I Love To See The Temple...I'll Go Inside Someday (In TUCSON!)

This morning my family sat down to watch the LDS Semiannual General Conference. For my non-Mormon friends, General Conference is a televised series of meetings (which happen twice a year) in which the leaders of our church give talks on a variety of gospel-related subjects. Church business is also taken care of at these meetings, such as announcing newly called and recently released church officers, and occasionally announcing new church policy as well.

And there were a couple of doozies announced at this conference...particularly if, like us, you live in the Tucson, AZ area.

The largest bit of news (the news that will most affect the church as a whole) was that the eligibility age for all missionaries has been lowered. In other words, young men are now able to begin serving their two-year missions once they turn eighteen (previously, the minimum age was nineteen). Young women can now become sister missionaries when they turn nineteen (the previous age was twenty-one); to me, this was a bigger adjustment and a pleasant surprise.

This tells me a lot of things about the church. For one thing, the church is getting serious about getting lots of young men and women worthy to serve missions. The church wants parents and families to start spiritually, socially, and mentally preparing their children earlier and better than they may currently be doing. The church wants to get more missionaries serving in the field, and this is a great way to do it. Apparently, the MTC sojourn for all missionaries will be reduced by one-third as well, which will further accelerate the entry of young men and women into the mission field.

This also tells me the church wants to shorten or eliminate the potentially dangerous "waiting period" between the time a young man graduates from school, and the time he is eligible to serve. I know one young man who cooled his heels for the year after his school graduation, waiting to go on his mission--he would be the first missionary from his family. Then, just weeks before he was to enter the MTC, he slipped up, had a moral transgression, and sadly had to delay his mission by another whole year. I suspect lots of people know young men and women in very similar situations! Luckily, my friend was ultimately able to serve a full, honorable mission. However, many other young men in similar situations are lost along the way and fall prey to various temptations of the adversary. Enabling young men to begin their adulthood immediately, by serving the Lord on a mission, will set these elders on a righteous path as soon as possible and teach them right away how to be responsible priesthood holders and mature adults.

As for the age reduction for sister missionaries...well, I am very excited about that news too, for many reasons! First and foremost, I think it will encourage a lot more young women to serve missions. Having sisters wait until 21 was not necessarily a bad thing, but it implied that women needed to do "other" things first (like get an education/get married/etc.). I would humbly submit that serving a mission can be just as essential in helping a young woman prepare for her future as any of those other things. Having a constant companion, living away from one's childhood home, serving her fellow men and women, and teaching the gospel...all these things prepare a young woman for life as a married woman and as a mother. Serving as a missionary also teaches young people how to stay focused mentally, and improves his or her work ethic and goal-setting skills. Such things come in very handy when someone is planning on attending college, and will certainly give returned missionaries a leg up on other, less prepared students.

I realize that women are not under an obligation to serve an LDS mission (young men, as priesthood holders, are strongly encouraged to serve, while sisters are welcomed but not expected to serve). However, letting women serve at 19 opens up that option to a lot of sisters who may be "on the fence" about it. Some of my college girl friends were dead-set on serving missions...then school, jobs, and marriage got in the way and not all of them made it. None of them regretted the course their lives took, but if they'd been allowed to serve at 19, I have no doubt they would have made it...and they would have been awesome missionaries, too! Now, women like my wonderful friends will get that chance. And maybe my own daughters, someday, will also have that chance. I don't want to pressure any of my girls to go, but I definitely want them to at least consider going. I have no doubt a mission would be a wonderful opportunity for all my daughters.

Speaking on a totally personal level, serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was one of the best decisions I ever made. I was one of those "on the fence" girls as I entered college, who had a negative opinion of sister missionaries (for some reason) and who wanted to focus on finishing college and getting married, not necessarily in that order. Back then, I thought about myself a little too much, and I was full of aspirations, attitude, arrogance, and drama. Then, I made many friends at BYU (smart, beautiful, talented friends) who wanted to serve missions, and I wondered why. This made me start thinking about what would be best for my personal development, and what would make me a better person (see how this is still all about me?). Gradually, I realized that a mission would be both an adventure and a wonderful opportunity to do some good.

Of course, serving a mission in Moscow, Russia, turned out to be all that and more. I am not a perfect person at all, but the mission helped me be a darn sight better. I learned to forget myself, go to work, and serve others selflessly. I learned to stand up for my beliefs, and learned to rely more on the Lord. My testimony of the living gospel was forged through struggle, trial, and triumph. I saw first-hand the way the gospel of Jesus Christ changed lives for the better. I learned patience, faith, perseverance, hope, tolerance, optimism, organization, diligence, compassion, and more. I learned how to be a better listener. I learned how to deal with many different types and kinds of people. I learned how to cook, clean, and sew better. I learned to stop being an impatient control freak, and start being a patient tool of the Almighty.

