Last night, our family attended the new Provo City Center Temple open house. I had never been to the Provo Tabernacle before it burned everything except for the outer facade. Following the fire which gutted the building, the President Monson announced that the building would become a new temple. It was beautiful inside.
The building is quite small, especially compared to other temples in Utah. One of the pleasant surprises was the beautiful murals on the walls. It seemed to hearken back to the old days when murals were common in the Salt Lake Temple. Murals and beautiful stained glass seems like this is a new trend, and I like it a lot better than the plain walls of temple. (I’ve recently attended weddings in the Bountiful and Mt. Timpanogos temples, both built in the 1990s with very plain by comparison walls.)
There are 5 sealing rooms, some with room for just 3 witnesses and 6 patrons. It appeared to me that people walk from room to room during endowments, similar to the Salt Lake Temple.
Are you excited to see the new murals and beautiful stained glass? Why do you think other temples do not have these beautiful features? Do you enjoy walking from room to room for the endowment, or do you prefer to stay seated in the same room the whole time?
We went to this open house last week. So gorgeous.
We asked a volunteer about moving from room to room like Salt Lake. We were told that there is one move in these temples, but not multiple ones, and that they will use the movies. It will be interesting to see.
The sealing rooms were so beautiful. I suspect the tiny ones will be used mostly for ordinance work, but we’ll see.
I’m a worker. I’m sure I would like to see it but in anyone I would see, the things I say and do are the same. I suppose I will keep doing them where ever I go except where they don’t need temple workers.
Moving from room to room would work well for me as it would help me to stay awake! Low boredom threshold.
This video has shots of the interior starting around 4:00:
At the small temples it’s also a single move. For a session at Winter Quarters, you’d go directly to the endowment room instead of waiting in a separate chapel. It gave you the opportunity to sit and look at the beautiful murals there. They are based on the landscape in the area, which gives it neat local flavor. The ceremony begins and you spend the first part in there. The move happens when you enter the terrestrial room (white walls with gold trim like endowment rooms in larger temples). There was a beautiful stained glass window of an intricate tree on the outside closest to the cemetery. Other windows had etchings depicting pioneer scenes and hearkening back to the history of Winter Quarters. I think they’ve really moved towards tying in local themes with the newer temples.
Rexburg has the mural room with a move to the Terrestrial. So one less move than Idaho Falls had.
The newer Utah temples (Ogden, Payson, Provo City Center) seem to have more intricate detail work–more stained glass, more carved stone. Photos of the newly renovated Fiji temple show beautiful carpets with colorful woven patterns of tropical plants.
I wonder whether, now that the church has fewer temples under construction, the Temple Department feels it can afford to be a little fussier on the interior decor for each new project.
Mary Ann: Do you live in Nebraska too? I love the our temple here!
Other Doug, we lived in Omaha for 3 years. I even got to serve as a ward gingerbread specialist for the annual gingerbread parade at the Trail Center. 😉 I loved that temple, and having it next to the cemetery where an ancestor and other family members are buried made it even more meaningful.
I guess the tour is popular. I was thinking of reserving tickets online when there were just a few spots left, but hesitated and they were gone shortly thereafter. Kind of wish there was not such a scramble for reservations.
Even when we went Saturday, the website said no reservations were availalbe. We just went without reservations because the website has been down so much. We got right in. (It was kind of stormy outside, so perhaps that helped a little.)
They are announcing that you don’t need tickets to attend the Open House: http://lds.net/blog/faith/lds-temples/come-one-come-all-no-tickets-needed-for-provo-city-center-open-house/