A visit with the Hinckleys

Mondays were preparation days in our mission. I remember one preparation day in the late winter of 1969, just before my companion and I were completing our seven months together in the mission office. It was a cold, rainy day in Rio de Janeiro. Most winter days in Rio were actually quite pleasant, unless it was raining. The winter rains could cause the cold to sink into our bones, it seemed, and there was no good way to get warm.

This particular Monday, September 8, we found a good way to get warm. We were being warmed and enlightened by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I wrote in my journal, "This afternoon I participated in one of the most uplifting spiritual experiences of my life. Twelve of us were sitting in a casual circle in the living room of the mission home, receiving precious insights and sharing testimonies of a special and holy nature. Among our number was an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, Elder Gordon B. Hinckley."

President Hal R. Johnson was running the show because, as Brother Hinckley had earlier pointed out while we circled the dinner table, he believed in being obedient to the mission president. However, as soon as the President had called us together and had called upon his assistant to offer the opening prayer, he turned the time over to Brother Hinckley.

He remained sitting in the easy chair he was in and suggested that each of the eight young elders present take about three minutes each to express a few thoughts. Some very touching testimonies were borne during those few minutes. It was a rare privilege and oppor­tunity to bear testimony to an Apostle.

Sister Virginia Johnson spoke next. She brought tears to my eyes as she told of how her parents had finally caught the vision of the gospel just before they, the Johnsons, were called to Brazil and had turned from inactivity to go to the House of the Lord.

Sister Marjorie Hinckley shared a few thoughts. She is an able and gracious companion to her husband. She spoke of her joy in be­ing with us and of the miracle of the great missionary system. She never worried about her sons while they were serving missions, she said. Only when they returned home did she begin to worry about them again.

Finally President Johnson bore his strong witness to us that he knew that this was the work and kingdom of God, expressing his overflowing gratitude and love for all those associated with him in this grand work.

Then all eyes turned to Brother Hinckley. Now it was his turn. He asked if he might remain seated because he wanted to talk casually and intimately with us, not wishing to preach. I saw true manhood and great humility as he sat there before us saying that he felt un­worthy of the office of the apostleship. As he meets with mission­aries across the width and breadth of the earth, he feels unworthy of the office. As he received such a warm welcome at the airport at 11:00 the evening before, he felt unworthy of the office. As he sits in meetings of counsel with the other Brethren in the Salt Lake Temple, he feels unworthy of the office.

He shared with us a few touching and close associations he has had with our beloved prophet and leader, President David O. McKay. Just last year the Brethren of the Twelve and First Presidency met in President McKay's apartment a few days before Christmas. As they each bore their testimonies, they expressed their love for President McKay.

Tears came to the Prophet's eyes, and he said, "I am not worthy of your love and trust." That was the Prophet speaking!

There is no doubt that he is a prophet, Brother Hinckley said. It was appropriate for him to speak of the Prophet—that very day was President McKay's 96th birth­day.

Often we sing, "We thank Thee, O God, for a prophet to guide us in these latter days." But if we would really follow the Prophet, the Church would be twice as strong as it is, and we would be twice as blessed as a people. Brother Hinckley assured us that the Lord was preparing a successor to President McKay—a man who would have wide and deep experience, years of long service, of capable judgment, of character molded by life and tempered by the Holy Spirit of God. He felt the Lord was taking His time in preparing such a replacement. President McKay's body is old and worn and weak, but his mind and spirit are firm and clear. When he passes away, there will be no poli­ticking, no power plays—the Lord's choice will be evident.

Brother Hinckley spoke of missionary work and the great miracle it is. He told us of how the Church is growing in the Far East, which was his res­ponsibility for eight years, of how it is surging forward in California. He said he felt a special spirit about Brazil. Years of slow and long preparation will be giving way to a time of rich and fuller harvest.

At times he feels concerned, in fact, about São Paulo baptizing too fast. Twelve years ago (when President Sherman Hibbard, now president of the Brazilian Mission, was working there), São Paulo had one branch of eighty mem­bers, seven of which were active. This year over 2,000 converts will swell the wards of the two stakes there now. It is difficult to integrate so many new members.

Brother Hinckley shared other missionary experiences with us. He has worked directly with the missionary effort since 1933. He mention­ed a letter from their son, who was called from the North Argentine Mission to open up the missionary work in Spain. One thing that im­pressed me from this letter was that he mentioned their most effective missionary tools were fasting and prayer.

He closed his brief remarks with an admonition to remain virtuous and faithful. He bore his witness, as a living Apostle, that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is indeed His church and kingdom here upon the earth today.

Brother Hinckley is a great man. He carries with him the Spirit of the Lord. He is intense in his untiring and devoted service. The Spirit bore witness to every soul that here was indeed a servant of the Lord.

Our meeting closed with a brief word of prayer given by our dis­trict leader.

Brother Hinckley then walked around the circle, shaking every hand, piercing into every soul, offering his best wishes. Tight schedules and other business beckoned, but our hour and a half with this great man is an experience I will long cherish.

Earlier in the day we of the mission office staff also ate dinner with the Hinckleys and the Johnsons. The meeting in the afternoon was planned for all the missionaries in Rio, but since it was preparation day we couldn't reach any of them by phone.

The Hinckleys had arrived from São Paulo at eleven o'clock the previous night. He had presided over two stake conferences there during the day. This morning Brother Hinckley had sent a telegram to President McKay with birthday greetings from the 60,000 members in South America and the missionaries of the ten missions. In the evening the Hinckleys left for Lima.

My love of reading

For as long as I can remember I have always loved to read. In fact, when I was a preschooler, from even before I remember, my mother said I used to be full of questions, and she would send me to look in encyclopedias or other books to find the answers. She said I might sit for long moments pondering an upside-down page in a book trying to figure out the mysteries of life.

I had a little picture book that I do remember. It was a prized possession from before I could read, I think. It was the story of when Jesus fed the five thousand people from the few loaves and fishes. As a child, I loved the stories of Jesus.

When I started school at Adrian in 1955 we read the Dick and Jane books. There were also books about Alice and Jerry. Years later I came across what Robert Fulgham wrote about Dick and Jane in a little piece I used to read to our children every August before they started another school year: "And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living" ("All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten," from the Kansas City Times, Sept. 17, 1986).

I didn't go to Kindergarten. I started with the first grade. I got a late start. But not really. Most of what I needed to learn was there in the books. And in the lives of the numerous people that have influenced me along the way.

When I was twelve years old, sometime in 1961 or 1962, thanks to encouragement and inspiration from my Grandma Batt, I read the Book of Mormon all the way through. That was a first reading in what I would now have to list as the one single book that has most influenced my life. It was the early start of what has blossomed into a life-long love affair with the holy scriptures.

By the time I was in high school I recognized my great love for history, particularly American history and Church history. I read B. H. Roberts's book The Missouri Persecutions, which chronicles the unjust treatment, the drivings and the mobbings, of the Latter-day Saints in Missouri during the 1830s, culminating in their expulsion from the state during the winter of 1838–39. The book had a remarkable influence on me.

In my teen-aged years, probably near the end of my senior year of high school, in the spring of 1967, I discovered A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh for the first time. I had done a lot of reading by then, from all the works that were required in my English classes in school to all the stuff I read on my own. It was a delightful discovery. This was still before Walt Disney's people acquired the rights to the Pooh Bear and began marketing them in cartoons and short children's books and such. The original stories came from the pen of a British author in the 1920s.

During my first year of college, 1967–1968, I read The Hobbit and the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. Few books have so engaged me or had such a profound impact on me. I cried after I finished reading the final chapter. I felt homesick for a place and a people I had known only in imagination. Other than the scriptures, there are few books that I take the time to reread. There just isn't enough time in my lifetime to read everything out there I might want to read. But I have read the trilogy that comprises The Lord of the Rings three times since that initial reading.

Another book I read a second time was Herman Melville's Moby Dick. I did not appreciate it the first time I read it when I was a sophomore in high school, but so many people insisted it was the great American novel that I had to find out what I missed the first time through. So I read it again the following summer. I still didn't find it. I think if you edited out everything that detailed nineteenth century whaling, perhaps it might make a good short story.

My nomination for the great American novel would have to be Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Even though I love to read, I don't read as much as I might like. I have averaged over the past many years a little more than a book a month, usually twelve to fifteen a year.

Many years ago in a Sunday School class we were discussing the Lord’s admonition: “Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). The teacher invited class members to mention books they had read, beyond the scriptures, that had profoundly influenced their lives. The responses were varied and interesting.

As I contemplate the works, beyond the scriptures, that have had a significant influence on me, or that I thoroughly enjoyed, or that gave me fresh insights into the world, I would have to list (in no particular order) at least the following pretty high on my list:

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
• The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• John Adams, by David McCullough
• 1776, by David McCullough
• Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, by Joseph J. Ellis
• Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, by Stephen E. Ambrose
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin
• April 1865: The Month That Saved America, by Jay Winik
• FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression, by Jim Powell
• Truman, by David McCullough
• King Lear, by William Shakespeare
• Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
• Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkein
• The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis
• Approaching Zion, by Hugh Nibley (I pretty much like anything by Brother Nibley, but this represents what I consider the finest collection)
• Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith
• To Draw Closer to God, by Henry B. Eyring
• The Missouri Persecutions, by B. H. Roberts
• Fire of the Covenant: A Novel of the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies, by Gerald N. Lund
• Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
• Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
• Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
• Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
• Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery
• A Child's Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, by A. A. Milne

This list is undoutedly incomplete. I have probably forgotten as many worthy candidates as I have listed. Compiled at other times, in other seasons, there might well have been other titles added, or even some of these deleted.

In the end, it is worth remembering what the Good Book says: "And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh" (Ecclesiastes 12:12).

My call to serve in a branch presidency

During the year Claudia and I were courting, we both happened to live within the boundaries of the BYU 49th Branch. In those days, campus congregations were branches instead of wards. After our marriage, we moved into a basement apartment that was still in the 49th Branch. I was serving as the elders quorum president in the branch.

On Sunday, March 25, 1973, just four months after we married, our lives suddenly changed. At about 3:45 that afternoon my counselors in the elders quorum presidency and I were in a room in the Joseph Smith Building and were about to begin home teaching evalu­ations with the presidency of the 49th Branch when Pre­sident Merrill C. Oaks, a counselor in the stake presi­dency, called our branch president out of the room for a few moments. The im­pres­sion came that for some reason his leaving the room affected me.

Within five minutes President Oaks returned to call me out of the room. President Bruce C. Hafen, the other counselor in the stake presidency, was there and Gene Dalton of the high council. Brother Dalton took me into a room upstairs, asked me to tell him all about myself, and then told me he was to be the new pre­si­dent of the Eleventh Branch and wanted me as his counselor, since I came to him highly recom­mended of the stake presidency. Then we slipped down­stairs for President J. Duane Dudley to extend the official call.

Our next trick was to get Claudia to the Eleventh Branch sacra­ment meeting within five minutes. She was home napping. When I phoned I couldn't rouse her, so I called a neighbor to go pound on the door. Nothing.

Once more I tried to call and this time she awoke. I said, "Claudja, I have someone here who would like to speak with you," and handed the phone to Presi­dent Dudley. She was still asleep really. He told her of the call and, after a brief pause, replied to her, "Now why would I be kidding about a thing like that?"

We lived at the bottom of the hill just south of campus. With­in five minutes she was up the hill to the Joseph Smith build­ing for the sac­rament meeting. She was to meet me in the foyer, but she came in while I was in the restroom and we missed each other. She had gone into the meeting and I was pac­ing outside, waiting for her. Finally she came out to get me.

After the sacrament President Dudley released the former branch presidency and then sustained Gene Dalton as presi­dent, Bill Brooksby as first coun­selor, and me as second coun­selor. As we were invited to take the stand, Claudia leaned over to me and said, "I guess this makes me a widow now."

That night, as on similar occasions when the Lord has called, I found it impossible to sleep. My feel­ings were over­whelming as I pondered my new responsibilities. I had to agree with President Dudley that there was a rightness about the call, but I felt so in­adequate. President Oaks and President Hafen told me that as soon as they started con­sidering Brother Dalton as a branch president my name appeared along with his and they never could disassociate it from his.

Two days later Elder Boyd K. Packer spoke in the Tues­day devo­tional at BYU. Because of my work on campus, I had not attended a devotional since Christmas, but this day I felt constrained to go. The Spirit bore mighty witness to my soul as Elder Packer spoke of modern miracles, particularly the inspiration that comes when Church leaders are called, and I then knew that my own call Sunday to the branch presidency was a call from the Lord Himself. It was as though Elder Packer's message was for me alone.

A few weeks later a dream came that taught me even more about my new calling. In the dream, as a very young man, I was called to be an Apostle. I remember being weighed down with a heavy feeling of inade­quacy and an overwhelming convic­tion of earlier slothfulness in God's service. There were days and days of hell. As I started from the uneasy dream, I lay pon­dering the meaning. The Spirit then taught me: I had not been called to such a position, but I was being taught that my station in the priesthood—as second counselor in a branch presi­dency—was as vital a post as that of an Apostle. The Savior required of me the same quality of service, he required of me to live by the same Spirit as the Apostles. The lesson seemed clear enough: shape up, give my all and my best, with­out reservation or fear, and follow the Spirit.

Our second trip across America

An account of our family's 1995 trip across the United States to attend Rachael's graduation from Peace College in Raleigh, North Carolina, and to bring her home to Utah. We were in 29 states and one province as part of our 25-day vacation. Joining us on our trip were Michael and Shauna, who had been married just the weekend before, and Grandpa Lange.

Thursday, May 4, 1995
Utah, Colorado

By six o'clock this morning our great ad­venture began—not bad con­sidering we were aiming to leave at four o'clock. The travelers in our car included Grandpa, Mom, and me. The tra­velers in Michael and Shauna's car included Michael, Shauna, Camilla (almost 14 years old), Eliza (12), and Mary (10). Talmage and Anna stayed home to go to school, feed the dog, tend the house, and other­wise behave themselves.

We traveled south on I-15 until Spanish Fork, where we took U.S. highway 6 toward Price and Green River. We joined I-70 just west of Green River and exited at Crescent Junction, where we traveled south to Arches National Park. We drove through part of the park, enjoying the arches and other red-rock formations. Michael and Shauna purchased a pass that allows them free entrance to all national park facilities for a year.

