“I Would Have Never Dreamed We Would Have a Temple”

When they joined the Church in 1959, Silvia H. Allred and Rosa Solis, two early Salvadoran Latter-day Saint women, never anticipated a temple in El Salvador. “I would have never dreamed we would have a temple. It just seemed so far removed, so remote,” Silvia said.

A half century later, in August 2011, they witnessed the dedication of the San Salvador El Salvador Temple. For Silvia, who was serving as first counselor in the Relief Society general presidency at the time, the opportunity to be at the dedication was “one of those tender mercies of the Lord.”

Sitting in the celestial room of the temple with her fellow Salvadorans that day, she “saw the faces of people who through the years have stayed faithful, through their poverty, through their adversity, through all the challenges they had had in life. They have remained faithful to their covenants,” she said, “and now they were going to enjoy the blessings of having a temple there.”

Rosa, a newly called temple worker, had trusted that the Lord would bless her if she remained worthy of entering the temple, no matter its distance from her. “I don’t have a fancy car and I don’t own a big house on the beach, but the Lord has helped me prosper,” she said. “I have children, grandchildren and even a great-grandchild that love God. And now there is a temple in El Salvador.”

The first family sealed in the new temple was Amado and Evelyn Vigil and their children, Michelle and Christian. The family joined the Church in July 2010 and had drawn closer together ever since. “From the time that we were baptized,” Evelyn said, “I could feel that everything started to change. My family was united in the Church.”

Amado said, “It’s not that we were dysfunctional before, but we started to unite more. The doctrines of the gospel helped us. As Church leaders taught us about the sacredness of the family, we thought more about the value we should place on our family.”

Evelyn and Amado were concerned that their children would struggle to behave during the sealing after a long day. However, they both entered the room reverently, and three-year-old Christian, “without any instruction or prompting, walked to the altar and kneeled by his parents” when it was their turn to participate.

In 2012, Jaqueline Velasquez from San Vicente was baptized for her grandmother in the San Salvador Temple. “When I entered the baptismal font, I felt the satisfaction that it was worth the wait,” she said. “A feeling of great beauty was present, because at the same time they confirmed me for her.”

“I know people truly can be united,” Jaqueline said. “Truly, this work is love for our ancestors.”