BENTONVILLE, Arkansas — From Washington, D.C., to Rome to Guam, Elder David A. Bednar has led media representatives and special guests on tours of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints around the world.
Sometimes his assignments to preside at milestone events of holy temples have coincided with special connections that he and his wife, Sister Susan Bednar, have with the area. One such instance was when Elder Bednar joined President Dallin H. Oaks when the latter rededicated the Oakland California Temple, located not far from where Elder Bednar grew up as a young boy. Another was when Elder Bednar, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, dedicated the Star Valley Wyoming Temple in Sister Bednar’s hometown of Afton, Wyoming.
Such connections abound with the Bentonville Arkansas Temple, with the Bednars and their three sons having resided in nearby Fayetteville for almost 20 years during the 1980s and 1990s while Elder Bednar taught as a professor of business management at the University of Arkansas.
Connections that matter
Eder Bednar has been involved in the Bentonville Arkansas Temple from the beginning. In November 2020, he presided remotely and offered the prayer dedicating the temple site via videoconference during the groundbreaking ceremony, which was a small, by-invitation-only gathering because of COVID-19 pandemic precautions and restrictions at the time.
He presided at the temple’s media day Monday, June 12, in Bentonville, leading media representatives on a tour and explaining the purposes of the sacred edifice and the ordinances performed and covenants made therein.
It was one of a number of tours he and Sister Bednar directed through the Bentonville temple over a five-day period as they and their sons invited longtime friends, former neighbors and colleagues — to join them in the newly constructed house of the Lord.
And he will return in three months to dedicate the temple, the Church’s first in Arkansas, in two sessions, at 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 17.
Elder Bednar over the five days emphasized how the temple, as a house of the Lord, should be connected to Jesus Christ and His Atonement. He further explained how Latter-day Saints should be personally connected to and with Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ, through sacred covenants and ordinances available in the temple.
In other words, the house of the Lord provides a way for people to have a covenant connection with the Father and the Son.
Multilayered experience
For Elder Bednar, this Bentonville experience is one of layers.
“The first layer is to be in the house of the Lord, helping people understand what the Restoration of the gospel has made available and possible — it is spiritually stirring and stunning,” he said.
“Then to do that with our family — our sons, their wives and almost all of our grandchildren — is another layer of tremendous joy.
“And then — with our family — to have the chance to take dear friends and associates through the temple and share the purposes and the blessings of temple worship,” said the Apostle, pausing before quoting Ammon in the Book of Mormon (Alma 26:16), “‘I cannot say the smallest part which I feel.’”
Elder Bednar then said: “It is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, to come back to a place where we lived, where we thought we would never leave — to be with these people who are such dear friends and to have all of these experiences. It is just remarkable.”
The house of the Lord is a house of learning and instruction, taught Elder Bednar during the tours he conducted with his wife, where Latter-day Saints learn of Heavenly Father’s plan for His children, Jesus Christ’s role in the Father’s plan and the importance of sacred covenants and ordinances.
The Bednars in Northwest Arkansas
Elder and Sister Bednar and their two young sons moved to Fayetteville in 1980, he just having received his doctorate in organizational behavior from Purdue University. During their time in Fayetteville in the 1980s and ‘90s, a third son was born, and they spent two years in Lubbock, Texas, with Elder Bednar teaching at Texas Tech University. When they arrived, a temple had just been announced for Dallas, Texas, putting a house of the Lord closer at six hours away.
In their time in Fayetteville, he served as a bishop, twice as a stake president and as a regional representative; as an Apostle, Elder Bednar has organized two new stakes in Arkansas, including the Bentonville Arkansas Stake in 2014.
Sister Bednar expected Fayetteville to be their “forever home.” That was until Elder Bednar’s 1997 appointment as president of BYU–Idaho (then still Ricks College) and 2004 call to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Coming back home
“So we have come back home,” he said at the start of a brief news conference in the meetinghouse adjacent to the temple prior to Monday’s media tour. “We are not Arkansans by birth, but whatever degree of adoption is necessary to be a full-blooded Arkansan, that is what we are.”
Said Sister Bednar: “Just know that our heart is here in Arkansas, and it has been for a very long time.”
For the past several months, they anticipated — and prepared for — their return to Northwest Arkansas. They were joined by their three sons, three daughters-in-law and most of their grandchildren this past weekend. “We have increased the population of Arkansas in the past couple of days,” Sister Bednar said.
Taking friends, neighbors on a temple tour
But it was not anything like a family reunion back at the old homestead. Rather, the Bednars and their sons invited many neighbors, friends and business colleagues to join them for guided walk-throughs of the temple with them in special tours on Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, along with the special guest tours that Elder Bednar led.
“Our sons have had opportunities to meet with their friends from high school, and I have reconnected with our neighbors, especially the women in the neighborhood where we lived,” Sister Bednar said. “They have come and visited the house of the Lord, and it has been amazing for me to be able to show them the temple and explain what we believe in and why temples are here.”
Summarizing their recent visit to Bentonville and Fayetteville, Sister Bednar said, “this just feels like a ‘welcome home’ for us.”
A multilayered “welcome home” — to not only Bentonville, Fayetteville and Northwest Arkansas but to the house of the Lord as well.
