"Welcome to old Nauvoo"

Across the Mississippi - Driving into Nauvoo. There are tons of water lilies on the water for miles at a time. This was such a beautiful area, I can see why the saints called it "The Beautiful". The the time the day was done we could see how sad it would have been for them leave their beautiful home, but they did it willingly to have the freedom to worship as they believed.

This house did not have any historical markers, but on the drive into town the street was lined with homes from the Nauvoo era.

Joseph Smith's Red Brick Store. The original store was burned, but this replica, owned by the RLDS church was a fun visit. In this building they have Joseph's desk in the office and his personal bible. Wow, what a nostalgic feeling that was! This room was the "School of the Prophets" and was the room that the RS would have been organized in.

Hyrum Street. Many of the streets here are named after the prophets family.

The 70's hall. This could have been my favorite stop. You could feel the spirit so strong when you walked in the door. This was the first 'MTC' so to speak where the 70's would prepare to go out on missions. I knew I had relatives that were a part of the church in Nauvoo, but had not done much research on those who were there - since I just started not too long ago, I hadn't gone back that far yet. Well, while we were in this building one of the missionary sisters said that they had a book of all the missionaries that were trained here and to look up names of family. We did and found Albert Miner, my 4th great grandfather. The other fun fact we got from this was his baptism - 1832. After this we went to the hall of records and found his wife's journal! We read the stories of how she taught him the gospel, he was told by his family he was crazy and joined anyway. In Kirtland he served as a bodyguard to the prophet Joseph Smith and enjoyed the blessings of following the prophet (Joseph even gave his son his baby blessing and named him Moroni - my 3rd great grandfather) as well as suffered persecutions with the rest of the saints - finally dying from exposure to the bitter winter after they left Nauvoo and losing his father in law to the mobs. His family continued and helped settle South Jordan and a few years later moved to Springville in Utah. For those of you who would like, I have a copy of the journal on CD.

Emily found a flower that was as big as her head and almost as beautiful as her face.

Pioneer Pastimes.

This was the favorite stop of the day for the kids. We spent a good 3 hours playing like pioneers would have. And dressing up and keeping house, and tending fires...

And a good stick pull with your dad of course. Chris won.

Emily doing a little laundry.

In this picture Lizzy is trying to show off her pioneer bonnet to the camera. Pretty flattering eh?

Doing a bear race.

Herding the sheep.

Tending the babies and teaching them "school".

The girls really got into taking care of this tiny cabin. Emily was an amazing baker, Lizzy took care of the children and Debbie cleaned very thoroughly (hmm, they do know how to do that).

A drive around the temple.

Brigham Young's home. After the saints left Nauvoo, Brigham Young's home was quickly occupied and so was kept in good original condition for years. The church bought it in about the 1960's. All day Emily really wanted to visit this house and was so excited to learn it was the original.

We ended the day at a play where they sang "Welcome to Old Nauvoo!" which the kids have been singing since. By the time it was over, they were tired and luckily we only had an hour to go to our hotel this night.