ORAL HISTORY 1855 POWRIE

Table of Contents

 

Life before the Church                                                                                          Page 1

Childhood memories

Military service

First exposure to the Book of Mormon

Joining the Church and gaining a testimony, 1950

Retiring from the automobile industry, 1977

Moving to Cape Town, South Africa                                                                                   Page 4

South African civil marriage law

Experiences as the first patriarch in South Africa

Logistical and stenographical problems arise

 

South Africa: Another Promised Land                                                                               Page 7

Mineral and spiritual wealth

Gathering the tribes of Israel

South Africa’s turbulent history

Misconceptions about racism and apartheid

 

Many Callings                                                                                                       Page 10

District president, 1958–1969
Arranging trips to the London England Temple

Counselor in the mission presidency, 1977

Patriarch for the Cape Town Stake, 1970–1995

First counselor in the Johannesburg South Africa Temple presidency

“We must build a temple generation”

 

Building a Temple Generation                                                                            Page 14

President Gordon B. Hinckley’s visit to the Johannesburg Temple, 1998

Daily temple presidency duties

No firearms allowed in the temple

Reverence in a small temple

Deeper vision of the plan of salvation

 

 

 

CHURCH ARCHIVES / FAMILY AND CHURCH HISTORY DEPARTMENT

 

THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

 

 

THE JAMES MOYLE ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTERVIEWEE: Kenneth Powrie

 

INTERVIEWER: Matthew K. Heiss

 

DATE: 23 September 1998

 

H:        Today is the 23rd of September 1998.  My name is Matthew Heiss.  I work for the Historical Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I’m in the Johannesburg South Africa Temple recording an interview with the first counsellor in the temple presidency, Charles Kenneth Powrie, and part of the interview will be about his responsibilities as a counsellor in the temple presidency, but before we get to that, I’d like to ask you about your personal background.  Begin by telling me where you were born and raised and about your Church membership, whether or not you were a covert to the Church or born into the Church.

 

P:         I was born in 1921, in a place called Lydenburg, a small town near the Kruger Park, which is probably better known to you.  It’s down in what we call the Lowveld.  My father was an early mining engineer, and he worked in the gold mine and asbestos mine area.  Unfortunately, in those days, the teens and the twenties, the conditions of working were so bad that he died when he was forty-nine.  As a matter of fact, he was born 114 years ago today, September 23, 1884.  He was one of the early mining pioneers.  He died when he was forty-nine, I was eleven.  My mother died six years later, so I’ve been kind of an orphan boy.  That’s my background.

 

H:        Did you raise yourself, or did you go off to live with relatives as a teenager with no parents?

 

P:         Actually, what happened [was] my mother died in July 1939, and the Second World War started in September, and I was into that at seventeen.  I spent six years and seventeen days in the British Navy and the South African Navy.  I was never really able to be an orphan boy because I was always doing something.  I finished school early, started work early, did everything early.

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H:        Tell me about your military service.  Did you see combat?  Did you stay down here in Africa?  If so, what was going on down here?

 

P:         There was some submarine activity around the South African borders, but I spent most of my time in the Mediterranean sphere, at the invasion of Crete and Greece and the North African campaign, Malta, convoys, and so on.  Then, when that was all cleared up, I went into the North Atlantic, working with the Transatlantic convoys, then up to Iceland and the mid-Atlantic and so on.  I was awaiting transfer to the Pacific area when the atomic bombs were dropped.  That was my teenage, my youth years, from seventeen to twenty-three.  In the meantime in 1943, I got married.

 

I first heard of the Book of Mormon when I was still going to school.  My widowed mother and two sisters let the missionaries in and later said, “Oh, here’s this thing called the Book of Mormon.”  It lay on our shelves for many a year.  Coupled with that, the National Geographic magazine—it was way back in the ’30s—was running a series on Utah and Zion Park and Canyonland[s National Park] and all that.  We thought, “This is interesting,” but nothing was done.  We grew up in the Church of England, where it was customary to go to church on Christmas Day and Easter and that was about it.  Anyway, the Book of Mormon lay there.

 

I got married during the war to my cousin, Philippa Dymond, and lived in Cape Town, then moved up to Johannesburg and went into the automobile business.  The missionaries called on us in May of 1950.  My wife, who was a great one for religious studies, let them in the door, and I said, “Oh, here’s another of those religions, study it through.”  She was rather stumped because the questions she asked were all answered, and the missionary, Elder E. Mauray Payne, whom she thought she could handle pretty well, didn’t turn out to be an easy one to push around.

 

Eventually in September of 1950 we were baptized.  I drifted in.  I didn’t really understand it.  I had my ideas of religion.  I used to pray to the Father in Heaven up in the sky, who looked precisely, by the way, what our Father in Heaven looks like in the temple.  That was my religion.

 

Anyway, I got put to work in a little branch.  The first church meeting I went to was in Krugersdorp, which is just twenty miles west of Johannesburg here.  We went to church where there were about six members present.  Two of the six were missionaries, in a little old Scout hall, and that was our introduction to the Church.  Now there are three wards in that same area.  The Church, of course, has grown considerably.

 

H:        How did you gain a testimony?  You said you just kind of got drug into it by your wife and put to work, but somewhere along the way there would have to be a spiritual conversion, I would think.

 

P:         I don’t know.  I tagged along from May to September.  She said, “I’d like to be baptized on Sunday,” so I thought, “I might as well come along.”  In those days there was nothing said to you about the Word of Wisdom.  We felt tithing was good, so we paid that before we joined

 

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            the Church.  Incidentally, my salary in the automobile business increased about three-fold as I paid tithing, this over about two years.

 

Things went very nicely.  I was put to work as the branch clerk, then branch teaching.  There were only two priesthood holders in the whole branch of twenty-five families; we were the only two and branch taught the twenty-five.  I was the only one with a car in those days because I worked in the business. That’s how it started.

