Missouri

 Monday, October 21, 2024

Saturday evening we returned from a five day trip to Missouri. The purpose of the trip was to be at Charlottes baptism but since we were going, we decided to take a couple of extra days and spend them in Nauvoo. We had a lot of very cool experiences.

To give you an overview, we landed in St Louis late on Tuesday, rented a car and then drove to the Air BnB where Brandon, Ally and Charlotte were staying. Wednesday we drove to Nauvoo and spent the night in an Air BnB and then Wednesday we spent the day in Nauvoo and drove back to St Louis. We dropped the car off at the airport and Brandon picked us up. Thursday we checked out St Charles where Ally has lived for the last twenty years or so.

Friday was the same but in the evening we went to Boo at the Zoo at the famous St Louis zoo and then Saturday was Charlottes baptism. We flew hom Saturday evening. It was a whirl wind trip but very eventful.

Now for the details.

We met a lot of people on this trip with wild connections. The first one was in the San Diego airport. We were eating lunch enjoying a pulled pork sandwich when this couple comes up to us and says, “Are you Kira Palmers parents?” We said we were and it turns out that they were in Kira’s ward in Calgary and very good friends with them. Unfortunately I forgot their names but here is a picture of them. They had been in San Diego visiting family or friends or someone.

Other than Kira’s friends in San Diego, nothing interesting happened on Tuesday. We landed late in the evening and thankfully the Air BnB was only twenty minutes from the airport. Brandon and Ally waited up for us but we all went to bed shortly after we got there.

Wednesday we drove straight to Carthage. We were there nineteen years ago right after Brandon got home from his mission. Ben was on his mission and Kira was married so we only had the four kids with us. Carthage jail was the unchanged, but they’ve built a nice visitors center there. The tour of the jail was very solemn. It was well done.

We stopped at a small but rather amazing museum across the street from the jail. It would have been nice to spend more time there but our time was limited and we had to choose between the museum or Nauvoo. Nauvoo won.

I did take this picture for Kira though. Kira is a firm believer in “cupping” and I was quite amazed to see that they were “cupping” more than 150 years ago. Yes, I know it was used for boils but it was still cupping, exactly what Kira does to herself.

From Carthage we headed straight to the vistors center in Nauvoo, learned everything we could about our ancestors and then took a wagon ride tour. We then took a tour of Joseph & Emma Smiths first home and the Mansion House. These were just recently purchased from the Community of Christ (formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints).

When we finished that tour, we saw a missionary couple named Elder & Sister Sommerfeldt. This couple was not only on this tour with us but they were also on the wagon tour. They were always with friends and we didn’t want to interrupt them but since they were now alone we asked them where they were from. They were from some town in Utah. We asked if they had any family in Alberta. Fara’s first husband was a Sommerfeldt and Alma Sommerfeldt was quite possibly my favorite teacher in high school. He taught me math.

He said he grew up in Lethbridge and Alma was his uncle but as we got talking we could tell that we connected on the Lybbert side as well. His grandmothers name was Ella Dora Lybbert. It was a different Ella Dora than my ancestor but with that name we had to be related.

We pulled out our “Relatives Around Me” app and we are second cousins. My Grandpa Lybbert (Lester) had a sister named Ella Dora and she was his Grandma. Elder & Sister Lybbert weren’t just missionaries, they were Mission Leaders (the new name for Mission President) of the Independence Missouri mission. There was a big Mission Leader Training session going on and they were in town for that.

After chatting with the Sommerfeldts, we checked out the Nauvoo House. This building was also aquired from the Community of Christ but it is not safe for tours and no work has been done on it yet. Frederick Kesler was there when Joseph Smith buried the orginal hand written manuscript in the South East corner stone in 1841 and then he was also there forty one years later when Lewis Bidamon opened the corner stone. Unfortunately, much of the manuscript was damaged by water. Bidamon was handing out the pages to anyone who wanted one. Frederick Kesler asked for a page and some guy ripped his page in half and gave Kesler half of a page. It is kind of sad but nearly ¾ of the manuscript has been not been recovered. This is Lisa chilling by where the cornerstone would have been.

We then attended an endowment session in the temple. There was a full moon which made the temple look very cool but this picture doesn’t look nearly as cool as it did in real life.

We then headed for our Air BnB and met the third person with connections.

Rachel has a cool story about how her and her husband ended up in Nauvoo. While the story is cool it turns out that Rachel grew up in Northern Alberta. When I say north, this is even quite a bit North of Edmonton. I don’t think we are related in any but we know people in common and she is from Alberta.