Temple Trip

Grandma: During that first year of our marriage, our merger, Grandpa started feeling the importance of going to the Temple and started making plans for it. He wanted to go to the Salt Lake Temple. We could have gone to the Canada Temple. It would have been a lot easier and faster. As we were planning, we really didn’t have a lot of money. We couldn’t think of how we’re going to get all the children that wanted to go or that could go and us from Anchorage to Salt Lake to go the Temple. Lo and behold, a friend from up there had driven an old school bus to Alaska with some of their belongings and what not. They had driven this bus up there and they heard about our wishes to go to the Salt Lake for the Temple. He called Grandpa and he says, “I’ve got this school bus. If you want to take it, you may borrow it and take your family down the highway.” We thought, “Well, that solves the problem because it would’ve taken three cars to get us all down there.” We couldn’t afford to fly.

Grandpa: Actually there are three miracles involved in that. I’ll let Grandma tell it because it’s shorter. One, we didn’t have the money yet that year we had a $1700 tax return which was exactly what we thought we needed to go. Then we had the borrowing of the bus. At the same time, because the season in Alaska was productive I was allowed to be able to travel out of there although I was the only one that generated money to keep us going. So the three things came together by different miracles.

Grandma: So we started organizing the children. I had an obstacle in that I had never had an annulment of my previous marriage with the children’s father. Together with the Stake President, we started working on that to see if we could get the annulment. It didn’t happen, it didn’t happen. They kept corresponding but we kept planning on this trip. We had all the children organized. We had one of the older girls with one of the younger ones. We had one of them in charge of food, one of them in charge of entertainment, one of them in charge of firesides. We had planned this trip that we would do all these things as we came down the highway. It was just amazing, all of the things we had to do. One of them copied words from the hymn book and one of them copied lessons. We were going to just do the whole bit as we traveled. We started loading the bus. I was out at girl’s camp with one of the girls. We still hadn’t heard from Salt Lake that my annulment would be finalized. Here we were all ready to go. Grandpa came out to girl’s camp and he said, “We’re going to be ready to go to on Monday.” I says, “Did we get the letter?” He says, “No, but we’re still going.” So here we were investing all this money and didn’t even know if we could come down to be sealed. He felt that it was going to happen. He had this faith. We got home from Girls Camp and the bus was all loaded up, all the food supplies to last us a week or whatever it was going to take us to get down the highway. We started out early one morning.

Grandpa: You want me to tell you something funny. This thing about when you mock God. You know, you don’t play around with God. I was sitting at a Home Evening and I said, “We’re gonna start out and our bus is going to be right up at the top of the hill and it’s going to be about noon and we’re going to still be in Anchorage.”

Grandma: He was joking about how fast that bus was going to go. They’d had it checked, had the engine checked. Thought it was going to be road worthy. I can still remember as we all loaded in the bus, had all our supplies, and we were pulling out of our driveway, I can still Loree. I always thinking of Loree, because Loree and Tammy and Ronna were not going to be going with us because they were of age that we had been instructed by the Bishop that they could not be sealed with us. I don’t know who was with Loree, was it Sherry, probably. They were standing in our driveway. I can still see Loree waving to say goodbye to us. It was so cute. I always remember that picture. We headed out of Anchorage and got through Eagle River and got up to Palmer. We were going up the Highway above Palmer up to Sutton and all of a sudden, Randy was in the very back of the bus and he shouted, “Dad, Dad, there’s smoke coming out of the back of our bus!” We thought at first it was just the morning dew because it was kind of misty and that it was swirling up but then we started smelling smoke. Grandpa pulled the bus over, got out, and our engine had totally burned up. Someone came along that had a tow truck and he said that he would turn us around and pull us back down into Palmer. We were really disappointed. We got down into Palmer and a good friend of ours who was a mechanic there and he was off duty but we called him and he said that he would come and check the bus out for us. He told us that the motor was totally shot, that we couldn’t make it. They started making plans as to how much it would cost as to get a new or a rebuilt engine put in the car. He said that he would do that. This was Steve Houston’s dad. Steve was Darcy’s boyfriend at that time. They gave us a price after it was all analyzed and we said we just didn’t think we could make it, get the engine fixed and still make it. All of the girls had been working really hard for spending money because when they came to Salt Lake City, they wanted to be able to shop and buy their school clothes and do all of that. We had farmed the kids out to friends up in Palmer which was 40 miles from Anchorage and we knew a lot of people up there. Members of the ward had taken the kids in and let them stay with them. We gathered up all the kids, put them in the bus, and told them that it was going to cost us so much. We could either go back to Anchorage, earn more money and start over again, or we could go on a wing and a prayer and make it on the money that we had.

Grandpa: That was the first strong, guided family prayer that we had where we asked Father’s help.

