That's a lesson title in President Benson manual.
I wrote last week's post because I was afraid that the testimony meeting would be horrible, and I wanted to have my thoughts organized and clear just in case. The reading of the letter went much better than expected, and there was only one horrible testimony, but the meeting was almost over then so I let it go. It might come out a little this week.
This week I am teaching Relief Society (as a sub), and I want to get all my thoughts out here so that only the ones that are pertinent to the class come out.
A lot of my feelings about the temple lately have centered around the family history that I am working on.
To give some context, my parents were both converts and joined after they were married, so there wasn't a history of church membership, though as you get further out into cousins sometimes you can find some others here and there.
There were still several people that were interested in genealogy, including my grandmother Harris. She had one cousin of her own, and one cousin of her husband's, who were both really into it, and had a lot of information going back which my grandmother collected and then gave to my father when he asked for it.
My first interaction with it was in social studies in junior high, when creating a family tree was among the project choices. I created a great one, because all the material was there, but I couldn't leave it at that, because there were heartbreaking stories. My grandmother had a twin who died. On my mother's side, her grandmother died in childbirth, with twins who also died, and because her grandfather had to work, my mother's mother was primarily raised by nuns. There was one family on the Davison side that lost four children to disease in two weeks. They had other children later, but for then they had no children left.
The great thing about the temple is that it can heal these wounds. I submitted my first names for temple work then. At the time you filled out sheets by hand and mailed them to Salt Lake, and then they could send cards to the temple you specified, or you could just ask for the work to be done.
There have been other spells of submission. Marguerite Rippey was the Harris cousin, and some other cousins took her work and put it in a book. That was the first thing I really entered into Personal Ancestral File. The first batch I'd submitted happened before I'd ever gotten on a computer.
As I got some Harris names ready, now we used computers. You would take them to a Family History Center on a disk, and it would check there for approval, and then you could take them to the temple to be printed into cards. This was progress.
Later another cousin sent me hundred of pages on the Bobiers. A different cousin I had never met contacted me, and he had a smaller batch of information on the Chaffee side, but it still filled in some blanks.
Every time someone would randomly hand me pages of genealogy I would take it as a sign that there were people ready, knocking through the veil. I would submit more names. After that I started hitting snags.
I tried preparing another batch in 2002, and when I got to the Family History Center none of them were approved. I tried a really big batch and the same thing happened.
Five years ago we could start getting things approved over the internet. It occurred to me that what was needed was organization. I would start going through and see of all the people in PAF, who had work done and who needed it, and submit that way. However, it occurred to me that with such a large database (about 7500 names) that it could be a long time until I would get to anyone, so I submitted another large batch in the meantime, with over 300 names.
That was too much to manage. I hadn't meant for it to get that big, but it added up really quickly. It takes a long time, and then we don't have any active men in the family, so I would part those out and one guy who swore he could get all the initiatories done really quickly lost about 40 of them. About a year ago I started getting e-mail from other people on the lines pointing out that these names had been reserved for a long time. They were generally nice about it, but I still felt ashamed.
I released some names, reprinted some, and I still have several cards left from this batch, but it feels more manageable.
The spreadsheet had gotten discouraging too. The idea was to write if they needed submissions, or research, or were done, but I got so scared to write "Done". Okay, their work was done, but their children weren't sealed to them yet, so would they feel done? What if I was missing information, like what if this person I thought hadn't got married really did?
I have pulled myself together now. If I have the children entered, then being sealed to their parents is part of their ordinances, and will be attended to. If I don't have everything that happened to everyone, I do still have a lot to work with now. When I have finished checking all 7500, maybe I will feel a need to research different things. I mean, I have gotten unexpected leads when they were necessary before.
The other thing is that so much has happened since that had nothing to do with me. Those names that didn't get approved were because someone else was working on them, or they were already done. There have been more done since I had stopped looking at it. I am not alone in this work. I may not know the other people doing it, but they are still helping me, and we are sealed together across many generations.
A few weeks ago we had a temple day where we took names all the way through, and six women in my family were able to have their work completed.
As I fill in ordinance completions, I see many where their work happened really close together. It could have been something like my experience, but for many of them I think it was that they had to travel to the temple, and make the most of it. There has been sacrifice.
That makes me think of a few things. One is gratitude at the increase in temple construction. My parents and my brother had to travel to Oakland. By the time I was in Young Women's it was Seattle, and before I was out it was Portland. We are so lucky. I think there were 58 temples when I went into the Missionary Training Center; there are now 147 operating, with another 31 under renovation, construction, or announced.
It has also become easier to arrange to do baptisms, with limited use recommends and temple assisted ordinances.
It is easier that we can do check and submit names at home with an internet connection, and can take names to whichever temple we choose. Families in different areas needed to coordinate a lot more before.
It is wonderful that home computers and internet also allow people of all ages to do extractions. People who may not have the resources to research their own can participate in this way, improving the resources for others and also learning more that will help them when they are ready to research their own.
So this is the thing held over from last week, when one testimony was very upset about how we are losing our rights. Putting aside for the moment that there has never been (nor should be) an actual right to force people to live the way we think they should, what rights are being infringed?
No one is stopping us from praying, or attending church. No one is stopping us from attending the temple. No one is stopping us from keeping our covenants. Only we can do that.
I love being at the temple; getting there is a different story. Finding the time and changing clothes and preparing mentally takes some work, but if I don't do that, that's on me.
There are so many blessings and opportunities available. Different ones will fit into your life at different times, but there will be something. Make room for it.
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