October 27, 2015- Farewell Nauvoo

I love this red bush in front of our house during Fall.

Dear Family and Friends,

            I am sad to say this will be our last letter here in the mission field. We will be leaving on November 6, 2015 to come home. We will have been here for twenty months, and have had a wonderful mission. We received news last week that Elder Schultz (Harry) has prostate cancer that has spread into his left pelvic bone, and we need to go home to start treatments. As a result, we won’t be able to put on the Miracle of Christmas concert again. But we are handing it over to very capable missionaries here who have had much experience in music, pageants, productions, so we know it will be a success. 

Last dinner with our missionary group before going home last August

Our last performance of Sunset on the Mississippi

            As we end our mission, a flood of feelings and memories keep coming to us. We feel so blessed and honored to have been called here to serve. What an awesome experience to represent those early saints who actually lived here in Nauvoo. I would like to share some of the wagon narration I give each week to visitors here, both members and nonmembers of our church:

            “We hope you’ve caught the spirit of Nauvoo as you’ve traveled with us today. It takes all kinds of people to make a community. In Old Nauvoo thousands came from many walks of life to form a community of believers in the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. You will be able to hear more about the lives of those courageous men and women who built this city from a swampland in only six and half years, as you go through these homes and shops. They gave their all to build this beautiful city and the beautiful temple on the hill.”

            And another wonderful quote by President Gordon B. Hinckley about Nauvoo’s temple that I share:

            “Today facing west, on the high bluff overlooking the city of Nauvoo, across the Mississippi and over the plains of Iowa, there stands Joseph’s temple, a magnificent house of God. Here in the Salt Lake Valley, facing east to that beautiful temple in Nauvoo stands Brigham’s temple, the Salt Lake Temple. They look towards one another as bookends, between which there are volumes that speak of the suffering, the sorrow, the sacrifice, even the deaths of thousands who made the long journey from the Mississippi River to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake.”

            These are examples of the kinds of people and stories that we have represented for the past 20 months. What a privilege! And most of all, I honor my own great great grandparents on both my mother’s and father’s sides who lived here. The Smiths, Whitings, Coxes, Berrys, Fieldings, and Harrises all left here and followed a prophet, Brigham Young, across the United States to Utah because of their strong faith. Oh how hard that must have been to walk away from their homes, businesses, farms, gardens, orchards, and load a wagon and head to an unknown place in the Rocky Mountains. Being here and seeing and living it has made this place come alive for me.

            We feel that we have gained so much more than we could have ever given on this mission. The other missionaries we have served with are valiant people, who have spent their lives in service to the Lord. We have grown to love them so much! They will be lifelong friends, almost like family. Our families have been blessed while being out here. Three grand babies have been born while here and three grandchildren baptized. Our business has carried on successfully, thanks to our sons, Ben, Ryan and Harrison.

       We have met hundreds of wonderful people from all over the United States and the world, while serving in the Visitor Center. We hope we have planted seeds of the gospel, and helped strengthen church members too. We have gotten acquainted with the amazing local citizens who live here in Nauvoo like Mayor McCarty, Fathers Sydlick and Tony from St Peter and Paul Catholic church, our pharmacist Luann Haas, Marian in the post office, Barton Golding, president of Chamber of Commerce, Kim Orth, young mom of 2 girls and head of Nauvoo Tourism, Robert Saint, owner of a hair salon, Durrell Nelson, in the temple presidency and owns the Fudge Shop, Laurie Peterson, director of the Nauvoo orchestra, Rick Marshall, the temple recorder and conductor of our Christmas concert- and so many more! We will miss them all! We have also been blessed by going out in the communities of Burlington and Fort Madison as members of the public affairs committee.  We met many Christian people with strong values who we have learned so much from, and made great friends.

Missionary friends at last breakfast before we all leave this month

       We have been able to attend the beautiful Nauvoo temple many times. What a blessing to be in that sacred House of the Lord, a replica of the original one that was destroyed. We will miss it so much. Our testimonies have been strengthened by our weekly and monthly trainings from our presidency and zone leaders. We also have been spiritually fed by church leaders who have come here to teach us i.e. Elder Tom Perry, Elder Jeffrey Holland, and many members from the Seventies quorums, and the Durrants.

       We have also felt the power of prayer and priesthood blessings on our mission.

