Every morning during this tour, we’ve started off with a prayer from one of us and then, once the bus was underway, followed that prayer with a brief devotional thought from another member of the group. Yesterday, the devotional thought was offered by Miguel Vera, who actually grew up in Mexico City but now lives and works in Texas.
For his brief remarks, he drew upon a 22 June 2018 article in the Church News by Gerry Avant that was entitled “The most memorable part of the Mexico City temple dedication was these words from President Hinckley.” I was so impressed by the words that he cited that I’m electing to share them with you here:
I’m sure everyone has had an experience that becomes embedded in his or her memory. Maybe it came through some action or something that was said.
One of my memories comes from the dedication of the Mexico City Mexico Temple Dec. 2-3, 1983. President Gordon B. Hinckley, then second counselor in the First Presidency, conducted and addressed some of the sessions to dedicate the temple, which was the first in Mexico and the 26th worldwide.
As he began his address in one of the sessions, President Hinckley spoke with a quivering voice as he testified that souls “from the other side of the veil” were present. “All rooms (of the temple) are filled with faithful Latter-day Saints,” he said, “but I am convinced there is a larger, unseen congregation participating with us.”
President Hinckley then named specifically individuals who had key roles in establishing the Church in Mexico, beginning with Brigham Young, who sent missionaries to the country. He stated the names of several of the missionaries and the first mission president. He named the first Mexican who was baptized, and pronounced the names of several others who had occupied a place in the history of the Church in Mexico.
President Hinckley then proceeded to give the talk he had prepared.
I suppose most of us have been in congregations when the person conducting the meeting has acknowledged certain people, such as a member of the stake presidency or other visitor and, later, has said something to the effect, “There is another person I failed to introduce.” Something like that happened during the dedication of the temple in Mexico City.
President Hinckley had been speaking several minutes. He paused and explained that there was another person from the other side of the veil he had not mentioned. In a strong voice filled with emotion and joy, President Hinckley exclaimed, “Welcome, Father Lehi! Oh, how your heart must rejoice!”
I was seated on one of the front rows in the celestial room. I wanted to turn around and look in the direction where “a late comer” might have entered the room. The moment seemed so real that I felt, surely, I could see what Father Lehi looked like.
I didn’t see that great Book of Mormon prophet, and I can’t affirm that President Hinckley saw him with physical eyes, but I’ve no doubt that the Spirit let President Hinckley know that Father Lehi, indeed, was present that day in that temple.
President Hinckley spoke of other temples as a fulfillment of prophecy regarding Lehi’s descendants. “Six new temples have been dedicated this year,” he said. “These were unplanned in terms of particular prophecy but most of these temples have been built to serve descendants of Lehi. … I believe the Lord has touched His prophet (then President Spencer W. Kimball) to bring into play those processes by which He is remembering ancient covenants concerning descendants of Lehi.”
We attended sacrament meeting today in a chapel on the grounds of the Mexico City Mexico Temple. The entire Mexico Area presidency were present on the stand — Elders Hugo Montoya, President; Sean Douglas, First Counselor; and Moisés Villanueva, Second Counselor — and I eventually learned the reason why: There was an area leadership training meeting underway over the weekend, and so the sacrament meeting was exceptionally well stocked with stake presidents and the like. Which probably explained why, when we entered the chapel a few minutes before the commencement of the service, it was so very, very quiet. I thought it by far the most reverent congregation I had ever encountered.
At the conclusion of sacrament meeting, we spent some time in the adjacent Centro para Visitantes del Templo de la Ciudad de México, which is very well designed and very attractive. It features a copy of Bertel Thorvaldsen’s Christus and has a particularly good section on the origins and history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in México — including the difficult issue of the Third Convention and the moving story of the Mexican martyrs Rafael Monroy and Vicente Morales, who were killed in Hidalgo in 1915.
Incidentally, you can read about the martyrdom of these two Mexican Latter-day Saints in Mark L. Grover, “Execution in Mexico: The Deaths of Rafael Monroy and Vicente Morales,” BYU Studies Quarterly (1995) 35/3. Moreover, their story is told in a 52.5-minute black-and-white BYU film, produced in 1966, that is entitled And Should We Die. It is available online, although the quality of the sound and the film’s visual sharpness aren’t quite ideal. I saw And Should We Die at some sort of ward activity shortly after it came out; I was very young and I’ve never seen the film since, but I’ve never forgotten it. I think that I’ll watch it again one of these next days.
After spending some time in the Visitors Center, we walked over to and around the Mexico City Temple itself. It was the first to be built in México or, for that matter, in Central America or in any Spanish-speaking country, and it remains the largest in the country. Its exterior features design elements drawn from Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican architecture, which makes it unique among Latter-day Saint temples.
Then we went to Mexico City’s great Museo Nacional de Antropología. But I’ll write about that tomorrow.
Posted from the Ciudad de México, México
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