My family moved to northern Illinois in 1965 when I was seven years old. Like many Mormon families in the “mission field,” we went back to Utah every year for vacation to visit relatives. My dad liked history, so on the way out we always spent a weekend at Nauvoo and Carthage (staying at some crappy motel that looks like the motel in the recent movie Vacancy). So I started coming here (I am writing this from my room courtesy of the wifi at the Nauvoo Family Inn and Suites) in the early days of Nauvoo Restoration Inc. As a result, I’ve been to Nauvoo many, many times (at least two dozen, I’m sure). One of my favorite memories was getting a personal tour from T. Edgar Lyon when he was still alive, since by dad had been one of his students.
My dad was not exactly what I thought of as the (proselyting) missionary type, but he often expressed a strong desire to serve a mission someday at Nauvoo. Alas, for him it was not to be; he died the night before my wedding reception in 1980, when he was just 51 (the age I will be just three and a half years from now). I don’t know whether I will ever serve a senior mission, but if I do, I would hope it would be here at Nauvoo.
I just came back from a missionary production at the restored Cultural Hall, called Rendezvous. It starred about 30 of the senior missionaries. My understanding is that there are two different companies that alternate nights of performing, so there are probably 60 or so missionaries total that put on this program. The show lasted an hour. It was basically a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland “hey, let’s put on a show!” type affair, a musical with lots of rousing numbers, intimate portraits, lots of humor.
I simply cannot express to you how cute these missionaries were. They were absolutely adorable. I’m sure some of them were out of their comfort zones up there on the stage, but they were gamers, one and all.
Any church that can get so many grandmas and grandpas out of their rockers, stop them from worrying so much about their sciaticas and get them up on a stage as a singing, dancing, wise cracking theater troupe, has something wonderful.
May 11, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Good post. In spring 2001 I drove from BYU to Connecticut to do an internship and I stayed in Nauvoo, I think at the very same hotel you’re at now (it’s pretty nice and new isn’t it?). I saw a few of the restored Nauvoo buildings the next day. One of the senior sister missionaries giving the tour of a famous Mormon leader’s restored home (perhaps John Taylor– I can’t remember) had tears in her eyes as bore her testimony and looked through a window up the hill to the new Nauvoo Temple that was being built.
May 11, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Thanks for the nice post Kevin. I also had the opportunity of visiting Nauvoo before it was brought back to life. There was something about it–the sort of ghost town feeling that I found enchanting and haunting as an 8 year old. It has its virtues now, of course, but I treasure the memories of the “old days.” Your post brought those back to me, so thanks again. By the way, having your father die the night before your wedding reception must have been traumatic to say the least. I notice that you post about him frequently and he obviously has had a deep impact on your life.
May 11, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Thanks, Costanza. Yeah, it was pretty traumatic for me.
The Elder in the tin shop took one look at me and knew I was a member. I have no idea how; I didn’t look stereotypically Mormon so far as I could tell(shorts, beard, sunglasses). But he knew. It was just him and me, and we had a longer conversation than normal. He was just like the sister John Williams recalls; he had a very easy-going but deeply abiding faith. A really impressive guy.
Quite honestly, I am just blown away by these folks.
Even though my own experience is mostly with Nauvoo senior missionaries, I’m sure it’s not just them. We had a great experience once at Cove Fort in Utah. My then purple-haired not-wanting-to-be-there teenage daughter was with us. A very kind senior elder found out that she was a vegetarian, and insisted on taking us out back to see the large garden the missionaries tend, and filling an entire grocery sack with vegetables for us. He found a way to relate to my daughter, and she really enjoyed that experience. To me it was a miracle.
These senior missionaries are just a treasure.
May 11, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Kevin -
That is a very nice way of looking at it. I came away from my last few experiences in Nauvoo a little less than satisfied with the elderly missionaries I encountered there. I wanted to know about the historical details of things, and the ones I talked to were not very well informed (especially compared to their RLDS contemporaries on the other side of town — now those guys really knew their stuff) — although the LDS missionaries were quite eager to share their testimonies with me, which felt too much like singing to the choir.
But reading your appreciation for their efforts made me feel like I had been too hard on them, and seeing as how I just got home from a production of Spamalot, it is only fitting that I be reminded to always look on the bright side of life. Thanks Kevin. I repent.
