'Just thrilled'
E-mail story
It's easy. Send a link to the story you were just reading to a friend. Just fill out the form on this page and we'll send it along.
Your name and e-mail address are transmitted to the recipient. Otherwise, it is considered private information; see Privacy policy.
DRAPER, UTAH
Now in its second full week, the public open house for the new Draper Utah Temple is going "very nicely," said Elder William R. Walker of the Seventy, executive director of the Temple Department.
Opening-day attendance on Thursday, Jan. 15, "was a little bit lighter than we'd expected, but then it picked up on Friday with 13,000 and 19,000 on Saturday," Elder Walker said. "We're expecting probably about 10,000-12,000 people a day going through from now on."
If all who requested reservations online or by telephone actually come, more than a million people will have toured the temple by the time the open house concludes on March 14.
Elder Walker said on Jan. 20 that many reservations are still available for mornings, but all evening tours have been reserved. Advance reservations may be made online at www.lds.org/reservations (maximum of 10) or by calling 1-800-537-6181 or 801-240-7932.
The shuttle system is working well, whereby open house visitors come to satellite locations at neighboring meetinghouses where they board color-coded buses to be transported to the temple, which is located in the Corner Canyon area of Draper at 14065 Canyon Vista Lane. An awning for lines of people entering the temple precludes them from having to stand out in inclement weather.
"People are just thrilled with the temple," Elder Walker said, citing reports he has heard. Many have expressed pleasure at the original art work in the temple, particularly the murals in the two "A" endowment rooms. Some have commented on the beauty of the celestial room with its high ceiling and elegant chandelier.
"We also get quite a few comments from people who are very delighted with the sego lily motif that goes throughout the temple," he said. "Of course, even the young people have studied the sego lily in school as the state flower of Utah, so they are aware of it and pay attention to it." Early Mormon settlers in the Salt Lake Valley subsisted on the sego lily root.
The Draper temple and the soon-to-be-completed Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple will be the third and fourth temples in the valley. Smaller than other temples along Utah's Wasatch Front, the Draper Temple will have no laundry or clothing-rental facilities and no cafeteria. "That reduces the necessary size, cost and staffing for the temple," Elder Walker said.
Notwithstanding its smaller size, it will have a full five-day-a-week schedule and is expected to be very busy, he said.
Ordinance sessions will be by reservation, Elder Walker said, noting that the endowment instruction rooms seat only 50 people per session. With two sets of rooms, that would be a maximum accommodation of 100 at a time.
"But the reservation system is designed not to make it more difficult to attend; it's actually meant to be more efficient and effective for everybody involved," he said, adding that it will prevent the inconvenience of going to the temple and having to wait for a later session than anticipated.
Moreover, at the comparably sized Rexburg Idaho Temple, the temple presidency soon found that the reservation system was unnecessary for the non-busy times, namely the mornings and middle of the day on weekdays, because those sessions were not full. That might be the case with the Draper temple.
"It would be kind of like a restaurant: If they're busy, you need a reservation; if not you walk in," Elder Walker said.
