Over the ensuing years the community and plantation grew. Dependable water supplies were developed, and Laie slowly slowly turned into a typical Hawaiian community, until a rather remarkable event on June 1, 1915: On that day Joseph F. Smith — the same man who had first served as a missionary in Hawaii in 1854 — returned as President of the LDS Church, and launched a new era of spirituality for Laie when he dedicated the site of the Hawaii Temple. President Smith's successor, Heber J. Grant, dedicated the Laie Temple on Thanksgiving Day 1919.
Today the LDS Church maintains over 120 temples worldwide (including another Hawaii temple in Kailua-Kona), but the Laie Temple was only the fifth one to be built, and was the first one constructed outside North America. Until the LDS Church built its next Pacific temple in Hamilton, New Zealand in 1956, the Laie Temple served all the devout members in Asia and the Pacific islands in the intervening decades; and some international members — especially Samoans — started moving to Laie to be closer to the Temple.
