Church History Trip - Day 3

August 29, 2008 - We boarded the bus at the obnoxiously early hour of 8:00 am (only really obnoxiously early if you stay awake really "early"... which we did...). This is our bus looking simply smashing after yesterday's storm:

Our first stop was the Far West Temple Site, located about 40 miles northeast of Kansas City. The first thing that surprised me about Far West is that there's nothing really there anymore. Every where else we went on this trip, excepting Adam-ondi-Ahman (which is expected), we were in a pretty decent-sized community. Far West is literally in the middle of no where.

The corner stones for the Far West Temple are still on the site. They are individually encased in glass. Compared to the temple site in Independence, Far West Temple was going to be huge. The "footprint" of the building was probably more comparable to the Nauvoo temple, only slightly smaller. One of the many things I learned at the site was that each of the temple corner stones stands for a branch of the priesthood. I don't remember the exact "north/south/east/west" locations for the corner stones, but each stone had a plaque next to it indicating, "This cornerstone was laid in representation of..." for each of the following: the High Council (Quorum of the Twelve), the Lesser Priesthood, the First Presidency, and the High Priesthood.

The monument at Far West, located at the back of the temple lot, was engraved with references from Doctrine and Covenants sections 115 and 118. D&C 115:7 says, "Let the city, Far West, be a holy and consecrated land unto me; and it shall be called most most holy, for the ground upon which thou standest is holy." There are only two other places in the scriptures that use this phrase, about the ground being holy (Exodus 3:5, Acts 7:33) and both of them refer to Moses and the burning bush. It was incredible to stand on ground that was so hallowed.

Another thing that I found really neat was in relation to the revelation given in D&C 118:5, where it says, "Let them take leave of my saints in the city of Far West, on the twenty-sixth day of April next, on the building-spot of my house, saith the Lord." The Twelve Apostles were called to serve missions in this revelation, and were to be set apart and leave the Far West Temple grounds on the appointed date. However, the Saints had already been driven from Missouri when their departure date arrived. At the suggestion of one of the Brethren, they all snuck across the state line in the middle of the night of April 25th-26th, were set apart while sitting on the cornerstone representing the Twelve, and then left on their missions from the Far West site. They fulfilled the revelation as it was given, risking their lives by reentering the state of Missouri after the Extermination Order had been given. It was really incredible to be there.

This is a picture of two of the guys I met while on the trip. Jason Oliver (left) was on our bus and sat in the back with Mindy, Gretchen, myself, and a few others. Keith White (right) was on the other bus, but him and some other friends came over most nights to our hotel room to play card games.

Mindy and I had this picture taken just outside the Temple Grounds (and some majesty or apparition of sorts glowin' on there in the middle):

Although this picture was taken in the Far West area, it really is a pretty good generalization of what we spent a LOT of time driving by throughout the trip. Lots of rolling hills, lots of big grain rolls... mostly just lots and LOTS of farmland. From what I gather, that's a pretty fair assessment of the Midwest in general.

We spent probably four hours in the bus driving from Far West to Nauvoo - basically across the entire state of Missouri. The main highlights of this four hour drive were stopping for lunch and driving through Hannibal (Mark Twain's hometown). According to our best calculations (because we're not 100% sure where we were, we stopped for lunch in a Middle-of-Missouri town called Chillicothe. The highlight consisted in our adoption (purchase?) of the notorious Ferdner "Ferdy" Hick. Gretchen and I had discussed the awesomeness that would ensue if we were to attain our own "Travelocity Gnome"... of sorts. We saw the man himself at the Dollar Store our bus parked next to... and history was made. (Ferdner was named during a period of semi-consciousness on the part of Gretchen somewhere between Chillicothe and Nauvoo. She claimed the epiphany, and we thought it was the coolest thing ever. It was made all the more cool when we returned home and watched Stardust, only to realize that the peddler in the movie is none-other than Ferdy the Fence! "Okay... you're havin' a laugh!") Ferdner was featured in many of our pictures taken during the remainder of our trip... so don't be surprised if you see him crop up every now and then...

We arrived in Nauvoo at around 3:30 pm; we were dropped off on Main Street and basically turned loose on historic Nauvoo for two hours. Since basically everything closed at 5:00 pm, we only had about an hour to see stuff that afternoon... and we also knew we would only have about 2-3 hours the next day...

