We had a whirlwind visit from Matt "Octane" Wright. He had contacts to meet for his job and worked in getting to build me a new computer! It's SO amazingly fast, I can hardly believe it. I now can play any game I want on it - probably WHY it has taken me so long to update....
He also single-handedly took out the non-working stair lift we have been frustrated with since we moved in. What a bear of a job! But now the stairway is unobstructed!
While he was here, my mom and Tom got their patriarchal blessings. That was really a neat experience. My mom was quite impressed and was really excited to get the written copy so she could re-read it.
Matt left the morning of the 27th and we dropped him off at the airport on the way to the Portland Temple, so that my mom could take out her endowments. I had been worried about how it would go, with her memory problems; but with the wonderful temple workers help it turned out just fine.
This is a shot from the atrium, looking into the lobby area of the temple. It looked so beautiful!
Ericka was able to come in the session with us because Jared watched the kids for her. I was SO grateful to have her there. I was so nervous about my mom's reactions and attitude that having someone there as back-up relieved me. The couple who taught my mom the temple preparation classes also came to go through with her. It was really wonderful.
The 28th was Ericka's birthday! We celebrated with her while we were up the weekend before. I'm not sure it was a "happy" birthday - there were a lot of holes in our plans. I was balancing a lot of things and dropped quite a few...including doing a birthday post for her. But I DID get a cake....but it wasn't angel food...
Friday the 30th, we made another trip up to Portland. Samara and Scott and David and Jill were coming in on the same flight! We had a good visit catching up and getting ready for Saturday. \
Finally our big day arrived and we went to the temple early - WAY early. I guess that is pretty uncommon because no one there knew quite what to do with us. The entry desk was so surprised that they didn't even mark us off the list as having arrived. (Which scared all our guests later as they arrived.) Ericka and Jared were the first ones there for our sealing, and the temple workers thought THEY were the Archers! So the Skinners started wondering what could have happened and tried calling us to see where we were. Of course, our phones were off - we were in the TEMPLE! So there was a flurry of confusion and concern going on, of which we were totally unknowing.
We were asked to wait in the inside lobby area, as our escorts were still busy with another assignment. We WERE early. So, we sat and waited until a worker came with our file and took us into the records room to make sure all the paperwork was correct. We were doing four sealing that day and there were a lot of papers. We had talked to no less than three different people before going in the record room - but none of them passed on the information that we had arrived and were working on our paper work to our guest and escorts when they arrived. The concern and confusion continued outside our quiet little office.
Tom, as the time went on, felt the call of nature and excused himself to find a bathroom. He found a lot more than that outside the door. He was grabbed and questioned and all HE wanted to do was get to the latrine. Questions were answered. We were each escorted by our own little temple worker and things progressed. Before we could go into the sealing room, it was noticed that we hadn't been given our little yellow name tags that said who we were and that we were being sealed. I guess that is a big thing. They called the supervisor of the temple workers and she questioned us and made the trip back to the recording office to retrieve the yellow tags.
Coming back, she pinned them on for us and commented on the pile of paperwork we had left in our wake. I told her, "We don't do ANY thing easy. Sorry it rubbed off on you!" We then were able to take care of what needed to be done before going into the sealing room.
We walked in and there were all our family and friends. Samara was Tom's mother, which was neat. I had my mom there. It was so neat to sit and look at their smiling faces. He took such tender care of me as he walked me to the alter and helped me get on my knees. When we knelt across the alter from each other, it was amazing. We had waited so long for that. We just kept looking into each other's eyes and everything else seemed to melt away. We both had tears in our eyes by the end.
Then we had my mom sealed to my step-dad. Tom acted as proxy for my Poppo. The poor little sealer got confused with the names and had Tom as the one who was dead. He almost sealed Tom to my mom! Several of us said "No!" before it was too late. He realized his mistake and completed the sealing correctly. It was quite a day!
Then I was able to be sealed to my mom and Poppo. That was a lot more emotional for me than I thought it would be. It was the neatest thing. I had wanted to have "born in the covenant" on my children's records. It was just something that was really important to me. I wanted that blessing for them. And hearing the blessing that go with the sealing were just overwhelming for me. Suddenly I HAD those blessing for myself! I hadn't considered that and hadn't listened to the words before. They were to my very heart. It was such a wonderful feeling and moment.
Then Poppo was sealed to his parents. Quite a day.
2 comments:
Yeah, you posted! Now to get the rest of the family caught up on their blogs.
Just looking through to see if you had blogged about the sealing. I'm so happy for all of you. It is wonderful and many, many blessings. I have thought of you so much through the holidays. May you receive extra blessings for your efforts to get all those sealings performed. Yeah!
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