President Nelson said in the October 2022 General Conference: "The reward for keeping covenants with God is heavenly power—power that strengthens us to withstand our trials, temptations, and heartaches better. This power eases our way. Those who live the higher laws of Jesus Christ have access to His higher power. Thus, covenant keepers are entitled to a special kind of rest that comes to them through their covenantal relationship with God. I promise that increased time in the temple will bless your life in ways nothing else can."
I am a planner, and along with that personality trait, comes a side-helping of worry. I am rarely overcome with anxiety or any kind of debilitating worry, but things nag me in the back of my mind. When I go to the temple, the things that aren't of God are forgotten. It's like my mind is reset, and I come out a better functioning human being.
I am my best self in the temple. Feelings that I have about people are gone, and I imagine I can see the patrons as Heavenly Father sees them. I love that feeling. And at times, I can take that feeling and use it outside of the temple which is a very good thing for me!
Miracles happen all the time in the temple. Just yesterday, while working in the office, I was a part of two miracles that I promised myself I would record:
When I arrive at noon for my afternoon shift, the temple office is extremely busy because it's the shift change. We have both morning and afternoon office workers in the office along with morning shift coordinators dropping off folders with ordinance cards and afternoon shift coordinators coming to check out the folders. We have two sets of temple presidency members and matrons also finishing up and beginning their shifts. It's a busy time.
I was sitting back, figuring out where I was needed the most until the morning workers left, when an older man came in. He appeared a bit rough around the edges with no suit coat on and an unshaven face. He caught my eye, and in my usual way, I asked him if I could help him. He told me that his wife had an appointment the following week to be sealed to her parents in a live sealing, but that he had been unable to figure out how to have those parents sealed first. (I'm not sure how this slipped through the cracks, because it should've been taken care of before.) We have been told that we are not a Family Search resource, and that if patrons need help with Family Search, they should contact the family history consultants in their wards. However, being the Family Search maven that I am, if I think I can solve their problem quickly, I will. At the moment, I didn't have anything going on but watching everyone else be busy, so I asked him if he knew his Family Search login information (this is usually where things get held up). He looked right at me and said "yes!", and I knew we were in business. I pulled him over to an empty computer (that in itself was a miracle). When I do this with most other patrons, they stand behind me and watch (or pull up a chair). This man got down on bended knees to watch. I pushed the computer keyboard over to him to type in his login information, but he told me it would be better if I did it. Slowly, he spelled out, from memory, his login information. I was thrilled when Family Search opened with his family information. I quickly found the husband and noticed that there was no "Sealing to Spouse" option, so I looked up the wife. Turns out, there were two parentheses in her name (for an alternate last name) which prevents the Family Search software from clearing her name (parentheses are foreign characters). All I had to do was remove those parentheses, and the name was cleared for sealing. I hit print, printed up the card, cut it down to size and handed it to him. And there he was, on bended knees, weeping. He told me through tears that he had been trying to get the names to clear for weeks and had had multiple people working on it with no success. It was such a tender little moment for the two of us in the office amidst all that busyness. He went on to do a session and came back into the office afterwards to thank me again. I was so grateful that I was there in that moment to help him.
Yesterday, I was training a new office worker who will be with me in the office every first Saturday. Sister Jensen is married to Brother Jensen, one of the assistant recorders with whom I have a fun friendship. Sister Jensen presents a challenge to train because not only is she kinda slow, but she asks a million questions. In fact, after a couple of hours with her and getting off track for the 55th time, I had to tell her that we need to focus on the important things to learn before we question why we keep cups in the office cupboards!
One of the responsibilities for the office staff is to check the office email on our shift. It's a daunting task because there are usually difficult questions and situations which need to be handled promptly. Some office workers simply don't check it, leaving the emails for the next shift. I opened an email that had been sent the day before (and which should've been handled by two shifts before me)--the email had a family group record attached to it, and the first two names of a patron with a sealing date. What should've happened is that I simply attach the family group record to already created paperwork. However, there was no live sealing scheduled in the temple schedule, and there was no paperwork in the Living Ordinance Binder. Too, the person who had sent the email hadn't signed the email, so I had no idea if "jstephenson" was a Brother or a Sister. After some sleuthing, I figured out that David George was actually Dave Murray who was signed up for a proxy sealing session on the same day. But I had no phone number, no email address, no way to contact him except through "jstephenson". So, I began composing an email, thanking the sender for the family group record and asking for more information. I had filled out the paperwork as best I could but there were some serious blanks.
As with all things in the office, a bunch of cards had come in for recording while I was working on Dave Murray's sealing, so I set the paperwork aside. But after recording, I sat back in my chair, and the phone rang (this is another thing that many workers don't like to do, including Sister Jensen--answer the phone). I could hardly believe when the caller ID came up as "Dave Murray". Sure enough, Brother Murray had discovered that he needed to sign up for a live sealing (instead of a proxy sealing), and he was calling to schedule that. I could hardly believe that I was looking at the paperwork in front of me, already filled out using the family group record and that all I needed to do was collect a phone number and email address. It was an answer to an unspoken prayer that I could take care of all of that for him.
I was thankful as well that I still have my teaching chops. Despite Sister Jensen's age and processing speed, I helped her extensively in learning how to work the phone and feeling confident doing so. In fact, we did several role plays of my calling her and what she would do, or what she would say. I even used my own phone to call (kept in my pocket for two-step verification in the temple gmail account). After a good 30 minutes, she felt confident in answering the phone, putting people on hold, and transferring calls. All because of Suzuki and teaching my own children. It's just one step at a time, and let's practice each step. Sister Jones, the temple matron who had been sitting at her own computer for a while, told President Jones that she didn't want to step away from her desk because she was "enjoying listening to Sister Kennedy teach". Yeah, temple blessings and temple miracles.
I wish I could tell everyone to go to the temple. You may not want to go, or you may not feel like you have time, but miracles happen there, and you will find your true self. As I told Hannah in the car on the way home last night, I feel like I can imagine who I will be in heaven when I see myself in the temple. I'm a much better version of myself there than I am in the world, and it reminds my battered self-esteem that there is indeed hope for me and for all of us.
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