            Elder Schultz and I have been performing a vignette called Thomas and Elizabeth in the Rendezvous nightly show. It is about a husband and wife who are preparing to leave and go west. But she doesn’t want to go, and he has to convince her, which he finally does. We sing a duet together at the end with very tender words which I would like to share in closing, and it expresses our true feelings about leaving Nauvoo:

            “And so Nauvoo, I say farewell to you, with numb and aching heart, one last adieu

            As through our tears we look to homes beyond, will ever we be fond of one as you?

            One cardinal song, one sunset glow, one Nauvoo dawn, one silhouette of woods on             snow…

            On templed hill, faint echoes ring…. Where prophets walked and talked with God,

            Their memories linger…

            And so we go and hide our aching hearts, No one will see our tears when we depart

            This home we leave will shelter memories clear, of all that we hold dear….In Old

             Nauvoo…. Farewell Nauvoo, Farewell Nauvoo.”

Thank you everyone who has written to us, encouraged us, sent us gifts, packages of treats and supported us on this mission. This place has truly made us better people than before, and we are grateful we had the opportunity to serve here in this blessed place.

We love you all, and look forward to seeing you soon.

Love Elder Harry and Sister Nancy Schultz

September 5, 2015-Illinois State Fair, A Wedding & Nashville Tribute Band prep

Dear Family and Friends:

            It seems like I just wrote a letter but realized it has been almost 3 weeks! It’s hard to believe how fast time is going on this mission. We would have been leaving this week on September 10, and it’s been hard seeing all of our MTC group packing and getting ready to leave. But we had a great training meeting by our president, where he told us to always feel like we are in the “middle of our mission,”, even if we are close to leaving; to serve valiantly until the end. So that is what we are doing. We have about 15 weeks left, and will work hard until we go home.

            Many of you may have already heard, but our renter in our Brea home, Theresa McCoy, passed away on August 13 from stomach cancer. She fought a valiant fight, and we are so sad about their family’s loss. She was the mother in law of Susan Vargas’ son, so if any of you knew them, it would be nice to send them a note of condolences. Our address there is 204 Napoli Dr., Brea.

Good morning, Illinois! On the way to State Fair. “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!”

            Some amazing events have happened in the past few weeks. On the 3rd and 4^th weekends of August, we went with Nauvoo on the Road again to the Illinois State Fair in Springfield. They invited us back from last year, and we were at the same location, right inside the main gate, at the Looking for Lincoln area. 3 vans took 7 sister missionaries, and 6 couples to help with the pioneer games and activities, and to perform in 3 shows per day. We went for a Friday and Saturday, and the next Friday too. We met hundreds of nonmembers, and gave out brochures, asking them to come to visit Nauvoo. Almost everyone had not even heard of Nauvoo, which is right here in their state. It was a great experience again, and we made very good friends with the directors of the fair.

Our Fair location

With director, Heather Wicken and Lincoln

Our location at the Fair by Lincoln Heritage area.

Nauvoo on the Road

            On Saturday, Aug. 15, I had the wonderful experience of attending the endowment session of Zenta Logan, who was baptized last year. She is from Burlington, and I was able to help in her joining the church. What a privilege to see her stay active, and prepare this past year to go to the temple. It was also neat to see her ward step in and fellowship her. The bishopric and wives, the Relief Society president, her visiting teacher and home teacher were all in attendance. And a sister who has become her good friend in the ward was her escort. Then we had a small luncheon in her honor at a missionary’s home. She was so happy to take this next step in her conversion, and I was happy to be part of that.

            We have lots of social events with this mission, and especially with each of our casts. There are about 65 persons in 3 casts. Our cast is called the "Sarah Granger Cast." Last week we went out to Bonaparte, Iowa for a dinner put on by the Bontragers, an Amish family. They are the family I told about in April who have 8 children and came to Nauvoo to visit, and they have 2 sets of twins. They held the dinner in their barn, and the food was delicious. About 58 of us came, and they served us homemade fried chicken, mashed potatoes & gravy, vegetable, cole slaw, homemade bread, and homemade pies for dessert. They also own a bakery where they sell baked goods to the public. What a treat this was to experience their culture. Marie, the mom, cooked the food, John and the children served, and cleaned up. It was so much fun!! They live in a big Victorian home, and the kids were all barefoot, and sat at the table with us to eat. They seemed so pure and untouched by the crazy world- not worldly at all. I was a little jealous of their simple life.

