I don’t believe that any of us can appreciate or begin to comprehend the full significance of the monumental blessing that it is to have temples.

Consider how many people in the history of the world have had the opportunities we have.  You might ask yourself, “Why me?”  Consider these facts:

1. The Jews had a temple in Jerusalem, and the Nephites also had temples; but as far as our knowledge goes, never has anyone had what we have today.
2. In 1906 President Joseph F. Smith was in Rotterdam, and made the outlandish prophecy that the day would come when temples of the Lord would dot the whole land of Europe.  There were none then in Europe.  (The Improvement Era, December 1970, 70).  One month from today the Rome, Italy Temple will be dedicated, Europe’s 14th.  (On 10 March 2019).  Brigham Young made the astounding prophecy that “To accomplish this work there will have to be not only one temple, but thousands of them, and thousands and tens of thousands of men and women will go into those temples and officiate for people who have lived as far back as the Lord shall reveal.”  (Ensign, November 1974, 54).
3. Today there are 201 temples either in operation, under construction, or announced.
4. No other church in the world understands what temples are even for.  These are all “non-prophet organizations,” meaning that of all the organizations in the world, the only one being led by a true and living prophet of the Lord is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Only a true prophet of the Lord could have revealed and could administer temple ordinances.  Ordinances are sacred acts having eternal significance, and are always administered in conjunction with a covenant.Ordinances and covenants are only available in the Lord’s true Church.
5. The ordinances administered in our temples today are the same ordinances given by the Lord to Adam.  Wilford Woodruff said this:  “Now, any man acquainted with the Scriptures can clearly understand that there is but one true Gospel.  There never was but one Gospel.  Whenever that Gospel has been upon the earth it has been the same in every dispensation.  The ordinances of the Gospel have never been changed from the days of Adam to the present time, and never will be to the end of time.”  (The Pearl of Great Price Student Manual, Religion 327, pg. 19).
6. The manner in which temple ordinances are administered is tweaked from time to time by direction from the Lord to His prophet, but the ordinances remain the same.  For instance, when temples have been unavailable, the temple endowment has been administered on mountain tops.  The Bible Dictionary points out that this was probably the case on Mt. Sinai and the Mount of Transfiguration.
7. Sealings of husbands and wives, and of children to parents, have been around from the beginning.  Elijah holds the keys to the sealing power, indicating that he doubtless performed sealings in his day.
8. The Jews have been waiting for over two thousand years for Elijah to return as promised by Malachi in the very last two verses of the Old Testament.  They are so confident that the prophecy will be fulfilled, that to this day they set a place for him at their Passover feasts.  Their tradition says that Elijah would come during Passover.
9. Elijah did come during Passover.  Not coincidentally it was also Easter.  He came to the Prophet Joseph Smith and to Oliver Cowdery in the Kirtland Temple on 3 April 1836.
10. Neither the Jews, nor anyone else, could understand the purpose of Elijah’s return until he finally came.  He planted in the hearts of the children the promises we made to our fathers in the pre-earth existence that if they would come and prepare our way, when temple ordinances weren’t available, that we would see to it that their baptisms, confirmations, priesthood ordinations, endowments, and sealings were performed.
11. Temples before Christ weren’t used for the same purposes that we do today.  Work for the dead was not performed in them.  The Savior had to first go to the world of spirits and set in place the preaching of the gospel of repentance so that work for the dead could commence.  Baptisms for the dead were then performed in the days of the Apostles.  Endowments and sealings were also performed.
12. But then the authority was lost.  The ordinances and their associated covenants were changed and forgotten.  The whole world was in darkness from the deaths of the Apostles until the Lord called a new prophet in the 1820s.
13. By revelation the temple ordinances were given to Joseph Smith.  In the 1840s he administered them to the Apostles, other men, and to his wife, Emma.  Emma then administered the ordinances to other women and trained them.
14. Following Joseph’s death, a feverish drive was undertaken to complete the Nauvoo Temple so that all who could might receive their endowment before they deserted their city and their temple and headed west.  When the upper floor was finished and dedicated in December 1845, Brigham Young and the Apostles, and other men and women, worked around the clock administering the endowment to over 5,000 people.  The Saints needed the power that the endowment gives to enable them to cross a barren continent and to build a new society—and the Church—in an uninhabited desert.  On February 2, 1846 Brigham announced that he was finished, and that it was time to go.  He and others had  lived in the temple for the previous weeks, and had gotten no more than about four hours of sleep a night.  He exited the temple and told the long line of waiting people that the work was done, and that more temples would be built in the Rocky Mountains where they were going.  He walked away.  The disappointed people didn’t.  They climbed the stairs of the temple.  Brigham halted, looked back, and returned to do hundreds of more endowments that day, and 500 more the next.
15. It was 173 years ago this week, on February 4th, that the last endowment was performed in the Nauvoo Temple.  The Saints set out for the West.  The temple ceremonies went along with them written only in the minds of the Apostles.
16. The Nauvoo Temple was destroyed, but now there are 201 more in operation or in planning where the same ordinances are being performed.  Boyd K. Packer called these ordinances more than essential—they’re crucial to our exaltations.  President Nelson considers that his covenants are his most important accomplishment.  President Eyring says that nothing is more important than temple covenants.  Elder Jeffrey R. Holland notes that temple covenants and ordinances are the heart and soul of our purpose in mortality.
17. The thing that leaves me gasping is that as temple ordinance workers, Marjorie and I are authorized to administer these same ordinances.  She, a woman, has had hands laid on her head giving her that authority.  Dallin H. Oaks said, “We are not accustomed to speaking of women having the authority of the priesthood in their Church callings, but what other authority can it be?”  (Ensign, May 2014, 51).  These ordinances are memorized word for word, they’re in our heads, and they’re the same ordinances that have been administered from the beginning.  And the Lord recognizes them!  What we’re allowed to do is binding for eternity.  I am astonished.
18. It requires nearly 1,400 ordinance workers to run the Meridian Idaho Temple.  Worldwide there are perhaps 220,000 temple ordinance workers.  The goal is that the ordinances of the temple will eventually be offered to every person who has ever lived who qualifies himself or herself for these essential, crucial ordinances.
19. It has been my privilege, as a convert to the Church, to see these ordinances administered to my own ancestors.  I recently finished tracking down all the descendants, born more than 110 years ago, of my great, great grandparents, and have had their ordinance work done.  My reasoning is that my great, great grandparents are surely as interested and eager about their grandchildren as I am about my own, so they would want this work to be done.
20. My new goal is to track down all descendants of my 3rd great grandparents.  That’s 16 couples, all born just before or just after the year 1800.  They each have hundreds of descendants.  There is lots and lots of work to be done, and I’m astonished at how easy it’s become.  I can sit down at my computer and actually find these lost souls.  I estimate that I sifted through the names of 500 people to trace down all of the descendants of my great, great, great grandparents, Andrew and Helen—and I found every one of them!  Their records are now accurate, and I generated some 200 names for whom I can now do temple ordinance work.  It is incredibly easy.  Linda Rich showed me how to do it.  She and the Smiths and Erma Wright and Barbara Scrivner and Millie Lutz would like nothing better than to teach you.
21. M. Russel Ballard is the Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. His grandfather, Melvin J. Ballard, was also an Apostle. Melvin J. Ballard was once acting as witness in the Logan Temple for the baptisms of 1,000 people.  He fell to wondering how those ordinances were received by the people on the other side of the veil for whom the work was being done.  He said that a vision opened to him of a multitude of people dressed in white waiting at a staircase on the other side of the room.  As each name was read, a person would ascend the staircase, watch the baptism, smile, and then move on.  He said that there was a person there for every name!  He went throughout the Church, from that time on, testifying that when work is done for a deceased person in the temple, that person is there to witness what is being done in his or her behalf.  Wilford Woodruff said in the April 1894 general conference that “there will be few if any who will not receive the ordinances of the temple when they are performed for them.”

