Day 6: Saturday, June 11

Destination: Palmyra, NY

Sites Visited: Niagara falls (woo!) and the Peter Whitmer Farm

Niagara Falls was awesome, as you can probably imagine :) This is a spiritual experience blog, so i'm not gonna write about going to the falls, even though I don't really have much to say about it anyway, haha. I took about a thousand pictures though!

After wards we visited the Peter Whitmer Farm. This is where the church was organized... It all began from this very spot, on April 6, 1830. (I find that a funny coincidence.. April 6 is Jesus' Birthday..)

In my HTM for today's sites there was a paper about this farm. It basically listed all the events that happened in this very house. They are as follows:

-The translation of the BM was completed.

-Three witnesses received their witness of the plates.

-Official organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on April 6, 1830.

-The first sacrament was blessed and passed in this Dispensation.

-The first Priesthood ordinations were performed including Joseph Smith Jr. and Oliver Cowdery ordained as First and Second Elders of the Church.

-20 sections of D&C were received.

-The first 3 General Conferences were held.

This home has so much history to it! It's amazing. We gathered on the grass next to the house under this big tree, all 100 of us. We talked about how from this one spot, from this one little home, the Gospel and this Church has spread throughout the earth. We have almost 14 million members today... It's incredible. Just to think of how far this church has come blows my mind... Missionaries preach every day and convert people every day. 

One of the main leaders, who was talking to us, pointed his hand out and slowly moved it across the whole group, pointing to us all. As he pointed to us, he wanted us to say the mission of someone related to us, or someone close to us, or even our own mission we may have been called to. As they crossed me I said, "England, Coventry Mission" because that's where both of my parents served. I heard about every major country as he pointed at everyone in the group... It was so incredible, to sit there and realize how far this church has gone... We sat right where it began, and we said where it had continued to move to. It's been all over the world, and it's continuing. I can't wait to see how many members we have in 5 or ten years... I just want to see how far it goes. It's already gone so incredibly far... This Gospel has reached places that Joseph Smith had probably never even known about or heard of. I just can't wrap my mind around that...

The spirit was so strong with our group. We've known each other less than a week, and we already have the ability to quickly bring the spirit so strongly into a meeting together... "If this were the work of man, it would fail. But it is not the work of man, it is the work of God, and God does not fail." This church is true... The spirit we felt there and bore witness of was so real and strong, there's no way we could have denied it. And it only multiplied throughout the trip. 

Here's the Peter Whitmer Farm, where many historic things happened. This is where the church began, where it was organized, on April 6, 1830.

This was next to the above house ^ We all gathered here after and talked about how much the church has grown and how far it has gone from this one spot.

Here's the top half of what was written on the visitor's center next to the house. It was small writing so I split it into 2 pictures.

Bottom half...