Louisville Kentucky Temple
This third temple of the day was going to be a make-it-or-break-it effort. If I got out of the Indianapolis Temple in time and the traffic was favorable I might make it for the latter part of the day in the Louisville Kentucky Temple but there was no guarantee.
I had about 150 miles to drive and a little over two hours to get there. The hard thing is that the Indianapolis temple didn’t open up until 6 PM and the final session at the Kentucky temple is at 7:30 and they’re 150 miles apart. My only hope was to make it to the Louisville temple before people were done with the last endowment session and maybe they would let me go in and do some quick initiatory work. I was right!
With about 25 miles to go I had the impression to double check the address that I had put into my truck GPS system. The address was correct but I decided to enter it into my phone and double check the route. The phone came up with a different route which cut about 13 minutes off my driving time. So I followed it. That was a good move!
On the way I crossed and awesome bridge and shot this video:
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I made it to the Louisville temple with 15 minutes to spare. They let me do some initiatories which worked out to be three names. Then I got to sit in the celestial room for about 15 minutes by myself experiencing the pure joy of making it to three different temples in three different states in one day.
The sweetest part of the whole day was what the lady temple worker said to me as I was exiting the celestial room: “Thank you for coming!” Those temple workers are pure gold.
The final few miles of driving to the Louisville temple work were tense. It seems to be out in the middle of nowhere with lots of uninhabited wood-covered land on the way. On the final half mile suddenly there is the stake center and the temple on the right-hand side. It was great!
I was so excited to have completed the three temples on the first day. This would be the toughest day of my trip. From here on out it’s downhill.
I was also thrilled to see a Kentucky Fried Chicken not far from the temple so I loaded up for dinner. They even gave me a complementary larger coleslaw which I loved!
I’m now driving towards the Nashville temple and it’s 191 miles from where I am. All I have to do is make it there by tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock for an endowment session then it’s on to Thanksgiving!
The Louisville temple is my 41st temple visited since January 2017. I’m only seven away from reaching my goal for 2018 of 24 temples (2 per month!)
Thank you Lord for blessing my trip!
