It is a gloomy, snowy day and I decided it was time to bring out the pictures of the Sacred Grove that we took on a much warmer and sunnier day in September. For those of you that do not know the story of the Sacred Grove, I will tell it to you as I show the pictures. This is the Joseph Smith farm in Palmyra. They moved here when Joseph was a young boy and farmed 100 acreas. Joseph was the third oldest boy of the Smith family. He and his older brothers, Hyrum and Alvin helped his father clear the land and farm it. They were a very hard working family. This is the type of fence they built around the farm, called a jack fence.
This is their home that Alvin built for his parents. They first lived in a log cabin and then built this home.
This is a replica of the barn they built. This particular barn was Brigham Young's father's barn. He lived in the same time period and since the Smith Barn was no longer....the church moved this barn onto the Smith farm.
Little stream that runs through the farm.
Joseph's mother, Lucy Mack Smith, wrote in her journal that Joseph became preoccupied with the religious fervor of the day and as he listened to all the different ministers preaching how to be saved, he became very alarmed that they all preached different things and seemed to be competing with one another over what they felt was the "truth" that would save. One day he was reading in the Bible in James 1:5 "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him."
In Jospeh's own words: "Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine....I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did... At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God."
"So in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt."(Phil and I in the Sacred Grove)
"It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of 1820. It was the first time in my life I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally."
"After I had retired to a place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God."
"I had scaredly done so, when immediately I was seized by a power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak."
"Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction."(My favorite missionary in the Grove)
"But exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction - not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being - just at this moment of great alarm,"
"I saw a pillar pf light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me."
"It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound."
"When the light rested upon me, I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me calling me by name and said, pointing to the other - 'This is my beloved Son. Hear Him.'"
We do not know the exact location in this grove of trees where the Father and the Son appeared to Joseph. But what happened that morning changed the world for good. It was the beginning of the restoration of ALL things. It was the beginning of the Lord's Gospel and the Priesthood Authority being brought back to the earth after a time of great Apostasy.We have walked in the Grove often as it is only a few minutes away from where we live. There is such a special spirit there. I am so grateful for this opportunity to be in the sacred place, doing the sacred Temple work of the Lord. We bear our humble witness that the Savior, Jesus Christ lives. That He is the head of this church. That He has established His church once again on the earth. That He has a prophet at the head of His church today, Thomas S. Monson, who He speaks to as in times of old, and that this is God's kingdom on the earth.
