Nauvoo in Pictures 

I've posted lots of pictures already on Facebook, but, happy day, these are all different ones!

Practicing

Here is our director Alex (in blue), she is from Jersey (the country), and in red is our music director Cristy, from New York.  We learned all of our dances inside on a flat floor and it was quite a challenge transferring them to the 3dimensional stage.

Ruth (who's back is facing us) was a curtain mover in the British Pageant. That meant that throughout the pageant she opened and closed different panels of curtains to set the different locations.  Amazingly, she was able to memorize the different positions very quickly and was often helping the other curtain movers.

Kaitlin was assigned to be a flag waver in the Preston Town dance. At a certain part of the dance she had to run down from the back of the stage, down several flights of stairs, over some ramps and around to the front, all in a long pioneer dress. It was frightening for her, but she did great and didn't falter.

In the heat of the afternoon we often were able to practice in this new warehouse that the Church bought for the pageant to use.

We practiced in rain and sun.

In the British Pageant our district was assigned to reenact saints in three different areas of the UK being converted.  Here we are in the Boxhill Chapel, we also appeared in the United Brethren, and Downham and Chatburn. All saying, I asked for baptism a good 15 times during the pageants but didn't get baptized once.

We were assigned to a district with another family, the Shultz's from AZ, and Garrett, one of the core cast members. We would meet together nearly every day to talk about what we were thinking about and to support and help each other.

 

Our directors were always very patient and positive with us.  It made us want to do our very best to please them.

The Pageants 

We carry trunks, like the ones behind Chuck, on and off the stage several times during the pageants.  We also noticed several pioneer trunks displayed in homes in Nauvoo. It got me to thinking what these family trunks must have meant to the pioneers.  They left their homelands and homes and packed everything they owned in trunks. Trunks were a piece of home that they carried with them.

We are almost always in families while on the stage. It is very deliberate because we want to tell the stories of families and the journeys that families took together.  In this picture our family is sitting on the deck of a ship headed for America. (Kaitlin is getting up to go visit another family on the ship)

We are singing "The Gallant Ship", a song actually sung by the first pioneers and found in Emma's hymnbook. A few days ago my sister posted a link on facebook to a letter my 2nd great grandmother wrote, and in that letter she quotes from the song "The Gallant Ship."  It was very cool to read those words in her own hand that I had just sung a few days ago on stage.

The first three-fourths of the British Pageant shows all the different communities being converted to Mormonism by the missionaries. The last fourth of the pageant is us on the ship headed for Nauvoo.  To see those huge sails and mast come up every evening was an amazing site.

In the Nauvoo Pageant we represented saints arriving off the boats for the first time in Nauvoo.  We were assigned to walk all the way from the back through the audience.  The pathways were sometimes very muddy but we squelched with confidence.

You can see our family in the very bottle left corner, first arriving on stage in the Nauvoo Pageant.

I shared on facebook how Ruth really wanted to be a street thrower, but wasn't chosen at first for that job. It was a tender mercy when someone had to drop out and they asked Ruth to take her place. Here is a picture of Ruth throwing Partridge street into the air as we created a map of the city of Nauvoo on the stage.

Throughout the pageant the men slowly erect this wooden scaffolding, and then in one of the final scenes we hoist a canvas covering over the scaffolding to create this huge temple. When the saints leave nauvoo, the temple is lowered and the stage is left empty.

At the very end of the pageant we all come back to the stage dressed in light clothing, representing the spirits of those pioneers.  Because our group was assigned to walk through the audience when we left Nauvoo, we are standing out in a dark field behind the chairs changing cloths. The other cast that is in Nauvoo, who are training to take our place, also join us on stage so there are hundreds of us.  The real temple is lighted behind us and we sing "The Spirit of God". It is an amazing thing to be part of.

Nauvoo in Words

Parallel Journeys 

On our last night in Nauvoo, Kaitlin and I were walking to the car and she told me how our journey to Nauvoo parallels on a small scale what the saints went through.

