Laying the Cornerstone of the Temple in West Africa
A Photo Essay
By Scot and Maurine Proctor

Part Five

click photos to enlarge

After the children were finished, President Hinckley invited anyone else in the crowd to take a turn helping to seal the cornerstone.

In the middle of a song, this choir member accepted the invitation with gusto.

This little boy had surely sung in his primary, “I love to see the temple, I’m going there someday.”

Many of the women at the temple dedication were dressed in elegant African dress.

Brother Appiah returned from Chicago to be at the temple dedication.  His father is the stake president in Cape Coast.

Joseph William Billy Johnson in the far right of the picture, started several congregations, calling themselves The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Ghana long before the missionaries arrived.

Those who helped with the cornerstone had a moment never to be forgotten.

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After receiving her education from University of Utah and Harvard, Maurine Jensen Proctor, the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Meridian Magazine, began her writing career with McGraw Hill Magazines and the Chicago Sun-Times. She has created award-winning television documentaries, has written a radio show for more than six years that played on 300 radio stations, and was a long-time writer of The Spoken Word for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

She, and her husband, Scot, have written several books together, including Witness of the Light, Source of the Light, Light from the Dust and The Gathering. They also edited a new version of Lucy Mack Smith’s biography of her son called The Revised and Enhanced History of Joseph Smith by His Mother and The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt. They were formerly the editors of This People magazine.

Maurine has been a part-time Institute teacher for the past 13 years and is the mother of eleven children and grandmother of three.

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