William and Sidney Price can identify with Nephi, who was "led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which [he] should do." (1 Ne. 4:6.)

In fact, when the couple were called last year to serve as public affairs missionaries to labor in and around Nauvoo, members of their La Mesa 1st Ward, San Diego California East Stake, gave them a plaque inscribed with those words from Nephi.Perhaps it was because of what they were told by Elder James M. Paramore of the Seventy at the time he issued the call.

"As close as I can remember, he said that he did not know what we were going to do or how we were going to do it, but we had his unqualified support," Elder Price said, suppressing a smile.

Elder Paramore, who was then president of the North America Central Area, did not send the Prices off without direction.

"He read to us from D&C 1:30, the verse that has to do with bringing the Church out of obscurity and out of darkness," Elder Price recounted. "He suggested that the Church may suffer from a degree of obscurity in this area."

Elder Paramore gave them more specific instructions. He wanted the Prices to work with people in Iowa - most of them not Church members - who would be observing their state sesquicentennial in 1996, coinciding with the sesquicentennial of the beginning of the Saints' trek across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo into Iowa and on to the Salt Lake Valley. The two sesquicentennial observances would converge nicely, Elder Paramore felt.

"And he also asked us to increase the number of visitors that enjoy Nauvoo each year," Elder Price added.

Careful to note that success has come from the efforts of many people, the Prices point with pleasure to numbers that tell a dramatic story.

Nauvoo visitors between 1988 and 1993 had numbered just over 100,000 per year. That had been declining at about 1 percent a year. In 1994, there were 126,684 visitors. That was the year after flooding on the Mississippi hindered Nauvoo visitation, so there may have been some "pent-up demand" Elder Price said.

The Prices came on board in April 1995. That year, he said, "after several wonderful travel articles that were written about Nauvoo, we had 161,564 visitors, which was up 27 percent from the year before."

Things look even better in this, the sesquicentennial year. Sister Price noted that Nauvoo has just finished its best August ever in terms of visitation: 53,641 visitors compared with 28,061 in August 1995.

"This year, through August, we have had 182,972 visitors," she said. From surveys of the August visitors "it looks like close to half are not members of the Church."

"If that rate continues," Elder Price added, "we will have had 239,000 visitors this year."

As for working with the people of Iowa, "they were already making plans; we just tried to catch up," Sister Price recalled.

"They were enthusiastically involved in several projects to put permanent markers on the trail" replacing worn ones that had been there since the '30s "and to mark all of the traces of the trail that have been identified," Elder Price explained.

Working with members of the Iowa Mormon Trails Association among others, the Prices helped organize several events this year. They began Feb. 3-4 with the commemoration of the Saints' 1846 exodus, an observance that focused national news media attention on Nauvoo. (See Feb. 10 Church News.) Events climaxed July 13-14 at Kanesville (now Council Bluffs), Iowa, with the Grand Encampment commemoration, Mormon Battalion mustering-in re-enactment and the dedication by President Gordon B. Hinckley of the reconstructed Kanesville Tabernacle. (See July 20 Church News.)

Between those events was an Iowa Mormon Trail History Symposium in Des Moines that drew scholars and enthusiasts from Iowa, Utah and elsewhere, two commemorative wagon trains and a handcart company that trekked from Nauvoo to Kanesville, and more than a dozen celebrations in Iowa communities on or near the Mormon Trail.

"We suggested many ways that stakes and wards could be involved in trail projects," Elder Price said. "For example the Des Moines stake took on the project of rebuilding a log cabin at Mt. Pisgah, one of the Saints' Iowa settlements. That was dedicated Sept. 2, and it is a beautiful representation of what a very primitive log cabin may have looked like."

Arriving in Nauvoo last year, the Prices began to build on what had been accomplished before. Their objective was to broaden the focus of Nauvoo's appeal. "We wanted to include all of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and maybe parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota and Indiana," Elder Price said.

Acting on a suggestion of local residents, they initiated a newsletter to inform people of what is happening in Nauvoo. It has a circulation of 900 and goes to tour companies, historical societies, chambers of commerce, convention and visitors bureaus, and stake and multi-stake directors of public affairs.

They set up the Nauvoo Restoration Public Affairs Council with about 50 members, including the directors of public affairs, the Nauvoo Visitors Center director, the manager of Nauvoo Restoration Inc., and a cadre of writers and other staff. "They have an assignment now from the area presidency to carry the message of Nauvoo to this expanded area," Elder Price said. "The council has been extremely effective in raising the consciousness of Nauvoo among members of the Church and among the media that can reach those who are not members."

Those media have been very responsive, the Prices said. Favorable articles have appeared in such publications as the Des Moines Register, Cedar Rapids Gazette, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Chicago Sun-Times, Mid-West Living magazine and The Iowan.

Elder Price said journalists are among the many friends the Prices have made. "We found and they found that their lack of coverage of the Church was not due to any preconceived notions about Mormonism, but a lack of knowledge about the Latter-day Saints and what we believe. As they pursued that knowledge, they wrote very favorably about us and they wrote thousands of column-inches."

As they near the end of their mission in October, the Prices recall a montage of vivid images: 1,000 people huddled in sub-zero cold at the edge of the Mississippi for the exodus commemoration; the departure of the commemorative wagon trains on a barge this summer over the river; the community of Seymour, Iowa, assembling a 150-voice choir to sing "Come, Come, Ye Saints" near the exact spot where the hymn was written; the recreated Pitt's Brass Band playing at the Keosauqua Courthouse in Iowa, replicating an 1846 event; and camping with the wagon trains near Murray, Iowa, in the ruts made by the original wagons in 1846.

Sister Price recalled a visit in June 1995 to Mt. Pisgah. There, a school teacher told of her class's project to memorialize the Mormon Trail. The teacher said when they were finished, they refused to let the project drop, and spent weeks researching and compiling a book on the Saint's accomplishment in crossing the plains.

"The teacher said they had written down how they did it and where they were, but they needed to understand why," Sister Price said. "So I brought a Book of Mormon and put it in their school library for them to look at, thinking perhaps it would help them understand."

Elder Price said there is a magnetism about Nauvoo. "People who come here fall in love with the gardens or the antiques or the architecture, or the living-history presentations. But something draws them back, and they eventually fall in love with the people and their sincerity. This is not a place where we really solicit missionary referrals. It's a place where we explain our history and we bear our testimonies. The combination really touches people."