062415

The rain finally let up (jealous much, Kalifornia?) so we were able to watch the BYU Ballroom Dancers perform on the outdoor stage near the temple last Wednesday.  They are pretty energetic and very good at what they do.  Just so nice to see all of this activity.  Next week the pageant starts up so that ought to be interesting and exciting.

They have several numbers that they do and their costuming is spectacular.  I took several videos but you'll need to wait till we get back before I can show those as they are huge and too big to post here.

This was a ballroom number that they won an international award for .  Very nicely done and beautiful.

This was a Latin number with several parts that was internationally recognized.  One of the young men participating was an Elder that served with Jonathan in Argentina on his mission with him.  We talked to him briefly.  He is a part of the dance team.

Their final number.  The will be finishing up this Saturday in Nauvoo and heading back to BYU to lay low for the summer and get ready for next year's schedule.  They are a very active bunch of kids and we "Seniors" wonder a lot about where in the world they get all of their energy.  

Oh, and I got a Father's Day gift from Nathan/Tabbi and family yesterday.  We don't have a set of jeweler's screwdrivers at the temple.  I just had someone ask me for one the other day and I couldn't find anything to help him out to fix his glasses.  Now I've got one!  And when ever I change a light bulb (the temple has between 2, 500 and 3, 000 light bulbs that we are constantly checking to make sure they are lit and replacing burned out bulbs), I like to mark on the new bulb the date it was changed but a pen doesn't work and I need to use a pencil so this comes in handy plus it doesn't look so obvious in my whites that I wear when I'm working.  Thanks, much appreciated...

062215

Today was a pretty good day.  Yesterday during the Marriage and Family Relations class that we are teaching with the Saldens, one of the counselor's in the Bishopric, who is attending with his wife, mentioned that he and his wife like sushi.  so, I asked if there were any good places for sushi in Burlington, Iowa.  I mean, really, how could we loose?  The stuff we've had so far is really bad, like Costco sitting around for the last two weeks bad so what could we loose?  He told us about a place in Burlington not too far from the church so, since yesterday was Father's Day, and that's just as good of an excuse as any, we drove back up there to find the place.  Sure enough, the sushi was pretty fair, actually pretty darned good.  But, it was't cheap.  Since we haven't had anything that was even remotely edible since we left in March, it was such a relief to find some great sushi to eat.

Tonight we had the Missionary Dinner and Talent Show.

Quite a group of Senior missionaries gathered together to eat and listen to the talents of each other.  The missionary standing to the right of the picture is the brother of Elder Richard G. Scott.  he serves in Nauvoo with us.  Cool, huh?

Elder Glutz taking pictures for us.  Some of his pictures are really good.

"There's a hole in my bucket" by the Adams.  Sister Adams really had a hard time keeping a straight face.

Elder Kirkam Smith, from Sacramento, does a rope magic trick with his mouth.  Weird, huh?

Even our Sister and President Hansen, counselor in the Temple Presidency, got into the act, with their rendition of Jack in the Bean Stalk.  Not one I've heard before.  Seems like she's done this before. 

Elder and Sister Allread sang/played "Where Can I turn for Peace".  I didn't know he could play a violin.  Such talent here in Nauvoo with our missionaries!

And, much to our delight, Justin informed us he will be ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood this coming Sunday by his older brother in Bakersfield.  We are really excited about that and looking forward to the day the family can be sealed some day soon.  

So, all in all, not a bad day...

Oh, and they delayed us changing schedule until next week so we are on our regular schedule till next Monday.  Then we start the 40 hour weeks on nights...till we leave Nauvoo...

061915

I'm doing my rounds in the temple and I escorted a brother to a locker so he could change and head into another area of the temple.  As he gets into his locker area, he looks up and sees my name tag and remarks, "Hey, that's my name, only spelled a little different!"  Sure enough, here is a picture of Joe Seeger and myself outside the temple while I am in my "outside the temple coat".  Nice guy.  We have a lot in common.  He is serving as the Stake Young Men's Secretary, which, coincidentally, was the position I was in just prior to heading to Nauvoo on our mission.  He lives in the Chicago area but is West of Kevin's area in the Chicago West Mission.  Kevin is in the Chicago Mission.  I took him on a tour of the temple and we talked a bit about family and things.  I told him about some Seger genealogy that he could look into.  I do have his contact info.

I had a great time introducing him as "brother Seeger" and watching several people with these really perplexed looks on their faces.  It was great fun.

Just so you don't think this is all that odd an occurrence, Elder Jon met with this missionary while on his mission in Argentina a couple of years ago.

So, Segers, Seegers, Seagers are everywhere!  Seger's unite!  or however they choose to spell it....

