Remembering Heaven: A New Documentary about Pre-mortality
By Sarah Hinze · February 21, 2021
For
many years I have collected stories about heaven. My collection includes not
only the heaven we go home to when we graduate from earth life, but the heaven
we come from before we are born. The quest to understand these concepts has
been a personal one. My search to know my spiritual origin and destiny has
always been with me, even as a child.
I was
born to loving parents and grew up surrounded by the verdant hills of eastern
Tennessee’s Smokey Mountains.
From an
early age, I was especially eager to learn about God. I ached deep in my heart
for an understanding of where I came from. I sensed that I was a child of God
and lived with Him before I was born. I missed him and, well, I was homesick
for heaven, I guess is one way to put it.
Our
family regularly attended our local Protestant church and every Sunday,
together as a congregation, we would stand and recite a creed that went
something like this, “God is so small he can dwell in your heart and He is so
large He can fill the universe.”
I
wanted to stand up on the pew and shout, “That’s not true, people. That’s not
who God is!” But I restrained myself. After all, I was seven years old. Who
would believe me?
In my
heart, I never believed God was like a cloud or a seed. I knew he was a man
with a son named Jesus. I knew he didn’t live in the entire universe, but in a
special place called heaven. I knew heaven was my home and God was my Father.
My
strong desire to know Him continued throughout my young years and on into
college. A pivotal moment for me came when I first heard in my
University English Literature class the following poem by William Wordsworth.
Ode on Intimations of
Immortality
Our birth is but a sleep
and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come,
From God, who is our home.
The
poem was electrifying. The words sang out like beautiful music to my soul. A
strong spirit of holiness rested upon me in my class. I thought, “So that is
where I come from. I come from God, who is my home.” But where and how can I
learn more?
My
search for God expanded into a search to learn all I could about the human
soul, however, many of the philosophies I studied, existentialism for example,
left me confused and even depressed.
Months
later, my mother had a miraculous encounter (a story for another day) with a
Latter-day Saint senior missionary couple from Brigham City, Utah, and invited
them to our home. My mother thought they may have answers to my questions.
Their first visit left a lasting impression because it was the first time I
felt the Holy Ghost. It was tangible and real, but I had no idea what had
happened. That was the beginning—or continuation—of an eternal relationship
with the Bunnell’s.
After
the Bunnell’s finished their mission in Eastern Tennessee, they invited me to
Utah. I jumped at the chance and a few weeks later I arrived to spend the
summer with them.
One
evening I was with my new friend Mavis sitting on her front lawn in Brigham
City, Utah. As we looked into the darkness of the evening sky watching
for shooting stars, she turned to me and said, “You know we lived in heaven
with God before we were born.”
I
sat in silence, amazed at how easily she said something I had only believed in
the deepest and most sacred place of my heart. This was the first time I had
heard another person say that we lived with God before we were born. All
of my life I had known it was true, but here with this new friend, who was a
member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she shared it like
it was common knowledge. This impacted me greatly. I had found people who
believed as I did.
Within
weeks I requested the missionary lessons and in September, 1968, I chose
baptism into the church. I was the Bunnell’s only baptism from their eighteen
month mission…what an honor!
Meanwhile
I enrolled at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. My future husband
Brent also enrolled there after his mission. We are both converts to the church
and were drawn together on a beautiful April afternoon as we shared our
testimonies with one another. A few days later Brent invited me on a drive up
Logan Canyon, which manifests some of the most majestic views imaginable.
After
about half an hour we had wound our way up the narrow twisting road until we
reached a mountain pass.
We
parked the car near a shady meadow alive with wild flowers surrounded by groves
of white birch. Brent took my hand as we walked.
The
scenery, the sounds, the smells—it all seemed so familiar. The feeling was
sacred and we were quiet, almost reverent. We didn’t speak for a time. Finally
I broke the silence. In an unusual display of boldness I said, “I think I have
walked with you before. . . . in heaven before we came to earth.”
“I feel
it too,” Brent whispered. From that moment, we sensed one another as we had in
the world before we were born and our spirits seemed to renew a relationship
from long ago. We could feel there had been love between us before and a divine
spark seemed to rekindle those memories.
Eventually
it was time to drive back down the canyon and return to the real world. Our
surroundings looked the same, but we were not. Our marriage came a year later
in the Salt Lake Temple. Soon our children came along to join us.
Several
of our children’s births were preceded by what I later learned is called an
announcing dream. An announcing dream can be defined as dreams, visions and
other spiritual connections with unborn children, or preborn spirits. In some
cases I was even told what the child’s chosen name was to be. This is my story.
