Festival of Lights, the sequel

On January 1, our family enjoyed a visit to the Washington , D.C. temple for its annual Festival of Lights. (We wrote about it on our family blog.)

Last weekend, Yvonne and I returned to the temple grounds after volunteering for a “cleaning assignment” there. We dressed warmly (thankfully it was actually in the high 30s, warm by recent standards, and a brilliant day) and left the house early.

Upon arriving, we learned our cleaning assignment was...(wait for it)...to take down the lights. The Festival of Lights had come full circle for us. During our four-hour assignment, teaming with one other volunteer among the many that were there, we worked very hard and were successful in removing the lights from one tree.

Yep. One tree.

A really big tree.

But one tree.

Working from ladders, sometimes at epic heights and great personal peril (not really that high, but it was a lot of time on ladders), we unwrapped and untangled string after string of lights. We lost count after we removed the 70th string from that one tree. Let’s just say we have a better appreciation for the Festival of Lights – and the 500,000 lights that it displays (although we are convinced our tree had close to 100,000 of them by itself).

Our backs were sore (from pulling lights, and from four hours on a ladder), but it was fulfilling providing service – and we were reminded of the Primary song: “I Love to See the Temple .”