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For us, the trip to the temple is 3 hours round trip. It gives us a chance to talk (a captive audience) about what we’re about to go through. For the most part, the temple has a calming influence that sacrament meeting doesn’t have.
I am a very slow learner. As a result, I like the repetition too.
I would never want it to be a “drive by” experience.
Minyan Man wrote:For us, the trip to the temple is 3 hours round trip. It gives us a chance to talk (a captive audience) about what we’re about to go through.
For the most part, the temple has a calming influence that sacrament meeting doesn’t have.
I am a very slow learner. As a result, I like the repetition too.
I would never want it to be a “drive by” experience.
I agree that the temple has a calming influence but for me that doesn’t come from going through a session. If there were meditation rooms to go to or other places to enjoy the quiet, shut out the outside world and try to connect with God I’d find that same influence and peace. Many times that is hard to achieve in the celestial room unless you can go during the right times when it won’t be busy. And the only way you can get to it is to sit through a session.
I’ve heard of members getting dressed then going directly to the Celestial room. You may have to ask, “How do I get to the Celestial room?”
I’m not sure if that’s true of all temples though.
A temple president wife once told me that temple work has never been about efficiency. While it would be nice, I don’t think significant changes will happen in our lifetimes. One the session starts I calm down. I wish there were a way to reduce the 45 minute lead time of checking in, changing, waiting, going to the endowment room and waiting again. I do enjoy sitting in the comfortable sofas in the celestial room snuggling with my wife.
Okay Roadrunner Quote:snuggling with my wife.
So you are the one. Get a car. Save the couches for people like me to nap on. Seriously.
🙂 Roadrunner wrote:A temple president wife once told me that temple work has never been about efficiency. While it would be nice, I don’t think significant changes will happen in our lifetimes.
One the session starts I calm down. I wish there were a way to reduce the 45 minute lead time of checking in, changing, waiting, going to the endowment room and waiting again. I do enjoy sitting in the comfortable sofas in the celestial room snuggling with my wife.
Advantage of the smaller temples, I suppose. Since appointments are suggested (and sometimes necessary) and there are few sessions every day, you know when your session is and if timed well you can go right in, change, get your name, and be seated in the endowment room with a wait time of less than 5 minutes. As long as I don’t poke along I can get there 20 minutes before the session and be good.
There was a time (olden days) when our temple was the Washington DC temple. It was an 18 hour bus trip (one way). We wanted to get as many endowments sessions in as we could so we ran from session to session.
When we were done, we were exhausted, spiritually.
On the trip home we would discuss our experiences.
There was a special feeling going to an endowment session & seeing the front row with PH from our ward.
Minyan Man wrote:There was a time (olden days) when our temple was the Washington DC temple. It was an 18 hour bus trip (one way).
We wanted to get as many endowments sessions in as we could so we ran from session to session.
When we were done, we were exhausted, spiritually.
On the trip home we would discuss our experiences.
There was a special feeling going to an endowment session & seeing the front row with PH from our ward.
Our bus trip wasn’t as long, but Washington was once our temple too (I was married there) and it is very conducive to doing as you describe, especially when in full operation mode and sessions can start every 10-15 minutes. The cookies in the cafeteria are yummy too.
I was married there too, DJ. It was only a 4 hr drive for us. But the bus trips as a youth were great memories. I thought about seeing angels on the drive down, but was filled with peanut butter cookies to make me happy on the ride home. They stopped chartering buses for youth temple trips years later. Everyone was bummed. Those were fond memories. They brought us together as a ward. Heber13 wrote:I was married there too, DJ. It was only a 4 hr drive for us. But the bus trips as a youth were great memories. I thought about seeing angels on the drive down, but was filled with peanut butter cookies to make me happy on the ride home. They stopped chartering buses for youth temple trips years later. Everyone was bummed. Those were fond memories. They brought us together as a ward.
It was 6 hours for us, more on the bus. We also chartered those buses or sometimes for youth trips several people would drive and we’d stay at a motel in a block of rooms. Sometimes we’d do something else like stop at a historical site on the way back but we stopped doing that eventually because those seemed to become the focus of the trip as opposed to the temple. On the other hand, for the youth the baptismal thing was only a few hours so it necessary to do something with the rest of the time, especially if we drove. We likewise had adult only bus trips, usually as a stake but our ward did one once. I agree, it was a unifying thing but I don’t necessarily understand why – perhaps all that time together on the bus? We’d leave at 0 dark thirty and get back really late. I do have some fond memories associated with those.
Many feel like we lost those valuable bonding moments, those Mormon meccas, by making temples almost too convenient to some people. There’s something to be said spending time together. If everyone shows up at the temple separately and goes their separate ways afterwards there’s still the time in the temple that is shared but not as much shared time outside the temple, aka real life.
Leaving at 0 dark thirty (a shared common hardship) also builds bonds.
In our temple, members sometimes bring a family name, do the baptism for that one person, immediately do the initiatory for that person, go straight into the endowment session for that person, then sometimes (when possible) finish the evening with a sealing for that person (and spouse or parents). Watching and helping in that process is hard to describe – and what I imagine as the best version of the work.
mom3 wrote:Okay Roadrunner
Quote:snuggling with my wife.
So you are the one. Get a car. Save the couches for people like me to nap on. Seriously.
🙂 Oh, so my wife isn’t supposed to sit on my lap?
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