We love the temple and know that understand why temples are important can help our children have a desire to go inside someday! This is Part 1 of a series of videos we will be creating for kids. We hope this helps your children prepare and love the temples of God.
John Rowe Moyle
In the video, Hyrum shares John Rowe Moyle’s story about working on the Salt Lake City Temple. Do you want to know if you are related to him? Just CLICK the image below to download this free guide and we will show you how!
Watch “Only a Stonecutter”
You can watch the entire story of John Rowe Moyle that the church put together years ago. Just click on the link below.
Carving Activity
Once you are done watching the video, you can make your own wooden blocks with God’s name to set beside your bed to remember that God comes first and that he loves you. Get a piece of wood, nail, and hammer. Then write God’s name on it with a pencil and then pound little holes around it. Post your competed blocks on social media and tag us at @mtcforkids! We would love to see them.
Temple Booklet
We have created 10 FHE lessons that you can use to help prepare for a temple Open House in your area or just to incorporate into your Family Home Evening Lessons. Click the link to see it in our Etsy shop.
Video Transcript Below
By God’s power, Moses sent 10 plagues, freed the Israelite slaves, parted the Red Sea, fed the people with manna from heaven, and taught the 10 commandments. God then told Moses in Exodus 25:8, “And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.”
What is a sanctuary? A sanctuary is a holy place, a place of refuge or safety. Have you ever been to a bird sanctuary? This is a place where birds and plants live. Birds gather together for survival and are protected from hunting by people.
A bird sanctuary is kind of like what God told Moses to build. Just as a bird sanctuary protects the birds, the tabernacle and now temples, protect us. We are given power from God to help us overcome the fiery darts of the adversary or temptations of the world.
Let’s pretend that this bowl of water is the world and that this black pepper is all of the bad things we find in the world, the fiery darts, or temptations. What are some examples? We just learned about the 10 commandments so when we are tempted to break a commandment those are some of the things that are not good for us and fill the world with evil or the bad things. Like stealing, fighting, lying, saying bad things about others, using God’s name in vain, not keeping the sabbath day holy and many many other things.
Now our world doesn’t look so clean anymore. So how can we live in this world and not get all yucky from the pepper or sins of the world? We have Jesus Christ and we have his holy house on earth today. Temples give us 4 things or the 4 P’s: power, protection, peace, and purpose through the priesthood of God.
When we live in the world but we have power, protection, peace, and purpose from temples which is God’s house, we can live in the world but not be off the world, we can have power to choose the right, protection to fight back against the evils of the world, peace in knowing that we are sons and daughters of loving heavenly parents, and purpose in God’s plan of happiness.
Even though you are young we can still learn about the temple, pray, read your scriptures, be baptized, follow the holy ghost, go to church, repent so one day when you get older you can go to the temple. Do you remember the four things the temple gives us: power, protection, peace, and purpose!
Part of our purpose in life, is to use our talents and gifts from God to bless others. When Moses was building the tabernacle many people used their talents help build it. When God restored the church through the prophet Joseph Smith he was commanded to build temples.
Have you ever seen a temple? Here are children from around the world that did get to see a temple. I love the temple. They are big and beautiful and bless children all over the world.
Have you seen what is written on front of the temple? It says, “Holiness to the Lord: The House of the Lord.” Do you know who carved the words on the Salt Lake City temple? His name was John Rowe Moyle and he lived a long time ago. He was a stonemason that means he carved things out of stone like a hard rock.
President Young called him to be a stonemason on the temple. He woke up at 2am so he could walk 22 miles to the temple. It took him 6 hours of walking. That is a long time. He would work on the temple all week and then walked back home on Friday night and he would get home at midnight. He worked on the temple for 20 years that would be over 321,000 miles. That is like walking around the whole earth about 12 times! Yikes, that is a lot of walking!
One day the family cow named Old Lindy, kicked and broke John’s leg. They had to cut it off and John made himself a wooden leg. This is the picture of his wooden leg. A broken leg didn’t stop John, he kept walking to the temple limping the whole way! He climbed 100 feet into the air to chisel in stone when he was 77 years old the words, “Holiness to the Lord: The House of the Lord.” He died 4 years before the Salt Lake City Temple was dedicated.
Why did he continue to walk to the temple and work on it for so many years even after he lost his leg? Because he loved God and knew that temples were holy places where promises made between God and his people took place.
How can you be like Brother Moyle and show your love for God and his temples? We can start by walking on the covenant path. That path that takes us back to our heavenly parents.
We are going to talk more about temples and how we even when we are young can learn and prepare to go to the temple someday! In this video, we learned that temples are a holy place, a house of God, a safe place where we make promises with God.
We also learned that they give us power, protection, peace, and purpose. Having a picture of the temple by your bed is a great way to remember to keep the commandments and follow Jesus so you can go inside the temple someday and make covenants and promises with God. You can also be like Brother Moyle and carve God’s name into a piece of wood to help you remember to always put God first, remember that is the first commandment.
Get some help from your parents and find a piece of wood, nail, and hammer. Use the nail and hammer to make the word God. Then put it by your bed to help you remember to keep your eye on God and his temple. Because “where you look is where you go!” Sister Neill F. Marriott
