It's been a great two weeks.
We were able to attend a zone conference in Nauvoo and see the Nauvoo
pageant and the British pageant. They
were both excellent. I think I enjoyed
the British pageant the most because some of the personal stories were new to
me. The Nauvoo Pageant tells of what a
great city Nauvoo had become after the Mormons settled there. Because they were so industrious and so
willing to sacrifice they even were building a temple. Nauvoo was the second biggest city in
Illinois next to Chicago. It breaks my
heart to hear how hard they worked to build the temple and were only able to
use it for a very short time before they left Illinois to go West. If they stayed in Nauvoo they would have had
to fight a war with those who felt threatened by our religion. Even though Nauvoo isn't very prosperous now
it is considered sacred ground to us. The
British Pageant tells of the missionary work
and the difficulties the converts in Britain had joining the Church and
then emigrating to America and on to Nauvoo.
At the end of the British Pageant, the theme being "Truth Will
Prevail", they had all the full time missionaries attending come from both
sides of the stage and from the back and fill in with the cast members. When I heard that we would be singing "Called
to Serve", I thought that we had just about worn that song out on our
mission. However, it was very powerful
and I was moved to tears. Here I was
standing with 100+ other missionaries, standing next to my husband and the
Mission President and his wife and trying to sing and not sob. At the end of that song, they transitioned
into "Redeemer of Israel" and that did it for me....at that point I
was just lip syncing. It is amazing how
much we can feel a part of this work even though we spend the majority of our
time paying bills, managing apartments, doing reports, communicating with
worried parents, submitting baptisms records to Church Headquarters, preparing
training manuals, submitting travel plans, etc.
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| This is a little before they had all the missionaries file up to the stage and sing. |
Also we traveled to Carthage and saw Carthage Jail and the
visitors center. Another sacred
historical spot. The statue of Joseph
and Hyrum Smith is touching and remind us how to truly love your brother. It was the most beautiful grounds and
structure in the whole city. There were
lots of people. One lady of another
faith, asked how could they afford to keep up the grounds, pay for the guides
and have such a beautiful center. It
didn't take long before one of the Couple Missionaries there explained about
what service missionaries do, our volunteer services and how the church
accomplishes so much worldwide.
One sweet story. A
couple of Elders were teaching a family.
The 9/10 year old girl was afraid of water. The day of the baptism she backed out, the
others were baptized. She was feeling
pretty sad about the whole thing. So the
next week the missionaries thought of how they could help her get used to
getting her head in the water. They
brought a bucket, filled it with water, and each of them took turns putting
their head in the bucket of water until the young girl was comfortable enough
to be immersed in the water. That
weekend she was baptized and it was a total success. The
Mission President commented that these are two Elders who followed the spirit
and found a simple solution.
Iowa is beautiful this time of year. The farms go on and on. You see mostly corn fields, then a lot of soy
fields and also some hay fields. The
corn is very tall, but not quite ripe.
Luckily for us the weather has been almost perfect. The temperatures are mostly in the mid-80's
with an occasional 90. It is more humid
here, but not unbearably so.
We love all the mail we get and the emails. We try to get on facebook to keep up with you
all! We're happy to be here and are
working hard and doing our best!
Lots
of love to everyone!!
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