Line upon Line

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During the summer of 2018, my youngest daughter worked as a driver for Crust Club, delivering pies to customers all along the Wasatch front. Some days she headed north through Salt Lake, Davis, and Weber counties. Other times she made deliveries clear down to the southern end of Utah county.

After a month or two of driving this 108-mile route, Kate pulled me aside one evening and spoke words that were music to my ears: “I feel like the temple is calling me.” She explained that each day as she drove, her attention was continually drawn to the latter-day saint temples scattered throughout the mountain valleys: Ogden, Bountiful, Salt Lake, Jordan River, Oquirrh Mountain, Draper, Mount Timpanogos, Provo, Provo City Center, and Payson. The more she saw those beautiful edifices, the greater Kate’s desire was to enter them. She began to actively prepare to receive her endowment, and our family rejoiced as we attended the temple with her that September.

Like my daughter, I have felt the temple calling me over the years. I have had many experiences both inside and outside of God’s holy house which have touched my heart, increased my understanding, and led me closer to Jesus Christ. Many of those moments are too personal to share, but others may be shared appropriately. Here are a few:

First night in the mission field

On the day I left the MTC for the mission field, my alarm rang at 2:45 a.m. By the time I finished packing, prepared my room for inspection, ate breakfast, was transported to the airport, waited there for several hours before my flight, flew across the country, was driven to the mission home, ate dinner, and had a testimony meeting with the other new missionaries, I was dead on my feet. All I cared about was lying down on the nearest flat surface.

But President Swinton surprised his sleepy missionaries. “Out to the van,” he ordered. “We’re going for a little drive.” Peering into the February dusk, I tried to imagine where he could take us at that time of night. He wouldn’t say. Minutes later, I stared out the van window as my adrenaline kicked in. I imagined my life as a missionary and all that would be required of me. In my state of exhaustion, I was nearly overwhelmed with the prospect of missionary life, feeling utterly inadequate.

The drive was long enough to allow my thoughts to edge toward panic. I was fighting back tears when suddenly a miracle appeared in the darkness. The fully lit Washington DC temple, almost blindingly white beyond the bare trees, loomed ahead like a vision. Until that moment, I had not fully understood the depth of my feelings about the temple. To my weary, worried mind it symbolized everything beautiful and solid and familiar to me. My family. My Savior. The beauty of His plan.

On that long ago evening, the temple represented all the reasons I had responded to strong promptings to serve a mission, to share the gospel which taught me about covenants and eternal connections. As the van drew closer that holy place, my heart was filled with the “peace…which passeth all understanding…” (Phil. 4:7)

I was still the same weak, silly, inadequate girl who had been on the verge of panic only minutes before, but I was a weak, silly girl who had been called and set apart to do the Lord’s work. What a tender mercy the mere sight of the temple was to me that night.”¹

Counsel from the First Presidency

While sitting in a sacrament meeting, I heard the speaker quote a letter from the First Presidency of the church which had been published years earlier: “Where time and circumstances permit, members are encouraged to replace some leisure activities with temple service.”²

Though my husband and I had attended the temple monthly for many years, I realized that my circumstances would allow me to attend much more often. I decided to go weekly. It took almost a year for me to quit making excuses to not attend so frequently, but once I truly committed to this new course of action, my life began to change. Following the counsel of the First Presidency initiated a powerful new chapter in my temple experience.

Ward temple night

For twenty-four years, my brother Robb and his family lived next door to me, which meant that we were in the same ward. I recall a ward temple night we both attended long ago. Near the end of the endowment session, I was standing in line waiting for my turn at the veil when I glanced to my right and saw Robb, who was already at the veil. His head was turned at just the right angle so I could see his mouth move and read his lips.

In my mind, I repeated the words of the veil ceremony along with my brother and felt an unusual moment of spiritual kinship with him. That brief experience was a sweet reminder that he and I are “on the same team,” committed to the same God, and striving for the same eternal goals.

The story of Adam and Eve

When I received my own endowment, I was surprised that Adam and Eve played such a significant role in the presentation. I puzzled over this for years.

