Monday

Today was an amazing morning.  We went into Laie for the Visitor's Center Training Meeting and we are so lucky when Elder Allen decides to teach us.  Today he said he was going to tell us about the Rome Temple.  He was the head of the Missionary Department for the Church when it was announced that a temple would be built in Rome, Italy, in 2010 I think.  He told us he flew there with his wife and they looked out over the land where the temple was to be built.  He showed us pictures of this land and how they kept some large olive trees in the drive up to the Temple.  They also flew to Denmark to visit the Church of Our Lady, where the original Christus is.  This church is a quite famous tourist stop in Copenhagen.  It has statues in marble of the 12 Apostles.  They asked if they could replicate these statues and take digital videos of them and create an electronic file to have the statues made, to be housed in the new Visitor's Center at the Rome Temple.  The agreement was that if anything ever happened to these original statues, like a natural disaster or something worse, they could be identically reproduced with these files.  They agreed.

So then Elder Allen and another man went to the marble quarry and chose the marble for the statues.  They were also making a Christus for the new Visitor's Center in Rome.    A giant robot would carve out the statues by computer and then workmen would fine tune the statues by sanding and polishing them to a high gloss.  He showed pictures of the robot in action, it was amazing to watch.

So as he is talking to us in the large theater he starts dialing his phone and gets the man in charge of the building in Rome on the phone and then we all Face time this man live from Rome!  He took us on a live tour of the Visitor's Center, it is so unique.  It has a real "villa" inside it, that is two stories high, and this will have the teaching rooms, which are the family and living room of the villa for the Sisters to teach friends in.  It looks like a real home!  Then he showed us the theaters and some new things that Rome will have that no other Visitor's Center has yet.  It was fascinating, just like we were there.

It was about 7 p.m. there and we could vaguely see the Rome Temple through the large windows.  He showed us the Christus with the statues of the 12 apostles making a semicircle round the Christus.  In the back ground painters were creating a huge mural that was to be the back drop of the Apostles and Christ.  It was to be a country scene of Italy.  He told us things that were unique about this mural, like he showed us a basket painted with sand and he said it was sand that was actually real, and from the Sea of Galilee that was pressed into the mural.  Another spot was a sea shell from the Dead Sea that was set into the mural.

The Temple dedication is scheduled for March 10-17 in 2019.  So much of the Visitor Center is already finished and also the temple.  They check and recheck everything many times before the dedication.  They were checking the lighting inside the temple this night and so that is why we were able to see it.  The lighting outside doesn't go on until after the dedication.

So guess where I now want to go before I die!  I always loved those Gidget movies in Rome, but I think it was because of the Ocean scenes, I didn't know about Hawaii in those days.  I remember wanting to go on a mission to Italy because of this, but if you went on a mission in those days people thought you'd never get married and my parents discouraged it.  But now I can go!

Tonight we went to two FHE again.  One at BYUH where we learned all about the Hawaii Reserves and why no one can built or afford to buy in Hawaii.  Discouraging.  Then we went over to Kahuku to our YSA Branch FHE.  It was a fun night as usual.  We played a game called the Switch game, kind of like musical chairs but no music...?

Elder Collins shoes after 2 years on a mission!
He returns home with honor in 2 weeks.