“We are One, Big Family”
The Finnish Temple Cultural Celebration, Part 2
Text by Maurine Jensen Proctor
Photography by Scot Facer Proctor

Editors’ note: Most of the pictures throughout this article (all parts) are not captioned with the names of the performers. Can you, the readers, help us caption each picture by identifying each person with a correct spelling of their names and where they are from (branch, ward, and/or district or stake)?

Please be sure and tell us the exact person you are talking about by saying where they are in the picture (example: third person from the left with the red flower in her hair) and the exact picture to which you are referring—each picture is numbered. Send all caption helps to sproctor3@cox.net and we will update the articles every few days as we receive the needed information. When you see someone you know — contact them and let them know they’re being featured on Meridian Magazine!

Please click on any photo to enlarge.

To go back to Part 1, Click here.

Celebration Theme

This was carried off with the coordination and orchestration that Latter-day Saints have mastered. A creative committee in Finland headed by Sirpa Happonen and members Irmeli Tuisku, Ari Varrira and Ulla Lehtinen developed the theme.

Sirpa Happonen, Creative Director of Youth Celebration

Sirpa said, “In this world today so many people are looking for something and not knowing what they are looking for. They feel like something is missing and they are unhappy. They don’t realize that what they are looking for is the light that comes from the gospel.”

With this thought, the theme became “Looking for the Light,” and the program was organized so that each country in the temple district had an allotted time frame for their performance.

Yet to make the program really have the glue they wanted required an original theme song and, with only a few days to go, the assignment fell back to Sirpa and Irmeli. Could they create something like this in so short a time?

Sirpa give directions to the cast; Irmeli stands by her side.

It was May, school was just out, and the children were asleep when Sirpa sat down in her kitchen to try to write some words. She had a prayer and suddenly the words to the song began to spill out of her. Three hours later she had all the words, which she then took to her sister Irmeli, asking if it were possible to compose the music in four days.

Irmeli came back that same night and said, “Here it is.”

“This was 100% inspiration,” said Sirpa “because never in the world would we have been able to make it on our own.

“I’m a teacher,” she said, “so I’ve loved writing little plays for school, but nothing quite like this.”

The celebration began with the Finns depicting a scene from Babylon ,where an earthquake struck with thundering destruction and blasting sound.

A woman then sang the theme song, “Oh where can I find my heaven? I am lost and all alone.” It is a song about searching for the light, so appropriate not only in countries that are north and therefore dark so much of the winter, but where secularism has reigned.

Please click here to go to Part 3 of The Finnish Temple Cultural Celebration.