Beautiful, Beautiful Day

The morning started out beautifully.  We arrived at the temple in the early dawn. The temple looked exquisite, as usual.

But then the morning turned kind of unbeautiful. I had left my temple locker key in the car....again!  Grr.  The temple recorder saw me coming and met me at the office door, master key in hand. Kidding.  But it isn't the first time I have left my locker key in the car and have had to find the temple recorder.

Anyway, on to explain the title of this post.  Gary and I were assigned to be the officiator and follower of the first endowment session of the day.  It doesn't happen very often that we are assigned to be together in the same session, but when it does happen, I LOVE  the experience to pieces. Beautiful.  And to make it even better, our favorite film was shown during our session.  It was just him and me and our endowment group "family".  I felt such a closeness to everyone in the session. I was a little nervous, though, since it was a relatively large session.  The more people, the greater the chance something will go wrong.  But everything went well. Well, maybe one little tiny problem that was my fault.  At one point as I was watching a cute little lady, I reached down to pick up an unknown article that I thought she had dropped.  As I started to pick it up, I realized it was attached to something.  She was so short that her dress was draped onto the floor.  I was picking up the hem of her dress.  Awkward!  But a beautiful session.

After such a beautiful experience, I dragged myself to my next assignment: the dreaded Youth Center. Today was the first time I have been assigned to work in a Youth Center. Ever. In any temple. I've always been grateful to have dodged those bullets! Let's just say my preconceived notion of what goes on in Youth Centers was less than positive.  But was I ever wrong!  Well, today anyway, there were no crying babies.

The cutest little family of four girls to be sealed to their parents was dropped off in the Youth Center, ages 12, 9, 2, and 9 months.  The baby was a jewel.  Sucking her thumb the whole time, she would go to any of us with a smile.  I was assigned to care for the two year old.  What a cutie!  She talked as if she were four.  I had so much fun helping the girls choose their white dresses and fix their hair.  There were too many hair bow and ribbon choices  for the two year old, but she managed to keep her hair design very tasteful.  The sealer talked with the girls for a while and then we were called to the sealing room.  Before today, I had no idea the workers in the Youth Center were the privileged few who escorted the children to the sealing room to meet their parents.  What a sweet experience!  As we walked down the hall towards the sealing room, little Lealah kept pointing to Jesus in the pictures.  She was so excited!  Even Joseph Smith's portrait was Jesus! The patrons who passed by all smiled and commented on the sweetness of the occasion.  Lealah would smile and twirl in her "princess" dress, lapping up the attention.

Walking into the beautiful sealing room and reuniting those four beautiful girls with their parents was a moment in time.  Lealah immediately wiggled her hand out of mine, scurried over to her mother, and climbed onto the chair next to her.  The baby started to cry when she saw her mother, but was happy when in her lap.  And then seeing the family kneel around the altar, join hands, and sealed for eternity. Words cannot express the sweetness of the experience.

No wonder I have never been assigned to work in a Youth Center.  It is a sought-after position assigned only to a privileged few who have pull.

Beautiful, beautiful day!

Temple Renewed

Tuesday, October 6.  Today is the day.  Time to throw the white work overalls into the wash, comb hair, wash  faces, and manicure nails (for me, anyway, not Gary.)  Time to find and iron temple clothes, and remember how to be temple workers.

For the past week we have been part of a large crew of volunteers to clean the temple in preparation for its grand opening.  It has been closed for eight weeks for major renovation.  When temple cleaning assignments are usually given,  there isn't much difference between the beginning of the work period and the end. To quote Temple President Colton, "On a regular cleaning assignment we usually work all day to find one speck of dust.  This is a unique situation....we are finding  dirt!"  He was so right.  We found dirt: construction dust and debris everywhere.  We mopped, dusted, vacuumed, and picked up leftover construction stuff for days. Besides all the great muscles developed from cleaning, more muscles have been developed from all the stair climbing.  (Remember there are seven floors in the Washington D.C. Temple!)

