Week of June 14th - 20th

One of the temple missionaries here finally captured a picture of the storms here.  Didn't this turn out so great.  We were coming off our shift Saturday evening and we could hear the storm and it was blowing so hard it was actually raining sideways.  It did stop after a few hours.

So, a couple of highlights from this week.  We had Bro. and Sis. Enaba came here to visit the temple from Tokyo.  They wanted to see the Nauvoo Temple.  Same with a three-some from Scotland, they wanted to see the Temple.  Seems when the spirit of Nauvoo gets into one, they will come no matter the cost.  It is a tremendous draw this city of Nauvoo.  Some are so drawn to see where the ordinances of the temple really began.  Right here.

On Thursday when we went in for our shift, about 1:45 - the temple had already completed 1738 ordinances, of which 1400 + were from the baptistery.  One group that was here this week was the Ogden 22nd Ward YSA on a Church History Tour.  They had been on the bus for 18 hours when they arrived in Nauvoo.  Great dedication.  120 wonderful young adults.  They literally took over the baptistery and the sealing rooms.  So good.  Then we had a youth conference from Lexington Kentucky.  Again so reverent and so kind.  One of the goals they had was to do a service project here in Nauvoo.  The city fathers said let them go through the public campgrounds, clean the trails, cut brush, haul debris to a dump truck etc.  The city estimated that it would take the 120 youth about three to four hours to complete this huge project.  That is close to 400 service hours.  Well,   drum roll - they had it done in 1.5 hours and done well.  They sang and worked so well together, very well organized.  The best part was so many happy faces.  'When we're helping we're happy as the song says.'

One of the site missionaries was telling us of this incident.  She looked up the street and saw about 5-6 youth walking to one side of the street, then pausing and walking back to the other side of the street.  They did this several times.  She asked them (after a few minutes), what were you doing?  They replied: "On the LDS side of the street you can feel the Spirit, on the other side of the street you cannot".  We were impressed that these youth could feel the Spirit, but more impressed they could tell when it wasn't there.  I assume this happened where the Church owned property is on one side of the highway and the public city owned campground is on the other side of the street.