While we were in Nauvoo a couple weeks ago, we got to do some sealing ordinances.
After the sealing session was over, the sealer said that he had some neat things to show us. First, he took us to the celestial room and we sat in there for a few minutes. Jershon and I sat on the same couch that we sat on on our wedding day when we were waiting to go into the sealing room. And we looked at the same painting that is across the room that we looked at on our wedding day. It is a landscape painting of Nauvoo in its marshy state, with a rainbow in the distance.
After we were done in the celestial room, the sealer took us up to the 5th floor (which is the top floor). He took us over to the spiral staircase and let us look down all the levels all the way to the bottom floor. It was really neat!
I love that spiral staircase, first because it reminds me of our wedding day when Jershon and I were walking down it together, holding hands, getting ready to go outside after our sealing. … but we only walked down from the 2nd floor, not the 5th.
And second, I love that spiral staircase even more since recently learning more about spirals and about how a spiral staircase symbolizes our eternal (which includes mortality) progression. We learn line upon line, layer by layer and ascend gradually, often learning the same things over and over again, only at deeper and deeper levels.
After the spiral staircase, the sealer took us over to the little room where little kids wait before being sealed to their families. It was a cute room.
And then he took us over to the sealing room where Jershon and I were sealed. 🙂 (we had mentioned to him that we were married in this temple). He said that their are only 2 sealing rooms on the 5th floor (all the other sealing rooms are on the 4th floor) and those are reserved for live sealings (the 4th floor rooms are for proxy sealings).
He asked us if we remembered which room we got sealed in but we didn’t. My mom said we had the biggest room though so we deduced from that which room it was. So there we were, standing in the very room that Jershon and I got sealed in almost 11 years ago. That was really sweet. 🙂
He drew our attention to the carpet in the room (which is the same in all of the sealing rooms so I had actually been noticing it in the other room when we were doing proxy sealings only a few minutes before). He said that this carpet is the exact same pattern and colors that were used in the original Nauvoo temple. The church had had a sample of it in its archives for years and then when they were going to rebuild the temple back in the early 2000s, they were able to find the exact same company in England that had made the original carpets for the temple back in the 1840s (that is still in business all these years later) and they had them make the carpets for the temple again. That’s super neat!
This is one of the 4th floor sealing rooms… perhaps even the one that we all did sealings together in today. This shows the color/design of the carpet in the sealing rooms.
After getting changed, and before leaving the dressing room, I peeked into the bride’s room for a minute. I remember getting ready in here before/after our sealing. 🙂
I love the Nauvoo temple and it was special to get to spend time in there and get such a nice sealer that would give us an extra-special experience.
(See the next few posts for more gifts that God has given to me recently…)
