple were the grave sights of our pioneer ancestors.  In the middle was a statute of a husband comforting his wife and at their feet was a marker that read “Grave on Unknown Child.”  This was truly another a sacred place  To enter, you walked between two cherubim with their wings extended towards each other covering their face and all around were sayings from “Come Come Ye Saints”, bible scriptures and my favorite, “Oh Lord responsive to thy call in life or death what er befall our hopes for bliss on thee depend thou art our everlasting friend.”  Their faith was life changing.

I then went to Liberty Jail which was a dingy dungeon with no light.  Tears flowed as I gazed at that hole where the Prophet spent so much time with D&C 121 and 122 started running through my mind:  “O God where art thou?....because of thy righteousness; and thy God shall stand by thee forever and ever…And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit or into the hands of murders and the sentence of death passed upon thee, if thou be cast into the deep, if th billowing surge conspire against thee, if fierce winds become thine enemy, if the havens gather blackness, and all te elements combine to hedge up thy way; and above all if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.  The Son of man hath descended below them all, Art thou greater than he?”

I then went to Carthage Jail where in the visiting center they opened with a talk given by Elder Holland which hit home.  I shall just share a part of his powerful testimony that solidified mine:  “May I refer to a modern ‘last days’ testimony?  When Jospeh Smith and his brother Hyrum started for Carthage to face what they knew would be an imminent martyrdom, Hyrum read these words to comfort the heart of his brother: ‘Thou hast been faithful, wherefore…thou shalt be made strong, even unto the sitting down in the place which I have prepared in the mansions of my Father.  And now I Moroni, bid farewell…until we shall meet before the judgement seat of Christ.’  A few short verses from the 12^th chapter of Ether in the Book of Mormon.  Before closing the book, Hyrum turned down the corner of the page from which he read, marking it as part of the everlasting testimony for which these two brothers were about to die…Joseph the Prophet turned to the guards who held him captive and bore a powerful testimony of the diving authority of the Book of Mormon.  Shortly after pistol and ball would take the lives of these two testators….In this their greatest—and last---hour of need, I ask you:  Would these men blaspheme before God by continuing to fix their lives their honor, and their own search for eternal salvation on a book (and by implication a church and a ministry) they had fictitiously created out of whole cloth?  Never mind that their wives are about to be widows and their children fatherless.  Never mind that their little band of followers will yet be ‘houseless, friendless, and homeless’ and their children will leave footprints of blood across frozen rivers and untamed prairie floor.  Never mind that legions will die and other legions live declaring in the four quarters fo this earth thay they know the Book of Mormon and the Church which espouses is to be true.  Disregard all that, and tell me whether in this hour of death these two men would enter the presence of their Eternal Judge quoting from and finding solace in a book which, if not the very word of God, would brand them as imposters and charlatans until the ends of time?  They would not do that!  Thery were willing to die rather than deny the divine origin and the eternal truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.”

We then entered the jail.  You could still see the bullet holes through the door and which stopped the clock.  The missionaries then played a tape of an elder singing “A Poor Wayfaring Man.”  Tears flowed as I gazed around the room and then my eyes fixed on the window the Prophet tried to leap out off.  Once outside by the well where the prophets body had; landed D&C 135 ran through my mind:  …”Joseph Smith the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only for the salvation men in this world, than any other man in this world…”

I then made my way to Nauvoo.  A truly beautiful place.  As you enter and leave the temple you face a stature of Hyrum and Jospeh on horseback looking over his beautiful “City of Nauvoo.”  Before the headed to Carthage.  It is truly a remarkable site.  I spent two days in that magnificent temple and found myself totally overcome with emotion.  You see I had taken my endowment out in Brigham’s temple in Salt Lake and now here I was in Joseph’s beloved temple.  Elder Hinckley’s words ran through my mind: “…We were to rebuild the house of the Lord as a memorial to the Prophet Joseph and as an offering to our God.  On the recent 27^th of June, in the afternoon at about the same time Joseph and Hyrum were shot in Carthage 158 years earlier, we held the dedication of the magnificent new structure.  It is a place of great beauty.  It stands on the exactly the same site where the original temple stood…It is a fitting and appropriate memorial to the great Prophet of this dispensation, Joseph the Seer.  How grateful I am, how profoundly grateful for what has happened.  Today, facing west, on the high bluff overlooking the City of Nauvoo, thence across the Mississippi, and over the plains of Iowa there stands Josephs temple, a magnificent house of God.  Here in the Salt Lake valley, facing East to that beautiful temple in Nauvoo stands Brigham’s, temple the Salt Lake Temple.  They look toward one another as bookends between which there are volumes that speak of the suffering, the sorrow, the sacrifice, even the deaths of thousands who made the long journey from the Mississippi River to the valley of the Great Salt Lake…”

I stood at the gravesites of the Prophet and his family and stood in the home of Lucy Mack Smith.  The Spirt in her home was very powerful.  I found myself for the first time understanding the great women’s organization that the Prophet started and its true mission.

I then went to the Farr West temple site.  One day it will be a beautiful temple in an idyllic spot.

I then went to Haun’s Mill which was a beautiful green pasture.  The river was now a creek but it was hard to comprehend the massacre that had happened there due to the peaceful beauty of the place.  I then drove to a small town in MO where the mob had travelled to slaughter the saints at Hauns Mill.  I found myself in a dying little town but there in the park was a monument with an original stone from the mill and two headstones.  One which listed those who had died and the other the names of the woman who ha survived and across the top was written “And they ever lost their faith and never left the church.”  Inspiring women.

I then ended my tour with a drive through Adam Ondi Ahman.  In my mind’s eye I could envision the Garden of Eden.  It is truly a place of beauty and peace.   How grateful I am that a door was opened that I could visit these historic church sites and feel the pioneer spirit that attended each.