My family has visited the Johannesburg Temple every
year, I believe, since it opened thirty years ago. Our annual holiday would be
to visit family in the Johannesburg area so that we could attend the Temple. We
drove the N1 between Cape Town and Johannesburg year after year, and usually
stayed with my wife Sally's mother Margaret Burns in Pretoria so that we could
enjoy the Temple. But it did usually mean that one of us could attend at a time
because we usually had one small child, then two, three, four and five. Sally
was often breastfeeding. So it was a real blessing to us when we were able to
stay in Patron Housing when that opened. What a difference that made! It was
possible then for Sally to attend the Temple each day because I could take
turns babysitting while she served, and we could change so that she could
breastfeed or babysit while I participated in ordinances. We could enjoy the
Spirit of the Temple in a way never before possible. As the children grew and
the older ones could look after the younger, we could attend together more
often.
We have found it a great blessing when we attended
with other ward members and different people could take turns caring for
children allowing parents that otherwise would not be able to participate, to
enjoy the blessings of the Temple. We would make sure that all children were
cared for so that as many adults as possible could be in the Temple
participating in baptisms, initiatory, endowment or sealing ordinances as frequently
as possible. Travelling from Cape Town, this was always a wonderful blessing.
I remember last December babysitting my 6
grandchildren and the children of a son-in-law’s sister. This sister and her
husband, bishop and sister Ferrett of Fish Hoek ward, had the most remarkable
visit that they had ever had because they were able to attend together for the
first time since their own sealing. All of this was possible because we were at
Parton Housing, the families in the family rooms, although the Ferretts were
staying with her brother in Vereeniging and not in Patron Housing. I read to
them and then took them into the Temple garden, and when they became a little
rowdy in the Temple garden I took them exploring in the gardens at Enduleni,
looking for fairies and wild animals. But Amanda Ferrett had apparently not had
a good Temple experience before, and this was a real turning point for her,
blessed by Patron Housing.
For me, I felt as reverent and blessed a Temple
Spirit having the children in the Temple garden enabling parents to be inside
together as serving inside. I looked after the two children of my counsellor in
the bishopric so that he and his wife could attend and endowment session
together. I served as an ordinance worker from December 1995 to September 2013.
It had been a blessing to be able to bring members of my own ward or stake
through the veil, or to officiate in my own children’s endowments. I would
participate in at least one endowment session, carefully observing for anything
that appeared to be different before mentioning to the Shift Coordinator that I
was available should I be needed in any way, and asking if I needed to know
anything that might have changed. It was wonderful being able to serve in that
way. I was saddened when told that because more than three months passed
between some of my visits I could no longer officiate. Serving the children in
the garden so that their parents could sit together in and endowment was also
wonderful although in a very different way.
Each of our children was born in the covenant
because Sally and I had been sealed in Salt Lake Temple immediately after our
marriage in 1981. It was such a wonderful blessing after years with no Temple
in South Africa to be able to frequently visit the Johannesburg Temple, and
such an increased blessing when Patron Housing was available. We hope that the Temple managers can find a way to enable families to serve in the house of the Lord in the way
that Sally and I have been able to do by making it possible for them to use the
family rooms, although we do understand that it should be on the proviso that
they always have proper care for each and every child.
Breast feeding mothers are blessed with the
flexibility that the husband can attend a session while she is feeding and the
father can care for them for the other session while the mother attends. This is possible because they
have a room in which the mother can feed in private. Ward groups add to the
flexibility, enabling parents to serve together where they might otherwise not
be able to do so.
