When you live on a small island in the Pacific Ocean where you are far from a temple, it takes lots of preparation and time to get a trip organized for families to attend the temple. The closest temple to us is in Manila, Philippines. It is more than 2,000 miles from here. We are so grateful for the Temple Patron Fund of the Church that helps families and individuals who are attending the temple for the first time.
The cost is very prohibitive for any of the members to ever be able to afford to go. None of us realize how fortunate we are to live in a close proximity of a temple. Especially those of us who only live about 5-10 minutes from the nearest temple. It was last summer that we first started to plan for a trip to the temple. We had the privilege of teaching a temple preparation class with members of the branch. As we got further into our class one of our members did not have a birth certificate and it took us months to get one for him so that he could get a passport. Unfortunately it took too long and he and his family will go on the next trip as the request to the Temple fund had to be submitted to the Asia North Area for approval for the financing before he had his certificate. There have been many stumbling blocks along the way as we have tried to help the George family who would be our only family going on this temple trip. The original plan was for the family to leave in March, but the first hurdle was finding out that the temple was closed for maintenance at the time they were to leave. Fortunately the flight was sold out when they went to purchase tickets. That was our first tender mercy. Each time trickets were reserved we would contact the temple with the dates only to find out they were extending their closure time for maintenance repairs. The temple actually ended up being closed for 3 months. Then the price of tickets increased significantly and it was above the approved budget. By changing the date to a later time the price for tickets were reduce to something more reasonable, so tickets were reserved again, but when they went to purchase them it was discovered that Sister George's passport only had 5 months before renewal and the policy here in the FSM is that there must be 6 months or more left when you travel from to and from the FSM. So the next morning off to the immigration she went to fill out renewal papers and send them off to the capitol on the Island of Pohnpei. She was told that they would be back just one day before departure. There was also a problem with the check that was being written to purchase the tickets and they had to have the Church finance center in Guam actually do the purchasing. The next tender mercy occured when the passport was returned in just 6 days. Tickets were purchased and we thought all was well but one day before they were to leave as we printed the itinerary for them it was discovered that they had the wrong return date. It was actually 4 days later than we had scheduled. So with some quick emails to Manila asking for additional days at temple housing they were on their way. This is another tender mercy as they get to spend extra days at the temple as this may be a once in a lifetime trip.
This is our wonderful George Family who are now in the Philippines attending the temple. President George is a Branch President here in Utwe. They were able to take four of their children with them. 
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