It is Sunday again What a great day it has been!

Our Sacrament meeting begins at 8am. If you are not there by 20 min. to the hour you are in the rec
hall on the hard chairs. As summer goes on we will have more visitors and will be even more crowded. 
Tonight the Young Sister Missionaries put on a "Sociable".  The theme was the atonement. They sang and testified and sang and sang while they played, and danced to a gospel song (ballet), testified. Then they had a violin accompaniment with a vocal solo.  It was all amazing.  The young people here are all so talented.

The Young Performing Missionaries have been here three weeks. They practice from early morning to late in the afternoon, eat and then go perform, "Sunset". There is a brass band and then singers and dancers. Most of the kids could sing or dance or both when they got here. Now they are doing everything.

Saturday was the opening for the shows but not the p YPM's Put on "The Promise", ( a history of life  in Nauvoo, funny and sad), Anna Amanda, (a vignette about a pioneer girl, with puppets too), and then they have a big part in "Sunset" with us senior missionaries. They work very hard.

The band plays in "Sunset", they have their own horse drawn carriage to take them around town playing and they get out and play in Old Nauvoo walking around stopping here and there. It almost gives the place a Disney Land feel.  Of course a lot of what they play is songs like "There is Sunshine in My Soul Today" or  "We Are As the Armies of Helaman" or "Oh How Lovely Was the Morning".

We went down and took some more beautiful pictures by the Sarah Granger Kimball house today. Peonies everywhere. Also took some of the Women's Garden.  I will try to post them in the next day or so.

Goodnight everyone.

And May Goes Flying By

It is hard to believe it is the 22nd of May.  Friday will be five weeks since we came to Nauvoo.

Sunday I sent some of you a picture from the Sarah Granger Kimball home.  Hiram Kimball was a wealthy business man in Nauvoo and was attracted to this beautiful girl Sarah, who had moved to the area with her family from Kirtland when she was 15.
Hiram was 34 and Sarah was 21. They lived in the home Hiram had bought earlier to live in but had now fixed up suitable for his new bride.

Sarah later had hired a seamstress lady, Miss Margaret Cook, to sew for her and they began to consider how they could combine their efforts to perhaps make new shirts for the men working on the temple. Miss Cook said she had the skills but had no means.  Sarah told her she would furnish the material if Miss Cook would sew the shirts.  They felt some of their neighbors might be interested in helping too, combining their means and efforts. The neighboring sisters met in Sarah's parker (March 4, 1842) to organize a Ladies' Society.  After a constitution was written they presented it Joseph Smith who said "Tell the sisters their offering is accepted of the Lord, and He has something better for the than a written constitution." He said, "I will organize the women under the priesthood after the pattern of the priesthood."

He later said, " The church was never perfectly organized until the women were thus organized." Hence began the Relief Society. First organized officially on March 17, 1842, and is now the largest, and longest lived women's in the world.

From small beginnings can come great things.

Sarah's husband was later baptized a member.  Sarah went with the body of the church when they left Nauvoo with her children, some family members, and her mother and without Hiram who was on an extended business trip. He joined her later.

She led a very public life in Utah. She loved politics. She was, in 1882, an active participant in the Utah Constitutional Convention. In 1891 she was a leader in the Utah Woman Suffrage Association. She always "said what she felt forcibly and always with effect." She was almost 80 when she died.

Hiram, at 62, and some others were killed when a boiler blew up aboard a small boat transporting them to a ship which would have taken them to serve a mission in Tahiti.

'Nite for now, Sister Boyle (Mom, Grandma)

Some pics

It has come time,(and past) to write again on this blog. I am sorry for those of you who have come to look and  found the nothingness that was here.  We continue to be busy going to new sites everyday.  They are trying to get us newbees in to all the sites at least once before the rush begins.

The anticipation is thick enough to cut with a knife.  The YPM's (Young Performing Missionaries) have arrived and can be heard about any time of day practicing the music for the performances. The pageants begin July 8th.  There are 2 this year: The "British Pageant" and the Nauvoo Pageant. There will also be about 10 vignettes going on through the week besides Rendezvous and Sunset by the Mississippi. Some of the vignettes are put on by the core cast from the pageants and some by the YPM's.

The brass band has also arrived and is now practicing with us for Sunset.  Except for not being able to hear ourselves think it is quite exciting to have them here.  Their director is a retired college director from BYUI (Ricks).

This week I have been at the

 Lucy Mack House (the prophet's mother) where I learned about her steadfast support for Joseph and her unfailing testimony of the truth of the restoration inspite of losing so many of her sons for the cause.

Cultural Hall which had 16 different uses in the time the Saints were here, including theater, Masonic Hall, school, courtroom, dance pavilion, banquet hall, for funerals, police department, church, and last but not least a place to build wagon boxes for the exodus. After the saints left the hall, in 1851, was sold at sheriff's auction for $4.38  It now, having been restored,  has a quilt display from pioneer times on the second floor, and is where we perform Rendezvous, on the first floor. There are 3 casts which rotate through the days of the week putting on the play every night but Sunday.  If there are enough tickets given out the cast of the evening puts the show on twice. In the summer the YPMs put on a cute show earlier in the day, "Just Plain Anna Amanda".

Today I went to the site called the Pendelton Log School House, where we tell of the importance of education and living healthy.

Tuesday was P-Day.  We went to Keokuk for groceries and "stuff".

I always promise to write sooner than later but someday soon will have to suffice.  Love to all.
Sister Boyle.