I have all spent a great deal of time this week remembering and celebrating the life of our Prophet--President Hinkley. I have so many favorite memories. President Hinkley's 90th birthday party, General Conferences viewed both life and on TV (we call this pajama church), Pioneer Day parades, Devotionals, the list goes on and on. For my blog this week I'd like to share two of my favorites.
My 2nd daughter was married April 12, 2001 in the Salt Lake Temple. She had planned the date deliberately so that Temple Square would be at its Spring best--tulips, daffodils, locusts, crocuses all in full bloom. We woke up the morning of the wedding to find that instead of a beautiful spring day we were back to winter--it was snowing. Stacy, my daughter, was devastated. Following the ceremony the photographer suggested that we take the wedding pictures in the Joseph Smith Building since the snow continued. He received permission to take us--Stacy and Sheldon, John and I--through the tunnel that goes from the temple to the JSB so we wouldn't get wet. After the pictures were taken we went back through the tunnel to the Temple to collect the Bride and Grooms clothes. We had just entered Temple when the security guard closed the entrance and came to stand in the hall. Luckily we turned around to see what was going on just in time to see the entire First Presidency driving out of the Temple in a golf cart. They were followed closely by 2 additional carts containing the rest of the apostles. The carts passed not 15 feet away from us. If the weather had been as beautiful as we had hoped it would be we would have been outside and we would never have witnessed this remarkable and memorable scene.
For several years I worked on a committee that built the Heber C. Kimball home at the "This Is The Place Park" (work is the operative word, one night we laid sod into the wee hours of the morning). At the conclusion of the project Stanley Kimball, the chairman of the Park Administration, invited us all to a commemorative dinner at the Grand America Hotel. I'm not really sure what I expected but when I arrived at the dinner I was surprised that I recognized many of the other guests as local civic and church leaders. We were seated at a table close to the podium from which the guest speaker would address us (the guest speaker was Brigham Young--but that's another story). Shortly after we arrived I looked up to discover that President Hinkley, President Monson, and President Faust were entering from a door behind the podium. They were coming right toward me and were seated at the table right behind me. I can't tell you what was served for dinner, I know that I was too excited to eat much. Although I didn't speak directly to him I've always referred to this day as the time I had lunch with President Hinkley.
4 comments:
Cool story! When I was but a wee lad my dad was serving as a stake president in the Idaho State University Stake. President Hinkley actually came to Pocatello back then to give a speech at the ISU football stadium. Before the confrence he came to a local stake center and had like a press confress, or a meeting of some sort - my memory now is sort of hazy. But, I will never forget as he walked out of the stake center I was standing on the sidewalk, and President Hinkley came out of the building with his entourage. I don't know how it happened but he asked me if I ws going to serve a mission, and I said yes. He then shook my hand. Pretty cool huh? I did serve a mission too, in the Philippines.
I have had my fair share of meeting members of the quorum of the twelve and even had one at Sunday dinner (Elder Oaks). I have been really close to President Monson, but I never was able to see the prophet as close as you were. That is neat.
I loved that you saw them riding in golf carts. How i imagined that just demonstrated to me that the apostles are jovial and love life as much as little kids do! I loved how fun it seemed.
What fun memories! I had a similar chance run-in down in the tunnels. We were taking a tour with Jerel Lindley who has been the head of Church security and even worked as President Hinckley's personal body guard for a number of years. At this time he was also the bishop of our singles ward. Anyway we were standing in the parking area under the church office building when Elder Eyring and his wife pulled up. Bishop Lindley told us not to stare but of course we all did.
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