1981
LDS Scene
March 1981


“LDS Scene,” Ensign, Mar. 1981, 79–80

LDS Scene

A recent honor recognizes the achievements of President N. Eldon Tanner, a member of the First Presidency since 1963.

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President N. Eldon Tanner

A $1 million endowment fund, established at the University of Utah College of Business by friends and admirers of President Tanner, will fund the N. Eldon Tanner Chair of Business Administration, along with several graduate-level scholarships and research fellowships for faculty members.

According to B. Z. Kastler, a member of the endowment committee, “The intent of the endowment fund is to imbue future business leaders with the vision, honor, determination, self-reliance, and high ideals that led President Tanner to contribute so unselfishly to a better community and world. Throughout his life, President Tanner has demonstrated that the application of the highest principles of ethics, integrity, and personal conduct contribute greatly to the success of any worthy endeavor or business undertaking.”

Now eighty-two, President Tanner has recuperated from recent hospitalization for tests, medication changes, and minor surgery. He has been a General Authority for twenty years.

Both the Jordan River Temple and the Mexico City Temple are on schedule and moving towards completion, according to Wallace G. McPhie, director of temples and special projects construction division of the Church. The Mexico City Temple foundations should be finished in February so that the precast exterior walls can be fastened up. The Jordan River Temple, more than half-finished, is scheduled to be completed by the middle of 1981.

The Book of Mormon was recently translated into Fiji, the forty-fourth language the scripture is now available in. Translation required four years.

President Ezra Taft Benson organized the San Juan Puerto Rico Stake on December 14, the first stake organized on this Carribbean Island. The first Spanish-speaking branch was organized only ten years ago in 1970. Now there are four branches and six wards, all but one directed by Puerto Rican leaders.

The recently distributed Activities Committee Annual Guidelines (PBAC0136) for 1980–81 contains information to help local priesthood leaders and activities committees adjust to the changed role of the activities committee in the consolidated meeting schedule. A revised Activities Committee Handbook (PBAC0012) is also available from distribution centers.

More than 75,000 viewers who saw Jimmy Stewart play the appealing Willie Kreuger in the Church’s Christmas special have written or called the Church requesting the eighteen-page color brochure featuring the similarities between ancient and modern baptism, blessings given to the ill, the sacrament, and missionary service. A postpaid card lets recipients order more free brochures, check a box requesting missionaries, or order a copy of the Book of Mormon.

Brigham Young University’s football team won its first bowl victory in December at the Holiday Bowl against Southern Methodist University in a “skin-of-the-teeth” victory. The Cougars were trailing 45–25 with only four minutes remaining. Their final touchdown tied the game with literally no seconds remaining, and they won the game by making the point after touchdown. This was BYU’s fifth appearance in a bowl game. BYU finished the season ranked twelfth in the Associated Press poll and eleventh in the United Press International poll.

Sister Bonnie Morgan, a recent convert, was named Oregon Teacher of the Year at a Portland conference of state school boards and superintendents in November. For eight years, she has been teaching at Sam Barlow High School in Gresham, Oregon, where the student newspaper she advises received the highest honor in the country.

The visitors’ center at the Hawaii Temple, totally remodeled and enlarged, was recently rededicated in Laie by Elder Adney Y. Komatsu, of the First Quorum of the Seventy and Executive Administrator of Hawaii. An average of a thousand people visit the center daily. About 85 percent of them are not members of the Church.

A special display on the 1844 arrival of the first Latter-day Saint missionaries in Tahiti has been opened at the Musee de Tahiti et des Iles in Punaauia, about five miles from Papeete. The display was prepared by S. George Ellsworth, professor of history at Utah State University, with the help of Paul Foulger of the Church Historical Department and at the request of Rev. Patrick O’Reilly, a Catholic priest who works with the French government as a historian. It includes such documents as early Church records and facsimiles of the journals of Addison Pratt, Benjamin F. Grouard, and Noah Rogers, the missionaries who opened the mission.

Paradise Regained, a novel about a convert to the Church written by Icelandic author Halldor Laxness, has now been made into a movie. Laxness won the Nobel Prize in 1955 and wrote Paradise Regained in 1960. The novel tells the story of an Icelandic farmer in the nineteenth century who is driven restlessly by the search for happiness. He encounters a Mormon missionary, is converted, emigrates to Utah, and eventually returns to Iceland as a missionary.

Paradise Regained was largely filmed on location in Spanish Fork with the technical consultation of Dr. George S. Tate of BYU’s Comparative Literature and Humanities Department and an expert on Halldor Laxness. The film, a three-part series totalling a little over five hours, has been shown in Denmark, Germany, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Austria, as well as in limited public showings in Utah.

Rolf Hadrich, director of television plays for the North Germany Broadcasting Network, commented after his visit to Utah: “From the Mormons you can learn how to believe in something vehemently without being a fanatic; without bothering others with wise sayings which for them might be vapid; cordial without being obtrusive—in short: to make fertile land out of a salt desert, for vegetation as well as for hearts.”

He added: “All of us believe that we did not exaggerate when, at parting, we said we shall come back. And this is why: A paradise which you may leave at liberty and where you can come back at any time has become a rare thing on this planet.”