Regarding the flying of the flag, I certainly never meant that any other flag than the Finnish one would be flown at the Helsinki temple. By “foreign” I simply meant Finland from the US perspective, but I should have been clearer.

My comment about the polite listen to had only to do with the opening day of the VIP open house. Some of the PR people, newly arrived from SLC, had suggestions on how to do the event. By then the Finnish committee had everything ready. I know that at least the people in Frankfurt had been very impressed by the Finnish committee’s work and how well the open house went.

Yes, the committee was made up entirely of Finns, but all of the training was done based on videos and printed material produced by SLC/Frankfurt. In the six months before the open house there was steady stream of visitors from Frankfurt. Many, if not all, of the committee members went to the Copenhagen open house, or met with the members there who organized it. During the first VIP day, when I was there directing traffic, there were Frankfurt and SLC PR people, plus some GAs from the area presidency, plus many temple missionary couples. (Most of them speak Finnish to some degree, being former proselyters.) So I’m not surprised some media folk felt there were a fair number of Americans about.

All the VIP’s including the PM, the speaker of the parliament etc. were there as the result of a certain Finnish member of the LDS Church inviting them. If someone thinks there were a lot of Americans present when the VIP’s were there, they simply can’t tell a Finn from an American in business suit.

Of course, the flag they fly on the Finnish temple grounds is a Finnish flag. Dah! The flag pole is located in front of the visitors’ (housing) building. Every LDS temple I’ve seen seems to have a flag pole somewhere on temple grounds and only flies the flag of the host country.

The architectural style of the temple building is in the words of the PM “Finnish National Romantic”. Examples of this style can be found both on the outside, as well as on the inside of the temple building. The shape of the spire and its copper covering, the front door and its ornamentation, the granite exterior, just to mention a few examples on the exterior.

For someone used having only negative press about the LDS Church in Finland, the temple open house publicity, which seemed over 90% positive, would have been too incongruous to believe had one not been there to see it. Just how was that possible? I’ve my opinion on that.

Just one more thing: What on earth possessed the Finns to stand, (in countless instances) 1h 40m or longer in cold rain just to see a Mormon temple?

They did insist that missionaries/members call for appointments, not do cold drop-bys.

The real sad story, though, is that the casual service and community oriented approach brought in by the current mission president seems to have been undermined by the dekmand for immediate results from the higher powers.

There were around three thousand requests for copies of the Book of Mormon. An enormous number, as you said. Interestingly, these have been hand-delivered to the requesters by missionaries, sometimes together with members: The difference between “I want church representatives to visit me” and “I want a copy of the Book of Mormon” on the feedback form was thus effectively nullified.
Not sure what the requesters have thought about that, although I would suspect that most people don’t mind. There has been some bad press generated due to a youngling being contacted, though.

The response of the public was fascinating, especially the range of people who were there and the general sense of reverence and politeness. On some days toward the end, there was an hour wait and it was raining, and people lined up to get in, mostly non-members. There were also an enourmous number of requests for Books of Mormon . . . perhaps a thousand?

The manner in which guides and other participants were trained was interesting. Endowment rooms were called learning rooms, and no references to veils or alters were to be made. I didn’t feel like it was dishonest, but definitely designed to lower the other-ness of the temple.

It was an invigorating experience for members, though, and I think it has given many a renewed sense of their place in the community, which has not always been a positive.