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LINDSIE TAYLOR / Scroll Photo Illustration
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Photo courtesy Dre Shelley
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ASHLEY ANDRUS / Scroll
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| Top: Nauvoo Temple. Middle: BYU-Idaho students Ashley Andrus, Danielle Skinn, Eric Haymond, Megan Duke, Rose Eaton, Amanda Miner, Amanda Cross and Jessica Whitton meet at the Nauvoo Temple grounds across from the Joseph Smith Academy they attended Fall Semester. Bottom: Nauvoo students gather for a testimony meeting at Hill Cumorah Oct.13. |
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| Living the Legacy |
The Legacy of the Pioneers came alive for nine BYU-Idaho
students as they attended the Joseph Smith Academy in Nauvoo |
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by Ashley Andrus
AND01049@BYUI.EDU
Scroll Staff |
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It is a windy December morning in Nauvoo, Ill., as students file into their Pioneer Life classroom, ready to receive instructions from their professor, Carolyn Dunford. The Nauvoo Temple stands majestically outside the window behind them, a tribute to the people who built the original structure in that spot more than a century before. The temple, despite its great deal of media attention both within and without of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has become a common sight for these college students. Many of the students spend numerous hours within its white walls each week.
“The temple is wonderful,” Jessica Whitton, a sophomore from Santa Fe, N.M., said. “Everyday I look at the structure, and it teaches me of faith, sacrifice and the love of my Heavenly Father and his son, Jesus Christ.When my heart needed to be lifted, I could go there or even sit and gaze at it in the sunshine and all my fears would depart.”
Whitton, along with 116 other students, has spent Fall Semester 2002 at the Joseph Smith Academy in Nauvoo, through a travel study program at BYU learning of the early Saints and trying to understand what has taken place in this remote western Illinois town that stretches to the edge of the Mississippi River.
In their classroom, Sister Dunford, who has dressed up like a pioneer woman for the occasion, has asked the students to share some of their feelings, discoveries and insights of Nauvoo. It is a tender subject.
One girl humbly explains how much she feels the temple has become a part of her, and several others nod their heads in agreement. Another student tells of how she and some fellow classmates dressed up as pioneers a few days prior and walked to the end of Parley Street, singing hymns and reading the signs together, then taking off their own coats to face the cold and sing “The Spirit of God” as they reached the end of the street, followed by a quiet prayer.
“I didn’t expect [this semester] to build my testimony as much as it did,” Ginger Price, a sophomore from Rexburg, said. “It has done so much for me; I have grown so much. I couldn’t have asked for any more.”
For some students, coming to Nauvoo has been a long-term goal that they have finally realized. One such student is Megan Duke, a sophomore from Fort Collins, Colo.
“I have dreamt about it for so long. It was everything and more than what I expected it to be,” she said. “The Nauvoo Temple is such a special one. There is a special feeling in there that is different from other temples I’ve been in. It was an amazing experience to live across the street from the temple and I will treasure that for the rest of my life.”
“I’ve never been so soaked into church history,” Amanda Miner, a sophomore from Springville, Utah, said. “ You are just learning so much in one building all day long.”
The group has plenty of time to get out of the building and experience many church history sites, however, including a nine-day trip to New York and Ohio to visit Palmyra, Fayette, Kirtland and Hiram, and a three-day trip to sites in Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska.
Through these trips, the students have come to know the Prophet Joseph Smith and now mention him as if he were a dear friend.
“Being here has taught me that Joseph Smith was more than just a prophet,” Rose Eaton, a sophomore from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said. “Now he is a person to me. I can relate to him. He has a more personal side. It is almost like I have a relationship with him.”
During their stay at the Joseph Smith Academy, students live in three floors of dorm apartments and attend classes taught by retired college professors.
“The classes were wonderful and the professors blew me away with their knowledge,” Whitton said.
“My favorite part of Nauvoo was the religion classes that we were able to take,” Price said. “The teachers are the most wonderful people, they are so smart and the spirit is so strong. After class I would just sit in awe and want to continue class.”
As several students who are attending BYU-Idaho this semester head back to Rexburg, it will be nearly impossible for them to forget what they have learned in Nauvoo.
“I’ve learned a lot of lessons,” Amanda Cross, a sophomore from Altoona, Pa., said. “I’ve drawn closer to Heavenly Father. I’ve been able to go to the temple, and I’ve gained so many friendships here.”
“The history has come alive,” Duke said. “I don’t think I could have ever grasped church history as well as I have without actually going to the places where it happened. There is a special spirit here — this place was a home, a place of refuge, of good times and bad. It is only fitting that the Saints have this memorial built up to them.”
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