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
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