“Angels in the Temple,” Liahona, October 2021
Latter-day Saint Voices
Angels in the Temple
I worried that my nervous condition might distract others in the temple—until I heard a couple’s comforting words.
Photograph by Candace Read
The temple is the most still and quiet place on earth, right? Well, maybe not for someone like me with Tourette’s syndrome. This neurological condition causes me to make constant movements and noises against my will. My Tourette’s can make people uncomfortable when I’m near them in a quiet place.
One day during an endowment session in the Washington D.C. Temple, I worried that I might bother or distract others. It takes all of my focus to control my tics, which prevents me from concentrating on anything else. So, as I tried to concentrate on the endowment, it was impossible for me to completely control my tics, though I did my best. I struggled more than usual during the session.
Afterward, as I was leaving the celestial room, I heard a comforting voice behind me say, “Please come back. Please keep coming to the temple.”
The voice came from a couple who had seen me struggling. They wanted to assure me that I was always welcome in the temple no matter what noises or movements I made. Their words made me feel that I was just as welcome and needed there as anyone else.
As they hugged me, the Holy Ghost blessed me with peace and joy. God had sent me a tender mercy in the form of those two angels, who comforted me and showed me that He cares. Because of them, I felt the peaceful, still, quiet feeling I had hoped to feel in the temple that day.
“Not all angels are from the other side of the veil,” Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has said. “Some of them we walk with and talk with—here, now, every day.”1
We all can be angels to those around us as we convey “love and concern for [God’s] children.”2