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This week for my Doctrine and Covenants class, we went to the Crandall Printing Museum to learn about the process for the printing of the Bible, Book of Mormon, and important American historical documents. I wasn't really sure what to expect out of the tour, but it ended up being one of the coolest things I've done/seen while I've been here at BYU. The tour was about two hours long, and basically they took us through several different rooms in which there were various printing presses. The first room was about Gutenberg and the invention of the printing press, and they showed us how each part of the printing process worked before culminating that presentation with actually printing some pages. The second room was about the role of the printing press in the formation of the United States and how essential it was for the colonists to have the capabilities to print things in order to bring about the independence of the nation. The man who led that presentation dressed up as Benjamin Franklin and taught us quite a bit about his life and role in the American Revolution as a printer. Finally, the third room was where we learned about the printing and bringing forth of the Book of Mormon. That presentation was truly amazing--I learned that because of the number of copies they were printing (5,000 copies, which was more than almost any other book that had been printed at one time in that day) and the short amount of time they had to complete the printing process, they had to have averaged two pages per minute. And after all the things we had learned in the previous rooms about the work involved in the printing process, that number was staggering. I agree with the men who were giving the presentations: they asserted that angels were helping to speed the printing process. It was a miracle that the Book of Mormon was printed in the short time that it was. That couldn't have happened without heaven's help. I don't remember the exact statistics of the starting and finishing date, but I'll try to look into that and post that next week.

I guess overall, I was just extremely impressed with how much the Lord has His hand in what happens here on earth. He truly does inspire men and women to do the things that will help bring to pass His work. Both historically and now, God knows what is going on in our lives and on this earth. He wants us to succeed and to fulfill the things He has in store for us, because those are the things that will bring us the most happiness anyway.

Here is the link to the museum. It was pretty cool--I highly recommend it to anyone who might be in the area, whether living here or just passing through.
http://crandallmuseum.org/