A Place of Love and Beauty

Marianne Wilson McKnight, “A Place of Love
and Beauty,”  Friend, Jan. 2002, 16
 

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“Who knows what this is?” Sister Gonzales held up a picture of a white building with pointed steeples.
 

Samantha’s eyes sparkled. She knew. “That’s the temple.”
 

“Right!” the nursery leader said. “And I’m going to sing you a song about the temple.” Sister Gonzales began to sing:
 

“I love to see the temple.
I’m going there someday …”*

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Samantha smiled. Yesterday, her family had gone inside that very temple to be sealed for time and all eternity. Samantha wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but Daddy had explained that now they could be together as a family forever.
 

Sister Gonzales continued singing:
 

“To feel the Holy Spirit,
To listen and to pray. …”

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Just thinking about the temple gave Samantha that same warm feeling she had felt when she was inside it. It felt like being in heaven.
 

The two women dressed in white in the youth center had been very kind to her and her brothers. Samantha called them “her angels.” While the children were waiting to join their parents, Sister Ferguson read stories to Samantha, and Sister Moore gave her some cookies and juice. Then they had both watched as Samantha built a temple with blocks.
 

“For the temple is a house of God,
A place of love and beauty. …”

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Sister Gonzales’s voice was sweet and clear.
 

Samantha already knew that the temple was Heavenly Father’s house. And it was a beautiful house! She thought about the sealing room with its crystal lights and mirrors. She remembered how her family had knelt around the altar as the temple sealer, dressed in a white suit, spoke the words of the sealing ordinance.
 

Afterward, they stood in front of the mirrors, and it seemed to Samantha that her family just kept going on and on and on. Maybe that’s what forever means, she thought.

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By now, Sister Gonzales was finishing the second verse of the song:
 

“As a child of God,
I’ve learned this truth:
A family is forever.”
 

Samantha was glad that she belonged to a forever family.