The recently refurbished and rededicated Hill Cumorah in Manchester, New York, is a historic and sacred site for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles called the reforested and refurbished area “the cradle of the Restoration.” The area was a pivotal place for the instruction of the young Prophet Joseph Smith as well as the receiving and translation of the ancient gold plates that we now have as the Book of Mormon.
In this episode of the Church News podcast, Church News editor Ryan Jensen is joined by Benjamin Pykles, director of historic sites for the Church, and Sam Palfreyman, site manager for the Palmyra area, to explore the sacred significance of Hill Cumorah, the faith-promoting experiences of visiting historic Church sites and how understanding the early history of the Church can help individuals gain and strengthen their testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Transcript:
Jon Ryan Jensen: This podcast was recorded prior to the passing of President Russell M. Nelson, 17th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some edits have been made to note his passing, and some interviews include remarks made before his death.
0:21
Benjamin Pykles: I hope people have a witness that what God and Jesus did in restoring the gospel to the earth, including bringing forth the Book of Mormon, I hope they’ll feel a connection to their own identity as Latter-day Saints when they visit the Hill Cumorah, and they can sense that, “Wow, the things that happened right here have blessed my life.” You can tie it back to the things that happened on this hill, the preservation of that record. The Lord preserved those gold plates there for 1,400 years so that when the time was right, He could send Moroni to go show Joseph where those were and prepare that young man to be spiritually ready to take those plates out of the hill and then, with the gift and power of God, translate it into the Book of Mormon. And now that book has and will continue to fill the earth and bless millions of lives as they read and receive the witness of Jesus Christ that that book is.
1:24
Jon Ryan Jensen: This is Jon Ryan Jensen, editor of the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, we are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In Manchester, New York, at roughly a hundred feet high, the Hill Cumorah stands as a small but significant marker for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is the place where the Prophet Joseph Smith met annually with a messenger from God named Moroni. From 1823 to 1827, Joseph was taught there by Moroni until the young Prophet was given the task of translating ancient gold plates into what we now have as the Book of Mormon.
On Sept. 21, 2025, the sacred site and its surroundings, including a renovated visitors’ center, were rededicated as a place of “holy remembrance.” Elder David A. Bednar, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, rededicated the historic site and called the recently reforested and refurbished area “the cradle of the Restoration.”
In this episode of the Church News podcast, we explore the sacred significance of Hill Cumorah as well as the historic events of the Restoration that happened on or around its slopes. And we are joined today by Benjamin Pykles, director of historic sites for the Church, and Sam Palfreyman, site manager for the Palmyra area. We discuss the importance of the site and how understanding the early history of the Church can help individuals gain and strengthen their testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
Gentlemen, welcome.
Benjamin Pykles: Thank you.
Sam Palfreyman: Thank you.
2:58
Jon Ryan Jensen: Sam, you’re joining us from out there. We’re here in a nice climate-controlled studio. We understand it’s been an eventful time for you out at the Hill Cumorah, and we’re glad that you’re with us today.
Sam Palfreyman: Thank you. Yeah, happy to be here.
3:10
Jon Ryan Jensen: I want to start out with what I think may be an obvious starting point, and that is the question of: Why does the Church find it so important to preserve or restore a place like the Hill Cumorah?
Benjamin Pykles: Thank you, Ryan. It’s a really good question, and it’s really at the foundation of everything that we do with historic sites in the Church. On the day the Church was organized, on April 6, 1830, the Lord gave Joseph Smith a revelation. It’s now section 21 of the Doctrine and Covenants. And in that revelation, the Lord commanded the Prophet and the Saints to keep a record. It says, “Behold, there shall be a record kept among you” (verse 1). And when we think about what that record entails, we naturally think about diaries, journals, newspapers, photographs, letters, which are all true. That’s all part of the record.
Jon Ryan Jensen: As a journalist, that’s absolutely what I think of.
4:07
Benjamin Pykles: Exactly. In historic sites, we also understand and know that the physical places of the Restoration are part of that record also. And so we believe we are fulfilling the Lord’s command by preserving these places — keeping them, if you will — and sharing them with the world. In a very real sense, they are witnesses to God Himself and then to the world that we remember what He’s done for us in restoring His Church and gospel and priesthood to the earth in these last days.
