Chapter 10 - Nauvoo

 

Nauvoo Mission (including special NauvooTemple section) 2001-2002

 

 

 

What a pleasant surprise it was, receiving a mission call to Nauvoo!  We had to get many things ready for this next mission, including having all of the period clothing made that we were told to take with us.  We found a good seamstress who made all of Jeanné’s dresses and my shirts.  I learned where I could buy my pioneer-style pants.   This time we attended the Senior MTC in Provo (which has been since closed) and met some of the missionaries we would be spending the next 18 months with.  It was exciting.   While there, we lost a hubcap off our car while it was parked in the parking lot.   Our son John noticed it gone, and found another one for us.  John replaced it so quickly we didn’t even miss it!

 

We began our Nauvoo mission on 17 April 2001.  We were asked to take our car with us, as we did on our last mission, but this time we drove straight through to Nauvoo.  After being greeted by President Richard Sager, we were assigned to an apartment in the Joseph Smith Academy.  The ‘Academy’ had been used as the dormitory and class rooms for the Catholic girl’s school.  It was built in a U-shape with the dorms in one wing and classrooms in the other wing.   The Church had purchased it several years earlier.  (The monastery where the Catholic Nuns lived who had taught at the school, was still there just south of the Academy.  I will mention it later.)  It was a long walk up to our third floor apartment carrying our things, but the apartment itself was air conditioned and very comfortable.  It was quite a warm day.  Our assigned apartment being on the top floor we were especially grateful to Elder Don Eliason, who also lived on our floor, who helped us carry our belongings up all those stairs. 

 

Here are a few pictures of the Joseph Smith Academy where we first lived:

 

Two views of the Joseph Smith Academy – we entered our apartment via the door bottom right.

 

 

 

 

  

                  Front room area                                      Kitchen – dining area                         Bedroom w/ king-sized bed!

 

The most important event that occurred during our mission was the construction, completion, and dedication of the Nauvoo Temple.  When we arrived the granite façade of the Nauvoo temple was just beginning to be attached to the outside of the building.  Whereas the original temple was made out of solid granite, the reconstructed temple is made of reinforced cement walls with a granite stone façade attached.  The panels of granite matched the original granite, and were glued resembling blocks of stone to stainless steel panels and then bolted onto the cement wall, leaving a four inch space between the wall and the panel.  When completed the temple was exactly the same size and same appearance as the original.   (I will mention various stages of completion in my journal, but most pictures showing the construction and the completed temple are in a later section.) 

 

May 2001

 

We really had a lot of cold, rain and wind.  One day a large tree blew over next in the court to us behind our apartment, and a large branch on a tree next to it broke right off!  During the time we lived in the academy we experienced two terrible wind storms (they could have been hurricanes.)   Many of the older trees in Old Nauvoo were blown down, including two additional later, during other storms, in the courtyard in the academy where we lived.  The beautiful singing birds that had always been in the trees in the courtyard were gone.   We missed them after the storm.   

 

We have been walking each morning this week, a habit we tried to retain during our mission.  We would walk around the Temple site and then out into the neighboring areas.  It helped us to become more acquainted with the city.  The Temple construction was moving right along.  When we arrived, the reinforced concrete walls were all in place and the granite panels were beginning to be attached to the outside.  The spiral staircase that goes up inside the tower was beginning to be built.  After a while the fence that had been around the temple block was removed, and at the same time an observation platform was removed, and the small model of the temple (which was designed by Jeannè’s brother, Steven Baird, and built by his sons} was moved north-east across the street to the where a new visitors observation area had been built.  They were located where the temple construction office had formerly been. 

 

There are two kinds of senior missionaries assigned to Nauvoo.  (That has since changed.)  One kind was those who provided for the upkeep and remodeling of the historical sites, and called NRI missionaries.  (Nauvoo Restoration Incorporated)  They wear work clothing to do their jobs, except on Sundays, and a few other days, when they help out at the tour.   We were among the second kind called “Visitor Center” missionaries; regular Senior Missionaries, except that we wore period clothing and were assigned to serve as guides in the visitor center, and at the historical sites.   We would give tours of the homes and shops, and tell the stories of the church members who had lived and worked here; often demonstrating what they did in their shops.  Included in the NRI missionaries just described was Sister missionaries who were (1) single and unmarried or widowed, or (2) wives of the NRI missionaries.  Some NRI sisters had callings that fell under the NRI umbrella, such as one who was a gardener, or others who worked in the historical and archeological sites building, the rest of them generally served along with us in the sites.

 

The days while serving at Nauvoo were much alike.  We awoke at 6:00 A.M., dressed and ate by 7:30 so, we could attend our prayer meeting in the Cultural Hall, and be on site by 8:00!  We then had to clean our site.  Some sites, such as the Cultural Hall (where Jeannè served quite often), were quite large.  The Cultural Hall had to be cleaned and dusted, in the basement (including two bathrooms), on the main floor (including the stage), and the second and third floors!   Fortunately the larger sites, such as the Cultural Hall and Browning sites, had several missionaries serving there, so that helped with the work load.  Cleaning the site was always a big job first thing each day.  When I worked at the Brick Yard, we not only

         Brickyard kiln with clay-mixing pit behind                  had to clean it, and the bathroom, but since the grounds                  

                                                                                 keepers  couldn’t get their big lawn mowers into our small area, we had to mow that lawn once a week with a hand mower – which I did many times.  We then greeted visitors until about noon.  If there were enough missionaries assigned to the site, we could rotate lunch hours, if not we would close the site for an hour, hurry back to our apartments and then return until closing at 5:00 P.M.   After that we would rush home, change out of our “period” clothing into our “stage” clothing, eat and return (four days a week) to either perform in the Rendezvous show in the Cultural Hall, or at Sunset by the River on the river-side stage.   Our stage clothing was clothing that was fancier and dressier.  For the stage, Jeanné had an especially fancy dress she wore, and I had a fancy white shirt and bow tie, with special dress pants.  During the summer months two Rendezvous shows were performed each night to accommodate the crowds.  It was after 10:00 P.M. before we finished. 

 

On our Preparation Day (‘P-day’) we would often visit sites we hadn’t been in.  We visited the Riser Boot Shop, the Print Shop, John Taylor’s home, the Post Office and the Tin Shop, although we did work in them later.  Little did we know but when the new site schedule came out onFriday that Wally would be working in the Tin Shop -- beginning the next day!  John Taylor’s house was built by well-to-do man who became disaffected with the Church and moved, but because it was built so well it was one of the nicest homes here in Nauvoo and John Taylor (later president of the Church) moved in after the man left.  Taylor was the editor of the Nauvoo newspapers and having his home next to the Printing Shop was advantageous.  Our P-day was changed from week to week to fit in with our site assignments and it was finished at 5:00 (6:00 during the summer) so that we could be home to perform if our cast was on stage that night. 

 

Jeanné started working at the Visitors Center two days a week, handling the free tickets to the various programs that we had each day.  It is a big job and she had to take reservations over the phone as well as take the visitors requests.  When the Young Performing Missionaries arrived for the summer there were two shows each day that required tickets.  One was called  A Nauvoo Adventure, put on by the YPMs.   It is put on twice a day.  We saw the performance last week and those young people are excellent!!   The show tells the story of Nauvoo through drama and song.  The other show is Rendezvous, which, too, is a      Visitors Center – Steven Baird was architect

musical and tells the story of Nauvoo, but in a more-or-less comical vein. It is put on by the senior missionaries  with the YPMs helping out, now they had arrived, in the 8:15 p.m. performance (there were performances at 7 & 8:15)   There is also another program called, Sunset by the Mississippi, which is put on by both younger and older missionaries down by the Mississippi river.  There is sufficient seating space there that tickets are not required.  None of the tickets cost anything, they are to make sure only enough seats are sold to fill the room available:  117 seats for Rendezvous, and 260 for Nauvoo adventure.   Because we were trying to learn to scripts and music, we attended and checked out all three casts’ Rendezvous shows.  The Sunset location has been moved up closer to the temple, as the older location would keep flooding out.

 

Wally was now working two days a week in the Tin Shop.  That was fun as it is an interesting tour.  The Tin Shop reconstruction was finished in 1990, so it is a relatively new site.  Wally was also assigned to the Browning Home and Gun Shop, the Lyon Drug, and the Brickyard.  Jeanné was assigned to work in the Cultural Hall, Browning Home and Gun Shop, and Lyon Drug, and we both worked one night a week in the Visitors Center as hosts, as the summer hours were extended to stay open until 9 p.m.  Jeannè worked in the ticket booth for one month, but it was decided that the Sisters working there needed to be “computer literate”

       

            Sylvester Tin Shop                              Browning Home and Work Shop                       Cultural – or Masonic – Hall

 

(which she is not,) so she was put back entirely in the sites.   She really liked working in the sites better, anyway.  I was assigned to the Browning Home two days a week and the Lyon Drug (which I had requested) one day a week.   When Jeanné was reassigned, she worked with me in Browning one day a week and in Lyon Drug one day a week.  We didn’t always get too many opportunities to work together, so this was nice.  Jeanné was assigned to the Wilford Woodruff home one day, which pleased her since it was one of the two sites that her parents had served in on their mission.  The other site that they worked in on their mission, and one that neither of us got yo work in, was the Seventies Hall.  It was closed most of the time we were there for renovation and cleaning. 

 

They built new walks and paths all through Nauvoo during this month, getting ready for the dedication and it is really looking nice.  Some of the walks are cement, and some are brick. 

  We had a Memorial Day service at the monument at the end of The Trail of Hope, which lists 2000 names of people who died here in Nauvoo.

We had a good time.  Wally became part of the “Nauvoo Legion” and carried a musket (wooden, of course) and marched to the flag pole for the flag ceremony.   In the picture at left Wally is inside the monu-ment pointing to some of Jeannè’s relatives -- she had about eleven who lived there.

                                                                

                                                         June 2001

 

We were put in the ‘Y’ cast of Rendezvous.  They have three casts: X, Y & Z.   We performed Thursdays and Saturdays this month.  Next month our days will be changed to either Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Friday, as the days change each month – Rendezvous is not performed on Sundays.  I was asked to take the part of John Taylor and sing, A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief, which I tried hard to learn. The next week I was asked if I was ready and I said I thought so.   They asked me to take over for one of the other cast members because he was sick.   In the part you represent John Taylor who walks in from the rear, down the aisle to in front of the stage, while singing the first and last verses a cappella!  There is no prompter when you are in the audience -- as there is on the stage!  Egad!!  Well, I blew it!  I forgot a line.  I paused, for what I thought was a lifetime, and then, recalling the words, finished the song.  Whew.  The director made me sing again two nights later!   I have to admit I was nervous, and frightened, but I made it.  

 

I had been having a problem with my throat and shortly after that experience I worked in a site that required me to talk non-stop the whole day, and by evening I could feel my voice going.  By Saturday I couldn’t make a peep!  So I spent better part of the next day in bed trying to get my voice back to normal.  Monday I made bricks in the Brickyard half of the day so I wouldn’t have to take a tour and talk, then finally went home.  Tuesday I stayed in bed and Wednesday my cohort in the Tin Shop took all the tours so I could rest my voice.  I was supposed to sing the following Monday, but had to have someone else cover for me

 

When I did get my voice back again the director gave me the choice between singing Poor Wayfaring Man or to sing the bass part  in the quartet.  I chose the quartet.  I began singing in the quartet on the next Thursday, and did so for the balance of our mission.  The first couple of times it was a bit scary, but I soon became quite comfortable singing with the other men, and I didn’t have to remember all those lines.  The quartet sings a cute little ditty about a newly married couple who will have to live in a lean-to, and keep warm in a buffalo robe.   I have to sing the ending line:  “So very, very warm” having yo go down to a low A with the word

 

  The ‘Y’ cast quartet – from left, Ray Jones – 1^st tenor, Larry Heigert - 2^nd tenor, Wally Thorup – bass, and Bob Toyn – baritone.

