Dedication of Joplin (Missouri) Stake Center

I neglected to post this item when I wrote it Sept. 28, 2012, on assignment from the stake Public Relations Committee.

Nancy Hunt, my wife, took this picture before the dedication.

   JOPLIN, MO -- Sixteen months and one day after one of the most devastating tornadoes in U.S. history ripped through this southwest Missouri city, LDS members in the city and surrounding area gathered Sunday evening for the dedication of their newly rebuilt stake center.

    Presiding at the dedication and offering the dedicatory prayer was Elder Tad R. Callister of the Presidency of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

   Joplin Stake President Creed R. Jones, whose home was one of more than 7,000 destroyed in the killer twister, conducted the dedication session and welcomed the more than 600 in attendance.

   Speakers recalled the miracles amid the storm’s tragedy and rejoiced in the completion of the beautiful 21,023-square-foot stake center – a new light on a rise in Joplin.

   The church building is at 2107 Indiana Ave., Joplin, Missouri, 64804.

   On May 22, 2011, the Category F-5 tornado cut a path through Joplin, killing 158 people and injuring about 1,000 -- the deadliest tornado in the United States since 1947.

   Eight members rode out the tornado inside the stake center in the only area of the building left standing. When the survivors opened the door out of the women’s restroom, virtually all the rest of the stake center was rubble!    

   Elder Callister warned that the new stake center itself will not save our lives. “Our lives will be saved only if we dedicate ourselves to Christ.”

    There is no tornado, earthquake, job loss or other misfortune that can take away our eternal blessings if we have faith in Jesus Christ and keep His commandments, he said.

   Choose faith over the reason of the world, Elder Callister said.

   As Prime Minister Winston Churchill told his nation in the darkest hours of World War II – “We will never, never, never give up” – Elder Callister urged those in attendance to “never, never, never give up on the Lord's promises.”

   Pres. Jones, who with his wife rode out the howling tornado winds in their car, said there are three refuges in life: home, church and the temple.

   There is safety in the church ordinances, he said. “If you keep your covenants, your covenants will keep you.”

   Beryl Nickolaisen, a member of the Joplin 1^st Ward, said that in the aftermath of the tornado, members have learned to put the needs of others above their own.

   Within days after the tornado, LDS Church members began cleanup projects and eventually put in more than twenty-thousand service hours in the stricken area.

   Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr reported on June 1, 2012, that by the end of April of 2012, the community and other volunteers had provided 810,476.5 hours in cleaning up and rebuilding the city area.

   Cleanup of the stake center debris after the tornado moved swiftly and less than seven months later, the building’s general contractor, Hunt Taylor Creek Contractors, was supervising the pouring of the huge concrete floor of the new stake center.

   The original Joplin meetinghouse was constructed in 1960-61 and was comprised of the chapel, some offices and several classrooms. Other additions were completed in the 1970s. The building as a stake center was dedicated June 15, 1996, as the Joplin Missouri Stake Center.

   Less than 15 years later, the tornado wrote a harrowing new chapter in the history of the church in Joplin, Missouri.

 
KSL.com posted the above picture and story on Oct. 15, 2012.