Temples

Photos by Scot Facer Proctor.

I, like members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all over the world, absolutely thrill at each new temple announcement. Since I am never sitting in the reverent silence of the Conference Center, I do sometimes whoop and holler to hear that the people of Thailand, where I interned in college, are getting a temple in Bangkok. Or that Kenya, where I participated in a humanitarian project in my early 20s, will get a temple in Nairobi. Or that Virginia, where I grew up, got a recent temple in Richmond.

My husband and I have a goal to do work in 100 temples; a goal that saw us bumbling our way through 8 hours of bus and train travel in Germany, only to arrive at the Frankfurt temple just as it was being locked up for the evening. Our flight was the next morning and the opportunity was lost.

But I’m afraid I had begun to think of temples as some distant phenomenon, excited by the far-off temple announcements, but not valuing the chance to enjoy the blessings of the temple in the next town over.

But the last few months have been different, as my ward and stake had the opportunity to prepare for the open house and dedication of a new temple of our very own. The Saratoga Springs Utah temple, as it turns out, will be my new temple. As I sat in the dedication on Sunday, I realized I had never sat in a temple dedication before and actually been a part of “this people” so often referenced in the dedicatory prayers and addresses commemorating the event.

This time, it is my temple. And the blessings and responsibilities of it are mine.

It’s a different feeling.

Our ward began to reap the blessings long before the temple was dedicated. We were asked to volunteer in various capacities for the public open house. I remember one fast Sunday where half of the meeting was youth bearing heartfelt and sometimes tearful testimonies of the experience of pushing wheelchair-bound patrons through the open house or even doing something as simple as putting the booties on patrons as they entered. Perhaps this is a mundane task, but these youth could feel that every task can be filled with the Spirit when you are building the Lord’s kingdom.

It reminds me of a story my Dad shared with me once from leading a Church history tour. There they were at Adam-ondi-Ahman, and they passed a senior missionary on his hands and knees in a flowerbed pulling weeds in the 100° heat. Another tour group passed by going the other way and their guide said to them over their headsets, “Can you imagine being called on a mission to do weeding?” After they moved away, my Dad turned to his group and said, “Can you imagine being called upon to weed the garden of the Lord?”

I, unfortunately, was unable to participate as a volunteer, though I attended the open house, where I was struck by the temple’s simple and elegant beauty. I was awestruck (as I always am) by the celestial room and hoped to stay a while and breathe it in, but within 90 seconds of my presence there, the 2-year-old strapped to my chest discovered the resonant echoing qualities of such high ceilings and we made a hasty retreat. But we didn’t leave that floor before we stood in a sealing room, and I got to see my little family all together standing between the mirrors whose reflections go into eternity. It was a sight I wish could always linger in my mind and motivate my days.

And it is the motivation that this temple dedication filled me with that I am most surprised by.

My husband and I decided that the day of the temple dedication should also represent a rededication of our home, and a rededication of ourselves to a higher and holier living. I have not done that when any other temple was dedicated, but this one is mine. And the blessings and responsibilities of it are mine.

Why is this any more significant than the Mount Timpanogos Temple, 15 minutes to the east of us? Certainly, the temple itself is no more significant than any other temple, and the work done inside is wonderfully consistent across the world. But temples are built and dedicated at specific times and places by divine design. There are scores of stories of temples for whom obstacles melted away for an expedited process and others that took decades of careful planning and negotiations to come to fruition. How could the Lord’s hand not be in every aspect of that timing?

As such, if you are in one of the many new temple districts in Utah, where 10 new temples are under construction and will be dedicated in the coming months and years, don’t think of it as just one more in a constellation of available temples near you. Instead, realize that the Lord doesn’t do anything by accident and if you are in a new temple district, He is asking something of you. The temple is, as President Eyring said of the Saratoga Springs temple, “a sign of the Lord’s trust…and confidence that [you] will respond with greater faith and energy.”

It is also a heavenly gift; a sacred place to lay your burdens at the door, as President Nelson shared in a message at the dedication. That thought brought such comfort to me. To be able to lay my burdens at the door of the temple makes the temple sound like coming home. Like visiting the security and love of Heavenly parents that know and root for you and want to help you.

And hopefully, that’s exactly what it is.

Temples are indeed the intersections where heaven and earth meet and where the Lord can dwell with us.

What an indescribable gift to live in a dispensation when we have so many temples and we are getting so many more.

As President Eyring offered the dedicatory prayer and so many individual physical elements of the temple were consecrated for their newly appointed use, it felt almost like the Brother of Jared bringing his stones before the Lord. Accept our best effort. Touch these stones and fill them with light. We built this house for you, please allow it to be a guiding light for us. It was both the best we could offer with our efforts and completely guided by thee. It felt like a covenantal exchange with the Lord, that made me want to go home a new person and never look back.

We want to leave the temple a new person that will never go back to our weaknesses. We want to consecrate and dedicate our very selves like temples, but just as in baptism, we need reminders. We need opportunities to try again and recommit. It has always been a stunningly beautiful thought to me that this earth life could have been arranged so that every person that ever lived could have had the opportunity to personally accept or reject the gospel, but instead millions never had a chance. We were built to be dependent on each other, as well as the Savior, for salvation.

Because so many eagerly wait for their work to be done on the other side of the veil, we get the chance to go back to the temple again and again to hear the ordinances and review the blessings and responsibilities again and again. And sit in a place set apart from the world and feel of its peace at a time when peace can be so hard to find. We get to do something for someone they physically can’t do for themselves. It is the closest to doing what the Savior did that we can get. In fact, Joseph Smith said fulfilling ordinances in behalf of our dead was how we could become ‘saviors on Mount Zion’.

“Prophets of God have always keenly felt the Lord’s desire to provide temples for His children,” President Eyring said. We often bare testimony of how sweet it is for the Lord to know and care about our desires on such a personal level. Providing temples for us is one of His own such desires for us. And how sweet it would be for us to care as personally about His desires, particularly when they are meant for our progression and joy.

The Saratoga Springs Temple dedication was a momentous occasion for my little family. It wasn’t like any other temple dedication I’ve been to, because this temple is mine. And the blessings and responsibilities of it are mine.

So, don’t let the flood of new temples that are coming make you take your temple for granted. If you are getting a new temple and already have some nearby, accept the spiritual invitation it represents to recommit to this sacred work, and spend more time enjoying the comforts of home with your spiritual parents.