 

Then we progressed.  In those days, the priesthood was restricted until you had traced your genealogy out of the country because of the black element and the seed of Cain, so my priesthood progress wasn’t that rapid.  In 1954, I was ordained to the office of priest by Lowell D. Wood.  He was a missionary in that time.  He was in the Pacific Area Presidency. He just died recently, an old friend of ours.  Ultimately, I was ordained an elder in 1957.  I was called to be district president in 1958.

 

H:        Of what district?  The Transvaal?

 

P:         It was then the Transvaal District.  That now embraces five stakes in the area.  There are now five stakes.  We built the Johannesburg chapel, which I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet.

 

H:        I haven’t yet.  We went to church here, but we went to the school and didn’t get to see the chapel, but we are going to see the chapel.

 

P:         It was built in 1957.  I was called as district president at a conference, at which I imagine there were probably three hundred people present.  We figured, “How will we ever fill this building?”  Of course, now it’s far too small.  Anyway, I was district president from ’58 to ’69.  Then, I served in the mission presidency a couple of times.  In those days it was a dual role.  Of course, the South African Mission embraced the whole country going up to Zimbabwe and what is now Zambia, and from there down to Cape Town.  It was a large, large area.  Being a mission, of course, we were under the direction of the mission president.

 

I was released in November of 1969.  The stake was created five months later, and I was called to be a stake patriarch.  Louis Hefer (the present temple recorder), by the way, was called to be the district president.  He succeeded me, and then became the first stake president.  I was a patriarch from 1970 until I came here in 1995, twenty-five years but for a break when I moved down to Cape Town.  I was patriarch of the Transvaal Stake when they split it into Johannesburg and Pretoria.  Then it was the Pretoria Stake, then the Sandton Stake, then the Roodepoort Stake.  I didn’t move, but the stakes grew up around us.  I went down to Cape Town in retirement in 1988.

 

H:        What took you down to Cape Town?  Did you retire and move down there?  What?

 

P:         Yes, I retired from the automobile industry in 1977.  I was looking around for something else to do at age fifty-five when the Church set up a Presiding Bishopric Office.  I was one of the applicants for the job of assistant area manager administration and was successful and started working for the Church in February of ’78. There was a regional office then Rosebank, a

 

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            suburb of Johannesburg.  We came under the British Isles-South Africa Area.  I was the administrative manager, and the other man was the Physical Facilities manager.  We had two secretaries, one each.  Now, of course, we got who knows what.  I retired at age sixty-five, at the end of 1986, it was actually early ’87, to facilitate the handover.

 

After thirty-three year’s residence, we sold up our home, which was about ten miles west of Johannesburg, and moved down to Cape Town where most of my wife’s and my forebears came from.  She and I are first cousins, by the way.  My father, incidentally, was a mining engineer.  On my mother’s side, my grandfather was a sailing ship captain, and his father before him, so we came from seafaring stock down off the Cape.  My forebears first came out to the country in 1820, some of them with the settlers, the well-known British 1820 settlers, but mostly as individuals.

 

We moved down to Cape Town.  I, by the way, have served as a civil marriage officer since 1963.  At that time, I was about the only one in the whole country.  Now we have about twenty of them.  Over the years, from 1963 to when I came here in ’95, thirty-two years, I performed just under four hundred weddings.  I figured out a stake conference congregation is about eight hundred, and that’s the number of people that I’ve performed weddings for.  Now, as a sealer, the Church prefers us not to perform civil weddings.

 

In this country, by the way, a wedding in the temple is not accepted as legal because the wedding ceremony has to be open to the public, either in a home or in an office or a church. The door must be open so that outsiders can come in, so in this country we have to have a civil wedding first.  Tradition is [that] it’s in one of our chapels, otherwise in a home, then they come to the temple to be sealed.

 

H:        I would be interested to know about your experiences as the first patriarch in South Africa.  Were there two patriarchs functioning for South Africa when the stake was first organized? because there was a fellow named Texas Smith.

 

P:         Yes, Texas Smith.  I was the first from March ’70 until President [Spencer W.] Kimball came out here as President of the Quorum of the Twelve in December 1973.  I was the first one for about three and one-half years, then he came in and we spread the load.  I functioned for twenty-five years as a patriarch.

 

On one occasion, quite interestingly, Rhodesia, at one stage in about ’77 or so, was having what they called UDI, Unilateral Declaration of Independence under British rule, so they were besieged as a country and under sanctions.  The Church membership were kind of isolated because their foreign currency allowance was so meager that they couldn’t travel.  I received permission in 1977 to go up there.  As you may know, a patriarch cannot function outside the stake without the Quorum of the Twelve’s approval.  I gained that and went up there for ten days.  It was quite a gruelling effort.  They said there were about forty blessings, and I ended up with sixty-two.  I was staying in the hotels in the area, starting about eight a.m. and finishing about six p.m., taking two or three in families at a time.  That was quite an experience.  That was the first time I had actively worked for the Church on a full-time basis.  Then that was followed up in ’78 when I started as a Church employee.  That was a choice experience, but kind of gruelling.

 

 

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H:        When you went down to Cape Town, did you continue to function as a patriarch?  Were you called as a patriarch for that stake?

 

P:         Yes.  As a matter of interest, the patriarch from there moved up here, and I moved from here to there.  I had a six month break while the calling was being done.  As you may know, you’ve got to be called again, so from April ’88 until October ’88, I had a hiatus.

 

H:        As you were first called as patriarch, what training was offered to you?  I know that patriarchs in Salt Lake City can come into the Church archives and read sample blessings to get an idea of the language and some of the issues.  It happens all the time where I work. You were so far away.  Did you go to Salt Lake?  What happened?

 

P:         I was set apart by Elder Marion G. Romney and ordained a patriarch the 22nd of March 1970.  I thought, “Somebody will give me some instruction.”  I waited and waited and waited and nothing happened.  Then, in about May, two brethren came from Cape Town with recommends for patriarchal blessings.  I said, “What do I do now?”  There was no option but to jump in the deep end.  I can testify to the support of the Spirit.  By the way, blessing number one was Louis Groenewald, who’s now the president of the Pretoria Stake. He recently lent me the blessing to look at, and I thought, “Well, you have to do a lot of spiritual input for this to sort of magnify it,” but I know the Spirit was there.

