LDS Scene

President Spencer W. Kimball has been back at work in his office since the last week in September. He underwent surgery for evacuation of a subdural hematoma, an accumulation of blood and fluid in the skull, September 7. After several weeks of recuperation he returned to his office for half-days of work, later increasing that to full working days. President Kimball, who is 84, had experienced increasing weakness prior to being admitted to the hospital.

He had been scheduled to undergo surgery for removal of a cataract from his left eye September 8, but that surgery has been deferred.

The Assembly Hall on Temple Square in Salt Lake City has been closed for repairs and maintenance. Inspections of the century-old building turned up evidence of structural deterioration. An engineering study is being made to determine what repair work will be needed. Meetings traditionally conducted in the Assembly Hall will be rescheduled to other facilities nearby.

The Sao Paulo, Brazil, Temple has a new president. Jose Benjamin Puerta has been called to succeed Finn B. Paulsen, who died August 1 in a Salt Lake City hospital after a brief illness. President Puerta has served as first counselor in the temple presidency during the past year. The temple was dedicated 30 October 1978 by President Spencer W. Kimball.

Angel Miguel Fernandez, former second counselor to the temple president, is the new first counselor. Robert Kenneth Flake of Mesa, Arizona, who has been serving as a temple missionary in Brazil, is the new second counselor.

The Parksville, British Columbia, branch of the Church is floating high. The branch’s float won best-all-around-float and best-adult-float awards in the annual Parksville Pageant Days festival parade. The float, designed around a theme honoring children, depicted several generations of a family.

The Mormon Festival of Arts is looking for art. Latter-day Saint artists are invited to enter work in the Sesquicentennial exhibition, “Latter-day Saints’ Festival of the Arts,” to be displayed at Brigham Young University. Work should demonstrate excellence in an aesthetic depiction of gospel principles.

In addition to the juried art show, a photography contest is planned. The “Patterns of Mormonism” contest will be a juried exhibition of photographic images dealing with the aesthetic dimensions of Latter-day Saint life. Photographers should “search out and isolate motifs which can stand on their own as visual equivalents of gospel principles,” says J. Clyff Allen, BYU Art Gallery director. The photographs should not be narrative in nature but should “communicate beyond the storytelling level.”

Entry information is available from Art Gallery, F-303 HFAC, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602; telephone [phone] ext. 2881. The entry deadline for art and photography is 22 February 1980. Entries will be juried 29 February 1980, and exhibited 14 March–18 April 1980.

BYU’s American Folk Dancers recently returned from Europe—triumphant. They won a gold medal in an international dance festival in Bulgaria during their six-week tour of six eastern European countries. The thirty-member troupe, accompanied by Elder Robert L. Simpson, also performed American folk and other dances in Romania, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland.

The dancers produced two ninety-minute television specials for national television networks in Bucharest, Romania, and Moscow, the Soviet Union. The Romanian special was aired three times on Romanian national television August 23, that country’s equivalent of the United States’ Fourth of July. Television releases of the two specials were planned for Bulgaria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

The gold medal, naming the troupe the best in the festival, was awarded at the conclusion of the Second Annual European Youth and Student Festival in Primorsko, Bulgaria.

The site of a new activities center on the BYU—Hawaii campus was dedicated this summer. Elder Marion D. Hanks, a member of the Presidency of the First Quorum of the Seventy, dedicated the site where a 5,600-seat activities center is under construction. School officials hope the center will be finished early in the 1980–81 basketball season, which will be the third year the school has participated in intercollegiate basketball competition.

The arena of the new building will have an upper concourse with 2,000 permanent seats and a ground-floor level with fold-out bleachers to seat 2,600 people. About 1,000 chairs can be placed on the main basketball court area to increase potential attendance at some activities to 5,600. The present campus gymnasium has seating for about 1,000, and the school auditorium seats 700.

The title of the chief administrative officer at BYU—Hawaii campus has been changed. Dr. Dan W. Anderson, formerly called executive vice president, will now be called president. He has been serving as the chief administrative officer since 1974 and was academic dean for one year prior to that appointment.

A BYU film has been selected for showing at the American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival. Fiji: The Great Council of Chiefs was shown at the New York City film festival in September. It was the first time a BYU-produced film has been shown at the festival.

A BYU film crew was the only crew invited to attend the rare Great Council of the Fijian Chiefs. The council is held every one hundred years. Production was sponsored by the Institute of Polynesian Studies, which is funded by the Polynesian Cultural Center near the BYU—Hawaii Campus at Laie, Hawaii.

The size of the school had changed, the speaker said, but the spirit hadn’t. The school in mention was BYU, and the speaker was President Spencer W. Kimball, addressing more than 24,000 BYU students and others at the opening devotional assembly of the fall semester.

“This is a city set on a hill which cannot be hid,” he said. “What you do here is noted far and wide.” He encouraged students to maintain high standards. He said many in the world “stand in wonder at what we have here set ourselves to achieve. The Lord’s standards, which we strive to meet, are high indeed—so high that we are likely sometimes to fail. But temporary setbacks are no disgrace if we try without ceasing. Never, never give up in well doing!”

The donation came in an envelope, accompanied by the usual form, neatly filled out to show a $114 donation to the Church Missionary Fund. The donor’s name, however, was unusual—it was from a Sunday School class of children in Saudi Arabia.

The eight members of course six in the Dahran Saudi Arabia District held a carnival in March, with proceeds going to the missionary fund. In April, their teacher sent the money to the Church.

“The children have been learning of the work missionaries do. They are very interested in being helpers of the Church and helping our brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia,” says Sister Betty J. Kleinbeck, their teacher. “This money is given with all the love in their hearts for their Heavenly Father so that his word can be spread throughout the land.”

A collection of heirloom-quality quilts, handmade by volunteer women from the Relief Society in Alberta, Canada, has been donated to the Canadian Red Cross Society. Wards were asked to produce one quilt a year, with materials provided by the Red Cross and by the women. The quilts are offered for public sale, with proceeds going to international relief and other Red Cross programs.

A Church-sponsored television advertisement has been named tops in its field. “Try Again,” a public service message on marriage solidarity, was awarded three CLIO awards at the 1979 CLIO awards banquet. It was named top entry in the television public service category and was honored as the best-edited and best-directed of all advertisements in all categories of the international competition. This meant that it won over more than 11,000 entries in television, radio, print, and packaging. The awards were the first television CLIOs won by a Church entry. “Try Again” is shown on some 140 television stations. “Homefront” radio announcements have won six radio CLIOs since 1972.