I love to experience God’s presence and his love, peace, and direction in the temple.
I love how the temple experience anchors and binds me to Heavenly Father and his Son.
I love how the temple helps me learn and acquire the principles of character that I need, to be able to live with God and my family in eternity.
I love the unity and fellowship of temple attendance with other committed disciples of Christ.
My first wife JoAnn was a wonderful person with tremendous commitment to our family and with great home-making and child-rearing skills, and our relationship was very positive. She contracted esophageal cancer and passed away in July 2004 at age 61.
After her loss, I wasn’t totally overwhelmed with grief to the point where I couldn’t function, but losing her took away my zest for life. To me it seemed like I was in a fog and just going through the motions of living, just doing what I had to do but without feeling. After about a year this fog began to lift and I began to sense that my life would be much better and complete if I had female marriage companionship again. Also, that I yet recognized that I needed female help to complete my work with the family that JoAnn and I had created. As JoAnn was facing her death, she had told me that I should marry again. And, I had previously concluded that the marriage relationship provided an enhanced and richer life. Women typically see life somewhat differently than men – the beauties of life, people relationships, emotions and feelings, and that important difference makes life much richer and more complete for men through the marriage connection.
As I began to think that it would good to marry again, I was reminded of the experience of my uncle Franklin and how he went about deciding who to marry after his first wife, Aunt Ellen, died in 1974 when he was 72 years old. When he decided to try to marry again, he determined to look for someone for whom their marriage would have eternal consequences. In 1977 he married Millie Stitely Lange, age 66, a divorced mother of two, and a convert to the Church. Their sealing in the Salt Lake temple provided “Aunt Millie,” as we knew her, with an eternal marital relationship. I remember her as a very loving, accepting person who seemed to have a real appreciation for being a part of Uncle Franklin’s family.
I saw Uncle Franklin’s choice about who to marry after the loss of his first wife to be reflected in the second marriages of two members of our Church’s First Presidency. Both President Nelson and President Oaks lost their first wives to death a number of years ealier. President Nelson then married Wendy Watson and President Oaks married Kristen McMain Both of these women were single women in their 50s when they had this opportunity for a temple marriage.
My Wendy reports having two spiritual temple manifestations that had some connection to our marriage. Like Aunt Millie, Wendy had experienced divorce from a disappointing and difficult first marriage. First, a year or two before we met and while traveled with her friend Jill to Las Vegas, they made a visit to the Los Vegas Temple. She had been praying earnestly that she could find a husband who would share her faith and determination to live the Gospel and loved the temple, who would love her and her family, and that she could both love him and also his children and family. While in the temple she received a strong comforting confirmation to be patient, that her prayers would be answered and she would find such a man. Second, after we met and had dated briefly, feeling concern and offering prayers about replacing JoAnn in my marital and family life, and while attending the Salt Lake Temple, Wendy received a manifestation that not only did JoAnn approve of this marriage, but had selected Wendy as her replacement. Soon after, I proposed marriage while we were seated together in the Celestial Room of the Salt Lake temple and she gave me a firm “Yes”.
The new Sunday meeting schedule, with a 25 minutes weekly gathering for each of Sunday School and for organization meetings including Relief Society and Elder’s Quorum, offers some good opportunities for furthering the critical work of the Church.
First, the Sunday School might be partially used as a tool of the Lord for teaching and supporting home-centered, Church-supported gospel learning. Therefore, some emphasis in the Sunday School time might be on helping family leaders to develop successful strategies to teach and study Come Follow Me lessons in their homes. Some time might be allocated to gives suggestions on how to provide such home-centered instruction. Also the class might receive reports from class members about how successful home study processes were conducted and how home study challenges were met.
Second, during the Elders Quorum and the Relief Society meeting time, these two organizations being groups having primary responsibility for efforts in the ward about perfecting and supporting the saints, missionary efforts, and temple and family history work, might view some of their meeting time as workings sessions for strategizing, planning, teaching, and reporting on these Melchizedek priesthood functions, as opposed to just studying conferences talks.
While performing an endowment in the Manti Temple on September 25, 2025 I had a sudden strong, even overwhelming, spiritual insight. Over the last few days, I had been agitated by the idea present in the Church that ministering visits to a family’s home might not be essential, if the assigned ministering brother occasionally greets a parent of the family in the hall at Church, if it is known that the family is doing well, and if the family doesn’t care or have any expectation of ministering visits in their home.
I had begun to think of a ministering brother as the official representative of the Church and of the Lord to that member family and to be responsible in visits to the family home to communicate to them that they are loved by the ward and the Church and by Heavenly Father, to identify and help supply any physical or spiritual need they might have, and either to respond personally to these needs or to inform and enlist the resources of the ward and Church in their behalf.
While still puzzling over how to conceptualize and describe the ministering role, Wendy and I made a trip to perform endowments in the Manti Temple. At the point in the ceremony where the ancient apostles, Peter, James and John, are directed by the Lord to be His messengers to present and administer the Law of the Gospel of Jesus Christ covenant to session patrons, I was struck by a powerful spiritual message that this is the confirmation that I had been seeking with strong words of description about the ministering assignment. And I understand that in the ancient Hebrew language the word messenger can be translated as angel. This temple covenant, as I understand it, has to do with what the duties are of those who are Church members or in other words, disciples of Jesus Christ. Therefore, my ministering role is, as that of Peter, James, and John, to be THE SPECIAL MESSENGER OR ANGEL to my assigned Church families or persons, to assist them in becoming TRUE DISCIPLES OF JESUS CHRIST. How that is to be fully achieved I am not sure, but I am absolutely certain that saying “Hello” on occasional Sundays in a church hallway is not sufficient.
