Swampy conditions

Yesterday, I mailed out a communication to all the new temple missionaries that are called to come and augment our numbers here in April.  I sent it out with the intent of seeing if the e-mail addresses we had were good.  I asked them each to respond to the e-mail so that I know that we were communicating with them.  As a result, starting last night, I have been getting flooded with their responses.  What I was not expecting was the tone of each response that is coming back in.  These people are excited and anxious to come and serve in Nauvoo.  It was the feeling that we had a year ago when we were preparing to come and serve here.  Now, a year later, our zeal has perhaps lessened a bit.  Feeling the enthusiasm of the new group is invigorating and so welcoming.  Having them come will be good for all of us in so many ways.

Also, yesterday, a bishop, in transit with several others to come to the temple, decided to call and verify with the temple that we were prepared for them.  The call was transferred to the brother at the recommend desk, and when asked if there was room on the 5 pm session, assured them that there was - as we did not have anyone scheduled for that time.  After giving him that assurance, he then realized that our last session for the day was scheduled to be at four, not five.  Adjustments were quickly made, and soon we all got to stay a little longer and make sure that our 5 pm session would be enjoyed by this group (4 couples).  We really are very accommodating.  And we always feel good when we can serve our patrons and allow the Lord to bless these good people that come.  Some of them come from as much as 3 or 4 hours away.  In the winter time, the weather often makes the trips here impossible.  So when they can come, we will do all that we can for them.

This last week has been a joy, weather wise.  It has warmed up – at least enough to actually melt a lot of the snow that has fallen over the last few weeks.  Monday, we had a blizzard, first with freezing rain and later with snow.  On Tuesday or Wednesday, after it warmed up a bit, we got a real heavy thunderstorm causing several inches of rain to fall.  It melted a lot of the snow but it had nowhere to drain.  The little parking area behind our house flooded to the point that we had to wade through 4 to 6 inches of water to get to our cars.  It wasn’t just the parking area.  The park like fields all around the flats were buried beneath rain-water and melted snow.  As we drove about the area we were reminded of the early saints that came here when this area was still called Commerce.  This area was a swamp.  They had to dig ditches to help drain the water.  Many died from malaria caused by the mosquitos that bred so abundantly in the standing waters all over the place.  Fortunately for us, our houses are already built.  We are sheltered from the rain and the bugs.  This water will drain before the mosquitoes get a change to lay their eggs.  But again, we get another memory to help us identify with the early Saints.

 

 

Valentine's Day

Another missionary slipped and fell on the ice this last week.  She now sports two black eyes.  We all look forward to the time when things warm up and become safer.  We have one local ordinance worker that checks the weather forecast and if there is even the slightest chance of inclement weather on the day that he is scheduled to come in, he calls to let us know that he is not coming.  In the past he had met up with several accidents trying to come in.  At his age, it just isn’t safe to drive, especially when driving conditions are poor.  The deer around here appreciate it as well.  He has killed more than one while driving to the temple.  I think many of us here have experienced times when they jump out in front of our cars and we have a hard time avoiding them, especially when there is so much snow and ice on the roads keeping us from being able to stop quickly.

Valentine’s Day brings with it several who want to be wed or sealed on that day.  Here at Nauvoo, we had three couples come in to have their families made eternal on that day.  I got to be one of the witnesses at two of those sealings.  It is especially fun when little children come, as well, to be sealed to their parents.  Yesterday, we had a beautiful family come from northern Iowa to be sealed.  They had three daughters ages 1, 3 and 6.  Afterwards they went out (in the snow) to have their pictures taken.  All went out, dressed in white -- but the mother, and all three daughters had bright red capes made that they wore over their dresses.  Our four “little red riding hoods” made quite an adorable sight.

We, as temple missionaries, are encouraged to do our own family research and find the names of ancestors that we can bring to the temple.  During the winter months when fewer people come to the temple, we can take opportunity to be patrons ourselves and do the work for those whose names we have found.  Frequently at the end of the day, a special baptismal session will be scheduled where we can go down and be baptized in behalf of those we have identified.  It is a special experience to stand in the font here at Nauvoo, which happens to be the largest baptismal font in any of the temples, to do that work.  While this is not the original Nauvoo, temple, the font does occupy the very same location that it did in the Nauvoo temple of old.  Perhaps some of our ancestors also stood in that very same location to do proxy baptisms back in 1845.  If any of you come to visit us, while we are here, I would encourage you to plan on coming to the baptistery so that you (or your older children) can have that opportunity. 

