The "Sweet" drive home

We noticed on the map that our route home took us within a few miles of Hershey PA! We would have been crazy not to stop and take a taste, I mean look around. :)

Here Enoch, Adelynn and I attend a choc tasting class. YUM.

And of course after a long and eventful trip, the teenages did what we adults wished we could do; slept the rest of the way! (10 hours total driving)

Best bunch of kids!

Looks like we succeeded in wearing them out. This ward youth trip was so much fun. We had 6 girls, 3 boys, 8 adults. Everyone got along so well. I love the youth in our ward. They are the best.
In the visitor's center at Hill Cumorah.

The Thinker

Smith cooper shop and farm

Joseph Smith Sr. was a master cooper, or maker of barrels. At one point the gold plates were hidden in the cooper shop.

When a huge oak tree fell down, farmers often hollowed out sections of the trunks and used them as barrels. The original oak barrel!

The light wood yoke on the wall is a human yoke, used for carring buckets of water. What a great way to keep your kids busy. If they got too roudy, you could just tell them to go get water!

This barn is larger than the one the Smiths would have had. But the cool thing about this barn is that it was from Brigham Young's farm! The whole superstructure was original. The outside wood had to be replaced when the barn was moved.

Below you can see what beehives used to look like. At the back of the picture you can see the sacred grove in the distance.

Palmyra Temple and the Sacred Grove

Going to the sacred grove was the most amazing experience of my life. There is no way for a picture to show how peaceful and beautiful the place was.

Here is our group that was able to perform baptisms. This group of kids are truly the best!.

Hiding places of the Golden Plates

The second home the Smiths built on their farm was a frame wood home. It was here that the golden plates were hidden and moved several times from hiding place to hiding place. Below is a picture of the bedroom where Joseph's two younger sisters slept. Once he hid the plates between the sleeping girls while the mob ransacked the house.

Here is a picture of the fireplace where Joseph had removed the bricks and hid the places underneath.

Joseph's oldest brother Alvin died in Palmyra. He was a staunch supporter of Joseph and firmly believed in his prophetic calling. Here is his burial plot.

Arwen and Will in front of a replica of the home in Harmony, PA where most of the translation was completed.

E.B. Grandin, first publisher of the Book of Mormon

First floor of the publisher's building. Here the first 5,000 copies of the BOM were published. Took 7 months to do the printing and 2 1/2 years to bind them all. Total cost was $3,000.

Will checks out another book published by E.B. Grandin near the same time as the Book of Mormon.

Enoch takes a picture with his new phone of the type set used.

Enoch and Adelynn check out all the tools used for the binding of the books. Right behind them are the tools used to put the gold lettering on the outside binding.

The staircases of the building were too narrow to trasport the pages from the top floor to the middle floor for binding. So a pully system was used to lower the pages. The difficulty of making such a large order of books again made me grateful for the many sacrifices made to bring forth the Book of Mormon.