This is the Cultural Hall located on the north end of Main Street; the Cutural Hall was used a a central meeting place, for plays, dances, etc. (This is where we watched Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo later that night...):

We went to the Post Office, right next to John Taylor's home, on Main Street. We walked down to the Scovil Bakery, where we got these tasty gingerbread cookies (and the recipe!), and then went next store to the Stoddard home and Tin Shop. This is a picture of a "Berry Line" (right smack in the middle with the string out one end). I took this picture because I figured Dad and probably Spencer would get a kick out of the original chalk line. They'd put fresh berries in the cup and mushed them up, so that when they drew out the string, held both ends tight, and snapped the line, they had a pretty straight line of berry juice that was very difficult to wash away. :0) Way cool!!

East of the Cultural Hall is a Family Center, where a lot of the Senior Missionaries held mini classes on how the Saints used to perform different every-day tasks. This is where we made rope - I think from the sorrel plant...? (and Dad, I took a LOT of pictures of this machine, if you ever got a hankering to make one... it was pretty darn cool):

This was rope made out of old cloth - same machine:

We also learned about dying and making fabric. After you collected the fibers (from flax, wool, cotton) you created the thread/yarn through a spinning wheel. Most people know that:

What most people don't know (at least I sure didn't) is that in order to sell the skeins of yarn, you had to measure it. They used a spinner's weasel to do this. You fed the yarn through the weasel and every two revolutions, POP goes the Weasel... I laughed, but it really happens.

Also in the Family Center you could make bread, dip candles, and a lot of other fun stuff. When we left the Family Center, we walked outside and thought this was pretty cool - the first signs of fall, surrounded by all the green. It was so dang pretty there!

Mindy decided that she wanted to use the necessary house. We surprised her when she came out. (And if you believe that one's not staged...)

We played cards while we waited for Mindy to come out of the necessary house. (Gretchen won. Go figure.)

A lot of the buildings in Nauvoo were made out of brick that was made from clay found in the area. This is the Heber C. Kimball house, and one of the biggest in the area.

A lot of the homes that were not lived in after the Saints left deteriorated over time. Most of the foundations had been excavated, looking for artifacts and the like. If they didn't know whose house it was or what it looked like, as was the case with a lot of the buildings, they looked a little something like this:

Mindy, Gretchen, and I are all of the opinion that we'd rather have pictures of us that we actually posed for. Or had someone else go, "Hey, I'm gonna take a picture." Pretty sure that's what I said right before this happened:

Right before we went back to the bus, we ran out on the skirts of Historic Nauvoo to look at the Wilford Woodruff house:

We got back to the bus right around 5:30 pm, and headed over to the Nauvoo Family Inn & Suites (our home and restaurant for the next two nights) and ate dinner - which after Ma & Pa's Kettle was basically amazing. From dinner we drove back over to the Cultural Hall to watch the play Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo, which was put on entirely by the Senior Missionaries serving in Nauvoo. It was both entertaining and endearing to see them act, dance, and sing out the story of Old Nauvoo. There was a new Senior couple that had just arrived and were watching the play, that they soon would be putting on themselves before long, for the very first time... watching their slightly shocked reactions was pretty awesome. I think it would be a blast! They sure looked like they were having fun! This is a video of their opening number... I think they're adorable!

We left Rendezvous and on our way back to the bus, we found a friend:

I got a lot of weird looks when I just reached down and picked up the garter snake, but Mindy and Gretchen thought it was cool.

I had them document this effectively to prove that I am not completely petrified of reptiles - in fact I quite like snakes. Turtles are cool. Lizards are, regretfully, still not cool. No offense to the lizards. We just have issues. I actually thought it would be pretty cool to have a pet garter snake... but we weren't sure that Tom (bus driver) would let me keep him.

Our tour guide didn't really plan a ton of "souvenir" time, so while we waited for the other bus to get back from Carthage (we were always alternating sites) we walked down to the gift shop of the hotel to see what they had. I got some pictures of some "quote signs" with Julie in mind - mostly because of the words (I think you could make them so much cooler Julie). This one was our favorite - admittedly we got a good kick out of it:

Two other quotes were, "Even a small star shines in the darkness." And, "I believe in angels, the kind that heaven sends. They're always her to guide me. I think of them as friends."

We were still waiting for the other bus, so we camped out in the hallway outside our hotel room and took pictures of our security guard, Ferdy.

We waited for the other bus a lot. I got a fair amount of "journal" caught up. Mostly we were paparazzied by Gretchen. Eventually the guys showed up and we played cards. More adventures ensued in the form of pillow fights... of course after the guys left and we were "in" bed.

Stay tuned for DAY 4!