Temple Trip

We had a wonderful trip to the temple.  We left the mission office right on time at 5:55 am with 6 Elders.  We stopped enroute in Plant City to pick up 2 more Elders and arrived at the temple at 7:30 am just as planned.  We drove in the mission's 12 passenger van.  I really don't enjoy driving it, but it got us there.

We had a good temple session and then met with the temple president, Pres. Cox, afterwards.  The Elders asked some good questions, and Pres. Cox seemed to enjoy meeting with them.  He wears a small pager, and he was paged twice while he was talking with the Elders but just kept going.

After the temple session, we visited with some missionaries from the Orlando Mission who were involved in a service activity on the temple grounds.  The missionaries in the zone around the temple work on the temple grounds three times a month as part of their service.  I don't know whether our missionaries were envious or not.  The Orlando missionaries are able to attend the temple twice a year; our missionaries only once during their mission.

We stopped at a Panera restaurant near the temple for lunch and several members stopped and talked with the missionaries.  One of them gather two missionaries two $25 gift cards to use for future temple trips.

When we returned to the mission office, we drove to see how they were setting up an apartment for the senior couple who will arrive tomorrow, the Duffin's.  They also will be working in the mission office.  Sister Duffin will replace Sis. Tollerton as the mission secretary.  Elder Duffin will manage the fleet of cars which full-time missionaries have been doing.

Elders McNIven, Gneiting, Treanor, Newbold, Stout, Duffin, Madsen, and Walton (l-r)