We woke up, had breakfast, and spent some last time in the pool, before grabbing some more breakfast, packing up and getting in the car. Then, we headed over to Liberty Jail. The boys were excited to see Liberty Jail – even Seth was talking about Joseph Smith and how mean people were in Missouri. We had to wait a little while because there was a big bus tour before us, so we entertained the boys with the camera and video camera. Andrew took some interesting videos.
I really really enjoyed the sister missionary who gave our tour. After the Independence Visitor Center, I figured it would behoove me to read a bit more about Liberty before going, so I read the Missouri chapters in the Church History Institute manual. But this sister told us lots of history – about the jail itself (it went on to become an icehouse, which just goes to show how cold it was that winter), about all the people who were involved, about the history of the church at that time period in Missouri. Between that and my reading I feel like I have a much more solid grasp of this part of Church history now. After talking for awhile (poor Katsu missed half of it because Seth would just not behave), we then went into see the reconstructed Liberty Jail. I didn’t realize that they used the foundation and part of the original stones, nor that the church had used it to house missionaries and help Sacrament meetings in it before restoring it to the original jail. And that the reason that they could restore it so well was that a Church historian had seen it back in the last 1800s and recorded lots of information about it, enough details to figure out how to rebuild it. The sister told us so much about each of the men jailed there and the trials they went through. It was really inspiring and inspired us all to handle our trials better and trust in the Lord and really gave more meaning to those sections of the D&C received there. I have to say this was my favorite church history site I have visited, I think. Seth fell asleep during the presentation, so it was even relatively quiet.
We decided we didn’t have enough time to see all the church history sites, but we wanted to stop in Richmond on the way back, where the prophet was originally jailed and also where there were tombstones of 2 of the 3 witnesses. Turns out that the map the church gave us wasn’t as great as we thought. We drove right past all the sites in Richmond – turns out they were on Business highway 10 not highway 10. The only reason we turned around was because the highway was flooded and the only way back to the main highway was to go back through Richmond again. After some trial and error, we finally found the sites. Thankfully, the boys were both napping this whole time, so there weren’t any complaints from them.
We enjoyed the little cemetery in Richmond and the monument. It was definitely worth seeing and the boys woke up and “explored” with us.
We went to a nearby McDonalds for lunch. It took forever, but the boys loved it. It is always the highlight of the trip – plus, I told them we could go to McDonald’s on our vacation when they have been begging for it this last month. Then, we stopped at McDonald’s seriously like 15 minutes later because Andrew had to go again. Lucky for him, we were close, because before that there was only fields and fields of corn and soy beans and nothing else. After stopping at Walmart for some snacks, we finally made our way back to highway 70 and drove the whole way home. What a trip!
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