"The work seemed ill-fated from the start. The excavation for the
basement required trenches twenty feet wide and sixteen feet deep, much
of it through solid gravel. Just digging for the foundation alone
required nine thousand man days of labor. Surely
someone must have said, 'A temple would be fine, but do we really need
one this big?' But they kept on digging. Maybe they believed they were
'laying the foundation of a great work.' In any case they worked on,
'not weary in well-doing.'..."The journals and
histories of [the] teamsters are filled with accounts of broken axles,
mud-mired animals, shattered sprockets, and shattered hopes. I do not
have any evidence that these men swore, but surely they might have been
seen turning a rather steely eye toward heaven.
But they believed and kept pulling."
I admit, at times I've found myself turning a steely eye toward
heaven myself. "Baptisms would be nice, progress would be nice, shoot...
even a new person to teach would be nice... but do I really need to be
putting myself out there in the heat of the
day, day after day after day?" Progress at times is imperceptible, and
sometimes I can't help but think if we're really making a difference,
but as we have "worked on, not weary in well-doing", casting those
thoughts of doubt to the side, we have seen miracles
poured out upon us in very real ways.
On the same day that we had listened to that speech, we were
wondering what we could do to "make" things happen. What were we doing
wrong? What could we change about the way we do work to make people more
interested?" And Elder Peery said something along
the lines that we are just like the early saints, who had to work day
after day to chisel away and haul those granite blocks down mountains to
build the temple. When a stone cutter chisels at a stone, it takes
hundreds of strikes before the stone breaks. There's
maybe not anything particularly special about the final strike that
causes the break, but it's the consistent effort of the previous hits.
With this shift in perspective, we continued swinging. As we were
walking through the town square, Elder Peery stopped and said, "There
was a boy on a bench, we should turn around and talk to him." Following
this prompting, we talked with the boy and he
ended up being interested enough to hear us out and listen for about 10
minutes. We gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon and set up to meet
the next day (he ended up dogging our second lesson, let's just rip that
bandaid off right now haha). As we stood up
from this little meeting, we were headed out and a woman stopped us and
said, "You can't leave without talking to me!" Turns out, Elder Peery
had stopped her on the street and met with her a few months ago and they
gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon. She
said, "I read that book you gave me and I know it's true. I couldn't
stop reading it! I read it all in 3 days. Eating and sleeping was a
burden. All I wanted to do was read! When I finished it, I prayed about
it and I felt the Spirit all around my body, like
snakes! It was so strong! I know that this Book is true! I've been
telling my children and my friends that if they want to be happy, they
need to read the Book of Mormon!"
Well gee.... After all this swinging, something broke! We're super
excited to see where things go with that. I know that there is power in
the Book of Mormon, and I also know that God will bless us as we work
hard and endure. It was such a sweet moment,
and I believe that one of the reasons it was so incredible is because
of how hard we worked before being blessed like that. Lives have
changed, including my own, because of the things we are doing here. How
cool is that? At times, well, really the majority
of the time, it's not comfortable and it certainly isn't easy. But the
pay off is incredible.
Returning to the account of the construction of the Salt Lake Temple, President Holland described its glorious finale...
(Quoting Wilford Woodruff)
"If there is any scene on the face of this earth that will attract the
attention of the God of heaven and the heavenly host, it is the one
before us today—the assembling of this people, the shout of ‘Hosanna!’
the laying of the topstone of this Temple in honor
to our God."In the writing of one who was there, 'The scene that followed is beyond the power of language to describe.' Lorenzo Snow, beloved President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, came forward leading 40,000 Latter-day Saints in the Hosanna shout. Every hand held a handkerchief every eye was filled with tears. One said the very 'ground seemed to tremble with the volume of the sound' which echoed off the tops of the mountains. 'A grander or more imposing spectacle than this ceremony of laying the Temple capstone is not recorded in history' It was finally and forever finished."
Though we may not be literally building temples, we are all in a
very real way working to build the Kingdom of God, which is the same
work. Our trials may not come in the form of shattered sprockets and mud
mired animals, but I this comparison has given
me the strength and motivation to keep pushing. Just like those early
Saints, we too will one day shout Hosanna as we are blessed because of
our consistent efforts.
You should really check out this speech.
Szeretettel,
Elder Burnett
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