We stopped at a Subway sandwich place in Moab for lunch. We then drove to Mesa Verde National Park in south­western Colorado. We ar­rived late in the day and only had time to look down into the Spruce Tree House and bought tickets for a one-hour guided tour of the Cliff Palace. Mom stayed in the car be­cause she didn't want to climb all the steps and ladders. A peek back into the history and culture of the Anasazi people, who appeared to flourish in this area from about A.D. 600 or 700 until A.D. 1300, was fascinating.

After leaving the park, we drove another 30-some miles to Durango, a lovely resort town in the mountains, and stayed overnight at a Comfort Inn. We bought dinner at a Wendy's and ate in our adjoining motel rooms. The three little girls went in the hot tubs.

Friday, May 5
Colorado, New Mexico

We awoke, greatly refreshed from having started so early yesterday morning. We ate the continental breakfast provided by the motel, packed the cars, and head­ed south toward New Mexico. South­western Colorado is pretty, but we found most of New Mexico dry, color­less, flat, and boring.

We were less than impressed with the sparing way New Mexico uses highway signs. At one point in the northwestern corner of the state could find no marker to tell us which way to go. We stopped at a U.S. Forest Service station, and the lady told us where to find the right road and added us to her tally of how many people couldn't find the highway. She said they were trying to convince the state to put up more signs.

We joined I-25 just north of Albuquerque, New Mexico's largest city, and turned east on I-40 in Albuquerque. We ate lunch at a Kentucky Fried Chicken (and a McDonald's for the little girls). Grand­pa and Eliza walked around the KFC fifteen or twenty times to get their exercise while the rest of us finished eating. We got caught in a traffic jam caused by road construc­tion as we were trying to figure out how to get back on the freeway.

At one point, as we were waiting in a long line of cars trying to turn left onto the freeway, Grandpa, who was riding today in Michael and Shauna's car, climbed right out of the car to tell a man in another car he shouldn't try to crowd in but to take his turn like the rest of us. Michael kept trying to lock the doors from the driver's seat to keep Grandpa in the car, but Grandpa kept unlocking his backseat door and managed to escape. It's a wonder, in today's crazy world, that he didn't get shot or something.

A ways east of Albuquerque we turned south on U.S. highway 285 and followed it all the way to Carlsbad, where we spent the night at a Quality Inn. We ate supper at Wendy's. Camilla, Eliza, and Mary went swimming.

The parts of New Mexico we saw reminded Mom a lot of her experi­ence two years ago in Kansas, and we wondered if New Mexico should be called the Land of Desolation rather than the Land of Enchantment. The one thing that makes traveling tolerable through such areas is our communicating between cars on the CB radios Grandpa borrowed from his friend Wayne Proctor.

Saturday, May 6
New Mexico, Texas

We awoke, packed the cars, ate a complimentary full breakfast in the motel dining room, and left for Carls­bad Caverns National Park, about 20 miles away in the northern end of the Guadalupe Moun­tains. The three-mile hike through the massive underground caves was fascinating, and we de­cided the underside of New Mexico was much more enchanting than the upper side. When we came out of the cave and returned to the parking lot, we found we had left the side door of the minivan open the whole time, but fortunately nothing was missing.

We had already decided yesterday to push through all the way to San Antonio, so we decided against visiting nearby Guadalupe Mountains National Park or going farther south to Del Rio, where we could cross into Mexico.

It was about noon when we left Carlsbad Caverns and headed south and east into Texas. We were much more impressed with the vast openness of the Lone Star State than with parts of New Mexico. We ate lunch at a Pizza Hut in Pecos, then spent most of the day traveling east on I-10 toward San Antonio. We stop­ped in Ozona to get gas and ice cream at a Dairy Queen and drove down a delightful residential street, where massive trees covered the street like a canopy.

We arrived at our Comfort Inn on the east side of San Antonio around 10:00. We didn't eat out, since to­morrow is fast Sunday. Shauna, Camil­la, Eliza, and Mary went swim­ming in the motel swimming pool.

Sunday, May 7
Texas

A pleasant Sabbath day. We held our own church in our motel room—first, a class in which we read and discussed Lehi's dream of the iron rod, likening it to our experience yesterday in the caves; followed by a fast and testimony meeting conducted by me, music led by Shauna, the sacrament administered by Michael and Grandpa, and each person bear­ing testimony. The Spirit was strong­ly present.

Afterward we drove into San Antonio and visited the Alamo and walked along the River Walk. The weekend crowds were heavy, and Michael was not feeling well, so he did not particularly enjoy the Alamo experience.

We stopped at a rest stop to fix sandwiches, but the wind was blow­ing way too hard, so we ate in the cars on our way to Houston. In Houston, after I led us in the rain through an extra loop around the city, we found Spring, the town where Rich and Amy Hogan and their family live. Rich used to work with me in the Missionary Department. We had a delightful evening catching up on old times, the kids getting to know new friends.

Monday, May 8
Texas

We spent a delightful day with the Hogans. This after­noon Michael and Shauna went to visit Gary, one of Michael's former BYU room­mates, who lives somewhere here in the Houston area. Grandpa, Mom, Camilla, Eliza, Mary, and I went to visit the Philipps in Kings­wood, about forty minutes away from where Hogans live. Joe and Mary­beth Philipps and their family used to live across the street from Grandpa in Bountiful.

This evening we had family home evening with the Hogans. For the activity they taught us a new game, "Can you pass a spoon without a mis­take?" After dinner and home evening, Grandpa re­ceived a visit from an old Navy buddy from World War II whom he had not seen in 51 years. They had played phone tag for a while until they finally spoke today for the first time.

Tuesday, May 9
Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida

Today was primarily a travel day. We said good-bye to the Hogans, hav­ing had a most enjoyable couple days with them, and left Houston mid-morning, traveling east on I-10 through eastern Texas and across southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and into the panhandle of Florida.

As we entered Louisiana, we stopped at a welcome center, where they were offering complimentary drinks of Kool-aid mixed with milk (brought to us, I suppose, by the cows of Louisiana). Eliza had a special code on the bottom of her cup, so she won a prize—a metal Kool-aid canister filled with various little toys.

We had originally planned to visit New Orleans but pretty much decided to skip it, thinking there was really nothing there of real interest to us. New Orleans is something like the Las Vegas of the South. That proved to be a wise decision since they were experi­encing massive flooding from a storm that had just hit there, and many of the roads were closed. New Orleans is five feet below sea level, so the only way they can get rid of all their water is to pump it out.

By the time we reached Alabama, it was raining hard and starting to get dark. The closest we came to actually see­ing the Gulf of Mexico was when we crossed a large bridge over Mobile Bay.

Our original destination for the day was going to have been Mobile, Alabama, but when Michael and Shauna visited Gary yester­day he recommended that we go an addi­tional sixty miles to Pensacola, Florida, because it was a lot prettier there. It also turned out to be a much cheaper place for the motel.

Wednesday, May 10
Florida, Alabama, Georgia

We awoke to a heavy rain falling in Pensacola. On the radio we heard there were tornado watches in the area. Last night we had told the girls we would drive them to the beach, which was about twelve miles from our motel, so they could see the Gulf Coast, but it was raining too hard to bother.

After eating breakfast in our motel rooms, we packed, bought gas, and headed north from Florida into Alabama, where we caught I-65 to Montgomery, the capital of Ala­bama. Some­where south of Mont­go­mery we stopped for lunch at Wendy's. At Montgomery we took I-85 the rest of the way to Atlanta. By early evening we arrived at our Quality Inn in the northeast end of Atlanta.

Thursday, May 11
Georgia

This morning we went to the Atlanta Temple, where most of us (Grandpa, Shauna, Michael, Camilla, Eliza, and I) did baptisms and confirmations from Sister Diane Dieterle's family file names. Brother and Sister Dieterle live in the same ward as our friends, the Stewarts, and work in the temple. Brother Dieterle officiated at the baptismal font while we were there. Mary is still too young to do baptisms for the dead, so Mom waited with her in the auxiliary building located behind the temple. The Atlanta Temple is one of the smaller temples, but like all of them is beautifully land­scaped. We enjoyed being inside the temple. Grandpa took pictures of us in front of the temple afterward.

This afternoon Grandpa, Camilla, Eliza, Mary, and I drove out to Stone Mountain, a state park about fifteen or twenty miles east of Atlanta. Carved on the side of the moun­tain are pictures of three Con­federate heroes: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. We rode a cable car to the top of the moun­tain, where we had a panoramic view of the en­tire area. Mostly we could see trees and the skyline of downtown Atlanta off to the west. After a brief after­noon rainstorm, we hiked down the south side of the mountain and caught the train back to the part of the park where the minivan was wait­ing for us.

This evening we went to the mis­sion home to have dinner and spend the evening visiting with Monte and Ann Stewart and some of their child­ren. The Stewarts used to live in Las Vegas, and we would usually stop to visit them whenever we would travel to southern California. Now Monte is serving as president of the Georgia Atlanta Mission. He and I were missionary com­panions during the time we served together in the mission office in Rio de Janeiro in 1969. We spent a very enjoyable evening with the Stewarts, and it was won­derful to eat an actual home-cooked meal rather than whatever from a fast-food restaurant.

Friday, May 12
Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina

Today we drove the 377 miles from Atlanta to Raleigh. We were on I-85 most of the way until we took I-40 into Raleigh. We passed right through the northern portion of South Carolina without even stopping long enough to set foot on its soil. South Carolina was the state where the Civil War began.

When we pulled into Peace Col­lege this afternoon, Rachael was out on the upper balcony of the Main Building waiting for us. She had ar­ranged for Camilla, Eliza, and Mary to stay overnight with her in her dorm room. The rest of us stayed in Susan and Jay Forsgren's little house a few blocks away from Peace.

Susan used-to-be-Stubbs was originally Rachael's roommate at Peace. As a result of Rachael's influence, she converted to the Church, becoming a Mormon much to the distress of her parents. And then she married a Mormon, the returned missionary who helped teach her the restored gospel.

We ate supper at Hardee's before Grandpa, Mom, Rachael, and I had to get ready for the baccalaureate service in the First Pres­byterian Church in down­town Raleigh, kitty-corner across the street from the state capitol building. The service began at 8:00. The most interesting feature was the baccalaureate address by Ann Laird Jones, the chaplain of Peace College, whom we had an op­por­tunity to meet later in the evening at a reception back at the college. We also met Linda Sparrow, the direc­tor of spiritual life program­ming at Peace. Both Linda and Ann ex­pres­sed warm apprecia­tion for Rachael and her contributions to the school during the past two years.

Saturday, May 13
North Carolina, Virginia

This morning the 123rd com­mence­ment of Peace College was held on the College Green. All of us, including Susan Forsgren, attended to see Rachael receive her associate of arts degree. At the conclusion of the service, the graduates all gathered around the fountain on the Green to sing the Peace alma mater and to throw a rose into the fountain.

After all the shouting and tumult died, Rachael finished mov­ing out of her room, and Grandpa bought all of us lunch in the college dining hall. We then took all of Rachael's stuff back to Susan and Jay's house to figure out how we were going to fit it into our two already fully packed cars. We checked on renting a trailer, a carrier for the top of the car, and shipping. In the end, we decided to try to repack and fit every­­thing in and somehow accomp­lished that feat.

We bid Susan and Jay farewell (they will be moving to Utah this July), said good-bye to Peace College as we drove by one last time, and left Raleigh.

We headed east on U.S. 64, then north on I-95 into Virginia. As we approached Richmond, the capital of Virginia, we took I-295, then I-64 to Wil­liams­burg, where we had reserva­tions at a Comfort Inn. We con­tinue to be amazed, as we have throughout all the South, at all the trees every­where. Part of the drive to Williams­burg was almost like being in a tun­nel, the trees were so thick.

Sunday, May 14
Virginia

We had planned to spend only one night here in Williams­burg, but we decided to spend a second night so we wouldn't have to travel on Sun­day. It rained much of the day, and it was a good rest day for us.

This afternoon we held our own church service again: first a class on the prophetic overview of history pro­vided by Nephi in the Book of Mor­mon, filled in by a lot of American history provided by me, and then a Mother's Day sacrament meeting con­ducted by Michael. Rachael led the music, Grandpa and I admi­nistered the sacrament, and the girls spoke and sang.

Later in the afternoon the rain stopped, and we drove a few miles along the Colonial Parkway—first to Jamestown, the actual site of the first English settlement in North America in 1607, the first capital of Colonial Virginia, and the site of the first representative legislative body in the New World; and second to nearby Yorktown, the place where the final battle of the Revolutionary War was fought and the British army sur­­rendered to the Americans in 1781.

Last night, after having checked into our motel, Michael and I had bought food at a grocery store for our meals today, so we could eat in our motel rooms rather than eating out.

Monday, May 15
Virginia, District of Columbia, Maryland

We arose, had our free continental breakfast, packed the cars, and were on our way again—a few hours north along I-64, I-295, and I-95 to Wash­ington, D.C.

We arrived in Wash­ing­ton around noon and made the mis­take of actually driving into the traffic of downtown Washing­ton, foolishly thinking there might be some place to park. The traffic was slow and frustrating, and we were glad finally to get out of town. We did drive by the Capitol Building, the White House, the Washington Monu­ment, at some distance from the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, and various other govern­ment build­ings and sites.

In mid afternoon we checked into the Hampshire Motor Inn on New Hamp­shire Avenue in Langely Park, Maryland. The motel offers a dis­counted LDS rate for those who come to attend the temple. Michael and Shauna's car wouldn't start after we had registered at the motel. Fortunately, Shauna is a member of AAA, so she was able to call them, and they sent a truck to tow her car. They were able to get it started again by using jumper cables. After that Grandpa and I went to a nearby K-Mart and bought a set of cables to have for the rest of the trip.

After that bit of excitement, we ate a combined lunch and dinner at the In­ternational House of Pancakes next door to our motel. All throughout the South we kept seeing restaurants called Waffle House, and Shauna wondered what it would be like to eat at one, so this IHOP was maybe as close as we might come. The wait­ress brought the children's menu to Mary (who is ten), Eliza (who is twelve), and Rachael (who is nine­teen going on twenty, but apparent­ly looks something less than that). Camilla (who is thirteen going on fourteen), on the other hand, received the regular menu.

