Serving (Breakfast) in the Temple

Puerto Rican Saints in Orlando, Florida, August 1995.

In the summer of 1995, about 220 Saints from the Toa Baja, Caguas, and San Juan districts and a few from the Dominican Republic made the journey from San Juan to attend the recently dedicated Orlando Florida Temple. The group had been preparing for months for their journey, both temporally and spiritually. Members attended marriage and temple preparation courses, collected the names of their ancestors who needed temple ordinances, and saved their money for the trip.

An advance party left on July 29, and the remainder of the group followed two days later. On August 1, four buses carrying the Caribbean Saints arrived at the Orlando temple early in the morning. It was “a very deep emotional moment,” recalled Becky Fraticelli, a member from Aguas Buenas. They sang hymns together as they waited for the temple to open.

Over the four days that they worked in the temple, the group—which included adults, youth, and families with young children—performed thousands of ordinances. They completed over 3,000 baptisms and confirmations, most of them for ancestors whose names they had prepared for the trip. About 1,700 vicarious sealings to spouses were performed, and around 1,500 children were sealed to their parents. Living ordinances received during the trip included 38 endowments, 34 sealings to spouses, and 23 children sealed to their parents.

Their service in the temple extended beyond ordinances, however. The chartered flight they had taken on July 31 had been the last to leave the San Juan airport before it closed due to an approaching hurricane. That same hurricane, Hurricane Erin, hit Florida on August 2. Because of the storm, many of the Orlando temple workers were prevented from coming. The visiting Puerto Rican Saints volunteered to help with the laundry, help in the kitchen, and fill other assignments in order to help keep everything running. William Burk, president of the San Juan District, recorded, “In the temple cafeteria/kitchen, several [Puerto Rican] sisters and brothers donned aprons and, using sign language with the only temple worker present, cooked up a Puerto Rican style breakfast for the whole group!”

The Toa Baja District organized another temple trip the following year, with 389 members attending. Then in 1997, 380 participated in another trip. In the October 2018 general conference, Puerto Rican Saints learned they would soon have a temple much closer to home. They celebrated the groundbreaking for the San Juan Puerto Rico Temple on May 4, 2019. In his remarks published in the Church News, Wilfred Rosa, the president of the San Juan Puerto Rico Stake, reflected on the sacrifices that the members had made for years to attend the temple: “I feel happy that finally we will be able to hear the sound of the coquí [frog] when we come out of the house of the Lord.”