Barrow's Illinois Nauvoo FM Mission: Fall begins

Once again I'm combining two weeks. The gardening season is a cycle, so the pictures from last year work for this year, except the people change. That is the best and hardest thing about serving in Nauvoo. Never have we made friends so fast and said good-bye to so many in so short a time.

September 23

This is the last week the Young Sisters work with us. The last group start packing and leaving next week. So we put them to good use by pulling the annual beds. Richard began to just pull the Kiosk and Exodus. That went so fast that he added the ginko tree bed on Main Street. He asked me if I wanted to pull the Browning Gun beds. Let's see. Today we have 6 YSMs helping us. Next week it will just be Sister Bailey and myself. It wasn't a hard decision. We pulled the beds. From there Richard just starting pulling beds. Scoville Bakery, Weeks, and then the Women's garden! Finally, feeling brave, we pulled the Visitor's Center. With the beds pulled we don't have to take the water truck out anymore, which gives us an extra hour and a half for other things, which we will need since it will just be Sister Bailiey and my taking care of things for a couple of weeks. New FM missionaries arrive October 8.

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Pulling Scoville Bakery bed

This plant smells like waffles and maple syrup.

Flowers all dumped.

It's sad to pull them, but in order to have beautiful spring flowers this has to happen.

October 1

We put on jackets this week in the chilly morning. Scarecrows popped up on Mulholland, and the first few leaves started to turn. We were asked to take care of the pumpkin carving for Bootiful Nauvoo, and the stories for the Christmas Walk. Monday night we had a planning meeting for the Christmas Walk, Tuesday a meeting for Bootiful, Wednesday mission training, Thursday woodcarving, but I don't think we went because we were too tired, and Friday we had a cook-out to say good-bye to the Paxmans. Saturday was General Conference. Sister Bailey and I worked so hard that I slept between conference sessions on Saturday, which is better than sleeping during conference. So much is happening that before we know it January will be here.

Sister Schmidt introduces Bootiful Nauvoo in FM prayer meeting.

Favorite Scarecrows

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The FM Scarecrow

Farewell to Paxmans

The Paxmans are from Canada. They had a strong, but quiet, influence on the FM family. Neither of them said much, but went about their work quietly and decisively. Elder Paxman took down hundreds of pickets in the fences, and then put them back up, depending on the whims of the history department. Sister Paxman painted and cleaned apartments before new missionaries moved in.