With the 2002 Winter Games beginning Feb. 8, the Church News will publish excerpts from various publications that portray their experiences and observations of Utah, Salt Lake City and members of the Church. This article appeared Jan. 20 in the Columbus ( Dispatch.

BY JOE HALLETT

Dispatch senior editor

SALT LAKE CITY

From atop the Wasatch Mountain Range in 1847, Brigham Young gazed across the Salt Lake Valley and told his weary Mormon flock, "This is the right place."

Now, 155 years later, the world will be the judge of that.

For 17 days beginning Feb. 8, about 80,000 spectators a day from more than 80 nations will pour into this mountain-enveloped city to appraise whether it is the right place to find international healing in the wondrous feats off of 1,200 Olympians.

"The Olympics are more important now than ever before," said Mitt Romney, president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. "It is clear we must show that America has not been stopped, and it is important to show that the world's nations can come to America in compete safely."

In some respects, Salt Lake City seemingly is the proper place to set a terror-shaken world on a peaceful path. Borne of pioneers fleeing religious persecution it is the headquarters of the only major religion with U.S. roots and home base for 60,000 Mormon missionaries exhorting peace and morality in 120 countries.

Yet, as it prepares to be laid bare to the world by 9,000 journalists, Salt Lake City — indeed, all of Utah — is conflicted about its image, at once proud of its family valued tradition but fearful of being portrayed as a cultural backwater.

Conservative, orderly, productive, decent — Salt Lake City is all of that.

"Our biggest hope," [Michael R.] Otterson [the Church's director of media relations] said, "is that we will have an opportunity to inform and educate people about who we are and about our beliefs. But we are not proselytizing during the Games. We literally have taken our missionaries off the street. We won't have them in airports; we won't have them at Olympic venues. If people want to go to Temple Square, of course, they can ask questions."

. . . . In Utah, the Mormon life is mostly lived and — in part because the Church forbids members to use tobacco, alcoholic beverages, tea and coffee — it is lived longer. Life expectancy is 77.7 years, third highest in the nation behind Hawaii (78.2) and Minnesota (77.8).

"This is not a sundown religion," [Brother] Otterson said. "This is a lifestyle that has to do with your health code, what you drink and the way you treat your family. There is a very high expectation of living your religion."