Nothing's Set in Stone

A personal essay by Taylor Fagan

Uncertain whether I'm a help or a hindrance, I wrestle with the opportunity of being a female construction worker on the Mesa temple. 

I threw off my hat and it rolled into the backseat making everything dirty. Great. My neon vest was no longer the bright orange. As I ripped it off, I was enclosed by a cloud of dust. And those poor ripped jeans! They had already been sewn up on two separate occasions. Needless to say, I was going home looking just as defeated as I felt. Certainly, this job was a blessing. More than that, I knew it was where I was supposed to be… but gosh, how much more could I take?

My boss shouted from across the parking lot before I could slide into the refuge of the cool sedan. “It’s getting too hot. We’ll have to start coming in earlier in the morning to avoid the sun!”.

“Avoid the sun?” I inwardly mocked, “We’re in Arizona. Nobody avoids the sun. Especially in the summertime.”

“Be here by half past four.”

Starting the Engine

The drive always took longer on the way home. Nobody was really up at 5am—sorry, 4am now, but there was plenty of traffic after work. Lots of time to let the sweat crust over my brow, lots of time to complain, err think. I was letting it sink in that I would be losing one more hour of sleep. Okay, that wasn’t really the hard part about it. My life lacked nearly any social aspect and I had few other responsibilities. Oh, and most of America was shut down. Thanks Corona Virus.

I took this job for me, but a little for my mom. It was the last transfer in my mission when that normal panic starts to set in as you realize you are GOING HOME. Like, for real. And that means you have to remove the badge from your dress, slide back into those jeans (which are now way too tight), and move forward with another set of goals. One of those goals was getting a job in order to pay for school in the summer. The best laid plans, am I right?

Actually, a particular preparation day in the mission seemed to be an answer to prayer as my mom revealed how she may have found me a good job. She opened up with, “I have a friend who manages a construction crew at the Mesa Temple.” I thought that was pretty cool but didn’t see the connection yet. “Ya know, you could probably get a job with him,” she prodded further.

“Do you really think so? I literally can’t even name more than two types of screwdrivers.” I quickly recalled the philips and the flathead, searching for anything else that might qualify me.

“He said there wasn’t any prior work experience needed.”

I figured that must mean it was a landscaping position or some other sort of manual labor that missionaries were accustomed to in the form of service. The immediate draw was that it was the Mesa Temple! I had received my mission call early in the summer of 2018. Just in time to go through the Mesa Temple to receive my endowment before the temple was closed. It would undergo a 3-year renovation, actually making me one of the last sessions before the temple was closed off to members of the Church. It was sort of—no, definitely a miracle that I made it through in that last week before it shut down. 

That specific temple had always had personal meaning for my family. Even now, though my parents had just finalized their divorce while I was gone away on my mission, I sensed a sacredness about those walls which represented so many desired promises. I knew my mom was sort of sad whenever that temple came up, and I desperately still wanted her to have good memories about this place, so I knew God had directed this tender mercy when my mission call came just in time. This same feeling surfaced again when I recognized God was putting together something special with this job.  Like my own personal way to thank Him for all that that building had given to me and my family.

Heavy Traffic

The traffic was heavier than normal. “Aren’t you all supposed to be inside?” I protested. “You can’t all be essential workers; I just know it.” The many others on the freeway probably had their own personal struggles but my thoughts drifted back to my own challenging day.

I had originally started out with column repair when I first joined the stonemason crew. Aged pillars sat at each side of the temple entrance, acting as a gate that patrons would pass through to approach the building. The first pair had been constructed just in time for the original temple dedication in 1927, nearly 100 years ago! These pillars, with their original stone, had nicks, cracks, and scars from top to bottom. My job was to patch those crumbling holes and delicately apply brushstrokes to the ancient terracotta pillar, blending the old with the new. I witnessed some of those scars heal.

Although I was intimidated that I had never experienced this type of work, I grew in both confidence and ability. Unexpectedly, I was pulled aside by my boss who reminded me that our work at the columns was about to be finished and that I would be starting a new task: setting stones for the windowsills along the North, South, and East side, eventually completing the West walls and entrance itself. This was definitely beyond my paygrade. Men (and they usually were men) studied this trade for decades before taking on complicated projects like this, whereas I had been mentored for only three weeks. Three weeks! My doubts were more crushing than any of the stones I  accidentally dropped on my fingers during that time period.

After completing just one side of the temple, I only felt more anxious. I could not remember half of the things I was taught. I did not want to use all the new power tools. I had not figured anything out. I was not ready to be on my own! More than that, I knew that I shouldn’t be on my own. Time was of great importance for all our deadlines, but I simply wasn’t capable of performing at the acceptable level for building the House of the Lord. Those worries plagued me each minute of every 8-hour shift; from the moment I stepped onto the still-dark worksite, all the way till I went home with the sun glaring over us.

The pieces we were working on required us to set them immediately on top of one another. At one point, my stones were crooked halfway down the 9-foot stack requiring me to painstakingly deconstruct the pins, calking, and shims holding them all together to reconstruct my work, thus drastically slowing the process. How would the Lord feel about my mistakes? Certainly, my work was scattered with imperfections. I felt ashamed I could not offer more. My boss was all-the-while kind to me. I disguised his patience as pity.

Parking the Car

I made a right off of the freeway and craved the shower whose water pressure would wash away not only the dirt, but the stress. So close! But there was more to consider.

My relationship with my boss, my relationship with my mom, my relationship with the Lord. I was so concerned about what people thought. My boss, an ex-army captain, was not a pushover by any means, but he did seem to have a special care for me as I worked on his team. I didn’t want to leave because I knew it really would put him in a hard position with the workload and replacing my (imperfect but consistent) efforts. Of course, my mother wouldn’t be mad at me if I chose not to continue. She didn’t even know she influenced my motivation for employment there. But she had always been such an example of strength. “Packard-Fagan women are strong, Taylor,” she would say. “We can do anything.” She showed that, too. 

And then there was God. He had led me here. But didn’t he know I was going to mess up His house? – As in, break a stone accidentally, slow down the progress, and have to completely re-do my work at times? Or was it me being built in the process? As in, laying down each stone as a symbol of my growing testimony, showing up every day to watch the sunrise over the white stone walls, or learning from my old-men co-workers who were more than just a little rough around the edges. Was He more concerned with me or His house? Was I one of His temples?

As I pulled up to the house, my mom was also in the driveway, unloading the car. With heaps of grocery bags cutting off the circulation on both arms, she still managed a wave and a smile. What a good woman. What a strong woman. “Okay,” I concluded, “I’ll do it.” I pulled out my phone and I set the alarm.

A brief note -- As I finally sat down to write this reflection that had been inside of me for over a year, I recognized the great impact this challenging job had made on me. The day after I finished my essay, my old boss called to offer me job to go to work on the Salt Lake Temple construction site. Recording my experiences and acknowledging my growth (however painful) prior to his phone call was essential for me to fatefully and faithfully decide to accept his offer for the upcoming summer.