Nauvoo Temple and village

Our room was pretty nice and it even had a hair dryer…………  Bill was sure that it was only 15 miles from our motel to the temple but it was over 25 miles and we took the wrong exit to boot.  Needless to say we did not get to the 8am temple session that we had hoped for.

One adventure we had was that of traversing this very narrow and very old bridge across the Mississippi river.  The sign said it was a toll bridge at the beginning  of our entrance to it but when we got to the toll booth, a small post it note said “FREE” so we thought that was pretty good – saved $2.  I have no idea how old this bridge is but it cannot accommodate anything larger than an automobile and certainly not a tractor trailer.  Apparently it opens up to allow river traffic through and there is a siren that sounds when the bridge is about to open up but we got through without a hitch – both ways.  We had to come back by this bridge to continue our journey to Nebraska after we had done what we wanted to do at the Temple.

The Nauvoo Temple is now about 10 years old.  That is hard to believe that it was 10 years ago that it was dedicated.  On the ground floor is an assembly room that is used for special occasions.  It is set up a lot like the main portion of the Kirtland Temple.  In one hall way they have Joesph Smith’s Saber that he wore as part of his uniform as a general in the Mormon Army.  There are other artifacts in cases on the wall and of special note is the collection of actual keys from the original Nauvoo temple and reproductions of other keys that used to be part of the original temple.  The original temple was built in the days of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young but Joseph was martyred before it was finished and the members of the church only got to use the temple for a few months before the mobs drove them out of Nauvoo and on to the West.  The mobs burned the village of Nauvoo and desecrated the temple and burned it.  The charred remains were then totally removed by a tornado later on.  When I visited Nauvoo many years ago, all that was to see of the original temple was a depression in the ground and some foundation pillars that were level with the surface of the ground.  The interior of the present day temple is built after the original plans and the woodwork is spectacular.  There is a spiral staircase that should be the envy of the world.  It is fine craftsmanship and is something like my father used to do when he worked as a joiner.  I know that he would really appreciate the workmanship in this temple spiral staircase.  All the rugs were hand loomed in England on 22 inch looms and are of pure wool and the patterns in the carpet are those that were originally designed for the first temple but never executed because the temple was destroyed.  I was amazed to hear that those patterns that were chosen to be used in the 1800’s when this first temple was being built were still around and able to be used in modern days to produce the carpets that they have today.  I was amazed at the elegance of the curtains they have on the circular windows – the pleating is perfect.  We were asked to be the witness couple for the temple ceremony.

After the temple session was over, we went to the visitor’s bureau and boarded a horse drawn wagon for a ride and narrative of the historic village of Nauvoo.  The place must have been beautiful when it was built and the method they used to make the bricks for the brick homes was amazing.  We went to the brick works after the tour around Nauvoo, and they did a demonstration of how the bricks were made and they gave us a small brick imprinted with Nauvoo on it.  David wanted a brick and we were happy that they still give out bricks at the brick works.

We ate at a small café in Nauvoo before starting off on our journey to Lincoln Nebraska.  We started out on route 2 across Iowa and it is the same route 2 that goes all the way past where Sara lives and we had no problem finding her home.  When I am out here in the Mid West, I have a hard time remembering which is north or south etc. and only be oriented by the fact that South Street is a short way from Sara’s house and that the university is north of the house.  Other than that, the Sun seems to come up just about wherever it wants to and sets wherever it wants to because I cannot imagine that where it rises is actually East.  I had the same problem in Pennsylvania when we lived there.  It seemed that the sun always rose in the west even though it was truly the East where it rose.  So we followed Route 2 across Iowa and it is a country road that is less traveled but it was the only east/west highway we could use that would not put us miles out of our way.  As we came in on Route 2 I suddenly saw Menards and then the Wal Mart and other stores that I have frequented in the past and I knew exactly where we were but my mind kept saying that we were traveling east when in fact we were traveling west.  I think I need help in orienteering.

