Group Forgets to Attend Temple on Ward's Summer Youth Temple Trip

By Cory Bickmore

CHEYENNE, Wyoming  – “Why didn’t we go to the temple?” That question from a 12-year-old girl left Young Women president Michelle Madsen speechless with just twenty minutes left on their long drive home from a youth temple excursion to Salt Lake City.

Youth and leaders from the Cheyenne’s Thunder Basin Ward had kept busy planning their big “Super Summer Temple Trip” for the past year and a half. Then for three days in August, ten leaders, eight parents, and thirty-seven young men and women enjoyed Temple Square, Lagoon amusement park, shopping downtown, a Conference Center concert, a waterslide park, a service project, Laser Tag, two picnics up the canyon, a sunrise testimony meeting, and the zoo.
 
“Somehow that last morning no one remembered our 5:00 a.m. appointment at the temple baptistry,” said Madsen, 30.
 
“I can’t believe we forgot,” said a ward leader who wished to remain anonymous. “This is worse than those two times the elders quorum moved out the wrong family.”
 
Yet Kelsey Wells, 15-year-old Mia Maid class president, while disappointed by the lapse, defended her leaders by declaring that the trip itself was “okay.”
 
She said, “Um, yeah, it was . . . really fun, and stuff. We had great snacks. I got to pet a giraffe.”
 
Thunder Basin’s bishop, Clark Hanks, has personally apologized to parents, promising close oversight of such events in the future. Still, Hanks feels the activity wasn’t a total loss.
 
“The kids had a wonderful time,” he notes. “They built their testimonies, and strengthened eternal friendships. It was a very positive temple trip, except for that part where everyone skipped the temple.”
 
Despite the goof up, Madsen and the others remain optimistic. “This is a gospel of improvement. We’re going to try again; we’re going to do baptisms in the temple; we’re going get this right. Besides, the kids didn’t get to finish their hike up Mount Timpanogos.”

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