Nauvoo

Nauvoo means "beautiful place" in Hebrew.

While we were there it WAS beautiful. The river, the purple flowers and the lily pads floating on what once was a swamp. The grounds are kept beautifully, and there are an abundance of well-kept flowerbeds overflowing with beauty everywhere.

But there was something else beautiful there too.

Nauvoo has a very special place in our family history. On my dad's side, the majority of his ancestors lived in Nauvoo before journeying West. Can anyone else say that? It is quite, quite unique how many of my progenitors lived in Nauvoo.

If you look at my Grandpa Flake's line:

-James Madison Flake and Agnes Haley Love were sealed in the Nauvoo temple

-Samuel Dennis White and Mary Hannah Burton were sealed in Nauvoo (and both of their parents!)

-Edson Whipple Sr. and Harriet Yeager were sealed in Nauvoo

-James McFate and Lucy Lisk were sealed in Nauvoo and their son, Joseph Smith McFate was BORN in Nauvoo

On my Grandma's side:

-Thomas Rice King and Matilda Robinson were sealed in Nauvoo

-James Webb and Hannah Griswold were buried in Nauvoo

So my family was very much involved in the story of Nauvoo! And you can feel it too when you are there. It's hard to put into words-- a similar feeling to that I had at the Lazy H Ranch where my grandparents lived some of their life. Like that place belongs to you and it's a part of you. Like a piece of them is still there.

Spending time in the Nauvoo temple led to amplified and additional venerated feelings. I have been to Nauvoo several times now, but this was actually my first time serving in the Nauvoo temple. As we sat in that sacred celestial room and looked up into those massive lofty ceilings, I couldn't help but think of my ancestors and what they had sacrificed for that temple.

So much of their time in Nauvoo was spent with the temple unfinished. Using one room, and then another as they became completed, never fully functioning or completed before they were forced out by violence. The emotion you feel as you look up to those soaring ceilings-- what would they think to see this temple now? How proud would they be of this beautiful building they designed, crafted in the finest details and recreated down to the smallest features they had imagined, in all its glory? It truly is Heaven on Earth. The Nauvoo temple in particular is so incredibly striking to behold because there is not a single thing around it that even comes close to its height and breadth for hundreds of miles, as compared to most modern temples today built up in city centers as we are used to.

Not only is Nauvoo special because of my family connection to it, but it has a unique spirit in the summer. The strength of the members visiting adds another level to the spirituality to that place. It takes a unique sort of person to visit Nauvoo-- to trek miles across the United States to see a pioneer village, and then attend on Sunday, while traveling, in their best dress clothes, by the hundreds, a sacrament meeting bursting at the seams with barely enough room to contain them. To then see those hundreds of people partaking of the Lord's sacrament (with two sacrament tables) and renew special covenants with Him is a spirit I won't soon forget. We stayed at a hotel a stone's throw from the temple and it was heartening to see people flocking to the temple. This temple out in the middle of nowhere! What once was a place people fled from because of persecution, has now become a place people flock to! Once the trek was from Nauvoo to Utah, and now the trek is from Utah to Nauvoo! A trek made to honor our ancestors, to show gratitude to their sacrifice, and to renew the same covenants that our progenitor's tribulations have made possible.

It's so beautiful to see the full circle. Truth circumscribed in one great whole, the beginning and the end, the last first and first last. Nauvoo is a beautiful place in more ways than one.

Thomas and Matilda King, sealed in Nauvoo