We arrived at Sara’s house at about 8.15pm and then the fun began.  The children were all  excited to see us arrive and the Oreo Cookies that they asked for were soon opened and enjoyed.  It was hard getting them to go to sleep.  Around 3am Oliver came in and got in bed with us and then about 2 hours later Lyla came in as well.  There is not enough room in a queen sized bed for two adults and two children……so I got up and left them to their bed space.  However, they soon got up as well and began to tickle Bill’s feet – one of the great games they usually play when we are here.

I fed the three children breakfast and then we played Chick Chick and the house was filled with noise, laughter and happy squealing.  Managed to get the boys to dress for school, Oliver to do his homework, and then out the door and over to Saratoga School.  Lyla insisted on walking with us and she made it all the way to the school but had to be piggybacked on the return trip. 

So it is now Wednesday morning and Bill and I have the house to ourselves and we are doing laundry. Tomorrow Jacob has an in-person interview with Novartis a drug company that is located here.  It is in the research and development area.

Monday 24 September Adventure.

 The sun was in just the right angle to catch the glass in the tower of this church on the corner down from our motel in Zanesville.  I thought it looked rather cool to catch the sun in this manner.

 This is the church across the street from our motel.  It used to be a church but is now a theater for a small group of players.

 this is the sign outside the theater announcing what is playing and when.

 Our Motel in Zanesville.

 Looking down the street towards the highway overpass.

 Moose rolling on his side laughing his antlers off with amusement at us trying to put all our stuff back into the trunk of the car.  there seems to be no way to get him to behave appropriately.  Seems like he is acting "from away" now that he is with us and no longer in Maine.

 He insisted on checking out the computer in the hotel room.  After he decided it was working alright, he decided to rest up and be ready for the trip tomorrow.

Goodnight Moose!

Some things we have seen on this trip.  For starters, I was surprised to see a wind farm in the mountains between Altoona and Chambersburg.  I had not expected to see a wind farm in this part of the world due to the mountains etc. But there they were, whirring away and making electricity for somebody.  We saw the same thing in Illinois today.  I guess we saw wind farms all along the I-80 corridor when we went out to Maine, around this time last year.

We have seen many small animals that are now road pizza – skunks, raccoons, groundhogs and what also looks like coyote and even a few deer.  I guess these animals don’t win any argument with a fast moving vehicle.  One would expect to see carrion feeders helping themselves to these free meals but there were no takers as far as I could see.

One thing of note is the field after field of dry, immature corn.  They had a drought this summer and the corn did not grow or produce.  It seems such a shame that they all lost their crops this year.  There were many fields of soybeans as well and they looked very dry.

We are now in Burlington Iowa and tomorrow we will leave early to go to the Temple in Nauvoo.  It is going to be a long journey from here but our appointment in the temple is at 8am.  All we did all day today was drive, drive, drive.  Our hotel keeper in Zanesville is from India and when I asked him if he had Ganesh on any of the walls (I did not see any), he took us behind the desk and there on the computer screen was Ganesh.  In one of the motels we stayed at on the way out here, there was a huge statue of Ganesh on the wall behind the front desk.  In this motel in Zanesville, they had a vase containing about 30 lucky bamboo and an elephant head on each end of the oblong vase.  He told us that he had run for a seat on the Ohio Senate during the last election and he lost by a couple of thousand votes.  He has been encouraged to run again since the people now have name recognition.  I did not know that humans had such a long ‘name recognition memory’.  I usually cannot remember someone's name 5 minutes after they tell me.

The motel we have tonight is very nice and very comfortable.  We should all sleep well tonight.

Blender photos

 Moose slept through the first day's travel

 He did better the second day and stood up for himself and other Moose..................

 Marsha and Chiz

 Gary and Bill

 Sherry

 Some familiar highway signs

 the restaurant at the William

 No bars on the windows or dubious traffic

 With Marian

 with Christine

 this tree was a skinny little slip of a tree when we purchased our house in 1977 but now it is fully grown and beautiful

 Our back porch on the first house we ever known.

 the tree across the street from our first ouose.

 Richland fire hall.

Rte. 219 on the way to Somerset

Our travels so far

We are now in Zanesville, Ohio.  We are at an Econolodge…and it is just that.

