Mr. Monson’s announcement of the three temples — in Thailand, Ivory Coast and Haiti — was unexpected, and set off a delirious reaction among Mormon missionaries in Thailand, whose cellphones were filled with texts and calls from home April 5 announcing the news in the middle of the night.
“The room erupted in cheers and shouts,” Elder Elliot Mayo recounted in his blog chronicling his two-year mission in the country. “Young men bouncing on their mattresses, ecstatic with joy and shouting in glee.”
“The district knelt in a prayer of thanks,” he said. “A dream has been realized, a vision reached.”
Mormon temples are not used for regular Sunday worship, which is instead held in smaller chapels. Temples admit only Mormons recommended by clergy. The temples are also the only places where Mormons’ ancestors can be posthumously baptized, married and blessed through sacraments known as “ordinances.”
“Baptism and eternal marriage can be performed in behalf of those who have died,” according to the official LDS website, Mormon Newsroom.
“People who died without receiving essential ordinances — such as baptism and confirmation, the endowment, and sealing — have the opportunity to accept these ordinances,” said the website’s report, titled, “Mormon Temple Rituals: What Happens in LDS Temples.”
Posthumously baptizing ancestors who were not Mormons “is a very important part of the function of the Mormon temple. It’s to do the work for our forefathers, our deceased ancestors,” Elder William R. Walker said in an LDS video.
Living Mormons can have their families “sealed” in a temple.
“Husbands and wives are sealed to each other, and children are sealed to their parents, in eternal families,” LDS said.
via NorthEast Calling http://necalling.com/mormons-bangkok-thailand-temple-project-marks-milestone-for-church-32112
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