July 13, 2015 - Monday In Carthage

Mom and I were up for an early morning walk after we had our morning devotional and prayers.  Somehow mom likes getting up early and going to bed early.  I am trying to get closer to her schedule but there is so much to do once we get home! But we do agree on the early morning walk time and that was 5:45am this morning.  It was already 76 degrees and very humid. I was going to go and get a haircut after our walk and breakfast, but I was soaking wet after our three mile walk!  

Today we had the closing shift so our schedule began at 11:45am today and we closed the center at 7:00pm.  It was a pretty quiet day in comparison to last weeks numbers.  We gave just over 400 tours today and it was so hot outside with a heat index of 113, and pretty cold inside as the temperature stayed close to 75.  In fact the sisters were cold inside and had to go outside fairly regularly to get warmed up!  Then at around 5:00pm this afternoon the winds came up and the air was cooled off to around 75 degrees outside!

I had a very interesting "moment of truth" this past week and I am going to try and put it into words.  During the last Rendezvous Play, in my part as "Pa", I completely skipped over a critical line that really highlights "Jimmies" part.  I knew I missed it but kept going with my lines almost without a hitch, and the audience could not have known, but it was still disheartening to have him miss out on his lines.  The tough part about this was that mom and I practice those lines each night I am scheduled to deliver them, and I had just gone over them less than 2 hours before.  Needless to say I was bummed all the way back to Carthage.  I even sent a note of apology to the play director!

The next morning I was still upset over messing up Jimmie's part.  As mom and I started on our walk, it started to rain a little and mom decided to go back home.  I kept going on the walk, and was thinking about the play mistake, when I started thinking about this quote that I received from the "Good Clean Funnies".  This was part of a joke about random thoughts on growing old.....

  

"Lord grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can & the friends to post my bail when I finally snap"!

I could not get this out of my mind until I started putting some things together. "...the strength to accept the things I cannot change".... I thought about my mission and the commitments I have made to be here.  I did not intentionally come out into the Nauvoo Mission as a 'conditional' missionary.  I came here to help with the work and fulfill every assignment given to me even if it was an assignment to play a part in Rendezvous.  

Then the phrase ".... the courage to change the things I can..."  Why of course I can work harder to not make the mistake again!  I can be more focused to not miss that part, and by trying to be more focused, I can be better prepared to make someone else's part better.  I realized that even my small part in this play affects others, and I have a responsibility so that others can do their best.  

Then the fun part of the quote, ..."the friends to post my bail...".   I will never be perfect and I will continue to make mistakes, but I can't stop giving my best even if I think I might fail. I need to stay focused and press forward and give everything I have to doing my best work, because, after all is said and done, I do have a Friend, an Elder Brother, who has already posted my bail in mortality so that I, and my family, may live with Him again.   

We all have an important part in this life and we all will affect someone as we travel through this mortality.  I just want to remember this "moment of truth", each time I fall short.  It will motivate me to do better and to focus on being better, and, ultimately, be the best I can be.  Then, in the process, I might be an instrument in helping someone else.

My gratitude goes out to the privilege that this part in the play, of "Pa", has given me to have this realization.  It came on a rainy morning walk in Carthage and will be imbedded in my mind for a long long time.

Now, for the day at the visitors center, we had a steady flow of guests, but one group, in particular, sticks out in my mind.  It was a group of 150 youth from the Missouri Stake, who were making Carthage their first stop of their youth conference.  They were supposed to come at a rate of 50 every hour but they all arrived at the same time.  Their plan was to be at the center for four hours and not "overwhelm" us.  They would have us take their youth on the tours as we had room, and they planned on staying for as long as needed.  

The only problem I saw developing was that the youth were somewhat out of control, the leaders wanted to play football and Frisbee on the lawns all afternoon, and the lawns had just been soaked with 4 inches of rain.  They were loud and blocking the walkways and I was pretty much put into crowd control mode, and teaching a little about advanced preparation to some of the leaders I could find.

It became apparent how this group of youth would come, at some point, into the Visitors enter and track the mud in, and be loud and obnoxious and affect others wanting a more Spiritual experience.  I decided that we would move them through as fast as we could.  I tried to get to the leaders and let them know their group was not ready for the Carthage experience and that we needed their help.  The only problem was that most of the leaders weren't ready either.  Some of the leaders tried to step it up in talking to the groups, and I was grateful for that.

However, it was a sad experience for me to see that most of the youth just had a walk through of an historic church site and not a Spiritual experience of being in the exact place that Joseph Smith sealed his testimony with his blood.  Just a missed opportunity for this stake, but, hopefully, some of them had some seeds planted as a result of being here.  One can only hope...

I did get an action shot of mom this morning:

Mom does a great job with her tours, and she is such a light to the visitors.  We have had a very busy 10 days, and with the groups tapering off, we feel like 400 or 500 guests is a pretty easy day!

We will have a great story tomorrow!  We have a member of the Quorum of the Twelve coming to Carthage with his family at 8:30am.  The mission president and his wife will be with them.  We are expecting his 22 family members and President and Sister Gibbons.  We have closed the Visitors Center until 9:30am to accommodate the family.   Thank you, in advance, for your prayers...