 

To answer your question, I was invited to go to Salt Lake to read these blessings in April 1970, but I was working at the time in the automobile business for Peugeot, the French company, and I could not be spared at the time because we had engagements for the Paris motor show in October.  I went a year later with Louis Hefer, who was then the stake president.

 

H:        For a general conference?

 

P:         For general conference in April 1971, at which time I was able to sit down in the archives and read through blessings, but that was a year later.  By the way, the so-called instructions never appeared until several years later.  They then produced a booklet about as thin as this (eighth of an inch), with suggestions for patriarch.  By that time, of course, I’d been on the way for a long time, but as I was reading these blessings out of the Church archives, you could see, going back into the 1800s and so on, it was Spirit, not the patriarch, at work.

 

People wrote them by hand.  I remember some of our members went over to England and received their blessings there before I was called.  I remember they said the patriarch’s wife wrote in longhand as he gave the blessing, so the blessing went at the speed of the capability of her writing.

 

H:        When you were called, were you given a tape recorder and microphone, or did you have to get a secretary who could do shorthand?  Tell me about that aspect of it.

 

P:         Those days were very, very rough.  Louis Hefer worked for IBM at that time—we bought a Motorola tape recorder.  You’ve probably seen them in the archives.  It had the regular cassette tape, but in those days the tapes got tangled up on the rollers, and a couple of times I had really rough problems.  I tried with a secretary now and again, but the reliance on other

 

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            people is difficult because I’ve got to be there with them.  The transcribing was a problem because I had to find somebody who could transcribe.  In those days, you transcribed, edited, and it had to be typed again.  Nowadays, I’ve got my own computer and edit it on screen.  Press a button, and zip, it prints.

 

I ended up giving 1,612 blessings over the twenty-five years, and half of those were typed by my late wife.  I pay great tribute to her because she was not a typist.  She said, “I’ll type.”  Before that, what I had to do was take the tape, give it to a secretary somewhere, go to work, come back over there, get the transcript, come back, deliver it to be retyped, collect it again. It was most, most cumbersome.  My wife normally did it at home.  I figured out she must have typed eight hundred.  That’s a couple of books, isn’t it?

 

H:        It is.

 

P:         Those were kind of logistical problems that we encountered.  Of course, later on the Church said you could get a transcriber with a foot pedal and earphones and all that, and a handy pocket recorder.  That alone has been an interesting experience to see the change in atmosphere of these.  The Church never would consent to a computer or word processor.  The nearest thing was a typewriter with word processing capability, but it was so cumbersome to work with that it was virtually unusable, so I got my own computer for family history.  After my wife’s death, my daughter in Cape Town used to type it in with no punctuation, nothing. Then I’d edit it and press a button and off you go.  That was an interesting phase.

 

Then the civil marriage officer exercise was quite demanding in time and effort.  In the early days I had to travel to Port Elizabeth and Durban and all over to perform weddings.  Over the years that’s been a meaningful experience because I can hardly go to any church meetings throughout the country but what there are people to whom I’ve given patriarchal blessings or performed weddings for.  When I come to the temple they say, “Oh, yes, you gave me a patriarchal blessing.”  I say, “What’s the name please?”  I remember the names, but the faces change.  It’s been a rich experience.

 

H:        When you were giving blessings, what would you do to prepare for a blessing if you knew somebody was coming for an appointment?  I’m interested to know if you had a special regimen you went through or thing you did, or if you just said, “Okay, come on in” and sat down.

 

P:         Of course, when I was first called I was groping in the dark.  I had heard that it was good to fast.  By the way, the handbook says that the person who receives a blessing, you don’t encourage them to fast; of course, if they want to it’s there.  I tried it, and as you can see I’m not really meaty, so I found that, physically, I just couldn’t handle it.  The nearest approach I could do was pray to the Lord.  During the war, there was a song devised by the American Navy, I think, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.”  That’s all one could do.

 

One thing that is interesting, when I was in Rhodesia in ’77, the sixty-two people who came, some of them said, “Well, the patriarch’s coming.  We might as well get our patriarchal blessing.”  You didn’t need to identify them; you could feel those who were yearning.

 

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One thing that amazed me in editing blessings, I used to look at them and see two consecutive blessings completely different.  Some sentences were long, some short.  Some words were strange to me.  One word I’d never even heard of.  I had to look it up in the dictionary to see what it was.  I have a testimony.  Of course, it was an enriching experience, meeting all the people.  The only way to tune in, I felt, was to sit down and talk for awhile, then the Spirit gets into the communication and off we go. 

 

Of course, many said later, “Can you help me to interpret my blessing?”  To which I would respond, “My assignment is to give the blessing, pronounce it, not to interpret it.  The Spirit must help you.”  I could give an opinion, the same as you could, but the recipient of the blessing, to me, it is that person’s personal blessing.   We used to say, when you go to water tap for water you don’t take much notice of the tap if the water comes out.  It’s a sobering experience.

 

H:        I’m interested in the notion of tribal lineage.  As I’ve travelled throughout the Church and interviewed patriarchs, I usually like to talk about tribe, and if there are certain places or pockets of people who tend to come from a tribe different than Ephraim or even Manasseh. What’s been your experience with that?

 

P:         I have a firm testimony that the Lord created the world.  The South African statesman Jan Smuts said that the Lord created the world.  Of course, he was not a Latter-day Saint, but he was a very religious man and a very far-seeing man.  He said, “He placed all the mineral wealth down at the bottom end of Africa.  You’d think He’d emptied His pockets out in the southern tip of Africa.”  As some Americans have said, this is the richest piece of real estate on the face of the globe.  I was thinking, “Was it that that attracted the seed of Israel?”  As Brigham Young said, “These people must have gone and looked over every mountaintop and picked up every rock to see what’s underneath, and now they’re here.”  And to me, that was the attraction.  The seed of Israel were brought here, the Europeans, the Scandinavians, the Germans, the Dutch, pure Israelites.

