Those unfamiliar with the typical meeting schedule for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints may quail at the thought of a three-hour block of meetings every Sunday. It’s something I’m used to, having lived with it for my entire adult life. I like it, in fact.

Here in Utah and in a lot of cities worldwide, LDS congregations will share facilities with other LDS congregations. A single building may have two, three, or sometimes as many as four or five congregations in it (when there’s construction or renovation happening on another building, usually), with schedules overlapping and meetings running from 8:30am until 5:30pm.

Today a new building, a temple, is being dedicated in Draper, UT. The dedication ceremony is being broadcast to stake centers (centralized congregational worship buildings), and the building my ward meets in is one such building. The broadcast is at 4:00pm, and my ward’s meeting schedule runs from 1:00pm until 4:00pm. So… we were told that this Sunday we’d only be having the 75-minute “main” sacrament meeting for the congregation. Sunday School and the other auxiliary meetings were canceled for the day.

It’s like playing hooky, guilt-free. (Well, except for the part where I realize I’m happy about playing hooky, and feel just a tiny bit guilty about that.)