By DIANA VAN ORDEN
diana@newsroom.byu.edu
The third in a series of Sunday School time capsules, a tradition dating back to 1899, was sealed by President Gordon B. Hinckley Wednesday afternoon in a ceremony in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.
The time capsule, created by five BYU students, will be on display in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for six months. It then will be on public display on an undetermined site on the church office building plaza until it is opened in April 2049.
Speaking of when the capsule will be opened, President Hinckley jokingly told the audience, 'I'm looking forward to that occasion. I hope I'll be here at that time.'
The ceremonial sealing of the titanium globe time capsule was held on the eve of the Sunday School sesquicentennial anniversary. The Sunday School was organized Dec. 9, 1849, by Richard Ballantyne in Salt Lake City.
Also in attendance at the ceremony were members of the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the Sunday School general presidency and other general authorities and general auxiliary presidencies.
Elder Harold G. Hillam of the Seventy and Sunday School general president explained that the time capsule is not just about the Sunday School.
'We'd like to feel that this capsule represents the entire church. That it isn't only Sunday School, even though we do honor them at their sesquicentennial year, but we?re honored to be able to present this as a capsule for the whole church,' he said.
Elder Hillam also explained the reason for the capsule's unique design as a titanium globe. 'We all felt with the world-wide nature of the church, it would be appropriate for a world-wide sphere,' he said.
The 28-inch diameter globe contains hundreds of items from all of the church departments as well as artifacts submitted by each of the church's 28 geographic areas.
Each member of the First Presidency also selected something special to include in the time capsule. President Hinckley chose to include a copy of the blueprint for the Nauvoo Temple restoration. President Thomas S. Monson selected Wednesday's copy of The Deseret News and a piece of the Berlin Wall as his artifacts to include. President James E. Faust picked a Portuguese copy of the triple combination to be placed in the capsule.
Other artifacts placed in the capsule included a piece of granite from the LDS Church's new Conference Center that broke off when a crane fell during a tornado that ripped through Salt Lake City, an African cloth made by a church member in Ghana, a box made of white marble used in the construction of the temples in Mexico, a piece of the foundation from the original Nauvoo Temple, and a copy of the film Legacy.
A laptop computer and CD-ROMS containing thousands of various photos, video segments, books and articles was also included.
The five BYU engineering students created the capsule as their senior project. Burke Hunsaker, a manufacturing engineering student who graduated in August, was one of the students to work on the capsule. He estimated it took the five of them almost 2,000 hours to complete the job.