The following is excerpted from the Church News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
After the Layton Utah Temple groundbreaking ceremony was announced in late January, organizers initially projected the May 30 event to draw hundreds of attendees to the temple site — perhaps more than a thousand or two — and started planning accordingly.
But consider how an unexpected global COVID-19 pandemic and resulting government restrictions and Church adjustments reshaped the actual groundbreaking experience, which was finalized Saturday, May 30, with an online sharing of the temple groundbreaking ceremony.
The actual groundbreaking occurred a week earlier than scheduled — a small-scale ceremony held Saturday, May 23, at the southeastern Layton site and involving the Utah Area presidency among the some 20 invited guests. Chairs were deliberately positioned to accommodate prescribed social distancing, attendees were equipped with protective face masks, and the pulpit, microphone and handles of the ceremonial shovels were all wiped down between uses.
The brief May 23 ceremony at the Layton Utah temple site was added to additional prerecorded video footage — ranging from aerial views of the property to the singing of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square — and then made available to be watched via online streaming on Newsroom.ChurchofJesusChrist.org on the original May 30 date.
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
