Thousands mark Smith milestone

The high school senior was drawing a portrait for an advanced-placement art class and decided he needed help.

So he got on his knees.

The subject of his portrait was LDS Church founder Joseph Smith, born 200 years ago this December.

"I knelt down and asked for guidance that my contribution would be pleasing to both my Heavenly Father and to the Prophet Joseph," wrote Cyler Sanderson, an 18-year-old champion wrestler for Wasatch High School.

As he began drawing the prophet's head, Sanderson focused on the eyes. "Those eyes have seen Heavenly Father and his Son," he recalled. "I need to somehow capture that experience in his eyes that expresses all that they have seen."

Sanderson is one of thousands of youths contributing large-scale dance, visual arts, musical and video presentations for statewide celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the prophet's birth. Organizers expect more than 125,000 youths to participate in large-scale stadium events across Utah this summer.

Sanderson's finished work, titled "The Eyes that Saw the Lord," has "strengthened my own personal testimony of Joseph Smith in a way I never thought possible," he said. LDS leaders who have seen the drawing are impressed with its depth.

"You always think about his visions after reading of his experience in the Sacred Grove, but you rarely focus on it like I had to in order to complete the drawing," said Sanderson, the youngest brother of Cael Sanderson, the Olympic champion wrestler who prevailed in Greece last summer.

The growth in individual "testimony of Joseph Smith" and the belief that God and Jesus Christ personally appeared in 1820 to the 14-year-old New York farm boy is at the heart of the projects, said Elder Merrill J. Bateman , a member of the Presidency of the Seventy for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The result has been "really great in terms of spiritual experiences for those who are participating," he said. "They're increasing their understanding of the Prophet Joseph Smith and what he did. He has become a real person to thousands of our youth."

The programs, and others events associated with them, are designed to provide a spiritual experience the young people will never forget, and many of the activities have already made their mark, according to Elder Bateman.

"We hope to build a sense of unity and opportunities to develop friendships" outside traditional LDS ward and stake boundaries, he said, recalling his own participation as a youth in a churchwide dance festival in Salt Lake City.