I Love to See the Tempo

I want to share a sweet experience I had when I was in Columbus with Shonna's family. First, some background: Almost every night of Caleb's eighteen months of life, he's heard the song, "I Love to See the Temple." That is part of his bedtime ritual: Whoever is putting him to bed sings him that song while they rock him, then he goes into his crib, gets tucked in, and that's it. He doesn't fuss; he just goes to sleep. It's his routine.

Well, for FHE one night while I was there, Shonna pulled out a picture of the Columbus temple. "This is the temple." The kid came alive. "Tempo. Tempo. Tempo!" It was like a Helen Keller "Wa Wa" experience. Suddenly he knew what it was they were singing about all that time. Oh. my. goodness. He was excited. They pointed out other pictures of the temple around their house. He was thrilled. Spontaneously, we decided to get in the car and drive fifteen minutes to show him the Columbus temple. Blake set up the picture of the temple in the back window where he could look at it and say "Tempo, Tempo, Tempo" the whole way there. When he saw the real thing, he was absolutely thrilled. "This is the tempo. There is the tempo. . ." over and over and over again. When it was time to leave, he was so sad, "Bye, bye, tempo. Bye, bye, tempo." He cried half the way home. He didn't want to leave.

Since it was a Monday night, the gates were closed. It reminded me of that song, "Open the gates of the temple!" Blake and Shonna have since taken Caleb back when the gates were open so he could touch the temple.

Caleb is just learning to walk. The story is told (I don't remember it) of when my little sister was learning to walk, my parents and older siblings would put ice cubes in their mouths to get her to walk to them. She LOVED ice cubes, so was motivated to walk to get the ice. Guess what they use to motivate Caleb to walk?

You guessed it; a picture of the temple.

I learned a lot from little Caleb. Do we feel that way about the temple? Are we SO excited to see it, to go there; do we cry when we leave? Are we willing to do hard stuff (like walking is for Caleb) to get there? " . . . And a little child shall lead them."