Mormon Life - Temples tag

Provo Utah Temple: Four decades of service

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:57:00 -0700

source: ldschurchnews.com

Mormon Life says: I like the photo gallery for this story. On Feb. 9, the Provo Utah Temple will celebrate its 40th anniversary. Early residents of Provo cherished Brigham Young's prophecy that one day a temple would be built on the hill overlooking the town. However, some wondered how this could be realized when the Brigham Young University campus began filling "Temple Hill" during the twentieth century.

Higher Places in Paradise

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:05:00 -0700

by S. Michael Wilcox
source: MormonLife.com

Mormon Life says: After losing my wife to cancer, I had to learn to live, love, and grieve all at the same time. I'm still learning to feel my way without her physically beside me, but I am learning more of the deeper meaning of eternal love.

Click here to read our article on losing a spouse--whether you have or someone you know is struggling--and how to cope.

Love is a redeeming emotion and grief is love’s shadow. I am now living in that shadow, the diminished light cast upon me by the death of my wife a short eight months ago. These have been days of pain and, yes, fear and questioning, but also of profound love felt in previously undiscovered depths of my soul.

I kept a small notebook near me during my wife’s battle with cancer and her eventual passing. I tried to record what I was learning about living and loving and grieving. I did not initially intend it for publication but was reminded that we are under divine injunction to mourn with those who mourn and offer what comforts we can. To that end, and by way of tribute to the woman I love, I wrote the book Sunset, my own passage through the landscape of a loved one’s passing, desiring that it might lift others who share the path with me or who will one day find themselves on our road, hoping someone left a few signposts to help them find their way. Grief is a searching, desiring emotion. It is the heart’s hunger—the soul reaching out to the limits of mortality’s boundaries.

Writing of Laurie helped to open the windows of my soul and let some of the sadness depart. Both love and sorrow are meant to be shared—love that it may grow and sorrow that it may diminish. Writing was a continued sharing of life, with the paradox that when I finished, it was like losing her a second time. My world was thinner. Yet, a wonderful Muslim friend of ours told me, “When we speak lovingly of those who have passed, we lift them to higher and higher places in paradise.” That was comforting. Sunset was my lifting.

I wrote that others may find in a shared experience permission to feel what they feel, realizing others truly do understand. Life now has a strange, unfamiliar quality to it. I’m on a stage in someone else’s play. I act out my roles. I interact with the other players. I say my lines and execute my entrances and exits. It’s a good play, certainly not a tragedy, and the scenes are filled with wonderful people and much joy, even laughter. But the genuine life, the loving life, is somewhere else. I wait for the play to end. The other actors will go home, the crowds will thin, and I will see her waiting in the wings. We’ll walk off together, Laurie and I, and have toast and hot chocolate in the kitchen.

I have watched countless sunsets in the past months, many of them over the ocean. As the sun nears the horizon, it spreads a narrow golden ribbon of reflected light across the water. It shimmers like an inviting pathway reaching my feet. I have thought many an evening that one day I will step out onto that shining, beckoning stretch of light and walk out over the ocean, past the waves, past the horizon and into the sunset. Laurie will come to meet me, reach out her hands, and grief will end. Until that day, I search for her in other ways. Perhaps my searching will help others.

There is a love that is developed between two people who look across at each other and love what they see. It is found in the face and features, in the heart, hair, soul, and mind which each accepts as a gift from the other. But all this is enhanced by the love that unites when both look from each other to something else and each loves what the eyes see equally.

Our marriage was more than just us. It was everything we both found dear, or satisfying, or comic, or lovable. It was the Shakespeare Festival, and Chinese art, the sea cliffs of Ireland, and the red rock hiking trails of Southern Utah. It was BBC mini-series and Poirot mysteries, orange juice with popcorn and French toast in the morning. I am learning to reach for this love, the warm flowing over the soul, the quiet awareness of someone looking with me. It is akin to retrieving an early morning dream or a forgotten lyric which trembles just on the rim of the mind.

I am also learning the deeper meaning of that eternal love which begins with two kneeling souls in a temple. We speak of the everlasting nature of love, its infinite scope. I always imagined it as stretching down the long corridor of welcoming time, past setting suns and turning galaxies, but my vision was always a future one of time unspent. Now I feel it pulling me backwards, through every moment of her childhood, her growing preparatory years, the seasons of dolls and dances, first lipstick and earrings, times I did not share with her but were now as precious as if I had always known her, always loved her, had never lived without her. I sense in this backward yearning that when the day comes that veils and closed doors will part and open and our sight search forgotten time that the reach of love will encompass all the eons of the past so that eventually there will never be a time when I did not love her.

