Fun Around Nauvoo!

We saw this paddle boat when we were stopped on the bridge at Ft. Madison.  It is a cruise ship that goes down  the Mississippi.  It looks very Mark Twain on the outside but is supposed to be beautiful and modern on the inside.  Notice the clouds.  We got a huge thunder storm about five minutes after this picture was taken.  So beautiful.

Did someone say to wear green?  Here we are in the Family Living Center and we all wore green that day.  Sister Scott, Sister Campbell, me and Sister Pierce.

Here are our young sisters the night before some of them left.  We have gotten really close to all of them as we work closely with them in the Visitor's Center.   Front:  S/Kupfer, Etherington, Holt, Russell, Monroe, Allred, Mills, Searel, Hughes, Poulson,  Newell, Hintze.  Front:  S/Morales, Hansen, Hall, Maile, Mills.  S/Richardson left that day.

Notice how huge this hibiscus is.  It is as large as Dave's head.  They are amazing!

A beautiful butterfly just outside the Visitor's Center

We saw this tug inside the lock at Keokuk.  We walked down to see the lock and Dave yelled, "Look, the doors are opening! and we saw this huge barge inside.  It has fifteen barges on it pushed by this tug.  A barge that big holds as much as 860 semi trucks.  It was amazing.

You can see the whole barge.  About 60% of all exported goods are barged down the Mississippi.  It is exciting to see them.

Yes, it is me.  I'm standing on the back step of the Cultural Hall.  This is how we missionaries dress in Old Nauvoo.  Oh, how we love it here and we have learned and changed so much. 

September is Here!

Dear Friends and Family,

The time has flown by and we have been here nearly six months.  Nauvoo and the missionaries here have become home to us. We have loved serving here and will never be the same because of what we have learned and felt here.   We are winding up our first six months and hope to begin our second six months on March first. 

We have been called as site leaders over the Visitor's Center.  It has taken us a while to get used to being in one place all the time.  We decided to really pray for a good attitude and to look for the "one" that we can talk to and teach.  We have really been blessed to have had some very positive experiences in there.  I have been able to give out three Book of Mormons in the past two days and have received two referral cards.  It has been pretty exciting to do this as a missionary.  Nauvoo is a different kind of mission as we have many members come here but also many who just have heard about Nauvoo and want to find out what is is all about.  We work in the sites one day a week and the Visitor's Center four to five.  I was in the John Taylor home today and Dave was in the Riser Boot Shop.

Many missionaries are going home this month (including us).  Nauvoo will have a skeleton crew during the winter months.  They have taken our three "Rendezvous"  casts and made them into two for the winter months.  It is hard making changes but everyone is willing to do whatever they are asked.  You soon find out that  what you thought was not so good turns out to be just fine.

My school is starting this week and it is the first time that I haven't been there in 25 years.  I have found out that they can get along perfectly fine without me. I wish all my good friends at ACS a happy beginning of the school year.  I will be going back to school in October to mentor the new teacher and do do the third, fourth and fifth grade plays.  I will be finished on February 5.

We leave Nauvoo with mixed feelings.  A part of wants to stay during the winter months with all of our wonderful new friends and yet we know we need to go home and finish things there.  I am really excited to see my dog.  We have missed him so much and he has been so ill but a little miracle has happened in his life and ours and we know that we will be able to see him soon.  We will be home on the 29th of September. 

We have had many friends come to see us this summer and we have loved that.  Nauvoo is a very special place and I hope that many more of you can come to visit next summer.  We just found out that The Young Ambassadors and the BYU Ballroom Dancers will be here next June.  That will really be fun and exciting. 

We miss you all and are looking forward to seeing you soon either at school, church or the temple.  We have lots to share with you. 

I will be posting this letter and pictures on our blog (curtisreview of old nauvoo@blogspot).  Hope to see you in a month.

Love,

Sherry  

The Pageant and Young Performing Missionaries

The Nauvoo Pageant

More pictures of the Pageant.

Joseph and Emma dancing in "Love Letters to Joseph."

Young Performing Missionaries - 2014

Our Sarah Granger Cast at "Sunset by the Mississippi"

Young Performing Missionaries and our cast at Sunset.  Dave and I are near the right side.

Who would have thought that tap dancing would be a part of our mission?

Heber C. Kimball taking the gospel to the people in England.  The church would not have survived if the members from the British Isles had not gathered in Nauvoo to give strength to the church.

Remembering July in Nauvoo

This gorgeous picture was taken by Trevor.  It is so incredibly beautiful.