4:36
Jon Ryan Jensen: I love that explanation. And so, you get to see the preservation and the ongoing efforts that the Church makes for this, and then to hear Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles talking about this particular location as a “cradle of the Restoration.”
How did that make the two of you feel?
4:55
Sam Palfreyman: It made me feel wonderful to be in the place where these things happened, to be commanded to remember things and specifically remember the ways the Lord has blessed His children. Preserving these sites enhances that ability to remember. And so it helped me, my family, to really remember the hand of the Lord in the lives of Joseph Smith and his family and, of course, mine in the present day. That connection is easier to make because of the Hill Cumorah’s preservation.
5:21
Jon Ryan Jensen: So, Sam, you have responsibility for what is contained there inside the visitors’ center. And Ben, you had a responsibility for all of what happened to replenish the hill itself.
And so, as the two of you went about this work, I would love to hear kind of what went into the thought process of “What is going away, and what needs to be here to help visitors” — like myself and my family, who were recently there — “to have a positive spiritual experience, to be able to feel the Holy Ghost there?”
5:56
Benjamin Pykles: Yeah, thank you. When the Church announced that the Hill Cumorah Pageant would be discontinued in 2018, it kind of launched a process of thinking about the future of the hill post pageant. And we had been contemplating that for some time, not knowing that the pageant would be discontinued, but thinking about, “What is the hill? What is its purpose?” And that pageant, the Hill Cumorah Pageant, was there for like 82 years and blessed many, many people’s lives. And I think there was a lot of sadness when the Church decided to discontinue that, and with reason.
But we had to think about, “OK, what should this hill be going forward?” and knowing the sacred events of the Restoration that happened there. I don’t know of another place, maybe outside of a temple, where Joseph Smith had so many repeated angelic visitations in one spot. He saw lots of heavenly messengers over the course of his lifetime. But here on the hill — Elder Bednar talked about this in his remarks before the dedication — multiple, over 20 documented visits of the angel Moroni and perhaps others to the Prophet Joseph Smith on this hill as Joseph was being prepared to retrieve the gold plates and be the translator of those plates and the instrument by which the Lord would bring forth the Book of Mormon to the world.
So, as we thought about its sacred, spiritual significance and thought about “How could we help visitors, both in person and virtually, connect with those sacred events?” we decided that the best way to do that, partly, was to try to take the hill back to what it would have been like when Joseph was there, as best we know, and then enhance the exhibits in the visitors’ center so that we could tell that story in a more clear and direct way.
It’s very interesting that, I think, had you done a survey of Church members in 2018 — I can’t prove this because we didn’t do the survey — but if we had done a survey and asked people to do a word-association exercise or something, “When you say, ‘Hill Cumorah,’ what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?” I suspect that many Church members would have said, “Oh, pageant.” And that’s great, but in some ways, it’s missing the mark. The hill had become first and foremost, in some people’s minds, a performance venue, and secondarily the hill, the place, the site where sacred things happened that influenced the world. And so part of this was to, “How do we rebalance that? How do we help recapture the identity of the Hill Cumorah as a sacred site of the Restoration?”
And part of that was to remove all of the pageant infrastructure from the hill — that was over 20 buildings and almost 9 acres of asphalt and gravel pathways and parking lots and all of those things — and then reforest, or begin the reforestation of, the hill itself; new trails, new interpretive signs along those trails, refurbishing the monument at the top of the hill. All of those things went into that process to rehabilitate the hill and allow it to be the sacred site of the Restoration that it is, so that we can remember and witness what God has done there for us.
9:43
Jon Ryan Jensen: I love that. And then the extension from the hill into the visitors’ center itself. Sam, that’s the part that you’ve been able to experience.
How does the visitors’ center augment what Ben just described?
Sam Palfreyman: As a team, we talked a lot about how the hill is the artifact. The artifact is the thing you want to point people to, you want to help people connect with, so that they can connect with the historic events that occurred there. And so the visitors’ center is really designed to point people to the hill; to enhance their ability to understand what happened there; to feel deeply that in reality, God did send heavenly messengers, specifically Moroni, to Joseph on this hill; and that people can understand that coming forth of the Book of Mormon really began at this hill. Great things now have reached around the globe.
