A Voice of Gladness!

To my son, 

                Yesterday we went to the Brigham City Temple to do baptisms and confirmation. I forgot the family names I meant to bring, so we performed the ordinances for other people provided by the temple. I was surprised to see that some of the names we did confirmations for were in Korean (at least, I think it was Korean and not Chinese). They lived about 200 years ago, and you of course don’t know them or anything about their lives and you probably never will. But you know that they are also children of God, and you did them a great service yesterday in doing these ordinances. They will have the opportunity to receive baptism and confirmation along with other ordinances in the temple that will help prepare them to return to their Heavenly Father and to live with their families forever. When you were born, the president of the quorum of the Twelve Apostles was President Boyd K. Packer. He had a powerful statement that he repeated often: “The ultimate end of all activity in the Church is that a man and his wife and their children might be happy at home, protected by the principles and laws of the gospel, sealed safely in the covenants of the everlasting priesthood.” I love that summary of what the purpose of this life and the Church is: that we can find happiness in our families and be united together forever through the ordinances of the temple. This is so important that the angel Moroni taught that without the uniting of families, “The whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming” (Doctrine and Covenants 2:3). That is serious! The purpose of the earth is to bind families together so they can return together to be with the Father and the Son.

                Recently your uncle was talking to me about the fact that of the many people who have lived on the earth (117 billion according to google), a very, very small proportion of those have had the opportunity to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ and be united as families through temple covenants. So, has the earth been wasted because of that? I don’t think so, because all of those 117 billion people have come into the earth into a family with parents who begat them. Unfortunately, some of those families have been dysfunctional, and some may have had parents die or disappear on them while they were very little, but the vast majority of people who have come to earth have done so as part of a family they grew up in. And so, the first part of the Lord’s plan has been and is being accomplished as families are created on earth and bonded together through love and earthly experiences. This makes the second part all the more meaningful and important: to unite those families forever through temple covenants. You help to make that happen in the temple for those who did not have the opportunity on the earth to do that. We know that all will eventually have the chance to indeed be a part of a forever family if they choose to follow Jesus Christ with all their hearts and make sacred promises with him. How blessed we are that our family can be united eternally because your mother and I were sealed in the temple and you were born in that covenant. I hope that you and I can always live worthy of that blessing! It is no wonder that the Prophet Joseph Smith spoke of this great work with these jubilant words: “Now, what do we hear in the gospel which we have received? A voice of gladness! A voice of mercy from heaven; and a voice of truth out of the earth; glad tidings for the dead; a voice of gladness for the living and the dead; glad tidings of great joy" (Doctrine and Covenants 128:19).

Love,

Dad