Wonderful Birthday Present

"I love to see the temple, I'm going there some day" so goes the first line of a popular Primary Hymn.

I too love to see the temple. I've been already, but tomorrow I get to have another wonderful experience. Tomorrow, my birthday, I get to go to the Salt Lake Temple for the very first time. My youth group is going tomorrow. No, this was not planned for my birthday rather, we all wanted to go to the temple.

Our Ward is in the Ogden Temple region, but because of the extensive remodeling they are doing our part of the region has been relocated to the Salt Lake Temple. We are going to take advantage of this and we get to go there tomorrow. I don't know if I can impress enough how exciting this experience is for me. My parents were married inside this temple. I know I won't get to see the room they were married in, but I get to be inside that great temple and feel the peace that comes from it. I get to do Baptisms in it, this is going to be amazing.

the first temple I ever went to was the Bountiful temple. My parents took me soon after my 12th birthday. Afterward we went to an Italian restaurant and I had gnocchi for the first time.

The second temple I've been to was the Ogden, Utah Temple. I first went there with my ward and we always went out to Farr's Ice Cream afterward. I always got this peppermint kind that is sooooo good.

The third temple was the Snowflake, Arizona Temple. The neat thing about the Snowflake temple is that it's practically in my Great-aunt and Great-uncle's Backyard. My Onkel Nicolas is really into family history and has reserved all the names on one side of my family. So while we were down there we were able to be baptized for family names in the Snowflake Temple, it was really neat.

Now the really cool thing about the Salt Lake temple is that it's construction took 40 years to complete. It's the most well-known of all the LDS Temples. Every Latter-Day-Saint probably knows where it is and that it took 40 years to build. From the outside the Salt Lake temple is very beautiful. It's surrounded by really tall buildings, that, believe it or not, were not there 100 years ago when the Salt Lake Temple was built. Normally we build our temples on hills so they "stand as an Ensign to the nations" but as the city of Salt Lake grew, the Temple was surrounded.

The most distracting temple that I know of is the Washington D.C temple. I guess as you come around the curve in the road, it's right in front of you and really bright. My friend has been in that one and she thought it was pretty cool.

"I love to see the temple, I'm going there someday. To feel the Holy Spirit, to listen and to pray"
I love to see the temple, I'm going there tomorrow, to feel the Holy Spirit, to listen and to Pray.
Hopefully I've shown you just a little bit of the love I have for the temple, my words are inadequate to describe my feelings about the temple. It truly is a beautiful house of the Lord. I love the Temple and hope to share my feelings around the globe.