Things seemed to go downhill from there: Grandpa ordered liver and onions, but a considerable time after we had ordered, the waitress returned to say they only had one piece of liver left and asked if he wanted some­thing else. In the end, he stayed with the liver and received his meal free. Still later, the waitress returned to tell Eliza they were out of the spaghetti she had ordered. She ended up having pancakes. The waitress was nice, however.

This evening we drove over to the Washington Temple and went through the visitors' center. The director, Don Christensen, and his wife are long-time friends of Shauna's and spent part of the evening visiting with her and Michael before taking all of us on a tour.

Tuesday, May 16
Maryland, District of Columbia, Pennsylvania

We had planned to do an endow­ment session in the Washington Temple, but we ran out of day too soon. We ate a regular breakfast in the IHOP next to our motel, then tried to find a Metro station to ride into Washington. When we couldn't find the one that was supposedly just down the road, we stopped and asked some­one, and he very kindly got in his car and led us to one (two actually, but the parking lot was full at the first one). We rode three different trains from Prince George Plaza station to the Smithsonian station on the Mall in downtown Washington.

We went to the relatively new museum on the Holocaust, which opened in 1993, and spent several sobering hours learning about the Nazi atrocities to the Jews in the first half of this century during the 1930s and 40s. Our feet were tired, and we de­cided we didn't have time to walk over to the Lincoln Memorial, and we had driven by the Capitol, the White House, the Washington Monu­ment, and numerous other famous things yesterday, so we caught the Metro back to our parked cars. We took only one train heading in the wrong direction and had to backtrack a few stops, but without too much difficulty got back to Prince George Plaza.

Next we got on the I-495 beltway, drove past the temple again, and headed north on I-570 to where we took the U.S. 15 freeway north across the Mason-Dixon line into Penn­syl­vania. We stopped first at a Wendy's in Frederick, Maryland, for our com­bined lunch and dinner.

We reached Gettysburg, in south­ern Pennsylvania, about 6:30 or 7:00 in the evening. The visitors' center had closed, so we walked through the cemetery and stood on the site where President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863:

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, con­ceived in liberty, and dedicated to the pro­po­sition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so con­ceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a por­tion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot con­secrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly re­solve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free­dom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Approaching the cemetery, we had also driven by some of the battle­field, where in the summer of 1863 thousands of Northern and Southern soldiers had fallen during the Civil War. Today, in the twilight of a lovely spring evening, we felt the peace and beauty of this place and drew inspiration from what William J. Bennett described as "the greatest and most famous speech ever de­livered on American soil" (The Book of Virtues, 568).

It was just getting dark as we left Gettysburg and headed east on U.S. 30 through York, across the Susque­han­nah River, to Lancaster, where our Quality Inn motel awaited us. We checked in at 10:00.

Wednesday, May 17
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut

It was raining again this morning. Shauna, Mom, and I went early to find a laundromat where we could wash clothes before we checked out of our motel. We were in Lancaster County, home to many Amish people, so we spent part of the morning driving around seeing the commercialization of their quaint Pennsyl­vania Dutch culture by non-Amish people. Lancaster County also has more covered bridges than any other county in the country except one (we're not sure where that county is), but we didn't actually find any covered bridges.

We finally got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76), a toll road, and drove toward Philadelphia. We stop­ped first at Valley Forge, where George Washington and the Conti­nen­tal Army spent the winter of 1776–77 during the Revolutionary War. We went through the visitors' center, went to the Memorial Chapel, and visited the actual house that General Washington used as his headquarters that winter.

I had been at Valley Forge in the summer of 1964 for a national Boy Scout jamboree and celebrated my fifteenth birthday here.

We then drove the rest of the way into Philadelphia, and although the distance was short it took us a couple of hours because the traffic was so heavy. We're not sure why the traf­fic heading into the city was so slow in the late afternoon.

In downtown Philadelphia we visited the Independence National Historic Site. The visitors' center and other build­ings were closed, but we were able to see the outside of Independence Hall, where both the Declaration of Inde­pendence and the Constitution were adopted and signed, the Liberty Bell, and numerous other historic sites from the infancy of our country. Phila­delphia was the capital of the United States during most of the Revolutionary War period and during the first decade under the Constitution (1790–1800) until the new capital in Washing­ton was built.

We left Philadelphia on I-95 and headed northeast toward New York City. It was just starting to get dark as we left Pennsylvania and crossed into New Jersey. Somewhere along the New Jersey turnpike we stopped at a service plaza to eat a late supper and to call Mark Tanner to get exact directions to his house in New Canaan, Con­necticut. He said we were about three hours away from his house still. As we left New Jersey, we crossed the George Wash­ington Bridge, a toll bridge, into New York. After a bit of con­fusion about Mark's directions, we figured out how to head toward Con­necticut. We ar­rived at the Tanners' house about midnight.

Thursday, May 18
Connecticut, New York

This morning we arose and had breakfast at the Tanners' before driving into New York City. We an­ti­cipated expen­sive parking, so all nine of us fit into our minivan, rather than taking both vehicles. We drove the car all the way down the west side of Manhattan Island to near Battery Park, where we parked the car and bought tickets for the ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We had a clear view of the Statue of Liberty without leaving the boat and could only imagine the thrill that thousands of Old World im­mi­grants must have felt through the years as they first saw Lady Liberty standing there in the harbor and beckoning, in the words of Emma Lazarus, with her outstretched beacon-hand that glows with world-wide welcome:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

We left the ferry at Ellis Island and spent several hours visiting the National Park Service restoration of the facility through which so many thousands of immigrants were pro­cessed into America during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

After we took the ferry back to Manhattan, we rode the subway up­town to visit the Metro­politan Museum of Art. In the six-block walk between our subway stop and the museum, we walked across such famous streets as Park Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Fifth Avenue. We also saw Central Park. After spending the last hour in the museum before it closed, we caught the subway back downtown to find our parked car. We also saw such famous places as Wall Street, the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, and some of the streets that have either songs ("59th Street Bridge") or movies ("Miracle on 34th Street") named after them.

On our way back to the Tanners' house in Connecticut, our gas gauge reached empty before we could ever find a gas station, and our little distance-till-empty computer reached 0 miles, which made us a bit nervous before we finally found a place to fill up in New Rochelle. We returned to the Tanners' about 8:00 in the evening, before either Mark or Ann returned, but they had ordered Pizza Hut pizza for us to eat. Mark works for PepsiCo, the company that owns Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell.

Friday, May 19
Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont

Grandpa went on a drive this morning with Ann Tanner to see parts of New Canaan while the rest of us were getting ready and packed. All you can see from where the Tanners live is trees. Their house is nestled right in a forest.

We traveled northeast from New Canaan on state road 15 until we joined I-91 a ways south of Hart­ford, the capital of Connecticut. From Hartford we took I-84 into Massa­chusetts, where we joined the Massa­chusetts Turnpike (I-90) and took it into the Boston area. We exited at Cambridge and toured the area around Harvard and MIT (the Mas­sa­chusetts Institute of Technology) before crossing the Charles River and trying to find the Boston Com­mons. The streets were narrow and often one-way, and we decided driving in Boston may actually be even worse than in Washington, D.C. A pretty heavy rain was falling, and we decided the three-mile walking tour of historic Boston, containing many sites from the cradle of the Revolu­tion, was not all that exciting any­more, especially since we could not find parking.

So, we headed north out of Boston on I-93, which took quite a while since the traffic was so heavy, and headed toward New Hamp­shire.

Today had not been a particularly good travel day, but it deteriorated from there. We had talked on our CBs about taking the exit at Derry, in southern New Hampshire, to get some supper. Our car (which had Mom, Rachael, Camilla, Mary, and I in it) took the exit. The other car (with Grandpa, Michael, Shauna, and Eliza in it) all of a sudden dis­appeared, and those of us in the front car didn't know what had happened to it. I assumed they had some­how missed the exit and had kept going, so I dropped everyone off at the Wendy's to order, and I got back on the freeway and drove to the next exit several miles ahead, all the while calling for Michael and Shauna's car on the CB, and then returned to join the family at the Wendy's.

We ate, then continued on, after saying a prayer that we'd find the other car, and continued on toward the Joseph Smith Birthplace Monu­ment in Vermont. The Prophet Joseph was born here on Dec­ember 23, 1805, and President Joseph F. Smith dedicated the marker on this site in 1905 on the hundredth anni­ver­sary of the Prophet's birth.

It was just before dark as we crossed the Con­nec­ticut River from New Hampshire into Vermont. The birth­place is in a remote and beauti­ful forested setting, and we ar­rived about fif­teen minutes after the visitors' center closed at 8:00. We knocked on the door where the couple lived, and they graciously opened up the visi­tors' center and gave us the tour, all the while hoping that the others would also arrive. The director and his wife are from Shauna's home ward in Bountiful and were disap­pointed that they didn't get to see her. As we were ready to leave, they let us use their tele­phone to call our motel in Rutland, and the motel said the people in the other car had called from Manchester, New Hamp­shire, and were on their way.

The drive to Rutland, through oc­casional little New England villages spread throughout the Green Moun­tains, was very scenic, but it was too dark to see very much. We drove by a number of ski resorts. We arrived in Rutland about 10:30, and the motel clerk said the others had called again from Lebannon, New Hamp­shire, so we knew they were coming. After unpacking the car and settling into our room, I sat in the lobby until the others arrived around mid­night.

And here's what had happened: just after we had agreed to exit at Derry to eat, the battery on their car died. They were completely without power; even the hazard lights wouldn't blink, and the CB died im­mediately, so they weren't able to communicate that they were having car trouble. They sat for quite a while, hoping we would return to find them, but we never did. Finally a nice highway patrol­man rescued them, got someone to come out and tow them into Derry, and they re­placed the battery.

We were all glad to see each other again. Fortunately, they knew where we had arranged a motel for the night. Many days during our travels those in the second car didn't necessarily know where we were heading by the end of the day.

Saturday, May 20
Vermont, New York

Rutland is the city where my grand­parents were laboring at the end of their mission in New England. On what would have been the last day of their mission, had they not extended a couple of months, my grandfather, William B Batt, died in his sleep on the morning of Feb­ruary 4, 1959, leaving Grandma suddenly alone in this distant part of the country.

We awoke, had our continental breakfast, packed the cars again, and were off, heading south on U.S. 7 to Bennington, Vermont. It was a very scenic drive along the western edge of the Green Mountain National Forest.

At Bennington we turned west and headed into New York State, travel­ing on state road 7 through Troy and Schenectady and then on state road 5 as far as Amsterdam. We had en­visioned avoiding the New York State Thruway (I-90) across the state by traveling on parallel routes that would allow us to avoid the toll road, but by Amsterdam realized that that would take too long because of all the little towns we had to travel through, so we got on the Thruway.

We continued past Utica and Syra­cuse, exiting at Newark, where we had reservations for the night at a Quality Inn. We arrived in Newark just before a firemen's parade was about to begin. Grandpa, Camilla, Eliza, Mary, and I watched the parade. We were staying less than a block from the Erie Canal that ran through the town. We were about nine miles from Palmyra.

In our motel there was a wedding celebration and some kind of teach­ers convention going on, and it was very crowded. The wedding celebra­tion was very loud and very obno­xious and also pre­vented the little girls from being able to swim in the indoor pool that they were hoping to use.

Tonight for supper we ordered Pizza Hut pizza and had it delivered to our motel rooms.

Sunday, May 21
New York

Today turned out to be one of the nicest days of the trip. We drove about 25 miles to the Fayette chapel, a lovely New England-style meeting­house built at the site of the Peter Whitmer farm, where the Church was officially organized on April 6, 1830. Fifteen years ago President Spencer W. Kimball had dedicated the meetinghouse and the recon­structed log cabin next to it as a part of the sesquicentennial general con­fe­rence on April 6, 1980.

We attend­ed the whole block of meetings, ending in a sacrament meeting in which the speakers were President and Sister Marlin K. Jensen. Elder Jensen is a member of the Seventy and completes his two-year tenure as president of the New York Rochester Mission at the end of June, when he will be replaced by Lynn Packham, who works with me in the Mission­ary Department. Be­cause this would be the Jensens last visit to Fayette, the ward had ar­ranged a reception afterwards with refreshments, which gave us an op­por­tunity to mingle with members of the ward and talk with the Jensens.

We then took a tour of the visitors' center, located in one wing of the meetinghouse, and the Peter Whitmer cabin. It was nice to stand on the spot where the Church offi­cial­ly began.

Next we drove about twenty miles back to the Hill Cumorah, where the boy Prophet found the Gold Plates as shown in vision by Moroni. We went through the visitors' center and then drove to the top of the hill. We thought about eating our picnic lunch at some tables on the hill, but we were dissuaded by a strong wind that started blowing.

A few miles farther on we visited the Joseph Smith Sr. home—the one completed by Alvin Smith in 1827. The home the Smiths were living in at the time of the First Vision was actually located next door and no longer exists. Across the road and down a little path was the en­trance to the Sacred Grove. It was a beautiful spring day, much like the one des­cribed by Joseph Smith in his history:

So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. . . .

After I had retired to the 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 saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. . . .

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! (Joseph Smith–History 1:14–17).

I took the Pearl of Great Price into the Grove and read part of the account while we were there. It is sobering to think we were standing somewhere in the vicinity of where God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ appeared in the spring of 1820 to begin ushering in the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times.

After leaving the Sacred Grove, we drove a few miles into Palmyra and saw the famous intersection where separate churches are on each of the corners. We had planned to visit the Grandin Press Building, where the first edition of the Book of Mormon was published in March 1830, but the building was closed for renovation.

We then drove to our motel in Lock­port, which is in the Buffalo-Niagara area.

Monday, May 22
New York, Ontario (Canada), Pennsylvania, Ohio

A long day today. We went first to Niagara Falls and crossed over to the Canadian side, where the views of the famous falls are more spec­ta­cu­lar. It was the first time anyone in the family—except Grandpa, Shauna, and I—had been in Canada. Grand­pa had served his mission in western Canada back in the late 1940s. It was the first time that Camilla, Eliza, and Mary had been outside the United States ever.

