LDS Church leaders dedicate site of priesthood restoration

OAKLAND TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Saturday marked a historic day for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as church leaders dedicated a new visitor’s center, where many significant events occurred in the church’s early days.

Saturday was the first time Elder Russell M. Nelson visited the place where Joseph and Emma Smith lived in the late 1820s, where Latter-day Saints believe the priesthood was restored by John the Baptist. Elder Nelson dedicated the new priesthood restoration site and visitor’s center Saturday morning.

“It is such an inspiring thing to think of not only what happened here, but our current membership and those who have made this possible,” Nelson said.

Plans to develop the area near Harmony, Pennsylvania, have been underway for years, in what remains a rural area of Pennsylvania.

“By visiting this site either in person or vicariously on the Internet, they will be able to understand Harmony and the key events of the Restoration better than at any other time in the past, because they will be able to visualize it,” Assistant Church Historian and Recorder Richard E. Turley Jr. said.

“Archaeologists, historians, architects, they figured out what the homes themselves would have looked like so it was a very exciting and interesting and a very long process to figure out what do we make these homes look like because they are reproductions,” Assistant Church Historian & Recorder Reid L. Neilson said.

Jean Edwards has lived in this area for 40 years and attends the LDS Susquehanna Branch, which will now meet in a chapel which is part of the new visitor’s center.

“It is a dream come true, I have dreamed about this day for a long time,” Edwards said. “Sons have grown up here, they have had a good understanding of the Aaronic Priesthood. My oldest son baptized my youngest son here in the river and that was very special.”

Now that the Priesthood Restoration Site has been dedicated, including the historic baptism area along the Susquehanna River, Church leaders believe that Latter-day Saints will have a new opportunity to better understand the significant events that transpired here in the Church’s early history.

“I hope families of the Church and families of this area will come here and get the inspiration for themselves, to walk where these great angelic messengers, heavenly messengers walked and restored the keys, and proper authority to allow God’s children to return to him,” Nelson said.

This article was originally published by KSL.com. It is used here with permission.