Hello and welcome to not so Molly Mormon podcast minisodes.

Today I have a letter from Emily. Okay, so here is a ridiculous

story about how controlling the Mormon churches to its members even when they are trying to, quote,

follow the rules. To sum it up, once you are 21, you are not allowed to participate in family

sealing ordinances for adopted or blended families if you are not endowed. Here is how I found

that out. When I was 12, my parents adopted my little brother and we got to go through the temple and seal him to our family.

All of the siblings were allowed to attend in the sealing room using limited temple recommends, which is basically just baptism for the dead interview questions, but the recommend is only valid for the

ceiling. They make this a really nice experience for the children. They have a nice little waiting

room and a cute little old lady walks through the celestial room and into the ceiling room to

participate. Side note, no one warns you that your parents are in their weird temple garb. This was so freaky to see. Needless to say, I did not look forward to my own temple ceiling because I knew the hideousness that awaited.

Later, I was 24 and I was finishing up at BYU and my parents had just adopted two more of my brothers from Haiti, making me the oldest of nine.

I developed a great relationship with these two, who were four and six years old, by visiting them multiple times in Haiti and actually introducing them to my parents.

After three years of waiting for the paperwork, we were all very excited to finally adopt them. I was dating my now husband. By that point, we were about one year away from getting married,

though we were already planning that at the time.

I went to my bishop with my current limited use

temple recommend to get a special limited use recommend for the ceiling. He told me that he would

not give me one because I was over 21 years old and the handbook says that no one over 21 years

old may attend the ceiling unless they are endowed.

So I asked him if I could get my endowment so that I could attend my family's ceiling

because it was really important to me.

He said no, that was not a good enough reason to get my endowment.

He also reassured me that I would still be sealed to them even if I didn't attend.

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