"Sacred Ground" - Jon Schmidt

This last semester Hilary, Courtney, Rachel and I decided that we wanted to visit all of the temples in the area. I mean why not? There are about 6 within an hours drive and no offense but Provo gets busy and loud so why not venture out? We planned to go every Friday afternoon after we were done with classes and let me just say it was the perfect end to the week. I so looked forward to my Friday's to be able to relax and forget about the stress from the week and be in the Lord's house. I am so blessed with the chance to have gone to the temples as many times as I have had. I seriously love the temple so much and I have felt the blessings from attending. It feels weird to not go to the temple every week since I've been home but I think I am going to keep that tradition when I go back to school and even try and make longer trips to the temples further away! So far I have been blessed to enter 11 different Houses of the Lord and I can't wait to do more work for those that have past! Here's a list of all the temples I have been privileged to enter:

Los Angeles, Redlands, Newport, Las Vegas, Nauvuoo, Provo, Salt Lake, River Jordan, Oquirrh, Draper and Mt. Timpanogas.

I am so grateful that my parents have been able to enter the temple and be sealed for time and all eternity and that our family can be together forever. "We can be together, forever someday..." I can't wait for my chance to be able to be sealed to whomever I am going to marry. Let's hope it's soon...but not too soon ;)

We started off our Tour de Temples with Salt Lake City. Oh man this temple is gorgeous!! We were only able make a trip to this one once but man it's so beautiful. I can see why it took them 40 years to finish it. It was so neat to see the intricate detail of everything!

Stop two of the Tour de Temples was Oquirrh! Oh man I love love love this temple. It is so dang pretty inside and we were lucky enough to go to this temple at least twice that I can think of.

Stop three was Jordan River! It looked so pretty when we came out and the stained glass was all lit up. Hilary got hit on by a 12 year old while we were waiting to do baptisms hahaha.


Mt. Timpanogas! So this one time we went here we went downstairs and then all of a sudden I see my very close friends down there too! I guess their apartment went to the temple every Friday too and we just happened to go to the same temple on the same day. It was pretty cool to be able to see them there.
Draper! I was lucky enough two summers ago to be able to go through the Open House of this temple. They had the funniest workers there. We sit down to do confirmations and they ask us where our boyfriends were at. Then they told us to tell the guy in the font to ask us out because I guess he was single. We agreed he was pretty cute but no dates came out of it.













We have had some amazing times together and we have grown so close. I am so sad that Hilary and Courtney are both going to be gone for the next year and a half while serving their missions. I am going to miss them so much but I know that they will be amazing missionaries and preaching the true gospel.

Outtakes: This one time we tried to attempt taking a picture of all four of us but it was sunny and it was reflecting off the snow on the ground. This picture is funny because 1) it cuts out some peoples faces and two we are all squinting. Then a very nice man came and offered to take our picture for us.


This other time Rachel was saying how her seat was wet and we just thought it was from a water bottle or something. Turns out there was about an inch of water in Hilary's trunk and it was leaking into the back seat. Here is Courtney and Hilary braving the wind and cold to see what was going on while Rachel and I sat in the warmth of the car.