Vancouver - here we come

In December I posed a difficult question to Ginny, "how would you like to go to the Vancouver Temple open house in April?". Well, I thought it was a tough question, since we are trying to locate a new home, Ginny is going to school full time and a number of other items that have us running like wild men. I should have know that Ginny would do anything to be able to attend the open house since she is the only member of the church in her family, and this was a once in a lifetime chance to show them what our temples are like and to explain their purpose. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity because most all of her family live fairly close to Vancouver. Before I could finish the question, she was dancing around like a little girl waiting to open her Christmas presents.

There was only one detail that we had to get worked out before we could make arrangements to go. We needed to know if we were going to be required to have reservations for the open house (here in Utah every temple open house requires reservations to help control the number of people at the open house at one time). If tickets were needed we would have to make sure we had tickets for all that were planning to attend and that we could get away from the pursuit of a new home and school for the time needed to make the reservations. Well as it turns out, the husband of one of Ginny's friend in Vancouver is on the open house committee. Just a week ago we found out that there were no reservations required, but now we had a new dilemma. My parents are coming with us and my nephew (son of my youngest sister) goes into the Missionary Training Center on the last Wednesday of the open house. That meant that he would be speaking in church on the second or third Sunday in April. We did not want to missing his talk, so we had to ask what the plan was for his assignment to speak. All in all everything has worked out and we will be leaving Salt Lake on April 9 for Vancouver. This makes it very nice for my parents as they will be able to go to Canada with us and then just stay here in Salt Lake upon our return for a few extra days to be able to attend Tyler's missionary farewell. My parents are not getting any younger and I worry about them having to travel a lot without anyone to accompany them.

We feel that the Lord has richly blessed us, not only with the means and time to attend the open house and being able to take my parents along but also being able to have my parents only have to make one trip from Nevada.

If you are interested in seeing what an LDS Temple is like and you live close to Vancouver, I would encourage you to spend a little time and pay the temple a visit during the open house April 9 - 24, (we will be going April 10th). I promise you, it will be well worth your effort and to top it off you may even learn that many of the world's perceptions of the Mormon's just simply are not true. I promise the people at the open house will treat you like gold. There will be no pressure to make you feel that we are recruiting members. This is just a gesture of good will for all that want to know what our temples are like and why they are different from our standard chapels.

If you are interested in attending you can find the information on the open house here.

As for our new home, I am purposely not detailing too much of what is going on as we are still negotiating with the builder on the home. Just let me say, yes, we are moving, its just a matter of getting every in place to have our new home built. Believe me I will blog about all that pertains to our new home when the time is right.