Why we love to serve

Dear Family and Friends:
     For the last 4 years we have been away from you and have missed many special events in your lives.  We just want to share this experience with you so that perhaps you can better understand why we love to serve.  It is experiences like this that have made broken legs, cellulitis, broken hearts for missing your baptisms, your birthdays and special holidays easier to bare.  These experiences have strengthened us, sustained us, and fortified our testimonies in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We are so thankful that we have had the opportunity to serve these two missions.  We thank you for your support and your love and your prayers.  We could not have accomplished this without you. 

April 17, 2015

This Friday afternoon, I went to the front of the temple to greet a couple who had come to receive their own endowments.  I didn’t really notice the husband because my attention was drawn to the wife.  There sat a young woman with tattoos on her arms and around her shoulders and back.  She was very uncertain about herself; disbelief that she was in the temple, not really feeling like she should be there, and almost childlike in her actions and speech.  As we were very short handed this afternoon, I was privileged to be able to perform her Initiatory Ordinances.  As I began, she looked at me and followed every word as if she were literally “drinking in every word so that she would thirst no more.”  When I told her that her Heavenly Father loved her and that she was clean from her sins, the tears welled up in her eyes and I knew that she had led a very rough life and had turned it around to follow her Savior.

She entered my office for instructions before the session and stroked her white dress.  She told her friend who was with her, “Isn’t this beautiful.”  The friend, who must have known her during her rebellious years, took her in her arms and whispered, “You are beautiful.”

Again, as I gave her instructions, she followed every word as if she were soaking up the words.  Her tattoos had faded from my mind.

I was in the waiting room when her husband was waiting for her after the session.  He asked me if the temple sold or rented clothes for children.  They are returning to be sealed together next Saturday.  When I explained that the children would be cared for in the Guardaria and that they would be dressed in white and that there would be no charge, I saw the tears well up in his eyes.  I could tell then that the 10 Quetzales ($1.30) had been a sacrifice for them and they would have to pay that again next Saturday.  If they had to pay for the children too he was very worried about where it would come from.

Just then his wife came around the corner.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  There stood a confident, smiling, radiant daughter of our Heavenly Father.  Her eyes were dancing and you could feel her sweet spirit.  Gone was the uncertainty, the doubt, the fear.  Here stood a beautiful woman who knew that she was loved and accepted by her Heavenly Father.  The temple is the house of God and she had come home to her Father and felt of His love. 

 We are coming home a little older, a little wiser and a whole lot more appreciative for what we have.  We will be ending our mission here on the 15th of June 2015.  We send our love and look forward to hugs and kisses in two short months.  Dad and Mom, Grandpa and Grandma, Lon and Nancy