The Temple and Knowing God in Our Extremities

Here is a letter I wrote to Pres Price today.   Some of it is in letters I have sent to Glo that I put on the blog but I hate to write so much of my spiritual thoughts and not put it into the history books of our family.

Hello Mike,

Thanks for always calling me and checking in with me.  It is really appreciated.

I just wanted to share with you some of the things I have learned in the temple with all the trials I have been facing lately.  

When I was a kid, my mom who though not having gone to the temple, told us Kennedy kids that in the last days, before Jesus would come, the holy temples would be safe from the destruction and the devastation of the second coming.  When there would be wars and rumors of wars, pestilence and earthquakes and the calamities of the last days, the temple would be a safe place.  As a kid and young man and even as an adult I have always wondered when the second coming approaches, How will we all hide out in the temple to find safety?  Right now I am under attack.  Daily I feel the influence of the adversary telling me that I am going to fail, that I am not worthwhile, that I do not deserve help and that the problems people have reported about me are reality and that what I have thought about myself and my abilities as a doctor and as a person, are not true.  I experience fear, trepidation and feel like I am falling apart.  

Larisa and I work in the temple on Thursday night and then we go on Tuesday nights after going to the Bishop's storehouse because they are both so close and because we need the temple, especially me.  When I walk through the doors, it is like a curtain has come down on the influence of the adversary.  I feel calm, I feel confident, I am not scared or worried, I feel myself again.  I have received two prophetic blessings in the temple in the past 3 months in which the brethren who gave me the blessings did not know what was going on in my life but they blessed me with words that only God could give them.  I have felt peace there that is literally otherworldly.  At one point I went into the endowment room and sat down by the door and began to pray.  It was literally like a cocoon of peace enveloped me and thought I was by the door and near the hall, I did not hear anything.  It was after a particularly hard day and I felt the peace of the Lord come over me.  Another day, I was at the endowment door checking to see that the new name had been issued as people entered the endowment room and as I prayed it was like I was in the presence of Heavenly Father and his peace was with me.  I did not feel worried or fearful or anything like what I had felt 30 minutes before when I was in the world.  

I have come to realize, that rather than the temples being places for physical safety, they are literally places of the most spiritual safety we can achieve in the world.  Tonight we had the missionaries over with an investigator that is getting baptized on Saturday.  Larisa who is very in tune with the temple told of a talk she heard where a sister in general conference described the temple as a bridge between this world and the celestial kingdom of God.  It is a place where the world we know and the eternity of God have their closest approach to each other.  I realize that rather than Heavenly Father needing us to go to the temple, in these the last days, we need the temple.  I sometimes feel like my time in the temple is when I feel most like myself and where I can know the truth of who I am and what I can expect from my life, rather than the lies and fear and deception of the world which lies outside the doors of the temple.  

The other thing I told you about was after my blessing by Pres Lund in the temple when he said things that only God and I knew I needed to hear and was blessed with things which I am in desperate need of - "being articulate not in a pompous or arrogant way, but to be articulate in a humble way that will change the perception of those to whom I speak about the world", "blessed to be able to sleep, to not wake up in the middle of the night and to be able to sleep restfully", which I have not done for months, I was talking to Larisa.  She said she was sorry we had come here and that it was a mistake.  As I said, I have felt that a hundred times - this was a mistake and I am paying a terrible price to come here.  But after the blessing and while I was talking to her and she said that, immediately to my mind, I was reminded of the story told in general conference.  I will quote it because it is so much better quoted from the original than I can remember:  As told by Pres Hinckley,  

Years later, a group in Cedar City were talking about her and others who were in those ill-fated companies (the willey and Martin handcart companies). Members of the group spoke critically of the Church and its leaders because the company of converts had been permitted to start so late in the season. I now quote from a manuscript which I have:

“One old man in the corner sat silent and listened as long as he could stand it. Then he arose and said things that no person who heard will ever forget. His face was white with emotion, yet he spoke calmly, deliberately, but with great earnestness and sincerity.

“He said in substance, ‘I ask you to stop this criticism. You are discussing a matter you know nothing about. Cold historic facts mean nothing here for they give no proper interpretation of the questions involved. A mistake to send the handcart company out so late in the season? Yes. But I was in that company and my wife was in it and Sister Nellie Unthank whom you have cited was there too. We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but did you ever hear a survivor of that company utter a word of criticism? Not one of that company ever apostatized or left the Church because every one of us came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives for we became acquainted with him in our extremities.’”

That speaker was Francis Webster, who was twenty-six years of age when with his wife and infant child he went through that experience. He became a leader in the Church and a leader in the communities of southern Utah.

When Larisa said she was sorry that we came here and it was a mistake to come here, I realized that as terrible as all this has been, it was meant to be and that in our own little way, we are privileged to go through this because we have come to know God in our extremities.  

I know that there are much worse things than this.  I am very grateful:  my wife loves me, our children and grandchildren are healthy and they are all on the covenant path, Allison joined the church and she and Mark were married in the temple, I am still getting paid and should come through this and hopefully will have a job somewhere when I am done, our health is ok.  I know there are much worse things.  But for different reasons this is a hard trial for me and Larisa but it is being given to us to teach us and me specifically things that the Lord wants me and us to learn.  I know I am not like Job but I feel to say as he did:  "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord."  I had job and career and income security in October and ever since then it has all disappeared like a dew before the sun.  I hope when all is said and done, I will survive vocationally from this, but I know even better than before how undependable the world and its trappings are and how the only things that are true are the things of God and his Christ: the gospel, the priesthood, the temple, the ordinances of the gospel and my family.  Those are the things that matter.  My ability to serve others has brought me and Larisa great comfort.  Working in the storehouse an the temple have been a boon rather than a burden and I and we are thankful for the opportunities we have had of time to do these small services.  

I hope you and Heather and Meredith are doing well.  I am sorry when we talk I talk so much.  I am thankful for your thoughts.  If you have time and feel like it is appropriate I would like to know what spiritual insights you had that day you had that outpouring of the spirit.  

I love you Mike.  I feel like we are brothers in a special way and I am thankful for that bond.

Have a good night.

Love you bro!

John