The Nauvoo Exodus Commemoration Walk

Yesterday, we walked down Parley Street.  We did it as part of an annual commemoration of when the original Nauvoo residents were forced to leave their homes in early February and flee the mobs into Iowa and then trek onward to the Rocky Mountain west.  At that time, in 1846, there were many of our pioneer ancestors that lived in Nauvoo.  I don’t know what the weather was like in 1846 but we do know that it was cold.  On the first day of the exodus (Feb 4^th) the wagons needed to be ferried across the Mississippi River into Iowa.  A few weeks later, the Saints were still streaming out of Nauvoo as quickly as they were able to outfit themselves.  By the 15^thof February, they were driving their wagons across the ice as the Mississippi River had frozen over, allowing them to do so.  A few days ago someone here and now had drilled a hole in the ice, so that they could determine just how thick the ice is this year.  At the point where they measured, the ice was about 22 inches thick.  About that same time, it was reported that someone had driven their pickup out onto the ice - having fun sliding around on the ice-covered river.  This year, the river has been iced over for the last two months – this being one of the coldest winters ever recorded here in Nauvoo.

 

Yesterday’s activity commenced at the Family Living Center, just behind the historic cultural hall on Main Street.  There we congregated and enjoyed a continental breakfast.  We then had a little program where we sang and listened to tributes made to the early saints.  We then went outside and fell in line for the parade.  We were led by missionaries decked out in the uniforms of the Mormon Battalion.  These were followed by others carrying several flags, reminding us that many of the early saints had just migrated from those countries not long before.  This group was followed by a horse drawn surrey where Brigham Young and his wife, represented by two missionaries, rode.  Other horse drawn wagons followed carrying a few children and others that would have had trouble walking the route to the river.  Everyone else walked the distance, being on either side of the wagons and surrey as we went.  We arrived at the river where we had a very short concluding program where we had a flag-raising ceremony performed by our “Mormon battalion” and we all sang “Come, Come Ye Saints”.  The weather was good.  A light snow was falling and there was not a lot of wind blowing – so it was tolerable!  Much easier for us than for our ancestors that continued on, on a trek well over a 1000 times longer, burying many along the trail as they went and rejoicing months later when they finally arrived in the Great Salt Lake valley.

This picture was taken last year

 

Yesterday’s events brought participants from far and wide; I am told some came all the way from San Diego, CA.  A symposium (or series of lectures) was also conducted in several of our meeting places around Nauvoo on Friday and Saturday where people could learn more about our Nauvoo history.  This brought many to the temple as well.  Friday, we had almost three times more endowments performed than we did the week before.  We are always glad to have visitors come to the temple.  Frequently, during the winter months, a high percentage of our endowments are performed by our own ordinance workers assigned to be patrons because few others come – especially when the weather gets ugly.

Triggered Memories

February has arrived.  Not much different than January has been.  But it brings with it a few memories.  It was almost two years ago, that our daughter, Heidi, had received her mission call.  Since she was living in Missouri at the time, she thought it would be nice to be endowed in the Nauvoo temple.  So Becky and I made plane reservations and flew to Kansas City where we borrowed a car, picked up Heidi and drove to Nauvoo.  She was endowed on the 11^th of February.  We spent the night before in the Nauvoo Hotel.  Then on that Saturday morning, we walked the two blocks to the temple.  Walking those two blocks was one of the more miserable memories I can recall.  The wind was blowing; I don’t recall if snow or freezing rain was falling, but it was cold.  The wind was right in our faces and I wondered if I was going to survive the hike.  But we made it and the temple seemed so warm inside.  What a comfort after the short trek.

One of the temple missionaries there at the time was one that I had known from the Mt. Timpanogos temple.  We got to see him that day.  A year later, after he had returned home off his mission, I asked him about the weather that day.  He said that that winter had been a very mild one; that they had only had three or so major blizzards that year, and evidently, we had walked into one of those.  Little did we realize then, that we would be back here ourselves, also serving as temple missionaries, and experiencing similar weather conditions on a regular basis.   Today, we enjoy these cold spells, and these blizzards, being better prepared for them.  We have the footwear and the coats and the thermals.  For us now, it is easier to tolerate – and besides, we now know what to expect.  Then we had been caught completely off-guard.

At home, in Utah, when we forget to flush our lawn sprinkler pipes before winter, and allow the water in them to freeze, the pipes break, causing grief in the spring when we turn the water back on.  We may end up needing to replace one or more pipes as breaks are detected.  They have similar problems here too.  Last Monday, a pipe in the temple that provided water to the emergency sprinklers froze, causing a sprinkler head to open up and rain filthy water throughout an upper-room in the temple.  This caused a lot of water damage both to that sealing room and to the marriage waiting room below it.  Now almost a week later, almost all the damage has been repaired.  In the meantime, a couple of weddings were performed, and I doubt any of our guest ever knew there was a problem.  That is because we have more than one sealing room and we would take the guests directly to the sealing room rather than by way of the marriage waiting room.  Interestingly, Becky and I were the guides for two of those weddings.  If there were others, I am not aware.