061515

Just some new pictures of what I posted in March.  Here is what our street looks like now.

Down the street towards the records office.

Up the street towards more housing.

Across the street, the open field where the fireflies like to play at night.

The area behind our tri-plex with the trees all leafed out.

We've had a couple of feet of rain in the last couple of weeks.  The river is at flood stage for the rest of the week.  Everything is wet, wet, wet.  Kalifornia really needs some of this water we keep getting.
We went to out monthly missionary meeting last night and got a briefing on the pageants coming up the end of this month.  They promise to be exciting and the pageant committee wants us to come on stage and sing the last song after we get through with our shift at night.  The pageants (British and American) will run from June 29th through August 10th and is our busiest time of the year.  We (the temple) will be open from 6 AM till 8 PM Monday thru Saturday as much as possible.  It's gonna be full time schedule for the missionaries and the local ordinance workers but it's what we're called to do.  They told us last night we have about 100 temple missionaries and 300 locals supporting the temple this summer.  Last year they had about 58,000 people attend the pageant.  It seems like it's a big deal.  Now, if we can keep the A/C running at the temple, we should be in good shape, huh?

We are teaching the Marriage Relations class in the Burlington, Iowa ward.  We started this last Sunday.  We had one couple attend.  Hopefully, we'll get a couple more but you never know.  Mostly temple missionaries attending and they've all been married for a million years.  Not teaching them a whole lot!  Class is going to run 8 weeks for the first part of the class.  Hafta see what happens in the next couple of weeks.  Arlene and I teach next week.

060815

Went with several other missionaries today to Kalona, Iowa to visit an Amish/Mennonite community for the day.  What a fun place to go visit.  Here's what we saw and participated in.

Started out at the Kalona Historical Village Visitors Center.  It's a couple of hours North of Nauvoo.

They have a lot of family items to look at but some very beautiful handbuilt quilts adorn the walls.

This one was obviously one of Arlene's favorites 'cause it's purple.  The detail work was absolutely stunning.

My favorite...

They had moved the old buildings to an enclosed area for us to look at.  My Dad would have loved looking at this old railroad station since he was raised in one.  'Course, it would have needed to say "Soo Line" on it to make him really happy.

We had to picture Mom in front of the old Kalona Post Office just to bring back some recent memories.  But, I'm not thinking she really wants to go back to work.

Walking through town we found chocolate!  Mmmmm...good stuff....

...and ice cream...

Downtown Kalona had no abandoned storefronts like we've seen in every other town we've gone through back here.  This town is thriving and has lots of people here conducting business.  

Proving we were in Kalona!

Touring the site, we were introduced to how the Amish do laundry without the modern convenience of using electricity.  The Mennonites use the modern things of today but the Amish don't.  And there are different levels to the Amish culture also.  See anything in there you fancy?

An Amish "outhouse".  It's a cell phone at the end of the road, solar powered, and is checked once or twice a day for important messages from family by several families in the neighborhood.  Obviously, they don't have phones in their homes.

This is an Amish pickup.  Not sure if it's a Dodge RAM or not.  But it's got One Horsepower!  We're traveling through the countryside in a large van so we can see the sites.

Stopped at a store with interesting remedies for what ails ya.

Stopped at JK Creative.  They do wood crafts and make them in the back.  Nothing from Taiwan or China.  All made on the premises.  Problem is, they don't take credit cards so that gorgeous, handcrafted wooden chest with the velvet lining that was $330 had to stay.  I don't carry that kind of cash.  If you're wondering where all of the American craftsmen are these days, here are a few of them.  The stuff is beautiful.  Not cheap, though.  All wood, natural colors, no coloring to the wood.  

Inside the showroom.  A couple of our Sister Missionaries admiring their wares.

I had to quick snap this.  This young Amish kid is hauling goat's milk to someplace.  They use goats because they can milk 2 goats at once using the same milking machine as they would for a cow.  Goats only have 2 udders (teats).  Cows have 4.  Get it? 

This is a typical garden on one of the farms.  A nice one, though.  The gals usually are barefooted when they are working in them.  You "Camino-ites" notice anything different here?  NO FENCE!  They use Marigolds to keep the rabbits out!  I asked if they had deer in the area.  "Yes, we have deer."  "How do you keep them out of the gardens?"  "Well, we have venison, too".  He later said if the deer come onto their property, the Amish just shoot them and eat them.  Kalifornia is so screwed up!

The local Amish "Wal-Mart" store.  Everything a self-respecting Amish or Mennonite person could want or need in the neighborhood.  I bet a 3rd of the store is shoes...all black!

