The hightlight of this week was our trip to Kirtland Ohio with the YSA Branch - great preparation for our Church History Institute class this fall. After a 5-hour bus ride we stopped first at the Kirtland Temple. Although it is owned by the Community of Christ Church (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints) the tour we received was very good. It was neat to be in the room where the Savior came to accept the temple and where Moses, Elias and Elijah all came to restore priesthood keys. We visited the Historic Kirtland sites with young sister missionaries as our guides - nice Visitor's Center with a good movie, Newell K. Whitney store and home, Johnson

Inn, Sawmill and Ashery. The church sure does a top-notch job restoring and keeping things looking nice. Such historic things happened in Kirtland - 65 sections of the D&C were received, many heavenly visitations ocurred, the priesthood offices were revealed and organized, many missionaries were sent out (including the Prophet Joseph and the Twelve). One of the two investigators we had on the trip gained a testimony of the Prophet Joseph on this trip.

Friday night we all attended (and loved) the "This Is Kirtland" pageant - in its 9th year of production by the Kirtland Stake. So much fun to see cousin Dianna Cardon there. She and her husband and 5 kids live in Kirtland. One son was in the pageant. One of Kevin's best high school friends, Zach Allred, is in the Kirtland area finishing his residency and played the part of Heber C. Kimball. Really great to see him as well.

On Saturday morning we visited the Issac Morely site - just a mile from town. A senior missionary couple were our guides. They LOVE serving in Kirtland. Joseph & Emma lived here for about 7 months. The saints built a school and many cabin homes - all gone now. Issac and his wife were quite well off and turned all they had over to the church. The level of sacrifice made by the saints is incredible. The 4th conference of the church was held here in June, 1831. The first high priests were called. This is a special, peacful place where Christ appeared during that conference. Joseph received 13 revelations here.

Our last visit was to the John Johnson Farm in Hiram, Ohio. This "revelation room" is where the Prophet Joseph Smith received a visitation from the Father and Son. As he was translating the Bible, he received many other revelations including D&C section 76 explaining the 3 degrees of glory. Sacred place. While living here the mobbers (mostly disaffected members) came and tarred and feathered Joseph - but he preached the next morning from the front steps. His ill baby boy died later from the exposure of that cold night. The testimony meeting that concluded our Kirtland visit was very special. We feel very blessed that we were granted permission to leave our mission boundaries for this trip. We arrived home Saturday night in a heavy downpour - such needed rain for this drought-stricken state. Our institute lessons are going pretty well. It takes us as long to prepare as we have time to spend! The sister who teaches at lunch on Thursdays is gone on vacation for 2 weeks - so extra lessons for us. Last night we attended our second "Why I Believe" meeting where recent converts and some recently reactivated members share their stories. Very powerful. My "bites" were all poison ivy! The bumps and rash areas on my knee and forearms are nearly gone now. Muncie is covered in poison ivy - and we have a large honeysuckle bush (10 ft. tall) full of very big poison ivy vines and leaves. I "caught" poison ivy while pruning that bush a couple weeks ago.