052616

Just got our "Class Picture" of the Summer Missionaries for 2016.  Here they are:

Can you find us in the group?  We're not in the first row...

The Peonies are blooming in our neighborhood.  these are next to our apartment.  They will be showing up all over the Nauvoo area now.

052316

Last Monday was Missionary Family Home Evening and we got to go see the Young Performing Missionaries (YPM) strut their stuff on the outdoor stage as they practice for opening night on Memorial Day.  They've been here a couple of weeks and have been memorizing and practicing for most of that time.  They've gotten pretty good at what they will be doing for the next few months.  These YPMs will be all over Nauvoo doing performances for the visitors so it'll be pretty exciting to watch them as they get better and better over the summer.  I didn't detect any mistakes, but I probably wouldn't anyway.  The Brass Band has memorized about 80 pieces so far.  No telling how many pieces these dancers have done.

Here's our beloved Sister Missionaries.  Sister Joines is on the left and Sister Webb is in the middle.  We drive up together to Burlington Ward every Sunday for services.  They will be finishing up their mission in August, a few months ahead of us.

Here is the Brass Band playing their little hearts out for us.

Here are our two sisters doing a polka for the audience with the YPMs.  They do a couple of numbers together when they don't require a lot of strenuous things of the older missionaries.  They leave that for those younger ones.

One of my favorite pieces.  This sister is pretty talented.  We have a couple more of these coming in the next couple of weeks and Memorial Day is this coming Monday so more to come.  Won't be long and pageant will be here.  More stuff to follow.  The schedule is picking up because when I clean the dryer vents at the end of my shift at night, the filters are full.  Same goes for the trash cans.  See you all...

051916

Day 2 of our trip to Adam-Ondi-Ahman started out by leaving the hotel relatively early to get a jump on traffic and see some of the sites before we made the Kansas City Temple 12:30 session.

Our tour bus is in the alcove in the middle as we're loading up to leave.  

The first stop was in Independence, Missouri at the temple site.  This is the sign just outside the temple plot.  It is owned by the "Temple Plot" church.  They are called the Church of Christ (Hedrickites).  They are an offshoot of Joseph Smith from 1830 with about 200 members that meet in the church just behind this picture.  

This is the actual temple site.  It is just a grassy field with 4 markers denoting the 4 corners.

North West Corner of the temple plot.  There are 3 more in each corner of the temple plot.  I didn't get a chance to get to the other markers.

We all gathered in the center of the temple plot to learn about the temples that will one day be built here, this spot being the main temple.  Joseph drew up a plot for all of the temples and the surrounding area back in 1830 or so.

We then walked over to a couple of buildings and the "Stone Church".

This explains the origins of the building.  Joseph Smith III,  Joseph Smith's surviving son from Emma Smith, was the first president of the church, presided here and built this church.

No matter what they call their church, they can't get away from their original name so long ago.  Now called the Community of Christ.

This is the Church of Christ (Hedrickites) church.  Limited number of members.

We then walked over to the Community of Christ's Temple for a visit.  It is across the street from the temple plot and in the vicinity of everything else in Independence.

Erected in 1994, in discussions with the C of C tour guides in Nauvoo, a tour guide in Nauvoo made it very plain that their temple is open to everyone and ours are closed.  Well, they don't do much of anything in their temple, unlike our temples, where we do a lot of work for our ancestors and living members.  The C of C has daily prayer vigils for peace at 1 PM and special sessions occasionally.  Other than that, it is vacant the vast majority of the time.

We were allowed into the sanctuary where they explained you can come in and pray or have meetings.  There are several pictures around the upper walls depicting ordinances that are performed in the church including baptism, confirmation, blessings, ordinations, healings, special blessing of comfort, etc. 

In the hallway leading up to the main room there were several pieces of artwork.  This particular piece was entitled "The Tree of Life".  There was a lot of emphasis on artwork in the building.  Most of it had a religious emphasis.  None of it related to any of their beginnings with Joseph Smith.

This is the stand and organ view.  Note that the organ player has his/her back to the audience.

Looking up from that spot you can see it resembles a conch shell clearly in design.

From the center of the room it looks like this.

A view around the room.

Looking back towards the exit, the room looks like this.  There are about 1,500 seats in the main area.

They give annual awards for peace and recognize those that contribute to it.  Here are those awards for the last several years.  The church's emphasis is on world peace, hence, the daily prayer for peace at 1 PM.

Oddly enough, there was no mention of Joseph Smith in any of the tour guides presentation remarks.  The last part of the tour was through their museum, where we are not allowed to take any pictures whatsoever, which I do not understand.  That is typical of any/all of their sites.  The museum had lots of stuff displayed about Joseph Smith and there the guide finally mentioned Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon with some other historical facts.  He did mention that he uses the BoM only as a reference in the study of the scriptures.  It's not a large part of study.  They had pictures of their apostles including two women that have been ordained to that position.  Bro Dunn also said he has talked to a sister in one of his tours that has been ordained to the office of High Priest in their church.  Apparently, they have a different direction from their leaders on priesthood ordinations than we do.  The president of their church refers to himself as "Wally".  They have about 250,000 members currently, worldwide.

