At the Salt Lake Temple, those who are baptized for the dead are usually limited to five or six names per person. That was instituted a long time ago, partly because, as I was told, the number of baptisms done were far outnumbering the number of endowments being done. So they cut back on the number of baptisms per person to try and get things evened out a bit, which they never have succeeded in doing. A lot of adults do feel guilty because they feel they are taking away from the youth if the adults do any baptisms, but I try to educate them that that is NOT the case. When an adult does the baptising, he can always be baptised himself by the next adult coming into the font to baptize. And the women usually have no more of a reason than they dont want to get their hair wet. To me, that's just a case of not understanding or having a testimony of the work. I can sympathize with you in the Provo area having a lot of unendowed youth and young adults for baptisms. While we dont have that problem in our stake to the same extent, I frequently get requests from the youth leaders in my own ward as well as in OTHER wards in the stake for family names. That's because the word has gotten out that my parents were the only ones in my line to joing the church. They are now on the other side of the veil, and since I took over researching my lines, I have found over 3 thousand ancestors that I have qualified for temple ordinances. So, knowing that, I often get calls asking for family names when the temple requires family names for certain sessions our youth go on for baptisms. For a long time I was supplying names, because there is no way I can do all this work myself. However, recently I started politely declining because I thought that the temple requiring family names MIGHT inspire more members in the stake to get going on their own research instead of easily relying on me for family names. It remains to be seen whether I am right or not. Personally, I love not only DOING the baptising, but also being baptised myself, especially if it is for my own ancestors. Before the 5 name limit was instituted and I was a veil worker in the Salt Lake Temple, I would often fill time by baptizing. On some occasions I would be in the font for over an hour baptising those who came and would officiate for a couple hundred names before getting out of the font. If adults are educated AND they are helped to get the Spirit of Elijah, they will realize that they can and should be baptized and they will WANT to as well. But, as long as we are at only about 5 percent of church members who even do ANY family history work, that isnt going to change much. > From: jncrandell@broadweave.net > To: lds-ward-consultant@rootsweb.com > Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 16:30:32 -0600 > Subject: Re: [LDS-WC] Youth temple work > > Michele wrote: > "It seems to me that some areas suffer who are not yet on NFS. When your > temple is on NFS, the REGULAR stake assignments have adequate names to pull > from as the temple downloads the expected need." > > The reality is that all temples are different, which is partly what I have > been trying to communicate in support of David's request for temple cards > for a youth temple trip. I live in Provo, and you have to realize that not > only do we have a large number of youth growing up here who want to attend > the temple, but we also have literally thousands (tens of thousands?) of > single BYU and Utah Valley University students who are taught to attend the > temple regularly. Until they are endowed, they are going to the baptistry. > This is not an nFS issue, and I don't believe nFS will solve the problem. It > seems to me that the Provo Temple downloads baptisms based on the number of > endowments that can be done, and that is far lower than the number of > baptisms that we have a demand for. > > A number of years ago the missionaries at the MTC were told that they could > no longer perform baptisms, in order to save the baptistry names for those > who are still unendowed. The baptisms were moving so rapidly that the names > were sitting for years before the endowments could be performed. It's just > the nature of the demographics in our temple district. The baptistry is now > open fewer hours than the rest of the temple, and our regular stake > assignments aren't even close to "enough" for our kids to attend the temple. > Our assignment is for 10 kids, once a year. Yes, there are five names per > proxy each year, but we have many more kids than this who want to attend the > temple, and they want to go more regularly than once a year. They definitely > want to go more than once in all of their six Mutual years. The youth > leaders are trying to meet that need and encourage this positive desire, but > it is very difficult to produce the number of names needed. If a group of > kids wants to attend the temple outside of their regular assignment, they > have to bring the cards. That's the rule. > > I was interested in the comment that it's hard to get adults to go to the > baptistry. Based on the problem we have, adults feel guilty if they go to > the baptistry! We feel like we need to give our kids that experience rather > than being "selfish" and wanting to do it ourselves. I joined into this > conversation, because I think we have a potential to help each other. If you > or your ward members are having trouble getting baptisms done, or if you are > sending them to the temple file rather than do them yourselves, please > consider sending them to someone in Utah to share with their local youth. > Personally, I would love to send my kids and their friends to the temple > each week throughout the summer. They could help anyone who would like to > give and receive that service. > > I also agree that we are not doing work for names but for people, but > changing the word "names" to "people who need their ordinances performed" or > something like that to avoid confusion with proxies and other "people" I'm > referring to, I find it easier to say "names." :-) > > Jill Crandell > > Please send the one word message SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to LDS-WARD-CONSULTANT-L-REQUEST@ROOTSWEB.COM > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to LDS-WARD-CONSULTANT-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message