Yesterday we went down to the San Antonio, Texas Temple for the first time.  Our stake had set up a stake “Temple Day of Service” and encouraged us to come on Friday and participate as a stake in serving in the temple. We called ahead last week and reserved a spot on the 6:30 session.

Google maps, which I guess should not always be implicitly trusted, told us that it would take one hour and twenty-eight minutes to travel from Austin to San Antonio.  We therefore left at 4:00 which we thought would give us plenty of time to get there in time for the session even if there was bad traffic. Well . . . traffic was horrific! It took us about 45 minutes to just get into down town, a drive of about 10 miles. You do the math.  We were going really really slow! Traffic didn’t get better after we left downtown and it ended up taking us 2 1/2 hours to get to the temple.  We pulled into the parking lot at 6:30!

We had wanted to take a picture beforehand because we weren’t sure it would work well in the dark afterward, but Sarah felt like we should just go in. The kind workers at the desk asked if we were there to do sealings, and Sarah explained that we were supposed to be in the 6:30 session but the traffic had been really bad. Thankfully, our stake president, Pres. Hollingsworth, was standing right there and said that if we hurried “really really fast” then we could still be in the session because they hadn’t started yet! We were sooo grateful. Neither of us had been to the temple in a month, and we both really missed it. The session was really sweet.

As we were pulling up late to the temple, I thought about how sad it would be if we were late for something much more important than the temple.  I kept thinking about how the temple needs to be a top priority in our lives and how being places in a timely manner is important to feeling the Spirit. I had the story of Joseph F. Smith going through my head about being late but being clean. I’m so grateful that we were able to participate in the temple.  It is important not only to our eternal lives after this life but to our mortal and daily lives.