Order in All Things

Cottage at Heol-y-gaer by the lane heading west towards Glasbury.

© Copyright Jonathan Billinger and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

It was a very late night as I was excited to find two documents each relating to two people in our family history. And they helped confirm the location of where one of our ancestors lived in a home that still appears to still exists in Glasbury, Wales.

This morning, we went to the Bountiful Temple after late arising and parked near the opening to the underground lot so we could get in easily in the snowfall. My wife had a couple of family names for initiatory and I went to work at the veil. It's not hard work. It is interesting that with all the "priestly class," men and women performing ordinances in the temple, there is no monetary pay. We do pay the custodians as well as the cafeteria and laundry workers. That's how the whole world should work.

Because the regularly assigned volunteers were in a prayer meeting, I was not able to get the information I needed for my part. There was a sign directing me to see the Temple Recorder. I went and the Assistant Recorder took me into a very neat office room with perfect stacks of blue and pink cards. He went to a small safe and tapped in a combination. Opening the door, he took a key out and went to a heavily secured cabinet and opened it up. A scripture came to mind:

let all the records be had in order, that they may be put in the archives of my holy temple, to be held in remembrance for generation to generation, saith the Lord of Hosts.

Here's the thing. I am happy that the Temple keeps such good care of the records. But how we get those records, at least with me late into the dark hours of the night, seems so arbitrary and haphazard. Yes, there are certain tedious and routine exercises to squeeze out the treasures of information. But most of it comes to me in the oddest of ways and connections deep in the subconscious coils of my brain matter. Oh, and the internet. Maybe that's a complex process of biological development making informational links from pieces not consciously known. I can't help but think there is a creative spark that is easily influenced by sparks of similar power from outside my brain. Or they have just short-circuited every notion of logic in there to send me leaping into the abyss of Faith.

There is no way my brain is in any way capable of sorting this out. All I know is that the abyss is not filled with darkness. The sparks flame brighter and brighter. And I am committed to the Truth that what we seal on earth will be bound in Heaven. Fir Tree Cottage helps give me hope of that.

St Peter's Church, Glasbury-on-Wye from Cwmbach
© Copyright Andrew Jones and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Addendum:
November 17, 2013

OK. Order in all things. By paying closer attention to the documents I had discovered, I realized that there are at least two different cottages named "Fir Tree" in Glasbury Parish. Actually, one is "Fir Tree" and the other "Firtree Heol-y-gaer." So I switched the picture for a cottage that is probably, but not yet confirmed, as the right one. It is in Heol-y-gaer where there are only three cottages today just a mile or so east of Glasbury.