Pilgrimage Series

The Magical story of us

In the fall of 2022, our family made a bold and daring decision: we sold nearly everything we owned and set out in search of truth, transformation, and a deeper understanding of our understanding of the lives we were meant to live. It was no small undertaking; we were a family of six stepping away from the life we had known. The decision sent shock waves through our lives and through the lives of those around us. We had no clear map for what would unfold, only the willingness to follow the journey wherever it might lead.

Our first destination was Bali. At first, we believed the island might become our new home. But after three months of exploring and searching, we came to a realization: the journey was not meant to stop there. Something deeper was calling us forward. What began as a relocation was becoming a pilgrimage. We were in Bali a total of five months, setting the foundation of this deeply spiritual pilgrimage on an island rich with spiritual power.

We felt drawn to sacred lands and ancient places, lands that seemed to carry memory and meaning within them. By moving our feet across the world, we began to encounter these places and the stories they held.

From Bali we traveled to Vietnam, where Britton was able to reconnect with a country that had once shaped an earlier chapter of his life when he served a Vietnamese-speaking mission as a young Mormon. After a month in Vietnam, we continued on to France, where I returned to places that had been meaningful during my own travels there twenty years earlier. From France the journey carried us to Ireland, England, and Scotland. These lands stirred a deep remembrance of ancestry and lineage, inviting us into a more intimate relationship with our roots and the stories carried in our blood.

Our travels eventually led us to Egypt, where many threads of the journey were to come full circle. The journey in Egypt was mystical, magical and utterly transformative. It was here that everything we had experienced became embodied, a living knowing. After Egypt we felt the pull to return to the United States, eventually landing along the Front Range of Colorado. In total, this pilgrimage carried our family across the world for eighteen months. The journey transformed each of us in ways that continue to unfold.

All images from The Magical Story of Us pilgrimage were photographed on medium format film using a Contax 645 and later developed and scanned by The Find Lab in Orem, Utah.