A family of builders is supporting the Church's temple boom.
His wife said he was nuts.
R. Bryan “Butch” Hutchings, who studied construction at BYU, was a mid-career builder in Cache Valley, Utah, in 1999 when he got the impression—“the kind you only get a few times in your life,” he says. “I was supposed to go build a temple.” He immediately checked the ward bulletin board for related missionary opportunities. When he told his wife, Debra Anderson Hutchings (BS ’77), she reminded him they had three school-aged kids at home and that his business was finally doing well. But he couldn’t shake the feeling.
So he called the Church’s Physical Facilities Department to ask if they could use him, noting that he spoke Spanish from his mission to Chiapas, Mexico. Because he had children at home, the Church initially declined. But a few weeks later Butch and Debbie received a call back to serve as temple construction missionaries, and soon Butch was in Oaxaca, Mexico. A few months later he was moved to serve at the Tuxtla Gutiérrez Temple construction site in Chiapas. His family joined him once school got out.
A zeal for building Zion extends through the larger Hutchings family. Butch’s brother D. Mark Hutchings (BA ’77), who taught construction management at BYU for 28 years before retiring, now serves with his wife, Mary Shelley Hutchings (BA’76, MA’77), as a temple missionary serving 650 Lindon Utah Temple construction workers. Their son Spencer T. Hutchings (BS ’12, MBA’17), a BYU construction management graduate, is a project manager for the huge annex of the Salt Lake City Temple renovation project. For his part, Butch today manages the construction of the Grand Junction Colorado and Farmington New Mexico Temples.
With a father and uncle who built chapels in Hawaii and California, respectively, Mark and Butch grew up with construction and temples in their veins. Several family members have patriarchal blessings that discuss building temples. Butch recalls attendingthe Oakland California Temple open house and later watching his parents regularly make the three-hour drive there. As a missionary in Venezuela, Mark was captivated by Old Testament passages about building the ancient temple, its craftsmanship and woodwork.
In the site trailer, which serves as a visitors’ center for the Lindon Utah Temple, a sign on the wall might be describing the Hutchings family: “. . . And other choice spirits who were reserved to come forth in the fulness of times to take part in laying the foundations of the great latter-day work, including the building of the temples” (D&C 138:53–54).
Mark doesn’t think his family’s contribution to temple building is all that unique. As a BYU professor he mentored and nurtured the faith of a great number of construction management grads—men and women, he notes—“whose contributions to the Church’s temple building are immense,” he says. It reflects a key tenet he held as a professor, one he put on a sign so he’d see it on his desk every day: “The most important thing you do at BYU as a professor is preparing young men and women for their future roles as leaders in the Church.”
Spencer, Mark’s son, is one of that cadre. After earning his construction management degree he returned to BYU to do an MBA. He felt inspired to call a friend at the Church about work opportunities. When the friend moved to special projects (the temple-building division of the Church), he invited Spencer to join him.
Working as a project manager over the roughly 290,000-square-foot Salt Lake Temple annex is humbling for Spencer. “This job is hard. There are so many different materials to procure and processes to manage, all to a tight timeline,” he says. “The Lord helps us. And we all have a powerful sense of purpose.”
And Spencer is up for the challenge. “I love the people I work with. I love solving problems, knowing the Holy Ghost is there to help.” He adds, “And I like how much learning this requires: materials, management, engineering, processes, technology….It’s a complicated business that takes enormous skill.” For help, he says he often turns to his “temple-building Uncle Butch about how I can learn to do my job better.”
“I love the people I work with. I love solving problems, knowing the Holy Ghost is there to help.”
Spencer Hutchings
Butch currently resides in Grand Junction, Colorado, traveling between the two temple sites he manages. He still gets emotional as he remembers being inspired to assist in temple building and reflects on the experiences he has had in the work.
Building a temple in Chiapas, where he’d served as a missionary, meant so much to Butch. While there he became reacquainted with a family he had taught 25 years earlier. “They had 10 children. The father was called to be the stake’s first patriarch,” he says. “Their sons and daughters had served missions and served in the Church and bishoprics.” And when the Tuxtla Gutiérrez Temple was completed, Butch had the opportunity to lead them through the open house. “It was really special,” he says.
That deep love is shared by three generations of Hutchings builders—builders of students, of temples, and of Zion.
