The Utah Temple Passport--Wherever fine LDS products are sold

If you’re wondering what I have been doing for the last year….here it is.

This is the Utah Temple Passport—Tour Guide. I believe I have blogged about it once or twice, but in case you don’t know about it, I’ll tell you.

About a year ago during a casual conversation Steve mentioned how his little sister Hayley who was endowed that day would likely be filling her Temple Passport pretty fast because she married an awesome straight-arrow guy. After he said the words I recalled an idea that I’d had years ago, and poof, there it was. It all came to me in one thought, and I knew I had to find a way make this idea a reality.

My hope was to create a classic and fun memento that Latter-day Saints could use to create lasting memories involving their Temple Visits. I have a USA Sticker Passport I used in college to log and remember all the road trips that I have taken through different states with my friends. I think it was intended for kids but I love it and still have and still treasure this sticker passport dearly. I love to flip through it and reminisce about my trips.

A week or so after Steve’s comment about his sister which triggered my thought, I paid a visit to my friend Curtis who among other things is an extremely talented graphic artist. I explained to him my thoughts and asked him if he wanted to help me. We decided to be equal partners on this project. He and his beautiful wife were just as enthusiastic as Steve and I so we shook on it and began our journey together.

I gave him some descriptions of what it looked like in my head and he took my imagery and produced some incredible designs almost immediately. His designs were exactly what I had wanted, only better.

Curtis presented me with some Temple seals after just a few days. They were so professional, polished and perfect. It was then that I realized that we really had something, and that we would be successful.

My part was to collect data and information about each Temple and write a 150 word bio of interesting and little known facts about each temple. Steve was my inner voice through this process providing valuable insight, direction and praise (which I need to feed my ego).

Together Steve and I researched Temples using various resources including the Church News, The Church Almanac, and a few other books we found written about temples. We also visited BYU professor of religion Richard O. Cowan, who teaches the Temples religion classes. He was a very valuable resource that gave us many ideas of places we could look to gather information.

During the writing process we learned SO much about our temples. I was struck by the blood sweat and tears involved in the construction of these temples. I wept while sitting at my kitchen table as I read about the sacrifices that so many early saints made for construction of these temples. One man who lived in Brigham City walked up and over the mountain to work on the Logan temple every day for more than a decade. We think that attending the temple monthly is an amazing feat. Their dedication in building temples was simply incredible.

For months we researched, wrote, edited and re-wrote these little temple facts descriptions. Once we got to a place where we were satisfied, I e-mailed them to the biggest word nerd I know, my BFF growing up Misty. She edited them and gave me her insight about changes to make and how to improve them. In addition Kelly’s sister Meegan who has a degree in English edited the content and provided valuable insight and edits.

I am extremely proud of the textual content. I think it is interesting, intriguing, and educational. My hope is that everyone who uses the passport will feel the same way.

Writing and compiling the text was a long and at times tedious process, but all the while Curtis was working on the seals and layouts and they looked so good. His designs kept me motivated to keep going.

Once we had all the content, seals and the layouts, Curtis had our first prototype printed up. It looked amazing! Once we had the hard copy, we noticed right away some things to change and we began the revision process which went lightning fast compared to the compilation process.

When all was said and done we had a beautiful beautiful beautiful Temple Passport that looked exactly like the one that popped into my head originally, only better and more refined.

We showed our prototype to a former Vice President of Deseret Book who lives in my parents ward. He was very generous to offer his thought and insight to us. His words when he saw the passport were… “It’s cute, I don’t see any reasons why this couldn’t be published.”

He gave us some really important advice about the what to expect from the publishing industry and how to be successful in getting our book published avoiding contract pitfalls that many first-time authors fall into.

I contacted Cedar Fort Publishing first by phone to see if I could find out how best to submit my work and see if they were interested at all in it. I spoke to Jennifer Fielding their acquisitions editor. She was helpful and realistic. She told me that many people have the same ideas and the good ones usually have already been published. My stomach sunk when she told me that.

I told her about my idea right then, I had to know if they had already seen a million temple passports. She responded very eagerly by saying she had never seen or heard anything like that before and that she was very eager to see it. I personally dropped the passport off at their office in Springville just days after that conversation.

Steve drove me down and took this picture of me walking it in to their office.

Then started the waiting game. Jennifer Fielding told me It would probably only take a week or two for them to make a decision about the passport because it was so small and quick to read through. Three or four weeks then passed. We started to get very nervous. I finally got an e-mail saying they were interested and wanted to pursue a contract.

We were ecstatic! We were assigned to work with another editor at that point. At that point communications with Cedar Fort to be very slow and quite frustrating. I was very irritated with this editor, but…you know…you can’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Because things were moving so slow with Cedar Fort, we ended up submitting the passport to Deseret Book for consideration.
They passed. What were you thinking DB? This thing is going to be HUGE!

Anyway…to make a long story short…that editor we were working with got fired and we resumed working with my original contact Jennifer Fielding, who is wonderful. We sorted out our contract details and signed! It was a very exciting day!

Here is Curtis and I signing the contract together.

It took many months of our publishing experts working with vendors in China to actually manufacture the booklet. We hit several snags including Chinese New Year which apparently shuts down all the factories in China for an entire month. Really. Then, shipping the passports out of the China we hit more snags. Chinese customs refused to allow the passports to ship because they were concerned they would be used for missionary work in China.

Cedar Fort has someone named Jane on their staff who is from China. She called customs to explain what they were and that they were all coming to the US and they were all paid for, but she was unsuccessful at getting them out of Chinese limbo. In a clever thought, Jane called the mission home in Hong Kong who either paid a visit to or called Chinese customs and was able convince them to ship the books.

So here we are on the day they arrived. What a day.

Here is Jennifer, Jane and me celebrating their arrival.

Here I am leaving with 20 copies of the Passport. (I'm a dork for taking these pictures, I know.)

I arranged to have a release party at Seagull Book convincing the manager there that I could fill the store with people willing to buy the book at a time when otherwise the store would be empty. I was very happy when she along with their corporate offices agreed to host the party.

So in case you haven’t already heard, we are celebrating the release of our work at Seagull Book at The District in South Jordan on Saturday May 22 from 4 to 6p.m. You are cordially invited to attend. I am hoping to sell all three hundred copies they ordered for the release. There will be cookies.

This process has been a joy to be a part of. I have worked hard and learned a lot. About Curtis, I must say he is an artistic genius. The passport looks amazing because of him. I appreciate his time, talent and patience especially since he hasn’t gotten a dime for all his hard work. Kelly has been a wonderful resource in all this too offering her insight and opinion has improved the look and feel of the passport. Both her and Steve were an integral part of bringing the passport to life. Saying thank you for all their hard work is just not enough, but I’ll say it anyway.

THANK YOU

I hope to see all of you at the open house!

If you are unable to attend you can purchase your own Utah Temple Passport Here