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We've been waiting for a while for the Manti Pageant, "The Mormon Miracle Pageant" as it's called officially, and it finally came this past weekend.  We also got the opportunity to visit with the Chapman's in their Bed and Breakfast, the Osbourne Inn, for overnight accommodations.  We got a little time to catch up on things and to renew our friendship.  More on that in tomorrow's installment.  We went to the ROC for part of the morning then headed up to Manti and Spring City later in the morning.  Since it was going to be 115 that day in St George, no argument there.  However, since the humidity runs about 1 to 2%, it's not nearly as bad as anywhere in Kalifornia.

One of our Service Missionary couples, Elder/Sister Anglesey, also went to the pageant and booked a room just across the way from the pageant.  They offered to get us a parking place at the motel so we were able to park there (no charge) much closer than we had thought we were going to.  That's Sister Anglesey pushing the baby carriage there with her Chihuahua in it.  Cute little dog but needed to be corralled.  Didn't make a peep during the whole performance and we sat there from 5:30 until 11 or so later that night.  Just wanted to be next to Momma.  The motel office behind was selling Pageant Meals for $6.  Barbeque beef sandwiches, a bag of chips, a soda and a dessert (for me a Ding Dong).  We didn't have anything all day so this was more than reasonable and pretty tasty.  

 

The pageant is performed on the hill below the temple.  That is a pretty impressive hill.  Throughout the afternoon/evening, I watched actors walking around and not all of them were all that young so I'm thinking, "You really need to be in pretty good shape to run up and down that hill to be a performer".  

 

That is a lot of chairs!  I asked around about how many and couldn't get a good response.  Looking online, I found out they set up between 12 and 14, 000 chairs for an 8 day run (2 weekends).  Consider that Nauvoo sets up only about 2, 200 chairs for a nearly 30 day run.  Makes you wonder.  And Manti has about 3, 100 people in the whole town.  Where do all those people come from?  That's a pretty stupendous effort on the locals part.

  

We were warned, from several different sources, about the protestors that post themselves outside the entrance.  There is a street that splits the park area and the seating area.  I was told the church bought that street and doesn't allow the protestors to stand there any more.  They can protest all they want outside the gates,  it's standard fare as they protest in front of temples and about anything the church does anyway.  This preacher was hollering, "Holy, Holy, Holy.  God Almighty", etc... Over and over again.  Then, occasionally, they'd kneel and pray for our souls.  Or something like that.  I appreciate being prayed for....I think.  Problem was, when they were saying the opening prayer for the pageant, this guy was screaming his prayer very disrespectfully.  Kind of distracting.  But, I remember prayers at family home evening when the kids were young so it wasn't too awfully different.  Brother Chapman was doing security that night and said Security found an abandoned backpack.  They had to look inside to see who it belonged to.  It was one of these protestors and they found a paycheck/pay stub for $700, apparently to disrupt the proceedings.  So, someone was there but not out of his convictions...I'm thinking it's called "filthy lucre" or something like that.  

 

FamilySearch had booths there.  Several, in fact.  I asked Sister Seger if she wanted to go do some indexing...

  

Dusk finally came around and the pageant looked like it would start.  It doesn't start until 9:30 and runs till after 11:00.  I won't get that time back.  The seats didn't really start to fill until 8 or so.

 

It was well lit and could be heard everywhere.  As it grew darker, it was even easier to see.  Some scenes literally took most of the mountain.

 

In this scene they lit up an angel on the top of the temple.  Probably the only time I wanted to have my 300MM lens on my camera in the last 2 years.  But, that thing is pretty heavy and the close lens is an 80 so taking close pictures is difficult.  Not sure if you can discern the angel or not.

 

If this isn't the whole cast, it's gotta be pretty close.  Because of where we were sitting, I had to shoot between the temporary stanchions for the lights.  I wouldn't make that mistake again but we didn't sit there and get baked waiting for the sun to go down either.  I guess you need to pick you battles.  There's always next year.  

 

At the end, the cast is up on the parking lot above, singing.  It was pretty impressive.  We enjoyed the pageant.  So did 12,000 other people.  Getting out wasn't all that bad but it did take a while.  They traffic was usually pretty bad going North but I really didn't think it was all that bad.  I've certainly seen worse elsewhere.