Laie Temple

I didn't know that the Laie Temple was closed for remodeling before I got here, but it is!  It's been closed for about 2 years now.  Us BYU students have had a bounty of opportunities to be involved with this re dedication of the temple.  It started with cleaning at the temple before the open house began.  I was helping out in the fountains.  I jumped right in and started scrubbing each tile individually with a pumas rock to get the rock/salt water stains off.  We had fun doing it and I loved how detailed we were about cleaning the temple, it was a good reminder of how important temples are.

Got a little wet while squatting in the fountains

Last Saturday I got a call from another ward member early in the morning that we needed more people at the temple volunteering.  I got out of bed and headed on over and was assigned to put on the shoe "booties".  I really had fun doing it.  They were expecting 8 thousand people that day so it was busy the whole time I was there.  It was neat to be right outside the front of the temple doors and to see people's excitement as they waited to go in.  I wished I could have gone in with all of them and see their reactions.  There were plenty of people who were not members and they just couldn't get over the nice service we were doing of putting on booties.  They were so surprised when they did not have to do it themselves.  We ate lots of chocolate chip cookies too since everyone gets one after they leave the temple :)  I have an assignment to go help out again this Saturday, which I'm excited for.

Last night my ward also was assigned to clean the temple! (Side story: I'm on the activities committee here and we had planned to do our first activity last night too.  The plan was to play fugitive then at the end destination we would all meet back up and eat.  But our ward also had volleyball intramural that night, plus the whole temple tour/clean the temple.  Needless to say we had a lot going on and people just were to busy to attend all of our wards functions that night!  But me and Carl, the head activity guy went and bought $96 dollars worth of hot dogs and chips to feed people!  Oh and when we were unloading all the groceries, I broke Carl's door handle off...oops.  Anyway long story short I get to my house later and find I have 128 hot dogs boiling on my stove.  We probably had a good thirty people show up to eat them all, but everyone just kept saying, "Ali, it is nothing for an islander to eat 5 hot dogs."  But none of our big islander boys came so we had a whole pot full of hot dogs left....)

Some of my ward

Okay so after the hot dog festivities we got to go and get a tour of the temple before we cleaned.  It was really neat.  We were in there for a good hour or so.  We learned a lot of things and spent a lot of time talking about the significance of the rooms in the temple and the important ordinances in the temple.  On the VIP tour of the temple when all the other religious leaders came, a Catholic priest (I think) was in the bridal room and asked the tour guide of the men got a room like this for them.  The tour guide replied no and that they just get ready in the bathroom.  The priest replied that that is something he really admires about our church "how we take care of our women".  There were 2 pictures in there that I loved as well.  One was of Mary and Joseph and the other was one the church just barely got the rights too.  It is off Jesus at the tomb and he is in pure white, Mary is there too in a red robe.  It was really stunning and showed Christ as a divine being.

After some people stayed inside to clean, others cleaned outside the temple(me) and others cleaned the church house.  I wiped down all the railings outside of the temple :).



So on the outside of the top of the temple is this phrase too, but it is backwards so it says, "The House of the Lord--Holiness to the Lord".  That is how it was done in 1919 when the temple was first built.  But the funny thing is, is that they just realized that they were opposite of each other.  So they'll be fixing that before the Prophet gets here...

FACTS:

• Construction of the Laie Hawaii Temple came to a halt when lumber ran out. Prayers were uttered, and two days later, a freighter was discovered stranded on a nearby coral reef. The captain offered his entire cargo to the saints if they would unload it for him. His cargo was lumber; enough to complete the temple.
• The architecture of the temple is a blend of ancient American ruins elements.

• There was no building stone available so volcanic rock was crushed to make re-enforced concrete.
• Laie, the site of the temple was a sanctuary or “city of refuge.” A person in flight could find sanctuary, even from the King, if they could reach the sacred grounds of Laie.