London Temple Trip

It was such a neat experience to go to the London Temple today after spending some time at the Hindu temple in Southall yesterday. I felt a nice meditative contemplative spirit at the Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha temple (maybe how Julia Roberts felt for those of you who have seen Eat Pray Love). But today at our temple I had one of the best spiritual experiences I think I have ever had in a temple. It was a pretty small temple and the workers were so excited to have such a large group come in to do a lot of work for them. At the Provo temple-a big group of students is very common but at the London temple, you could tell this was a big ordeal (in a good way) for them to have us.

Before we got started-one of the cute old temple workers talked to us about how special the work we are doing for the people across the veil truly is. We ALL must be baptized and confirmed to make it into the celestial kingdom. So we are doing the work for people to have this chance (pretty special if you think of all who have died without a knowledge of the gospel). And yes, there will be consequences for people who have sinned in this life-but ultimately God is providing a way for everyone to have the choice through the temple work we do.

But what struck me the most was not what was said-but the spirit that was felt. As a group of us girls sat in the room waiting to do baptisms and confirmations-we took the opportunity to sing hymns. Although my voice is not up to par with many of the musically gifted we have in our group-it didn’t matter at all. The temple workers came in and said we sounded like “angels” and someone even thought we were a CD. The spirit there was just so strong-words can't even justice to it. As we sang “I Stand All Amazed,” (one of my all time favorite hymns), I felt so touched thinking about the life of Christ and his infinite atonement and sacrifice for us.

I also loved singing “Lead Kindly Light” and in it two phrases hit me. The first was “the night is dark and I am far from home, lead thou me on” and the second, “I love to choose and see my path; but now, lead thou me on.” I know there are a lot of times I wish I could choose my path in this life and at times I feel alone-but I know Christ is and will always be there for me if I put my faith and trust in Him. The gospel is amazing and as we closed our temple trip singing “The Spirit of God” all together as a big BYU group-I felt the chills and that “burning in my bosom” that I know this gospel is true and I am so lucky to have been born at this time with it in my life. There really is no greater gift and I know I am here on this London Study Abroad to have experiences like the one I had today. So in conclusion-it is just so comforting to know that no matter where I go-the peace of temples bring will always be there for me.