Guess who we saw at the temple today?
For the past couple of years I have attempted to be a regular temple attender. I had had several tough years during and after going back to school to get my bachelors. So I thought I would try and tempt the lord to give me some blessings from regular temple attendance. The first thing that happened was I got laid off, from a pretty lame job. Then I ended up in St. George teaching a couple of classes at the college. That was fun, but it wasn’t what I really needed to be doing to provide for my family. About 6 months after getting laid off, I was blessed with a good job. I still believe it was Emerson’s praying that really got me the job. But, I will blame some of it on the temple attendance.
Some time in the first quarter of 2012, my cousin Martin and his family were sealed in the temple. So I asked him if he wanted to be my temple buddy and help keep me motivated to go regularly. So he agreed and we have been going ever since. We had been going to the Jordan River temple on Tuesdays because we could go before 6AM, but only on Tuesdays. Then the schedule changed at the Jordan River Temple because of the new movie. We realized we could go to the 6AM session at the Salt Lake temple and the timing for work would be about the same. So about a month ago we started attending the Salt Lake Temple.
Our second time in the Salt Lake Temple there was a lady, with a group of friends, that looked really familiar and then I realized it was a lady I had seen speak at General Conference last April, April of 2013. Martin even remembered her name, Sister Elaine Dalton. That was kind of fun to see a prominent member of the church in the temple.
This week we changed the day from Tuesday to Wednesday because of a thing I had going at work. While in the waiting room I recognized one of the Ladies from Sister Dalton group walking in, and sure enough there was Sister Dalton followed shortly behind. What a coincidence seeing her again. Then after the session Martin and went to the name desk to pick up the family names we had just completed. We notice Elder Uchtdorf and Elder Eyring stading about 40 feet away in front of the stained glass panel in the main section of the entrance to the temple. There were a couple of security people close by. We asked the young women at the names desk how often things like this happened. She said “I have been working here over a year. And this is the first time I have seen anything like this. They are doing temple president training.” When I turned around I also saw Elder Cook. As we walked back to Martin’s work, were our cars were parked. We talked about other times we had seen and met general authorities of the church.
Just before reaching the car I got a text from Richard Coffy, A fiend of mine from South Carolina, who is now working in Salt Lake. The text said “What are you doing in City Creek?” I texted back that my cousin and I were just getting out of the temple. He said he was surprised to look out the bus window and see me walking across the street.
Seeing all of these people is just one of the blessings I am getting from regular temple attendance.