Not to sugar-coat things...serving a mission was hard. And there were days I hated it. But I have never regretted doing it, because it made me a better, more Christlike person. The mission enabled me to help other people and serve them, in ways big and small, and it helped me to always seek out the good in others. If those are the very least things a missionary gains from his or her mission, than that mission has been a success, and that person will come home ready to make their community and their family better and stronger. I wish all future missionaries that level of success, and I hope these new, (slightly) younger missionaries can have these same beneficial experiences.

So, the missionary announcement was the "big one" at conference this weekend. However, there was an announcement just before that one that was even more exciting--at least in our household. President Monson announced the building of two new temples...one in Peru, and one in TUCSON, ARIZONA.

Big YAHOO! As you can imagine, this sent up a huge cheer all over the Old Pueblo. We had some friends over that morning, and they stood up and cheered out loud at the announcement. I actually kept quiet...mostly because I was in shock. Happy shock, but still! I couldn't believe the church was finally remembering our little corner of Arizona.

We've lived in Tucson for more than nine years now. When Nathan and I first moved here, we had no kids, no home, no friends, and no job. We barely knew anybody down here. We were also surprised and a  little disappointed to find out how far away the temple was from here. It usually took us at two hours to drive the 100+ miles from Tucson to the temple in Mesa, Arizona...in 2003, that road was a narrow, crowded freeway with little more than desert in between the two cities. Even a "short" temple trip was at least 7 hours (the drive up, the temple session, and the drive back).

In our nine years in Tucson, Nathan has gotten his master's degree and now has a good, stable job. We've had three wonderful children. We've bought a beautiful house in a neighborhood we love. Ironically, these many blessings also make getting to the temple even more difficult. Over that time, the freeway has been widened, but we've moved further south to Sahuarita, and our commute has increased by another 20 minutes or so. The kids don't enjoy the long ride, and it's hard to figure out what to do with them once we're in Mesa (we don't have many friends up there, and in the summer when the weather is hot we can't just wait outside with them while one of us is in the temple). Add onto that the ballooning gas prices over the last couple of years, and our increasingly busy schedules (not to mention the fact that the Mesa Temple is often overcrowded and slightly stressful). We confess that a trip to the temple has become a rare, daunting endeavor that we only do two or three times a year. We know many wonderful, faithful families who make it up to Mesa on a monthly basis. We are grateful for those families, but we are not as awesome as them! It has become easy for us to make excuses and miss out on more regular temple attendance.

As the years have gone by, and as the church has announced two new temples in the Phoenix area ("overlooking Tucson," as we saw it), we became resigned to the fact that long temple trips were going to be the way of things for the rest of our lives. We tried to put a positive spin on it, but in the back of our minds, we've always been a little sad and wistful, hoping that maybe someday we'd be remembered by the leaders of the church. Now, at last that day is here! I realize the temple won't be finished for a few years, but just having a goal to look forward to is incredibly exciting and inspiring.

This announcement has reminded me of how much the temple has meant to me throughout my life. The day I went through the temple was one of the most peaceful (yet powerful) spiritual experiences of my life. Since then, I have always relied on the temple as a special place where I could escape from life's craziness, and find time to spiritually commune with our Father in Heaven. I have had prayers answered in the temple. I have done family history work in the temple. Most of all, I was married to my beloved husband in the Denver Temple and made covenants there to follow Christ forever and raise my family in righteousness. Now that a temple is coming to my hometown, I feel like I've been given a new tool to inspire myself and my children to live Christlike lives.

We have had a lot of blessings come our way lately. After four and a half years in Sahuarita (and more than three years after the formation of the Sahuarita Stake), our stake center is nearing completion. It will have an Open House and dedication in November, and we are very excited to have such a large, beautiful building to meet in. And now, we have two more Open Houses to look forward to! The temple in Gilbert, Arizona (another Phoenix suburb) will probably be sometime next spring, and then our community can begin preparing for its own House of the Lord to be constructed.

So, in summation...this General Conference has really gotten me excited for the future. I don't know exactly what I plan to do with myself once the kids are all in school all day...maybe go back to school for a master's degree, maybe find a part-time job, or maybe even a combination of both. However, I know one thing I definitely want to do...I want to be a temple worker!! I hope and pray this goal can come to pass once Tucson's temple finally opens its doors.