Chapter 32
Our Strength Is Our Faith
On October 1, 2000, President Hinckley—now ninety years old—dedicated the Boston Massachusetts Temple in the eastern United States, achieving his goal of having one hundred operating temples by the end of the year. Two months later, as Christians around the world prepared to celebrate the birth of the Savior and the beginning of a new millennium, he dedicated two more temples, in Recife and Porto Alegre, Brazil. Another nineteen temples were either under construction or in the planning stages. It was a fitting conclusion to a year that saw more temples dedicated than any before in the history of the Church.
During his lifetime, President Hinckley had watched the Church grow from an institution with four hundred thousand members, most of whom lived in Utah, to one with over eleven million members in 148 countries. In 1910, the year of the prophet’s birth, the Church had just four temples, and the endowment was available only in English. Now the Church’s temples were found all over the globe, and the endowment was available in dozens of languages. The inspired change to temple design had helped make this possible.
But temples were not the only buildings President Hinckley had on his mind. For some time, he had expressed concern that the Salt Lake Tabernacle was not large enough to accommodate everyone who wanted to attend general conference in person. So he commissioned a new assembly hall with three times the seating capacity of the Tabernacle. The Conference Center, built on the block north of Temple Square and dedicated in October 2000, was an engineering marvel, and it delighted the prophet.
Under President Hinckley’s leadership, the Church had also continued to embrace new technology. Shortly after becoming Church president, he had approved the creation of a website where internet users could find the scriptures, the testimony of Joseph Smith, and general conference addresses. By the end of 2000, www.lds.org included digital copies of the scriptures, thirty years of Church magazines, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” and “The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles.”
As much as President Hinckley saw great potential in the internet as a force for good, he observed evil in it too. Pornography was a grave concern. “Leave it alone!” he pleaded. “Avoid it like the plague because it is just as deadly.” He also condemned physical and sexual abuse and urged Church leaders to help bring perpetrators to justice.
The prophet was still concerned about the number of Saints who fell away from the Church. Under his direction, missionaries were placing greater emphasis on conversion prior to baptism, and mission and stake leaders were meeting together in new coordinating councils to discuss how to better minister to new members. While President Hinckley worried that sacrament meeting attendance was not improving, he was encouraged by the retention efforts of Saints worldwide.
At the dawn of the new millennium, he placed hope in the rising generation. More and more, they were going on missions and getting married in the house of the Lord. He also noted that they were better educated than past generations.
As Church president, he yearned for ways to help young Saints gain the education and career training they needed. Earlier that year, during a meeting of the Church Board of Education, he had felt the Spirit telling him that Ricks College, a two-year institution, should become a four-year university called BYU–Idaho. Such a change would give many more young Latter-day Saints an opportunity to attend a Church university.
The following day, President Hinckley presented the idea to the apostles, and they unanimously approved it. He then counseled with David A. Bednar, the president of Ricks College, and they decided the new university should focus on teaching and the use of online classes to expand the numbers of students enrolled at the school.
The prophet wasted no time in announcing the change. “It will become a great institution,” he declared.
Recently, he had also thought much about young women and men in developing nations, especially returned missionaries. Faced with poverty and a lack of education and job prospects, they sometimes grew discouraged and drifted away from the Church. At his encouragement, the Presiding Bishopric had begun developing a new program to provide small loans to Saints worldwide to help them pay for trade school or university. Likening it to the Perpetual Emigrating Fund, the Church’s program for helping thousands of European Saints gather to Utah in the 1800s, President Hinckley planned to call it the Perpetual Education Fund.
“I feel that this program is inspired and can bless the lives of so very many young men and women,” he wrote. “Their sights can be lifted and their ambitions stirred.”
In November, President Hinckley held a special broadcast devotional for the youth of the Church. To help them become better disciples of Jesus Christ, he invited them to learn and practice six B’s:
A little over a month later, as the year came to an end, he reflected on his life and the goodness of God. Although the prophet’s body was weary, his spirit was aglow with peace and contentment. “My feeling is one of profound gratitude to my Father in Heaven and His Beloved Son,” he recorded in his journal on December 31, 2000. “We now look forward to a new year.”
Two months later, on February 26, 2001, Darius Gray and Marie Taylor sat in a crowded auditorium in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. At the front of the room, apostle Henry B. Eyring was speaking to more than a hundred reporters and special guests about the Freedman’s Bank project.
After eleven years of work, Darius, Marie, and more than 550 volunteers at the Utah State Prison had finished extracting the information about all 484,083 African Americans named in the records. Recently, the Church had begun providing technical and financial support to the project, and the information was now searchable and available to researchers on CD-ROM and at any of the Church’s family history centers.
“To African Americans, the Freedman’s Bank records represent the largest repository of lineage-linked documents known to exist,” Elder Eyring announced. “In the near future, it is also our hope to provide the database free of charge on the Church’s genealogical website, FamilySearch.org.”
In the days leading up to this announcement, Darius had met with leaders in the Family History Department to plan the release of the database. “We’re really going to do this,” he thought. “It’s going to happen.”
