Temples Dedicated in Alberta and North Carolina

Edmonton Alberta Temple

Canada’s 5th and the Church’s 67th operating temple was dedicated by President Gordon B. Hinckley in seven sessions held 11–12 December. “Let Thy providence be felt in this great nation of Canada, that it shall continue to be a land where Thy sons and daughters enjoy the precious boon of freedom of assembly and worship,” said President Hinckley in his dedicatory prayer. “Bless those who govern that they shall look with favor upon Thy people, and may Thy work grow in numbers, in majesty, and in strength in this good land.”

Also in attendance at the dedication were Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; Elder Hugh W. Pinnock of the Seventy, President of the North America Central Area; and Elder Blair S. Bennett, an Area Authority Seventy. About 27,000 people attended the new temple’s public open house.

With two ordinance rooms and two sealing rooms, the Edmonton Alberta Temple serves about 14,800 members living in five stakes in Red Deer, Grande Prairie, and Edmonton. The temple is open for six sessions on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays and three sessions on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

“To have a temple located here is going to bless lives in ways we really don’t even understand yet,” said Elder Bennett. “This has literally been a fulfillment of the hopes and dreams and aspirations of a generation that has lived and served in Edmonton.”

Quoting Doctrine and Covenants 109:22 in his dedicatory prayer, President Hinckley said, “May ‘thy servants … go forth from this house armed with thy power, and that thy name may be upon them, and thy glory be round about them, and thine angels have charge over them.’”

Raleigh North Carolina Temple

“We are partakers of those wondrous blessings promised in words of revelation,” said President Hinckley in his dedicatory prayer for the Raleigh North Carolina Temple. “Thou hast said, ‘For I deign to reveal unto my church things which have been kept hid from before the foundation of the world, things that pertain to the dispensation of the fulness of times’” (D&C 124:41).

Participating in the seven dedicatory sessions held 18–19 December were Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and Elder Loren C. Dunn of the Seventy, President of the North America East Area. Prior to the dedication, about 31,000 people attended a public open house.

Located in the suburb of Apex about 10 miles southwest of metropolitan Raleigh, the new temple serves about 27,600 members in eight North Carolina stakes: Winston-Salem, Durham, Greensboro, Raleigh, Goldsboro, Kinston, Fayetteville, and Wilmington. The temple is open for two daily sessions Tuesdays through Thursdays, three on Fridays, and five on Saturdays. An adjacent meetinghouse is expected to be built in the future on the temple’s 12.5-acre site.

Speaking to reporters outside the temple before the first dedicatory session, Elder Ballard described how the Church shares goals with other religions, such as safeguarding “values, family, fidelity, and the responsibility of parents for their children, teaching them correct principles, guiding, loving, and showing the way, not letting them get gobbled up by the ravages of the world.”

In the dedicatory prayer, President Hinckley said: “We pray for all who enter Thy house that they may be pure and clean in heart and hand. May they here ‘feel thy power, and feel constrained to acknowledge that thou hast sanctified it, and that it is thy house, a place of thy holiness’” (D&C 109:13).