            Also this month, on August 29, was the wedding of our dear single senior sister, Sharon Watkins. She is also from Laguna Niguel in Orange County, and served in the Newport Beach Temple on a different shift. She met a single man here in Nauvoo, who is on a service mission, fixing all of our computers, etc. in the visitors center. His name is Brother Larry Nicholl.  They shared an office upstairs and decided to get married in July, and they asked me to help them plan their wedding. I was the wedding planner and had a lot of fun working with their florist, the caterer, and gathering all the decorations.  It was held outside here in the women’s garden, and they were married by Bishop Cluff, his bishop. They had about 400 persons in attendance, and it turned out to be beautiful, if I do say so. They paid a caterer and a florist. I ordered linens from my nephew Ron, Berrett- in coral colors and soft yellows.  We used the pioneer theme with corals and ivory, and old lace doilies, oil lamps, mason jars with wild flowers, etc. They served chicken croissants, spinach salad, and 3 kinds of grapes. They had 3 flavored waters and the caterers made 2 delicious cakes- gingerbread with fresh whipped cream and banana with cream cheese icing. Oh, and Elder Schultz set up the sound and coordinated a program! It made me feel like the good ole days of catering. It felt good to use my talent again. 

            Our present projects besides the regular duties of serving as site leaders in the Visitor's Center, is helping coordinate the concert coming here on October 10, called the Nashville Tribute Band- and country band of 9 LDS guys from Nashville who put on an Interfaith Community concert. We have a commitment from a Christian church in Burlington who is pastored by the mayor Shane McCampbell, to come and sing with them. They are performing a “Nashville Tribute to Jesus Christ” called Redeemer, with their original songs, etc. We are helping market it, and make it a success by getting people to come to Nauvoo. It is actually being sponsored by the Nauvoo Tourism Office, who is led by our good nonmember  friend, Kim Orth, and she is so excited that we are working together on this. Please pray for its success! We also hope it will be a great missionary activity.

            We started our new vignette last week in "Rendezvous." We are now Thomas and Elizabeth, not Peter and Abigail. We learned all new dialogue, and we even sing a duet together which has been a challenge for both of us. But we are happy to help in this show in any way we can.

            We do miss and love all of you, but feel a great responsibility to continue serving on our mission. We will soon start the rehearsals, and preparation for "The Miracle of Christmas" program. This is the reason we were asked to stay. So we will be working hard on that after the October concert. We look forward to seeing you in a few months. Thank you so much for all your support and encouragement. We have loved this mission, and most of all we have loved serving the Lord, and testifying of His restored gospel.

Please write to us if you can. We love hearing of all the news back home.

Love Elder and Sister Schultz

May 17, 2015-Lots of new things, my walk in the Groves, and Elder Schultz speaking japanese

Dear Friends and Family,

            It has been three weeks since I last wrote and time seems to fly by so quickly. I apologize because this will be a long letter. Spring is here and Nauvoo is beautiful and green once again. We have had a lot of rain, and are still wearing sweaters and jackets, but it is warming up.

 Tonight we had our first district meeting with our new “Martin Harris” district. We have the Harwoods, who came out with our MTC group last year, and he is the first counselor in the presidency. We also have 2 young single sister missionaries, and two new couples; the Sullivans and Swensons, both from Utah. We had dinner here, and then discussed the principles President Gibbons was taught at the Mission Presidents training conference in Denver last month. All twelve apostles were there, which shows how important missionary work is to our leaders. This great work of bringing souls unto Christ is their first priority, and we surely feel it out here on our mission. We received the last 5 couples on Friday, so now we are up to our full quota for missionaries. And we really do need them! We are getting more and more visitors per day here; we average about 300-400 a day, and that will increase when school gets out.

Elder Schultz with Nauvoo Temple President James MacArthur. An old missionary leader from Japan. He was his AP.

            One big event here is the re-opening of the local grocery store, formerly named “Duck’s.” It is now the "Nauvoo Market," and was bought by 2 LDS men, and remodeled. It opened last Friday, and we are so glad! It is clean and very light, and has well stocked shelves. Now we don’t have to travel to Keokuk for everything!

            We have more new responsibilities added to our very busy lives. I became a wagon narrator last week, and narrated three school field trip wagons. It was a lot of fun telling 30 children on each wagon all about Nauvoo, and pointing out the different homes and shops. I only get to do it once a week, until we get busier. We only have six wagons and six carriages going out now, but starting next week, we will have 18 wagons and carriage rides. This is exciting!

