Welcome.

One of my coworkers at the temple is a uniquely gifted gal. She’s got a lot of specialized talents, one being the discerning of spirits. It’s an interesting gift, and she has had spirits trapped in darkness and those illuminated with light come to her.

Her daughter has the same gift. At her sealing with her now husband, her then nine-year-old daughter leaned over to her and asked, “Mom, who are all these people?” She replied, “They are people from our ward and family – you know them.” “No, mom, not those ones,” she replied, “the ones in white standing everywhere, who are they?”

I have been intrigued and moved by some of my co-worker’s experiences she has kindly shared with me as we’ve become friends.

She and her family have recently moved here to our community. Her employment in the temple here is her fourth temple job. Though it’s her first time as a custodian, she has a familiarity with being a temple employee.

A couple years back, she had a dream. In her dream, she was in the temple surrounded by people from the other side dressed in white. She described their facial expressions as being varied. Some very smiling gigantically. Others were thoughtful. Some wore minimal to no expressions on their faces. But she said the temple was packed. Filled beyond capacity with spirits. All in white.

She told me when she awoke, she had this overwhelming desire to see these spirits in person in the temple. She got down on her knees and prayed for that privilege should it not run counter to the will of the Lord.

Apparently it did not, because the very next day she attended the temple and she told me that as she walked past the recommend desk, her otherwise veiled eyes were uncovered, and she began to see people in white everywhere. As she walked, she brushed past them, and they brushed past her. The temple was flooded with them.

I was so moved by this beautiful story.

As we come and go inside our temples, I love the idea that others are coming and going, too, even if most of us can’t see or feel them.

I found myself thinking today of those telling words of Henry Van Dyke:

“I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: ‘There, she is gone!’

‘Gone where?’

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: ‘There she is gone!’ there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: ‘Here she comes!’

And that is dying.” (Henry Van Dyke)

What a beautiful transition from here to there! And for those faithful in the cause of Christ, they continue their labors in that very cause beyond the veil. How comforting to thus know!

And how tender that some (all?) of their converts can return when co-partners on this side of the veil enter temple doors to do for them what they, as spirits, can only witness.

I love that our temples are packed with those in white from both sides of the veil. I believe it. I love it. Where one goes or one comes, the work of salvation makes it possible for all to come unto Christ and be fully completed and redeemed through His atonement.

And so we die and are thus gone from the mortal sight of those we love for a season, but if our vision was touched, we would indeed see them without obstruction.

Unto all the world: Gone from our sight? Not really.