Guests feel peace at open house in Hong Kong Temple
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During the first week of the Hong Kong Temple open house, more than 7,000 visitors toured the newly completed edifice.
The temple, constructed of polished granite and capped by a gold-colored mosaic tile dome and a statue of a trumpeting angel, is on Cornwall Street in Kowloon Tong on the Kowloon Peninsula.The building will house the temple in its top three stories and the baptismal font in the basement. A meetinghouse, mission office, apartments for the temple president and the mission president and a small outlet of Beehive Clothing will be located in other areas of the sacred building.
After the open house, which ends May 21, the temple will be dedicated during seven separate services May 26-27.
About 400 VIP guests - Chinese and Hong Kong business, government and religious leaders - visited the temple May 7-9. Many members also brought their friends, neighbors and associates to view the sacred edifice.
Elder Jerry D. Wheat, public affairs missionary in Hong Kong, said those attending the open house felt something special during the tours - which took place on mostly warm sunny days with temperatures in the 80s. "Many people commented on the feeling they felt on the top three floors," he said. "They commented about a peace and reverence and a different feeling they felt there and that they haven't felt anywhere else."
Elder Wheat said a minister from another religion wrote him a letter expressing his appreciation for the temple. "He said, `Elder Wheat, there is something different about your temple. Hong Kong lacks what you have in your temple - it is a reverence.' "
Elder Wheat said the temple, which will serve 21,000 Church members in Hong Kong, Macao and Singapore, has given local Latter-day Saints hope. "They are only now beginning to realize that it is perhaps the most sacred place on earth," he explained. "Many members have never seen a temple and have never experienced the things they are seeing and will see."
Plans for the temple were announced in 1992 by President Gordon B. Hinckley, then first counselor in the First Presidency.
