Hey everybody, welcome to another great episode of the Why Religion Podcast, Anthony Sweat here from Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University.

As I'm recording this introduction, we are in the middle of the summer when many people are able to take some time and travel, including myself.

As I've gone to different places, I've noticed a really interesting phenomenon.

The more that you know about the important events that took place at the site you're visiting, the more meaningful the place becomes.

You can be standing on a spot of ground where the destinies of lives or cities or even nations were changed, and you cannot even know it.

And if we don't know it, the site often means nothing to us. All we care about is where we're going to get our lunch.

On the reverse, if we do know what happened at certain sites, our minds can imagine, our eyes can see, our hands can feel, and our hearts can be touched more deeply.

As an example, I was recently in Navu, Illinois. My teenage daughter and I decided to rent some bikes and cruise up and down the flats and go up the bluff, pass the temple, and down Mulholland Street.

And we just kept riding, heading east towards the farmlands.

We had nowhere in particular that we were heading, just exploring, weaving in and out of old country roads, waving and saying hi to kind local residents as they sat on their porches,

sipping a drink and enjoying a pleasant summer day.

My daughter and I randomly turned north down one particular road, heading toward a park, far removed from any place that most tourists would go.

As we took a break at the park, I looked across the street at a historic-looking home that had some modern wings added to it, and noticed what looked like to be a little for sale sign or something dangling there.

My curiosity got the better of me and I went over to see what it was. The sign read, quote,

Hiram Smith, home and farm, 1840 to 1844, end of quote.

I was at the home of the martyr brother of Joseph Smith, and the patriarch of the church, and I didn't even know it.

Suddenly, I wasn't just at a park. I was imagining Navu in 1844, asking myself questions, such as,

why Hiram built a home so far removed from the flats where Joseph and Hebrew and Brigham lived.

I could also picture someone coming down that old country road and carrying the news to that spot,

the Hiram had been killed, and imagining his wife Mary Fielding Smith and their children's grief.

That's just one small example about the power of knowing about, seeing, and if possible, visiting sacred sites,

including sacred religious sites related to the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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