Our first week has been both interesting and busy. Sunday started off with three inches of snow and a temperature in the low twenties. It snowed off and on throughout most of the morning.
Sunday block meetings start at eight o'clock in the morning with Sacrament Meeting in the stake center which is located between the temple and the visitor center. That meeting is for the Nauvoo missionaries, temple missionaries and any visitors to Nauvoo. We then move to one of the two theaters in the visitor center for Sunday School. The brethren then move to the other theater for priesthood meeting while the sisters remain for their Relief Society meeting. We have to leave the chapel so that the two local wards that meet in the building can hold their meetings. The lesson manual for priesthood and Relief Society is "Teachings of the Presidents, Joseph Smith" instead of Lorenzo Snow. It was interesting to be in the meetings with only high priests and sisters in attendance. During the summer, visitors are so numerous that they would overwhelm the local wards.
President Gilliland asked that some time following the block meetings, we go through the Brigham Young home, which we did. We then drove to Carthage to go through the visitor center and Carthage jail where the prophet Joseph and his brother Hyrum were martyred.
Each day this week started with training for all sixty six of us new missionaries in the mornings and afternoons with some afternoons being devoted to our visiting sites to become familiar with them and how to conduct tours. Training also included review of all the songs we need to have learned. Evenings we were attending the Rendezvous shows so that we could get familiar with them and how they are performed, since we will be doing them soon.
Thursday this week was our preparation. It was also the day that President and Sister Gilliland had us along with three other new missionary couples to their home for breakfast at 7:30 a.m. They are having all new missionaries in their home for breakfast and to get acquainted. Following the breakfast, we went to the temple for an endowment session. That was a great experience. We plan to do that each week on our preparation day.
Following our morning training on Friday and Saturday, we spent the afternoons dressed in our period clothing. We received some on site training and experience in giving tours.
