Journey to Nauvoo: D Schedule

Life is about change, and here in Nauvoo that is a principle we see and practice a lot here! Between May and September there are three major schedules, A, B, and C - that is as long as you are assigned specifically to the sites. If you are assigned to the Visitor's Center, facilities management, the gardens or teamsters then you have a completely different schedule. Schedules are posted two weeks at a time, the first week is pretty much set, the second week could change sometimes. You will have a combination of the different schedules each week. A is from 8:45-3pm. B is from 11:45 to 6pm and C is from 9-12 and 3-6. That way there is always a minimum two missionaries in each site. In the Fall the amount of visitors we have drops drastically and so does the amount of missionaries we have. Starting September a lot of the missionaries go home, then starting about April we start getting a lot of new missionaries arriving. This works because the majority of missionaries here serve for 18 months. The flux in those numbers means that winter months we are down to a minimum of missionaries to keep everything open and running and so we have D shifts. A D shift means that five days a week you are on site from 9:45am to 5pm. Many of the missionaries when we don't have a lot of tours coming in work on humanitarian projects making scarves, hats, stuffed bears, quilts that are then given to people in need. In some of the sites people are doing prep for next year making things that will be given away next year to visitors like bricks, rings, ropes, and cookies. Others work on personal projects and that is the category I fall into with working on wool carding, spinning, weaving, quilting and working on my dulcimer. I look like I am moving sometimes with the things I take with me! No matter what site I am in though I am able to show how to spin, and that is a lot of fun especially with these beautiful fall days when I sit outside and get to enjoy the sunshine. Sundays Harold and I are what they call "outbound" which means we attend a branch in Mt. Pleasant Iowa which is about an hour from here so we leave about 7:30 in the morning and get back here sometime after 1pm. Missionaries that are not outbound start church at 7:50 in the morning, because the sites open from 12:30 to 5pm on Sundays.
In addition to the site schedules everyone is assigned one Preparation Day a week, that one is fun because if you get everything done you can go play or visit surrounding areas. There is a schedule that shows which day you are off, that day rotates every month. So, if you need a different day than when you are assigned you contact someone on the day

On top of the longer days in the sites we have rendezvous two nights a week, we try to go to the temple at least once a week and there has been a historian here doing a lecture series two nights a week. Pretty evenings sometimes get a walk or bike ride fit in also. Mornings are preparation for the day, housework, exercise. There is an exercise class on Monday and Friday mornings that I attend, then once a week I get to go play and learn on my dulcimer. Training meetings are Wednesday mornings at 8am then the other days we go walking. One Sunday evening a month we have District meeting which is a lot of fun and we were just made District leaders, there are four other couples in our district.

We also have special events this time of year, last week we just finished helping with a community wide celebration called "bootiful Nauvoo" We got to help with carving the 500 pumpkins that are carved by missionaries and community members which are then used to line the streets of uptown Nauvoo. Then Saturday evening was a parade, some missionaries (including me) were in the lead with one of the horse drawn wagons from here fancied up for Halloween with people on the wagon and some of us walking on the sides all doing a dance routine thing we had been taught. We also had missionaries that did a Chinese style walking dragon. Lots of community people dressed up in costumes and walked in the parade, plus somebody drove a ghostbuster car! Along the sides of the roads were food vendors, stores fixed up, missionaries did kettle corn for everyone and little bags of candy for children under the age of 11. Missionaries made up a lot of the corn in advance and bagged it, along with the bags of candy. So much fun when people ask us how much, and our answer is that it is free! I ate way too much Kettle Corn, but boy was it good. Now we are all preparing for the Christmas Walk in Old Nauvoo that comes up on the 2nd of December!

Now let's throw in a couple more things on top of that schedule. One is the fantastic fact that we had friends we had not seen in years come visit Nauvoo for a few days and we were able to spend some time with them. We are helping with the preparation for Christmas in Old Nauvoo, we are in charge of publicity which entailed helping get the flyers made and passed out, plus put up here and in the surrounding communities. Then on Thursday we were offered the chance to move to a little bit larger home (when so many missionaries go home in the fall there is a little bit of change around in residences) We had asked a few months ago but were still delightfully surprised. Our new home is still in what we call "the Flats" and is a historic home, but will be big enough we can have children come visit us much easier!!! That said, we found out on Thursday we could move, since Friday is our Pday this month we moved the next day! We worked on it again Saturday morning and evening and have most of our stuff moved over and put away. Doing all of my new projects means the amount of things we brought has expanded! We have two weeks to get everything done, but figure it will only take us a few more days to get everything moved and cleaned, working before and after our other commitments.