Nauvoo Illinois Temple

Temple #62

Nauvoo, Illinois

April 9, 2016

     Welcome to Nauvoo! What a fantastic city to visit! After Chicago we headed West and made it to Nauvoo Illinois. Out of all the cities we planned of driving through on our way home Nauvoo was the one we planned on staying in the longest. We were there for three fun-filled, spiritual days. It was great! Ivy had been to Nauvoo twice, but it was my first time there. Ivy's grandma and grandpa Kunz served in the Nauvoo temple on missions as well which made going a little more special. 

     We started our time in Nauvoo by going to the temple. The Nauvoo temple is unique in many ways that make it just amazing. It was great driving through the small town of Nauvoo and then coming around the corner and seeing the building in which we had seen hundreds of pictures of. 

     The temple was larger than I expected as well when we walked up to it. It was spring and the flowers were just blooming making the temple and it's grounds even more pretty. We walked to the front of the temple and across the street where a statue of Joseph and Hyrum Smith riding horses stands, which seems to be a famous place for pictures and so we got a couple ourselves. 

     The temple itself is facing West unlike most other temples in the Church which face East. The reason being is because it was first built that way in 1840 and rebuilt exactly as it was, and as Gordon B. Hinckley said, it is as a bookend with the Nauvoo temple in the East and the Salt Lake City Temple in West with hundreds of Pioneer stories in between. It was incredible to think of what the pioneers sacrificed and did to build the Nauvoo temple when it was first built. 

     Walking into the Nauvoo temple was like a dream in a way. It felt as if we were walking into a church movie or something. When you first go in you can go to some doors which are open and they lead into the assembly room which looks just like in the movies. It is gorgeous and the feelings inside are indescribable. 

     We did a session and absolutely loved the entire thing. During the session we moved throughout rooms which were all beautifully painted with murals. There are only seven temples where you go throughout four different ordinance rooms as you progress through a session, so it was neat to go through the Nauvoo and experience it. It really felt as if we had gone back to the days of Joseph Smith and gone through the temple then. Everything was remade like the original and the decorations, flooring and furnishings were similar to what would have been in the temple in the 1840’s. It was simply incredible. 

     My parents, Doug and Laurel, just barely went to Nauvoo and the temple there. After they returned they told me it was incredible, and the entire experience there “was life changing.” I agree as well to those words. The temple was great but the spirituality of Nauvoo doesn't stop there. We went throughout Nauvoo the rest of that day and the next where we continued to love it and feel the spirit. 

     There are a few museums throughout old Nauvoo which give you an idea of how the saints lived. It was nice to go when we did because, although it was cold, there weren't that many tourists there. Apparently it can get crowded in the summer months. 

     We did a wagon ride as well which was neat and informational and then went to a play that the senior missionaries put on. It was a fun play with catchy songs that was worth seeing. 

     While in the area we also stopped by Carthage Jail one day while there. This is where the Prophet Joseph Smith was martyred. It was a sacred place as well and a solemn place. It was touching to go there and to see the place where the great prophet had been killed. 

     We had the same feelings in Nauvoo as we walked down the road, Parleys Street, which led to the Mississippi River. It was sad to imagine the poor pioneers as they had to leave their homes and temple and journey west. When we left Nauvoo we were also saddened even though we were headed home. The spirit was so strong there from the beauty of the place and the temple and from the people there. It was all incredible. 

     We loved Nauvoo so much that we went to a small shop and found a ring which we saw a temple worker wearing and bought it for me for my wedding ring. It had on it an image of the sunstones which surround the top of the temple, and has on the sides a moon and a star. The sunstone represents the rising forth of the Gospel in these last days and the restoration of the Gospel. The ring for me is a reminder not of just my marriage by also my love for the Gospel. 

     Nauvoo was amazing and there is so much more that I could write and say about it, about its history, its temple, the pioneers, and the members now there. It is a place that we encourage all to go to, like a pilgrimage in a way, yet just for a spiritual benefit. Our testimonies were strengthened there and we know that what the pioneers started nearly two hundred years ago there was the truth.