I am not speaking of the belief that we knew each other in a pre-mortal life. It is not that! But something deeper, more holy, first created in the temple, at the altar where the eternal motion towards both future and past begins its infinite longing reach. Was she ever not there? Was there ever a time I did not love her? No, it seems in this that love is retrospective and captures all the moments of the past and makes them part of the now, one eternal round, all things in the present, time in perfect wholeness, union before union. Ironically, it is death, the perceived ender of things that has given me this gift of enhanced ages.

With that vision I offer to all my own deepest prayer.

“We mourn, Father, be with us in our mourning! Though thy scriptures so triumphantly ask, ‘O death, where is thy sting?’ we know where to find it. We love, Father, help us in our loving. Teach us to walk the path that leads forward, into the arms of those we long for.”

Temples Are a Beacon

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:06:00 -0700

source: radio.lds.org

Mormon Life says: I loved this story during general conference, and now it's been turned into a beautiful video.

Temple focus strengthens ward’s youth

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:23:00 -0700

source: news.lds.org

At the beginning of 2011, leaders and youth of the Kearns Utah 34th Ward were in a bishop’s youth committee meeting, looking for activities that could spiritually affect the ward’s youth that year and throughout their lives.

Seventeen-year-old Zack Ohlwiler raised his hand and proposed regular temple visits.

Central America has become a 'land of temples'

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:13:00 -0700

source: ldschurchnews.com

Perhaps it was John Forres O'Donnal's upbringing in the rural Latter-day Saint colonies in northern Mexico that blessed him with a farmer's eye. He could look at a fallow, empty field and immediately divine a rich bumper crop.

It was 1942 and Brother O'Donnal wasserving as an agricultural adviser in Guatemala. Outside of some Mormon expatriates working near the Panama Canal far to the south, he was perhaps the lone member living in Central America. A congregation of one.

Mormon student group works to extend campus presence

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:43:00 -0700

source: thedp.com

With the construction of a brand new temple scheduled to begin this spring, Penn’s devoted Mormon community continues to extend its place and presence on campus.

The Latter-day Saints Student Association, which became an official student group on campus last December, obtained formal recognition by the Students Activities Council at that time and will soon begin to receive funding for events and programs.

Mormons plan temple in Connecticut

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:20:00 -0700

source: farmington.patch.com

The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints is expected to give an informal presentation at the Monday Town Plan and Zoning Commission meeting to discuss plans to build a temple at the intersection of Melrose Drive and Farmington Avenue.

The organization has not yet submitted a proposal to the Town Plan and Zoning Office but has discussed plans for the building.

“They’re proposing to build an incredibly beautiful, very New England-appropriate temple that is going to be a significant landmark in this town for hundreds of years,” ...

Kansas City Missouri Temple open house and dedication dates announced

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 07:38:00 -0700

source: ldschurchnews.com

The First Presidency has announced open house and dedication dates for the Kansas City Missouri Temple.

The public is invited to visit the temple during an open house from Saturday, 7 April 2012, until Saturday, 21 April 2012, excluding Sundays.

Research under way on original Tabernacle in Provo

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:30:00 -0700

source: deseretnews.com

As the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prepares to build a temple out of the burnt shell of the Provo Tabernacle efforts are underway to preserve Provo history.

Perhaps few people realize a smaller structure was built in 1867, just north of where the Provo Tabernacle stands today. The only physical reminder of the edifice is a monument erected in 1959 by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers.

Calgary Temple gets their angel

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:11:00 -0700

source: mormonsoprano.com

Mormon Life says: The forwarding link has a video of the event. At sunrise on Thursday January 12, 2012, a traditional golden Angel Moroni statue was placed atop the new Latter-day Saint (Mormon) temple being built in Calgary, Alberta Canada.

Gilbert approves zoning request for LDS temple area

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:12:00 -0700

source: azcentral.com

The Gilbert Town Council on Thursday approved a rezoning request that paves the way for hundreds of single-family homes, condos and commercial development surrounding the Mormon temple site at Greenfield and Pecos roads.

About nine acres of commercial land directly adjacent to the temple, which is still under construction, theoretically could be used to build a gas station or pharmacy, but council members said they are confident the developer won't let that happen.

