A special spirit fills the atmosphere at the Joseph Smith Memorial Monument located at his birthplace here, influencing members and non-members, according to missionaries who work at the visitors center on the site.

      The memorial is a granite monument that marks the site of Joseph Smith's birth 187 years ago on Dec. 23, 1805, and the location where his parents, Joseph and Lucy Smith, farmed during the early years of their married life.The monument is a visitors attraction that helped introduce the gospel to many members of the local South Royalton Ward, including its current bishop. Ward members now comprise the largest congregation in the community.

      "The local people who come to the Joseph Smith birthplace feel that special spirit and they return again and again," said Kristen Anderson, a full-time missionary from Bountiful, Utah. "If it doesn't touch them at first, sooner or later they feel it."

      "The people of Vermont are wonderful," added Sister Julianne Hollist of St. Anthony, Idaho. "They are hard-working, down-to-earth people. One can't help but love them because they are very spiritual."

      Bishop Charles J. Greene of the South Royalton Ward and his wife, Joan, are among the converts who were introduced to the gospel when he visited the monument.

      "We became curious about the monument and drove up there on my 30th birthday, 15 years ago," said Bishop Greene. "We met a missionary couple named Farnsworth. They were the first people we had ever met who identified themselves as Mormons. They were very nice and they showed us all through the exhibits and told us about the monument. We left all the bad things we had heard about the Church at the door, and we went in with open minds.

      "We prayed. It didn't happen in the first day - it took time."

      He said that many others in the ward were introduced to the Church when they visited the monument, or by someone else who had joined after visiting the monument. Today, the ward has about a dozen converts a year, a slow but steady increase.

      "We have a very harmonious ward," he said. "These are really good people. Our children are among the best in the community. The people can't help but see our happy, well-adjusted children. We let our children and our deeds do our speaking for us. We are thriving spiritually, and we are so grateful to the Lord for so many blessings."

      It is natural that ward members hold picnics and outings at the memorial, and provide many service projects at the monument. The ward's Scouts help improve the surrounding 400-acre park.

      They also present a day-after-Thanksgiving pageant and help install some 80,000 lights that illuminate the monument grounds during the Christmas season.

      Ward members have developed an affinity for the experiences of the Smith family while they lived in the area, said Bishop Greene. He readily understands how the Smith family farm in nearby Norwich failed.

      "Our winters are so long. We have thin soil and a short growing season," he explained. "At one time, 70 percent of the land was cleared and farmed. Now, only 30 percent of the land is cleared and farmed. We have property near Tunbridge that at first looks like woods. But there are barbed wire and stone fences on the property that are grown over with huge trees that have been there a hundred years. The whole area has woods like these."

      Summer offers a welcome reprieve from the long winters. "It's like paradise here in the summer," said Bishop Greene.

      When the sap runs in the maple trees, the countryside becomes a hundred hues of green, fringed with myriad wildflowers. Mild summer days stretch into fall and trees snap into a blaze of colors with the first frost, he said.

      In Bishop Greene's mind he can picture the toddler Joseph playing on the hillside where the old homestead used to stand. He can picture the boy Joseph running through the maple trees along the stream.

      "He walked where we walk," said Bishop Greene. "Things haven't changed much."

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