June 4 – June 10, 2015 – Weeks 13, in Nauvoo

June 11, 2015

Not too much to report this week, except we had a very strong storm go through here last Sunday.  Lots of heavy rain with lots of wind and lightning and thunder!  At least one big limb came down from a tree and blocked the road, and our computers didn’t have internet service at Lands and Records on Monday.  Don’t think there was any more damage, just a lot of shattered nerves!  

We were in our Sunset by the Mississippi show last night which we performed in the Theater in the Visitors Center instead of the outdoor stage because it was too hot and muggy - 103 with the heat index, and rain expected.  The BYU Young ambassadors were performing ourside at 8:30, so we went over to watch them and boy IT was hot - until a breeze started and then lightning began brightening up the sky.  they announced that they wold stop if it started raining, and the show was finally stopped a little after 9:00 and three songs early.  The anouncer said, "There is a severe lightning storm approaching with heavy rain, so leave quickly and seek shelter immediatel!  So everyone hurried to their cars and left.  We stopped with friends for ice cream at Annie's, and there was lightning and thunder all night, but little rain until morning.  Thre is always excitement around here.

Three of us Sisters have been asked to be Site Assistants at the Lands and Records.  We have a meeting this afternoon to plan how we will handle the rush of people this summer.  We each work there twice a week, which I really like as you know how much I love doing research and helping people. 

 
Monday night after our two Rendezvous shows we attended an 80^th birthday Party for Elder Clark

 Party guests in costumes after play....

– a lot of us didn’t get there until 9:30.   




Elder Clark giving a Mark Twain reading...... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 The Nauvoo Brass bands travels around Old Nauvoo in a wagon pulled by two horses,

 

 

 and I finally had my camera with me when they were playing outside the Cultural Hall.   

 

It is Thursday evening now and it is raining hard again with lightning and thunder - in fact there are flash flood warnings for area's around us.  I don't think we are in danger here, but we do have a show tonight and we have to be outside to get back and forth to the stage in the Cultural Hall.

P.S. We got through the show with only a few sprinklers on us, but the lightning and thunder show is still on!  Ohhh, there goes more thunder!!! 

 

 

May 28 – June 3, 2015 – Weeks 12, in Nauvoo

June 3, 2015

Wow, the weeks are flying by!  And we are still moving along.

Richard traveled from Indianapolis to visit us the last week end and it was wonderful!  It was so wonderful we forgot to take pictures of all of us.  We hope to do better next time!

Friday night Richard got here early enought to see us in Sundset by the Mississippi. 

 In the opening and closing numbers Elder Ray and Sister Barbara are together, singing "Hello Everybody....."

the Elders sing "Act Natually"...

 

 

 ....the Sisters sing, "Oh Be Joyful" and dance and sing "Jubilee."

 

 

 

 

 

 

All of the branches of the Military are honored and Ray is honored to carry the
U. S. Navy flag.  

 

Saturday night we had two Rendezvous shows and the audience at the second show was very kind and gave us a standing ovation.  Our director came out at the end and told of the ovation – she was pleased and so were we.   We always stand outside after each performance and meet the audience as they come out.  That night a lady from our audience came up to us and told us how good we did and how much she enjoyed the show.  Then she said, “I felt what they must have felt” and that is what it is all about.  We portray what those long ago saints did, and though sometimes in a light hearted way, we hope our audience will catch the spirit of how they felt and how they coped with everything.  Their faith in Jesus Christ was strong, and that helped them endure much.  I was so pleased to get conformation that we are reaching them.

The Brigham Young University Young Ambassadors are here in Nauvoo for a couple of weeks and we got to see their show last night which was just after our Sunset on the Mississippi show.  They are performing Heartsongs, Melodies of Love.  If you would like to know more about them, go to: https://cfac.byu.edu/music/ and you will find a link to “BYU Young Ambassadors perform in Nauvoo.” 

The website: http://invite.nauvoopageant.net/2015/Mission/Doying.htm tells about the pageants that will be here in July and August.  Come and see them, and visit with us while you are here. 

The productions that we Senior Missionaries are in, Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo, and Sunset by the Mississippi are going well, and they can be seen every night except Sunday – Elder Doying and I are in one or the other of them four nights each week. 

We really do more than dance and sing, like serve in the many sites around Old Nauvoo where we teach and invite, and are enjoying everything, especially having ice cream at Annie’s some nights after our shows.    