Dallas temple walk

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:21:00 -0700

source: ldschurchnews.com

As 27 young women set out at 4:30 a.m. to walk from their meetinghouse to the Dallas Texas Temple, leaders were sure the energy and enthusiasm of the goal would wear off.

Instead, the young women embarking on their 18.1-mile walk to get to the temple, practically "ran to the temple," said Janice Aoyama, second counselor in the Frisco Texas Stake Young Women presidency.

Fire damages building at Los Angeles California Temple

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:14:00 -0700

source: latimes.com

Mormon Life says: Arson investigators are still trying to determine whether the fire was an accident or arson. Investigators were trying to determine the cause of a fire that damaged a building early Tuesday at the site of the Mormon temple in Westwood.

The structure was a house under construction on the church grounds, according to an official at the landmark property, the Los Angeles California Temple.

Model LDS temples--Lego and wooden--built in Mormon homes

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:40:00 -0700

source: deseretnews.com

Mormon Life says: What a cool hobby this man has. Andrew H. Johnson has four models of Mormon temples in his home.

James Holmes has one of the Salt Lake Temple he built as a freshman in his high school geometry class. It took him and a partner 40 hours to fashion since it had to meet strict geometric standards as well as resemble a world famous icon.

It resides in the library of East Lincoln High School in Denver, N.C.

Payson City Council approves Mormon temple plans

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:34:00 -0700

source: sltrib.com

City officials Wednesday gave their blessing for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Payson Temple.

The City Council unanimously approved a conditional-use permit for the 96,000-square-foot structure, as well as a site plan and boundary adjustment. And the city staff will work with the church to keep the temple exterior lighted at night without disturbing the neighbors.

Year in Review: 2011 Another Year of Progress for the Church

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:44:00 -0700

source: Newsroom.lds.org

Mormon Life says: Love this look at the last year from the perspective of the Church. It has been a great one! In 2011 new temples were announced and others dedicated, and increased public attention was focused on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in what many journalists have called the “Mormon Moment.”

Temple Building

Thomas S. Monson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced the building of eight new temples during the Church’s general conferences in April and October. President Monson said four temples would be built internationally in Canada, France, South Africa and Colombia, while another four will be built in the United States in Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. Of particular interest was the announcement that the historic Provo Tabernacle, which had been destroyed by fire in December 2010, would be rebuilt and converted to the city’s second temple.

Philadelphia’s Mormon Temple: An Affront to Modernism

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 10:11:00 -0700

source: weeklypress.com

Mormon Life says: A discussion of the new Philadelphia Temple's architecture and what the community thinks about it.

When it comes to church or temple architecture, Mormons have it all over Catholics and mega-church Protestants, whose modern churches frequently overemphasize cold, hard lines and sterility.

The proposed Mormon temple at 18th and Vine Streets near the Philadelphia Parkway won’t be a utilitarian warehouse. The design is one of many temple designs currently in use throughout the Mormon world. Currently there are 133 Mormon Temples in operation. When the Philadelphia Temple is completed, that number will rank in the high 130s. The Temple will have two spires, one hosting an image of the Angel Moroni, the angel whom, according to Mormon belief, appeared to Mormon founder Joseph Smith in Palmyra, New York, sometime after Smith asked God which church he should join.

Brothers start free shuttle to Washington D.C. Temple

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:08:00 -0700

source: washingtonpost.com

Mormon Life says: How incredibly generous of these two brothers!

Paul and Stephen Saunders are big fans of the Mormon temple in Kensington and want others to be as well.

The Crystal City brothers said they’re so eager to attract more worshippers that they have started a free, independent shuttle service from a nearby Metrorail station to the temple during afternoon rush hour.

Site acquired for Meridian Idaho LDS Temple

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:13:00 -0700

source: deseretnews.com

The Meridian Idaho Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hasn't been completely designed yet, but it does have an address: 7345 North Linder Road in Meridian.

The location just north of the intersection of North Linder Road and Chinden Blvd. in Idaho's third-largest city was announced Monday.

"Meridian has a large faith community which plays an important role in keeping a strong focus on our families," said Meridian Mayor Tammy de Weerd. "[The new LDS temple] in Meridian is welcomed and we will do our part to ensure their needs are met."

President Uchtdorf meets with Guatemalan media

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:16:00 -0700

source: ldschurchnews.com

Thousands of Latter-day Saints from western Guatemala graciously welcomed President Dieter F. Uchtdorf to the "Land of Eternal Spring."

President Uchtdorf also made time to speak with a reporter from the national media about the role of temples and the future of the Church in Guatemala.