The angel Moroni blows his golden trumpet from the highest spire at the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
We've lingered in the Salt Lake valley of Utah, surrounded by snow-covered peaks on our east, south and west. Two reasons for the lingering: We wanted to poke around into the beliefs of the Mormons and this is Ground Zero; 2: we have been struggling with a recalcitrant indicator light problem on our rig. We've been blowing fuses for a few days and needed to root out the cause.
While a mechanic endlessly worked at tracing the fault in our wiring, we took off in the car (and the cat) to poke around the Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Oh, silly me. I actually thought we could walk into the Temple. No. We were met by a man dressed entirely in white (white tie, white shirt, what suit, white socks, white shoes) who was named Elroy. Elroy asked if he could help us and I asked if it was permissible to enter the Temple. Only if we were members of the church, he told us. Clearly, by our attire, we didn't match the look. Elroy suggested that we walk around the corner and wander to the visitor's center where we would meet two women - “there will always be two of them,” he said – and they would take care of our every need.
With the cat in her red bag, we wandered past three beggars into the visitor center. And the women were there, in groups of two. They each wore a badge along with a flag of their country of origin. I noted flags of Singapore, India, U.S., The Maldives. We greeted them but they did not pounce so we wandered through the center where there was a diorama of Jerusalem of 2,000 years ago. We took an escalator upstairs to a round room, painted with the heavens. In the center of the room was a larger-the-life marble carving of Jesus. He stood there with hands outstretched while a disembodied voice spoke on behalf of God, telling all in the room that “This is my beloved son.”
Dozens of families stood before them stature to have their picture taken. As we sat on one of the comfortable couches we watched as the pairs of women knelt in front of couples to answer their questions.
Still, no one came to us and we descended two floors to a series of dioramas that explained the belief systems of the church. We also took in a movie that did an impressive job of explaining the church's outreach to the poor and the unemployed. We picked up a pamphlet the explained the testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith. This told his story of being 14 years old and his struggle to choose a Christian sect with which he could worship. He could not choose, but stumbled onto the Epistle of James which reads, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God … and it shall be given unto him.”
Joseph decided to give it a go and he went out to the woods behind his home in upstate New York. After he was enveloped in darkness and he felt he was struggling for his life, two personages appeared to him and one said, “This is my beloved son. Hear him.” He asked which sect he should follow and was told not to follow any of them for they were an abomination to the lord.
Four years passed and Joseph was much abused and persecuted because he told of his vision. He slipped into “many moral errors.”
But he lay in bed one night and asked for forgiveness and to find out how he sat with God. This was a big night for he was visited by an angel named Moroni who gave him key information about the gold tablets he eventually would uncover and translate. The rest is history. Joseph took his flock west, always under attack from people who didn't like Mormons and what they stood for. They settled in Salt Lake and created a city and a religion that has grown and spread across the world.
Jo and I remember being in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, during the Water Festival. More than a million people had come in from the provinces for the festival and we wandered among them on the waterfront. The booth that was most popular, above all the food and drinks and snake charmers and clothing stalls was a tent in which members of the Church of Latter Day Saints showed a movie about their outreach to the poor of Cambodia. It always was filled with people who watched and listened.
We wandered back to our car, passing banks of tulips, jonquils, iris, pansies and petunias and poppies. A nice little stream channeled its way beside the sidewalk.
We received a welcome phone call from the mechanic, saying he'd located the bare wires that had been the cause of our shorting turn signal problem. Now we were able to head on. We came north again, marveling at the beauty of the snow-covered mountain ranges rising all about us. We came to Ogden, Utah, to spend the night.
Friday, May 14
We drove across the northern edge of the Great Salt Lake, on a two-lane road, and came to the Golden Spike National Historic Monument at Promontory, Utah. This is the place, back in 1869, where the continent was connected by railroads from the east and the west. Leland Stanford brought along a golden spike which was driven into the wood to secure the final rail.
There's really not much to Promontory. But each day, replicas of the two steam engines from the east (No. 119) and the west (Jupiter) come out of their train shed and meet on the track.
The site exceeded our expectations because of the arrival of the trains, sighing with that lonesome steam whistle as they approached the historic site, and because there is an excellent museum on the site. More than 10,000 Chinese workers dug their way through the Sierra Mountains to get the Pacific leg on its way. Their digging progressed at eight inches per day during the first two years. This can only be compared to our modern goal of sending a man to the moon and bringing him home safely.
We headed out for Idaho after the visit, driving alongside the Sawtooth Mountains which look exactly as they should with a name like that. They were covered in snow but our highway was clean and dry.
Distance traveled thus far: 3,340 miles.
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