I Love To See Our Temple

Summer is mostly over and I haven't blogged about any of our summer vacation yet. Time to start!

After the big announcement in LDS General Conference almost five years ago, the Tucson Arizona Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is (finally) just about completed! In mid-August, the temple will officially open its doors for worthy members of the LDS faith. Inside the temple, these members will do sacred ordinance work for both living members of the church, and for those who have passed away without the chance to hear the gospel. For a member of the LDS Church, the temple is both a symbol of God's love for us and a workplace in which we learn more of Christ and strengthen our eternal family bonds.

To say that the members of the church in the Tucson area are excited is an understatement. Some residents have been waiting their whole lives for a temple to be built in their town. Nathan and I have only lived in Tucson for about 14 years, but it has still been a long, hard wait for us at times. Before this year, the closest temple was in Mesa, Arizona (a two and a half hour drive away). Now we are able to get to the temple in a mere 40 minutes! Sure, it's still a bit of a drive, but sooo much better than it was before. Nathan and I hope we can set a good example for our kids and visit the temple much more frequently than we have in the past.

As a family, we have been following the temple's construction closely. I joined the Facebook page of a local LDS photographer, because he has posted weekly construction updates that include photos. We have also been to visit the construction site several times with the kids, each time pointing out the progress of the temple, and talking about what a great blessing the temple will be for our area.

Despite seeing the steady construction progress, we were uncertain how long it would take for the temple to be completed. We received a pleasant surprise early this last spring, when the church announced that the temple would be dedicated on August 13th of this year! That was sooner than many of us had predicted. A tiny part of me had wished that the temple wouldn't be dedicated until early 2018 (when Aurora turns eight years old; that way, she could have attended the dedicatory sessions). But our community was getting a temple several months earlier than expected, so I wasn't too upset about it!

Along with the dedication announcement came two other, related announcements: the temple would be holding a public open house through most of June; and the local church youth (ages 12-18) would be performing a large "cultural celebration" that showcases the history and traditions of our area, and celebrates the arrival of a temple as part of that. These cultural celebrations, once rare events, have now become common, taking place almost every time a new temple is finished somewhere in the world. It is a lot of work, but it gives the local church youth and their families an additional sense of "ownership" of the new temple.

With all this exciting news, our family got a little "temple fever" this spring & summer, getting a little giddy about its imminent completion. I even splurged and bought a lovely canvas print of the temple to hang in our house, along with our family pictures.

I don't usually spend big bucks on art for the home, but I made an exception this time; I don't think anyone in the family minded! It is nice to have a visual reminder of the temple in our home.

The temple open house dates were June 3-24, 2016. The youth cultural celebration was announced for Saturday, August 12, 2017. As her (amazing) luck would have it, August 12 is the day Lorelai turns twelve years old, which means she qualified--by the skin of her teeth!--to participate in the cultural celebration. Even though she is still eleven years old, she has started attending the weekly Mutual activities held by our ward to practice the singing & dancing for the celebration. Just like that, she said "goodbye" to the twice-monthly Activity Days, and she is now hanging with the "big kids" every Wednesday night. At first, when we told Lorelai about the cultural celebration, she wasn't all that interested in participating! I suspect part of it was the timing of the announcement; she had just finished performing in The Little Mermaid, and she had hoped for a bit of a break between performance practices. But after the first week or so of practice, she started to warm to the idea and enjoying herself.

Nathan joined the fun just a couple of weeks later; he was asked by our bishopric to serve as a "captain of ten" for the cultural celebration performance. The "captains of ten" are basically kid wranglers, making sure that the performers have all their costume parts, are in the right place, have enough water, etc. The plus side to the job is that these captains will be the only adults on the field with the performers at showtime; they have front-row seats for the action! It's a pretty exclusive club, and we are all happy that Nathan got the gig (he was probably asked to do it because of his calling as a seminary teacher; he already has a relationship with many of the youth). Our family will be excitedly looking for Nathan and Lorelai on camera as we watch the celebration broadcast from our local church meetinghouse (the performance will be held in a local baseball field, and there isn't room there for all the families who will be watching it).

