My St. Louis Testimony

I'm sitting here this Sunday in an almost completely empty home. Our stuff is all packed up and moved to Springfield (thanks everyone for your help!), minus a small carload of stuff that we are taking with us when we leave tomorrow morning. As our time here in St. Louis quickly comes to an end, I can't help but think about all the ways we have grown and changed since being here; all that we have learned and become. For the most part, those changes have come slowly over time, the kind that you don't really notice while you're in the midst of it. But when I look back at who I as 3 years ago when we first moved here, who WE were as a couple, we really have changed. A lot. And being fast Sunday today, I thought more specifically about how my testimony has grown and changed during my time here in St. Louis.

First and foremost, I have gained a testimony of the temple, stronger than I previously knew was possible. Words cannot express the peace that regularly and consistently being in the temple brings into your life. They cannot express the strength and fortitude that I have been blessed with through my service there as an ordinance worker each week. They cannot express the paramount importance of the work and ordinances performed there and their role in our salvation. They cannot express how completely being in the temple changes you, and fills you with the Spirit, with love, with His love.

Now that is not to say that every single time you attend the temple will be a profound, ground-breaking, life-changing experience that you will remember the rest of your life. To be certain, I WAS blessed with a precious few of those experiences through my service there, but they definitely did not happen every week. There were plenty of days that I went to bed the night before, dreading the time I had to wake up the next morning for my shift. Plenty of days that I wished I could just fall back asleep rather than get up and get ready for the temple. But even though I didn't always feel like going, and even though I didn't always have a miraculous experience while in the temple, I DID always feel the Spirit. I DID always feel His peace. I DID always have opportunities to serve. I DID always have opportunities to be blessed by the service of others. And that is how my testimony grew into what it is now. Just as the scriptures said, through small and simple things (Alma 37:6) and by doing his will (John 7:17). It was in the doing that I learned for myself, the going and being in the temple each week. And it was the everyday, nondescript, small and simple things that took place there each week that drew my heart to Him, that changed me and brought to my heart a new spirit, the Spirit of the Temple.

I have such a love for the temple now; I wish that everyone could have that some love for and testimony of the temple. The beautiful thing is that everyone can. Everyone can become worthy of a temple recommend, and choose to make temple attendance a priority in their life. Everyone can determine to act. Everyone can feel the sense of belonging, the feeling of coming home when they walk through the temple doors and participate in the ordinances therein. But for you, just as it was for me, that love will not come right away; that change will not come immediately. It will come slowly, many times almost imperceptibly. It will come piece by piece. It will come here a little, and there a little (Isaiah 28:10). It will come line upon line, precept upon precept as you are faithful and diligent in your efforts (D&C 98:12). For that is how the Lord works. That is how He shapes and molds His people. That is how you draw near unto Him.

And that is the testimony that I have gained as we have been in St. Louis these past 3 years. That is the change that has begun in me. And that is the change and testimony that I hope to keep alive and burning within me throughout my life, that I hope to be able to look back on and still be able to say in the years to come that I still "feel so now" (Alma 5:26).