Friday, May 5, 2017 – Elder Berry, Elder Aina, Family Living Center Cleaning and Tours, Community of Christ flowerbeds, Lyon Drug & Richard’s Arbor

Today is Elder Berry’s last day of work at FM. He has had many duties with FM, the most recent being heavy equipment operator. He was honored at our FM Prayer Meeting this morning with the customary FM Farewell flag/pennant. Elder & Sis. Berry are concluding a 23 month mission and they have been great servants of the Lord and our good friends. We wish them a safe trip home.

All week the assigned topic for the FM Prayer Meeting spiritual thought has been on Agency. Today it was Elder Aina’s turn to give the Spiritual message. We can always count on Elder Aina to do something different and special. This morning instead of speaking he sang his message. Elder Aina has a rich and mellow singing voice. He sang acapella the hymn: “Know This, That Ev'ry Soul is Free” hymn #240. Wow, what a treat, I could listen to him sing all day. Good message and a great song Elder Aina!

1. Know this, that ev'ry soul is free

To choose his life and what he'll be;

For this eternal truth is giv'n:

That God will force no man to heav'n.

2. He'll call, persuade, direct aright,

And bless with wisdom, love, and light,

In nameless ways be good and kind,

But never force the human mind.

This hymn was included in the first LDS hymnbook in 1835.

Today our work day started at the FLC, “Family Living Center.” Sis. Johnson, Emilie Roper, Constance Skog and I pulled weeds most of the morning. Our goal is to get all of the flowerbeds all over Old Nauvoo looking their best for all of the bus loads of students arriving daily. When we finished at the FLC the grounds and flowerbeds looked much better.

 With the warmer weather the “Pokeweed” and volunteer Chestnut trees have been coming up everywhere. I used my shovel and without much effort, I was able to get them all out of the ground taproot and all. Pokeweed is a real monster, if left unchecked it will grow 12 to 15 feet tall and overwhelm everything else in the flowerbed. Today I was killing Pokeweed with great enthusiasm, I love killing Pokeweed!

In the spirit of cooperation with our Neighbors, The Community of Christ Church and historic sites, today we cleaned a couple of their flowerbeds in the “Smith Family Cemetery.” The cemetery is very special to both of our churches. It is the final resting place of Joseph Smith, His brother Hyrum, Joseph’s wife Emma as well as Joseph Smith’s parents, Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith. In a couple of weeks we will be back to plant their flowerbeds full of beautiful annual flowers.

Our final cleaning project was the flowerbeds in the Lyon Drug herb garden. This is a very large garden with multiple flowerbeds. It will take us a long time to completely finish cleaning everything that needs cleaning there.

 

Kyle Johnson’s Mission Announcement on FaceBook:

Kyle Johnson

Friday, May 5, 2017 2:00PM

Happy to report that I have been called to serve in the Illinois Nauvoo mission as a Young Church Service Missionary. I report on June 1st. We will have a farewell gathering at my home on May 21st 6pm to 8pm. All are invited. Hope to see you there!

Planting our last three flowerbeds at our home:

After work today Sis. Johnson and I went home and worked an additional 3 hours on our back porch, our seedlings and planted the final 3 flowerbeds at our house. There are 2 flower beds in the front yard by the front door and one large flowerbed on the back of the building facing east.

Thursday, May 4, 2017 – Our Clean Van, Clean & Bark Chip Scovil Bakery / Tin Shop / Pageant Office

The first thing we discovered this morning was our “Grounds Van” was empty and clean! It was used to haul Boy Scouts last evening and so the benches had to be put back in. But, to put the benches back in Louie Hernandez had to take all of our tools and supplies out. But before he put in the benches for the Scouts he completely cleaned and vacuumed the inside. Wow, what a wonderful surprise. Sis. Johnson and the rest of us got to put all of the tools back in there right spots and in order. It was soooo nice to have a neat and clean van today.

Our entire work day consisted of more flower bed cleaning, weeding, and covering with shredded bark. Once the flowerbed is weeded and “Barked” it really looks good.

We started at the Scovil Bakery, then we moved to the flowerbeds around the Tin Shop. Next we went to the Pageant Office Building followed by the Brigham Young Home after lunch. It was a good, successful day.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017 – Mission Trg. Mtg. Cancelled, Cleans Main St., Bark Chips, Dr. Zach Rodeffer, Sunset Rehearsal

Usually we have Mission-wide training early every Wednesday morning. However this week the training meeting was cancelled. President Hall and the other leaders were busy this morning picking up the YSM’s, “Young Sister Missionaries” at the airport. There are twenty YSM’s (ten companionships) arriving today. They will be here for six months, right through our busiest season in Old Nauvoo. We love having the YSM’s serving with us; they bring a special spirit of dedication, love, enthusiasm and hard work to the mission.

