It was late 2007, and I was living in the California Bay Area. To my surprise, I started getting promptings that I should prepare to move. I didn't know why or when, but the promptings were so strong that I began packing a few boxes each week.

Fast forward to summer 2008. At a mandatory meeting at work, we learned that our location was being closed down. Fortunately, I was able to get another position in the same company almost immediately. It felt absolutely right — and it required me to move 2000 miles away, to Memphis, Tennessee. (Thank goodness I had a head start on packing!)

Having seen the Lord's hand so clearly in the move, you can imagine my surprise when I got to Memphis and everything seemed to go wrong. Work projects that should have been simple were hedged up by unexpected obstacles. My work suffered and I missed deadlines — not exactly the way to inspire my new manager with confidence in my abilities.

For several months, I couldn't even get Internet access at my apartment. I experienced opposition in my church calling. I had difficulty sleeping. I felt an ongoing sense of anxiety and spiritual unease. It felt as though I was under some kind of attack!

I pled with the Lord to know what to do. To my surprise, the clear impression came that I needed to attend the temple weekly. Having lived several hours away from a temple in California, I had settled into a pattern of attending once or twice a month. But apparently that wasn't enough anymore, especially now that a temple was within 20 minutes of my home.

With full-time work and several busy callings, I knew it would be a challenge to follow this prompting. But I also knew what I'd felt. I had to trust the Lord that I'd be able to do what He asked, and that it would result in the help I was seeking.

I now consider the decision to attend the temple weekly to be one of the turning points in my life. Right away I was freed from the anxiety I'd been feeling. All my problems were not immediately resolved, of course, but I was given inspiration line upon line for all aspects of my life: family, work, church callings, friendships.

I received gentle correction and insights into my own behavior. The blessings were so profound that I didn't want to stay away from the temple. It became the highlight of my week and a source of great strength and peace.

If you've been reading this column for a while, you know that its emphasis is on finding simple ways to achieve important goals. Probably most of us, if not all, would consider regular temple attendance an important goal. Still, it's one we often struggle with. We mean to go later this week, or maybe next month, but something always seems to come up. Then somehow weeks and even months go by and we still haven't gone.

In reality, getting to the temple is very practical: it's largely a matter of making a schedule and sticking with it, just as we schedule doctor's appointments or children's soccer games or family outings.

Imagine this scenario: in your current life, with all your current obligations, someone promises you a regular check for $10,000 if you'll agree to pick up the check from them and spend a few hours together. In your current life, would you find time to do that regularly? I can't imagine anyone saying no, because the benefit far exceeds the sacrifice. How much more would we make regular time for the temple when we realize that the treasures there go far beyond any earthly wealth!

As busy as we are now, there's a good chance our lives will become busier, not less busy, as time goes on. There probably won't be some magic future when we'll suddenly have ample time to attend the temple. The way to be diligent in temple worship is to make a plan to fit it into our lives now.

So the challenge for this week's column is to prayerfully make a goal for regular temple attendance. It may be weekly, monthly, or some other interval that is right for your situation. But once you've made the goal, schedule your temple sessions and don't let other less important things get in the way.

Of course emergencies may arise. But we can follow the example of Elder Richard G. Scott, who makes up his weekly session if he misses one. (see Temple Worship: The Source of Strength and Power in Times of Need.)

The temple is the source of blessings you can count on; blessings you don't even know you need; blessings to solve the hardest problems you're facing. In D&C 127: 4 the Lord says, "Let the work of my temple... be continued on and not cease; and let your diligence, and your perseverance, and patience, and your works be redoubled, and you shall in nowise lose your reward."