Week 2: Practice, Practice, Practice

05/22/2016:  We got so much done our first week that we did not have much to do this week, which resulted in watching the stage missionaries work a lot of the time.  At the start, they learned their choreography, which was hard for me to watch since I love dancing so much, but the choreographer invited me to follow along as they learned when I was talking to her about the styles of dance she incorporated together.  It was really fun to get to dance some this week.

For most of the week, we did run throughs of The Promise.  Because we have still yet to program the lights with Elder Camp, there was not much I could do other than write a lot of letters.  One day we went to the paint shop at Nauvoo Facilities Management, and I got to paint the black desk that I have been dying to paint since I saw it in a show last year.  It was so exciting!

Last week, I forgot to mention that for the first time ever the techs have someone over us: Elder Schultz.  He and his wife were senior missionaries here for 2 years, and he ended up helping out with tech last year and was then called to come back this summer to help with the tech YPMs.  Most of our success is due to him since we would otherwise be completely unaware of what to do.

This week I was appointed stage manager for Sunset by the Mississippi, which is a fun but crazy show since no two are the same.  Right now, we are having a lot of problems with sound due to a new board not fully installed and some signal issues over distance, but hopefully all will be resolved before we open Saturday.

We received some bad news this week: We will not be giving site tours since we are not officially site missionaries. We have no idea what we will do every morning instead other than each companionship helping with Anna Amanda 3 days per week.

Yesterday we had preparation time and drove to Keokuk, Iowa to get groceries.  In addition to the 2 small bridges that have been under construction and turned into one-way roads since we got here, the bridge over the big Mississippi River is now undergoing construction.  Because of this, the inner lane on each side is closed and the speed is slower going over it.  As some of you know, I find bridges over water to be terrifying to cross, so crossing that bridge has gone from scary to traumatizing.  Thankfully, I have enough food to take shelter on this side of the river and shop at the local market for a while.

While in Keokuk, we met 2 members of the church, which was way cool.  One just joined our church 3 years ago, which was really neat to hear about.  The other is the Young Women's president in her ward.

We had a lot of fun (maybe too much fun) riding in Elder Camp's golf cart this week. We are really excited that Elder Camp and Elder Schultz have let us drive it for quickly going between places to pick things up.  

I have a fun fact I learned this week.  Actors here have to run outside to get between each side of backstage, and to minimize adjustment needed when entering a dark dressing room from outside, they keep one eye covered while outside.  Turns out that pirates did the same thing so that they could go below deck easily... except instead of looking ridiculous by constantly keeping a hand over an eye, they wore eye patches.  yeah... that's right... all of them wore eye patches and none of them were actually missing an eye.  Maybe some of you already knew this, but it completely blew all of our minds and has been discussed daily since learning it, so I just had to share.

Photos:  One is of my companion, Sister Young, and me. Another is of the stage sisters the first time they got to try on their costumes. (I just got mine back from being fitted so no pictures yet.)  And the third is from one of our shows.  

-Sister Sylvestre