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As part of our "explore Minnesota" adventure we went to Cold Spring, MN (near St. Cloud) to see Assumption Chapel. There's quite a store behind this adorable and very very tiny Catholic Chapel. It was originally built during the grasshopper plague in 1877 (hence the nickname Grasshopper Chapel). Father Leo Winter believe the plague was punishment sent by God so he built the chapel for the town to gather and repent their wrongs hoping in return that God would end the plague of grasshoppers...miraculously it worked. In 1894 a tornado lifted the Chapel and dropped it a few feet away onto two oak trees. The original Chapel was destroyed but the two crippled oak trees still stand (badly disfigured) to give testimony to what the tornado had wrought. The chapel was rebuilt in 1952 and is absolutely beautiful. The Virgin Mary is etched in the stone above the doors with two grasshoppers at her feet. They've also got all the stations of the cross around the courtyard in little houses as well as tributes to St. Joseph and St. Francis Assisi (under which Tom and Sebastian are seated). I easily could have spent hours here, we were the only visitors and it was very peaceful and calming there. (do you think the light colored transparent blob in the lower right-hand corner of the top picture could be a ghost?)