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Tonight was the annual Temple Ordinance Worker Devotional.  We were able to meet in the Assembly Room of the temple, and it was packed, and hear from the temple presidency, the temple matron and the president.  We also were able to hear Brother Marshal sing one of his famous songs that is just spectacular and we also got to hear a medley of songs played on the grand piano in the Assembly Room.  A very nice afternoon.  Most of the comments were thanking us for our work as workers in the temple and their testimonies of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  Then we were able to meet over at the Arrival Center and eat cookies.  Good way to top the evening.

Last night was the Annual Pumpkin Walk in Nauvoo.  This has grown from the Nelson Family Halloween to a town gathering of revelers that look at carved pumpkins.  Literally hundreds of pumpkins that are on display on the sidewalks of the street for a few blocks (no, I could never get a clear shot of the pumpkins, sorry), right next to each other.  There are lots of things to see, a flash mob (group, wasn't too big this year, I'm told), food to buy and consume, and costumes everywhere.  But I was focused on the pumpkins.

With as many people as there were in town, the local police kept the streets open to car traffic.  That seemed to be a dumb move.  There are side streets that cars could have driven around the festivities.  The sidewalks are really crowded and the thing only last 3 hours from 6 to 9 PM.

I'll only show a few of my favorites.  Some of them are truly spectacular!

Well, there had to be a Bart Simpson there somewhere, didn't there?

Odie?

The flash "mob" and that's one of our laundry "Queens" hamming it up.  We had one of our janitors in there also.

"Rocky Road, heh, heh!"

A wookie for good measure...

Of course, there had to be one of these in there somewhere!

Nice details!

"I am groot!"

Look at the detail on this one!

Wouldn't be Halloween without one of these, now would it?

All in fun.  Nothing like the smell of burnt pumpkin in the evening (blech!).  But, it was nice if you're a pumpkinophile.  Personally, I think I've reached my limit for the next 40 years.  That was way more than enough for me.

Oh, yeah, they don't do Halloween in Nauvoo.  I guess you go to another town for that.  This is what they do here.

And just so you'll be thinking about it, Elder Kevin will be hitting his big one year half-way mark in the mission field in about two weeks.  Now that is hard to believe isn't it?

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Beginning to look a lot like fall back here...

East side of the temple in the afternoon.

We just started getting a couple of days that the temps dipped below freezing then popped above 40+ again.  Days are still very moderate and nice but 80 or less most of the time.  We're below anything in Camino.  The trees have just started to turn in earnest.  Lots of leaves are just dropping like crazy without turning and we are getting very little rain so the grass is all drying up.  Kind of a change from the spring.  They are harvesting the corn/soybean crops.  Had a few afternoons where the humidity dipped below 25%, which sends the feeling inside the temple into new, cold feelings for the fall.  Guess winter will be an interesting time.

We got a new couples missionary picture from Tom Simpson Photography (I hafta mention the company name) so here it is:

Hmmmm...black coat and a black background...probably not the best choice...and, of course, I'm half asleep.  Well, better than nothing.  We have 9 couples leaving this week then most leaving the following week.  We will have the winter missionaries filling in for the winter months.  It'll be a slim crew of people.

We visited the Sarah Granger Kimball house last Thursday before work.  It's a nice little old house.  She was the instigator of the Relief Society back in Nauvoo.  She moved to Nauvoo when the Saints went West.

Sister Seger and the house.

That pole in the center is a new fangled "washer" for clothes.  She had all the latest "appliances".

Upstairs with the kids room.  The spinning wheel and to the left there is a "weasel".  It would turn 40 times then go "pop" as it wound the yarn from the wheel so they knew when they had hit the right amount of yarn for a skein...hence "pop goes the weasel" (not responsible for mis-spelling).  See, you learnt something...

 

Master bed, trundle bed and crib.  Note tiny shoes on bed.

  

A shot out the kitchen window.  Yep, looks like fall.

Oh, I fixed a temp sensor up in the attic above the #6 Sealing Room last week and the engineer that I work with told me he had never seen that thing work in all the years he has worked here, ever.  He was excited to have it working right for once.  Really, all these people that have come through here and no one ever figured out that you just needed to replace a less than $20 sensor to fix that erroneous sensor and it would start working again?  No wonder I was sent here...sigh.  He also told me I had justified my mission here.  "So, that means I can go home now?"  "No, wait, I have this list...not for another three years or so....".  I guess he wants me to stick around for a while....

I've been working on the formulas for the washers (called "extractors" in the business).  Boy, are these things complicated.  When I first looked at the way they set up the formulas to wash clothes, I was absolutely mystified as to how it all works.  After staring at the books, looking at the formulas, staring at what we had, many hours of going over and over the books, I finally figured it all out and can now actually understand how they work.  These are 60# washers (30" and they are small washers) and the washers get quite a bit larger.  Pretty doggone complicated making household washers pretty simplistic.  These things have been running for nearly 15 years with relatively few problems but they are gosh awful expensive when something goes awry.  I am replacing the system board, display board and connecting cables at about $3, 000 a pop.  But, when you consider how much laundry these things do during pageant, I suppose this is a bargain.  They run all the time.  Interesting to work on.  1999 technology.  wonder if they have updated it any.  Like entering data on an old Nintendo....

We have the annual Temple Workers Devotional this Sunday at the temple in the Assembly Hall with the Temple Presidency.  Won't be able to take pictures but there should be a lot of people there.  Usually have a General Authority but not this year.  Just hafta settle for locals.  Brother Marshal will be singing to us so that will be good.  He sings beautifully.  Looking forward to it.  I'll report on it later.  See ya! As usual, more to come...

