We Love to See the Temple!

I wanted to jot down a couple cool experiences we've had relating to the temple lately. In 2020 I made a personal goal to attend the temple at least once a month for the whole year. I crushed it for the first three months, and then all the temples in the world shut down. And because I've already received my own endowment and been sealed to Nate, I haven't been able to attend since.

I think it has been good for me to have this period where the temples have not been available to me, so that I can really tell the difference that being able to attend makes in my life. As a mom of young kids, I've frequently thought of it as a sacrifice to take what time I have alone and spend it at the temple. Now I'm recognizing that the blessings outweigh the sacrifice. I look forward with earnestness to the day that I can go back!

It has been thrilling to watch our hometown temple continue to rise despite the worldwide closures. A few weeks ago the youth from church had an activity where they walked from our ward building to the temple. It's about three miles. They all did great, and I love that our youth leaders are finding ways to turn these kids' minds and hearts and even bodies toward the temple, even if it's only to the outside of it.

We were thrilled to recently hear that temple baptistries in our area would be open to the youth by appointment. Nate had the special job of clicking the little button a lot of times until he could snag one of the time slots for us. The first three months booked up within about an hour of the appointments being opened! We were lucky enough to get a time to attend as a family. We weren't really sure what to expect, but we were super excited, especially since it was Bryn's first time being old enough to come along! 

Out here in the bosom of Zion each of the kids generally get to do about five baptisms and then are moved along quickly so the next person can have a turn. Imagine our surprise when we arrived at the temple and found out that our little family got to have the entire baptistry to ourselves for an entire hour! We brought somewhere in the neighborhood of forty family names to do work for. We were thrilled to be able to do baptisms and confirmations for all of them, and then the temple workers asked the kids if they wouldn't mind doing just a few more each. By the time we were done, we had done work for more than 50 individuals! 

The workers were all so thrilled to have us there and to be moving the work along again. A sweet housekeeper talked to Bryn and I in the locker room about how when the temple was totally shut down, she would be cleaning and maintaining it, and would feel so strongly the presence of those on the other side anxiously awaiting their saving ordinances. We will probably never have another experience like that temple trip.

Grandma and Abbey and some cousins came to visit last week. We drove by our temple with them to check the progress, which we do pretty frequently these days. Across the street in the church parking lot, were several huge pillars that were waiting their turn to be installed on the outside of the temple. Nate jumped at the opportunity and ran everybody over to touch the temple while we had the chance.