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A Lifelong Love for the Temple
Betty McIlwaine still remembers the joy she felt when she and her late husband, Bill, were taught that families could be made eternal through ordinances performed in temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After over six decades as a member of the Church, she continues to enjoy her weekly worship and service at the Adelaide Australia Temple.
Each week, Betty logs on to the Church’s FamilySearch app to find a deceased relative for whom she can help provide temple blessings. She says, “It feels special to be taking a family name card to the temple, to think about that person and her life, and to pray and hope she will accept the gospel and the ordinances.”
Reflecting on her own life, Betty says, “Heavenly Father has always been good to me and my family.”
Betty was born on 4 January 1932 in Kadina, on the Yorke Peninsula of South Australia. It was during the Great Depression and her father, one of many looking for employment, moved his family to Whyalla to work at the newly opened shipyard.
They lived in a tent on the beach until Betty’s father could build a cabin for them. She remembers, “As far as you could see, the beach was lined with families living in tents.” Children loved living there and going for a swim anytime they wanted.
In 1950, Betty met her husband, Bill, who had migrated from Belfast, Northern Ireland to also find work at the shipyard. They married a year later and had three boys and one girl, but sadly, a road accident would take their second eldest son, Donal, at the age of 21. Betty now has 11 grandchildren and 26 great grandchildren and says, “Every one of them is lovely.”
Their eldest son, Michael, first met missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in primary school. At that time, schools held religious instruction from different denominations and Michael would come home excited to tell the family how much he enjoyed these classes.
The missionaries soon visited the McIlwaines and taught the gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole family. Betty remembers feeling the power of the Holy Spirit at her very first meeting with the Whyalla Branch, especially during the sacrament service.
The McIlwaine family was baptised in the Whyalla sea on 29 December 1962. On Christmas Day of 1967, the whole family flew to New Zealand to be sealed for time and all eternity in the Hamilton New Zealand Temple. After that first visit, Betty and Bill fell in love with the temple and returned as often as they could afford it.
Many years later, in 2000, the Adelaide Australia Temple was dedicated, and every month, Bill and Betty would travel four hours from Whyalla to serve and worship there. Then in 2003, they drew a circle of a 30-minute radius to the temple and were blessed to find a home which was only a ten-minute drive away. They began working two days a week at that temple and did so for 10 years, until Bill became ill.
Betty returned to regular temple visits after Bill passed away in 2015 and now, at age 91, she says, “I hope to be doing that until the day I die”.
In March of 2023, her son Michael was called to be president of the Adelaide Australia Temple, with his wife, Caroline, as temple matron. Betty was “over the moon” when she found out and was sure, “Bill would be smiling in heaven”.
The passing of her son Donal and, more recently, her husband Bill have made Betty more grateful and aware of the blessing it is to know that God’s plan of happiness reunites families in the eternities.
She loves the gospel truth that families can be together forever. “It’s a great motivator to keep us on the straight and narrow path so that we can be reunited in the next life.”