Boise Temple

 The Boise Temple is almost open again, yay! I'm really excited for the re-dedication this Sunday.

 We did the open house tour back in October with Chuck's parents. (Your guess is as good as mine as to why my hand is inside of Jack's shirt - was I that cold? Some sort of payback because his hand is constantly down my shirt? Who knows.) The boys really enjoyed it; for Family Home Evening the Monday before, we talked a lot about the temple and showed them official before and after pictures that the Church had released to the Statesman. This really helped them know what to expect - and gave us a fun preview! As we walked in to the stake center before the tour, the ushers gave us a pamphlet about the temple that also included some pictures. Will enthusiastically called this his 'ticket' and clutched it throughout the tour. He loved matching whatever room we were in to its corresponding picture within the pamphlet.

 So it's fitting that Will ended up being our family's best 'missionary' in terms of sharing invitations to the open house. Because of the heavy traffic, we parked at a nearby church building and were then shuttled up to the temple on a charter bus. Will kept talking about that bus vs. his preschool bus, so the next week I asked him if he wanted to give a picture of the temple to his bus drivers and tell them about going to see it. He responded, "Yes, and my teachers too!" Okkkay buddy! So I helped him give them to George, Elizabeth, Tammy, and Katie (bus drivers/attendants going to and from preschool, respectively) and then I put two extra invites into his backpack, semi-figuring he would forget. But that day when he got home I asked him about it and he happily relayed how he had given them to Miss Brittney and Ms. Kim and told them they could go see the temple! (I emailed his teacher later to follow-up with more info and to make sure she knew there was no pressure...)

Oh, and then he even followed up. The next preschool day Will and I had this exchange:

"Hi buddy! How was school? How was the bus?"

"I go to preschool! Elizabeth not have her temple picture. I say 'Where your temple picture?' and Elizabeth say it at her home."

And then I pretty much died laughing. Way to be low-key, Will!

I was really excited to be able to help at the open house as a tour guide for a couple of days. Emily K and Paulina were ushers, so we carpooled over together each day and had the best time talking and laughing. (Sister Fleshman joined us the first day, but opted to drive with her husband the second day - sad for us!). Since Emily is sooo sweet and knows about my Cafe Rio/temple tradition, she and Paulina treated me to lunch there on Thursday to thank me for driving both days. 

Being a tour guide was a really great experience - and luckily not as intimidating as I thought it would be :). The first day I was excited to be paired with a friend from our old ward in Boise whom I hadn't seen for a while. April and I led two tours (I made her speak on the first one and then I did the second) and got lots of good time in to catch up with each other. The second day I led a tour with another friend, Brenda, as the second guide. We then got to help out as ushers by the fountain for a while, and then I pushed a wheelchair through a tour. I loved watching all of the tour participants' faces as we went through the temple - some of them had seen the rooms before the remodel, for others this was their first exposure. The last room on the tour was the Celestial Room, where everyone was invited to be silent and spend a few moments in quiet contemplation/prayer/meditation. It was SO neat to be able to share that special experience. I'm really grateful to have a temple sooo close again!