Just as the Savior admonished His disciples during His mortal ministry to "stand in the holy place (JS-Matt. 1:12)," latter-day disciples should also stand in holy places for a refuge from the storms of life.
"Prominent among such holy places," said Elder Lance B. Wickman in his Sunday afternoon address, "and key to all the others, is the temple of the Lord."Elder Wickman of the Seventy related an incident when he, as an Army infantry officer, had orders to go to Vietnam during the war there. He talked of the pain of leaving his wife, Pat, in Hawaii. "At last, the hour of parting arrived. I clutched my bride to my bosom and kissed her one last time, and then I was gone."
As he traveled toward the airfield with his heart about to break, he saw a flare fired into the night sky.
"Its brilliance momentarily lit the inky darkness and seemed to ignite a spiritual flame in the blackness that invested my soul," he said. "My thoughts were drawn away from this saddest of days to the very happiest: back to that beautiful December day when Pat and I had entered the Holy Temple and there were sealed to each other, not just for this life only, but for all eternity. I thought of the eternal covenants we had made. Like the sunrise, it dawned on me that no matter what happened in the uncertain future just ahead, Pat would always be mine."
Elder Wickman said the temple is the key to salvation because it is a place of thanksgiving, a place of instruction and a place of understanding "in all things." (See D&C 97:12-14.) Then, he said, comes this glorious promise:
"Yea, and my presence shall be there, for I will come into it, and all the pure in heart that shall come into it shall see God." (D&C 97:16.)
Elder Wickman and his wife have faced other challenges including two other goodbyes during the war, the death of a 5-year-old son and the birth of a handicapped daughter.
"Life has brought us its challenges, as it does to all," he said. "But through the years, I have come to appreciate the wisdom of a dear friend, a patriarch and temple sealer. He said, `Lance, the joy I receive is more than just being in the temple. The temple is in me. And when I leave the temple its peace goes with me.
"So it can be for every righteous soul. When we visit the temple as often as distance and individual circumstance permit, the temple will be in us."
