Happy Sunday: Kyiv Ukraine Temple (or, Making Lives Beautiful)

This is a video of the celebration that took place during the Ukraine Temple dedication last summer. I can't help but shed a tear of tremendous joy and deep gratitude for the faithful Latter-day Saints of Eastern Europe who sacrificed so much to be there. A handful of members from a little branch in northeastern Romania attended the dedication and were absolutely brimming with happiness upon their return. Their elation and edification could hardly be expressed in words, but it was felt by all who heard their accounts of the experience.  [For more on LDS temples, refer back to this post].

A few months earlier I had been living in a town in the more south-central part of the country. There, I met a man who epitomized Anne Shirley's classic definition of living "in the depths of despair." I won't go into the miraculous story that ensued. Perhaps another day. Or maybe I'll even let him tell it. Last month, this man was hardly entrenched in the depths of despair in which he had been wallowing about a year earlier. He had the blessed opportunity of attending the Ukraine Temple where he made beautiful and binding promises with his Heavenly Father. His life is now filled with light, meaning and profound joy from actively living the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It doesn't require a 180 life-adjustment to see and feel the blessings of attending the temple. It makes the sad happy and the happy even happier, though in my current state I feel like I couldn't possibly be happier.

On his baptism day.  He is the one with the dark hair.