Mormons Display Sandpoint Building Structure Will Serve Members From Libby To Newport

Fresh flowers and freshly pressed white shirts were in abundance at the new Sandpoint Stake Center on Saturday.

Young boys in neckties hurried to open doors for visitors coming to tour the newest stake center of the Mormon Church.

The $3 million, red brick and white columned building will serve as the hub of 10 wards (congregations) and more than 3,000 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from Libby, Mont., to Newport, Wash.

But not for long.

The membership just keeps growing.

In two years, the Sunnyside Ward in Sandpoint grew from 280 to 400 members, said Kim Pearson, a Sandpoint attorney who serves as the ward’s bishop.

“This area has traditionally depended on timber and tourism,” he said. “As the economy has expanded, it’s providing more opportunities for Latter-day Saints to move in.”

Pearson is a case in point. His family moved to Sandpoint a few years ago from Washington, D.C., attracted by a job offer.

But it’s not just migration that’s causing the demand for larger church facilities - church membership worldwide is booming.

The latest count of Mormons worldwide is close to 11 million, and growing about 3 percent a year. The church has nearly 60,000 missionaries and baptizes more than 80,000 children each year.

That’s why the church is building about two stake centers a week. One is now under construction in Hayden, Idaho.

The Sunnyside Ward and the Sandpoint Ward will attend services in the new stake center, which has a chapel, a full-sized indoor basketball court, a kitchen, several offices and meeting rooms for youth groups and other organizations of the church.

The center will also host conferences for the larger area and will serve as the organizational hub for the outlying wards.

The center also houses an employment office to help members - and nonmembers - find a job or change jobs. The office works closely with the state employment office, explained Russ Hiatt, a member giving tours Saturday.

Another service to the general public is the center’s Family History Center, which houses numerous resources for researching genealogy, such as microfiche of vital records from around the country, computer databases and more.

The center will be staffed with skilled genealogists to help members and nonmembers with their research. The center can also tap resources of Salt Lake City’s Family History Center, which houses the world’s largest genealogy archives.

“Salt Lake has more records than England,” said Leo Smith, a church member who specializes in genealogy. In the last four years, Smith has tracked down more than 1,000 of his ancestors.

Mormons have a special reason for studying their family history. Mormon theology teaches that everyone can reach heaven - even the deceased who were never baptized.

A dead relative can be baptized after the fact by proxy in a special ceremony in a Mormon temple. The closest temple to North Idaho opened last year in the Spokane Valley.

Living baptisms in Sandpoint will take place in a special “baptism font” built below ground level for total immersion.

While only Mormons in good standing with the church may enter a temple, the Sandpoint Stake Center is inclusive. A “Visitors Welcome” sign is posted out front, and everyone is invited to the weekly Sunday services.

During Saturday’s open house, the stake’s president, Nelson Boren, Hiatt, and others with the church patiently explained the theology and practices of Latter-day Saints to visitors, including state representatives, mayors and a school superintendent.

While civil marriages will be performed at the stake center, “eternal marriages” can only be performed in a sacred temple, Hiatt said. “That’s also something we believe in that’s a little different from other churches.”

All members are expected to give 10 percent of their earnings to the church, and that money goes directly to Salt Lake City.

The headquarters paid for the construction of the Sandpoint Stake Center and sends a portion of the tithes back to the local wards according to church attendance, Pearson said. Neither Pearson nor other church officials are paid. Instead, they are “called” into service for the church as volunteers.

Idaho, being a close neighbor of Utah, has always had a strong Mormon presence, except in North Idaho. The church took hold in southern Idaho in the mid-1800s, but the first branch of the church didn’t establish itself in North Idaho until 1936, in Coeur d’Alene.

In 1947 the Spokane stake organized, and the Sandpoint stake organized in 1978.