It took a while crossing through customs back into the United States, mostly because of the traffic delay. We were grateful Grandpa didn't try getting out of the car, as he did in Albuquerque, and cause some sort of international border incident.

As we left Niagara and Buffalo, we traveled along the edge of Lake Erie on I-90 through the western edge of New York, the north­western edge of Pennsylvania, and into Ohio. Just east of the Cleve­land area, we took the Kirtland exit and stopped at the Church history sites there. Claudia, Rachael, Camilla, Eliza, and I had been here two years ago as we were taking Rachael off to school. It was a first visit for the other travelers in our party.

We visited the Newell K. Whitney home, which is now a visitors' center, and the Newel K. Whitney Store across the street, where Joseph Smith first met the Whitneys when he arrived in Kirtland from New York state on February 1, 1831. Later Joseph and Emma lived in a portion of the store. The store served as head­quarters of the Church for a time in the early 1830s. In an upstairs room, where the School of the Prophets met, the Prophet received a number of revela­tions that are now pub­lished in the Doctrine and Covenants, including the Law of the Church (section 42) and the Word of Wisdom (section 89). A special spirit was present in these hallowed places.

After touring the store, we went up to the visitors' center operated by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and took their tour of the Kirtland Temple [a few years after this visit, on April 6, 2001, the Reorganized Church changed its name to the Community of Christ]. The young man who took us through the temple also took us up to the attic level, which we did not get to visit two years ago when we were here. He said that the structural weak­ness of the building pre­vents them from doing that during the sum­mer when the crowds are bigger. In the First Presidency council room, at the west end of the attic level, was where the Prophet had his vision of his brother Alvin in the celestial king­dom (as now recorded in D&C 137).

We were much more impressed with this young man than the guide we had two years ago. The one today referred regularly to both our version of the Doctrine and Covenants as well as the RLDS version as he described the spiritual manifestations that occurred here. And he actually believed the events here happened as the Prophet and the other early Saints described them. Our earlier guide from two years ago, as well as those who talked to us at the RLDS temple in Independence, were clearly trying to distance themselves as much as possible from these sacred events.

After we finished at the temple, we bought ice cream at a little place across the street and then drove about 30 miles to the John Johnson Farm, where the Prophet Joseph and Emma lived during part of the Kirt­land period. One of the rooms up­stairs was designated as the reve­la­tion room. A number of reve­­lations were received here, including the glorious vision of the Father and the Son and the three degrees of glory (now recorded in section 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants). This was indeed hallowed ground.

It was also in this spot where the Prophet Joseph was dragged out of bed one night, tarred and feathered and left for dead in the woods, and then after the Johnsons and others spent the night cleaning him up, he preached a sermon from the front steps of the farm house the next morning on the Sabbath. As a result of this same incident, unfortunately, one of the Murdock twins died that Joseph and Emma had adopted after their own twins died.

As evening approached, we left for Cincinnati, which was still four hours away in the very bottom part of the state. The Bertassos had given us directions on how to find their house in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati. We arrived there about 1:00 in the morning.

Tuesday, May 23
Ohio, Kentucky

I knew Mike Bertasso in the mission field in Brazil, and both Mom and I had become acquainted with Mike and Kathy as young mar­rieds at BYU back in the early 1970s. The children of the two families first met each other back in July 1988 at the Bertassos' home in Villa Park, California. Mike is the bishop of their ward. Kathy teaches early morning seminary every day. The Bertassos have seven children: David, who just last week returned from the Germany Berlin Mission; Stephen, who is home on medical leave from his mis­sion in the Domi­nican Republic; Nathan, about 17 or 18; Matthew, 16; Carrie, 14; Diana, 12; and Andrew, age 9.

We spent a nice lazy day at Ber­tassos' house in Fort Thomas, Ken­tucky. We slept in after our late arrival last night. Mike had gone to work before we awoke, but Kathy and the children were home all day be­cause today is election day in Kentucky and the schools were out.

At noon Kathy, Grandpa, Mom and I, Michael and Shauna, and Rachael went to meet Mike Bertasso at his work and went to lunch on a river boat restaurant floating on the edge of a very full Ohio River. We had a pleasant visit, but we were sitting in the sun and Rachael sun­burned her arm. I had the unfor­tu­nate situation of food getting stuck in my esophagus, which seems to hap­pen with increasing frequency these days, and wasn't much for visiting after that.

This afternoon we watched a video of the recent award-winning movie Forrest Gump, starring Tom Hanks. Mike came home while we were watch­ing the video, and his family took him to the airport to catch a flight to Brazil. Some of us wished we were going with him.

This evening Eliza and Camilla went to Mutual with the Bertasso kids.

We decided one of the highlights of our trip has been the days we have spent visiting with our dear friends—such as here with the Ber­tassos or earlier with the Hogans in Houston, the Stewarts in Atlanta, the Forsgrens in Raleigh, and the Tanners in Connecticut. We have surely ap­pre­ciated their generous hos­pitality.

Wednesday, May 24
Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois

This morning we said good-bye to the Bertassos and headed west to­ward Nauvoo, located on the Missis­sippi River on the western edge of Illinois. We traveled through bits of Kentucky and Ohio and all the way across Indiana and Illinois. It rained on us this afternoon as we crossed Illinois, and reminiscent of our trip through the Midwest two years ago we saw a lot of flooded farmland.

Michael called PJ Hasleton this morning in Utah to see if he wanted to use a one-way plane ticket Michael and Shauna had for him to fly to Kansas City, where Kathryn Kieffer and her friend Rhonda would pick him up and drive with him to Nauvoo to meet us. He agreed, and they got it all arranged about an hour before PJ had to take off for the air­port. We agreed to meet Kathryn at the Nauvoo visitors' center between 6:00 and 7:00 this evening.

We arrived in Nauvoo about 6:15 and found that the visitors' center closed at 6:00. Kathryn, Rhonda, and PJ had not arrived yet. So we went to the Nauvoo Family Motel, the only place on the trip where we had not made an advance reser­va­tion, and were able to get two rooms—one a family suite and one a regular room. Kathryn arrived shortly after, just as we were unpacking our cars. The six girls (Mary, Eliza, Camilla, Rachael, Rhonda, and Kathryn) stayed in the regular motel room. In the two-bedroom family suite Michael and Shauna took one bed­room, Mom and I took the other bedroom, and Grandpa and PJ shared the hide-a-bed in the living room. Apparently it had an aw­ful mattress.

Thursday, May 25
Illinois

Nauvoo was settled by the exiled Latter-day Saints begin­ning in 1839 as they were fleeing from the unlaw­ful perse­cutions in Missouri. It had become a thriving city, rivaling Chicago as the largest city in Illinois, by the time the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were mar­tyred five years later in June 1844. By February 1846 the Saints were leaving their homes once again to be­gin the great trek to the Great Basin in the Rocky Mountains, then a part of Mexico, under the leadership of Brigham Young and the rest of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

The Prophet Joseph named the Saints' new home Nauvoo, which he said meant "a beautiful location, a place of rest."

Today, thanks to the efforts over several decades by Nauvoo Restora­tion, Inc., and the Church, the city has be­come one of the finest histori­cal restorations of an entire city in the country. And, un­like Colonial Williamsburg in Vir­ginia (which charges $25 a person), it is free.

We spent the day visiting the many sites in Nauvoo, starting first with an orientation and film in the visitors' center. PJ was not feeling well when we got up—nausea and dizziness—so he stayed in our motel and rested. A little later we went back and checked to see how he was doing, and he felt up to accompanying us the rest of the day. A lady at the visitors' center told us his condition may have been a result of his sud­den change to the barometric pressure or humidity, or some such thing we don't under­stand, of this part of the country.

We first visited the Cultural Hall and the Scovil Bakery, where we met Sister Fackrell from our stake in Bountiful, who with her husband is serving as a mis­sionary. At the end of her presentation, she gave each visitor a molasses cookie, such as the Saints may have made in the 1840s. Mom bought some little metal cookie cutters to give as thank-you gifts to people back home who had helped with Michael and Shauna's wedding breakfast.

Next we took the buggy ride tour of Nauvoo. Then we visited the Seventies Hall, one of the earliest missionary training centers in the Church. The guide actually called it the first, but it seems that the School of the Prophets in the upper floor of the Whitney Store in Kirtland could also reasonably qualify as the first MTC.

Next we went to the black­smith shop, where Elder Fack­rell was working. He showed us how they fashioned a horseshoe, and Camilla was the one to receive it because she had the next birthday of all the people in the group. All of us re­ceived a prairie diamond, a horse­shoe nail bent into a round ring shape. It was used by pioneer men to give to their fiancees as a wedding ring.

We went back up to the upper part of the city to find some lunch, and Grandpa treated us all to lunch at Porter's Place, named after the color­ful character from Church history, Orrin Porter Rock­well. Several bought post cards there, and Mom bought some T-shirts.

We continued after lunch with visits to the Browning gun­smith shop and home, then across the street to the post office, the John Taylor home, and the print shop. The Times and Seasons newspaper had been pub­lished here. Next we went to see how bricks were made at the brick kiln and received our souvenir bricks.

We wanted to see the Joseph Smith home, the Mansion House, and the grave sites of Joseph and Hyrum, so we had to go to the RLDS visitors' center to be able to tour these sites. They were historically interesting, but we all noticed the very obvious difference in the spirit between their sites and ours.

By the time we finished these last places, it was 5:00 and all the sites were closing. We went back to our visitors' center, which stays open until 6:00, and looked around a little more. We also toured the garden of women's statues just outside the visitors' center. The various statues, set in a lovely garden, depict the varied seasons and roles in a woman’s life. An appropriate setting since it was here in Nauvoo on March 17, 1842, that the Prophet Joseph Smith turned the key that organized the sisters of the Church into the female Relief Society with Emma Smith as its first president.

Back in the upper part of the city, on the bluff that over­looks the Mis­sis­sippi, we walked through the land­scaped spot where the Nauvoo Temple once stood. The original corner­stones are still visible to give an idea of the size of the 128-foot by 88-foot edifice. An imposing struc­ture built on the summit of a bluff overlooking the lower part of the city and the river, the temple was visible from a distance of twenty miles. Started in the fall of 1840, it was not completed until May 1846, nearly two years after the Prophet Joseph's death and after many of the Saints had started leaving the city. Baptisms for the dead were performed in the basement level of the temple as early as November 1841, long before its completion. The well used to provide the water is still on the site. Even though the temple was not yet com­pleted, it was often filled to capacity beginning in December 1845 by mem­bers coming for their ordi­nances during the months just before the exodus. A fire consumed the building in October 1848, and a tornado later knocked down the walls that were still standing.

That evening Kathryn took Eliza and Mary to play in the Nauvoo State Park. Grandpa wanted to rest his foot that Michael had tried to run over. We ordered pizza for Grandpa, Kathryn, Rhonda, Rachael, Camilla, Eliza, and Mary to eat in our motel. Mom, Michael, Shauna, PJ, and I went to the buffet dinner at the Nauvoo Hotel.

Friday, May 26
Illinois, Iowa, Missouri

This morning we left Nauvoo and traveled about half an hour to Carthage, Illinois, to visit the jail where the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were martyred on June 27, 1844. A later prophet, John Taylor, who was an eye­witness of the murders, de­clared: "Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it" (D&C 135:3).

Joseph and Hyrum "lived for glory; they died for glory; and glory is their eternal reward. From age to age shall their names go down to posterity as gems for the sanctified" (D&C 135:6).

After leaving Carthage, we headed west on U.S. 136, crossed the Missis­sippi River at Keokuk, Iowa, and headed south until we picked up U.S. 36, which we took across northern Missouri until we got to Adam-ondi-Ahman in Daviess County and the Far West temple site in Caldwell County, important sites in Church history during the late 1830s.

Ad­di­tionally, the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman is where Adam "three years previous to [his] death . . . called Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, and Methuselah, who were all high priests, with the residue of his posterity who were righteous . . . and there bestowed upon them his last blessing.

"And the Lord appeared unto them, and they rose up and blessed Adam, and called him Michael, the prince, the archangel.

"And the Lord administered comfort unto Adam, and said unto him: I have set thee to be at the head; a multitude of nations shall come of thee, and thou art a prince over them forever.

"And Adam stood up in the midst of the congregation; and, not­with­standing he was bowed down with age, being full of the Holy Ghost, predicted whatsoever should befall his posterity unto the latest generation" (D&C 107:53–56).

Adam-ondi-Ahman will also be the site of a similar gather­ing just before the Savior's Second Coming (see D&C 116).

After visiting Far West, we headed south on I-35 toward Kansas City, where Kathryn led us to her house, where we spent the night. It was raining again when we arrived. Shauna discovered that she was al­lergic to the cat that the Kieffers got rid of two weeks ago, so she and Michael stayed in a nearby motel and the rest of us with the Kieffers. Later in the evening, after Kathryn and her parents returned from a wedding re­cep­tion, Kathryn took Michael, Shauna, Rachael, and PJ around the Kansas City area, including into the state of Kansas by mistake, and to a huge Barnes and Noble bookstore.

Saturday, May 27
Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska

We awoke and had a pancake breakfast kindly fixed by Sister Kieffer. Kathryn had left earlier on a 7:00 plane for California. After we packed the car again, we said good-bye to the Kieffers and went to find Michael and Shauna at the Motel 6 where they spent the night. We drove through the Kansas City area to Indepen­dence, where we first visited the LDS visitors' center and then went across the street to the RLDS Temple. It was raining very hard, and we were drenched getting between the buildings and cars. A kind sister in our visitors' center loaned Michael and me an umbrella to use in going to fetch the cars from the parking lot.

After we finished in Independence, we drove a few miles north to Li­ber­ty, where we toured the Liberty Jail. The Prophet Joseph and others spent the winter of 1838–39 im­prisoned here, and some of the most glorious revelations ever given were received there (see sections 121, 122, and 123 of the Doctrine and Covenants).

We stopped to eat lunch at a Wendy's, then headed north on I-29 through northwestern Missouri, the very south­western corner of Iowa, and eastern Nebraska. We crossed the Missouri River for the final time near Nebraska City as we passed from Iowa into Nebraska.

