Once a teacher

I've learned something over the past few years: I love teaching. I've had lots of different callings over the years and because I'm musical they almost all involved playing the piano. Now that I'm finishing a master's in education and teaching every day, suddenly, a whole new avenue has opened up for me! Anytime they don't have a teacher--ask Meg! Last week I filled in for the RS Yoga class. Since I've done yoga probably twice in my life it was a bit of stretch...but hey, I'm a teacher, right?

I did get the opportunity to teach RS this past Sunday and it was a wonderful experience for me. I really do love teaching and the benefit of teaching in church is that lesson planning becomes a spiritual experience instead of a burden. My mom is in the YW presidency and missed my lesson so I had promised her I would fill her in--figured I might as well post it here but don't feel obligated to read it.

The topic of the lesson was Elder Richard G. Scott's talk from last April Conference, "Temple Worship: The Source of Strength and Power in Times of Need."

Because I'm a chemistry teacher, you get equations and math :o) I divided Elder Scott's talk into this:

Showing + Going + Knowing = Overflowing

If we want more out, more love, more sense of overflowing with the love of the Lord and the spirit of the temple in our lives, we have to put more in. We can do more to show the importance of the temple in our lives and teach it to our children. We can go more regularly and prepare to get more out of our experience. We can grow in our knowledge of the purpose of the temple, of family history work, and of the deep personal symbols we find there.

Showing the Temple
Post pictures of the temple in your house along side people and things that you cherish. If you hang a picture of you and spouse at the temple on your wedding day in a place where you are most likely to feel frustrated it will bring you peace instead of frustration, understanding and love instead of anger. Teach your children about the temple--tell them where you are going and why. Take them to walk around the grounds and to the visitor's center.

"Always prayerfully express gratitude for the incomparable blessings that flow from temple ordinances. Live each day so as to give evidence to Father in Heaven and His Beloved Son of how very much those blessings mean to you” (Elder Richard G. Scott, April 2009).

Going to the Temple
"Set specific goals, considering your circumstances, of when you can and will participate in temple ordinances. Then, do not allow anything to interfere with that plan" (Elder Richard G. Scott, April 2009).

Make the entire trip part of your temple experience. Leave early enough. Listen to uplifting music. Let your spouse drive if you get frustrated driving in traffic! Participate in all the different ordinances. Be as prepared and aware as you were the first time you attended. Don't rush out immediately after.

"There are few places now that offer an opportunity to meditate in quiet reverence. Before entering some temple to begin ordinance work, the companies frequently assemble in the chapel in the annex portion of the building. Here the members wait until the full company is assembled. Generally in life we would become impatient in waiting. To be first in a room and then be compelled to wait for the last to enter before proceeding would in other circumstances cause irritation. In the temple it is just the opposite. The waiting is regarded as a choice opportunity. What a privilege it is to sit quietly without conversation and direct the mind to reverent and spiritual thoughts! It is a refreshment to the soul" (Boyd K. Packer, "The Holy Temple).

Knowing the Temple
Why the temple? Isn't church or prayer or the scriptures enough? The prophet Joseph Smith taught: "The Church is not fully organized, in its proper order, and cannot be, until the Temple i completed, where places will be provided for the administration of the ordinances of the Priesthood."

Elder Richard G. Scott says we must "understand the doctrine related to temple ordinances, especially the significant of the Atonement of Jesus Christ." He suggests starting with Doctrine & Covenants sections 88, 109, 131, and 132. I also recommend Boyd K. Packer's "The Holy Temple" preparation packet.

Elder John A. Widtsoe: "We live in a world of symbols. We know nothing, except by symbols. We make a few marks on a sheet of paper, and say that they form a word, which stands for love, or hate, or charity, or God or eternity. The marks may not be beautiful to the eye. No one finds fault with the symbols on the pages of a book because they are not as mighty in their own beauty as the things which they represent. We do not quarrel with the symbol G-O-D because it not very beautiful, yet represents the majesty of God. We are glad to have symbols, if only the meaning of the symbols are brought home to us. We live in a world of symbols. No man or woman can come out of the temple endowed as he should be, unless he has seen, beyond the symbol, the mighty realities for which the symbols stand.
"The temple ceremony will not be fully understood at first experience. It will be only partly understood. Return again and again and again. Return to learn. Things that have troubled you or things that have puzzling or things that have been mysterious will become known to you. Many of them will be the quiet, personal things that you really cannot explain to anyone else. But to you they are things known" (quoted Boyd K. Packer in "The Holy Temple")

Overflowing with the Temple
"What is there that is more important than attending and participating in the ordinances of the temple? What activity could have a greater impact and provide more joy and profound happiness for a couple than worshipping together in the temple?" (Elder Richard G. Scott, April 2009).
Elder Scott lists many blessings that come from making the temple central in our lives:

• find joy and comfort in the midst of all your sorrows
• enable you to have faith in God
• help you thank the Lord for the trust He places in you to overcome difficulties
• rejoice in the knowledge that your children are yours forever
• feel the influence of loves one through the veil
• have no reason to feel despondent
• find faith to never complain
• help you make difficult decisions
• free your mind from the burden of worry
• give you knowldge and wisdom
• feel the love of the Lord
  

Finally, President Gordon B. Hinckley made a powerful promise that was re-published in the October 2009 Ensign. "If we are a temple-going people, we will be a better people, we will be better fathers and husbands, we will be better wives and mothers. I know your lives are busy. I know that you have much to do. But I make you a promise that if you will go to the House of the Lord you will be blessed, life will be better for you."

I intend to test that promise. I want to be better! I want to be a better wife, a better mother, a better friend. I want to listen more closely, give more fully, and love more deeply. There are so many people I care about who don't have this blessing yet--how I wish I could explain what the temple means to me and my family! I only hope that they can see and feel the difference in my life and know that they also have a Heavenly Father who loves them and watches over them. And someday--someday--we will all be in the temple together.