I love to see the temple, I'm going there someday

Well first of all, sorry to all those that are not LDS because this is mostly about goings on in the church and such, so I'm sorry if you don't all understand how excited I am about some things I'm going to talk about. :)

Anyway, this weekend is our Church's General Conference which consists of two days (Saturday and Sunday) of sessions where the leaders of the Church speak to the members. There are two sessions each day which are two hours long. It happens two times a year, the first weekend of April and the first weekend of October. It is a very wonderful and uplifting time and I love it! I didn't appreciate it as much when I was younger but as I've gotten older it's become a very special time of the year and I love listening to the council our leaders give us. I especially love going to the actual conference center and listening to it in person. It's such an amazing experience to sit there with 21,000 people, over a hundred General Authorities of the Church and often the entire 360 person Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Needless to say, the new Conference Center is HUGE!!!!! (they say that it can fit two full size Boeing planes inside of it....holy crapt that's big!!!) It is an extremely AWESOME experience, let me tell you.

(yes, this IS actually a top view of the conference center, it has tons of plants and walkways on top of it and it's pretty fantastic!!!)

(isn't it awesome???)

This past weekend I actually got to go to the session of the Relief Society (our Church's organization for women) and be there at the conference Center filled entirely with women, except for the few GA's that spoke :) I went with my sister-in-law Amy and we had a great time!

Anyway, to sum that up...I LOVE Conference weekend! I was sitting here this morning watching the first session and the President of our Church, Thomas S. Monson, announced five new temples, which is always super exciting anyway (we currently have 128 in operation around the world and they are all magnificently BEAUTIFUL buildings!). Among these new five he announced a new temple in the greater Kansas City area of Missouri!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now being from Missouri, this is super, super, super exciting for me and my family. It is also exciting because of the historical significance of that area from the beginnings of the Church. I did find it quite interesting that they chose to say "the greater Kansas City area" instead of a specific location so right now I have no clue where it's actually gonna be but it's still exciting! It most likely will be in Farwest Missouri but it could be in Independence or Liberty as well so I can't wait to hear specifics! We're hoping they'll mention more when my family goes to their stake conference in two weeks. Currently my family has to drive a good 3 hours to the temple in St. Louis, which isn't really all that bad and it's a gorgeous temple, but one near Kansas City will definitely be closer!

(this is a picture from Farwest that my sister Annie took, her husband did landscaping stuff there for a while and they got to go up there quite a bit. There is really nothing around there, just lots and lots of gorgeous Missouri land!)

I have always loved our temples, everything about them is amazing. They are built with such care and are done with as much perfection as a building could be. I would love one day to just travel around the world and seeing these awesome buildings. Currently I have been to/seen in person the Nauvoo Temple, St. Louis Temple, Salt Lake Temple, Manti Temple, St. George Temple, Mt. Timpanagos Temple, Bountiful Temple, Oakland Temple, Mesa, AZ Temple, and the Birmingham, AL Temple. I think that's it, besides the ones I've just driven by like the Jordan River Temple. I love taking pictures of them though and am gathering quite a collection. Here are a few of them.

Anyway, that's pretty much all I have to say right now, except I guess to say that I LOVE TEMPLES! I have had such wonderful amazing experiences there and am so eternally grateful for the blessings they bring to my life!