Hello to Beautiful Nauvoo!

We finished our time in the Mission Training Center on Tuesday, September 11th. That night we started our drive to Nauvoo, Illinois. After overnight stops in Rock Springs, Wyoming and Kearney, Nebraska (one of my new favorite places), we arrived in Nauvoo in the evening on Thursday, September 13th.

We had a nice stop at the Winter Quarters Visitor Center in Omaha, Nebraska on Thursday

Bruce's brother and sister-in-law, Gary and Sharlene, have been serving a mission here in Nauvoo as teamsters for the past 18 months. We stayed with them our first night in town. They held a nice s'mores party for all of the Young Sister Missionaries.

We are just starting to know these wonderful young missionaries. Bit by bit we are recognizing faces and even putting them together with names.

Friday we began our mission "in the field." This began with a few days of very helpful orientation and training, lots of check writing, getting our home set up, meeting SO many new people, lots of studying and several trips to the "sewing room" to get our site clothing in order.

Speaking of site clothing: I am the proud owner of my first-ever custom made dress! It took four visits for measuring, sizing and fitting. Sister Hall, who made my dress, worked on it for more than two days during her shifts in the sewing room and then brought it to my house after she finished for the day. She wanted to make sure I could wear my OWN dress tomorrow, instead of the "loaner" I used today. 

Speaking of today: today was our first official day serving in the historic sites. I was in the Scovil Bakery while Bruce served in the Jonathan Browning Home and Gun Shop.The story of Lucius Scovil is a very compelling testimony of someone who gave everything he had, several times, to build up the kingdom of God. We are not able to tell his whole story in our 5 to 10 minute presentations, but I want to send everyone out of the shop with reference material, so they can really know him and his love for Jesus Christ.

Me, in my loaner dress, in the bakery

Lucius Scovil Bakery

Tomorrow Bruce will be serving in the Brickyard (I must admit that I am a tad jealous). I will be in the Heber C. Kimball home. This is a beautiful large brick home which the Kimball family was only able to live in for four months before they were forced by mobs to leave Nauvoo.

This is my lovely new dress, with an added collar and one of the aprons I made before I left home. I am certain there will be pictures with me actually wearing it in future posts since I will only have two dresses to wear in the sites during the 18 months we are here.

Now, some lovely Nauvoo pictures, for your enjoyment!

 Mississippi River Lotus

One of HUNDREDS of Pelicans

Sunset at the end of Kimball Street (Brigham Young's Home on the left)

 A fairy oasis in Brigham Young's Garden

By Small and Simple Things are Great Things Brought to Pass

Mission Day 3 Mission Training Center

The first three days of our mission, here at the Mission Training Center (hereafter "MTC"),  have been very busy and tiring because we are used to doing nothing less activity. We are enjoying the spirit, classes, teachers and other missionaries.

We had a small experience that taught us a great lesson in listening to the spirit

Every meal we make It a habit to seek out young missionaries to sit with. They are so outgoing and eager to tell us all about their missions. Likewise, they want to know all about us. At breakfast this morning we sat by three sisters who were all by themselves. They didn’t engage us first, as usually happens, and wouldn’t make eye contact. They mostly looked at their plates and ate silently. This was quite different. I asked one of the sisters where she was assigned to serve. In a very French accent, she said, “Montreal.” I said, “You already speak French!” She nodded. With a bit of difficulty, we came to understand that all three sisters are going to the Canada Montreal Mission and had come to the MTC to learn English, which they would also use on their missions. One sister was from France and the other two were from Tahiti (I am an uneducated oaf, who did not realize that French is spoken in Tahiti!). They had two weeks left at the MTC and it was obvious that they were not comfortable with their English conversation skills. Our conversation was punctuated with blank stares and “I am sorry. I don’t understand.” It was a rather quiet and awkward breakfast.

Fast forward to after lunch. We were walking out of the cafeteria and saw these three sisters. They brightened up, smiled and waved at us. We approached them so Elder Cornwell could give them his Savior of the World pictures. They were pleased. As we were getting ready to go our separate ways the sister from France said, “Excuse me. May we ask you a question?” I was pleased because those were the most words they any of them had spoken to us. We turned back and said, “certainly!” They had a question for Sister Martino (MTC President David Martino’s wife) and wanted to know if we thought it was appropriate to speak to her. In our short experience here we have observed that the young missionaries are very excited when Elder and Sister Martino speak to them or are even near them. They are celebrities! We might have erroneously felt that way about those who serve in leadership positions in the past. Our experience as leaders has taught us that none of us are any better than the other. Those in “high” positions are only serving there because of their faithful experience and willingness to do all the Lord asks them to do. I could tell the sisters were anxious about approaching Sister Martino. Since we have no such anxiety, I asked, “would you like us to go with you?” With relief they said, “Yes, please!” I think they thought we would be well-acquainted with the Martinos, since we are equally aged. We are not. I did not know where to find them, but I knew who to ask, so we confidently headed towards the offices. I peeked in a couple of doors to see if someone could direct me to Sister Martino’s office then turned to the left and there she stood, along with President Martino. We saw them about the same time they saw us. “How are the Cornwells!” Elder Martino called to us (Sidebar on Elder Martino: He works very hard to recognize all the senior missionaries and call them by name. He studies the photographs that come with the missionary recommendations so he can personally greet us without seeing our name tags). 

