Follow the prophets, but watch where you step

We Mormons have been asked to follow the prophet. The easiest prophets to follow are the ones that move the least, thus we decided to combine this commandment with our strange fascination of finding the graves of famous dead people. The result was a summer evening checking out the tombstones of as many of the past presidents of our church as possible.

Thanks to our trips to Nauvoo we've seen the grave of Joseph Smith Jr., the Church's first prophet. He's buried between his brother, Hyrum, and his wife, Emma in the same plot of land where his son Joseph Smith III and his mom, Lucy Mack and his dad Joseph Smith Sr. are also buried. There's a long story about the movement of his body after his horrible and untimely death, but I'm pretty certain this is his final resting place. We probably would have got ourselves in the picture as well, but we felt a little out of place there as we weren't sure if we were allowed in the cemetery.

Between State Street and A Street on First Avenue in Salt Lake lies the Church's second president, Brigham Young. This was the first stop in our presidential gravesite evening extravaganza! Its not very often that all of my siblings and I get out to do something, and this ended up being a super fun day. The statue we're surrounding is right at the feet of Brigham's grave, and out of some weird conicidence, the very next day a pair of drunken vandals actually stole the stone book out of his hand. I swear it wasn't us!

Here's Zoe and Emery still fresh with excitement for the grave hunt. I never knew that two little kids could have so much fun looking at fancy rocks for an entire evening. Brother Brigham's grave wasn't anything more than a cement slab with a fence and plaque on it, but I think it's pretty cool that it is only a few plats away from the living quarters of the current prophet. It was cool to look at all the flowers in the little cemetery in downtown Salt Lake, but we had to get moving, there were lots more to see. I've posted all these in prophetic order, so that is why some of the pictures have a bit darker background then others. We were in that cemetery until after dark trying to track all these guys down. Anyhow, John Talyor came next, you know, and here's Emery and Zoe and I hangin' out with him. A lot of the prophets have really cool obelisk headstones, but for some reason all our good pictures have the pointy top parts cut off. Use your imagination.

Here's Wilford Woodruff, another prophet buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. I've always felt a close relationship with Wilford, only because my great grandpa's name was Wilford Woodruff. I think that's a good reason. Wilford is my dad's middle name and I think we make fun of him too much about it. Or perhaps not enough. Does anyone think its weird that we had our little kids in the cemetery after dark. You gotta get all macabre with your kids sometimes.

Lorenzo Snow was a no show, as he is too busy being dead in Brigham City. Sara doesn't know about this yet, but we're going to track him down in August when we go on vacation to Utah. Next on the list is Joseph F. Smith, who is buried below the headstone that Zoe spilled her water on (sorry Joseph). His dad was Hyrum Smith who, like I mentioned above, is buried next to his brother Joseph in Nauvoo. The giant obelisk we're sitting beneath is a monument to Hyrum. I think the background on this picture is super pretty.

After Brigham Young, Heber J. Grant was the longest serving church president. He was president through all of the Roaring Twenties, The Great Depression, and World War II. Before he was church president, he worked to improve and develop The Avenues area of Salt Lake City, which is where he still spends most of his time.

It was getting mighty late when we finally found the grave of George Albert Smith. This is a summer night, so it must have been around 10:00. As we were on our way to his neck of the woods the gates of the cemetery were closing. During this picture I was getting a little nervous that we'd have to spend the night there since all the entrances we knew of had been locked shut. We couldn't just stop after all our work! Needless to say, we got outta there.

David O. McKay served as a general authority longer than any other person. He was in the job for 64 years, and that's a super long time. I thought the headstone for the McKay family was pretty cool, as it is nice and tall and easy to find. I was kinda surprised how hard it was to find some of these graves, even with the detailed maps we had found. I guess in a 120,000 plot cemetery it wouldn't be easy to find 11 specific people, but we did it...well, almost.

These Smith guys are easy to find, since they're right next to each other. Joseph Fielding Smith is the son of Joseph F. Smith, and thus the grandson of Hyrum Smith. George Albert Smith is not a direct relative of Joseph Smith, his grandfather was a cousin to Joseph so we had to actually search around for him.

I don't know much about Harold B. Lee, only that he wasn't president for long. I think the look on Zoe's face is pretty cute. This is the look of elation that can only be felt by a child on a prophetic grave quest.We all liked the big chunks of petrified wood on Spencer W. Kimball's headstone. Nice taste Spence! I also liked seeing that the W. is for Woolley. How do you pronounce that? I'm glad that Bryson put in a few minutes holding up the headstone, you know, giving President Kimball a break.

I've been to Whitney, Idaho, does that count as having seen Ezra Taft Benson's grave? Next time I'm in that part of Idaho I'll have to stop by and pay him some respects. The first grave we looked for in the Salt Lake Cemetery was that of Howard W. Hunter. We all looked and looked but couldn't find the guy, he's somewhere way in the back. It took everything in me to leave the cemetery without having seen his grave. We'll definitely be going back to find it in the near future.

The most visited plot in the Salt Lake Cemetery is Gordon B. Hinckley's grave. He was the prophet we kids grew up with, and this was the first time I've seen his final resting place. There were a few old canes left there by visitors, and lots of cars parked all around.

So there you have it, 15 dead modern prophets, and Sara and I have seen the graves of 12 of them. Once we track down the evasive three we'll be sure to post 'em up on the blog. That was a crazy fun Sunday evening activity. If you're ever bored in Salt Lake, you should go and seek the Holy Graves. Let me know if you need a map.