Our Story Begins

      The last session of General Conference April 1999, I was alone in the basement of my Aunt Patsy’s house.  My brother and I were up visiting from Provo where I was BYUing and he was Jiffy Lubing.  The two things I remember most clearly about April 1999 conference are Elder Scott fading in and out as we drove through Sardine Canyon on our way to Idaho during the Saturday afternoon session,¹ and President Hinckley’s electrifying announcement.  You remember—the rebuilding of the Nauvoo temple.

      Wow.

      The effect this had on the church can’t be rightly compared to lightening because with lightening it’s just KAPWOWM!!! and it’s over (except for, perhaps, a forest fire).  The electricity generated by the Nauvoo Temple announcement is still buzzing.

      A temple! In Nauvoo!

      I wasn’t born early enough to see the first temple outside North America or be affected by the first temple in Asia; I was too young to understand the import of a temple behind the Iron Curtain.  But in recent years, the flood of temples has affected me, and the news of a temple again in Nauvoo . . . .  How can it be expressed?  But you felt it—you know what I mean.  It is the Nauvoo Temple.

      (I remember, even when I was young, being excited at conference, wondering if they would announce any new temples.  Now I get excited wondering where the new temples will be.  It’s an exciting time to be alive.)

      President Hinckley’s announcement was the catalyst for my Nauvoo experience.  Nauvoo was suddenly hovering before my mind’s eye.  Every mention of it stuck out, and so when I heard of the BYU Semester in Nauvoo, it fixed itself in my thoughts.  When I learned that there is always plenty of room for more men, I remembered.  Then, suddenly (and very unexpectedly), my mother called and said she thought I should go to Nauvoo.

      “What?  Why?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Me neither.”  And I didn’t.  But in the end, there I was.  Nauvoo.