Elder Mark A. Bragg on how temple and family history unify families in Christ [20:05-25:09]

your remarks, you refer to the temple as often as you can as the house of the Lord. And I thought, that's, that's not helpful at all. Right? I just didn't think that was great advice, but I was obedient. And so I went and in my comments, I think I went seven for 11. I think seven times I said, house of the Lord and a couple times I said, temple, but, but it's true. His point is when you say house of the Lord, you start to think about what happens in the temple. When you say temple, you think of the structure and it's a beautiful structure, but house of the Lord forces you to think, think about what goes on inside. And, and the great, the great thing there was, as I, as I mentioned that, the next speaker was a city councilman, not a member of the church. He referred to it almost exclusively as a house of the Lord. And then the mayor, who was, uh, not a member of our faith, did the same thing. And even the Sacramento B referred to it as, uh, you know, house of the Lord. So there is power in doing that. So I had to go back out of the bed and say, listen, I doubted you, I apologize. Yeah, it was a great advice. You repent. Yeah, I repent it very, very quickly. We were in Maui together and to the fires there and you spoke to the youth. And I remember you said that to them as well. This was before a house of the Lord was announced from Maui, but they wanted one. I remember that they, they, they every, I think everybody everywhere who wants one, but that, I remember you telling them, refer to it as the house of the Lord. And then that's where your mindset goes like you were explained. That's right. And now they're getting one and now they are and they're so excited about it. But that's, that's how we tie everything that we do. So, so in the family history department, you know, you can start to focus on a lot of different metrics and associate with family search and, and what's going on in family history. But, but if we focus on, again, keeping the main thing the main thing, if we focus on ordinance ready names, if we focus on taking our ancestors, accompanying them, I like to use the word accompanying them to the temple to, to help them receive the ordinances that they need for exaltation, then it's always naturally going to turn to the Lord because that's, that's the focus. Yes. And turning our hearts to our ancestors. And I think to, I tend to like to look for studies. I don't know, I think it'll like it kind of helps justify my thoughts and, and I'll see studies that are done saying how much family history and knowing about where you came from helps your own sense of identity. Yeah. And maybe that's a secular study, but it's all scriptural. It's all doctrinal. This idea that we've, when we know we're coming from and we've connected to our past. And now, like you said, we have accompanied them to the house of the Lord. There's a strength in that that we're getting from each other. I love that because, you know, I, I think there are times where we say, oh gosh, that, that study, that, that's doctrinal. It shouldn't surprise us because the doctrine is pure. The doctrine is truth. It's eternal. So we should never be surprised when a study supports what we believe all along, but I get, I do the same thing. But the, the interesting thing about, there's a study, Emory University and, and the impact of family history on, on the rising generation, the youth. And what they determined was it does. It does give you the sense of belonging. It strengthens them. But there's another nuance to it. It's, it's learning about the, the ups and downs of our ancestors, the challenges, the, the resiliency of our ancestors that allows us to say, okay, I can do this. I can, I can get through this. You know, going back to another experience, one of the archives we visited was in Warsaw, Poland. And, and we asked that question again. So tell me what's, what's one of the treasures in this archive? And you know what she brought out? She brought out the maps that were drawn up after the city of Warsaw was just absolutely decimated. 80% of the city was destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people killed towards the end of the war. And her treasure was, this was the map that was drawn up to say, here's how we're going to rebuild the city. And, and she talked about her ancestors that lived through that. And, and some who died in that. And I could just, you could just see the strength that she got from that. The strength that said, and, and, and, and, and, and all of the people they in, in, in that part of the world that they said, we can get through this. Whatever, whatever is in our way right now. And, in, in 2026, we can get through this because we have this in our DNA. We got through something much, much worse. And I think that's the key is not only knowing the names, but knowing the people. I think that's, that's key to this. Oh, I love that. And, and as well as we join as more and more,