Draper Temple Open House

The day finally came for us to tour the Draper Temple. I had made our reservation in mid-December so it seemed like we had to wait a very long time for this special day.

Each time we drove to Salt Lake this past year or so I would check it's progress with great curiosity. While driving down the freeway at 70+ miles per hour it was difficult to imagine how it would look. For a long time it was yellow making it very difficult for me to visualize.

Today I got to see it up close and in person. It is beautiful just like all the others. This was my first open house and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to show the kids the inside of a temple.

They did this one different from others that I had heard about. They had assigned several Stake Centers as meeting spots so that parking at the temple wouldn't be a problem. Our appointment was for 1:40 in the "red lot" but we arrived almost 20 minutes early and no one seemed to mind. We watched a short movie about temples and the Draper Temple specifically. After that we boarded a shuttle bus that took us up to the temple. From there we went through tents (they were set up in case of bad weather) until we got to the temple entrance.

Once inside we just wound our way through the temple. It was a silent tour but there were signs up to tell what rooms were what. It started off with the baptismal font that was very impressive. From there the kids had a bit of a hard time because it was very slow going. It was way crowded and hard to keep them interested while we were in hallways or on stair cases. It was also very warm in some spots making you want to just sit on a sofa and take a nap. They kept asking when they would get to the chandelier room. Once we got to the Celestial Room they perked up a bit. The chandelier was amazing. From there we went to a sealing room where they were able to look into the mirrors symbolizing eternity. After that we made our way out of the temple and into another church building for cookies and little bitty bottled waters.

We enjoyed plenty of cookies before going out to take some pictures. We couldn't have picked a worse time of day for photos. After that we went back and waited for what seemed like eternity (Yes, that pun was intended) for our bus. We felt like we would never get off the mountain. We were in line for more than 20 minutes. It was miserable. The worse part was the green buses and blue buses were coming one right after the other but there wasn't a running red bus to be seen.

Finally we were rescued and got back to our car at 4:15!!! After we got some food we were able to have a discussion with the kids about what we had seen. Bless their hearts they said they really liked the tour. During it they were asking when we would be done! We still haven't decided if we are going to try to go the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. It is very close to being finished. If we do it will have to be on a week day.