Across the street from the motel, is a building that looks like it was a church at one time but now it is used to worship the God of Bawdiness because they have turned it into a theatre for entertainment and the playbill advertised on the front of the “church” is “FORBIDDEN BROADWAY”.  I have no idea what that is all about, but it does not look like some place a lady missionary should enter.  There is no parking lot for this church that I can see and parking on the street is not allowed so that leaves the motel parking lot – but the play is not being held tonight so we have a place to park our car.

This is an older motel – you can tell that by the architecture even before you enter the room,  but at least this one has a hairdryer – which means I do not have to put the room heater on full blast with cyclone force blowing action to get my hair dry (this is what I had to do this morning and my hair looked like a mop in a fit as a result).  Yep, they even let me into the church with my hair in such a mess.

When David was little, I had taken him up to the Mall to pick Bill up one night and we stopped out front of the mall and beeped the horn of the car to catch his attention.  We were unsuccessful so at David’s request I beeped the horn again and then David announced – Well of course you know that these are ‘Beep Free Walls’ so it is no wonder that Daddy cannot hear us.  My hope is that these walls and windows of this aging motel are ‘beep free’ and that we can get some sleep tonight.

Yesterday we drove from Allentown in Eastern Pennsylvania to Chambersburg to meet our friends Chiz and Marsha and their daughter and granddaughter.  It is hard to see Chiz so incapacitated but he was glad that we stopped by to see him.  We had lunch with them and we talked and talked about the old times when we all lived in Johnstown.  We left his house in mid afternoon for the ‘short’ drive to Hollidaysburg.  We trusted the Google Maps printout but really should have gone by the highway (and paid the toll and everything) and we would not have had such a ‘round the mulberry bush’ ride that took hours and hours.  On the other hand, the trees here in Pa are further ahead than those we left in Augusta and the leaf peeping was spectacular.  Eventually we found Gary and Sherry at their apartment and we had a grand time catching up on all the news of children and grand children.  Of course there were the “million children and grand children” pictures exchanged with appropriate “Wow! I can remember when…………………..(you fill in the answer).  They told us of another friend Debbie who used to live in Johnstown the same time we did and that she has had two strokes and is in the County Home.  They do not call it the county home anymore because a company has purchased it and turned it into a pretty nice facility.  It is so secure that we had to find someone who knew the combination so that we could operate the elevator when it was time to leave.

We found our way to the “William Motel” in Ebensburg.  It did not have a hair dryer – and a lot of other amenities that one would expect.  However, we were too tired to argue or ask so we climbed into bed and had to struggle to get up this morning.  This motel boasted a cooked breakfast – but it was only being served from 9am on we needed to be 20 miles away in Johnstown for church and we decided to go to the Valley Dairy for breakfast.  They have remodeled the place but the service is still slow.  I did not think we would make it to church on time let alone be there early.  However, we got there about 5 minutes before the meeting started and were surprised at the number of familiar faces we found in the congregation.  It was a good reunion to be sure.

After church we went to see Marian and she had lunch ready for us.  We talked about all kinds of things and had a wonderful time.  We then went over to see Christine who lives next door to our home that we had on Lenore Street.  She was telling us that the people who own the house now put in a full bathroom down in the basement but the people who installed it made a real mess of the pipes and waste pipes etc. so much so that she had 4 inches of water accumulate in her basement during a couple of heavy downpours recently.  The indoor French drains that we had put in were adequate, it is just that the people who installed her full bathroom messed up the pipes etc. ; really sad to hear.

We left Johnstown and were about to follow the Google map thingy again but realized that it would be way quicker for us to go down Rte. 219 to Somerset and get on the Pa turnpike there rather than trundle through town and out Menoher boulevard to Ligonier then onto Rte 30 to New Stanton and thence to Ohio.  So we circumvented the Google stuff , went down 219 to the Pike and then out to New Stanton and thence to Zanesvile, Ohio.  Whew!  I am tired of driving.

This is what I mean when I say that it’s like life in a blender – we are trying to cram too many miles into too few days as we trek back to Arizona.

In spite of all that happened, I am glad that we went to Johnstown Ward – Gary said we would know more people in Altoona Ward if we went there than to Johnstown…………..but we had a good time in Johnstown. We spent the first 20 years  of our married life in this town and church congregation.