Since they don't use electricity, they use propane for heat/light so here is one of their ceiling heaters/lights.  I'm kinda thinking this won't pass some kind of safety standard in most of Kalifornia but it works nicely back here.  They use natural sunlight for lighting in the rooms and use what looked to me to be DC current fans to circulate the air in the big rooms.   Most likely from solar arrays on top of the buildings.  Solar is big here and everywhere.

One of the aisles in the store.  On the left is the stainless steel goods for cooking.  Fair prices on items for the home.  The guide said the homes have 8 to 15 kids for farming so they cook a lot of food.  The guide said one of the farmers said he used Roundup on his garden to keep the weeds down (that is forbidden to use that kind of a devil's product).  He was surprised till the farmer explained, "I roundup my kids and they pick out the weeds!".

The last stop of the day was a Mennonite family style meal at a local home.  We had a bunch of us there but "Selena" has been doing this for years.  She's the short gal on the right of the picture.  Very friendly and nice.  Her grand-daughter served us.  We had Tapioca (Strawberry and very tasty and I don't like tapioca), salad, pork roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, mixed vegetables, pasta, and several different pies for dessert.  And there was plenty of it.  All in all, a very nice day and we enjoyed it immensely.  Most of the people here are temple missionaries and all of us are members.  The tour guides are used to us "Mormons" coming us for tours.  He was pretty good and knew his stuff.

060715

Weird weather yesterday.  Thunderstorms, rain like there was a flood coming then it all kinda of cleared out.  Left us with these beautiful skies late at night just before the sun went down.

We were able to attend the Young Ambassadors final fireside here in Nauvoo for this year.  They will be doing shows the rest of this week in the open air amphitheatre then they head home for the rest of summer and will be getting ready for next year.  A wonderful and very talented group of performers.  Last night's performance was singing and testimony, some of it was pretty moving.  They packed the stake center in Nauvoo with people.  One of the speakers remarked that he hadn't seen so many black and white name tags since he had been in the MTC.  Odd, though, we're all much older than what he was used to.  A lot older...  So, I took this with my phone and it's kind of bad but you get the idea.  I tried to turn the phone at the end but it went a bit wonky so just bear with it.

we're heading off to Kolona tomorrow so will have a few picts from that.

060115

Yesterday afternoon, after attending Burlington, IA ward, we got to head over to Carthage, IL and watch "Be Still".  the BYU Young Ambassadors did a 15 minute presentation in mostly speech but with some song about Joseph/Hyrum Smith's last day before they were martyred and the few days afterwards.  It was very well done and brought a few tears to these old eyeballs.  Afterwards, the Brass Band did a series of numbers about Joseph for us to enjoy.  Afterwards, Arlene and I talked to a couple of the Elders and found out they are on their way to leave for missions after the summer experience.  One already has his call.  The other is waiting for his to come in September or October.  They are really good and I don't see any reason Kevin couldn't participate with these young Elders and Sisters if he can get into the Y at some point.

BTW, it's barely been getting into the 60s for the last week.  Weird, huh?

Went over to visit Hannibal, Missouri today.  That is the hometown of Samuel Clemens or Mark Twain.  One of my favorite authors.  Lots of stuff to look at.

Some of the exhibits at the initial museum/life history of Mark Twain.

Huckleberry Finn home

One of the exhibits in the Mark Twain home

The infamous white picket fence that Mark Twain got others to paint as a "fun thing".

Arlene acting like a Riverboat Captain in the Mark Twain Museum.

This is kind of a piano/organ/calliope.  It's about 10 feet tall.  How'd you like to move this thing?

Ummmm...so much fine chocolate at the Stam Chocolatier!  Nummers  

There was this clock place down the street.  The guy was working on all kinds of grandfather clocks.  This is how he puts them racks to work on them.  Oh, and, did you know you could spend $5, 500 on a Howard Miller grandfather clock made in Michigan?  Nice clock, though...  No, not bringing one home.

244 steps up to the lighthouse (what do you need a lighthouse on a river for?).  'Course, once I got up there, I found out you can drive up there.  Arlene benefited from that little excursion.

A view of Hannibal, MO from the lighthouse.

The lighthouse in all it's glory.  Can't go in but the view is nice, what you can see through the trees that have grown up around it.

The Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn memorial.  No access to it, although there is a concrete walkway around it.  Kinda weird.

Last shot as we were leaving.  The bridge from Illinois across the Mississippi to Missouri.  We will be heading East across this, back to Nauvoo for the end of a nice day.  $2.39 for gas and a stop at Golden Corral for a fuel up.  Not much sushi back here but did find a Chinese buffet that has some passable sushi in Quincy.  At least it'll get us by once in a while till we can get back to Placerville.  BTW, I've had enough Mark Twain to last me a lifetime.  There is only so much a person can take....