Motives for Temple Attendance

Why go to the temple?
    In former years, going to the temple once in a lifetime or on very special occasions was really the only possibility for persons who lived outside of the Utah-Idaho-Arizona LDS corridor.  We have heard recently of the wonderful sacrifices to attend the temple by pioneer converts in Japan and early members in Tonga, who prepared for years to afford the trip to Hawaii or New Zealand to seal their families together. Also, poor farmer family converts in northwest Arkansas loading the entire family into an old pick-up truck to make the trip to Mesa AZ.  
    Closer to home, on our mission Wendy and I saw several persons in our little Mt. Zion branch who had been up to the Raleigh Temple once for family sealings (2 hour drive) but not returned again.  It just seemed like it was too far and too much trouble.  
    JoAnn and I both came from families who were good people, but seemed to have something of this same temple attitude as above, by choice.  My grandfather Frank Davenport was endowed before he served a mission and he and Grandma Kate were married in the Logan Temple.  However, they immediately settled in Oregon 1000 miles away from a temple and I am not sure if they ever experienced the temple again, perhaps at most once or twice while visiting family in Utah.  To me it seems a little sad that they left a place that had one of only the three or four temples in existence at that time.  
    JoAnn's Evans ancestors were Dan Jones converts in Wales in the 1850s, migrated to Utah in the 1880s, and seemed to have the tradition that sometime in their lifetime everyone should try to qualify to have their families sealed together in the temple.  JoAnn’s parents achieved this in May 1965 after more than 30 years of marriage.  This was on the day before Angela was born.  I do not know whether they were ever inside a temple again.
    But over time we are learning how to appreciate the temple more.  And Church leaders are giving more emphasis to attending the temple regularly and often as a way to increase one's own spirituality and connection to God.
    We know people who perform temple work several days a week.  As temple workers, we see numerous elderly people who overcome their impediments and come regularly to the temple with their canes and walkers, wheel chairs, oxygen machines, pillows and pads.
    What motivates people to come to the temple?  Initially of course it is:
        1. To perform and participate in temple ordinances for oneself and those in our immediate family.
    However, recently when many of our current church leaders talk about the temple in conference or other places, they tend to put emphasis on our own spiritual blessings and development that occurs from repeated temple attendance.  President Nelson has asked and challenged us to attend the temple regularly and “as often as our circumstances permit”.  
    Here are several added reasons to make regular and repeated temple attendance an important part of our lives:
         2. To worship God (D&C 109:14, 24) and to experience His very presence and His cleansing (D&C 88:66, 74-75), to personally remember and give thanks and adoration for Christ’s suffering, sacrifice, atonement, forgiveness, and goodness and for all heavenly blessings in one’s own individual life.                         3.  To anchor (Ether 12:4) and bind (Pres. Nelson) oneself personally to Heavenly Father, the Savior, and Their Church, including experiencing intensely Their peace and the fulness of Their Spirit (D&C 109:15) and Their love for you, gaining a vision of who you really are and can become, obtaining inspiration and direction for one’s own life and also the personal strength, support, and healing power to successfully cope with life’s challenges, problems, and burdens.
         4. To better learn and implement in one’s own life and character the principles and laws that encompass the higher or Melchizedek Priesthood level of the covenant path as a consecrated disciple of Christ (D&C 84:19-20), facilitating our personal mastery of these celestial Christ-like principles (2 Peter 1:4, 1 John 3:1-2) by recommitting in a sacramental way to these temple covenants, in preparation to being able to live with Him in His heavenly Kingdom.
         5. To be a savior on Mt. Zion (Obadiah 1:21, D&C 84:32, D&C 128:24, D&C 138:47-48) and help gather Israel on the other side of the veil, performing ordinances for persons who have died, especially serving one’s own ancestors and relations who have been identified by our own family history research.
         6. To be strengthened as a missionary, to have angels bear one up, to go forth armed with power, and bear the great and glorious tidings of the restored Gospel to the ends of the earth (D&C 109:22-23).
         7. To maintain and strengthen eternal bonds with those persons and family that we love the most, through participating with them in the ordinances of the temple.
         8. To experience and be united in a brotherhood or sisterhood, even a Zion-like community fellowship, to celebrate and strengthen bonds to other wonderful Latter-day Saints and disciples of Christ (ward or stake, temple associates, friends) and to help others have a temple experience.