I was
at home, just 10 weeks along with my sixth pregnancy, when I felt intense pain
in my lower abdomen. At the same time I began to hemorrhage badly. “This is NOT
supposed to happen again!” I cried out in my mind.
I fell
to the floor and prayed with more intensity than I had ever prayed in my whole
life. Flashes of memory of the miscarriage I’d had experienced just the year
before and the grief I’d endured overwhelmed me. I had been promised that this
time she would come!
Even
before that fifth conception I had felt this gentle female presence with me and
knew she was the daughter who was coming. During the three months her tiny body
grew within me, her spirit self would occasionally enter my dreams and share
with me her love. I had grown to love her; therefore my grief was enormous.
When I miscarried, I feared I had lost her forever. Months went by as I
struggled.
Then
one day I had a dream-vision. I saw her again—she was a mature spirit woman
dressed in white with brown hair pulled back at her neck and hanging down her
back. She had large inquisitive brown eyes. I marveled at her radiance, she
looked like a queen–she was my daughter, the baby I had miscarried two months
before. She was apprehensive about her sojourn on earth and reluctant to leave
behind the loving environment and special friends of the pre-mortal heaven.
However, in this dream she called me “Mother” and I knew that she was
committing to come to our family. I was greatly comforted and offered a prayer
of gratitude to God for this understanding that she would still be born to me
at a later time.
In
another powerful dream several months later I saw myself in a hospital room. I
was aware of every detail— the narrowness of the room, the window, the bed, the
television. I saw the door open and a nurse walked in with a little bundle. I
rejoiced when she placed a beautiful baby girl in my arms.
As I
awakened from the dream, I sensed a divine, loving male presence standing in
the doorway to my bedroom. In a distinct voice he declared of the female infant
I had just seen in my dream, “Her name is Sarah. Her name is Sarah.” She was to
be named after me.
Not
long after this miraculous experience I conceived again. The first 10 weeks or
so had progressed normally, and yet here I was again, lying on the floor,
hemorrhaging and so very frightened. I prayed, desperately pleading to God with
all the power of my being, “Please help me!”
Eyes
closed, a scene unfolded in my mind. I saw my own spirit-self departing our
heavenly home. I was looking back at it as I moved swiftly away and saw it
bathed in what I can only describe as holy flames of bright white fire that did
not consume. I knew that I had prepared for this journey for eons of time, but
I was terrified. I didn’t want to leave my Home. Separating from our Heavenly
Father was heart-wrenching for me. I felt an intense sadness as I moved down
through space. I was leaving a place where I had been safe and loved
unconditionally for untold millennia, but I knew it was my time to embark on my
mission to mortality.
As I
continued traveling down through the stars, the pace accelerated. Then I saw
it, the earth…far, far below–forbidding, distant, cold—a stark contrast from
heaven. I remembered being taught in my premortal life that earth was a long
way from our heavenly home, but when I actually experienced the journey to
earth, I was stunned by the cosmic distance.
I felt
the chill of the approaching remote and dreary world. Fear and loneliness
filled my being as the abyss widened from the nurturing, peaceful and loving
environment of my premortal childhood. Comfort appeared in a presence, a
strengthening escort who suddenly was by my side. Telepathically I conveyed to
him, “I did not realize that the earth was so far away from our heavenly home.”
“Indeed,
it is a great distance,” he acknowledged.
As the
vision faded, a message of hope entered my mind: “You came to earth to be
tested and tried, but you shall overcome the trial of this threatened
miscarriage.”
Reawakening
to my immediate surroundings, I found myself in the most humble position of
prayer I could imagine, flat on the floor. I sensed with my spirit a Being of
power enter the room. I felt compelled to rise. I was totally immersed in His
love. I begged Him to heal my body for the sake of the child within me. In
answer, He conveyed these words to my mind: “I am the Great Physician. I will
heal your body, and this baby will be born whole and well, for I have so
decreed it.” The promise delivered, His presence gently withdrew. I laid down
on the bed, enveloped in a peaceful, healing power. Soon, the pain and
hemorrhaging stopped entirely. I was whole. And, above all, my baby was safe!
The following day, my doctor confirmed that everything was okay.
Months
later, when I went into labor, my husband drove me to the hospital. It was a
cold, dark and rainy night. I closed my eyes to the soothing rhythm of the
windshield wipers. In my mind I saw her–a beautiful woman with brown hair and
brown eyes. She was saying goodbye to many people, all dressed in white in the
heavenly realm. I was eager to receive my promised namesake, little Sarah, but
I could sense that she was vacillating about leaving the unconditional love of
her heavenly home. I feared there was a real chance she might withdraw from
earth life again and I prayed for the safe arrival of our sweet daughter.
