Behind the more than 17,000 people who attended the dedication of the Toronto Ontario Temple are stories of faith and devotion - some that tug the heart strings, others that stir the soul, but all are moving and inspirational.

The story of Dora Valencia and her visiting teacher, Laura Gordon, is a story of courage and service.For the past four years, Sister Valencia, 54, has had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig's disease, named after the famed New York Yankee star who was forced from baseball in 1939 because of the disease. She has been confined to a bed in an Ajax, Ontario, hospital for four months.

But on Saturday, Aug. 25, she was taken to the dedication of the temple in her bed by Sister Gordon, who has been her visiting teacher since she joined the Church four years ago. "Early on," related Sister Gordon, "I asked her if she wanted to go to the dedication, and she indicated she did."

Doctors at first would not take responsibility for Sister Valencia to be taken out of the hospital for the 60-kilometer trip to the temple. It would be about four hours from the time she left the hospital until she returned. Her health would not permit such a trip, Sister Gordon was told.

But in the end, the Christlike love of a caring visiting teacher overcame what were seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Sister Valencia, a native of Quito, Ecuador, and the only member of the Church in her family, was permitted to attend the dedication, where she met President Thomas S. Monson, second counselor in the First Presidency.

Sister Gordon said she visits Sister Valencia in the hospital three times a week, and once a month gives her the Relief Society message. "Obviously, I have grown to love her very much," related Sister Gordon.

For the first three years, Sister Gordon's visiting teaching companion was Maria Rattray. They took turns reading to Sister Valencia in Spanish from the Book of Mormon and other Church literature. Sister Gordon's visiting teaching companion is now her daughter, Rebecca.

For the past six months, members of the Pinkering Ward have visited Sister Valencia in the hospital every day, said Sister Gordon.

"She [Sister Valencia] is an inspiration to the entire ward. Our service is just small acts. She gives to us far more than we give to her."

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Marie Attard and her daughter, Henrietta, served as hostesses at the temple dedication. Theirs is a story of the daughter, 24, searching for the true Church and bringing her parents in with her.

"I started reading the Bible on my own," related Henrietta. "I wanted to find the true Church." She went through the yellow pages in the telephone book and saw listings of many churches.

Earlier in her life she had some association with Church members, and so she called up the mission president in Toronto, who sent missionaries to teach her the gospel.

"It took me a couple of months to receive my own testimony," she recalled. "I fasted and prayed and received the answer that the Church was true." She was baptized in June.

However, her mother, who thought her daughter "was old enough to find her own way," had considerable apprehensions about her investigating the Church. "But I found in talking to her that she was searching in a very mature way," the mother related.

"My own conversion," she continued, "began when we discussed the differences [between the family's religion and what Henrietta was studying with the missionaries]."

A month later, the mother followed her daughter into the waters of baptism.

In the meantime, the father, Joseph, was observing what was taking place in the lives of his wife and daughter, and he, too, was baptized on Aug. 24, the day before the temple dedication began. All three attended the dedication. "It was an experience we wouldn't have missed," said Marie.

Members of the Halton Hills Ward, Brampton Ontario Stake, the Attards moved from Malta seven years ago and settled in Mississauga, Ontario.

"For us, being baptized was like coming home," explained Henrietta. "It was as if we've been searching for the true Church all our lives. And it was due to what my mother had taught me - to search diligently for truth."

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The story of Blaine E. Hatt, a high school English teacher in Fredericton, New Brunswick, is one of providing leadership to others so they are motivated and worthy to attend the temple.

He is president of the Saint John New Brunswick Stake, a stake that covers a vast area and includes the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, and most of Cumberland County in Nova Scotia and most of Washington County in Maine. It takes about seven or eight hours to travel from the northern most point of the stake in Bathhurst in New Brunswick to the easternmost point in Montague on Prince Edward Island.

The stake is about 1,400-1,600 kilometers from the temple in Toronto, a distance requiring 16-20 hours to drive, explained Pres. Hatt.

In spite of the great distances to the temple, he said members in the stake are "very, very temple-minded."

"We have two sisters in Moncton [New Brunswick] preparing names for the Toronto temple, and they will submit more than 5,000 names of Acadian ancestry, which is French ancestry. A brother in another ward has close to 2,000 names of his own family and his wife's family that he's preparing for the temple."

In preparation for the temple dedication, the stake was supplied with copies of a picture of the temple for the homes of every family in the stake, Pres. Hatt related.

"We gave out between 180-200 tickets to our stake members to come to the dedication," he explained. "When the temple opens for endowment sessions on Tuesday [Aug. 28], we will have at least 110 of our members in that first endowment session."

A major theme in the stake has been that "all roads lead to the temple," said Pres. Hatt. "We fly, we come by car, by vans. We have traditionally put together bus trips to go to the temple.

"The temple has always been and continues to be a very important part of our service in the gospel. It's because we talk about it and we encourage our members. We tell about the blessings and the enjoyment and the fulfillment of receiving the covenants that our Heavenly Father has for us on the earth."

With the dedication of the temple in Toronto, Pres. Hatt looks forward to having more members go to the temple more often.

"We need to come to the temple as often as we can," he said. "We, and many others in our stake, build our vacations around going to the temple. We don't take a vacation and go sight-seeing. We say, `OK, we're going to take a week and spend three or four days in the temple.' "

Sister Hatt said, "One of the things that may have contributed to people feeling so close to the temple is the degree of sacrifices required in order to get there."