September 28, 2011

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal
September 28, 2011
The Angel Moroni will Descend upon Philadelphia

The ground breaking ceremony was held last Saturday for the new Philadelphia Temple and it was televised at each of the chapels in the 8 stakes in this area. The event was reported widely and one of the local papers headlined that the “Angel Moroni will descend on Philadelphia.” We picked up a couple women from one of our classes who don’t have a car and we watched it at one of the downtown chapels. There are about 1.5 million people in Philadelphia and we would guess there are at least 10 times that many people in the cities nearby.

As you can see from the buildings in the background at the dedication, the temple will be built right downtown.
Two of the speakers at our summer seminary, Vai Sikahema and Ahmed Corbitt participated in the temple dedication program. They are from the Cherry Hill New Jersey Stake Presidency. Vai Sikahema is a popular sportscaster on TV and Ahmed Corbitt (stake president) is the Church’s public relations director. We were much impressed by their willingness to come talk to the few kids at summer seminary. President Sikahema’s talk about how his family went to the New Zealand temple was inspiring. He is a frequent contributor to the Deseret News.

Vai Sikahema with summer seminary and with Elder Eyring.
We forgot our camera on the day President Corbitt came to our summer seminary dressed in character as a Chautauqua impersonation of Joseph Smith Jr. Here is a photo of him giving a similar performance at a youth conference. To our little band quoted the whole of Doctrine & Covenants section 1 and played a game with them where he would tell them the section from the D&C if they read to him any verse at random.