Lessons on the Temple
Lesson No. Sixty-One

 Sustained by Faith, Sacrifice, and Temple Covenants

The Second Rescue - The account of the rescue of the Willie and Martin handcart companies in 1856 on the high plains of Wyoming is well known.  What is not well known is that the temple work for these heroic pioneers was not done until the late 1990s when the Riverton Wyoming Stake came to the rescue, and over 4,200 temple ordinances were performed for these pioneers.  During this time large tracts of land at the Willie and Martin rescue sites were acquired by the Church.  Thousands of the youth of the Church, through trek, are taught to remember what sustained our handcart pioneers.

Like the pioneers we also must pass through the refiner's fire - President Faust said: "In the heroic effort of the handcart pioneers, we learn a great truth.  All must pass through a refiner's fire, and the insignificant and unimportant in our lives can melt away like dross and make our faith bright, intact, and strong.  There seems to be a full measure of anguish, sorrow, and often heartbreak for everyone, including those who earnestly seek to do right and be faithful.  Yet this is part of the purging to become acquainted with God" (Ensign, May 1997, p. 62). 

The reason our prophets teach us of the pioneers is that if we understand what sustained them we can be sustained by the same principles when we experience the refiner's fire.

Temple Covenants sustained the pioneers and it will us also - The fire of the covenant burned in the hearts of over 5,600 pioneers who were sustained in their journey west because of the endowment they received in the Nauvoo Temple.  Temple blessings were the last desire of the Saints as they left Nauvoo, and they were their first desire as they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley.  Two days after they arrived, on July 26, 1847, Brigham Young planted a rod in the ground and said, "This is where we will build a temple to our God."  Temple covenants and blessings sustained the pioneers.  Their daily challenge was to survive.  Our daily challenge of maintaining our spiritual strength is different, more subtle, but equally challenging. 

We must be willing to sacrifice – Willingness to sacrifice was required of the pioneers and it is required of us.  The Lectures on Faith, Sixth teaches:  “Let us here observe that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation….When a man has offered in sacrifice all that he has for the truth’s sake, not even withholding his life…then, he can obtain the faith necessary for him to lay hold on eternal life”

The pioneers were willing to sacrifice their all to establish Zion in the West.  We are under covenant to give all that is necessary to establish Zion in our homes and families. 

Willing obedience is the sacrifice the Lord requires - "And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit.  And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost" (3 Nephi 9:20).  The commitment of our agency to willingly obey is the sacrifice the Lord desires but never compels.  It is the only thing we have to give him that is really our own.  Everything else is already his.

In our homes and in the temple we most closely follow the example of the Lord – Through his atonement the Lord gave his life in an infinite and eternal sacrifice.  He did for us what we can't do for ourselves.  In our families we are to sacrifice for each other and for our children and for our ancestors by doing for them what they can’t do for themselves.  Remember, "We love what we sacrifice for and we sacrifice for what we love" (Ezra Taft Benson, Christmas Devotional, 7 Dec 1986).