A Promised Day Arrived
The Helsinki Finland Temple Dedication, Part 4
Text by Maurine Jensen Proctor
Photos by Scot Facer Proctor

The Cornerstone Ceremony

Click on Photos to Enlarge

The temple dedication was held in four sessions, with the cornerstone ceremony during the first. President Hinckley, accompanied by several others, came out on the especially prepared platform to put as he says, “the mud in the joints.”

The Finland temple is the 124th temple in the Church, and the 85th temple President Hinckley has dedicated. He has rededicated another ten temples.

As is his custom, after he had applied the mud, with an eye on creating memories for the people, he turned to a little child in the audience to come and do the same.

The little girl chosen, also dressed in a national Finnish costume was Paivi Haikkola’s daughter, a fourth generation member in Finland—and a link from the past to the future.

Outpouring of Love

The temple dedication was held in four sessions—the first in Finnish and the second in Russian. We’ll tell some Russian stories in articles to come.

Matti Kuosuranan, who has been a member since 1969, but has lived in South America for the last seven years said, “While living abroad, we got the strong feeling that the temple would be coming, so we had to come home.”

Roland Daetwyler, who has served as the mission president in St. Petersburg said, “This is so important for the Russian Saints because it was so difficult to go to the temple in Sweden. It required two visas and a trip to Finland and then on to Sweden. I told my missionaries, people become about 70% more converted when they go to the temple.”

For Nancy Harrington from Tigardi, Oregon, who has been called on a mission with her husband to serve in the Finnish temple, “Returning to Finland was like coming home. This is my husband’s third mission here and we are just rejoicing with the people. I’ve had so many hugs and I feel so loved.”

Baltic missionary, Elder Justin Jensen, said that the temple has cast a special glow onto the work of the 20 missionaries working in Estonia. “We seem to be working with more faith.”

The sun was short-lived that day of dedication. After only 18 minutes of light, the sky closed up and it wasn’t long before dedication attendees had to pull out umbrellas as they waited in line to go into the temple.

Yet, what was felt in the temple was a spirit so sweet, that holding umbrellas didn’t stop the hugging and greeting. It was an overpowering sense of the Lord’s love.

As visitors new to Finland, we felt tied to the people as if they were our oldest and dearest friends and in every direction we turned we saw people we felt we knew well—even though we had just met them or conducted an interview for a few minutes.

Inara Jegina from Latvia said the very first time she went to Church, she had the feeling as if she had finally returned home. It was that sense of love.

You could see this heavenly love on the faces of the people. It’s a sense of abundance and appreciation that not only fills you personally, but spills over until your sense of good will expands to include everyone.

The temple is what brings a world that is fragmented and divided, broken and scarred, back to be at one, of one heart.

There is no better demonstration of this than with the Helsinki, Finland temple. The Finns have a national inheritance of suspicion toward the Russians. Their eastern border has been vulnerable and many have family members who were killed in a brutal war with the Soviet Union during World War II.

Yet here in the Church the Finns and Russians are united. The Finns have long been gracious hosts to the Russian Saints passing through on their way to the Stockholm temple. Now they will work together in the Helsinki temple.

It is the power of atonement—of at-one-ment. During the coverstone ceremony, Auli Haikkola said, “I wondered last night about the many people like me who had family killed during the war with the Russians. My father was killed, and I remember during my childhood that hatred toward Russians filled many homes.”

With the temple gleaming before us she said, “It’s really all over, all over. This generation will have peace.”

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