The miracle of springtime in January

We had just completed the dedication of the Bountiful Utah Temple. Because the first Sunday of January 1995 had been New Year's Day, and the second Sunday the temple dedication, our stake chose to have fast Sunday that month on the third Sunday.

Brother Wayne Beck, a member of our ward in Bountiful, called attention in fast and testimony meeting to an obvious miracle we had all witnessed that week. He called it "The Miracle of Springtime in January," the remarkable January thaw we witnessed throughout the week during the 28 dedicatory sessions of the Bountiful Temple.

The weather forecasters just days before the dedication began were telling us that these middle two weeks of January are the coldest part of the year in Utah. And so we basked in the near-sixty-degree afternoon temperatures and enjoyed nighttime lows that were warmer than the daytime highs were supposed to have been. The grass was turning green, and pansies and crocuses were poking up.

Meanwhile the West Coast, particularly California, was being battered with storm after storm that, after wrecking havoc there, should normally have come east to Utah. Instead, the storms went north and south of the Wasatch Front and left us with mild, mostly dry weather all week.

The dedication—attended by more than 201,000 people—ended Saturday night at six o'clock. Saturday evening it started raining, and sometime during the night it started snowing and continued with a wet, heavy snow much of Sunday and beyond.

Those who see the world through the eyes of faith—those who, as the Lord defined it, have a "knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come" (D&C 93:24)—see these favorable weather patterns as more than simple coincidence. Rather, we see them as the Lord's divine approbation, His obvious approval and acceptance of this new House of the Lord that we have built and dedicated to His holy name and to His eternal purposes in the salvation of both living and dead.