Aug

3

Today we traveled from Orem to South Jordan and then to Salt Lake City with the purpose of visiting and performing service in two of the Temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Why did we go to two temples? Was not one enough? My youngest daughter had never been in those temples and so we decided to use it as an excuse for a short trip, adding a little bit of variety to the work.

Salt Lake Temple

Salt Lake Temple

Also, it seemed a good opportunity to stay together as a family working in favor of those who have already passed to the other side of the veil (that for Mormons simply means those who have already died).

It was a wonderful experience and I am glad that I am sharing it with my children so that they may learn since a young age to experience the blessings and the wonderful feeling of working in the temples.

Moreover, I do not want to find myself in the situation of someone who once spoke in a General Conference and recognized that he had never spent time with his kids in the temples, while he had spent plenty of it watching football games. To go to football games may be a bonding activity with our children, but if I need to choose, I prefer to go to the temple with them.

Jul

15

Last Saturday I went for the first time to get a massage. A friend of mine gave us a free ticket and I could not see a reason not to go.

I need to say that it was great, very relaxing. It actually helped me remove a little pain in one of my feet. Similarly my wife had not had back pain since then.

Today I went to the Temple, the Mormon Temple, where I serve almost every Tuesday morning for a few hours. While I was there, as usual, I felt better, more relaxed, and my spiritual or mental aches disappeared.

I could not avoid comparing the Temple (at least the Mormon Temple) to the massage. In the case of the massage my body was relieved of some pain and restored to its best condition. Similarly, when I spend time in the Mormon Temple, serving others, I come back feeling a lot better, with my spiritual senses and my intellect reinvigorate and in better “tune” with God and life.

I know that many people who have never been in a Mormon Temple wonder why not everybody can go into one of them.

Perhaps this is part of the answer. To go inside a temple we need to be prepared so that the proper atmosphere is maintained and people who enter can receive the spiritual benefits they are looking for. Moreover, everybody can qualify to enter one of those temples and receive the blessing of an eternal marriage and family and spiritual peace. He or she only needs to become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and keep the commandments….

Jun

18

Yesterday I went to Manti, Utah and watched the Mormon Miracle Pageants. Before the performance started, I noticed these people from other faiths with their signs about the Bible or other websites, usually against the Mormon Church.

Usually I avoid them, but this time I decided to talk with a couple of them. It was an interesting experience. All of them insisted on salvation by grace. They have a hard time to understand or accept a simple and even logical concept as that of progression. The have an all-or-nothing attitude. Or you are saved or you are damned, or you believe or you do not, or you pay tithing or you do not. They do not understand or they do not want to understand degrees. Also, they want something simple and easy. Jesus does everything for you.

They do not get the big picture and insist on words or specific scriptures trying to prove their point. I know that discussing religion with them is almost useless, but I tried to understand them. There was another one who was only yelling, trying to be like Samuel the Lamanite. I could not even talk to him, he just kept yelling and really nobody was listening to him, he should have tried with a megaphone.

There were also a father and a son. The father left the LDS Church after going unworthily to the Temple when he was 18, according to his own words. His parents are still active in the Church, but his son was with him trying to convert Mormons….

I told his son that because his father left the Church he was losing the blessing of the temple and he told me that “Mormons do terrible things in the temple, they do baptisms for the dead”… When he said that I did not know if I should laugh or cry. I thought about his father. He went to the Temple at least once and he knows that we do not do “terrible things”, but his choices have “terrible” consequences in the lives of his family and his posterity. As a convert I am particularly sad when I see people who were born in the Church break the progression of their families. I think how sad must be his parents.

For some reason when he was 18 he gave up. Why? At one point he told me that it is hard for some people to keep the commandments. I had the impression he was trying to tell me that he prefers his new doctrine because there is really no effort or possible failure implied.

According to his doctrine, you accept Jesus and you are saved, while in the Mormon Church you are taught that you need to fight against your nature to follow the commandments and keep improving your life (even after accepting Jesus). He probably felt unworthy when he was 18 and he gave up. He was inactive for many years and then a few years ago he was “saved” by some Protestant group. He wishes it was that easy. But it is not. On the other hand, it is not impossible and it is not just for a few special people, but all men and women can qualify for the true salvation. However, it requires humility and perseverance: true salvation is a process not a single event.

During the performance it was remembered how important is to let people know the true principles of the gospel, because when the true doctrine is not known and practiced, human being have the tendency to fall into transgression and entire societies may end up being destroyed, as it happened with the ancient Nephites.

While there I have thought again about the power of the Internet. How important is for us to explain true principles to all mankind,

“teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things…(Matthew 28:19-20)

May

15

As I mentioned in a previous blog, Mormon Temples can be visited inside before they are dedicated. This is a good opportunity, since this video show images of the inside of the new Mormon Temple, built in Curitiba, state of Paraná, Brazil.

I used to live in Londrina, the second city in the same state, and I am glad that now members of the Mormon Church will not have to travel to S. Paolo, a long trip from Curitiba.