            All of the new summer shows start next Saturday, May 23, including the outdoor "Sunset by the Mississippi" show. We are all busy learning our songs and actions to participate. They chose Harry and I to perform our song and jokes again. And then I will also be singing the duet with Sister Swindler and the blue grass band. That leads to Elder Schultz’s new job: he will be performing every night in that show, not just twice a week with our cast. That means we will not be doing our Peter and Abigail vignette, and I will go to Rendezvous show alone. The reason is that he is needed to play for several specialty numbers with his bass, in the small bluegrass band. Needless to say, he is in heaven!! One of the Young Performing Missionaries plays a five string banjo, so they have his bass, a guitar, a strumming banjo, and the picking banjo. A girl also plays a fiddle. So their band is playing “Dueling Banjos,” “Orange Blossom Special” and about 5 other numbers they are backing up. AND he is helping setup the sound equipment for the show, and making sure everything is hooked up correctly, so that the YPM sound intern can run it; lots of cords, cables, cordless microphones, and monitors. He is really  reliving his former life of shows and loving it!

            We are also very busy on the Public Affairs Committee. We are preparing for two BYU groups to come in the month of June: The Young Ambassadors and the Ballroom Dance Team. We have been setting up outreach events for them to help with service projects, and then perform at local cities i.e. Keokuk, Burlington, Fort Madison (our 2 cities), Carthage, Quincy, Hamilton and Montrose. This is to do missionary work, by getting people to come to Nauvoo to see them perform. We are also getting publicity materials out like flyers and posters- flooding the stores and public places. Elder Schultz and I are also hosting a VIP tour with all the leaders of Burlington on May 28- the mayor and 20 people are coming here (it is about an hour away) and we are providing a continental breakfast for them, taking them on wagon rides and to see some sites. A lot of planning has gone into this, so we hope it turns out!

            Elder Schultz also can’t get away from feeding the multitudes! 2 weeks ago he put on a “Grateful” breakfast to all of the FM (Facilities Management) people, men and women who literally run the place. There are about 60- he did a pancakes, sausages, and drinks, and they loved it. They have a big “break room” down at their complex, and he used their large griddle. This week he is feeding breakfast to all the teamsters: about 30 of them! He can’t get catering out of his blood!

             We continue to serve in the Visitor's Center as the site leaders, which means we are training lots of new couples on how to greet people, give them tours, help them plan their activities, show films, and be missionaries. We had a few familiar visitors this past two weeks. Buddy Youngreen, our good friend from Utah who was head of the Joseph Smith Sr. Family Organization for 33 years came with 2 friends. He is an expert on Nauvoo and Church History. We didn’t know he was coming, but we spent our whole Friday P-day with them, and he took us to special unknown places involving the Smith families. What a treat this was to listen to him explain many unique things. Then Devin Davis, or Elder Davis, who was a YPM last summer, came back to Nauvoo for a week-long visit, and he stayed with us in our extra bedroom. We really bonded and became his “other parents” last year, so we enjoyed catching up with him. Then yesterday, we saw and visited with Lacey Murdock and her new husband Barry ( I don’t remember their last name). She was in the Fullerton 8^th singles ward when Harry was the bishop. They live in Arizona now, and seem so happy! We love seeing old friends and meeting new ones. That is one great thing about being in the Visitor's Center.

            I had a wonderful personal experience yesterday. I went on a walk down on the flats of Nauvoo, in what we call “The Groves.” They are next to the pageant stage, and it reminded me so much of The Sacred Grove. There is a winding path with “reader boards” telling about sermons given in the groves around Nauvoo by Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Brigham Young and others. They had to meet outside because there were no buildings big enough. It was a beautiful sunny day, with a quiet breeze blowing, and the birds were singing. I just sat on a bench and took it all in- I took time to ponder things, and just listen to the sounds. It was an amazing time and it really fed my soul. I was overcome with gratitude of being on a mission in this sacred place, and how much I have grown to love the former saints who lived here, but also the new people we have met; fellow missionaries, and Nauvoo citizens. I will really miss them when we have to leave in 7 months.

            I was privileged to give many tours these past weeks to nonmembers, and share my testimony. I met a great family from Japan yesterday who were here visiting, and chose to come to Nauvoo; a grandfather with his daughter and 3 grandchildren. They were not members but loved the history. I gave them Japanese Books of Mormon, and told what our church believed. Elder Schultz spoke Japanese to them and it was a special time. We have these experiences several times a day.

I am so grateful that I have this gospel to guide my life, and grateful for the Lord making it possible by restoring His church on the earth in these latter days. We are having an awesome mission!!!

Love to all of you,

Elder and Sister Schultz

Or (Mom and Dad)