Another Great Day At the Temple

Saturday was our last day to work at the Twin Falls Temple Open House. We arrived for devotional about 7 am and worked until about 11:30. Full capacity is about 4200 visitors a day (that's running a tour group of 30 people every 5 minutes). Saturday over 7000 people toured the temple!!! You can imagine what a mad house it was. Thankfully, it was an organized and happy mad house, but a mad house nonetheless. Tours were backed up heel to toe, and the groups just got larger and larger. Many with 50 people in them! Wow, it's wonderful to see such interest in our temple. As of Saturday, over 125,000 have toured it. It will be interesting to see what the final numbers look like.

Elder Brent Nielsen shared a couple of neat pieces of information on Saturday morning: 1) there have been over 300 self-referrals given to the missionaries directly from the tours, and 2) there have already been several baptisms from those referrals, with more planned before the dedication on August 24th. We are so thrilled with the outpouring of the spirit that has pervaded the valley during this open house. He also shared a great experience where some of the protestors outside the temple were invited in to take a tour. One man accepted the invitation. After his tour he told his tour guides that all the information he had been told about the temple was completely false. He packed up his protest materials and went home!! One last experience (my favorite one) was of a man who, after his tour, was asked what he thought. He exclaimed, " I need to be a Mormon, I already believe all this stuff. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've heard it somewhere before."

It just goes to show what incredible power the temple and the gospel have when we don't do things to get in the way! I love that people who are looking are finding what they've been missing.