We had originally planned to drive as far north as Council Bluffs and Omaha to visit the historic site at Winter Quarters, but we decided this morn­ing that we were more interested in getting home and could save our­selves a hundred miles and a couple hours if we bypassed Winter Quar­ters. It proved to be a wise decision in other ways as well: as we were approaching Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska, we could see severe weather behind us and heard on the radio that there were tornado watches out for the counties of eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. We were glad to be getting out of the area as quickly as possible.

At Lincoln we caught I-80 and headed homeward. We stopped for gas and dinner at a Pizza Hut in Kearney. We arrived late in Ogallala to spend our final night in a motel. We hadn't really planned to come this far, but the Memorial Day weekend has begun, and we couldn't find any rooms to reserve in North Platte, where we had planned to sleep. To­morrow, however, we will be glad we are 50 miles closer to home.

Sunday, May 28
Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah

The final day of our trip began this morning in Ogallala, Nebraska, where we had spent the night at a Comfort Inn. After we had eaten our continental breakfast, packed the cars, and were ready to leave, we held a brief sacrament meeting in our motel room. I con­ducted, Rachael led the music, Michael and PJ blessed and passed the sac­rament, and I spoke briefly about what had happened and will yet happen at Adam-ondi-Ahman.

We then con­tinued west on I-80, roughly following the route of the Mormon Pioneer Trail, across the rest of western Nebraska, all the way across southern Wyoming, and into eastern Utah. Occasionally rain fell on us as we headed west. There were still patches of snow along the freeway as we crossed the mountains just west of Laramie. We stopped for gas and a final meal at a Wendy's in Rawlins, Wyoming. I kept re­minding the children that it took more weeks for the pioneers to make this trek than the hours it was taking us to make the same trip.

We've been looking for license plates of all the states as we’ve crossed the country. Yesterday, driving across Nebraska, we finally saw South Dakota. That made 49 states. Alaska is still missing. We did see plates from Hawaii, Guam, about half of the provinces of Canada, one state of Mexico, the District of Columbia, and all the rest of the states except Alaska. Some of the kids saw one in Bountiful a few days after we returned home.

A hearty cheer went up as we crossed into Utah and con­tinued the final miles through the lovely mountains toward the Wasatch Front. We decided this portion of Utah was as beautiful a place as any we had seen across the country. We arrived home in Bountiful around 8:00, hav­ing traveled 7,471 miles through 28 states (29 states for Michael and Shauna) and one province during our 25-day trip.

Our trip across America

An account of our family's 1993 trip across the United States to take Rachael to attend Peace College in Raleigh, North Carolina. We traveled through fifteen states as part of our fourteen-day vacation.

Friday, July 23, 1993
Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska

We left Bountiful at 6:00 this morn­ing in Kermit, our 1993 Dodge Grand Caravan, and headed east up through Parleys Canyon on Inter­state 80 toward Wyoming. It was early dawn, a light rain was falling, and Mom and the six children (Rachael, a few weeks short of her 18th birthday; Talmage, 16; Anna, 14; Camilla, 12; Eliza, 10; and Mary, 8) were all soon asleep again as I drove through the mountains of eastern Utah and western Wyoming.

We had originally planned to leave about 8:00 last night, but after we had had our final family prayer and went out to hook up the fold-up camping trailer to the car, our prayers were immediately answered. (Claudia would later refer to what happened as our spiritual non-experience, an occasion where a proper course of action was laid out before us, in answer to prayer, by what we could not get to happen.) The lights on the trailer were not working. After spend­ing a couple hours working on them—with the help of Grandpa Lange, Delbert Strasser, Delbert’s son-in-law Matt Johnson, and Colin Van Orman—and discovering in the process that the tires on the rented trailer were nearly bald, we decided not to haul the trailer with us after all.

That was a right decision, but it left Anna and Camilla stranded with the bishopric up at the Texaco station on the west end of Kamas, where we were supposed to rendezvous at 9:30. Anna and Camilla had been to girls camp since Tuesday morning and were being brought back down from Camp Piuta a day early to meet us to leave on the trip. Mom tried finding out the number of the gas sta­tion, but the information operator needed an actual name. She tried calling the Kamas police, but there was no answer. Grandma remem­bered that Grandpa had a cousin who lived somewhere up in the Kamas area, so she called her and finally got the number of what turned out to be a pay phone at the service station. Claudia talked to Bishop Gail Anger by about 10:00, after they had been waiting half an hour, and told him to bring the girls on home.

By the time we reached Little America this morning, out in the mid­dle of nowhere in southwestern Wyoming, the skies were gray, and it was cold and blustery. Rather than stopping for breakfast at a rest stop along the freeway, we decided to eat in the restaurant at Little America after we filled the car with gas. Talmage and Rachael took turns driving throughout the day we spent heading east along Interstate 80. By late afternoon we reached Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming, where we refueled both ourselves and the car.

By early evening we reached the Nebraska border and stopped to snap a picture of the entrance sign. I was the only one in the car who had ever been in Nebraska before.

We continued driving, enjoy­ing the pleasant scenery of western Nebraska until it turned dark and started to rain again. Much of our drive across Nebraska paralleled the general routes of the Oregon Trail (which this year is cele­brating its 150th anniversary) and the Mormon Trail as they followed the Platte River through Nebraska.

I had created travel activity books for each family member and had distributed them this morning after breakfast at Little America. Among the activities in the book was a page called Oregon Trail Bingo, which contained various things the children could see along the way as we traveled through Nebraska—such as North Platte, I-76, spacious skies, a bridge crossing the Platte River, exit 199, Hastings, Kearney, big red barn, Lexington, Lincoln, cows out­standing in their fields, Platte River, Grand Island, Sidney, welcome to Nebraska, amber waves of grain, tractor in a field, Cheyenne County, Kimball, I-80, Omaha, exit 300, Central Time Zone, and Ogallala. Mary was the first one to complete an entire line on the bingo card.

Also, a part of the travel activity books were journal pages for each day of the trip, where the children could each list the states we visited, any interesting things about their visit, and other stuff they wanted to remember about each day.

On the first day of the trip, several of the children com­mented about the nice bathrooms at each of the rest stops we visited along the way. Tal­mage, for example, wrote: "Nifty bathrooms (with wall murals of cow­boys and horses and things in one of them in Wyoming). One rest room at this one rest stop in Wyoming was round (kind of like a circle). The restrooms in Nebraska have foot pedals to flush with instead of hand levers."

Nebraska is a long state, and we reminded the child­ren of how the several hours it would take us to cross this por­tion of the country paled in comparison to the several weeks and months it took the pioneers to cross it.

I drove after dark until I was too tired to go any further and pulled over at a rest stop and slept for three hours. It had been raining hard, and we were glad we had de­cided not to camp along the way. The thunder and lightening—coupled with the discomfort of trying to sleep seated in a car—awoke me, so I drove another 40 miles to the next rest stop, where I slept for another two hours, before continuing the drive in the early pre-dawn hours of Satur­day. The rains came down hard all night, and the lightening filled the entire sky like a flashbulb on a giant camera. Daylight was returning by the time we drove past Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska, and on to the Omaha area.

Saturday, July 24
Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois

Today is Pioneer Day in Utah. Appropriately, hav­ing spent much of the night following the routes of the Mormon and Oregon trails, we arrived at Winter Quarters (now Florence), Nebraska, before breakfast and just after the night's rains stopped and the skies cleared, to visit the pioneer cemetery and visitors' center at Winter Quarters. By evening we would reach Nauvoo, Illinois, where the Mormon pioneer trek originally began.

Winter Quarters was a temporary settlement built on Indian lands on the west bank of the Missouri River. It was sur­veyed in October 1846 and laid out in a grid with streets and blocks and individual lots. The houses ranged from two-story brick homes to sod huts. The settlement housed almost 4,000 Latter-day Saints by December 1846.

Upon orders from government officials concerned about settle­ment on Indian lands, the Saints vacated Winter Quarters in 1848 to go either to the Salt Lake Valley or back east across the river.

On January 14, 1847, President Brigham Young received at Winter Quarters the revelation now known as section 136 of the Doctrine and Covenants, which contained "the Word and Will of the Lord concern­ing the Camp of Israel in their journeyings to the West" (D&C 136:1).

There was a peaceful, sacred feel­ing in the lovely little hillside cemetery where many of the pioneers were laid to rest. Historians tell us that some 2,000 Latter-day Saints died near these settlements on both sides of the river between June 1846 and October 1848—with still more on the pioneer trail as it snaked its way west from here. What a terrible price was paid for the legacy of faith that we now so comfortably enjoy!

Eliza wrote of our visit to Winter Quarters: "We went to this place. We saw a 20-minute video, then we went to a grave yard. It was weird! They listed all the names of people who died and were buried there. There were two Elizas. One was 3 years old and the other 27 years old. We saw a wagon and a handcart and a log cabin. (Oh, this was all in Nebraska.)"

Talmage added, "We went to Winter Quarters and saw a little cabin, wagon, and handcart. More importantly, we saw the memorial for all the people who died at Winter Quarters for their faith. It was heart touching. We also saw a 20-minute film about Winter Quarters and the Mormon pioneers."

After we finished breakfast on the picnic tables at the visitors' center, we got back on Interstate 680 and im­medi­ately crossed the Mormon Bridge over the Missouri River and entered Iowa. In nearby Council Bluffs, on the Iowa side of the river, there had also been pioneer settle­ments during the early years of the exodus to Utah, home to another 8,000 Saints. It was in this area that the Mormon Battalion left on its historic trek to Santa Fe and San Diego, and in December 1847 the First Presidency was reorganized for the first time and Brigham Young became the second President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In western Iowa, still near the flooding Missouri River, we traveled along Interstates 680 and 29 a short distance until we re­joined Interstate 80, which we followed past Des Moines, the capital of Iowa. There had been massive flooding through­out much of Iowa. It is the only state in the Midwest in which every single county had been declared a disaster area.

Mary wrote on the second day: "In the bathrooms [at rest stops] the water is yellow and icky in Iowa. . . . The flooding in Iowa is getting better and better; some places aren't that much flooded. In Iowa the fields are green and the trees are green. It's totally pretty here. Iowa is heaven."

Eliza added, "Well, Iowa is the prettiest place I've seen so far. It's kind of sad that Iowa is flooded. You can't drink water in some towns. They buy it."

Talmage wrote, "There is quite a bit of flooding all over the place. One part was about a foot or two away from the highway (I-80) at one of its low points in Nebraska. The water looks kind of sick in some places of Iowa. Also in Iowa we saw two or three completely flooded soft­ball fields."

Near Iowa City we turned south and followed U.S. high­way 218 to Ft. Madison, where we tried to cross the Mis­sis­sippi River. We had been told the bridge was open there, but it was not, so we bought ice cream cones instead and then continued a few miles further south to Keokuk, where we could cross the swollen river from Iowa into Illinois.

We were awed by our first views of the mighty Mississippi, Old Man River, the Father of Waters. The Keokuk bridge normally handles four lanes of traffic, but only two were open. On the east end of the bridge a temporary dirt roadway had been built up to allow cars to cross. Water was lapping at the edge of the roadway. The next morning, after another night's storms, the bridge was closed again and half the Nauvoo Ward were unable to get to their Sunday meetings.

After arriving in Nauvoo and securing lodging for two nights at the Nauvoo Family Motel, Mom and I went to the visitors' center to plan what we wanted to do during our short stay in Nauvoo. We learned a musical program put on by the young missionaries had just started in one of the theaters, so we hurried back to the motel and gathered up all the children and returned to the visitors' center to watch the rest of the enjoyable production.

Sunday, July 25
Illinois

Today was the 100th anniversary of Katherine Lee Bates's writing of the song "America the Beautiful," which we sang as the opening hymn in sacrament meeting in the Nauvoo Ward. What appropri­ate timing, we thought, as we were discovering for ourselves how beauti­ful America really is.

Oh, beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

Oh, beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine ev’ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

Oh, beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev’ry gain divine.

Oh, beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

After attending sacrament meeting, we went to the visitors' center and watched an introductory film about Nauvoo, which served as headquar­ters of the Church from 1839, when the exiled Saints were being driven from Missouri, until 1846, when the Saints were again being driven from their homes, this time under the leadership of Brigham Young.

The Prophet Joseph Smith named the Saints' new home Nauvoo, which he said meant "a beautiful location, a place of rest," which we surely felt it was. It was here among all the lovely trees that Mom first noticed the sound of all the many birds.

We also toured the garden of women's statues just outside the visitors' center. The various statues, set in a lovely garden, depict the varied seasons and roles in a woman's life. An appropriate setting since it was here in Nauvoo on March 17, 1842, that the Prophet Joseph Smith turned the key that organized the sisters of the Church into the female Relief Society with Emma Smith as its first president.

Our motel room had a kitchen in it, along with two bed­rooms and a living room, so we returned there to prepare and eat our midday meal. We then returned to the historic part of Nauvoo on the flats along the river. We first visited the Cultural Hall and a bakery, then took a carriage tour of the restored part of the city. We then worked our way through a number of the other lovely restored buildings (including such places as the print shop, John Taylor's home, the tin­smith shop, the Browning gunsmith shop, the black­smith shop, the brick­yard, and the Heber C. Kimball home), re­ceiving an ample history lesson in each one.

Talmage wrote of today's activi­ties: "We visited the old Nauvoo historical sites and learned about the various homes and shops. We each got a prairie diamond, which is a horse­shoe nail bent into a round ring shape. It was used by pioneer men to give to their fiancees as a wedding ring because they couldn't get real diamond rings during their journey to Salt Lake City.

"We also got a Nauvoo souvenir brick and drove along the Road of Tears. It was really called Parley Street and was the road everyone traveled along in their wagons to get on the ferry to take them across the Mississippi. Many tears were shed along this road."

Our final stop this afternoon was at the Smith family cemetery right along the banks of a very full Mississippi River, where sandbags kept the lapping water from reaching the burial site and the nearby buildings now owned by the RLDS church. Mary wanted to climb the little fence that surrounded the cemetery and go stick her hands or feet in the water of the river. Mom told her she couldn't because of all the filth and disease that might be in the flood waters.

