There may not be palm trees in Palmyra...

...but WOW.



Palymra is beautiful.

The Harlem YSA ward went May 11-12, and lucky us...
we got to go with.



That's Miriam at the cozy Palmyra Inn.
The rooms had a queen bed and a mini kitchen.
Not to mention enough floor space to actually sit down.
I seriously considered re-locating.

The Palmyra Temple. 

Like something out of a church movie. 

Untouched. 

Spring flowers everywhere. 

Birds singing.

I half expected to find diamonds paved into the concrete. 

First Stop?

The Sacred Grove. 

Where God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith in 1820,

answering a prayer,

 and opening a new dispensation of time where the priesthood of Jesus Christ is on the earth

and where God reveals His will to prophets,

just like in the Old and New Testaments.

Miriam said it first, but I felt the same way. 

She said she kept thinking of the words Joseph Smith wrote after the First Vision. 

"For I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it."

The tree in the above picture was standing in 1820.

They call it a "Witness Tree." 

One of six still standing in the grove.

Brother Robert Parrott helped me find it. 

He's the one Elder Jensen spoke about in his CES Fireside about the Sacred Grove last month. 

A really wonderful man. 

Needless to say, it's a beautiful place.

We also toured the EB Grandin Printing Press where the first copies of the Book of Mormon were printed. 

I got to fold my own printed page, too. 

That's where they would wash the ink blotters. 

Our tour guide said that wall has never been washed.

We couldn't have asked for a better trip. 

This is the statue on top of Hill Cumorah, where the gold plates the Book of Mormon was printed on were buried. 

And... this is Charlotte and I diving into a 5 pound calzone.

Delicious, and spiritually uplifting.

Can't stay in paradise too long.

Although it was a great vacation within a vacation.

Back home to the city!