Celebrating the Laie Hawaii Temple Centennial
An Evenings at the Museum presentation in the Church History Museum auditorium.
Laie Hawaii Temple
Wednesday, November 6, 2019, 7:00 p.m.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Laie Hawaii Temple, the fifth temple built by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the first outside of Utah. President Heber J. Grant dedicated the new temple on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1919.
To celebrate the temple’s centennial, the Church History Museum will present an Evenings at the Museum program at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 6, with Church History Department historian and archivist Clinton D. Christensen. Christensen will share insights gathered from personal interviews conducted for his newly published book Stories of the Temple in Laie, Hawaii.
Christensen has been compiling temple histories for the Church History Department for over a decade. Often those histories are deposited in new and rededicated temple cornerstones. In 2016 he became involved in a project to find stories to include in a published history for the Laie Hawaii Temple centennial.
His research included a huge oral history project that resulted in the collection of hundreds of recorded interviews of Church members who have a connection to the temple in Laie. Christensen was so impressed with the impact the temple has had on Latter-day Saints from Hawaii, the Pacific, and Asia, that he proposed doing a storybook that would be in the voice of Church members. Some 130 of those stories ended up in the book.
Christensen’s presentation will include many faith-promoting accounts about how the temple came to Hawaii, about the dedication of the temple, and about member excursions to the temple from far-off Pacific islands and Asia. Christensen will share eyewitness accounts about the temple during World War II and will tell how the temple helped one well-known Hawaiian face the destruction of the devastating 1946 tsunami.
Reservations for this Evenings at the Museum event are not required; however, seating is limited, and guests are encouraged to arrive early. The lecture is free and open to the public.
The Church History Museum is located directly west of Temple Square at 45 North West Temple Street in Salt Lake City, Utah. The museum is open from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on weekdays and from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturdays. Free parking is available in the museum parking lot at 119 West North Temple Street after 4:00 p.m. weekdays and on Saturday.