Vegas Baby!

Wednesday we took 12 of our Young Women to do baptisms at the Las Vegas Temple.

If you know me then you know I have an obsession with the youth doing Baptisms. I'm pretty sure stems from when I was in YW and we only had the Provo Temple to do baptisms. But we had to share it with ALL of the other youth in Utah County down to Washington County. So we were able to do them once every 2 years. So if you were lucky you did them twice while you were a youth. I wasn't that lucky. I was sick one of the times so I only got to go once. Now we have the St. George Temple and we get to take the youth once a quarter. Which still isn't enough for me. We make it the most important birthday party ever when my kid each turns 12. I have a whole talk about this subject and will post it later. As for now:

9 of our YW were able to do baptisms. The other three were non-members. The Vegas Temple is a lot different than ours but the one thing I loved was that it had a huge entrance where everyone could come in (even in your cut off shorts and t-shirts) to sit and read the Ensign or New Era and they even have a large atrium when they could walk around and sit while they were waiting for us. It was nice to not have them sitting outside in the heat thinking that they couldn't be a part of what we were doing.

The rest of us went downstairs and did baptisms. It was really fun to see how laid back and reverent it was there. Our St. George Temple seems to get a little on the, Hurry up and get it done, side. Which is fine. Our Temple is very busy and they hurry to accommodate everyone. We were the only ones in the Vegas Baptistery. The 1st Counselor in the Temple Presidency came down and talked to us for 15 minutes before we even started. It was really neat. Randy Turek, Stefanie's husband came to do our baptizing. It was nice to have a priesthood member with us. We had one Young Woman who this was her 1st time ever doing baptisms. It was fun to watch her.
This is Angie Smith our YW Sec., Jen DeMille and Sarah DeMille our 1st Counselor. I love them all so much. They always keep me laughing.

While everyone got dressed I went back up stairs to see the other girls. They were patiently waiting. I went up and sat next to one of them who asked me if she could come to church with me on Sunday. I, of course, said yes and invited her cousin who was one of the other girls to come too. Shayne had invited them both last week but they declined. So maybe this week. We always have kids that do not belong to us sitting with us. We love it. That's why we have moved to a center pew. I am so impressed with the youth of the world today. They are a great example to their parents. They come to church by themselves and stay for all 3 meetings. I am so glad that I have the calling to help them out.

SIDE NOTE -
Since Jacob got his mission call he has been working in the Temple on Thursdays from 9am-2pm. So Shayne and Sophie have been there every week so he can baptize them. This week I took Sophie and Chase. I think this is Chases first time in the blog so I will tell you who she is. Chase is Debra's 12 year old daughter. They are here for our Beckstrand Reunion this week. So it was just the three of us because Shayne had to work. When we got there the lady at the front desk said that Jacob had just called and couldn't make it because his car broke down. So we did our baptisms anyway and when I saw Jacob later that night at dinner (all of the adults and Jacob went out to eat as part of reunion) I told him that we missed him. Next week we are taking Jaden, he had basketball and couldn't come, Ashley, she was at girls camp, Emma, just turned 12 and didn't have her recommend yet but will get it this Sunday, and Austin and Bryce (Debra's boys) were at a football camp. It will be a great experience. Jacob has been an excellent example to all of his cousins.

Back to Vegas-
After the Temple we went to Ethel M's chocolate factory to see them make all sorts of yummy things. It was very interesting and didn't take long. Then we went to Randy's sister's house to swim and have a B-B-Q. The girls loved it.

They had chicken fights, played basketball,

went down the slide and squirted everyone.

They had a great time. It was hard to get them out of the water when it was time to go.

The whole trip was wonderful. I know it'll be one that they'll remember for a long time and will hopefully give them a desire to go back to the temple soon. I wish we could take them to a different Temple every week. Utah now has 13 working temples and 2 more under construction. Our next closest ones are in Manti and Monticello both a couple hours away. But we are truly blessed to have ours so close. I try to go as often as I can for fear that I may have to move somewhere where it takes longer than 10 minutes to go and I won't be able to take advantage of feeling the spirit and helping those who are waiting patiently for their work to be done.