 

Om the word “warm.”   Kind of low for me!   It was really quite fun to have the audience applaud when I “almost” got that last note!  Actually, I could hit it okay, but I milked it good for all I could get out of it, and the audience seemed to enjoy it.   Jeanné was now singing in Rendezvous, too.  She started singing a solo in the song, David says, a skit in which the women are in a Relief Society meeting.  It is a cute song which goes, “Isn’t this a splendid way to spend a really perfect day?”  The song has two solo parts in it, and Jeanné sings one of them.  It goes: David says, the reason women knit, is’ta give the mind something to think of

 

while they talk and sit.  Well, I’ll show him, I’ve learned a thing or two:  Your recipe for Johnny cake will make him cockle-doo!   She really sang it well, and it brought a lot of laughs, too.  I believe we mentioned earlier that we do other things in the cast, too, and we are getting to enjoy our participation quite well.  The nice thing is that it really has such a good message for the visitors.  Then, on top of all that we were changed to work on the ‘blue’ cast of the Sunset on the Mississippi which was on two other nights each week.  

 

The Prophet Joseph and his brother, Hyrum, were martyred on June 27, 1944, so on Wednesday, the 27^th, we held two commemorations!  We drove to Carthage for a commemoration at 7:30 a.m. in the morning that was put on by our church at the Carthage jail.  There were two speakers, Dr. (Elder) Joyce Shireman from Community of Christ, and Elder Robert Backman (emeritus of the Seventy).  Between them the Young Performing Missionaries sang a musical number, The Last Farewell, that was absolutely beautiful.  This was all followed by a beautiful recitation, by Elder Verne Nelson, A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief.  Then four re-inactors (portraying Joseph, Hyrum, Dr. Richards, and John Taylor) all went up into the “Martyr Room” and Elder Richard Robinson, portraying John Taylor, sang three verses of A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief, while sitting in the window Joseph had jumped from when he was martyred.   This was followed by Taps played by two buglers (one acting as an echo) B it was so beautiful I can’t describe it.  I don’t think there were many

 

 

      Carthage Jail – Joseph jumped from 2^nd story window above.         Grave site - owned by Community of Christ.

 

dry eyes.  Following that we all had to hurry back to Nauvoo to open our sites and then at 12 noon all the

sites were again closed for two hours while we went to the grave sites of Joseph, Hyrum and Emma for the program by RLDS (now called the Community of Christ) church who owns that site.  It was directed by Dr. Shireman (see above,) and Elder Kenneth Godfrey, who is a BYU professor.  He gave a talk on “Joseph Smith as a Family Man” and a lady from RLDS gave some brief remarks about Joseph and Hyrum, after which the Young Performing Missionaries sang another song (I couldn’t get the name of it) that was just beautiful.  Then we went back to our sites and spent the rest of the day as normal.  It was a very inspirational day.  [Just as an aside, Elder Robinson (above) is a former music teacher and he gave me a couple of singing lessons before his release, to help me sing my lower notes – I had been singing tenor for years!  And a sad note: Larry Heigert (from our quartet) died in the fall of 2007.]

           

One Sunday night we had a fireside at the Visitors Center where Elder Kenneth Godfrey (a BYU professor, who was serving as a missionary, along with his wife, Audrey, during the summer months) spoke on the martyrdom.  One of the things he talked about was when he was working on his doctors’ thesis at BYU he went to the Church Historians office and noticed a whole row of boxes marked “Letters from Nauvoo.”  They had never been read!   He asked A. William Lund, the church historian at that time, if he could see them, and Bro. Lund said, “No, you might find something in there that proves the church not to be true!”  Elder Godfrey’s retort was, “Then, they might make a statue to me!”  Well, undaunted, he sent a letter to Pres. Harold B. Lee and asked him about them and Pres. Lee wrote across his letter to allow Elder Godfrey to see them.  So Bro. Lund, when allowed access, carefully reviewed everything Elder Godfrey wrote and occasionally tore up a sheet that he didn’t want published!  Elder Godfrey was so cute about the way he presented his talk, and said he did glean some personal insights into the lives of people during the Nauvoo period, but he said he never found anything that proved the church was not true!

July 2001

 

There is much activity on the Temple going on now.  There was a period when nothing      seemed to be added, but that has all changed.  Almost daily we can see new stonework being added to the Temple.  The “moon” stones at the bottom of the windows have started being installed.  There are now four moon stones on each side of the building.  You can also see where the stone widens at the top of the columns and that is where the “sun” stones will rest.  They are progressing with the fence around the temple block.  They are now putting in a large storm          drain pipe to drain water away from the northeast corner of the temple block.   There is a low spot and whenever there is a rain storm the water pools there.  The Church asked the city of Nauvoo to take care of the problem, but they wouldn’t, so the Church is putting in a storm sewer which starts on the northeast corner of the Temple block, proceeds to the south side and will run all along the south, passing the Monastery.  It is obvious that no expense is being spared to make this temple beautiful, and one to last through Eternity!

 

Last Thursday we had another downpour.  Over 12 inches of rain!  Then Monday was another HOT day with the temperature about 87^o, but VERY humid, so it seemed even hotter.  But after all that, the next few days were so pleasant that we almost forgot the bad days!  We have been blessed with some very nice weather so far, and we are so grateful for it . . .  So far we have only had two or three really hot days, which we understand is very unusual for Nauvoo this time of the year.

 

Up until the end of June we only had one Rendezvous program at 7 p.m.  Now we also have one at 8:15 p.m.  Jeanné now takes the part of the music director the musical number in the scene about the Relief Society, and I have to be on the front row of the stage when the curtain opens with, Well, Welcome to Nauvoo, including a line of men kicking-- something akin to the Radio City Rockettes (sure!).  You wouldn’t believe what we end up doing sometimes.  Sometimes it gets rather crazy!  One week, Jeanné almost forgot when it was time for her to be on stage for a new “skating” scene.   We stand right on the front row on stage as the curtain opens ... she on my right, I on her left . . . she twirls around once and we walk across the stage;  it would have looked kind of funny if she had been missing!  Well I can’t say much because I did the same thing the next night!  I got so flustered, I forgot where I was supposed to be with all these new changes, and I came rushing on stage at the last second, just before the curtain opened!  No one knew it but us (and every one else on stage who had been looking all over for me!!)   Don’t get the idea that all is fun and games here.  The programs we worked in were just that, work!    Besides learning all the songs, we also had learn all the actions that went             Stage at rear of Cultural Hall

along with them.

 

 

It was my birthday, this month, and there is a tradition here in Nauvoo:  When it is your birthday everyone stuffs (literally!) your mailbox with little birthday wishes, often times with a little gift attached, like a miniature candy bar or something similarly good and delicious.  It was fun on those days to check our mail box and find these little gifts.  Some of them were really creative! 

 

August 2001

 

Each summer the Church puts on “The City of Joseph” pageant, and many church members with their families volunteer to come to participate in it.  Many are from local communities; others traveled from far away to enjoy the experience.  They live in the dormitories formerly used by the Catholic students.  Those rooms don’t have air conditioning.  The pageant was in June and July, during hottest time of the year, and the families would often sit together in the halls.  Some would sit outside our apartment doors just hoping for a breath of cool air!  What a hearty bunch of people.  [The Church has changed the pageant since we served our mission.  They are now using groups imported from BYU and Utah, and so I don’t know if local families participate like they used to.  Recently the Church destroyed and removed the academy building because it would hace been too expensive to put air conditioning in it.  I don’t think they are planning to replace it.] 

 

We often see Milt and Karen Moon, former members from our ward in Holladay.  And we see Elder and Sister Cannon.  The Cannons  are in the same cast that we are, so we see them at least twice a week (Elder Cannon is Cynthia William’s father – Cynthia lives in our old Holladay ward.  Sadly Sister Cannon recently passed away.)   One of the privileges of working here is to be with so many wonderful missionaries, many of whom have been mission presidents or stake presidents.  Many have also been on two, three or more missions – as we have!   We learn so much from them all.  We do love our mission, and as busy as it keeps us we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else!

 

Jeanné handed me a cold glass of lemonade, and did it taste good.  We have been having a good warm old time of it here.  Our heat index (which takes into count the temperature and humidity) has hovered around 110-115^o and it’s not the heat that gets you here, it’s the humidity.  When we walk out of our air conditioned  (thank goodness!) apartment or historical sites our glasses fog up in the humidity! 

 

On a couple of occasions I have sent visitors over to the Visitors Center, as a referral to a discussion I got started with them on site.   One of the problems we experience when working with visitors in the sites is not having time to sit down and talk when they wanted to know more about the Church.   So I was pleased that on both occasions they did go over to the Center, and I was told they got them to send in a referral card asking for a Book of Mormon.  Our lovely young dingle Sister missionaries really do follow through with them.  We touch a lot of lives here.  About 20% of the people who come here are non-members. 

                                                                                            

September 2001

 

Things really slowed down after Labor Day.   Since then our sites have gone back to winter hours by closing at 5 p.m.  During the summer we closed at 6 so we really had to hustle to get to Rendezvous by 6:45!   At one of our performances of Sunset by the Mississippi it threatened rain and lightening so bad, that a few minutes after the program started we noticed the piano player’s hair standing straight up in the air!  The program was quickly cancelled and we all ran to our cars!!   Last Saturday was the last Sunset by the Mississippi program for this year.  I am not sad to see that end, as the bugs were getting so bad they nearly carried us off!!  But the summer visitors did enjoy the show.

 

 

          Our new home!  The largest home in Nauvoo, three stories high.

 

The Young Performing Missionaries have now gone.  We really miss them, as they were such cute kids and so talented.    After living in the Academy for about three months we were moved into the Yearsley home. We were scheduled to move into the home, where the sister YPM’s had been living, on August 28^th, but the BYU professors who are teaching this semester at the Joseph Smith Academy (a BYU summer program) arrived early.  As a result we were given 24 hours to move.  Fortunately one of the NRI missionaries helped us move (with his pickup truck) and we were all out of our apartment in an hour and a half!  Problem was that all our stuff was dropped in the middle of the floor of our new home, and it took forever to get it straightened.  We were now living in the Yearsley mansion!   The home has three floors;   the top          Stairway leading up to our second flood bedroom

floor has never been restored:  It looks like it hasn’t been lived in for 100 years!  The other two floors are nicely furnished, having three bedrooms, two large modern baths, a 14 x 24 front room, and a kitchen -- which is not much smaller than the living room -- and it has two refrigerators!  (Eight lady YPMs, live there during the winter.)   It is all air conditioned and heated by a Lenox Pulse furnace. We were quite comfortable.  (Unfortunately we don’t have many good pictures of the interior.)

                                                                                                            

We still had a few things to do.   We washed and hung the curtains and the Venetian blinds, and cleaned the windows.  We started with the kitchen and the front room, as they were the worst.  The windows in those rooms are 10 feet high!!   Try washing a 10 foot long Venetian blind in the bathtub!   Fortunately the rest of the windows are smaller and all but two are on the second floor, so we could take our time.  We also had to remove a bunch of shoe-polish stains on the carpets, but found a product that works like magic, so that wasn’t too hard.  We can’t complain.  The girls who were living here really did try to leave it clean.  Jeanné also cleaned out the basement -- so well that it really looks quite nice.  At one time this home had a jail in the basement!  Almost the day we arrived there the NRI men started repairing our roof.  They had to remove a portion along the front and back that had become rotted, and they worked hard to finish the job quickly.  

