Do-lt-Thyself

One morning at 5:45 last week, a group of prosperous-looking men, most of them pallid and paunchy, drove up to a construction site in Salt Lake City, and began mixing and pouring concrete for a building floor. Two hours later, tired but happy, they hopped back into their Buicks and Chryslers, drove home for a shave, shower and breakfast. Then they headed downtown to their regular jobs as lawyers, bankers, doctors and businessmen.

These high-salaried, early-morning moonlighters were devout Mormons helping to build a new $600,000 chapel for a ward (parish) in Federal Heights, a prosperous Salt Lake City suburb where homes cost up to $85,000 and the average income is about $13,000 a year. By Mormon rule, the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contribute half of the chapel's cost; the ward's members must pay the rest. The Mormons of Federal Heights have collected most of their cash quota, but they decided to supplement it by taking advantage of an old custom of the church that allows members to "work off" part of their assessments. Says Ward Bishop George R. Hill, a professor of fuel technology at the University of Utah: "We like to feel that part of our sweat is in it."

Since work began in May, volunteer chapel builders have put in more than 500 hours of hard labor on Saturdays, Thursday evenings, and early mornings, mostly on such relatively simple tasks as painting and pouring concrete. Utah's Governor George Dewey Clyde, who lives in the ward, put in one enthusiastic session with a shovel. Henry D. Moyle. an oil company millionaire who is counselor to Church President David McKay, has been over to the chapel project twice, promises to do some carpentering later.

About four-fifths of the work on the chapel will be done by commercial contractors, who take a tolerant view of their moonlighting help. The volunteers themselves enjoy do-it-thyself chapel building --even though in some cases the motive is as much corporal as spiritual. "If we didn't believe in it," says Jay Johnson, an executive of Phillips Petroleum Co.. "we wouldn't be there. But besides, it's physically good for those who sit at a desk all day long."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.