Temple Moments: Just the Beginning

One Monday morning in May 1989, Michael Snow drove a couple of times around the parking lot of an LDS meetinghouse near his home in Concord, New Hampshire. Then he decided to go inside.

A conscientious custodian told this young father about the church and then took him to the kitchen. There, a few missionaries were having breakfast on their preparation day. The rest is history. Four weeks later, Michael and his wife, Sandra, and their oldest daughter, Kathleen, then 13, were baptized. The family looks forward to the baptisms of two other daughters, Alexandra and Krysti, when they are old enough.

Sister Snow readily embraced the gospel message her husband discovered. She also had been searching for truth since her youth. When she was 13, she wrote out questionnaires and took them to ministers of about 10 different churches. All answered her questions, but none satisfied her yearnings, She had also been acquainted with several LDS members.

"I didn't know too much about the Church, but I knew a lot about the people, and that made a difference," Sister Snow said. Coincidentally, before her baptism, she started doing family history research. Sister Snow explained that after their baptism, "the next thing we wanted to do was go to the temple. It was really important to us. We wanted to be sealed as a family."

A year later, the Snows and two other families from the ward traveled by cars to the Washington Temple. "Coming over the last hill on the highway--there it was," she said. "The House of the Lord. What a magnificent sight! My heart was beating so hard I was sure my chest would explode!"

Inside the temple, though, the family was calm. "We had a feeling of serenity . . . that we were all going to be together," she said. Significant as the experience was, she added, this was just the beginning of her purpose on earth.

"Now that our temple work is done, we can concentrate on everyone else," said Sister Snow. "I can't wait to go back and do the work for my mother. We have a lot of work to do."

Written by John L. Hart