Dear Family & Friends,
Since the last blog message was done on Tuesday, this blog message should be shorter; but because of what we did the rest of the week it may not be any shorter. Last Tuesday evening we attended the Hill Cumorah Pageant, this time without having an assignment. We just sat back and relaxed and greatly enjoyed the Pageant. We knew this would be the last time we would have the opportunity to see the Pageant while we are serving as missionaries. The Pageant is much like the scriptures; as we read the scriptures we keep learning more from them, even though we have read the words previously. Each time we have seen the Pageant while serving as missionaries, we have also learned new things we did not notice previously, even though we have seen it. Prior to the Pageant we attended two presentations given in the basement of the Hill Cumorah Visitors Center. Since this is the 75th anniversary of the Pageant; these two presentations were on the topic of the history of the Pageant. One was a 15 minute video summary of some Pageant milestones. A number of people who were a part of producing and directing the Pageant provided short comments about some of the miracles of the Pageant. The second presentation was done by two past presidents of the Pageant, and the costume designer for many of the Pageant costumes. Charles Whetten was the director and producer of the 1988 completely revised version of the Pageant; he spoke about how the Lord’s hand was very evident in putting this new production together through divine direction. Orson Scott card wrote a lot of the script for the 1988 Pageant. Crawford Gates talked about a few experiences he had in writing the music for the 1988 production. We learned later that the music he wrote has had very few minor changes in it since he wrote it; essentially the same music is still used today. While he was working on the music; he said he prayed a lot and had done 17 writings of the music but none of them sounded right. So he asked one of the 12 apostles to give him a blessing to help him; which was done. In the blessing one phrase stood out to him; he was told he would feel the right music. This is precisely what happened and he was then able to complete the music and have it sound right. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Utah Symphony, and the Mormon Youth Choir performed the music; and it was professionally recorded. Gail and Jerry Argetsinger were involved in producing the pageant for a number of years; they are both in the University Of Rochester Theater Department. Gail designed over 3000 of the costumes used in the Pageant. Gail shared a couple of miraculous experiences in getting the costumes done for the 1988 Pageant. One was about being led by the Spirit to two unique dress shops in NY where she obtained 50 of the costumes she needed which were already to use as they were; and they matched exactly the type of clothing that would have been worn by people who lived in the time of the people who would have lived when the event took place. The second one was the miracle of the Goop. This mixture was used to make cording on a group of costumes. Gail had the lady who actually placed the Goop on the costumes tell her personal experience in doing this. The Goop was put in place on the costumes by using a cake decorating squeeze tube. She placed the Goop on the costumes for the first performance; and as the cast members went out on the stage the temperature was so hot and the humidity so high the Goop melted and ran down the costumes. The next morning when the lady told Gail they had a problem to fix; Gail asked how much Goop she had left, and she said about one Cool Whip size container full. Gail asked how much she needed and she said about 2 gallon; but they had not time to get any more. They prayed together for help to take care of the problem, and Gail left to take care of some other things. The lady went to work putting the Goop back on the newly cleaned costumes. She just kept filling up her squeeze tube from the same Cool Whip size container; and after a few hours she had them all done. At this point it finally dawned on her that the amount of Goop had been enough to do the job; and she still had about as much as she started with. This second Goop application lasted for the rest of the Pageant, even though it was hot and humid. Another miracle happened in getting the totally new stage built in time for the Pageant in 1988. The full new script had not been approved by the First Presidency until the first of the year 1988. The directors told the crew to save the old stage and store it behind the Hill Cumorah just in case it was needed; a few weeks after that the old stage caught fire and was destroyed. They had not yet found a stage building company that had time to build a stage. By divine help Thiokol Chemical Co. near Ogden UT had somehow gained access to some oil well drilling platforms which fit the need for the new stage. Footings were put in place on which to place the platforms. When the platforms arrived the legs did not match the footings that were made. At this point they discovered that the Lord had provided a member of the Cast and Crew who was a professional welder; so they set up a welding fabrication shop area and the welder and some helpers made the right legs to fit the footings. The stage was finished within just a few days of the Thursday night rehearsal. These are a few of the miracles of the Pageant; there are many more; they lead me to know that this Pageant is the Lord’s Pageant, not man’s.
Wednesday evening we went to the airport to get on a plane to fly to Provo to be present for the temple sealing of our grandson Austin and his wife Josie in the Draper Temple on Saturday. Our flight from Rochester to Atlanta was delayed an hour; and our flight from Atlanta to SLC was also an hour and a half late leaving; but we finally made it SLC about 1:30am; where Jana was waiting to pick us up and take us to our house. We arrived at about 2:45 am Thursday; that was a 22 hour day for us from Wednesday at 6am to when we arrived at our home. We went a few days early so we could take care of a few items of business we needed to do; and also our family had arranged to have a family reunion with us on Friday while we were there. We express our great appreciation to all who helped with the reunion; it was truly an awesome reunion. We are so pleased and happy that all of our children were able to come while we were there. We had a very enjoyable few days together. We were blessed to see and hold our 28th grandchild for the first time and to also see two of our great grand-children we had not seen or held yet. We were able to visit for a few minutes with some of our neighbors while we were there. We met our new neighbor across the road who is a Police Officer and has been very good to keep an eye on our place. We also visited with our neighbors Ruth Johnson, and Bruce and Linda Gammon, and Harold and Gloria Thomas and their son John; and also Dee Ann Jenkin, who is an aunt to Elder Hole here in our mission. Saturday was beautiful day and we had a spiritual experience to help Austin and Josie receive their temple ordinances, including being sealed forever. We were pleased to meet Josie’s family; they are great people. We were very blessed to also have Jay be available to do the sealing for them, and Loni was with Jay. Thank you very much Jay for being available to do the sealing for them; The Spirit directed what was said. Due to poor communication on my part, Jay and Loni were in an earlier endowment session than we and Austin and Josie; I failed to follow a prompting to call Jay on Friday; I feel badly that we missed having them on the same session with us. There was a powerful felling of the Spirit in the temple with us; some of our parents and family and ancestors from the Spirit world attended with us; I know and felt that is true. We spent some additional time with some of the family Saturday evening. This morning we got up 4 am and Josh picked us up and got us to the SLC airport by about 5:30am for our 7 am flight to Atlanta which was a half hour late leaving. We were blessed to not have too far to walk in the Atlanta airport to get to our flight from Atlanta to Rochester. We made it to Rochester about 5:30pm; and got to our house about 6:15pm. Now that this blog message is about done we will get to bed at a decent hour and hopefully be ready for all the responsibilities of tomorrow.
We express our love to each of you for being who you are and living the way do and doing all the good things you do. Thank you again to our daughters who did much of the work for the reunion; we love you and are so grateful for all you did.
Love,
Mom & Dad, Grandma & Grandpa, Richard & Maxine
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