Went to the Joseph Smith birthplace and Memorial in Vermont. It was really cool. Joseph smith was the first prophet of the church of the Jesus Christ and the founder of the church and he was born here on December 23, 1805. In a log cabin on his grandfathers farm, his house was in the middle of the town Sharon and the town Royalton. We got to go on a tour of the place by a elder missionary couple. They were so sweet and so cute together 🙂 The sister missionary took us around the monument and told us about it and how it go there. The granite monument is 38 1/2 feet tall because that is how old Joseph Smith was when he passed away. And they build the monument on Joseph smiths 100th anniversary of his birth. It weighs about 39 tons and a team of about 12 horses and a few ox’s to pull the wagon that the monument was placed onto. On their way to deliver the monument they ran into a ditch and just the day before it rained so they got stuck in it and they had to get out of it and they said a prayer and the next day the water froze and they were able to walk across it which was a wonderful miracle. Another part of their journey, they were so close but they still had a hill to climb and it took them 33 days to just get 2 miles up to their destination and they were worried that they wouldn’t get it to their destination on the due date.
Then we got a tour of a building with a ton of stories and things to read and learn more about Joseph smith and the Trails that he had growing up and through his lifetime. When he was only 7 years old he got a huge infection in his left leg due to typhoid. A surgeon from New Hampshire came and looked at his leg and ended up putting and eight-inch incision between his ankle and knee, hoping that the swelling will go down. Then a little bit later they ended up cutting directly into his bone and removing all the infected areas, letting healthy tissue to grow back, and its crazy that he was awake for all of it! He was one brave little boy. The doctor removed nine large pieces of infected bone. It took him years to fully heal but he still limped when he was an adult. And they did say that God was already setting him up for trails and challenges, because God knew that he would get through them.
Then we went with the elder missionary on a big golf cart and rode around into the woods and looked at where their houses used to be and they had stones around the base of where the house used to be. They had such beautiful places that they were in in the forest and its crazy how they found their houses again after they went working in the fields.
Over all the Joseph Smith Birthplace memorial was so good and I highly recommend it, I learned so many new stories and facts that I did not know before, it was so cool and its so nice learning new stories. Even if you’re not LDS still go because you will learn so much.
