Day 05 – A picture of somewhere you’ve been to

 The summer after my senior year in High School, I was able to attend a church history tour!! This tour changed my life for the better, and my testimony has grown immensely because of it. I had soooo many great experiences, I wish I could share them all. But I will limit them all down to one, and I'm sure you'll hear of more in the future :) The tour was 19 days long, with 56 other people I barely knew.This is the Kirtland temple, and it is currently owned by the Church of Christ (or the RLDS church I believe). They allow tours to go through, which in my opinion is sad. The temple should be a sacred and holy place, and the Kirtland temple still kinda is but at the same time not really. For instance, I went to the Washington D.C. temple, and I needed a temple recommend to enter. In the Kirtland, anyone can go through and there is definitely a different spirit there. Its not bad or anything, just different.

Anyways.... there was a tour group of 56 of us (50 were teens), and we got to go through the first two stories like everyone else. BUT... here comes the amazing part. My tour guide, Brother Tesch, has been doing this tour for the past 36 years, and has done 38 plus tours. So I guess you can say he knows what he is doing.
Brother Tesch is really good friends with the guy who operates the tours for the RLDS church, and since they're way good friends our tour gets to do something not everyone is able to. We got to go to the top floor :) It might not sound like that big of a deal, but to us it was. We were able to go to the room where Joseph Smith received a ton of revelation for the book of Mormon and such, and the Lord appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in the top floor of the Kirtland Temple. When we all got up to the 3rd floor, the spirit was amazing. It was so strong, and everyone was touched deeply. The church is true :)