Saturday, October 25.  Our first introduction to the temple...not so impressive.  Entering through the service entrance, we were met with a lot of protective plastic sheeting taped to the walls and to the carpeting. Plastic covered all of the displaced paintings and stacked furniture. Construction equipment and cleaning supplies scattered everywhere. Not to mention the myriads of endowed construction workers: carpet layers, sheet rockers, chair installers, and tile workers.

Our first assignment was to carry a large 138 by 12 1/2  foot carpet roll up the winding staircase to the fourth floor.  Not a simple task,  especially when the stubborn carpet didn't want to bend around the corners in the stairwell.  At one point, I was getting closer and closer to the stair railing before the carpet finally bent. Kind of scary!  Fifty workers and sixty-two stairs later, mission accomplished.

The rest of the day our cleaning crew was assigned to clean the four emergency-exit stairwells.  Not only the stairwells but the "attic" of the temple--the floor above the seventh floor.  A place where no one has gone before, and probably no one will ever go again!  Much sweeping, mopping, dusting, and polishing railings, it was spotless.

Monday, September 29.  A voluntary morning for the brethren to carry boxes of new seats to the six endowment rooms.

Tuesday, September 30. The sisters spent the morning in the laundry folding clothes while the men carried  another massive carpet roll to the fourth floor and carried more boxes of seats to endowment rooms.

Wednesday, September 31. Good news!  We were promoted to the seventh floor.  How gorgeous!  Our first glimpse of  the assembly room with beautiful white carpet and newly-installed, celestial-blue priesthood seats on either end of the room.  It's patterned after the Kirtland and Salt Lake Temples.  Massive!   The 2,000 white congregation chairs were meticulously set in orderly rows.  It reminded me of the Arlington Cemetery.  More vacuuming, dusting, and wiping sweaty brows later, we were finished.

Thursday, October 1. Demoted. Our crew was sent to the bowels of the temple---the floor below the baptistry level.  Again, a place where no one has gone before, and probably no one will ever go again!  Much sweeping, dusting, and mopping later, it was spotless---well, almost.

Friday, October 2. We were sent back to the bowels of the temple for more cleaning.  Rats!  After conquering the freight elevator with its jaws-of-death doors, more sweeping, mopping, and dusting.  This time the sisters were left to do the job.  The brethren were needed to carry more boxes of newly-delivered  seats to the endowment rooms.   But determined to pass inspection this time, we really stirred up the dust.  Much coughing, wiping of sweaty brows, and cheerful conversations later, we were finally finished.  I only mention "cheerful conversation" since one of the three of us sisters working was the Temple Matron, Sister Colton.  Best behavior, Sister Eddington, best behavior!  Again to quote President Colton, "On your first day back to the temple, you will look at the parts of the temple you cleaned and proudly say, 'I cleaned that!'"  Not so in our case. Who's allowed in the emergency stairwells or the  basement dungeon? No one!

But again, we were promoted to the Celestial Room. Kind of hard to envision how beautiful the Celestial Room is supposed to be when furniture and paintings from all areas of the fourth floor were stacked and packed in every spot.  But after dusting, vacuuming, and rearranging, it started looking better.

Saturday, October 3.  This was supposed to be a day for watching conference, but with the threat of a hurricane coming on Monday, we were rescheduled to do our final dusting and vacuuming before conference instead of Monday.  When we dodged hurricane Juaquin, our cleaning day was cancelled.

Monday, October 5.  Zero hour!  The construction crew was supposed to have been done and gone.  But they weren't.  Still more tiling, and painting left to do. So we vacuumed and dusted around them, hoping our work wouldn't be undone. Everything looked so different. Over the weekend the temple was freed from its plastic prison. Rolling shelving containing worker clothing and cleaning supplies had disappeared.  No more command center for the volunteers to meet, receive daily instruction, and gather for a break and snacks. Workers were placing furniture and paintings in their proper locations.  The beauty of the temple was reemerging.

It is exciting yet sad.  The end of a week's worth of laughter, temporal work, bonding, and the joy of service. It's finished. Yet it's just beginning.  On to temple voices and eternal work. On to more bonding.  On to feeling the Spirit of the Temple in its fullness.  On to the joy of service in its fullness. We are excited.

Beautiful temple - both inside and out