TOURS AND TESTIMONY

Quetzalcoatl, Teotihuacán, Palenque, Tikal, Copan, Kaminal Juyu, and Lake Atitlan, before last summer were only names which appeared on pages beneath photos and on maps of Southern Mexico and Central America. Kathleen for years had had a heightened interest in the archeology of the Ancients of the Americas. For me it was all a desire to see with my own eyes the topography where Nephi, Alma and Moroni walked while in mortality. Either way the days of the first half of June of 2010 were spent putting color onto black and white pages of written text.

Long ago Joseph Smith declared that a testimony of the Book of Mormon would never come about because of external proofs or archeological discoveries, but would come about because of an affirmation by the Holy Spirit manifesting the truthfulness of ‘The Golden Bible’ to the God’s children individually and powerfully. Therefore, when Kathleen and I were given the opportunity to visit these wondrous sites with two of our sons, Sean and Rynn, along with a bus load of wonderful friends, it was a journey where dreams were being fulfilled rather than a quest where we were seeking for a more powerful witness of the veracity of the sacred record translated by that youthful prophet in the mid 1820’s.

Ignacio was the first local guide we had on our trip. He had been a missionary for the church and so it was expected that he would desire to demonstrate all of those discoveries which are now available, but unknown during the days when Joseph was doing the translation off of the plates, which proved without a doubt where the River Sidon or the city of Zarahemla were located. Gratefully, he was reserved and instead presented what he called ‘coincidences’ which seem multiply with the new discoveries of each passing decade. These ‘coincidences’ indicate that Joseph was either the greatest clairvoyant ever or he was indeed aided in the translation by the gift and power of God.

Michael Wilcox was the ‘educator’ on the trip which was hosted by a wonderful young couple, Christi and Brandon Towner. The three of them enhanced our experience tremendously and made sure we were well informed, safe and comfortable while we traveled. Michael filled the long bus rides with magnificent magnifications of our understanding of the teachings in the Book of Mormon along with introducing us to some of the ancient writings from the Mayan Popol Vuh. At each of the wondrous stops we made he helped us to understand that it could have been in such a setting that this or that event from the history of the Book of Mormon might have taken place. Once again I was appreciative of the fact that he wasn’t insistent that this had to be the exact location where Noah held the trials of the prophet Abinidi, but simply pointed out that it would most likely have taken place in a setting much like where we were standing at the time.

The mind pictures I had formed during the many readings of the Book of Mormon burst into clarity as I heard the sounds and viewed the denseness of the tropical areas where the progeny of Lehi had settled and struggled to find the paths through the jungle, and also the path which would bring them back into the presence of their Heavenly Father. No longer did I have to leave it to my imagination, but now I had seen the remnants of a civilization which was highly sophisticated and which had built monumental Temples and pyramids and supportive buildings. I saw compounds reserved for ancient scribes, stairways carved with historical accounts from a society which in the 1800’s was declared to have had no written language. I saw paths which stretched for hundreds of miles and enabled a lively trade between the ancient nations. I traveled on rivers which brought understanding to how hundreds of bodies could be dumped and carried out to the sea. I understood how peoples could live in those dense jungles in relative proximity and yet be unknown to each other. I saw calendars based on a great understanding of astronomy which correlated with the moon calendars of the Book of Mormon, and revealed a civilization which was obsessed with the recording of dates and the seasons of the year.

Because of some of the limitations the aging process have inflicted upon me, my sons had to do most of the climbing of the structures and the recording of the views from the tops of the Temples. In some ways this turned out to be a blessing. While I waited alone it gave me the opportunity to visit with some of the descendants of those Mayans who had built the overwhelming structures the boys were mounting. At Palenque I talked with two boys and a girl whose parents had kept them out of school that day so that they could sell calendar necklaces to the tourists. We had a delightful time where they offered to show me where I could see a girly show, then they offered to introduce me to their mother and when I told them how old I was they said their grandmother was a very fit lady! When they didn’t want me to know what they were saying they slipped easily into their particular Mayan dialect which was one of 31 to be heard in the area.

I was sitting at the base of the grandeur of the ruins of Palenque and almost driven to tears by the words of these bilingual youth who seemed to be but a shadow of the mighty nation which once occupied this area. At Tikal I had a wonderful talk with a group of youth from a military high school who were out on a field trip to gain a better appreciation of their history. They were bright and capable and I could see in them the fulfillment of the promises in the Book of Mormon that the descendants of Lehi would once again become a righteous and mighty nation.

There was another occasion when I was talking with a young couple taking a few days off from their work at Wal-Mart in the capital to visit the wonders of their ancestors. They were a delightful, well-educated couple whose eyes shown with the hopes of making a better world for their posterity and for their nation. These visits and many others put flesh upon the characters of the Book of Mormon and I was filled with the understanding that those ancient nations who had been so two dimensional on the pages I read were children of Heavenly Father who struggled with the same things their descendants were now struggling with and found fulfillment making the same progress their progeny were now experiencing.

TO BE CONTINUED…