May 13 – May 27, 2015 – Weeks 10 & 11: in Nauvoo

May 27, 2015

Dear Family,

No excuse for no email last Wednesday – I just forgot until Saturday and decided to wait until the next Wednesday which is today and wouldn’t you know it, the internet is down again! (Thursday morning - it is up again!)  Not too much different happening anyway.  We did have a cast picnic at Inspiration Point along the Mississippi river on Thursday the 21^st.  
 

 A large camp fire was started, and while it was getting hot and ready for cooking, the Elders whittled long branches into proper sticks to hold the hot dogs – some having up to 4 prongs.

It was fun watching some folks cooking 4 at a time over the fire!  The Sisters set the tables with the fixings, and lots of salads and desserts.  

Good food and good company. 

A tug boat plies the waters up the Mississippi pushing 15 barges. 

As we were all leaving we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a statue of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith at Inspiration Point - they are pointing west - commemorating the place where those early members of The Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints crossed the river as they were forced to leave Nauvoo in February of 1846.  Many were leaving homes they had built, but only lived in for thee or four month. Below is a replica of the wagons they took with them, loaded with as much as they could carry.  The wagon is sitting on a barge like they would have used to pull them across.

 

We have started with the summer hours of 9:00 to 6:00 at all the sites.  The Visitors Center is open from 9:00 to 9:00 and I think the wagon rides begin around 8:30 in the morning and go tuntil about 2:30.  The shifts for us Senior Missionaries are one of the following each day: A=9:00-3:00; B=3:00-6:00; C=split, 9:00=12:00 and 3:00-6:00.   We are short about 18 missionaries to cover the sites, so occasionally we will have to work a 9:00-6:00 shift as we  did yesterday.  A very long day – and we had to perform in the Sunset on the Mississippi outdoor show last night which is from 7:00-8:00.  We ate a quick salad between our shift and the show!

So you can tell that we are still running, but because we love our Saviorand he lifts us up, we are managing to keep up.......

May 7 – May 13, 2015 – Week 9: in Nauvoo

May 13, 2015

Sorry this is late – the internet has been down in the Mission.  It makes it difficult when we don’t get our messages about where we are supposed to be! 

There are over 200 missionaries here in Nauvoo right now.  That includes the 20 Single Sister Missionaries, 20 Young Performing Missionaries, and 15 Band Missionaries.  The rest are Senior Missionary couples and Single Senior Sister Missionaries. We really fill up the chapel each Sunday.  More will be coming in for the Pageants in July – not sure how many that will be. 

We had a Fireside/Family Home Evening both Sunday and Monday evenings at the Nauvoo Stake Center with Karl Ricks Anderson speaking to us.  He is renowned for his knowledge of the Kirtland Period in Church History.  His most recent book, “The Savior in Kirtland” documents the many accounts of the Savior’s revelations to Church leaders and early Saints and he spoke of the occasions, and was entertaining as well as knowledgeable.  His laughter reminded us of the angel Clarence in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and we enjoyed the evenings very much.  We had dinner with two missionary couples in one of their homes before the fireside on Sunday. 

Today we went to Quincy to pick up my white tap shoes that we had died black for the Sunset show.  They turned out good, and I am doing better at making them tap-in-rhythm.  Then we went to the

History Museum in Quincy,

where they have a collection of keys to the original Nauvoo Temple.  In the winter of 1838/39, when the saints were forced out of Missouri under threat of extermination, the city of Quincy, Illinois took them in and gave them shelter and food. Their hospitality and kindness saved many lives, and made it possible for the saints to establish Nauvoo about 40 miles up the river.

Some of the people of Quincy joined the church, such as Jonathan Browning that I told you about last week.  The two cities still have a great relationship. 

The Museum has a very nice exhibit of the “Mormons” and has a film about that time in our history.  They also have an excellent exhibit on President Lincoln and the Civil War.  

After our Rendezvous show this evening, one of the cast couples couldn’t start their car, so we took the Sister home while the Elder called AAA and Elder Ray went back to stay with him until they arrived. 

We took lots of photo's of the garden at the Sarah Granger Kimball home.  Here are a couple.

The Peonies are just beginning to bloom, and Elder Ray is enjoying them.

