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”.
