A Tour of The Church History Library

On November 30, we headed down to Salt Lake to get our official badges which allow us into the various places we need to go as missionaries in Salt Lake Headquarters Mission.  That included a stop at the Church Office Building to get our pictures taken, a visit to the mission office to get our badges and take care of some zone business, and then Bryan Adkins, the intern in our area of the Church History Library, took us on a tour of the Church History Library to get acquainted with the building itself.

We started off at the Church History Library where we met Bryan Adkins.  He became our tour guide for the trip which I think took a bit longer than he planned as he went everywhere with us.

This is the entrance to the Church History Library.  It is located at the northeast corner of Main Street and North Temple in Salt Lake.  Directly west is the conference building, across the street to the south is the Church Office Building, and .....

to the southwest is the Salt Lake Temple!  How excited at this very historical time of the 4-5 year rebuilding of the Temple that we will be serving so close.  It actually turns out that our new office/cubical has a similar view from the 2nd floor---about half way down the west side of the building.  When we are there sometime, I will take a picture...

After getting our photos taken at the Church Office Building, we got a "tour" of the underground parking between the Joseph Smith Building and the Church Office building.  This is suppose to be the amazing way to travel during the winter snow storms.

Here is our zone on the board at the mission home---our pictures aren't on it.  Sis. Unger told us that our pictures were on Pres. Unger's desk, apparently to remind him to attend the meeting and announce us as the new Zone leaders.

The Church Library-- I have never been inside this building before--

This is the motto-  "Behold, there shall be a record kept among you."    This is inside the lobby and this door admits people inside to do research.  However, at this time, the building is closed to the public and most of the staff.

Looking from the library toward the front doors of the building--

After the tour of the building where we learned that our keyed badges let us into the building and elevators but not into the floors where we will be serving (that was fixed later)--we headed back through Temple Square and watched the big tractors digging up the area where the Annex once was and around the base of the temple.  These people are very skilled and it was fun to watch.

These pictures were taken through some plastic glass so you can see a bit of reflection on the photo.  It was very loud as well.

To give you some perspective, the North Visitor Center is in the back left of this photo and the Conference Center is the back right.

They are slowly taking down the spires as well to update them with appropriate earth-quake proofing.

This picture shows another view of the depth that they are digging but it might be hard to see it.  In the top left of the picture there is a staircase from one of the eastern doors.  This is where many families have stood after weddings to get pictures.  The ground use to reach the bottom of those stairs....

The viewing area....

A close up view of the stairs....

How amazing it will be to watch this process over the next 17 months----

One fun thing that happened during our tour is we met someone in the fourth floor break room (which has an amazing view of the temple and Temple Square) and when we said we were from Syracuse, Utah, he immediately said that his wife was serving as a missionary in the Temple Department and was helping select items for the interior of the Syracuse Temple...so exciting to think that people are planning our temple!