Monday, May 15, 2017 – E&S Hopkin Last Day, FM-Plus, Planting at Women’s Garden, Scovil Bakery, Sarah Granger Kimball Home, Pres. Hall’s Home

This morning at our FM Prayer meeting we said goodbye to Elder and Sis. Hopkin. Jordan Bodily, FM’s Director, presented them with the FM keepsake flag as a farewell gift. Today was their last day at work. They leave for home bright and early Wednesday. As “Housing Coordinator” for the Mission, Sis. Hopkin has touched the lives of every single missionary that has come to Nauvoo. She is one of the hardest working missionaries in the mission and she has done a remarkable job. She will be missed.

There is a program in the Mission called “FM +” to help Richard and the grounds crew at FM. But it really helps out Sis. Johnson and I. Missionaries that normally give tours at the historic sites in Nauvoo have the opportunity on occasion to work with and help us. Today we had 5 Sisters and one Elder assigned to help us. They were great and we got a lot of work done today with their help.

We started our day planting five flowerbeds at the Women’s Garden. Here again the planting pattern was “Mountain Meadow with a Nauvoo flair.” This planting style and color pattern will make each of these flowerbeds stand out and look great this summer. I can’t wait. I think these five flowerbeds were the last that needed to be planted in the Women’s garden.

We finished our morning of planting at the large flowerbed next to the Scovil Bakery on Old Main Street. We had a whirl wind morning because once we finished all of the planting we turned right around and started weeding and cleaning around all of the trees, flowerbeds and building by the Cultural Hall and the Family Living Center. Our last stop and cleaning project before lunch was at the historic home of Sarah Granger Kimball. We didn’t finish all of the flowerbeds there but we had to stop for our lunch break.

Our last project of the day was cleaning the flowerbeds at the home of Pres. & Sis. Hall. Unfortunately we had to slam on the breaks and proceed with caution because we discovered a lot of Poison Ivy and Stinging Nettle in the Liriope beds there. We took the necessary precautions and none of us got hurt. We will have to return to the Mission President’s home because we ran out of time before we finished cleaning all of the flowerbeds.