Amazing Accomplishments

WARNING THIS IS A LONG POST! hehe

Temples have always been a huge part of my life. That is how my family has been blessed to be sealed together since Stacee, Brett, and I were adopted we needed to be sealed to our parents in order to live with them forever. I am so grateful we are! I was sealed in the Los Angels temple to my family and then once Brett was born we were sealed in the San Diego temple. I am jealous of my older siblings because I am sure they have some sort of memory of the inside temple when we were sealed together since they were older than me. I was two when Brett was sealed to us so there really was no hope of me remembering that experience.

Ever since I can remember I have loved the temple. At school everyone called the LDS temple a castle and would ask me all sorts of questions. Some of their questions I could answer

and some I couldn't because I honestly don't know exactly what all happens in the temple besides in the baptistry. Growing up in San Diego I think has also made me very bias to have the LDS San Diego temple my all time favorite. When we were able to go for Young Women's to the temple my dad always came with us and made it so he would baptize me every time. That is such a special memory for me because now that I live away from home I can't have my dad be the one to baptize me. Every time after he baptized me I would always give him a HUGE hug and get him wet! I didn't know how much he love that until he told me after I moved to college.

I explained how I don't like how other priesthood holders now are baptizing me and I thought it would be a little weird to hug them. :-) My mom and I share a fun memory with the San Diego temple as well. We are not good singers at all and whenever we drove to club soccer my junior we were blessed to pass by the temple. We would sing (every off tune and not on purpose) the song "I Love to See The Temple". Now when I sing it I instantly remember her and sometimes I tear up a bit. I love that memory.

As a whole family in 2009 for Thanksgiving all of us were temple worthy to perform baptisms and we share a very sacred and special opportunity as we went for the first time all together to preform baptism. This was the first time I can remember my whole family inside the temple. I'm not sure when we will get that opportunity again, but I really hope we will be able to one day.

The next temple I went inside was the Bountiful temples in Utah. When I came up here my junior year for a Snow Blast I told my dad how much I wanted to go inside some temples. I can't remember if I told my dad that I thought the Bountiful temple was the pretties or if we went inside because it was the closest to where we were staying. Either way we went inside it and I loved every minute of going inside another temple different than the San Diego one.

After that experience I didn't go inside any other temples until I came to Snow College. The Manti temple is only about 10 minutes from where I live and I have been so blessed to go visit the grounds and inside as an escape from the world. My first semester here at Snow my roommates and I would go every Sunday to the temple and read scriptures together. We grew so much closer together as roommates and friends because of this experience. I have not had the same amount of love or felt as close to my other roommates, which I believe is because we don't connect on the same spiritually level as we did that first semester.

In 2010 it was a challenge to be able to go to the temple and I think because of that trial

I made a goal to go inside every temple in Utah Valley. It was very discouraging to have to wait till I could go inside, but this goal kept me looking to the temple as a goal. When I came back for my second year of school, I asked one of my Best Friends (Amy Gonzales) if she would go inside the temple with me. She started to cry once I asked her because she was a HUGE support for me earlier that year. Two days after I asked her we went inside the Provo temple. It was such an amazing experience!

The next day I went inside the Mt. Timp temple by myself, which was very peaceful for me to reflect on the year.

In November I had asked another one of my Best Friends (Heather Wilcox) if she would go inside either the Jordan River or Oquirrh Mountain temple with me. She wanted to go inside the Oquirrh Mountain temple because she loves that temple and I was more than happy with that choice. In this temple

I was able to perform my first ever family name and it was AMAZING! The baptistry there is so pretty and I felt like an angel inside the temple. The next temple I went inside was the Draper temple with my friend Jake Newman and that was another great experience. This time I was going inside the temple with a guy I liked and was a completely new experience for me. I had a lot of fun going inside

and performing the work with him.

The next two temples I went inside was this last weekend with a friend I meet at a Snow Blast my senior year. Sarah Monson and I stayed very close from that first weekend we meet.

Last year we spent a lot of time together and unfortunately that little stinker graduated a year early and didn't return to Snow this year, but we still have stayed really close. We have always wanted to go inside the temple together and finally were able to go! I told her about my goal of going inside every temple and she really wanted to go with me to accomplish my last two temples in the valley. A week before I went up to Springville I called her and told her I was going to be up north and wanted to go inside the temple with her. We then planned to go inside my last two temples, the Jordan River and Salt Lake temple.

We had such a wonderful time catching up on each others lives and had plenty of time to do so because the wait to go into the font in the Jordan River temple was 2 hours! I am so glad neither one of us needed to go anywhere because that would have been sad not to perform work inside that temple.We talked about everything while we waited and shared our desires to serve missions. I thought it was so cool how she wants to serve a mission too and how we both are turning 21 this year, which means we both could be leaving within this next year or so. :-) I am very excited!

After we went inside that temple we drove up to Salt Lake and going inside one of the first temples the saints built was incredible. Yes, the Manti temple was also built by the saints, but the Salt Lake is where the Saints first settled. It was where Brigham Young said the famous words "This is the place". How cool to have that also be my last temple in the Valley to go inside too! Needless to say that was a very wonderful day. I did it! I went inside every temple in the Valley to perform baptisms! It is such a cool feeling for me and a great accomplishment to say the least.

It took a lot of strength, support, love, and determination to go inside the temples, but I DID IT! Now my goal is to go inside more and of course get my endowments out so I can go inside all of the temple! I want the San Diego to be the temple I get my endowments out and I CANNOT wait to go through it (hopefully it will be this year too!) and eventually be married for time and all entirety to the man who will make me so ecstatically happy.

The other BIG accomplishment for me this past week was I deleted my Facebook. Yes, that is sad for a few people, but it was something I needed to do. I was strongly prompting to delete it this week because of different reasons. Nothing bad or anything like that, but just so I will be able to have stronger relationships with other people and actually TALK to them instead of "FaceStalking them". I have been prompted to delete it every now and then, but this week I had such a strong prompting that I need to delete it NOW. A lot of different reasons helped me get to this point to such a friends and how I have been making a strong effort to listen and follow all the promptings I receive from the spirit. It has been amazing how the more I listen and act the more I can hear and feel the spirit in my life! I love it!