The Call to Zion:

From the very beginning of the church, Saints all over the world headed the call to gather with the saints. Some of my ancestors converted in New England, others left their homeland in England to cross the sea to America. All of them left family, homes, occupations, and possessions to go to Zion. They didn’t really know what to expect, they just went on faith because they felt it was the right thing to do.

Even though we had not planned to go to Nauvoo this summer, we felt the call to go. So we saved money, set aside time, and left the comfort of our home, friends and technology to go to Nauvoo. Even though we were getting Kaitlin ready for a mission and our employment was uncertain and future unsure, we went forward with faith.

Becoming One People:

In Nauvoo and other settlements, saints welcomed each other with open arms and hearts. Strangers were brought into homes, limited resources were shared, and class systems were set aside. Although from different nations and places, they had one faith that bound them together.

Walking in to the first day of rehearsals is unlike any other experience I have ever had. Many of the staff already know your name; they shake your hand, look in your eyes and say how glad they are that you are there, and they mean it. You meet others and they are already friends that you just haven’t met yet. As you look at the families, you know they all have different stories, a fireman from Arizona, an engineer from Utah, a mother from Iowa, a student from Nottingham, different, but the same as yours; they all felt the call to come and be in Nauvoo and sacrificed to be there.

Uniting in Trials:

Sickness swept through Nauvoo, taking the lives of many and taking a toll on all. Together they fought the mud, the bugs, and the heat to build a city. Each saint had their place, building bricks, making cloth, herding animals, caring for children, among others. They worked together on the Temple, giving one day in ten to build that huge limestone building where they knew their family could make covenants and be sealed together forever. Their hardship, their loss, their sacrifice, only brought them closer together as a people. United, they built the largest and most prosperous city in Illinois in just a few short years.

In Nauvoo we all got a sickness that we jokingly called the ague, a nasty head cold and cough that swept through the entire cast. We spent 16 hour days rehearsing in mud that covered the tops of our shoes and rain, or hot humid sun. Everyone was given a job to dance, or wave a flag, or move a prop, which everyone did with enthusiasm and without complaint. Even though we were all suffering and sleep deprived, you never heard a cross word, or negative comment, only praises from our director and the staff and encouragement from one another. We knew that to earn the right to represent these pioneers we had to experience a small measure of what they experienced. We literally built a temple on the stage in the pageant, but we also built friendships together as we worked as one. In eight days we learned two pageants containing five dances, over 20 songs and 3 hours of stage time.

Leaving the Place we Love:

In 1846 the saints were forced from their beautiful city by mobs. They swept their floors, loaded the wagons and turned their faces from their newly finished temple to head west. Their hearts ached as they walked though the freezing snow down Parley Street. Not only were they leaving their homes, but also the society and friendships they had made.

In the final minutes of the Nauvoo Pageant we reenact the saints leaving Nauvoo. We have build a 40 foot tall temple on the back of the stage, and then we leave it, huddling together with shawls and trunks, and walking down the stage, off stage ramps, and through the audience (and the mud) into the darkness. This part of the pageant is always super emotional, but on our last night, it is even more so. In a meta way, we really are leaving the place and the people we love. We are leaving behind the Zion society we have created in this place, doing this pageant, and will soon be going back to the harsh, real world.

 Going on Our Way Rejoicing:

In the Nauvoo Pageant, my 2nd great aunt Eliza Snow says that the saints “felt to rejoice” as they started west. They had built the temple. They had made covenants with God and had their families sealed together. They were going together to find somewhere where they could be free of fear.

It’s with mixed feelings that we left Nauvoo. We were happy to be leaving the humidity, bugs, and exhaustion, excited to be sleeping in our own beds. But, we had had a wonderful time and had made new friends that we would probably never see again. We had had amazing spiritual experiences and had learned so many new things, many of which were personalized for each one of us. We were leaving our mini-Zion behind, but we were taking those feelings of Zion with us in our hearts, with renewed determination to be better people and to strengthen Zion where we live.

