It
was just another Sunday at the Hukill house. Mom was styling little
Annie's hair in between mascara applications, 14-year-old Whitney was
frantically searching for her brown high heels, and Josh, 12, and Doug,
16, were curled up in the living room sneaking in some extra zzz's
before shower time.
But then, once
everyone was neat and tidy in dresses and ties, something odd happened.
The Hukills, devout members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, didn't go to church.
"It's
kind of weird," said Whitney Hukill, a ninth-grader at Kennedy Junior
High in West Valley City, Utah. "Every Sunday for my whole life — unless I'm
sick — I've gone to church."
Statewide,
Sunday, Aug. 23, nearly 2 million perfectly healthy Latter-day Saints, like the
Hukills, skipped out on worship services. For the first time in the
state's history, LDS President Thomas S. Monson cancelled church.
The
prophet wanted to free up members' schedules so they could attend the
dedication ceremony for the newly completed Oquirrh Mountain Temple,
said Robert Homer, coordinator for the temple's open house and
dedication. The building, which Latter-day Saints consider the house of
God, is the 13th to be dedicated in Utah and the 130th in the world.
__IMAGE1__"I
think President Monson just wanted to do something nice for the
saints," Homer said. "From a Latter-day Saint perspective, temples have
great significance. To be able to participate in a dedication ceremony
is huge."
Over the past three days,
during nine separate ceremonies, more than 14,000 Latter-day Saints sat
in on dedicatory services at the new temple, which is located at 11022
South 4000 West. Hundreds of thousands more watched via satellite
transmission from select meeting houses.
Annie Hukill, 9, digested the numbers over breakfast, pausing with a scoop of milk-soaked cereal just inches from her mouth.
__IMAGE2__"Why do they do so many dedications?" she asked her father, Mark Hukill. "Do they just dedicate it over and over?"
Mark Hukill, who is bishop of West Valley City's Deerfield Ward, shrugged his shoulders.
"I
think the Lord is trying to tell us something," he said. "The number of
dedications, the cancelled meetings — he's trying to express to us the
importance of temples. He wants us to focus on temples and families."
Family,
Mark Hukill said, as he watched his four children scramble to get ready
for the dedication ceremony, is what The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints is all about.
"Going to the temple, binding families together forever — that's why we're here on earth," he said.
A
lot of church members seemed to have family on their minds as they made
their way through the morning drizzle to various broadcast locations
and the temple itself.
"If life's
not about families, there's no point to it," said Bob Bowen, of
Riverton, Utah, as he scooted across the Oquirrh Mountain Temple parking lot
in a golf cart (He'd been transporting "little old ladies" back and
forth all day, he said.). "And the temple — the temple is where we get
married and where we seal our children to us."
Sandra
and Jaime Perez, of Magna, Utah, held hands as they talked about the hours
they, like hundreds of Latter-day Saints in the area surrounding the
Oquirrh Mountain Temple, spent volunteering at the building, helping to
coordinate parking and usher curious visitors through the open house.
"It feels like our temple," Sandra Perez said, smiling shyly at her husband.
There wasn't anything shy about the way Darla Hukill talked about her feelings for the temple, though.
Standing outside the meeting house where she listened to President
Monson pray for the Oquirrh Mountain Temple, she got teary eyed.
"This
experience was so very powerful to me," she said. "Being part of this
dedication just reminds me that we made this building for God and his
son. Now it's truly the place God dwells on earth."
E-mail: estuart@desnews.com