Local Priesthood Leader Message
The Temple—The Great Symbol of Our Membership
“The Spirit we feel in the temple helps us to improve ourselves, and we can experience the reality, power, and hope of the Savior’s Atonement in our individual lives.”
On June 6, 1994, the day after Howard W. Hunter (1907–1995) was set apart as President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he extended two invitations to the members of the Church. Speaking with a tone of gentle encouragement, he said: “First of all, I would invite all members of the Church to live with ever more attention to the life and example of the Lord Jesus Christ, especially the love and hope and compassion He displayed. …
“I also invite the members of the Church to establish the temple of the Lord as the great symbol of their membership and the supernal setting for their most sacred covenants. It would be the deepest desire of my heart to have every member of the Church be temple worthy.”1
From that moment on, all my thoughts turned to the house of the Lord. At that time, I had been in the Church for three years and it was the first time to watch a living prophet on television. This event has remained engraved in me to this day. Fifteen years later, in 2009, I entered the temple for the first time with my wife for our endowment and sealing. It was then that I had a deeper testimony of the truthfulness of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ—for Joseph Smith the Prophet could not have devised all of this when he himself was a man with very little formal education. Rather, that there is a Supreme Being who revealed to him all these things.
So, I started working towards bringing my children to the house of the Lord to be sealed as family. On Friday, August 15, 2014, Sister Kongolo and I went to the temple with our two children and they were sealed to us. It was an unforgettable experience. We spent three weeks in South Africa and managed to go to the temple four times a week and to attend at least two sessions each day. The Spirit we feel in the temple helps us to improve ourselves, and we can experience the reality, power, and hope of the Savior’s Atonement in our individual lives.
Linda K. Burton, Relief Society General President from 2012 to 2017, said, “We can receive inspiration and revelation in the temple—and also power to cope with the adversities of life”2.
When I was called as president of the Lubumbashi Democratic Republic of the Congo Stake, I knew that to be a good leader, one has to have been in the temple to receive sacred ordinances. Once, during a leadership meeting, I requested that—in order for us to establish the temple as the great symbol of our membership—we should organize ourselves to go to the temple by saving money. A few leaders followed this initiative and, in 2015, we embarked on a trip to the temple with our wives—traveling from Lubumbashi to Johannesburg. For the next two years we made an annual trip to the temple.
I know that when we remain faithful to the ordinances and covenants we have made, we will be led by inspiration and not by sight—and we will receive priesthood power to better lead with zeal the children of God under our stewardship.
As stated in 1 Peter 5:1–3, “The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:
“Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind;
“Neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.”
The prophet of the Lord, President Russell M. Nelson, said, “The assaults of the adversary are increasing exponentially, in intensity and in variety. Our need to be in the temple on a regular basis has never been greater. … I promise you that the Lord will bring the miracles He knows you need as you make sacrifices to serve and worship in His temples.”3 Going to the temple allows us to be in the presence of the Lord, to be guided by Him and to receive the inspiration we need to guide His children in our various responsibilities. I quote again the Lord’s prophet who said, “Obedience to the sacred covenants made in temples qualifies us for eternal life—the greatest gift of God to man”4. The covenant is a promise, an agreement between our Heavenly Father and His children. God sets the terms, which we accept. By keeping these covenants, we can qualify for the blessings of exaltation and eternal life.
Elder David A. Bednar, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said, “The ordinances of salvation and exaltation administered in the Lord’s restored Church are … authorized channels through which the blessings and powers of heaven can flow into our individual lives”5.
President Nelson asked members of the Church to keep on the covenant path. He explained, “Your commitment to follow the Savior by making covenants with Him and then keeping those covenants will open the door to every spiritual blessing and privilege available to men, women, and children everywhere.”6
The Lord gives us power to resist our enemies, as recorded in the Kirtland Temple dedicatory prayer in Doctrine and Covenants 109:24–26, “We ask thee, Holy Father, to establish the people that shall worship, and honorably hold a name and standing in this thy house, to all generations and for eternity;
“That no weapon formed against them shall prosper; that he who diggeth a pit for them shall fall into the same himself;
“That no combination of wickedness shall have power to rise up and prevail over thy people upon whom thy name shall be put in this house.”
As we go to the temple of the Lord, we must prepare ourselves spiritually and temporally because we are going to make an appointment with the Lord, as recorded in 1 Corinthians 3:16–17, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
“If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.”
This means that our body, which is the temple of the Spirit of the Lord, enters the temple, which is the house of the Lord, and that is how we receive protection and blessings.
I testify that the temple is truly the house of our Lord. If we make appointments and remain faithful by keeping on the covenant path, as President Nelson said, we will have the blessings promised to the faithful saints.
Pungwe S. Kongolo was named an Area Seventy in April 2018. He is married to Séraphine Mugo Ngwezya. They are the parents of two children. Elder and Sister Kongolo reside in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo.