President Dallin H. The temple will be rededicated in three sessions: a. The rededicatory sessions and youth devotional will be broadcast to congregations in the temple district. On May 19, , the Mesa Arizona Temple closed for extensive renovation that will be followed by a public open house and rededication ceremony. The renovations will include:. Exterior maintenance including new roofing and drainage systems Mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and HVAC upgrades Interior improvements consistent with the historical character of the building Replacement of the furniture and finishes Preservation and augmentation of the historic murals Replacement of the windows consistent with the originals Major renovation of the grounds that preserves shade trees, replaces the reflection pools, introduces new garden spaces, and better accommodates the Easter Pageant Demolition of the current visitors' center and construction of a new visitors' center and FamilySearch center across the street.
Located just east of the original Mesa Townsite—settled by pioneers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the Mesa Arizona Temple anchors a historic district, which has predominantly retained its residential character. A public visitors' center shares the meticulously manicured grounds of the temple, which feature a cactus garden and large reflection pools.
The Easter season brings thousands of guests to the temple grounds every year to watch Jesus the Christ, the largest annual outdoor Easter pageant in the world. At Christmas time, the grounds are converted to an exquisite Nativity display accented by hundreds of thousands of Christmas lights. The Mesa Arizona Temple was the first temple to present the endowment in a language other than English.
The year-old Mesa Arizona Temple has become a pillar of the Phoenix area's second-largest city. The temple has wrapped up major renovations and will be open to the public for the first time in nearly 50 years.
It is set to be rededicated in December and will be open for public tours before then, starting Oct. Typically, you can't just walk into a temple. This is only the third time the Mesa site has offered public tours. Thank you for subscribing. This premium content is made possible because of your continued support of local journalism. Temples are usually limited to members of the church who are in good standing.
Because of construction and renovations, though, many people who aren't members of the faith have been inside. That's partly why church officials see the need to rededicate the temple in December. The Mesa temple hasn't offered general public tours since , prior to a rededication. Before that, it offered tours in and while construction was wrapping up. Several church members among the founders saw opportunity in Arizona, according to Chad and Beth Coons, a husband-wife duo serving as historical subcommittee chairs on the Mesa Temple Open House and Rededication Committee.
The Arizona Republican wrote that 10, people attended one of several opening ceremonies. Today's renovations have sought to faithfully restore the temple's insides and conform to the way it would have looked in , when it first opened. The classical grand hall, built of gray granite, looks just as it did when the temple was first built. Important works of art have been preserved and restored. These include murals in the grand hall depicting Joseph and Hyrum Smith sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with the Native American nations.
Conservators removed layers of paint from years of modifications to the original works, reattached the canvas to the wall and filled in damaged areas. All of those rays of light had been obscured over the years by other people painting over them. And so the mural conservators came in. They removed those elements. And J. Instruction room murals were removed to allow repairs to walls and upgrades to utilities. Remnants of the original murals are now displayed in other areas of the temple.
The Church commissioned Linda Curley Christensen and a team of artists to create new murals to encompass the four walls of each room, similar to how they appeared in I felt a harmony and a resonance with their intent in what I was portraying. I began to feel like I was just helping them refine and refresh something that they had begun to create. And so we have to do it exactly right every time. It was just a huge, huge challenge. Many who have worshiped in this temple are Latinos. The faith responded to its growing Spanish-speaking population in these regions by conducting the temple ceremony then done with live actors in Spanish.
So, they had to find members of the Church in the Phoenix area that were fluent in both Spanish and English and train them to do the entire temple ceremony in Spanish.
It would have been a remarkable feat because not only did they have to be temple workers who knew the ceremony in English perfectly — they had to learn it in a second language just as well. The new option encouraged large groups of Latino families to make the trek to the Mesa Temple, often at great sacrifice.
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