d: 29 Dec 2008 01:00 AM CST

"In 1853 the cornerstone [for the Salt Lake Temple] was set, and ox teams began dragging granite stones from the mountains twenty miles away." ' "Good morning, Brother," one man was heard to say to a teamster. "We missed you at the meetings yesterday afternoon." "Yes," said the driver of the oxen, "I did not attend meeting. I did not have clothes fit to go to meeting." "Well," said the speaker, "Brother Brigham called for some more men and teams to haul granite blocks for the Temple."" 'The driver, his whip thrown over his oxen, said, ". . . We shall go and get another granite stone from the quarry" ' (David O. McKay, Salt Lake Temple dedication services, 21 May 1963, pp. 7-8). "President Woodruff had watched men cut out granite stones seventy feet square and split them into building blocks. If there was no mishap (and that would be an exception), that teamster, 'too poorly clad to worship,' could return within a week."

Boyd K. Packer, "The Temple, the Priesthood," Ensign, May 1993, 19