Sarah Granger Kimball's home is very nice and is as gracious as she was.  She was responsible for starting our Relief Society, when she and her seamstress decided to make shirts for the men working on the Nauvoo Temple.  They invited their women friends to help and soon decided to organize a Society and so the process began.   

One can only imaging 15 or so woman sitting around this room and sewing away. 







Have I posted a link for you to check out about Nauvoo?  Here it is: http://www.historicnauvoo.net/ 

Enjoy!

April 29 – May 6, 2015 – Week 8: in Nauvoo

The events of this night took us by surprise.  We got in our car to drive to the Cultural Hall for our Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo show, and found that Ray did not have the keys to the car with him – he had left them on the dresser when he changed his pants, and I didn’t have my purse with my keys.  Of course we had pulled the  locked house door shut behind us, so we walked the couple of miles to White and Main Streets.  It took us a half hour, arriving only 15 minutes late for the warm up, and 15 minutes before show time.   One of our songs begins with, “Come Walk the Streets of Old Nauvoo, meet me at Kimball and Main.”  Well, we did that tonight, but Kimball is three blocks further down the road.  Thank goodness it wasn’t raining!  We had a doozy of a storm the other night, with continuous lightning and thunder for a couple of hours or so.  Thursday and Friday may be just the same.  One of the Elders in our cast is a Facilities Manager Missionary and he had a master key to our house so he and his wife brought us home and let us in – we are so blessed. 

On our way home we stopped at the home of one of the Elders that came out with us, and Elder Ray and another Elder gave him a blessing – his hip is giving him pain again and he does not want to leave his mission early!

We are beginning to decide which sites we most like to be at.  For me it really is hard to choose.  Learning about and telling our visitors about those long ago folks is very inspiring.  Like most pioneers, they were very creative, and willing and able to work with what they had. 

Ray has three he really likes, and I will tell you about the Browning Home and Gun Shop – he loves Jonathan Browning’s story.  Jonathan was born in Brushy Fork, Tennessee in 1805 and was an apprentice blacksmith by age 14 and making “fine looking rifles” by age 19. A few years later he opened and operated a successful gun shop in his home town of Brushy Fork.  Jonathan married Elizabeth Stalcup (that name familiar to you Don G?) and they had five children before moving to the riverboat town of Quincy, Illinois, about 40 miles downriver from Nauvoo.  There he heard about Joseph Smith and came up the river by steamboat to meet him.

 He became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and “by December of 1842 he had moved his family to beautiful Nauvoo” and established a gun shop here.  He is known to have been a friend of Abraham Lincoln and he became famous for his guns, especially for his repeating rifle that he invented and was making as early as 1831.  He joined the saints in their westward trek, and wanted to join the Mormon Battalion but was asked by Brigham Young to stay in Council Bluffs, Iowa to help the remaining trekkers with supplies, blacksmithing and guns – he remained there for five years.  He eventually moved on to Utah and his son, John Moses Browning was born there and became just as famous as his father, if not more so.  The Browning Museum in Ogden honors both father and son, with many of their guns on display. 

I really love the Brigham Young Home, and also the homes of John Taylor and Heber C. Kimball, not just for the homes, but the stories of the men and their families. 

However I do think Lands and Records has captured my heart and I hope to spend a lot of time there. I love doing research, especially about families. 

My scripture for the week will tell you why: Malachi 4:5-6. 

 

 

 

We don't always wear pioneer cloths!  I have short sleeves here.  

                     It is getting warmer - in the 80's today. 

April 23 - April 29, 2015 – Week 7: in Nauvoo

It has been an eventful week here in Nauvoo.  On Monday I worked at the Lands and Records again.  I really enjoy working there.  We help folks find their ancestors who lived in Nauvoo from 1839 through 1845, and learn about them and where they lived.  Sometimes they are surprised to know that they did have ancestors here, and sometimes they already know but want to learn more about them, and our database has histories, maps, stories and some genealogies.  We were quite busy and I got to help people find info on their ancestors who were in Nauvoo, and burn all the information we have onto a CD for them.  One of the Temple workers came in about 4:30 seeking some information, and he mentioned that there are two graves to the North of us in the grass area and did we know about them.  We didn’t so he took us to them so we could see where they were.  They are for a mother, Maria McMenemy (sp?), who died on the same day in 1843 as her stillborn baby was born.  We went back to the office and looked her up and found her and her family, but the baby is not listed – stillborn babies usually are not. But we did find that her other two children died that same year or the following.  Times were very hard for them and they endured much.  It is special to me to remember them and see the love that their descendants have for them. 

