It's not about us

When you work in the temple most of the time, you do many of the same things repeatedly. You'd think there's not much to tell about in that case. I seek to find words to convey the delight we have in the temple.

Yesterday, we were responsible to make the schedule for the roughly 30 people who came to serve in the morning as ordinance workers at the Nauvoo temple. Some are full-time missionaries, like us. Some come every Saturday morning, but live in the area. Some come once or twice a month. On Saturday mornings, we regularly have a few people who come to temple to make their own eternal covenants with God. Since we were assigning the workers' schedules for yesterday, we assigned a guide for each of these individuals. A guide welcomes them and sticks with them through the 1 to 4 hour process of making these eternal commitments. As Mimi and I looked at the list of workers and the list of (let's call them) newcomers, we needed to match worker guides with each newcomer. Well, one newcomer couple was married with little children. The adults come to the temple a few hours before their children. The mom (who had never been in a temple before) was anxious that her little ones, particularly the one-year-old, would be cared for adequately when they arrived.

In assigning guides, we asked a couple who drives in from a couple of hours away in Iowa once a month to be their guides. We'd never asked these folks to serve in this way before. It just so happened that the woman who was guiding was able to be very reassuring to the mom that all would be well with her children, because she would personally see to it. It seems that when she had come to the temple for the first time years before, she too had little children, including a nursing baby. She felt all the same anxieties, and had seen that her children were provided a very sweet experience. She could allay yesterday's newcoming mom's distress and tell at the end of the day what a choice experience both the newcomers and the only occasional guides had shared together.

Well, of course, there is no way we could have known that these were the right folks to match up together. There is no coincidence!

The three-month point in the mission

Half of our guaranteed time here in Nauvoo has passed as of today. This is the 3-month mark of our mission. We are surrounded by Mormons, but we don’t make much to-do about pioneer day. We make some fuss and hold gatherings on June 27 to commemorate the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, but no July 24^th events that are any different from every other day. Here you see us and our friends the Ogdens from Koosharem, Utah. (You get extra points if you already know where that is.) We are sitting in the audience digging the legs of our folding chairs into the wet ground, waiting for festivities to start in Carthage at the commemoration on June 27. One of the rubber chair tips remains embedded in the soil there to this day. Here you see the Nauvoo Brass band playing prelude and President Condie speaking. We'll go anywhere, any time to hear him.

                                                  

We are in the peak season for visitors here, and have completed 3 of the four weeks of pageant. One of the huge delights is the almost daily opportunity to find dear friends from -- everywhere -- who come through. Here you see Jen Johnson and her kids who drove up from Dallas and  Joe & Jolene Swenson who walked into the temple and found Brent -- to everyone's surprise and delight. The Swensons were driving from the west to Pittsburgh to report on their just-completed mission in Chile. 

During the pageant, we have been asked to coordinate the translation of the presentation into Spanish each night. We have a complete script in Spanish and headphone microphones that let us hear the stage and do our best to stay up with the action. We have passed out a few receivers each evening – 6 to 8 on average, for audiences of about 2000. On Tuesday night of this week, we passed out all 47 of our available sets, and could have done a few more. A tour bus from Mexico came through town. 25 or so of the passengers showed up for a temple endowment session on Tuesday morning, and we were privileged to officiate it totally in Spanish.

Translating the pageant has been a stretch. Back in June, Brent was asked if he were willing to participate in reading the Spanish translation of the script and he eagerly agreed. Not having heard more about the last week of June, he asked if it was still happening and was invited to a meeting of all willing translators (again – that’s readers of printed script, not simultaneous hearers and translators). At the meeting, one week before pageant began, he was asked to coordinate the entire project. On that Monday night, we saw a video of last year’s pageant and sought to follow the script for the first time.

Moved fast!

We learned that this is the first year of trying a full-script translation. Last year, in the first translation effort, a synopsis of each scene was spoken in Spanish over the receivers; no effort was made to match the pageant dialog. It was like the difference between reading the scriptures and reading the chapter headings. But over the course of the last year, a full-text translation has been produced; now we are finding the best way to deliver it to the part of the audience who wants it.

So a fair amount of time was invested in trying to break down the script for 20 unique characters on stage so that 8 translators – 3 women, 5 men – could speak the script without ever having to hold a conversation with themselves. Then we sought an equal number of willing people, most of whom either served Spanish-speaking missions 4 or 5 decades ago, or learned their Spanish in the temple. Not your very best fluency.

We all showed up to the dress rehearsal the night of July 4 and learned to some degree of horror that only 2 headset mics were available. Real hard for 8 people to share – in rapid dialog, especially. We gave it a best shot that night that started out chaotic and ended up mediocre.

You know what they say about poor dress rehearsals leading to great performances? Well, gratefully, three weeks into the effort, we can truly say that is what has happened. We simplified the hand-offs so that 3 men and 2 women could do the whole production, and our hero Craig Butler, the pageant AV wizard, got us 2 additional mics. For the last few nights, we have tracked almost perfectly with the stage performance without technical problems. Brent even took 2 of the men’s speaking roles during the past week, and will be on the mic maybe 3 times during the next week. It’s been a delightful learning experience, and more than a little wearying, being added to the normal temple duties.

Our Stake President, Damon Bahr, said when he set Brent apart that he would encounter some unusual ways to serve. That part has surely been fulfilled already. Brent also got to translate a couple of sealing sessions for Spanish-speaking families.

Can a veteran generation guy learn good blogging?

I have three kids who blog well. I want to believe that, despite being born 6 weeks before the baby boom started, I  can be a contributor -- if not a contender. Being in Nauvoo grows in delight, depth of relationship and profound insights.


So here's a start. We got here 7 weeks ago. Weldon and Vickey Tovey hosted us so graciously that the transition was utterly painless. But about a quarter of our guaranteed time in Nauvoo has gone by. Zips, indeed.

We’ve hung Gerber daisies in front of our posh apartment. More on that topic (poshness, not daisyness) in the future.

Our temple president is Spencer Condie, seated between his counselors and their wives. He is as warm and unstuffy an emeritus LDS general authority as one could ever imagine. His goal is that everyone who comes to the temple feels profoundly welcome; as a result, our assignment is to be a window on Christ's love to all we encounter. Pr. Condie shared the remarkable insight that it’s a huge deal to enter the temple. Attending regularly brings great blessings. But we get the opportunity to functionally live in the temple. Out of this world.


The Dworczyk family were our first Nauvoo kin visitors. We're in a wagon that goes around the Nauvoo countryside to give teamster missionaries a venue for telling stories about stunning people who lived here in the 1840s. Plan on the ride when you come.

We’ll continue to share thoughts and pictures here. We’d love to share conversation with you here.