Elder Gary E. Stevenson: Your Sacred Temple Experience – powered by Happy Scribe
Welcome to the Phase three temple, experience your time in the temple in this new phase of temple reopening will feel both familiar and different as you participate in proxy ordinances. I’m delighted to walk you through some of these adjustments.
To prepare for your visit, you will need to schedule an appointment with the temple in your Temple District. We’re excited for patrons to begin using a new online tool to make reservations for ordinances. If you find that you need help making your appointment, reach out to your ministry and brother or sister, a friend, a family member or a local leader, he or she will be happy to assist you.
Some areas will not immediately have the online tool available. However, appointments can still be made via email or a phone call to the temple when making your appointment. Please be straightforward and open as you verify that you are free from any symptoms related to covid-19. Your health and the health of ordnance workers are very important to us. You’ll be reminded about these health requirements in an email you will receive 24 hours prior to your temple appointment. When arriving at the temple, you will be greeted by a temple worker who will verify you have been free from any symptoms of covid-19 during the past five days and have not been recently exposed to covid-19.
You’ll be asked to confirm your willingness to wear a face covering throughout your time in the temple, followed by a final health screening protocol, including a temperature check. If you’re experiencing symptoms or are unwilling or unable to wear a mask, you’ll be invited to reschedule your appointment and return at a later time. Precautions within the temple include regular cleaning and sanitizing throughout each day and the availability of hand sanitizer in many locations.
All sacred temple ordinances will be available under phase three, but with limited attendance, fewer patrons will participate in each ordinance and fewer ordinance workers will be in the temple. We have carefully and prayerfully adjusted temple procedures to enhance learning and to keep our temple patrons and workers safe. Here are a few examples of such adjustments in the Baptistery, all participants except the individual being baptized will wear a face covering. You may be requested to bring members of your household to officiate in the ordinances if possible.
In each endowment’s session, fewer seats will be used, seating will be socially distanced, and members of the same household will be seated together. For example, in this temple, which holds up to forty two people in an endowment room, just 12 of those seats will be filled. Facilites, the number of patrons will continue to be limited, as has been the practice in phase one and phase two. Additional adjustments in our pattern of temple worship might include sensitivity regarding the number and frequency of temple ordinance appointments, attendance in your temple may be limited to ensure adequate opportunity for all who desire to participate in as much as temple housing and food services will not be available.
Large groups from wards and steaks may not be accommodated. Brothers and sisters, we love you and rejoice with you as temples around the world begin to move to expand that opening status. The temple is the house of the Lord, where holy ordinances are performed and sacred, meaningful worship takes place as you faithfully adhere with happy, cheerful hearts to the adjustments I have described, you’ll be blessed, uplifted and strengthened. We asked for your continued faith and prayers, your kind regard for the needs of others and in a special way for your patience as we enter this new phase of temple opening.
I am so grateful for the inspired direction from the first presidency in these temple matters. And conclude with my testimony of our living prophet, President Russell M. Nelson. And of Jesus Christ as our savior and redeemer. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
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