Elder Ray finished his shift at the Brickyard at 3:00 Monday so he went to Keokuk to get gas in the car and had it washed, then picked me up at 5:00.   We decided to go out for our anniversary  because we couldn’t on Wednesday as we are in the Rendezvous play that night.  We chose the Nauvoo Hotel but they were closed for dinner, but the lady there told us about the Hawkeye Restaurant in Keokuk and we went there and had a very nice meal of filet mignon, sweet potato French fries and Ray had cheese soup and I had the salad bar. 

Right after eating Elder Ray started having pain in his chest – it was gas build up and subsided when he belched the gas up, but it always came back and was very painful.  The next day Ray saw our mission Doctor  and he wanted Ray to go to the hospital emergency and be checked out.  So we drove to the Fort Madison Community Hospital about 15 miles away, arriving there between 10:00 to 10:30 a.m. They took him in right away, hooked him up for an EKG and took a chest x-ray and determined that he was not having a heart attack.  They then took an x-ray of his lower abdomen and the results showed something similar to what Dr. Udall thought it was, and it was decided to do a cat-scan of the area.  Nothing showed up with that so they said they could not tell what was causing his problem and sent us home about 4:00 p.m., suggesting that he eat only liquids the rest of the day, and only soft foods Wednesday and see what happens.  

  

Elder’s Stroud and Riemann came Tuesday evening and gave him a blessing.   Ray woke up Wednesday completely well, and we can now testify that Nauvoo Miracles do happen here.  We have heard many stories of them, and now we know for ourselves the Lord truly blesses us as we serve.

And we are so glad he is better!

 

 

 

 I ordered a cake and we picked it up this afternoon and took it to Annie’s, the local ice cream parlor, and after the Rendezvous show, about 60 of our new friends here at Nauvoo gathered with us there to help us celebrate our 61^st wedding anniversary.....

 

 ....it was a lot of fun to share our special day with them!

April 15 - April 22, 2015 – Week 6: in Nauvoo

Saturday we served together with Sister Hintze at the Family Living Center.  It was first time for Elder Doying and the second time for Sister Doying. 

Elder Doying, Sister Hintze, Sister Doying

The Young Single Missionaries who serve here in Nauvoo, do so for their first six months – April through September, then go outbound to various area’s around the United States, for six months, then back here for their remaining six months    They arrived back here around April 15^th and one of them, Sister Hintze served in the Fresno, California mission, and was actually in Visalia where the Gene and Dorothy Higbee live.  They are dear friends of ours from our Ward in Fontana in the 1960’s.  it is a small world indeed. 

Sunday  night we had a District meeting with everyone in our mission at Richardson Point in Iowa.   We carpooled there with our District leaders, Elder and Sister Pearce.   It is a place where the departing Saints of February 1846 got bogged down in mud for almost two weeks in March of 1846. It took them a month to get there, it only took us about an hour. The first deaths of the trek west occurred there and the owner of the property (not a member) built a fence around the graves and built benches for people to come and see them.

One of the graves is for a James M. Tanner, a baby boy of 15 months.

The area was very heavily forested when he bought the property and much clearing had to be done.   

 

 

 

 

 

It rained most of the way out there and stopped for a while, but started up again as we were leaving after a nice program.   We were all in our "site" pioneer clothes and we all got wet.  And it gave us an even better understanding of what those long ago pioneers endured.  

There are tracks along the trail through farm land out there in Iowa and the farmers have plowed around them all these years to preserve them, even though they aren't Mormons.   It is very heart-warming to feel that love and reverence from them.  It was a very inspirational gathering. 

 

 

 

 

 

There are hundreds of tulips blooming in Nauvoo right now.  Here is just one flower bed here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today as we traveled back from Keokuk, Iowa, we stopped and took pictures of a flock of Pelican’s in the shore waters of the Mississippi near Nauvoo. 

Very gracefull. 

Last Sunday Sister Doying got to teach Relief Society and Elder Doying taught Priesthood. We may not have to teach these again, as all the missionaries get a chance. No doubt other teaching assignments will follow.

  

 

We love our Savior and serving here for him.  One of our favorite scriptures is Matthew 16:13-16.    Check it out, and let me know if you agree.

Jesus is the reason we are here.  Because of Him, we are "flying".