Take your wife to work day.

I've mentioned before that every day is different here in Nauvoo.  Today I decided maybe Dee needed me more than the ground's crew did.  So after picking up sticks with the crew, Dee picked me up and I spent the day doing downspout extensions. I was his left-hand man.  We had to find all of the houses where missionaries lived and make sure their downspouts had extensions on them.  The houses are all over town, so we had fun exploring Nauvoo.  I did help, but at the end of the day I was convinced he could do the work even with his left hand limitations.

Dee with his left-hand woman.

Ducks laying low. It's hunting season.

After work Sister Archibald  introduced me to Irene's dulcimers. Sister Archibald had told me about playing dulcimers at Irene's.  One day, while Dee and I were touring the Brigham Young home, I met Irene.  What a wonderfully open and creative person.  Her house was built from logs from a 18th or 19th century Pennsylvania log house.  She builds instruments.  When I walked in she sat me down with a dulcimer and we started playing.  Surprisingly, I could pretty much keep up with Irene and Sister Archibald.  She sent the dulcimer home with me so that I could practice. 

Irene is Hawaiian

Irene with her husband who if from Tonga

Sister Archibald

Me

Irene's house is round. 

A few of Irene's instruments

Irene's front view

Back to work

After the busy weekend it felt good to get back to our routine - planting bulbs and picking up sticks.
We were greeted at break time with the FM scarecrow.

Pumpkin dump at FM compost pile

Now back to our mission

Last week a young sister missionary collapsed in the Visitor's Center.  She has been hospitalized all week and Sunday we had a mission fast for her.  The mission doctor said it is a miracle she is alive. But miracles happen all the time here.  A senior missionary had a horse step on his chest.  He survived, and is still serving here.

After church on Sunday we served in Browning Gun. We learned the tour rapidly because we had a steady stream of visitors all afternoon.  Jonathan Browning invented the repeating rifle. A faithful member of the church, he followed the Saints to Ogden, Utah. Johnathan never patented his invention, but his son, John Browning patented over 120 gun improvements and inventions.  These include the 1911 semi-automatic pistol and a machine gun that was used in both World Wars.  Browning Gun stayed in the family for 4 generations before it was sold.  It still exists in Morgan, Utah.  Some people come to Nauvoo just to see the Browning Gun shop.  There are original guns here on display.
Giving tours is a lot of fun. Every group was different. My last tour was for a sister from Nigeria and her local friend.  She is the Stake Relief Society president in her stake and is very excited that the city she comes from will get the second Nigerian temple.

Sunday night we had district meeting at our district leaders' home, the Nelsons, who are from Farmington! A wonderful day of worship and service.

Saturday Bootiful Nauvoo

Ignore the dates on most of my posts.  I'm always a few days behind. This weekend was crazy busy.  Saturday was our P-day, but it's a good thing we got our chores done during the week.  The schedule for the next week hadn't been posted by Friday night, so I checked it Saturday morning and discovered we were assigned to a site on Sunday! So after a nice leisurely morning, with a pancake and sausage breakfast, we dressed in our Sunday clothes and headed to Browning Gun so we could at least get an idea of the tour.  Elder Weldon, who we came out with, gave us a very thorough tour.

Bootiful Nauvoo started at 2:00 with pumpkins being launched from a canon.  I tried to take a picture of it firing but the pumpkin went way too high.  The men firing it were having a great time seeing which pumpkin went highest and landed farthest away.

Gun Powder and ammunition

Fire in the hole.

The weather was beautiful all day, cool enough for October, but very mild. I was told that last year it was freezing cold and the year before that it was 89 degrees.  Welcome to Illinois.

Now it was time to make Kettle Corn.  Friday we bagged 1500 bags, because people start lining up for it faster than it can be made on site.  It's popular because #1 it's delicious and #2 it's free.  Around the corner from where we were bagging corn a woman stood on the balcony of the Mercantile and sang Phantom of the Opera pieces,  along with the Temple recorder singing up to her from the front lawn.  They sang beautifully.

Cooking

Bags of corn and free candy from the YSM

Waiting for the corn to be ready to bag

The parade started at 6:00.  First came the baby oxen pulling their little wagon that one of the missionaries made.  I was too late to the parade to get a photo of them.  The parade consisted of many people dressed in costume, Noah and his wife, Ghostbusters, and some entries by the missionaries pictured below.

Citizens of Nauvoo

Noah, wife, and Dinosaurs

Missionaries crazy band

Followed by crazy dancers

Ghost Busters

And the Dragon

After our kettle corn shift ended, Dee and I strolled down the street with the other 6,000 people to see if we could find our pumpkins.  We enjoyed delicious homemade quiche while we looked at all of the pumpkins.  It was a lovely date. Stefanie, a young French mother who has a Children's workshop business, baked the quiche.

Happy Halloween from Bootiful Nauvoo. 

Dragon

Scorpion and horse

Johnny Dep

witch

Muholand Street and balcony where the girl sang from.

Along a path

How can it already be Friday?

The surgery was a great success.  Dee slept all night for the first time in a month. Now instead of waking me up with his getting in and out of bed to relieve the pain in his hand, his gentle snoring wakes me in the middle of the night.  I'm so glad he can sleep again.  He can't do his regular work quite yet, but this is progress.
Wednesday we planted over 2000 bulbs. I was so tired I didn't know if I'd get up the next day, but sleep, even interrupted sleep, is great rejuvenation.

This is what 1000 bulbs looks like.

