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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...