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Pageant is wrapping up this week so we decided we needed to take one more shot at seeing the Nauvoo Pageant since we probably won't ever be back here again.  It was a good choice as the night's weather was spectacular as well as the performances.  After the pageant we got to meet with some of the cast that Arlene wanted to meet.  We also sat next to our favorite site missionary sisters once again.

The opening was attended with flags, bagpipes, singing the National Anthem, and prayer.

Lots of pageant show going on throughout the evening.

One of the highlights of the pageant is erecting the temple in pieces.  It's large and goes up  bit by bit, a little at a time.  Of course, it goes up as the story unfolds.

Then they begin to put up the temple walls...

Almost there...

...and done!  Pretty phenomenal temple, huh?   

At the end, they light up the real temple in the background as they sing the closing songs.  It's pretty impressive.  Unfortunately, I was sitting a little too far to the left to get the whole temple in the final picture.    

Arlene got a chance to talk to one of her favorite singers, Dallyn Bayles.  He sang at one of the other presentations and he has a phenomenal tenor voice.

Arlene also got to talk to Aurora and Scott who play the Lairds in the pageant.  They are wonderful actors and they also play in one of the temple videos, just in case you might recognize them. 

Just a really nice evening for us.  In a few days, the pageant ends and all of this goes away for the year.  The stage will be empty and Nauvoo begins to empty out as the end of summer slowly comes around.  School will start in a few weeks and the kids will no longer be here but the retired folks will start coming for the late summer rush but that is never as much as the summer rush.  As things wind down, we are getting ready to head on home, making plans for a couple of temple visits back here and that final drive across the mid-west to home and the end of our mission.  We've been here almost 18 months now, but it seems like forever...some days.

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With pageant winding down this week, I will finally get to breathe a little bit so time to catch up somewhat.

Today we had a bit of a going away for our soon to leave missionaries from Nauvoo.  The Simons, who have been with us for almost a year as shift coordinators, will be returning to Idaho Falls in the next couple of weeks.  The Hendricks, he's a fellow Assistant Engineer working with me for the last 18 months and will be returning to Utah in about 3 weeks.  The Lyman's, who coordinate the Family Search building and all of the effort, while not really one of the temple missionaries, per se, are still one of us as we all work closely with them all the time.  They will be returning home in a few weeks also.  The Petersen's are actually leaving today.  They are district workers and are local but are moving to Sycamore, UT.  We wish them all well on the next adventure in their lives.  We have grown very fond of them over the last year of their service.

As usual, getting together to break bread over delicious pulled pork barbeque and other tasty entrees.  Lots of missionaries this time of years, for a while anyway as we slowly start to loose the winter missionaries.  This time of year, however, they will start to loose the Assistant Engineer Missionaries that have been serving since spring of 2015.  That would include yours truly...yeah...

President McArthur addressing the "guest of honor".  L to R,  E/S Petersen, Lyman, Hendricks, Simons.

Elder Hendricks, my fellow engineer, gave an eloquent farewell speech.  He will be missed.

Elder Petersen brought an appropriate end to things for the evening.  Kind of reminded me of a funeral, actually.  So much sadness at these missionaries leaving.  Since we'll be going in a few weeks, I guess we're next month.  Maybe they'll forget about us?  One can only hope!

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Today we visited Fort Madison over in Iowa.  It's a historical site that has some long running history in the area.  Our P-Day group arranged a meeting with the on-site historical head of the organization.  He was very knowledgable and a great source of information.  In fact, virtually non-stop for 2 hours.  The fort was a far West outpost in the early 1800s and had quite a checkered past.  As an Army outpost, the tour guide had a lot of interesting stories about how life was back then.  This site was full of interesting stories about how life really was in the early 1800s.  Not some place I would want to live.  Especially when you realized that when you hit your early 50s, you had to have, at least, 2 or 3 opposing teeth so you could tear open a black powder packet to load a musket or you couldn't re-enlist.  Not that's a real standard to live up to!

The fort as it sits.  The Mississippi is behind it, to the East.

The outer fencing.  Note the posts are of different heights.  The lower one was so the soldiers could shoot down onto those that would try to attack the fort.  Also note the deck that the soldiers stood on to get them higher up on the wall.  The taller logs also afforded a place for the soldiers to duck behind when being shot at.  The logs are also pointed so the snow and rain will slough off and not rot the wood.  Pretty nifty, huh?

This is our guide telling us about the Quartermaster's building.  They had quite a collection of items from their time period.  

The next building over is the officer's quarters.  Their room was usually white washed in and out and was well appointed, I mean for the time.  Notice the "chamber pot" at the corner of the bed...

Another room in the Officer's Quarters was the kitchen area.  They made bread on a regular, daily basis but it was thought that eating fresh bread would make you sick if you didn't wait until it was a couple of days old.  Now that is weird.  

Behind the Officer's Quarters building is the outhouse, on the left, and a clay "oven" on the right.  You can figure out what the outhouse is for, I'm pretty sure.  The clay oven is made up of rock and clay.  They would build a fire, put in their food, cover it up, and let it bake for awhile until it was done.

These are the enlisted barracks in the back of the fort.  The building on the right is acting as a museum, of sorts.  The one on the right is a doctor's office and an example of enlisted housing.

They have a 6 pound cannon onsite.  It is actually on a 9 pound cannon base but this is what they have.  A 6 pound cannon uses about 2 pounds of black powder to fire a projectile.  The first time they fire this thing, they used 6 pounds, thinking that was the way it was.  The cannon fired a concrete projectile clear across the Mississippi (more than 1 mile) and it ended up clear across the field it was sitting on.  