Processing what happened - ongoing process at best

Processing “what just happened” takes a long time.

It is much like the adoption process – something I know about.  Don’t know about giving birth because I did not do that – just did the adoption route.

The beginning:  Our Bishop brought up the subject of going on a mission to us.  At first my thoughts were for my grandchildren.  My heart said, “NO!  I just want to spend the rest of my days playing with my grandchildren (I did not think of them ever growing up but staying little and wonderful to play with)”.  But he wisely let the suggestion sink in and a few weeks later we looked at each other and said, “Ok.  Let’s do this”,  we said that about adoption – OK let’s do this! But we had no idea what was in store.  The promise was, You can play with your grandchildren after the mission is over.  A Mission is the chance to serve the Lord Jesus Christ to the best of our ability on a full time basis – what a privilege.

The Papers:  Endless papers and then more papers, doctors’ visits, tests, decisions, and then more papers.  When we decided to adopt there were papers and more papers to fill out and endless questions about our attitudes etc.,  the papers for a mission are an effort for someone elsewhere to read and try to determine if we could last the course that we had now chosen to follow.  The adoption agency wanted to be sure that we could take care of a little one and raise it properly and more importantly could we provide for its needs etc. to maturity – but no one who starts out as a parent with homemade or store bought children is ever guaranteed that all or any of them will last the distance because life takes care of that aspect;  So we dutifully filled the papers out, the doctor had his clerk fill them out and all were sent in.

Waiting:  Waiting is not something I am good at and never have been.  My mother used to say that Patience is a virtue, possess it if you can, seldom found in women and never in a man.  We waited and worried about the application papers – would we be found adequate to the task ahead?  Would they take a chance on us doing what was asked?  Better yet, what is being asked for this mission?

Watching for the postman:  Ah yes, the federal government worker in the blue uniform who brings bills, magazines, advertisements, political papers and mission calls.  Many people were waiting anxiously for us to get the mission call in the mail and we were under strict instructions to call them as soon as the letter arrived so that they would also know what and where we would be.

SKYPE:  I am grateful for Skype.  It is a program on the internet that allows us to talk to our family and see them at the same time.  I can also see the progress in growth of my grandchildren so it will not be such a shock to see these ‘big’ kids when we get there.  Sara wanted us to open our mission call while Skype was running and so we did.  All her family was gathered and Bill and I at our respective computers and the letter was opened – You have been called to work in the New Hampshire, Manchester Mission!

What’s next?:  Well, the adoption agency had a series of interviews with us, set up parenting classes and required that we attend all of them and then when we were properly prepared (can you ever be prepared for parenting?), you get your baby.  Preparation for our assignment took the form of going to the Missionary Training Center in Provo and going through the process of learning about digital cameras and how to take the pictures.

The fun begins:  We embarked on child rearing with gusto.  We did the same on this mission – we approached it with gusto and my blog records what happened along the way.  Eventually the children left home and made lives for themselves.  We went through the duties set for us and now we have ‘left home’ and are going back to our home in Arizona.  As with children, who come with no operating manual, the operating manual we were given for the digital cameras were written in such technical language that we could not understand it and the problems of blurred images left us discouraged and wondering if we had taken the right course to begin with.  But we survived the children growing up and we have survived the digital cameras and all that went with a mission.

ALL WE HAVE TO DO NOW IS TO SIT BACK AND PROCESS WHAT HAPPENED AND DISTIL OUT OF IT THE LESSONS WE NEEDED TO LEARN.

Welcome to civilian life............

So, we have been here one year.  Ups and Downs and twists and turns one could never anticipate and we walked out of the archives yesterday and tried to prepare to leave.
We got off to a slow start - the mattress monster had Bill in its vicious clutches but breakfast on the table was incentive enough to extricate him from  the quilt that had him so tightly tied down.  Then the fun began.  We had to cobble together the boxes needed to fill up with stuff we thought we could not live without and then put the lot in the trunk and back seat of the car.  Jennie came over to wish us well and I noticed that her face was all cut up.  She fell last night going home but she assured me that she is ok now.  Sue and Norma came at 10am - they knew that we would not be out the door at 8am.  I asked if we should charge admission for all the people who want to observe the Missionaries get packed up and not have to use a U-haul to get their stuff home.
Finally, we got into the car - leaving a bunch of stuff for the ladies to sift through as they take inventory of all the stuff in the apartment.
As we walked out the door, it just seemed like we were going to the Archives for the day.  We drove out to Rte.95 and then started down towards Portland.  It was the strangest feeling.  I tried to make sense of it, but the thought kept coming back to me "What just happened?".  It seems like we were taken into a time warp of sorts to work on the digitizing and then released from the time warp to drive back to Arizona.  I guess time warp is not a good term, but how does one explain what happened in the intervening 365 days - the only evidence I have is the blog I kept but that seems so surreal when I look at it.  Did all that stuff really happen?  Oh Yes, it did  and as I read it I feel like I am an observer rather than a participant.  It is the strangest feeling to just walk out of a mission and into the real world.  "What just happened?"
David called at about 11am Augusta time.  His comment was - I knew you two would not be ready at 8am because Dad likes to sleep in.  Well, it will not be long now and we will be able to sleep in as much as we want - well, not until Oct 4th.  We know that David that David himself would not have been up at 8am Maine time - that's 5am Arizona time and he does not see daylight until someone wrestles him out of bed.
We drove out to Maine one year ago and now we are driving back.  "What just happened?"
In any case, we had a good trip down here to Allentown and our adventure for the day was finding that one of the major roads we were to travel was closed till October 31.  So we found ourselves facing a detour and that put a wrinkle in the whole trip and made it a 10+ hour trip instead of an 8 hour trip.
Eventually we found the motel and then set out to find a restaurant.  About the only thing we could find was McDonalds. so our meals for the day consisted of breakfast at home, Mc. Donalds for lunch on the Expressway and again here in Allentown.  I will be a blimp if this keeps up.
Our little Moose slept in the back window - tomorrow he will sit up and wave to the other drivers.

It is a push button world after all.............

We hurried through the day's work...............well as hurried as you can get trying to get everything right the first time.  Mary came into the archives and the two of us worked together to help her learn what needs to be done when I am not here and she has time to come into the Archives to help with the document preparation.  She said "Well, if we have to do lots of these and they are the same except for the names and page and writ number, why don't we photocopy them and then fill in the needed information?"  Now, that was a brilliant idea on her part - some thing I did not think  of before this.  So I went over to the search room and asked Anthony to photocopy the page for me and then it went much faster to fill out the paper for each writ.  I really think that if we had not done this, I would still be there writing crazily to get the whole court done.  This continued actions folder for the September 1808  court was incredible in size.  Anyhow, we got it done and I showed her how to put them in the folders and that is basically the whole job.  She said she would be willing to come back and work some more.  After today's effort, taking into account as many variables as possible, It is quite possible that we have over 60,000 images in the 28 boxes I have managed to put together.  I think it willl keep someone very busy for a long while.  the incoming digitizers, when they get here, have 207 boxes for Washington county to get thorugh before they start on York County....and we are 8 cubic feet ahead of the game in York.
Well, we finished up, fixed up the shuttle, closed the lights, camera, computer and door and off we went - I suppose you could say we went off into the sunset because FedEx is in the western part of Augusta.......so we took the shuttle there. and dropped it off.
We then went to Manchester to wash the car.  Why?  Well in preparation for us to encounter wet weather in Pennsylvania of course (according to the Iphone).  Then we went home, ate dinner and started to pack and do laundry when I discovered that the members of Augusta Ward had assembled in front of our apartment to sing some parting songs to us.  That was really sweet and very moving.  We are grateful to them for doing this.
The blender is whirring away and I have to finish packing but at least I can say that today was very eventful.
Oh, and I found out from Jeff that we have to write out the copy paper headers - it costs the sate for us to photo copy these papers but on the other hand they want the stuff done quickly and efficiently and this is just the way to get it done in that manner................but the gum'm'ment is at work here..................'nuff sed!