Tucson Temple Cultural Celebration

I was lucky enough to get to be involved in the Cultural Celebration for the Tucson Temple on Saturday, August 12th. I was a captain of 10, so I had a group of youth (8 youth, not 10) that I was in charge of making sure got to where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be there, in the right costumes. It was super busy and the kids got tired of me leaving to go to practices for the cultural celebration, but it was a privilege to be involved, and we were all relieved and happy when it was over. Partially because our temple was dedicated, and partly because life could finally return to normal. 

The week before the celebration we had a full day Super Saturday practice. One of the stake leaders made special cookies for all the youth and leaders in our stake. They were so cool.

The following week we had our dress rehearsal Friday night for 4-5 hours in the heat, then the day of the celebration we ran through it twice in the afternoon, had dinner, then put on the real thing that night. We were sweating like dogs, but at least the weather held out for us.

With this celebration being outside in the middle of a Tucson summer, and monsoon season we had some precautuions we had to take so people wouldn't be dropping from dehydration. We checked up with the kids all the week before reminding them to drink lots of water, and when we were out at practices we had sprayers to serve as portable swamp coolers, basically, spraying the kids down, and letting the evaporation help cool. Of course the humidity of monsoon season made it a little less effective, but it was still better than nothing. 

One of the photographers for the event caught me spraying the youth down. I look like I should be on Ghostbusters.

 All the participants got enough tickets for their families to be able to attend. Since it would be during Megan's bedtime and she wouldn't sit still well anyway, Jacob opted to sit it out at home with her, and let my mom take the other kids to the celebration. I found them before the show started to say hi.

 With Grandma picking up all the kids except for Megan, she was pretty bummed. So she and Jacob went on a daddy-daughter date to Baskin Robbins. It seems to have cheered her up well enough.

The theme for the show was The Time is Now. Some awesome artists made this awesome background.

During the opening numbers of the Cultural Celebration we had a great sunset going on behind the audience. It was so fitting that as the youth sang the song, "I love you Arizona" talking about our beautiful sunsets, there was one going on in the sky.

 The view in the other direction, however, right then was of some clouds moving in with lightning. We were praying that it would hold off until after the show was done, and it did. The rain didn't start falling until 90% of the sets had been taken down and most everyone was gone, and most everything packed up. What a blessing! Then the clouds let loose that night and there was some good, loud thunder for quite a while in the wee hours of the night.

Our stake participated in the opening numbers, I Love to See the Temple (in English and Spanish), I Love You Arizona, and It's My Time, then had a nice long break while the other stakes performed. They finished up with our stake and one other stake combining to dance to "Good Friends." This is some of our ward waiting to go on the field for their turn:

All the 2100 youth in the temple district did a dance to a hip hop version of "I Hope they Call Me on a Mission" and finished up the night with an awesome song, "I Will."

It was so cool. And during It's My Time at the beginning, and I Will at the end I felt very strongly how much God loves these youth. I'm glad they were able to be involved and feel the spirit of sacrifice and the excitement of the temple.

Here's a time lapse video of the whole thing that someone from our stake did. Pretty cool. :)

And now we are so happy to have the temple closer. It is still 45 minutes away, a full hour during high traffic times, but today I was able to drop off Megan at preschool, drive up there, do initiatories, and get back before she was done with preschool.