For those that don't know, LaVerl & I went with his sister J'net & husband Bryan back to Palmyra, NY to help with the Hill Cumorah Pageant as volunteers for 2 weeks. It was a wonderful experience and we loved it. We got to see all of the historic church sites and see many of the beauties of New York. We stayed in the old historic Beckwith Mansion, which has quite a story of its own.
The beautiful Palmyra Temple sits up in a grove of trees, almost hidden from view.
The landscaping is sooo pretty, everything grows so well.
They told us about this window, its called the "Hinckley window". As you can see, all the stained glass windows in this temple are made to represent trees like in the Sacred Grove. All windows in all temples are not clear, one cannot see in or out of them, however you can see that these are!! That is because Pres. Hinckley wanted them that way. He said, "We have the real thing here (the Sacred Grove), we should be able to look out and see it for ourselves."
This is the view from the window inside the temple. They had to cut a "U" shape out of some trees that were blocking the view down to the Sacred Grove.
Words cannot explain the beauty of this place. All markers and signs have been taken down, its just a peaceful forest with paths and trails that you can walk anytime of the day or night. One night we went just to watch the fireflies. Early mornings were great to take our scriptures and journals and just sit on a bench and reflect, ponder and pray.
Its a wonder, when I think about, to actually be in the Grove where God the Father and his Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ really did appear to Joseph Smith. Somewhere in this forest, they were there! It makes this place just as sacred as the places where he walked in Jerusalem & Nazareth! We saw what was left of the 'witness trees', big old dead trees that had died years ago, but that had been there at the time of the first vision. Along another path was an old dead ironwood tree they call the "Apostle Tree". It had 12 dead branches coming out of it!
This is the front of the Grandin building where they printed the first 5000 copies of the Book of Mormon. The Sister missionaries give a wonderful tour here
What's neat about this building is that so much of it is still original. The floors, the planks on the main floor are the same where Joseph Smith walked, the walls on the 3rd level where the printing press was, still have the original in ink splatters.
Then we headed to the Smith farm where we walked through a replica of the little log house where they lived. This was the path that lead between the log house and the frame house that Alvin built. This is the path that you can look over and see the temple.
They told us this is where the girls slept and we were told that the plates were hidden between them one night that the mobs came. I'd never been told that. Isn't the little potty chair cute?
These are the original bricks and the hearth where Joseph Smith had to hide the plates from the mobs that were after them.
The church historical restoration has tried to bring everything back to the way it was when the Smiths lived there. They had to take porches, gables, extra rooms off the house and take plastering off the walls that had been done to modernize it. They don't give tours in the upper room above this floor, but our supervisors took us up there!
This is the little log house, and enclosed in the plastic enclosure is a Bible that dates back to Joseph Smiths time, turned to the scripture in James 1:5. I'm pretty sure Dad isn't supposed to be playing with the antiques! We loved seeing these sacred places and hearing again about the restoration of the gospel that took place right here!!
