On everything I was told not to say as a temple tour guide, ditching Ari for spring break, and Grace’s two cracks at the driver’s test (vol. xxvi, no. 4)

Dear Family,

The very, very, very, very, very, very much long awaited Washington D.C. Temple open house finally got underway yesterday.

The pandemic has necessitated a few departures from what I understand to be “normal” temple open house procedure. (Lacking experience with many temple open houses, I am assuming what I observed at the pre-pandemic Philadelphia Temple open house was normal.) The most significant difference is that the tours during the “main” open house (the one going on now) are self guided. People are allowed in to experience the various rooms at their own pace. Reservations are only required to park. People arriving by cab (or bike) can drop by anytime and have a look inside.

During the week and a half leading up to April 28th, however, guided tours were provided to a number of “invited guests” from the community (Supreme Court justices, Members of Congress, the governor, local elected officials, leaders of other faiths, press, and other people of consequence and influence, including several who probably don’t think of themselves as important). These tours were led principally by apostles (Elders and Sisters Bednar, Christofferson, Cook, and Gong have all been kicking around Maryland this month) and other General Authorities and General Officers from Salt Lake.

Crystal and I were among a group of local schmoes asked to be on standby to lead tours of the temple when the A-list tour guides were not available to. We were delighted to have drawn this duty as it allowed us to spend a Friday afternoon relaxing near the refreshment table in the climate-controlled visitors’ center while other volunteers toiled in the parking lot and did other things that required standing at various posts in and around the temple for hours at a time.

The tour guide training Crystal and I had received during a walk-through of the temple a couple of weeks earlier — training we did not expect to actually use — was both interesting and enlightening. Talking points were provided to help us describe what happens in the various areas of the temple using accessible language and avoiding terms that normal people might not be familiar with. Endowment rooms are “instruction rooms” and the recommend desk is the “welcome area.” Covenants and ordinances became “promises” and “ceremonies.” It seems like it would be easier if we just used the more commonly understood terminology all the time among ourselves. But I have wasted enough energy trying to get people at church to stop using silly, outmoded terms like fireside¹ to know that these are fruitless endeavors.

We were instructed to be warm, genuine, and transparent. Perhaps counterintuitively, given how shrouded in mystery the temple can seem, the only thing I recall being explicitly told not to say in response to a question was, “I’m not supposed to talk about that.” I found this pleasantly liberating.

But, like I said, Crystal and I did not think we would guide any actual tours. Third-string quarterbacks seldom get in the game, and that’s basically what we were.

Less than an hour into our shift, however, at approximately 2:58 p.m., somebody told us we would be leading the 3:00 tour. I pretended not to panic and quietly started wishing I had paid closer attention to the training and spent a little more time memorizing the talking points and the route we were supposed to take through the temple. Fortunately, Crystal had everything down pat and probably wound up doing most of the actual talking, especially at the beginning.

The hour that followed was simply exhilarating. As we walked from room to room and floor to floor, Crystal and I took turns talking about why we perform proxy baptisms and other ceremonies for our ancestors, the promises we make in the “instruction room,” the silent solemnity of the celestial room, and the unparalleled beauty of what transpires in a sealing room. She and I both struggled at times to talk about these places so laden with meaning to us without getting weepy.

As we approached the bridge from the rotunda at the end of our tour, we paused for a moment to avoid interrupting a tour getting underway at the other end of the bridge. That tour was being led by Elder and Sister Cook, and the pause gave me an opportunity to quietly explain to the guests standing near me that Latter-day Saints believe Jesus has twelve apostles on the earth today. Twelve in the whole world. Then I pointed at Elder Cook, whose back was to us, and whispered, “That tour guide is one of them.” I half-apologized to our group for their having drawn the B-team with Crystal and me, but no one seemed too put out by it. I smiled at Elder Cook and gave him an upward sup nod as we passed each other on the bridge. This characteristically male gesture would ordinarily imply that the two of us are acquainted, which we are not. But the 81-year-old apostle smiled back at me anyway and it made me happy.

Grace, meanwhile, was stationed just outside the temple entrance, distributing booties for everyone to slip over their shoes. Somebody told us that the most frequently asked question by temple open house visitors is whether the shoe coverings have religious significance.

“I’m not really supposed to talk about that,” is how my inner smart-aleck would want to respond to that question. If you’re reading this, you probably already know that the deeply religious purpose of the booties is to keep the carpets clean.²

While taking a break from bootie duty, Grace and her compatriots got a guided tour from Sister Reyna Aburto, one of the aforementioned General Officers. It was the first time Grace had been allowed above the main level of the temple.

Grace’s shift started at the same time as our tour guide shift but ended several hours after. A month earlier, this would have been inconvenient for us. But Grace got her driver’s license this month and was consequently able to make the 5-mile, 14-minute drive home from temple all by herself.

I hope Grace won’t mind my telling you that she needed two tries to pass her driving test. The first attempt ended prematurely when she touched a cone while pulling into a parking space, an automatic game ender. “We think of these cones as our children,” the woman administering the test said.

