As my son unpacked his mission suitcases, he handed me a booklet.  “Do you remember this?”  It was a letter from me written while he was in the temple receiving his own endowments and I was at home with a runny nose during a pandemic. Reading the letter and seeing the stories I had gathered brought back the sweet feelings I had on that day.

 

My parents served as mission presidents in the Florida Tallahassee Mission.  While they were there, they were given a book on the history of the Southern States Mission detailing the stories of the faithful pioneer saints of the south.  The Florida Conference of the Southern States Mission was organized in 1895 and my great grandpa, William Henry Summerhays, arrived as a nineteen year old missionary in 1896.  There was one branch in all of Florida and the organizations formed were Sunday Schools of that branch.  William kept a journal recording their daily activities as well as those who were baptized, their birthdates and parents names.  Wanting to be close to my son’s experience in the temple, while he and my husband were gone, I scanned the pages of William’s journal and gathered stories from the history of the Southern States Mission and attached the relevant pages to the people they detailed in Familysearch.org.

 

As I did so, I noticed something.  As I looked at the ordinances, I did not see one who received an ordinance beyond baptism and confirmation during their lifetimes though they were faithful their entire lives.  With travel difficult, a trip to the temple in Utah must have been an impossibility for so many of them who sometimes barely had the resources to feed and shelter their families.  As I sat at my computer that day feeling sad that I couldn’t be with my son in the temple, my heart connected with those early saints who because of distance and expense were not in the temple as they desired.

 

Elder Renlund shared the story of his own grandparents who were baptized in Sweden and for similar reasons to the early saints of Florida did not receive the covenants they hoped for in their lifetime.  Like others, his grandmother, Lena, “died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, … [was] persuaded of them, and embraced them.”…Lena lived as though she had already made these covenants in her life. She knew that her baptismal and sacramental covenants connected her to the Savior. She “let the sweet longing for [the Redeemer’s] holy place bring hope to [her] desolate heart.” ….Through covenant, she received the power of God to endure and rise above the depressive pull of her challenges and hardships.” (Elder Dale G. Renlund, April 2023)

 

There are so many blessings we desire in this life, so many opportunities we wish to participate in and see the fruition of, yet like those early saints, some things are outside of our power and choice.  And so we bring our offering, our faith, and our hope to the Lord.  We connect ourselves to Jesus Christ by covenant and allow Him to transform us and make our lives, our offerings, our faith and our hope perfect in Him and through Him we become capable of receiving all that He has. He knows every longing of our heart, every tear we have shed and knows how to fill every empty place.  We can have faith in Him. He is a God of miracles and keeps His promises.