At the beginning of August, Rese and Darvin Moore celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary. This month, they’ll travel to Hawaii and finish the 16-month-long celebration of their 50th.
The Moores have spent the past year traveling the United States by RV, visiting almost every temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the country — that’s 80 temples, 49 states, and 2,787 temple ordinances.
They sold their house, furniture, and nearly everything else they owned and lived on the road for over a year. The Moores are both converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Rese Moore said the Church’s focus on families has always motivated them.
“Eternal marriage was one of the biggest draw-points to us in the gospel,” she said. “No one talked about eternal marriage but the Church of Jesus Christ. . . . (We) decided that for one year we would work full time in the service of doing the work for our kindred dead.”
Rese and Darvin Moore celebrated 50 years of marriage by visiting 80 temples in 50 states. Provided by Rese Moore.
The two were married in 1967, and days after their marriage, Darvin Moore left to serve in the Marine Corps in the Vietnam War. There was no time for a honeymoon, so later the Moores created a family tradition: every time one of their seven children got married, they would go on a honeymoon for themselves. These trips ranged from an Alaskan cruise to a trip to Yosemite.
“We decided traditions were things that you create yourself,” said Rese Moore. “Whatever you want a tradition to be, it can be.”
So the two have traveled frequently throughout their life together, and as their 50th anniversary approached, they decided they could celebrate by traveling to every temple in the United States.
“We liked going to the temple in Arizona two or three days a week there (and our son) said, ‘Why don’t you do all the temples?’ So we decided to start doing that,” Darvin Moore said.
They visited the five temples in Arizona, and from there headed out across the United States. They would park their RV in one location for a few weeks or months and drive their car from temple to temple within that area, then get in the RV again and drive to the next destination.
On May 10, 2017, they left home, having visited the five temples in Arizona and the Albuquerque New Mexico Temple. On Aug. 7, 2017, they celebrated 50 years of marriage. On Aug. 7, 2018, they celebrated 51. And in September of this year they’ll travel to Hawaii and finish their trip with the two temples in that state.
Rese Moore stands outside the Washington D.C. Temple. Provided by Rese Moore.
Darvin Moore was the navigator, a job that proved to be tricky. “We had to kind of watch the church website on when the temples were closing for cleaning,” he said. “Several of them closed last year . . . so we had to get to those temples first so that we could do it.”
The Los Angeles California Temple, for example, was closed for six weeks when the Moores were on the California leg of their trip, so they’ll stop in L.A. on the way to Hawaii next month and visit that temple then. The only temple missing from their plan is the Baton Rouge Louisiana Temple, which was closed when they were in the area. Rese Moore said they plan to go there when it reopens.
Besides planning around weeks-long and months-long closures, the Moores had to plan around daily temple schedules. They tried to spend one or two days in each temple performing different ordinances, and some smaller temples had a limited number of endowment sessions that sometimes overlapped with each other.
The Moores talk about their trip like Latter-day Saint missionaries, referring to their time on the road by saying, “We’ve been out a little over a year.” They served a proselyting mission on Temple Square in Salt Lake City six years ago, and they kept mission traditions alive on their temple tour. Every Monday was their “P-Day,” or “preparation day.”
“My husband every Monday did all the laundry and a nine-hole round of golf, and I spent the day at the library,” Rese Moore said. “So . . . we did church full time, but we also did silly other things as well. You know, that kind of a simpler life.”
Rese and Darvin Moore traveled the country in an RV, which they would park in one place for a few weeks or months while they drove to different temples in the area. Provided by Rese Moore.
Tuesday through Saturday, they traveled or served in temples. On Sunday, they went to sacrament meeting in whatever location they found themselves.
Every ordinance of the nearly 3,000 the Moores performed was for a deceased family member. They utilized grandchildren to perform baptisms for the dead.
“We had a printer on the dashboard, and we contacted all our family and said, ‘Will you help us?’” Rese Moore said. “We have seven children and 20 grandkids. We sent a plea for the grandkids to do the baptism work for all these names,”
Besides emailing temple ordinance cards back and forth to family members around the country, the Moores kept in touch with their children and grandchildren by written postcards and a private Instagram account Rese Moore kept updated with stories from their travels.
She wanted to build strong family ties, both to their living family members and to previous generations. She learned and told stories about ancestors, which made temple ordinances more meaningful.
“It gave me an opportunity to share spiritual stories with my grandkids and kids, and then I recorded those in a book,” she said.
The Moores' grandchildren added a colored sticker the shape of each state as their grandparents visited that state on their trip. The Moores will visit their final state in Hawaii when they go in September. Provided by Rese Moore.
She referenced how President Russell M. Nelson has taught members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to bring their families closer to Jesus Christ, whether that family is living or deceased. They have taken that directive seriously, and the New Testament parable of the laborers in the vineyard has special meaning to them.
“That’s our story,” Rese Moore said, referring to how both she and Darvin are converts to the Church. “We came late to the vineyard . . . but all the blessings are given to us, no matter what time you come to labor in the vineyard. So for us this was a great way to give back the thing we cherish most.”
To the Moores, spending a year in the temples of the United States changed their hearts. Rese Moore said they hope to be serving a full-time temple mission within a few months.
“You just — you can’t go back to being the same person, because you’re not,” she said.
