Essential things

While attending the temple has always played an important part in my life for the past 31 years I have never truly understood or felt its real impact until about 4 yrs ago.

There were many overnight trips to Hamilton from Wellington and later from Whangarei where we would travel for long hours on a bus, work in the temple literally through the night and return by bus in the morning and where I would find myself exhausted for days afterwards. I was always amazed to see the elderly brothers and sisters, some well into their 80s do that trip each month with such enthusiasm. I loved listening to them chatter on with each other in Maori and I figured I would love to have their excitement for the temple. I knew even then that I was missing something!

When I was married in the temple a small piece of the puzzle appeared. OK so this was a place where families were united forever. It brought a very special spirit to me when I was able to see all four of my teenage children do temple baptisms for our ancestors but even then I just knew there was more to these temple visits.

In every aspect of my life in the gospel I try to reach a point where I am not motivated out of a sense of duty but out of a sense of love. It was finally towards the end of 2007 that this LOVE for the temple hit me and hit me hard. As I have mentioned before in an earlier blog it was during a visit to the temple that I finally received the revelation as to where the Lord expected me to go and I finally got it! This was the house of the Lord which meant that He was in there and I am visiting Him at His place, spending time talking to him and vice versa. I finally caught the vision that the temple is a place of personal revelation.


This was confirmed again during a week in the temple in Frankfurt in July 2009 when I received the message from the Lord that things were going to get tough for me but that I didn't need to worry about Rebekah (Lol that last bit came right out of left field.)

In the past nine months I have been blessed to spend 3 days in the temple in Madrid, two weeks in Frankfurt in April and July of this year, a wonderful weekend visit to the London temple with the Paris Stake Relief Society in April and last week I spent a day in the Preston temple with the Single Adults. (Not bad for someone with extremely limited resources!)

I have developed such a hunger to be in the House of the Lord in these past visits. The more that I have gone the more I have opened my heart and understanding that the Lord actually wants to speak to me, the more I have been privy to some very sacred experiences. Going to the temple now is not just important for me. It has become essential in my bid to have a personal relationship with my Saviour. I am looking forward to General Conference when I hope they will announce that there will be a temple built in France!