Winter Quarters Nebraska

Winter Quarters Nebraska Temple 

Earlier this month I drove my car, full of youth, to our closest mormon temple to do baptisms for the dead.  I am in the Young Women Presidency in our ward here in Iowa.  It was windy, cold and took forever to commute.  I hate driving on road trips (that's what makes Spencer such a wonderful husband -- he drives most of the time).  Thankfully, we finally arrived.

The youth in our ward are great, and I mean that, they really are wonderful.  Because most teenagers on a Saturday morning don't want to wake up early to drive two hours there and two hours back - but, my beehives, they did it.  With smiles and giggles the entire trip.  Not only did we travel to the temple, we also went to the visitors center across the street.

I will be honest, I didn't know much about the history of the pioneers other than they walked and walked and walked and walked... like the primary song, right?  I mean I even went on pioneer trek in my youth and really can't think of anything interesting that happened besides lots of walking, a few kids passing out here and there... the usually stuff.  Anyway, I found out that I have pioneer ancestry and still couldn't recall much about anything from my church history education.

Driving around this little town filled with mormon history was something else.  Streets were named after companies, ie., Young Street (I'm so mad I didn't take a picture of that - next time), and then the pioneer cemetery is located behind the temple and is shown in the above picture.  We decided not to walk around outside in the cold with wet hair, so much our observing was from the car or inside the visitors center.

Here is exactly what I learned on this trip:  info here
Basically, to sum up.  Iowa, "most tried stamina, courage, and equipment" of the pioneers.  And guess what, I feel like I can totally relate.