Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

Saying Good-bye

I can't believe we just finished the third week of July.  This is the week I've dreaded for several months.  Monday we said good-bye to the Christensens, and Thursday was the Nelson's last day of work.  Our garden club is only 4 now.   A new couple is coming on Monday, but we don't know if the wife will be assigned to us.

The last six-women garden crew.  Nelson, Grigsby, Christensen were all here when I came.  Bailiey, me, and Sister Pleshek will remain after September when Sister Grigsby goes home. 

The Christensen's receive their FM flag. 

The Nelson's closing remarks. 

                         

Sister Christensen wanted a photo of the Grounds crew. This is at our Monday morning meeting. 

Huge Wind and Rain Storm

         On Wednesday afternoon a 20 minute hurricane blew through Nauvoo.  As we were eating our mid-day meal by the kitchen window,  I noticed the sky was getting very dark in the west. The weather app went from 0 percent chance of rain to 70!  And it started to sprinkle.  In minutes the wind started to blow, the rain came down in horizontal sheets.  We stood at the front door, which faces east and is covered by our porch, and we both commented that it looked like the hurricanes we'd watched in NC.   Later we learned that the winds were 60-70 miles per hour. Not quite hurricane level, but enough to knock down the power poles on Parley Street and make Nauvoo look like a hurricane came through.  Tree branches and whole trees are down all over town.   After cleaning up most of our yard, we went down to see if the pageant chairs needed set up.  By the time we got there the pageant work crew had almost all set up again, but we were told they had been blown into a big pile.   No one was hurt, no buildings were damaged.  The only casualty I know of is an RV that a tree crashed through.  I knew what my garden club would be doing the next day.

This job took a larger team than our garden club. 

The summer interns ran the chipper. 

Two husbands came and sawed logs for us. 

Thursday we loaded at least 4 trailers full of tree branches, and others were out doing the same.  Youth groups who were in town also gathered piles of branches by the roadside for us to clean up.  Before we even got to work on Friday (and we start at 6:00), Elder Pleshek got up and loaded a trailer with tree parts. Later that morning  while we worked at Exodus a family of triplets and their grandmother came and asked to help. They stayed until our break.  There is still a lot to clean up, but it will get done.
       

Heat Wave

 This week has been incredibly hot.  We were suppose to dance on Thursday night, but after two sisters began to feel sick, Elder Bingham, the mission doctor, sent the senior missionaries home.  Even though they canceled the children's parade, we had children making hats, so we had to wait until they finished - and one little 4 year old was not in any hurry.  (I don't know if I've ever mentioned that Dee and I are the managers of the children's parade.  I'll try and take some pictures next week.)

Okquawka, Illinois

On Friday the pageant people gave the FM employees and missionaries a Chinese lunch to thank us for all the work we did to make the pageant come off.  Dee built new counters for the concession stand.  The grounds people mowed and put together 60 giant pots to beautify the pageant grounds.  My crew had nothing to do with any of it, except keep the rest of Nauvoo beautiful. 
Saturday Dee and I went north to Okquawka, Illinois to check out a sewing repair shop.  My machine broke a few weeks ago.  Okquawka is a little, middle America town.

Horseshoe park. 

Fur trader's house where Lincoln  and  Chief Black Hawk visited. 

At the FM lunch on Friday, Lon, one of the employees, told us about growing up in Oquaska.  The main road ran into the Mississippi.  Lon and his friends liked to ride their bikes into the river.  At night the drunks ran their cars into the river, so the town finally built a dirt barricade between the river and the main road.  It is still there today. 

Mission Training: It was Zone Conference. The lesson was, We are apprentices for Christ and His work. WE split into three groups.  Our group shared 1 Nephi 17:7-16 which is the story of God commanding Nephi to build a boat.  The question we answered was, "What Christlike qualities did Nephi show as he built the boat?"