Thursday Temple Trip

Last night for mutual was our temple night to do baptisms for the dead, which replaced our regular Tuesday night activity. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend, as I couldn't find a babysitter for my son. It sounds like everyone had fun, and I'm sure they all enjoyed going to Tito's Tacos afterwards, which is tradition in our ward and a Los Angeles classic.

If you would like, you can learn a little bit more about baptisms for the dead here or here.  For those who are fortunate enough to live close to a temple, this is a regular activity. Our youth are usually able to go once or twice a year with the stake.

By Choice or Chance?

Last night for mutual we did an activity I called By Choice or Chance. The goal of the activity was to drive to the temple. But here's the twist: the car turned left, right or went straight based on the roll of a die. For our YW group, we split into two cars and saw who could get the closest. Since we live in the valley north of the Los Angeles temple, I decided that we should start down closer to it. We took the freeway down and once we got off on the exit to the street with the temple, we started rolling the die. I wrote a list out for both cars: 1 and 4 were left turns, 2 and 5 were right turns, and 3 and 6 were straight. It really doesn't matter which numbers you use. We had a few rules, like be safe (don't cut across traffic to make a turn at the next light), don't turn if the spirit tells you not to, and don't get back on the freeway. So whenever we came to a light or a stop sign we followed the directions on the die.

Our car ended up in a neighborhood a few miles away. Once we turned into the neighborhood we were stuck and just couldn't seem to get out. The other car said they stayed pretty close to the temple and passed it a few times, but just couldn't get the right number to turn into the parking lot.

After about 30 minutes of trying to get there, we called up the other car and we met up at the temple. We did a few activities at the visitors center and talked to the sister missionaries there. I meant to have treats there at the temple grounds, but I was running behind and wasn't able to pick anything up beforehand. So instead we had treats that I had someone else pick up for me back at the church building. There we discussed how the YW need to make the choice now to have the temple as their ultimate goal. They won't be able to go if they don't stay on the right path. Turning off the path can get you trapped in a neighborhood that is hard to get out of. Sometimes you come close to the temple but close doesn't cut it. There are lots of parallels to draw from this activity.

The girls had a lot of fun (at least we did in our car). They were getting so frustrated and realized within a few minutes how hard this was going to be. I think and hope that it made an impression on the young women. Getting sealed to my husband in the temple has been the greatest joy and blessing in my life and I am always grateful to know that our family will be together forever.