It's a Mormon Miracle

This last weekend, we trooped down to Manti to see the Mormon Miracle Pageant. McKay had seen it when he was little, and apparently, it's a pretty big deal. It's a play depicting the restoration of the Church, and key events in the Book of Mormon. It's performed on the hill in front of the Manti temple, and they've done this every year for about 30 years. This year, there were about 900 people involved in the production, and each night, the attendance is at about 14,000. They still use the same recorded narrative that was made in the 70's, so none of the actors speak; they just mime out what the narration says. And because it was made in the 70's, it has that awesome cheesy dramatic tone to it.

I think the real fun was the fact that it starts at 9:30 every night, but we got there at 6:30 to get good seats, so the three hours in between were spent just milling around. At about 7:00, most of the characters came out in costume to mingle with the audience, and to pass out referral cards. I probably should have been more into the cards, but man oh man, I was so excited to get a picture with some Nephites.

We've been collecting pictures of us in front of temples. Manti makes eight! (Only 120 to go...)

Fun times! From right to left, we've got two generic pioneers (I can't remember their names), Captain Moroni, Young Joseph Smith, and a generic Nephite warrior (who told us he makes it through all the battles).

Holy smokes, it's Mormon!

The play was getting close to starting, and Tyler was winding down. He made it about halfway through the pageant, and then passed out in his stroller. Our pictures of the actual pageant didn't turn out very well. Our camera has night issues.

We didn't get home until about 1:30 AM, thanks to traffic, but overall, we had a good time, and I'm glad we did it. But it's kind of like hiking the Y. You do it once for the experience, and then you don't go again until you've forgotten what it was that made you swear it off. In McKay's case, twenty years.

And I did find me some Nephites.