Sunday, May 1

Church at 8 am - This will be a constant.  It's a good thing I'm a morning person.  We had a wonderful fast and testimony meeting and then left the building to go to the temple.  We dressed in white and then met again in the Assembly Room.  There is a large assembly room on the first floor that is rarely used.  We had another testimony meeting with just the temple missionaries.  The consensus is that we are all grateful to have been called to serve in this great temple and we are in awe of our peers.  This will be a wonderful six months.  We went home and fixed dinner and before sitting down to eat, realized we had a lot of food.  We went upstairs and invited the McBrides to join us.  We had a fun dinner.  Then we went to a "Sunday Sociable".  They don't have firesides here, they call them sociables.  We met in the visitor's center theater, filled it and they turned on the TV and broadcast the program to the other threater.  There were probably 300 - 350 people there.  The curator of the Lincoln Museum in Springfield came and talked about Abraham Lincoln and Joseph Smith.  He drew a parallel in that both were very poor and both were self-taught through reading.  Joseph restored the gospel of Jesus Christ to the earth and Lincoln felt that God was using him to save the union.  Without Lincoln's efforts, who knows where we would all be.  He also brought statistics which I couldn't write down fast enough.  The gist of it is that Lincoln has ceased to be a hero to Americans.  Old folks like us revere him, but young people today know him only as a president and associate him with the Civil War but that is all.  Parents - teach your children about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and John Adams and real heroes.