Nauvoo

We have now been a week in Nauvoo and are half way finished with our Nauvoo experience.  The 16 hour days have been grueling but joyful. The weather has been very wet and very hot. We have battled heat, humidity, mud and insects, and yet, to us, this is the most beautiful place on earth.  We have met a lot of new families and have felt an instant love for them as we have served and sweated together.   There is a real zion feeling here where we all work hard at encouraging and supporting one another. Hearing a negative comment or criticism is rare.

As we have been learning to tell the story of these early saints, we have received great blessings and support. We have felt well for the most part, and more importantly, our minds have been made sharp and clear so that we are remembering in the very moment what the next dance move is, or where we need to be on the stage, or what we need to do. There is a great pouring out of God's blessings all around us.

Our hearts and thoughts have turned to these people who gave so much to live the way they believed.  We've learned a lot about our English ancestors that we didn't know before, and we are reminded again of those pioneers that loved the gospel, and this place, so much.

We have each been learning our own personal lessons and going on our own journeys here.  I've been posting a lot of what I've been thinking about on facebook and have been posting lots of pictures there, so I don't feel to go into a great amount of detail here, just know that we are exhausted and loving every minute of it! 

New Job!

How could I forget the most important news of the week!  Chuck has gotten a new job and will start as soon as we get home from Nauvoo.  He will be working for a solar panel company that has just moved into the area doing similar work to what he was doing for eBay.  It's close to the pay range he was making before, but the office is located downtown which will add a lot of time to his commute each day. Still, it is a job, and Chuck feels very happy and relieved to have secured employment.

Shots

You learn a lot of new things when you are getting a missionary ready. For example, did you know that there are only a few clinics authorized to give you a yellow fever and typhoid immunization?   It's true. You can't just march down to your local drug store and get them.  So on Monday we drove downtown to the health department for Kaitlin to get her shots.  She did a great job and was very brave, but it all went down hill from there.  In all fairness, Kaitlin was already feeling sick that morning, so we are not totally sure if it's the shots or not that has made Kaitlin run a fever and feel totally aweful for the past week.  We suspect that it is a combination of both.  The nurse told us that she would feel sick from the typhoid shot for the first few days, and then a week later she would feel sick from the yellow fever shot. So about today Kaitlin is moving from one sickness to the next one.  We are assured by our neighbor, who had typhoid, that being a little sick for a few days is much better than having the real sickness.

The Cyberman

I pushed hard this week to finish the cyberman costume I've been working on, in time for the Barnes and Noble Doctor Who night.   I've been working on this costume for months and experienced several setbacks in the final hours, however, it did get finished and Ruth and I dressed up and went to the event.  The event itself was kind of dumb, but the workers there really liked the costume and gave me a little gift as a reward. We also took a bunch of photos to enter into their costume contest online.  I learned a lot from this first expedition as a cyberman, and ended up doing some damage to the suit that I'll need to repair and sort out. All in all a good first experience in the cyber suit.  (Kaitlin took some pictures of me in the suit that turned out pretty cool)

I failed to mention last week that I learned that two photos of me in the Sanctuary Base Space Suit and a very abbreviated selection of my article was published in the Doctor Who Magazine this month.  The magazine won't be on sale here in the US until August, but a cosplay friend from the UK posted a scan of the article on Facebook.  I was super excited!

Happy Independence Day

We took our annual trek up to my  mom's house for the 4th of July this year.  Her town parade was a little disappointing this year, but Jared was able to catch some candy in the candy drop so that was a success.  We had a nice lunch with family and a good visit. In the evening our friends invited us over for dinner, where they fed us excellent food and we had a good time visiting and lighting fireworks in the circle.  Our neighborhood was crazy alive with fireworks of all kinds, including professional type aerial fireworks, right over our house.  There were so many fireworks that this morning, diving to church,  the road was covered with a fine layer of sand/gravel (from the fireworks) that clinked against the bottom of our car as we drove down the neighborhood streets.

