KCMO Temple Open House Trip

The Seventeenth of April 2012 was an important day for us. We left home early in the morning, picked up a couple of people on the way to the church, and loaded up a big van with nine people for a trip to the Kansas City Missouri (KCMO) Temple open house.

Elder Howlett is standing next to the 15 passenger van that we rented to take the people who were able to go to the KCMO Temple open house.

We left the church a few minutes after 6:00 in the morning for the nearly seven hour drive. We made it to the temple a few minutes after our 1:15 pm appointment, but it didn’t matter for they had gotten a few minutes behind on their tours, so everything was right in sync. We took our GPS unit with us, and it was perfectly accurate in getting us where we needed to go.

For a couple of weeks we had been working to encourage members of the Garden City Ward who had not yet been to the temple to take advantage of this short time when a temple would be open for visitors. We had a list of about 40 that we contacted. The need to be at work was the reason that most of them couldn’t go with us, but we had enough interest that we felt justified in renting a van for the trip. We never had enough committed to make the trip to fill the van, but during the last week we invited any other ward members to go with us. There was a lot of interest, but conflicts of time got in their way. Then during the last couple of days we had illnesses crop up to reduce the number of participants further. And even the city courts did their thing by scheduling a couple to be in court that day. But we had the primary president, who is a trained and experienced driver, scheduled to go and help with the driving, and one of her nine-year-old granddaughters also went. As it turned out, nine passengers in a fifteen-passenger-van is pretty comfortable.

We wrote several information pages to try to generate interest in the trip, and the message given below (after the description of the temple tour) was prepared to help those traveling with us to understand what they were going to see.

The KCMO temple is a three-story building with the baptistry built below the ground floor, so it could be said that it has four levels. From a distance it looks quite plain in its white stone surface, but when you get up close you find that there is carved stone around each of the windows, doors, etc., and it is very beautiful.

We took this photo just as we were going up to the temple for the tour through it during the open house. Notice the three floors above ground. 

There is a stake center next door, and the tour began there with greetings from a guide and a 15-minute video presentation to introduce us to the temple and its purpose. There were a lot of visitors there, despite it being one of the days when there were fewer visitors scheduled than on most other days. We moved slowly from the Church to the temple and waited a bit before it was our turn to go in. We were not hurried at any time, and that was good as we had one sister with us in a wheel chair. Once we entered the temple we moved steadily through the building seeing first the recommend desk, then the baptistry, then one of the dressing rooms and finally the first "training room." From there we moved up a bit to the second training room, and then to the Celestial room. This was understandably a very beautiful room featuring mirrors on opposing walls. This same feature was next to be seen in a sealing room. The one we saw was big enough for a pretty large family gathering for a wedding, but we also got to look into a smaller one. The nine-year-old girl that came with us was too short to see the striking image that these mirrors create so Elder Howlett picked her up so she could see the endless reflections in the mirrors that are such a wonderful symbol of eternal life continuing forever into the past and into the future. It was a great experience for all of us.

This is the picture of our group taken around the table where we had punch and cookies after the temple tour.  Clockwise around the table from left to right are Gill Asebedo, Michelle Asebedo, Deanne Peat, Shyanna Goodman (the 9 yr. old girl who came), Royal Taylor (Shyanna's grandmother and the second driver of the van), Sister Howlett, Janice Allen (in the wheelchair), and Jackie Heady (who lovingly pushed the wheelchair all around).  Elder Howlett took the picture.

After the tour we stopped for gas and something to eat, then started back home, and we didn’t make it back to the church in Garden City until after midnight. Everyone helped clean out the rented van, and then Elder Howlett had to fill it up with gas and return it to the dealer where we rented it. It was past 1:00 a.m. before we got home, but it had been a wonderful day.




The information given below is very similar to what we were told by the guides. We hope you enjoy this explanation.

Why do the Latter-day Saints build Temples?

Very soon after the Church of Jesus Christ was restored to the Earth (1830) God commanded the Latter-day Saints to build a temple. The temples built in the latter-days function in the same ways as did the temples that were built in obedience to the commandments of God to His prophets in the Bible. The first of these described in the Bible was known as the "Tabernacle," built according to instructions given to Moses. It served as "the center place of Israel’s worship activities during the wanderings and until the building of the temple in Solomon’s day." (LDS Bible dictionary) After the Children of Israel were firmly established in their promised land, King Solomon built a permanent temple in Jerusalem to replace the tabernacle. That temple was destroyed several times when the Israelites turned away from God to idolatry, and rebuilt again when the people once again became more righteous. The last time it was rebuilt by king Herod for political reasons, but Jesus recognized and used it for its spiritual purposes despite the apostate nature of the Jews of that day.

