Comments on: Top 10 Church History Sites

By: skip

skip — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 03:00:27 +0000

Amri:

I’m sorry to “jack” this post to respond to your WOW post (which apparently closed before I even saw it), but I want you to know that I admire you very much for your desire to stay in the faith. The only reason, really, not to drink coffee or tea is to be able to have a temple recommend. I suspect you may have some challenges with certain aspects of the temple right now, but I hope you will regain your desire to attend, and make the required WOW adjustments to obtain a recommend. The temple has been a real source of joy for my wife and I, especially now as our children prepare for marriages and missions and we begin to share what has become highly spiritual times together with our children in the House of the Lord.

I will be praying for you.

Respectfully and admiringly,
Skip

By: Amri

Amri — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 19:52:10 +0000

Andy,
I think that’s why I felt so intimately connected to Adam-ondi-Ahman. It’s nothing really. Just fields and farms but I felt very Mormon there, and I was happy about that.

If only we could script more unscripted spiritual moments….

By: Andy Ashcroft

Andy Ashcroft — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 18:45:11 +0000

One of my best “Mormon place” moments was at the site of the Nauvoo temple before it was rebuilt. At the time, it was just a grassy depression in the ground, surrounded my a walkway and flowers, very understated in comparison to some of my other experiences with church sites (this could be my faulty memory, but I could swear that someone was piping the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from speakers in the woods when I went to the Joseph Smith birth site in VT). There’s a lot to be said for unscripted spiritual experiences. Perhaps because it wasn’t much to look at there weren’t many people there, so much the better for me.

By: Carol F.

Carol F. — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 05:42:12 +0000

I loved this post. Thank you, Amri. I, too, have been sustained by thoughts of these old places and what they meant.

Have you ever seen Scottsbluff, Nebraska? There is a monument there but it is the drive going west toward Scottsbluff that is so poignant. It is quite the landmark and the pioneers could probably see it for days. I read an account that said each wagon train usually had a dance when they reached Scottsbluff. We travel the distance in a car in probably less than an hour.

Another of my favorite sites is a “Fort Utah” monument at the church in which I grew up in Lehi, Arizona. The saints who were asked to come settle here (Phoenix, Arizona) crossed the Salt River and built a small shelter on July 4th, 18xx. Every 4th of July the nearby Lehi wards gather in the morning and ring a big brass bell that is part of the monument. No mention is made of the pioneers, however. I found that out on my own. Probably most people think the bellringing has to do with Independence Day and the pancake dinner. That’s what I thought growing up. Maybe I will go back this year and make a speech.

By: queuno

queuno — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 02:40:23 +0000

Wait, Naiah, you grew up in Hiram? Frequented the Johnson farm? We may have crossed paths on a dark road once or twice…

By: Seth R.

Seth R. — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 18:31:13 +0000

I never was a “city missionary.” Too fast paced, too transient, too numbers-driven (though I’m sure it didn’t have to be). I spent my entire mission in small Japanese towns (island of Kyushu). Plenty of farmland and forested mountains amid the subruban sprawl. Never saw any of Tokyo except Narita airport.

By: Amri

Amri — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 17:24:46 +0000

Talon,
The Brown Family reunion in Nauvoo was similar because none of us know how to be nice to the elderly missionaries at Church Historic Sites. SMB kept telling us Mormon dirt in front of these missionaries who surely thought he was lying. Even though you can’t really make up the weird stuff of early Mormonism.

Seth R. that is drive/area is gorgeous.

I served in Japan too. In Tokyo so my faith space there involves smoggy mornings and avoiding traffic but boy was I faithful then.

By: Seth R.

Seth R. — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:49:40 +0000

That was me! For our honeymoon (sort-of), my wife and I drove up that same highway after making a complete circuit from Capitol Reef to Escalante to Zion’s to Bryce Canyon and back to Provo.

My heart, and my relationship with God will always remain grounded among the aspens of the Aquarius Plateau (although a bit of it seems to have been planted in rice paddies of Southern Japan as well …).

By: Talon

Talon — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:08:35 +0000

Temple Square, SLC, UT. When I was a little girl, I liked hitting each stationâ€“glass boxes housing scenes from Mormonism. Iâ€™d pick up the telephone, push the buttons and stare at these tiny dolls depicting martyrdom or death on the plains. The only other place Iâ€™ve seen like it was in Bombay India where they used the exact same â€˜doll/action figures in glass casesâ€™ idea to depict Ghandiâ€™s life and mission. Temple Square is ranked 8 because now there are no glass boxes and I get ticked at the movies that manipulate me into crying. Jerks.

The glass boxes with telephones at Temple Square were/are my all time favorite. I too lament their passing. In 2002 my wife and I made the drive down to SLC from Alberta for the Olympics. I had told my wife, who is not a member, all about Temple Square and the glass box diaramas that presented canned Church history through a 1960′s telephone. I was crushed when we got to the South visitors center and they were no longer there.

On a side note, since we’re talking about favorite Church History sites, I got into a fight with a sister missionary at the BOM printing press building in Palmyra. She was an older sister, and viewed us with suspicion when we declined the guided tour. Her husband took the tour group, and we wandered from display to display as I explained some of the finer points of Church history to my wife. The sister missionary followed us around, sometimes peeking around corners at us, like we were going to take the antique printing press and make a run for it. Finally she made some comment like “I’m watching you!” from across the room, and I lost my patience. A verbal altercation ensued. My wife sarcastically refers to it as one of my finest moments.

The view of the Carston Temple with the mountains in the background always makes a major impression on me. But I also get a warm fuzzy feeling everytime I see “The Store” in Magrath, so I’m not sure what that means. LOL!

Someone mentioned the small towns of southern Utah. The drive down highway 89 is one of the most picturesque a person can take. Panguitch, Orderville, Kanab, etc., beautiful.

By: Amri

Amri — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:28:27 +0000

Thomas,
I’m glad you’re back. I like having Mormon community made up of all types, not just the kind that hate me. I kinda wonder if I should leave though, so I can get myself an inspiring return story. I usually like those stories.

I just drove with my bro, smb, across the country and we must have been ridiculously close to Peoa, Sherpa. I’m disappointed we didn’t know.