We got up very early to go to the 8:00 am church. It was mostly missionaries and they spoke about family history and temple work. It was a good meeting and i was struck by a quote about how we need to be trying to save the dead as hard as we try to save the living. We have so much work to do, and I need to spend more time on that. We stopped by the temple for more pictures on the way back from church.
We were tired from going to church so early, so we took a nap and ate some lunch. I told the kids to be back in the car by 11:15. This is Alexis at 11:14 waiting to get in the car, because she still had a minute.
We went to the LDS Visitors' Center. We had a few minutes before it opened, so we went to the Women's Monument behind the Center. We recreated some of the statues depicting different aspects of a woman's life.
In the Visitors' Center we watched a short film about Nauvoo and looked at some artifacts from the time the Mormons lived here.
We visited Wilford Woodruff's home. An older sister missionary from Australia gave us a tour. We learned the family was only able to live in the home for 4 months after it was completed before they were forced to leave. All the stories of sacrifice inspired me.
We then went to the Community of Christ Visitors' Center, to tour the Smith properties. We were able to touch a sun stone from the temple and the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House that once held the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon translation.
Lex and the Nauvoo House
We were able to go into the Homestead where the Smith's lived when they first arrived in Nauvoo. They were several things the Smith's originally owned in there, including Emma's walking stick, that she used as an older woman (we touched that too).
There were mayflies everywhere and Lex screamed when they came near her.
We also toured the inside of the Mansion House, another home of the Smith's.
We visited the Red Brick Store, which served as a store, meeting house, court, and even as a temporary temple. Alexis found another little one to be friends with. We had taken the tour with another LDS family that had 5 boys. We got some root beer that is supposed the recipe that Lucy Mack Smith used and visited the grave sites of Joseph, Emma, and Hyrum before moving on to the LDS sites.
We really wanted to go to the brickyard, but stopped by the school house on the way. The missionaries told us about the people using phonetic spelling and tested us to see if we could figure out some old fashioned words. The brickyard was awesome. This Elder taught us about how to make bricks and compared some of the principals of brick making to our own lives. We got a souvenir brick to take home.
We went to see Lucy Mack Smith's home and Cam checked out the outhouse behind it.
Next, we went to the wainwright and blacksmith shop. The senior missionaries were sweet everywhere we went. We got our prairie diamonds there.
Driving back to the motel we saw a spot where the river went right up to the street. We thought we should touch it. It smelled pretty fishy.
That evening we went to watch a performance called "Our Story Continues". The performers sang Broadway and other songs as they related to a circle of life type story. I enjoyed trying to figure out where the songs came from, but the kids thought it was long.
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