Bern Temple

As I’ve mentioned, we have a focus on becoming a Zion family. We talk about Zion, read about Zion, we named our little school “Z School” and try to remind each other to be better when we aren’t acting so…Zionish. Going to the temple in Bern, and staying in the simple temple housing, is like a mini visit to Zion. The girls called it "Zion House” and didn’t want to leave. It is sort of beyond my writing ability (as are most things!) to describe the experiences we had there. Geoff and I spent as much time as possible in the temple taking turns with the girls; trying to squeeze in a little school (although we finally decided we were all ready for a break so we packed it all away for the rest of our trip). Being in the temple is so rejuvenating! And to be there four days in a row, doing more than one session daily, dissolves all of life’s tedium. The housing is so simple. Life’s necessities are provided and we realized again how little one needs to get by. The sign on the room doors say, “This simple yet sufficient housing should meet your needs while you are here.” All rooms are the same (three bunk beds, six lockers and a small bathroom). All share the same cooking/eating space (the kitchen has 10 hotplate/sink stations with an island in the middle, and the dining area has 3 long fold-up banquet tables and two large round tables with wire baskets lining the walls for visitor’s food, and three large refrigerators). It was crowded this time. There were several Italian families. These people are so different from the Italians we meet across the border. They have a light in their eyes. I loved watching their ways. Every morning they put something on the stove to boil, like veggies and beans. At lunch I was always anxious to see what they did with it but never saw the outcome. They measure their pasta with exactness when preparing something like spaghetti. They all gathered together for mealtime and had a social, lively time. There were also four American military families who came from Italy. They came in their minivans and cooked all their meals in gigantic crockpots. The Italians kept trying to peek in to see what in the world was cooking inside. They approached the crockpots like something that had fallen from the sky! The American families brought kids, and our kids thought they had died and gone to heaven! So here is a lunchroom-like dining area with tables full of temple-going people, full of kindness and happiness, sharing food with each other, learning about each other, laughing together, kids running around playing chess and board games, and more than once I went back to the kitchen to clean up our mess and someone else had done it for us. There were language barriers but there was definitely a unique unity. Everyone there was at their “pur(est) in heart”, and with the sharing and serving there were no poor in the place! We can't wait to get back!