Prologue

 I'll post about our trip eventually--get it all down for the memories--but I'm traveling light and won't be blogging while we're gone.

Here's a prologue, we decided we started our trip a little early on Friday.

We drove to Manti and met up with several carloads of girls as well as the boys, who had been camping.  (They had showered!). We went to the Manti temple, which is beautiful like all temples and also unique like all temples.  Since there were so many young men there, Adam didn't do any baptizing, but he and I sat in a tiny room with a recorder and the youth came in one or two at a time for confirmations.  I said I didn't have to be there, because the room was so tiny and maybe more youth could come in, but they said they wanted me so there were multiple females.

So I was happy to feel needed.

After the temple we went to the cemetery at the base of the temple.

I can't imagine a better setting for a cemetery.  I think it would be very comforting at a burial to look up and see the temple.

Molly, the excellent YW president, talked about their upcoming trek and encouraged the youth to find an ancestor to connect with.  Then she told about one of her pioneer ancestors who was in the Willie Handcart company.  She wanted Adam to speak, so he said that his story wasn't about handcarts, but the love of a grandma and the love of a sister.

He told about how his great grandma (Karoline Lang Simonsen--we're going to go see where she's from!) joined the church and moved to Utah.  His grandma, Kate, wasn't active in the church, but Adam's aunt Jeri took her siblings to church.  Jeri was really close to her Grandma and Grandpa Simonsen and Adam said because of her influence on Jeri and Jeri's influence on Linn, it blessed Adam's life.

It is remarkable to think about all the seemingly small but in the end huge relationships and influences that shape us.

I showed people the new to me app on Family Search where you can put in a location and see who is buried nearby.  I don't think anyone had relatives at the Manti cemetery, but a lot of us (including me) had people close by.

Karna Nilsdotter Yorgason (we're going to see where she's from!) is buried in Moroni.  It was slightly, but not too much, out of our way.  After a nice lunch at The Malt Shop in Ephraim, we went to Moroni.  It is not a huge cemetery, but big enough that we struggled to find the grave.  I knew how much Adam had to do at home, so I kept saying, "We can give up.  We don't have to keep looking."  

He said, "It's fine.  This is the start of our trip."  I love being married to a man who is always up for anything.

We had started on the exact wrong corner of the cemetery, but finally found her!

As we were driving away from Moroni, I was thinking about Karna and about how she left her home and never returned.  

I'm going back to Villie, Karna.  I'm going to the church where you were christened and to the streets where you surely walked.  You matter to me. You joining the church and moving across the world to join the saints matters to me.  You raised Ellen who raised David who raised Harvey who raised Mark who raised me.  You matter to me.