Temple Trip

I'm sometimes taken aback with Justice's spirituality.  Even before we started going to church, even before he had any true knowledge of Jesus, he KNEW Jesus.  He fumbled through prayers as a very young child with no prompting from us.  He has been close to Jesus as long as I can remember, in spite of the lack of early childhood teachings in the home.  And when we started going to church, and he was baptized, he blossomed into the most spiritual person I know.  He is young, his spirituality is innocent, fresh, and amazes me.  It doesn't matter what is wrong in our world, he can fix it with a spiritual thought.  He can fix it with a heartfelt and emotional prayer, and he can fix it with a scripture.  

As a prior leader in a youth organization in my church, I have been to the temple with the youth several times.  I have seen many youth go into the waters of baptism for the first time on behalf of someone else.  I have had the honor of witnessing the work being done for their deceased ancestors and others that have died without being baptized.  (I'm not going to go into the details of what and why we do what we do in the temple, but if you'd like to read about it, here is a link… Baptisms For The Dead.)  

Justice's first trip to the temple was important to him for a very big reason.  He was going to perform baptisms and confirmations for several deceased family members on his Dad's side of the family.  I don't have much temple work to do on my side of the family, I've got some unknown family members out there that have been doing it already and it's nearly all complete.  Joe's family has no work done at all.  Doing the genealogy research for his side of the family proved to be a daunting task.  You've never done genealogy work until you've done it for African-American lineage.  The information is sparse.  Official birth records were not kept in most instances, and once the line is traced to slavery, you hit a dead end that can't be fixed.  To make my point clear, I will say that Joe's grandmother passed away at the ripe old age of 100.  Or was she 103?  Nobody knows, as there is no official record of her birth.  The best records are kept in old ledgers and family bibles, most of which were destroyed during Hurricane Hugo.  But family lore gets in the way of the truth sometimes, and the facts just aren't clear.  African-Americans also use nicknames often, and during my search for the truth, I hit brick wall after brick wall finding nicknames instead of real names.  Grandchildren resided with grandmothers that had children younger than the grandchild, so it's impossible to tell which child is a son or grandson.  Women in his family bore children in their very late 40's, having seven or eight or even 12 children per family.  Census paperwork was the best link I had to his past, and it was spotty as African-American's didn't trust the census folks and didn't always tell the complete story.  I did what I could, and with Justice's help we were able to sift through enough records and come up with several people to perform ordnances for.  Two of those people were Joe's father and his grandfather.  Joe loved his grandfather more than any man in his life.  His grandfather taught him to be a man, and he misses him every day.  He, like Joe's Dad, died too young and left a gaping hole in his heart.  To have Joe baptize his own son on behalf of his father and grandfather was a very emotional moment for both father and son.  

I did not realize how emotional until after the confirmations were complete and I realized Justice was crying.  He told me that he had never felt the spirit so strong before in his life, and by the look on his innocent and sweet face there was no doubt of the truth of his statement.  I will NEVER forget wiping those tears off of his wet little face, I will never forget the testimony building experience I got last night from this 12 year old son of mine.  From his powerhouse of an opening prayer that gave me goosebumps and left my jaw agape to the time we walked out of the temple, it was an experience I will never forget.  And neither will he.  What a blessing this boy is to us, and what a blessing the temple and the work performed inside is.