May 11, 2007 at 11:12 pm
I had a similar experience to you, Kevin, when I visited Kirtland once. I was a little hazy on my testimony, but an elder kind of stuck to me in the general store and pulled me aside when we went upstairs and we talked about the School of the Prophets. A great experience.
May 11, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Funny, the main thing that keeps my dad from putting in his mission papers it the fear that they will ship him off to Nauvoo to wear a silly costume and do a song and dance show. Or make him work in a brickyard, a kind of forced labor usually reserved for prisoners.
May 12, 2007 at 5:21 am
Glenn, if it’s history you want, plan on coming her May 21-24. 2009. In two years the Mormon History Association will be having its annual conference here, and the place will be teeming with hundreds of histrians, with all of the tours and papers and presentations you could imagine.
I came to Nauvoo once for a John Whitmer Historical Society conference and had a great time.
May 12, 2007 at 9:14 am
gst,
Having lived in Nauvoo for six years, and interacted a good deal with the senior missionaries there, I can tell you your father may not have much at all to worry about. Nauvoo is considered a “plumb” assignment. When some of these missionaries get talking, you find out that many of them are wealthy and well-connected to certain general authorities (one had an annoying habit of constantly reminding people that he lived next door to President Monson—”Well, TOMMY says…”) Between the temple missionaries and historic site missionaries there, you eventually get a distinct impression that many of these couples either pulled strings, or had strings pulled for them, to be called there.
Glenn,
Keep in mind that the LDS senior missionaries are all required to work from a script. The script is written to fit brief visits from tourists, most of whom don’t share your (or my) interest in the details of history. Unfortunately, since the scripts aim for brevity and missionary influence, they tend to be oversimplified. They also are sometimes outright wrong, but they are gradually making progress on that as a few missionaries with historical expertise end up serving there.
Each site happens to have a small library of chosen history books, which the missionaries are encouraged to read. Unfortunately, it is rare for the missionaries to take advantage of this resource. Most of them are by no means well-informed on LDS history matters.
May 12, 2007 at 9:19 am
Nick Literski,
If you don’t mind my asking, why have you lived in Nauvoo for six years?
May 12, 2007 at 10:09 am
John,
I don’t live there now. I left in January 2006. I had a small law practice there, and loved living in the town. I had every intention of growing old, dying, and being buried there, but sometimes things change.
May 12, 2007 at 11:08 am
Nauvoo is in between Purdue and Kansas City, where my parents live, so we used to visit quite regularly. My nephew went through that temple for his first time. It was a lot of fun to track the changes from the late nineties to now.
…I also like how it is called the “Cultural Hall.”
May 12, 2007 at 11:13 am
There’s a wonderful story about that, J. Stapley. Shortly after the building was rennovated (it has never really been “restored”), historian Stanley Kimball was driving Elder Mark E. Petersen around Nauvoo. Kimball saw the “Cultural Hall” sign, and became upset, knowing full well that it was the Masonic Hall. After he ranted a bit, Mark E. Petersen asked, “What is it with you historians wanting to tell the truth?”
May 12, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Nick, were you able to make a living with your little law practice there? I assume you were since you lived there for six years, but I’m just curious. For many years they had a big banner over Mulholland saying “Nauvoo Needs a Doctor!” And I noticed that the Fudge Factory apparently is still for sale. I also wonder how Estel is doing since that discount bookstore came to town.
I’m just fascinated by what it must be like to actually live there, both a little town and a Mormon mecca, so if you have any stories you would care to share, slap ‘em up here. I would be very interested.
May 12, 2007 at 6:35 pm
It’s interesting to me that even a trained, long-time historian and Church History Museum director, Glen Leonard who even authored a one-volume church history book and a more recent book on Nauvoo a couple of decades in the making would be sent to New Mexico on a mission. If anyone was perfectly suited for a missionary assignment to Nauvoo it is he and his wife. There certainly better be someone special in New Mexico :)
I love Nauvoo, we live about 4 hours away and have met some friends from Chicago there for the last couple of years… Best time to go to Nauvoo – Conference Weekend in October, you have the place to yourselves.
May 12, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Zionsuburb, that is part of the reason I wanted to go now. It’s close enough to summer that things are open, but it’s still a little bit offseason and not too crowded. And the weather was perfect. Nauvoo in August is hell.
