MODESTO — The foundation work is barely underway for the Modesto Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but Kip Wilkins already knows what it will feel like to walk through the doors.
“It’s a place you can leave your worldly cares behind and be at peace with the world,” the Ripon resident and Manteca Stake communications coordinator said.
For now, if Wilkins wants to visit a temple, he has to cross the Altamont Pass and drive nearly 60 miles to Oakland.
It’ll be a much shorter drive by 2026.
That’s because the 7,000-square-foot temple is being built behind the Almond Blossom meetinghouse on Dale Road just southeast of Kaiser Hospital in north Modesto.
The temple is situated to serve stakes — a collection of church wards or congregations — based in Manteca, Lodi, Stockton, Modesto, North Modesto, Turlock, and Merced.
The Manteca Stake has roughly 4,000 members in the communities of Manteca, Lathrop, Ripon, Tracy, Mountain House and French Camp.
Church members, as well as the general public, are invited to access a visitors center to learn what the temple project entails.
The temple construction site visitors center is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Those that chose to venture there will be greeted by Gordon and Carol Howe.
The couple are volunteer missionaries from Star Valley, Wyoming.
“We’ll be here until we hand over the keys to the temple (president),” Carol said.
It is the third temple mission for the Howes.
Their current mission is to help oversee the construction and share its progress with visitors..
Previous mission assignments for the Howes have been to work to assist with specific activities at temples
One mission was at the Palmyra, New York temple.
It’s most striking — and unique — architectural feature is a bank of large windows that overlook Joseph Smith’s farm.
Smith was the founder of the Latter-day Saints movement.
The visitors center has a rendering of the outside of the temple as well as renderings of the inside.
The Howes can share unique touches incorporated into the architecture design of the Modesto temple.
They include an element designed to represent Yosemite Fall in the facade above the outside entrance as well as almond blossoms incorporated into window designs.
The 17.63 acre site will also include extensive landscaped grounds.
“We believe a temple is the place you go to meet Jesus and learn of him,” Carol said.
The primary purpose of temples is for faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ to participate in sacred ceremonies, such as marriages, which unite families forever, and proxy baptisms on behalf of deceased ancestors who did not have the opportunity to be baptized while living.
The Howes — with the help of church members in the area — are carrying on a tradition started when other temples were built in recent years.
Home-baked cookies are provided every Wednesday for members of the construction crew working on the temple.
The temple is among 336 existing, or being built, worldwide.
There are more than 17 million church members worldwide.
In California, there are 728,995 members in 146 stakes encompassing 1,134 congregations, and 228 family research centers.
The Modesto temple is going up roughly 12 miles from the church’s first building in California — a meetinghouse in New Hope near the confluence of the Stanislaus and San Joaquin rivers west of Ripon and south of Manteca.
The first Latter-day Saint immigrants arrived in San Francisco in 1846. The Mormon Battalion, a group of Latter-day Saints preparing to fight in the Mexican-American War, arrived in San Diego the following year.
LDS church part of early
Manteca-Ripon history
Sam Brannan arrived in what is now rural south Manteca at the confluence of the Stanislaus and San Joaquin rivers in 1847.
Brannan had headed west under direction of Brigham Young to establish a colony in what was then Alta California.
The one-time publisher of the New York Messenger had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints several years earlier.
Young was the second president and LDS prophet.
Brannan had a group of 200 men join him on his trip around Cape Horn sailing from New York to Yerba Buena that would later be rechristened San Francisco.
Brannan had sent a company of 20 men with supplies up the San Joaquin River in a bid to establish a settlement in the interior. They landed near what is today Mossdale Crossing where the massive 1.2 million square-foot Mayfair distribution center is located.
They moved down river and found what they hoped would be the proverbial promised land for a new LDS settlement just up from the confluence of the San Joaquin and Stanislaus rivers amid thick riparian oaks woodland harboring Tule elk, California grizzly bears, geese and a plethora of wild animals from rabbits to foxes.
Near present-day Caswell State Park is where the 20 men built a central house, cleared and plowed fields, and planted wheat and potatoes in a place they called New Hope.
Mother Nature did not cooperate.
Heavy January rains in 1847 caused the rivers to burst their banks creating a flow of water that reached three miles in width at one point.
The undoing of the colony ended up being a subsequent potato crop where the centers were all rotten due to the excessive water.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
