Temples Can Show Us How to Achieve Reverence, Peace, and Happiness (Multiple Sharing Time Suggestions)

I Can Feel Reverence and Peace in the Temple

This idea will take two weeks to present. It will require full cooperation from your presidency, bishopric, and primary workers.

Week One: We Need a Recommend to Enter the Temple

Materials needed: driver's license, work card, passport, and a temple recommend
Pie chart with each component of receiving a temple recommend

Procedure:

Take time to have the children tell you what each of the first three items are for. What do we need to do to get them? Are you excited about being able to drive someday? Work? Travel? What are the benefits that come from each activity?

Hold up the recommend. What is this? Show the children the pie chart. You could also have the bishop come in and go over the process of getting a recommend. He could ask the children some of the questions they would be asked if they were getting a recommend. Cover the things they might know already, such as obey the Word of Wisdom, prayer, paying tithing, obeying parents, being honest, attending church meetings, etc.). Each child should then be given a symbolic recommend of their own to sign. Have the presidency or the teachers keep the recommends for week two. It may also be good to involve parents in this sharing time by sending a letter home explaining what you will be doing so they can help the children prepare for week two. Ask the children to try and wear something white for the next week.

Week Two: I Can Feel Peace and Reverence in the Temple

Materials needed and preparation: VCR, DVD or laptop to show a film of the inside of a temple
Table set up outside the primary room where children will show their recommends, have a member of the bishopric there to check recommends
All teachers or primary workers should get there early to ensure the children get their recommends quickly
Banner for outside door with "House of the Lord" on it
All Primary Workers should be dressed in white clothes just as in the temple
Have the pianist there early playing very reverent music just as is done in the temple chapel
Have the Primary room set up more as a chapel

It is essential to have everything planned perfectly and set up on time so the atmosphere of the temple can be duplicated. You want the children to feel the difference the atmosphere has.

Procedure:

As the children enter the "temple," they should be seated an should be able to feel the difference in the room. Have at least one member of the presidency up front standing quietly. After most of the children are seated, have the children sing "I Love to See the Temple" and have the opening prayer. After the prayer, show the video of the temple interior. After the video, take time to discuss how the children felt about the experience. What felt different? As they looked at the video, what things did they notice about the temple? What does peace mean? What does the temple teach you about peace? What does the temple teach you about reverence? In looking at the temple and feeling the peace there, how can you keep that peace with you when you are at home? At school, etc?

Include a handout to encourage the children to remain worthy to enter the temple, such as a scripture (1 Thessalonians 2:11-12: As ye know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children, that ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory.)

Discussion

Discuss with the children what reverence, peace, and happiness mean. Have these words on strips of paper and place them in envelopes, one for each class. Have the definitions on large word strips or use pictures to illustrate the words. Have the classes match up the pictures or word strips with the words. It would be helpful to have pictures from the temples available so you can discuss how the temple looks inside. Also, discuss that at the temple, we can learn many things that will help us in our everyday life.

Object Lesson

Have a compass or sextant available for primary. Discuss with the children what the compass does and what the sextant does. Show how the compass works. Then, using a blanket, put a child under the blanket so he/she can't see the orientation of the room. Have him point north as he is turned. Then show pictures of some temples. Explain to the children that the temple is a spiritual compass. It can teach us many things about peace, reverence, and happiness. The temple is an ever-present reminder that God intends the family to be eternal. Seeing the temple, living for the blessings of going there is like keeping our eyes on the "north" on the compass.

We Can Learn that Inner Peace Comes from Choosing the Right

Materials: Pictures of the inside of the temple
Calm, peaceful music played on the piano

As you show the pictures, let them hear the music. Say "The temple is a very quiet, calm, peaceful place. It is not possible to feel anger and peace at the same time. Peace comes from obedience to God's laws. As we try to live his commandments and choose the right, we will have a good, peaceful feeling inside and that is the way it feels inside the temple."

You could go over different situations where the children practice choosing the right choice.

I Can Be Happy When I Keep the Commandments

Using pictures, stories, or role play, illustrate how we can be happy by choosing the right and following the commandments One of the things Heavenly Father has asked us to do is to be sealed as family in the temple, to be married in the temple. How does attending the temple and being sealed as a family make us happy?

We Can Make Our Homes Like a Temple

Materials: Picture of a temple
Picture of a home

We can help make our homes more like a temple. In the temple, everything is neat, clean, and orderly. We can keep our rooms neat and tidy; and we can cheerfully help clean the rest of the house too, as well as helping outside in the yard. Inside the temple, people speak kindly and softly. We can make sure that we speak to our parents and brothers and sisters with respect. We could like to make our homes places of peace and love and joy like the temple (see Doctrine & Covenants 88:119). His house is a house of order. Have one of the children read the scripture aloud.

We Can Do Things Now to Make Our Home a Better Place

Materials: Picture of a temple
Poster of a home
Words written on cards: clean, reverent, orderly, service, and love.

Give cards to teachers in your primary who have been to the temple. Ask one to tell briefly how they feel about their word as it pertains to the temple. Post word card on picture of the temple. Then ask a child to tell how they could make their home more like Heavenly Father's temple using that same word and post the word on poster of home. Continue until all words have been discussed.

Conclusion: We can all do things now to make our homes better places by using the temple as an example.

We Can Use the Temple as a Measure for Our Decisions

Materials: Pieces of wood
Hammer
Nails
Saw
Pencil
Yard stick with paper taped to one side, saying "If I do this, will I be worthy to go to the temple?"

When we are building something like a house, we use these tools and materials. (Show and discuss the items brought.) The yardstick is used to measure how long we need the wood to be cut to fit where we are building. If we cut the wood too long, it won't fit, and if we cut it too short, it won't work either. So the yard stick is a very important too. We can use the temple as a "measure" of our decisions. We can ask ourselves, "If I do this, will I be worthy to go to the temple? Will this make me happy?" Use examples of situations.

Baptisms for the Dead

Have a child who has recently graduated from primary and been able to do baptisms for the dead come back to primary and share their experience with the children. Have them tell about the peace and happiness they felt because they were worthy to go to the temple and because they had chosen the right.