"Listen carefully, Thomas.  You will be tripping over your whiskers before you see me sitting atop any wagon, leaving Nauvoo."

Don't you just love these expressions in "Rendezvous?"

Trevor, Michelle Me, Kendra and Dave at the Stone Bridge.  It was so much fun having family here to enjoy Nauvoo with us.

Trevor in front of the Nauvoo Temple.  It had been 20 years since our family came on vacation to Nauvoo.  Only the cornerstones were left of the temple back then, waiting for it to be rebuilt.

July is Over

Dear Friends and Family,

It has been a long time since I have written and that is because we have been so incredibly busy during the month of July.  We had a lot of visitors in Nauvoo and the sites were busy all day long giving tour after tour.  One day we gave out 951 cookies in the bakery and during the month of July there were over 47,000 visitors in the Visitors Center.  People line up early in the morning for the carriage and wagon rides and stand in lines for all the productions.  It is an exciting time with the Brass Band and the bagpipers in town.  The pageants were magnificent and we loved every moment of this exciting month.

We had some wonderful visitors during the month of July.  We had Faye Avarell and her sister, Amy, come for five days.  It was so much fun to show them around.  The next week we had Kendra, Kim Verespey and Caitlyn, Danny and Emma.  We then had Trevor and Michelle.  It is so much fun to show our loved ones around Nauvoo as it is such a special place and we love it here so much.  Nan and Richard Hunter, Ann and Steve Hayden and lots of Nan's grandchildren were here the first part of July.  It was all so exciting.  The last night of the pageant was Saturday night and now it is beginning to quiet down a lot.  The Young Performing Missionaries are here for one more week and then there will just be wagon and carriage rides and "Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo."  Dave's brother and sister-in-law are coming next week-end and my friend, Liz Semichy, is coming for eight days near the end of August.  By September it will be quiet in Nauvoo and the missionaries will then begin to bake cookies, make bricks and prairie diamond rings, getting ready for the thousands of visitors next summer.  They also do lots of indexing and making humanitarian kits for babies and hospitals.

Many of our friends are nearing the end of their 18 month mission and are getting ready to go home.  We will miss them so much.  I have never met this many friends in such a short amount of time.  By the end of October, there will only be a skeleton crew of missionaries to carry on the work.  Dave and I will be home from our first six months on the 29th of September.  We have very mixed feelings about leaving but this is our call and we have things that we need to finish up and accomplish at home.  We have decided to leave our car here with our friends and take the train home.  We will then use our truck to get around in before it is time to come back.  We are coming home on the train.  It leaves from Ft. Madison (15 minutes from here) and takes us to San Bernardino.  We will see how that goes.  We will leave a lot of our stuff here and just take home our clothes.

Our mission has been life-changing.  We have loved every moment of it.  We were just put in as assistant site leaders over the Nauvoo Visitor's Center.  We wear church clothes instead of our period clothing every day.  We are there four days a week and only one or two days in the sites.  It is not my favorite place to be but we have decided to be immediately obedient to whatever we are asked to do and so we are doing it happily.  At least we get to work together. 

We love doing "Sunset By the Mississippi" and we will really miss that when it closes this week.  We also love doing "Rendezvous."  It runs all year - rain or shine - no audience or big audience.  There are three casts this summer but the rumor is is that there will be only two in the winter.  We shall see.

We love you all and know that your thoughts and prayers are with us.  Ours are with you, also.  We pray that your lives are happy and you have had a happy summer. 

Love,

Dave and Sherry 

July Fun Begins

The four of us.  Sister Aaron, Sister Harwood, Nan and me.  These are all the people that were asked to come to Nauvoo by the Hunters.  I didn't know the Harwoods or the Aarons before we came but I love them both and we have had lots of oportunities to work together.  We had a special breakfast at the Aarons.  It was wonderful to see Nan and Richard.

Here we are at "Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo."  This is Nan, me, Dave and Sister Pixler.  She is in charge of the sewing room now and has become a good friend. 

This one is for Kathleen.  Here we are in Nauvoo.  In the front is Ben, Julia, Hannah Hayden and Clarissa Peterson.  In the back is Ann Hayden, Will Peterson, Nan, me and Steve Hayden.  Ann is Nan's daughter and she and Steve are very good friends of mine.  All the kids were students of mine at Almaden Country School.  

Dave and my friends Faye and Amy waiting excitedly for the Nauvoo Pageant to begin. 

Here they are at the end of the pageant.  The skies opened up and rained buckets on us.  We were drenched!  The pageant went on in the pouring rain and no one in the audience got up and left.  It was really a night to remember.

