Merry Christmas

• We feel blessed to be in such a spiritual environment here. The talks we are privileged to hear, the people we meet and the experiences we are having are something we will never forget.

• Last night was Christmas Eve. If our children and grandchildren would have been here it would have been just perfect. The snow was falling gently as all the missionaries sang Christmas Carols on the Nauvoo Temple Steps. It was a beautiful sight as we overlooked the Mississippi River with Joseph and Hyrum on their horses in the foreground. Then we enjoyed donuts and hot chocolate and cider at church. We stopped by to see all our friends perform in Rendezvous before coming home to spend a quiet evening together at home thinking about family.

…the best gift I can give is my witness of the Savior. …Christmases I remember best are the Christmases that touched my heart the most. Henry B. Eyring

• I enjoyed working with other sisters last month as we helped prepare for the open house for President Condie. He is our new temple president.

• Gary calls our little 14x21’ historic house “The Mendenhall Mansion.” We love it here. We have a Charlie Brown Christmas tree that takes up half of the living room. Our little 9 year old grandson said something profound. He said, “A Christmas Tree is best when you appreciate what you have.”

Christmas is an ongoing story. …the story is not finished until the Savior’s work has been completed.

• It seems like almost every night has been special as part of the Christmas celebration. We have attended such things as a family home evening at the President’s home; a Christmas Walk along the candle lit streets with stories at each site and bonfires to keep us warm; caroling and goodies at the Family Living Center; a tree lighting at the Visitor’s Center with the mayor, Warsaw High School choir and the townspeople attending; and the opportunity to attend the temple.

…The Lord would like us to reach out to the lonely, the ill, those burdened down by the cares of this world and to reach out in love with an encouraging word, a smile and a listening ear.

• Elder Jaster often comes by and eats lunch with me wherever I am working that day. Once he drove up to Sarah Granger’s Home and after turning off the engine a herd of cows in the field came up to greet him. There must have been 50 or 60 of them, more than you can see in the picture. They were used to being brought hay in the loader because as soon as he drove up all the cows came towards him like they were expecting something to eat. It was an awesome sight.

President Ludwig suggested we have a homemade Christmas …a simple Christmas

…a heart free from bitterness and sin

• The missionaries made donations of baby blankets to the Carthage Hospital and have been working on other humanitarian projects.

Gifts that are endless: The Atonement of Jesus Christ; Peace; Forgiveness; Being called His Children and Eternal Life and Exaltation.

• We got to decorate Sarah Granger Kimball’s home for Christmas as well as the Visitor’s Center. It was an unusual sight to see Elder Jaster hanging garland and decorating trees. What was even more unusual was to see him smiling and acting like he was enjoying it, ha!

Love comforts, counsels, cures and consoles.

Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin

• Elder Jaster said he’s keeping Nauvoo going. They’re going to have to either shut it down when we leave or hire a battalion to keep things going, ha!

…spread the message of hope, love, and peace.

• We have had to make adjustments for there being so few missionaries here over the winter. We were down to 101 and now have 115. The sites are all open but the hours have been shortened.

There is nothing we can tell the Savior about loneliness, rejection or suffering.

• Our goal is to make 75,000 gingerbread cookies so there will be enough for the thousands of visitor’s who come to Nauvoo throughout the year. We have just over 70,000.

• We have 1,645 grandchildren in our mission now. At every zone conference, Sister Ludwig says we have however many grandchildren there are praying for us. …and we are praying for them.
I love this picture of President and Sister Ludwig.

If there hadn’t have been an Easter, Jesus would have been just another little Hebrew boy.
President Condie

• Everyday we see missionary’s mailboxes bulging with little gifts of goodies and other simple acts of love and kindness.

The magic of Christmas is not in the presents but in His Presence.

Summer’s Over

President Ludwig said there’s a rumor going around that Disneyland is the happiest place on earth. He said, “That’s not true. It’s Nauvoo.”

Definition of a Missionary: “Someone who spends time away from loved ones so others can spend eternity with theirs.”

Well, Sunset and Pageant are over and all the visiting performers and Young Performing Missionaries have gone home. They’ve left a big hole in our hearts.

Elder Evans said there are 2,338 little legacies (grandchildren and 407 great grandchildren) we are leaving at home that will carry on the legacy [of missionary work].

