Friday, October 07, 2016 – Farewell Breakfast, Sis. Johnson’s Work, Mow at Carthage

This morning we had another farewell breakfast. We sang “Farewell Nauvoo” to 19 of our friends and fellow missionaries who are going home. These farewell breakfasts are always really hard on everyone. There are always a lot of tears shed. On the lighter side, the departing missionaries did skits and parodies of our “Sunset” and “Rendezvous” songs and vignettes. They were great and very funny. 

At work today, I went to Carthage to mow lawns and Sis. Johnson stayed in Nauvoo to help Richard and his work crew. They started at the flower beds in front of the Jonathan Browning Gun Shop. We pulled those flowerbeds earlier in the week but we left all of the banana plants. Today thy finished the job by cutting down all of the banana plants and hauling them away.  However, they didn’t dig up any of the root balls. The idea is the first frost would have burned the banana plants to the ground anyway, but the plant will come back next spring as big and as beautiful as ever.

 

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the rest of Sis. Johnson’s day. But in a nutshell she was very busy and worked three hours past quitting time. Her first big job was to help inventory and label the first shipment of bulbs that arrived from Holland. FM’s shipment included tulips, hyacinths, narcissus and anemones. We will start planting them next week.

Sis. Johnson’s next big job was a last minute surprise. Richard has known for a while that we were going to have a General Authority visit FM at the end of next week. The surprise came when Richard found out this afternoon the General Authority’s plane had already landed in St. Louis and Jordan Bodily, the Director of FM, was there to pick him up.  Sis. Johnson spent the rest of the day helping Richard and his crew tidy up for the visitor. They cleaned all of the greenhouses, swept and washed the floors and walls. They cleaned and washed all of the potted plants on the outdoor shaded benches, straightened them all up so everything would look clean, neat and orderly for the visitor. It was a long day of hard work for Sis. Johnson but she loved it. 

My day of work at Carthage was just as long but it was far less stressful. I mowed all of the lawns at the visitor’s center as well as the Bushnell House. Scott Higley, my boss over mowing, asked me to attach the lawn mowers grass catcher bin and power blower. With the attachments in place the mower I drive in Carthage turns into a giant grass and leaf vacuum as well as a mower. The system worked perfectly. The grounds around the visitor’s center and the Bushnell House look great.