What is entailed in giving 172 missionaries a trip to the temple for a Christmas present?

by Barbara Fallick — last modified Jan 05, 2007 04:16 PM

The missionaries from Santiago were all brought to the temple as a Christmas present. Extensive preparation was necessary to make it happen.

The mission president of the Santiago mission (a city about two hours north of Santo Domingo) wanted to bring his missionaries to the temple as a Christmas present. It is not a simple thing to do that. I'm not sure of all the arrangements that had to be made on the Santiago end. I do know that the trip had to be spread over two days with half of the elders/approximately 10 sisters coming one day and half coming the second day. They had to arrange a catered meal to feed them each day after their temple service.

On the temple end, we had to make extensive preparation. Sister Peterson, the temple matron, had the mission president have the missionaries fill out the slips for clothing requests ahead of time specifying sizes. Each missionary's name was on his/her slip and the slips were divided into which day they were coming. Sister Peterson alphabetized the slips by last name. Then about four of the sister workers went to the temple the day before the Santiago missionaries were to arrive and we made sure all of the laundry was pressed and folded. This day happened to be Monday, our supposed day off. Then on Tuesday we all arrived at the temple at 7 am (one hour earlier than usual) and pulled the clothing for each missionary and placed them alphabetically on tables. When the missionaries arrived, they were lined up alphabetically and their bundles of clothing were handed them as they reached the clothing counter. That afternoon, we were back in the laundry, folding and pressing the clothing from that group so there would be clothing for the second group. This was after we had served our normal shift that morning. Then we were back in the temple again by 7 am the following day to repeat the process and we had to go back to the laundry that afternoon so the laundry could dig themselves out for the normal patrons that evening.

In the meantime, the brethren were frantically doing initiatory to keep the temple in names. Many shifts the week before the missionaries came, we had only one session the entire shift and the rest of the time was spent doing initiatory because the temples stock of names had gotten so low. The brethren even had special initiatory sessions on Sunday and Monday when the temple is normally closed to get more names done. On these days, they used the initiatory booths on the sister's side as well as the brother's side so they could do more.

I'm sure the missionaries had no idea what strenuous effort had to be made so they could receive their Christmas gift from their president. This happened the week before Christmas when we were all frantically busy preparing Christmas gifts for others and feeling there wasn't enough time as it was. President Peterson says that we must be as swans in the temple, very calm on the surface while paddling madly beneath.

This small portion of the Lord's army, 172 missionaries, all labor in one city. According to one missionary, baptize approximately one stake a year.