Saturday, August 5, 2017 – John Deere Worldwide HQ’s Exhibit, Moline IL, Pavilion, YSSM’s from 2016

This morning we headed 100 miles north to Moline, ILL for a P-day outing. We traveled with Elder & Sis. Van Horn and Elder & Sis. Witbeck. We visited the Worldwide Headquarters of the John Deere Company. We visited two John Deere Museums/Exhibits in Moline, one at the company HQ’s and the other in down town Moline called “The John Deere Pavilion.” 

 

In 1836 the company founder, John Deere, was a blacksmith and realized that local farmers couldn’t plow very well with their old poorly designed iron plows. John Deere invented a plow made out of highly polished steel and a correctly shaped moldboard, “the self-scouring steel plow.” And the rest, as they say, is history; with over 2500 patents, hundreds of thousands of employees in 65 countries around the world the John Deere Company is a major producer of farm equipment around the globe. All because a blacksmith saw a need and invented a plow that opened the fertile plains of the great Midwest to agriculture to fed a nation and is now feeding the world.

After visiting the “John Deere Pavilion” we walked across the street to eat lunch at a local establishment, “The River House Grill.” We had a wonderful lunch of good food with good friends. Everyone really liked their meal and even though I am still on a soft food only diet, my chicken noodle “Soup of the day” and a side of cottage cheese was really good too. 

This evening at our “Sunset by the Mississippi” show we had another one of those sweet surprises. Six of the young single Sister Missionaries (YSSM’s) that served with Sis. Johnson and I last year (mostly in Carthage) have returned to visit Nauvoo this year.  We have many fond memories of working and serving with these young ladies last year when they wore missionary name tags.