The Fifth Sunday

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Yesterday was a 5th Sunday and on 5th Sundays we often have the youth meet together and the adults meet together and have special lessons. Yesterday Sterling and I presented a lesson to the youth, while the Bishop took care of the adult class. 

Sterling shared the Ward mission plan because he is on the missionary committee, and since I am a member of the Temple and Family History committee, I was able to talk about our upcoming temple open house and what a wonderful opportunity this will be for missionary work. We still have no date for the open house, but the signs are pointing to one late this year.

I’m always nervous before I need to teach a lesson or give a talk, but I think this one went well. Here are the notes from my message. I had a slide show to go with my message.

Temple Open House

Even though the message for today is centered around missionary work, I can’t think of a more powerful missionary tool than the open house for our temple. The temple has been standing there, right next to the I-5 freeway for over thirty years. Millions of people have seen it and admired it. I have served as an ordinance worker in the temple longer than you guys have been alive and we always had people coming to the front desk, asking if they can have a tour of the temple. People who were not married in the temple would come to the temple to take wedding pictures in front of it. It is a beautiful building, and now everyone will have a chance to tour the temple and learn more about the beauty of the work done inside the temple and not just the beauty of the temple itself.

Every Thursday afternoon, when I would leave work a little bit early to go serve in the temple, everyone in the company where I worked knew where I was going. They watched me do this for years and every one of them will be at this open house because they want to know more about it. My wife works at Westview High School. She is a very sociable person so most of her coworkers know that she served in the temple as well. They also all know that there will be an open house when the temple opens, and many of them have already asked her to be their personal tour guide because they know how much she loves the temple.

I’m willing to bet that most of your friends know that you perform ordinances in the temple several times a year. If you let them know that they can now go inside this temple and learn more about what you do there, they will want you to take them also.

One of our apostles has said that the San Diego Temple is a jewel among the churches temples and there will never be another one like it. It was pretty expensive, and we are now building so many temples that it is necessary to keep the costs down. Don’t get me wrong, I think all the temples are beautiful, but there is nothing out there quite like our temple.

Just to get you a bit more excited about the temple and the upcoming open house, let me share some of my experiences with the temple.

Parking

When our family first moved here in 1992, the temple was just nearing completion. In our very first fast Sunday, we were asked to fast for the temple because there were not nearly enough parking spaces. I remember thinking that we were asking the Lord for a pretty big miracle. Take a look at this picture. 

Where would we be putting additional parking?

West of the temple we have this freeway. We’re not putting any parking there.

East of the temple we have all this housing. It is hard to imagine that we’re going to move them.

South of the temple is the street,

and north of the temple is this big office building.

Shortly after that fast, the office building filed for bankruptcy. If you take a close look, you can see a big parking structure adjacent to our parking lot. The church bought the office building, cut a hole in the wall of the parking structure and now the office building does their normal work during the day and in the evening, when we really need the extra parking, they have all gone home.

The Lord truly works miracles.

Over the years I’ve heard many stories about the temple. I was hesitant to share these stories because I didn’t know if they were true or if they were just urban legends. I then had the opportunity to visit with the architect of the temple. His name is William S. Lewis Jr., and he confirmed that every one of the stories that I’d heard were true.

Brigham Young Prophecy

Brigham Young prophesied that “in the process of time, there will be temples overlooking the Pacific Ocean and that there will be temples with gardens on their roof.” Some might argue that our temple doesn’t really over look the Pacific but I’ll bet that from the tower, you could see the ocean. It’s close enough for me. And the temple does have a garden on the roof. 

Do you see that eight sided star in the middle of the temples roof? Those aren’t windows. That is an opening to a beautiful garden immediately below.

I couldn’t find a decent picture of the garden, but this gives you an idea of what it looks like. The garden sits in what we call the “atrium’ and it is surrounded by sealing rooms. If you get married in the San Diego Temple, this is where you will get married.

Watch for this garden when you go through for the open house. It is beautiful.

Catholic Architects

Another story that I had heard was that the architects of the temple were a catholic couple. Since I knew who the architect was, and he wasn’t catholic, I knew this had to be a false story. When I met the architect, I asked him where this story may have come from.

As it turns out, there was a catholic couple who did work for the architect. Their names are Dennis & Shelly Hyndman. They love the temple. They never did get baptized, but they loved the temple and everything that it represented.

Reflection Pool

Where the giant lawn is now, there was supposed to be a large reflection pool. As the temple was nearing completion, San Diego was going through a very bad drought, it was decided that it would be irresponsible to put in a large reflection pool in the middle of a drought. They decided to put in a lawn instead of a reflection pool. While I would have loved the pool, it may be a good thing that we have the lawn since that is a favorite place for wedding pictures.

Water Fountain

Under the west spire of the temple is a beautiful spiral staircase. I heard that this was the largest free standing spiral staircase in America. That is actually false, but this is still a beautiful staircase.

Perhaps my favorite place in the temple is standing on the balcony at the very top of the staircase. Looking out over the stairs and at the beautiful windows just brings peace to my heart.

