Millions Shall Know

This week was a big week here in Nauvoo.  

June 27 is the anniversary of the temple dedication and of the martyrdom of
Joseph and Hyrum Smith.  This is Elder Thompson at Carthage with
 President McArthur at the Commemoration program.  Elder Thompson and President McArthur have a special bond from an experience in the temple when President McArthur asked him to do something for him.  Elder Thompson prayed unceasingly for 35 minutes and the request was miraculously fulfilled and then some.

It was a privilege to serve in the temple on this day.  There is an old clock on the 1st floor that
doesn't work, but the time is set to a little past 5:00; the time of the martyrdom.

There are so many reminders of the Prophet Joseph.
 We know he was a Prophet and our testimony of him and our Savior grows as we serve here.  

This is a picture of Nathan Tanner.  He is Sister Thompson's gggrandfather.  He and his father John Tanner were closely associated with the Prophet Joseph Smith. 

Nathan was with the Prophet on one occasion when he was wrapped in vision and 

saw the future of this country over which the pioneers were to travel. 

He was chosen by Joseph Smith as one of the explorers to accompany 

him on his proposed journey to the Rocky Mountains. 

He was among those awaiting the Prophet on the night of June 22, 1844 

when they crossed the Mississippi River preparatory to proceeding westward.

However Emma sent a letter with Porter Rockwell begging her husband to return.  

Hyrum said: "Let us go back and give ourselves up, and see the thing out." 

To which Joseph responds, "If you go back I will go with you, but we shall be butchered."

 Hyrum retorts: "No, no; let us go back and put our trust in God and we shall not be harmed.  

The Lord is in it.  If we live or have to die, we will be reconciled to our fate."

Joseph and Hyrum returned to Nauvoo and their martyrdom followed.

 Big crowd, probably 1,000 people at the Carthage gardens.
 The Chambers (six month temple missionaries) are in the foreground.

There were readings and Praise To the Man sung by the Young Performing Missionaries.

If they look a little hot, well it was hot!

We are sitting next to the Rober's (site missionaries who got here the same week we did) 

and behind us to the right is our neighbors across the street the Anderson's.

Oh, and Sister Lynn!  The Flagstaff girls.

On Sunday we had a fireside featuring Noteworthy from BYU.  They are a female a-capella group.  They are really talented, beautiful and provided a very spiritual fireside.  

They will be here next week as well.  We will get pictures then.

After the fireside we saw 'Our Story Goes On' on the pageant stage with the pageant cast.

Isn't this setting amazing!  What a view!

This cast is so talented.  And includes many who you would recognize from other performances!

But...can you see the bugs!!!!  Fireflys are fun, the rest are NOT.

We saw this little cutie on our way home from Quincy                                     in front of Heber's house. 

We had to make another trip to Quincy.  Enterprise called...they needed the van they had given us...so now we have the Goldilocks car...not too small and not too big; 2016 Hyundai Sonata.

The car saga continues...

Bits & Pieces

This is going to be a jiffy post of our week in Nauvoo.  

We have been busy in the temple and out of the temple.  Here is just a quick look.

We were able to trade in our Yaris rental car for something a little bigger.
Still no word on when our car will be repaired.
 But we can now drive around and not feel every rock in the road!

We saw a glass blowing demonstration at Nauvoo Glassworks.

The corn is growing taller.

The Young Performing Missionaries are still performing, and continue to do an amazing job! 

Love it when they wear their hoop skirts ;)!

 Our missionary talent show was this week.  This is Pres & Sis Hansen doing Jack and the Beanstalk.

 An Elder from Germany said after tonight he is not sure how we won the war!

 Some had real talent, some were just plain silly.

Elders Rand and Widdison tried to be 'Teapots', turns out they are just sugar bowls!

The sing-a-long was fun.

Our weekly missionary meetings have been so inspiring.  

People have been sharing stories from their family histories. 

