Momma Linda: December 10, 2017 Cedar City Temple Dedication

It's a really big deal to have a temple in your city! The early settlers in Cedar City actually thought they would have a temple here, not in St. George and name the place where SUU's Old Main building is "Temple Hill" or Temple Knoll. But it was not to be for many years.

But now, we have one! It required no great sacrifice on our part. We barely helped out at all, actually. We regularly pay our tithes and offerings, but as far as a sacrifice of time or effort? Not so much. Many of the talks in today's dedicatory sessions did emphasize that NOW is the time we need to sacrifice and spend time researching family names and attending to the ordinances. We can offer that to those who have gone before. It was a lovely day.

However, it did not start out that way! As many of you may know, Mike and I were invited to sing in one of the choirs for the dedication today. Well, I take back what I said about no sacrifices--we DID practice long and hard with the other members of our choir. Dinners were postponed, sleep lost. So, yes. I guess we did contribute. I'm still not sure just how we got on a list, but however it happened, we are extremely grateful. We are not stellar singers, by any means. Mike was, once upon a time. Me? Not so much, though voice lessons have been on my bucket list for quite a while. (Kind of late now, eh?)

Friday evening, we had a dress rehearsal in the temple. Afterwards, we were each given our ticket to get in with the choir, along with one ticket for a "guest." Since we were both singing, we didn't need one for our spouse, so we told Mike's Mom that she could use our "guest" tickets and have someone take her.
Mike wore his new suit to the dress rehearsal. He bought a new shirt, too, with a larger collar. He was comfy. :-) Saturday, Mike took his Mom to a funeral in St. George and I stayed home to do house work (not work on my Christmas newsletter, unfortunately) and laundry. I love days at home. I did shopping for a work party, I did the dishes for the first time this week (Mike's done them the other times) I ran through the hymns a number of times.

Sunday morning, when I turned off the water from my shower, Mike said, "I don't have any recommends any more." HUH? He repeated. They, both his personal "Choir" ticket recommend AND the guest ticket had been in his [new]shirt pocket and I'd laundered his shirt. Now, I can count the times on ONE HAND that I have not checked pockets when I do laundry. Truly. I do it. All the time. But not that day. And his little card were in the shirt pocket and totally dissolved into practically nothing. ARGH!! It was 7 :45 am and what were we to do??? The tickets were for not until the 3 pm session, but we had to be there at 2 pm to warm up and all go in together. The choir director didn't answer an email ( I only had email, not even a phone number!) And I left soon after to attend the first session at our stake center. Mike decided to go up to the temple and see what could be done. And, yes, it was busy and crowded up there! He was gone a long time. They told him that he should bring his regular temple recommend, along with the pieces he'd found -- we could actually see his name and "Choir" because those two parts were actually clear stickers that had been adhered to the paper tickets-- and that the choir would certainly vouch for him as being IN the choir. It looked like we were okay to go, but they would not issue a second guest ticket, so we had to call Mike's Mom and tell her that she wouldn't be able to attend the dedication inside the temple after all. Too bad. But not really. There were so many people around when WE went at 2 pm, the lines stretched around the building and people were standing outside before it was time to enter.
It would have much easier for her to watch the proceedings from her own stake center, so that is what we suggested she do. And she did. Her visiting teacher picked her up and took her.
There was no chance of her being able to be in the Celestial Room where we were singing. I asked at our dress rehearsal just where all the other people were going to be seated, and was told, "Oh, everywhere!" Besides the instruction rooms, there were people in the chapel area, the marriage waiting room, he said they even put 10 chairs inside the Temple President's office! ha. It was packed and the tv monitors did a very nice job of projecting the proceedings to the other locations--even our back waiting area (but we were on the very front row, lucky us).

Everything went well with the singing, the walking in and out. We didn't trip or pull down the curtain covering the mirror we had to carefully walk past between the Leaders' chairs and the wall behind them. Nobody elbowed an Apostle on the head as they walked to their place in the choir. And I think we all mostly remembered and sang the right words and the right notes. Whew. We are SOOOOO glad we got to have this experience. But we are also SSSSOOOOOOOO VERY GLAD it is over!!!!! It was nice to be thanked by President Eyring. He walked into our little waiting room before hand to tell us all "Thank you. We love you. Good luck." And then walked in on his way out to say Thanks one more time. Sweet, sweet man. All the talks were good. The music I heard from the first session was good, too.

A nice day. A good Day. A GREAT day for Cedar City and for the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in this area. Let us go up unto the mountain of the Lord.