 

We could sleep up to 12 people!!  The front room has two hide-a-bed couches which csn each sleep two.  The main floor bedroom has two single beds.  On the second floor there are two bunk beds in one room and two single beds in the other.  For us we pushed the two single beds together in the larger second floor bedroom.

 

History lesson: The David D. Yearsley home is known as the tallest private home in Nauvoo.  It is probably the only home in the city with a roof of its kind.  The sturdy timbers supporting the roof are the same as those used in the construction of bridges many years ago, and as long as the house stands it will probably show no signs of sagging.  After the Saints left Nauvoo, the population here dropped to approximately one tenth of its original size. 

 

In 1854 a jail was constructed in the basement of the Yearsley home.  There are bars on the basement windows, but we don=t know if they were there for the jail or not.  They didn’t need any jails here while the Saints lived here.  Joseph Smith believed in letting anyone guilty of a misdeed to work off their sentence with community service instead sending them to jail.

 

The Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association (YMMIA) is said to have had its beginning in the Yearsley home in Nauvoo.  Young men and boys would hurry home from school, do their chores and then come to the home of D.D. Yearsley (who was well educated) to study the Bible and Book of Mormon.

 

Yearsley is best remembered for being one of the first four men who volunteered to go with about 20 other men to investigate the possibilities of the Latter-day Saints locating in California and Oregon after the Nauvoo temple was completed.  This organization was named the Western Exploration Company.

 

This mission is going to receive 16 more young full-time sister missionaries (not YPMs) to help out in the Visitors Center B that will give them a total of 26 sister missionaries here (including the ones mentioned earlier.)  They will then turn the Visitors Center over to them like they have done on Temple Square in Salt Lake.  The sister missionaries would also work with us in the sites, from time to time, and as you will see later, some were assigned to Carthage.  They were good workers!

 

The most terrible thing happened:  On September 11^th, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York were destroyed by two planes that purposely rammed into them – killing all passengers on board.   We couldn’t believe our eyes as we watched the events on T.V.

 

The Temple is moving along rapidly.   Most of the sun stones are installed, and they are now working on the front of the temple.  The tower is 90% complete.  They are building a 200-car garage across the street from the temple, on which they already have the footings in.  That was a massive undertaking because they had to remove a whole hill to make it!  Curb and gutters are finished all       

     Sun Stones as they looked when delivered       around the temple square, and the streets will be paved soon.  It is looking wonderful.   They bought tons of granite stones from China (of all places) that will be used for the sidewalks around the temple itself B inside the fence surrounding the temple block.

   

One day we took a tour (six of us, plus our guide) to historical sites between here and Quincy, fifty miles south of here.  It was really enjoyable B and educational.  In Quincy we were able to hold the original old Nauvoo Temple keys!!  Didn’t even know there was such a thing!  They are the keys to the original temple and are in a museum in Quincy.

 

So far I have worked in the Browning home and gun shop (where I was in charge for six months); the brick yard; the blacksmith shop; the tin shop; the print shop; the Lyon Drug store and the Sarah Granger Kimball home, as well as the Living Center where we would demonstrate pioneer crafts (candle making, bread making, rug making, weaving on a loom, rope making and coopering – barrel making.) 

 

I didn’t always work in the same sites with Jeanné, but we did work together in the Browning home, the Sara Granger Kimball home, the Lyon Drug store and the Tin Shop.  Jeanné loved working in all the sites.  For various reasons some of the women didn’t like to work in some of them, so when someone was needed, Jeanné was the one they often asked.  Because of that she probably ended up working in more different sites than most missionaries.  Normally, when I worked in the tin shop or the print shop or blacksmith shop, I would be assigned with another Elder rather than a sister missionary because that was more typical of the way it was in the original Nauvoo period.  One day I was working in the tin shop and my partner was sick.  They asked Jeanné to substitute for him.  It was a rather slow day and we were sitting in a little back room where the missionaries relax when there are no visitors.  I guess I was too comfortable, and fell asleep.  When a tour came in, Jeanné gave the entire presentation – including the demonstration of how you make tin-ware -- and I slept through the whole thing!  I asked her how she did, and she said, “It went just fine.”  It shows how versatile she was in her service to the Lord in Nauvoo.   She is quite a gal!!

 

October 2001

 

Well it has been three weeks since the ‘tragedy’ and I guess we are all just waiting for the other shoe to drop.    We haven’t been as affected by the 9/11 disaster as many, but it has affected us none the less.  On that Tuesday night we had a special prayer meeting for those who had lost their lives or were injured, and on Friday night we got to witness the First Presidency’s prayer broadcast.  Rendezvous was cancelled that week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday (we felt it was okay to perform on Thursday;  there would have been so many people that disappointed by the cancelling) but refrained again on Friday because of the day of prayer called for by President Bush.

 

Our families become so precious to us at these times, when we see such sorrow and willful destruction of human life.  We need to remind ourselves it doesn’t matter how we die, it only matters how we live.   Seems like sometimes it takes a tragedy to wake us up to what’s really important in this life: Christ and our relationship with Him and His teachings, to help us find happiness and a fulfilling life.  He knows that loving and caring for His children is where we will find this true happiness.

 

Hopefully those people who have lost so much will be open to learn about the plan of salvation and where their loved ones really are and how they can be together again.  There is a life after this one, there is hope out there, and they just need to be open to learn the truth.  We pray our missionaries may reach them.

                                                       This page and next: Views in Lyon Drug Store                        

 

Here in Nauvoo, many of the missionaries are past bishops, stake presidents, mission presidents, patriarchs, etc.; several are on their third, or fourth missions.  We get to partake of their sweet spirit and strength.   We feel to marvel at the talent that is here everywhere amongst those we work with.  Some of our senior missionaries don’t have the very best of health, they hurt, but does that stop them?  No way!  They are on a mission for the Lord and they just keep going.  They set a marvelous example for all of us.  Combine their resolve with the spirit of our forefathers here in Nauvoo and the Spirit just radiates over these sacred grounds.  It’s such a privilege just to be here, and our temple is the frosting on the cake.  To see it take shape to completion is such a blessing to us.

 

They placed the dome on top of the temple tower on Monday the 10^th.   It looked so big on the ground and so small up on the tower!   We met the man who made the Angel Moroni statues (out of fiberglass) for three of the new temples recently under construction.  The man (can’t remember his name) brought the statue here, so we got to meet him as we gave our tours.  He is also making the oxen for the temple font, and he cast seven sun stones, star stones and moon stones for the stone cutters to use as patterns.  He lives in West Jordan, and his plant is in Kearns.  He told us they were going to put the Angel Moroni statues on the Holland and Boston temples on the same day!!

This month was quite a special one for us.  We were thrilled to have a new great grandson, Luke, enter our family on October 18^th.   He is the son of our granddaughter, April, and her husband, Keith Oaks.  A healthy 7 lb 12 oz little boy, 20 inches long, with long blonde hair!  We were so thrilled when we received a call from April at 2:15 a.m. (Just about an hour after Luke was born B we are one hour ahead of Salt Lake) telling us that he was here.  Grandpa, John, sent us pictures via the

internet and a video by overnight express, of that cute boy, and his proud parents and grandparents.  How grateful we are to our Heavenly Father for blessing them (and us) with such a beautiful baby.

         April & Keith under stone bridge that was built to

         allow Nauvoo to be drained when it was a swamp

  

On that very day (and after we knew Luke was born) we were able to drive to St. Louis and take our grandson Elder Andrew Thorup, to lunch with us, and just a week later our granddaughter, Angie Thorup,

                       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                   

                                                   Wally, Jeannè, and Angie in front of John Taylor’s home

 

came to visit us for five days.  Those were wonderful days for us.  One of the perks for working here in Nauvoo, is that we can have visitors most any time we want,B and go visit nearby - as long as it is just on our preparation      day.  That keeps us pretty much in line!  Since we had to drive to St. Louis to pick up Angie and take her back to the airport, we had visited that lovely city three times this past month.                                                                              

                                                                                               

  On Friday the 21st we had the thrill of a lifetime, watching the Angel Moroni statue being placed on the temple. They had us close all of the sites so everyone could watch.  The crane operator was really a magician.  He lifted up the statue, and swung it out, ever so slowly, over the crowd for a look-see, and then he placed it gently into the hole that had been prepared to receive a pipe on the end, which was then bolted down.   After the statue was finally seated and firmly attached, the temple bell tolled 12 times; you could see tears in people’s eyes, and chills went up and down our spines.  To think we heard the bell on the Nauvoo temple for the first time in 155 years!  And the Angel Moroni just glittered in the sun, in all its glory.  The Lord had to rise up another generation to rebuild His temple.  To be in that generation is truly spine tingling.

 

October has really been a big month for tours.  About four of the six nights during the week have had to have two performances.  Many tours have been visiting from Utah, too, taking advantage of the beautiful weather this time of the year, and enjoying this beautiful place.  We have been having a lot of non-member visitors, too.  They are generally quite impressed with this place.  We are keeping busy, and that really does make the time fly by.  Our weather has cooled off significantly, too.   You can definitely feel fall in the air.  We have to wear a little heavier coat than usual.   Every few days it rains, or threatens to rain.

 

An unexpected change was made here in our mission this past month.  Our Nauvoo Restoration (NRI) manager was been released and replaced.  Also our new mission president has been announced.   It was announced in the Church News.  It will be Sam Park and his wife, Ann.  They are from Salt Lake City.  They will be taking over in January.

 

It was also announced that the open house and dedication will be next May and June.  We are virtually sure that we won’t be living here in the Yearsley home by that time.  The Church says they are expecting 50,000 people to come to the open house.  We think that is pretty wild, as that would be 10,000 people a week.  We expect to be very busy giving tours during that period (we will not be participating in the open house or dedication because of that.)   They have begun building 60 apartments here to house the temple missionaries who will be coming here.  They are small brick homes that will house, 1, 2 or 3 couples for up to 6 months at a time.  They are building them to look like homes of the Nauvoo period and we think they look the part.  See picture on next page.                                                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the new missionary homes

 

November 2001

 

Construction on the temple missionary apartments is moving right along.  They are taking on a shape and character that makes us pleased with them, as they really are looking like they belong.  They are built as pre-cut homes, so the wood all comes bundled up, wrapped in plastic wrap; all they need to do is nail them together!  While the floor plans are very similar, the red brick exteriors of the homes are each uniquely different.

 

The Yardley home is on a corner of two streets that are not paved, they are gravel and dusty!  White Street (which goes in front of our quarters) is the main road for all of the trucks that leave the granary, down by the river, heading back to wherever they came from.  Partridge Street to the east (which runs North and South, intersecting White Street) is the first road west of the highway, so much of the local traffic travels along it, though it is one of the worst streets here in Nauvoo in terms of upkeep!  This is the grain harvest season and the trucks are trying to bring the harvest in, so they are constantly running up and down White Street, from before dawn to long after dusk.  The trucks pass us along White Street about every 2 or 3 minutes, depending on the time of day or night, and they keep a cloud of dust in the air.  I can wash my car’s windows at night and by morning there is a heavy film of dust covering the car.  The way they harvest corn (the big crop around here) is to wait for the corn to completely dry and then grind up the whole stalk!! And then the machine spits out everything but the corn, which is then fed through a pipe into a truck next to it.  Amazing, but it works.  I guess they have to reconstitute the corn before they feed it to the cattle -- or for whatever use they make of it.  They also grow lots of soy beans – I understand they alternate fields so that they change crops each year – and soy beans attract a little beetle that looks like a lady bug -- except they are brown – and stink awful!  When the trucks are hauling them, the bugs get everywhere!  They got all over the walls of the sites and our home.  We have to vacuum over and over again to get rid of them.

