Sunday, Oct. 16, 2016 – Stake Conference, Post Office & Fredrick Merryweather Dry Goods Store

Wow, what a great Stake Conference we attended this morning. All of the speakers were wonderful and they gave inspirational and motivating talks. I can’t begin to recount here the heartwarming stories they all told and the spirit I felt from their messages.

I would like to tell a little about two of the speakers in Stake Conference.  A husband and wife (Bro. & Sis. Hustice) each spoke and told the story of their conversion and baptism last July. Bro. Hustice talked about the first time he visited the Carthage Jail and took the tour a few years ago. He said it was a nice “history lesson” nothing more. This year he and his wife took the Carthage Jail tour, “. . . the Lord decided to change my mind . . . I went with an open heart and an open mind. In the upper room of the jail I knew Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God!”

In July Bro. Hustice said they had been invited to attend the Pageant by a member of the cast named Mitch. When they got there they found Mitch before the Pageant started and he said he had saved two seats for him and his wife. He asked Mitch how he knew he and his wife would attend the Pageant on this night? Mitch said, “The spirit told me to.” The seats were front and center! After the Pageant Mitch found him and his wife again. Mitch stood there with his arms folded and a grin like the Cheshire Cat. “Stay here, I have someone for you to meet.” In a few minutes he returned with the same grin on his face and said, I’d like you to meet the Prophet Joseph Smith!” He had brought Dallyn Vail Bayles, the actor and singer in the Pageant that portrays the Prophet. Bro. Hustice said, “. . . I looked up and said: I know Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God.” 

Bro. & Sis. Hustice attended the pageant eleven times in two weeks. The baptism for Bro. & Sis. Hustice was held on July 24, 2016. Three hundred people attended the baptismal service including the entire Pageant cast! Both Bro. & Sis. Hustice bore powerful testimonies during their talks in Stake Conference today.  Like I said, Stake Conference was very good.

After Conference, Sis. Johnson and I were assigned to be tour guides at the “Post Office & Merryweather Dry Goods Store.” This was our first time to give tours there; in fact the only other time we’ve been in the building was when we took the tour with Nathan & Valerie on Labor Day weekend. 

As we studied the material available about the Post Office in advance, we learned some very interesting things about the postal system in the 1840’s. For example the price to mail a single sheet of paper (No envelope) was very expensive. It cost six cents for each sheet that had to travel up to 30 miles, and twenty-five cents for mail traveling more than 400 miles. The average pay for a worker in Nauvoo was a dollar a day. Twenty Five cents to mail a letter represented a quarter of a man’s daily wage. That was very expensive.