PALMYRA, N.Y. -- Rising out of a hill above a quiet grove of trees, the "crown jewel" of Latter-day Saint worship now overlooks the spot where Joseph Smith said he saw God in the spring of 1820.
Atop the new Palmyra LDS Temple, a golden angel Moroni points his trumpet to the east, where the Hill Cumorah offered up golden plates whose translation into the Book of Mormon has become the heart of LDS theology.On Thursday, the focus of 11 million members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints worldwide will be centered on this place -- the cradle of their faith and now home to the church's 79th temple.
With only 24 hours left to apply the finishing touches, workmen were scurrying to lay a carpet walkway on the newly planted sod to prepare for the traditional cornerstone laying. Their handiwork will be seen not only by about 1,200 local members expected to participate in four dedication sessions here Thursday but by an estimated 1.5 million Latter-day Saints expected to view the historic proceedings from stake centers around the United States and Canada.
Contractors in denim coveralls stepped carefully amid the freshly planted flowers, stringing electrical lines and sweeping fresh landscaping bark off the sidewalks as intermittent snowflakes landed on the tulip blooms. Workers set up chairs and an outdoor canopy. Cameras were placed at strategic spots inside the building. Security men were overseeing the activity and expressed their delight.
"I didn't think it would ever happen here, but my wife did," said Kay Whitmore, former CEO of Kodak and a longtime resident who worked with the temple-building committee to coordinate some 3,000 work assignments among local church members.
"A lot of people talked about this, that we needed a temple on top of the Hill Cumorah, and many casually speculated. Those of us who are more practical said with relatively few temples -- Toronto is only 170 miles away -- it wasn't reasonable that we would have one within the area here. Obviously my wife was right and I was wrong."
LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley walked the snowy hilltop in January 1999, selecting the spot little more than a stone's throw up the hill from where Joseph Smith's log cabin has been recreated alongside the larger family home. Just beyond that lies the Sacred Grove, where 14-year-old Smith said he saw God and Jesus Christ in vision after praying to know which church was true.
"I regard this temple as perhaps the most significant in one respect in the entire church," President Hinckley said last spring during the temple's groundbreaking ceremony. "This is where it all began. I marvel at what has happened here. From this place, this work has spread over the Earth to more than 160 nations. . . . Who could ever have imagined it?"
Certainly not the church members who reside in Palmyra, a village of 8,000 whose population and agricultural way of life still retains the quiet simplicity that characterized the region when Smith first entered the woods to pray. Back in the 1960s, Whitmore said, the locals looked with some suspicion on Latter-day Saints.
"Years ago, the impression was that Mormons breeze into town, put on (the Hill Cumorah Pageant) and leave. In those days, it was run by missionaries and primarily people from the West. We used to provide food out there because there was no fast food nearby. But for many years, there's been a real effort to get involved with the local community."
Once the local service clubs were allowed to set up tents and serve food at the annual pageant, which draws nearly 100,000 visitors annually during midsummer, "it created some positive feeling that there's some residual to all of this," Whitmore said. "There's been a whole series of things where the LDS community has tried to engage the larger community."
That groundwork has laid the way for local support, with more than 30,000 area residents participating in the temple open house last week -- most of them non-Mormons.
The support is gratifying, Whitmore said, particularly in light of opposition the church has faced in several other areas where temples are planned. "The major newspaper here had an editorial early on saying we support it. Obviously the normal objections of traffic and too much light were raised, but their point was that they ought to be easily solved, and they were to the satisfaction of most everyone."
Lynn Green, a 24-year resident of Palmyra, said the actual nine-month construction of the temple was "a total miracle. People in the town have been amazed at this building. They see it as the crown jewel of Palmyra, and they've described it as this sparkling jewel that sits up there on the hill. With the lights at night, it's just beautiful."
Bob Winebrenner, second counselor in the new temple presidency, said while the temple is small -- only 300 people can squeeze inside for each of Thursday's four dedication sessions -- the excitement it has created locally and throughout the church will have drawing power. Pausing to contain the emotion he said has been building in everyone who has participated in the project, he tried to find words to sum up his feeling, best expressed in one simple phrase:
"It really will be a temple to the world."