So, in 2002, when this visitors’ center opened, back to the word artifact, artifacts need to be protected specifically. And so this visitors’ center had windows, of course, on entry places, where there’s artifacts, like the statue, that can withstand sunlight. But the main exhibit room was without windows, closed in such a way that all the artifacts inside could be protected and light could be controlled, things of that nature.
And it was wonderful and effective in what it was trying to do, which is what Ben is getting at, which is it was a gateway experience. It was trying to help people to understand the story of the Restoration from the Sacred Grove to the Hill Cumorah on to the Grandin Printshop, the Priesthood Restoration Site and the Whitmer Farm. So I was trying to tell all of these great stories and all these places in one place.
And in the past 20 or so years, we’ve learned that most people go to all the sites, and they tend to go in chronological order. So this gateway experience, we were able to move beyond in this new iteration of the exhibit and focus specifically on what happened at the Hill Cumorah. And with the artifact being the hill and not being original things, like a copy of the Book of Mormon from 1830, inside, we let that go to Grandin Printshop, where it can be preserved.
And here at the Hill Cumorah Visitors’ Center, instead, we have windows that open up to the hill. We have artwork that can tell the story and get people prepared to get onto the hill and experience the place and the power of place and the sense of “This is where these sacred events happened. This is where these historical events that we have records of from Joseph, his mother and others can be told in a way that’s different than how it used to be, and more focused.
12:25
Benjamin Pykles: One of the things that the team recognized early on was: Here’s this 20-year-old exhibit that’s been sitting there and blessing lives, and we’re at the base of the Hill Cumorah, but the exhibit itself had very little about the Hill Cumorah. It was just one small segment of this other large gateway exhibit, like Sam explained, just touched on the Hill Cumorah.
And we knew there was lots more to say about the Hill Cumorah, and we thought, “Well, what better place to tell those stories, important stories, than at the hill itself?” The hill, like Sam said, is the attraction. But as we prepare people to go out and experience that hill, we can have some exhibits and a film and other things that will really help them appreciate what the Lord did for His children on the Hill Cumorah.
13:14
Jon Ryan Jensen: When I think about the story of the Hill Cumorah — and you touched on this — Joseph Smith, for five years, had a chance to go back every year and be taught by Moroni. I’ve said this before on the podcast; President Gordon B. Hinckley used to say, “Repetition is a law of learning,” and Joseph Smith got that at a young age. But then when I was there with my family, I realized, “We’re not going to get that same repetition likely. What we learn while we’re here has to happen while we’re here.” At least certain aspects of it. We can continue to teach about the events. But you really get that one shot.
As you consider the one shot that some people and families may have as they come to visit that site, what’s the thing that you hope now — with the way things have been redone — what’s the thing that you hope that they walk away from the hill remembering?
14:06
Sam Palfreyman: I think what I hope individuals and families can experience at the hill and walk away with is a witness of Jesus Christ, that He was behind the Restoration, that He sent Moroni to a young man, Joseph Smith, in a period of his life where he was learning, preparing, not quite ready for the life that lay ahead of him and the miraculous things he needed to be a part of. And so I hope that we can all see that Jesus Christ is mindful of individuals. Jesus Christ knows us individually and can put us on a path where we can be prepared for greater things.
14:44
Benjamin Pykles: I love that. I would add, too, that I hope people, starting right where Sam started, that they will have a witness that what God and Jesus did in restoring the gospel to the earth, including bringing forth the Book of Mormon, I hope they’ll feel a connection to their own identity as Latter-day Saints when they visit there, and they can sense that, “Wow, the things that happened right here have blessed my life.”
It’s a fun exercise to have people stop and think about, “How did the Book of Mormon come into your life, into your family?” For some of us, it goes way back, generations. And those that have just joined the Church, it’s an intimate, personal story that something happened just maybe a few years ago. But no matter how the Book of Mormon came into your family, into your life, you can tie it back to the things that happened on this hill, the preservation of that record.
The Lord preserved those gold plates there for 1,400 years so that when the time was right, He could send Moroni to go show Joseph where those were and prepare that young man to be spiritually ready, and physically ready, to take those plates out of the hill and then, with the gift and power of God, translate it into the Book of Mormon. And now that book has and will continue to fill the earth and bless millions of lives as they read and receive the witness of Jesus Christ that that book is.
