Church History Sites 2: Kirtland, Ohio

Kirtland was a lot of fun.  The church has restored a lot of Kirtland to what it was in the 1830s.  You can see the saw mill, school house, Newel K. Whitney store and home, The Johnson Inn, etc...

We took a tour lead by two sister missionaries.  The weather was perfect, and the first warm, sunny day they'd had all year.

The Newel K. Whitney Store was one of my favorite places to visit.  Joseph Smith and his family actually lived upstairs above the store for a short period.

This is a very sacred place where amazing revelations were received.  The Word of Wisdom was received in this home!

 The School of the Prophets met in this room:

Part of the tour brought us to the Johnson Inn, which has been turned into a visitors center.  They have a kiosk there where you can search for people that lived in the area during the time the church was there.  I found my ancestors, which was pretty neat :)

And of course the highlight of Kirtland was the temple.  None of the pictures have been edited so they're a bit dark...sorry.  The temple is also such an amazing and sacred place.  It is no longer owned by our church, but we were still able to tour it.  We weren't allowed to take any pictures, so you'll have to take my word for it that it was pretty cool.  The workmanship was pretty awesome too.  The Spirit was so strong during the whole tour.  It was just amazing! 

We were lucky to get a tour with a small group.  If there's too many people in the group they won't take you to the top floor of the temple because it can't hold a lot of weight.  We had so many little "coincidences" during our visit that made everything just perfect, from having the perfect weather, to being somewhere at just the right time, to being allowed to join a smaller group, etc.  We just felt very blessed that we could experience everything and feel the Spirit so strongly. 
 

Church History Sites 1: John Johnson Farm

Our Spring Break was in March.  It's different here.  Instead of a full week off Monday-Friday, they schedule it around Good Friday.  So spring break is actually called Easter Break and we're off Thursday, Friday and then Monday...and that's it!

We decided to go explore some church history sites.  Kirtland is only 3.5 hours from our home...yay!  On our first day we drove straight to the John Johnson Farm in Hiram, OH.
Emma and Joseph and their family lived here in 1831-1832.  Some really amazing and sacred things happened in this home.  The 76th section of the Doctrine and Covenants was received here.

This is the room that Joseph and Emma slept in.  One night they were sleeping in a bed like this one with their twin babies who were sick.  Emma was on the bed with one baby and Joseph was on the trundle with the other baby when I mob broke in and dragged him out.  They stripped his clothes off, beat him, and tarred and feathered him.  The mob also dragged Sidney Rigdon out of his home across the street and when Joseph saw him he thought he was dead because he had been knocked unconscious.  When Joseph made it back home, Emma screamed and fainted at the first sight of him.  She thought the tar covering his body was blood.  They worked all night scraping the tar off of Joseph's battered body... 
... Early the very next day, Joseph stood on the front porch and preached to a congregation like nothing had happened.  A few days later, one of the twins died from exposure to the cold the night of the mobbing. 

Here we are on the steps that the prophet often preached from:

After touring the John Johnson Farm we drove to the home that Eliza and Lorenzo Snow were born and raised in.  It is privately owned so I just snapped a few pictures.

 The Snow home is so charming!

There's a very old cemetery next door.  I was excited to find "Lydia".  She was Lorenzo and Eliza's aunt. 

After our explorations in Hiram we drove north, hoping to find Lake Erie....  It would have been hard to miss!  We walked along part of the shore, but there were dead fish everywhere!  Ewwww!  So we didn't stay long, and we were cold.