Midwest Roadtrip: More Church History

The Eleventh Day, after a horrendous night in the hotel, I fenagled a discount and then we checked out of our Nauvoo hotel and hugged goodbye-for-now to Laura & her kids. (They'll be coming out to Grandpa & Grandma's house in a couple more weeks.) Just our family again, we headed to our easternmost destination: Carthage, Illinois.

Carthage is the jail where Joseph, his brother Hyrum, John Taylor, and Willard Richards were unjustly held and then attacked by a mob, resulting in the martyrdom of the Smith brothers.

There was a film in the Visitor's Center you had to watch before touring the jail/home. I did learn quite a few more details about the situation - such as how kindly the actual jailers thought of their captors (letting them have their bedroom instead of the nasty cell).

Then it time to recross the Mississippi and start our own migration west. We paid a visit to the former/future sacred site of Adam-Ondi-Ahman in Missouri. Not much to see or feel there, but a bit of a trail to stretch the legs from all the driving. (And we spotted a racoon.)

And we made it to Liberty, MO in time to check out the Liberty Jail Visitor's Center there before it closed for the night. This site, the jail recreated and housed inside the center, was a time of great difficulty for Joseph and all the Mormons. Several significant revelations were received there, though.

We at a late dinner at very likely the slowest and worst Mexican restaurant actually owned and run by Mexicans and then crashed for the night at a really sketchy Days Inn. Day Twelve we rose early and hit the (Church) sites in Independence before heading out across Kansas. Independence has a dedicated temple lot surrounded by visitor centers of both The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and an early splinter (Church of Christ/Hendrickites) AND another splinter The Community of Christ with their own "temple".

Also of note, to us anyway, was that on the other side of the lot was a lovely fountained square dedicated to the U.N., and discovering that U.N. monies aided in the construction of the Community of Christ building.

Honestly, my favorite part of this stop was learning from the very old man in the tiny Church of Christ office about their beliefs. Interestingly (again, to us) they have 25 "Articles of Faith and Practice" which serves not just as reminders of basic belief, as the 13 LDS Articles of Faith do, but as pretty much their handbook to all their far-flung members or branches. I picked up a free copy and have to say I only barely disagreed with the wording in two of the 25.
Then we drove and drove, straight shot, on the freeway, across Kansas and eastern Colorado. We got off I-70 onto Highway 24, and drove straight into the tornado-warning storm in El Paso County. Mark, as the driver, was very serious and cautious about proceeding at all (at this point we didn't know it was THAT storm, just that we'd never seen lightning like we were experiencing). Then huge hail thundered down on us in crashing waves and it was totally dark, except the lightening. We pulled over and prayed and waited. Samuel was on the verge of terrified but I felt mostly calm - even thought it was kinda cool. Eventually the storm's brutality lessened, at least over the road in the direction we were traveling, so we headed on towards Colorado Springs. When we were sure we were really past it, I asked Mark to pull over for a picture. Doesn't do it justice, but it's a memento.

What was really surprising is to realize, much like when you take an airplane out of Seatac or Heathrow airports, that beyond the clouds it is still a beautiful, sunny day! We still had about two hours of daylight with which to drive across the city and find our hotel.