We ran out of time and energy long before we finished see­ing every­thing we wanted to see. The build­ings close at 6:00 in the evening, at which time we returned to our motel to eat dinner.

A fortunate result for us from all the flooding throughout the Mid­west was a lack of crowds at Nauvoo while we were there. We did not have to wait in line at any site we visited. The City of Joseph pageant, which would have been presented the week after our visit, was canceled.

In the evening we visited the site where the Nauvoo Temple once stood. The original cornerstones are still visible to give an idea of the size of the 128-foot by 88-foot edifice. An im­posing structure built on the summit of a bluff overlooking the lower part of the city and the river, the temple was visible from a distance of twenty miles. Started in the fall of 1840, it was not completed until May 1846, nearly two years after the Prophet Joseph's death and after many of the Saints had started leaving the city. Baptisms for the dead were per­formed in the basement level of the temple as early as November 1841, long before its completion. The well used to provide the water is still on the site. Even though the temple was not yet completed, it was often filled to capacity beginning in December 1845 by members coming for their ordi­nances during the months just before the exodus. A fire consumed the building in October 1848, and a tornado later knocked down the walls that were still standing.

Monday, July 26
Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky

This morning we checked out of our motel and visited a few more sites in Nauvoo—first the brick yard, where Mom talked the people into giving her more souvenir bricks to share with Grandma and Grandpa, Shauna Christensen, and Cláudia’s parents and grand­parents (the Amatos and Puertas) in Brazil. We also stopped at the Seventies Hall, which we wanted to visit yesterday but simply ran out of time to see. The Seventies Hall served as one of the earliest mis­sionary training centers in the Church. (The guide actually called it the first, but it seems that the School of the Prophets in the upper floor of the Whitney Store in Kirtland could also reasonably qualify as the first MTC.)

We then drove to nearby Carthage to visit the Carthage Jail, where on June 27, 1844, the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were assassinated.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Nauvoo, but our brief stop at the Carthage Jail was especially memorable—to actually stand in the very room where the Prophet and the Patriarch lived their last moments before sealing their testimonies with their blood.

Eliza wrote in her journal, "We saw the room where they stayed in. It was dark and hot. (We got air conditioned.) It was awful. I saw the actual window Joseph jumped or fell out of."

From Carthage we followed U.S. highway 136 in a straight line across the state of Illinois until we came to Interstate 74, which we would follow the rest of the way across Illinois (past Champaign, Urbana, and Danville) before entering Indiana and the eastern time zone. We stopped at Mahomet, Illinois, to get gas and eat a late lunch at a Subway.

We continued to follow Interstate 74 across Indiana, past Indian­apolis (the state capital), and on toward Cincinnati. Indiana, like the other states we had been passing through, was very green with rolling farmland interspersed with forests, lakes, and rivers. Shortly after we entered Ohio, we took Interstate 275 (a belt route around the Cincin­nati area) and entered back into Indiana for a moment and then into Kentucky and on to the home of Mike and Kathy Bertasso at 106 Stanbery Ridge in Ft. Thomas, Kentucky. The detailed directions Kathy had given Mom on the phone a few days earlier were very help­ful, and I was able to drive right to their house.

I knew Mike Bertasso in the mission field in Brazil, and both Mom and I had become acquainted with Mike and Kathy as young marrieds at BYU back in the early 1970s. The children of the two families first met each other back in July 1988 at the Bertassos' home in Villa Park, California. The Bertassos have seven children: David, who left the MTC exactly a week earlier for the Germany Berlin Mission; Stephen, 18, who will be leaving shortly for BYU; Nathan, 15 or 16; Matthew, 14, who was away during the few days we were visiting; Carrie, 12; Diana, 10; and Andrew, age 7.

Tuesday, July 27
Kentucky, Ohio

Today we had a quiet, restful day visiting with the Bertassos in their lovely home. Mom, Rachael, and I went with Kathy Bertasso to visit Mike's office, which is right on the river front facing downtown Cincin­nati on the other side of the Ohio River. We went to his office to fax something to Peace College that Rebecca had faxed from Salt Lake City. The item we faxed, an answer to our prayers, was an offer of employment from Peace College for Rachael to work as an aide in the language department.

During the afternoon the children all went swimming at the local YMCA. In the evening we all went to watch the Young Women play the Young Men a game of softball. Talmage, Anna, and Camilla all par­ticipated. On our way back to the Bertassos' house, we drove through part of Cincinnati and therefore looped through a little bit of Ohio.

Kathy Bertasso had recently had surgery and was still recovering from that, so she had to take things a little slower.

Wednesday, July 28
Kentucky, Ohio

We arose very early this morning and about 5:00 left Cincinnati and on Interstate 71 drove diagonally in a north­eastern direction from the very bottom of Ohio to the very top, reaching the Kirtland area about 9:00. We ate our breakfast on picnic tables behind the visitors' center, which was located in the Newell K. Whitney home.

The headquarters of the Church were located in Kirtland from 1831 until 1838. Karl Ricks Anderson relates in Joseph Smith's Kirtland, a fascinat­ing book I reread just before our trip, about Joseph and Emma's arrival from New York:

"On about February 1, 1831, a sleigh stopped in front of the Gilbert and Whitney store. A man jumped out and went into the store, where he ap­proached Newel Whitney, extended his hand, and called him by name. Newel, be­wildered, re­spond­ed, 'I could not call you by name as you have me.' 'I am Joseph the Prophet,' the stranger said. 'You have prayed me here, now what do you want of me?'

"Newel's grandson, Orson F. Whitney, later wrote: 'By what power did this remarkable man, Joseph Smith, recognize one whom he had never be­fore seen in the flesh? It was because Joseph Smith was a seer, a choice seer; he had actually seen Newel K. Whitney upon his knees, hundreds of miles away, pray­ing for his coming to Kirtland.'

"Elizabeth Whitney described the Prophet’s arrival as 'the ful­fillment of the vision we had seen of a cloud as of glory resting upon our house.' Joseph wrote that he and his wife 'lived in the family of Brother Whitney several weeks, and received every kindness and attention which could be ex­pected, and especially from Sister Whitney.'

"A glorious new era had begun in Kirtland" (Joseph Smith's Kirtland, 8–9).

After eating our breakfast, we took a tour of the Newell K. Whitney store across the street, where Joseph Smith first met the Whitneys when he arrived in Kirtland from New York in 1831. Later Joseph and Emma lived in a por­tion of the store. In an up­stairs room, where the School of the Prophets met, the Prophet received a number of revelations that are now pub­lished in the Doctrine and Covenants, including the Law of the Church (section 42) and the Word of Wisdom (section 89). A special spirit was present in these hallowed places.

We then went to visit the Kirtland Temple, which today is owned by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints [several years after this visit, on April 6, 2001, the Reorganized Church changed its name to the Community of Christ]. It was special to be in the temple, knowing of the many pentecostal events experienced there during the early months of 1836, including the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ and the ancient prophets Moses, Elias, and Elijah (as recounted in section 110 of the Doctrine and Covenants).

Our guide was a short, kindly man who had lived nearly all his life, since he was three years old, in the Kirtland area. It was amazing, however, what a different slant the RLDS guide put on the same events that we see from such a different per­spective.

Talmage wrote of his visit to the temple, the first constructed by the Saints in this dispensation: "We visited the Whitney store and the Kirtland Temple. It was neat and I felt the Spirit of God while in the temple. I felt it just as was promised in Joseph Smith’s dedicatory prayer. It was a warm, peaceful feeling and a sense of being in a sacred place where many miracles happened and even the Lord and Jesus appeared."

Section 109 of the Doctrine and Covenants contains the Prophet Joseph Smith’s inspired prayer of dedication at the Kirtland Temple on March 27, 1836. An estimated 1,000 people attended the dedica­tion service. A repeat dedication was held on March 31. It was a time of great rejoicing. Dedicatory anthems were sung, including a new hymn written for the occasion, "The Spirit of God." This anthem has been sung at every temple dedication since that time.

The Spirit of God like a fire is burning!
The latter-day glory begins to come forth;
The visions and blessings of old are returning,
And angels are coming to visit the earth.

The Lord is extending the Saints’ understanding,
Restoring their judges and all as at first.
The knowledge and power of God are expanding;
The veil o’er the earth is beginning to burst.

We’ll call in our solemn assemblies in spirit,
To spread forth the kingdom of heaven abroad,
That we through our faith may begin to inherit
The visions and blessings and glories of God.

How blessed the day when the lamb and the lion
Shall lie down together without any ire,
And Ephraim be crowned with his blessing in Zion,
As Jesus descends with his chariot of fire!

We’ll sing and we’ll shout with the armies of heaven,
Hosanna, hosanna to God and the Lamb!
Let glory to them in the highest be given,
Henceforth and forever, Amen and amen!

In his dedicatory prayer, the Prophet Joseph pled with the Lord for a visible manifestation of His divine presence. Many recorded the fulfillment of that prayer. Eliza R. Snow wrote, "The ceremonies of that dedication may be rehearsed, but no mortal language can des­cribe the heavenly manifestations of that memorable day. Angels appeared to some, while a sense of divine presence was realized by all present, and each heart was filled with joy inexpressible and full of glory" (from the article on the Kirtland Temple, in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 2:798).

"The climax of the spiritual out­pouring occurred on 3 April 1836, when the Savior appeared in the Kirt­land Temple to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery and said, 'For behold I have accepted this house, and my name shall be here; and I will manifest myself to my people in mercy in this house' (D&C 110:7). Then three other personages of former dis­pensations, or eras, came and restored keys of the priest­hood: Moses restored the keys of the gather­ing of Israel; Elias re­stored keys of the gospel of Abraham; and Elijah restored the keys of sealing. These keys represent three different aspects of the mission of the Church" (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 2:799).

The revelation to build the temple in Kirtland came to the Prophet Joseph Smith in early 1831, but the cornerstone was not laid until July 23, 1833. The temple was completed in the early spring of 1836 and was abandoned within two years as the faithful Saints fled Kirt­land for western Missouri.

The children have a fifth-great-grandfather, Charles Dixon (1766–1854), who received his patriarchal blessing in the Kirtland Temple on November 15, 1837, from Joseph Smith Sr., first Patriarch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

After seeing the temple, we returned to the intersection where the Whitney store is located and had some ice cream cones in the little ice cream shop across the street from the store. It was a very hot day, the thermometer in our car registering 98 degrees at one point. It was also very humid.

We learned in Kirtland that in the 1830s it cost 25 cents, nearly a half day's wage, to mail a letter. Often mail was sent without post­age, and the person receiving it had to pay any postage due before he could get the letter from the postmaster. The Prophet Joseph often received letters that had been sent COD, and some of this mail con­tained insults.

"It is a common occurrence," the Prophet once wrote, "and I am sub­jected to a great deal of expense by those whom I know nothing about, only that they are destitute of good manners; for if people wish to be benefitted with infor­mation from me, common respect and good breeding would dictate them to pay the post­age on their letters" (History of the Church, 2:325).

The problem continued until the Prophet placed a notice in the Church news­paper: "I wish to inform my friends and all others, abroad, that whenever they wish to address me thro’ the Post Office, they will be kind enough to pay the postage on the same. My friends will excuse me in this mat­ter, as I am will­ing to pay postage on letters to hear from them; but am un­willing to pay for in­sults and menaces,—con­sequently, must refuse all, un­paid” (Messenger and Advocate, Dec. 5, 1835, 2:240).

We drove a few miles further east along Interstate 90 and went to an area near Painesville to a beach on Lake Erie, where the kids walked down to the water and played for a while. We then ate our lunch on a picnic table. Even in the shade of trees, it was hot and muggy and thoroughly un­comfortable.

Talmage adds, "We went to Lake Erie and played in the water and skipped rocks. I taught Camilla and Eliza how. My watch is still dead [from going swimming with the Bertassos the previous day], and I think it might stay that way with water inside ruining it.

"One restroom in an Ohio rest stop on I-71 had automatic faucets where the water would go on or off depending on whether your hands are under it or not."

We then drove south on state highway 44 about 30 miles until we came to the John Johnson Farm home and visitors' center near Hiram, Ohio. We had been hot and tired and still had a four-hour drive back to Cincinnati ahead of us and almost decided not to go to the Johnson farm, but we are very glad we did. The older sister, who was at the farm house with her husband as a full-time missionary, gave us a very special tour of the original home. Joseph and Emma had also lived here for a time, and one of the rooms upstairs was designated as the revelation room. A number of reve­lations were re­ceived here, in­cluding the glorious vision of the Father and the Son and the three degrees of glory (now recorded in section 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants). This was indeed hallowed ground.

It was also in this spot where the Prophet Joseph was dragged out of bed one night, tarred and feathered and left for dead in the woods, and then after the Johnsons and others spent the night cleaning him up, he preached a sermon from the front steps of the farm house the next morning on the Sabbath. As a result of this same incident, un­fortunately, one of the Murdock twins died that Joseph and Emma had adopted after their own twins died.

We then drove down to Interstate 76, which took us past Akron, until we intersected with Interstate 71 again and re­turned past Columbus, the capital of Ohio, and on to Cincinnati and the Bertassos' home across the river in Kentucky. We were back by 9:00, a long but very rewarding and enjoyable day.

Thursday, July 29
Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina

We took our time getting up and packed this morning. We visited a lot, and by about noon pulled out of the Bertassos' driveway and headed south through Kentucky on Interstate 75 until we came to Lexington, where we stopped for gas and ate lunch at a Hardee's.

Every time we approached busy traffic or were changing freeways or getting on or off freeways, I would often turn off the radio or the tape that was playing at the time. Some­one asked why I did that, and I said I had to sneak up on the freeway. Talmage wrote of one such incident, "We had to sneak up on the freeway by keeping Rachael's Peter, Paul, and Mary tape off till we were on. This was right after we ate at Hardee's in Lexington, Kentucky. Anna tried to make a lot of noise so we couldn't sneak up on it, but she failed."

After lunch we traveled east on Interstate 64 through eastern Kentucky and into West Virginia, the Mountain State, very aptly named because that is about all we saw as we drove through the state. Even Charleston, the state capital, seemed to be just sprinkled among the mountainous hills. As we left Charleston, Interstates 64 and 77 became a toll road, and we had to stop at three toll plazas to pay $1.25 each.