16:16
Jon Ryan Jensen: I love hearing both of those two explanations. Ben, as the director of the Church’s historic sites, you are very aware of all of the things that have happened, all of the events that have happened at these locations.
And when you mention the pageant going away and the announcement that there would be changes for not just what people knew about the Hill Cumorah Pageant but also for the British Pageant and Manti, Castle Valley, Castleton, Mesa — part of that, I would think, has to be a reflection of the changing face of the Church as the Church grows globally.
And these pageants take on — some of them have gone away, and some of them look a little bit different. But there are also other things that you have been able to step forward and do to help individuals around the world have experiences with these locations that they might never get a chance to visit.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
17:09
Benjamin Pykles: It is true that one of the rationales that was given for discontinuing most of the pageants of the Church was this recognition that the Church is growing globally faster than ever before. And so as the Church looks at how it will use its resources, they really are trying to invest in things that are blessing the global Church and not just small segments of the Church. We take that vision seriously in the Church History Department and in historic sites.
We know that only a very small fraction of Church members will ever be able to come physically to these places in person and experience these places firsthand. Those that can are privileged and blessed to have that experience, as your family did just a few weeks ago, but we are trying to find the best ways right now to share these sites in an effective and meaningful way with the global Church; and with anyone in the world, for that matter, not just Church members, but for all of God’s children, because we believe they are for all God’s children. What He did at these sacred places is for the benefit of all of His children.
So, we’ve been experimenting with things. We started virtual tours during the pandemic. That was an unintended blessing of that hard period in the history of the world, is that the sites were closed. And we had missionaries there, and there was no one to give tours to. And so we quickly sent out cell phones and tripods and microphones and set up Zoom links and all these things so that these missionaries could start to give tours to people all around the world. And that continued, and does continue, still today.
We’re learning how to balance in-person tours with virtual tours. So this is still very much a thing that we’re learning and trying to experiment with. But I remember visiting the sites after the pandemic and being on the other side of the camera watching these missionaries give tours to Latter-day Saints in Brazil or in Ghana and all these places and these beautiful people that will never have the chance to come to these places in person.
They were weeping because they never believed that they would have a personal engagement with the Sacred Grove, for example, or with the ashery in Kirtland, or the Whitney Store in Kirtland — all these places that they read about in the scriptures and they study about in “Come, Follow Me” every four years, these places now could be even more real to them, because they’re sitting there live on a virtual tour with a missionary, seeing these places through a screen.
And what’s been really remarkable — I think there was some part of us that wondered if that would work, if the spirit of these places could be translated through digital means. And in my experience, the answer to that is a resounding yes. I have seen people truly feel a connection and feel the power of the Spirit and the witness of the Spirit through a virtual tour.
20:25
Jon Ryan Jensen: I love that. I really do. And I think back to my mission and to other times as a Young Men leader, as a Sunday School teacher, when I would have loved years ago to be able to show something like that. And now we did show it to our kids when it first came out during those months of COVID and felt that we were benefited from it as well. And I can only imagine the stories that you’re hearing.
Sam, at the same time, I know while we were out there and we were in the visitors’ center, that there were a few individuals who came into the visitors’ center who are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s a little out of the way compared to most of the things people think of when they talk about visiting New York. But not only is the visitors’ center a place for members to go and see something that they do know about, but a chance for people who don’t know much about the Church to come and find out something.
What do you hope that missionaries are able to convey through the visitors’ center when those individuals come?
21:27
Sam Palfreyman: I think it’s important to remember that all God’s children can appreciate something that other of their brothers and sisters might hold sacred. And it was really nice to hear that from local civic leaders and local people not of our faith who attended the dedication and were able to recognize the value of the Hill Cumorah as a place that helps people get closer to God, to feel peace, to feel love, to feel greater hope in their individual life. And we hope that extends to any and all who visit.
We continue to have missionaries who provide such a welcoming, and they accommodate people who need help up the hill with a golf cart ride. I hope that that message is clear for all, that this is an inclusive landscape, that this is for all God’s children who are seeking for an experience of “What happened here? Why is this significant? And how can I feel greater love and peace and hope in my life?”
