A Day at the Temple

May 9, 2010

We spent Thursday, May 5th in the New Zealand temple. We were able to do 24 baptisms, 17 endowments, 12 sealing of couples, 8 sealing of children. It was an exhausting wonderful day. We also met some wonderful people. Here are a few of them:

Bro and Sister Kerioma from Timaru left their 8 children at home to spend three days at the temple. Bro Kerioma is with the ANZAC and has been the branch president for 9 years. They worked in the baptisry and were very kind.

Tina was a woman who worked in the lunchroom with Jack. Jack said she was a very kind soul. Each stake in New Zealand has two weeks a year where they come to the temple and bring the workers to staff it. They needed an extra man in the lunchroom, which is opened from 11:30 to 1:00.

I did the baptisms for the women and Jack did them for the men. A kind Maori man baptized me but could not pronounce my name. By the end we were both laughing. Afterward I told him how much I could relate to his pronunciation problems. Jack and I are trying to learn the names of the people in our ward and we go over the ward list on a regular basis as we try to train our mouths and brains around words and sounds we are not used to saying. Whittier doesn’t seem hard to us but I’m sure “Tuialii” isn’t hard for him (pronounced too-ee-ah-lee-ee). This gentleman was the former stake president in Christchurch. I wish I could remember his name. I probably couldn’t pronounce it.

We ended the day in the sealing room. We met Bro. Joyce who was a sealer, an elderly man. He is from Gisborne, about midway up the east coast of the North Island. He told us a special story and got emotional as he told it. When they were building the temple and excavating the east side, a skull was unearthed. They halted work and discovered an ancient Maori burial ground. They contacted the locate tribe and they came out. There were only a few bodies but they were re-buried down by the visitor’s center. The temple president talked to the “Maori gentleman” and said they would put a plaque up to commemorate the graves. But the “Maori gentleman” said, “What you are building on the hill will be sufficient.” Two things touched me: Bro. Joyce was touched because this man was not a member of the LDS faith and I was touched by the way Bro. Joyce referred to this man as a gentleman. That is not always the way the Maori are referenced.

Just a few of the many snap-shots of the day; you get to ask Pepper about the animals getting out of the barn.