 

The Star, Sun and Moon Stones on the Temple are mostly all up now.  Just a few are left to do along the front where they are still working.  Most of the stonework on the front of the temple has to be cut and placed by hand, making it a little slower.  They have also started to put in the beautiful star windows along the top of the temple.  They are red, white and blue!  The center is red, the star is white and the areas between the points of the star are blue.  They are quite large, but when you get them up that high on the building, they look rather small, but are actually quite large.   (See next page.)                                                          

                                                                                   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                               Five-pointed star windows in red, white & blue

 

We were advised that Open House tickets are now available on the internet. Those of us who live and work here in Nauvoo were given first opportunity to obtain tickets, and Jeannè and I have ours already, even though there is some question if we actually will need them!   We are getting all geared up for this wonderful event.

 

Jeanné and I went for a nice ride in our car.  We drove over the bridge to Keokuk, and from there up to Montrose.   Montrose is directly west across the Mississippi from Nauvoo, and is where the pioneers crossed when they left Nauvoo during the great exodus in 1846.  It is a straight shot, right across the river. 

We didn’t realize it before, but a road leads right out of the river to the west, just like it leads into the river in Nauvoo at the place called ‘the Exodus Site’.  The road can still be seen where they would have entered Montrose after crossing the river (either by barge or over the frozen river.)  The Temple sits right up there across the river to be seen in all its glory.  So beautiful at night!     The work on the Temple continues, as well as the work around it.  They have asphalted all the streets around temple square (they call it ‘temple square’ here, too) so it was torn up much of the month.  It is so lovely now; it puts the rest of Nauvoo to shame. They have sodded all of the lawn on the West side of Wells Street which includes in front of the Monastery where the Nuns live (incidentally they are getting ready to leave soon) and have planted large trees in the lawns all around temple square.   I was asked to be the site leader at the Browning Gun Shop!  (-- you know, the one who cleans the bathroom and puts out the garbage.)  Actually I considered it quite an honor since the Browning is the largest site and probably the number one tourist attraction here, or close to it.  It is one of the sites that doesn’t close for lunch, and so there has to be at least four people working there.  Jeanné wasn’t too happy because now she will work with me in the Browning three days a week (site leaders have to be at their sites 3 or 4 times a week) and she had enjoyed working in the different sites she had previously been working in.  It was nice in that we could be together more often.   She will still work in the Lyon Drug and the Visitors Center, as well as with me in the Log School House on Sundays.  I also work in the Print Shop and the Brickyard (ugh!)  I have been in the Brickyard ever since I came and had hoped I might get to leave that place.  Problem was, so

                            

                                   Browning front room                    In the gun shop where we demonstrated      

                                                                                             how Browning made his guns

                                                                                                                 

 

many of the men found some excuse for not working there (really!) and those of us who were willing, ended up working there forever-r-r-r-r.

 

Actually, I enjoyed the Brickyard, but it is one place that you never stop.  If you aren’t giving a tour, you are making bricks.   By the end of the day, my poor ‘ol back would about give out.   And, as mentioned before, it was the only place that NRI didn’t cut the grass – not enough room to get their machines in -- so that was our chore, too.

 

 

                       The green machine pressed out the souvenir bricks                     Here I am giving a tour

 

Wow has it been cold here.  It is hovering around freezing at night; rarely getting above 45E during the day.  Those temperatures wouldn’t be too bad, but here the wind is almost always blowing and the wind-chill factor really enters in – it just goes right through you.   We have been having some rain, too, and that makes this place one muddy mess B especially now that they have all the streets dug up to put water and sewers in for the new temple housing.   It is really a mess, because when you turn on to a street you never quite know if you can drive through it anymore!  More often than not they have the street blocked off, either with the big shovel digging the trenches, or some truck loaded with brick or some other building necessity.  Many times I had to back up to the next corner or try to turn around and carefully pick a way through all the muck and mud.

 

We had a lovely Thanksgiving.  All of the missionaries ate Thanksgiving dinner together in the Family Living Center, with banquet tables filling the place.  We were separated into families (groups of about 20-24 people) and each “family” prepared its own meal!  As District Leaders we were on the committee making all the plans and it was quite an event.  That has been another perk of being a missionary here in Nauvoo.   With so many senior missionaries here we’re always doing fun things together.

 

December 2001

 

The exterior of the Temple is nearing completion.   They will be installing the last of the stone on the walls of the building within the next day or so.  There is still work to be done on the roof and the upper levels, but it is moving right along, really helped by our very favorable weather this year. 

 

There is still no snow here.  We understand that it has been years since they did not have snow in Nauvoo by December 1^st!   I still can’t believe that the Saints were able to build this temple 150 years ago  with the means that they had at their disposal.  The contractors have huge cranes and hoists to work with today; it is almost unbelievable how they could build with the massive stone granite blocks they used and end up with a structure as beautiful as this!!!  And then to have to walk away and leave it!  What courage.  What faith!  Well, we know that the Lord destroyed the building so that it wouldn’t be desecrated no matter what other people might attribute it to, and we are so blessed to be able to see it take form once again.  The weather has also allowed the landscaping to proceed, and many trees have been planted, walkways have been finished, and quite a bit of lawn sod has been laid. 

 

Elder Midgley, is the painter who has painted most of the windows in the temple.  He has been here over two years.  Jeanné and I were invited down to his shop to see the last few windows that he painted before they will be installed.  The windows look so small up on the temple, but when you stand next to them, they are BIG!  The two rectangular-shaped windows will go on the back (East) of the temple.  The largest one will be in the assembly hall on the second floor; the smaller (shorter) one is for the                       Good thing we saw them when we did, because the Celestial Room window was

Newly painted window    installed the next day!  It is 212 feet by 82 feet in size.  The other windows we saw   were the last five Star-windows to be installed with the red, white and blue colors.  They were positioned just as they will be in the temple, with the point of the star down.  They are so pretty.  We asked him about the paint.  The paint costs $75 a gallon for the undercoat and $91 a gallon for the finish coat!  They use two under and two finish coats on each window.  The company that makes the paint has been in business in Holland for 300 years and the paint has specially been formulated for the altitude and humidity we have in this area.  It has a very high gloss finish and makes the woodwork just shine.  (Please see figures 32, 33 & 34 in the Temple section that follows.)  [Sad note:  Elder Midgley died from cancer in 2007.  He was a wonderful missionay -- and a great harmonica player!   He taught many of us how to play the harmonica.]

 

Work continues inside the Temple as well, and we understand that it will be finished by February 1^st.  At least that is the target date!  The home that the church bought for the temple president was razed (on the corner, just North of the temple block) and they are building a new home on that lot; it will be in the 1840's style to fit in with the period.  The temple missionary housing units are moving along rapidly.  They really do fit in with the 1840-style homes, too.  We are really pleased with their appearance.  I have been able to

 

peek in a couple of them and they are much larger than they looked to us when they were just a foundation!  A few are single dwellings, but most are duplex, triplex or four-plex apartments.

 

Tours have started being quite slow.   But that doesn’t mean we don’t keep busy.   We have been asked to participate in humanitarian relief during our slower period, so I joined Jeanné and the other women at the Browning site in making warm knit hats for the needy.   It’s kind of fun.  You can almost make one hat in a day, so they go pretty fast.  Another thing that we are doing a lot of is forming singing groups for various programs that are coming up.  Jeanné and I are in a triple-quartet preparing for the Christmas day program here.

 

The Rendezvous shows shift to a different night each week now (instead of each month) because of the fewer number of visitors.  Since most of the shows are given on weekends, that allows everyone an equal opportunity to perform.  If you wait too long between performances you start forgetting things.

 

Jeanné and I were asked to participate in program called, ANauvoo-on-the-Road.@  The mission was asked to put on the program in an elementary school in Quincey, where there were almost 600 fourth graders who came to see us!!   We took demonstrations of Pioneer crafts that we do here in Nauvoo:  Brick making, blacksmithing, horseshoe making, cookie making, rope making, candle making, and Pioneer games.  Jeanné helped showing how they made gingerbread cookies, and gave them each one-- and I helped the blacksmith.  He made the little horseshoes and I gave one to each group (of 8 to 10 kids), and gave each student a ‘prairie diamond’ ring, made out of a horseshoe nail.  Except for 20 minutes when the school served us a delicious meal, we were constantly busy from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.  It was fun, but we were exhausted.  It is a full hour‘s drive each way from Nauvoo to Quincy!  So it was a full day.

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          Buffet dinner with good friends at Christmas                  Sister Birschbach, Jeanné, Sister Child, Ann Sager, Elder Child

    Elder Schofield, Sister & Elder Orton and Elder Jarvis                

 

            Well, we had a lovely Christmas!  The first two Christmases we spent away from home, on our first mission, were quite lonely and somewhat sad because of that.  But this Christmas was special.  We had a lovely dinner with over 200 people in attendance and even though it was similar to our Thanksgiving dinner, this time we had pot roast instead of turkey!  And was it so good!  The dinner was an assigned pot-luck, with the mission providing the meat (as at Thanksgiving.)   Jeanné cooked the meat according to a recipe that one of the missionaries got from the chef at Hotel Utah, many years ago, and it was absolutely delicious!  Our roast weighed 16 lbs!  It was almost too big for our pan!  We divided up into District Afamilies@ again, but this time the families were 3 different districts than last time, so we got to visit with different missionaries.  After the lovely meal, we had a fun program of music and caroling.  The whole thing lasted over 4 hours, and made a wonderful day. 

 

The Eliasons, one of our favorite couples, stopped by and spent a few minutes with us, which was special.  They are from Idaho, and run a cattle ranch.  Their children have been running the ranch, and with the drought and now so much snow, they are having financial problems and they will be going home a month early with our Mission President’s blessings to try to save things.  We already miss them, and they haven’t gone yet!  That[s what has made our mission here so special.  All the wonderful missionaries that we have learned to love.  It was such a wonderful place to be.  Everyone knew you and you waved and said, ‘Hi’ to everyone you saw,  sometimes even to those you didn’t know!  We felt like it would be how heaven will be, for it seemed a little like heaven on earth.

 

We are kept so busy that we don‘t have time to be homesick.  We have a new family of all these wonderful missionaries right here in Nauvoo that we dearly love.    We think we have told you before how everyone gives little birthday gifts to you on your birthday.  Well you ought to see what happens at Christmas!  We could hardly hold all of the little presents and things they stuffed our mail box with each day, we had to carry them home in a grocery sack!

 

The missionaries put on a Christmas program in the Auditorium of the Joseph Smith Academy.  It holds a lot more than either of the two theaters in the Visitors Center, so we invited members from the Ward and the community to come and join us.  Our 100-member choir sang several numbers, Jeanné ‘s group (the Nauvooettes) and the men’s barbershop chorus that I sang in (the VLQ -- Very Large Quartet) both sang, and then a triple quartet that we both were in sang the cute song, Twelve Days After Christmas, which had so many crazy actions in it we wished that someone had taken a picture!  Does it sound like we had a lot of fun here?  You are right!

