Wednesday, April 26, 2017 – Mission Training Meeting, New Arrivals, School Bus Tours, Planting Columbine in Women’s Garden, Elder & Sis. Van Horn as Noah & Sophia

This morning in our weekly Mission Training Meeting we were introduced to the 13 new Senior Couples that arrived in the mission last Friday. They are excited and enthusiastic to say the least. They will be a great addition to our mission. We are only expecting six more couple to arrive in May, one in June and ten YSM (Young Single Sister Missionaries). This will complete the mission’s full complement of Senior couples, Single Sisters and Young Sister missionaries. 

During our training meeting Pres. Hall gave us the School Tour Schedule for the next two weeks of the local schools. Since I don’t work in the Historic Site on week days, I was surprised to see the list and how many school bus loads of kids are coming. There will be 9 buses of school kids arriving during the last week of April and the first week of May. There will be a lot more through the remainder of May and into June.

When a tour guide is leading a group of students from one of the local schools the mission has a directive to make our tours non-religious. That is, we can’t use the name of Jesus Christ, the name of our church or any other religious terminology. Even the early Latter-day Saints of Nauvoo are only referred to as “Pioneers.” But that is OK because the excited children go home and tell their parents what a great place Nauvoo is. Then they bring their whole family back to tour Historic Nauvoo. It’s a win-win situation.

We put in another full day of work in the Women’s Garden again today. We started by pulling wild onions out of another large flowerbed. After a few minutes of pulling onions my hands smell like I was at a 4^th of July BBQ slicing onions for hamburgers. It kind of made me hungry even though I don’t like raw onions. 

Now that the large flowerbeds had all of the wild onions removed we planted a variety of Columbine plants from 3” pots. There are already some Columbine plants left over from last year in bloom. These new plants will really add to the color and stagger the crop of blossoms. These flowerbeds are going to be beautiful.

Our last job of the day was to pull the last of the tulip bulbs in the last of the flowerbeds in the Women’s Garden. And, as usual there were missionaries helping themselves to the bulbs in our trailer before we headed to the compost pile.  In the end, I don’t think there will be a single tulip bulb left to turn into compost. They are being picked up and taken to new homes as fast as we can dig them.

 The only place left with tulip bulbs is at the Carthage Visitor’s Center. Tomorrow morning we will be out there with a large crew and a dozen volunteers to pull all of them.  

This evening in our “Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo” show our good friends, Elder & Sis. Van Horn had their debut as “Noah & Sophia.” There are always a few nerves and stage fright during anyone’s debut but the Van Horn’s gave a great performance. They hit all their lines and cues and the vignette came off without a hitch. Good job Elder & Sis. Van Horn.