Day 14: Nauvoo, Temple Baptisms, Sites and Sounds of Old Nauvoo

What a long day! Who would have thought that the one day where we get to do whatever we want whenever we want would be the most exhausting one on the tour? Not me, thats for sure.

I slept in this morning until about 7:30 because somebody's phone kept going off, so I got up and jumped in the shower to get ready for the day ahead. When I got out of the shower, we went down to breakfast, and then went souvenier shopping before we were scheduled to go to the temple for baptisms at noon.

The temple was amazing. Going in, right after they check your recommends, you can see the meeting room, which is roped off, but it looks almost identical to the meeting rooms in the Kirtland Temple. Only the Prophet is allowed to call meetings in that room. When everyone got through the line, we were ushered downstairs to the baptistry, and I was in the first small group to get changed into the white clothes. Everybody else got to wait in the chapel in the basement, and I could hear them singing the Spirit of God while I was waiting to be confirmed. When we got in the room, each of us 5 girls got to be confirmed for about 10 names, and it was Brother Dungsten and Brother Sperry doing the confirmations with our bus driver Phil marking off the names. When we finished in there I was planning on just going back and changing my clothes since I couldn't do baptisms with my cast. A bunch of the temple workers offered to get me a bag or something so I could go in the font, but I decided against it, so they offered to let me do extra confirmations. That worked for me, so I accepted, but had to wait while they did a group of boys.

While I waited I got to sit out by the font, and I noticed the font was a foot or two lower into the ground than the normal floor. I later came to find out that they did that on purpose because in the original temple, the font sank into the swampy ground about that far. It just goes to show that they tried to copy as much detail as possible.

When I finished up with my extra confirmations and changing back into my clothes, I went out to the chapel to wait for some other people and to read my scriptures. I decided it would be cool to read some of the sections in the D&C that were revealed when the saints were in Nauvoo, so I found the right ones from the Table of Contents in the front. I opened to Section 127, which happened to be about the Baptism for the Dead. Section 128 continued in the importance of it, so I continued reading, and in the first verse, Joseph recorded something that really impressed me.

"1 As I stated to you in my letter before I left my place, that I would write to you from time to time and give you information in relation to many subjects, I now resume the subject of the baptism for the dead, as that subject seems to occupy my mind, and press itself upon my feelings the strongest, since I have been pursued by my enemies."

This was really cool to me, because at the time when the saints were in Nauvoo, the most pressing subject on the Prophets mind when he knew his life was in jeopardy was that of the doctrine of Baptisms for the Dead. Not the live ordinances, the work for the dead. Reading through that section was so amazing and I felt the Spirit so strong there with me. I know that the work for the dead done at the temple, specifically Baptisms for the dead, is done both for us and for them. "For their ^asalvation is necessary and essential to our salvation, as Paul says concerning the fathers—that they without us cannot be made perfect—neither can we without our dead be made ^bperfect." (vs 15). Even though I didn't get to do baptisms, I still got to do the confirmations and feel the Spirit there.

When we finished, they showed us the spiral staircase and we got to walk up it a flight to the entrance. It was a very cool experience.

After Baptisms, I walked up to the hotel and changed, and after dinner, we were able to go to the Missionary Program, Sunset on the Mississippi. It was a good time; included was lots of laughs,

Lots of funny Senior Missionaries,and a really sweet sunset.

When the sun was still setting, we decided to walk down the Trail of Hope down Parley Street where the saints walked as they left Nauvoo. On our way there we met up with all of the performers from the play we saw last night and additional characters from the Sunset performance we saw today. I learned that they auditioned to be part of the group and all those who were there were called to serve 4 month missions. They even pulled out their nifty name tags. They were all down by the trailhead because one Elder got his real mission call and opened it with everyone there. I don't think very many people get the opportunity to open their mission call while on a mission. They were super cool, but they had to go, so we walked down the trail.

At the end, right before the Mississippi, there was a huge memorial with all the names of the pioneers who had died on the trek from Nauvoo.

Then we were able to see the sun completely set on the Mississippi. Pictures just don't do it justice.
On our walk back towards the Temple, me and Alan were amazed by the amount of bugs we were forced to walk through. When we passed under the first streetlight, we were further grossed out by the amount of bugs congregated under it. We were definitely in Swamp Land.
We stopped in front of the temple, and after many futile attempts of getting a non blurry picture of the temple, we figured we had to get down on the grass and use the ground as our base. It worked, and we got loads of pictures.

We walked all the way around the temple and made our way back up to the hotel with Mindy.

So, as you can tell it was a very exciting day in Nauvoo, the City of Joseph, City Beautiful. I love it here, but not necessarily enough to live here. I'm glad we were able to come back.