More so than the cultural celebration, Nathan and I were excited to participate in the temple's open house. The Open House ran for about 18 days. Since there are currently nine LDS stakes in the Tucson temple district, each stake was assigned two days in the schedule to "staff" the open house with volunteers. Our stake was given Tuesday the 13th and Friday the 23rd of June as its dates. There were hundreds of volunteer positions to fill, of many different types. There were parking lot attendants, tour guides, medical & security personnel, ushers, tour guides, and more. And on top of that, each day had three different four-hour shifts to fill.

There was an online sign-up for all the volunteer jobs; the day the sign-up went live, I called Nathan at work and told him we had to sign up soon, if we wanted one of the cushier jobs. We were a little nervous about volunteering for one of the "outdoor" jobs; since this open house was taking place in June we knew it was going to be pretty hot & miserable. So we promptly signed up as temple ushers for Friday the 23rd. That was the job everyone wanted; volunteers stayed indoors virtually the whole time, it was very light on physical labor, and best of all, it was inside the temple so volunteers could admire the beauty of the building along with the visitors! We considered ourselves lucky to get the job.

After a week or so, we noticed that there were still a lot of volunteer positions available for Tuesday the 13th...especially in the parking lot! The stake was having a hard time filling all the positions for a number of reasons: our stake is one of the farther stakes geographically from the temple; children were home from school and babysitters were scarce; and many families were leaving on vacation. Despite worrying a bit about the intense heat, we both felt moved to action. After giving it some thought, Nathan and I decided to each sign up for not one, but two parking shifts on Tuesday the 13th. I would work the morning shift at the temple parking lot, then switch to the stake center parking lot for the afternoon shift. Nathan would work both the afternoon and evening shift at the stake center. We thought it might be fun to have a "date" as open house volunteers, even if that date consisted of standing around in a hot parking lot.

But there was yet one more volunteer opportunity that the open house presented to us! Our ward choir director informed us after practice one Sunday that there was a VIP open house, taking place over a couple of days just before the public open house was to begin. This VIP open house would include prominent local leaders, businessmen, church leaders, and others. At the conclusion of this open house, there was to be a small reception area, complete with snacks and light music. And the open house organizers needed musicians to play some of that light music!

I leaped at the chance to perform at the VIP open house, as did my friends Tabatha and Julie. We pooled our efforts and chose several three-part songs. I played piano, Tabatha played flute, and Julie played violin. For several weeks, we practiced our music and prepared for our half-hour performance time.

At the last minute, we found out that the time slot after ours was available, so we ended up playing our "set" twice; we ended up playing together for about 50 minutes! Frankly, it was not a life-changing experience. We were performing inside a tent; thankfully, it was air conditioned, but the noise of the portable unit made it difficult to hear the music unless you were standing right next to the musicians. And our particular time slot was very sparsely attended; the only visitors who heard us were some of the other volunteers!

None of us minded, though. This was the closest any of us had been to the temple thus far. Before that day, we'd had to park in the nearby neighborhood or next to the nearby office building, and walk to the temple grounds, which were until recently gated off. On this day, we were able to park in the actual temple parking lot and walk around briefly on the temple grounds! We didn't go inside the temple yet (although we might have been able to if we'd just asked the right person), but simply being close to this beautiful building and making sacred music was enough for that day.

That Sunday night, Nathan and I attended a volunteer training meeting for the temple open house, where we got the basics of what was expected of us volunteers. The usher job seemed straightforward enough...the parking attendant job less so. We saw slide after slide of parking lot maps, complete with station identification & traffic flow directional symbols; it was a bit overwhelming at first! Luckily, everyone was in a good mood and we were all confident that even if there were a few hiccups, we'd be able to manage everything smoothly.

Our family's turn to tour the temple came just a few days after my musical performance. We had booked a free tour reservation online for Tuesday night, June 6th...just a couple of days after the beginning of the open house. We were very excited to take our family to "our" temple! Our family's tour was in the evening, so we got to see the temple's beautiful blue dome just as it was hit by the rays of the setting sun. It was a lovely sight.

We didn't take pictures of the temple's interior, but this video has several shots of the interior, as well as an explanation of the temple's importance to the church and its architectural significance in the community.

It was dark outside by the time our tour was done. This temple is not one of the LDS Church's bigger temples, but it is still obvious that a great deal of work and care went into its construction. The ordinance rooms of the temple are smaller than I was expecting; on the other hand, the sealing rooms (where eternal marriages are performed) were larger than I thought they would be. And I thought the baptismal font was strikingly beautiful! In the end, all the space will be put to good use.

