Why Historic Nauvoo, Service Projects, Plantars Warts, and a Garage

You may have wondered like me, how a little out-of-the-way farming community became a magnet for thousands of guests year after year? When the mayor of Nauvoo spoke at the Christmas Walk last month, he said, "Nauvoo has three seasons--Bootiful Nauvoo (Halloween), Christmas, and tourism." So how did it all come about?

As you have probably gleaned from prior postings, about 12,000 Mormons were driven from Nauvoo in February, 1846 at the risk of their very lives. The exiled pioneers primarily settled in the west outside of the United States boundaries not to return for over a hundred years. Then in 1954, Leroy Kimball (a grandson of Heber C. Kimball, a Mormon who lived in Nauvoo until 1846) decided to purchase his grandfather's home in Nauvoo as a summer, retirement home.

 However, the restoration of the old home was slow and tedious due to the constant flow of interested passersby.  Leroy decided that if there was so much interest in his home, there would certainly be interest in many of the historic homes. He met with leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, donated his property to them, and the Nauvoo Restoration Committee was organized to determine what properties to purchase and restore.

So there you have it all in a nut shell. Many of the properties were selected in the late 1960's and the rebuilding of the Nauvoo temple took place in 2002.

 Leroy went to Europe to purchase authentic period furniture. Is it not darling? 

  Portraits of Heber C. Kimball above and Leroy Kimball below.

Humanitarian Service Projects

Here's a question for you. What do a hundred ambitious LDS "old time missionaries" do when tourist season is still in the future but all the sites are kept open? They come up with service projects; that's what they do. 

Poverty in the mid-west is at an all time high. My project of choice is purchasing sleepers for new born babies. As you see, quilts, hats, burp cloths, and other miscellaneous baby cloths are made and assembled for new mothers who don't even have cloths into which to take their baby home. I chose to order sleepers to match  since we didn't have enough sleepers compared to the other items. I probably purchased over 75 sleepers and that was probably for only about 2/3 of the kits.

 As you see, we're kept quite busy.

 We're also making adult size quilts to be given to the homeless, bibs called cover-ups for assisted living homes, hygiene kits for women's shelters, as well as hats and mittens for all ages.

Want to know how to get rid of a wart on your foot?

Have you ever had a plantar's wart? Elder Johnson had one treated twice before we came to Nauvoo. Once by his MD and once by a dermatologist. When it returned to torment his every step, the mission doctor here suggested he try the "wet" method. It's so simple, I can't believe it isn't a wide spread solution. Just keep the wart wet for a solid two weeks. If it dries out at any point, you must start over. Elder Johnson accomplished this by first wrapping a wet piece of gauze on his foot secured with a piece of duct tape. It needed to remain moist. After a week, he used a band aide over a small piece of wet gauze exactly on top of the wart again wetting it when needed. 

Waaalaw...wart can't be found.

Garage anyone?

We are not one of the elite missionaries who warrants a garage here in Nauvoo. However, neither are we willing to scrape stubborn ice like you've never seen before. So I introduce to you....the portable garage.

 You can wear your garage where ever you go. Well, except while you are driving of course. This morning the ice was so thick on top of our garage that we had to peel it off like a banana. If you ignore the fact that the windshield wiper broke off during the episode, it worked great.