You can't write down the way you feel

Our family attended the dedication of the Bountiful Utah Temple on Sunday afternoon, January 8, 1995. After we returned home, our eleven-year-old daughter Eliza wrote in her journal about her experience in the temple. Near the end of her sweet entry, with wisdom beyond her years, she wrote: "You can't write down the way you feel."

That’s the way I felt in trying to place on paper anything that remotely described the sacred experience we had that Sabbath afternoon inside the House of the Lord.

The Bountiful Temple had been announced five years earlier—in February 1990—by President Ezra Taft Benson as the 47th operating temple in the Church. We were thrilled at the announcement of a temple in our very own Bountiful. We lived, after all, only eight miles from the Salt Lake Temple. But now the stakes of southern Davis County would have a temple of their own. I wondered if my parents and my grand­parents and others who had gone on before who had lived in this area were similarly rejoicing from their side of the veil.

Claudia and I, together with each of the children, contributed financially toward its construction. We eagerly watched its progress as it rose on the mountainside above our home. And we attended the public open house that was held in November and December of 1994.

And now the temple was ready for dedication. President Howard W. Hunter was the President of the Church, and this was the second of two temples he would dedicate during his short tenure as our Prophet. He dedicated the Orlando Florida Temple in October 1994. The Bountiful Temple was being dedicated in 28 dedicatory sessions—one for each of the 28 stakes in the temple district—beginning on Sunday, January 8, 1995, and concluding the following Saturday, January 14. Four sessions a day spread over a week’s period of time. Our stake was assigned the third dedicatory session.

Our stake president, F. Michael Watson, who happened to serve as secretary to the First Presidency, had very kindly arranged for us to receive tickets to be in the celestial room. Being in that room, in the presence of the Prophet and his counselors, was incredible, but it occurred to us afterward that we could actually have seen the speakers better on one of the TV monitors in another room in the temple.

President Gordon B. Hinckley conducted the session for our stake. A choir from the stake sang "The Morning Breaks" as the opening hymn. Rex Christen­sen, our stake patriarch, gave the opening prayer. The choir then sang "Sweet Is the Work."

Elder Neal A. Maxwell, of the Quorum of the Twelve, spoke about the temple in the land Bountiful described in the Book of Mormon and mentioned the third volume of scripture that someday we will have from the Lost Tribes to join the witness of the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

President Thomas S. Monson then spoke, followed by another number by the choir, "Song of Praise." We all felt that the strength and beauty of the music was far beyond what a group of singers of that size could be producing and wondered if heavenly choirs were filling in also.

President Hinckley in his address mentioned that he had participated in the dedica­tion or rededication of all but five of the currently operating temples.

President Howard W. Hunter spoke of how temples are like corrective lenses: they allow us to see the things of eternity clearly.

President Monson then read the dedicatory prayer that President Hunter had offered in the morning session. Michael and Shauna had attended that session with Shauna's family. Michael and Shauna were engaged at the time and would be married in this temple three months later. (Michael, incidentally, was the only one of our children old enough to attend the dedication of the Jordan River Temple back in November 1981, just a couple months after he turned eight.)

Elder Maxwell explained and then led us in the Hosanna Shout, followed by the emotional climax when the choir sang the "Hosanna Anthem" (written by Evan Stephens for the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple) and the congregation joined in with "The Spirit of God" (written by William W. Phelps for the dedication of the Kirtland Temple). Gerald N. Wray, our former stake president, gave the closing prayer.

Eliza wrote in her journal concerning the music, "It was so beutiful. It sounded like the tabranackle choir. It gave me goosebumps. It sound like tryumphint Angels sing­ing. It made me feel so happy!!!"

After that entry is when she recorded, "You can't write down the way you feel."