Day 11

Today was a major crash and burn day for me. I'm not sure if we took any pictures today or not. We drove to Nauvoo this morning and I felt like crap. We finally got a tour of the Joseph Smith house ala Community of Christ. They're really weird people, not at all convincing in their proselyting efforts. Anyway they answered a lot of questions about their own religion such as their take on priesthood, how an authority comes to be, word of wisdom, etc... Their priesthood is everyone and anyone - their "temple" is open to the public. They do not believe in endowments or temple ordinances. Authorities are voted in first by other authorities and then by general body. Their Word of Wisdom is just words of wisdom and not given much weight or thought. Their Relief Society was disolved years ago. When they explain how their prophet came to be, they simply state that "some believed that Joseph Smith Jr. passed the authority to his son Joseph Smith III but JSIII had to wait until he came of age, meanwhile [another individual] stood in his place until that time." They preach "love and joy" and there is no hell because hell is only what we make it here on earth - God loves everyone and you're already saved because he loves you so much. At this point I started smelling something, but to my relief it was only some cat crap I stepped in. Whew! We had to come back to the hotel today because everyone crashed (especially me). And then we went back out to walk the "Trail of Hope" and to watch the pageant. The Trail of Hope is a path down one of the streets that leads to the river so the Saints could either walk or float across the river (depending on whether or not the river was frozen enough to walk across). Anyway, there are signs that lead down the road to the river with different individual's diary entries regarding the day this happened. Next we tried to go to the pageant but Emily had a surprise in store for us - so we had to come back to the hotel. We'll try again tonight.