The Temple

The Rome Italy Temple, my 40th Temple

inside the visitor center

a replica of the temple

beautiful stained glass in the visitors center

the death masks of Hyrum and Joseph Smith were on display in the visitor's center when we were there

inside the visitors center at the Rome Temple

the 12 Apostles

James and I at the Christus

outside the glass of the visitor center

on the grounds of the Rome Temple

The House of the Lord

Angel Moroni

view of the visitors center from the temple

walking the grounds of the Rome Temple

on the steps of the Rome Temple

sunset at the Rome Temple

My first son to serve a mission, Micah, was called to serve in the Italy Rome Mission. This was during the time that the Rome Temple was being built. They made lots of progress on the temple while he was there, but then President Uchtdorf went to visit the temple and said that it was not up to the standards that it should be for a House of the Lord, so they started over. They wanted to make it perfect, and they did, but it took much longer than expected. It was not completed when Micah returned home from his mission. It was still not completed after Micah got married and we returned with him and his wife to tour his mission. We went to see the progress they had made on the temple. It looked nearly completed. Then, for our 25th wedding anniversary, James and I flew back to Rome and attended the completed and dedicated Rome Italy Temple! We toured the Visitor's Center where they have a Christus and statues of all of the twelve apostles, and many other things that are worth your time to see. We saw a friend of ours from Monticello Utah, who happened to be serving a mission there. When we arrived at the temple, I didn't realize that I'd lost my public transit ticket (it must have fallen out of my pocket when I got out of the cab) until after my endowment session. By then it was night and the temple would soon be closing, so I was pretty worried. But a very kind temple worker gave me a bus pass that she happened to have and we were able to safely ride the bus back to our termini stop. We did an endowment session. At first they were going to do the session in English, because everyone who was there spoke English. But then they had some more people come and decided to do it in Italian, so we wore headphones. I admit I took my headphones off for a large portion of the endowment because I wanted to listen to the endowment in the beautiful Italian language. We were very blessed to be able to visit the Rome Temple for our anniversary, and especially considering that all of the temples in the world closed shortly thereafter because of COVID.

We went back to the Rome Temple in 2024 with my mom and I took lots more photos. We did a sealing session that was so full that they ended up splitting our session into English and Italian patrons.

2024

My mom in front of the temple, 2024

The Trip

We flew to Rome for our 25th wedding anniversary. It was the 2nd time we had been there. The first time we toured my son Micah's mission. That time we visited Venice, Florence, Rome, L'Aquila, Sardegna, and Sicily. This time just James and I went and we only visited Rome. We attended the Rome Temple, which was my 40th temple. We toured the Colosseum, the Forum, and Palatine Hill. We paid extra to tour the Necropolis under St. Peter's Basilica. This was definitely worth the time and money! We met in a small group and they took us below the basilica. They showed us where they believed Peter's bones were. I couldn't see where they were, so I asked someone who was on our tour. He pointed over my shoulder at the bones until I figured out where they were. Later that evening when we were at the Rome Italy Temple's visitor's center, we saw a couple who had been on the Necropolis tour with us and they said, "wasn't that incredible to have Tim Tebow on our tour?" I didn't know who Tim Tebow was, but it turns out he's the one who pointed over my shoulder to show me where the bones were. He was on his honeymoon in Rome. When the Necropolis Tour finished, they brought us up into St. Peter's Basilica, so one of the best parts about the tour was we didn't have to wait in line to get in. We did have to go through a process to get the Necropolis Tour tickets. But if we ever go back to Rome again, we will definitely do the tour again. We also toured the Vatican and went to see the Sistine Chapel. The first time we visited Italy we stayed in Airbnb the whole time, but we had a very scary experience where we arrived in Rome and our Airbnb had been shut down the day before. We were in the middle of Rome with nowhere to stay! We eventually did get a different Airbnb to stay in (at eleven o'clock that night). But the second time we went to Italy we stayed at the Roma Resort Termini, which was right by Roma Termini. It was a very convenient place to stay, and we'd definitely stay there again if we went back to Rome. We rode the metro and bus most of the time, but took a taxi to the temple. It took about a half hour to get to the temple in a taxi.

When we went to Rome for our 25th wedding anniversary, it was in February of 2020. When we left to come home, they were just starting to ask at the airport if passengers were experiencing any fever, or other COVID symptoms. It was at the very beginning of COVID, before the whole world shut down. We were so very blessed to be able to go before all of Italy closed their doors, with so many of them getting sick. We were also blessed to be able to get back to the US without any problems. It was just perfect timing for us. We were in Rome for two days and tried to fill those two days with as much as we could. We went to the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon. We visited the Spanish Steps as well. We went to Piazza del Popolo, Piazza Navona. and Piazza Venezia. There is so much to see in Rome that I wonder if even the people who live there have seen it all. I would love to go back!