May 14, 2015 - Thursday

It was such a beautiful morning as we prepared for the day in Carthage.  Mom was up early and got me up and going at 5:15am.  We had our devotional and prayers and then a 30 minute workout before we left to meet the Hansen's for our brisk morning walk. We even made such great time as we arrived back at the jail for our cleaning duties by 7:00am.  Our first tours started promptly at 9:00am.

Today was the first day we have had 3 couples working the visitor's center during the week.  I am training the 3 new senior missionary couples for the fun time this summer.  We had our first tour scheduled, with a charter school from Utah come in this afternoon, with 80 junior high and high school students.  They were scheduled at 3:00pm this afternoon but arrived at 3:30pm.  They were a very quiet group of young people and very few of them smiled during the tours.  I thought that was a little strange, but it was a great opportunity to work out some bugs for our tours coming this summer.

Part of the process in handling large groups in a short amount of time is to break them up into smaller groups.  For this group we had them divided into 3 smaller groups and started one in the movie theater, one in the jail, and one in the history room.  Those waiting in the history room got a little prelude music by one of their students.  What a wonderful opportunity to play the baby grand piano in the Historic Carthage Jail Visitors Center!  Here is a picture;

The tour went very smooth and we were able to complete the 3 tours in a little over 75 minutes.  And we had 21 additional guests join in the tours as we rotated the groups from the history room to the movie to the jail tour.  It went pretty smooth and I will work on getting that down to 60 minutes.  I love these kinds of challenges and still be able to give a meaningful presentation.

This  is a picture, below, of our Rendezvous cast tonight.  We had two performances, and look at that lovely lady on the first row!  Could it be that world famous stage show actress from Nauvoo?....  

The first show was packed and the second one was almost full.  In the second show we had a couple that Josh and Isaac home teach from their ward in Utah.  The world continues to get smaller!  Josh and Amy will find out by this Sunday if it will be worthwhile to come to Nauvoo and see Granny and Grandpa on stage....

Here is a picture of the Hampton's that Josh and Isaac home teach.  What a pleasant couple and so very kind!  They know they can count on their home teachers each month!  What a credit to Josh and Isaac!

These personal pictures in front of Joseph and Hyrum are becoming the norm here in Carthage.  It has been wonderful making these connections almost every day!  One observation the Hampton s made was, "the Jeppsons take their vacation in Hawaii, we go to Carthage"....

It has been a wonderful day and filled with some fun surprises.  However, I just got a text to be at the jail tomorrow at least 30 minutes early for some very special guests.  I hope you will check out the blog tomorrow for additional details and developments!  Until then, thank you for checking us out tonight!