 

Mainly, I experienced the seed of Israel through the seed of Ephraim.  We are here to be the nursing mothers and fathers for black Africa.  That’s the way I interpret it.  The ones that came to see me, I felt straightaway, were real Ephraimites, people with get-up-and-go.  I didn’t believe they had much to do with merely the South African scene, but to me, we here are a very peculiar people.  I’ve often thought when you look carefully—the promised land, of course, is America.  To me this is the second one, because we have been challenged here to bring all these ethnic groupings together.  We have Germans and Italians and Portuguese and blacks and whites and Chinese.  We’re here to do the opposite of what the Tower of Babel exercise was—to scatter them.  As I see it, the seed of Abraham, scattered throughout the world, has been drawn particularly to this place to make one nation of this cosmopolitan group.  I don’t know if you’ve read James Michener’s book called The Covenant?

 

H:        I haven’t.

 

P:         He wrote a book called The Covenant.  The covenant people he interpreted to be the Afrikaner stock, the people of the Abrahamic covenant, people mainly from Holland, people who were seeking religious freedom and freedom from the oppression of the later British rule,

 

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            from the rule and oppression of Europe at the time.  That’s mainly French, Huguenots.  Have you heard of them?

 

H:        Yes.

 

P:         Why did they come here?  Because it was halfway on the trade route to the East Indies, and they stopped off here and thought this would be a good place to stay.  Then, later, they found all the riches, the gold and diamonds, which attracted mainly the British people.  Then you get two hard-headed Ephraimite groups there.  This, to me, is the way the history unfolded.

 

In my late wife’s early searching—she and her mother used to be great searchers—there was a book written called The Destiny of the British Empire and the USA.  Have you ever read this?

 

H:        No.

 

P:         This was based upon the premise that the British Empire was Ephraim, and the United States was Manasseh.  They came pretty close, but they were looking at the destiny of the seed of Joseph governing the world.

 

So, to come back to this ethnic grouping, really I didn’t come across anybody except Ephraim and Judah, and, of course, the adoption of the blacks into the system, then Manasseh as well, through the Lamanite affiliations.

 

H:        I was going to ask if things changed after the revelation on the priesthood in 1978.  Now that blacks could be baptized and have the priesthood and receive patriarchal blessings, have you found a difference in lineage, or is it, as you said, that they were adopted into Ephraim?

 

P:         Or even Manasseh.  We were counselled by the Twelve at the time to say—if you’re in doubt—the Abrahamic lineage is the major one anyway.  To me, destiny is right down the line.  The historians of the world are kind of floundering around.  If they could only latch on to the Book of Mormon and our beliefs in Abraham and these covenant people, it would be so easy, but there seems to be a curtain of darkness placed on them.

 

H:        Tell me how things changed in the Church in South Africa after the 1978 revelation on the priesthood.

 

P:         I have heard, and I believe it to be true, that of all the countries—you know, we’ve got this legacy of apartheid and the oppression and so on—that’s the dark side of it.  The light side is, for example, I grew up employing black servants whom we treated as one of the family in a Christian way.  Most people did.  The farmers of this land, mainly the Afrikaners, treated them perfectly well.  It’s the bogie of apartheid, this oppression and so on.  I think it is remarkable how we as a nation accepted it.  I’ve heard that we were less prejudiced than most other people.  I think, on the whole, it went remarkably well.  We are mending fences here and going at it in quite a remarkable way, I think, in this country.

 

 

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The problem is too many of the seed of Israel, in and out of the Church, are taking off for Australia, New Zealand, United States.  To me, it’s a pity.  The prophets have never indicated that they should do that.  My counsel has always been, “You were born here.”  I’ve felt in blessings to announce the fact, “You were born here with a destiny.  Stay here.”  The feeling I had was, “We’re here.  The hand of the Lord is over us.  It’s the second promised land.”

 

H:        My stay here in South Africa has been brief, but I’ve seemed to notice something.  I wonder if you could comment on it.  On the one hand, society seems to be in a state of transition, and I hear a lot about the high crime rate and the unrest or the anxiety that people have, and I’ve seen the razor wire and the bars on the doors and windows.  At the same time, I see that there are five stakes here in the Johannesburg/Pretoria area.  Here’s the temple.  We have General Authorities living here now.  The work of the Lord seems to be progressing.  It seems like there are these two opposite extremes going on.  I’m wondering, as a South African member of the Church, how do you see it?  How do you steer between these two extremes?

 

P:         I’d say it’s [the] teething problems of a new nation we’re building.  We’ve only been going five years, as you know; next year it will be five years.  If you look at the history of this country, 1910 was the Union of South Africa.  Prior to that were the English, British, South African, Dutch, the Anglo-Boer War.  The 1910 Union of South Africa brought British Imperialism for roughly forty years up to 1948, when the Afrikaner nationalism took over.  Actually, a policy of separate development, apartheid’s predecessor was introduced by the British way back in the 1920s.  The African National Congress (the great black freedom movement) goes back to the teens or 1921 or something.  Then you had that forty years of Afrikaner nationalism.  Now we’ve come to the year 1994, roughly.  Can you build a nation in anything but perhaps another forty years?  It’s impossible.  The whole generation of black people have only known the so-called oppression.

 

By the way, it was interesting, when I visited Salt Lake once in the early ’80s, I went into the toilet in that headquarters building and there was a black man from the USA.  We got talking.  He was a member of the Church.  He heard I was from South Africa and he said, “Oh, that’s where the blacks are in bondage.”  He used that term.  I’ve never forgotten it.  Then I saw that U.S. television series North and South, and I saw the bondage of the blacks, the slavery.  This is his concept and, perhaps, the whole of the United States’ concept of black-white relations.  Either you’re in bondage or your not.  Now apartheid had its problems of separation, but there was never a bondage.  The slave trade was abolished here way back in the Dark Ages.