This is John Ellison Maxfield and his wife Sarah Elizabeth Baker

Sister Thompson's gggrandmother and grandfather

Sarah Elizabeth Baker Maxfield joined the LDS church with her husband and children in Bedeque, Prince Edward Island, Canada. The family sold or gave away all their belongings and left to join the saints in Utah. On September 1, 1851 in what is now Ham’s Fork, Wyoming, Elizabeth gave birth to her last son in the back of a wagon. Both mother and baby were so weak and exhausted that there was little hope that they would survive. The wagon master held the company up for a couple of days to allow her husband, John Ellison, to go into a nearby tent settlement and find someone who would care for his wife and baby, or bury them if they did not survive. John and the children could not wait for her recovery or death and leave later, because of the great danger of traveling alone through hostile Indian country without the protection of the entire company. So they made the unthinkable decision to leave their wife and mother behind. Miraculously, within a week, Elizabeth and the baby both recovered. They were able to catch a quicker-moving wagon train, and when John Ellison and the remaining children arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, Sarah Elizabeth and her new baby, Henry Adheimer, both healthy and vigorous, were in the crowd welcoming them to Zion.

"The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us is to seek after our dead. ...For it is necessary that the sealing power should be in our hands to

 seal our children and our dead for the fulness of the dispensation of times--

a dispensation to meet the promises made by

 Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world for the salvation of man.  

...Hence, God said, 'I will send you Elijah the prophet"  --Joseph Smith

Elder Russell M. Nelson has taught that the Spirit of Elijah is 

"a manifestation of the Holy Ghost bearing witness of the 

divine nature of the family".  This distinctive influence of the 

Holy Ghost draws people to identify, document, and cherish their 

ancestors and family members--both past and present. 

--David A Bednar Oct 2011 General Conference

In the gospel of Jesus Christ you have help from both sides of the veil, and you must never forget that.  When disappointment and discouragement strike--and they will--you remember and never forget that if our eyes could be opened we would see horses and chariots of fire as far as the eye can see riding at reckless speed to come to our protection.  They will always be there, these armies of heaven, in defense of Abraham's seed. 

--Jeffrey R Holland March 18, 1980, For Times of Trouble

Pinch Us

As we were leaving the temple one day last week (for some reason early because the sun had 

not yet set!) with Sister Hendricks we were blessed with a beautiful Sunset by the Mississippi!  

We love Sis Hendricks, she's a sweetheart.  She has the most wonderful Tennessee accent!  

Her husband is one of the temple engineers so they are 18 month missionaries. 

 We will be sad when they go home in a couple months.

We did not venture far this week from Nauvoo on our Pday.  

Driving around in our loaner Yaris is not too fun.  (Car update:  a new engine is on back order)

We went to see Anna Amanda.  It starts with this cute puppet show. 

Once again, the young performing missionaries do not disappoint.  The show is really fun.  They are amazing.  They do so many different performances. Every. Day.

A real treat was the concert of hymns the Bass Band plays at the Carthage Jail. 

The Spirit is so strong at Carthage.  

It was so inspiriting to sit in front of the jail listening to songs about the Prophet Joseph Smith. 

We saw Sister Lynn there.  You might remember her from our carriage ride a few weeks back.  Anyway, we visited with her and her companion for a little while.  

She is from Gilbert, Arizona and was born in Flagstaff just like Sister Thompson!  

I don't remember ever knowing anyone that was born in Flagstaff before!! Yay!! 

These sister missionaries serve for 18 months.  However, they come to Nauvoo in the summer and then in the winter they are assigned somewhere else in the states 

(they don't know where they are going until they open up another call in the Seventies Hall 

after the summer season has ended), and then come back to Nauvoo for another summer.

The last two weeks the BYU Folkdance team has been here performing.  They did a fireside Sunday evening for the missionaries.  So much talent and sweet testimonies! We saw a performance on Monday and will go back on Saturday evening to see their other performance.  

What they can do in the heat and humidity is unbelievable.

However the corn is growing and loving the heat and humidity.

Sunday afternoon we saw 'Be Still'.  It is a dramatization the young performing missionaries do of Saints reaction of the murders of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum.  It was so inspiring.  The missionaries bring the Spirit to everything they perform.  Afterwards while chatting with some, we commented how we didn't know how they could have the stamina to do what they do.  Everyone of them that you talk to about this mentions the angels they are supported by.  

Last week while one of the missionaries was volunteering at the FamilySearch Center 

a family came in to look for ancestors that may have lived here in Nauvoo.  

