Sesame Street Revisited ♫ One of these things is not like the others, One of these things does not belong ... 🎶 Can you figure out which? Post a comment and let us know if you can guess what it is. Feel free to ask what those items are.
Posts
A Drop in the Bucket One of the first things we noticed around here is there are so many people with black tags: site missionaries, performing missionaries who do wonderful shows like "Sunset on the Mississippi" and "Love of the Savior," CES missionaries, proselyting missionaries (both old and young), service missionaries working from home, Facility Management missionaries, all in addition to those of us serving in the temple. And that's even before the pageant missionaries show up. So many opportunities to serve the Lord. It's great to be among so many wonderful people!
This and That A few miscellaneous observations, none big enough to write a whole blog about I think they're serious about not parking in front of the garage door, A lady I visited with in the temple told me she lives in this house. It's on the road between Nauvoo and Keokuk or Quincy, so we see it a few times a week. We'd noticed how nice it looked, but never thought we'd meet the owner. We call it the Eagle House. And speaking of eagles, the eaglets are growing up and are now scruffy-looking teenagers We have a big beautiful bush in front of our bedroom window. The blossoms survived last week's storms, but not the ensuing weather. However, other flowers are growing in the bed around it now, as well as other flowers around Nauvoo. Spring flowers in Nauvoo ^This is how we get our mail. but there are a few problems for the mail room people as evidenced by this sign: There's a Catholic church and school near the temple. One side of the school backs on a for...
Tourist Season in Nauvoo The reason we are serving a mission at the Nauvoo Temple, the tourist season, has hit, big time. The first month was rather slow as we trained and geared up. Now they've added sessions in all areas of the Temple. For the most part, our hours aren't any longer, but we work at an increased pace with more people attending. We're assigned to the Baptistry on Tuesday afternoons. The rest of the temple is closed, but we make up for it with the Youth coming in droves. This shift is the one that's a little longer--we worked well over six hours instead of our usual 5ish. We ran out of some sizes of baptismal clothes this week. And the busyness we faced was only matched by the weather with heavy rains and winds off and on throughout the day. At one point I heard a mother's phone going off on an Amber Alert. When we got out of the temple and looked at our phones, we found it wasn't an Amber Alert but a full-blown tornado warning (no pun intended), ...
Hannibal, Missouri Most of the temple missionary couples enjoyed a nice outing to Hannibal. We carpooled for the ~1 hour drive. The group started at the Mark Twain Cave and ended with a riverboat ride. The cave would have been a wonderful place for kids to explore and grow up with, but it would have been a parent's nightmare because it was so big. At one point they had a designated spot that when you entered you wrote your name down and removed it when you left. At the end of the day, a search party would look for children who were unaccounted for. Back then they only had candles for light. In front of the cave entrance Thousands--yes thousands--of people who went into the cave wrote their names on the walls, either scratching it in or using soot from candle smoke. After the cave we went our own way for shopping, lunch (we enjoyed Fiddlesticks with our carpool buddies), and window shopping our way around town. We went into a wonderful quilt shop, but they requested no pictures. Si...
Starlight Art Glass Studio The temple missionary group has a lot of activities planned. Last Monday on our P-day we went to Burlington, Iowa, to tour a stained glass studio. This is part of their lobby. Lots of beautiful glasswork. Arline's mother would have loved all their birdhouses In addition to their glasswork, they have some side hustles: selling koi, metal and glass yard sculptures, and aquatic plants. One of their koi ponds Yard art Dave's Favorite* --The Drgaonfly Story In a pond, under the lily pads, water beetles live. Sometimes they feel immense sadness when a beetle climbs the stem of a lily pad and is gone forever. One day, a little beetle climbed the stem. She was sure she would return home to tell what she discovered. She broke through the surface of the water and lay on the top of the lily pad. As she slept in the warmth of the sun, her body changed into a magnificent, colorful dragonfly with wings. She soared and discovered a new world. ...