 

So, to answer your question, where are we going, I don’t know whether we’ll live long enough to see into the Millennium or what, but to me another twenty-five years perhaps will see the birth of the real nation, but now we’re going through the birth pangs, teething troubles, or whatever you’d like to call it.  It can’t happen overnight; you’ve got to give it time. 

 

Of course, the problem with the crime rate is that unemployment is terrible.  What do you do if you’re short of money?  You go and rob.  Of course, the new black politicians are on a real gravy train because they’ve never known this before, so it’s temptation.  As one gets older,

 

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you look that it’s just a fact of life, if temptation is there and your will is weak and you’ve never known anything else, that’s the way you live.

 

The Saviour’s words on the cross, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”  That, to me, is half the problem.  People don’t know how to do it.  We’ve been schooled in management techniques greatly in the Church.  To us, government is second nature.  To them it’s foreign.  They’ve never done it before.  The money is there, help yourself.  Maybe you’ll see the answer.  I won’t.

 

H:        I hope I do.  Tell me about your calling as a counsellor in the temple presidency.  I guess I should ask, first, when was the first time you were able to go to the temple?

 

P:         September 1969, when I was the district president.  We had been planning this temple trip for a long time.  In those days you could say to a congregation, “How many have been to the temple?” and one or two hands would raise, so we, as a district presidency, got together and we started planning an organized trip.

 

H:        Tell me how you did that?  The distance was so great.  I assume you went to London.

 

P:         Yes, eleven thousand kilometres, six thousand miles away.

 

H:        How did you work out to organize a trip that far, that would cost that much money?

 

P:         I had two good counsellors.  One of them was a bank manager and chief financial manager, so we started encouraging people to save.  Then, to cut a long story short, we got the list of people who wanted to go, families and so on.  It took several years to plan and put money aside.  Then we chartered a Sabena 707, which would normally seat about 100 something passengers.  In those days the 707 was [a] top-of-the-line aircraft.  Anyway, we hired this plane and they shut half of it off for cargo, and we as a group of eighty went in the rest of it.  We ran them out of water and cold drinks because they had lots of drinks on hand.

 

H:        Alcohol.

 

P:         Yes, which we didn’t use, but it was a good experience.  We went over to Brussels, then to London as a group of eighty.  We were so large we had to split up into two groups because the London Temple accommodations couldn’t accommodate us all.

 

I happened to be working for Peugeot at the time, so I went to the Paris Motor Show.  It was business time and pleasure half the time.  Then we toured England and Scotland in the two weeks we had while we were not at the temple.  That’s how we went.  It was a great experience.

 

Thereafter, the floodgates opened, because just after that the stake was organized in 1970.  Six months later the stake was organized.  I think the Lord and the authorities saw “These people mean business.  Let’s go.”

 

H:        I was going to ask what difference it made to all of a sudden have a core of people who had been endowed, who had made the covenants.  I guess seeing the stake, that’s answered the

 

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            question.  Was this the only occurrence where members of the Church would charter a jet, or did this perpetuate?  Did you set the example and did this continue until this temple here was built?

 

P:         No, after that the largest group was fifteen or twenty.  It was not chartering the whole aircraft deal, but that, to me, was the breakthrough.

 

H:        I read in one of the histories of the Church here that there was kind of a perpetual temple fund, where Saints would—I don’t know if you would pool your money or make a loan and people could pay it back.  Was there that kind of thing going on to get people to the temple?

 

P:         Not that I know of.  After that, I was a patriarch.  One of the grouches that I had as a patriarch, if I may call it a grouch, was that I’m mainly an administrator and organizer, and to be shoved out or put up on a pedestal, I used to grouch at it.  Anyway, I was called as a patriarch in March 1970.  Then the greatest thrill came to me in 1977, when I was called to be a counsellor in the mission presidency, because now I could get back into business again.

 

H:        Was this with President Dale LeBaron?

 

P:         Yes, and then subsequently Lowell D. Wood succeeded him.  To me, that was a thrill.  I’ve always liked being in administrating and doing things.  Now when you’re a patriarch you must sit and meditate in a corner all the time or something.

 

H:        As a counsellor in the mission presidency, could you continue to function as patriarch?

 

P:         Yes, I did.  Indeed, Elder David B. Haight set me apart as a counsellor to President LeBaron.  I was interested in the [General] Authorities’ viewpoints over the years.  One says, “You’re not to be touched.  You’re untouchable.”  Another one said I could serve as a high priest group leader or counsellor in the mission presidency.  That was kind of an executive position.  Then certain Authorities came and said, “No, patriarchs must not be touched,” so of course, I went back into isolation.  I personally preferred the ability of being able to have a closer and more personal contact with Church members.

 

H:        Prior to your call as a counsellor in the temple presidency, were you a temple worker, or was your call to serve as a counsellor your first experience for working in a temple?

 

P:         Interestingly enough, all my life I have felt the temple was so special I didn’t want to work there.  I think the angels heard that and told all the temple authorities to leave this man alone.  I went from 1969 doing odd visits—I used to go to Europe for Peugeot, and I used to go to the temple.  In 1969, right through 1971 on to the temple dedication in 1985 here, I used to pay periodic visits, including U.S. temples.  Then when I lived in Cape Town, I used to come up every three months or so to get refueled.  Nobody ever asked me to be a temple worker, and I was so grateful.

 

The first temple work I undertook (I was called in ’95) was probably in 1993 or 1994.  They started to say, “Would you like to help bring people through the veil?”  You didn’t have to be a temple worker for that, so I used to do that.  Nobody ever said, “We want you to be a temple worker,” and I never complained, so when I was called here, I was absolutely green.

 

 

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H:        What was your reaction to the call?

