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A Promised Day Arrived
The Helsinki Finland Temple Dedication, Part 4
Text by Maurine
Jensen Proctor
Photos by Scot Facer Proctor
The Cornerstone Ceremony
Click on
Photos to Enlarge
The temple dedication was held in four
sessions, with the cornerstone ceremony during the first. President
Hinckley, accompanied by several others, came out on the especially
prepared platform to put as he says, “the mud in the joints.”
The Finland temple is the 124th temple
in the Church, and the 85th temple President Hinckley has dedicated.
He has rededicated another ten temples.
As is his custom, after he had applied
the mud, with an eye on creating memories for the people, he turned
to a little child in the audience to come and do the same.
The little girl chosen, also dressed
in a national Finnish costume was Paivi Haikkola’s daughter,
a fourth generation member in Finland—and a link from the
past to the future.
Outpouring of Love
The temple dedication was held in four
sessions—the first in Finnish and the second in Russian. We’ll
tell some Russian stories in articles to come.
Matti Kuosuranan, who has been a member
since 1969, but has lived in South America for the last seven years
said, “While living abroad, we got the strong feeling that
the temple would be coming, so we had to come home.”
Roland Daetwyler, who has served as
the mission president in St. Petersburg said, “This is so
important for the Russian Saints because it was so difficult to
go to the temple in Sweden. It required two visas and a trip to
Finland and then on to Sweden. I told my missionaries, people become
about 70% more converted when they go to the temple.”
For Nancy Harrington from Tigardi,
Oregon, who has been called on a mission with her husband to serve
in the Finnish temple, “Returning to Finland was like coming
home. This is my husband’s third mission here and we are just
rejoicing with the people. I’ve had so many hugs and I feel
so loved.”
Baltic missionary, Elder Justin Jensen,
said that the temple has cast a special glow onto the work of the
20 missionaries working in Estonia. “We seem to be working
with more faith.”
The sun was short-lived that day of
dedication. After only 18 minutes of light, the sky closed up and
it wasn’t long before dedication attendees had to pull out
umbrellas as they waited in line to go into the temple.
Yet, what was felt in the temple was
a spirit so sweet, that holding umbrellas didn’t stop the
hugging and greeting. It was an overpowering sense of the Lord’s
love.
As visitors new to Finland, we felt
tied to the people as if they were our oldest and dearest friends
and in every direction we turned we saw people we felt we knew well—even
though we had just met them or conducted an interview for a few
minutes.
Inara Jegina from Latvia said the very
first time she went to Church, she had the feeling as if she had
finally returned home. It was that sense of love.
You could see this heavenly love on
the faces of the people. It’s a sense of abundance and appreciation
that not only fills you personally, but spills over until your sense
of good will expands to include everyone.
The temple is what brings a world that
is fragmented and divided, broken and scarred, back to be at one,
of one heart.
There is no better demonstration of
this than with the Helsinki, Finland temple. The Finns have a national
inheritance of suspicion toward the Russians. Their eastern border
has been vulnerable and many have family members who were killed
in a brutal war with the Soviet Union during World War II.
Yet here in the Church the Finns and
Russians are united. The Finns have long been gracious hosts to
the Russian Saints passing through on their way to the Stockholm
temple. Now they will work together in the Helsinki temple.
It is the power of atonement—of
at-one-ment. During the coverstone ceremony, Auli Haikkola said,
“I wondered last night about the many people like me who had
family killed during the war with the Russians. My father was killed,
and I remember during my childhood that hatred toward Russians filled
many homes.”
With the temple gleaming before us
she said, “It’s really all over, all over. This generation
will have peace.”
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