Boo-ti-ful Nauvoo

The town of Nauvoo celebrates Halloween in a big way.  We experienced it last night.  There are about 1100 people who live in Nauvoo.  People come from all of the surrounding towns for this celebration and it was big.  The streets up in the commercial part of town are lined with jack-o-lanterns--about 400-500 of them.  That is one of the things that we missionaries do--carve the pumpkins.



Here are Elder Johnson and Mark carving.

 Some girls who grew up here come home to take charge of the pumpkin carving.  They draw the designs, tell us how to do it, and bring us pumpkins to do according to our experience level.  We used little saws that you see on the table.  It is really fun.

We carved in the mission green house.  It was a little on the chilly side.

Some of the pumpkins waiting to be put on trailers.

Our good friends, the Calls.



I carved too. 

 The building was open for two days and missionaries went and carved whenever they had time.

Here are some shots of the finished jack-o-lanterns sitting around town.

It was still kind of light for this one.

They had some large jack-o-lanterns that they auctioned off later in the evening.  These were some of them.  You can tell the display wasn't on church property.

More for the auction

Some of the local organizations sold slices of pie, hot chocolate, hot dogs, etc.  My new friend, Marilyn Candidos is in the hat and shades.



Main Street with jack-o-lanterns.  The temple spire is at the left. 



A "cat" jack-o-lantern

About 6 in the evening, there was a parade.  People dressed up in costume, some costumed their dogs, and etc.

A couple of characters in the parade.  The lady who cuts my hair is Minnie.

There was a cute train in the parade.  I couldn't get it in one shot, but had to get it for my grandsons.

More of the train

The caboose

 President Obama and Governor Romney walked in the parade.



Here comes the missionary band.

 The missionaries had a crazy band in the parade.  They rode on a carriage pulled by horses, Mike and Ned.  Mark is at the right driving the horses.

Another shot of the horses and carriage.  Elder Endter is the teamster on the carriage with Mark.  Elder Poulsen at left and Elder Rodgers at right are walking along to make sure no one gets in the way of the horses.

Mark was sort-of smiling

Some of our talented band members

Sister Endter is waving

Elder & Sister Openshaw and Elder Wise

Mike and Ned

Elder Endter backed up so we could get a good shot of Elder Dahl

Sister Heaton bagging kettle corn for the folks

The mission furnished Elder & Sister Anderson's kettle corn for everyone.  They gave out about 1300 bags of kettle corn.

Sister Anderson.  She and her husband make the kettle corn.

Elder Newman with a kettle of kettle corn

Elders Christensen, Andersen, Newman making the kettle corn.



 As the evening got darker, the designs showed up better.

Jack-o-lanterns

They look better lit up.



Here's a great one.



I like the animals on the second one from the left.

The one on the left has card shapes and the mouth spells Bridge.  Elder Call carved it.

We had an enjoyable time at the Boo-ti-ful Nauvoo.  The missionaries were involved in order to support the community.  We had a good time and made some new friends.