One Final Thought

One final thought.

By now, the temple theme to our mission is clear, so bear with me for a wrap up and one more story.

 As members of the church we often hear our apostles and prophets talk about "the gathering of Israel" and  the purpose of temples in that pursuit. I believe all that to be true and important, but I have come to believe that regular attendance at the temple also offers another kind of gathering. I have come to believe that temples are also sacred gathering places for those of us on this side of the veil. Scattered through this last 18 months of letters has been stories of our "random" and unexpected temple meetings with beloved missionaries and meeting Cindy without a plan. Remember our story on January 14th titled "The Dream that I Hadn't Even Thought Of? when against all odds we "bumped" into Sister Thi at the crowded mall food court? 

A month or two after that meeting I found this post on her Facebook page:

Returning home nearly a week after a short business trip to Hong Kong, I now have time to sit down and capture the emotions of this trip.

Since having children, all my business trips are usually quite mindless, with no expectations, not wanting to do anything other than finish work and then go home, and this trip was the same. But it's a little different because Hong Kong has a Temple, so in addition to my work schedule, I have arranged to attend ordinances at the Temple.

Hong Kong brought me a lot of unexpected love and surprises....

 

 .......Because my appointment at the Temple was at 7pm, and Michael and Elder and Sister Smith's was at 7:30pm, at first I wanted to go first and not have dinner with everyone, for fear that my schedule time would mess up your their plan, but Elder and Sister Smith were so kind, they didn't want to let me go alone, so everyone decided to eat quickly to make it to my appointment time. Thanks to that, I encountered the third surprise on this trip.

As soon as I returned from the food ordering table, I saw two very familiar faces, I couldn't believe my eyes at that moment. Sitting right there was my Mission president JimChar Christensen and his wife Char Baird Christensen, President and Sister Christensen. They finished their mission in Cambodia for long time and are now serving as a couple missionary in Hong Kong and I didn't know that. There are feelings that words cannot describe. Even though it was just an unexpected reunion, all three of us felt God's great love when He cares about the smallest things in our life.

Elder and Sister Christensen decided to change the ordinance they had previously registered for to perform the same ordinance I had registered for. We baptized and confirmed two of my deceased immediate relatives together in the Hong Kong Temple. Elder Christensen performed the ordinance in English, but when he read the names of my immediate relatives, speaking Vietnamese very well, I felt an abundance of the Holy Spirit in the room and an infinite love of God for my lost ones at that moment. (Even though I can understand the ordinances in both English and Chinese, other brethren will have great difficulty when they have to read the names of me and my relatives in Vietnamese)

The three of us sat in the ordinance room together, holding hands and thanking God for His plan. Vietnam and Cambodia did not have Temples yet, so I never dreamed that I would go to the Temple with They, when they happened to meet each other in such an unscheduled but touchingly perfect plan, could only know that it was the gift that Heavenly Father wanted for us.

There is something extraordinarily sweet hearing someone else's version of a story that is precious to you and to know that it is precious to them too.

So here is one more story.

During our last seminar in Thailand, the morning after falling and scraping my knees, we both randomly woke up at around 4:45 a.m.. We both lay there for a while trying to go back to sleep, mildly afraid of the stress that was waiting to greet us in the new day. Just as I was about to give up, and get up, Dad threw back the covers and announced he was going for a walk. I also climbed out of bed and we headed out into the dark streets. We were walking briskly and as we came around the corner by the temple gates we halfway noticed a woman come through the gate toward a waiting car. We paid her no attention at that hour, she had a hat pulled down on her head and in the dark we couldn't even really see her. As we strode past, all of a sudden we heard, "President??" We stopped in our tracks and turned around and there was Diem Thuythuynguyen, one of our favorite sister missionaries from Vietnam. We served with her at the beginning of our mission and we had not seen or heard from her in six years. We were all so stunned! We threw our arms around each other exclaiming our joy, but it was short-lived because she was in a panic because her Grab ride was waiting to take her to the airport. We hugged, we exclaimed, we asked her if her life was good and then she was gone. We were probably together for less than a minute, but as we waved good-bye to the receeding car, the sense that God had just orchestrated something impossible was overwhelming. We turned around and more slowly, and silently continued our walk in the dark. It was minutes before we could even speak. How had that just happened? What woke us both up at that horribly early hour? What pushed us out the door into the dark of a not so great part of town? What determined the exact speed of our walking to put us in her path at that precise moment? There was only about a 5 second window the Lord was working with. Five seconds earlier, or 5 seconds later and it would never have happened. But oh, the joy of that meeting.

 It's been over a year and a half, and when Jim and I remember and talk about it there is still only gratitude and wonder. 

Since being home I have had several more "random" temple meetings with old friends. One evening as I came into the lobby to wait for Jim, suddenly I was being hugged by one of my old Laurels. This beautiful girl came from a family with inactive parents and I had been her temple escort the morning she was married in the Salt Lake Temple. Over the years I have wondered how she was doing and what her life looked like. Even though we only had less than a minute together, meeting her in the Draper Temple lobby as she and her husband came for their scheduled session told me everything important that I needed to know. She too still walked on sacred ground.

I've been going to the temple for many years now and I believe that temples are the Lord's playground. If we will go there as often as we can He finds every opportunity to bless our lives in ways we cannot see coming. This is what the truest and most sacred joy is. 

♥️