“Visiting the Draper Utah Temple,” Friend, Mar. 2010, 18–19
Visiting the Draper Utah Temple
Before any temple is dedicated, children and adults can go to the temple open house and see what a house of the Lord looks like on the inside.
Aubree, Reese, and Ellee M. live a few blocks from the Draper Utah Temple, so they watched as it was built week by week. They even saw a big crane lifting the angel Moroni into place. “That was really awesome!” 10-year-old Aubree said. “But the best day ever was when my family and I got to go inside.”
As soon as they walked through the temple door, the children felt a special spirit. Their tour guide explained that “everything in the temple is sacred,” Aubree said.
Eight-year-old Reese learned that the twelve oxen holding up the baptismal font represent the twelve tribes of Israel. “I can’t wait to go inside again when I turn 12 and do baptisms for the dead,” he said.
The windows of the temple are beautiful and colorful.
The celestial room was everyone’s favorite room. It’s hard to stop looking at the tall windows and the sparkling chandelier.
The sego lily shown on this window is Utah’s state flower. When food was scarce in the Salt Lake Valley, pioneers ate its roots.
In a sealing room, a man and a woman kneel on each side of an altar to be sealed to each other.
In this dressing room, brides get ready for their temple sealing.
Being here makes people think about what a beautiful, peaceful, happy place our Heavenly Father’s home is and about how much they want to return there.
Family photographs by John Luke; all other photographs by Christina Smith