We toured the old building and saw where and how the first 5,000 books were printed. The building had obviously been added on to, but in some places still had the original creaky wood floors which was neat. An interesting story we heard here was the E.B. Grander at first told Joseph he couldn't print the book because he knew how much drama there was about the whole situation and he didn't want to be a part of it. Later, he was telling his friends who were a part of the mob that he had told Joseph no and they responded by telling him he should print it, he was in the business of printing to make money to support his family and they understood that, so he could print the book.
My favorite part of that tour was seeing the whole process of how they actually printed the books. It looked very tedious and time consuming, not to mention messy! They also had one of the original books in a glass case where the missionary told us if it got messed with Salt Lake would know it before her just because of all the security surrounding it, but you'd never know it was so heavily guarded just by looking! When we were done there we went next door to an LDS bookstore and ran into a guy who had been in my ward in Rexburg in 2007! Small world!
We then decided we would drive out to see Niagara Falls even though we'd heard from everyone it was a better view from Canada and we didn't have our passports. It was still pretty amazing to see. It was a pretty drive out there as well and even though we couldn't see it, we drove along the Ontario Lake coast the whole way there. The falls was pretty awesome, and wouldn't you know it we ran into the couple from Idaho that we had toured the Joseph Smith farmstead with. They were nice enough to take a picture of all of us.
When we finished at the falls there was still one more historic church site we hadn't been to because it was about 45 min. out of the way from Palmyra and that was the Peter Whitmer home where the church was restored. It closed at dusk so we hurried over there to try to see it really quick. Right as we pulled up the senior missionary couple was walking out the door and the husband asked if we'd come back tomorrow which meant we had to camp another night which I really didn't want to do. The wife then said, "let's just do one more tour, we have nothing to hurry home to." And we greatly appreciated that they stayed for us!
Canada.
The visitors center there was this beautiful building that had a chapel that was housed the local ward, so that was cool. The house itself was another replica built on the same foundation and was bigger than both Smith homes.
Some cool stories and facts from here,
When David decided he wanted to be a part of the Book of Mormon translating process, Oliver and Joseph were in Harmony, PA and needed a new place to stay and translate. Peter Whitmer told David that after he finished planting the fields he could go down to Harmony and get them and bring them back. I forget what exactly he had to do after planting that would take so long, but it was going to be 3 more days before he'd be able to leave. Well the next morning when he woke up the fields were planted and this other turf stuff he'd had to lay was spread. He went to his sisters to thank them and they said it wasn't them, that they had seen 3 men doing it and thought David had hired them. So with the fields being done and planted he was able to leave earlier than planned. Meanwhile in Harmony, Joseph told Oliver they needed to get there stuff ready to go, that David was on his way even though David wasn't supposed to be on his way and they weren't supposed to be leaving for another few day. Joseph had seen a vision of David coming toward them and sure enough he was there shortly thereafter and they were able to leave sooner than expected.
The upstairs room of this house is where the beginning (last plates) of the Book of Mormon was translated. Sounds like they translated the plates in reverse so they started with the end of the Book of Mormon and ended with the beginning.
the only picture we took of the house, ha.
This was also the site where the 1980 general conference broadcast started from. When the church sited were dedicated, President Kimball stood in front of the Whitmer fire place to begin conference, it went to Salt Lake for speakers, and ended in the chapel next door with President Kimball dedicating all the buildings. I believe that was the 150th conference and also happened to fall on April 6 which we know is when the church was formed in the same location. The sister at the Book of Mormon publication site also said she believes the 200th general conference will be broadcast from somewhere but I can't remember if she said where she thought it would be.
I also learned that though the church was organized with only 6 members, there were more than 80 people at the home watching this organization take place. Some were children, but it was clear whether the rest were just spectators or what.
A final piece of information I learned was that Joseph had the gold plates for about 2 years but it only took 65 days to translate them. It took 2 years to get 65 days due to the fact he kept having to move around in order to find peace and safety.
We left the Whitmer Farm about 8pm and decided rather than have another sleepless night,this time with rain, that we would just drive home. It was looong but Spencer did awesome and slept almost the whole way and we never had to stop once! We were home by 2am. It was a short trip, but so worth it!
Oh, turns out we did get a picture of the Joseph Smith frame home, thanks Nate.
and the girl is the sister missionary who gave us the tour.