Just one week later, I would return to the temple...this time, with the glorious responsibility of being a parking attendant!

At least the view was nice! Being a parking lot attendant at the temple was relatively uneventful but not boring. We had our opening devotional inside the temple itself; after that, we headed for the maintenance shed on the opposite end of the parking lot for our super-quick attendant training. Our friend John was the shift supervisor; it was fun to shoot the breeze with him throughout my shift!

All of us rotated our jobs every half hour or so, taking one lengthy break inside to rest our legs and drink some fluids. At some stations, we merely waved cars into parking spaces (these were usually cars with handicapped stickers). At other stations, we oversaw tour bus loading and unloading (open house visitors were bused to the temple from the closest LDS stake center, a few miles away). In still another location, we spent most of our time turning away visitors who attempted to park their cars in the temple parking lot (visitors were told to go first to the stake center, where they would be bused over; the temple parking lot was too small for that many visitors). Overall, things kept happening, and it was fairly interesting throughout.

Plus, we had these awesome huge umbrellas for shade.

I had to leave that shift a little early, though, in order to make it to the stake center; that was where my afternoon shift was going to be. My temple parking shift had been in the morning, so it hadn't been too hot (Mother Nature was blessedly merciful that day all around; the high temperature was "only" around 96 degrees! That is pretty low for Arizona in June. We got lucky!). I was excited to meet up with Nathan for this shift.

This job ended up being less exciting than the temple parking job. Here, we mostly kept the parking lot exit clear whenever another tour bus arrived back from the temple. Once in a while, we had to halt a car trying to leave, but mostly we just tried to hide in the shade and drink lots of fluids, while trying to look important.

I was grateful for the company; it was fun to do this service with Nathan, even if it was a hot, sweaty day. Bonding through volunteer work was quite rewarding! I left for home around 5:00 pm, while Nathan stayed behind to bravely man his post throughout the night (he finally made it home around 9:00 pm; luckily there were a few other friends of his hanging around that he was able to pass the time with in that parking lot after I left). Our girls had spent most of that afternoon taking care of themselves; we had trusted them on their own, and thankfully they did not disappoint us! In fact, our next-door neighbors, who had signed up as tour guides, also dropped their kids off at our house. For a few crazy hours, there were eight kids (all under twelve years old!) at our house, plus one over-stimulated dog. Luckily, everyone survived, the adults had a lovely spiritual evening, and everybody went home that night a winner (although Nathan and I were very tired).

Just a week and a half later, it was time for one more volunteer shift. This one was the last weekend of the open house, so we anticipated it being a busy, crazy night. But no more hot parking lots for us; this time we would be volunteering as ushers inside the temple itself! We carpooled up with some friends and got to work.

On this occasion, I left my camera & phone behind, so I could stay 100% focused on the job at hand, and not allow myself to be distracted by "worldly" things. This way, I was able to concentrate on my job (which, to be fair, was pretty easy; I mostly directed traffic with my hands from one room to the next). I was also able to hear and see visitors' reactions to the beautiful things they were seeing, and the spiritual impressions they were feeling. I saw many people that were genuinely moved at being in the temple...some of those people were probably not members of our church, either!

At one point, while directing people into the Celestial Room (a special room for quiet meditation & prayer), I heard one father whisper earnestly to his young daughter, "Honey, this room is a piece of heaven on earth." The girl's eyes widened and her hand tightened in her father's. I had to fight back tears; I completely agreed with those words! I am so grateful that the temple is a place where we can set aside our worldly cares and draw spiritual strength from our Father in Heaven. At the same time, though, it is also a place where we can bring our cares with us into the temple, then pray to God for direction. I have often done so in other temples; quite often, I have received strong spiritual promptings as answers to these prayers. I am grateful that soon I will have a place to commune with God that is close to my home!

After our shift was over, we grabbed a quick dinner with our friends and then rushed home. We were tired, but so very satisfied with the night's work. Just a couple of days later, the open house concluded, and our temple came one step closer to its completion. As of this writing, it is being thoroughly cleaned, furnished, and prepped for full service. Tucson youth are still practicing for the cultural celebration. In just a few more weeks, all those big preparations will see their culmination, and I can't wait to witness it! Until then, it has been gratifying to help out (even in a very small way) with presenting this building to the public.