Over in the doctor's office, we were treated to stories of what doctors did to treat patients in the early 1800s up until the Civil War.

Over in the garrison's office for the watch commander, they had a few typical uniforms on display.

Displaying the flogging devices used to punish soldiers that had been involved in some sort of infraction at the fort.  Flogging was used until the end of the Civil War.  

Plus enlisted accommodations in one of the buildings.

In one of the corner block houses there were slits to fire from.  We could see the bridge over to the rod headed for Nauvoo and a barge headed our way.

Interior view of the fort.

We had a really informative time listening to him explain way more details than I could have ever wanted.  It was quite interesting.

On another point of interest...we have our last date that we will be here working on our mission.  We had been given September 16th as our last day so we had asked to leave a bit earlier so we could visit the Kirtland and Palmyra temples.  However, after proposing this date, we found that the Palmyra temple closes for winter shutdown on September 12th, the day we would leave to go visit them.  So, Arlene asked President McArthur if we could possibly leave a week earlier so we could get there and visit that particular temple.  He approved it, as he wants us to have some good experiences on our way home, and we have a new end date of service of September 3rd as our last day in the temple.  Our rudimentary plans are to visit Kirtland, Niagara Falls, then Palmyra.  On the way back, we will be stopping at the Columbus Ohio and Indianapolis Indiana temple before heading back to Nauvoo.  So, officially, we have 46 days until we can start our trip to leave for home.  A week later and we'll be back to do our final packing and we will then head West about the 17th or thereabouts.  Now, if we can make it to that date...

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On to the 4th of July...

Breakfast over at the Seger's place on the 4th.

The kids had to have their photo taken outside the first stop at the renowned Nauvoo Fudge Shop.  And all of them smiling, that was a first...

Nummy, so many choices!

Take my picture, Papa!

Everybody has to pose over at the next shop...

Obligatory family pict in front of the Nauvoo Temple

...and in front of the garden across the street...

...and the whole family.  So, our friend says, "yeah, I know how to use your camera"...so, I guess balancing the subject is not one of your strong suits, huh?  He took half a dozen shots and they all look like this.  Well, guess I can't be too choosey, can I?

Lucy Mack Smith house and a look around.

Avrye knocks out with Nana while the rest of us tour the house. 

Later that night we make it to the British Pageant dress rehearsal.  

That thing is annoying!  Right over our heads...   When the light died down I guess they stopped flying.  

  

Magnificent as usual.  This year it is dry and doesn't smell like wet dog last year.  Didn't rain this night and they did a great job.  This is the entire cast on stage at the end.  

Had a great day.  Nathan/Tabbi and family left the next morning at around 10 AM for parts South.  They'll be travelling for the next couple of weeks and seeing other sites and relatives.  We wish them a safe journey and great trip.  See you next time!

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Well, the weekend is over and mom's surprise finally happened when Bob and family showed up at the Nauvoo Temple to let her know they were in town (can I really call Nauvoo a town?).  They were here from Friday night until Tuesday morning and we had lots of family time together showing them what we could in that short timeframe all about Nauvoo.

Getting ready to head out on the wagon ride and see the "Flats" around the lower portion of Nauvoo proper. 

On the ride with Nana while I rode with Garret in front of Tabbi and the wee one.

  

...on to the blacksmith shop for a demonstration of wagon wheel building and horseshoe making and, of course, getting a prairie "diamond ring", no trip to Nauvoo would be complete without one! 

  

I'm thinking the people that make minivans must be really happy with their sales figures...

  

Of course, the guys need to stop by the Browning Gun Shop and look at the gun collection and all that was built in Nauvoo while Browning lived in Nauvoo.  Great GrandPa was a member of the church and knew both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young very well.  He moved on to Utah when the Saints were driven out of Nauvoo in 1846.

  

Pioneer Pastimes for the young ones.  Avrye had a great time chewing on blocks of wood and rolling around on the rag carpet.

  

Allye got dressed up so she could play "pioneer" for a while.  She seemed to like that.  We had to pry her out of the costume.

  

Giddyup!

  

These things are hard!

  

Nathan's pork ribs for dinner.

  

Guess who is the favorite Nana today?

  

Chocolate cake, ice cream and other goodies for Nana's birthday celebration.

So, the next day was Sunday, on the 3rd, we attended Nauvoo 2st ward with about a million other people where they had 40 sacrament trays just for the back area in the cultural hall, no way we could get into the chapel.  It took 35 minutes to get through Sacrament and it was Fast and Testimony plus the meeting, due to the number of wards meeting in the building, Sacrament is only 65 minutes long.  Went really fast.

At Carthage and the back side of the jail with our tour guides.  We managed to catch just about the last tour of the day.

  

Dad's probably thinking this may be a good idea...  The lower jail cell.

  

The door that was shot through just prior to the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

  

The window the Prophet Joseph Smith fell through.

  

...from outside..

  

Our family at the Carthage Jail site.  All together for the afternoon.  Taken by a family that was there also on a family get together.  The father and mother had just been released as the mission president of the Macon Georgia Mission.  A huge family get together.

Well, I'm out of time so I need to get to the temple for today's work schedule.  More to come tomorrow or, at least, later.  Have a day or two more to add.

BTW, Elder Kevin and we have decided that we are going home separately.  We will be coming home in September somewhere around the 25th.  Kevin will be flying home on the 2nd of November.  We are beat and will be heading home at our original release date.  We've had enough.  So, we have about 10 weeks to go.  See you soon.