March 21, 2015 - Saturday

Sister Lasher and I were up early this morning as we read and prayed together and then took an early morning walk around Nauvoo.  We had a service opportunity at the Stake Center this morning at 7:30am and that is where we scheduled our walk to go so that we would be on time.  We were able to work with other senior missionaries to clean the building.  There were about 12 of us in attendance.  Mom and I got to clean the kitchen and the windows throughout the building.

It is always more fun working together!  Those windows were so shinny when we got done!

We then hurried home to get ready for our site assignments.  Mom had the assignment to work at the Lucy Mack Smith home and I got to work in the Blacksmith shop one last time before we start full time in the Carthage Jail Visitor's Center tomorrow.  

Here is pioneer Ma inviting me in for a quick tour of Lucy Mack Smith's home.  This is an amazing residence and I had to take some pictures for our blog.  This is the last assignment for mom before we start in Carthage tomorrow and this is one of the many assignments she has really enjoyed.

 This is the original smokehouse on Lucy Mack Smith's property.  This has been preserved over 170 years and was used for a variety of different things including the original intention of smoking the meat that was available for her family.

This is a marvelous picture of two pioneer era missionaries standing in front of the well that was dug for Lucy Mack Smith.  Some of the stones were repaired, but this is her well!  She drew drinking water from this well for her family, and drew the living water from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is a lovely picture of a beautiful pioneer women looking down into the Lucy Mack Smith well to determine the depth of the water.  These wells were hand dug and the wall of the well was build as the well was being constructed.  In some instances, the pioneer men were killed when the wall of the well collapsed on them in the process of being constructed.

Here is an "ash hopper" area right outside the smoke house.  We were very fortunate to capture two early pioneers in the process of preparing the fire and getting the water boiling to make their soap.  Notice the faces on these wonderful early pioneers.  They loved their work and they loved building Zion wherever they were asked to serve.  Color photos were extremely rare in the 1840's in Nauvoo, so we feel especially blessed to have been able to capture this moment in history.

 Here is the fireplace in Lucy Mack Smith's home.  With the long dresses and petticoats that the women wore, a fireplace was a dangerous place for a women to be working.  It was one of the three major causes of death in the Nauvoo years for a women if her dress caught fire.

 This is the upstairs living area in the Lucy Mack Smith home.  Younger family members would live in the upstairs areas because of the steep stairway coming into the upper floors.

Take a look at these stairs!  This is what the family members had to climb to get into the upstairs living quarters.  This was another of the top three ways that caused death among the women.... falling down the stairs.  The third was was in child birth.  The pioneer women worked long had often very hard hours to take care of their homes and families.  They were a precious blessing to all those they served faithfully and Sister Smith, (Mother Smith as she loved to be called), was one of the foremost women of faith in the Nauvoo era.

This is Mother Smith's sleeping area within about 15 feet of the fireplace on the main floor of the home.  There came a point in her life when she could no longer climb those stairs.

Also included in Mother Smith's home is a complete set of china that belonged to her sister-in-law, and is missing just one tea saucer.  The set is irreplaceable and is displayed behind a class curio cabinet in the front room.  I meant to take a picture but I had to hurry off to the Blacksmith Shop!

Here are some more pictures in the Blacksmith / Wainwright shop;

The Chancey Webb Blacksmith shop would make any size wagon on carriage a person wanted.  The above picture shows some of those wagons. Some had seats for the drivers and some were made just to carry goods and personal belongings across the plains to the Rocky Mountains.  This was a distance of about 1,400 miles and the journey would take around 100 days if the traveler kept moving.

 This picture shows many of the tools a blacksmith could make.  Many of these tools would be used in his own trade, or he would make them for other trades based on discussions or possibly drawings of what the tradesman needed.

 These are pictures of the harnesses that were used back in the 1840's.  Most wagons used oxen as teams to pull the loaded wagons but some still used horses.  Interesting to note is that horses were more expensive to use, but a little faster than oxen.  The oxen would walk about the same pace as the pioneer, about 2 to 3 miles per hour.  The house could walk 4 to 5 miles per hour.  However, the horse was a very sought after animal from the Indians whereas the oxen were not.  And the pioneer needed to take food along for his house, whereas the oxen would be able to survive on the plentiful prairie grasses.