We continued cleaning Main Street where Sis. Johnson, Richard and Constance left off yesterday afternoon. The flower beds in front of the Print Shop, Post Office and John Taylor’s home are full of a lily named “Star of Bethlehem.” It puts on a dainty little flower but it is a WEED in our flowerbeds. If left to its own devises it will multiply and completely overwhelm any garden it is in. For the past couple of weeks we’ve been cleaning 

Later in the morning after we finished pulling weeds from all of the flowerbeds we picked up a load of “shredded bark” to cover all of the bare ground in the flowerbeds we just finished cleaning. The shredded bark makes the flowerbeds look much nicer and later we can still plants the summer annual flowers though it. Now the flowerbeds down Old Main Street look much better, just in time for all of the bus loads of students coming to take tours.

For the past few days I’ve developed a toothache. It has gotten bad enough that I’ve found it hard to fall asleep at night because of the pain. I talked to Sis. Jean Winegar who found a very good Dentist last month in Hamilton, ILL named Dr. Zach Rodeffer. I call his office this morning and his receptionist was able to make time for me this afternoon.  It turned out that my toothache was caused by an old crown that had a high spot that irritated the whole tooth. The dentist cut away the high spot on the crown and hopefully this will solve my problem. I already feel much better already but we will know in a week or so if this has completely solved the problem.  

This evening at our “Sunset by the Mississippi” rehearsal we found out that we have another new couple in our “Emma Hale” Cast. They are Elder and Sis. Johnson (3). Yes that’s right. . . There are four Elder & Sis. Johnsons in the mission and ALL four are in the “Emma Hale” cast with us. Wow, what are the odds. The new Elder Ross & Sis. Cheryl Johnson will be a great addition to our cast. We look forward to getting to know them.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017 – Dig Daffodils, Mow Carthage, Temple Session, Tucson AZ Temple Open House

This morning dawned sunny and cloudless for the first time in weeks. We got to work outdoors all day. Sis. Johnson worked with Richard and Constance Skog in the Women’s Garden digging up four Daffodil beds. These Mini-Daffodils are some of the last to be dug because they stayed pretty so long. But even they reached the point where they had to be dug.

The rest of their day they worked on the various flowerbeds, tree wells and site landscaping all along Old Main Street. There is still a lot left and we will probably be back doing the same thing tomorrow and for the rest of the week.

I spent my whole day in Carthage mowing the lawns at the Visitor’s Center and at the Bushnell House. I had to haul away all of the limbs blown down by last Friday’s storm first. I also used the leaf blower to clean all of the tree blossom debris from the sidewalks by the Visitor’s Center and the Jail.

This evening we were blessed to attend an endowment session in the Nauvoo Temple. And it really is a blessing for Sis. Johnson and I to live only three blocks from the Temple, to be able to attend frequently, and feel the spirit of this sacred place. In the 1840’s the Nauvoo Temple blessed the lives of the Saints that lived here and since the Temple has been rebuilt, it continues to bless all of our lives here in Nauvoo. It truly is a beacon on a hill. It offers peace, comfort, happiness and salvation for each of us as well as for our ancestors. Sis. Johnson and I love attending the Nauvoo Temple.

Back in January the Tucson Arizona Temple open house and dedication dates were announced. Sis. Johnson and I very much enjoy attending the dedication ceremony broadcasts to our Stake Center of Arizona Temples. The open house will be June 3 to June 24th. The Dedication will be Sunday Aug. 13, 2017. Unfortunately Sis. Johnson and I will still be on our mission and we won’t be able to participate in the dedication. This will be the second Arizona Temple dedication or rededication that we will miss. We also missed the dedication in May 2010 of the Gila Valley Arizona Temple because we were on a mission in the Dominican Republic. 

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865671916/Open-house-dedication-dates-announced-for-Tucson-Meridian-and-Cedar-City-temples.html

Monday, May 01, 2017 – Geranium cuttings, VC Cleaning, Jack Hallman, Pioneer Pastimes & Brick Yard 

Today was an on-and-off rainy day which meant we worked part of our day in the greenhouses and part outdoors cleaning & weeding. We started indoors making more Geranium cuttings for rooting. They will be next year’s parent plants. We label the new cuttings with a reproduction of the identification tag. One of the plants I cut for rooting had a tag dated 1987! That means this exact plant has been cloned every year for the last 30 years! Wow.

When the rain stopped we were out in the Women’s Garden and Visitor’s Center cleaning and blowing the sidewalks. We also picked up and hauled away a whole trainer load of downed limbs from last week’s storm. And it was a very strong storms, we received about two and a half inches of rain between Friday and Sunday.

Our busy guest season is starting to heat up. This week there are nine different schools scheduled to come with bus loads of students taking tours. One of their favorite places to visit is “Pioneer Pastimes.” Our next cleaning project was weed removal there in anticipation of a lot of guests soon.

The rain forced us to bounce between the greenhouse and the Historic Sites but we finished our work day cleaning the flowerbeds and sidewalks at the brick Yard. Some of the weeds growing up between the bricks in the sidewalks were three and four inches tall. The “Weed Eater” made short work of them.