Upstate New York

So this weekend me and four other people jumped in a rental car and LEFT MANHATTAN. For those who have never lived in NYC, this is kind of a big deal. You can go years without every leaving Manhattan just becuase it is so difficult. We left at 5 a.m. and drove to Palmyra, NY. Where it all began......
It was lightly drizzling the whole day in Palmyra but although I have lived on the East Coast for almost a year now I was amazed at how green it was. Central Park's got nothing on the rest of the state. Turns out New York knows how to grow trees. We saw everything, the Hill Cumorah, the Sacred Grove, the printing press where the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon was printed, the original manuscripts with Oliver Cowdery's handwriting, the Smith log home where all eleven of the Smith's lived in a space the size of Mom and Dad's bedroom, the Whitmer farm where the church was first organized and most importantly......The PAGEANT. The pageant was excellent. I went expecting the same type of thing as the Manti temple pageant. It was nothing like that. This pageant was really well done. I LOVED IT! I loved wandering around the sacred grove. You can see the angel moroni statue on top of the Palmyra Temple peeking out over the trees from the sacred grove. It is beautiful. I just kept thinking, what was Joseph Smith thinking as he walked out of that sacred grove. Did he have any concept of how important that experience would become to so many billions of people? I was struck by the simplicity of his lifestyle and overcome with gratitude for his courage. It was a fabulous experience.