Mormon Battalion

Wednesday (the 30th) was John's birthday, so after he got home from his meetings and the rest of us got cleaned up from the beach we headed out to the Mormon Battalion museum in old town San Diego.  Steve and I had been there years ago but they remodeled it about 5 years ago and wow was it awesome.  It is amazing now and they have a 45 minute interactive and immersive tour where you feel like you are back in time.  They also have lots of sister missionaries that are also dressed up.  We were so impressed!  It was so great to learn more about a part of church history I didn't know very much about, but what I didn't expect was to have it be such a spiritual experience too.  This story of almost 500 people (mostly men and some women) who, when encouraged by the prophet Brigham Young, volunteered to help the U.S. army to fight the Spanish American war.  This wasn't easy and they had to sacrifice so much but they followed what the prophet had asked them and it was an answer to many prayers that had been said, even if it was in a different way than they had imagined.  They had to travel 2,000 miles but in the end they didn't have to do any fighting.  At the end of the tour, the sister missionary bore her testimony that we all have our 2,000 mile journeys in life that are hard and require sacrifice but if we follow the prophet and have faith, we will be blessed.  So when it gets hard and we think we can't go on, we can remember that and push on even if it's just one more mile.  That really touched me and hit home to our current circumstance.  I am so grateful for the stories and examples of those who have gone before and for their faith and sacrifices.  We are so blessed!

Abby got all geared up when she enlisted in the Battalion.

The kids got to pan for gold at the end and keep two of the pieces.

This is a picture of a picture that they took for free.  So fun!