For some reason, as I watched these ordinances performed, my mind went back to the first time Tara went to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. Grandma Pearl was living with us at the time and had 15 family names whose temple work she wanted to have done. We took David, who must have been 14, and Tara, who had just turned 12, and went to the Seattle Temple. We discovered once we got there that, unfortunately, Bruce's recommend had expired just a day or two before, so he wasn't able to go inside. He waited in the car while Pearl and I took the kids down to the font where a ward group was doing baptisms. They kindly allowed us to interrupt their sequence and provided the priesthood authority we needed. Tara was baptized for the eight or nine women, and then David for the men. And then the group we'd interrupted thanked us for the opportunity we'd given them to serve, saying there was a special spirit there with family names.
This morning, as the Yokota Ward youth were being baptized, a group of four siblings came in to do baptisms, and our ward brethren were able to provide the priesthood they needed. They were followed by a Japanese woman, probably about my age, who was there with a pile of family names. Now, all the baptisms that had been done were Japanese names, but this was different. I was moved to tears as I watched her intently reading the names on the screen, moving her mouth along with Brother Sadler, who was doing the baptizing, and nodding her head as he would stumble over Japanese pronunciations and then get it right. As they completed all of her names, she just beamed, bowed and thanked him while still in the font, and then bowed and thanked me (arigatou gozaimasu) -- we were blessed to share her joy.
One of the most powerful things I have observed since we've been serving in Japan and even before, in the MTC, is simply how good people are. From the senior couple missionaries we got to know in the MTC, to the young families in the military ward, to the missionaries in the field and in the office, to the Japanese siblings and sweet little Japanese lady who came to the temple to do baptisms this morning -- I am profoundly affected by how kind, how selfless they are, and what a great desire to serve they have.
Missionary work is challenging in Japan -- centuries of religious traditions and practices that they don't even understand seem to be part of who they are -- it's like it's in their DNA! Christians are rare, and Mormons even rarer. But there's no shortage of goodness in the gentle people who live here. I don't have any trouble believing the above statement from President Grant, because of the missionaries and members who love and serve, and the Japanese people who will, someday, open their hearts to the message we bring.
1 comment:
I absolutely love that quote. I remember in the ESL that my Japanese classmates were the sweetest and kindest in the whole class. I'm excited about the fulfillment of the that quote.
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