Grandma: We knelt in prayer and everyone was kneeling in the bus. We asked for His help and guidance. One of the children popped up and said, “I’ve earned $50 to spend when we get to Salt Lake. I’ll donate my money.” I think that was Anita, one of the younger ones. Each one popped up and said, “I’ll donate my money” throughout the bus.

Grandpa: Some of them had over $200 earned.

Grandma: So they all agreed to donate their money if didn’t have to go back to Anchorage and start all over again. Our prayers were answered and we farmed the kids out. The mechanic said it would probably take a few days to get the engine in. We just stayed right there in Palmer until it was done and then we all crawled in the bus and headed out again. It was just an unbelievable trip. We couldn’t travel too many miles a day because we weren’t going too fast. Every night we would stop and camp. Every morning we would have a devotional. The girls, whoever was in charge of the devotional that morning, we had a guitar and we would be out by a stream in the Yukon Territory or into Canada. We’d be out beside the stream and all gather around and have our devotional. We’d sing a song and somebody would give a prayer and a lesson. Just a short beautiful little spiritual time for us to be together and then we would all climb in the bus after prayer.

Grandpa: Except for the time that I disobeyed a prompting which you gave me and that’s things would go wrong. We fell into a mudslide.

Grandma: It started to rain and the AlCan was very muddy. Grandpa wanted to drive well into the night to get out of the rain. We were driving along and all of a sudden he hit the side of the road. We slid off the road in the van and there we were. About that time, it was kind of funny, everybody had to go into the bathroom. So here the girls were jumping out of the van into this thick mud, getting out someplace they could go to the bathroom. It was a disaster. Luckily we found somebody that came and pulled us out and we were able to keep on our way. Eventually after days, we pulled in to Aunt Carol’s house. She was expecting us and going to put up with us.

Grandpa: We left on the 17th or 19th of July and we arrived in time for Randy’s birthday on 1st of August. On the 2nd of August we went into the Church offices.

Grandma: We pulled into Aunt Carol’s house and then we got all cleaned up and we fixed some beds in the bus and she took care of some of us. Coming down we didn’t have room for everybody to sleep in the bus so the boys would get their sleeping bags and they would sleep underneath the bus or under a tree to sleep during the night. As soon as we got cleaned up, after a day or so we went into Salt Lake City, to the Church office building. I know Grandpa asked to see Brother Calver. Brother Calver was the assistant to the Prophet. President Lee was the President at that time. He said they had not cleared me yet to be sealed to Grandpa. We still went in and Grandpa took out his endowments. I was able to be there with him. It was quite a process. One day, we went in and we were sitting in the Church office building. We went in fasting. We waited to see President Lee. We didn’t know how long we were going to have to wait because they hadn’t cleared an appointment for us. We sat out in the waiting room and waited most of the day. Then Grandpa got up and he said, “Let’s go home, back to Carol’s”. I said, “Are we gonna give up then?” “No,” he says, “I feel that we just need to go home.” He went over to the fountain and he took a drink. I says, “Are you breaking your fast?” He says, “Yes, everything’s going to be ok.” We went back out to Aunt Carol’s house. The next morning we took the children all dressed up and we went into Brother Calver’s office and he said, “Sister Barrera, here’s a letter for you.” I opened up the letter and it said that my annulment has been approved that we could go to the Temple and be sealed. We hurried and rushed and got the children in. The whisked them away and put them in white clothes. We went into the Temple and were sealed. They brought the children in and the way the General Authorities had worked it out. The Barrera children came in and I stood in proxy for their mother. They gathered the children around the altar and I was the proxy. They were all sealed to their mother and their dad. It’s been a little bit unusual, a little bit complicated but it was a very wonderful experience. The Church News had heard about us and our trip coming down the AlCan and the engine burning up and everything that had happened. They wanted to interview us. This writer, she came and got on the bus and talked to all of us. She wanted to go up in the canyon where we had a more rustic background like we had coming down the AlCan because she wanted to take some pictures of us. She’s taking us, winding up the canyon. I don’t know if it was I-80 at that time or what it was. We got up in there and our engine started to smell and it was feeling very good we got up there. She got the kids all set out on rocks, took pictures of us, and interviewed. The story appeared in the full page in the Church News. That was kind of exciting. Then we headed up to head towards Alaska again. We were going to Portland to visit my brother and let him know what was going on. We were just about into Portland and the engine started acting up again.

Grandpa: We burned a second engine.

Grandma: We didn’t quite get into Portland and we had to get towed in. We visited with my brother while they put another engine in the bus. Somehow or other, we made it back into Anchorage. It was probably a good two to three weeks journey for us. My honey was always full of faith. No matter what happened, he had the faith that things were going to work out. That’s the way we were supposed to do it. It was great.