Monday morning our church building was given the assignment of cleaning the Sacramento Temple. This was our first opportunity to do it. I was excited about helping out. Vicki and Gary told me they would pick me up at 6:30 am so we could arrive by 8:00 am.
I was so excited and anxious about being ready on time that I woke up around 3:15 am and never went back to sleep. I usually get up around 5:00 am and so I could not understand why I was worried that I wouldn't be ready in time. I blame Grandma Faulk. She was a worrier and she passed this gene onto her grandchildren.
When we arrived at the temple and had put on our white coveralls, we gathered together to receive our instructions. The head cleaning man shared a story.
Shortly before the temple was dedicated, the new temple presidency was instructed by someone from Salt Lake that this temple would not have a paid cleaning crew and would rely on volunteers. They told them that there were two ways to accomplish this. The first way was to have the early morning temple workers arrive two hours before their shift. This meant that they would need to be there at 3:30 am to clean the temple. The late evening temple workers would need to also stay late which meant that they wouldn't be able to go home until 11:30 pm or midnight. The temple presidency didn't really like this suggestion and asked what the alternative was.
"Well," they were told, "you can ask the stakes to send pools of volunteers to come and clean. But, this has never worked. We really recommend that you use your temple workers."
The temple presidency thanked the Salt Lake people for their counsel and direction and decided to go with suggestion number two. The stakes were asked to help clean the temple.
About a year later, a group of people from the Temple Committee from Salt Lake came out to inspect the Sacramento Temple. They spent three days inspecting EVERYTHING! When they were finished, they met with the new temple presidency and reported that this was the first temple in their recollection that was in better shape a year after the dedication. The stakes had pulled through!
We were then given our assignments. Some vacuumed, some cleaned and restocked paper supplies in the bathrooms. Some dusted. I was part of the dusting crew. We were asked to dust every horizontal surface we could find and polish any mirrors or glass work that we saw. We were given a damp rag to dust with, two dry rugs (one to dry after dusting and one for our window cleaning) a bottle of Windex, and a Magic Eraser. We then went to work.
After three hours of dusting I looked at my damp cloth. It looked just as clean as when I started. I looked at my dry cloths. They looked clean, too. My big contributions to cleaning the temple were picking up a stray bobby pin, a used Kleenex, and a three pieces of lint off the carpet.
I wish my house was this clean!
Wow! I wish my house was that clean, too!
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