Nauvoo Week

This week really circled around the Nauvoo trip. I would wake up at night thinking about things I forgot, or how to balance things out better or would there really be enough food… or way too much. In preparing the food we figured it often by the person, then multiplied it by 130— or 120— and finally down to something like 110 people as sisters dropped out. Then we had to divided it by houses with houses having 18 (except when the GF folks came to breakfast) 23, 25, and 43. Try dividing 3 gallons of milk into 4 houses with those varying numbers of sisters.

I was sad as I got emails saying these sisters are dropping out. Sickness. Health of a spouse, work, indifference…. Each had a reason. But the atrophy was not as bad as it could have been. I downloaded conference talks onto my kindle to listen to on the way up. Then I learned my kindle refused to speak to my wifi speaker. So I got a cord so they would communicate.

This week I worked some on my financial promotional and we worked on our missionary application. I set up an appointment for a physical. And Tuesday night we visited with John, a thoughtful investigator.

Wednesday Tom and I drove up to Mexico, MO— about 1 ½ away from Nauvoo. The last hour or so we had torrential, unrelenting rain. They had predicted rain in Nauvoo Thurs, Fri, and Saturday. But we prayed for improved weather. I think the downpour was so that I’d think, wow, this little sprinkle is nothing! And that was what we had at Nauvoo, mist, sprinkles, and some dry periods. It was really pretty nice weather. With cloud cover, you can take better pictures.

We’d bought a lot of food and I had a shopping list for Aldi and Walmart in Keokuk one of the closest shopping towns to Nauvoo. Nauvoo has a Casey’s gas/shopette and that’s about it. My counselors were driving up together and they arrived in Keokuk about the same time we did. So we loaded their call with all the Aldi stuff that would not fit into our car. We didn’t have enough room for the 15 bags of lettuce, 7 containers of yogurt and ice cream we needed to get at Walmart, so Tom planned on going back.

We arrived at the Bunk House about 12:30. It’s the largest home that sleeps 50 and has a huge island in the kitchen with double stove, frig, and dishwashers. We unloaded all the food and then proceeded to divide it up. With the smaller number of sisters, we decided to combine a house, move the men to a closer house, and simply not use one of the houses. I wish I would have waited until the last minute to order the final house. We could have saved several hundred dollars! Ah well. The problem was that with fewer sisters we needed to recalculate the number in each house and then figure out how to divide up the food. Tom did make the run to Walmart— but later than we had anticipated.

My one counselor, Carolyn, did an awesome job assigning rooms, houses and beds to all the sisters. My new counselor helped to plan devotionals and to assign people to nights to go to the temple and the play. It was challenging, but worked out better that two of the wards with the largest number coming arranged on their own, to reserve temple and play seating. And ultimately everyone got where they needed to go!

The men were magnificent (there were two per house)! They did a great job of cooking and cleaning up. They were quite self-sufficient and the women felt loved and pampered as they were waited on and served food. It freed them to see more and do more since they just had to come in and sit down and eat. The women were very appreciative.

I went to the temple on Thursday night with the groups from Mountain Home, Ava and Mountain View. Sprinkles of sisters and the helping husbands (including Tom and I) went on Friday morning. Other wards attended the temple Friday night and then on Saturday morning. The non-temple groups went to see Rendezvous at Old Nauvoo, a play put on by the senior missionaries. Tom and I went on Friday night. It was funny and poignant as it looked at Nauvoo and the saints as they prepared to leave Nauvoo. These were all old dudes singing and dancing and acting and they were fantastic!

I had not realized that it was a choice between moving west or having a civil war within the state. The saints chose to leave willingly. But you could feel the sadness as they left all they had worked for and built up— homes, fruit trees, hand-made rugs and furniture, even livestock and gardens. It is a testimony to the strong faith they had that this was the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was true. How can you not follow truth?

By Friday morning, it appeared that the food would be sufficient and was allotted fairly well. After Tom and I went to the temple, he went to nap and run, and I went to visit old Nauvoo with some of my presidency. Here we are in the women's statue garden.

We had a few bumps in the road. I needed 10 dozen eggs plus 19 for the brownies… but we ended up with 19 dozen eggs. However, the men made hard boiled eggs and offered eggs for breakfast, and surprisingly, most all of them got used! I asked Tom to buy 8 lbs. of broccoli, thinking of the frozen broccoli to steam for baked potato toppings. However, he failed to read my mind and bought fresh broccoli. One of the men there had run restaurants and offered to be in charge of the menu, ordering, and cooking for the next time we did this! I was ecstatic! I thought of him as I debated what to do with the broccoli. Would he prep it, divide it out and deliver it to the houses before the evening meal? Sure! We had about a tablespoon left over… so all was well.

I had also worried about having a ton of things to take home. We’d bought a jar of peanut butter, jelly, mayo and mustard for each house. However, I asked each house to divvy-up and give away the extra food they had and we brought very little back home. The only thing we really had left over were massive amounts of muffins and cookies. I had asked the sisters to bring muffins and cookies. They were to take them to the bunk house to be divided up. Some did… some didn’t. Our house had cookies the sisters brought— and we had plenty. We got an allotment of muffins from the Bunk House, but they had massive amounts left! We tried giving them away for sisters to eat on the way home, but probably still had 100 or more left over. I don’t exactly know what happened to them, and I’m not asking.

At the temple, Tom thought he saw a familiar name- Bob Brown.  We had known someone by that name in Yuma. Was it the same one? Yes. So after the play, Tom and I stopped at their house for a delightful catch-up on 40 some years. They are serving a year mission at the Nauvoo temple. They also served a temple mission in England. It turns out he is the uncle of one of our  former ward members. Small world!

Tom and I tried to leave as soon as we could on Saturday. We needed to check the homes and make sure the sisters had stripped beds, emptied trash and cleaned out all the food. We wanted to get home because a young man, Ethan, was getting baptized at 6:30 and we wanted to be there. It was a beautiful drive home. The leaves were turning color in northern Missouri. We had divided highways and narrow country roads to drive on. We drove though this town on our way there.

Our GPS tried to direct us incorrectly at least twice, and I had some trouble trusting it and following it several other times, so I made a couple of wrong turns. One, Tom was convinced endangered life and limb… and he may be correct. But Praise God we made it home safely. And in time for the baptism. Nice guy. It’s always a joy to see how the gospel can change lives for good.

Sunday was Fast Sunday. Several of the sisters talked about how much they appreciated the Nauvoo trip- that it was a spiritual experience and a wonderful time to bond with the sisters in their ward and stake. Today Tom was also called to be the Young Men’s president. He will do a great job. We also had the self-reliant class in the afternoon. I think I am catching up on my sleep. Life is good.