Posted by:
Elder Berry
(
)
Date: September 10, 2020 12:40PM
COVID times setup a situation I don't envy. I have 2 missionaries out right now. Naturally my wife wants to have the missionaries in our area over. I'm supportive of my wife's desires. It also can be interesting like it was last night when one of them at dinner asked me if I believe in Satan. I told them I did not and an interesting human evolution discussion ensued.
But I digress.
One of the missionaries that we have had over for dinner before had been super excited to go through the temple when they opened for live endowments. This missionary told us a story of their grandparent's sacrificing everything in another country to travel thousands of miles to go to the temple. Their grandparents are either still in that country or emigrated to the US. But this was such a sacrifice for their beliefs.
And last night they told us that the temple wasn't what they expected. The other missionaries (there were two companionships here last night) went on an on about what actors they liked and which version was better. I asked them if they had ever been to a live actors endowment. They hadn't. They didn't know if they would like it and one missionary's parent had told them it was longer than the movie and that they wouldn't like it as much.
But that one missionary...so sad. You could tell they were trying to participate with the others. It was subtle but it was literally last week for them and I could tell they were still processing it. Imagine the family story of sacrificing everything for the temple sealing. Imagine being in a family where it was paramount and then having it be not what you expected? And then all the other young people talking about it like it was something like I don't know. Not popular media but something "special" but not "sacred" we can't talk about it.
Strange. The young Mormons today are obviously more open about their feelings and this one particular young Mormon made me feel very sad. They were on their mission for a month, had heard about this temple experience their whole life, waiting for that day and it comes giving them and unexpected experience. It was totally obvious that the experience wasn't as "cool" as the others were claiming but this missionary repeated the chant, commented on the actors, and such but there was a look in their eyes. One I read well. For all the temple changes it is still a shocking experience that throws a young Mormon into a weird place where they have to process things that they just might end up putting on a dusty mental shelf and trying to forget to ever process it. Just gush about the temple to cover up the WTF.