Pioneer "sociable" in Nauvoo

     Historic Nauvoo is educational as well as spiritually uplifting. We are constantly reminded of what life was like in the mid-1800's. Recently we had a "sociable", which is a pioneer era term for a get-together, in the cultural hall. In our modern day church buildings we have what we call cultural halls that are just a part of the chapel, usually in the very center of the building, and serve as a basketball court, gym, large activity room, performance venue, and extension of the chapel when needed. Here in old Nauvoo, there was a tall building built by the pioneers in which to hold cultural events.

There is a basement (not too deep in the ground since we're so close to the water table here by the river) with a few rooms in it, a main floor with a stage and audience seating area, and an upper floor which is a large open room for dancing above which was a small balcony for the band. All of us temple missionaries borrowed pioneer garb from the site missionaries and had a dance!

 The gentleman by the windows is one of our temple missionaries. He is 80 and plays an awesome harmonica and guitar. We enjoyed dancing to his music. Then we had a guest site missionary to teach us a couple of the dances the pioneers may have done in this very room. It was a little complicated. You can see the foursome on the left were trying to figure out just what they were supposed to be doing.

 Much to our surprise, the couple we were participating with (also at least a decade older than Russ and me) and we were selected by the teacher to demonstrate because we were actually managing to do it right- sort of.......

 All of us ladies sang a song for the men, in return for the lovely serenade they had given us on Valentine's Day. I wish I had taken my phone with me so I could have recorded them singing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart". In a smallish room, a choir of about 20 adult men singing was powerful!

 Russ still sings really well (for an aging man) and plays his guitar but, unfortunately, not really what you might call "dance" music. Everybody enjoyed his performance anyway and did manage to dance to one of his folk songs.