BENTONVILLE, Arkansas — Perry and Melinda Turnbull, longtime Arkansas residents, met as elementary school classmates in central Arkansas. After they completed high school, Perry went on to serve a mission. Upon his return, Melinda was baptized as a member of the Church and they were sealed in the Washington D.C. Temple. Since then, the pair have spent decades of their lives in the area for education, employment and Church service.
They represent the multitudes who together have provided the growth and strength of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in and around Northwest Arkansas.
That growth and strength in the region — extending into southwest Missouri and northeastern Oklahoma — has resulted in a new house of the Lord, with the Bentonville Arkansas Temple to be dedicated Sunday, Sept. 17, by Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Elder Bednar and his family — his wife, Sister Susan Bednar, and their three sons — were also part of that growth and development in the 1980s and 1990s in the Northwest Arkansas metro area, anchored by Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale and Fayetteville.
Getting to know each other — and the Church
Melinda Faye Rice remembers two other students in her first-grade class in Dardanelle, Arkansas, in 1965 — her best friend, Jean, and a new boy named Perry Turnbull, whose family had just moved from Wyoming and wore what she called “cowboy clothes” to school. Jean and Perry were the sole Latter-day Saints in the school.
Melinda and Perry grew up advancing through the grades, becoming friends and later dating in high school. The time together included participating in Church youth activities and visiting some with the full-time missionaries.
One teaching caught young Melinda’s attention. “The belief that made a lasting impression on me was temple marriage,” she recalled. “I loved the idea of being married forever.”
As Turnbull left to attend Brigham Young University in Utah and was mindful of mission preparations, the two stopped dating — but remained friends, exchanging occasional letters, even during his mission service in Mexico. Rice enrolled in the University of Arkansas, and remembers a sophomore-year trip to Hawaii and her first chance to see a Latter-day Saint house of the Lord, the Laie Hawaii Temple, where these eternal marriages take place.
When Turnbull returned from his mission, his parents invited Rice to join them in picking him up at the airport. The two started dating again within several months, and she soon again started meeting with the missionaries.
Baptism and temple marriage
On April 11, 1981, Perry Turnbull baptized Melinda Rice. At the time, the Church had a ward in Fayetteville — where she and the Bednars attended — and a branch in Rogers.
And on Aug. 21, 1982, Melinda Rice became Melinda Turnbull as the two married in the then-closest temple, the Washington D.C. Temple. Because of the 1,200-mile distance, the 19-plus-hour driving time and the inability of nonmembers to enter the temple for the ceremony, Melinda Turnbull’s family chose not to travel.
“But nothing could have convinced me to change my mind about getting married in the temple,” she said. “It was eternally important to me.”
Added her husband: “Against all odds, she took a chance on the gospel and on me because the Spirit confirmed to her long ago that Heavenly Father had an eternal marriage for her in the right place and in the right way.”
The couple started their life together in Utah, with Perry Turnbull back at BYU and running a couple of small businesses, with the time and attention given to the latter adversely affecting his grades. He was asked to catch up academically by attending a semester somewhere else.
Melinda Turnbull suggested her husband finish his degree at the University of Arkansas, where she had graduated. Before committing to move back, he asked the bishop in Fayetteville to recommend someone at the university with whom he could visit.
The bishop spoke of “a great guy, member of the Church and professor in the business department at the University of Arkansas — David Bednar.”
Perry Turnbull remembers the counsel from the future Apostle in the phone conversation. “You should consider a place like Arkansas — or probably even Arkansas itself — as a place the Lord can employ you to do His bidding,” he remembers being told. “Education is important, and you should prepare yourself, but being where the Lord needs you is even more important.”
Perry and Melinda Turnbull packed up their young son and belongings and returned home to Arkansas in 1985. With the exception of a few years living in the Philadelphia area, the Turnbulls — who now live in Cave Springs — have raised four children and helped grow and strengthen the Church in Northwest Arkansas by serving in numerous stake and ward callings over the decades since.
