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Yesterday was Easter so we had our usual church services but afterwards we had a nice Easter dinner for all of the missionaries at the Arrival Center.

The dinner last night had ham, funeral potatoes, a salad,  and a desert.  We had several family guest and a room full of missionaries.

President and Sister McArthur spoke to us after the meal to top off the evening.

Today was the "Annual Prairie Grass Burn" put on by Facilities Maintenance and the Nauvoo Fire Department.  They have free hot dogs, potato chips, and kettle korn for everyone that attend the event for the hour that precedes the burning.

This is, believe it or not, a pretty big event for the community and a lot of local people attend it as well as most of the missionaries.

One of those attending the event called this a "Tulip Tree".  Not so sure about that but it is kind of pretty.  It's located just across the street from the burn.

This is what the field looked like before the burn started.  Note the fire trucks located behind.  They had about 3 times as many trucks/firefighters there as last year.  There were a lot more/taller weeds this year so I guess they were expecting a larger fire.

3 minutes after the start of the fire, this is what is left of the field.  I took a video of the burn and it actually took about 3 minutes before it ran out of fuel.  That's 5 acres of weeds gone in about 3 minutes.  That is pretty impressive!  There were several bunny rabbits that ran out from the fire towards the people and were really spooked with all of the people standing around.  They were pretty confused as to where to go. 

The video of the burn I took is over 200 MB and I can't post it as it's just too big to transfer to the blog.  I'll make it available somewhere along the line.

Only a couple more weeks to spring shutdown and we start prep for the wako summer schedule.  Can't wait!  And in less than a month the summer missionaries will be here.  So much changing in the next few weeks...