September 10, 2022

Albuquerque New Mexico Temple

It’s 321 miles from the Lubbock Texas Temple to the Albuquerque New Mexico Temple. I finished my work in the Lubbock temple at about noon and my appointment in Albuquerque (to do some sealings was at 7 PM. No problem on the travel! Besides, it would give me another chance to drive 80 miles an hour on these wonderful freeways!

There is so much open ground between Lubbock and Albuquerque! I just kept thinking if you gave every American 1 acre of ground you would still have land left over.

The Albuquerque temple is special to me, even though I’ve never been there before. It’s because of my brother Ron.

He has been a consultant to the local PBS affiliate in Albuquerque for many years. He travels there for a week at a time about 10 times a year and he’s done it for many years.

Ron is smart. He goes to Albuquerque by himself, so when he’s done with work he spends evenings in the temple. For years, he’s been on a first name basis with all of the ordinance workers there.

Ron could easily use his time to go get himself in trouble during these evenings and no one but him would know. Instead, he makes a beeline for the temple. Like I said, Ron is smart

Shout out to a young security employee at the temple named Evan. The front of the Albuquerque temple is close to a major street. I didn’t think there was enough room to get a good shot of me at the front of the temple, so I asked Evan if he would take a shot of me in the back of the temple. Instead, he quickly loaded me in his golf cart and drove me around to the front and took the photo there.

with a little bit of time to spare, they added me into the 5:30 initiatory time slot. The ordinance workers there were fantastic as they worked with both me and my crutches!

at 6 o’clock I went into the celestial room and read a number of chapters from the book of Isaiah. I was in there by myself. It was heavenly!

At 7 o’clock I joined in for the sealing session. I was quite excited in that I had brought with me about 10 family names, all of which were males who needed to be sealed to their parents. Needless to say, it was a big day for my relatives as a number of them finished off their proxy temple work.

Afterwards, I went down the street a few blocks and grabbed a burger. It was terrific! You know it’s a good burger when you eat the entire burger without stopping to grab an onion ring or take a drink of a soda. That’s what this was like.

It’s 571 miles from the Albuquerque temple to the Oklahoma City temple. I have an appointment to do initiatory‘s in the Oklahoma City temple tomorrow at 2 PM. I ended up driving a little over 300 miles on interstate 40 towards Oklahoma City.
At around 1:30 in the morning, I pulled into a picnic area, crawled into the back of the SUV, and went to sleep. Shout out to Loves truckstop who sells pillows for $10 and rolled-up blankets for $15. I bought one of each and I was in heaven!