Week 4--September 15-21, 2019

 We are finally settled in and decided we would start visiting some of the sites in and around Independence. We decided to start off by visiting the sites close to our Visitors' Center and that share a common history with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as they are off-shoots. We visited the Community of Christ Temple located across the street from the Independence Visitors' Center. The Community of Christ was originally the Reorganized Church of Jesus of Christ of Latter-day Saints (RLDS). The temple is a call for world peace.  Organ recitals are given each Sunday.

 This is the view looking up to the top (195')  from inside the sanctuary (the main hall) of their temple.  No ordinances are conducted in this temple.  It is the world headquarters of the church.

Stained glass windows inside the temple. The image represents the scripture that the "field is white already to harvest." The white lines represent the scythe. The circular images represent rice and the straight stalks represent wheat.

The spiral on the top of their temple is based on the conch shell.

They have a labyrinth on the upper level that you can walk. It is outside.  Interestingly, unlike a maze, you follow the path and it always reaches  the center.  I presumed that it means, all of us will get to heaven if we just stay on the path.

There is a world map at their temple that is be a reminder to take the message to all the world.

This beautiful organ is inside the Sanctuary of The Community of Christ Temple. When we went there was a man playing the organ.  (You can see him perched about 20 feet above the floor). The organ has 5685 pipes. Most of them are behind the facade of the organ which is fifty feet high, forty feet wide, and eight feet deep.

This building is the Auditorium for the Community of Christ. It contains offices, and they hold a General Conference here every three years on April 6. It has a seating capacity of 6,000 and is available for rent.  Occasionally local high schools rent the facility for graduation.

On Friday we visited the Church of Christ lot which is kitty corner from the Independence Visitors' Center. They own the ground on which the lot for the temple was to be located and was dedicated by Joseph Smith.

The marker for the temple lot is barely visible in the bushes.

This plaque is placed in the sidewalk. It says, "The Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and Mormon leaders dedicated this area for construction of a temple, 3 August 1831. A temple complex was envisioned as the center of a city to be called Zion."

The Church of Christ has placed makers for the four corners of where they say the temple was to be located. There measurements are 90 feet by 180 feet. However historians for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say the lot size is closer to 60 feet by 100 feet.

This marker is for the southeast corner.

Northeast corner marker.

Northwest corner marker.

In 1930 the Church of Christ was doing excavations to build a temple. They found a stone that was engraved with SECT which means Southeast corner temple. This plaque marks where the stone was found.

The Visitors' Center for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

We visited the Pioneer Cemetery in Richmond, Missouri, where there is a monument to the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon. The monument is located on the site of the grave for Oliver Cowdery.

Our last stop for the week was at the grave for David Whitmer located in the Richmond Cemetery.

Tom's major responsibility around the apartment is to do the dishes after dinner.  We have a dishwasher, so it's not a huge chore. You can see that he wears the apron the Bertins gave him when we finished our mission in the Quezon City North Mission.  We really like our apartment!
The only other jobs he has are: vacuum the carpets once a week, iron the six white shirts he wears each week, and eat the delicious meals Garnalee prepares every day.

Week 3--September 8-14, 2019

Sunday morning (3 AM) I (Tom) was awakened by thunder and heavy rain.  Garnalee wears ear plugs (for my loud snoring) and didn't hear a thing. We got up at 5:45 AM to arrive on time at our 7:30 AM missionary meeting in our assigned Hill Park Ward.  Our Bishop is Bishop Vaka from Samoa.  There was only one Priest at the Sacrament table, so I was asked to help bless the Sacrament.  Our Ward meets at 10:30 AM.  After Church and lunch, we began working on our presentation to the sister missionaries which will be on Friday.  We were assigned to discuss pages 86-90 of the Historical Sites handbook we received before coming to Missouri.  On Tuesday, a 1976 graduate of Rigby High School introduced himself and said he recognized me from RHS.  Seems to happen quite regularly. On Wednesday it was Garnalee's turn.  A group visited from Osgood, where Garnalee was born and raised.  They knew several of the same people. I called my grand-nephew, Andrew Carson to see how he is doing.  He was baptized the Saturday before we left for the MTC.  He was a road construction flagman, but to have year-round employment, he changed to a brick making company in American Fork.  He was ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood last Sunday. Thursday is our Preparation Day (P-day).  Garnalee did all the laundry ($9.25) so I could make the bed with clean sheets and then I ironed 5 long-sleeved, white shirts.

