Jackhammers in the temple
Initially, my plan for this week’s newsletter was to wish you a Happy New Year and usher in 2020 by sharing with you some of the best photos by Ravell Call and Jeffrey Allred in 2019 during our trips to cover President Russell M. Nelson and other leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I’ve still done that below.
But on Monday, I conducted a striking interview with a former temple president that didn’t make it into my story. The interview was about how workers began Monday to move the first furniture and sacred emblems out of the Salt Lake Temple as renovation begins in earnest and the work done by the visitors’ centers moves to the Conference Center across the street from Temple Square.
President William A. Schaefermeyer, who was released two months ago as president of the Jordan River Temple provided additional perspective on what was happening this past weekend as the Salt Lake Temple closed.
The Jordan River Temple closed for two years after a final endowment session on a Saturday evening, the same as the Salt Lake Temple, in February 2016.
“You walk away from the temple and the doors close and the following week the workers move in. It is no longer a temple,” President Schaefermeyer said about the closure. “I had no authority of any type in the construction.
“It was kind of a sad experience walking out of the temple and knowing that hammers and jackhammers were coming in.”
He used the same term Salt Lake Temple President Jack Wixom Jr. used about his building: “tired.”
“The Jordan River Temple was tired as far as its inner workings, the electrical, plumbing and heating systems,” he said. “We knew those needed work. The temple itself, the walls, floors and paintings, were still beautiful.”
One of the hardest parts of the closures of the two temples for the two temple presidents was saying goodbye to the temple workers, volunteers who accept church callings to help people perform saving ordinances for themselves and their dead.
President Schaefermeyer said Jordan River had over 4,000 temple workers when it closed.
“We physically sent a release letter and certificate to every worker. I ran several pens out of ink, since Schaefermeyer is such a long name,” he said with a laugh.
On the final day, they met with each worker and gave out a cookie.
“How can you adequately thank people for volunteering in such a sacred thing?” he asked. |
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Temple presidents and matrons often, like the Wixoms, are released when a temple closes for renovation. President Schaefermeyer and Sister Sharon Schaefermeyer continued in their calling through the renovation, talking to local congregations about family history and temple work.
In January 2018, they started the process of calling temple workers again, with a goal of having 3,500 in place by the rededication in May 2018.
“A fair share of them, 40% to 50%, had never worked in a temple before,” President Schaefermeyer said. “They had to be trained, and we couldn’t train them until after the temple was rededicated.
The rededication happened on a Sunday. On Monday, the doors reopened for a few sessions. On Tuesday, the temple operated at full capacity.
“We relied heavily on the experienced temple workers at first,” President Schaefermeyer said. “It was exciting, to say the least.”
Since the occasion for our phone call was the Salt Lake Temple, I asked him if the Salt Lake Temple had any meaning for him or his family. Yes, he replied. He worked as a volunteer temple worker there in 1964–65 after his mission in England. More strikingly, his maternal grandparents, his parents, he and his wife and all six of his children were married there.
“My wife and I have been a couple of times in recent weeks to go a last time before it closed,” he said.
The Jordan River Temple open house, which took place after the renovation and before the rededication, drew 452,000 visitors. Many people already are looking forward to the open houses for the Washington, D.C. (2021), St. George (2022) and Salt Lake (2024) temples.
The Washington and Salt Lake open houses are expected to be the largest in church history. |
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What I’m Reading ... The Christmas lights tradition on Temple Square will continue during the Salt Lake Temple renovation. I found this interesting little history of how the tradition began.
The NFL playoff runs by the Patriots over the past two decades have made the long, dark winter between baseball seasons so much shorter and more manageable. This year’s team has been terribly disappointing for the past eight games, winning four and losing four. My hopes for them are dimming. Former BYU star Kyle Van Noy, who plays linebacker for the Patriots, tried to get my hopes up.
The 10 most beautiful photos of the earth taken from the International Space Station in 2019 are irresistible.
I laughed so hard at the stories about former Red Sox manager Terry Francona in this piece on the best baseball tales of the decade that my wife had to come check on me to see if I was OK.
This story is more complicated. It’s a deep look at Rudy Ruettiger. Yes, that Rudy, the man about whom they made the eponymous movie. It’s no surprise to learn that some parts of “Rudy” are dramatized, but it is surprising to learn about his life today and how he continues to take on doubters and bullies and trolls.
So, a couple of weeks ago I complained about journalists mailing in year-end stories. Then some of my very own colleagues proved that they don’t. Kelsey Dallas wrote a lovely personal reflection about how she found holiness in the midst of pain during her year covering the world’s biggest religion stories. Trent Toone did a nice job rounding up the stories of the year about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; it’s a good piece for finding our finest stories of 2019. And I really enjoyed the great Lee Benson’s look back on how he got into journalism at BYU and how he still enjoys the magic of people telling him their stories. |
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| I’ll turn over this section to Ravell Call and Jeffrey Allred. The first three photos are by Ravell during reporting trips he and I took together. The first is an image of the ceiling in the Vatican while we were in Rome covering the temple open house two months before President Nelson met with Pope Francis. The second is a photo from inside a New York synagogue where President M. Russell Ballard visited with Rabbi Meir Soloveichik. The third is from a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, to which the church donated money after a man shot dozens of people during prayers in March. |
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| Jeffrey took the next two photos, stunning sunsets half a world apart and half a year apart. The first was in Fiji in the spring as President Nelson spoke at a devotional during one of his global ministries. The second was in Sharon, Vermont, in the fall during a visit by President Ballard ahead of the 200th anniversary celebration of the beginning of the Restoration. |
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| The next few go with some of my favorite stories of 2019. Ravell really captured the story I wrote about the church’s preschool program in Samoa with the first image. He did the same with the second for my story on harrowing tales of death and survival in the 2004 tsunami and how the church built 900 homes and 15 schools to help Indonesia rebuild. One of our most rewarding experiences together was seeing how church donations are helping suffering children like these two burn victims in a pediatric hospital in Ecuador. Finally, going out on the ocean in a boat with Ravell and some church members to see how boys fish as part of self-sufficiency initiatives in Tonga was a superb adventure. |
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| The final two are images of President Nelson from his global ministries in 2019. First is one from Cambodia, where President Nelson was met with respect by a government leader for the church’s work in that nation. The second is from an interview I conducted with him, Elder Quentin L. Cook and Elder Enrique Falabella at the airport in Bogotá, Colombia, just before they boarded a flight to Ecuador. |
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