Friday, January 06, 2017 – Cold, Artifacts Finished, Vacuum, Temple & Refreshments

Another cold morning. When we woke up it was minus one degree below zero. When we finished working the temperature was all the way up to 10 degrees. At least we didn’t have to work outdoors in it all day. 

We worked indoors with Elder Walker in the Artifacts Conservation Room all day. We finished bagging, cataloging and recording the last three boxes of 126-4B. 126-4B stands for Zone 126, Site 4b which stands for the Archeological dig at the Hyrum Kimball Store in Old Nauvoo. We filled 8 boxes of artifacts from this site alone.

 

By the end of the morning we finished bagging the recording the very last box in the whole conservation room. There are none left to be cataloged. The job Elder Walker started last summer is finished. His goal was to be done by the end of the year and he almost made it. He was only 6 days short of his goal.

Elder Walker has several boxes of bagged artifacts still waiting to be entered into the data base so he has a few more days of computer work left. But when he’s finally finished with those, he will have bagged, labeled, recorded and cataloged almost 5000 bags of artifacts and they represent about 400 boxes full of material from the excavations and reconstructions. 

 

The largest excavation site was the Temple. There are 69 boxes of material pulled out of the ground there. Next largest was the Brigham Young home with 48 boxes followed by the Browning Home and Gun Shop with 47 boxes. Next there were 46 boxes from the Chauncey Griswold Webb home. Chauncey was one of the brothers who operated the blacksmith shop located on the northwest corner of Parley and Granger streets. He helped many Saints prepare to head west. These four locations represent over half of the 400+ boxes of artifacts. The rest of the 200 (+or-) boxes came from 20 (+or-) other sites.

Since we had some time left in the day we helped Elder Walker clean up and haul away the old boxes and trash bags to the burn pile. Then we cleaned out the “Grounds Keeper’s” Chevy van and vacuumed it. It was due to be cleaned. And while we were at it we also cleaned and vacuumed our personal car, the Ford Focus. It needed a good cleaning too

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This evening our “Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo” cast had a session at the temple together. The endowment session was followed by a get-together at the Wilson home for light refreshments. We really enjoy being with and doing things with our cast family. And they truly are our family while we are serving our mission here in Nauvoo. 

 

It was very cold tonight. It was only 5 degrees above zero at 5:30pm before the Temple session. When we got out of the temple it was 3 degrees. Cold and getting colder.