Montreal Quebec Temple Open House

Saturday we were blessed to be able to take our family to the Montreal Quebec Temple Open House. A temple open house happens after a temple is built or renovated, where they allow the public to enter the temple to see what is inside.  The Montreal Temple is about 3 hours from our house, like all the other temples in the area.  But we have never made it to this temple before. 

We got to Montreal and the exit for the Temple was closed.  Fortunately the next exit East got us on the right road just a little further up.  We even had time to go get lunch before our tour.  French is the language spoken there, and so fortunately Brian was able to communicate for us.  After our Panama trip the kids were so confused why French wasn't the same as Spanish.  Joshua thought they were speaking Chinese.  (I think he got the big C countries mixed up, geography is a little fuzzy when you are 7 or 31).  Lunch took forever so we thought we were going to be late for the tour, but it was more relaxed than we expected.  You just showed up and they sent you to the next group that spoke your language.

First we watched a video about temples.  Miriam really liked the bride talking about eternal marriages.  Miriam remembered Emily getting married so that helped.  Then afterwards we went to the temple.  You have to put on these plastic slipper things to protect the carpet. Miriam was horrified and pouted the whole time they were on.  The only thing that stopped her from pouting is one picture in the temple really caught her eye.  The other two kids were fairly reverent.  Their favorite room was the Celestial Room with the giant chandelier.  I liked the mural in the ordinance room, and all the small Canadian details, which evidently they added them with the renovation.  Afterwards we got to take a picture in front of a screen with the temple on it.

Here is my picture of the outside.

And here is a link to some pictures inside the temple.  http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/%C2%A0montreal-quebec-temple-opens-for-public-tours?cid=HP_TH_11-5-2015_dPAD_fMNWS_xLIDyL2-2_

And then we went home, or tried to.  We ended up driving around Montreal looking for the road back to the United States for about 1 hour.  Fortunately  Brian has a decent sense of direction and kept us from getting too lost.  We mostly drove in different circles looking for the road until we finally saw a sign for it.  There was some road closures and detours, which made it a little rougher.  But we made it home.