Earl R Olsen

Earl R Olsen

Just For One Person – Manti Baptistery

As told to and transcribed by David E. Merrell (grandson)

After we had been to the Manti Temple for about a year, maybe not quit, the Temple President come to us and told us that he wanted us to take over the baptistery. We were doing ordinance work. We had all the dialogue memorized and were really involved. He said I don’t want to have to do anything with it. I want you to work with the stakes and everything. You do everything. It’s your baby. And so we did, and we really enjoyed it, and I can really tell you a lot of experiences there.

This one Saturday in the summer the temple family were having a party over at [Etham Park] and we had quite a few kids there to baptize. We were hurrying to get it done and you know to get a crew. When we got finished we had to wipe the font down, you know, turn everything off, clean everything up. We did that and we walked out and there was not another soul in the temple, but us.

And when we got out the front door there stood a sister from San Antonio, Texas. She come to be baptized for her mother, her deceased mother. She’d had car trouble and she was standing there at the door almost in tears wanting to be baptized for her mother. The temple wouldn’t be open Monday so that meant she’d have to wait until at least Tuesday to get this done. I began to think about what I had to do to get ready to do this just for one person. It just kept coming, just for one person.

Finally, I told her we’d do it. So Grandma took her and got her ready and I went and started to get the font ready. You had to fill it. You go down in the dirty, old dirty basement, down a rickety ladder. There were two pipes, one cold and one hot, two, two inch pipes with a valve on them. You turn them on, you go up and test the temperature, and then you’d go down and change the valves. It was quite a process to get ready. We finally got ready and I got two of the gardeners to come in as witnesses. And I dressed up to do the baptizing.

When I mentioned her mother’s name, I don’t know what it was, but something went through her, it was just like lightning, and I felt it too, the most wonderful feeling I ever experienced in all my life. And she just went like this and just almost screamed. Then I told her, I said, that was, I think your mother accepted your offering. But I had never experienced anything in all my experience like that. It just, something, that, it was meant for her. I had her, you know, in position to baptize and the most glorious experience I ever felt in my life.

The point is, one person is important. That was my big complaint, all this, and I had to go back, and you know, wipe the font down, and take care of all this other, just for one person.