They both served as young adults and as mission leaders and have also been stake and service missionaries.

The two were wanting to serve yet another mission, and then came a call to meet with Elder Jorge T. Becerra, a General Authority Seventy in the church.

The Myers met with Becerra, and four weeks later, a call was extended – not to serve a mission, but in the Ogden temple of the church.

Shaun will be a counselor in the temple presidency and Christina will serve as an assistant to the matron. According to Shaun, it’s a three-year calling.

Brian Wolfer, Special to the Standard-Examiner

Shaun said he has felt “closer to God for months prior to this call” and that the call is convenient.

“I just have some things in my personal life that I have to do, so when this calling came, and it’s to live here and be here, then it just fits so perfectly that we stay in our home,” he said. “I can finish a couple tasks that I have to do and I can still serve. We don’t know how much time is involved, but people that talk to us tell us that it’s more than full time – even as a counselor.”

That time commitment means Shaun will no longer be able to serve on the Ogden City Council.

“I know it was a hard decision to make because he wanted to give back to the community,” Christina said. “He was elected to this position … and he just did not feel like he could give as he would have preferred to give to the community and representing his constituents because his time would be just too separated.”

Christina said the two will continue to run their business, Myers Mortuary.

Brian Wolfer, Special to the Standard-Examiner

Determination to serve

When it comes to serving missions, Christina said the goal is to “serve as many as we can, as our bodies will allow us to do.”

Shaun served his mission as a young adult in Mexico while Christina served hers in Ecuador. Shaun was a mission president, serving alongside his wife in Mexico.

Shaun said “you just say yes” to the calls to serve and “just have faith that it will work out OK,” but he acknowledged it isn’t always easy.

After he was called as a mission president and started preparing, he found himself thinking that he was “about as unprepared as it gets.” He said he started to have some “slight anxiety” and wondered what he was getting himself into.

“And then there’s just these tender mercies,” he said. “There’s these moments and times when you’re studying or reading scriptures.”

He said he came across Doctrine and Covenants 6:36, which reads, “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.”

“I just had this overwhelming peace come to my heart and soul, and I thought, ‘President (Thomas S.) Monson always says, ‘Whom the Lord calls, he qualifies,” and so I thought, ‘I will depend on what I’ve been taught and what I’ve learned,'” he said.

He said when serving, it’s not about directing others but about being directed by the Lord.

“He does the teaching and he helps you get to where you need to be and teaches you what you need to know and how to be effective,” he said. “There’s lots of trial and error. And the Lord is merciful, and he is good, and he is forgiving, as long as you keep trying and you have your heart and your focus in the right place. It’s a wonderful learning lesson that you learn these valuable lessons. I think you learn as much by failing as you do if you were just automatically successful or somebody told you everything to do and you did exactly what they told you to do.”

Christina connected serving to knowledge of everyone’s “true identity” of being children of Heavenly Father.

“We have a charge, a responsibility, to be his hands and feet and his expressions to Heavenly Father’s children on earth,” she said. “We have that duty to carry that out, and it’s a beautiful gift that he has given to us where much has been given, much is also required. And I feel like we have been blessed so tremendously with the knowledge of the gospel, first of all, with our testimony. That’s something we feel overjoyed in sharing with others, and we want others to be able to feel that happiness, that there is a plan of happiness in the world, that most people in this world are completely unaware of, that God truly loves us and knows us and wants to bless us and that he stands ready to reach out his helping hand at all times.

“And perhaps if we, as humble, very imperfect beings, if we can have any part in that, in helping others to come unto Christ – not just to learn of Christ, but to come unto Christ and to accept his teachings and to partake of his blessings and his goodness – we feel very, very humble to be able to be part of that.”

Temple service

Christina said there are 3,400 ordinance workers that they will be serving, training and supporting, and Shaun said there are four four-hour shifts of ordinance workers each day in the temple.

Christina said having the four shifts is “wonderful” because “it allows people that might never have been able to serve as an ordinance worker to serve in the temple.”

She mentioned specifically those who have a night job or parents who have young children at home.

“So we have individuals of all ages, and it’s just fascinating because you can learn so much from each other and so much life experience and just to feel one another’s spirit,” she said.

Shaun said one thing he loves about the temple is the effect it has on people over time.

“Those that come regularly, you start to see changes in their lives and their attitudes and their joy, and they serve so joyfully,” he said.

He mentioned a woman who attends in her wheelchair and noted that it wasn’t easy for her at first.

“And then just to continue to watch her as she became much more social with people and people with her, I can’t possibly tell you what a transformation you see in the life of someone who spends time in the temple, and it’s really beautiful,” he said.

Christina said the woman has blossomed.

Shaun also mentioned a young man who is both deaf and blind and had an interpreter with him while he performed baptisms for the dead, one of the temple ordinances.

“So, the person who signs with him does the hand movements, and this (man) has to hold the hands to feel the hand movements take place,” he said. “So as this interpreter, this brother, took (the man) in the baptismal font, he would sign with his hands the prayer, and then he would also mention the name of the person, and he’d spell that all out, and this (man) would just be able to feel the communication with his hands, and then this other brother who was there with him would baptize (the man).

“And tears came to people’s eyes that just watched this beautiful event take place, because people come to draw closer to God. They come to provide service for their family history. And to see the sacrifice that some people make, like (this man) and this other woman in the wheelchair – it is humbling to think, ‘I can see. I can hear. I have two legs. I can walk. I don’t have any disability at all,’ but you appreciate those that come who have a disability because they make such an incredible effort to be there. And they’re positive, they’re happy, but being at the temple also helps them to be better. And for me, that is just one of the highlights of being able to serve in the temple is to interact with those that come to the temple. Whatever their purpose is for being there, it’s just delightful to be a part of their experience.”

Contact Standard-Examiner editor Ryan Comer at rcomer@standard.net.