 This is the wagon that Brigham Young authorized for the trek to the Rocky Mountains.  It was 3' wide by 11' long and could carry up to 2,000 pounds.  There is no place on this wagon for a teamster since he could weigh 200 to 250 pounds and take away from the maximum load capacity.  Driving a team of oxen was done by the teamster walking along side the oxen, thus saving that valuable space for food and supplies.  Interesting to note, every 3rd or 4th wagon carried wagon parts for potential breakdowns along the way.  The Saints were prepared temporally as well as spiritually for the trek west.

Tonight mom and I stayed close to home and did some laundry and worked on our Priesthood and Relief Society lessons for tomorrow.  We also baked some cookies for the premiere showing of the "Cokeville Miracle" movie being released in April, 2015, by T.C. Christensen.  Brother Christensen will be here along with the principal of that school where this miracle took place to give the missionaries a preview and a fireside on the making of this film. I got to meet this principal and his wife today on a tour of the Blacksmith Shop and gave them a personal review of Mary's Prairie Diamond story....

Here is an article on the making of that movie:

COKEVILLE, Wyo. — On May 16, 1986, David and Doris Young stormed into Cokeville Elementary in Cokeville, Wyoming, and took the entire student body hostage then set off a bomb.

It’s something the tiny community will never forget and an incident filmmaker T.C. Christensen is documenting.

The working title for the movie is "The Cokeville Miracle," and Christensen said to watch for it to be released between March and July 2015.

Ron Hartley was an investigator for the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office at the time and he remembers the day clearly.

"I didn't even know anything about the bombing until I drove up on the scene," Hartley said. "My heart just sank, because I knew I had four children in there."

As he arrived on scene, it was a mass of confusion.

"There were little kids, lots of little kids coming out, and they were black with smoke," Hartley said. "Their faces were tear streaked through the smoke. It was total chaos. The ceiling lights were all blown out and the TV was all melted. There were pockmarks on the wall and the explosion went straight up through the ceiling instead of going out."

The bomb investigator had no explanation for why the bomb went up instead of out.

Credit: KSL TV

"When I walked up towards him, he just said, 'Hartley, I'm not a religious man,' but he said this is a miracle," Hartley said. "If this had gone off the way it was intended to go off, it would have leveled this school and there would be a lot of dead children."

After the Youngs set off the bomb, miraculously the only people killed in the blast were them. In the days following the explosion, many of the children in the room reported seeing guardian angels present in the room at the time of the bombing. Ron Hartley’s boy was one of them

"I asked, 'What happened at the bombing, son?' And he said there were angels there," Hartley said. "There were angels for everybody."

Hartley's son told him as the bomb went off the angels surrounded the explosion and went up through the ceiling with the blast and then came back down. His son had no idea that the bomb investigator was perplexed about how the bomb went up instead of out. After hearing his son's explanation of events, Hartley was convinced his boy spoke the truth.

This is the event Christensen plans to highlight on the big screen.

"The thing that first attracted me to this story idea was just the fact that you have a school room full of 154 people and a bomb goes off and the only people that die are the perpetrators," Christensen said. "All the innocents get out. Just that is pretty incredible, but this story goes way beyond even that."

It’s not the violence and mayhem that Christensen is focusing on, but rather the miracles surrounding the event. He says the major theme of the film is that people realized through this incident that they were not alone, that God was involved and watching out for them.

When I walked up towards him, he just said, 'Hartley, I'm not a religious man,' but he said this is a miracle. If this had gone off the way it was intended to go off, it would have leveled this school and there would be a lot of dead children.

–Ron Hartley, Lincoln County Sheriff's Office

Amid the chaos and confusion of the movie set a sense of healing has also been taking place. Survivors from the original hostage situation have gone there and have found healing.

Kamron Wixom was a sixth-grade student at Cokeville Elementary at the time of the bombing. He visited the set of the film several times.

"I gave 17 pages of journal notes that I compiled together and tried to remember everything I could and handed it over to T.C.," Wixom said. "Whether it was for him or for me, I needed to write it down. It made it so that the experience for me became a third-person thing that I could look at as if I was watching a movie."

Not everyone involved with the Cokeville bombing is happy about the making of this movie, but Christensen is hopeful that good will come from telling this story.

"I think it's a great film about hope," he said. "I think that we are in need of seeing that we're not alone and not that every incident ends as well as this incident ended but that we can see we're not alone."

Contributing: Keith McCord

We are looking forward to the fireside and our first day in Carthage as the site leaders tomorrow.  Thank you for checking in tonight!  We love you!