Oh Nauvoo II

August 11, 2008
Well, we’re on our way to Missouri again. I liked Nauvoo. It was quant. I loved learning about how they made everything. They really created their lives. Candles, barrels, wagon wheels, bread, quilts, bowls, TEMPLES. Everything was made by their own hands. It seems to me that these modern days, we just buy our lives, but back then their whole life was a craft.
Before I came to Nauvoo I thought of it as just another town that the pioneers got kicked out of. But now I have seen it; imagined it for what it was. Felt it. And it’s so much more to me because I see now how much it was to them- my ancestors and those who gave their lives for Christ’s church. Nauvoo is Joseph Smith’s city. His spirit truly is there. To me the whole place, however, felt sad. The ghosts of so many untold stories and unexplained feelings are there, reminding us that there is a price to believe. And that it’s not over yet.
One man giving a tour asked us at the end if we ever wondered how we too can add our names on the list of those faithful pioneers. I wondered. He then told us that to do this we need to learn to say “no” and how to walk away from the temptations of our day. But I still feel like they sacrificed more. They are the heroes.
As we were in Carthage jail, where Joseph and Hyrum was murdered, I had a hard time imagining that they were actually there. That perhaps their last breaths still lingered somewhere in that room. I felt angry that I never got to know him. The man who brought pieces of heaven down to the grasps of us all. Everyone talks so much about him, but I feel like nobody even really knows that man. That no matter how many words we throw around, we will never know him. I don’t know why this makes me angry, but it does. I want to know him. Meet him. I’m jealous that I can’t and that they did.
But we testify of him. I testify of him. I know he was a true prophet of God. I know he saw Them. Oh how I wish I could hear his stories from his own mouth. But I guess it is not needed. I still know it’s true.
My mom posed an interesting thought. Maybe we all watched from heaven as he lived and died. Perhaps we sat there crying into our angel hands. I suppose it’s possible that we did hear his story from his own mouth. I guess maybe we do know him.