Day #24 Kirtland, Ohio

We arrived in Kirtland about 3:00 today and went to the temple site. It is owned by the Community of Christ (RLDS) and they gave us a tour of it. It was very interesting having a tour of our church history by a young lady who isn't of our faith. Her parents joined the Community of Christ a few years ago but she said she was still on her journey to find what she believes. We couldn't take pictures of the inside, only outside. The upstairs and downstairs are almost identical rooms, large assembly-type rooms with pulpits and stands at both ends. A lot of the woodwork, especially upstairs was original. It was very beautiful. It was a large tour. I wished we could have sat in there and had a few minutes of quiet to enjoy the special place.

Across the street is a small cemetery with many old, old grave sites. We've been to several cemeteries on this trip and the kids always try to find the oldest date on a head stone.

We then headed over to our visitors center and took a tour of Kirtland with a cute pair of Sister missionaries. We all really liked the Newel K. Whitney store. The kids thought it was fun to see all the things that were for sale. He was a jack-of-all-trades! We ran that store and was the town's postmaster.
Upstairs was really special, where the first School of the Prophets was held. It was a smallish room, not as big as I'd imagined... about the size of an average bedroom nowadays. The Spirit was really strong as the Sisters testified that this was one of the four places that the Father and Son appeared to Joseph Smith and others here in Kirtland. The other three places in Kirtland are the John Johnson Farm, the Isaac Morley Farm, and the Kirtland Temple.

We took a tour of the old saw mill and the ashery nearby. That was fun to see how it all worked! They said the ashery was one of the ways the saints earned money to build the temple. Everyone would bring their ashes to the ashery and they would add water and other material to a big pot, then cook it at extremely high temperatures (like 1000 degrees or something crazy) for several days until it turned into potash, an important fertilizer for crops that was previously only obtained from England. People came from all over to buy their potash. This ashery is the only one left in North America. Very cool!
(I don't think I'd want the job of tending the fires night and day!)