Oklahoma City Temple Trip---

or-alternative titles-- "How Many Times Did You Change Yours Clothes?" OR "Ice Cream For Dinner, Anyone?"

Wednesday, August 2, we first attended our MLC (Mission Leadership Council) Review meeting at the stake center with all of the missionaries in our zone.  It also included our in-person interviews with President and Sister Collins although we had done ours on Monday since we were leaving for the temple right after the meeting.  Our young missionaries do a great job organizing these meetings (and Elder Hall is great to provide laptop and tech support.) and we feel the spirit of their testimonies when we are together.  Love these sweet missionaries....

If I had thought this through, I would have taken a picture of the three of us at our MLC Review meeting, because it was our first stop in our series of changing clothes over the next 48 hours.  It went something like this....

after our meeting, we changed into comfortable traveling clothes to drive the 3 1/2 hours to Oklahoma City.  We made a quick stop at our hotel and changed back into the same clothes to hurry to make our 6:30 pm session at the small and beautiful Oklahoma City Temple.

welcome to the windy of the plains--
almost felt like Amarillo 

Although I had brought some salads to eat for dinner prior to the session, we didn't really have time and afterwards, we took Lizzy, a young adult who met us at the session, out for ice cream...so ice cream for dinner that night.

Thursday morning, we got dressed in casual clothes to go down for breakfast at the hotel and then went back to our room for a bit before getting ready to head back to the Oklahoma City Temple to meet some more YSA and the YSA missionaries for our baptismal appointment.

Here we are with our group--more later about everyone, but notice we are in the same clothes as last night and yesterday morning meeting....

we then changed our clothes at a gas station for a quick 4 hour drive to Clarksville for our Thursday evening Institute class.  We arrived there about 5:30 at the chapel so we could set up, rest AND--you guessed it...change back into our "missionary" clothes.....for Institute.  Unfortunately, the food truck we intended to have dinner at with our Institute class closed right as we were arriving.  So, our two class members indicating that they were okay just to have class and no dinner...so Gary invited them for ice cream AFTER class...so for the second night in a row, we had ice cream in the evening instead of dinner...

Eli, Jena, Jonathan, Gary and me...barely.
We struggled to get this picture.  Trust me-same clothes.

although we did eat our salads at 10:00 pm when we finally got home....and changed our clothes!

For the record, I did have backup dresses for Jena and I and another shirt for Gary, but in our comings and goings, it was just easier to use the same clothes.

Now more about our trip to the Oklahoma City Temple in the following posts!