Utah Salt Lake Temple Square Mission

May 4, 2014

Our Beautiful Temple at 9:00pm

Today is my sister’s birthday and she would have been eighty-two had she been alive.  I miss her and my family but know we are one eternal family so really we are never really alone.  Our Heavenly Father is always there for us and His Son can always bring peace and comfort to our soul.

Because so many people come from China to Salt Lake, there are many Mandarin tours each year.  The gospel cannot be preached to the Chinese so it is very difficult for the sisters to teach them.  Therefore, a new approach is going to take place with these people.  This week we learned that family history is going to be promoted within the Chinese tours because of the great respect they have for their ancestors.  So, sisters now will gear into the importance of families when they take these tours.  The twenty-two Mandarin speaking sisters were thrilled as they heard about this approach to teaching people from their country.

We had a special luncheon mid-week in the Empire Room of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  This is the place where we held our wedding reception almost forty-six years ago and it was fun to be there again.  We met with tour groups, people from various chambers of commerce and those that promote tourism from all over the state.  This was a luncheon for President and Sister Poulsen, a way to introduce them to this unique group of people.  The food was great and the discussions lively.

Again we talked with Diane and concentrated our conversation on the Articles of Faith.  As we came to the fifth Article of Faith concerning Priesthood and “the calling of man by God,” she bristled for a moment.  Taggart did a wonderful job of explaining to her the Priesthood and she said for the first time she had a better understanding of this concept.

We called our friend, Trevor Clarke, in Australia.  He is the older gentlemen in his 80’s who was on the Square last summer.  He has written us many letters but we’ve never shared the gospel with him.  He is coming back to Utah this summer and hopefully we can teach him some of our beliefs.  We have already bought an organ CD for him because he loves organ music particularly music played by Clay Christiansen.

We saw the Burtons on Saturday and gave them their last installment of training for the Hospitality Tours.  They are so excited about their service here on Temple Square.  Hopefully they will have a great experience this summer.

Cesar and Family

On Saturday we went out to breakfast with Cesar and his parents.  Even though they speak limited English, we were able to communicate quite well with the help of Cesar.  As he told us later, we were speaking spirit to spirit.  We would love the spirit to touch their hearts so they could be open to the gospel, but we can see that Cesar’s transformation from what it was has had a real impact upon them.

 One last word, we had another celebrity sighting.  As we walked into church today who should be sitting in the audience but Quentin L. Cook.  He was there with his wife, daughter and son-in-law.  The sisters did not notice him as they came in and he left before our service was finished.  However, Taggart was able to shake his hand and welcome him to our meeting.