Kaitlin at the Temple

On Wednesday morning I went with Kaitlin to the temple, just her and I.  We had a very nice experience there together.  Chuck was able to join us for the session.  We were worried that it would be busy, but it ended up being a quiet and nice day.  Kaitlin got extra special attention from all the temple workers because it didn't say on any of her paperwork that she was going on a mission so they were all quietly wondering about why we were at the temple that day, but were too polite to ask.  Finally, one of them asked me and word of Kaitlin's mission call spread really quickly.   There is a lot to take in the first time you go to the temple, so Kaitlin was glad she had decided to keep it very simple and low key.  Afterwards we offered to take Kaitlin out for a nice lunch, but she asked if we could go home and pick up Ruth and Jared and all go out for hamburgers, so that's what we did.

Youth Conference

Chuck and I served this weekend as group leaders at our church's three day youth conference.  We were assigned 8 kids from other churches in the area to be in our group and we all came together and had a fun time.  We did some service, played a lot of games, ate good food, and did a strenuous hike up a hill at night.  Ruth participated in the conference as well, and she was assigned to another group with kids she didn't know. She says she had some good times but didn't love it.  I thought also that the conference had some really great moments, but my organizing brain makes it difficult for me to totally enjoy functions like these. What impressed me the most was how great all the youth were, in our group, and in general.  These were all clean cut, positive youth, who were kind and friendly and worked hard.  After an exhausting day on Friday, I expected half of them to sleep on on Saturday, but they surprised me by all being there the next morning at 8am for the day's activities.

Chuck and I with some of our group. We named ourselves "The Unicorns" (put hand to forehead to form a horn).

Our Week in Pictures

*Note: I lost my camera on Thursday, so I'm missing photos of some key events. I've done my best to recreate them here. My camera was found and is getting mailed to me, so I should have the actual pictures soon.

On Tuesday we had another rehearsal for the British Pageant workshop. This time on the Conference Center stage.  Including this rehearsal, we learned three dance numbers in seven hours.  In the video find the very best dancers and then pretend they are us. If you get this blog via email, you'll have to visit the blog to view it.

*Wednesday was Kaitlin's one day off work this week so we had a birthday celebration.  Because she will miss Christmas with our family this year we had a Christmas party. We listened to Christmas carols, ate Christmas dinner, and made and decorated Christmas cut-out cookies. 

*Thursday was our British Pageant performance.  Have you ever had that dream where you are on the stage in front of a crowd but you've forgotten the lines, or don't know the dance, or forgot to show up at rehearsal all month?  No?  Maybe it's a drama person dream.  Anyway, that was sort of our experience performing the British Pageant this week.  We had only ever performed the dances; we had never seen the pageant itself. We didn't even know what it was about exactly. So here we are sitting backstage seeing the pageant for the first time, and then when we see other people getting ready to go on stage, we go on stage too.  That's about how it went all night.  It was a little bit of a beautiful mess but we sang and smiled and did our best.  At least now we are a little more prepared for when we go to Nauvoo.

Thursday was the first day of our town days celebration.  We went to our annual "Touch a Truck" and old car show.  A friend of ours restored this 1972 VW. Whenever we see bugs we think of Aunt Laura.

On Saturday our whole town came out to celebrate Kaitlin's birthday.  We went to a parade in the morning and saw dancers, high school students, and princesses.

We celebrated Kaitlin's birthday some more before went to work. For gifts she got mostly things she will need in Paraguay.  That night we visited Kaitlin at work and brought her a cupcake.  After her shift some of her friends surprised her with pizza and cake.  We wrapped up the evening attending our city fireworks.

Today is Father's day.  Chuck is a great dad in our home. TV today would make you think that dads are lazy and incompetent, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Chuck will mow the lawn and fix the car, and then fold the laundry and do the dishes.  He is an all around great dad, and we are lucky to have him.