During a RootsTech Family Discovery Day address Elder Bradley D. Foster said, “If the gospel is worth anything, it is worth everything.” In the book of Moses found in the Pearl of Great, we read: “For behold, this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39). As we participate in temple and family history work it is good for us to remember the importance of this work, which is of great worth.
Elder Foster shared the following in his address: Heavenly Father wants all of His children home again, “in families and in glory.” Imagine your unique role in that plan. I’ve learned that if you want to endear someone to you, do something nice for their children. Imagine how Heavenly Father will feel about you as you’re doing something nice for His children.
You will help them discover their families, gather them together, and connect them, to one another, and to Him. Think of how parents and grandparents on the other side of the veil will feel about you as you help their posterity discover them, gather their stories, connect them to each other through temple ordinances.
As we are engaged in family history research, and then attend the temple we not only bless the lives of those we serve but our lives are blessed. In 1922 John A. Widtsoe said: “Temple work gives a wonderful opportuity for keeping alive our spiritual knowledge and strength. The mighty perspective of eternity is unraveled before us in the holy temples; we see time for its infinite beginning to its endless end; and the dream of eternal life is unfolded before us.” Speaking of what he had learned personally through worshiping in the temple, Elder Widtsoe said: “In the temple, I see more clearly my place amidst the things of the universe, my place among the purposes of God; I am better able to place myself where I belong, and I am better able to value and weigh, to separate and to organize the common, ordinary duties of my life, so that the little things shall not oppress me or take away my vision of the greater thangs that God has given us.”
The term “stand in holy places” can refer to a condition as well as a place. As we research our family histories, prepare names and go to the temple to do this work, in a very real sense we become holy as saviors on mount Zion, doing for another what they can not do for themselves.
Elaine Hardman – Granite Family History Center – Communications