HUMILITY AND OBEDIENCE
Lessons Learned
Fred and Christine Finlinson
11/27/08
Lesson #1, November 26, 2008
It all started on Sunday, November 23, 2008 when Brother Abney from the High Council dropped a note to me as he was leaving the stand after conducting Stake Business in Sacrament Meeting. My first error was that I did not read his note which he mentioned was about a temple cleaning assignment until later on Sunday night just before going to Tyson’s birthday party. It was then I discovered that our assignment, three members to clean the Timpanogos Temple was for Wednesday night from 6:00 pm until 10:00 pm on the night before Thanksgiving.
It just didn’t seem fair or right. We had Jazz tickets, a lot of people would be out of town and Thanksgiving is a time for families. I got pretty “hot” thinking about the inappropriateness of the assignment. I called the Stake President, but fortunately for me he was out of town. I then called the Messenger, Bro. Abney, and started asking questions. I thought I wasn’t shooting the messenger, but Chris thought I had stepped over the line. As a result of my interrogatories, I found out that our Stake had not learned about the assignment until Friday afternoon, the 21st. There had been an agonizing discussion at High Council Meeting about the short notice, and being on the evening before Thanksgiving. Pres. Delis had counseled that the temple needs to be cleaned, let’s see if we can find 30 members out of close to 6,000 that would be willing to clean the Temple.
In the exchange, my question was whether the members in our ward should even be asked. The stake encouraged us to ask, but then said they would understand if members couldn’t make it because of the short notice and being on the night before Thanksgiving. In my mind, asking some one to serve and then saying they could understand why they couldn’t serve is the same as telling the person that they would not be expected to serve. So the first struggle that I had to deal with, was should I even ask someone to serve.
Part of my attitude was being driven by the fact that I had blown the best opportunity to make the assignment to others in the Ward when I didn’t read the note in detail until late on Sunday evening. The opportunity to go to the Priesthood and Relief Society had passed because of my error. When Chris suggested that my attitude was out of line, it was like being hit with a hard dose of reality. It really hurt and I started to step back and think a little clearer. I had just finished reading a book about the Mountain Meadow Massacre. Good people did a very bad thing on that event and most used the excuse, that they were just doing what their leaders had asked them. Blind obedience may not be a defense; however, the basic request from my leaders was to help clean the temple, not kill innocent people. So I had to discard the blind obedience justification and come face to face with the simple request to serve by cleaning the temple.
I concluded that we would fill our ward’s allocation and rather than delegating this assignment to the Priesthood and Relief Society, I would go personally. I planned to ask Pat Patterson, 1st Counselor in the Bishopric and Darrel Wendell, the High Priest Group leader to go with me. As Chris and I talked further about this, she volunteered to go with me. When I asked Pat, his wife Donna volunteered. We were starting to look forward to a double date, cleaning the temple. Pat told me that there was good news and bad news. Donna would go, that was good, but the bad news, she didn’t want to hear any complaining about the call. I readily accepted Dona’s terms, but there were still lessons that I needed to learn.
The brief note from Brother Abney asked those coming to wear clean work clothes. There was no mention of whether white clothes were required and I couldn’t get an answer from anybody about the color of the work clothing. I concluded that I would wear jeans and a work shirt and if they wanted white, I could go home. On Tuesday, after I had reported our names to Brother Abney, Donna got pneumonia and requested a pass which was deserved. Just after I learned that Donna couldn’t go, Dale Nguyen called on other matters. He is our Executive Secretary. He volunteered to join Pat and me. With this option, Chris decided to stay home, she might be able to attend the Jazz game, but that opportunity had passed and it let her stay home and work with Lorrie to get ready for Thanksgiving dinner.
My attitude started to change from Sunday night to Wednesday morning, when I finally spoke with Pres. Delis about other issues, I mentioned the Temple assignment and expressed that my decision to participate was penitence for my bad attitude. He suggested that perhaps I should attempt to clean the temple each week. I think he was kidding me, but maybe not. As Pat and I drove over to the temple on Wednesday night, we were still facing the white issue, and the remote hope, that it would be required and we could go home, but as soon as we saw others in jeans and sweatshirts, “white” became a non issue. There was one last straw, our instructions said nothing about parking or were to enter the temple. It was clear that there was only one way and it was not the front door, we had to walk from the West parking lot around to the Southeast corner and enter through the basement service entry, the servants’ lowly entry. This could have been the last straw.
In a way it was the last straw, as we entered, cleared security and recommend checks, we learned that over 119 people responded to this call to serve on the night before Thanksgiving. The staff at the temple directing the cleaning was overwhelmed with the turn out. Our stake had over 40 in attendance. Other stakes responded with the largest turn out for a cleaning they had experienced since the Temple became operational. The previous high number was 96. I was assigned with Pat, Dale, and Eric Bucker from the Sunrise Meadows Ward and a good tenor, to a crew cleaning doors and bathrooms in the basement around the cafeteria. The wood was cleaned with Murphy’s oil, then touched up with lemon oil, then polished. We used queue tips to get dust out of the cracks and we cleaned bathroom title with little tile brushes. We even used a mop to clean the ceiling, the walls, and the floors. We topped off our assignment by going back to all of the doors to clean up and polish the chrome fixtures with a vinegar mixture that really polished.
Through out the temple, the cleaning process was in full swing. After about two hours, the assigned work was completed. Kathy, our supervisor, invited the four of us to come into a spot in the temple that we would probably never get to see. She had our attention, wondering what this place would be, would it be the “Holy of Holies?” In a way it was, she took us up to the Brides’ room. She was right; we would never on our own get to see this beautiful room. There is a chandelier in the Brides’ room that is the probably the prettiest chandelier in the Temple, and on Tuesday night it had been taken down and each single piece had been cleaned, polished and reattached. It was just beautiful.
