Blessings

This month in primary, the theme has been Temples. I had the opportunity to teach the week about sacrifices made for the temple,meaning, the things us as people must give up and do in order to attend the temple or even have temples. I already knew many of the stories of the first temples built in our times and it was a lot of fun to learn so much more about the temples

many of us are so blessed to enjoy today.

SO, that being said, here are a few temple details about our family.

-Our family has attended 2 temple open houses, Anchorage and Oquirrh Mountain.

-Dave and I have attended 12 different temples which include temples in 5 different countries: United States - Salt Lake City, Idaho Falls, Provo, Jordan River,Ogden, Oklahoma City, Houston, Anchorage;Toronto Canada; Stockholm Sweden; Copenhagen Denmark; and Perth Australia.

-We have lived 3 minutes from a temple.It was awesome to have our chapel right next to the temple...we saw the temple every Sunday and almost every day!

-The furthest we have lived from our area templewas during our time in Norway, 18 hour journey to the Stockholm Temple.

-We were sealed/married on a Monday morning,in the Salt Lake City Temple by my Grandfather,who has served as a temple sealer since his temple mission in the Philippines. It was a perfect, beautiful, most happy day.

-I met half of Dave's brothers and sisters in and at the temple.

-My Grandparents, or our children's great grand parents who are living, have all been temple workers. And now, my children's Grammie is a temple worker too.

And, did you know there are 5 temples in Australia? Sydney was the first dedicated in 1984 (the 28th temple), then came Adelaide (89th) and Melburne (90th) in 2000, Perth (106th) 2001, and last Brisbane (115th) in 2003. Before there was a temple in Sydney, many of the early saints in Australia who joined the church moved to UT or they traveled to the New Zealand temple (11th temple) which was dedicated in 1958. There are many stories of families from Perth driving across Australia (a rather treacherous road, especially back then), then taking a plane from the east coast to get to the New Zealand temple. It was an expensive journey.

What special memories and blessings do you enjoy because of the temple? I am thankful to have a temple so near to us again. That is a blessing, but only if we do our part to get ourselves there and partake of that blessing.