Gratefully, I came across a quote from Elder Bruce C. Hafen which changed the way I viewed the endowment:

“A friend once asked me, ‘If Christ is at the center of the gospel and the temple, why doesn’t the temple endowment teach the story of Christ’s life? What’s all this about Adam and Eve?’ I have come to feel that the life of Christ is the story of giving the Atonement. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of receiving the Atonement, amid the sometimes-formidable oppositions of mortality.”³

The other side of the veil

I was at the Draper Utah temple, participating in proxy sealings. At the exact moment the sealer finished sealing a proxy couple together, a loud cheer went up outside of the temple, indicating that a bride and groom had exited the building to greet their family and friends after their live sealing ceremony. Everyone in my proxy session smiled, and I’m guessing they had the same thought I did: each time a proxy sealing is performed on earth, a cheer goes up on the other side of the veil as loved ones rejoice for their temple ordinances to be completed.

Studying and pondering outside of the temple

I recognized at a certain point in my temple journey that simply attending the temple more often wasn’t enough to help me grow in understanding of the ordinances, signs, and tokens. So, I began to search and study outside of the temple in the scriptures, on lds.org, and in carefully chosen books written on the subject of temples and symbols.

As I have persisted in this habit over the years, my understanding of the endowment, initiatory, and sealing ordinances has slowly increased. I am seeing the Savior in every facet of temple worship, and what used to feel repetitive and routine in the temple has morphed into beautiful, sacred encounters with the Lord.

Becoming an ordinance worker

One of the great privileges of my life is to serve as a temple ordinance worker. I remember the exact date I was set apart for this new opportunity. Laying my hands on a sister’s head for the first time to perform the initiatory ordinance, I marveled that priesthood authority had been delegated to me to participate in that sacred moment.

Performing priesthood ordinances never gets old. In early 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit hard and fast, the difficult decision was made to close all LDS temples temporarily. Suddenly, the place many church members turned to in stressful times was not available. Five months later, temples opened on a limited basis for those receiving their own endowment before serving a mission and for live sealings.

I was grateful to be among a handful of workers called back to serve on my temple shift. It was an unusual time at the temple for many months, with the front doors locked—opened by a worker to let in those with appointments for live ordinances—and it was almost eerily silent in the lobbies and the dressing room.

One of my favorite assignments during those months was to be in the celestial room. Because so few patrons were allowed in each scheduled session—only sixteen—there was often time when I was the only person in that sacred space. I frequently had the celestial room to myself for ten to fifteen minutes and I basked in the stillness, the holy silence. I felt like I was sitting in God’s living room. It was an oasis of peace during an uncertain time.

A moment of heavenly connection

A few years ago, an experience in the temple instilled in me a greater sense of unity with every woman I encounter. On a busy Friday evening, the hallway on the upper floor of the temple was packed with people waiting to participate in sealings. My husband and I were assigned to a room along with five other couples, which was more than we usually had in a sealing session.

The sealer addressed a woman who had brought ordinance cards for a husband, wife, and their five daughters: “Usually, we have one person at a time kneel as proxy when a child is sealed to their parents. Tonight, because we have enough female proxies for five daughters, we can have them all sealed at the same time.”

After the couple’s sealing was performed, the five other sisters in the room were invited to join the proxy parents around the altar, and the ordinance proceeded, with the sealer speaking the name of each daughter, from oldest to youngest. This was a tender moment.

Unexpectedly, after the ordinance was finished, we lingered at the altar for a long moment, smiling at each other through our tears. We had knelt as strangers, but the beautiful truth filled our hearts that we were sisters just as surely as those five for whom we were proxy, and we basked in a moment of heavenly connection.⁴

Yesterday

Forty-two years after receiving my endowment, the temple is still calling me. Just yesterday, my husband and I were privileged to participate in a sealing ceremony for a young couple. Brad was the sealer, and I was the guide for the bride. In the brief remarks Brad made before performing the ordinance, he drew attention to the altar where the couple would hold hands in a sacred way as a reminder of Jesus Christ whose Atonement makes it possible for us to live eternally with our families and to become perfected.

As my husband pronounced the beautiful words of the sealing ordinance, the Spirit filled the room and I was reminded that it is “in the ordinances thereof, [that] the power of God is manifest.” (D&C 84:20) “Each time we attend the temple—in all that we hear, do, and say; in every ordinance in which we participate; and in every covenant that we make—we are pointed to Jesus Christ.”⁵

Is the temple calling you?