 

The Browning Home, where we spend three days a week now, includes a two-room log cabin as a part of the complex.  The largest room (perhaps 12 feet square) has a lovely large fireplace in it in which we keep a big (gas) fire burning.  But all the heat must go up the chimney, because it really doesn’t ever get very warm in there.  When we go in on our tours, it still feels cold to us!   And 60% of the homes here in Nauvoo were log cabins like that one!  Whew.  We just don’t know how blessed we are to live today. 

          In the log cabin behind the Browning home

 

We received a copy of a little monthly newsletter entitled, Temple Times published by the Nauvoo Temple Committee.  The December 2001 issue reads:

 

                                       “Nauvoo Temple Exterior Nears Completion”

“Following nearly two years of construction activity, the exterior of the Nauvoo Temple nears completion.  According to Elder Ron Prince, Temple Project Supervisor, the effort has been blessed with moderate weather.

“Hand-set limestone blocks fill the arches and the portico on the west façade of the temple.  Additional star stones project from the roofline and function, with the tall star chimneys, as anchors for the balustrades along the roof edge.  Three complete passes of tucking, the stone grouting process, seal the exterior temple stones in place. 

“Sod and tree planting replace construction equipment on the site and fill much of the temple block as the landscaping continues.  Granite pavers mark the parking lot while red brick pavers laid in a herring-bone pattern cover the walkways near the building.

“Elder Prince noted that the remaining detail of the temple exterior construction and the landscaping features are both ‘moving ahead rapidly to conclusion. ‘It’s always a race for time with weather,’  Prince admits, ‘but we are happy we’ve been so blessed this fall.’”

 

They were also requesting volunteers for the open-house, to park cars, transport guests and direct traffic.  Others will greet guests, introduce videos, usher and serve light refreshments.  Persons from the five temple district stakes and other areas who are interested in helping are invited to set aside some of their vacation time now so they will be prepared to assist, at the invitation of their priesthood leaders, according to Area President Donald L. Staheli.

 

Continuing to quote from the newsletter: “Interior --  Progress continues on the interior construction of the temple.  Millwork and painting proceed throughout the building, while specialty decorative painting in the instruction, assembly and celestial rooms provides striking artistic detail.  The wood columns in the assembly room, for example, have been treated with several different finishes to resemble marble.  Another historic replication, the rostrums installed in either end of the assembly room, represent both the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthood offices.  Curved railings now outline the completed spiral staircase in the southwest corner of the temple.  Parking Facility -- Concrete work progresses on the newly constructed public parking garage.  According to Elder Vivian Butt, construction supervisor, nearly 80 percent of the retaining walls have been poured and backfilled.  The first third of the lower floor is complete and progress continues on the second third of the floor.  Upon completion, the facility will park 200 vehicles.  Exterior --  Following the design of the original temple, chimneys emblazoned with a star motif  line the edge of the roof.  The chimneys, created from limestone, come in two heights and anchor the balustrade along the roofline.  Eight intricately sculpted Corinthian capitals, created from fiberglass, top the aluminum freestanding columns that accent the belfry.   Temple Missionary Housing --  Construction continues on the 24 temple missionary housing units on the flats.  Red brick veneers cover almost half of the dwellings and nearly all the units have windows installed.  Interior finishing continues as six of the units are painted and most have plumbing and electrical installations roughed in.”

 

Well, about now we were getting excited about the temple completion.  It was looking so lovely, and almost completed now.  They finally removed most of the cranes that were surrounding the building.  The balustrades mentioned above are all laying in the parking lot awaiting installation.  They look so big, down on the ground.  Once on the top of the temple, like everything else, they will look so small!

 

We were excited to learn that John, Leslie, Angie, Ann, and Bill and Ann Park will be visiting us in March.  Keith and April Oaks (our granddaughter) and their little son, Luke, our new little 2 month-old great grandson, spent five glorious days with us.   What a special Christmas present.  Oh, one special thing.  April and Keith were here only one day on which our cast was scheduled to perform in Rendezvous and with the few number of visitors this time of the year, they don’t put the show on unless there are at least 20 people in attendance.  Well, at our performance before they came we mentioned that it would be nice to have a show that night and our director, Sister Stutz, asked, “How many are willing to put on a show for the Thorups?”  And every hand in the place went up!  So we had a show for them!  (Actually we had more than 20 people, anyway!)

 

Perhaps the most notable thing at the beginning of December was the absence of visitors.  We were getting very few and far between.  At some of the sites we were lucky to have one or two tours (of two people each) a day!  But the week between Christmas and New Years brought a large number of visitors, many from nearby.  We especially appreciate those.  Well we keep busy doing various things, and the days don’t drag on much. 

January 2002

 

We had a nice New Years Eve party.  A local member, who owns the Nauvoo Family Motel, invited the missionaries and the ward members to use his ballroom for a New Years Eve party each year.  And we had a ball!  Everyone brought finger foods, and there was far more than anyone could ever eat, and good too.  Then our New Years Eve committee really out did themselves in providing fun entertainment all evening long.  We have a group of musically talented missionaries here (Elder Reed Payne, Leslie Thorup’s uncle is one) and they have come up with a small instrumental group they call, Mississippi Mud.  (The m is pronounced oo, so it is pronounced, Mood.)  Cute, huh?   And they are really good!  One of the missionaries in the group, Elder Taylor, retired from playing with the Disneyland band, and is he good.  He makes up all the music charts that they play off, and they are having much fun playing together!  You can’t believe how many talented people we have here.  At the party one young Korean sister missionary did a traditional Korean dance for us.  The Sewing Room made her costume and one of the men made the mask that she wore with it.  It was pretty unique to say the least!   A missionary, Elder Rees, was the M.C. for the evening.  He is a professional juggler and really good.  He put on several juggling acts for us at various times during the evening. .  Some of them we had never seen him do before.   Anyway it was a really fun evening.  Brother Kay Walker (who owns the Motel) provided everyone with hats, and noise-makers and confetti, etc., and on the stroke of midnight he had hundreds of balloons on the ceiling fall down.  It was some party.   The funny thing is that we were all so tired, before the event.   We are usually in bed by 10 and everyone was wondering how we would ever stay awake.  But we didn’t see anyone leave early! 

 

While we understand that Utah has had an abundance of snow and cold this year, our weather continues to be unbelievably good for Nauvoo.  I overheard one long-time citizen of the community say she could never remember a Fall like this one!  Well, as we have said all along, the Lord has had a hand in staying this weather so the temple, the parking lot, and the temple housing can all be finished.  And you had better believe it!  It has been cold this year, but nothing like it was last year, we are told.  Of course this all helps the temple and associated buildings proceed along on schedule.  The only problem has been that we keep getting rain storms that cause havoc with all the streets that have been dug up for utilities on the new temple housing.  We had a frog-strangler rain storm one day; it hit exactly at 5 p.m. (when the sites close) and really dumped on us for about 10-15 minutes.   The rain storms in Nauvoo are downpours like you may have never seen.  The lightning even goes sideways.  It is a scary sight!  And you really haven’t seen mud like we have here.  There is an abundance of clay around here, from which they made the lovely red bricks used in the homes here, and it might be good for bricks, but it makes a sticky mess to have to drive or walk through!!   But they are getting closer to being finished with the digging, which is the source of all the mud.   Can’t be any too soon for us!  Only a few of the Temple Housing units are left to be bricked up and the outside walls will then be completely closed in.  We hear from some of the workers that they are already painting and carpeting the units.   They have also been able to grade the landscaping around many of the apartments.

 

We have learned that there will be no concrete showing anywhere on Temple Square.   All of the fences have been installed in cement around the perimeter of the temple, but it is all being covered with limestone.  Nothing on Temple Square will be made of anything that could not have been here in the 1840's!   Not that it had to be here, but the material is from that which was available in Nauvoo days.  The parking lot is covered with granite pavers (a little larger than bricks) so that there will be no cement or asphalt on the driveway!  As mentioned before, they purchased the granite blocks in China!   You will have to see it to believe how beautiful this all will be.

 

Jeanné and I went to Keokuk for an orientation meeting on a new program we are involved in called, Volunteers In Public Schools (VIPS.)  We will be going to a school all day Mondays and Wednesdays each week during January and February to assist the teachers in any way they need our help: reading, math, etc., etc.  They have been doing this for something like 14 years and it has been very successful.  We feel honored to have been chosen to participate.  Jeanné and I are serving as volunteers at the Wells-Carey school in Keokuk this month, and it has been quite an eye-opener for us!  We each help with four classes, from 1^st to 5^th grade, two days each week; Mondays and Wednesdays.  We start at 9 a.m. and finish at 2:30 p.m., with an hour off for lunch.  The kids are really cute, and as one would suspect, some of the kids need a lot more help than others.  It has been enjoyable for us.  We have had to learn a few words that were never in our math vocabulary when we went to school 60 years ago, but that is par for the course! 

 

 

Jeannè with a couple of the children she tutored at an elementary school in Keokuk

 

The children and teachers, and the principal, really treat us quite nicely.  They are so polite, and seem to appreciate what we are doing for them.  Since we are doing this, we are only on our sites in Nauvoo on Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday (Thursday is our preparation day) so it makes the week seem even shorter than before!   It is a little sad because we are informed that this is the last year that the Church will participate in this volunteer program.  We understand that the missionaries will be used to serve in the temple during the winter months hereafter, here in Nauvoo, but no ‘volunte-ering for school’ is a new church-wide thing, so they won’t be doing it anywhere.  It could also be because of legal                         Wally with two of the children he tutored

implications.  We were told that one incident cost the Church $3 Million when a tutor had a student sit on his lap.  No one was around to verify his innocence, and the Church just paid rather than go to court; what a litigious world we are living it!   We have missed being at school twice, once because of Martin Luther Day and another day because the schools were closed for ‘snow days.’  They have several of these built into their school calendar each year.

 

We had our new mission president arrive this month.  When President Sam Park stepped in Nauvoo, on Saturday January 19th, he officially took over from President Richard Sager.  Pres. Sager stayed on for several days to help him with the transition.  On Thursday night, Pres. Park and Sister Park came to Rendezvous, and it happened to be our night to perform!  They said they were very impressed, and we understand that they have talked about nothing else since!   Pres. and Sister Park invited our cast to their house for an open house one evening.  Because of the number of missionaries here (about 180 right now) we were invited according to which Rendezvous cast we belong to (there are three) and we guess that is as good a way to divide us up as any.  It gave us an opportunity to meet them.  They are really fine people.  They are neighbors to Bob (my nephew) and Nancy Thorup, and they had nothing but good words to say about them.  They have Buddy Youngren as a house guest, and he gave a fireside talk based on his recently written book,  Joseph and Emma, a Love Story, at the open house.   Buddy has been the president of the Joseph Smith/Hyrum Smith family organization for about 30 years, and was asked by Pres. Lee to try to bring the two families together.  He commented it was about like bringing the Jews and the Arabs together!   But he has done a marvelous job and the families are talking together quite well now.  He says the Smith family all recognizes the prophet Joseph, even though the RLDS are putting him under the table now.  We had the pleasure of cleaning in the temple with Buddy Youngren one day, prior to the dedication.

 

So we had a program to honor our outgoing president and his wife.  We honored them with a variety show.  They were supposed to be try outs for the summer Sunset by the Mississippi program.  I sang, Aura Lee, with a male quartet composed of Ray Jones, Lamar Hair, and Dan Birschbock.   [We have kept singing together on occasion since returning home.]  We call ourselves the ‘Senior Moments’ and we sounded pretty good, even if I say so myself!   Then at the end of the program, sixteen missionaries were selected to represent the “old” members from last years Young Performing Missionaries-- and I was asked to be one of them.  When the YPM’s left last summer, they put on this cute program to say goodbye to the Sagers, and this was sort of a reprise, with each of us wearing a sign with the name of one of YPM’s on it.  (I was Elder Munz) he just got married to one of the lady YPM’s!  He is very handsome and talented -- so that’s probably why they chose me - ha!)  It was fun.  We were a little nervous when we learned that Elder Stahli, our Area President, would be in attendance. 

