I had a great desire to visit the temple when I was in Young Women. The Personal Progress program really inspired me and increased my desire to visit the temple. I prepared to receive a patriarchal blessing, I did family history work and prepared to receive the temple recommend. My husband decided to go to the temple after returning from his first YSA conference. Initially, he did not have a desire to go on a mission he just wanted to marry in the House of God. But while he was preparing to visit the temple, he felt a desire to go on a mission and serve the Lord.
My husband and I received our mission call letter on the same day. We left at the same time from the Rajahmundry District but went to different missions. I was called to serve in the India's New Delhi Mission. He was called to serve India Bengaluru mission. We both visited the Manila temple in 2015 where we received our endowments. We also received our patriarchal blessings in the Philippines MTC.
When we attended the temple for the first time the experience was beyond description. We truly felt that it was the House of the Lord. We forgot about the outside world and all worldly things. We felt like everyone who was serving there were angels. Everywhere in the temple we saw people with dressed in white. By seeing them we felt a strong spirit, unity, and peace in the temple. We felt a warm welcome from the servants of the Lord. We felt as if we were royal princes and princesses to our loving Heavenly Father. In the temple, we can understand clearly the plan of salvation. The temple covenants that we make really help us to realize the Lord's plan and his purpose in our lives. We had a wonderful first session in the temple but we knew in the first visit to the temple we could not understand the meaning of everything thing that happened there. That why we need to visit often to understand the purpose of the temple and covenants that we make inside the temple.
Brother Veerababu and I married legally in India on 15 August 2018. We were sealed in the Taiwan temple for time and eternity on 30th August 2018. This was our second temple visit. We are very grateful to Heavenly Father for giving us the wonderful privilege of being sealed in the temple for time and eternity as a family. This time we learned more deeply about the temple and had great spiritual experiences there. When we visited the temple for the first time in Manila we did not get the opportunity to participate in baptisms for the dead and other sacred ordinances. But in the Taiwan temple, we were able to perform all the temple ordinances.
The first ordinance that we experienced was being sealed as a family. As we looked at each other across the altar, we felt that we were born for each other and that God made us be one. We knew at that moment that we would be blessed to strive to receive exaltation, to support each other to receive everlasting life. The feeling was wonderful. The next ordinance we performed was the sealing of our grandparents. Veerababu represented our grandfather and I represented our grandmother. We performed their sealing as a proxy. It was also a great feeling. We also performed baptisms for the dead. We could feel a strong spirit while we were performing baptisms for our ancestors. I could strongly feel that our grandparents joy, happiness, and gratitude. The spirit touched our hearts and tears came. We had one more precious opportunity to serve as a witness couple during an endowment ceremony.
We had many more spiritual experiences and we are really grateful to God for giving us the opportunity to experience and enjoy all the blessings of the temple. We spent five days in Taiwan and didn’t miss the opportunity to attend all the temple sessions. We felt that we were closer to our loving Heavenly Father. We truly felt and understood about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and his love which he shows towards all mankind. Those temple trip days are the most beautiful spiritual days we have had in our lives.
We really know that “we are the link between our past and future generations.' We have the great responsibility to save our ancestors and to be a great example for our future generation. We believe that as we strive to keep the temple covenants that we made by enduring to the end that definitely God will help us to be exalted as a family one day.