Michelle and I were in the temple last night, after-hours, cleaning the celestial room, in our white scrubs. Just the two of us.
I got an email from my RS president, “We are looking for more volunteers for the Temple cleaning this Thursday at 9pm. If you can help please e-mail me.”
I thought of all my prayer-requests that I send up to heaven, asking God to “volunteer” and help me out. Sometimes I think my prayer didn’t make it to the top — that maybe it hit the slush pile. So, I realized how nice it would be to respond immediately and hit the reply button, “I can help. My daughter in law, Michelle can go with me.”
How often do we answer God’s call to us? or how quickly? I must admit, I think before signing up and last night at about 8 pm, I was feeling tired. I called to find out what we should wear and was surprised that we could show up at the temple in pants, even jeans, casual-wear. We just had to bring our temple recommend.
When we walked through the doors, the brothers at the desk were smiling and pointed us in the direction of a room just off the entry — like a living room, with baskets of white scrubs for us to wear.
We donned our new cleaning apparel, joined for a prayer and the Temple President gave us a short thought and thank you. With a vacuum, dust cloth and cleaning kit we headed for the Bride’s room. We cleaned the President’s Office, the Sealing rooms and the Celestial room. Michelle and I felt honored to shut the door, turn on the vacuum and clean. I must say, there was not even a speck of dust to begin with, but I ran the cloth over all the hard surfaces, even sitting on the floor. It felt so comfortable to be in the Celestial room in comfortable clothes.
I thought of Michelle’s mother who died of breast cancer when Michelle was 12. I wondered if she was watching. And I promised to be a good earthly mom to her daughter.
We looked the Celestial room over, and agreed, we had to leave, it was time to go down — back to the Telestial kingdom. As we drove down the temple mount, the symbolism of descending the mountain of the Lord was real.
The Sacramento Temple is on a mount surrounded by Oak trees, the road winds down the mount:
The Sacramento Temple in the evening:
The road up to the Sacramento Temple:
