One hundred years ago, President Heber J. Grant of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dedicated the Laie Hawaii Temple on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1919. Until the Church changed its temple naming policy in the late 1990s, it was known as the Hawaii Temple.
This magnificent structure on a tropical hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, was only the Church’s fifth temple, and the first to be built outside the continental United States. For many of its earlier years, the Laie Hawaii Temple also served Latter-day Saints in all of the South Pacific islands and Asia.
| Temple Square is always beautiful in the springtime. Gardeners work to prepare the ground for General Conference. © 2012 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. | 1 / 2 |
Faithful Saints from Samoa, for example, moved to Laie even while it was under original construction to be closer to the temple, and excursion groups soon came from New Zealand and later from Japan and Korea. Other Pacific island and Asian groups came as recently as 1979. Today, the Laie Hawaii Temple district includes Oahu and Kauai in Hawaii, and the Marshall Islands. (The Kona Hawaii Temple, dedicated in 2000, covers the rest of Hawaii).
To help mark this historic milestone — especially for those with personal ties, the Laie Hawaii Temple centennial committee has set up a website at:
The site includes an events calendar, photo gallery, a list of resources and other information about the Laie Hawaii Temple and other temples, vignettes and stories, a historical timeline, and an interactive memories blog to which users around the world can submit their own experiences and pictures. (Submissions will be moderated and/or edited before publishing). Note, this is not an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Literally millions of people from around the world have also visited the beautiful Laie Hawaii Temple grounds and Visitors Center since 1919; and since 1973, many of those have come as part of an optional free tour sponsored by the nearby Polynesian Cultural Center.
“The Laie Hawaii Temple has been a great blessing and beacon in all our lives,” said Steve Laulu, president of the nearby Kaneohe Hawaii Stake and chairman of the temple’s centennial committee. “We invite all to come again and share our aloha through the new website.”
Newsroom contributor: Mike Foley