The project’s fate had not always been certain. Early on, extracting names for temple work had become a motivating aspect of the project. But in the mid-1990s, the Church began actively discouraging people from submitting names of nonrelatives to the temple. The change was an important and necessary measure to respect the families of the deceased, but it caused the project to stall. As a result, Darius and Marie shifted their focus to creating a research tool to help African Americans find their ancestors.
The inmates finished extracting names in October 1999. After that, they carefully verified their transcriptions and—despite a three-week prison lockdown—completed the work in mid-July 2000.
One inmate who helped coordinate the project got emotional when they finished. He never expected the work to affect him as much as it did. He had read heartbreaking records of enslaved fathers and mothers being taken away from their families. Other records mentioned people being shot to death. One record he extracted told of a nameless enslaved baby being traded away for farm equipment.
Many inmates had similar life-changing experiences. Once, the coordinator came upon a weeping volunteer. “I cannot believe the way these people have been treated,” the inmate said. Placing a hand on the volunteer’s shoulder, the coordinator noticed the man was tattooed with the initials of a white supremacist group.
Now that the data was extracted, Darius and Marie had to find a way to make it widely available to researchers—something they did not have the resources to do. A popular genealogy website offered to purchase the data for tens of thousands of dollars, but Darius and Marie declined, feeling it would be wrong to profit from the inmates’ work. Instead, they donated it to the Church in exchange for making it available to everyone who wanted to use it.
At the release event for the CD-ROM, which was broadcast to Washington, DC, and eleven other cities in the United States, both Darius and Marie spoke about the project. Darius acknowledged that the records told many painful and uncomfortable stories. “I think oftentimes we have been afraid to talk about race,” he told reporters, “but race is a reality. We ought to share in the history together.”
He believed family was at the heart of the project. “It lets you know how important family was,” he said. “Even in the hostile environment of slavery, people struggled to keep track of each other. They worked at it, they kept track of one another.”
Marie agreed. “When I discovered the Freedman’s Bank records,” she said, “I envisioned African Americans breaking the chains of slavery and forging the bonds of families.” Now she hoped the records would continue to bring families together.
“That is what it is all about,” she said.
When Felicindo Contreras was called to serve as a bishop in Santiago, Chile, his wife, Veronica, was released as the ward Relief Society president. But she soon received a new calling: stake seminary and institute teacher.
For many years, the Church’s institutes of religion had generally operated near university campuses in the United States. But in the early 1970s, leaders in the Church Educational System began adapting institute to operate in stakes across the globe. The change allowed all young adults in the Church, not just university students, to benefit from the program. Regional CES administrators supervised the classes, and the stakes provided teachers.
In Chile, weekday religious education operated for a time alongside more than a dozen Church-run primary and secondary schools. But it was expensive for the Church to operate schools in every country where there were members, and Church policy dictated that as soon as the Saints had access to adequate secular schools, Church schools would close. In 1981, the Church closed its last school in Chile and began relying solely on seminary and institute to provide the Saints with religious education.
Studies had shown that institute students were much more likely to stay active in the Church than those who did not attend. Yet in Chile, only about one in five of all active young adult Saints was enrolled. At the time of Veronica’s call, only three or four students in the stake regularly attended institute.
Veronica believed institute classes played a vital role in helping young people progress closer to God. She began mentioning institute to every young adult—and parent of a young adult—she met at church. She also visited the bishops of each ward, urging them to invite young people to attend classes. Many of the bishops were supportive, especially when she shared her convictions of institute’s importance. Before long, more than fifty students were taking part in institute.
Since many of her students came straight from work or school, they often did not have time to eat before class started. Worried they would not be able to focus on her lessons if they were hungry, Veronica made sure the students had something to eat when they arrived. She usually provided them with cake or a small snack. Other times she prepared something bigger, like a barbecue or some other meal. But she would never tell the students what food to expect, hoping the mystery of it would encourage them to come to class.
At the start of the year, she would ask her students what they wanted to learn. Based on their feedback, she taught classes on the standard works, temple and mission preparation, and eternal marriage.
Using the institute manuals as a starting point, Veronica prepared her lessons prayerfully, looking for ways to address the everyday struggles of her students. She liked to break the scriptures down verse by verse to encourage her students to think deeply about the lives and teachings of the people and prophets they studied. She also encouraged the young people to ask questions.
“If I don’t know the answer to your question or a concern that you have,” she would say, “I’m going to look it up and I’m going to give you the answer—or we are going to look it up together.”
As the institute class grew, the students became a tight-knit group. They enjoyed spending time with her and with each other. Sometimes, when they were dealing with personal problems, the students would come to her for advice. She always urged them to resolve their concerns with the right people.
“Look,” she would tell them, “talk to your bishop or to your dad or mom, because if there is a problem at home, you must solve it at home. And if there is no solution, go and talk with your bishop. That’s the best thing to do.”
Veronica understood that her students faced challenges. At the time, Chile’s economy was struggling, and many young people wondered how they could afford to attend school, get married, and raise a family. On Veronica’s wall hung a sign that read “Faith in Every Footstep,” and she believed that acting in faith and applying the teachings of Jesus Christ to everyday life would produce good results.