22:23
Jon Ryan Jensen: And Sam, I think it’s important for us to note that we’ve talked exclusively about Hill Cumorah and the visitors’ center there, but you have responsibilities for things like the birthplace of Joseph Smith in Sharon, Vermont, as well as the Priesthood Restoration Site, and then, of course, the Sacred Grove and Grandin there in Palmyra. So I imagine that, because you are so close to those places, that you have maybe — I don’t want to say a favorite, but some things that stand out to you as, “I hope people, when they come, look at this and take a minute to think about this part of it.”
Are there any of those that you would be willing to share so that people who do do either the virtual tour or go in person, that they don’t miss something that you’re passionate about?
23:08
Sam Palfreyman: Great question; difficult to answer, but I’ll try. I’d say the biggest thing I witness is budgeting enough time to just walk at these sites, reflect at these sites and think. There’s a lot of information. There’s a lot of wonderful things that happen on tours. But probably the thing that me and my family — I have a 7-, 5- and 3-year-old with my wife — when the five of us go to these sites, when we just have a little bit of time to walk and talk together and reflect, I think it becomes much clearer why the Sacred Grove is called sacred, why the Hill Cumorah is such a seminal place and not just another beautiful hill among beautiful hills in New York.
And so I think that’s the biggest thing, is taking the time to slow down, think about what happened there, ponder and, if you have someone to talk about it with — whether that’s a missionary, whether that’s your family members, whether that’s God, if you’re going to pray — I think those are the kind of things that make a visit to the Church’s historic sites really meaningful, if not transformational, for individuals and families who take that time to do that.
24:19
Benjamin Pykles: Sam makes a really good point. For some people that haven’t been to the historic sites for a number of years, they may remember their experience where everything was guided. You arrived at the site, you were met by a missionary, and that missionary stayed with you the whole time. And there’s a time and a place for that. The missionaries can, like Sam said, facilitate some good experiences. But we also know through audience research and research in the industry that some people want a self-guided experience. They want to be alone in these places — and yes, maybe have someone answer a question when they have one — but otherwise, want some time alone to just think and ponder.
And what we’ve done at the hill is to allow for that. We don’t give guided tours of the Hill Cumorah. We have pathways and a trail network where people can go experience that on their own. If they would like a missionary to go with them, that missionary certainly is there and available to do that. But the same thing with the exhibits, it’s meant to be a self-guided experience, and the missionaries are there to help explain what opportunities there are and then answer questions as they arise and help them understand how the exhibits work and whatnot. But otherwise, it’s just you arrive with yourself, your family, whoever you’re with, and you get to explore that place on your own.
25:39
Jon Ryan Jensen: And I think there’s some good modeling there for parents or grandparents who are really excited to take family members there, because, as Sam was talking about his kids, it reminded me of one of two experiences that I wanted to share about our visit there recently. And one was when we got to the Sacred Grove, my wife and I wanted to talk so much and wanted to share with our children so much why it was important to us. And my 15-year-old daughter, when we got to the edge of the Sacred Grove, said, “Mom, Dad, I just want to walk down this trail.”
And I don’t think she even said to us, “Don’t come with me” or anything. But we understood she was just saying, “I want to do this.” And so she took that time for herself. And we ended up having all of us kind of take our own little spots. And there are benches in there to sit and ponder and pray. But I was so impressed with her as a little 15-year-old to say, “Yeah, this is my time. I’m claiming this.” And I’m grateful that we weren’t saying, “Well, you’ve got five minutes, and we’ve got to be back at the car.” We did build in that time that Sam described to let her do just that.
The second one, going to the tour part that you were saying, I was very grateful for that when we were at the Smith home and then at the Priesthood Restoration Site, that the missionaries who were there taught about the historic matters, were very direct in what happened there, bore their testimonies of the Savior, of Heavenly Father as a loving Father, and of the Holy Ghost and our ability to feel it. Then they just let us be. And I think that was, for children who’ve been on field trips throughout elementary school to high school, they expect someone to keep telling them everything until they get ushered back to a bus. But they got to sit and ask questions and talk with us, and I really appreciated the way that that has evolved a little bit.
27:30
Benjamin Pykles: When I think about what the Church is doing, from President Russell M. Nelson forward about a home-centered, Church-supported experience, I feel like this is an extension of that. You as a father, and with your wife, got to teach your children about the Restoration of the gospel in the places where it happened, and the missionaries were there to support that and to help you do that.
Jon Ryan Jensen: Indeed. I hadn’t thought about it that way. Very much so.
