I Love to See the Temple

On May 1st, we drove over to the Gila Valley. Bryce was participating in the Teacher/Priest Triathlon in Pima. Since Adam had a Cub Scout night at the Riparian Observatory Friday night, we went over bright and early Saturday morning, picked up Bryce and poked around the Valley until it was time for our open house tour of the Gila Valley Temple. Check out Mt. Graham. If you look closely, you can see it is still covered in snow on the first day of May.


We drove by Andrew Kimball's home in Thatcher. This is where Spencer W. Kimball lived from age 7 until he was 22. Dan recalled the story of President Kimball as a young 14-year-old boy attending a stake conference where Susa Young Gates, daughter of Brigham Young, had everyone stand up who had read the Bible - Old and New Testaments. Only a few people stood up, and not being one of those few, Spencer felt strongly that he needed to read the Bible cover to cover. He started that very night. In about a year he had accomplished his goal in this house, reading the Bible by coal oil lamp in the upstairs bedroom of this house.

After lunch at La Paloma, a trip to the Pima cemetery and a drive by Grandma Alder's old house, we stopped at Aunt Rita's to visit and change our clothes for the open house. Rita lives in Central where the temple is located. She is close enough to the temple that you can see the top of the steeple and Angel Moroni from her house.

Dan took this picture from the temple grounds. We liked the sun streaks that appeared in the photo.

This is the Gila Valley Temple. It is beautiful inside and out. One of the instruction rooms has all four walls painted with murals of the surrounding landscape complete with quail. But I think our favorite was the enormous sparkling chandelier in the Celestial Room. It was most impressive.

It was a great opportunity for Bryce and Adam to see the inside of a temple. Bryce been in the baptistry of the Mesa Arizona Temple, so this was very interesting to him. He even got to go through twice - once with the Ward YM the night before and once with us. He shared some of the information his tour guide had told them about the construction of the temple and the pictures that were commissioned for the interior.

It was a windy day, but we took a moment to have our picture taken in front of the temple. It is because of the sealing powers used in the temple that our families can be together forever!