One of the sons pulled up an ancestor and in the stories tab was this: 

"My children, I have guarded the prophet Joseph Smith while he slept; I have guarded him while he walked the earth.  I have slept at his side.  I have felt the power of God in his life  I have seen the mantel of the Holy Ghost hover over him.  I have received the witness that I know that he is and he was a prophet of the living God, and I want you children, my family, to honor him and to honor each succeeding prophet following him because your security in the kingdom of God and your security in the church depends upon your full allegiance in the prophets in the earth.  This testimony I leave with you, and I know that he was, indeed, a prophet of the living God."   --Edwin Whiting (KWJW-7B9)

We also add our testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith.  He restored Christ's church.  He translated the Book of Mormon and restored the keys of the priesthood and the ordinances of the temple.  We are grateful for the opportunity to serve in, as President Hinckley called it, Joseph's Temple.  

Everyday we are grateful for another day in Nauvoo.  We can't believe the blessing it is to be here and to enjoy all that goes on.  Pinch us.  Each day we say, do we get to do this again today?!

Blessings and a Bump Along the Road

This week we were able to serve in the Arrival Center two times.  The first night we were there 

it was really quiet.  But on Friday a stake from Nebraska came for youth conference.  We had 

4 bus loads of youth throughout the day go over and serve in the baptistry.  It was a blessing

 to see the kids come back from the temple having had a great experience there.  

This is the view from the Arrival Center of the temple.  It is directly across the street.  Since there is not really a baptistry entrance; groups come here to check in and then are taken over to the temple side door.  It is also a place people can come to change clothes to go to the temple.  We had several do that as well.  We had family members waiting while siblings were married, people who wanted to know more about the temple, those looking for the Old Nauvoo Visitor Center.  It was so busy, and so fun. What a blessing to serve here.  We are also able to show the video that was made for the open house to those that want to see the inside of the temple and learn more about why we have temples.

We had a couple who came to receive their own endowments and have 3 sealings.  The wife was sealed to her parents, sealed to her husband, and then had their three children sealed to them.  We had a special conversation with the 6 year old when they came back from the temple.  We talked about how he felt when he was in the temple and that special feeling was from the Holy Ghost.  

We told him we hoped he can remember that experience his whole life, 

what happened there and how it made him feel.

"There exists a righteous unity between the temple and the home. 

 Understanding the eternal nature of the temple will draw you to your family; 

understanding the eternal nature of the family will draw you to the temple."  --Gary E Stevenson 

"Temple. 

 One other word is equal in importance to a Latter-day Saint. 

 Home.  

Put the words holy temple and home together, 

and you have described the house of the Lord!"  --Boyd K Packer

We have had so many spiritual experiences serving in the temple everyday.  

We stand all amazed at the loving tender mercies given to to those who come to serve and to us.  Heavenly Father is in the details of our lives.  

He loves us and cares about us.  That is evident to us every day.  

We cannot walk the halls of this beautiful temple without thinking of the sacrifice of so many so that we might have the gospel.  We are so grateful to experience these special moments with people who come to share in the spirit of this beautiful temple. 

We were in the baptistry on Saturday.  A group from BYU-I came.  While handing out clothing, a young return missionary was shaking with tears in his eyes.  He told me he was fulfilling a childhood dream of performing baptisms in the Nauvoo Temple.  It is a privilege to observe so many lives being touched by coming to the Nauvoo Illinois Temple.

This is a picture of the art glass in the baptistry that Tom Holdman did.  

This picture of it is off of his website.  It is amazing to see this in person. 

 A miracle that it is even here.  He is so talented and his story so amazing.  

So here is the bump in the road for the week.  On our P day we decided to take a drive to Iowa and have lunch.  About an hour out the car started making a terrible sound, so we turned around and then everything just stopped.  Luckily enough we coasted back to Farmington, Iowa.  A trucker helped us push it around the corner in front of this house and off the road.  We called Hyundai Roadside Assistance.  A tow truck came 1 1/2 hour later and drove us to Quincy, Illinois.

It was another 1 1/2 hour to the dealership there.

It was a miracle we had cell service, miracle we had purchased the wrap-around 10 year coverage, miracle all is covered, including the loaner car.  Miracle it was our P day so we didn't need to get back for our shift.  So for now we are driving a Yaris.  Not sure when they will be done with our car.  Sounds like it is getting a new engine.  So much for a fun P day.  But we cannot even describe how blessed we feel that it all is going to work out.

This pretty doe was in our back yard.  Last week the lawn mower flushed out the cutest little fawn.  

It had to be only a day old, wobbly legs and all.

Just for fun here are a couple clips from the children's parade march 

before the start of Sunset by the Mississippi.