Nauvoo Missionaries

We'll start this long blog with a beautiful shot of the Temple and the full moon. I love capturing beautiful memories of our mission.

Remember I said I would be showing a little house again. Well, summer has arrived to our cute little abode.

This is the commemoration of the martyrdom on June 27th. All the sites were closed for an hour while we supported the Community of Christ with their remembrance and then that evening we went to Carthage, which is what you see.

The 3 roses were part of the Community of Christ commemoration. They did a nice job.

This is a picture of a young woman and her son and a friend we met in a park while taking some pictures of Quincy. We were surprised to find them here sand bagging just a few minutes later and 2 miles down the road. They had changed clothes and everything.

There were several hundred people sand bagging here. Their situation with their water treatment plant was serious.

Another view of the sand baggers. The next day the church sent our Young single sister missionaries from Nauvoo (21 of them) and the Illinois Peoria mission sent 130 Elders to sand bag. They worked hard and Quincy greatly appreciated the help. For 3 days Quincy volunteers made over 1,000,000 sand bags A DAY!

I wish we could have captured the racing feeling we got as trucks sped away with bags deperately needed.

This the "The Pier" restaurant. It is a favorite of some missionaries. We wonderhow long it will take to be up and running again.

You see Joseph and Brigham discussing the trek west at the end of Parley Street. In the back ground you can see the reader board that usually stands 3.5 to 4 feet high. We can usually go on around to Water Street from here but with the flooding the street was closed.

The Nauvoo House was the only structure that was threatened in Nauvoo. The BYU Folk dancers made sand bags for the Community of Christ church, who owns the Nauvoo house. They attribute the success of keeping it from flooding and damage to the folk dancers.

A little snail taking refuge from the flooding by the Nauvoo House.

The next few pics are taken in Quincy on our P-Day. Looks pretty scary see all those electrical wires in the water!

You can get the vision of just how much the Mississippi has risen.

This picture is on the Hamilton side (east) of the bridge crossing over to Keokuk. They dumped 30,000 tons of gravel on this little section to keep the bridge open. Then as the river subsided they had to go back and clean it all off the road. The ripple effect is tremendous!!!

One day Steve McCain, Coach McCain's son, brought his little boys to Nauvoo. His wife has just had their 3rd baby and he was on an outing with his cute little boys. He lives not far from here in Macomb, Ill. It is so fun helping everyone get dressed up.

One evening after Rendezvous as we lined outside the Cultural Hall to greet the visitors out comes a cousin Sterling Tanner and his family. His wife is Eva's cousin. He took me on my first plane ride when I was a junior in high school. He has diabetes and is a doctor who specializes in children's diabetes. He had alot of advice for Kyle.

Elder Flake racing Pres. Johnson the first councilor in the mission presidency.

Here they are going at it with the hoops. You can tell whose winning. Can't wait to race all of you!!!

We walk past the Brigham Young home every day after preparation meeting. The door is always hard to open, so Elder Flake gets one more chance to be of service often!

Young Performing missionaries taking a little break from their rigorous schedule!

The Nauvoo Brass Band The drummer and the tuba player are the only male in the brass band. They both received their mission calls while here and opened them in the Seventies Hall. What a privilege!!!

Each day a 11:00 there is a puppet show and then a cute little play called Just Plain Anna Amanda These performing missionaries are just taking a quick break between performances.

This young man did excellent even though he did not have his full arm. He had been adopted by some very caring people.

This is the Halbert family who lived in Pueblo Stake and then moved to Mesa South Stake not long after we did. It was fun to see them!!!

We discovered these cute young people are relatives. They are the grandchildren of Doug and Dixie Jarvis Shumway. Dixie is Grandma Melba Flake's sister's daughter. It was fun to figure it out! They were on a church history youth tour.

We find the trash strewn all over by this guy if we don't take proper care of the garbage each day!

Mr. Blue Oriole comes often. We love seeing him. We also see a yellow oriole sometimes.

We found a snapping turtle one evening. A brave man whose occuptaion is to do with animals picked him up by the tail.

He wanted to snap onto anything that came his way. Someone gave him a stick, it was about the size of your ring finger, and the turtle just snapped it right in to like nothing was in his way.

Dad (Elder Flake) on a P-Day outing trying to figure out the old windmill pump. You'll note the beautiful lush green around him.

Dad performing "Have I told you lately that I love you". This was the last practice before we started our actual performances. This number is performed during "Sunset by the Mississippi". It is a fun entertaining show, no history of Nauvoo.