TOUR Baltimore | Gettysburg | Harmony | Fayette | Palmyra | Kirtland | Cleveland (June 3-9, 2024)

Next we will head to Gettysburg.

The next day we will head to Harmony, Pennsylvania.  Here Joseph Smith received his first recorded revelation, D&C 3.  Here, in Emma’s hometown, Joseph and Emma began their married life in earnest and we will be able to tour a replica of their first home.  Joseph began his sustained translation of the Book of Mormon here, with Emma acting as a scribe.  Here the Smith’s were visited with the first of many tragedies that would dramatically affect their lives as they buried their first born child shortly after his birth.  Here too Joseph would first meet with Oliver Cowdery in 1829 and begin translating the gold plates at a feverish pace.  That translation would lead them to ask God how they too might be baptized.  We will go down to the Susquehanna River, somewhere near the site where Oliver and Joseph, having received authority from John the Baptist, baptized one another.

After Harmony, we will head north to Fayette, New York to see the site of the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  In this sacred place, Joseph Smith completed his translation of the Book of Mormon, received multiple revelations, and heard the voice of God speak to him in the house of Peter Whitmer, Sr.  Fayette would serve as the location for all of the early Church general conferences.

From Fayette, we will travel to Palmyra where we will see the Smith family home and farm, ascend the Hill Cumorah where Joseph found the Gold Plates and tour the Grandin Printshop where the Book of Mormon was first printed.  Most importantly, we will go to the Sacred Grove where each us will have a chance to feel the spirit of that place and contemplate on the incredible miracle that took place there, when, after centuries of silence, God and Jesus Christ chose to again send their truth into the world.  Joseph Smith’s prayer has dramatically changed the lives of millions in the world.

From Palmyra we will travel to Kirtland, Ohio.  This second headquarters of the Church is indeed holy ground.  Here thousands of Saints congregated as they were converted in far distant communities and followed the command of the Lord to erect a Holy Temple, the first in this dispensation of the fullness of times.  We will tour the Newel K. Whitney store, where the School of the Prophets met, where Joseph received the revelation known as the Word of Wisdom, where Joseph received many revelations, and where a large group had the collective, shared experience of seeing God the Father and Jesus Christ. The tour of the Kirtland Temple will allow us all to be in a sacred space where Joseph had the keys restored to him and again saw the Savior.

While in the Kirtland area, we will go to the John Johnson farm in Hiram, Ohio.  This is also a place of triumph and tragedy, where Joseph will have perhaps the most miraculous of all visions take place as he and Sidney Rigdon are shown the Celestial, Terrestial, and Telestial Kingdoms in the vision now known as D&C 76.  Here Joseph would also be violently dragged from his home by a mob.  They beat him, attempt to poison him, and tar and feather him, but Joseph remains undaunted in his testimony of the truth.  

After seeing these sites, we will fly home out of the Cleveland airport.

Along much of the journey, Gerrit will provide historical insights into the American and Latter-day Saint history sites, drawing from his PhD in American History and his time working on the Joseph Smith Papers project as a historian.

Many people wait their whole lives to go to Jerusalem, so they can possibly walk where Jesus walked.  But at these sacred places, we know of a certainty that Jesus Christ also walked as He visited his Saints in the latter days and brought about a restoration of his Church.