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On the 6th we had a surprise birthday party for Sister Glutz over at the park near our apartments.  She turned the magical age of 60, which is pretty young for most of the missionaries out here.

Sister Glutz in the center, hubby on the left.  Fan club surrounding her.

Us in our "matching" Nauvoo 2015 sweatshirts.

The Glutz's.  If Bro Glutz looks pained, he was baptizing a patron in the temple earlier that day and it went a bit haywire.  He slipped a disc and was in a lot of pain.  He's been off work since then.  He does all of our spectacular photography for us and is really quite good.

We have a large group of geese that live here in Nauvoo and wander around keeping things in order.  They "graze" near our apartment sometimes so here are some long distance shots of them, if you can make them out.  You may need to blow them up a bit to see them but they are there.  Yes, we know they are there most of the time by their honking.

This is another group West of the other group so you can see there are a lot of them.  

On October 8th we want to Springfield, Illinois (there's no "noise" in Illinois we frequently say here), to have my finger looked at by a plastic surgeon.  Basically, they said to let it continue to heal as it is doing just fine.  They made me a splint to protect it as I keep hitting it, and that really hurts!  So, I have a custom splint to protect my finger and I change the bandage every day, well, Arlene does.  If they put a skin graft on it, I'll never have any feeling or nerves grow back so I opted to let it grow back and have the potential for some feeling and nerves, maybe even a fingerprint.  However, it will take a lot longer.  But, it is coming along nicely.  About half of it is completely healed at this point.  Just really tender with new skin and soft as a new baby's butt (can I say that?).

I'm doing some genealogy research for my brother's ex-wife, Susan Ford, and stopped at a couple of cemeteries in the Springfield area.  I have been trying to get her some genealogy info and put together family group/generation sheets.  I knew that several of them were buried in Springfield so figured this would be a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.  While there, the first cemetery just happened to be right next to the Lincoln Memorial.

Note the bust of Lincoln in front.  For some odd reason, tourist like to touch Lincoln's nose so that it's bright and shiny and the rest is dull and deep bronze.  No idea why that is such a "cool" thing to do.

Inside the rotunda is the monument that they made the one in Washington, DC from.  Note that Lincoln is sitting on a US flag.  The one in DC is the same.  If you look closely, you can see the stars on it.  Since you can't get behind the one in DC, you would never notice this fact.  The guide there was very nice and had a lot of info to share.

Over his final resting place.

He is underneath, incased in many yards of concrete after a failed attempt at stealing his remains.  His son didn't want him to be disturbed ever again.

Magnificent hallways leading back to his tomb with bronze statuary in every corner representing his life.

I thought this was an interesting quote from him.  You need to blow it up to read it.

The tomb was not ready at first so they had this makeshift tomb prepared for him until the final resting place was ready.  This is on the backside and down the hill from the main tomb.

Nauvoo hosted the Annual Harvest Run this past weekend that ran right past our apartment.  We had a couple of our more energetic missionaries participate in it.  This was the completion (almost) of the half marathon.

This is Elder Little from Orlando, Florida.  Note the missionary tag on his running jersey.  It was 41 this morning but beautiful by the time they got here at around 11 AM.

This is Sister Bailey from Los Angeles.  She's making the turn and making fun of our cheering for her and pointing to the right.  Note the missionary tag.  She lives right below us and will be heading home in early November.  

Well, that's about it fer now...more to follow...

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Catching up a bit...

Got a new lens to play with for my camera.  Does a little longer distance shots.

From the road below the temple at 70.

A bit closer from the same spot at 350.  I frequently need to shoot from a distance so this should make it a bit better for some of my shots.  Lens was a factory refurb unit so not all that expensive compared to the rally expensive ones that I have no need to purchase or use.  I can get by with this one easily.  Works perfectly for what I need.  Can't use it inside of a room, though, just too close for comfort.

Before conference we got up early (6 AM) and went to Cantril, Iowa, to the Mennonite town there to get groceries with the Admin head and her husband, the Dewey's.  Apparently, Mums are out this time of the year.  Quite the array to choose from.

Another Post Office for Mom's collection.

Last night we had a "Break the Conference" potluck at the Arrival Center for the missionaries.  That is the building that visitors come to before entering the temple if they need to change or freshen up a bit while traveling.  We were split between the president's home and the AC as there are quite a few of us, about 100 in total so the space is limited.  This is about 2/3s of us.

Picking out the soups and stews we want along with breads and salads.

Time to enjoy the victuals.  Right tasty!  We are actually kind of limited so  most of what we get is from crock pots but it's pretty good stuff, considering.

On our way out I glanced up at the temple and realized that security guard had not turned on the lights yet.  The temple lights are all electronic/digitized and we've had a failure in the system so we need to turn them on/off at certain times of the day.  The engineers usually do this.  However, when no engineer is in the Engineer's Office, it's up to the lone Security Officer to do it.  Apparently, he was a bit slow last night so I snapped a picture as this is a pretty rare sight.  We have a pretty good electrician working on the issue but he hasn't been able to figure it out yet.  It's managed by a computer and it's beyond me, believe it or not.  We think it's a relay that has gone out but we can't find it, yet.  So, until the dumb thing is figured out, we hafta do things manually.  Hence, we may have a few nights, days, like this.

Note that Moroni is lit up.  Haven't figured out why only him as all of the spot lights are all on the same circuit.  Well, maybe I know why...  The spots are aircraft lights that run at 2000 degrees F and cost a fortune.  You wouldn't want one in your front yard, trust me.  If they get wet, they explode, so the encasing fixture is pretty special also.  Oh, and it was a lot darker than this picture shows...