We had a little scare as we crossed from West Virginia into Virginia because we thought we were going to run out of gas, and there were no towns or gas stations anywhere in sight. We were able to get some in a little place called Bastien, Virginia.

Talmage wrote of this experience: "At 6:55 ET we found ourselves dangerously low on fuel. Our elec­tronic miles till empty thingy said we only had 4 miles left when we made it to a Citgo station in Bastien, Virginia. At first we couldn't find any. When we did find a gas station in West Gap, it was closed and was the only one there."

When we reached the North Carolina border about dusk, nearing we thought the end of our journey, we stopped to allow Rachael to take a picture of the sign. Little did we realize we still had several hours to go across North Carolina till we reached Raleigh.

We drove by Mt. Airy, North Carolina, which was the town of Mayberry on the old Andy Griffith show on tele­vision. The nearby Pilot Mountain was Mt. Pilot on the show.

A little later, as we were passing Winston-Salem, we could smell the strong smell of tobacco, which we later learned was being harvested just then.

We reached Raleigh just before 11:00 p.m. and checked into the Comfort Inn just north of town on U.S. high­way 1. We picked this particular motel so the kids could each receive a free Choiceasaurus (a little plastic green dinosaur). As it turned out, this was the only motel we stayed in during the entire trip that we made advance reservations for. We were very tired from a long day of traveling and were glad to be able to go to sleep in real beds.

Friday, July 30
North Carolina

This morning I called Bob Lee, the Institute director here in Raleigh (whom I had talked with on the phone two previous times), and told him we were in town. Brother Lee agreed to come over to our motel to meet us and take us on a tour of the Raleigh area. He took us into down­town Raleigh first and showed us where the Peace College campus was located. He then took us to North Carolina State Univer­sity, where the Institute classes meet in the student union building. He then took us by the meetinghouse where the two Cary wards meet and then to his house in Cary to meet his wife and a few of their eight children. After visiting a while and having some lemonade, we returned to our motel.

Then Mom, Rachael, and I went over to Peace College while the others stayed to swim in the motel pool. During the summer months, unfortunately, the offices at Peace College close at 12:30 on Friday after­noons. It was about 2:00, so no one was on campus except a kindly security guard, who very graciously gave us our own private tour of the buildings on campus. It was obvious how much he cared for the girls at Peace.

When we left the Cincinnati area Thurs­day, we had originally planned to return late Sunday evening to stay one more night with the Bertassos before heading to Missouri, but after we saw how far away Raleigh was from Cincinnati, we decided not to return that way.

Saturday, July 31
North Carolina

Today we drove for about two hours south from Raleigh on Inter­state 40 to Wilmington, where we went to Wrights­ville Beach on the Atlantic Ocean and spent a couple hours playing in the surf and on the sand. It was a most enjoyable outing. In a lot of ways, such as the difficulty in finding parking near the beach, Wrightsville Beach re­minded us of Laguna Beach in southern California. The children have now been from sea to shining sea, the Atlantic to the Pacific, with one of the Great Lakes thrown in for good measure.

Talmage recorded the event: "Today we went to the Wrights­­ville Beach in North Carolina. It had a lot of sea­shells, more than California. It had pigeons and a few seagulls, fewer gulls than California. We built two sand castles, both of which were washed away."

This afternoon, as we were returning to Raleigh from the Wrights­ville Beach, we saw a mileage sign as we got on the very beginning of I-40, its easternmost point, that read "Barstow, Cali­for­nia 2,559 miles." Barstow is at the other end, the western­most point, of Interstate 40.

When the final portion of I-40, connecting Wilmington to Raleigh, was completed in the late 1980s, Charles Kuralt observed: "Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything" (Amy Wilson, "U.S. Route 66: Historic Road Is Time Line of America," National Geographic News, Jan. 18, 2002). There is a certain truth in that observation, because the interstates miss a lot of what can be discoverd traveling the old U.S. highways and back roads of America, but we have seen a lot of the beauty and granduer and diversity of our country from the intestate highways we have traveled on during this trip.

Back in Raleigh, I called and talked to a Sister Henderson, a member of the Raleigh First Ward, whose name we had been given by a lady from Peace College. She told us further about church meet­ings in the morning. Her oldest son is serving in the Brazil Belo Horizonte Mission, and two other sons, twins, have received mission calls and enter the MTC next month. This evening one of those sons called Rachael and invited her to join a group of about five other young adults to go out to eat and to a movie. Rachael had an enjoy­able time.

Sunday, August 1
North Carolina, Tennessee

Yesterday morning, after we had eaten breakfast in our room for the second of the three days we were here, I dis­covered that a conti­nental break­fast came free with the motel room. And this morning, of course, was fast Sunday. We went down and brought some of the food back to our room to eat after we returned from church.

At 9:00 we went to the Raleigh First Ward to attend sac­rament meeting. We met the bishops and some members of both the First and Fourth wards. Rachael actually lives in the Fourth Ward, but their meeting schedule until September is in the afternoon, and Rachael has to begin at Peace College this after­noon. It was fast and testimony meeting, and we were very impressed with the services. After sac­rament meeting, we left Rachael to attend the young adult Sunday School class and Relief Society while we returned to our motel to pack and check out.

At noon we returned to the church to pick up Rachael and take her to Peace College, where she could check in for the summer writing institute beginning at 1:00 p.m. At that time, she picked up her registra­tion packet, had her picture taken, and found her room. While we stop­ped to have some refresh­ments (cookies and punch), Rachael happened to meet Susan Stubbs, her roommate in the regular school term, and her parents. They hit it off very well from the start, and it appears to have been a good match up. Susan is from Yorktown, Virginia, about four hours away from Raleigh.

As we were moving Rachael into her room for the writing institute (room 302 in Finley Hall), we also met her room­mate for the next couple weeks, Debbie Lee from nearby Cary.

After we had Rachael all moved in, we went out to the parking lot and took some pictures and said good-bye and hugged each other. About 3:00 we drove out of the Peace College parking lot, a sad-looking Rachael standing there waving good-bye, the sort of once-in-a-life type of experience that rips your heart out, even though—or maybe because—we have been plan­ning and working toward this very day for the past eighteen years.

A week later, on August 7, I wrote Rachael concern­ing this parting:

"Well, today's your eighteenth birthday. When we drove out of that parking lot Sunday afternoon, seeing you standing there all teary-eyed, it really tugged at your dad's heart strings. For eighteen years we'd been preparing for this very day, and now here it was, and it was a rather sober experi­ence—something like when we left Michael at the MTC in Provo last year: we didn't want to be there, but there was no other place we wanted him to be. As I drove along during the quiet times of the next few days (when we weren't listing to Talmage's tape of Weird Al Yanko­vitch or whoever he is), my thoughts kept returning to you and the big empty hole you left there now that you won't be living with us anymore and how wonderful a daughter you've been and what exciting opportunities lie ahead for you and how much I'll miss you, etc.

"I do love you very much, and we do miss you, but we're glad you're there in North Carolina, certainly one of the most beautiful and friendly places I've ever been. May the Lord bless you always."

Mary wrote in her trip journal: "Peace was very interesting. I got to go to Rachael's room. . . . I want to re­member Rachael and us leaving. I will always remember the tears of Rachael Cleverly."

We left Raleigh, which we had indeed found to be a very lovely and delightful area, and headed west on Interstate 40, traveling past Greensboro and Asheville, by which time we were in the hill country, an entirely different aspect of beautiful North Carolina.

We stop­ped at a lovely mountainous rest stop off Inter­state 40 in western North Carolina to eat our evening meal of sand­wiches (which everyone tired of before the trip ended) and chips and juice. It was a lovely wooded spot, but un­fortunately the table we picked was also a favorite resort for a swarm of pesky little bees that wanted to share the evening with us.

Beyond Asheville, as it was approaching dusk, we passed near the east boundary of Great Smokey Mountains National Park. While driving through this lovely stretch, we entered Tennessee, and traveled just a little past Knoxville, where we stayed in another Comfort Inn for the night.

Concerning this part of the trip, I reported to Rachael in the letter written on her birthday: "After we left you in the parking lot of Peace College Sunday afternoon, we drove out through the hill country of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee and stayed in a motel near Knoxville. The western part of the state is very different from the Piedmont or coastal regions of North Carolina, and we enjoyed it very much. Interstate 40, which we were traveling on, went by the eastern edge of Great Smokey Mountains National Park as we were leaving North Carolina and entering Tennessee. It was a great deal like West Virginia, very mountainous, very pretty. You would have enjoyed it."

Monday, August 2
Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri

Talmage wrote in his journal of a dream he had last night: "We were like pioneers going to Missouri in the winter with­out a car or wagon or any­thing like that. We were wearing modern winter clothing. There was a group of maybe 50 or 60 people, old and young. We were camped some­place in the Rocky Mountains, where we set up camp for the night. The young men of this group (me included) were each given an assign­ment to help with the setting up camp. My job was to chop and gather firewood. When I was through it was getting pretty dark. I sat down next to some people (I'm not sure who—friends, family, strangers?) and a young man about David Ashton's size and/or age offered me a paper plate with some homemade pizza and I took it. I started eating it then woke up. I felt like what is going to happen during the opening of the seventh seal before Christ appears again when the Saints would drop what they were doing and im­mediately make their exodus to Missouri."

Today we continued our exodus toward Missouri. Much of today was spent driving. We left Knoxville and drove to Nashville on Inter­state 40. At Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, we took Interstate 24 in a general northwestern direction through the rest of Tennessee, across a portion of western Kentucky, and into southern Illinois until we reached Mount Vernon. After filling up with gas again at Mount Vernon, we took Interstate 64 from there to St. Louis.

Just before we left Tennessee, near a place called Clarkes­ville, we stopped just off the freeway at a little family-style restaurant and ordered our mid-day meal. Mom had such local delicacies as catfish and hush puppies.

We had been concerned about reports that it would be difficult still to get across the Mississippi River, but we were able to do so just north of St. Louis on Interstate 270. We continued west through Missouri on Interstate 70 until we stopped for the night at Columbia at another Comfort Inn.

At St. Louis the flooded area on either side of the Mis­sis­sippi was easily as wide again as it appeared the original river would have been—making the en­larged river three times its normal width. We saw buildings in the water where only the roofs were visible.

Tuesday, August 3
Missouri, Kansas

Columbia, where we spent the night, was about two hours from the Kansas City area. We got up and drove to Inde­pendence, a suburb of Kansas City.

We visited Church history sites in Independence. Three different religions own parts of the original temple site laid out by the Prophet Joseph Smith in this central place that the Prophet said was the site of the Garden of Eden: (1) our church has a meetinghouse, a visitors’ center, and some vacant property that now looks like a park; (2) the Reorganized Church has their world head­quarters there—including their Auditorium and their newly finished Temple, which we toured; and (3) the Church of Christ-Temple Lot, also known as the Hendrikites, owns a little spot.

By the time we reached the temple site in Independence, it had started raining lightly. We toured the Independence visitors’ center and saw a couple films and had a nice visit with the guides there.

We then toured the new temple of the RLDS church. The archi­tecture of the building is really strange from the outside (some have described it as a giant snail or a space ship), but it was a gorgeous building on the inside. Interestingly, the RLDS guide in the temple invited us to take pictures of any­thing we wanted, while the RLDS guide at the Kirtland Temple said we could not take pic­tures inside because of the sacred nature of the building. Apparently their new temple isn't as sacred. The guide emphasized that they did no ordinances in the temple and held no regular meetings. By the time the tour was finished I had no clue really as to what they use the building for, except for the portions that serve as their church office building and a school.

Independence is the county seat of Jackson County. In ad­dition to its being the site of the New Jerusalem, the place where the early Saints anticipated building up the center place of Zion, it was also the out­fitting and departure point during the 1830s and 1840s for explorers, trap­pers, and pioneers travel­ing west over the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California trails.

When we were through visiting the temple site in Independence, we drove north out of Jackson County, across the swollen Missouri River into Clay County, where we visited the Liberty Jail. In this dungeon the Prophet Joseph spent the winter of 1838–39 while the Saints were being expelled from Missouri and heading back east across the Mississippi River to Illinois, where they eventually built Nauvoo. While in­carcerated in the Liberty Jail (an ironic title, to be sure), the Prophet received the marvelous revelations that are now sections 121, 122, and 123 in the Doctrine and Covenants. LDS historian B. H. Roberts would later call this site "a prison temple" because of the momentous revela­tions that were given here.

The jail itself was built in 1833 and was used for that purpose until 1856. Later it was used as an ice house, and finally after a long period of disuse was demolished near the turn of the century. The current visitors’ center includes a partial reconstruction of the jail as it then existed. The Prophet Joseph was a prisoner there from December 1, 1838, until April 6, 1839, when during a change in venue he was allowed to escape and join his exiled people gathering back on the other side of the Mississippi in Illinois.

The young sister missionary who took us on our tour of the jail was a Sister Cahoon from Woods Cross, Utah. She had been out on her mission just a month. As we were leaving, I secured her parents' names and phone number, so we could call them upon our return and tell them we saw their daughter and she looked well and gave us a marvelous tour. I did call the mother the day after our return. She greatly appreciated the call. She also said that her husband was a first cousin to Aunt Ruth, married to my uncle Irvin (Grandpa Cleverly's twin brother).

After eating lunch at a Wendy's in Liberty, we drove farther north along Interstate 35 into Caldwell and Davies counties, where we visited the temple site at Far West and then the beautiful valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman. They were lovely, peaceful places, where we experienced a won­derful feeling with the realization of what had and will yet occur there.

Far West at one time had 5,000 Latter-day Saints living in it. All that is there now are beautiful fields and the four corner­stones of the temple that was started but never completed. Settled in 1836, after the Saints left Clay County, Far West became the county seat of the newly organized Caldwell County and for a brief period the head­quarters of the Church. In addition to the temple site being dedicated and the cornerstones being laid, seven revelations now published in the Doctrine and Covenants (sections 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, and 120) were received in Far West, the Quorum of the Twelve officially left for a mission to England, a stake of Zion was organized, and Joseph F. Smith (sixth president of the Church) was born on November 13, 1838.