Next we went across the street to the LDS Church Visitor's Center.

A much different atmosphere is in the visitor's center.  We viewed a film about families and discussed the meaning of life's journey in the first part of the visit.  We had a very nice young sister missionary giving us the tour and she bore her testimony of the gospel.

Of course, we had to pose for this picture after the sisters sang to us.

Next stop was the Kansas City temple for a session.  It is a beautiful temple.  Unfortunately, I can no longer enjoy the temple as I'm looking at the lights, the way they hang curtains, the types of lights in the ceiling fixtures, the lockers, how hard it would be to change a ballast, the way they do lockers for the ordinance workers...  Forever ruined for me, I guess...

It was dedicated in 2012 so it is a fairly new temple.

...and the picture in front of the fountain.  The brother taking the picture took a bunch of pictures but this was the only one that showed up on the camera so, this is it.

At any rate, we left for home after this and a long ride to Nauvoo.  We had a great time, saw some wonderful sites of our church's history, and enjoyed Bro Dunn's efforts to fill in the blanks.  So glad we went.  

051816

The big trip is here!  Left Nauvoo around 7 AM this morning headed to Adam-Ondi-Ahman and other historical sites.  And it's been a long day...  First stop was:

Entry sign to the 4,000 acre site in the middle of nowhere.

But, brother Dunn had to do some repairs to the muffler first before we could move on.

This is a brief view of what we first saw at Adam-Ondi-Ahman when we stopped for lunch.  This is one end of the valley.

A missionary lunch.

Map of Adam-Ondi-Ahman.  The church now owns 4,000 acres here with the final 500 acre purchase in the last couple of years.  Joseph foresaw the need to acquire the property.  They farm it and lease it out to locals for farming.  There are a lot of crops growing everywhere that we looked.

Visual of the valley.

The story at the site.

What it really looks like.

Bro Dunn talks about the valley and it's history/future.

Bro McDonald played his bagpipes for us as we talked about Joseph Smith and his role in Adam-Ondi-Ahman.  The valley is behind.

Moving on, this is the site that Adam and Eve prayed from each day.   It is the concrete square in the center of the picture.

The site caption.

The spot that Joseph Smith spoke from to hundreds of people.  This small valley has near perfect acoustics.  Brother Shaw is about 150 yards away from the rock Sister Simons and Brother Dunn are standing on and they are talking in a normal voice and can hear each other.

Bro's Shaw, Simons, McDonald, and O'Brien standing on the speaking rock.  This is the rock that Joseph Smith spoke discourses from down to the valley below when he was in the area.

After a stop at Gallatin, we moved on to Far West and a nice little LDS gift shop.  

This was a painting in the gift shop that is about the Saints being driven out of Nauvoo in the winter of 1846.  It depicts them using the long boats and the temple in the background, is a really great painting.  An unusual perspective.  The artist had several pieces of work in the shop and all of them were very well done.

Next stop was the Far West Temple Site a little further down the road.  Although dedicated and there were plans to build a temple here at one time, persecutions made it impossible to ever build here.  The 4 cornerstones were laid and are still here today.

This is the erected monument at the site.  One day, I suppose, they will build a temple here, but due to it's location, it will probably not be anytime in the near future.  Like Nauvoo, it's in the middle of nowhere so it would be hard to staff it.

The South East cornerstone.

Who the South East cornerstone was dedicated to and is always dedicated to at all temples.

This is pretty much the whole area with the cornerstones in the grassy corners.  It would be a good sized temple when completed. 

This was, at one time, the town square where the head of the military was ordered to shoot Joseph Smith and Major Doniphan convinced him otherwise.  Managed to get him not to do it with threats of considerable legal action if he did.  Doniphan play an integral part in keeping Jospeh Smith alive a good portion of his last years.

This is the infamous site where Joseph Smith rebuked the jail guards.  The jail is long gone but they managed to find the site, purchased it and a small sign erected to mark it.

Of course, you need to read the sign, right?

Next to the three witnesses monument erected in 1912.

Last stop was Liberty Jail where Jail where Joseph was incarcerated for many months.  It's not the real jail as a good portion of it was huge wooden timbers and had rotted away but it was rebuilt and placed inside this building.

This was an artist conception of what the jail looked like when Joseph occupied it for the winter he was there.

This was our tour guide.  She was very knowledgeable, 32, and had about 2 weeks left on her mission.  She was pretty special to listen to.

The upper section of the jail.  Note the small hole in the middle of the floor.  That was access to the lower section for the prisoners.  Those timbers were about 12" on the square.  

The only door in or out and there were no door knobs on the inside, only on the outside.

This is the lower section where the prisoners were held.  Joseph Smith on the left.  That small slit on the right is one of two used for ventilation.  The restroom facilities were, well, limited to say the least.  This was not a good place to be under any conditions.

All of us watching the presentation.

A view of the whole jail.

How would you like to carry these around with you at church?

Well, it's been a long day...time to head for the hotel and some much needed rest and dinner.  We are heading off to Applebee's for dinner.  Tomorrow is another day and a few more sites to see.  I will post tomorrow's stuff on the next day's blog.  I mean, really, how many pictures can I post on one day on this blog?