San Diego Temple

San Diego Temple
By Jenny Komenda

~~~~~~~~~~~

“May all who enter these portals come with clean hands and hearts, and minds free from the stain of the world. May they find within these walls a refuge from the noise and stress of the world. In their seasons of trouble, wilt thou here whisper peace and direction. May they come with glad expectation and leave rejoicing in the spirit found in this dedicated sanctuary.”
- Gordon B. Hinckley, San Diego California Temple Dedicatory Prayer

~~~~~~~~~~

When President Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated the San Diego California Temple in April 1993, its gleaming white spires rising above the La Jolla hillside marked the capstone of a Latter-day Saint presence in San Diego that had begun nearly 150 years before—long before the pioneers ever set foot in the Salt Lake Valley.

In the summer of 1846, five hundred Latter-day Saint men answered a difficult call. Though the Saints faced persecution and the government had offered them little protection, they followed the counsel of the prophet Brigham Young and formed the Mormon Battalion—marching nearly two thousand miles across the American Southwest in service to their country, one of the longest infantry
marches in U.S. military history. When those weary soldiers finally glimpsed the Pacific near present-day Oceanside in January 1847, they were barely recognizable as an army—ragged, shoeless, and exhausted. They reached San Diego two days later, months before Brigham Young and the main body of Saints would arrive in the Salt Lake Valley. Their arrival more than doubled the American-born population of the small former Mexican outpost.

Yet what these men accomplished stands as a powerful testament to the principle taught in Mosiah 2:17: “When ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.” Rather than rest, they went to work. They cleaned and whitewashed the buildings of Old Town, dug between ten and twenty wells lined with kiln-fired bricks, and constructed what became the first fired-brick building in California—a courthouse that would serve the community for decades. They constructed a bakery, blacksmith shop, several ovens, chimneys and picket fences for local residents. They formed debating societies, singing groups, and educational clubs, and held weekly worship services attended by townspeople, Californians and Native Americans alike. Despite the community’s initial suspicions, the Battalion’s acts of public service would later serve as a hallmark during their residency in the city and steadily earned the respect and love of all. So beloved did they become that after word circulated that the Battalion’s posting was up, every single citizen of San Diego signed a petition asking California Governor Richard B. Mason to let them stay.

Noting the Battalion’s imminent departure, the Southern Military District Commander, J.D. Stevenson wrote to Governor Mason stating: “All persons at San Diego are anxious that the Mormons should remain there; they have by a correct course of conduct become very popular with the people, and by their industry have
taught the inhabitants the value of having an American population among them, and if they are continued, they will be of more value than a whole host of bayonets. ... Within 80 miles of the place the inhabitants of every rancho have asked permission for some of the good Mormons to come and work for them ... and I have been, in consequence of this good feeling, the more desirous to have them remain.”

These soldiers carried with them a charge from Brigham Young: to remember their prayers, to revere the name of God, and to treat all people with kindness. They planted seeds of faith in San Diego’s soil before there was even a gathering place for the Saints to call home. Today the San Diego California Temple stands as a gleaming witness of the harvest those seeds produced. Twin 190-foot spires reach heavenward, accompanied by eight additional spires—the most of any temple—connected by a star-shaped atrium filled with a garden. Throughout the temple, an eight-pointed star motif appears more than ten thousand times. This symbol, prevalent in early Christian and Semitic iconography, has been linked both to the ancient priest-king Melchizedek and to Jesus Christ, and echoes the ancient Christian tradition of the octagon as a bridge between earth and eternity. 

The Battalion’s soldiers could not have imagined such a temple standing where they once dug wells and laid bricks. But the God they served surely could. As the Savior taught, “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20). The fruit of their faith endures—in stone and marble, and in the lives they blessed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~