I currently live in an area where it is easy to go to a temple. I only need to travel 10-15 minutes and I know what a great blessing is to live close to one of these sacred buildings.

If you are not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church), I invite you to talk to the Mormon missionaries and ask them about our temples, where families can be sealed for eternity.

Watch the video:

Inside Mormon Temples: part 2.

May

7

There are many people who wonder what is so special, or secret, in the Mormon Temples. Why “normal” people cannot go inside? What mysterious things do Mormon do inside?

First of all, for those who would like to see the interior, I suggest to simply attend an open house. After a temple is constructed and before a temple is dedicated, the public is invited to enter and view the rooms. Hundreds of thousands of people usually attend these open houses. After the formal dedication, the temple is closed to tourists because the Latter-day Saints begin using the temple to perform sacred ordinances.

This is the first concept to understand: temple ceremony are sacred, not secret. I will elaborate on this idea in a future blog.

For now, if you did not have an opportunity to go to an open house, you may want to take a look at these pictures (a virtual tour):

For more information you can also visit MormonChurchTemples or LDSChurchTemples.com

Jun

13

People may disagree about what constitute a miracle. I believe that many miracles happened in my life. This is about one of the most important that happened in the life of our family.

It happened approximately 19 years ago, and it focuses on the Swiss temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church).
At that time, in 1988, my wife and I lived in Asti, Italia. My wife, Giovanna, was expecting our first child and the closest temple was in Zollikofen, Switzerland. We had been to the temple previously only a few times and we enjoyed being there. A trip to the temple would require several hours, and as new parents we were extremely concerned with all the changes that would happen after the birth of our first son. We were thinking that probably we wouldn’t be able to go to the temple for several months, at least.

Therefore, in spite of Giovanna being seven months pregnant, we decided to accept the invitation of a member of our branch to go once more to the temple. Our relatives were not active members of the Church and this idea seemed to them a little crazy, but we felt that it was the right thing to do.

The trip was good and we went to the temple. While we were there, inside the temple, I had a marvelous feeling about the joy of being father. I had never been a father before and therefore that feeling was amazing. In fact, that feeling started growing so strong that I thought: “whow, how can I expect two more months, after having such wonderful feelings?”.

Half an hour later we were outside sitting in front of the temple when suddenly my wife started feeling in pain. We were not sure what was the problem but we thought it was nothing serious.

A little later, however, the pain came back and stronger until a friend (who already had children) finally told us that probably the baby was trying to come out! That didn’t seem good. To be in a foreign country, away from family and friends, not speaking the language (German), and especially having to deal with a possible premature birth was something really scary.

However, the people who took care of the housing for members of the Church traveling to the temple, Monique and François Portellano, were extremely helpful and directed us to the nearest hospital, in Jegenstorg.

At the hospital the doctors realized that Luca, our son, was trying to come out sooner than expected. They tried for several hours to stop it, but it was impossible. On May 13, 1988, around 12 pm, he was born, weighting only 3 pounds.

That was one of my first great experiences with inspiration and revelation in the Temple. After that, I learned that strong feelings in the Temples have usually practical consequences in our lives if we pay attention to them.

To keep Luca alive, since he had a problem in his lungs, the doctors put him in intensive care and there he was for a couple of weeks. After that they decided that it would be less expensive to move him to Torino, Italy, using the hospitla plane than keep him in intensive care for longer time.

Luca was bound to stay in Torino’s hospital for another two months before he was able to come home.

In the first year of his life he needed a lot of care and it was particularly interesting for us to hear from an Italian doctor, not a Mormon, that we had been lucky that he was born in Switzerland, close to the Bern University Pediatric Hospital where they were experienced and fast enough to save him.

Coming from a non-Mormon, that was a confirmation of what we already knew, that our trip to Switzerland, to go to the Temple, was the right decision and one that probably saved Luca.

Jan

4

Mormon Temples are special places of peace, inspiration, and learning. But this is not all. They are the place where families can be sealed for eternity together.

This life is a time of probation for humankind and it is not uncommon that faithful parents have troubles with some their sons. How can a family be together in the eternity if the children make wrong decisions ?

I don’t know the perfect answer to this question, but this is something interesting coming from the Prophet Joseph Smith:

“‘The Prophet Joseph Smith declared–and he never taught more comforting doctrine–that the eternal sealings of faithful parents and the divine promises made to them for valiant service in the Cause of Truth, would save not only themselves, but likewise their posterity. Though some of the sheep may wander, the eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold. Either in this life or the life to come, they will return. They will have to pay their debt to justice; they will suffer for their sins; and may tread a thorny path; but if it leads them at last, like the penitent Prodigal, to a loving and forgiving father’s heart and home, the painful experience will not have been in vain’ (Orson F. Whitney, in Conference Report, Apr. 1929, 110).”

This can be of some comfort to many and an interesting point for those who want to know more about the Mormon Church and the importance of the Mormon Temple.

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