It has been reaffirmed to us what a small world it it. We were serving at the Independence Visitors' Center on Wednesday when a couple came in with their son from Utah. The sister missionaries asked them what their name was. They responded "Shaw." I walked over and told them that my grandmother was a "Shaw." They asked if she was an "English Shaw" or a "Scottish Shaw." I told them she was a "Scottish Shaw." In the continuing conversation he told me his father was Ivan Shaw which was a name I remembered from growing up. I told them my grandmother was Ora Shaw and she married a Warnock. They remembered "Aunt Ora" but didn't remember her husband's name. I told them he went by "Elick" which they immediately remembered. His grandfather, Robert William Shaw and my grandmother, Ora Shaw are brother and sister. So John Shaw, in the picture with us, and I are second cousins.

 Tom in front of our apartment building in Independence. We're on the top floor and find it to be very comfortable.

View of our apartment building from the parking lot. Ours is the top window on the right.

 Our daily walk is in the Woodlawn Cemetery which is just across the street from our apartment. It gives us a nice, safe place to walk.

 Most days we walk 2/3 miles in the adjacent cemetery to begin our day.

 As we walk we look at the headstones that are close to the roads. The earliest date we have found is a death date of 1818 (that's 201 years ago!). The headstone is partially broken off so we can't read the name or the birth date. There may be earlier dates but many of the headstones are not legible.

 There are many small buildings scattered throughout the cemetery which are crypts or mausoleums. There is even one that looks like a bunker.

















We found this headstone interesting since Missouri was a slave state and fought with Confederacy in the Civil War. It is for a woman who was born a slave. She later became a businesswoman in Independence. She also developed and marketed a salve.

We even found a Harrington headstone. We don't know if they are relatives, but we'll have to check it out.

While the sister missionaries do all of the tour guiding so far, we know we'll be leading groups too, so we spend a lot of time studying the history of the area.

Last Friday our missionary training lesson was on the last four pages of the book we all study.  We suspect the mission president's wife assigned us to present it was to help us along in our study.  We took about 30 minutes to make the presentation, and were pleased with the results.














                                                                                               

Week 2 - September 1-7, 2019

 Sunday morning we went to church at the same building we usually attend, but the schedule had changed, so it was a new ward at 9 AM.  The 1st councilor was Brother Bruggeman. I asked, and found out that his father and mother served on our Temple shift in the Idaho Falls Temple.  Small world.
Sunday evening we took Scott, Traci, Quinton, Demiree, Easton, and Stephanie to dinner at the Cheese Factory in Denver for Quinton's birthday, and as a thank-you for putting us up for two nights.  I had fish tacos, the bill, with tip, was $300.
We left Thornton Monday morning just before 8 AM. The drive across Kansas was wide open spaces with nothing to see. With the time change and breaks, it took 10 hours.
Our new apartment is at 207 E. Sea Ave. #6.  It was about 7:30 PM when we arrived from Thornton.  Waiting for us was Elder Dunn with our keys (the Dunns are in Apartment 3), and two young missionaries who carried our heavy suitcases up the two flights of stairs to our apartment.  The sisters below us, in Apartment 4 (Sister Johnson and Sister Moritz) had decorated our door.  Very thoughtful of them.



Our first order of business on Tuesday morning (we didn't have to report to the Visitor's Center until 2:45 PM) was to go grocery shopping.  We drove straight south on Noland Street and found a Walmart superstore.  $123 later we had most of the staples we'll need for the next couple of weeks.

On the left is the area in our mission, but we'll only be working in the IVC (Independence Visitor's Center) and HLJ (Historic Liberty Jail).

We spent Tuesday, Sept. 3 learning the routine of the Visitor's Center, and then on Wednesday, Sept. 4 we did the same thing at the Liberty Jail.

This is a cross-stitch of the Liberty Jail.  It's very nice work and stands on an end table in the entryway.

Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019, was P-day.
We spent the day doing laundry, vacuuming the apartment, unpacking, and more grocery shopping.  I think we're done for awhile.  We've been taking morning walks into the adjacent cemetery in the cool of the morning.
Friday, Sept 6, 2019 we had to attend a 7:50 training meeting (it'll be every Friday) learning how we missionaries can do a better job.


Friday night we watched President Russell M. Nelson's 95th Birthday celebration on our computer.  Guest artists included Gentri, Donny Osmond, Jenny Oaks Baker with four of her children, The Bonner Family, and Nathan Pacheco.  President Nelson's closing remarks were inspiring.


Saturday, Sept. 2019, we got another P-day (once every six weeks) so we decided to go to the Kansas City, Missouri Temple about 25 minutes up the road.  It was a very nice Temple.  It was erected in 2012.                                                                                                                                                                   

 After the Temple session it was time for lunch.  We had a list of all the places we should see and eat at while we're here so we chose the first eatery on the list, Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Q one of the 13 best restaurants in America.  The home page says Bar-B-Q in a gas station.  Sure enough, it's inside this Shamrock gas station.  It was fairly hard to find from the Temple and I wondered how anyone had found it in the first place.  I was fired up to reprimand the sister who made up the list.  That would be Sister Cummings the office secretary.



However, after lunch I had repented.  The line was long and continued to grow while we waited and then ate, but the pulled pork sandwich and banana cream pie were excellent.  Amazingly, I didn't get anything on my white shirt.

Week 1–August 25-31, 2019,
Missouri Independence Historical Sites Mission

Week one at the MTC (Missionary Training Center) in Provo, Utah.  The food is still amazing, but it's still fattening. It would be easier if it weren't all you can eat of 15 different choices.
We left Blackfoot after Church and lunch on Sunday and spent Sunday night (Aug. 25) at Chad and Jen's.  We had chicken burritos for dinner, and then played a card game called Garbage.  Grace won handily.  For breakfast we had Belgian waffles, at which time Emma called home on Zoom. Chad was already at work, but he joined into the call from there on conference.
We left for the MTC at 9:45 AM and arrived at the MTC at 10:05.  We spent the week in S2 as usual, but this time in 307.
Our first training was on the conversion process and the steps involved: 1) Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement, 2) Repentance (which which happens daily), 3) Baptism (that is renewed weekly as we partake of the Sacrament, 4) Receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost and then repeat.  Endure to the end means keep repeating this process until we die.

We are in front of the world map where all missionaries get their picture taken. We are pointing to our mission—Missouri Independence Historic Sites.

We were assigned to work with "others." The couple was the Haderlies from Greensboro, NC. They were called to the Texas Dallas-Ft. Worth Mission.  They'll be doing MLS. We came to love the Haderlies very much.
We watched a video for FHE which was Elder David A. Bednar on the "Character of Christ." He said that without attribute of; love, integrity, and charity, "strikingly displayed" the Atonement would not have been possible.  I realized that if those same attributes hadn't been strikingly displayed by Joseph Smith, the gospel would not have been restored.

During our week-long training we visited the new T4 building.  The 12 murals were amazing and have been included in this blog post.

These are the 10 missionaries in our district at the MTC. Elder Larson (1st white shirt from left is from the same North Salt Lake City Ward as the Bertins). The Wyatts (from Twin Falls, Idaho), us, our trainers Sister Freckleton (standing left) and Sister Peterson (standing right).  There were two single sisters who will be serving in the Church office building in Salt Lake City; Sister Balls (sitting left in pink is from Logan, Utah) and Sister Blakemore (sitting right in white is from Omaha, Nebraska).
This was a wonderful group.
We had a wonderful week at the MTC.
After checking out we drove back up to Chad and Jen's to spend our last night in Utah.

Saturday, August 31st, 2019
We ate breakfast with the Harringtons. It was baked oatmeal and sausage.  We liked it a lot and will have to get the recipe.  After breakfast we headed for Thornton, Colorado to spend the next two nights with Scott and Traci.
The beautiful drive along I-70 went through several tunnels and beautiful canyons.  We arrived at 4:50 PM.  Shortly after our arrival Traci made barbecued hamburgers (about 3/4" thick), potato salad, and potato chips.