San Antonio Temple Trip

This last weekend was obviously special as it was Easter. Its a special holiday on its own, but this year we had an experience I'll never forget. Everyone is out of school here for Good Friday, so we were able to plan a temple trip for our entire stake youth group. It was a lot of work and planning. We challenged each youth to find their own names. They each had to find 10 names to be able to attend. The temple is about 4 hours from McAllen. So many of the youth and ward youth leaders didn't have much experience doing family history, but the excitement that developed and the work that was done was inspiring for me! 

Brett was off work so we decided to take the whole family. I'm still nursing Tyson, so I couldn't leave him anyway. We decided to make a family trip of it. We drove down the day before and went to the temple to pick up the names that the youth had submitted. There were over 800 names to have their baptisms and confirmations done! These are all family names from our youth and they worked hard to find these names. 

We decided to go to the San Antonio Zoo as well. Kayla is at such a fun age. She knows all the animals and is so full of excitement at experiencing new things. The Zoo was a hit for all of us!

These hippos were awesome! They were right up against the glass and were moving all over. They backed up right against the glass with their giant bums and Kayla thought it was hilarious. 

Thanks to a good friend, Kayla knows how to make an elephant sound and its hilarious. She was really excited to see the elephants. 

Tyson, as always, was a champ. He's such a blessing with his mild nature and big smiley face. I just that boy so much!

Family photo!

 

Brett took Kayla on the carousel and she was probably the happiest kid on the earth! She was quite upset when it was over and she ran right through the gates to get back on. She's really getting fun and more adventurous. She loves being independent and I love watching her grow up. 

They had a petting portion with pigs and goats and Kayla had a ball! She was much more happy about the goats than the pigs though. 

We had dinner at Steak and Shake, which Brett loves. Tyson was very determined to get in on the shake eating! I haven't started him on any food yet because I'm waiting until after our trip, but I think he'll be pretty excited when he can start eating food. :)

 

The next morning started off early for us, but not as early as the rest of our group! They left McAllen at 3:15 AM! We all met at a local Stake Center and used that as our base. 

We had an action packed day. We divided the 109 youth into 10 groups. They then took turns doing Baptisms at the temple, doing a service project on the temple grounds, and doing activities back at the stake center. We did a lot of shuffling kids back and forth and trying to keep everyone organized. 

We were also on food duty. We ordered pizza from Costco and completely filled the car! We left Tyson at the church with other leaders and its a good thing because he wouldn't have fit!

                            

I was so grateful to everyone that helped take care of the kids. I was so busy and Brett ended up spending the whole second half of the day in the temple so I had a lot of help. Kayla is recently potty trained so I was nervous she'd have an accident with all the driving and with different people taking care of her but she did great! 

I felt like I only saw Tyson when I needed to feed him. He had a good time being taken care of by a variety of people. Everyone kept complimenting me on how great of a baby he is. I'm grateful our kids are such troopers!

One of the best things was driving the youth back and forth and hearing their experiences doing temple work for their own ancestors. It makes all the work and planning completely worth it. I'm so proud of our youth taking Elder Andersen's temple challenge seriously. I pray they will continue to take their own names for temple trips and set that goal. 

We snapped one group photo as we were all getting ready to leave and I will cherish it. I'm so blessed to have the calling I do and the memories it gives me. My own testimony continues to grow as I watch these youth learn and grow testimonies of their own. The future of the church is in good hands!