In Luke’s Gospel he speaks of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, officiating in the sacred services of the temple. Soon after Joseph and Mary took the baby Jesus to the temple to perform sacred ordinances in His behalf. Twelve years later Jesus’s parents "found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions." Thus we learn of two of the purposes for temples: the performance of sacred ordinances, and the instructing of the Saints. Later, during the three years of His ministry, Jesus was often "found in the temple" teaching the doctrine of His kingdom.

Already, in Jesus' lifetime, the temple in Jerusalem had become polluted. For Jesus, the temple was a sacred place, and He was offended by those who had turned it into a place for their business of selling sacrificial animals and the coins used in some of the ordinances performed in that era. When the Romans conquered Jerusalem in 70 AD, one of their objectives was to destroy the temple which had served as a symbol of the worship of the Jews.

The temples mentioned in the Bible were known as "The House of the Lord", and these words were inscribed on each one, followed by the words, "Holiness to the Lord." Both Moses and King Solomon considered the temple as an essential place where the Lord could come and reveal His will to the people. All of the latter-day temples also bear these inscriptions in the language that is used locally.

The Old Testament temples operated under the priesthood of Aaron, and looked forward to Jesus’ Atoning Sacrifice. Thus the temple complex was the venue for the animal sacrifices which were symbolic of the great and last "atoning sacrifice" to be made by the Messiah - the Lord Jesus Christ. After the atoning sacrifice had been completed, the taking of bread and wine was instituted to remember what Jesus had done, so animal sacrifices are no longer included in the temple worship. But in other ways, the temple continues to function to bless the righteous people of the earth by providing a place for instruction and sacred ordinances. Everything done in a modern temple reflects the faith of the Latter-day Saints in the promises of resurrection and eternal life through Jesus Christ. Nothing done there would make any sense without faith in the Eternal and undying soul of mankind. In the temples the Saints perform sacred ordinances for the blessing of people throughout the earth and throughout all time as Abraham was told his posterity were to do. This includes baptisms for individuals who have died without having been able to complete this sacred ordinance themselves. These baptisms are performed in a baptismal font built like the "Holy Sea" that Solomon built. Solomon’s Holy Sea rested upon the backs of twelve oxen representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Perfectly true to Solomon’s symbolism, the modern Israelites are blessing all people who have lived on the earth by performing this sacred ordinance for people who did not have the opportunity to do so themselves, but who continue to live in the world of spirits, and wish to have the blessings obtained through the baptism covenant.

Likewise there are ordinations to priesthood authority that take place in the temples. And there are places of instruction where the doctrines of Jesus Christ are taught in scriptural purity. There are places dedicated to establishing permanent family relationships where marriages are performed - not to last only until "death," but to last throughout eternity. In these rooms family relationships are created that will eventually link all of Adam and Eve’s children into one family, showing that life is not about "them" versus "us", but that all of "them" are part of "us".

This is the photo we took of the temple just before leaving the parking lot.  It is beautiful, even though the trees are small because it is very new.  


Even while outside the temple a visitor can observe another of the functions of the temple. Most of the modern temples have a statue of the Angel Moroni standing high on the highest point of the temple. This stands as a symbol to remind everyone that God has fulfilled His prophecies that in the last days He would send angels to restore the fullness of His Gospel. Although there were many angels that participated in this restoration, the Angel Moroni is the one who best fits the prophecy in Revelations 14: 6-7 where it speaks of the angel restoring the everlasting Gospel. The Angel Moroni was the last prophet to have lived anciently in the Americas, and he was the one who finished the record of the prophets of his people and hid it so it would be preserved until the time when it should again be made available to the people of the earth. Even after his death and resurrection, Moroni remained the guardian of the plates on which the record was engraved, and on September 21, 1823 he appeared to Joseph Smith as an angel and gave him instructions regarding the future of this record. This angel appeared to Joseph many times over the next seven years until Joseph was prepared to receive the record and until the work of translating the record into English was completed. This record did indeed contain the everlasting Gospel, and it stands as the most solid evidence of the work of restoration that made the true Church of Jesus Christ once again available to men on the earth. Thus, the statue of the Angel Moroni standing on the temples of the Church is a symbol of God’s work continuing forward in His own way in the latter-days.

The work done in the temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is extremely sacred, and during an open house, when a temple is open to anyone who would like go inside, this work will only be described with enough detail to give the visitors an idea why thousands of members of the Church of Jesus Christ (who are called "Latter-day Saints") will come to the temple each month to serve there after it has been dedicated to the Lord.