Temples dot the Wasatch front

While driving up and down Utah and Nevada, we decided to try to show the kids as many temples as we could. It got them thinking about the temple and temple work a lot more, so they asked a lot of great questions about what happens there and why Mommy and Daddy love the temple so much.

Living just three blocks from a temple helped - the first temple each day came rather quickly. JT would call out "'Roni! Mroni!" when he saw the angel Moroni on them.

This summer was a time of dedicated temple service for us. LDS temple are there to unite families across multiple generations. We do vicarious ordinance work for them so they can have the same blessings of the gospel that we do. (more here).

A couple years ago Joy got really interested in doing some family history and she found and prepared the names of something like 60 family members for us to do temple work for. I admit the reason she did only 60 is because I asked her to stop at 50, knowing that at our usual pace of each of us doing one person each month, that was all we could manage in two years. We kept at it.

Then last year I got more interested in family history also. Playing around with both my history and Joy's, I prepared enough names to take us up to about 100 waiting on us. Oopsies.

As we counseled together about how we were going to get this done, we decided to do everything we could to more than double our temple work.

Joy: I had told Derrill, no, we didn't have the time. Then a week or so later I was feeling like I needed extra help from Heavenly Father. The answer I got was that I should go to the temple every other week. Then when I talked to you about it I remembered your insistence on doing more work for the dead, so yours was more altruistic *lol*

Over the summer, at least one of us was in the temple every week. In Brigham that meant a leisurely morning stroll for each of us to the temple three blocks away. In Stephenville that means a full day trip. We regularly sent one of us up to Dallas (2 hours away with traffic) first thing in the morning and they stayed there until the evening. It's been a wonderful, fulfilling, peaceful time.

The only "problem" is that despite taking care of more than 30 people's ordinance work, we still have 100+ people to do because I keep stumbling across more relatives who need work.