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"This was the week Melanie took out her endowment. I remember writing about when Paul took out his endowment (../9701.html), Dad's endowment work (../9721.html), and earlier this year I wrote about my first time to experience the temple endowment (0015.html).
The word endowment is one of those English words with several different meanings. For those of you who have not received your endowment yet, it makes sense to write about what can be said outside the temple. The dictionary defines endow as:
The Encyclopedia of Mormonism says:
In a very real sense, the endowment is a free gift from Heavenly Father. Every time I go to a temple to participate in an endowment session vicariously for someone else I am giving them a free gift. This is a free gift, a gift which they can choose to accept or choose to reject. Every time I give someone else this gift, I find new insights. Specifically, I find spiritual insights. When we went through with Melanie, I realized for the first time that the plant and animals find joy in fullfilling the measure of their creation. When I correlate this insight with II Nephi 2:25 (Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.) I sense several years worth of study and thinking. To me, these intellectual/spiritual insights are one of the joys of going to the temple.
It would have been nice to be better prepared the first time I went to the temple. However, I grew from the experience, and am a better person for having passed through a trial of my faith. I hope to be here to support each of you when you take out your endowment. It would be nice to keep each of you from needing to face any trials of your faith, or any trials. However, we don't grow without them. So, I hope it is useful for you to know as long as I am alive (and probably after I pass to the other side of the veil too) I am here to support and help you if you simply let me know what I can do to help you. I hope you each realize the benefit of letting others, especially someone who loves you, help you. As the old saying goes:
And sometimes it is hard to get up. For instance, on the Sunday morning after Paul's reception we slept soundly until 10:00 AM MST. Randy and Katheryn's church started at 9:00, and we had every intention of going. Oh well! After getting ready I read. Since leaving for Calgary (0022.html) I've been reading The Book of Mormon to meet the Burgerner challenge. I'm marking all of the time and space references as I read it this time. We finally left the house about 3:00. We went back out to the amplitheater where the festivities happened the night before to make sure it was cleaned up. We found one set of balloons, one extension chord, and a half-a-dozen glass beads from the goldfish bowls. We went from there out to the freeway, got gas, and drove to West Salt Lake Valley to visit with one of my missionary companions. Stephen Plowthow was one of my greenies when I was District Leader in Harlow. He contacted me because he typed in `England East Mission' on a search engine, and my extended resume came up. Of my 18 companions, he was the first to ever contact me. And I have not contacted any of them. Guess there is still anger about the baloney that happened in my mission. Like my personal endowment, it was another of those trials, which helps one grow (../9644.html, ../9819.html, ../9849.html). It was a very nice conversation. His wife Cathy and the daughter we met are very nice people. It was fun to reminisce about the past. I learned a little more about when President McConkie came over and met with all of the missionaries. All in all it was a positive experience, and I'm glad we drove up to far west Salt Lake. We took the stuff we found at the amphitheater by Paul's condo, and then we went out to dinner at The Olive Garden. Quite a different Sunday.
Monday we traveled back to Houston. Melanie, Jared, and Sara did not make arrangements to get back home from the airport. They left messages, I went to Hobby, they took the Metro, Andrea picked them up and called me, and I drove home. It took all day. Good thing I worked Memorial Day, or I would have been charged another day of vacation. Tuesday was catch-up, and I worked late. Wednesday was more of the same. Chris Nevin of IBM stood me up for a big meeting. Tuesday evening was a YM/YW Combined Activity at the roller skating ring. I can not believe how bad and how uncomfortable I was on the roller skates. A few years ago I remember doing OK. Now, I barely made it around twice, falling down once, and only did as good as I did because Andrea supported me and encouraged me. I spent most of the evening reading about Sound. Thursday's sales forecast meeting was good, although we weeded out a lot of potential clients there had been no progress with. Tom Frantes of Exxon-Mobil Upstream Research postponed our meeting for a week. In the evening Continuum hosted the LSU (Louisiana State University) Alumni Houston group. Tom's boss, one of the Exxon-Mobil V.P.'s was there and apologized for pulling Tom into another meeting. He sounds receptive to my proposals, and I felt we made good progress. I gave my Impending Obsolesence of Maps talk, and mistakenly put LSU in Lafayette instead of Baton Rouge. Oh well! Friday was a very busy day, and we had a good CoRe Exchange around work done on the Hibernia field. I worked late, and got home about 7:00 PM. We still do not have TV because I cut the cable (0022.html), and Matt and Rachel are bored. Oh well! I spent the evening working on Ken Turner's web pages (http://www.hgol.net).
