Saunders Excellent Adventures: Gilbert Temple

Friday, January 31, 2014

Gilbert Temple

The Gilbert Temple Open House

began on January 18th, 2014

We attended the Open House on

Thursday, January 23rd

we went to the Temple Open House.

It was beautiful.

The tour started in the Church building near the Temple where a short movie clip was shown. It told a little bit of the history of Gilbert, Arizona and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the area.

The video told of the importance of family and the sealing ordinance.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland had a sound-bite in the video where he talked about Heaven, and that if he couldn't be with his family there, then it wouldn't be Heaven -- that is a terrible paraphrase, but when I find the quote I will share it.

Then we went through the Temple.

It is gorgeous inside and out!

The inside has lots of tile and soft colors. I can't describe it, but it's beautiful.

The chandelier in the Celestial Room is 18 ft. tall and has 40,000 Swarovski crystals.

To say it glitters is an understatement.

There are seven sealing rooms,

and the marriage waiting room is huge and is on the same floor as the sealing rooms.

The tour guide said that is a first in any temple.

We had several flights of stairs to go down after the tour was over.

Kyle wanted Jon to help him....so Jon was helping Kyle and Scott stayed back with them. Sunny and I went outside....there were youth stationed there who would take the booties -- used to keep the carpets clean -- off your feet so you didn't have to bend down.

Sunny and I moved a little way down the sidewalk.

Scott came out.

Jon came out.

Kyle came out.

Sunny and I heard, "Is that Kyle?"

We looked at each other. So far, that hasn't happened here.

But in Washington it happened everywhere we went!

Someone knew Kyle.

Scott told us that the young lady turned to the others and said,

"That's Kyle. He goes to my school. He has the cutest laugh."

I am amazed -- every time -- the influence that one person can have.

Coming out of the Temple, after the tour.

Wee took lots of pictures.

The tour ended and we came out on the South side of the Temple.

It was crowded so we decided that we'd come back another time to get pictures of the front of the Temple.

Kyle, Sunny and Scott

Kyle and Scott

It was kind of cute. Because when I told Kyle we were going to the Temple Open House, all he heard was Temple and so he got dressed to go do baptisms -- and he was very angry with me when I told him we couldn't do those today!