“We are always going to have stumbles,” she’d tell her students. “But we are always going to have the hand of the Lord helping us.”
In May 2001, Seb Sollesta left his home in Iloilo City, Philippines, to live and work in the United States—a dream he’d had since college. He had friends and relatives from the Philippines who had already moved to the U.S., and they lived happy and successful lives. “Maybe I can have that dream also,” he thought.
His wife, Maridan, had not liked the idea of him leaving home to move to the other side of the world. “Your dream is just your dream,” she had told him. “That’s not my dream.” They had three teenage sons to raise, a pharmaceutical business to run, and Church callings to fulfill. She did not understand why he wanted to go away.
“You need to think it over very wisely,” she had counseled. “As a husband and wife, we need to live under one roof in one house.”
Unwilling to stand in the way of Seb’s dream, though, Maridan ultimately agreed to the move. Both of them knew that many Filipino couples lived apart, with one partner staying in the Philippines while the other worked abroad. Why couldn’t they do the same?
In the United States, Seb moved in with his uncle in Long Beach, California, a city on the west coast of the country. He found a job working the graveyard shift at a nearby hospital. The nighttime hours were difficult, and the job was challenging, but it paid well, and Seb enjoyed the work.
On weekends, he attended his local ward and then visited relatives with his uncle. He liked making new friends and becoming better acquainted with his relatives. But he also felt lonely and missed his wife and children. He and Maridan tried to talk on the telephone every day, but doing so was expensive. To make a long-distance call to the Philippines, he had to use phone cards at a cost of ten dollars an hour.
After working five months in California, Seb started thinking seriously about returning to the Philippines. His visa would expire soon, and if he wanted to continue working in the United States, he needed to extend it. For a time, he had thought about having Maridan and their sons join him, perhaps permanently, once he had enough money. But Maridan wasn’t interested in living in the United States, and he did not want to stay there without his family.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, violent extremists hijacked three commercial airliners in the eastern United States and crashed them into buildings in New York City and the Washington, DC, area. A fourth airliner went down in a field after passengers resisted hijackers. The attacks killed nearly three thousand people and triggered widespread outrage and fear. While people around the world mourned, the United States and its allies vowed a “war on terror” against the militant group behind the attacks.
As Seb watched television news coverage of the tragedy, he no longer felt safe where he was. He wanted to be with his wife and children. His sons were at a vulnerable age. They needed someone to guide and strengthen them as they got older. He needed to be at home with them and their mother.
A few days after the hijackings, Seb boarded a flight for the Philippines. He was returning earlier than planned, but he had no regrets. True happiness, he now realized, did not come from worldly success. It came from family.
Less than a month after the September 11 attacks, President Hinckley spoke to the Saints at general conference about the rising conflict. “We live in a season when fierce men do terrible and despicable things,” he declared. “Our strength is our faith in the Almighty. No cause under the heavens can stop the work of God. Adversity may raise its ugly head. The world may be troubled with wars and rumors of wars, but this cause will go forward.”
“And as we go forward,” he continued, “may we bless humanity with an outreach to all, lifting those who are downtrodden and oppressed, feeding and clothing the hungry and the needy, extending love and neighborliness to those about us who may not be part of this Church.”
A few months later, Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, an event President Hinckley had been anticipating for several years. Despite the recent terrorist attacks, the games brought an unprecedented number of international visitors to Utah, including thousands of journalists eager to ask questions about the city’s religious heritage and culture. President Hinckley set the tone for the Church’s community support by announcing publicly that missionaries would not preach to Olympic tourists. Still, the Church took steps to help reporters and other visitors learn about the Saints.
In October 2001, Church leaders had launched a new website designed to answer basic questions about Church beliefs and practices. During the games, the Church also set up a media center in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for reporters. Anyone curious about the Church and its teachings could attend Light of the World, a Christ-centered pageant about the history of the Church and the message of the restored gospel, held four days a week in the Conference Center.
After the events of September 11, safety was a major concern at the games. Extensive security measures protected each Olympic venue, yet organizers worked hard to preserve the community spirit of an Olympic host city. To help the games run smoothly, the Church provided resources to the Salt Lake Olympic Committee, parking lots for the crowds, and a range of services. The Tabernacle Choir performed in front of a worldwide audience of three billion people during the opening ceremonies. And many Saints, including returned missionaries who served as translators, contributed by volunteering their time.
After the games were over, the prophet reflected on the experience in his journal. “The Church has been greatly blessed by these Olympics,” he wrote. “We have not done any direct proselytizing, but we have made friends and admirers across the world. People who scarcely ever heard of us are now somewhat familiar.”
He thought about the many dignitaries, heads of state, and industry leaders who came to the city to enjoy the games. They brought to mind a prophecy by Brigham Young that Salt Lake City would become a “great highway of the nations,” a place where kings and emperors would visit.
“The prophecy has been fulfilled in what we have observed during the past two weeks,” President Hinckley wrote. “Now we settle down and go back to work.”