Friday, January 12, 2024
This morning I woke up early to study my scriptures. As part of my daily study, I always read a bit from Saints, the history of the church. Today I read about the sacrifices that the Guatemalan saints in the 1940s made to attend the temple in Mesa, Arizona -- where we went with the kids just a few days ago. The temple is definitely becoming a strong theme of this trip. It’s the sacred journey to the mountain of the Lord. For some, the journey is short. There are six temples within a 30 min drive of my parents’ house in Orem. We plan to visit them all in the next few weeks. In Michigan, our closest temple is in Detroit -- two hours away. Even when the newly announced Grand Rapids temple is completed, it won’t be any closer. There, we are happy to get to the temple once per month. And yet here I was reading about saints who spent their entire lives saving so that they could attend the temple just once in their life.
It’s inspiring.
Also today, the older kids were able to attend seminary at the Orem High School, and they had a good time. I’m grateful that they are able to experience what that is like. I have such awesome memories of my time in seminary.
In the afternoon, I went birding with Kimball, Ian, and my brother Lamon. He expressed some interest when I posted about it at the beginning of this trip. So we went up the canyon. It was freezing cold, and we didn’t see a ton of birds, but we did see this downy woodpecker.
In the evening, the older kids went to a gymnastics meet to watch their cousin Brooklyn, and Betty, River, Ian, and I went with my sister Annie and her kids to the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point. It was perfect for them. The only bad part was leaving. Ian really hopes we can go back.
When we got back from that, we dropped off the kids, and Annie, Betty, and I went to La Fruitería, which is a new Mexican ice cream place here in Orem. The food was delicious!