27:59
Benjamin Pykles: This extends also — and this was very intentional in our teamwork on the Hill Cumorah — that we made an intentional effort to make sure that both the hill and the visitors’ center and the exhibits were accessible to people of all abilities. This was very important for us, and we’re trying to do this more intentionally across all the Church’s historic sites.
When the angel Moroni monument was dedicated on top of the Hill Cumorah in 1935, the original design had a series of stairs, concrete steps that led down to the base of the monument. So when we were engaged in the project to redo, take off all the pageant infrastructure and replant it with trees and the new trails, we made the conscious decision to remove those steps and create a smooth path that leads right to the base of that monument.
So for the first time in the history of that monument, since 1935, someone that uses a wheelchair or a mother or a father pushing a stroller, they can get to that monument without trouble. And that’s really important to us. We want all of God’s children — those that come in person, those that can’t but can experience it digitally — to be able to experience these places in meaningful, personal ways.
And, Sam, I’d love for you to share how we took that same principle and applied it to the exhibits and the visitors’ center.
29:25
Sam Palfreyman: Yeah, so another intentional thing we did for the exhibits was to create tactile images of the artwork, so the paintings have these beautiful 3D renderings, basically that had to be carved out and designed in such a way that our friends who are blind who visit experience the artwork with their hands and, using their fingers, trace over what the three pictures showing Moroni and Joseph look like. And that way, they can be included in the celebration of the site of these stories and the understanding and connection that all are welcome to have here.
And similarly, with the statues put in the front room, of Jesus Christ appearing to the people of Nephi, that was designed intentionally so that it could be touched, so that it could be accessible and experiential for everyone; or children who learn tactilely, who can better understand what it means when Jesus Christ says, “Arise and come forth unto me, and feel the prints in my hands and in my feet, and see that I’m the Savior of the world and have been slain so that all could live” (see 3 Nephi 11:14). And so this, at least, was our attempt and our hope, was that all will feel welcome, all will feel able to enjoy and understand these exhibits.
And lastly, a small thing we’re still testing — probably going to need to get better at with time — but is putting QR codes or translations of the exhibit text on our interpretive tables. And right now, you can experience it in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. And we’re hoping to expand that as research and feedback comes back of what languages are needed at these sites and how we can reach all who want to understand and interact with these exhibits.
31:12
Jon Ryan Jensen: I’m one of those who needs to learn a little bit better with time as well, because my immediate reaction with the sculptures was to not let my children touch them, so I’ll repent of that next time. But I can vouch for the fact they’re not up on pedestals, which surprised me. They’re right there at ground level. And how exciting to see that individuals can go right up, and I saw pictures from the weekend of the dedication, where there were children right up there, and to see them holding the Savior’s hands, there’s certainly something touching about that.
Benjamin Pykles: Sam sent a picture soon after those were installed of one of his daughters doing that, and it’s very moving. It’s very touching.
31:51
Jon Ryan Jensen: One of the things that I noticed when when arriving at Hill Cumorah was while we talk about reforestation and regeneration, it’s still pretty noticeable that the trees, and everything that’s growing in the section where the pageant used to be, it’s not as tall as those that have been growing for 100 years plus.
Can you talk about what’s gone on there since pulling up the parking lots and starting to plant those trees?
32:12
Benjamin Pykles: Yeah, thank you. What we’ve done has been very intentional, and it’s done with an eye to the future, an eye of faith, if you will. Trees don’t grow very fast, and trees need to grow in a certain environment. If we’re trying to re-create a forest instead of a park or a golf course, we could have purchased 10-foot-tall trees and planted them up and down that hill. But what we know from working with professional foresters is that when you do that, the tree is going to grow not as tall and have a big, round, bushy canopy or top, just like you would see in a golf course or a park, because those trees haven’t grown up in competition with one another.
And the way we designed the trail system on the Hill Cumorah is to, for the first time, take people into a section of the hill more towards the south of a part of the hill that the trees were never cut down. And so you have this marvelous old growth forest on that part of the hill that very much resembles the Sacred Grove. And that’s the type of setting that we’re trying to grow on the hill where the pageant used to be performed, and that’s going to take some time. So what we did intentionally was scatter thousands of tree seeds and plant thousands of tree seeds all across that face of the hill.
