Once upon a time...

...in a suburb of a big city in the desert, there was an announcement made:

A beautiful temple was to be built right smack dab in the most convenient location for so many hundreds of families.

The families were pleased as punch about that. They loved temples.

One of the local church leaders made a challenge to the families in his area. He requested that each family go and take a family picture on the plot of land where the temple was to be built. He told them that as they visited that spot to take pictures, and again and again as that temple rose from the strong foundation it would have, that they would grow to love that temple even more. As they watched it grow, so would they grow in faith and love for what that temple would represent.

Well, there were many families who took that challenge to heart.

One particular family, (one with a picture-taking-adverse father, a picture-taking maniac mother, one big boy, three medium-sized girls and one spit-fire three-year-old) tried over and over again to get to that spot when the light was just right and when they weren't running five different directions. They planned three different times to get there but each time their plans were foiled.

Until one day that picture-taking maniac of a mother decided enough was enough, and piled her kids in the car at the last minute even though their dad was out of town (which, she realized, would make him jump for joy because really, another family picture just may have done him in anyway).

They started traipsing through the gorgeous field where the temple would some day stand, bulldozers poised for their job at hand in the distance. The family was delighted...until they looked back and realized they were in for trouble with a capitol "T." That spit-fire three-year-old of theirs wasn't happy.
No, not one little bit.

And this family knew full-well from experience that she meant business when she decided she wasn't happy.

They offered up their best efforts to cajole that girl to snap out of it with no luck so they opted for individual shots.

Finally after some valiant efforts (and some patience), the bad mood spell was broken...mostly by the six-year-old girl who knew the ins and outs of her little sister's "language" quite well.That three-year-old stinker suddenly did anything her family told her to do, even pose for her brother's cell phone picture he wanted to take.

Which made him look like this:
Pictures were at last taken of all the children together...some with the sixth child, Dora, included.
And the mother fell in love with them so much that she couldn't even decide which one to put on her blog.
Not because the children were perfectly posed and primped...in fact they were quite worn out after all the work with their little sister, and it was hot, and sticky and sweaty in that field.

But that mother fell in love with the pictures because they radiated the love those children had for each other (and for her because they let her take them).
And because seeing her children in that field where that temple would some day stand did something to her heart. Her children couldn't know the depth of what that temple would symbolize to her: that she got to be with these children of hers forever. And that they got to be with each other forever too.

But she knew it.

And she was glad because despite their fights and drama and eye-rolling at each other at times, she knew that really, being together forever is exactly what these children would want.
This mother hoped that her children would feel that tugging of love grow in their hearts too as they watched that beautiful building grow.

And that what her church leader had said would come true: that as they watched that temple grow, their spirits would grow with it.The End.

(But not really the end because Part two of this story is HERE.
Part three is HERE.
and Part four is HERE.)

Labels: , ,