 

We finally got to go to the St. Louis temple.  Since we get off at 2:30 after school on Wednesdays, we got permission from our mission president and drove to St. Louis, stayed over night, and took in two sessions.  The weather was really nice, and it was a lovely trip.   It is a beautiful temple and we were happy that we finally got to go there.  The Celestial room has a chandelier that is absolutely gorgeous!  Wow!   Probably the only time we will get to go, since we will have our own temple soon now, and we can only get permission to go to the St. Louis temple every six months.   It was also quite nice to be able to attend the temple, for the first time in almost nine months.  Have to say, though, that the thought crossed our minds, as we looked at that lovely temple, we can hardly wait to be able to use “our” beautiful new temple here in Nauvoo.  That night when we got home we saw that they had finished putting on all of the balusters around the top of the roof of the temple.  Really like putting the frosting on the cake.  They make it look so beautiful.   This temple literally takes ones breath away!  Still can’t believe that the Saints could build that beautiful building during all the hardships, both physical and monetary, that they had to endure while here in Nauvoo.

 

Well, we found out what it is like to have snow here in Nauvoo!  As we have mentioned, it has really been cold, really too cold to snow much of the time.  Well, it warmed up and we got a nice snow, all of one inch!!  It was so cold, it froze to the ground and we had really a lot of trouble getting around, on one inch of snow!!  It would melt just enough during the day to create some ice, which would then freeze during the night, and watch out!  One of the senior missionary ladies fell on the ice and broke her collarbone!  I did a fancy dance myself, but managed to stay upright.  Whew!  Actually that was our first snow, and we have had snow twice since.  The last time, just this week, laid down about 8 inches of snow!  We understand it was the same snow system that hit Utah a week earlier.  When we have snow here it is accompanied by ice.  Here in Nauvoo, we were spared any damage, but in all the areas surrounding us tree and wires were down and many

 

 

homes were without power for well over 24 hours!  They even closed the schools for two days in Keokuk, just across the river from us.

 

The Catholic monastery, where the Nuns lived, was right directly across the street from the temple.   (I always thought the place where nuns live was called an Abby, but what do I know?  If they want to call it a monastery, that’s okay by me!)   It was the home of the Catholic Nuns who had taught at the school that I mentioned earlier.  They had lived there for years.  Jeanné and I had visited Nauvoo a couple of times when her parents were serving their mission there and we had always thought what a terrible eyesore the building was, and how it would have interfered with the view of the temple from the river.  Well, the Church negotiated with the Nuns that if they would sell them the rest of the site (the Church had already bought the school and the dormitory) they would build them another monastery in a town north of Nauvoo – where, it turned out, the elderly Nuns would rather be now that they weren’t teaching any longer.

 

They have started to demolish the monastery.  It only took a few days, and it is almost completely gone!  There is only one small part of the building left standing today.  Plus some big holes in the ground and a whole bunch of metal, piled up to be carted off somewhere.  We understand they plan to make the area into a park.  Even on these snowy days, we hear the rat-a-tat-tat of the pneumatic hammer as they continue the demolition, it sounds like one big woodpecker!  That will make a clear unobstructed view of the temple.   Here is a good one for you:   The local Nauvoo newspaper had a front page story showing three big pictures of the monastery being demolished, with a comment by the mayor of Nauvoo, saying:  “The saddest day in the history of Nauvoo.”   Boy!  Was he ever wrong?  He should have been here 156 years ago when the Saints were being forced out of the city at gun point, if he wants to know what “sad days” really are.  Maybe he just ought to read the history of his fair city.

 

We were told that we missionaries were going to be asked to help clean up the temple. We had been hoping for this privilege.  Last Thursday was our preparation day, and we were asked to go and clean up the temple!  What a pleasure!!  We cleaned from 8 to 11:30 a.m. and as luck would have it we got to see almost everything inside the temple!   We vacuumed, dusted and cleaned most of the temple from the basement to the 5^th floor!  What a beautiful place.  You will never see another one like this!   I may have mentioned before that nothing on temple square (Nauvoo temple square, that is) will be made from anything that couldn’t have been (the operative phrase) here in the 1840's.  Well, when you stop to think that through, it brings up a multitude of thoughts about what would and would not have been here (and before you get too curious, that is not entirely true ,obviously there are lights, not candles, for example.)   But, even the lights have been made to look like candles, and since they had no metal lockers in the 1840's, the Nauvoo temple lockers are made of beautiful walnut wood!!  Wow!    We couldn’t take pictures, so perhaps I can explain to you a little bit about it.   We entered the temple thru the underground tunnel that connects to the utility building in the back corner of the temple square (furnace, air conditioning, electrical, etc.) down through sub-tunnels, arriving in the basement where the baptismal font is located.  It is not completed yet, nor have the oxen arrived.  It is quite large; the same size as it was in the temple in 1841 when the font was dedicated the first time.

 

We then walked up the beautiful spiral staircase in the south-west corner of the temple.  We used this means of access to every floor, incidentally.  They are still working on this stairway, but the wooden hand rails are, again, walnut.  Beautiful!  All the wood in the temple seems to be walnut, including the hardwood floors, and most of the doors.  Some hall doors are painted and blend in so that they almost look like a part of the wall when they close.   I don’t know how to explain them otherwise.  Continuing up to the second floor, and we can identify it as the second floor, because all of the windows in the temple are round on the even floors!  They will eventually have beautiful curtains over them of the type that sort of fan out from the center, but right now, except for one that we saw finished in one room, all are uncovered, so we could still see out of them.   This floor is where the dressing rooms and lockers are, and initiatory areas.  As already mentioned, the lockers are walnut; the counter tops are all marble, as are all of the partitions between the toilets, etc.  I can paint this picture from my mind, but I can’t make it as beautiful as it really is.  On the third floor are the endowment rooms (four of them; patrons will move from room to room, but it will be on video) plus the magnificent celestial room, and that’s the same floor where the waiting chapel is, as well as several sealing rooms (not sure how many.)   The celestial room ceiling is over two stories high, and will have a beautiful stained glass window in it (it has been removed so it won’t be damaged during construction) and we noted the beautiful elliptical window near the top of the celestial room on the east side of the building that had just been installed this week.  It is over 8 feet high and about 24 feet long, but where it is, way up in the top of the room, it doesn’t look that large from ground level.    I am told it weighs 4000 pounds (2 tons!)  Again, wow!  The light fixtures will all have crystal hanging from them; they will just sparkle.

 

I can’t remember what is on the fourth floor, but I think there are two large sealing rooms, one of which will hold up to 50 people, among other rooms.  The fifth floor is where the temple workers lockers are.  We then walked down to the first floor, the level where you enter, and we saw the big auditorium (it looks somewhat like the main-floor room in the Kirkland Temple) and the recommend desk.  I am sure that there will be many pictures of all this in the Ensign after the open house.  (I have later learned that you can see much of this on the internet @ deseretbook.com/nauvoo/.)  Needless to say we were impressed - it is so beautiful.  I might remind those who might wonder about the amount of money that was spent on this temple ($23 Million) that it was been built entirely by donations, starting with a massive contribution by the James L. Sorenson family.  It will truly be a monument to those faithful people who built it so many years ago, many of whom ultimately gave their lives for their faith and courage.

 

We were excited about the Olympics in Salt Lake, and we had two couples come to our home to watch the opening ceremonies with us on our little 13 inch TV.   Our son, John, sent us some pictures of the Awards Plaza, and we were amazed at how beautiful they were able to transform that parking lot!    We tried to watch the highlights each evening on T.V. when we could and it has been very interesting.  We did watch much of the closing ceremonies, too.  One thing we may have in common with Utah this year is the cold!  Our temperatures aren’t that cold, but when you add the wind-chill factor here (it almost always is blowing hard) it feels a lot colder than the thermometer says it is!

 

We had a house guest with us most of the month.  Jeannè’s niece, Jill Moyes, (Steve and Delpha’s daughter) stayed with us for three weeks.  She was working as a volunteer in the Temple, doing gold leafing with a crew of other people who came here for that purpose.  Her daughter, Sheryl, came Thursday and will be going home with her.  They were traveling via Amtrak, so we hoped they make it okay, as we had quite a bad snow storm the night before.  Jill has had a real desire to see if the great Indian chiefs from around this area have had any temple work done for them, and has done quite a bit of research on it.  We spent part of one day visiting the library in Keokuk where they have a bunch of information about Indians, but it is all in reserved books that can’t be taken from the library, so we made a bunch of copies, etc.  It was fun learning

about those great men.  Chief Keokuk (for whom the city Keokuk is named) spent some time here in Nauvoo with Joseph Smith, as did many of the other chiefs.  Jill tells quite a story about them.

 

February 2002

 

We learned about the expanded dates for the open house.  They earlier announced that the open house would begin on May 6^th.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  The open house will begin on May 1^st.  But the first few days (mostly during the evening hours) are being reserved for local residents (Nauvoo itself, and what they call the tri-state area: Illinois, Iowa and Missouri.)  Anyone living in those areas can come, without a reservation, on those early days.   May 1^st is being entirely reserved for residents of Nauvoo!  That will be really nice.  They are sparing no expense to make this a really enjoyable experience for everyone who comes.  They are currently allowing residents of the tri-state area to make reservations on all of the expanded days and times (they don’t need reservations on those days reserved exclusively for them) and then on March 1^st, anyone can call or contact by e-mail and reserve more tickets for all available times left.  Since many of the first tickets were reserved by tour groups, after March 1^st it will probably be easier for the normal person who wants to get tickets.  We had already had some who have asked us to get tickets for them during the early days, but hoped that everyone would understand that it was being done to allow the local residents an opportunity to see the temple and it would defeat the purpose if we started allowing church members to take up those times.  The hours of the open house have also been extended, during the original days available, and we think no one should have any problem getting tickets.  People can even come without a reservation! 

 

Jeannè and I were on the committee for our Valentine’s Day party.  We were in charge of publicity.  I created all the signs, invitations, announcements, etc., on my computer.  We had the BYU kitchen staff repare a chicken dinner and the BYU students volunteered to serve us.  What a treat!  We usually have to stand in long lines and serve ourselves wherever we have a dinner..  The theme was, Love Makes the World Go Around.   The music was from the 1940-1950's era, and the table decorations were all based on song titles.  Those who did the centerpieces really came up with some cute ideas!   We also are had a large heart-shaped backdrop that couples could have their pictures taken in front of.  And our great AMississippi Müd  (pronounced Mississippi Mood) band played for us.  Don’t you all wish you all could have been on a mission like this one?

 

The Monastery (where the Nuns lived) is gone!  Every last piece of cement and brick!  There is just a big hole that they are filling in with soil so that the area can be landscaped.  They even took down a number of large trees, so there will be little to block the view of the temple now.  It surely looks nice.  Most of the work left on the temple is on the front where they are finishing the stairs and the walks leading into the temple.  We hear that the oxen have been installed around the baptismal font, and that the font itself is almost completed.  

 

February is definitely the slowest month for visitors.  Several days a week this month we did not have a single visitor at some sites.   Since Jeannè and I are in Keokuk volunteering at school that gives us more to do, so that has been a blessing in itself, and the VIPS program will be extended until March 24^th!  That will add another three weeks to our school volunteer work.

