Poster Article:

Temples Bless Families

“Let this house be built unto my name, that I may reveal mine ordinances therein unto my people” (D&C 124:40).

At baptism, we make covenants with Heavenly Father to obey His commandments. If we keep these covenants, someday we can go to the temple to make more covenants, participate in sacred ordinances (special ceremonies with spiritual meaning), and receive blessings.

Temple ordinances create eternal families. Through temple sealings, entire families—brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, grandparents, great-grandparents, and other ancestors—can be together forever.

You can prepare now by living righteously and learning about family history. At age 12 you can go to the temple and be baptized for your ancestors, helping to connect them to your eternal family.

You can also prepare to be an eternal family by treating one another with love and kindness. Elder Robert D. Hales of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles explained, “To receive the blessings of the sealing that our Heavenly Father has given to us, we have to keep the commandments and conduct ourselves in such a way that our families will want to live with us in the eternities” (“The Eternal Family,” Ensign, Nov. 1996, 65).

Family Home Evening Activities and Ideas

1. Remove page F9, and glue it to heavy paper. Cut out the picture of the temple and the seven triangle frames. Punch a hole at each circle. In each frame, glue or draw a picture of the person listed. Then write his or her full name on the line. Use string to tie the top hole on the temple picture to the bottom hole on your picture (leave a short piece of string between the temple and frame; see illustration). Then tie your parents’ pictures to the holes at the bottom of the temple picture. Tie the pictures of your grandparents to the bottom of your parents’ pictures. (Remember to tie your mother’s parents to her picture and your father’s parents to his picture.) On the back of the temple picture, write a goal that will help you stay worthy to enter the temple someday. Tie a string to the top of the mobile, and hang it where you can see it often.

2. For a family home evening lesson or Primary talk, discuss the statement by Elder Robert D. Hales. Display your mobile, and explain that the strings represent sealing powers. What would happen to your mobile if you cut the string between the temple and your picture? Cutting the string—or making wrong decisions—separates you from the blessings of the temple and your eternal family.

Electronically composed by Randall J. Pixton

Me
My father’s father
My father
My mother
My mother’s father
My father’s mother
My mother’s mother