We are loving our mission - if you can't tell.

My very good friend - Sharon Watkins.  I know that we will be forever friends - besides that - she is from California.

July is Here

Dear Friends and Family,

Can you believe that the summer is half over?  The mission here has been gearing up for July when all the people come to see the pageants.  There are people all over the place.  Dave and I worked in the Browning Gun Shop on Sunday with another couple and I can't even tell you how many people we had in that four and a half hour period.  Fortunately, the two men were good at it because their two wives had never served there before.  You only work with your spouse on Sunday.  Other days you work with another sister and the gun shop is usually a man's site.

We love it here!  We love the people and we love the missionaries.  We work hard.  This is not a Disneyland mission!  When you open a site in the morning you clean, dust, vacuum, and sweep.  You are on your feet for six hours.  You hurry home and change your clothes and then you either go to "Rendezvous" or "Sunset."  We have two evenings off a week.  We use any spare time to learn "Preach My Gospel," study the scriptures, write to family, study your site book for the next day, listen to conference talks, go to the temple, etc.   We have lots of memorizing of songs and lines in the plays.  It is not a mission for the faint in heart.

Until you have walked on these streets, you cannot really understand what the pioneers gave up when they were forced out of here.  We drove over to Montrose, on the other side of the river last Wednesday, and looked back on the beautiful city.  I can only imagine their heartache as they looked back, seeing Nauvoo for the last time.  The wagons lined up and came down Parley to cross the river.  It used to be called the Trail of Tears but President Hinckley, who was president of our church until 5 years ago,  changed the name to the Trail of Hope.  Our mission president, President Gibbons, told us that the pioneers were not here to build cities, they were here to build faith.  I love telling their beautiful stories in the homes.  But, I mostly tell the visitors that no matter how many homes or artifacts you see, if they were here what they would want you to know most is that they loved the Lord, they loved the Prophet Joseph Smith, they loved Brigham Young and that they would do whatever was asked of them because they had such great faith.  Wilford Woodruff asked that we not forget the sacrifice and it is by coming and visiting here, that we don't forget. 

We are doing our vignette in "Rendezvous" once a week, two performances in a row.  Since some of the bridges are out across Iowa because of flooding, many visitors have had to make detours to make it across the rivers.  There were two busloads coming from Canada on Saturday night.  They had 60 tickets to "Rendezvous."  The busses screached up and some people ran off but we were already half way through the second performance.  It was decided to to a third performance just for them.   We made history.  No one has ever done three performances in a row!  There were 101 of them.  They were very appreciative.

The pageants have started.  We saw the Nauvoo one on Tuesday and it was wonderful.  We are seeing the British Pageant on Friday.  I hear that one is even better than the first.  I can't wait.  Trevor is coming to see that one.  I am sure that he will love it as he went to the MTC in Preston, England. 

We are looking forward to friends and family coming over the next few weeks.  Nan and Richard Hunter and some of their children and grandchildren are coming next week, Faye Avarell and her sister are coming on Saturday the 19th, Kim Verespey and her kids are coming at the same time as Kendra, Trevor and Michelle are coming at the end of the month and then my sister-in-law and brother-in-law and some of their family are coming the first part of August. 

I put some pictures on my blog yesterday.  You are welcome to look at it.  It is called Curtis Review of Old Nauvoo @ blogspot.  I will put this letter on there, too.

We love you all and appreciate you thoughts and prayers in our behalf.  

Love,  Sherry  

This Week in Nauvoo - July 8

Driving home from the Visitor's Center the other afternoon.  We just never get tired of the view across the Mississippi.

You can see how high the Mississippi is.  This is at the end of the Trail of Hope.  These trees are usually not in the water.  Many of the bridges are out because of flooding. 

This is in Montrose.  It is the place where the Latter-Day Saints had to escape to across the river as the mobs forced them out by burning their homes and threatening to kill them.  It was a miracle that the river flooded as there are rapids right there.  It was in the middle of February.  They were only able to go 35 miles that month because of the terrible mud and the freezing weather.

This is the last that they saw of their beautiful city of Nauvoo and the temple that they had worked so hard to build.

This is in the Sarah Granger Kimball home.  This Bible was given to Sarah by her husband Hyrum as a wedding gift.

Beautiful flower garden the Sarah Granger Kimball home where the Relief Society began.  It is one of my favorite places to serve.  This is Sister White.  She has been here for 15 months and has taught me a lot.

Our debut as Thomas and Elizabeth and Us in the Rain

"Listen carefully, Thomas!  You'll be tripping over your whiskers before you see me sittin' atop any wagon leaving Nauvoo!"

