Nauvoo Surprise!

We took the three younger kids out of school Friday and took the fam to Nauvoo so that our newly returned missionary, Ruggles, could see Grandma and Grandpa again! It was their P-day and they planned to spend all day with us, except they had an important meeting that afternoon that they couldn't really tell us about.

We had already decided to spend some time on the temple grounds with our children. Hubders had set us up in three teams and we were to look for the symbolic and decorative things on the temple. Each team had a notebook and we were to sketch, count, and describe each item we found in the notebook. We left for the temple a bit before Mom and Dad's meeting and were enjoying our time there when someone came out of the temple and said that President Monson was inside!

We were there when he came out of the temple, quite a thrill! Hubders took some pictures, and we would have left it at that, but there was a couple standing near us and the wife called out President Monson's name just as he was about to get into the car. He looked up, came over to where we were, and shook all of our hands! There wasn't a crowd, just the couple, the six of us, and, as President Monson turned to go back to his car, a newly married couple and their photographer walked up. He shook their hands and their photographer captured it! Quite the wedding pictures for them!!!

None of us could have imagined that we would get to see the prophet! We didn't even know he was in Nauvoo!! But what a sweet experience for our family!!!