July 2004 Ensign - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

it is their temple. They have made it theirs when they
come here to perform ordinances—or even to clean.”
Local leaders encourage and support them in this work,
he explains. “If I may say it this way, President Hinckley’s
plan was to take the temples to the members and then to
take the members to the temples.”
Throughout Mexico, members are taking to temple
worship and the blessings that flow out of it. From
Matamoros and Ciudad Victoria to Mazatlán and Guaymas,
from Puebla and Campeche to Acapulco, there are members
who rejoice in blessings received through temples
that are now within reach of their homes.
In Monterrey, there was much opposition to the building
of the temple. And yet there are members who can testify
that they saw it in dreams and knew it would be there, says
temple president Eran A. Call, a member of the Seventy
from 1997 to 2000. Here too members speak of it as our
temple. There are no missionaries serving in it, President
Call says—all the workers are local members. Many in the
temple district have caught the spirit of the work. Not long
ago a stake group came bringing 3,000 names of deceased
persons for whom they would perform temple ordinances.
Hope for Eternity
The first meetinghouse built by the Church in Mérida
was very significant for members who helped build it—and,
as was the policy then, pay for it—recalls Saidy Castillo de
Gaona of the Zacil-Ha First Ward, Mérida Mexico Stake.
“The members paid our half with our work—pure hard
labor,” she says. Young Saidy learned to operate the brickmaking
machine while she worked on the project. And it
was there that she met her future husband, Noé, a labor
missionary helping to construct the building.
“When they knocked that building down, it was very
emotional for me,” Saidy continues. “But the important
thing was that they built something of greater value.” The
Mérida Mexico Temple now occupies that site.
As a teenager, Saidy had seen herself in a dream in a
temple in Mérida. “I knew there was going to be a temple.
I asked the Lord to let me live long enough to see it.”
She and her husband were married more than 35 years
ago. They were sealed in the temple in Mexico City shortly
after it was dedicated. Through the years they supported
the Church faithfully in a wide variety of priesthood and
auxiliary callings. When the Mérida temple was dedicated
in 2000, the Gaonas were prepared to serve there too; they
were the first two temple workers set apart.
He was serving in the temple on the day he died suddenly
in late 2002. Saidy says it was only her knowledge of
the eternal nature of marriage that allowed her to cope with
the loss of her companion. “I think if it hadn’t been for the
gospel, I would have wanted to die. The knowledge of the
gospel gives me strength to go on. The gospel is everything
for me. It was everything for my husband too.”
She turned once more to service in the gospel for help
in healing the hurt of her loss. In addition to serving in the
temple, she found solace in giving of herself to her five children
and grandchildren and also in her Church callings. “I
think I’m happiest when I’m working,” she explains.
That may well be true for every member in Mexico.
Those who seem happiest are those who are working to
serve others and spread the gospel. Perhaps without even
thinking about it, they are helping day to day to fulfill
President Kimball’s dream of a vital, growing Church
membership in Mexico. ■
ENSIGN JULY 2004 41