Love To See The Temple

Week 55  March 23, 2015  4:43 EDT   Love To See The Temple



Alright, sit tight because this is a long one folks.

Somehow this week we we we always out of our area (helloooo exchanges) and often out of our mission boundaries (!)

[full disclosure: we're not apostate, we just had lots of trips to Seattle and such. more to follow.]

First off, our 70 year old recent convert/landlady (who's basement apartment we live in currently) had an emergency that landed the three of us in a hospital in Seattle in our pajamas. Ruby called and woke us up to help her get an ambulance - she was in waaaaaaay bad shape (excruciating pain, fever, dry heaving....yep.) and in triage they assessed that she had some MAJOR kidney stones. So after a few hours and too many phone calls later (especially to President Blatter haha) we were able to get some heavy meds put in Ruby, got us back on a ferry and went back home to go about business as normal for the rest of the day. 

On the ferry, in shock - we escaped the ambulance to use the bathroom since our whole morning groove was thrown off:

Ruby stabilized (thank you, dilaudid!):

and our ferry ride back:

The Bainbridge Island ward also has an annual service project at Our Lady of the Rock monastery on Shaw Island (yes, go and google Shaw Island... yep, the one in the San Juans is correct!) - President Blatter said it was a fantastic opportunity to build relationships with the ward members and to serve as the Savior would, so he gave the go ahead and off we went with over 50 others from the ward. The nunnery has seven Benedictine nuns (all between the ages of 70-90) who live on 30 acres of land, and we all helped with various assignments to help take care the property - like cleaning chicken coops, filling pot holes, clearing ponds, and Sister Smith and I were on a team to split and chop chords of wood for five hours. Needless to say, it was an awesome experience, and we are all a bit stiff today from the manual labor.

This week was also awesome because we had double header baptisms; one in Lacey (Sister Smith's old area) for Bob and one up here for Spencer, the son of an awesome recent convert, Christel. And wouldya look at that? Sister Swann (my first comp) and I were reunited for a spell (:

But even with all those adventurous things all over the WaTac (and beyond..ahem) our most exciting day of the whole week was being able to go to the temple as a mission. The Silverdale, Port Angeles and Tacoma zones went together for an endowment session and words cannot even describe how much I have missed being able to feel the Spirit in the temple and how much it feels like home.

Since it is the house of the Lord, and we are His sons and daughters, it is also our house. It is were we can always feel the familiarity of home. It is were we can remember who we are becoming, because who we have been becoming has been in the works long before this life began.

And because everybody loves quotes about temples and loves some C.S. Lewis (and because hey, he's probably accepted the restored gospel of Jesus Christ by now...)

“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.” 

Love,

- elizabeth