FARMINGTON, New Mexico — Embroidered around the flag of the Navajo Nation, which lies in the southwestern United States, is what Natives recognize as the Four Sacred Mountains of the Navajo.
“Those Four Sacred Mountains are our compass,” said Junior Pinto, a Navajo Latter-day Saint in Belen, New Mexico. Blanca Peak to the east; Mount Taylor to the south; the San Francisco Peaks to the west; Hesperus Peak to the north.
For generations, these surrounding mountains have represented the essence of life and served as anchors for physical and spiritual well-being.
And now members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints see a spiritual nucleus to this traditional compass: the soon-to-be-dedicated Farmington New Mexico Temple. Standing near the center of the Four Sacred Mountains, this house of the Lord is a new guide pointing Saints toward their heavenly home.
“It parallels right back to the teachings of our Navajo and why it’s there,” said Pinto. “It’s been prophecy that’s been in our traditional beliefs to be fulfilled, and it’s being fulfilled. This is our compass.”
The Farmington temple is scheduled to be dedicated Sunday, Aug. 17, by Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. This temple will serve Latter-day Saints in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest, including several Native American tribes in the area.
Here’s what this new temple and the gospel of Jesus Christ have meant for Navajo, or Diné, community members in the Four Corners region.
Navajo Nation president at the open house
On July 14, the first special guest to tour the Farmington temple was President Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation, the largest tribal community in the United States. President Nygren had previously met with the First Presidency in February 2024.
“This temple represents more than a place of worship; it reflects the values of faith, family and community,” President Nygren said in a July 14 Facebook post. “As leaders, we have a responsibility to bridge understanding and show respect for all beliefs and cultures. That’s how we build unity.”
Holding a miniature Christus statue he was given at the open house, President Nygren expressed his gratitude to be invited into the building and the opportunity to pray in the celestial room.
“I want to make sure that my support for the Church will always be there,” he said in a July 15 video on the ChurchofJesusChrist.Gallup Instagram page. “Because anytime we promote God, Jesus and our people’s ability to pray and find purpose, that’s such a good thing for our communities, because that’s something that can last a whole lifetime if people can continue to be centered around those principles.”
‘Where reverence for the divine runs deep’
Elder Jose L. Alonso — a General Authority Seventy and president of the Church’s United States Southwest Area — said that “the Four Corners region is a unique and blessed land — a place where reverence for the divine runs deep.”
He added: “The people here, many of whom are descendants of pioneers and Native communities, carry a strong spiritual identity and a profound respect for family, heritage and God. It is a region where faith is lived quietly but deeply.”
Among the “faithful, devoted and joyful disciples” in the temple district, he said, “The Native American Saints stand as a sacred example. Their lives have not been without hardship, and it is likely that future trials will come. But they endure with strength that transcends mortality — a strength rooted in Jesus Christ and His infinite Atonement.”
Missionary work among New Mexico’s Native Americans began as early as the 1860s. In 1876, over 100 Zuni people in the Ramah area were baptized. The state’s first stake, the Young Stake, was established in May 1912.
During the Great Depression in the 1930s, Latter-day Saint communities in Farmington developed projects to produce necessities of life for people in need. Local Saints have since worked to serve the needy and those experiencing poverty in their communities.
‘Everything is good’
Walking through the Farmington temple’s open house, Crystal Jimson enjoyed the pure expressions of love around her. They were as simple as a stranger greeting her in the hallway with “yáʼátʼééh” — a Navajo term meaning both “hello” and “everything is good.”
“It was just overflowing love. Everyone knew, Indigenous or non-Indigenous, that we were in our home,” said Jimson, from Gallup, New Mexico.
She added: “Seeing another Indigenous brother or sister was very warm, very unique, almost like a ‘we made it’ kind of feeling. To feel like we’ve known each other forever and to greet each other in our language was pretty amazing to see.”
After one particularly tedious day at work, Jimson drove to the Farmington temple to ponder. Almost immediately she felt spiritual comfort sitting in her car, knowing she would “leave neutral ground” as soon as she walked in the building.
