When Porter, 66, a tool salesman from Orem, Utah, tried to explain the grove's significance, he could not stop himself from crying. "This is like Mecca to us, really," he said. "We revere Joseph Smith just as if we had lived at the time of Moses or any of the other great prophets because he revealed all the precious truths that had been lost."

Chris Lanham, who plays the young Smith in the pageant, said he found in the grove a better understanding of both his character's motivation and his own.

"It's strengthened my testimony about my beliefs a ton, like, a ton," said Chris, a 15-year-old from Utah. "This whole experience has. I don't want people to think that I think that I'm Joseph Smith, but I feel much more secure when I'm talking to people now."

The chance to embody the central characters in Mormon history makes a part in the pageant a sought-after honor.

"We tried for five years before we got into the pageant," said Dr. Rex Thompson, a dentist from Idaho Falls, as he adjusted his apostle's tunic and fake beard in the dressing room mirror before the show.

Like the others, Thompson came to Cumorah having no idea what role he would play. The directors met the players for the first time on July 2 and cast the parts in three hours based mostly on physical appearance, which they can do because the speaking parts are all prerecorded. The show opened six nights later.

"That's the miracle," said Chris Lanham's mother, Kim Yandow, an associate pageant director.

An hour before sunset, the players plunged into the crowd, an ocean of clean faces and modest dress. They handed out programs and signed autographs by the score. James Jackson, who plays the adult Joseph Smith, was stopped every few feet by families begging to have their pictures taken with him.

Not all who came sought to reinforce their faith. A blanketful of skeptics from Ithaca, anthropologists and political scientists from Cornell University and their friends peppered Carla Salmon, a harvest dancer garbed in lavender kerchief and red peasant dress, with questions about her faith.

Salmon, 22, a schoolteacher from Edmonton, Alberta, stood her ground. "I know that what we portray here really did happen," she said with a big smile.

Some in the group from Ithaca said they were drawn to the pageant by the Mormons' unselfconscious display of faith. Others said they came for the spectacle. Hanson, the artistic director, agreed that the show played against the stereotype of Mormons as a colorless people. But the stereotype, he said, is wrong.

"Mormons in the 1800s, unlike other conservative sects, loved theater, dancing and music," he said. "There is a tradition in the church that's very open to the arts, and even though we are a very conservative people in terms of behavior and lifestyle patterns — maybe even dull — from our perspective, there's no contradiction between brilliant spectacle and the white shirt and no cup of coffee in front of me."