Nauvoo Trip - Day 2

We did lots of great things on our first full day in Nauvoo!  First was a tour of the Joseph Smith family properties owned by the Community of Christ.  We toured the Homestead and the Mansion House, and talked about Nauvoo House and the Red Brick Store.  Our tour guide, Will, was very friendly and knowledgeable, and noticed the FSU shirts a couple of people in our group were wearing.  It turned out that he is earning at PhD (in something related to Church History...?) at FSU and he is in Mema and Papa's ward!  He and his family were living in Nauvoo for the summer while he did research and conducted tours for the Community of Christ.

Nauvoo House (left) and Homestead (right)

Ben, John, and our new friend Will

We had to do a Girl Power picture on the second floor of the Red Brick Store,
where the Relief Society was organized.

After the CofC tour, we visited the Seventies Hall, where Liza and Luke read quotes by 1840's missionaries from the pulpit and then had a little too much fun sitting on the stand.  Upstairs, we found Andrew Hiram Whitlock's record.

Next we went on a carriage ride through the countryside while a senior missionary told us stories about people who'd lived in Nauvoo in the 1840's.

We took a little time to look around in the visitors' center, then walked over to the oxen experience area for a short wagon ride pulled by a team of oxen.  The missionaries were jokingly proud of the fact that their oxcart ride had the best reviews of any oxcart ride in the area.

Then we went back to the visitors' center to watch the Nauvoo Performing Missionaries in a cute musical production called "The Promise," a romantic comedy told against the backdrop of the Saints settling in Nauvoo.

We spent a little time on Mulholland Street before and after dinner at the Hotel Nauvoo.  There was an old piano on the sidewalk, which every kid wanted a turn to play - and Jack played it every chance he got during the rest of our trip.  It made my heart happy.  We also did some souvenir shopping and Luke defeated Ben in Connect Four.  He even went above and beyond and connected five.

We headed down to the pageant area early so that we could enjoy the activities at the Country Fair.  The families who come to be extras in the pageant also ran the fair every evening, and we had so much fun taking advantage of the activities!  Jack mostly hung out with the other teenagers in the dance area, where they were calling dances and doing circle dances, etc.  We had to tear him away to join us for an old timey family picture.

The Nauvoo Pageant covered several years of history, beginning with the Saints moving to Nauvoo and ending with the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.  It was very well done, and we loved seeing how they "built" a temple on the stage.  I was really glad that we saw the British Pageant first because several of the characters in that show were in the Nauvoo Pageant as well, so we appreciated that their origin stories were fresh in our minds.