This is Sister Taylor, she is serving her second mission in Nauvoo. She gave us a tour of the Scovil Bakery before we went to serve our Friday night shift and gave us molasses cookies!!
So a little about Lucius Nelson Scovil who owned the bakery and his wife Lury. He joined the Church in 1837 in Kirtland, Ohio. He and his family endured the persecutions in Ohio and Missouri. While living in Kirtland he owned a wagon and a team of horses. Many families did not have the means to move their families to escape the persecutions, but Lucius was a kind and generous man who moved families 100 miles to the Ohio River. Lucius made 5 trips transporting others, then gathered his family leaving all his possessions behind and traveled to Missouri. There he took odd jobs so he could to pay off his debts. He was penniless when his family was driven from Missouri to Nauvoo.
He worked hard to get back on his feet and built the Scovil Bakery. When the Saints were forced to leave Nauvoo in 1846 he not only lost all he had, but as the wagons were pulling out along Parley Street his wife Lury died in childbirth. The twins she delivered, Mary and Martha, died 10 days later. He was devastated, but prepared to leave with his family members.
He started west with his remaining 4 children but didn't get very far before he was called on a mission to England. He didn't want to leave his children but wanted to do what the Lord asked him to do, so he left them in the care of family and friends and went to England. On his way there, he stopped and sketched a drawing of the Nauvoo Temple.
When he arrived in England he commissioned 150 dozen fine china plates be made with the picture of the temple surrounded by the names of the leaders of the church at that time. He would give them out to people he met and taught. (Pretty cool pass-along cards!)
This is an original plate that is displayed in the bakery. Scovil worked hard and was successful each place he lived but lost everything time and time again. However, his focus in life was not gaining material wealth. He wanted to move God's kingdom forward by keeping his baptismal covenants. His testimony was his spiritual wealth.
So these are the crazy steep stairs to the basement. The stones are from the original foundation.
The front of the Scovil Bakery. Not a very big place, but there is evidence that it perhaps originally had more than one story. You can't really tell from the foundation if it was a 2 story building, but journal accounts of people living there indicate that it must of had a second story.
This is the summer kitchen out back, and the pretty daffodils in front.
For Family Home Evening on Monday we had a lecture by Brother Dunn about what Joseph Smith really looked like. It was very interesting. He died when photography was just beginning to be used. We do have detailed descriptions however and this profile drawing by Sutcliffe Maudsley.
It was used on the Old Nauvoo map printed in 1842 along with an architects drawing of the temple.
There goes the wagon again...it must be 10 minutes after the hour. It is fun to go out and wave Hi!
Sorry, it looks like it might have been trash day ;)
We saw the buggy out for the first time. Aren't those horses beautiful?!
We had 2 more lectures from the Durrants this week. They have now left Nauvoo, but will be back in August. We can't wait! Brother Durrant gave all the temple missionaries a print of a painting he did of downtown Nauvoo. It is a treasure to us. They are master story tellers, but they are more than stories, they are testimonies of the gospel and relay history in a interesting way, always with the spirit.
Sister Durrant spoke about Lorenzo Snow. She gave details about his life that were so interesting. He had a gift of raising from the dead. He raised a young girl that had been dead for 2 hours.
In 1898 the president of the Church, Wilford Woodruff, died. Lorenzo Snow was at that time eighty-four years old; he did not want to be president of the Church and take on the immense burdens of administration and financial struggle in which the Church was then immersed. But his calling was the Lord’s will. He had a beautiful spiritual experience while supplicating the Lord in the temple. For three days he received no answer to his prayers, and then as he was leaving the temple, a glorious manifestation was given. Later he showed one of his granddaughters the place where it happened and said, “It was right here that the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to me at the time of the death of President Woodruff. . . . He stood right here, about three feet above the floor. It looked as though He stood on a plate of solid gold.” She recalled: “Grandpa told me what a glorious personage the Savior is and described His hands, feet, countenance and beautiful white robes, all of which were of such a glory of whiteness and brightness that he could hardly gaze upon Him.
Then [Grandpa] came another step nearer and put his right hand on my head and said: ‘Now, granddaughter, I want you to remember that this is the testimony of your grandfather, that he told you with his own lips that he actually saw the Savior, here in the Temple, and talked with Him face to face.’” --LeRoi C. Snow, “An Experience of My Father’s,” Improvement Era, September 1933,677
He was serving as President of the Salt Lake Temple at the time and had an apartment in the temple where he stayed these 3 days. (Sister Alldredge took us through this apartment, which is the old sealing office, when she showed us sealing room 5. This room is directly next to the Holy of Holies, with a stained glass window between the two rooms.)
Sister Durrant told of the talk President Snow gave on tithing in southern Utah. He promised the saints they would receive temporal and spiritual blessings if they obeyed the law of tithing. He received a telegram everyday in Salt Lake City from the stake president saying there was no rain. Then came the telegram that it was raining. After the lecture, President McArthur said that stake president in St George was his great grandfather.
We had a fantastic week.
We are learning a lot.
We are humbled by the opportunity to serve this mission.
We love being in the temple everyday.
We love serving those who come to the temple.
We love serving along side those that work in the temple.
We invite all to come unto Christ.
