Temple Tour

This week was fall break here at USU, which means we got Friday off and THAT'S ALL! But, nevertheless I was still grateful :) and Jillian and I made the best of it. We decided that it would be super cool to see how many Temples we could do baptisms at, in 2.5 days. Thursday after class we headed to Salt Lake. We decided to do all of Temple Square on Thursday. We ate at the Nauvoo Cafe and saw/heard a man with an AMAZING accent... but he left before I could meet him :(. Then we saw the Joseph Smith movie, found the compass by the Temple, toured the Beehive House, went to the top of the Conference Center, went to the visitors center and saw the Christus, and the "God's plan for my family" program thing, which is really cool and something I didn't even know existed! Then we ended the day with doing baptisms in the Salt Lake Temple, and it was beautiful! I think that the Salt Lake Temple has a very special spirit about it, and Temple Square was such a great way to begin our endeavor!

Oh, and we wandered around taking pictures, it was great!


Me leaving plenty of room for a boy to come into my life :)





Grandma and Grandpa Peterson were kind enough to let us sleep at their house that night. They took good care of us, and I especially enjoyed just sitting and visiting with them. I love my grandparents so much! They are amazing people and there is so much to learn from them. I am so grateful for their exmamples to me.

Thursday morning started early at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. It is absolutely beautiful, like all of the Temples... and I even ran into my friend Adidas there! It made me super uber happy.

After Oquirrh Mountain we went to the Jordan River, which was super great! It reminded me of Oakcrest as that is the Temple I went to all summer!

Friday Afternoon we went to Draper...


and Mount Timpanogas. We actually finished at Draper and had to hurry to Mount Timpanogas to make it to our appointment in time. Jillin and I both got in the car and realized neither of us had any idea where the Mount Timpanogas Temple was! We called Jilli's dad and he got us off the right exit, but after wandering around American Fork (I think?) for awhile, we decided to ask someone. We didn't have time to pull over and ask, so we just rolled down our window and asked the car next to us at the stoplight! It was so funny! He was really nice, and he actually just led us right to the road that would lead to the Temple. It was definitely an adventure. I am so glad there's so many nice people out there!

When we were ready to leave that temple we went to grab Jillian's recommend from the front desk and it was GONE! We're still not sure what happened to it, either someone accidently took it or it fell on the floor or something. We left our name and number and they said they would call if it turned up. We really hoped that it would because we still had 3 more temples to go to the next day. We called our Bishop to see what he could do for us, and he said he would be happy to talk to any of the Temples tomorrow. We prayed and continued on our journey, trusting that everything would work out. We were to spend that night in Provo with Jillian's counsin, Shelly. We were eating dinner with Shelly and her roommate when the Temple called! They had found Jillian's recommend! We ended up going back to the Mount Timpanogas temple to pick it up on Saturday morning. I am so glad it worked out. It was a good experience to learn from.

I think in life we'll be going along trying to be our best, to do good, and to serve those around us. Of course, Satan is not going to like that and he's going to do everything he can to stop us, maybe even make our temple recommend disappear. He's going to be make things pretty hard on us. But, if we press forward. If we do everything in our power to continue aka leave our name and number at the temple, call the Bishop, and pray, then things will work out. God is greater and He will help us. I also felt like maybe Heavenly Father was testing us to see if even if things got difficult if we would give up and change our plans, or if we would press forward to continue to the house of the Lord. I'm sure there's a lot of different applications I can learn from this story, and I'm so glad that Heavenly Father is always willing to teach me!

While waiting for Shelly and roommmate to show up, we decided to get ready in the ihop bathroom! It was a grand adventure :)


Saturday morning after getting Jillian's temple recommend again we went to the Provo temple. Shelly and her roommate came with us and it was so neat. While there I ran into Cameo and it was SO fun to see her! She is such a sweetheart! I love her!


After Provo we headed back to Bountiful. The Bountiful Temple is one of my favorites. The baptistry is beautiful! and you get to walk down a sweet princess-ee tunnel to the baptistry. We got to spend several hours sitting in by the font because they were really behind. It was a good time to be able to sit and reflect. To pray and read my scriptures. It gave me a lot of time to think about my future. I'm seriously considering going on a mission. There's not a lot I can do right now besides prepare myself to be worthy to serve the Lord as a full-time missionary, which I am working hard to do. Heaven knows there's many things I can work on. It was a really great experience. Unfortunately, for some crazy reason, we forgot to get a picture in front of it :/. So just try to imagine mine and Jillian's makeup free wet strangly hair faces in front of this temple :)


After the Bountiful Temple we went to Jillian's home to eat lunch with her family. Her sweet mom made us this absolutely delicious breakfast casserole. It was so fun to meet all of her family and spend some time with them.

We then headed to the last Temple in our Temple tour, the Ogden Temple, which is just like the Provo! We got there and they got us through SO fast! The baptizer was the fastest baptizer I had EVER had. It was crazy insane! He was really funny to because he was pretty old and he couldn't see the names so he'd see the first letter of the name and pretty much make up the rest. Hopefully Heavenly Father still counts it if everything else was in order! :) After we were going to get dressed again we were talking to the sweet Temple workers in the locker room. We told them what we had been doing and how that temple was our last. I really didn't want to leave. The sweet sister in there asked if we had more time and I said of course! So then we did it again! Definitely worth it too! and because I stayed longer I got to run into my friend Zipadee! It was super great to see her! Man I love seeing my Oakcrest friends!
If you look closely, our silhouttes are in this pictures :)

We were headed out of the Ogden Temple Parking lot when we saw a Deseret Book right across the street! So of course we had to stop, and we ended up spending about 2 hours there! It was so fun! I really could live in that store!

At all of the temples the parking lots were always full, and the baptistry bursting. It was so encouraging and exciting to see so many people, everywhere we went, going to the house of the Lord, serving their fellow men, and growing closer to their Heavenly Father.

This trip was one of the best experiences of my life. It was amazing to almost live in the Temple for a couple days. Service really does make you so happy! But more than that. The House of the Lord is an amazing place to be. I love the spirit that is there and the power that comes into my life just by being there. I have a testimony of Temples. I know they are God's house on earth. I know that the ordinances that go on there are real. I know that the Temple is a place where I can always find refuge. I am so grateful there are so many temples so close. I feel very blessed to live here with so many choices of where to attend.

It also hit me this trip how important it is for those of you who are endowed to go to the Temple! Jillian and I were probably baptized for about 100 names each. That's 200 people who need the rest of their work done. We did between 5-20 names at each temple. As far as I understand you can only take one name through at a time for the endowment. That is 200 women we need to go do a session at the temple just to finish the work that Jilli and I were able to do. So, Make a goal to go to the Temple! Go do some good!

It seems like in the past year the Temple has been talked about a whole ton. It is very important that we attend regularly. I know we are blessed when we do. Something else super cool I just learned in Stake Conference is that those whose work you do will take a special interest in your life. I can't wait to get to the other side and meet all of the wonderful sisters who I was able to help while on this earth. It's going to be amazing!