Since this tower is adjacent to the I-5 freeway, the architect was worried about road noise, so he planned for a water fountain to be placed in the center of the staircase on the bottom floor. Unfortunately, the temple was way over budget, and the fountain got cut. What a shame.

Seal of Melchizedek

Throughout the temple you will see many eight-sided stars. It turns out that the eight-sided star is a symbol of the Prophet Melchizedek. They call it his “seal.” I asked the architect about this, and he said that he used that symbol because it is two overlapping squares and it fit well with the design of the temple, at the time, he had no idea that it was the seal of Melchizedek.

The Night the Lights Stayed On

Have you guys heard the story about when the Saints were being driven out of Nauvoo? The temple was almost finished, but since they knew they would be leaving Nauvoo, the brethren decided to start performing Temple Endowments. There were so many people who wanted to receive their endowments, that they kept the temple open night and day performing as many ordinances as they could during the time they had.

Well, we had the exact same situation happen for us in the San Diego Temple. In 2020, when everything was shut down for Covid, the temple was shut down as well. In fact, every temple in the world was shut down. Missionaries always receive their endowments before they leave on their missions but with no temple’s, life had to go on and missionaries headed out on their missions without being endowed.

As things started improving, they opened it for a short time, but only for live ordinances.

Lisa and I were some of the more experienced ordinance workers, so we were fortunate enough to be asked to work during this time. What an amazing experience.

There were missionaries serving in our area who had come on their missions without being endowed. There were also a lot of couples who wanted to be sealed. The missionary’s family was allowed to come and be with their missionary and it was quite special to see families travel from all over North America to be with their child.

We were only allowed to do one family group at a time. We would meet the missionary and his family at the front door. Lisa would check their temperatures, and then I would lead the group to the endowment rooms. We were the only people in the entire temple. It was quite surreal. When the session was over, we would then walk them to the front door and wait for the next group. What a wonderful experience.

In November, the Governor decided that things were getting worse, so he announced that on Friday at midnight everything had to be shut down again. The temple presidency was obviously disappointed, because we had a huge backlog of people who had appointments to be endowed and or sealed. It was early in the week when the announcement was made, so the Temple Presidency called Salt Lake and asked for permission to run the temple night and day until the deadline on Friday at midnight.

The recorders called everyone who had an appointment and told them about the deadline. They then told them that if they were willing, we could perform their ordinance during the night. Beginning Wednesday morning, the temple was booked solid until Friday at midnight.

Our shift started Thursday afternoon, and we worked until Friday morning. It was perhaps the most amazing night of my life. I officiated an endowment session at 1:00 in the morning. Lisa escorted a bride who got married at 3:00 in the morning. This bride also had a small miracle. It was kind of sad, because things happened so quickly, they were unable to have any family or friends join them. They were getting married without anyone with them.

As it turned out, a very close friend of hers was the sister of Patriarch McPhie. The friend called her brother, Patriarch McPhie, and told him about her dear friend and asked if he would be able to perform the sealing. Even though they didn’t know each other, it was still special and kind of like having surrogate family perform her sealing.

Sealing a Family

My wife is a convert to the church, so she has a lot of ancestors who need their work done in the temple. When she finds a new family, she takes a paper clip and clips the members of the family together. She puts the name of the father on top, followed by the name of the mother, and then each of the children from oldest to youngest. In this way she has all the entire family together. All of her families are in little bundles like this. She even writes on the back of each card how she is related to that person.

When we take these families to the temple, she hands them over to the sealer and the first thing he does is remove the paper clip and puts the couples to be sealed in one pile, the sons to be sealed to their parents in another pile, and the daughters to be sealed to their parents in a third pile. This is obviously the most efficient way of doing it, but it about breaks my poor wife’s heart to see her family “figuratively” broken up like that.

One time when we were sealing some of Lisa’s families Patriarch McPhie was our sealer. Lisa handed him her families all gathered together with little paper clips, and he was about to remove the paperclips and then he stopped. He asked her if these were all families. She told him that they were. He then said, “would you like to seal them as families instead of separately?” My wife then said, “you can do that?”

It was amazing and a much different experience than sealing them separately. They have the father kneel on one end of the altar and the mother on the other end, and then the kids are all on the sides of the altar. What a wonderful experience that was.

Sister Leavitt was then looking at her families and saw one family with eight children. She was excited but then realized we didn’t have enough people to stand in for all the kids. We were two brothers short. As she was putting the family back in her pocket, two brothers walked into the room and asked if they could join us. Another miracle. We then gathered the family around the altar. These altars were not designed for ten grown adults. We were all squished together, and it was hot and sweaty, but it was amazing. The spirit was so strong, and we knew that this family was in that room with us. What an amazing experience. Everyone left that day uplifted and strengthened.

A week or two later Sr Leavitt was at the temple and a man comes up to her and says, “It’s you! You’re the lady who sealed her ancestor’s family all at once around the altar.” I got to be one of the sons. Thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of that.”

These are the kind of experiences you will have at the temple. Think of this as you attend the open house. Make sure your friends all come with you so they too can feel of the spirit that will be there.