"That was so inspiring, it almost made me cry."

This little blog/journal has been seriously neglected. But we did have an experience I've been meaning to write about for the past few months . . .

In July we went to Utah to visit my parents and Kelly's family. We flew into Las Vegas, drove to my parents' house in Cedar City, stayed the night and headed up to Salt Lake City the next morning. On our second day in Salt Lake we decided we'd get up and go to temple square. While I was excited to revisit, I wasn't that enthused to do it with my kids. I could already hear the "I'm boreds!" and "When are we going to be finished?" But we figured the kids should see temple square whether they wanted to or not. So out we headed.

After looking at the fountains and climbing on the statues the kids did start to become a bit antsy. Hoping to keep them interested by seeing something different we headed over to the Assembly Hall. We walked in to a group of Chinese sisters singing "I am a Child of God" in Mandarin. (I mean I think it was Mandarin, not being a Chinese speaker I can't say for certain :o) We sat down in one of the pews and were soon joined by two sister missionaries. I thought they might be disappointed we were members, but they didn't seem to care and invited us to see a video presentation at the visitor center. Honestly I didn't really want to go, but since they were asking and we had no other specific plans we followed them to the visitor center. We started out in a small room fixed up to look like Utah's red rock country and proceeded to watch a video about a family who's son slips and falls while hiking in the red rocks. Three more rooms followed with videos about the family's life experiences from the birth of a child to the death of a grandparent (if I'm remembering correctly). Jaded me found the videos to be sweet albeit rather saccharine and maudlin.

When they were finished one of the sister missionaries asked if anyone had any comments. Joel surprised me by raising his hand and saying, "That was so inspiring, it almost made me cry." He was, of course, one hundred percent in earnest. When we headed out into the hallway, Joel still feeling touched by the spirit, started to tear up. The hall led to the room with the Christus statue and we all sat down. Joel and Eli, both of their own volition, commented about how they really liked the feeling in the room and wanted to stay for awhile.

After a few minutes in the room, Cara had had her fill though; she turned and whispered in my ear that her Hello Kitty really wanted to sharpen her claws and needed to go out and scratch on tree bark. Not wanting to lessen the boys' spiritual experience Cara and I left to go outside and satisfy Hello Kitty's scratching compulsion.

Kelly and the boys stayed in the Christus room for almost another hour. Joel and Eli did not want to leave the warm and loving feeling they were experiencing there.

Definitely a lesson for me. My boys of short temper and attention span are completely capable of having spiritual experiences. Also cheesy Mormon movies may be more inspirational to those with open hearts and pure spirits.