What Ian Does, Part II

I'm going to be a little more serious with this update. It was a bit more serious of an experience. From July 10th to 12th, I traveled with a large group of other youth belonging to my church to visit a site of religious significance.

I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In other words, I'm a Mormon. The point of this blog post is not to deliver a sermon on our beliefs, although I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. Rather, this is a post to tell everybody about part of my life, a part that concerns my religion.

If you will be overly uncomfortable with discussion of religion,
or won't respect that I and others consider some of these things sacred,
then please, don't continue reading.

Mormons believe in modern revelation. We believe in Jesus, and when Jesus was alive on Earth, He established a church and taught men precious truths and principles. (Bear with me. This is necessary backstory.)

We also believe that after Christ and His apostles died, gradually the principles that Jesus taught were misunderstood and revised by men until the whole truth was no longer had.

We believe that eventually, God called a boy named Joseph Smith to restore what was lost and reestablish the church and principles that were had anciently. God also revealed to Joseph the location of an old record, like the Bible, on which was recorded the writings of people who lived on this continent before it was found by Christopher Columbus and whose descendants are the Native Americans. This record was called the Book of Mormon.


Now, the trip that we took was to Palmyra, New York. In and around Palmyra was where Joseph received the vision of and from God that told him of what he was expected to do, where he found the plates on which the record was engraved, and several other historic locations.

The crowning event was our visit to the grove where Joseph saw, in the flesh, God and His Son Jesus for the first time; it's a very spiritual and fulfilling experience. We also visited a number of other places, played games and did activities together to know and have fun with one another, and saw the Hill Cumorah Pageant, which is an event that involves a lot of dedicated actors and stage crew displaying live some of the key events in the Book of Mormon. Very well put together and worth going to, and all trip expenses were covered, so our families paid no money for it.

 

I won't bore you with more details than you need to hear. Basically, that's all the important stuff. I had both fun times and times that were ever so good in a way that's hard to describe. I met people and went places. Until next time!