May 13, 2007 at 6:20 am
[...] reiterate what Kevin Barney posted about the other day: here are these senior missionaries, mostly from the American west, some of [...]
May 14, 2007 at 10:18 am
I think they wait until you’re there to spring assignments on you. My wife’s grandfather said he’d only go to Nauvoo if he could work with horses and didn’t have to do any singing or dancing. As soon as they got there they told him he was working in the brickyard and had to sing and dance every other night.
May 17, 2007 at 8:40 am
#13:
Yes, I made an above-average living for the region, though I wasn’t “high on the hog” by any means. My friend, Estel, is still doing quite well, but the new “not” Deseret Book store (which is managed and staffed, etc. by Deseret Book) will have its first year of real business this season.
Not everyone would appreciate the stories I can tell about living in Nauvoo. It’s a wonderful place to live, but it’s also a rather bizarre experience. For example, remember when the entire church received satellite broadcast of the first session of the Nauvoo Temple? Well, there was one ward, in the entire church, which was expressly forbidden to receive the broadcast–the Nauvoo Ward (which has since split, btw). Actual attendance was also impossible, since it was taken up entirely by dignitaries from Utah. Living in Nauvoo means being the last in the entire church to hear about the church’s plans for events in Nauvoo. Living in Nauvoo means countless “opportunities” to serve as parking attendants, refreshment vendors, etc., with an enormous amount of ecclesiastical pressure to donate MORE time and work than whatever you happen to be doing.
I don’t mean to say it’s a bad place to live. I loved it there. It just had some really serious quirks. :-)
May 17, 2007 at 8:45 am
#14:
Thank goodness Glen Leonard was NOT called to serve in Nauvoo. His book received very lukewarm response from Mormon historians, because it included a number of blatant inaccuracies. For example, despite the past 25 or so years of solid scholarship on the Council of Fifty, Leonard wrote that it was “an advisory council under the direction of the First Presidency and Quorum of the TWelve.” Now, that’s just false, and it’s tough to believe that Leonard doesn’t know it’s false. Still, it’s a much more “acceptable” characterization of that group, when it comes to modern LDS teaching and practice. His description is entirely unprecedented, and he gives no basis on which such a claim could be argued. Personally, while the book has many strengths, I think it shows strong evidence that either (a) Leonard self-edited to protect his church job, or (b) Leonard received official directives on how certain subjects would be treated.
May 17, 2007 at 8:48 am
I should have mentioned, however, that I genuinely like Glen Leonard. He’s a good man, and wherever he serves, I’m sure he’ll do great work.
May 28, 2007 at 1:05 pm
This thread is dead, but I wanted to add, for the record, that my family and I went through Nauvoo last summer, the first time I was a boy.
The kids still talk about it glowingly. We go on a lot of vacations, and this is considered Top-3.
May 28, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Thanks, Nick and queuno, for sharing your personal experiences with us.
May 29, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Somewhere, I have a guide on “how to see Nauvoo in exactly one day”, with a flow of what to see in what order. Was a hectic day, but we were motivated by only having one day to see it.
It’s funny, but my older children’s testimony may have been strengthened more by that one day than by anything other lesson they’ve sat through. [I know, visiting historical sites is not generally the thing you want a testimony built on, but to a (then) 6yo and a 9yo, seeing where an ancestor lived and hearing about why they left are powerful images.]
June 12, 2007 at 11:15 am
I see that this thread is dead as well, however I wanted to give the perspective of someone who was born and raised in the Nauvoo area and has had a church connection to Nauvoo for more than 20 years.
It is wonderful. It is everything you make it to be because that is how life is. There are amazing opportunities to serve. I have met the Prophet, Apostles and other General Authorities and church leaders. I have seen the incredible growth. I have seen the interesting people who come and go as missionaries and those who have felt called to live here for a time. And now I live in the shadow of the temple and have the privilege of attending ordinances there. While there are people who come here in hopes of exploiting the area for money or for personal status, most people here are helping to build the kingdom of God and I would ask that those who are attempting to tear down that kingdom and halt that great stone from rolling forth to step out of the way because I would hate to see them crushed by it. The church is truly led by the Saviour Jesus Christ and His righteousness will not fail.
If you want to experience the Spirit in a way you have never felt before, come to Nauvoo with no expectations and it will find you.