June 2024

Living Ordinances

We are so grateful for the many members who make covenants in the House of the Lord. The Lord has said that his house is a house of order, and He has established rules and procedures that, if followed, will enhance the spiritual experience of each of His children as they make covenants with Him there. This is especially true as they make preparations to participate in ordinances for themselves. 

The sisters in the temple office are tasked with providing assurance that procedures developed by the temple department are followed faithfully and with exactness, so that the records of the church can be maintained with accuracy. They often receive calls from patrons who, during conversation with their priesthood leader, have received instruction which reflects either a misunderstanding of temple procedures, or a problem in the communication of those procedures. 

The six items listed below address some of the most common questions brought up in those calls. For background and further study, please review sections 26, 27 and 38 in the General Handbook of Instructions. Please help members to take the time to become comfortable with the things they need to do as they prayerfully prepare to receieve their own ordinances!

• The first thing a member needs to do to schedule a Living Ordinance at the Winter Quarters Nebraska Temple, is to send in a clear scanned copy of their Recommend for a Living Ordinance (RFLO) to the temple office email at winte-off@ChurchofJesusChrist.org. 

• Be sure to leave your full name and a good telephone number where one of the office leads can contact you.  After the office receives your RFLO one of the office leads will call you to do a brief verification of your records information, and set up your appointment day and time at the temple.

• Please note, if you are trying to set-up a Licensed Marriage Sealing, make sure you send in a scanned copy of your marriage license along with your RFLOs for both bride and groom.  In additon, if you are divorced and this is your second marriage, make sure you send in a scanned copy of your Letter of Cancellation or Letter of Clearance with your RFLO, along with the scanned copy of your marriage license.

• Sealing After a Civil Marriage,  you will need to send in your scanned RFLO and proof (marriage license) of marriage.  

• Child to Parent Sealings, parents will need to send in their scanned RFLOs to the temple email.  Children under the age of 8 do not need an RFLO, but they will need a membership number for the temple paperwork (please check with your ward /branch clerk).  Children over the age of 8 will need a Limited Use Recommend.  Adult children 21 years of age and older will need to be endowed and hold a current temple recommend.

• Child to Deceased Parents, those adults 21 years of age and older who hold a current temple recommend may be sealed to their deceased parents.  They will need to send in a clear, completed Family Group Record with information that all of their parents temple work has been completed to the temple email.

Scheduling A Baptism

The temple office continues to receive many calls about the how to create an appointment for group (especially youth) batpisms. Would you please help to pass on these simple rules? We all want temple patrons to have a good experience at the temple, and one of the best ways is to build confidence that when they go to the temple, they won't be surprised by something that doesn't meet their expectations.

The process to make a Group Baptism appointment is the same as the process for making an individual appointment.  Please note that, if you are making a group baptism, the Baptistry can only handle 16 patrons in any scheduled one-hour appointment.  If your group has more than 16 patrons attending, please make as many baptism appointments as necessary to accommodate this maximum.  The temple encourages Priests to help with the baptisms; Melchizedek Priesthood holders are needed for the confirmations.  Usually, 2 or more Priests, 3 Melchizedek Priesthood holders, and two sisters can run a session in the baptistry.  Two witnesses will be selected from among any of those attending the baptism.  Usually, each patron can do approximately 5 baptisms and 5 confirmations during a one hour session (if the session is full with 16 patrons.)  It is always a good idea to have a few extra Family File cards on hand.

FamilySearch Resources

What follows here is an email from Brother Adamz, our North America Central manager at FamilySearch.  Much thanks to Brother Adamz and the amazing staff at FamilySearch. I hope that all of you will recognize the hand of the Lord in all the progress that they have made in reducing  the complexity of this huge set of databases to such a degree that the final interface is so user-friendly. If you need help with any of this, please call! (Jo is at 402-457-4808 and Bill is at 402-312-3926   -  if we don't answer right away, please leave a message and we will return your call as soon as possible!) 

Considering the temple department's goal of 40 new temples per year going forward, we will all need to up our game as leaders to keep these temples busy with the work of gathering.

Greetings! 

I hope you are doing great.  Below are some items I wanted to share with you.

Ordinances Ready

• Training video for Ordinances Ready: Link  (https://media2.ldscdn.org/assets/temples/how-to-use-ordinances-ready/2023-05-0020-ordinances-ready-leader-training-1080p-eng.mp4)

• Ordinances Ready Landing Page for North America: https://www.familysearch.org/united-states-canada/ordinances-ready

Getting Started

• Update to Getting Started page for members: https://www.familysearch.org/gettingstarted/

Other Items

• African American Landing Page: Landing Page

• Introducing FamilySearch Labs blog Article: https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/familysearch-labs

  • FamilySearch Labs link: https://www.familysearch.org/en/labs/

• Family History Activity Report Guide: Link

  • You will need to be signed in to FamilySearch

• FamilySearch event assets for local events: 

  • Branded signs and booth materials can be ordered from BYU Print & Mail. 

  • The handouts, “Family History: Get Started Now” and “My Family: Stories That Bring Us Together” can be ordered from the Church’s Online Store. 

