Saturday at the Temple is always a very busy day. Today, (6-8-13) the first buses arrived at 4:00 am. And that was after a ten hours or longer bus ride. The members file off the buses, walk past the guard station just inside the temple grounds, are checked in and then wait. The members wait in a common area next to the cafeteria for several hours until the cafeteria opens at 6:00am and they can eat. Then at 6:30 members can pick up a card which will reserve them a session later in the morning or afternoon.
Once inside the temple door, patient faces wait in a long file in front of the desk to get a session pass where 25 people will fill the first session. Each group of 25 passes means another half-hour wait. On week days sessions are every hour. Regardless of the wait members are willing to fill any other assignment. Every once in a while I see tears running down cheeks as people step through the front door. This may be their only temple trip for the whole year. I was told that 2,000 baptisms were completed before 3pm on Saturday.
By 8:00 am sessions, which run every 1/2 hour on Saturday, were filled until 5:00 pm. I think ward members take turns watching each others children while parents attend a session, because mothers have arm loads of small infants and fathers are trying to keep the youth in hand all around the temple's beautiful grounds. On Monday a crew of about 20 will be working from dawn to dusk to clean the two or three acre of grass and concrete that surround the temple. They will groom the landscape which is immaculate, but a little out of sorts from Saturday's workout.
Many of these picture were taken about 3:00 pm and people were just running our of gas and crashing in any convenient place.
At 6:30 pm there were still groups of people waiting and others loading back on buses for the long ride home.
Every North American Missionary is treated like a celebrity. If we walk outside everyone wants us in a picture. When they find out we live in Utah, they want to know about our last conversation with El presidente Monson. It is inspiring to know what these members do to attend the temple.
I have mentioned bus transpiration before and the dangers traveling over the Andes from Lima to La Oroya. Wednesday a tanker truck crossed to the Lima bound side of the two lane road and hit a passenger bus head-on. The tanker truck was full of gasoline. Almost immediately the bus was engulfed in flames. Seven people died and 45 were injured. Seconds before the inferno one passenger, Elder Udall on his way home to Nevada, managed to leap out a rear window. He jumped from the bus cutting his knee and hand only to land in a pool of gasoline. Everything, but the clothes on his back, burned. He picked up a cell phone that had been ejected from the bus and phoned the mission office. But even his clothing was soaked in gasoline and had to be trashed. Missionaries in the mission home got some extra clothing and Dr. Bramwell patched him up and the elder got back on his scheduled flight home.
The Cafeteria
Where is my mother?
Information Desk in the Common Area
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