July 29, 2016 - Friday in Nauvoo

Our morning got off to a great start with our early devotional, prayers and our sweet Nauvoo walk!  The temperature was cool enough to wear a sweatshirt and also feel the invigoration that low humidity brings.  And, in addition, we were able to enjoy a brisk walk with almost no traffic.  What a great way to start the day!

Mom had the assignment to be the second shift narrator and I worked at the Blacksmith's shop on the late shift.  I was especially grateful to work in the cooler temperatures at the Blacksmith shop.  With the forge going at high heat, the shop can get really hot.  But the temperatures today prevented that from happening.  And we had almost 500 visitors come into the shop today.  It was non-stop tours and I didn't get to rest until we got to the Sunset play tonight!

And the Sunset audience was the largest one we have seen so far this year.  Mom and I counted 860 in attendance.  They were a loud and fun audience and the show went so smooth!  The Young Performing Missionaries and the Nauvoo Brass Band have such high energy!  We are down to the last two weeks of the Sunset shows and the season ends on Saturday August 13th.  We will then be down to two Rendezvous shows each week after August 13th..  Then, it looks like our last Rendezvous show will be Thursday August 25th.

I had some great families come into the Blacksmith shop today.  It was so fun to make the horse shoes for them.  We are running low on the horse shoes we made this winter, so they are asking us to only give one shoe to the entire group.......  Well how can you do that with eight or nine children wanting a shoe?  Here is how I did it.  I put myself in the rotation to follow one of the longest winded senior missionaries who can make a 20 minute tour into a 35 minute tour.  That gave me time to do my 15 minute tour and an additional 20 minutes to make 10 extra shoes while they watched.  I did this at least a dozen times today and got lots of applause for the effort to make sure every precious Primary aged child got a souvenir!