What a privilege it is to do this work!

I get up feeling excited every day.  I’m a member of the Church with a testimony that this is the Lord’s true Church.

I hold the same Priesthood that was bestowed upon Adam and Abraham.

I have been privileged to make covenants, something that few people in the history of the world have been able to do.

I have the privilege of being able to go to church each Sunday, and to renew my baptismal, priesthood, and temple covenants.  Renewing all of our covenants is what we do when we take the sacrament.  The sacrament itself is a covenant.  When taking the sacrament, we’re not promising perfection, but promising to keep trying.

I have the privilege of extending these same blessings to all of my posterity and to all of my progenitors and to open the opportunity for each of them to be as happy and excited about life as I am.

I have a wife and a posterity that are sealed to me for eternity.

I have had the privilege of getting myself sealed into long lines of ancestors that I’ll have the honor of meeting in the not-too-distant future.  I anticipate that they’ll be very happy to see me.

I have the privilege of praying each day to know whose life I can bless that day—on either side of the veil.

We can’t do everything, but we can each do something.  Boyd K. Packer said, “ordinances and covenants become our credentials for admission into [God’s] presence.  To worthily receive them is the quest of a lifetime; to keep them thereafter is the challenge of mortality.”  (Ensign, May 1987, 24).

Find some time to go to the temple.

Set aside a couple of hours on the Sabbath to find your waiting ancestors.  Invite a temple and family history consultant to come to your house and show you how.

There is no more important work that we could possibly involve ourselves in than temple and family history work.