Idaho Falls Temple Tour

Scott's brother, Tyler, is the new temple director of the Idaho Falls temple. He will be handling all the financial day to day things. But as such, he was able to give his siblings and in-laws a special tour of the Idaho Falls temple.
We dropped the kids off at John and Heather's on Sunday night! Thanks for watching them!. And then we went to the temple tour that started at 6:00pm.  And it was super cool for our family and Ty's wife's family to be the only people in the temple.
The whole thing has been redecorated and redone.  Not only because of age did it require a redecoration, but it required a special redecoration because it is a historical temple. Number 8. Top 10 are historical. And so there is one level of redoing things when a temple needs redoing, and then seven steps higher there is the historical way of redoing things.  For instance all the marble in the temple was taken from a quarry in Portugal and one in Italy when it was originally built.  And because its a historical temple they went back to the original quarry's to harvest more stone.  The Italian quarry was actually closed, but the church convinced the small town to reopen it just for them to harvest what they needed.  And all the base boards are stone too.  The detail is incredible.  And all that detail and extra luster is because it is a historical temple.
They went with a purple and lime green color scheme, which looks incredible, and all of the furnishings and decor follow a 1945 modern look. Keeping with the time frame of when the temple was built.
There were some walls that were moved around. And some new windows put in.  For example new stain glass windows in the creation room, and I must say it really lightens everything up and makes it so much more beautiful in there.
Some of the walls they couldn't move.  The Idaho Falls temple is the first to have a single steeple design.  And one of the only temples where the baptismal font, celestial room, and Moroni, all line up on top of each other.  Because of that there are really thick baring walls that are where they have to be, but they did a good job in opening up a small view through some doors into the baptismal font area in the redesign.
Also in the redesign they wanted to use the cafeteria area for other things, but because it was a historical temple the decision went all the to the First Presidency, and they said, that the cafeteria stays.  So there is still yummy pie people! But they did make the space smaller.
Due to new fire codes, they are only able to have 88 people in a session as opposed to the 140 they used to be able to have, and so they figure there will be less traffic in the cafeteria as well.

Ty mentioned how he has seen the hand of the Lord in all the workings of the temple.
The art in the temple is incredible.  And the Idaho Falls dump called the temple one day and said, that they had some of the temple's art work. Turns out a worker saw the edge of a wrapped picture on the corner of a box and on further inspection realized that it was a box of paintings.  Sure enough someone doing cleanup around the temple ground accidentally mistook the box for trash and it was saved by someone at the dump.
Also one of the contractors realized that there were some mirrors missing from the temple and had the prompting to look on Craigslist. Sure enough someone was selling the mirrors, and when the contractor picked them up, he fired the worker who stole them and was selling them.

Every inch of the temple, besides the walls with murals on them was torn down and redone completely.  The murals had to stay because they were historical. But all the sealant on them was stripped down, they were touched up intricately with the finest and smallest bushes and then new protective gloss put on.  Ty said, tedious artistic work at 1000 dollars an hour.

The angle Moroni was taken down and patched up and new gold plating was put on it.  We saw it in half process, and all of us got to bump the rock with Moroni.
I got to see things that were super cool.
The brides room is so beautiful! There is a room where children can play while they wait to be sealed. It's in the basement. Ty's wife is in charge of buying toys for it, and there are three cribs in another room where babies can sleep.  The President had his own lunch room. I saw the washing machines and dryers, and instructions rooms.
I even got to sit in the sealing room that Scott and I were sealed in. The largest on on the top floor.  Which isn't the largest anymore, because they combined two on the other floor to make one big one.
Cool tour.
And there is my report.