The Gift of Temple Work for Your Kindred Dead

I'm a bit behind on a few things I should have covered earlier.  I'm going to go back and try to hit a few of them over this week.  I'll start with the goings on of May 3rd and go from there.  A few months ago, I was trying to think of what to do for Marinda's birthday and wasn't too excited about the idea of sending another small package for over $20 bucks in postage like I did at Christmas.  Packages are nice as a missionary, but with postage being so high and the actual delivery at least somewhat uncertain, I wanted to see if there was something else I could do without costing an arm and a leg.  After thinking about it for awhile, I decided it would be perfect to prepare a few family names that she could do the endowments for, as this would be spiritually uplifting and could also be sent over email.


At the time I arrived at this plan, I was thinking how I would need to make plans in advance to get all the preliminary work done.  Unsurprisingly, about a week and a half before Marinda's birthday on the 4th, I realized I still had done next to nothing to enact my plan.  Work and church obligations have been absorbing a lot of my time recently.  Even Sundays, which is usually the day I do such things, have been pretty packed with various meetings.  I set aside a few hours to do the research and was delighted to find a few names in that time.  I was able to round up 5, which seemed an ideal number to send.  I had planned to get Rachelle to do the baptisms and confirmations for me, as I thought it would be nice to have her participate in the gift, but I didn't get a response when I called her.  It was really my own fault for not having planned out better to give her sufficient time to get stuff done.  I'm pretty sure it was also her finals week, so she was no doubt quite busy at the time.  My only remaining option was to do everything myself all at once, and I determined that the only time I really had to get all the early temple work done was on May 3rd, the day before Marinda's birthday.  This made me a little nervous since it didn't leave any room for error, but I was confident I could get everything done if I made that my only plan for the day.

On Saturday, the 3rd, I did run into a few complications.  In the morning, I had to do a few chores that ended up taking longer than I expected.  Then, as I was getting ready to go to the temple, I realized that I hadn't gotten the sheet printed out with the names to take.  This caused me momentary panic, because I wasn't sure how to get the printout done.  I decided to try the library first, though I wasn't sure it was open.  It fortunately was, but when I got there, I remembered that I don't have a library card and was worried this would cause another unforeseen delay.  Fortunately, it turned out that I didn't need one.  I was able to get the printout made pretty quickly.

It was fun in the temple to get to see this baptistery for the first time.  It was kind of weird in a way to be there though.  I was thinking it through and I'm pretty sure the last time I actually did baptisms for the dead was on my mission, oddly enough.  We did them with a few of our recent converts.  It's been a long time, which added to the oddness of being there with a bunch of teenagers.  I was definitely a bit rusty on the baptism technique!  I had to relearn how to not lose my footing in the font.

It did take awhile to get there though.  There was a pretty good sized line in front of me.  In fact the two girls who went right before me were also Larsen's and also had family names!  I'm pretty sure we weren't really related, but it was an interesting coincidence.  It was entertaining to think that all the onlookers probably thought we were all together, even though we weren't really.  With all the waiting, my time in the baptistery took about 2 hours.  Then I went upstairs to get the initiatory done.

Fortunately, I didn't really have to wait there.  It didn't take too long overall, though the process was slowed down a bit by the fact that one of the workers was apparently new and had to be reminded of what to say fairly often.  Sadly, she had the longest part to do too!  I felt bad for her, because I have an idea what that would be like.  It really is a lot to learn.

When I worked at the Rexburg temple, I loved working in Initiatory because it was definitely the place I felt most useful.  A lot of what the female workers do is simply stand around to "guide" people where they should go, even though pretty much almost everyone knows where to go.  The truth is, you need a lot more male temple workers overall, but you pretty much always get a wife working along with a husband.  This leads to a lot of jobs for the women that really could be easily dispensed with.  But in Initiatory, you have the best opportunity to really serve.  It takes awhile to remember everything correctly, so I felt bad for this woman.

I don't know everything perfectly anymore, but it usually comes back to me pretty well when I do a series of initiatories.  I could have probably helped her pretty well myself, but that seemed to me like it could be quite embarrassing for her to be corrected by a patron.  The other temple workers started jumping in to correct her pretty quickly, and I felt bad for her getting quickly corrected repeatedly.  I think it would have been better to give her a few moments to recall the words on her own!  As it was, I think the attentive audience probably made her more nervous and thus more forgetful.

I was in the temple for about 3 hours total and really had a wonderful time.  It was fun to do progressive work for the same people.  It really made me think again about how I would like to do all the ordinances for one person in succession one of these days.  I think that would be a truly special experience!  I've been contemplating trying to arrange for a group in the ward to undertake the same goal in my capacity as Family History Consultant.  I'm not sure I could convince people to do it, though.

After I finished, I spent some extra time at the temple taking pictures of the stunning spring grounds.  It gave me a good opportunity to play with my new phone camera, which I'd only had two days then.  I'm including my favorite shots in this post.

So on Sunday, I was able to send Marinda my gift along with a short email.  It's only the second or maybe third time I've emailed her, as my personal opinion is that email should really be reserved pretty much for parents, so the missionary had plenty of time to read and respond to the people who have done most for them.  It seems only fair to me.  I'm not totally sure it will be the most meaningful gift for Marinda, but I hope she will have good experiences with it.  I had a good time in preparing it, at any rate!