Church Historical Sites

When we first arrived the Mission President told us that we could take a weekend and go and visit some of the early Church historical sites. We wanted to wait until the weather cooled off a little bit. Well this past weekend was nice and next weekend is General conference so we took Friday and Saturday and visited some of the sites. I am still thinking about what we saw and did, this area is so rich with Church History and events still to come, that I am finding it a bit overwhelming when trying to decide what to share. In addition, ancestors of both my father and mother lived through and experienced the Missouri persecutions. When I think of what they were willing to endure for the gospel’s sake, I feel immense gratitude for them, their lives and their legacy of great faith. I have included several of their histories to remind us of what they endured because of their faith in Jesus Christ and the restored Gospel.We as a family have a lot to try to live up to, and if we don’t try to each do our best to help God’s Kingdom on earth go forward, I feel those ancestors are going to be very disappointed. Thinking about all this has caused me to have a little bit of writers block. It’s not that there is nothing to share but that there is so much that I am having difficulty trying to determine what to share, so as to even do partial justice to what has already occurred and what will yet take place in this sacred part of the world. I decided to just record several brief impressions and then later when I have more time I will come back to this subject and add additional detail. With that introduction I will try to share a little about this trip and each of the stops we took and even about a little surprise stop that we had not planned on.