Those trees are growing. Some are only 2 feet tall now. Some, the fast-growing ones, are tall. I saw one that was probably 12 feet tall this past weekend. But the others are still quite small. I like to tell people that the pageant, it took 80 years for the pageant facilities to grow up on the hill over the years, and it’s going to take at least that long for these trees to grow up and become a forest again. It is intentional.
Some people go there and they say, “What are all these weeds growing on the hill?” And sure, grass, and there are weeds growing on the hill, but at the base of the hill, we intentionally planted a native meadow full of native flowers and native species. And, man, if you go there in the months of July and/or June, it’s spectacular. It’s glorious. It’s got butterflies and bees everywhere, and lots of color and just a beautiful, rich meadow. As the year progresses and you start to get into fall and winter, a lot of those flowering species die off, and it starts to look a little more brown. But that’s just how Mother Nature works.
But in time, we will have a beautiful, mature forest there, which, again, is meant to resemble what the hill would have looked like when Joseph was there. In the meantime, people can walk past that part of the hill, go into the old growth forest part of the hill and imagine that setting there as well. And we hope that people do that, because it is really wonderful to stand in that forest, like we’ve talked about, and take a moment to think about really what happened on that hill and, “What did Joseph experience? What was he being taught? And how was he being prepared to bring forth the Book of Mormon?”
35:30
Jon Ryan Jensen: Having been there, I can say it really is a unique experience, that kind of progressive experience, knowing that you are going to arrive someplace very special. And that feeling, I like that you compared it to the Sacred Grove, because it is that feeling as you walk through that trail and make the turn back toward the monument. It’s a culminating experience to go through nature and to arrive at that point. It looks beautiful.
Benjamin Pykles: Thank you.
Jon Ryan Jensen: Ben, I want to open this up for you: Being over all of the historic sites, just generally speaking, are there things that members of the Church maybe are missing? If you had a chance to say to them, “When you go visit any of the Church historic sites, please take advantage of ‘this’ part of the opportunity.”
36:18
Benjamin Pykles: I think I would say what Sam just said: Make sure that you take the time to be still and really contemplate what these places are and what they mean to you and to your identity as a Latter-day Saint, as part of the covenant people of the Lord, and give thanks. Give thanks to God for what He’s done in restoring His gospel and His power and His Church and His kingdom to the world, to the earth, in these places.
I think sometimes we go, and this is not inappropriate, but we go to these places wanting — we’re on vacation, and we’re in recreation mode, and that’s good, and that’s fine. But we also need to remember that this is not Lagoon or Disneyland, and that’s not the purpose of these places. It’s not to entertain. It is to educate.
But I would say even more than anything, it is to witness. It is to bear witness, again, to God Himself, first of all, that we remember what He’s done, and then to receive our own witness of that truth and then share it with the world, so that we extend that witness to our families and to our friends and our neighbors and anyone else as we march forward to the Second Coming with the gathering of Israel. It’s just these historic sites are the beginning of all of that, and it’s a marvelous and sacred experience to interact with them.
37:55
Jon Ryan Jensen: When Elder Bednar specifically dedicated the Hill Cumorah recently, there were five phrases that really stood out, because he dedicated all of that surrounding area as a place with these purposes. He said that it would be a place of “holy remembrance” and talked in a Church News video about why remembering is so important. He dedicated it as a place of “heavenly inspiration”; of “heartfelt appreciation,” expressing that gratitude; “seeking and learning” and a place of “humble reverence.”
Benjamin Pykles: Amazing.
38:30
Jon Ryan Jensen: Yeah. A beautiful thought, if you go into it with that aspect versus that of diversion, but to think, “I get to go here and feel a little bit of humility before what happened here through the love of our Heavenly Father.
Well, gentlemen, thank you. These are such great insights. I really appreciate hearing all of those. I know that the Church is continuing to, like you said, make adjustments to other historic sites.
Are there things that are on your docket right now that you are excited for members to experience?
39:03
Benjamin Pykles: We are almost done building a new visitors’ center in Nauvoo. It’s called the Nauvoo Temple Visitors’ Center. It will be completed next year and, we hope, dedicated next year. Its primary purpose is to tell the story of the significance of the Nauvoo Temple in God’s plan to exalt His children. We all — hopefully all, most of us — all who should and will soon go to temples and participate in ordinances and make covenants in the houses of the Lord. And this visitors’ center is designed to help people remember that that started in Nauvoo. The first place where the Lord revealed those ordinances and restored those covenants was in the Nauvoo Temple.