I mostly blame the Silver Spring Driving Academy for this initial failure, but I also partially blame myself for not providing more specific practice and training. The test requires pulling into a regular size parking spot with three cones on either side spanning the full length of it and sitting on the lines themselves. It’s the equivalent of pulling into a parking space between two giant Sprinter vans, both parked on the line. It’s a good test, even though in real life I’d sooner park across the street and jaywalk across six lanes of traffic than deal with such a space.

It’s obviously not rocket science (our roads are replete with cars operated by people who manage to pass the test despite not actually knowing how to drive) but it does take practice. And so the next day I re-created the test environment by hauling some borrowed traffic cones and broomsticks up to the Northwood High School parking lot. Grace spent the next half-hour or so beating the living daylights out of those poor cones, but she eventually figured it out and within an hour she was pulling in — frontward and backward — like a pro.

She passed the test two days later. And for what it’s worth, Grace is the only one of our children to get from her driver’s permit to her driver’s license without crashing one of our cars. So she’s got that going for her.

Fun fact: I learned this month that Hilton Head Island, despite being in South Carolina, is further south than anywhere on the west coast of the continental United States. (It’s a fraction of a degree of latitude south of Tijuana, Mexico.)

While this may not really affect my (or anyone’s) daily life, it’s one of those disconcerting little discoveries — like learning that our house in Silver Spring, Maryland, is north of Cape May, New Jersey, or that Atlanta, Georgia, is west of Detroit, Michigan, or that Los Angeles, California, is east of Reno, Nevada — that cause me to realize that I don’t understand the geography of my country nearly as well as I think I do.

I got to thinking about Hilton Head geography when Crystal, Grace, and I decided to drive there this month over spring break. Ari, whose work schedule at Kids After Hours gets longer during breaks (when elementary school ceases to function as a source of child care) was unable to come with us.

We found a charming and surprisingly affordable little condo on Vrbo for the three of us two blocks from the beach and one block from the Piggly Wiggly.

We filled the days on the beach and doing what literally everyone visiting Hilton Head does — riding rented beach cruiser bicycles all over the island.

They’re pretty fun and easy to ride. Even with a broken arm and wrist.

One naturally encounters a lot of restaurant servers when on vacation and 99% of them reacted identically to my cast. It went like this: They’d look at my arm, look at Crystal, look back at me, and ask what I did to anger her enough to cause so much damage.

It’s in rather poor taste as jokes go (and that’s saying something coming from me). I considered making up different explanations that would better fit the servers’ basic narrative. But in my case the truth (I got mowed down on my bike by a car, as recounted in last month’s letter) makes for an interesting enough story without having to resort to embellishment. Most adult orthopedic misadventures (it turns out you hear about a lot of them when you walk around with a cast) are far more pedestrian. “I was changing a light bulb…” “I slipped on a step…” “I was putting groceries into the trunk…” At least my injury has a good, harrowing tale behind it. “Oh my goodness, you could’ve been killed!” That’s right, baby, I could’ve. But instead here I am, riding my beach cruiser around town with one hand like a boss!

I’m feeling much better, by the way, and expect the cast to come off next week.

Oh, and here are a few more pictures from Hilton Head.

We stopped in Savannah for a few hours on the way home. Matt and Andra were kind enough to let us stay the night at their house in Raleigh (and Henry was kind enough to cede his bedroom to us) and so the drive home was pretty chill.

Hannah and J.T. had their first bouts with covid this month. It sounds like they both got it worse than any of the rest of us did, but I think they’re doing better now. Also this month, Hannah did what it seems like every other skilled professional in their 20s is doing right now — contributing to inflation by leveraging a job offer (in Hannah’s case, an assistant director of nursing position in Heber, a job she had not applied for but was legitimately interested in) for more money, a title bump, and a company electric car at her current job.

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Sophie, who turned 20 earlier this month, continues to play the Assembly Hall organ every chance she gets but spends most of her productive hours talking to people visiting Temple Square from seemingly everywhere on earth for one to two minutes at a time. Occasionally, these interactions prompt people to find out more. I probably don’t have the details of this story exactly right, but I am given to understand that there was this one person who first encountered Sophie on Temple Square and was subsequently baptized by George Higgins, another missionary from our ward, serving in Scottsdale, Arizona. I’m not sure how they split the commission on that one.³

Her life is harder than she lets on publicly. I suppose that’s true of most people (except people like me who whine loudly about even the most trivial annoyances). I am thankful (and I believe Sophie is as well) for loving family who are kind and patient with me when I feel sad and useless and for a faith that helps bring things into perspective.

Love,
Tim

1. The correct word is devotional. But if you can find firesides mentioned anywhere in the General Handbook, then I’ll stop complaining about people saying it.
2. Someone told me that much of the carpeting will be torn out and replaced between the open house and the dedication. I don’t know whether that person knew what he was talking about. But if he was right, then the open house booties’ sole purpose is to keep the carpeting nice for the open house itself.
3. As this is the internet, a remote possibility exists that someone will read this and not realize I’m joking. Missionaries are not paid commissions. Missionaries cover their own expenses and work for free.