"And who is it that drove our team all across Missouri, all by herself?"

Elder Gifford, Me, S/Thomas soaked to the gills in front of the fallen tree.

A day we won't forget.

Here is the fallen tree that broke in the rain and fell just 10 feet from where we had been standing.  It was so scary.  I have never been in the rain where the sky just opened up and dropped buckets on us.  The rain was going sideways. 

This Week in Nauvoo

S/Clement, S/Aaron, Me, showing off our pantaloons.

Some of my favorite young sisters.  S/Hintze, S/Newell, S/Gines

Ahh!  I've finally got him where I want him.

Dave about to get his head chopped off. 

Here we are at Nauvoo on the Road.  We were at Ft. Madison at the historic fort for a celebration.  It is fun to travel with all the missionaries.  We sing "We're On The Road Again" as we travel.

IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

June 22, 2014
Dear Friends and Family,

What a week!  Life just keeps getting more and more busy.  We are all gearing up for July when all the visitors come to see the pageants.  We are looking forward to Faye Averall and her sister, Amy, in July followed by Kim Verespy and her family, Kendra, Michelle and Trevor and then my sister and brother-in-law, Sally and Jerry Curtis and part of their family in August.  We can hardly wait to show them all around Nauvoo. 

One of the highlights of this week was Thursday working in the Pioneer Pastimes.  It is a fun park with pioneer dress up clothes, a play house, a school house and all kinds of stilts, rings and pioneer toys.  It is a place where children can play as they get a bit tired of looking at the sites.  My companion for the day, Sister Thomas, and I were a bit complaining about not loving it there because it is so hot and humid.  About ten minutes before three, the thunder started booming.  I asked the family who was there how long it would be before the rain came.  They were leaving and they said about 20 minutes.  We decided to bring the dress-up clothes and rocking chairs under the shelter so they wouldn't get wet.  Now remember, I am a California girl.  When it rains in California it is light and intermittent. 

I told Sister Thomas we should start bringing things in as people wouldn't be coming any more if it rained.  She agreed and we began by loading these sheep that are made out of logs in.  They weight about 50 pounds.  (They need to go on a diet!).  Just as we got them in the play house, the skies opened up (this is about 2 minutes after the guy said 20 minutes) and it just poured buckets on us.  It was raining sideways.  About five minutes later, the huge tree we had been sitting under split in two and fell to the ground right in front of us.  If those people hadn't left, it would have fallen right on them.  It was not more that 10 feet from us.  We were like the Nauvoo emergency, we were screaming.  I called Dave to come and help us and he was just getting out of the shower and didn't even know it was raining.  By the time he got there we were soaked to the bone, my apron was so heavy with rain it was dragging on the ground.  I had never seen that much rain fall out of the sky at once (until today).  We were lucky we were not killed.  It is a memory I will never ever forget.  I even put it on Facebook.  I will add the pictures to my blog.  I will put this letter on and add photos.  You can look at it.  It is Curtis Review of Old Nauvoo at Blogspot. 

On Friday, we had our debut as Thomas and Elizabeth in "Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo."  Yes, we were very nervous.  Even though I have directed a million plays, I have only been in about 4 plays in my life.  We did two performances that night and it was really nice because when we finished and came down in the green room, our cast all applauded for us.  It is so nice to work with the people here.  Everyone is so supportive.  We are having an absolute wonderful and spiritual mission.  I will be putting a couple of pictures on the blog of our debut so you can see.  One of our friends came and took some pictures.

We went to a sociable tonight put on by the Contemporary Dance and Synthesis group from BYU.  It was wonderful.  Even though they were dancers, they did a lot of singing and telling the story of Joseph Smith.  We are so lucky to get to participate in these spiritual events.  Friday is the commemoration of  the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum at Carthage.  We hope to be able to go but we have "Rendezvous"  at 6:30.  We hope to go for a least part of it.  They are closing the sites at 4:00.

Murphy is doing great.  We have prayed for some mighty miracles since we have been here and have found ourselves to be very blessed.  He even went on the boat ride around Lake Arrowhead and loved it and they loved him.  We have been praying for our singing voices and though we probably won't make it into the Metropolitan Opera, we were adequate.  We pray for those in our ward who are hurt or sick.

Please know that we love you and feel your support.  This has been life-changing for us.  I don't think you can really realize the faith of those who walked these streets and then were forced to leave until you have been here yourself.  I will never forget what was done for me by these early pioneers.

 Love,

Sherry and Dave

ONWARD, EVER ONWARD!!