And, well, in Nauvoo, the first endowments were administered in the Red Brick Store, which the Church just acquired from Community of Christ last year. So we can tell that story in that special place. And the Nauvoo Temple was reconstructed, of course, in 2002, but now there’s a visitors’ center to help people remember and give thanks for what the Lord did in revealing and restoring temple ordinances and covenants to the world — those sacred ordinances that bind us to Him and that bind us together as families and endow us with power as we gather Israel and do the work of the latter days.
40:39
Jon Ryan Jensen: Gentlemen, thank you for the time that you’ve taken today to talk with us about the Hill Cumorah and the other historic sites near that area and also in other parts of the country.
I would love to end now in the same way that we do all of our Church News podcasts, and that is to ask you: What do you know now? So, Sam, we’ll start with you, and when you’re finished, we’ll go to Ben. What do you know now, having gone through this experience?
41:03
Sam Palfreyman: Growing up in the Church, I heard many times the miraculous rate at which the Book of Mormon was translated. It was a speedy thing that really demonstrated the hand of the Lord. And I love the story that goes with it, that I learned much better and in greater depth through participating in this Hill Cumorah project.
And that is that Joseph Smith had a task to receive gold plates and take them from a hill. And that took years. It seems simple. It seems like it should have happened rapidly, maybe a couple minutes, and it took years. And I think the preparation time, the patience it taught Joseph Smith, the ability it had to foster communication between Moroni and Joseph, Joseph and the Lord, all the impatience and frustrations and things that really resonate with me in my life — especially when I was 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, that is one racked with impatience for most of us.
And so the lesson that the Lord has for Joseph to be patient, to prepare, to get ready for better things that Joseph can’t see then but would be able to see later, is a great lesson to me, a great reminder to me that the Lord loves us individually, knows us individually and will prepare us for greater things than we’re able to see beyond current limited vision. And that can actually be at every age.
I think that was the other thing, is I remembered back to when I was 17, what’s changed since then and what hasn’t. I still feel the need for the Lord to teach me patience, teach me to be happy in the present, but to hope for a better future and to work towards that joyful future with hope and with patience and with a love for others. And I think we see that in the story of Joseph Smith and the Hill Cumorah.
42:59
Benjamin Pykles: I love that. Thank you, Sam. Elder Bednar, who dedicated the site, in his remarks, he spoke about the “celestial curriculum” that Moroni delivered to Joseph on the hill during those annual visits.
And I’ve been pondering about what that curriculum entailed, and I was reminded of a verse in Joseph Smith — History in the Pearl of Great Price. And this is the last half of verse 46, where I think we do get a little bit of a glimpse here about what some of that curriculum included. He’s recounting what happened on Sept. 21 and 22, 1823, so this is actually not happening on the hill. This is happening in the boyhood home, the log home there, when Moroni first appeared to Joseph that first night.
But the third time that he appeared — he appeared four times over that night — and the third time he appeared, he said that Moroni “added a caution to me, telling me that Satan would try to tempt me (in consequence of the indigent circumstances of my father’s family), to get the plates for the purpose of getting rich.” And then he went on to say this. He said, “This he forbade me, saying that I must have no other object in view in getting the plates but to glorify God, and must not be influenced by any other motive than that of building his kingdom.” And I love that thought. I want that to be the motto of my life, that anything that I do for the Lord, it is to glorify Him and to build His kingdom.
And if we can all try to adopt that attitude and seek that purity of heart that Joseph had to acquire — that time of preparation that Sam talked about — I believe a big part of that was so that Joseph could get his eye single to the glory of God and know that the value of those plates was not in the metal from which they were made but in the words that were written on them that he would translate by the gift and power of God that would become the book that, as President Nelson has been teaching us, is both the sign that the gathering of Israel has commenced in the last days and the primary instrument by which that gathering is happening, all in anticipation of the Second Coming of the Lord.
How blessed we are to have that book on the earth, and how blessed we are that Moroni and Joseph did their parts in making it come forth.
45:56
Jon Ryan Jensen: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News editor Jon Ryan Jensen. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.
