Sunday, December 07, 2008

A Trip to the Provo Temple

To celebrate Pauls birthday, we planned a trip to the Provo Temple to participate in sealings. Not all of use could enter the temple that day. We all felt sad. I tried to bright everyone by telling them a story of another Temple session not attended, that was a blessing.

So as not to embellish I found the story and copied it here.

The Christensen Family, pages 284-285.

"... With the knowledge that our great-grandmother, Ellen Christen, had done temple work for some of ther people in June 1893, I had new hope that we might learn more. ... Relia and I hurried off to Salt Lake that morning intent on participating in a session at the temple. A lot of other people had the same plan and the first and second sessions were over crowded. We were told to come back in the afternoon. We could not because we had young children and our livestock to care for.

"Our disappointment must have been very evident, because as we sat there in the Annex waiting for the return train, one of the ordinance workders ased if there was something they could do to compensate. I told him that my people had done work at the temple in June 1893 for their kindred of which we had no record. ... He escorted us to a basement room where large filing cabnets covered the walls. ... He opened the book and asked for the names of the proxies. In seconds he had found them. Grandfather, grandmother and great-groudmother had done ordinances on hehalf of fourteen of her kindred. The relationships to the proxies, dates and places of birth, etc, were all there. Our dissappointment had proven a bessing in disguise.

"With the data which Brother Card copied from the temple archive, we soon went to the library and made a deposit on research to be done, in Demark. ... So it was that in a few weeks time we received 145 names."

There is more to this story:

"It is said that grandma Ellen Christensen had been very sick the year before and said she could die happy if she had only done the temple work for her people. Phoebe said, "Why don't you pray to the Lord and ask Him to help you get better so you can go and do some?" Phoebe said, "She did pray to the Lord and she did get better so last June (June 1893) we went and did some." ... Aunt Mable told that her sweet old grandmother had to be carried to the train when they left for Salt Lake, but when they returned she could walk.

1 comment:

syerke said...

Miracles do happen! And we all have many blessings in disguise...it just takes some work to recognize them as blessings sometimes.