Epilogue

Good-bye Nauvoo

Good-bye Backyard

Last dishes washed without a dishwasher

View out the kitchen window

Ready to fly

with my own little piece of the greenhouse.

 We stopped at Cahokia, only to realize that the museum isn't open on Mondays.  But I still climbled Monks Mound.

View from top of Monks Mound. St. Louis Arch in the background. 

We stayed in Hopkinsville, Ky.  One hour north of Nashville, the night of the tornado.

First site of the Smoky Mountains. 

 Welcome Home

Home.  Hmm.  Somethings missing. 

What?!  Everything is missing. 

Ah. The most important thing is still up. 

Hung up our family picture.  Now I'm home.

STICK!

Welcome home present from the Bradleys. 

Sister Bloxham from Nauvoo!

Spring in Sanford

Now we are really home.  Dee fixes our dryer. 

Final week

We left Nauvoo 9 days ago, but I'll try to remember our final week.  We worked, but mostly in the greenhouse. It was too cold and wet outside. 

Our coleus collection

I panned the pot washing operation.  We wash a lot of pots in the winter. 

Richard and Adam.  How I'll miss them. 

We ate dinner out almost every night.  It was hard to get our food in our refrigerator eaten up. We had district meeting dinner at the Warners'.  We had dinner the next night at the Willard Richards home with several FM couples. 

FM friends

Hidden in a back room of the original house

Beer Cellar added by the German owner

View of the temple from the side porch

We said farewell at Site Training on Wednesday, along with four other couples who were going home within the week.  Several more will follow and many more new missionaries will come.

Thursday we cleaned and packed.

And maybe I got to do something I'd wanted to do before I left.  Or maybe I just dreamed it, like Sister Prettyman. 

Friday  Richard took the grounds crew to Red Front for sweet rolls and hot chocolate.  It was so good.  Richard's wife, Mary Ann, and sister came with the children.   After work  Trish checked our apartment out.  We passed. We had dinner and played games with our upstairs neighbors, the Weldons. 

Receiving our FM flag from Jordan, FM supervisor extraordinaire. 

Saturday we packed the car, gave food away from our cupboards, and ate dinner at El Camino with some friends. 

Sunday we said good-bye to Burlington Ward.  Then had dinner at the Howards, who go home in a couple of weeks.  Elder Howard and Dee are third cousins once removed through the Cluff line.  Elder Howard introduced us to many things Cluff.  Sister Howard and I are on the same page in life's philosophy.  She's been a good friend.  The Prettymans were the other FM couple leaving with us. Such good people.

Best of all, Sunday night, we had a fireside with President Rizley.  I'm so glad we finished our mission with one of my favorite things - learning from our president.

So Farewell Nauvoo.  What wonderful memories we take with us, but also knowledge, friends, a deepened testimony of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

 I was instructed in my setting apart blessing to be happy.  And I have been peacefully happy here.  I've enjoyed the work, even though often it was physically hard.  I was also told in my blessing that I'd have good health, and except for a cold and some other strange two day thing, I've been in good health, nothing debilitating.  I was told that I'd make eternal friends.  That I have.  So many.  I hope our paths cross often in this world, as well as in the world to come.  Finally I was told that I'd have experiences that would help me for the rest of my life.   It awaits to be seen how that plays out.  I'm not sad I'm leaving, but so happy I came.  The rest of my life will be richer because of the last 18 months.

Winding Down

We have one week of work to do before this grand experience comes to an end.  You might wonder how I'm feeling.  I'm ready.  If all of these good friends were staying forever, I'd be more sad.  But many have already left and eventually they all will leave, scattering back to their homes.  Some of us will cross paths again, which is something great to look forward to.  In the mean time, we have one more week of work, site training, and a dinner at Willard Richard's house.

The most exciting thing this week happened on Monday.  We had our exit interview with the mission president. Only he's not a mission president, but a site director.  It's a little confusing, because we are missionaries, and he is a president.  But Nauvoo is no longer the Illinois Nauvoo Mission, but rather Nauvoo Historic Site, under the direction of the history department of the church rather than the missionary department.  He gave us a lot of good counsel and we really loved talking with him.  Nauvoo Historic Site is in good hands.

The second best thing was Zone Conference.  President Rizley created a power point about the priesthood, which our zone leaders, the Carlsons, used to lead a really good discussion about the role of the priesthood, especially has it relates to women's role.  I'm sorry that was our last zone conference.  The thing I will miss most here is the learning.  Our leaders have been the best teachers of gospel principles.  And our cohort has so much experience living the gospel.  The discussions we have are deep and meaningful.  It helps that the Joseph Smith Papers have been published.  The scholarship that is coming from them is outstanding.

 Work this week was very slow, too cold to go out, not much to do in the greenhouses, so we washed pots, and transplanted a few seedlings into trays.   Finally Thursday another shipment of plants came in.  They are shipped in trays of plugs. Each plug contains a flower.  We transplant the plugs into pots.  It takes about a day and a half to get them all done.  Time passes much faster when we are out working in the yard.

As a mission in Nauvoo comes to an end we start missing each other, so there are lots of dinners.  Wednesday forty missionaries gathered at Dr. Getwell's restaurant to honor our photographer, Elder Cornwell.  We were lucky to be here with the Cornwells.  Not only did he photograph our time here, but he and his wife are just a good couple to know.  And they have a son or daughter in Winston-Salem, so we hope to meet up with them at the Raleigh Temple from time to time.

Thursday we were invited to Newel K. Whitney's house, by the Odums, who are missionaries from South Carolina.  After a good dinner, we played dulcimers and discussed the Civil War.  They are another couple who we will see in North Carolina.  I've been asked so often since the Odums came, why don't I have an accent.  They speak real Southern. 

Dee in front of Newel K. Whitney's home, completely modernized inside. 

Saturday we cleaned like crazy.  All of the blinds had to be taken down and washed, along with the curtains. Most things are packed that we aren't using.  I hope it all fits in the car.

Between ice storms I've been taking afternoon walks, enjoying living in so peaceful a place.  This afternoon I thought, this is the Lord's revenge on those who took the saints' property away from them, a revenge that didn't hurt anyone, but restored what was rightfully theirs.   There is a quote by John Taylor, third president of the church,  that he gave in 1882.

As a people or community, we can abide our time, but I will say to you Latter-day Saints, that there is nothing of which you have been despoiled by oppressive acts or mobocratic rule, but that you will again possess, or your children after you. Your possessions, of which you have been fraudulently despoiled in Missouri and Illinois, you will again possess, and that without force, or fraud or violence. The Lord has a way of his own in regulating such matters.   JOURNAL OF DISCOURSES 23:61-62

The Lord does indeed have his own way of regulating affairs.   The Nauvoo Restoration Incorporated started buying back the dispossessed property in the 1960s, and it was of course done without force, fraud, or violence.  The process has been going on since then, including restoring the temple.   Nauvoo stands as a monument to the men and women who didn't lose faith, even as their property and the lives of many loved ones were ripped from them.  As Wilford Woodruff left Nauvoo he said:
"I left Nauvoo for the last time perhaps  in this life. I looked upon the temple and city of Nauvoo as I retired from it and felt to ask the Lord to preserve it as a monument to the sacrifice of the Saints. "

That prayer has been answered and continues to be answered.  By summer there will be a whole new section of restored homes just below the temple.  In a couple of years a new visitor's center will be built.   Some people have compared this town to Williamsburg.  It is not. The tour guides are not professionals. They are all volunteers and for half the year young women missionaries guide the tours.  They share the stories of the people who lived here.  These stories cause us to ask questions - like why did they come and why did they stay?
  Though Nauvoo is a historical mission, not a proselyting mission, visiting here can be a spiritual experience.

Old style fence

New style fence around the newly rebuilt Hunter home. 

It's been a privilege to serve here.  I will miss it, but I'm ready to move on to the next thing in my life.

Love is in the Air

Steam rising from the river on a frosty morning. 

After church on Sunday we were invited to the Mecham's for dinner.  Sister Mecham is 89 years old, but always sends a missionary couple off with a farewell dinner.  This was ours.  She told us we had to eat her cake for an appetizer.  The reason was she had other things for dessert.  Cake was followed by a pot roast dinner.  Then Elder Mecham recited poems he'd written and memorized.  I asked Sister Mecham what was the largest crowd she had ever served?  200!  She lived in Florida in her younger years and every December they had an open house for the neighbors.  The neighbors brought family who were visiting, and so it grew.  We all have a mission in life and I think one of Sister Mecham's missions is to entertain.  She was a professional clown and she still likes to make people happy.

The work week continued as usual with a little sanding in the paint department, potting up newly arrived annuals for the garden, and washing pots.

Sister Willmore dropped by the carpentry shop and took our picture.  She also showed us how to edit photographs on our phone.  I'm always learning new things from the other missionaries. 

One day in the pot shop we learned about grafting from a master gardener.  

Elder Barrow was given a few unusual challenges.  He never knows what he will be asked to do.  One task that came his way was fixing the dryer vents in an apartment building where the young sisters live during the summer.   The vents emptied into the attic instead of the outside.  So he had to crawl up  through a 2 foot hole in each apartment and reroute the vents.  It was cold, and he couldn't wear his coat and get through the small hole.  Later this week the missionaries working at Browning Gun complained that the log cabin behind the house was cold, despite the gas logs burning in the fireplace.  Elder Barrow discovered that the chimney actually worked and instead of smoke, carried the heat straight up and out.  So he created a plug for the chimney. Soon the room was toasty warm.  Don't worry.  He checked for CO and CO2.  All is well.

Elder Barrow at the site of his work. 

See the makeshift damper

It snowed the morning after he created the shield, and I went with him to shovel the walks and check on how the shield was working.  It was a beautiful cold morning and I took some frosty pictures from inside and outside Browning Gun.

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This pillar of light is actually the end of the rainbow. 

We no longer have mission training.  It is now historic site training.  This week we critiqued the newest Nauvoo brochure.  After the discussion President Rizley shared some things learned on their trip to Egypt comparing the Egyptian temples to temples of the covenant people of God.

The weekend was packed with activity.  Friday night we had a mission Valentine Party, complete with a game of matching first names of missionaries to last names, a pot luck dinner, and some round dancing.  My favorite dance, The Virginia Reel,  capped the evening.  Elder Barrow and I won the prize for the most enthusiastic reelers - a courting candle holder.

Since we call each other Elder and Sister
it was a challenge to match first names to last names

waiting for dance instructions

Elder Cornwell, our mission photographer

On Saturday for our last big hurrah before leaving the mission we finally made it to Springfield and Lincoln country.  The Howards came with us.   It was well worth the trip.

In front of the Lincoln home - the only home he ever owned.  The family lived here 17 years.  They rented it out while in Washington, planning to return at the end of his presidency. 

 The Lincoln Museum was the best I've ever been to.   If you ever get a chance please visit.

Lincoln's law office. 

Lincoln's cabinet discusses the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Lincoln's loved to entertain - at least Mary did.

Only 300 of the 500 invited guests came because of the rain.  She outdid Sister Mecham.  I doubt she fed them a meal.