June 16, 2015 - Tuesday

Jackson would be proud of Grandpa!  He did his lines with Jimmie tonight, perfectly!  When Jack was here with us last week he helped Grandpa in his practice sessions.  When I "performed" the night they were in the audience, I missed a line, but quickly caught up with a slightly different version than Jack and I had practiced.  Well, I thought I did pretty good in hiding the glitch until I saw Jack after the show.  He said; "Grandpa you did a great job tonight except you really messed up that one line".  Well, Jack, I made it through tonight and did not mess up any lines!

This morning was a beautiful morning and very cool, and absent of humidity.  We were very pleasantly surprised with how nice it was on our walk!  We had our usual morning devotional and then got ready for the day.  We were in the Visitors Center by 8:30am.  Our first tour of 55 scheduled at 9:00am and another of their group of an additional 55 scheduled at 10:00am, called to say they were delayed.  They indicated they would all be arriving together at 12:30pm.  That ended up working out very well.  We were having a steady flow of guests by 8:45am and it slowed down around 12:30 to perfectly accommodate this group.

This was a youth group from the Long-view, Texas Stake.  They were the 14 to 18 year old youth, and they had just traveled through the night, 14 hours, to be here with us today.  The young people were so ready to learn about Joseph.  I was very impressed.  We took the young men first.  There were 57 on this tour and then we took the young women next and they numbered 78.  

I took half of the young men and held them for a few minutes while Elder Hansen took the first group.  I was able to teach them, and in some cases remind them, of some important events that took place on June 24, 25, 26 and 27th of 1844.  I had them sing some hymns, before the tour, about the Prophet, and that set a wonderful tone for the beginning of the tour.  I also had some wonderful participation.

However, I did something that I have not done before as I spoke to them in the martyrdom room.  After teaching them that we were all walking on the same grounds that Joseph and Hyrum walked on, ...  And telling them about his preparations and his fulfilling of his prophetic responsibilities, ... I had a captive audience in the martyrdom room.  I simply said that once they, as young men in the Aaronic Priesthood,  crossed the threshold of the martyrdom room, they entered a point of no return in their lives.  

I told them that they were in the same room that Heavenly Fathers Prophet was martyred and that Heavenly Father was probably with Joseph and Hyrum at that time.  I felt impressed to tell them that some of them were not living up to their potential as Priesthood holders and that this experience gave them a new opportunity to make course corrections and be the young men that Heavenly Father needed them to be.... Just as Joseph rose to the responsibilities he had been given, so could each of young men rise to that challenge.  It was a precious moment.  I hope they were listening with their Spiritual ears!

From the 2002 remake of the film, "The Prophet of the Restoration, I have tried to commit this thought to memory;
"The Gospel of jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation.  The fulness of this Gospel was restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith.  Joseph lived and died for the cause of truth.  The work he began continues to spread throughout the earth.... Shall we not go on in so great a cause?"

The tours today were all delightful.  We have such an awesome group of senior missionaries and young sister missionaries.  There is such a great feeling as we work together to help insure a wonderful experience for our guests.

We travel back and forth to Nauvoo several times each week and the following pictures indicate some of the clouds we see.  When they get really dark, the rain starts down and often comes so hard that the windshield wipers can't keep up.

Here is a picture of the Nauvoo sunset and the overcast clouds that are starting to clear up.

This picture shows some very ominous clouds developing over Nauvoo.  This is taken from about 10 miles away from Nauvoo.

The lush green fields are beautiful. However we are not sure why it is so lush and green with so much rain and so little sun!

This looks like a terrible storm is right upon us.  With all the tornados that we hear about in this area, it makes me wonder, as we took this picture, if a tornado wasn't about to form!

While the storm clouds gather and the storm begins to rage upon the people, there is safety in the Temple!