 

On February 4^th, we celebrated the ‘Exodus’ of the Mormons from Nauvoo, February 4, 1846.  They make quite a celebration out of it here.  On Sunday night, the 3rd, we had a fireside where many sang appropriate songs for the Exodus, or gave little personal vignettes about persons who left here (often ancestors of those who spoke) or other Pioneer stories.  Many of them heart-rending, and we were often brought to tears to as we heard of the struggles and sacrifices that were made by those remarkable people.   Jeannè and I participated in the music part.  My quartet sang, God Bless America, to begin the program with, and a double quartet, in which Jeannè and I both sing, sang Faith in Every Footstep as the closing number.   We also participated in a couple of other songs, during the program, by the VLQ (Very Large Quartet) in which I sing, and the Nauvooettes in which Jeannè sings. 

 

The next morning, Monday, we all gathered at the Family Living Center and all the missionaries had breakfast together and then either rode or walked (we rode in a carriage) over to the Exodus kiosk on the bank of the Mississippi river, where we had a flag raising ceremony, and the BYU students sang a couple of songs.  Boy!  Was it cold!

 

In keeping with the historic event, it turned out to be the coldest day of the year thus far!  And we all could empathize with the pioneer families who had to leave in 1846, as the temperature was recorded even colder than that!  What a sad day it must have been to leave virtually everything they owned behind and take off for -- no one knew where!  The weather was cold and rainy during the whole Spring of 1846, and as a result the wagon wheels would bog down in mud up to the hubs.  If they made five miles a day, it was considered a good day, and many days they only were able to travel one mile!   Countless people died along the way and were buried in unmarked graves.  Ground so hard that they could hardly dig a grave; they just piled rocks over the grave in hopes that it would keep the wolves from eating the bodies!  But, they kept going.  And you and I are the grateful recipients of their efforts in enjoying the beautiful city and state that we live in today. 

 

March 2002

 

            We have learned that we will be moving out of the Yearsley home around the fifteenth of April.  The Young Performing Missionaries will arriving here on May 3^rd and the young ladies will again live in this house.  We knew we would have to leave, and it is good to know when.  We have no idea where we will move to, so will have to wait on that.

 

Jeannè and I were going over the different sites we had worked in while on our mission in Nauvoo.  Jeannè and I worked together in the Browning, School House, Tin Shop, Lyon Drug Store, Post Office, Pioneer Craft House, and Visitors Center.  Besides those, Jeannè also worked in the Cultural Hall, Woodruff Home, Heber C. Kimball house, Bakery, John Taylor home, and the Lucy Mack Smith house.  Sites that I worked without Jeannè in were Brick Shop, Blacksmith Shop, and Riser Boot Shop.  You can see that Jeannè worked in many more sites than I did.                          Main Street

                                                                                                                         Print shop, Taylor home, Post Office

 

One Monday night we had a FHE in our big house.  We had 38 people here!  A missionary couple, the Henriksens, had served as humanitarian missionaries in the Philippines on a prior mission.  They worked under the direction of LDS Charities, which was begun perhaps 5 years ago when the Church realized that much of the money that members were donating for charitable purposes was being kept for operating expenses by the organizations that they had been using.   So the Church created their own organization and now many groups and companies who make large contributions, make them through LDS Charities because the church doesn’t keep any expense money.  It has become very successful.  They told how they would visit hospitals and schools, orphanages etc., and provide materials and equipment for them.  They had numerous

obstacles to overcome, and showed how the Lord always provided a way.  It was a very informative and inspirational evening.

 

We have been hit by another cold spell.  This is the worst we have had this winter.   Last Sunday the temperature got up into the 70^o ‘s then the cold hit and the temperature dropped to 9^o Monday night B that would be about -10^o with the chill-factor, which makes it even colder than the exodus re-enactment day.  Today it has snowed quite a bit, again giving us the most snow we have had all winter.  Hard to tell how much snow we have had because of the wind.  It blows it away before we can measure it!   I would guess at least 4 inches.  And now a strong, cold wind has started which caused the powers-to-be to close the sites this afternoon and send us all home

 

 

Well, this place continues to be one of activity.  If it isn’t one thing it is another.  This past month we have had truck after truck, full of furniture for the temple and for the temple missionary housing.  And we mean BIG 18-wheelers!   Across the street, where the Monastery used to be, the landscaping is virtually completed with sod planted on the crest and the rest - going down the hill - seeded.  They have also poured cement walks and created a planter box to make it attractive.  The entrance side walks to the temple are almost complete, in granite, as we mentioned before, and they placed pipes underneath to prevent them from freezing during the winter months.  A name plaque is being installed in the front of the new temple.

 

We are looking forward to many visitors this month.  The first week Fred and Peggy Westergard were our guests.  Then the following week we had our son, John, his wife Leslie, their daughter, Erin, and our daughter, Ann, and Bill and Ann Park, all here.  The Parks stayed with Ann’s brother, Elder Reed Payne, who lives just a block from us.  We are in seventh heaven thinking about all the company we finally are going to get! 

 

Well, the BIG change in our lives is we learned that we are being transferred to the Carthage Jail!  We will be there for the rest of our mission, we are told.  That means when we leave the home we are in we will move to an apartment in Carthage!  We don’t know how we could be so blessed!  It is every missionaries dream here to be able to serve there.  It is such a spiritual experience, and to be able to share that with others is a real honor.   We unders-tand that our apartment will have two bedrooms!  So we would still be able to have visitors.

 

The couple whose apartment we will be using will leave on April 10^th and we are scheduled to move on the

13^th as it stands right now.   Since that will be about a week                   Aerial view of Carthage Jail                               

 after we start, we will have to commute until we move.  As

 we have said before, nothing around here is cut in stone, so we are always vigilant about possible changes.   Our mailing address (and shipping address) will not change.  We have to come to the mission post office here in Nauvoo for all of our mail as before.  But, our phone number and our e-mail will change. 

 

We learned yesterday that we will continue working in Nauvoo one day each week -- in the Family Living Center.   Our day here will be on Monday’s, and our preparation day has been changed from Thursday to Wednesday now.  With having to come to Rendezvous twice a week, and later, Sunset by the Mississippi twice a week, we would be in Nauvoo quite a bit.   With having to attend church in Nauvoo, and

all else we are scheduled to do, we figure we will be in Nauvoo 5 or 6 days during the week, for at least part of the day. 

 

The first week of this month our weather turned very bad on us.  We had our worst storm of the year, and the coldest!  It hit Thursday night.  They closed our sites at 2 p.m. on Friday it was so bad.  The cold was the worst part.  It got down to -6^o and when you add the chill-factor it was -15 to 20^o for sure!   That’s cold enough to freeze your uncovered skin in just a few minutes.  We got a taste of what the Pioneers suffered through.  And the wind around here is relentless.  It almost always blows this time of the year and it is cold.  The weather still continues on its roller-coaster ride, up and down (mostly down lately,) but there is hope that it may warm up a bit this next week.  March came in like a lion and went out like a lion!   We are paying for the lovely mild winter we started with.   Once winter came, it just doesn’t seem to want to leave!  I have been

fighting a cold and hoarseness for almost two weeks now, and am convinced it is because of the cold wind that it just hangs on.

 

April 2002

 

Jeanné and I walked over to and spent some time in “the Groves” a small area which has been set aside to simulate “the Groves” that were used in Old Nauvoo for meeting places.  In this grove there are little signs with quotations taken from a number of different journal entries.  One that we took particular note of told about a church meeting that was interrupted by storm.  Everyone was getting up to leave when the Prophet Joseph suggested that they all unite in prayer and faith and maybe the storm would be abated.  It went on to say that the storm and heavy rain surrounded them on every side during the meeting but that the grove itself remained completely free of storm!  The journalist mentioned how wonderful it had been to be in the presence of a true prophet of the Lord.

 

There were actually two “groves” in Nauvoo; one a little north and east of the temple (they called it the East Grove) the other just west of it (called the West Grove) where the Joseph Smith Academy now stands.  The reason for the two was that they chose the one which had the more favorable wind, so the speaker could be better heard!  Well, the grove we visited has been made just north of the Yearsley home where we lived, in other words, it wasn’t in that location during the 1840's.

 

Plans are continuing for the temple open house and excitement can be felt in the air.  The temple missionary homes are nearing completion.  Several of the missionaries have been helping to set up the furnishings inside the temple missionary homes, making the beds, etc.  They are really super nice!   They have washers & driers, garbage compactors, electric can openers, dishwashers, and every other convenience to make them quite comfortable for the temple missionaries.  It seems like they will only just have to bring their clothes with them!  Everything else is being provided.  It will be much like staying in a Motel!   Sounds fun!   Incidentally, the furnishings in all of them are exactly the same!  Same colors, same everything.

 

One Saturday they had a “trial run” of taking people through the Temple and it seemed to work out well.  There were a number of problems develop, but that’s what they were looking for.  The tour will be long and difficult as people will have to walk up five flights of stairs, however only one flight at a time, as they will stop on each floor, but on the way down they will have to walk the whole way!  They do have an elevator for handicapped and others who can’t take stairs, but the elevator is rather small and this may be a problem depending on how many need it. 

 

Until we went to Carthage, we worked one day each week in the Family Living Center and one day in the Sarah Granger Kimball home.  So far we had only worked in the Family Living Center on Sundays and we could only demonstrate the way things work (they don’t do any work on Sundays so we couldn’t make any-thing.)   Now we will be able to make rope, candles, bread, and work on the looms, etc.  We have been hoping we would be able to do that.  The Sarah Granger Kimball home is where the Relief Society actually got started.  The organization took place in the Red Brick Store, but Sister Kimball was the one who got a few women together to begin a ‘charitable society’ to help                        Inside Family Living Center

with the building of the temple.   The Prophet Joseph told them that the Lord approved of their idea but had much more in mind for the women than the narrow idea that they started with.   The following week Joseph met with them in the Red Brick Store and officially organized the Relief Society.   The Sarah Granger Kimball home was restored through the efforts of Barbara Smith, while she was Relief Society general president.  There are a number of things around Nauvoo that have Barbara’s touch on them, including the beautiful Women’s Garden with its lovely statues, next to the Visitors Center, which made them special.

 

We moved to Carthage, and the Open House for the temple brought many more visitors here than normal, so we have been struggling to keep up with them; and the time, which flies by anyway, just spun out of control.  It was quite a trial moving from our big house in Nauvoo, to our little apartment in Carthage.  We struggled trying to find a place for everything we had while in our Yearsley mansion. 

 

I had a cataract removed from my right eye this month, not long after we moved to Carthage.  My eye doctor in Salt Lake had told me that he thought I would be okay until my mission was over, but it got to the point where I could hardly see out of that eye and decided now was the time. We found some fine doctors with offices in Keokuk, Iowa, just across the river from Nauvoo.  What a piece of cake!  The operation itself took less than 30 minutes.  The interesting thing was that, although they say I was wide awake, I can’t remember a thing!  The operation was a complete success and I can see so well, that now Jeanné who also has a cataract, is going to have hers done in June.  What a marvelous things they can now do!

 

May 2002

 

One thing that our move to Carthage changed was the clothes that we wore.  In Carthage we did not wear period clothing, except when we were in Rendezvous, or in Sunset on the Mississippi programs in the evenings.  We were in Rendezvous two nights and Sunset two nights which meant a lot of driving to Nauvoo.   Sunset didn’t begin until about 8 p.m. which means it wasn’t over until 9, and when we have two shows in Rendezvous we didn’t get out until 9:15 so we didn’t get home much before 10 p.m., as it is nearly a 30 minute drive to Carthage (we found a short cut that reduced our time needed to travel there.)