President Ludwig said there were 3,000 who attended the pageant on opening night. Last year there were 7,000 missionary referrals from the pageant and this year there were 12,000.

Everyday is exciting here in Nauvoo. One evening we had fire trucks and police cars come in answer to a false alarm at the Cultural Hall.

Elder Jaster spent time cleaning out leaves and debris by the Grandmother Statue left by a rainstorm. He was also replacing brick in the Women’s Garden when out of the blue people came and set up tables with white linen cloths for a luncheon and program being put on for the media. He and Elder Wilcox had to move quickly to move bricks and make it look presentable for the guests.

Sampler in the Allyn House in Nauvoo: “Some things are true whither you believe in them or not.”

Sherleen Jaussi’s spoke to us. She is the pilot who was making a cross country solo flight in 1981 when her plane crashed. She said she found comfort in the scriptures and knew them well enough to remember the stories. She said to be careful what we put in our minds because whatever is in there will come back.

We attended the Western Illinois Thrashers Show in Hamilton. Elder Jaster loved seeing all the tractors and hit and miss engines.

We visited The Mormon Handcart Park in Iowa City. It put history into perspective for us. In 1857, some 1,300 Mormon converts from Europe reached the end of the line for the railroad in Iowa City. Five handcart companies were organized to make the thirteen hundred mile trip to Salt Lake City.

Javier is the drummer in the video. He is from Spain and is a performer with the BYU International Folk Dancers. His parents were converts to the church in the 1970’s. He said they always emphasized missionary work. All 6 of their children served missions. When he was in grade school his teacher asked the students what they wanted to be when they grew up. He said “A Mormon Missionary.” When that answer wasn’t satisfactory to her he said ok “A Mormon Fireman.” Javier served a mission in Arizona.

A sister I served with mentioned that in the early days of the Church men were scholars of the Bible and that’s why they were receptive to the restored gospel. You just wonder how many men of today could be called scholars of the Bible. Yes, we have many scholars today but few who are spiritually minded men of faith.

Follow the Prophet

His counsel may interfere with our lifestyle but it offers protection from the world. Prophets bear testimony to the world and teach God's word in clarity.

Happy 4th of July

• We sat outside on porch swings at a little frozen custard shop in Jamesport, Missouri, a 1953 Old Order Amish Settlement, and enjoyed listening to two ladies playing Mountain Appalachian Dulcimers.
• We went to Adam-ondi-Ahman – a sacred historic site of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s very green, pretty and peaceful.
• An elder from the Church Missionary Department spoke to us. He told about being on a cruise with his wife when they announced over the loud speaker on ship that there was a man overboard. He rushed to the edge of the ship and saw the man and the rescue team pulling him in. The man had been 3 days in an inner tube in the ocean. Referring to that experience, he said “Who will man the life boats?” We are all members of a crew working on behalf of the Savior. He said to imagine ourselves wearing lifesaving gear of orange rubberlike suits when we look in the mirror. It will have an impact on what we say and do.
• We’ve enjoyed watching professional performers come to Nauvoo such as the Hughes Brothers, the Young Ambassadors, Vocal Point and The Nauvoo Brass Band.
• We had lunch at an old mill called the Bonaparte Retreat Restaurant. It sits on the Des Moines River. You wouldn’t know it was a nice restaurant from the outside but it was very nice inside. Our waitress was 87 years old. There is a historical marker by the restaurant that says, “March 5, 1846 – Brigham Young and {the} Mormons crossed {the} Des Moines River on {their} way to {the} West.”
• We watched the Steamboat Days Parade in Burlington, Iowa. Little girls would have liked the pink, blue and yellow horses hooves. A man watching the parade shouted "Go back to Nauvoo!" as we walked past him. We are easily spotted with our missionary name tags. It didn’t take but a minute for Elder Jaster to strike up a friendship with him. He used to be a Mormon at one time.
• It’s so fun working with the Young Sister Missionaries. On Father’s Day they said they have raised their vision of all the qualities they want in their future husbands after being here and seeing the good examples the Elders are setting.
• Several people spotted tornados last month close to Nauvoo. We’ve had some foreboding skies, hot temperatures and high humidity.
• The Nauvoo Pageant will start this month. “The City of Joseph” had gone on for 39 years but President Hinckley had an idea to start a new one in 2004. . The new pageant was to tell the doctrine of the church and its early history. There is also a Frontier Country Fair with 25 different activities. There were 7,000 missionary referrals last year from the pageant.
• President Ludwig announced that he and his wife have been asked to extend another year here until January of 2012. They are the best!
• The Martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum was 166 years ago on June 27, 1844. We went to Carthage, Illinois where the martyrdom took place. The program started at 5:17 pm. I’m assuming that’s the time of the martyrdom. On Sunday, the young performing missionaries sang, Praise to the Man. It was extraordinarily beautiful and powerful. There were only 10 men and 10 women but it sounded like there were 500 angels singing with them.
• Elder Jaster has been in the Women’s Garden the last several weeks replacing brick on the walkway.
• We had another 6:45 am Farewell Breakfast for departing missionaries on the outdoor stage. It’s always a sad event but was a glorious gathering of all the missionaries. The sun was just coming up and the weather was perfect. The band played “God Bless America.” They had three long tables set up on stage full of food. It was like an Easter Sunrise Service that I remember as a child at Memory Grove in Salt Lake.
• For me (Elder Jaster) it seemed like a taste of heaven. Here we were on a perfect morning with all of our friends and all of the good food we could eat. What more could you ever expect in Heaven? Then all too soon it was over and I had to go to work cutting out broken bricks in the women’s garden and helping Elder Wilcox replace them. I never pictured retirement as getting up at 0530Hrs and working all day then putting on 2 shows at night getting off at 2130Hrs. But where else could you work with so many good people and have a 25mph speed limit? The pageant starts this week. They have priority over everything else. I don’t know if Sister J mentioned it or not (I don’t read her blogs) but I’m the Official Pig Squealer for the entire Z cast during Grandma’s feather bed.