Best Regards,

Glenn Adamz

About Suffering

One of the reasons a person might come to the temple is to relieve suffering through worship of the Father and the Son in prayer, both privately and as part of the temple ceremonies.  Those prayers are effective. As James says, "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much (James 5:16)," but, because all of God's children have agency and the prayers of each may project conflicts with the prayers of another, God in His perfect knowledge of all, has to schedule the answered prayers of each.  Even knowing that, there is still this admonition from President Eyring: "when the answer to my prayer seems delayed, I tend to listen to the counsel of President Nelson, and look for opportunities in my life to repent." 

Enduring suffering is one of the hardest parts of "enduring to the end," but the ideas listed below may help put suffering in a proper perspective. We hope that they may be of help in your ministry.

"Neal A. Maxwell once offered this advice to Jeffrey R. Holland: “You must tread with caution on the hallowed ground of another’s suffering.” (Quoted in David F. Holland, “Latter-day Saints and the Problem of Pain,” 2016 Neal A. Maxwell Lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp97FgzjQR0). I’ve mentioned in class before that I have a strong a[d]verse reaction to the idea of God “giving” us trials in the sense of being the cause behind them. Yet, this is the language we often use when discussing the trials in our own lives. Questions such as “What did I do to deserve this?” or “What is God trying to teach me?” (which, I should note, is very different from “What can I learn and possibly teach from this?”) or “Why do bad things happen to good people?” tend to rest on the assumption that God is in fact the cause behind our afflictions. We sometimes assume the suffering we experience are punishments inflicted because of sin or, perhaps more commonly, specific tests for us to pass with right and wrong answers; a hidden grand meaning just waiting to be discovered."  (Walker Wright, Times and Seasons,  March 13, 2017, http://archive.timesandseasons.org/2017/03/neither-shall-there-be-any-more-pain-trials-and-their-purpose/index.html)

"Elder Maxwell has said that there are three reasons why we suffer. 

• The first one is mortality. We live on an earth where things happen. Where rheumatism and all kinds of things happen to us. We suffer that. 

• The second one is that we are stupid. Apostles do not actually use that word, but if the shoe fits, wear it. We may step out in front of a car. We make mistakes, and we end up hurting others or ourselves. 

• The third reason is that the Lord wants to school us, and if we are not paying attention and he needs to school us, he will give us something that will whip us into shape. 

"One of the problems with these three divisions of suffering is that while we are actually sufferering, we do not normally know which one it is. Howerver, whatever challenges the Lord has provided us with, or allowed for us, we can turn to the Lord, trust him, and serve him. It will all work out the right way in his time and in his place. It is a gift. And so it was for the people of Alma."

(Quoted in Book of Mormon Central, Come Folllow Me, May 25, 2024, Commentary: Alma's People Were Brought into Bondage, John W. Welch, Notes by John W. Welch)

Think Celestial!

Your choices will determine where you will live throughout eternity, the kind of body with which you will be resurrected, and those with whom you will live forever.

When you make choices, I invite you to take the long view—an eternal view. Put Jesus Christ first because your eternal life is dependent upon your faith in Him and in His Atonement.It is also dependent upon your obedience to His laws. Obedience paves the way for a joyful life for you today and a grand, eternal reward tomorrow.

-- President Russell M. Nelson

Temple Moments

In a 1962 BYU speech titled “The Lord Is Mindful of His Own,” Elder Robert L. Simpson, then the First Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, told of an experience he had going into a humble Maori home in New Zealand.

“Here we had a situation where a mother and father and 12 children were living the gospel as well as anyone I have ever seen in all my life. As they would gather around each evening to have their family devotional scripture readings and have the children participate, there was a time in the evening when the father would put a few pennies in a glass jar sitting upon the mantle. The house was lighted with candles and kerosene lamps. In this humble home this little jar was always there—just a few pennies each day. This was their family temple fund. (Imagine a family of 14 trying to save a few pennies a day, knowing that they would have to travel thousands of miles, at least to Hawaii, in order to get to the house of the Lord to do what they wanted to do.) Then they would kneel down in prayer, and from the smallest child they would take their turns and ask Heavenly Father that they might enjoy the rich blessing of having their family sealed together in order that they might have the fulness of the gospel come into their home.

“I used to sit there and literally break up inside wondering how these wonderful people would ever realize this blessing. A few pennies a day—they just could not possibly get a family of 14 to the temple on a few pennies a day, and I did not know how they could ever do it. But they prayed in great faith, and they prayed with devotion, and they meant what they said.

“If someone had told me at that time that within my lifetime there would be a temple built within sixty miles of this very home, I would have said, ‘I don’t believe it,’ because I did not have the same faith these people had. I am not sure that they visualized the building of a temple in New Zealand either, but they knew that their family was going to get together and be sealed and receive the rich blessings of the gospel. I want to tell you that the Lord is mindful of these people. He was mindful of their plea, and he poured his blessings out upon this family—and this family was multiplied by many hundreds throughout the length and breadth of New Zealand. It is a wonderful thing to contemplate the great blessings of the Lord to these Polynesian people as he listens to their prayers of faith” (in Leon R. Hartshorn, Outstanding Stories by General Authorities [2007], 115).