It was at Far West on October 31, 1838, that Joseph Smith and other Church leaders were arrested by the state militia and taken first to Independence, then Richmond, and from there to Liberty, where they were imprisoned for several long months during the winter of 1838–39.

Haun's Mill was located about twelve miles east of Far West, but we could not go there because the floods that had occurred here in recent weeks made the dirt road impassible.

In May 1838, Joseph Smith led an exploring expedition north­ward into Davies County to find additional places for the Saints to settle. They found a beautiful townsite on the Grand River and named it Adam-ondi-Ahman. While there, the Prophet received the revela­tion that this was also the site, men­tioned in a revelation received three years earlier, as the valley where Adam had gathered his right­eous posterity three years before his death.

The valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman had been under water the previ­ous week and was now filled with lots of mud, but it was still a lovely place, and we had no difficulty arriving there. William W. Phelps wrote a poem about the place that was included in the first LDS hymnbook compiled by Emma Smith in 1835 and is hymn number 49 in our current hymnal:

This earth was once a garden place,
With all her glories common,
And men did live a holy race,
And worship Jesus face to face,
In Adam-ondi-Ahman.

We read that Enoch walked with God,
Above the pow’r of mammon,
While Zion spread herself abroad,
And Saints and angels sang aloud,
In Adam-ondi-Ahman.

Her land was good and greatly blest,
Beyond all Israel’s Canaan;
Her fame was known from east to west,
Her peace was great, and pure the rest
Of Adam-ondi-Ahman.

Hosanna to such days to come,
The Savior’s second coming,
When all the earth in glorious bloom
Affords the Saints a holy home,
Like Adam-ondi-Ahman.

While we were at Adam-ondi-Ahman I read to the family two passages from the Doctrine and Covenants, the first about what had happened there in the opening days of the earth's history, the second about what will yet happen there in the closing days:

"Three years previous to the death of Adam, he called Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, and Methu­selah, who were all high priests, with the residue of his posterity who were righteous, into the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman, and there bestowed upon them his last blessing.

"And the Lord appeared unto them, and they rose up and blessed Adam, and called him Michael, the prince, the arch­angel.

"And the Lord administered comfort unto Adam, and said unto him: I have set thee to be at the head; a multitude of nations shall come of thee, and thou art a prince over them forever.

"And Adam stood up in the midst of the congregation; and, not­withstanding he was bowed down with age, being full of the Holy Ghost, predicted whatsoever should befall his pos­terity unto the latest generation" (D&C 107:53–56).

"Spring Hill is named by the Lord Adam-ondi-Ahman, because, said he, it is the place where Adam shall come to visit his people, or the Ancient of Days shall sit, as spoken of by Daniel the prophet" (D&C 116:1).

Talmage shared his feelings about our visits to the Missouri Church history sites we visited today: "We went to the LDS visitors' center in Independence, Missouri, then visited the RLDS temple. I found out their prophet will receive a 'revelation' from the Lord and the congregation would vote on it to see if it was really a revelation. (How stupid.)

"We then went to Liberty Jail where Joseph Smith was held for 4 months.

"We then visited the Far West temple site. There wasn't anyone else there, so it was real peace­ful, quiet, beautiful, and spiritual.

"After that we went straight to Adam-ondi-Ahman, where no one was there either. There was a lot of flood damage in the valley, but it was still neat, beautiful, and spiritual place. Mary and Eliza were spooked by some rabbit that jumped out in front of them. I think I liked Adam-ondi-Ahman the best and the Far West temple site next."

As evening approached, we returned south to Kansas City on Interstate 35, where we crossed the Missouri River a final time, left the state of Missouri, and traveled along Interstate 70 again to Topeka, the capital of Kansas, where we stayed again in another Comfort Inn. The freeway to Topeka was the second toll road we had been on during the trip.

One of the nice things about staying at the Comfort Inns, besides getting more Choiceasaurus dino­saurs each stay, was that all of the children were able to stay free in the same room as Mom and me, so the cost was no more than if Mom and I were making the trip alone, and breakfast was free every morning.

Wednesday, August 4
Kansas, Colorado

A lot of driving today on Interstate 70 across the plains of Kansas and eastern Colorado. Kansas was probably our least favorite state, probably because Mom was not feel­ing par­ticularly well today, the roads were rough in many spots, the long hours of tedious driving over the rolling prairies was less exciting than much of the rest of the country we had seen, and we were now just heading home, having seen all that we came to see.

On our return trip, we passed a few rather interesting oddities: an Elvis museum just off I-70 somewhere in eastern Missouri that we had to back­track along a frontage road for nearly fives miles so we could take pictures of it for Rachael. In windswept Kansas we saw billboards along Interstate 70 that invited us to visit Dorothy's house, that proclaimed Colby in western Kansas as the Oasis of the High Plains, and that urged us to visit a prairie dog museum, where we could see the world's largest prairie dog, a living five-legged cow, and a six-legged steer. Alert readers in the car actually saw these signs; we are not mak­ing this up.

We did enjoy the abundant sunflowers we saw growing in Kansas, one of the few things Mom liked about the state. Unlike its depiction in the Wizard of Oz, Kansas is actually in color now, although Mom disputes this fact by point­ing out that except for the sunflowers it was rather gray the day we passed through­.

We stopped in Colby, Kansas, for gas and lunch at a Pizza Hut. The bill­boards all across Kansas billed Colby as the Oasis of the High Plains. It was cloudy and grey and windy when we were there, and we weren't all that impressed with the place. Of historical note, how­ever, I went for my first time ever into a Walmart at Colby.

We arrived at Denver and spent our final night in a Comfort Inn somewhere in the southwestern part of the Denver area. We ate supper in our motel room. It's good we're nearing the end of our journey, because everyone's get­ting pretty tired of sandwiches every day.

We were glad we were in Denver this week, however, and not next week when the Pope and President Bill Clinton are both in town. Accommodations would be harder to come by, and traffic would be horrendous.

Thursday, August 5
Colorado, Utah

We arose early this morning, so that we could eat breakfast and have the car packed and get checked out of our room by 7:00, at which time we left Denver and headed into the beautiful Colorado Rockies. Parts of the trip were breath­taking, and I wished later I had stopped a couple times to take pictures on our last roll of film. We had bor­rowed Rebecca's camera, since she couldn't come with us, to use throughout the trip. At Vail Pass, Interstate 80 climbs to nearly 11,000 feet in elevation, a little higher than we were at the beach last Saturday.

Later, as we traveled into western Colorado, the terrain started resembling the harsher desert mountains that we are more familiar with in the Great Basin.

We ate lunch in Grand Junction, Colorado, and shortly after­ward entered Utah, bringing cheers and shouts from all the children. We continued along Interstate 70 through the San Rafael Swell and the Fishlake National Forest, parts of Utah none of us had ever seen be­fore, until we came to Salina. The scenery along this part of the drive was breath­taking.

From Salina we drove north on U.S. highway 89 until Palisades Lake, just south of Manti, where we dropped Talmage, Anna, and Camilla off at the ward youth con­ference. We got there at 3:00, just half an hour after the rest of the youth from the ward arrived from Bountiful. We stayed and visited for about an hour, and then Mom, Eliza, Mary, and I made the final trip home to Bountiful, where we arrived about 6:30 this evening. A lovely time was had by all.

North Dakota was one of the few states whose license plates we were still looking for. As we exited the freeway at Bountiful and were driving by the McDonald's and Smith's on the old highway, we finally saw North Dakota. Of all places to see it finally! We were still missing Rhode Island and Hawaii, I think.

Conclusion
On our trip we traveled 5,789 miles. I summarized the entire trip in my next letter to Michael in Brazil:

"We had a marvelous trip, saw a lot of beautiful country in the 15 states we traveled through, witnessed first hand the incredible devastation caused by flooding rivers in the Midwest, had a delightful visit with the Bertassos, got a chance to visit Peace College and meet some of the people in Raleigh that will influence Rachael's life dur­ing the coming year, and toured many sites impor­tant in Church history. I plan to put together a full report of our experi­ences in a special issue of the Family Journal, which I will send you when it's ready, but in the meantime let me touch briefly on each of the listed elements of our marvelous trip.

"First, we saw a lot of beautiful country in the 15 states we traveled through. It seemed the farther east we traveled the greener and more beautiful the country became. The eastern half of the country simply has a lot of trees, and even in the rolling hills of states like Nebraska and Iowa and Illinois and Indiana—where there are a lot of farms—everything is still green and beautiful. West Virginia, one of my favorite states, was the most mountainous we passed through outside the Mountain West. North Carolina was as pretty as everyone told us it would be. Trees every­where. Even in big cities like Raleigh it was like being in a forest. Mom was the first to notice the sound of all the birds. In addition to all the regular pretty countryside, we crossed wide rivers, burrowed through mountain tunnels, dipped our toes in Lake Erie, and spent an afternoon at a beach on the Atlantic coast of North Carolina, and climbed to nearly 11,000 feet over Vail Pass in the Colorado Rockies. It is an immense, big, wonderful, blessed country we live in.

"Second, we witnessed first hand the incredible devastation caused by flooding rivers in the Midwest. In state after state we saw vast tracts of forest and farmland covered with water, the greatest single natural disaster to hit the country's mid­section in recorded history. We weren't sure where we'd cross the two main rivers—the Missouri and the Missis­sippi—but were able to get across both going and coming. The first bridge we tried to cross the Mississippi was closed, even though we'd been told it was open, but we were able to cross 10 or 12 miles south of Nauvoo at the Keokuk bridge from Iowa into Illinois. Normally a four-lane road, only two lanes were open on the Illinois side, and water was lapping the sides of the dirt em­bank­ment built up for cars to cross on. It rained again that night after we crossed to Nauvoo, and the next morning the bridge was closed again, and half the Nauvoo Ward couldn't get to church. The City of Joseph pageant, which would have been staged in Nauvoo the week after we were there, was canceled this year. On our return trip we crossed the Mississippi just north of St. Louis. The flooded areas on both sides of the river were at least as wide as the original channel appeared to be, so the net effect was an already vast river being about three times its normal width (and all this in a major metropolitan area). We saw rooftops poking out of the water and the tops of signs and telephone poles and bridges. Simply incredible. People were saying the Mississippi Valley was the sixth of the five Great Lakes. Or one of our three oceans—the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Mississippi.

"Third, we had a delightful visit with the Bertassos in their large home on a wooded ridge in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, overlooking the Ohio River, which was not flooding, across from Cincinnati, Ohio. Mike was even in town, although he was unable to go with us to Kirtland as originally planned. Too busy at work and getting ready to leave a few days later for Puerto Rico. Kathy had recently had surgery and had to take it easy while we were there. Their children and our child­ren blended well, like they did that Sunday we visited them in California, as they all became reacquainted. We were with the Bertassos from Monday evening, July 26, until about noon on Thursday, July 29. We were gone all day Wednesday on our day trip up to Kirtland and Lake Erie.

"Fourth, we got a chance to visit Peace College and meet some of the people in Raleigh that will influence Rachael's life during the next year. We were in Raleigh from Thursday night, July 29, until Sunday afternoon, August 1. Friday morning we called Bob Lee, the Institute director, and he came over to our motel to meet us and then took us on a tour of the Raleigh area, including stops at Peace College, North Carolina State (where the Institute meets in the student union building), one of the meeting­houses, and his home (where we met his wife and some of his eight child­ren). That after­noon, while the kids were swimming at the motel, Rachael and Mom and I went to check out Peace College. We were very impressed with the campus in the heart of downtown Raleigh. The oldest building was built before the Civil War. We found out, unfortu­nately, that during the summer the offices close on Friday afternoons at 12:30, so we didn't get a chance to meet any of the people we've corres­ponded with and talked to on the phone all these many months. A very nice security guard with an appro­priate Southern accent and an obvious love for the girls gave us a personal guided tour of all the buildings on campus. Saturday, after we returned from the beach on the Atlantic Ocean, we called some members whose names and numbers we were given. The Henderson family has a son in the Brazil Belo Horizonte Mission and two others, twins, who go in the MTC next month. The one son called back later and invited Rachael to go to a movie and to eat with a group of six young adults from their ward. She went and had a nice time. Sunday morning we attended sac­rament meeting in the Raleigh First Ward (which Rachael will attend through August) and, while the rest of us went back to check out of the motel, Rachael stayed to attend the young adult Sunday School class and Relief Society. In September, when the meeting schedules change, Rachael will attend the Raleigh Fourth Ward (which she actually lives in). While there we met the bishops of both wards and some of the members. (The bishop of the First Ward had a daughter who attended and graduated from Peace.) When Rachael checked into school Sunday afternoon, we were able to meet her roommate and her parents. I think Rachael will have a great experience.

"Finally, we toured many sites important in Church history—includ­ing Winter Quarters on the Nebraska side of the Missouri River near Omaha; Nauvoo on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River; Carthage Jail, where Joseph and Hyrum were killed; the Newell K. Whitney Store and the Kirtland Temple in Kirtland, Ohio; the John Johnson Farm home near Hiram, Ohio; the temple site in Inde­pendence, Missouri; the Liberty Jail; the temple site at Far West, Missouri; and the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman.

"I'm not sure I have either the oomph or the space in this letter to describe some of the marvelous feelings and things we learned at all of these places. That will come in the Family Journal or in next week’s letter.”

Throughout the trip the children were collecting things: pebbles from the beaches of Lake Erie, seashells from the Atlantic beaches of North Carolina, post­cards and brochures from Church history sites, and bugs from all over the eastern half of the country for Camilla's sixth grade bug col­lec­tion. I was thrilled to be col­lecting more maps. And all of us were collect­ing enough memories to last the rest of our lives.

The children were marvelous travelers, and a wonderful spirit of co­opera­tion and patience prevailed throughout the trip. In fact, we often felt the Lord's Spirit attending our pilgrimage and saw many evidences of His guiding and pro­tective providence.

Once in the car the children got talking about walking someday to Missouri. They didn't think that sounded too exciting. After a while, how­ever, ten-year-old Eliza decided that if Heavenly Father wanted her to walk to Missouri then she guessed it would be OK.