Hinckley, Gordon B.
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Of the Seventy
Elder Monte J. Brough
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When President Hinckley traveled to Hong Kong in 1992 to consider potential temple sites, he felt unsatisfied with all of them. “We looked at one after another after another. I became very discouraged,” he later said. “The sites were so tiny in some respects and the cost of real estate is so high— many millions of dollars for a little piece of ground.” One night, he retired with no clear understanding of how he should proceed on his assignment to find a temple location, but in the middle of the night he awoke with an impression. “Something very interesting came into my mind,” he recorded, “I did not hear a voice with my natural ears, But into my mind there came the voice of the Spirit. It said, ‘Why are you worried about this? You have a wonderful piece of property where the mission home and small chapel stand. They are in the very heart of Kowloon, in the location with the best transportation. . . . Build a building of [several] stories. It can include a chapel and classrooms on the first two floors and a temple on the top two or three floors.’ . . . I relaxed and went back to sleep.” “To me it was inspiration,” President Hinckley continued. “I drew [the temple] out, and I still have the little drawing that I made . . . in my journal. [This drawing] is essentially the plan which we had for this temple.”
President Gordon B. Hinckley
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Again, many members of the Church are talking about how much revelation has come just since President Nelson became the President of the Church. And again, I hope none of this sounds sarcastic, but thank goodness. Because we didn’t have much with President Monson, and we didn’t have very much with President Hinckley. The things that are coming forth now have been worked on for years and decades. I think the perfect illustration for people of our age—maybe just old guys like me— President McKay in the 1950s is highlighting the importance of the family. In the 1950s, in the 1960s, TV programs are called Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver. They cannot be any more clean than this. So why in that era is President McKay emphasizing the family? Because you needed it for today, and it would be 70•years too late if you were starting today. So this is not new. In many instances, the revelation is not what to do; the revelation is when to do. President Hinckley, small temples. Everyone attributes small temples to President Gordon B. Hinckley. He came home from his mission; he worked for the Church in the Missionary Department and in the Communication Department. David O. McKay invites him to his office and says, “Brother Hinckley, we’re going to build a temple in Europe, and we need to present temple ordinances in many different languages, even at the same time.” They’d never encountered that challenge before. Gordon B. Hinckley didn’t do this by himself, but that was the beginning of exploring the use of audiovisual means of presenting temple ordinances. In the 1960s, as a member of the Twelve, he’s in Asia. I’ve read minutes from the Quorum of the Twelve where Elder Gordon B. Hinckley writes from Asia and says, “The methods that we use for temple ordinances in the large temples in Utah won’t be appropriate for the—for what we need to do here.” This is in the 1960s. In the 1970s he’s a member of the First Presidency. With Spencer W. Kimball the first small temples are built. Then he becomes the President of the Church, and we tell the story. He’s in northern Mexico. He’s concerned about the Saints there who don’t have access to the temple. And on the napkin, in the back of the car as he’s driving along, this is the revelation. The revelation to President Hinckley was not the idea of a small temple: “We’re going to have a hundred of them by the year 2000.” It was the when, not the what.
Elder David A. Bednar
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In July 1992, President Gordon B. Hinckley was in Asia to select a site for the Hong Kong China Temple. After a discouraging day of not finding a site he felt good about, President Hinckley returned to his hotel and went to sleep. Between 2 and 3 a.m., inspiration came in a dream. He felt directed to use property already owned by the church to build a multipurpose structure. He found paper and sketched a design. “If ever in my life I felt the inspiration of the Lord, it was with this building,” President Hinckley later said.
President Gordon B. Hinckley
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