Mormons all over Central Valley are jazzed about future Modesto Temple. This is why | Opinion

For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, few things rival the anticipation of a temple being built nearby.

The second coming of Jesus would top that, sure. But that’s about the only thing that would.

That’s why a temple coming to Modesto is a cause for celebration for people in our faith.

“I think it will be a beautiful addition to our city,” said Modesto Mayor Sue Zwahlen, who like me is a church member. She had no say in the decision to construct a temple here, or in helping to move plans through the approval process at City Hall, she told me.

Opinion

There are 730,000 LDS (Latter-day Saints) church members in California. Those in the Central Valley have been making the trek to Oakland, maybe once a month for the devout, since a temple was built there in 1964. Options arose with new temples constructed in Fresno in 2000, and near Sacramento in 2006, but Oakland remains the go-to temple for most of us.

So chapels have been buzzing with anticipation since church headquarters in Salt Lake City, where such decisions are made, announced in April 2022 that Modesto would get its own temple. The buzz will grow with an official Oct. 7 groundbreaking at the site, next to an existing LDS chapel at 4300 Dale Rd.

People driving on Dale north of Pelandale Avenue in the past few days started seeing earth-moving machinery behind the chapel, where we used to play softball and hold picnics and other events at an outdoor pavilion. The church owns more than 17 acres, ample for what’s considered a mid-sized temple at 30,000 square feet. By comparison, Sacramento’s is 19,500 square feet, and Fresno’s is only 10,700. The brand-new Feather River Temple in Yuba City, to be dedicated Oct. 8, is 41,665 square feet.

The Modesto site could not possibly accommodate the thousands of members wishing to attend the Oct. 7 groundbreaking, so they’re making attendance by invitation only. But everyone can watch it live at templegroundbreaking.churchofjesuschrist.org.

Eventually, you won’t be able to drive by without noticing the Modesto Temple going up. Although it will have just one floor, a structure resembling a grand bell tower with huge stained-glass panels will stretch three times that, topped with a spire reaching 115 feet. Mormons like their temples to stand out.

Yes, members have been called Mormons since the church was founded nearly 200 years ago coinciding with the publication of The Book of Mormon, a book of scripture. At times members are called Latter-day Saints. In recent times, church President Russell M. Nelson has emphasized the full name — the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s understandable that people will refer to it as the Mormon temple, but we generally prefer it if you can remember the whole name.

When I was growing up in Sacramento County in the 1960s, the church had just 12 temples throughout the world. Now there are more than 160, with a few dozen more in some phase of design, like Modesto’s, or under construction. Most of the growth explosion came in the past three decades.

Sacred ceremonies

Members from Lodi to Merced and everywhere in between — plus the foothills and as far west as Tracy — will be encouraged to attend the Modesto Temple. That means less foot traffic for temples in Fresno, Oakland and particularly in Sacramento, which often is crowded.

Stuck as we are almost equidistant from Sacramento, Fresno and Oakland, many church members assumed Modesto and its neighbors would continue making round trips of three hours or so forever. Getting our own temple is seen as a nod to faithful persistence, and evidence of Salt Lake’s commitment to making temples more accessible to members everywhere, because what goes on inside is really special.

Sacred ceremonies include weddings for eternity, enabling families to stay together forever, as well as other covenants, or promises with God designed to help bring people closer to the savior.

Let’s be honest — life is hard, and unity can be difficult to achieve. The temple puts people together in a spirit of peace and comfort transcending generations. Church members thrive on that spirit, bringing them back again and again.

You get some of that same feeling in everyday chapels, to be sure, where everyone is welcome to worship on Sunday and participate in youth and other activities during the week. But the feeling is more intense in temples.

Often, they are the tallest structure in the vicinity. In March, the Modesto Board of Zoning Adjustment — a nonelected panel at City Hall — approved the temple’s 115-foot finial, or spire. That’s 50 feet higher than zoning otherwise allows.

I and my family have attended the adjacent Dale Road chapel since we moved to the area 33 years ago. That meetinghouse will stay, according to plans submitted to City Hall.

Four years ago, our son was married in the Sacramento Temple, and a reception was hosted by the bride’s family (dear friends Darlyn and Ben Remington) in the fabulous events center at Redwood Cafe, which is next to and independent of the Dale Road chapel. Restaurateur Bob Campana 30 years ago acquired the former Knights of Columbus hall there and turned it into Vintage Gardens, rebranding it several years ago as the Redwood Cafe.

Redwood Cafe lives on

Negotiations with the church led to an agreement giving the restaurant up to 20 months to move out, Campana said. He wants to acquire as-yet-unidentified land nearby, dig an expansive wine cellar — perhaps the size of five normal wine caves, he said — and hire a house-moving company to jack up the restaurant, put it on wheels and plop it on top of the void.

“I’m going to move the whole fricking thing,” he said. “Then if people say it’s not quite like the old Redwood Cafe, I’ll say, `Yeah it is; it is the old one.’”

Campana, who doesn’t know how to dream small, envisions people renting the cellar space gazing out on subterranean gardens. Lest you doubt him, remember that he opened a second Redwood Cafe in Oakdale, is repurposing the historic water building in Patterson as a legacy restaurant, and has acquired a European food-and-wine tour company.

Once the Dale Road spot is vacated, the church is likely to simply landscape it for an attractive, unobstructed view of the temple, Campana said. Plans at City Hall indicate it could become an auxiliary parking lot for the chapel and temple.

Although operating temples are not for nonmembers, anyone can go inside before they’re dedicated. For example, the new Feather River Temple in Yuba City held public tours for three weeks ending Sept. 9. That will happen in Modesto as well, in two or three years.

The Feather River Temple is the church’s eighth in California, joining those in Sacramento, Fresno, Oakland, Los Angeles, Newport Beach, Redlands and San Diego. In addition to Modesto, others planned or under construction will be in Bakersfield, San Jose and Yorba Linda.

-30-