Sunday, September 26, 2010

Temples to Dot the Earth

While at BYU, I took a fun class on temples. Taught by Richard Cowan, a funny and kind blind professor, the course used a book, Temples to Dot the Earth (link to full text online). The title is a phrase that Bro. Cowan coined that is often used in the Church now.

While looking for something that BYU did, related to my dissertation, I stumbled on a Google map that someone put together that shows locations for most of the temples in the earth, represented as dots on a map (link)—temples to dot the earth, if you will. I explored this, wanting to learn how to make my own custom map for temples, and put one together (link, using borrowed material from here). (In these maps, you can click on a marker and get pictures and additional information.)


With temples on the mind, imagine my surprise and delight to see that the Ensign that came in the mail yesterday had a special booklet on temples! It was totally unexpected, but I could have known about it if I had been more prepared (the Church News did an article on it, link).


The double picture of a Celestial Room in this magazine features the San Antonio Temple: our temple!

I'm grateful that we can "go up to the mountain of the Lord" (see Isa. 2:2-3) and that temples really do dot the earth. I'm also grateful that I live close enough to one of these dots to go so often!

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