Goodbye Old Girl

Last Sunday, the band and the stage missionaries joined together to sing "Invocation", the signautre song of the YPMs. In this grouping are the kids I became closest to, minus one and I never did get her picture. We say goodbye so often in Nauvoo, it's almost like, Okay, just get out of here. But the truth is I kept singing the song "Don't you let my heart know that you're leavin'... Leave me now, before my heart finds out."

Some of the Young Performing Missionaries at the Talent show, which is also their big goodbye. The sister on the far right is Sister Smith. She is an orchestra teacher and is fabulous on the violin and the clarinet. We had a lot of good visits together. It was hard to see the band go. They would stop by Land and Records every day but Sunday and get a popsicle of some other little treat we had for them and visit for a few minutes.

Oops, I uploaded the wrong picture--- this is the table setting for the goodbye party I threw for Sister Longhurst. We had all of the Senior Single Sisters in the mission over to our home for dinner and an ALOHA. It was pretty fun even if I do say so myself.

Elder and Sister Andrus, and Elder Black as they did their "goodbye". It was really funny. They kept moving around on the stage like they were going to put on a huge production and finally they sang, "Well goodbye to Nauvoo" took a bow and sat down. I loved it!!!

Elder and Sister Camp and Elder and Sister Myers were the directors of the Sunset by the Mississippi. The Myers were asked to stay on until the end of Sunset, which they did and were so fun. The Camps were primarily responsible for the Young Performing Missionaries, but had the final word on any staging or scripting changes.

Elder and Sister Foster were our zone leaders along with Elder and Sister Nelson sitting behind the two that are standing. They met the Ludwigs in Colorado and were very good friends.

Sister Longhurst, my former companion , sitting literally in the limelight as they made all the departing missionaries sit on the sunset stage at 6:45 AM while we said goodbye to them with a breakfast of cinnamon rolls, bisquits and gravy, sausage, fruit, juice and eggs. If I had my way we'd have scrambled eggs, and hot cakes cooked on Dad's grills and we'd start the thing somewhere around 9 AM, but that's not negotiable.