Skip to main content

Temples in the Past Year

I live 478 miles from the nearest temple.  That is nearly the same distance between my home in American Fork, UT and Flagstaff, AZ.  My nearest temple is the Taipei, Taiwan temple.  Other 'nearby' temples are Korea, 562 miles away; Okinawa, Japan, 610 miles; and Hong Kong temple, 746 miles away (Hong Kong is our designated temple).  All of them require a flight (although we *could* take the train to Hong Kong, but it is an 8-hour train ride).  Getting to a temple is expensive and takes planning way ahead.  Yet, miraculously, in 2024, we have been to the following temples:

Tokyo
Hong Kong
Vancouver, BC
Mt. Timpanogos
Saratoga Springs
Taylorsville
Orem
St. George
Red Cliffs
Newport Beach
Layton
Seoul, Korea
Bangkok Thailand

Temple attendance is of highest priority to me.  I'm beyond thankful for these miraculous opportunities. I will share one unique experience.  While preparing to do initiatories in the Seoul temple, I let FamilySearch generate names for me.  The ones that came up were shared by someone in the Shanghai District, but they were Japanese names.  While in the temple, the ordinances were spoken in Korean, I was reading the English text, doing Japanese names for someone in a district in China.  It was a majestic and unique opportunity in gathering Israel.  

In addition to the temples above that we entered and did work in, we were able to also visit:
Lindon
Salt Lake City
Smithfield
Cedar City
We are beyond blessed to have temples dotting the earth.  I love President Nelson's statement, "I pray that we won't miss the majesty of this moment."  (of announcing more temples)  I'm so thankful that I can attend the Houses of the Lord.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christmas Wishes

Christmas is hard to find in China.  Most external things that signal to us that Christmastime coming is missing here.  We have to look hard to find Christmas trees and decorations.  The typical holiday events and gatherings are missing.  Snow or anticipation of snow is absent.  The music is almost non-existent.  Giving to others is not accepted (it causes extreme embarrassment because they feel like they owe you). This has caused me to look harder and be thankful for the Merry Christmas wishes I do find. I've also had to use my own initiative to fulfil my other Christmas wishes.  Here are some of my Christmas wishes for 2024 found and created: Generally, the government discourages the people from celebrating the 'Western' holiday.  But a few places do find a way to wish me a Merry Christmas! This year we had very vibrant Christmas colors in our complex.  They were stunning, Christmasy and very cheerful!  (pictures taken mid December) Th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Final Service Project--you can help!

Our time in China is quickly coming to an end.  We will be moving back to the US at the end of June.  I have had several impressions to conclude our time here with a service project.  I have learned that the local children's hospital is building a library and is in need of books.  My original plan was to involve many Chinese people in this project so they could feel the joy of service.  However as I have experienced over and over again, service is a very difficult concept for the Chinese people.  Their culture requires them to keep tabs of who they owe and who owes them.  They will not give if they don't see a direct benefit for themselves.  In addition to this, they lack trust because scams are rampant.  Thus, my requests for them to help with my project haven't gone anywhere. I don't blame them and I feel deeply for them. So my goals for the project have changed.  While Tom and I can provide many books to the library because books are ...
1 comment
Read more

Dinner Guests

Before we moved to China, my dream life was to stay home and make dinner for my neighbors.  If asked of a place I'd like to travel, I would usually comment that I would rather have a kitchen remodel than seeing far away places.  That is because I have come to really enjoy having people over for dinner and a kitchen remodel would make that much easier on me--which I cared more about than seeing the world. (It also illustrates my extremely low need for adventure to be happy.) Thankfully I have been able to continue that hobby in China. It is a bit more of a challenge here because of an even smaller kitchen capacity, lack of ingredients and my concern about feeding Chinese people food they might actually like.  For my personal records here are dinners I have photos of. Tina and James (our liaison for our landlady) Sherry, Talia & Stella (Tom's co workers; and Stella tutors me in Chinese) Penny (one of my Chinese teachers) Melissa's cousin (someone from CCID branch asked ...
Post a Comment
Read more