Pure love is what makes a successful marriage, said Richard H. Winkel, president of the Sacramento California Temple, at a family history fireside at the Varsity Theatre.

Winkel, a former mission president in Madrid, Spain, and member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy, spoke at the fireside, which was sponsored by the Center for Family History and Genealogy.

Winkel discussed the importance of his eternal family, an experience he had in reuniting a family and how the marriage of Joseph and Emma Smith is a model for Latter-day Saints to follow.

"The overriding theme in marriage is love, pure love," Winkel said. "Love should always be our focus. Pure love is behind successful marriages and happy families and pure love is behind the atonement."

Winkel said being sealed in the temple has been a great blessing in his life that cannot be explained in earthly terms. He and his wife said both they and their children raised each other and this would have been impossible without Jesus Christ as their foundation.

"It is painful to think of possibly being separated from them in the eternities," he said. "We want to be together after this life."

In addition to his own family, Winkel talked about an experience of a man, Marcel Sternberger. While riding a subway train in Manhattan, Sternberger talked to a Hungarian man, Bela Paskin, who lost his wife during World War II. Paskin told Sternberger about his return home after the war and finding strangers there instead of his wife.

Sternberger at this time remembered talking to a woman with a similar experience. This woman was Paskin's wife, who moved to Brooklyn, and Sternberger gave Paskin her phone number.

Paskin and his wife, because of Winkel, were reunited once again.

"Imagine the feeling of this couple when work is performed for them in the House of the Lord so they can be together forever," Winkel said. "The Father and the Son want us not only to be bound together but to be bound to them. How many love stories are there in our family histories that are waiting to be fulfilled through our work on behalf of our ancestors?"

Another example shared by Winkel of pure love in marriage was Joseph and Emma Smith. He said Emma was by Joseph's side throughout their marriage and that they both had true love for each other.

"Though Emma Hale Smith was sealed to Joseph, her life was never easy," Winkel said. "Emma never really had a home of her own until after the Prophet died. She sacrificed all her life and knew little of temporal luxuries."

Winkel read the Lord's charge to Emma in section 25 of the Doctrine and Covenants. He also listed the many children the Smiths lost in their life and how their faith and love through trials is an example for members of the church to follow.

"Six of Joseph and Emma's eleven children died within the first year of life," Winkel said. "Have any of us known such separations? I think I could safely say that all of us are extremely sympathetic to Joseph and Emma's separations and trials because of our own experiences."

Winkel in sharing these three stories of pure love in marriage stressed the importance for Latter-day Saints to center their marriages on Christ and by attending the temple regularly.

"We can have this love in our marriages by praying to the Father with 'all the energy of heart,'" Winkel said. "The temple is a symbol of the pure love of Christ. It is also the means by which we can increase our love for each other and live together forever."

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story online apparently misidentified the source of the story about Bela Paskin. BYU NewsNet corrects all errors brought to its attention, and thanks those who keep us on the straight and narrow.

Copyright Brigham Young University 22 Feb 2007