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All
photographs ©
2004 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
By
Maurine Proctor and Sylvia Finlayson
Meridian’s Senior Staff is in Ghana, reporting on the
temple dedication and the Church’s astounding growth in West Africa.
Stories on the Saints in Ghana, humanitarian efforts there, doing
family research from oral histories and much more will be appearing
in the days to come in Meridian.
click
photos to enlarge
 Russell
Tanner, Director of Temple Building for the Africa West Area had
a staggering assignment—build a temple in a land where you cannot,
as he jokes, call 1-800-Give Me Anything, as you can in developed
nations. Materials to create a building to the standards of the
temple are not available in Ghana, nor anyplace in West Africa.
Machinery is nearly impossible to procure in a land where even the
long stretches of major roads are often built with painstaking and
tedious hand labor.
Ghana,
frankly, has not one building that approaches the beauty or quality
of the temple. This is a place where most of the businesses are
rectangular shelters made of weathered wood and corrugated tin roofs.
Many of the more substantial buildings often are weathered and dilapidated,
their paint peeling and their stucco pitted. Building methods are
rudimentary and the best buildings are subject to the steamy tropical
weather that blights them with rust and mold.
 To
make the assignment even more daunting, it is not merely the Ghana
temple that the Church built, but it is also in the process of building
the temple in Nigeria where the problems are similar. To complete
both temple projects, Russ, said, will actually involve the completion
of 15 buildings, a road and a bridge by the time stake centers,
office buildings, and patron housing is included. In cities were
electricity is fickle, outages are frequent and clean water is impossible,
calculated into that figure are also buildings that contain back-up
generators, water supplies, and of course, a well.
These
are extras not considered when a new temple is built on the grounds
of a stake center in Minnesota.
 For
help, the Church turned to Taysec, the largest construction firm
in Ghana and the only ones who had done major work there. This made
the team working on the temple truly international. The architects
were Ghanian, home offices of the construction company are in Europe
and all were working for a Church based in Utah.
Liam
McVeigh, construction manager, said of the temple, “Nothing of this
standard has been built in this country, so there wasn’t even another
building we could show people as an example of what we were looking
for. Even five-star hotels are not of this standard. The challenge
was to get people to understand that we really meant what we said
when we were looking for these very high standards. Consequently,
we had to bring in specialists from offshore to do some of the very
fine work at the end.”
 The
temple building required a small army—as many as 600 people employed
at a time with another 150 subcontractors. “We had to have facilities
for all of these people,” said Liam, “catering, toilets and more
just to keep the job moving. We housed a total of 60-70 expatriot
workers. It was 6 months for designing and planning, and another
two years in construction.”
Still
that doesn’t tell the whole story. President Hinckley announced
that a temple would be built in Ghana in 1998. He warned the Saints
then that it would be a process that would take years, but no one
could have foreseen the painstaking, often contradictory messages
that emanated from the government while the Church was seeking approvals.
 The
initial design that the Church offered in 1999, based on the small
temple model used many other places, was shot down, and it was only
after the Church announced a second design that the process was
revived again. Russell Tanner said, “The Ghanian authorities wanted
to have lots of height. The new plan was taller. We made the stake
center two stories and the office and patron housing each four stories
high. They are trying to do many things to improve the looks of
Accra, and for them more was better.”
 The
approvals came back piecemeal. First came the nod for approval
on the stake center, and, when it came, Russ urged something unusual,
“I want to dig today,” he said, feeling that “if we could start
the building, momentum would keep the ball rolling. That day they
began to move earth.”
Three
weeks later approval came for other buildings on the temple lot,
and three days later the approval for the temple itself. At that
point they broke the construction team up so that all of the buildings
would rise at once.
 Still,
keeping in budget and meeting deadlines requires sweat and strain
in a developing nation. The Church wanted to use as many materials
from Africa as possible—not just for expense, but for culture’s
sake. This had to be an African temple throughout, one that would
ring with recognition for the people.
Thus
began the great African exploration, not by adventurers in khaki
shorts looking for big game, but by the LDS temple department looking
for materials.
“The
original plans,” said Russ, called for Bethel white granite out
of Vermont like that used on the Bountiful Temple. I couldn’t sleep
at night about that. I knew there had to be a local solution, and
so I started talking to lots of people who told me that the quality
stone in Africa is all in the South.”
He
found a stone company in South Africa that indicated the quality
of stone he was looking for was in Namibia, so it was off to a forgotten
corner of the Kalahari desert, through dunes that looked like Lawrence
of Arabia, finally coming to a German-owned stone quarry where
he found a lovely consistent granite called Namibia pearl that is
the material used on both the Ghana and Nigeria temples. It is
beautiful. It is African, and it saved a lot of money.
 The
hardwoods used in the interior of the temple are another rich reminder
of Africa. Here are not the familiar northern hemisphere grains
of oak and maple, but the resplendent trees of Africa, unusual and
elegant in their growth patterns.
The
temple woodwork is a mahogany-stained makore wood, with an unusual,
staggered checked grain. It is a wood that is at home in Africa,
naturally resistant to the termites which build their homes in fierce
mounds that look like five-foot castle compounds.
Russ
said, “We had to work long and hard to process the woods properly
to meet the temple standards, but every time we met a challenge,
the way was opened up for us.”
 Design
for the interior of the temple was created by Bengt Erlandsson,
who started working for the Church ten years ago, and has done similar
work for several other temples. He claims that doing this design
work on temples is the best job in the Church.
In
Ghana, a traditional handicraft that is revered and passed from
generation to generation is the weaving of kente cloth, a fabric
marked by diamonds and distinctive geometric lines in bright African
colors. He found a piece of kente cloth in purples and greens,
then muted it for the design of the stained glass windows.
The
diamond shape, in fact, became a theme repeated throughout the temple
interior in glass and wood. Bengt had to be careful not to play
off any symbol that belonged distinctively to any one Ghanian tribe,
so the geometric shapes he chose are universal. “I understand that
the diamond shape to them represents a turtle, which represents
wisdom. That seemed an appropriate theme for a house of knowledge
like the temple.”
The
pilasters in the temple are designed with palm fronds to signify
Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem.
 One
persistent question for Bengt was how to find African furniture
for the temple. Temple quality furniture is not readily available
in Ghana, so he had 90% of it custom designed using a manufacturer
out of Spain. He wanted furniture that said Africa to the patrons.
This brought him to furniture designed with subtle touches of lion’s
feet and elephant tusks. Chairs in the sealing rooms, where couples
and officiators sit, use a north African design to create the tree
of life. In the celestial room, a piece of furniture resembles
the traditional chief’s stool.
One
young man saw the chief’s stool and said he couldn’t sit on it because
it signified royalty. He was reminded, “We’re all royals here.”
 Bengt
said they had been worried about putting a temple so beautiful in
a land so impoverished, but the result has been what they hoped.
It is a reminder of who the people are, royal children of a Heavenly
Father.
Before
the furniture was placed in the temple, it was stored in a warehouse
and in the stake center. About 20 young men, all local members,
were hired to move it. “I have never felt such devotion and spirit,”
said Bengt. “I think the Ghanians are a very strong people.”
 What
the people, both members and visitors, have felt as they have been
able to see the temple is not just that it is beautiful, but something
far more. A tangible spirit and power is felt here, unmistakable.
One
of the members of the Ga tribal council, a ruling group in Ghana,
summed up the sense that even a casual visitor felt, “Right from
the gate, we knew we were entering a unique place. We knew we were
entering somewhere where you could have contact with God. I felt
something really falling on me. I felt a lot of people would like
to join your Church.”
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