Why you should pay tithing…

I have always had a testimony of tithing. When I was a teenager my grandmother, LeNore Christine Jensen, shared this story with me.
 
It was during the depression in the 1930's and my grandparents had five children and were very poor. My grandfather may have been unemployed or underemployed, but I am not sure. The only sum of money they had was ten dollars and that was put aside to pay their tithing, but they had no food in the house to feed the family, except for a sack of flour. They debated whether to pay tithing or buy food for the five hungry children. They paid their tithing and then my grandmother went to the sack of flour to make a dry bread of flour and water to feed the family. When she opened the sack of flour, there, on top was a ten dollar bill, the exact amount she had paid in tithing.

After I married Ray, he was not excited about paying tithing, but before our marriage he promised me he would work to go to the temple with me. One day he said to me, "We need more life insurance (little did I know that he would later pass away). I said "The best insurance we can have is to pay our tithing because in the last days the destroying angels will pass us by if we pay our tithing. Reluctantly he said to me, "If you can pay tithing from our income, go ahead and try."
   Money was very tight--we had a house payment, a car payment, two little boys, and were really struggling. I didn't know how we could do it, but I paid the tithing. The next week we lived on chicken noodle soup and crackers. Then to our surprise Ray received a check from the railroad. It was money that had been left in his pension plan when he worked for the railroad four years earlier. The check was for the same amount of money that we had paid in tithing, 

       
     After Ray died I had no idea how we would live, but I received a check for $400 each month from Social Security to support our family. I didn't even know about social security and had no idea how we were going to live. Each month I paid our tithing and have never to this day gone without. There was a time I had to work three jobs and money was very tight--all I could do was pay the bills, but I have been truly blessed and have never gone without the necessities of life.

Malachi 3:10, KJV: "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."

Because we paid tithing we were able to go to the temple and be sealed as a family for time and all eternity. Before he died and while Ray was so ill he had a messenger come to him and tell him he had a mission on the other side before the second coming of the Savior.  Later in my life I was given a blessing telling me that Ray was like a mission president on the other side sending people out to preach the gospel to those in spirit prison.