“This is where Heavenly Father needs us as a people to, in a sense, ‘level up,’ because His help is here, and He’s going to help us.”
As a branch Relief Society president, Jimson aims to help the sisters around her to walk along the covenant path. “This temple helps me in my calling more than I could ever do in a decade.”
Spiritual strength from a spiritual heritage
Elder Larry Echo Hawk, an emeritus General Authority Seventy and Wyoming-born member of the Pawnee Nation, fondly remembers Farmington as the place he grew up and was baptized as a 14-year-old. There he also met his future wife, Sister Teresa Echo Hawk, when they were in fourth grade — whom he would later baptize as a college student.
“When we heard about the announcement that there would be a temple in Farmington, we rejoiced over that,” said Elder Echo Hawk. “My wife always says that’s our Waters of Mormon. It’s where we learned about the gospel.”
A significant milestone in Elder Echo Hawk’s testimony was gaining a witness of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon in high school. “It really did change my life and put me on a course that has brought a lot of blessings.”
What got his attention was the book’s introduction, which says the Lamanites are among the ancestors of the American Indians. Focusing on his connection with people in the scriptural record has helped him internalize the teachings and cling to promised blessings.
“I mark in a special color all of those passages in the Book of Mormon that relate specifically to the Lamanite people, the descendants of the people of the Book of Mormon,” he said. “It’s brought a lot of promises to me in my life.”
In 2009, Elder Echo Hawk was appointed by President Barack Obama to be assistant secretary for Indian Affairs in the United States Department of the Interior. Until his call as a general authority three years later, Elder Echo Hawk traveled to 47 states to meet with tribal people.
“What really impressed me is how spiritual Native people are in pretty much every place I went,” he said. “They don’t start meetings without prayer. And I always knew they were spiritual people, but I really learned that is universal throughout Native American tribes.”
Native American members of the Church in Farmington, then, “are deeply spiritual in more than one way,” said Elder Echo Hawk.
“It’s from their culture that they have those spiritual values. But when they join the Church, they have an enhanced feeling about the importance of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that gives them spiritual strength.”
Gathering oral history, gathering Israel
The nonprofit Gathering of Tribes aims to “encourage Indigenous Latter-day Saints to nurture their faith in Jesus Christ, unite families through family history and temple work, care for those in need and celebrate their cultural identity as it relates to the gospel,” according to its website.
Just two months ago, the organization began a project to advance this mission of unity through family history: conducting oral history interviews with community elders in the Navajo Nation.
Shane Manning, Gathering of Tribes’ director of operations, is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and currently lives in Gilbert, Arizona. She said that Indigenous communities that pass on information verbally through generations may have few or incorrect written records.
“So we’re going back to the source, and we’re asking the people who hold that community and family knowledge, ‘What do you know?’ And then we’re putting all that information into a database for future generations,” said Manning.
Although the nearly 10 oral history specialists start by gathering basic genealogy, “the interview doesn’t stay with names, because there’s always a story,” she added. “We hope that it will spark a desire to learn more about ancestors,” especially among the rising generation.
Cindy Quinney, executive director of Gathering of Tribes, is an enrolled member of the Onion Lake Cree Nation and lives in Calgary, Alberta. She said discovering family history “not only strengthens them individually, but it strengthens their family and it strengthens the community. And so there’s a bigger picture than just collecting names.”
Now with a house of the Lord built in Farmington, this “bigger picture” includes gathering Israel on both sides of the veil. “Heavenly Father has a plan for us to start gathering,” said Quinney. “As we gather, we’re going to start working together with all tribes. We’re going to see each other as one, and we’re going to love each other as one. We’ll be called a Zion people.”
A medicine man and a feather
Junior Pinto of the Alamo Branch (Navajo), Los Lunas New Mexico Stake, affectionately remembers the diligence of his grandfather, a Navajo medicine man.
“He just always told me, ‘In your time, you will have the true medicine, and you will be the true medicine man.’ And I never really understood that until the Melchizedek Priesthood was bestowed upon me.”
