May 4, 2015 - Monday

It was a restless night for some reason last night.  I felt pretty tired this morning, perhaps because I needed to be at the Visitors Center by 7:15am for an early event.  We set up a seminary teacher to pod cast her lesson about Joseph and Hyrum from the jail back to her students in Washington State.  I was up early and took my usual walk with Helen and about half way the rain started coming.  Mom went back to our house and I continued on my path, and the rain ending up clearing up after a few minutes.   So I was able to get the full walk in and it was sure humid out!  

I got the teacher all set up by 7:30am and went home to get ready for the day.  I came back around 9:00am to help put things away.  Here is a picture of her set up;

We had to use the window, where the Prophet Joseph fell out, for the best signal for the call.  The students had a really neat experience being able to focus on the lesson broadcast from a very sacred room.

I have shown this special photo shot to a few people and thought that you might like to see the window Joseph fell out of from the perspective of the bullet hole where the  mob fired through the door and hit Hyrum.

We got to the Visitors Center by 8:45am and got the center open for our guests.  The first visitors were already in the parking lot by a little before 8am so they were happy we started up earlier for them.  It seems we just keep opening up earlier each day, but this is why we are here, for sure.

There are some wonderful people we are serving with here in the Nauvoo Mission, and here is a picture of two of them.  Sister Olsen is at the piano and Elder Hatch is singing along with her.  She is 83 and serving as a single sister, and she was the first person who had us over for dinner at her house when we settled into our mission the first part of March. Elder Hatch is in our Rendezvous cast and we have sure enjoyed getting to know him and his wife.  

It was a rather slow day as far as visitors coming into the center, but we had some great connections.  The Nauvoo Temple missionaries all arrived over the last two weeks and their ranks swelled to around 80 couples.  They come from all over the United States to serve here in Nauvoo for six months.  There are so many who want to come that the temple missionaries are limited to the length of their missions.  This couple pictured below have a home teacher that all of our family knows well.  It is none other than Dan Daines up in Spokane, Washington!

And we can't forget our play, Rendezvous, performed tonight!  In the midst of a downpour and a thunder and lightening display, we put on a show for all the Young Performing Missionaries who arrived here last Saturday.  They were, by far, the most supportive audience we have performed for and they were loud, cheerful and totally into the show.  I caught a picture of Elder and Sister Hatch having some fun in our cast room that is affectionately called "the Green Room".  This is where we "relax" in between vignettes.  This is such a great group of people!

Sister Hatch is using her knitting needle to "load" Elder Hatch's rifle before a scene that all the men carry their rifles in to perform a vignette called "Willingly". We had two shows tonight so mom and I got home around 10:30pm.  The rain came down hard and put the windshield wipers to hard labor, but we made it home safe and sound.  It made for a long day.  It is a pleasure to serve here in Carthage and we seem to always be on the run.  

Additionally,  I wanted to post this and, again, thank you for checking in with us tonight! We see time going by at a very rapid rate...