 

P:         Mighty shocked.  I’m sitting down there in Cape Town, which is a thousand miles away, quietly meditating and watching the waves.  President [Laurence C. Bundy-]Palmer said that he had the impression to call me out of the wilderness.  I’ve known him from way, way back.  We worked in the Krugersdorp Branch at the same time.  I think it must have been about the early ’60s then.  He went to Klerksdorp, so I’ve known him many years.  I’ve been around so long I know most people around here, except the new ones.

 

H:        How would you describe the leadership style of President Palmer?  What does he bring to the calling as the first South African called as a brand new president?  I know that Lionel Bibb assumed the presidency and did that for two years, and he now lives in the States.

 

P:         That’s right.

 

H:        So tell me a little bit about President Palmer.

 

P:         He spent fifteen years or so in a very small unit of the Church in Klerksdorp.  I had a speaking assignment there a couple of weeks ago and there were twenty-two at the sacrament meeting, but his style is—he was a miner all his life.  He’s a very enthusiastic, go-getter man, so his style has always been, “Let’s get the job done and go kind of thing.”  It’s been refreshing style.  I think we’ve brought in a fresh atmosphere in the fact that we were now the first all–South African crew.  It was a good feeling to do that.

 

H:        What does it mean to the South Africans here to see a complete South African presidency?

 

P:         I don’t know.  I think within themselves, if they notice it, they thrill.  Of course, people are not as perceptive as they should be or might be.  I think the Spirit permeates the whole place.  I think our only concern is that people are so busy, so under pressure to earn money to keep their heads above water, they don’t have time, or they think they don’t have time, to come to the temple and get refueled and renewed and rejuvenated, and all their troubles will be lightened.  That vision is not here.

 

A couple of years ago we had a get-together in the Gatehouse with Elder [Christoffel] Golden [Jr], Area Authority Seventy, who is South African, and he said, “We must build a temple generation.”  That was two years ago. It’s going to take how long to build a temple generation.  One of the sad things, when the temple was eleven thousand kilometres away, it was a thrill to go to the temple.  Now it’s eleven minutes away.  It’s too easy.  That’s human nature.

 

H:        What is the Gatehouse?  I’ve heard it referred to, and I don’t know what it is.

 

P:         It’s this appendage here.  When this was originally a residence, it was one of the relics, it was kind of a traditional building style of this Parktown ridge.  To the locals, it was kind of a sacrosanct area.  There was a mansion here of kind of a pseudo-American style building.  We demolished it, of course.  It had a gatehouse.  In the old days, when people came in horses and carriages, they went through a gatehouse, so as a concession to the locals we said we would

 

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            demolish this gatehouse, but we would replace it with a modern one.  It’s called the Gatehouse for that reason.  You ride underneath it to get into the basement parking.  That’s where the term comes from.  It is officially part of the temple, but it’s really an appendage.  In days gone by, certain of our temple presidents have used that as a visitors’ centre, as a kind of a social place, or even as a waiting area, but technically, it’s part of the temple, and it’s now used as a waiting area for children being sealed to parents.  And, of course, it’s used if General Authorities come and want to meet with the staff, as with President [Gordon B.] Hinckley when he came here.  He met with all the workers in that area.

 

H:        Tell me about that.  Tell me about President Hinckley’s visit here.

 

P:         It was scheduled for one o’clock, a walk around the temple for half an hour, then address the temple workers for fifteen minutes.  He was so busy, he got here at 1:20, and hurried around.  We were all going to see him at the big gathering, anyway, but we appreciated him. It was lovely to see him, to get to know him for a few minutes.  He dedicated the temple, as you saw, at which time it was a great experience.

 

H:        What are your specific responsibilities as the first counsellor in the temple presidency?

 

P:         Between President deVilliers and myself, I handle baptistry and the sealings, and he handles the endowments and initiatory ordinances.  We’re supervising those areas.  On Friday and Saturday we split the presidency because we have to take care of kind of two full days running.  This week, for example, I’m on Friday morning and Saturday afternoon.  The other two are on Friday evening and Saturday morning.  Otherwise, we handle our respective callings.

 

H:        What does that mean?  Does that mean you are the person in charge?  When you pull that shift on Friday and Saturday, which are the busiest days, as I understand it, does that mean that you sit here in the office and troubleshoot, or are you in the sessions making sure things are running?  What does that mean?

 

P:         Well, as far as baptistry is concerned, we have Saturday morning only.  We have a very competent baptismal operation supervisor.  We gather all the youth together, outside in the foyer, I say a few words of welcome to them, and then hand them over to the supervisor, and he and the lady supervisor shift them.  Unfortunately, our baptistry has only got two showers and six lockers on either side.

 

H:        What happens when you have a big group?

 

P:         They have to sit and wait and be ferried through two by two, which is one of the restrictive parts of the temple, unfortunately, because we cannot accommodate large groups.  The youth, of course, are not called, but, nevertheless, it’s kind of a special occasion.  They say, “Hey, do you want to go?” and they volunteer, the more, the merrier kind of thing.  It takes a bit of watching over.  I do the preliminaries with the various stakes.  Each one has a turn every five weeks.  We try to ensure that there’s order in the place.

 

 

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H:        I remember being a young deacon and teacher and priest, and going to the temple was a very special thing.  I still remember some portions of the talks that were given to us as we waited to go do the baptisms.  We were told what a sacred experience it is, and how the work that we do parallels the work on the other side of the veil.  For me, it was a profound experience, and I was wondering what approach you take as you meet with the youth.

 

P:         Similarly, I try to have them remember something meaningful.  You probably got one turn a year, didn’t you?

 

H:        Yes.

 

P:         Here each stake has every five weeks, and then within the stakes, the various units are catered for, but we are still maturing in that respect to sort of have the image of a special occasion impressed upon them.  Our priesthood leaders don’t have the vision of the fact that this is a sacred call and opportunity for the youth to come to the temple.  It’s a special, special occasion.

