I Love To See The Temple

The Sunday before last, I was able to make it to church at the ward that meets right next to the Madrid Temple. Although this ward is a Spanish only ward and I could not understand much of what was being said, it was still nice to be around members again. It was interesting though, because I noticed some fairly big differences between services here and those back home. For starters, people carried on conversations throughout the entire meeting, often times without even trying to keep their voices down. I was sitting in the back near the door, so for the first 20 minutes of the meeting I chocked it up to that, but after the sacrament I realized that these side conversations were happening all over the chapel. At one point, the Bishop was addressing the congregation and a group of particularly noisy people came in the door behind me, and they were talking so loudly, I thought for sure the bishop would do something to indicate his annoyance. But no, he kept right on going with his talk, completely unfazed.

This was so strange for me, I think because of the fact that I have attended church in other countries before, Thailand to be specific, and the people were as silent as they are in the US during the service. I actually articulated some of these feeling to Jillian one night and she explained similar experiences while on her choir tour in China. “They aren’t being disrespectful; they are just being not-American, or Thai, apparently.” This made a lot of sense considering the importance of saving face and always showing a high level of respect towards others in Thailand, but I guess what I had a hard time with was the fact that I had not heard nearly as much talking when I attended catholic mass. Granted, we were standing and singing every two minutes which is hardly enough to get a conversation going, but still…

Another big difference I saw was in how the people greeted one another. In Spain, greeting a woman involves kissing her on either cheek. I actually got to learn this the “fun” way during my first week here when Ana, my host mom, introduced me to two of Jaime’s friends, a boy and a girl. I shook hands with the boy first and then extended my hand towards the girl just as she was leaning in for the kisses. I nearly grazed her chest in the process and instantly turned bright red. Ana laughed as she watched the whole thing unfold and then informed me of the proper etiquette in Spain. Anyway, this rule applies to both women and men when greeting a woman and as such, in the organized chaos after sacrament meeting, all that I could hear was excitedly spoken Spanish and kissing noises. This carried on into the hall and in the tightly enclosed space, the din was almost too much to handle. SO MUCH LIP SMACKING!

After the block, I walked around the temple and took some pictures which have been scattered throughout this blog. The temple was small, probably about the same size as the Oquirrh Mountain Temple, but it was still quite striking. The stark white of the main building, combined with the burnt orange foundation and the azure blue sky made taking pictures an absolute delight. As I walked around the perimeter of the Temple, I realized that it had been over two months since I had even been close to a temple.  It’s funny, but this realization made me both happy and sad. Sad because of how long it had been, but happy because it made me appreciate the feeling of calm and serenity I had all the more. And I guess it was in that moment that I realized just how much I love to see the Temple.