 

It was certainly different in Carthage.  Our tours were much more spiritual and it was nice to bring a little more spirituality into our mission.  We sometimes found it difficult to give this tour, as it brought quite tender feelings to the surface as we would talk about the martyrdom of the Prophet and Hyrum.   Our biggest concern was how to give the tour in as short a time as possible during the open house.  At first we thought we could break the tour in parts and offer them a choice, but we found most people wanted the whole thing and we quickly gave up on that idea.  Most members of the Church know the situation surrounding the martyrdom, but members of other faiths don’t have that background so we had to fill in as many blanks as possible.  We ask them to take pictures during the tour, but many wanted to stay behind and take pictures, especially in the martyrdom room, and there were those who stayed anyway.

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                       Martyrdom Room                                     

 

We had the wonderful privilege and opportunity to take a tour of the temple just before the Open House             started.  What a beautiful place.  The outside is unbelievable beautiful but even that doesn’t hold a candle to the inside!   What a breathtaking experience that was!   They practiced on us, in the way they were to take tours through during the open house, and they had it down to a science by the time the open house began.  Pretty neat!  Pres. Hinckley called the Nauvoo temple the “World’s Temple” and it really is.                            

        Statues of Joseph & Hyrum in back of Carthage Jail     

      at entrance to Visitor’s Center

                                                                                                

 Jeanne’s brother, Steve, and his son, Robert, were here for a couple of days prior to the open house and were given a cook’s tour of the building by one of the temple building missionaries.  (Steve worked as the         restoration architect in Nauvoo for many years, and he worked to make sure the temple exterior was authentic.)    They have done a marvelous job of integrating the new temple missionaries housing into the Old Nauvoo landscape and Steve was so delighted, he was like a kid in a candy factory.  We had wondered what his impression would be of the temple missionary housing and he was very pleased. The temple missionaries all arrived and we understand there would be a total of 170 of them!  Since there is only housing for 60 couples, we don’t know where they put them all!  They told us there will be more volunteers here from the surrounding 27 Stakes for the open house than there were in Salt Lake for the Olympics!  They were expecting over 400,000 people to come to the Open House!   Whew! 

            We didn’t have any idea of how many of those would find their way to Carthage, but we learned it was about 10% of them!  We found we had to ‘cram,’ sometimes,over 70 people into a tour, and the jail only comfortably holds about 40.   It was the only way we could accommodate the crowds, so we hoped the people understood. Most were very cooperative I found.  The spiritual feeling that we had when giving the events of the Martyrdom was almost overwhelming.  The visitors, as did we, often left the Martyrdom Room in tears.

 

Our weather here has been bad at best.  We have had a couple of    nice days this week, but mostly our weather has been cold and wet.  I    Door in martyrdom room with bullet hole    can assure you it kept us very busy. 

 

Our goal during the open house was to try giving the tour in as short a time as possible and still retain the spirituality of the experience.  I feel we did a good job, handling the long lines that extended well out into the parking lot at times, and especially when we had to cope with the occasional rain storm that came along.  With the new temple came temple workers who had been called from their current temple assignments to work in the Nauvoo temple.  Several of these wonderful men and women used the time when they weren’t working to volunteer to come and help us handle the large crowds we experienced during the open house.   They were truly a life saver.

 

One Saturday, our biggest day to that time (we had over 1700 visitors), it rained all day long, a real frog-strangler at times.  And people were really very patient as they waited, thank goodness.  By the end, we were having over 1900 visitors here a day, the temple open house had been having 7 to 8000 a day, we were informed.  That had been hampered by the rain, too, as the lawns that were being used to park the cars are so wet that the cars got stuck in the mud!   By and large, however, things went along quite well in spite of the weather.   We were told that over 330,000 people went through the temple during the open house!   We had in excess of 100,000 people visit the jail during that time.  I don’t know how we could have handled more!

 

June 2002

 

Well, the big rush was finally over and we settled into what we hoped was going to be the pace for summer.   The past month had been wild.  Earlier I mentioned we had reached a high of about 1900 visitors a day.  Well, we finally got up to over 3,000 a day!    You might be interested in these statistics:

 

Nauvoo Temple open house total visitors: (May & June 2002)       331,856

 

Carthage Jail visitors during open house period:    104,176

Total visitors, May 2002:   38,633

Total visitors, June 2002:   65,543

 

Our largest number of visitors (in Carthage) was on June 20^th:    3,211    (247 per hour)

Average visitors per tour, May 2002:   35

Average visitors per tour, June 2002:   56

 

The temple open house used 600 volunteers per day.   We accomplished the task here in Carthage with just 8 missionaries, plus four Temple Missionary volunteers who helped with crowd control.  They had so many volunteers from the various Stakes in the area helping them that they came over and helped us!   We were exhausted by the end of the Open House, but it was special to have that many people come and see this sacred shrine.   We had quite a few General Authorities and other special guests visit, as well as most of the Tabernacle Choir members who also visited us here, and it was special to take them on the tour.

After our crowds exceeded 2000 visitors a day, we got permission to shorten the tour.  Doing this we reduced the length of the lines to just 45-60 minutes instead of up to 3 to 4 hours prior to that.  The weather was not the greatest either.  To add to our problems, we had about 2 inches of rain some mornings and many visitors were drenched.  Some gave up and left, and we don’t blame them.   The movie we show here was made an option to watch -- if they had time.  We really encouraged it, though, as it is such a great movie, about Joseph Smith as seen through the eyes of those who knew him. 

We began the tour outside the jail at the well (where Joseph fell,) where we would briefly tell the things that took place leading up to the martyrdom.  One of the wonderful temple missionaries, who were helping us, would then advise us that it was time to move, and we would take our group up into the “Martyrdom Room,” as we called the jailor’s bedroom where Joseph and Hyrum were martyred.   We would try to limit our stay there to six minutes, after which we would move them across the hall into the “Dungeon” cell where we would continue the tour and answer any questions they might have.  As soon as we moved out of the Martyrdom Room, another tour was waiting         Well where we started beginning our ‘short’ tours

at the top of the stairs so that they could enter just as soon as we got out.  Sometimes that was difficult to get people out of the room because of the Spirit that is felt there.  Since, for some, this was their only opportunity to visit, it was hard to ask them to rush.   The real time involved in taking a tour was the time that it took people to take pictures and move from one place to another, especially when they had to climb those very steep stairs up to the 2^nd floor!   Very few people wouldn’t try to make it, including most of those who had even come in wheelchairs!   They would almost do anything to make it up those stairs.  And, struggle as they did; most made it.  We kept several boxes of tissues in the martyrdom room, because one or more on the tour would frequently be shedding tears at the end, including Jeanné and me!  It is very difficult to give the tour and not be affected by the strong Spirit you feel.  We can tell you, we have become quite proficient in telling the story of the martyrdom!  There aren’t many questions about the event that we haven’t had to answer and carefully explain.

 

We were joined by the YPM’s (Young Performing Missionaries) to the second Rendezvous performance each night which added about 15 minutes to that program.  They are cute, and talented kids and it is fun to get to know them.     Our attendance is a full house each night.  The audience really added to our performance.  You could feel their energy.  (It helped wake us up!)    The Sunset by the Mississippi program was going pretty well now, with the YPM’s joining us there too.  We never had as large of an audience all the previous summer as we had during the open house weeks.  There are many, many seats (almost 2000) but that was the first time we had seen them scouting around for more seats!  The weather (again) was a limiting factor that year -- we did not perform outside if it rained - last year we went in the Sarah Granger Kimball barn, but it was far too small to hold the crowd this year.

 

After the Open House, we had a few days of breathing room until the day before the dedication when the crowds grew pretty large again, but not so large as they had been before.   We thought they might subside after the dedication but so many people were coming to go to the temple in Nauvoo after it had been dedicated, it seemed like Carthage was the second place they wanted to see, so our tours were still fairly large, but manageable.  For example we had four tour buses one Thursday (55 people each) bring a youth group from Arkansas to do baptisms for the dead, and swamped us for a few hours.  That was quite typical of what we began to see.    Well, enough of our woes, which were our blessings. 

We had two extra young Sister Missionaries (YSM’s) assigned to Carthage for the past month, but those missionaries spent most of their time in Nauvoo helping with the Open House.  Now that we had all six of them back, we were a bit tour-guide heavy in Carthage, and several senior missionaries had to leave for special reasons

            Our six young missionaries who helped us            (health, deaths, etc.) for a few days, so they asked we                                      senior missionaries to help out over in Nauvoo for a week or so.  

                       

Jeanné and I put back on our Pioneer-period clothing, and I worked in the Blacksmith Shop and Jeanné in the Pendleton Log School House.   There were a few new missionaries arrive, too, that needed time to learn the scripts, so it left them needing extra help in Nauvoo.  All I can tell you is that I learned what HOT is!   I had worked in the Blacksmith Shop before, but not on hot summer days like at this time.  The Blacksmith Shop has no air conditioning, only a few ceiling fans, and especially when you work over the forge, I found out what HOT is (Jeanne= told me the temperature was over 100^o outside!)   They chose the days for us to go over to Nauvoo based on the nights that we would stay there and be in the Rendezvous show so we wouldn’t have to travel so much.   By the time the day was finished, I was soaked through to the skin with perspiration!   With no “home” to go to wash up in, we went to the Visitor’s Center and used the rest room for a sponge bath and to change into our stage costumes, and then grab a bite to eat, all in about 45 minutes!   It worked out fine and we lived through it.

 

We can’t tell you how blessed we were to have been in Nauvoo, and Carthage, at this special time.  The Lord sustained us through all of it and will, as we continue.  Our health was good and our strength was good, and we really enjoyed what we did. 

 

Prior to my mission, one of the several operations I had in conjunction with my prostate cancer left me with a low-grade staph infection.  My doctor thought it could be controlled while on my mission by having me take a daily antibiotic, but toward the end of our mission the infection started started getting worse and when I informed Dr. Middleton about it, and sent a picture of it to him, he told me that I had better come home for what he referred to as a life-saving operation.  That meant we would have to cut our mission short about two months; but the operation was successful.   We left Nauvoo at the end of July.   The open-house and dedication of the temple had been in May and June, so we were there during that special time when we felt we were really needed.  Our mission was certainly a memorable experience.  One that we will never forget.

 

During the first half of our mission in Nauvoo, it had been a tradition to take each person, leaving for home, to the steps of the Cultural Hall and sing, “Farewell, Nauvoo” to them.  It was such a sad thing, and many, including me, would tear up by the time the song was over.  The first time we participated in one of those experiences I commented that if we had to participate in that, I didn’t want to leave!  When President Park came, he changed that farewell experience to having dinner, with all those who were leaving, in his home, with his and his counselor’s wives cooking the dinner.  We were grateful for the change.  However, as I come to the end of my journal, I would like to finish by writing out the words to that beautiful song:

 

Farewell Nauvoo

And so Nauvoo I say farewell to you,

With numb and aching heart a last adieu.

          And through my tears I look to homes beyond;

Could ever I be fond of one as you?

One Cardinal song,

One sunset glow,

One Nauvoo dawn,                               

 

One silhouette of woods on snow.

From templed hills faint echos ring,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Where prophets walked and talked with God

There memories linger.

And so I go and hide my aching heart;

No one will see my tears when I depart.

This home I leave will shelter memories clear

Of all that I hold dear, in old Nauvoo.

Farewell, Nauvoo

Farewell, Nauvoo

 

Words & music by Nonie Sorenson                              – a former Nauvoo missionary.