‘We love the place’
When the Bednars first arrived in Fayetteville in 1980, he was called to be the stake clerk. As the stake high council was one or two short of its full complement of 12 members, Elder Bednar would occasionally be assigned to speak in different wards and branches.
One assignment was to the Rogers Branch, a small unit of about 30 people that met on Sundays in a middle school cafeteria, with stowaway lunch tables pulled down from the walls to provide seating. “People were seated around those tables, and that is how we had sacrament meeting.”
In the early 1980s, the Church had about 2,000 members across northwestern Arkansas, northeastern Oklahoma and southwest Missouri, where today membership is between 35,000 and 40,000. Struggling branches, wards and just one stake have given way to many strong wards and multiple stakes.
“It is a miracle of remarkable proportions,” said Elder Bednar, who as an Apostle has returned over the years to create three stakes within the new Bentonville temple district.
The growth is a combination of convert baptisms, strong individuals and families choosing to stay in the area and then the influx of people drawn directly or indirectly due to a variety of corporate headquarters and local employers — such as Walmart in Bentonville, Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt Trucking in Springdale, and the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
From executives and managers to employees and interns, the corporate draw to Northwest Arkansas has brought in a steady flow of Latter-day Saints. “It is a remarkable chemistry and mixture,” Elder Bednar said.
“So, to have seen the hand of the Lord guiding this kind of growth and strength in the Church over such a short period of time is remarkable.”
Elder Bednar has been involved in three major milestones for the Bentonville Arkansas Temple — the Nov. 7, 2020, groundbreaking services, the June 12 media day earlier this year and now Sunday’s dedication.
He participated remotely in the groundbreaking, which was held during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. He and Sister Bednar and their family returned for the media day and special-guest tours in June, happy to invite longtime friends, former neighbors and colleagues to tour the new temple. Sunday’s dedication is the icing on the cake of the Bednars’ involvement.
Elder Bednar and his family lived in northern Arkansas until 1997 when he was invited to be president of Ricks College, now BYU-Idaho, and before his 2004 call to the apostleship.
He said, “We love the place — we never would have left. But the Lord had different plans for us.”
A ‘home’ to seek direction in life
Today, Perry Turnbull serves as president of the Rogers YSA Branch, and both he and his wife have been training with others to serve as ordinance workers in the Bentonville Arkansas Temple when it opens after its dedication. The Turnbulls had served in similar callings at the Philadelphia Pennsylvania Temple when they lived in that area for several years.
Over the years, considerable time and finances were needed for members in Northwest Arkansas to participate in ordinances in a house of the Lord, including the Washington D.C. Temple after its 1974 dedication, the Dallas Texas Temple (1984), the Oklahoma City Oklahoma Temple (2000) and the Kansas City Missouri Temple (2012).
“We’re so used to sacrifice to go to the temple — a four- or six- or eight-hour drive,” said Perry Turnbull, calling the new proximity of a temple “surreal.” His wife said the proximity will bless young families, since the longer distances and time resulted in two-day trips, with parents having to make arrangements for children in their absence.
The Turnbulls used the Bentonville temple open house this summer to invite high school and college friends to learn of the house of the Lord, with the many paintings of Jesus Christ throughout helping to set a tone for the guests.
“It was such an amazing experience being able to take them in and to share with them our beliefs and the ordinances and covenants that we make there … and understand our Church better,” said Melinda Turnbull, adding that those friends called other friends to tell them to ask for tours from the Turnbulls.
Even before it has opened, the Bentonville temple has attracted local Latter-day Saints, especially the young adults. “Many of them go to the temple and sit outside to ponder and pray in a place they never before had to do that,” Perry Turnbull said. “It has quickly become a ‘home’ for them to seek the directing they need in their life, and then they often post on social media about it or just discuss it openly.”
