OPEN HOUSE

May 26 - WOW! It has been a very busy week. The open house started and the VVIPs started on Tuesday, May 18th, the VIPs on Wednesday & Thursday then the general public on Friday and Saturday.
The VVIP tours were the high government officials and the Major Business’, the VIPs were the mayors of the smaller communities and Military, and general business. There were some very subtle responses from each group. The owner of “a” major airline came through and was so impressed that today he brought his entire family to tour (2 groups of approx 20 each). The Philippines General Manager of Dunkin Donuts came and brought his office staff early on Wednesday morning and was so impessed that he sent several dozen fresh Donuts every hour throughout the rest of the day. Many florist sent huge and I mean huge 6 foot high by 4 foot wide floral arrangements with some of the most gorgeous tropical flowers, at one point in time there were at least 6 of these arrangements. This week there have been several smaller just large baskets of fresh flowers sent.
Sunday Elder Teh of the 70ty dedicated the new Stake Center on Temple Square, it was stake conference and they met for the first time in the new building. Although the new building has been used for the open house staging. The whole meeting was a rich spiritual experience.
Sunday afternoon Pres Moritmor set up a Fireside for the Sr. Couples to hear the General Kontractor, They are from New Zealand, Kanut ( you sound the “K”) talk about the spiritual experiences he had while building the temple and because of which he joined the church. Many times things seemed at a total impass when all of a sudden without fanfare they were resolved. Just amazing. He told us that the people coming to admire the temple only see about 45% of the work done. The rest is all underground and then told us all about that portion. I was so amazed, as were several others that we asked if he would give us a tour and his eyes just lit up. BINGO Kanut’s wife’s family were all LDS and moved about the time his wife turned 8 and forgot to have her baptized. She thought all these years she was a member but found out she had only been blessed. Kanut just got his temple recommend since he was baptized over a year ago but 4 months ago he was able to baptize his wife so they have to wait until she has been a member for a year. He very emphatically told us that he was coming back to this temple and be sealed to his wife and have the children sealed to them.
Monday - the tours started again from 9am to 5pm, Family Home Evening Night. We, the Sr. Couples (you don’t know how irritating it is to be called “Sr. Couples” as young as we are) are host/hostessing the Video rooms. There are 5 video rooms. In one of the groups we were hosing this really great couple with a little boy came in and they were just asking the right questions before the group meeting started. A couple of missionaries were in that group when it started with an investigator and when the group meeting was over and they were leaving I pulled one of them aside and pointed out the couple and asked them to get close to them and check them out. They told us later in the day that they want to know as much as they could about the church because this is what they have been searching for, they told the couple they could take care of that for them. We worked the afternoon shift and went with our good friends the Asher’s shopping. We went to dinner and then shopped, saving the heavy groceries for last. The mall closed at 9pm and we finished shopping and left the market at about 8:55. The security guard told us where to go to get a taxi so off we went. Asher’s finished before us and since it was near impossible to get them and their groceries/shopping into one taxi they told us they would see us back at the apartments. We were just a few minutes behind them. Wellllll we waited at the taxi pick up stop for about ½ hour and not one taxi so we left, about 6 people waiting for a taxi ahead of us, and went to another taxi stop closer to the front of the store. We waited in a long line of folks about 20 minutes before our turn for a taxi. When we got back to the apartments Mike and Vonnie, the Asher’s, were ready to call the police. When they left they just walked up, got a taxi and was home in about 10 minutes after leaving us, we were over an hour getting back.
Tuesday – We were supposed to have the tour with Kanut but it was cancelled until Wednesday. We worked the morning shift and it was steady but not to real busy. The afternoon shift that started at 2:00 noted that starting at 5PM they had people lined up all night. They seen 1500 people in 3 hours.
Wednesday today, we had the tour with Kanut. Boy! Were we impressed. Kanut was right, 55% of the work is under ground and no t many people will ever be aware of it. I won’t bore most of you with the details but suffice it to say the sewage treatment plant, setteling ponds, pumps, bells, whistles, tunnels, they are all there. Drop a note if you are really interested giving me your e-mail and I will put the whole thing together for you. Yup! You probably also guessed by now that we worked the afternoon shift today and also tomorrow. From the time we got there today at 2PM until 7:50 we had not stop visitors. As one group was leaving our room another was waiting in the hall to enter, not just us but everyone’s room, all 5 of them. We were almost running out of tour guides we were going so fast. Last week we started with 10-15 people per group and now we are up to 20-25 per group in the PMs and people still backed up most of the time.