Bogota Columbia Temple

Temple #98 

Bogotá, Colombia

May 16, 2018

     We were flying to Bogota Colombia and we were so excited! We were also a little nervous because we had heard how unsafe Columbia could be. Flying in was pretty though. Bogota is a massive city of 8 million people or so in a valley surrounded by mountains and green fields. It was raining and kind of cold which was surprising since we were basically on the equator. When we got there we instantly took a bus towards the temple. The traffic was terrible though so it took two hours to reach the temple! 

     We were so happy and relieved when we finally reached the temple. It was lit up and beautiful and we were so glad to be there. We walked to the temple housing which was across the parking lot and we stayed the night there. It was different than the other temple housing’s we had been to because hardly anyone spoke any English. 

     In the morning we went and did a session. We now could see the temple in the daylight and it was larger and more brilliant than we thought! The temple is bigger than the others we have recently been to for sure. It has four endowment rooms and two stories. It has earth, moon and sun stone carvings on the outside of the temple. President Hinkley, when he visited it, said it was some of the most beautiful stone work he had ever seen. It was indeed beautiful and well done, especially in the Celestial room. We ourselves were amazed at the stone work throughout the entire temple. 

     In the endowment room there was a pretty mural which had the beach and ocean in it, which we thought was odd since we were a long ways away from the ocean. We went through the session but had to do everything in Spanish because no one really spoke English. We even had to say everything in Spanish during the session which was difficult yet we had help and we managed. 

     We then took a taxi back to the airport. We wanted to see the city and some of the sights there but we had a feeling we needed to go to the airport. We arrived about four hours early which was crazy, yet we were so glad we did. The line to the airline company we went through took about two hours to go through. They were a cheap airline that charged for every little thing and then on top of that security took about an hour. We finally got to the gate and only had twenty minutes before they began boarding. 

     We really enjoyed Bogota and the temple there and were happy everything worked out, yet we were glad to go. It was too big and busy of a city for us and we were excited for our next stop; Peru!