The family had already saved a significant amount towards the trip when they were approached by their priesthood leaders to make a donation towards the construction of the Sao Paulo Brazil temple. “As a family, we sat down and we decided that we would donate all the money we had saved towards our temple trip,” said Sister Bricknell.
After making that great leap of faith, and parting with all the money they had carefully saved for their own temple trip, Sister Bricknell said: “The blessings came!”
A year later, the family had miraculously saved all the money they had given away, and more. They now had enough money to pay for the 13 000 kilometre journey to the USA to be sealed together in the Salt Lake City temple.
“It was amazing -- just amazing how things just worked out,” said Sister Bricknell. “If you put the Lord first, the blessings will come. “We contributed our own savings towards the [construction of the Sao Paulo temple] and within a year we were able to go to the Salt Lake Temple ourselves.”
Brother Bricknell said that the process of raising funds for church buildings and temples practised in the early days of the church was “a unifying effort”.
“Every member got involved,” said Brother Bricknell. “We had bazaars, and cake sales, and we would go to the middle of town with the sisters and they would set up their cakes on the trays on the pavement. There was love. There was unity; it was tangible.”
Years later, after the LDS temple in Johannesburg was constructed in 1985, Brother Bricknell said the saints from Durban felt a continuation of that unifying spirit as they made the six-hour road trip to visit the Johannesburg temple together. “When the temple was built in Johannesburg, what an amazing difference it made in the lives of the people in Durban,” he said. Members from Durban made the trip for temple worship, “often in three or four mini buses,” said Brother Bricknell.
“Those were such bonding times for all the people that would [attend]. It was an amazing experience for us. The members in Durban were very faithful temple-goers.”
This weekend, some thirty years later, the saints in Durban will witness the groundbreaking for a temple in their own city.
Brother and Sister Bricknell at the groundbreaking of the Durban South Africa temple