Our First Week in Nauvoo

It's been a busy week. We've been in the temple every day. Sunday we were set apart and got a little tour, Monday we had more of a tour and were sent on errands around the temple to find things (not an Easter egg hunt, more like where would you go to get this or turn that in), and Tuesday morning was our first shift. That was baptism by fire! Fortunately, the ordinances don't change, but there are a lot of procedures that are different, plus we're up and down five of the six floors throughout the shift. Can you say lots of stairs? There are two rather slow elevators, but most people use the stairs. The spiral staircase is beautiful.

Our shifts are 5-6 hours, and the temple closes for a few hours in the early afternoon. Right now we will be working three mornings and two afternoons a week. Surprisingly, the morning shifts are easier on us. Baptistry training will start next week. Then we'll have two shifts in the baptistry (one morning and one afternoon) and three more throughout the temple. We've been told that will probably change somewhat when we move to the summer schedule. Saturday morning the baptistry was as busy as any temple we've worked in. While generally things are still a little slow, we've been able to do some of our own family work during our shifts.

As you might expect, the Celestial Room is gorgeous first thing in the morning.

(From the Church website--we did NOT smuggle a phone in)

There are three groups of missionaries in Nauvoo now: temple, site, and some younger missionaries (a lot of whom are site missionaries or at the Visitor's Center). The site missionaries are those who are at the various houses, do demonstrations like make horseshoes or rope, provide wagon and carriage rides, and run the activity center. They wear pioneer clothing. Right now that wouldn't be too bad, but summer isn't here yet. And later in the summer they have the cast missionaries who will be in the pageant. We think we've got the best of the missions. 

The Temple missionaries are a tight group and often do things together outside of the temple. They're great people. We have a Whatsapp group that helps us stay in touch with each other. Game nights, dinners, errands, and outings are the things we've heard of just this week. I'm sure we'll find many more things to do with them.