Deseret Peak Utah Temple
I came to Utah to attend my nephew’s play, Phantom of the Opera, at Spanish Fork High School, where he plays the Phantom. I didn’t know that the Deseret Peak Utah Temple was open for business today, until last night. I was fortunate that I grabbed the last endowment appointment at 3 o’clock on the churches website.
I took my brother and his family to breakfast this morning at Golden Corral in Orem, where we all played the role of Phantom. It was a big hit! 
Afterwards, I rode back on the frontrunner and went back up to Salt Lake. From there I took a Lyft ride 35 minutes to the temple. I got there an hour sooner than I thought I would, which was great! I decided to do sealings instead, which will get me back out quicker and get down to my nephews play quicker. On the way, we passed the Great Salt Lake and I had to take a shot of it.
One of the fun things about approaching a new temple is seeing it from a distance. They’re hard to miss! That was also the case today. Often they’re built adjacent to a stake center too.
The Tooele Utah landscape is much different than Montgomery County, Maryland, in that there just aren’t a lot of trees or greenery around. That makes a temple really stand out! 
One of the people I performed a sealing for was Edward Tasca, a man who purchased a copy of the Book of Mormon from my father in 1950 when my dad was on a mission in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I did his endowment a month ago in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Temple and it felt great to finish off his temple work today!
The Deseret Peak Utah Temple was dedicated just earlier this week by President Russell M Nelson. It was the 200th temple to be put into operation. President Hinckley had a goal of getting 100 temples in operation by the year 2000. He accomplished his goal. Now in less than 24 years, we have doubled the number of temples worldwide. It’s remarkable to see the growth of the church throughout the world. At this point, the McAllen Texas Temple is the only one in the United States I have not done temple work in.
In about 30 minutes the Frontrunner will pick me up and take me back down to Provo where I will catch a bus and go to my brothers home to then go to the high school and watch my nephew in Phantom of the Opera. I was successful in sneaking in a temple trip in-between the breakfast this morning and his performance tonight!
There is light snow in the mountains and somewhat on the ground out in Tooele right now. Yet the flowers on the temple grounds still look great!
This has been a wonderful day to be in another one of the Lord homes and perform his work. The lavender chairs in the sealing room were spectacular!
And once again, I proved that the Church will let you into the Lord’s holy house, wearing Levi’s and no tie!