After he was born, Pinto was given a ceremony with a white feather. Traditionally, he said, the parents hold on to the feather. When the child gets to a responsible age, they give the feather to the child, who then puts the feather in a place sacred for them.
However, Pinto’s mother died before he could receive his feather, and it got lost in her possessions. “I longed for my feather, and I missed it,” he said. That’s why one particular design element resonated with Pinto when he entered the Farmington temple.
“There’s a place in the temple that those white feathers are there. And to walk into where those feathers are, it’s like I never lost it,” he said. “Of all the sacred places on this earth to have it, I know it’s in that sacred building, in the Lord’s house. So I’m at peace with that.”
Pinto refers to the Farmington temple as “the Navajo temple” — the more he visits, the more he recognizes his Navajo heritage intertwined with his desires to live the gospel of Jesus Christ.
‘This is everybody’s church’
“I remember growing up, I was always told Navajo has no place in [the Church],” said Tom Yellowman, a Navajo Latter-day Saint who grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona. He wouldn’t be baptized until years after he was married civilly to Gina Yellowman.
His wife, though, grew up in the Church as a Navajo member. “It was rough. You had a lot of comments from the Navajo people saying I was ‘too good for them,’” she said. “But my parents were really good examples, and they were really faithful, and they knew what they wanted their children to be in the gospel.”
Gina Yellowman attended church just with their daughter, until one day her husband decided to join them. “They took me in, and they nourished me,” he said of the ward. “I was welcome. I was loved.”
He was eventually baptized, although it took 10 years to get the support of his hero and “cheíí” — grandfather — in that decision. The turning point came after his cheíí heard his grandson, then 8 years old, pray over a meal.
That moment of religious fervor stuck with his cheíí, and he later told extended family members in Navajo: “What they’re doing is really good. They have a strong belief, and they belong to something good.”
The couple now lives in Kirtland, New Mexico. Over time, said Gina Yellowman, Navajo hesitancy toward the Church of Jesus Christ has changed. “There’s more members that are a lot stronger in the gospel, and it’s not so frowned upon.”
As the second counselor in the New Mexico Farmington Mission, Tom Yellowman gets to translate for a lot of missionaries throughout the reservation and has seen more respect for the Church’s beliefs. “I can feel the change [in recognizing] the gospel doesn’t just belong to one group; it belongs to everybody. And I think they’re starting to feel that this is everybody’s church.”
Navajo open-house tours
Cultural connection to the house of the Lord was strengthened by having translators present at the open house.
Before their tour, visitors who spoke Spanish and Navajo could watch a video introduction to the temple in their own language, followed by an open-house tour and the chance to ask a Native speaker questions about the temple.
One such translator was Romero Brown from St. Michaels, Arizona, who had served as Chinle Arizona Stake president from 2011 to 2021.
“Explaining things in Navajo means a lot more to our people,” he said of the visitors. “They’re curious to learn. And that was a good opportunity to do missionary work.”
Despite living two hours away from Farmington, Brown has accepted a calling as a sealer in the newly dedicated house of the Lord. And so he’s training his son to take over the family’s two restaurants to have more time to serve the Lord.
“The Lord’s coming is near, and the blossoming of the rose is still happening.”
‘A special place in His heart’
Although not a Native American, branch President Jason Frank feels God’s love for members of the Alamo Branch (Navajo), Los Lunas New Mexico Stake.
“A lot of people have told us that they feel the Spirit more easily there in the branch than they do in their home wards when they come to visit,” he said. “And I’m not sure why, since I know the Lord loves us all. But there must be a special place in His heart for them.”
President Frank said he was amazed by how Native American themes intertwine with the beauty of the Farmington temple. He also hopes Native American people “feel like it’s the temple for them.”
Mentioning that many Farmington locals already serve in New Mexico’s first temple, he said, “I know that Albuquerque has really been blessed by the people from the Farmington area.”
Before serving missions, all three of President Frank’s daughters served as ordinance workers in the Albuquerque New Mexico Temple. “It made a difference with them loving to go to the temple.” The state’s second temple, then, “is making it so the rising generation can love the temple more.”
