How the dedication of the Fortaleza Brazil Temple by Elder Soares became a historic event

(by Scott Taylor thechurchnews.com 6-2-19)

For the Latter-day Saints in this northeastern coastal city who struggled to start a branch with just a couple of convert families five decades ago and then patiently waited for the dedication of a temple announced nearly 10 years ago, Elder Ulisses Soares served as an empathetic friend.

In several weekend meetings associated with the Sunday, June 2, dedication of the Fortaleza Brazil Temple, Elder Soares — the Brazilian-born member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles presiding over the events — recalled his parents’ conversion when he was five years old.

With no temple in all of South America, the Soareses were part of the Los Angeles California Temple district. They waited 14 years before being able to go to the temple to receive their endowments and to be sealed as a family.

“It was something they were dreaming of for a long time — the high cost of those days and the distance made such a trip then almost impossible,” recalled Elder Soares, explaining how his parents transitioned from worldly habits to gospel habits in preparing for the temple.

As a young man in 1978 and well before the completion and dedication of a new temple in Sao Paulo later that year, he left on his mission to Rio de Janeiro without ever having attended the temple. While he was gone, the rest of his family went for the first time.

One month before his scheduled return, Elder Soares and a half-dozen other similarly unendowed missionaries received special permission from their mission president to join one of the overnight weekend temple caravans carrying members from Rio to the Sao Paulo temple.

There he had five hours in the temple — to first receive his own endowment and then to be sealed to his parents, who joined him that Saturday at the temple — before returning to Rio for his last month of service.

“Because of those five glorious hours in the temple,” he recalled, “I learned of the plan of salvation and the promises the Lord had for me, so I was anxious to share those with my investigators.”

And he and his wife, Sister Rosana Soares, were anxious to share the same as they spoke to the Saints in Fortaleza — hoping the local members would see their new temple as symbolic in their lives as the city’s name, which in Portuguese means “fortress” or “strength.”

The Soareses underscored the importance and impact of temple covenants and temple attendance in their lives, particularly in speaking in two of the three June 1 meetings held in conjunction with the dedication — a morning meeting with missionaries from the Brazil Fortaleza and Brazil Fortaleza East missions and an evening youth devotional with young men and young women from the temple district.

Elder Soares emphasized the purity of the House of the Lord and the importance of one being worthy to participate in temple ordinances, even as a youth and young adult. He repeatedly gestured and pointed toward the temple from the pulpit of the adjacent stake center where the Saturday meetings were held to underscore a fortress of strength to help withstand temptations, both before and after missions and marriage.

Elder and Sister Soares also joined other visiting leaders in an afternoon meeting with a chapel-full of Fortaleza’s “pioneer” Church members, including some who had been baptized more than a half-century previous. The pioneer families came three and four generations strong to the meeting, drawing the admiration and appreciation of the general authorities who greeted each one.

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https://www.thechurchnews.com/temples/2019-06-02/fortaleza-brazil-temple-dedication-elder-soares-historic-50047