"Make New Friends, But Keep The Old...." November 30, 2016

   
   When I was in 2nd grade, I was a Brownie in the Girl Scouts. Though only 8 years old, I clearly remember one of the songs we sang way back then whose simple lyrics were sung in a round:
 "Make new friends, but keep the old.  One is silver and the other's gold."
This sums up the past 6 weeks of our life as we have been serving our mission here in Nauvoo. One aspect of this mission that makes life so enjoyable are all the wonderful new friends we have met. There are about 40 of us serving as Nauvoo Temple Missionaries at this time from all over the country.  Each has a story and each has willingly come ready and willing to serve the Lord. There are also about 150 Site Missionaries serving in Historic Old Nauvoo.  For Thanksgiving Day, the Site Missionaries hosted a Thanksgiving feast and invited our Temple Missionaries to join with them. They held the event in the Pageant Headquarters Building which is just a couple miles beyond downtown Nauvoo.  I use that word "downtown" very loosely.  It is a very small place!!!!  The dinner was very nice and we enjoyed being surrounded by our friends.  However, the smell of turkey and all the fixings was sorely missed in our little home here and so was our family!  We were blessed to be able to talk to all of our children and many of our grandchildren over Thanksgiving. They are the true blessings for which we are constantly grateful.  We are thankful for modern communication and how we can not only talk to our family, but see them, too!
 
    For many many years, the Monday following Thanksgiving was when we would set up our family's donations to Festival of The Trees to benefit Primary Children's Hospital.  Most years, that included a large Gingerbread House for the Gingerbread Village which was always a favorite of our grandchildren. In keeping with that sweet tradition in a much smaller way, this past weekend following Thanksgiving, 4 of our new friends and neighbors gathered and made little Gingerbread Houses to bring in a little Christmas magic.  We had a great time and the end results were fabulous! The husbands hung out next door while the women created their candy houses.  Afterward, one of the husbands, Elder Cordova, made and served a spaghetti dinner to all 8 of us. "Make new friends, but keep the old.  One is silver and the other's gold!"

   Now that the temple has reopened after its 2 week cleaning, we are back serving in the temple nearly everyday which is where we have met so many new friends, both fellow missionaries and patrons, some from miles away and others who are local residence.  We are constantly amazed at the people who come and drive for up to 3 hours each way to serve for 2 hours.  Also, there are those who come with difficult physical challenges who are there on a regular basis, some of them even come daily. In our spare time, we try to get up energy so we are prepared to serve the next day.  We serve on Tuesday PM, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday AM, and on Thursday we serve on both the AM and PM shifts  with a 3 hour break between the 2 shifts.  Our commute to the temple is 2 minutes and we really love our little home away from home.  It is interesting how quickly you can feel at home in a new spot.  When we walk in the door of our little apartment, we are "home" and we like it a lot and feel very blessed to live here.

   Monday is our P-Day when we do laundry, go grocery shopping, and explore fun places.  We never realized we would spend so much time in Iowa, however practically everything we do outside of Nauvoo, Illinois seems to be across the Mississippi River into Iowa.  We are doing our part to support their tax base over there in Iowa each week!  For our P-Day outing this week, we drove with our next door neighbors, the Cordovas, back to Cantril, Iowa to shop at the Dutchman's General Store.  That store is so amazing.  As we said in an earlier post, it is an Amish store run by the Mennonites. Their cheese is the best ever and their prices make the drive well worth while.  As we entered the store this week, there were boxes of every kind of apple you can imagine and some of them  we had never even heard of.  Regardless of the kind, all the apples were 49 cents a pound.  We chose one of every kind to try.  They smelled like a fresh apple orchard!  We had a wonderful time with our new friends.  This will not be the last time we journey off to Cantril, Iowa  you can be assured! We do enjoy our P-Day adventures and exploring what is beyond the miles of endless farm land.

  Serving in the Nauvoo Temple gives a Temple Missionary some assignments where you sit at various posts and direct the patrons who attend the temple according to their needs.  When no patrons are in that area, you are free to read and study the scriptures.  Since we are serving in a Church History area, I decided to begin by reading the Doctrine and Covenants, one of the 4 standard works, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. "The Doctrine and Covenants is a collection of divine revelations and inspired declarations given for the establishment and regulation of the kingdom of God on the earth.  Although most of the sections are directed to members of The Church, the messages, warnings, and exhortations are for the benefit of all mankind..." (D&C, Introduction) While reading one day during a temple shift, I came across a scripture found in D&C 19:26 that spoke loudly to me, "Thou shalt not covet thine own property.....". I have thought about this scripture and how it applies to our current season of life as we serve our full time temple mission.  We left our family and our home and our bed and our possessions and our friends and our life back in South Jordan, Utah to come fulfill our calling.  It is not a sacrifice, instead it is a blessing and a privilege to serve here.   We do not yearn for those things we left behind to come here.  We know that everything we have been given truly belongs to The Lord, not to us.  We do "not covet thine own property" and that is a great discovery that will continue to bless us long after our 12 month mission has ended.

    We send our love to all of you, whether you are old friends or new friends, for we truly know that "one is silver and the other's gold."