Another Great Day (Mike)

Yesterday was a rather slow day at the fort. I was in the shift coordinator’s chair for two hours, then in the out buildings for another hour. Therefore I didn’t even get to take a tour out. Visitors were less also for our shift.


Today was a different matter. My first tour was a family from California; a grandmother, her daughter and daughter in law, and three grandchildren. The Grandmother was from Guatemala and didn’t speak English. She had the Aztec facial features. As we went through the tour, I explained about the Prophet Joseph Smith, a prophet in our time and why we have temples. When we got to the Book of Mormon display, I showed them pictures from the Book of Mormon and explained that it was about their ancestors, and that Christ visited them after his resurrection. I explained that they had prophets also who kept a record and that it was translated by the Prophet Joseph Smith. Upon hearing this, each of them wanted the missionaries to bring them a Book of Mormon and teach them more.

Following our shift, we took a trip to Frisco, an old Ghost town west of Milford, where my grandmother Cummings was born. Frisco was a silver mining town of about four thousand people in the late 1870/80’s. It was a rough town, but my great grandfather Fredric Montgomery Bird was there with his family, making money. I read of one account that stated that it wasn’t uncommon to have as many as twelve murders in one night. There is still some mining activity there, but all that is left of the town is a few foundations and fallen buildings, along with old rusting mining equipment. We enjoyed taking pictures of them including the old coke ovens that were used in the smelting of silver, copper, and gold.