Since I haven't had time to add many photos lately I will add several posts today while I have time to get caught up! This time of year water lillies grow in the Mississippi River and are now blooming. These pictures don't show it very well, but it is like a garden of flowers growing in the river!

I couldn't resist taking this photo of a newly harvested field with wonderful clouds in the sky here in Nauvoo!

I have seen these baby deer all over town, but I never had my camera when I could get their picture. There are actually three of them and they are so cute! 

The Nauvoo and British Pageants ended last weekend. It was a very wonderful, but BUSY month for our mission. By way of example, in the month of June, about 5,000 visitors came through the Scovil Bakery. In the month of July, just under 15,000 visitors came through the Scovil Bakery! Last year they estimated that about 43,000 people attended the pageant. I haven't heard final figures yet, but a week before the pageants ended we had already had over 60,000 people attend the pageants!  So this week I have just been trying to get caught up on things I had to put off! A friend of mine got some fantastic photos of the pageants and so I may add some more to my blog when she sends them to me. I love pageant time!

This temple in the scene is a prop - but it's still pretty impressive!

The temple in the next two pictures is the real thing lit up in the background at the end of the Nauvoo pageant. 

Even though this isn't a very good picture, you can still get a feel for how spectacular the ending of the Nauvoo pageant is with the Nauvoo temple lit up in the background!

This woman in the blue shirt stopped me on the last night of the pageant and said she liked my skirt so I thanked her and we started visiting a few minutes before it started. Turned out her name is Charlotte Jackson with her daughter Cheryl and they were from Indianapolis. As we continued talking we found we have a common friend, Milly Day in Newport Beach, CA!!! Small world!

Yesterday I went to Carthage to see the Young Performing Missionaries and Nauvoo Band. Afterwards I met Lloyd D. Newell, the voice of the Tabernacle Choir program - Music and the Spoken Word! I didn't realize until then that his daughter is serving as a young sister missionary here!!! I didn't know that Sister Newell was his daughter! I was disappointed that I didn't have my camera with me.

But today his family came into the Visitor's Center where I was serving and so I got this picture with him and his wife, Karmel. Too bad I took such a bad picture!!!

Then tonight the Newell family was at our 2nd  Rendezvous Show!

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me, Lloyd Newell, Karmel - his wife, their younger daughter, Sister Sue Brown, and their son. Sister Brown and I gave his wife and daughter our show bonnets to wear for the picture! He said he has been doing the broadcast for 25 years!!!

Also, as a side note, just to illustrate how incredibly busy it is here in Nauvoo right now. I served again today at the Scovil Bakery and we broke the record I mentioned last week. We gave 78 tours to almost 800 people! I hope our cookies hold out! We baked about 50,500 cookies and froze them during last winter and spring in anticipation of the summer visitors. But more people are coming during this Pageant month than anticipated! Yahoo!

This is a picture of the couple playing the part of Joseph Smith, Jr. and his wife Emma Hale Smith.

In my blog, I haven't often expressed some of my deeper feelings about how this Nauvoo experience is affecting me. But for some reason my heart has been drawn out more than usual today for the early members of my faith and my ancestors that lived here in Nauvoo. Maybe this is in part because I was asked to share a story of one of my ancestors with the mission presidency and I have been rereading their stories trying to decide which one I wanted to tell. You see every one of my lines of ancestry on both my mothers and fathers lines (except one that I am not sure about) lived here in Nauvoo and walked the same streets that I now walk. And when I tell the stories of those who lived here in the sites, it is as if I am telling my people's stories. The spirit of love and sacrifice just permeates every part of old historic Nauvoo. There is one black and white photograph in the Seventies Hall of Nauvoo in the 1840s. I wish we had a copy of it in every site to remind us and our visitors that Nauvoo was a heavily populated, thriving city of over 12,000 people. It was the 2nd largest city in Illinois. There were no unused spaces in this city like we see now. 

There is a 20 minute film we show in our Visitor's Center called "Remembering Nauvoo" that I think everyone who comes to Nauvoo should see. I have seen it several times, but after my shift ended at 6pm tonight I went and watched it again and cried most of the way through. I am feeling such intense love right now for those early saints who lived in this beautiful place. I can hardly bear to think of the trials they experienced and the persecution and suffering they endured by those who were not of our faith. Religious persecution is just another example of man's inhumanity to man. I have no patience for it on any level. 

At the end of the film there is a quote by one of the early church leaders, Wilford Woodruff, that talks about the prayer in his heart as he is being forced to leave his beloved Nauvoo and gazing back at the Temple. He asks Father in Heaven to allow their sacrifices to be remembered. My prayer is that I will always remember and be as grateful for their sacrifices as I am right now! What a wonderful blessing in my life to be here. I hope that everyone who reads my blog will desire to come to Nauvoo and feel this incredible spirit!

Later on this week I serve again in the Family Living Center where we bake 6 loaves of homemade bread every day the way the pioneers did it in our "bustle oven". Here are some of the workers enjoying a slice of one of the loaves with butter and jam hot out of the oven! YUM! The Family Living Center has 7 different stations to learn about life in pioneer times - candlemaking, breadmaking, spinning, weaving, rope making, pottery and barrel making. It is a fun place to serve.

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Elders Toomer, Curtis, Fullenbach with Sister Clement and me!

 On the 4th of July I went over to the Schultz's back yard with a few other couples and the Young Sister Missionaries to celebrate with a BBQ and fireworks! Elders Broadhead & Schultz provided the entertainment on the guitar and bass. A fun time was had by all.

Happy Birthday to my sweet daughter Michelle Port