 

I guess all the way through it’s a question of maturing viewpoints and activities.  It takes time.  I’ve always been impressed with the fact that the plants grow slowly.  People grow slowly.  Man just wants to do instant coffee, instant tea, instant conversion.  As you grow older, you see it differently.

 

H:        Are you called upon to speak and give firesides and encourage temple attendance because of your position in the presidency, or do you shy away from that and say, “I’m supposed to minister here in the temple, not advertise.”

 

P:         No, we grab every opportunity we can.  For example, my eldest son got remarried a couple of weeks ago in East London, so we went down there.  The branch president knew we were coming so he said, “Oh, can we have a fireside?”  That was nice.  No, we take every opportunity.  I mentioned I spoke out at Klerksdorp two weeks ago.  I’m on the speaking assignment list for Roodepoort Stake.

 

H:        Does that mean you’re on the high council?

 

P:         No, just as an invitee, a guest speaker on the speaking assignment schedule.  President deVilliers is on the list as well.  We try to encourage stake presidents to invite us, because we can’t come in and say, “Hey, how about giving us some time to talk.  We’re available anytime you want us,” so we take every opportunity.

 

H:        You said that your other responsibility was over sealings.  What does that entail?

 

P:         That entails monitoring the temple file work, also when people come in with a family file to accommodate them in sealing sessions, trying to encourage people to bring a whole family group along with the family file.  We’ll provide the sealer and the room, and you provide the patrons.  In other words, I oversee the sealing operation: to see that it functions, that the sealer is there and the room is open, and the people get in and get going.  Once it’s going, then I step back.

 

 

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H:        Tell me about the occurrence when black members of the Church from West Africa or East Africa or maybe even Zimbabwe and some of the countries north of here come to the temple.  It’s kind of unique that priesthood leaders and members who live in very dire circumstances are brought here to the temple, and I’d just be interested to know some of your experiences and some of the feeling that occurs when these members are able to come here to the temple.

 

P:         I think the most impressive thing is they usually come Tuesday or Thursday, and by Friday they’re kind of different people.  There is something that lights up within them.  We are used to watching television and fancy movies and see all this kind of decor with carpets and so on.  I walked into our toilet here once, and there was a black man standing looking at it.  I don’t know whether you’ve seen the tap where you lift and turn.  He looked and said, “How do you turn this tap on?”  I had to explain that.  Then we had to show them how to use the toilet and wash their hands.

 

In the baptistery, it’s customary that everybody going into the font has to have a shower.  We have to go through and show them how to use a shower.  Some of them have never even seen a shower.  We take it for granted.  We have to go back to basics and show them how to use the shower.  “Turn here for the heat.  This turns it on.  Here’s a towel.”  We have to kind of nursemaid them through the first few days, but then after a couple of days you can see them blossoming.

 

It’s particularly challenging when we have people from Ivory Coast or the Congo or places in the islands who speak French only.  The communication is a problem.  Basically, we have learned to look after them like children.  We don’t want to baby them too much.  That is not what they need or want.  Then once they get going, they just blossom.  It’s lovely to see.  Our biggest problem is, again, the logistics when somebody organizes too many coming at once.  We find the ideal is about three or four couples.  Then you can give them the attention they need, but if you’ve got ten or twelve then it’s a scramble, and I think we miss the point.  They should have a good first temple experience.

 

It’s a once in a lifetime experience for them to come the first time.  They’ll get a temple in Ghana one day, but most of them come mainly Church assisted.  They have a fund or something.  They come in as bishops, bishop’s counsellors, stake presidents.  We look at them and say, “Wow, man, you don’t look like a bishop to me.”  This poor man hasn’t the foggiest idea.

 

The marvel to me, in the Church, is that all the leadership in the Church are giving them the benefit of the doubt.  The finest type computers are going up into West Africa.  We used to say, “Oh, it’s wasted on them.”  The finest buildings are being built.  The whole gospel is unrolled before them in all its glory, no respecter of person, and that, to me, is the marvel of it all.  The gospel fits everybody.

 

H:        When these people from West or East Africa come to the temple, and you spend the whole time with them, do you create special sessions for them, or are they plugged into the three o’clock or five o’clock session?

 

 

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P:         In the past we used to run special sessions, but we’ve found that we were so stressed for labour and all that, we preferably leave it to what it is.  We may come in a bit early to accommodate ourselves as to the handling of them, but mainly they keep to the basic schedule.

 

H:        Do you notice a different spirit that they bring to the temple, or do you notice the same thing from somebody from Johannesburg who drives to the temple in minutes?

 

P:         Oh, they appreciate it.  It’s a question of appreciation and taking it for granted, the same with the locals.  Some come here as a matter of course.  Like I said, it depends on people’s attitudes as to whether they receive all the blessings.  “I might as well go,” or “I want to go.”  That’s the difference.  Are you crying out for it or taking it for granted?  I think that’s the biggest problem.  The temple here is so easy.  We take it for granted, which is sad, but we have some who you can see it’s their life.

 

H:        I’ve heard that there are two questions that are asked as somebody enters the temple.  One, “May I see your recommend?” and two, “Are you carrying a firearm?”  Is that true?  Is that not true?  I’ve been told this for a couple of years, but I’ve never had somebody in the temple presidency set me straight.

 

P:         A lot of people carry firearms, plenty.  We had one lady with a nine millimetre automatic.  She had a very heavy caliber one.  She used to come in and plonk it on the desk. Now we’ve been counselled.  Please take it down to your car and lock it up.  You do not bring it into the temple.  We stop cameras also, but the firearm is a very, very real thing.  A lot of people carry them.  Of course, this is a mixed blessing because the hijackers, who are inclined to stop you at a traffic light or something, if you move your hand, if you’re reaching for a gun, they’ll shoot you.  This is the problem.

