The Independence Visitor's Center is built on a
portion of the land that the Church purchased to establish the center place of
Zion.
I finished lunch earlier (you can read about that over at 1000Places) than expected and
decided to visit here sooner than expected.
I was able to watch a couple of videos about the translation of the BoM
and then had my own personal sister missionary to show me around the
exhibits.
The Church has done some amazing things with the
experience here. There is a little
outside of a cabin with benches (and some sad looking mannequins) where we
chatted about what I knew about that period of history (and where I confirmed
that I was a member, just not a very good one).
I like these individualized tours where we can just informally chat and
I don't feel like I'm being proselytized.
Once the cabin cleared we went inside this
awesome little interactive cabin. I
loved this exhibit. First of all, the
cabin is decorated in a way that totally reminded me of the cabin at
Palmyra. Second, they play a little
audio clip, but the cabin windows are really screens that change to reflect the
different seasons, times of day, etc. So
when they are talking about winter in Independence there are snow covered trees in
the windows, while they talk about a era of city building - a barn appears in
the window.
The missionary told me that they were trying to
focus on the positive aspects of the Saints time in Missouri and not only
dwell on the horror that was coming. I
think it is powerful to think about how much good happened there, how many
people were committed to the gospel, how they really felt this was their place
and how much work and cooperation went on before things got terrible.
We also discussed about how this scenario still
plays out today. Of course, the natives
were upset about a whole bunch of outsiders were moving into their
community. I see this sentiment over and
over in Texas. Don't move in and take
away our status quo. We don't want you
voting together, or doing things that change our way of life, etc. And for the early Saints in those established
communities it was the same. People are
afraid of change, and when you have a lot of privilege or authority people are
so afraid of losing any of that power.
After the cabin exhibit, you step out into a
replica of the printing office where the first BoMs were printed. We talked about how these things were real
and how at that time the level of effort required to produce one book was so
enormous that losing a printing press was devastating. We also talked a little bit about one of my
favorite quotes from Ender's Shadow which, paraphrased, it:
God takes all our actions and uses them for
good. So even the evil or unjust
actions, are eventually turned and used for His purposes. This can be incredibly uncomfortable in the
meantime.
I like to re-frame Emma Smith's place in history
with this in mind. I was always taught
that she turned against the Church and was to be reviled, but in actuality her
staying in Nauvoo, allowed for the preservation of so many church sites and
other artifacts. We have many of these
places today because Emma Smith chose to stay and her sons chose to run their
own church. Her decisions may not have
been righteous, but that doesn't mean they weren't used for the Lord's purposes.
Also, I'd had fragment of a hymn stuck in my head
for about a week, and could only remember one line. "And Jesus will say to
all Israel, "Come home."" I figured it was stuck in my head
because I constantly joke that I need to move to Independence so I don't have
to walk very far in the coming apocalypse;
I'll already be at ground zero for the Saints.
Well, while we were listening to the printing
press presentation the background music was this song . THE PRINTING PRESS GUY WROTE THAT HYMN! (W.W. Phelps, Now Let us Rejoice)
The last presentation was a quick clip of
(honestly, I don't remember, but it made me all teary-eyed). And my missionary and I started walking back
upstairs. She told me that this had been
the first tour she'd done on her own, and I have to say. A+