When I
opened my eyes, we were just pulling into the hospital parking lot. I checked
in and was wheeled to my room. The labor went normally. With my husband
comforting me as best he could, I approached those final few minutes before
giving birth when things get most challenging. I again closed my eyes and
prayed silently. With my spiritual eyes, I saw the outline of a personage
dressed in white, standing by my bed.
“I have
personally escorted this child to mortality,” he confirmed in my heart.
I was
much relieved by this assurance that little Sarah would not “back out” again –
that her apprehension for earth life was overcome by the aid of a divine
escort. Shortly thereafter, our precious daughter was born.
Soon a
nurse came in and said, “Every room on the maternity floor is full. We have to
move you down to an area on the second floor.” I was taken on a gurney through
long corridors and down elevators to an isolated little narrow room. As they
propped me up in my bed, mental images from a year earlier flooded my mind. I
had seen this exact room in my dream, along with the events that followed.
The
door opened and a nurse walked in with a little bundle and placed it in my arms.
As I looked deeply into the eyes of my beautiful baby girl, it was as if I
heard the proclaiming voice echo from the past, “Her name is Sarah. Her name is
Sarah.” At last I held my namesake–Sarah Rebekah–the sweet baby of my dreams,
whose earthly body had miscarried on the first try, now returned to earth as
promised.
Hinze,
Sarah The Announcing Dream: Dreams and Visions about Children
Waiting to be Born, (Three Orchard Productions, 2016.)
It
is a humbling experience for a spirit waiting to be born to announce their
desire for birth into your family. None of us are perfect
parents by any means, but it seems our children love us and want to be with us,
seeing past our imperfections, perhaps seeing our potential more than we do.
I
wondered if other parents had these experiences, and soon discovered that I was
by no means the only one. But what began as curiosity became a quest when I
received profound impressions that part of my life’s mission was to research,
teach, and write about this special experience occurring to people worldwide.
Collecting stories was one thing I could do, but writing about it was something
else. I was frightened. It seemed like more than I could possibly do. After
much prayer and contemplation, I realized that I needed to be faithful to this
assignment.
As I
began doing so, I was soon joined in my research by my husband, Brent, who has
a Ph.D. in psychology. We proceeded to conduct interviews, collect case
studies, give talks, and publish about the marvels and mysteries of announcing
dreams. Brent and I coined the term “pre-birth experience” or “PBE” to refer to
any experience that relates to souls prior to birth or conception. We learned
through an analysis of the data that unborn children can warn, protect, and
enlighten us from another plane of existence. Most often they appear to
announce it is their time to be born.
Social
scientists coined the phrase “announcing dream” to identify dreams about unborn
children and other types of PBE, not only in the western world, but in cross-cultural
studies around the world. It is our belief that PBEs, like NDEs, are universal
and occur among all peoples, now and in the past.
The
abundance of research on near death experiences (NDEs) strongly suggests an
afterlife. Add the increasing research on pre-birth experiences (PBEs),
implying a pre-earth life, and the data leads to the following model that we
really are eternal beings:
The
concept of a pre-earth live is not new and is familiar to members of the
church, but it has been largely forgotten or even rejected by the world. Most
people are not aware that within the growing collection of ancient texts there
are a plethora of teachings referring in some way to our premortal
origins.
After I
had published several books, Brent and I had the chance to visit with Elder
Hartman Rector Jr. who was staying at a friend’s home after speaking at our
stake conference. She had given him one of our books to read, and he was very
encouraging with the direction we were going with our research and writing.
“There will be books, films, music, art, and various forms of media that will
share this important information,” Elder Rector said.
The
word film caught my attention. I knew nothing of filmmaking. It seemed like an
impossible dream, but I took Elder Rector’s counsel to heart that someday, with
the Lord’s help, we would have a film.
I
knew that with God’s help, all things are possible.
In 2018
while we were serving a mission at the London England Temple, I received an
email announcing the LDS Publishing and Media Association’s Annual Conference
in Provo, Utah which would convene soon after we would return home. I was
strongly impressed that I needed to be there. The promptings continued, so
arriving home from London, my suitcases still packed from our mission, I packed
a small suitcase and headed to the conference.
Once I
arrived, I networked and talked to many people until I was given the name of
Tom Laughlin. Soon afterwards, we talked on the phone and our dream of a
film began to take shape.
I
believe that the adversary has taken the teachings of preexistence out of the
mainstream and placed it into obscurity to hide from mankind their true
spiritual origin. It should be shouted from the rooftops!
https://latterdaysaintmag.com/remembering-heaven-a-documentary-film-and-my-personal-testimony-of-premortality/?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=scot-maurine-proctor&utm_content=Tueday+23+February
