I Love To See the Temple

Sisters' Log Day Five

I love to see the temple.
I’m going there someday,
To feel the Holy Spirit,
To listen and to pray.
For the temple is a House of God
A place of love and beauty
I’ll prepare myself while I am young,
It is my sacred duty.

Our day started out so nicely. We attended a session at the Nauvoo temple. What a wonderful way to begin a day, except Sandy kept trying to go through doors that evidently weren't where we were supposed to go. The temple patrons were very helpful in pointing her in the right direction. Edie pretended she didn't know Sandy, as she went through the right door. The temple has a clock tower that marks every hour. As we left this morning, it chimed twelve times announcing the beginning of the afternoon. We're surprised Sandy didn't end up in the clock tower in her quest to go through every unmarked door. If nothing else, she had the little temple workers hearts pounding as they chased her down to keep her out of what were probably "sensitive" areas - like the men's dressing room.

This picture was taken from the front steps of the temple. The Mississippi River is in the background.

However, it’s still hot and humid here. The salesperson at one of the gift shops in Nauvoo told us that this is the worst humidity they've had in a couple of years. Last year Nauvoo hit 90 degrees or above for only four days. Today the temperature is 93 degrees and the humidity is 56%. It's stifling.

While walking back to our hotel room, we noticed that a couple of parking spaces had opened up in front of the hotel, so Sandy ran (well for her it was running--we're not as young as we used to be) down the grassy knoll to the gravel lot behind the hotel next door to the one where we were staying so we could park the car closer to our room. We then changed our clothes and went to lunch and to do a little shopping. Zion's Mercantile has a wonderful gift shop with a cute sandwich counter in the back, and their sandwiches are delicious. We walked across the street to go to two more gift shops, and then we were soaked from head to toe from the humidity. As we were walking back to our room, Edie noticed that one of the tires on the car looked a little low. We decided to just keep an eye on it to see if it got any lower. We carried our purchases up the three flights of stairs to our room only to discover that the air conditioning wasn't working properly again. So we sent a text to the general manager of the hotel (she's our new BFF) to let her know. She told us to keep an eye on it to see if the temperature went up any more. So about an hour later we let her know that it was 79 degrees in our room.

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A few minutes later she knocked on our door and told us that she was moving us to the hotel next door and upgrading our room. She had two young men take our bags for us. We thought our other room was nice, but this one is like an apartment: two bedrooms, not just two beds, a cute bathroom, living room and a kitchenette. More importantly, our new hotel has an elevator. We would still recommend the room we were in--very cute, very clean, and very nice, but this new room is da bomb! This is the place to stay. We are in the Brigham Young Suite, and it's well worth the price, which we don't have to pay. For our trouble, General Manager Sherry gave each of us a Nauvoo temple book and a piece of the old Nauvoo temple from the 1800's. We love her.

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On the way over to this room, we checked on the tire, and sure enough, it was flat. Thank heavens we belong to AAA! We had to miss the pageant we were going to attend, because we were waiting for the nice men who changed our tire and aired up another tire on the car, but we're so glad it's fixed. We'll get the flat tire fixed tomorrow in Fort Madison. Tender mercies were abounding. If we hadn't moved the car, we wouldn't have known until tomorrow when we were getting ready to leave Nauvoo that the tire was flat. Even after we moved the car and knew the tire was low, we probably wouldn't have checked on it again tonight but since we changed rooms, we decided while we were by the car we would take a look at the tire. We have definitely been watched over.

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The two pictures below were taken from the small balcony off our first room, and the views are nice.

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Below are the views from the double-french-doored large balcony in our new room. Very nice!

BFF Sherry told us that there had always been a rumor that Joseph Smith had an underground tunnel constructed in Nauvoo for his use when he lived here in the 1840's, but no one had ever found it. The tunnel wasn't found even when the basement was dug for the new temple, so it remained a legend. However, when the hotel in which we're staying, put in a sprinkler system, they discovered the tunnel. They have no idea where it starts or ends, because parts of it are under public roads, but the part that's under these hotels is on private property, so the owners lowered a camera into the tunnel to take pictures. Today we were able to see those pictures. The tunnel is lined with red bricks mortared together. Even though no one knows the length or the destination of the tunnels, it's assumed that they extend below the city to Joseph Smith's house and to other Church sites.

Below are a couple more pictures that we took today:

Joseph Smith

Monument dedicated to the memory of Joseph Smith's parents, Joseph Smith Sr., and Lucy Mack Smith.

Here's hoping the rest of our trip will be complete with inflated tires and that Sandy won't get lost.