Baby Ara

 We welcomed our 4th baby into our family just over a week ago! We were so excited for her arrival, but also nervous... Nervous because we still had not decided on her name. This was my experience on coming to her name.

    Malachi and I had already known one part of her name. We knew we wanted her to carry the name Marie/Mary. Marie is my middle name after my great grandma, Dorothy Marie Kelsey Gerber. Then we had many experiences that told us that Mary should be apart of her name when we were at the temple. So we translated it into a different language. We loved Marie/Mary in Maori, which is Mere. But we didn't really know if it was better as her first name or middle name.

    Now this sweet little girl is born! She is just absolutely teeny tiny! She weighed 6lbs 9oz at birth making her our smaller baby by over a pound. She also looked super Maori to us when she was first born so that helped us focus on just Maori names.

    Well the next 24 hrs go by and we're calling her all the names we had on the list. Malachi even made her a birthday card with one of the names. But none of them felt right. We were very thoughtful and prayerful. We turned to the scriptures, our patriarchal blessings, the patriarchal blessings of our family members, and so much prayer.

    Malachi had to go home to take care of our older kids while I stayed at the hospital for another day. We FaceTimed and texted a lot. But still, nothing was sticking.

    The morning of the last day in the hospital, I woke up, fed baby girl, and then went straight to prayer and the scriptures. While reading I had a few names come to mind and I would look up their meanings. I will say that I have a testimony that in urgent situations, revelation can come quick, and this was pretty urgent lol. We needed a name before we left the hospital that day. Well yesterday, Malachi and I brought up names we had liked for Tiana, but obviously didn't pick. One of those names I absolutely loved and still did and it came to mind again. It was Ara. However, our biggest hold up with that name was just that it didn't have a deep meaning, we just liked it. So of course I googled "Ara meaning" and in Latin, Ara means altar. 

    Truly, I instantly felt a sigh of relief. That needed to be her name! All the wonderful experiences Malachi and I had been having at the temple, the name Mere holding a temple meaning for me as well, and a way to direct her to the temple when she's older... All of that seemed so right to my heart. 

    I brought it up to Malachi and he loved that name too, but thought it was too short. He wanted her name to be more substantial. I'm sure I won't give his opinion justice, so I'll just say that. So he desired to add "nui" to her name which means "great" in Maori. Thus her name being Aranui would mean, "the great altar." We loved it even more thinking about how tiny she is, the smallest of the family right now, and yet her name would mean something grand.

    Thus we decided to have Mere as her middle name! 

    So here is Aranui Mere Hopoate!

 

   So there you have it. Quite the process. So much pressure. But it was all worth it. The peace in finding a meaningful name just for her means a lot! She's our little love bug and I look forward to teaching her about her name.