Let Me Just Check That

Tuesday evening I was first follower for the second endowment session. As such, my duties include standing at the door of the chapel and checking everyone's name slip to be sure the previous ordinances have been done.

Once in a while some of the checks to ensure that that has happened (confidential information, my post, the veil) fail and a name gets through that has not had all its ordinance work completed properly. Sr. Price, assistant matron, had stood with me for a few minutes just that evening and cautioned me to be vigilant, noting that last week someone had gone all the way through to the celestial room without any preparatory ordinances having been done. (She also said she wondered if what had really happened was that the sister had had several family file names in her pocket, including one properly marked and for whom she was doing the session, and simply grabbed the wrong one at the veil.)

I had checked five or six people into the chapel when a sister approached me and handed me her name slip. Immediately I noticed that it looked different from the others. The box for endowment was checked, but nothing had been checked or date stamped for initiatory. I asked her to wait a moment, and caught Sr. Crowder's attention, asking her to examine the card.

"Why is initiatory not date-stamped?" she asked me. I replied that I did not know, but had flagged the card as one that had not been filled out correctly prior to getting to this point.

It turned out that initiatory ordinances had not been completed, and the sister in the confidential information booth had not caught that, simply checking the next box and allowing the sister to proceed.

I went back to the woman who had handed me the card and I could tell she was a bit anxious. "You have done nothing wrong," I reassured her. "Not all of the ordinances have been completed for that person yet."

Norma piped up in support. "It's no problem; we'll just take this card back so it can be done. You can get a new card and still do the session."

A look of relief spread over the lady's face. "It is probably my fault," she said. "I must've grabbed the wrong card out of my family file."

I again told her that everything would be find and directed her to go get another name (which she did) and resumed my post, checking name slips as more people arrived to do an endowment session. She soon returned, this time with a correctly filled out name card, and we smiled at each other as she went into the chapel.

Little did she know that it was scary for me, too, to ask her to stop and wait while I checked her card. I am still new enough to serving as an ordinance worker that I don't always know what to do in certain situations. I did know that her card wasn't correct, but I also did not want to interrupt a person's temple worship, either.

Luckily, for both of us, things turned out well.