After visiting our Tarkington cousins, we headed off towards Nauvoo. I was very excited to show the kids. I probably hyped myself up too much, but more on that in a minute. Last minute, we decided to stop off at Carthage first. I think that was a good decision. The kids were very reverent and good listening. Sam didn't want to be happy about it at first, but he got over it and actually had a lot of good questions and comments for the missionaries. I think the John Taylor story really stuck with him, so Jer found a replica of John Taylor's watch to give him.
Then we headed over to Nauvoo for the rest of the day. The kids loved the area that they could do stuff that pioneer children would have done. It was hot, but by the time we got walking around to the different homes and shops it started to cool down a little. We got to go to the Tinsmith shop, the print shop, John Taylor's home, the Gunsmith/blacksmith shop, and the home of the man that was the gunsmith at the time... Jonathan Browning. I got to visit the visitors center while Jer had the kids at the children's activity thing. Then we drove around and talked about the Trail of Hope and the other buildings there. We drove to the temple and then to the Zion's Mercantile store. Everything was supposed to close by 5:30, but the store was still open by 6 and they didn't have a problem with us in there. After that we just drove as far as we could West so that we could get to Wyoming sooner.
If I had lived in that time, I would have LOVED to be a tinsmith. It's sewing and metal work in one.
This is the bullet hole that killed Hyrum Smith.
It was interesting to see a bus load of Fundamentalists show up as we were leaving. Again I was reminded of all the break off churches that still hold Joseph Smith and the early days of the church as part of the their founding as well. No wonder a lot of people get confused. There are 6 or 7 churches at least with the same founding. It also made me very grateful for revelation. Revelation and Priesthood authority are the two thing that really set the Church of Latter-Day Saints apart from these other. These other churches began because of people deciding not to follow the current prophet, but God said that he will always lead his church through the prophet.
By this time, Sam was super grumpy. It was hot, he was hungry, his crutches hurt under his arms, and whenever he does spiritual things... he has a great experience but then gets tired out. (I'm not worried about that. On my mission, it was my experience that many times a spiritual experience will physically take it out of you. Many of our baptismal families would go home and sleep the rest of the day, etc...) He was tired and didn't want to do anything more. I was frustrated because I thought the kids would be running from place to place and just love all this stuff that we'd been learning about. I told him that we were just going to peek in the printshop for a second and then go to the gunsmith like he wanted to. We went in and Sam was grumpy and tired of everyone asking about his crutches. This missionary was able to pull him into a conversation and he really engaged with her. It helped him to be happy enough to get through another little bit. He got frustrated when we were back on the street and only agreed to our last stop because it was a Gunmaker.
Seth took this picture. He asked if he could take pictures when we got to the temple... I usually don't let him, but he seemed really excited to. I put it around his neck and told him not to run... He got some pretty cute ones for someone just turning 5.
He got this one of Dad, and I love Dad's picture of it, but I had a hard time downloading it from his phone.
I took these last three
You can barely see it, but the moon is just above the temple here. We would have loved being able to take Ada in to do baptisms, but we're planning on doing that when we come out to this area in 2024 for the solar eclipse. Then we can take all three of the older kids.
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