As I had obeyed, my attitude softened. As I addressed each issue, there was a resolution that enabled me to advance to the next issue. By the time we were in the basement room with all of the others who had responded, I was in the right attitude. The combined group had a prayer and then the work started. We cleaned and polished and in the words of Aunt Elizabeth Finlinson Foy, we “were where we were supposed to be, doing what we were supposed to do, when we were supposed to do it.” The realization of my lesson of obedience and humility was received in the Brides’ room as I remembered and shared Chris’s story of “humility and obedience.”
Lesson #2, January 2, 1998
This is Chris’s story and she tells it with great class. In preparation for our wedding, Chris had taken a lot of preparation to make it special. She had contacted the Salt Lake Temple to learn what the requirement was for white shoes with heels because she didn’t like the temple issued white slippers. They gave her the specifications and we spent the after noon of New Year’s Eve, 1997, going to six different stores to find white shoes that fit temple specifications. Finally at the sixth store at about 6:30 pm, we found just the right pair and made the expensive purchase at Dillard’s. While crossing the street to enter the Temple early Monday morning, one of the shoes fell out of its carrying bag unknown to Chris. A person behind her saw it fall, picked it up and brought it to Chris so that she had the right shoes for her wedding.
Chris had her wedding dress designed so that it could be worn both as her temple dress and her wedding dress for the rest of the day. It was classy and it was lined to meet temple specifications. Chris doesn’t like bumps or bulges in clothing. This dress was a work of art created by Mel Brown’s daughter in law. This was just part of the preparation that she had done to make this a very special occasion. Pres. James E. Faust was going to marry us. Our families would be there to support us, and we were really looking forward to getting married.
Then Chris ran into the Salt Lake Temple Sisters in the Brides’ room. Chris was a regular temple attendee, she knew the “drill” on how to wear the temple clothing and her mother, Edith, was there to help when it was needed. Edith and Virgil worked in the Mesa Temple for almost twenty years and Edith had helped numerous brides get ready for their marriages. This wasn’t “her first rodeo.” They were well prepared to get up to the sealing room for the pending marriage and then they ran into the Temple Sisters in the Brides’ Room.
The first encounter evolved quickly. Chris headed for her locker and planned to dress in front of her locker as is the general custom for temple worshipers. But this was not to be, the Sisters wanted her to dress in the middle of the room where all could see how beautiful her dress was while they made sure that she had her garments on the right way for the wedding. Chris begrudgingly made the move to the middle of the room and then the second encounter occurred. As she made the move to put on her lined wedding dress, she was stopped. Oh sister, you need to wear a slip. Chris explained that the dress was lined so that a slip wouldn’t be needed and she also indicated that her experience with “temple slips” was that it was hard to find one small enough and most of the time they “clinged” badly. There was no give in the Temple Sisters, so Chris tried on the first slip they brought, it was about a foot and half too long. They brought a second slip and it wrapped around her tighter than saran wrap. The third slip didn’t cling, but it was a little long, so rather than try on more for the perfect fit, Chris decided to fold it over a couple of times to get the right length. She really wanted to get married rather than try on slips for the rest of the day.
That should have been enough, but the Temple Sisters were just getting started. They then suggested that Chris should pin her locker key to her slip so that it would not be lost. They were not impressed with Chris’s proposal to give the key to her mother who would be right by her side the entire temple experience. Chris was sure that it had to be their way or the highway, so she allowed them to pin it to her temple slip and endured the bulge under her dress. It would match with the bulge from the slip folds. With her dress in place, it was time to put on the new temple shoes. The Temple Sisters were not impressed. In their mind, only the Temple slippers would work. It didn’t matter that the new shoes complied with the temple specifications, the only way Chris was getting out of the Bride’s room was in Temple slippers.
During these encounters Edith was amused, but she kept quiet as she watched Chris deal with these items of stress; however, at times she just giggled. Now it was time to put on Chris’s bonnet and fix her veil. The tradition is that the Bride’s Mother gets to do this. Edith had spent 20 years helping brides in the Mesa Temple and she was confident in her ability to properly place the bonnet and veil. She proceeded to do just that and then her confidence left her because the Temple Sisters didn’t feel that it had been done right. When informed that it was up to the Mesa Temple standards, the Temple Sisters informed Edith that in the Salt Lake Temple, is wasn’t right and it had to be adjusted to the Salt Lake Temple Standards. It was adjusted accordingly, but now both Mother and Daughter were nodding their heads and muttering under their breath, “Humility and Obedience.”
By the time they made it to the sealing room, the waiting Groom could tell immediately that something was bothering both the Bride and the Mother. The nodding of the head is a classic Roberts’ warning sign. It is not unlike the raised tail on a charging buffalo. I immediately asked what was wrong. The only response from the Bride was, “Humility and Obedience. Let’s go in and get married.”
We did, as we entered into the sealing room, the love from our family and friends immediately replaced the stress from the Brides’ Room. President Faust conducted our marriage with “class” and pronounced an Apostolic Blessing on our effort to combine our two families. Our lives have been blessed as a result of our union; however, a negative response to the lesson of Humility and Obedience may have stopped our union from occurring.
Both lessons of humility and obedience teach true principles. There is a process that needs to occur as we have to shed some, if not all, of our feelings until we are ready to obey our Father in Heaven. We have found that when we are humble and obedient, the Lord blesses us beyond our comprehension. Our love experience together as husband and wife is such a blessing. The sweetness on the ride home from the temple on Wednesday night was far better than the attitude on Sunday night. It just works that way when “you are where you are supposed to be, doing what you are supposed to do, when you are supposed to do it.”
With all of our love, Fred and Chris.
Hannah, Ty, and Brady
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