The Tucson Temple Begins!

Saturday, October 17th, 2015 was a very special day for our community. It was the day the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held the official groundbreaking ceremony for the Tucson Temple. It's something that many local members of the church have been waiting for for decades. The Barretts haven't been here for "decades" (yet??), but this groundbreaking was still a long-awaited event for us.

Photo courtesy of Kali Hoenes

Our family has lived in the Tucson area for more than twelve years now; over time, we had resigned ourselves to the fact that we'd never live close to an LDS temple while in Arizona. True, there are several other temples in Arizona. We are part of the Mesa Arizona temple district and have visited it many times (here's a blog post about one of those visits). And in the last year, two new temples have been completed in the Phoenix area as well; that has opened up some of our temple attendance options! But it has often felt as if Tucson was a part of Arizona "forgotten" by the church, despite its many faithful members.

It was sometimes hard not to get jealous of Phoenix. When the Gilbert temple was announced (and when we realized it would be located less than ten miles away from the Mesa temple), I was furious. Nathan and I have struggled to attend the temple regularly over the last several years...mostly due to the huge time commitment required combined with caring for our three young children. A temple trip to Mesa takes a minimum of seven hours; that's a long time for small children to be away from home! And as our children have gotten older, it's been hard to find a Saturday that wasn't too busy for a trip to the Phoenix area. Perhaps it sounds like I'm making excuses...maybe I am. However, balancing everything in our busy lives hasn't gotten easier over the years, and (for better or worse) the inconvenience of temple trips has made it a lesser priority at certain times in our lives.

But then, a few years ago, we saw a brilliant ray of hope. During the October 2012 session of the LDS Church's General Conference, Thomas S. Monson, the president of the church, announced that a temple was being planned for the Tucson area. Our family was overjoyed by the news; it felt like we'd finally been "noticed" as a region. We knew our prayers (and the prayers of many wonderful, faithful saints in the area) had finally been answered!

Of course, since this is Tucson/Pima County we're talking about, we knew that the actual answer to the prayer (the temple's completion) would take more time. Nathan's job puts him in contact with many county, municipal, and other government officials; within hours of the announcement, he correctly predicted (via a simple Internet search for local land owned by the LDS Church) exactly where the temple would be built. Truthfully, most members in the Tucson area figured it out pretty quickly; but we all knew the church wouldn't announce the official site until all the legal miscellany was completely taken care of. Unfortunately, due to Nathan's many years working with the aforementioned government officials, he also predicted that it would take several years for the temple groundbreaking, never mind the actual dedication of the building.

The optimistic side of me brushed off his warnings, but my husband turned out to be right; it was just over three years between the General Conference announcement and the temple groundbreaking! Many of the delays were typical Pima County red tape (it takes forever for things to go through the government here). A big problem was getting the temple's architectural design approved by the city. Tucson has a lot of "dark skies" ordinances (mostly due to the close proximity of a number of major astronomical observatories). This could easily cause complications when building a temple, as the church often likes to illuminate the buildings at night. Add to that the county's strict zoning laws, and it doubtless meant more than one headache for the church's temple department, as they struggled to come up with a design that would work.

*Note: the next paragraph is filled with rampant speculation, so take all this with a grain of salt!*

Rendering by Kerry Niesen

I am not privy to all the details, but from what I heard, the church submitted an initial design for the temple in 2013 that included a 95-foot spire; not uncommon for an LDS temple, but difficult to get approval for in Pima County. In the neighborhood where the temple was expected to be built, the building height limit was only 44 feet, plus a dome. In order to approve the taller spire, the church would have to get an exemption from the county's Board of Adjustments, which had the potential to be a long, grueling process. In addition, the spire would likely need to be lit from the inside, not the outside, to be in accordance with the city's "dark skies" ordinances. Besides the height and lighting issues, I also heard (this is all rumor, mind you!) that certain city/county officials were worried the temple's initial design made it too similar to the well-known San Xavier del Bac Mission, located on the south side of town.

So it seems the church went back to the drawing board with their design..for at least a year! Finally, in 2015, this was the conceptual drawing that was released to the public, along with an announcement of the temple groundbreaking on October 17th:

At first, the design startled me: the rounded dome atop the temple is fairly unique among LDS temples; there are certainly no other temples in Arizona that look like this! The shape actually reminded me of a Muslim mosque...but with an angel Moroni on top to confuse random passers-by. However, the more I looked at the drawing, the more I started to fall in love with the idea. Many of the newer LDS temples are very same-y in design and construction. I loved the idea that our temple will have a distinctive, memorable look that will make people curious to study it and learn more about it. I love that even though we have waited a long time for a temple, we will be blessed to have a unique, special building that is custom designed for our great community.

This was our view of the groundbreaking; pretty exciting, right??

The day of the groundbreaking was cold, windy, and even a little rainy. For those lucky enough to attend the groundbreaking in person, this was likely a bit uncomfortable. But for our family (who got to watch the proceedings live via satellite broadcast in our local stake center), the weather didn't bother us one bit!

Of course, our comfortable seats were but a small reward; we were pretty jealous of the people who got to attend the ceremony live! I mean, they got to meet Dieter Uchtdorf, for crying out loud. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity for those present, and while I am happy for them, I am also bummed we didn't get the same chance. Oh well; maybe we can finangle our way into the open house or the dedication in a few years!

DIETER UCHTDORF! Photo by Kali Hoenes

During the broadcast, we saw many many familiar faces; a few friends of ours sang in the multi-stake choir, and our old bishop in the Tucson East Stake (now president of the East Stake!) was one of the first to hoist those golden shovels!

Besides the joy of seeing work on the temple begin, it was wonderful to spend the whole broadcast scanning the crowd for people we knew. It was also nice afterwards to see my Facebook feed blow up with so many pictures from the event. Many of the pictures were taken by Sahuarita friends...but in the background of those pictures, I would see friends from our years in Tucson as well.

The whole experience filled me with a happiness that is hard to describe. I was so happy to see so many people we loved get the chance to participate in a little history. I was happy to see the joy on everyone's faces as they mingled with General Authorities. Most of all, I was happy to see the fruition of so many people's hopes and dreams ever since we moved to this part of the country. We know so many wonderful people in the Tucson area, including many amazing Latter-day Saints. This new temple will bring so many blessings to our region, and will be the means of bringing many people closer to Jesus Christ.

My friend Tabatha shaking the hand of Uchtdorf, an Apostle of the Lord. Photo by Spencer Boerup

I am thankful this blessing will be extended to so many people we personally know and love, and I am also thankful for the many more people I don't even know whose lives will be positively affected by this building. I know the temple is God's house on the earth, and I know the things we learn in temples help us both in our everyday, "mortal" lives, and in preparation for our eternity as well.

Now we just have to wait until the building is done. We'll be watching its progress with great interest! We are hoping to take the girls up to the future temple site several times over the next many months, so they can watch the construction process. I hope they too will appreciate what a great blessing this temple will be to our home here in southern Arizona.