Although I was eager to worship in the Nauvoo Temple, I was even more excited to walk down Parley Street. You recall that Parley Street led to the site of the old Nauvoo Ferry, from which the early Saints began their exodus from Nauvoo to the Salt Lake Valley. I had visited Nauvoo on other occasions and had wondered what it might have been like to walk down Parley Street in the 1840s—leaving a temporally and a spiritually secure environment—and to look back on the city and the Nauvoo Temple before crossing the Mississippi River. Now that the temple was finished, I was anxious to have that experience.

You may also recall that on June 30, 2002, during the final dedicatory service of the rebuilt Nauvoo Temple, President Gordon B. Hinckley extended a heartfelt request that those present in the temple take time upon leaving the service to walk down Parley Street. He asked that, as they did so, they think of a young pioneer family and imagine the difficulty of leaving a comfortable home and departing for an unknown destination.

I will never forget what I felt as I walked down Parley Street last summer and looked back at the temple. My heart swelled with gratitude and my eyes filled with tears as I thought about those noble pioneers. I stood near the bank of the Mississippi River for quite some time and counted my many blessings and tried to imagine what it would have been like to walk or ferry across the river into an uncertain future.