The new Latter-day Saints (Mormon) temple is opening to public tours for the first time. Video / John Weekes, Supplied
The new Latter-day Saints Temple beside the motorway in South Auckland offered a handful of visitors a sneak peek today, six-and-a-half years after construction began. Its interior includes sights few have seen before. John Weekes was one of those who got a look inside.
Oscar Lawrence, project manager, is with the church’s Pacific Special Projects Department. And this, no matter what your religious views or views on religion, is one special project.
With its 54m-high spire on a property straddling more than 4ha, the building is highly visible – but it’s really only when you get inside that you appreciate it.
“A temple is the best we can humanly achieve in construction and design,” Lawrence says. “The finish is an extremely high level. It’s what we call a temple-standard level.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) temple adopts some of the styles the church is known for overseas, but Lawrence says local motifs were added.
The temple interior has a big stairwell, drinking fountains, many framed paintings, and numerous rooms. It’s more akin to a complex than to a single church. It has dressing rooms, featuring cubicles with lockers where “brothers” or male members and women can get changed separately into white clothes.
The Baptistery at the Auckland Temple.
The main staircase at the new temple in South Auckland.
Inside the temple, a baptismal font has sculptures with a dozen ox heads and eight steps into a pool.
“We believe that our lives, who we are, are made up up of a combination of our physical bodies and our spirits,” an elder says.
Stained glass and some huge chandeliers feature in some of the temple’s rooms.
We take the stairs – about 18 steps to the next floor up. One of the rooms is called an instruction room and looks like a chapel. In another, a screen will come down and members can watch videos – more specifically, “an audiovisual presentation that depicts the life of Christ’s children here on Earth”.
The Sealing Room at the new LDS temple in Manukau.
“We can have perfect moments in this life,” Nattress says.
The next room is the Celestial Room. The ceiling is high and a huge chandelier dangles from the earthly firmament. It’s intended as a place of peace. The two dozen-odd people in the tour all spend a minute or two in silence, in a room the church says is intended to evoke heaven.
Down a hallway, a small room off to the side is called the Bride’s Room. Nattress jokes that the guys who get married don’t get anything like this.
The LDS Auckland Temple Bride's Room.
Another room integral to the marriage ceremony is the Sealing Room. It’s a dazzling room with light-coloured carpet, another huge chandelier, and two mirrors, each facing the other so when you look at yourself - or yourself and your new spouse - the views seem to stretch to infinity.
The elders guiding this tour say the sealing ceremony is about emphasising the sanctity and commitment of marriage. About 20 chairs line each side, intended for family who’d attend the wedding.
Elder Steven Bangerter, visiting from Salt Lake City, talks about some of the decor and symbolism.
Some 1500 people worked as subcontractors on the LDS temple in Auckland, project manager Oscar Lawrence says.
“The light, the brightness, the beauty is symbolic of something much more grand than the physical setting itself.”
There are so many lights that when Bangerter speaks and gesticulates you can see on the floor the shadows of his hands many times over.
Nattress speaks passionately about his own wife Shawna and family and of the temple he says: “For me, this is heaven. I can have a little bit of heaven. I just love coming to the temple because I feel so much peace.”
Detail of stained glass inside the Manukau temple, New Zealand's second LDS (Mormon) temple, which is opening to the public this week.
To the side of the Sealing Room, there’s a huge window that looks about 4.5m high.
“The crystals are polished periodically, crystal by crystal. It is a representation – the light of God, light of Christ. It is meant to call our mind heavenward, toward God.”
Bangerter says the church tries to design temples according to the size of local memberships. A town with 10,000 LDS members will need a bigger temple than one with 1000.
The temple at Redoubt Rd near Manukau City has numerous rooms and the church says all rugs are made with 100% New Zealand wool.
“We want as many people to come to the temple as would like to.”
The temple was announced in 2018 and work began in June 2020. Walker Community Architects of Auckland were architects and the general contractor was Westland Construction NZ. APT Interiors did interior design.
The church said the art glass or stained glass was designed in conjunction with Utah’s Holdman Studios, and the site features 250 trees including kōwhai, nīkau and pōhutukawa.
For a long time, LDS members in the country’s biggest city and those further north had to travel to Hamilton if they wanted a temple experience, Elder Taniela Wakolo told the Herald outside the temple.
Now they will be able to worship and meet closer to home. The Latter-day Saints also have a temple planned for Wellington, and a more detailed announcement on that is expected later this year.
The church said the “open house” at the Goodwood Heights temple on Redoubt Rd will be held from this Thursday to March 22, excluding Sundays. The tours last about 45 minutes.
