LDS Scene

President Spencer W. Kimball underwent surgery again November 17. Doctors again found an accumulation of fluid between his brain and skull, called a subdural hematoma, and drained it surgically. Surgeons were able to use an opening created in the first operation to drain the second subdural hematoma.

President Kimball, 84, spent about two weeks in the hospital after the first operation and traveled to the Middle East six weeks after surgery.

J. Talmage Jones of Leeds, Utah, has been called as president of the Singapore Mission. President Jones, a retired certified public accountant, served as mission president in western Canada in the mid-1960s. The Singapore Mission has been part of the former Southeast Asia Mission and, more recently, the Indonesia Jakarta Mission.

The Ogden and Arizona temples have new second counselors. George T. Frost is new second counselor at the Ogden Temple. He and his wife, Myrtle, have been sealers in the Ogden Temple since May 1977. Leo B. Hakes is second counselor in the Arizona Temple. He and his wife, Valma, have been temple workers since April 1977.

An area conference in Rochester, New York, has been planned for 12–13 April 1980. The conference will come one week after an observance of the Church’s 150th anniversary with ceremonies at nearby Fayette, New York, where the Church was organized 6 April 1830.

Members from New York, New Jersey, and northern Pennsylvania will attend the conference at the Rochester Community War Memorial.

On April 6 a new meetinghouse and visitors’ center complex will be dedicated. The complex includes an authentic replica of the log house in which the Church was organized.

Area conferences in Mississippi and California have been announced. The Jackson, Mississippi, area conference will be May 3–4 at the Fairgrounds Coliseum in Jackson. Members from New Orleans and Alexandria, Louisiana, and Little Rock, Arkansas, regions and Mississippi Jackson, Louisiana Baton Rouge, and Arkansas Little Rock missions will attend.

The Pasadena, California, conference will be May 17–18 at the Rose Bowl. Members from eighteen regions throughout southern California and from the Yuma, Arizona, Region will attend.

“Christmas World” is being shown around the globe. The one-hour program on Christmas customs, featuring the Mormon Youth Symphony and Chorus, has been placed with television stations in nine countries. It was produced by Bonneville Productions.

The Church is giving Christmas gifts to nonmembers this year. The December Reader’s Digest advertising insert sponsored by the Church offers an enlarged reproduction of the Harry Anderson painting Second Coming. The genealogy insert in the October English- and German-language editions of the Digest has received the largest public response of any insert so far.

Tuition at Brigham Young University is going up. Undergraduate tuition will go up $35 per semester starting fall 1980, bringing the semester tuition to $485. Graduate and advanced-standing student tuition will increase from $500 to $540. Graduate School of Management tuition will increase from $645 to $695, and Law School tuition will increase from $825 to $890.

Those rates apply to members of the Church. Nonmember students pay one and one-half times the standard tuition rate. The tuition increases will help meet the rising costs of operating the university, says President Dallin H. Oaks. Despite the increases, the cost of attending BYU is about seventy percent less than the average at the 700 private colleges and universities in the United States.

The 1980 Women’s Conference at BYU is scheduled January 31–February 2. “Blueprints for Living” is the theme of the conference. A complete class schedule is available from the ASBYU Women’s Office, 432 Wilkinson Center, BYU, Provo, Utah 84602, Attention: Women’s Conference. Latter-day Saint women from throughout the United States are invited to attend.

Thousands attended the cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Seattle Temple 3 November 1979. (Photography by Jim Bates.)