June 2, 2010

We are Loving our Mission

• On our Preparation Day a few weeks ago we drove along the Mississippi and took pictures of turtles on logs and geese with their cute baby goslings.
• We have 380 missionaries serving in Nauvoo this summer.
• We walked down The Trail of Hope on Parley Street. Several missionaries did vignettes of pioneers. It was wonderful.
• We had district meeting at our house and cooked steaks and salmon outside on the grill. We have two young performing missionary sisters in our district. They are so talented and add so much energy and enthusiasm to the mission.
• When weeding at Lyon Drug and getting ready to plant new herbs, I found a little bird’s nest with 4 baby birds in it. How sweet they were.
• Elder Jaster has been working hard helping to make major changes on the outdoor Sunset stage, getting the Pageant stage ready and maintaining houses, roads and assisting the carpenters.
• President Hill said the culmination of repentance and obedience come close to a “Cure All.” …things that are common temptations for all of us are dishonesty, pride, anger, impure thoughts, complaining, criticizing and comparing.
• We are thankful for our little grandson, Mason, who is recovering from his recent surgeries. He is only 3½ but has undergone close to 8 major surgeries as near as we can recall.
• We have enjoyed going to several of Susan Easton’s Black’s lectures. She has some great stories to share of Nauvoo and early church history. I notice that she usually ends her talks with something similar to 'Someone did something to prepare the way for us.' How true that is and how grateful we are for our ancestors.
• One of the sisters told me it took her husband 48 years to finally become active in the church. He will be 82 in June and still wants to serve 2 more missions. He’s here as a teamster and I’ve heard he jumps on back of the wagon like a 19 year old. They are both an inspiration to all of us!
• All the tulip bulbs have been dug up and now we’re planting new flowers in the Womens’ Garden. They’ve given flowers and vegetable plants to the missionaries to beautify their homes. It will be convenient to pick a tomato at dinnertime and run if we are short on time.
• We performed Sunset by the Mississippi for the first time last Saturday. I haven’t worn ponytails for over 60 years but now I am. Elder Jaster did a great job as a “Pig Squealer.” The Hughes Brothers from Branson, Missouri did their performance after ours. Their whole family of over 40 some were involved. They are a fun group.

"...Jesus Christ... I bear testimony that as long as there is one spark of the will to repent and to reach, he is there. He did not just descend to your condition; he descended below it, ‘that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth.’ (D&C 88:6)”

Truman Madsen, Christ and the Inner Life, 14