Beautiful, Beautiful Day

The morning started out beautifully.  We arrived at the temple in the early dawn. The temple looked exquisite, as usual.

But then the morning turned kind of unbeautiful. I had left my temple locker key in the car....again!  Grr.  The temple recorder saw me coming and met me at the office door, master key in hand. Kidding.  But it isn't the first time I have left my locker key in the car and have had to find the temple recorder.

Anyway, on to explain the title of this post.  Gary and I were assigned to be the officiator and follower of the first endowment session of the day.  It doesn't happen very often that we are assigned to be together in the same session, but when it does happen, I LOVE  the experience to pieces. Beautiful.  And to make it even better, our favorite film was shown during our session.  It was just him and me and our endowment group "family".  I felt such a closeness to everyone in the session. I was a little nervous, though, since it was a relatively large session.  The more people, the greater the chance something will go wrong.  But everything went well. Well, maybe one little tiny problem that was my fault.  At one point as I was watching a cute little lady, I reached down to pick up an unknown article that I thought she had dropped.  As I started to pick it up, I realized it was attached to something.  She was so short that her dress was draped onto the floor.  I was picking up the hem of her dress.  Awkward!  But a beautiful session.

After such a beautiful experience, I dragged myself to my next assignment: the dreaded Youth Center. Today was the first time I have been assigned to work in a Youth Center. Ever. In any temple. I've always been grateful to have dodged those bullets! Let's just say my preconceived notion of what goes on in Youth Centers was less than positive.  But was I ever wrong!  Well, today anyway, there were no crying babies.

The cutest little family of four girls to be sealed to their parents was dropped off in the Youth Center, ages 12, 9, 2, and 9 months.  The baby was a jewel.  Sucking her thumb the whole time, she would go to any of us with a smile.  I was assigned to care for the two year old.  What a cutie!  She talked as if she were four.  I had so much fun helping the girls choose their white dresses and fix their hair.  There were too many hair bow and ribbon choices  for the two year old, but she managed to keep her hair design very tasteful.  The sealer talked with the girls for a while and then we were called to the sealing room.  Before today, I had no idea the workers in the Youth Center were the privileged few who escorted the children to the sealing room to meet their parents.  What a sweet experience!  As we walked down the hall towards the sealing room, little Lealah kept pointing to Jesus in the pictures.  She was so excited!  Even Joseph Smith's portrait was Jesus! The patrons who passed by all smiled and commented on the sweetness of the occasion.  Lealah would smile and twirl in her "princess" dress, lapping up the attention.

Walking into the beautiful sealing room and reuniting those four beautiful girls with their parents was a moment in time.  Lealah immediately wiggled her hand out of mine, scurried over to her mother, and climbed onto the chair next to her.  The baby started to cry when she saw her mother, but was happy when in her lap.  And then seeing the family kneel around the altar, join hands, and sealed for eternity. Words cannot express the sweetness of the experience.

No wonder I have never been assigned to work in a Youth Center.  It is a sought-after position assigned only to a privileged few who have pull.

Beautiful, beautiful day!