As we approached, Sister Martino came to me with open arms and gave me a loving hug. We motioned the sisters over and told Sister Martino that they had a question for her. She said, “Of course! First I need to give you each a hug!” When Elder Cornwell told President Martino that the sisters spoke French and were in the MTC to learn English, he began to speak to them in French. They all had bright smiles on their faces as we left them in the care of President and Sister Martino.

As we thought about this experience we realized this was a small thing to us, but a big thing to these dear sisters. 

Because we followed the prompting to sit with these sisters and try to communicate with them, they recognized us. Because Elder Cornwell followed to prompting to give them pictures, they trusted us. Because we were prompted to go with them to find Sister Martino, their anxiety to approach her was relieved. Because we followed inspiration, we were able to serve them and that is very rewarding!

Killing time in front of the Provo Temple before entering the MTC.

We are assigned to labor.....right here!

Beautiful flowers everywhere around the campus

View from the 6th floor of one of the new MTC towers.

Illinois Nauvoo Mission President and Sister Lusvardi (Sister Lusvardi and I taught our first year of school together at Greenwood Elementary School in American Fork, Utah)

Illinois Nauvoo Mission Bound!

Drew Receiving His White Coat (Blurry, Sorry!)

Here is Drew receiving his white coat at the LECOM (Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine) White Coat Ceremony on September 21, 2013. Sorry about the focus. The camera couldn't focus at that distance and low light.

Coconut Joy Cookies

Oh. My. Goodness! The only thing better than eating these cookies with a glass of milk would be eating them with a scoop of "Coconut Joy" ice cream from the BYU Creamery. I wish I lived within 100 miles because I would definitely make the trip to buy some.

Here is the recipe for these DELICIOUS coconut, chocolate, almond cookies:

Coconut Joy Cookies

1 c. packed brown sugar

1 c. butter (softened)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tsp. coconut extract or flavoring (buy it from Amazon or another online source, it will be much 

      less  per ounce and you will want to have a lot more of it on hand to make these cookies often)

2 eggs

2 c. all-purpose flour

1 pkg chocolate pudding mix (large box) or 1 ¼ cups dry pack cannery pudding

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (12 oz.)

1 pkg. (10-12 oz) coconut

1 cup almonds, chopped or sliced (measure, then chop)

Preheat oven to 325°F.  Beat together brown sugar, butter, vanilla, coconut extract and eggs in a large mixing bowl with electric mixer until creamy.

Stir in flour, pudding mix, baking soda, and salt.

Stir in chocolate chips, coconut, and almonds.

Drop dough by large spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 13-16 minutes until cookies are a tiny bit gooey. Remember they will continue to bake on the cookie sheet once removed from the oven.

Cool 1-2 minutes and remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.

"Keep Calm" Stackers

 The poster and phrase from the British "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" morale campaign of World War II has become popular in recent years. Many facsimiles and parodies have been created. See Keep Calm and Carry On Wikipedia.

I decided to use the phrase, logo and a bit of a knock-off to create some convertible stackers. I gave these to a couple of my friends. The block with the logo has the crown on one side and the Salt Lake Temple on the other. The "CARRY ON" block also says "KNEEL DOWN" on the other side. I painted these brown to match my friends' decor, but I am making another set for myself and painting those red, like the poster.

These were created using my Cricut and the "Make the Cut" software. I found the "Keep Calm" font free online (just do a search). If you want the .svg files of the crown and temple, email me (rbitrbit@gmail.com) and I will send them to you.

....Almost There! The Kitchen, That Is

This looks like the same view when I painted the cabinets back in November, but this is a view of my old counters and the kitchen prepped for new counters.

First comes tear out and haul away (free!!!). Tim and Kenny were AWESOME!! Yay FloForm Counters!

I have always lamented that the counter should extend almost to the window. Well, now is the chance. This is the "build-up" necessary to support the counter extension.

The wood framing is the support structure for the Corian. The product expands and contracts and this kind of support allows it to do that. We just can't stand on the counters (I do that from time-to-time...shhh!) ...anymore.

The first counter went in easily. There were no seams.

The right side needed to be seamed. You can see the seam in this picture, but you sure can't see it now.

Kenny buffing out the seam and scratches from transport.

All installed. Now it is time for Bruce to re-install and re-plumb the sink and for me to haul everything back into the kitchen.

They set the sink in but elevated it on blocks so we didn't need three people to lift it back up (it weighs over 150 pounds). The padding under the blocks is necessary because this Corian color (Medea) shows scratches (boo!).

When you marry an engineer you get someone who just knows how to figure things out. Bruce decided that it was going to be very hard to mount that sink by himself without scratching the Corian and incurring my wrath. He rigged up this jack on blocks and it worked PERFECTLY! Bruce caulked the counter, I lowered the jack as he adjusted the sink with not one mark on the counter.

Last minute measurements

A little "nudge" here and it is installed. The plumbing wasn't as easy.

It looks so good!

Here is my extra counter space.

It is sooooo long!!

The finished view. Now, just imagine the whole kitchen with a white subway tile back splash that goes from the counter to the cabinets and medium dark engineered hardwood floors.