Last weekend I had the opportunity to go to Palmyra with a group of young single adults. I was a little nervous going because I didn't know one single person, but I ended up having a blast. I got up early Friday morning to meet at a church. After waiting and waiting some more there, we were finally ready to go. It was a small group of people that went. The group rented two fifteen passenger ford vans. I loved it cuz it felt like home taking a road trip in a huge van :) It took us about six hours to drive to New York. When we got there we set up camp and went shopping. For dinner we had tinfoil dinners (definitely not my first choice for food). Another sad thing about this situation was the food wasn't ready until way after dark and no one really had lanterns or anything, so we were eating in the dark. My meal had burnt veggies (seriously they were black since they had been in the fire so long) that went crunch crunch when you tried eating them... yummy. The next day I woke up at 7:30 and I don't know how it happened, but it felt like I had slept in. I thought it would be crazy hard for me to wake up, since I normally wake up around eleven. We went to Niagara Falls and it took us about two hours to drive there. It was very cool to see the falls. After going to the falls, we went to the Sacred Grove. It was the most amazing feeling walking through. My only regret was that I didn't sit down and take it all in. We walked through it slowly, but then it was over. We also saw Joseph Smith's house where Moroni appeared to him in his bedroom. It was so neat to see! After that we went to the Hill Cumorah Pageant. I loved it and was so sad when it was over. It felt so short to me. I honestly thought it only had lasted about 30 or 45 minutes but it went for an hour and twenty minutes. On Sunday we went to church in Fayette (where the church was first organized). It was very neat because after sacrament meeting, we walked through a replica of Peter Whitmer's home. It was there that the Book of Mormon was translated as well. When it was time to go home, I was so sad. I was homesick for gospel related things like church history sites or seeing the missionaries, or reading the scriptures, or conference talks. Anything gospel related, I wanted it because being around those things I wasn't homesick for the family. Who knows if that even makes sense, but that's the way I felt. Overall, it was an amazing trip and I'm so glad I got to go. :)
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| This is what I wanted to do! Maid of the Mist! It looked like so much fun. |
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| Hill Cumorah :) |
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| Disregard the strangers in the picture... I don't know who they are. |
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| Joseph Smith's home. |
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| Palmyra temple :) |
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| Funny story behind this picture. My goal in going to the pageant was to find a concubine and take a picture with her. Well this creates a problem since I have no idea what a concubine looks like and there are hundreds of cast members walking around. Also, I was afraid to ask in the first place! Totally out of my comfort zone. After a good number of minutes, I finally went up to a girl. The first person I asked was in fact a Concubine! Boy did I get lucky! |
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| Some of the people from the trip :) |
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| This picture doesn't do it justice, but this is the sad result of not using bug spray... 45 bites |
Good times :)