I went to bed at 10:00 and had just got to sleep when Audrey and Andrea came in having a conversation. Audrey stayed out way too late, and woke us up at 3:00 when she got home. I couldn't get back to sleep, and so I got up and got ready to leave. Sara had dropped Rob off after Andrea went to sleep at 12:30. Rob didn't have his driver's license, and so I took him back over to his house, not knowing his driver's license was expired. It was raining very hard. We finally got on the road at about 4:20 AM. It rained hard until we got on the Tollroad, then it was only intermittent to Dallas. We went straight to Ben and Sarah's and dropped off Rob. Then we went to the temple and got there about 8:20 AM. It was really special to go through the temple endowment session with Melanie. I would glance over at her across the room, and she was giving apt attention. All in all it was a good experience, and she said `It wasn't as wierd as I thought it was going to be.'
We took pictures in front of the temple after the endowment session. Then we went over to Ben and Sarah's and hung out for a while. About 1:00 we all went over to Chile's and I bought lunch. Andrea asked why I have a need to pick up the tab for lunches like that. I explained it is a character defect I share with Roger Anderson, and there are lot's worse defects I could have. Andrea, thanks for laughing with me and agreeing. Thanks to Rob, we finally brought Ben and Sarah's Saturn back from Dallas. Thanks again. It is definitely going to help with transportation this summer. We got home about 6:00, changed and went over to the Beckstrom's Community Center for Paul and Kate's Open House at 6:30. The Open House started at 7:00 PM.
The room was decorated very nicely. There were all of these beautiful flowers and ferns. I didn't realize many of them were our's until we were cleaning up and Alma was putting them in his Mom's pickup to take back to our house. The reception was the same night as Stake Conference, and there was not a map to the place in the invitation. So attendance was not crowded. However, there were a lot of very special friends who visited: Blaine and Judeth Taylor from Richmond, Todd and Michelle Staheli who live in The Woodlands, Karen and David Kessler, Don and Kathleen Keller, Steve and Sue Feil, Dan and Linda Jones, Ron and Linda Burgerner, Collins and Barbara Steward, and many, many others. Sister Linda Peterson took photos. Sister Beckstrom, Carolee Weber, and Karen Amason did most of the food stuff. The outstanding thing was the video of Paul and Kate's childhood photos and their wedding pictures. It is absolutely wonderful, and I look foward to sharing it with each of you over the coming months. Kate's parents, Val and Debbie Jones, had flown to Houston from St. George for the Open House. When they came over to the house after the reception, Debbie was very impressed with Ken Turner's painting of St. George and the Second Coming. She said `This is a spiritual painting.' I was very touched by her insight of what Ken and I attempted to create. I gave them a copy of Prime Words, which is my personal endowment for you kids.
All in all it was a wonderful week. The highlight was going through the endowment session at the Dallas Temple (0025.html) with Melanie. A close second was to participate in Paul and Kate's Houston Open House. And isn't it wonderful this ranking is arbitrary and doesn't really matter. After all, life freely, or should I say naturally, provides us with a course of instruction designed to optimize our personal journey back to Heavenly Father. It is our own personal subpattern of the eternal pattern known today in The House of The Lord as the endowment."