Weeks 33 and 34 and 35; February 10 to March 2, 2014

Hello: 

It is just amazing to me that time goes so fast.  We are working hard and enjoying every minute to serve as missionaries for the Church. 

During this past week Elder Pincock met two men who live in Eastern Idaho.  One is Shawn Brown from Newdale (family is Jessie and Linda Brown) and a man from Pocatello, Jonah Simmons.  Shawn knows the Val Schwendiman family in Newdale very well.  They are working in the area and came to Nauvoo to see what is here.  Hope they enjoyed their visit.

Sister Pincock went to the dentist the first part of the week to finish up her root canal and it can't be completed but the dentist said that it should be okay for awhile until sometime down the road she will need to have an implant done. 

We have our preparation days on Tuesday's, training meetings on Wednesday mornings, Rendezvous shows twice a week, Sunset on the Mississippi practices one night a week, serving every day but preparation day  and the time just flies by.  We are preparing to teach Priesthood and Relief Society on March 2 so that takes some of our time.  Sister Pincock has made 70 Christmas ornament ball (one for every Sister in the mission) and with her sewing items and working on Humanitarian things we run out of hours every day.

For Valentines Day, Sister Pincock  melted about 10 lbs of chocolate and made chocolate hearts for every couple in the mission.  It was fun to put the chocolates in small plastic bags, tie them up and place them in the mailboxes of each missionary.  It was a fun way to celebrate Valentine's Day.  thanks to you for the many, fun valentines and we hope our family enjoyed the ones we sent.  On Valentine Night we had a dance at the Cultural Hall  to celebrate Valentine's day.  It's the first time that anyone knows about that an actual dance has been held in this ballroom since the restoration of the Cultural hall. 

Cultural Hall where we have the Rendezvous shows and where the
Valentine's Dance was held

Dancing on the 3rd Floor of the Cultural Hall
(this is the original floor where Joseph and Emma danced)

Oh, a Valentine kiss

our friends, E/S Jones from Canada

For our celebration we went to Burlington (about 30 minutes away) and had dinner at Applebee's.  It was great!  We have not been to Applebee's since we left home last June.  Brought back some good memories of eating at the Idaho Applebee's with  Archibald's, Wade's, and our family.

On Valentine's Day we served at Carthage Jail.  It was a great place to serve and E/S Gneiting (from Rigby) even brought lunch for the 8 of us serving there that day.  That evening we had our new neighbors that moved in below us ( E/S Harris) over for dinner,

In March we will have our Relief Society commemoration at the Red Brick Store here in Nauvoo.  Can you even imagine!  Every year we celebrate the organization of the Relief Society and this year I get to be in the exact place where it took place.  I will be accompanying a group of ladies who are singing a special number for the occasion. We hold practices every few days. 

On February 18 we had a great shopping trip in Quincy.  I got two new shirts and two new coats and we bought a little freezer.  Yes, a freezer so can start making food for all our visitors this summer.  We are getting very excited.  I am also making a new supply of personalized pillowcases for our guests.  If you are coming this summer and have not called us yet, we encourage you to call this week.  Our "hotel" is getting filled up and the tickets for Rendezvous, Anna Amanda, The Promise  and other things are getting pretty filled up.    I know it is only the first of March but summer is coming fast and plans are moving right along.  And talk about visitors, we were surprised by Linda and Delbert Edstrom, who came to visit.

what a fun few minutes we spent with the Edstrom's from Rexburg

They had been to Branson and decided to come through Nauvoo on their way home  to see us and they got to see a performance of Rendezvous and reminisce their mission from about 5 years ago.  What a great surprise for us. 

We had a Rendezvous performance last week with absolutely no guests.  It happens once in a while.  We still had to put on the play and used it for a practice time on stage.  We take our little play pretty serious.  It goes on rain or shine, snow or freeze, guests or no guests!

I'm still in charge of one of the cookie baking sessions each week.  We are still trying to get our 80,000 cookies baked and frozen for the summer months.  It's quite a fun day.  I am including some fun pictures of the cookie production.

cookie baking

more cookie baking fun

We seem to have enough time to have other missionaries over for dinner and enjoy socializing.  Occasionally we meet someone at the sites who we drag home for a meal.  Last Sunday we had a man come into the Tin Shop where we were serving about 5 minutes to 5.  We were just getting ready to close.    We were expecting guests for dinner and so we just invited him to come to dinner with us and that got us out of the Shop pretty fast so we wouldn't be late before the others arrived.  He was a man who was across the river at Fort Madison for business meetings and had come over to Nauvoo for Sunday afternoon.  His parents live in Rigby.  We do not know them but some of you might.  They live on 400 North-Tom and Diane Wilson.   If you know  them tell them we had their son over for dinner. 

Tuesday we left home at 7:00 am and headed for St. Louis.  A missionary couple who are leaving in a couple of weeks wanted to see the St. Louis temple before they leave and so we drove over with them and attended a Temple session.  It's a beautiful Temple.

St. Louis Temple (we took the picture last fall)

Afterwards we went to St. Charles and visited that quaint little town and saw the spot where Lewis and Clark started off on their expedition  to explore the west.

Lewis and Clark Memorial in St. Charles Missouri.   St. Charles near St. Louis
was the starting point for the Lewis-Clark Expedition

They have a cute museum there. the original State capitol buildings of Missouri. stone streets, etc.

Original State Capital building for the State of Missouri

Brick streets in St. Charles

Missouri River

We had a great day.  We topped it off by going to Cracker Barrel  for dinner and I got to spend my gift certificates from Christmas.  I got two new skirts and paid for dinner.  Thanks for the fun Christmas gift.        

I'm sorry its been so long since we posted our last blog.  We are having great experiences.  They never end.  We did get bad news about our Mission President.  His health is not good enough to come so he has been released.  However, things go on just the same and the interim  president is doing a great job.  Isn't it wonderful how the church works so smoothly because of the organization of it and is never dependent on one person.

One of the many couples that we enjoy associating with is Elder and Sister Thurston.  They are from Blackfoot and she is the daughter of Betty Zundel from Pocatello, Idaho.  The Zundel's were good friends with Elder Pincock's parents and we knew Sister Thurston (Karen) in Pocatello. You just never know when you are going to meet someone that you grew up with.

Elder and Sister Thurston  (she is Karen Zundel from Pocatello)

We gave our lessons today on repentance and we were so touched by the message of them- that our Heavenly Father has a plan for everything.  We talked about the steps of repentance, how we all need to repent and how it works by the power  of the Atonement.  We were blessed to have been asked to give these lessons in Relief Society and Priesthood Meeting.  We hope you are all doing well.  We love you so very much  Keep doing your best.


Love,
Elder and Sister Pincock