GLEN ALLEN, Virginia — Standing in front of the Richmond Virginia Temple, Elder J. Christopher Lansing reflected on his youth in the historic city.
It was here that his parents, Doris Rogers and Theodore Hebert Lansing, joined the Church in 1954. A year later, the Lansings began preparing to enter the temple. The area was then part of the Salt Lake Temple district, and the family’s story is typical of many Southern U.S. families at that time. Their journey to Utah, which has become part of their celebrated family history, occurred before interstate highways and in a car without air conditioning.
Doris Lansing did not drive, but got her license so she could help with the trip. Not long after they set out, however, she wrecked the car. While no one was hurt, the family car was towed back to Richmond. It was a few weeks before they could set out again.
The long journey did not get easier.
Elder Lansing’s sister came down with mumps and had to be quarantined. The younger children got in the luggage and threw clothing out the open windows of the car before their parents realized what was happening; much was lost. And Elder Lansing got stuck in a telephone booth — necessitating a rescue from the fire department.
The family finally arrived in Salt Lake City.
“We saw the lights on the temple,” Elder Lansing recalled. “My dad started just driving around and around the block.”
He could not stop looking at the temple.
“It was the first time I had ever seen my dad cry,” he said.
As I looked at the beautiful Richmond Virginia Temple — dedicated by President Dallin H. Oaks on Sunday, May 7 — I thought about all the Latter-day Saint families who had made a similar journey.
Elder Enrique R. Falabella, an emeritus general authority, was raised in humble circumstances in Guatemala City, Guatemala. He was only 5 years old when his mother, Leonor Falabella, died.
In the years after the tragedy, his father, Udine Falabella, met Latter-day Saint missionaries and — longing for an eternal family — joined the Church.
In Elder Falabella’s youth, there were only six branches in the city.
When his father was called as district president, the mission president asked him, “What are you planning to do?”
The answer was immediate: “We are going to the temple.”
Udine Falabella was able to secure a family passport but didn’t have the money needed for his entire family of four children to travel to the Mesa Arizona Temple. “My grandmother was not a member of the Church, but she stepped forward and gave us the money that we needed,” Elder Falabella told the Church News.
After a long bus ride, the family first glimpsed the temple.
Years later, Elder Falabella returned to Arizona with his wife, Blanca; the young couple sold some of their possessions to afford the trip.
It is a legacy they share with other Latter-day Saint pioneers.
In December 1963, 10-year-old Benjamin Sinjoux— who would later serve as an Area Seventy — and his family were part of a group of 64 Church members who traveled from Tahiti to the New Zealand Temple in Hamilton. Most in the group — the first Tahitian Latter-day Saints to do temple work — had saved for many years to be able to make the nearly 5,000-mile round trip.
The group arrived in Hamilton on Christmas Eve. Elder Sinjoux said the temple, viewed through thick fog collected at the bottom of the Hamilton hills, looked as if it were floating. He recalled that as the Church members got their first glimpse of the temple, they asked the bus driver to stop. At the moment they comprehended the blessings in front of them, every member of the group on the bus knelt down and prayed.
Today the Church has 177 dedicated temples. With an additional 138 announced or under construction, the total number of latter-day temples is 315.
“Let us never lose sight of what the Lord is doing for us now,” said President Russell M. Nelson in the October 2022 general conference. “He is making His temples more accessible. He is accelerating the pace at which we are building temples. He is increasing our ability to help gather Israel. He is also making it easier for each of us to become spiritually refined. I promise that increased time in the temple will bless your life in ways nothing else can.”
It is hard to write about the dedication of a new temple and not hear about the stories of faithful pioneering families — like the Lansings, the Falabellas and the Sinjouxes. Each new temple, and every temple district, has stories of faith woven from threads of sacrifice and consecration.
There is now a temple in Virginia and in Tahiti. There are six temples that are dedicated, announced or under construction in Guatemala.
Often, in Utah and in other temple locations across the globe, I have observed the same thing Elder Lansing experienced so many years ago when he first visited the temple — cars circling the block, or stopped, because the driver can’t stop looking at the temple.
It is a manifestation of President Nelson’s invitation to all of us to “focus on the temple in ways you never have before.”
“I promise,” he said, “that increased time in the temple will bless your life in ways nothing else can.”
— Sarah Jane Weaver is editor of the Church News.