 

We had one poor lady coming here about two months ago.  She stopped at a traffic light down there with two kids in her car.  Her cell phone was lying on the seat.  The man smashed the window and she hit him.  She said it was like hitting a rock.  She was screaming.  Then he grabbed her cell phone and ran off, fortunately, but the problem is, it’s a real thing.  We educated people to leave their firearms.  This lady used to leave hers at the desk.  Now we’ve encouraged her to put in the trunk of her car and lock it up.  It’s not our responsibility, and of course, cell phones are another thing.  We encourage people to leave them outside or switch them off.

 

H:        Those are basically the questions.  I discussed a lot of these other issues with President Bundy-Palmer.  Before I ask my final question, is there some major topic about your responsibilities here in the temple that we haven’t touched upon?  I don’t want you to sit there and think, “Boy, I have all these great stories, but he hasn’t asked me the question yet.”

 

P:         I would assume with you having talked with President Palmer you’ve got the routine going here.  As I see it, about six months ago we had a couple whose son was coming off a mission.  They worked in the [Mesa] Arizona Temple, and they came here and worked two months. They showed us the schedule of workers in Arizona.  Having talked to other workers, we find in this temple one of the peculiarities is, here we are jacks-of-all-trades.  We do everything.  I

 

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            have a very good friend with whom I worked in the Cape Town Mission office some years ago.  He’s in Bountiful, Utah.  He’s a Salt Lake Temple worker.  Number one, he said, “I could never be one of these push button ones.  I want to be a live temple worker,” so he doesn’t go to Bountiful.  I used to visit former friends and mission presidents in the States.  They just go for one thing.  One is a former mission president and he said, “Every day, veil, nothing else.”  Somebody else does the new name, nothing else.  Someone else does initiatory, nothing else.  Here we have to be everything.  I think it’s a good thing, because one has a broader aspect of the temple.  I can now do everything. 

 

I think it’s more an enriching experience being in a smaller temple, but at the same time it’s much more demanding, much more so.  For example, with my going on seventy-seven, I frequently do about a forty hour week.  Most people should be sitting down watching the birds fly around.  I don’t know whether that point has been covered before.  By the way, another challenge in a temple like this is everybody knows everybody.

 

H:        Why is that a challenge?

 

P:         Because everybody wants to talk.  Reverence is a problem.  “Oh, I haven’t seen you for ages.  How are you doing?”  Then they start talking about the latest cricket score, rugby score, stocks and shares.  How do you stop friendliness?  It’s like the reverence in chapels.  I’ve been to an overseas temple.  You go there and you know nobody.  What a lovely experience.  Everything is [whispering] quiet.  The Jordan River and Salt Lake temples, [whispering] quietly dignified.  This is the Church.  We’re all friends and brothers and sisters, but here, virtually everybody knows everybody.  In these five stakes we’ve got over 1,500 recommend holders.  Where you come from, probably one stake has got 1,500.

 

H:        It’s not that green on the other side of the fence.

 

P:         Which is your home ward and temple?

 

H:        Salt Lake Temple.  I live downtown, which is real convenient.  I can go over right from work.

 

You’ve had a varied experience with the Church here as a patriarch, as a Church employee, and now in the temple.  My final question, as we conclude the interview, is that I’d like to know what the experience here in the temple has brought into your life that is somehow different than the administrative callings that you’ve had, and the mission presidency, or even the calling of patriarch.

 

P:         Another of my callings in the temple has been as an administrator, as well.

 

The temple has brought me a deeper vision of the plan of salvation.  You’re with it all the time.  One of the things that I have a firm testimony of is that the Lord lifts you up to heights—physically, spiritually, emotionally—that you never could have achieved any other way.  It’s like being in a business with lots of perks, housing, entertainment.  Here, my wife and I have been kept going miraculously at the hand of the Lord.  By the way, we’ve known each other about thirty-five years.  Her husband died several years ago, and my wife died six years ago.  We got married two and a half years ago.  The Lord brought us together, I know,

 

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because I came as a counsellor and she came as the assistant to the matron in the opposite spot.

 

H:        And you weren’t married at that time?

 

P:         No, we weren’t married.  I’d been prompted over the years to seek her as a companion, but I resisted it because I didn’t think she was interested.  Anyway, that’s another story.  I think we’re the oldest couple in the temple, and we haven’t been off on a day’s sick leave.  Other ones stay home.  It’s a testimony-building experience. 

 

            A couple of months ago I had a dose of food poisoning.  I had an administration in here Tuesday night.  Wednesday morning President Palmer said, “Don’t bother to come in.  Get yourself right.”  I discussed it with my wife.  We were feeling pretty grim.  “No, we’ll come in.”  From that very moment, [we] could feel it.  We were renewed.

 

These are things that happen numerous times.  Time and time again we’ve seen the hand of the Lord directing our footsteps, lifting us up.  That, I think, is the most significant experience, and it scares us really when we contemplate having to give it up.  It’s like when you’re a bishop and you’re replaced.  The mantle is taken off of you.  To us, it’s a scary experience to say, “One day it’s got to end.”  That’s probably the hardest thing about this calling.  I was taught many years ago when you get a calling to remember that there’s a release note in your pocket.  I think the Lord looks after His servants, and this is a special place to be looked after.

 

H:        I’m interested to know, were you called in this presidency as a single man?

 

P:         Yes.

 

H:        That’s kind of unique, isn’t it?  I’ve never heard of a counsellor in the temple presidency being called who wasn’t married.  I think it’s wonderful.  That’s very interesting.

 

P:         Possibly, the Lord saw I would be married.  I started September 1st.  We got married February 10th, but as I say, we’d known each other for years and years and years.  My wife was baptized in 1960, and I was baptized in 1950.  We worked together, she as Relief Society president over the whole country, and I was the district president.  Of course, she was happily married with five kids, and I had five.  Her husband died in 1990, and my wife in ’92.  I saw her here and treated her cordially and all that, but I know the Lord brought us together.  I know I wouldn’t have had the nerve to remarry if he hadn’t said so.  These are the perks.  These are what the temple has done for me.  It’s special.

 

H:        Thank you very much for this interview.