Three years after we joined the Church, I told my wife, Pat, that I wanted our family to go to the temple to be sealed for eternity. She was pleased, but she wondered how we could afford to fly from Cape Town to London, where the nearest temple was. We had just started a new business and there was no money for such a trip. I told her I didn’t know where the money would come from, but I felt sure that if the Lord wanted us to go, we would find a way. Acting in faith, I went to the office of the airways and booked the flight, paying a deposit. Once I had demonstrated my faith, things began to happen. Two companies bought into my business, and soon we had enough money to fly to the temple.
Once in London, we spent time in Somerset House finding information about our ancestors who had lived in the UK. After one such visit, we stopped at a café for something to eat. When we returned to our hotel, we discovered that we had lost the briefcase containing our temple recommends, plane tickets, and travellers’ cheques. We took a taxi back to the area where we had been and retraced our steps. When we reached the café, the owner told us that he had found the briefcase and had kept it in case we should return. It had been several hours since we had lost it, but the contents were still intact. How grateful we were for his honesty, and that we had our documents safely back.
The night before we were to go to the temple, I checked through our briefcase to see if the recommends were still there. To my horror, they were not! Hurriedly we searched the entire room. They were not to be found. Three times we systematically looked everywhere in the room. No recommends. Finally, we decided to pray and ask Heavenly Father to help us. We all knelt around the bed and offered up a most fervent prayer. If the recommends were not found, our trip to England would have been in vain.
At the end of the prayer, I stood up, and I felt that I should check the waste paper basket. I picked it up from the corner of the room and turned it upside down on the bed. There, under the orange peels, apple cores, and other rubbish, were our recommends, all screwed up in a little ball! How relieved we were. We gave thanks, and the next day we were able to travel to the temple to be sealed as a family for eternity.
It had been a long, eventful journey, but it had all turned out well in the end. The Lord wants us to take our families to the temple and to receive the essential ordinances there, and He had helped us do so under difficult circumstances. It required a lot of faith for us to get to the temple. Several times things went wrong so that we were nearly prevented from being sealed, but with the help of the Lord, we succeeded in getting there and receiving this great blessing. He helps those who have faith in Him and want to do what’s right.