Several mission presidents visited Nauvoo this week for a seminar.  Thursday night Elder Neil A. Andersen, his wife, and Elder Carl Cook, and his wife met with all of the missionaries for a brief time. Elder Andersen asked that we all be able to shake hands with them.  It took 7 minutes for over a hundred of us to shake his hand and be thanked personally by him for our service.

Elder Andersen's message to us was pretty simple. Joseph Smith proclaimed the divinity of Jesus Christ. The Book of Mormon proclaims the divinity of Jesus Christ. He connected the testimony of one to the other.  Then he told us what President Nelson said in Montreal.  "I just know Mormon is embarrassed that the church is called after his name, instead of its proper name, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  I can just imagine him saying, "How did this happen?" 

Elder Andersen left each of the groups there with their own blessing - the senior missionaries, then the young single sister missionaries, then the performing missionaries.  The blessing he left with the seniors was that the knowledge of the gospel that we've had for years would burn even deeper into our souls, and our posterity will know that we knew. 

Then the performing missionaries performed for us.  They were flown in just for this night.  These missionaries serve during the summer here.  Their performance made me so excited for the summer. They are here from May until mid-August.  They not only put on the pageants, but do all sorts of performances during the day.  They sang a song they said was one of Emma Smith's favorite hymns.  "When restless on my bed I sleep".   I've never heard of it, but would like to find it. 

FRIDAY - PUMPKIN FEST PREPARATION

So tomorrow is Nauvoo's Pumpkinfest.  This is a city celebration, not a church function, but as guests in the city, the missionaries get involved.  The Facility Management buildings are turned into pumpkin carving, kettle corn making factories.  Dee and I participated in both today.   Much more fun than planting bulbs. 

Add caption

My  carving - drawn by somebody else. 

And just for comparison, someone else's.

One trailer ready to go to line the streets of Nauvoo City, (not the historic section)

Popping corn

Adding sugar and salt, ready to bag it.  5,000 bags will be handed out tomorrow night. 

Other things going on

Elder Hawkins is going home, so he is giving away the geodes he collected. 

The temple from the Facility Management Compound.  I wish I had a better camera.  It was quite beautiful in the fading light tonight. 

Stay tuned for more Pumpkinfest tomorrow. 

The Sabbath is a delight

 The leaves turned this week and this morning it was 27 degrees when we went to 7 AM choir practice. I love this time of year and I love Sundays. What a good idea Heavenly Father had, to ask us to rest from our normal routines and to remember the sacrifice of his son once a week.
We  miss our children and friends of course, but we are so grateful to be here and having this experience.  The Facility missionaries work behind the scenes and we do very physically tiring work, but just like the people who followed Alma, the Lord makes our physical burdens light. I know I'm able to do much more than I thought possible.
Tomorrow we will pull the frozen flowers from the Carthage flower beds.  Then Dee and I will drive up to Iowa City to stay in a hotel, because  early Tuesday morning he has carpal tunnel surgery. He is so ready to have this affliction removed so that he can sleep at night.  He has continued to do his work during the day, but he is very tired.

These trees are out our front door.

Nauvoo on the Road in Hannibal, MO

Friday was our preparation day, affectionately knows as P-day, which Sister Christensen pointed out does not stand for play day.  We cleaned the house, grocery shopped, visited the John Taylor house and the Brigham Young house, and rested up for Saturday.

6:30 A.M. Saturday we met at the Nauvoo of the Road trailer and van.  4 senior missionary couples drove down to Hannibal, MO to participate in the Folk Life Festival.   This is the last NOR for the year.

Nauvoo on the Road is my favorite thing we have done so far.   Only FM missionaries do it. I like it because we get to talk to people who are not members of the church.  Most of the visitors to Nauvoo are church members. We don't talk directly about our beliefs unless they ask.  Instead we invite them to Nauvoo ,invite them to write their personal history, and to go on Family Search. I like hearing their family stories, which they very readily tell us.

We had 600 visitors to our booth.  We offered a variety of activities - and nothing for sale.
 The wind blew vociferously at times.  Our "Where are your ancestors from?" map blew down and broke, so we couldn't use it.  This map was such an attention getter last week, but the genealogy fan chart worked almost as well. In the picture below notice the display pictures blown down on the table.
 We've observed that people either enthusiastically admit that they are very interested in their family history, or are adamantly not interested, thank you very much.  I can't say what percentage are interested, because we really only talked to people who approached the table.  This group kept us quite busy most of the time.  The beauty of the map is that we could pull some of the more reluctant ones over, so it was a great help last week when we were at a smaller festival.  Hannibal's festival is near enough to St. Louis and Quincy to draw a large crowd.

Keeping the chart from blowing away. 

Explaining the fan chart to a visitor

One visitor thought his family was descended from one of the James brothers, Jesse or Frank.  He knew a lot about Jesse James, but hadn't documented the connection.  He was very happy to learn about Family Search and start researching.

Dee cutting off this boy's rope.
The boy declared he wanted to make another one.

The Princess of Hannibal folk life festival is
making a rope.

Pioneer children's games

These girls were determined to finish the braided
weaving. Their mother called them away
before they were able to. 

Our booth sat at the end of the road,
about a 100 yards from the levee, which
seemed to have a leak. 

So we went to explore just how much trouble we'd
be in if the levee gave way. 

The river is actually quite a ways away.  That
is a park between the waters, but you
can't get to it right now.  The road to it is
under water.

WRAL has been sending me flooding alerts annoyingly often.  I know the river is high, very high, but I think we're OK unless one of the many dams breaks. I may just delete WRAL off of my phone.