Dear Friends and Family,

Another week has passed by.  I can't believe how fast the time is going.  We are loving this mission more and more.  We have had the opportunity to hear Susan Easton Black give her talks on the prophets every week when we don't have "Rendezvous" performances.  It is a real highlight of our mission.  She is married to George Durrant.  We, and our friends the Judds, used to follow him around on the "Know Your Religion Series" because we thought he was such a great speaker.  George and Susan are temple missionaries here in Nauvoo.  He shook our hand the other night and said, "I'm sure glad you got old enough to go on a mission."

This mission is more that anything that we anticipated.  We love serving here.  I think you have to be here in Nauvoo to really experience what the faith and sacrifices were that these people were asked to endure and they did it willingly because they wanted to.  That faith and sacrifice has gotten into the marrow of my bones.  Dave and I are both still learning but we are getting more confident and more knowledgeable every day.

The Living Legends from BYU are here this week and their show is fabulous.  They have wonderful costumes and dances.  They perform on the outdoor stage and then gave a sociable for the missionaries last night.  The performers bore their testimonies of the gospel  and sang many songs.  It was so uplifting and so inspiring.  We are so lucky to have them here to share their spirit with us.

This is our last week of practice for our vignette in "Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo."   We have our last rehearsal in the morning and we make our debut on the 20th.  We are pretty nervous as we have a duet to sing.  Of course, we both have colds and I had another of my usual bouts with laryngitis this week.  Every time I get remotely ill, it goes right to my chest and lungs.  We are praying for a Nauvoo miracle that we are able to sing the song without slaughtering it.    It is such a beautiful little song and we would like to do it justice and not sound like Kermit and Miss Piggy.  I wear one of those day caps in the play and in the vignette.  I was telling Kendra that some ladies look adorable in those caps, but I look like the Snoopy's enemy the Red Baron in my white bomber cap.

We are very close to the young sister missionaries here.  We love them a lot.  They usually say, "Sister Curtis, you are so funny."  They say that even when I'm not trying to be funny.  They are truly examples of the believers.  I admire them so much.  They do a lot of teaching with the seniors in the training meetings. We also have a wonderful mission president.  He is very quiet but dynamic at the same time.  He does not micro manage but teaches like a general authority (he was in the the second quorum of seventy).  He teaches you and then expects you to go forth and do it.  He has a very nice wife who is a lot of fun.   We are still very sad that Nan and Richard are not here as they would have been fabulous and we would have loved to serve with them.

Thank you for the notes that you send to me.  I try to spend one night a week and respond to them as I love hearing from you all.  It is such a different world here.  We don't have a television or radio so we just go through life not knowing what is going on in the world.  I do have my phone and Facebook and I try to talk to my kids every week.  I do hear of things going on at home and we keep those people in our prayers and put thier names on the prayer roll of the Nauvoo Temple.  We love you and you are not far from our hearts.

My blog is up and running and I have posted a lot of pictures.  It is Curtis Review of Old Nauvoo.blogspot.com.  I will post this letter there but be sure to look back at some older posts - like the one about the bat in our house!  I will try to put it on FB when I put a new post  or you can just look every week.

We miss you and love you,

Sherry and Dave

This Week in Nauvoo -

We were so pleased to meet with Dave's Nephew, Jeff Gough and his wife and son.  They came to Nauvoo to take their son, Joseph to the temple.  We were able to attend the temple with them and then they took us to lunch at Angelini's in Keokuk.  It was a really fun day for us.

Here we are at the mission breakfast that they have once a month.  From left to right; Sister Scott, Sister Mengel (leaving in June and in charge of the sewing room), Sister Harris, Sister Jones (she is leaving this month also - her husband is the vet). Sister Thomas, me and Sister Hoen.  We have made so many new and good friends.

On The Road Again.  We are leaving for Nauvoo on the Road.  We went to a Renaissance  Fair in Keokuk.  We were only there for two hours when the skies opened up and we were rained on.  We decided to pack up and leave and then stopped in Hamilton at the DQ for ice cream.  From L to R:  Sister Hansen, Sister Poulson, me, Dave, Sister and Elder Toomer, Elder Aaron, Sister Allred and Sister Russell.  I love working with the young single sisters.

We saw this coming home from our "Sunset on the Mississippi" show and just had to stop and look over the river.  The river is beginning to get water lilies on it.    It is full of geese families, moms, dads and babies.  The skies here are incredible.  It is so beautiful here in Nauvoo.

Just before we left the Renaissance Fair.  The sisters are ducking in from the rain.  I think they were having way too much fun.