Her 3- and 6-year-old daughters, two of Eberhart’s nine children, played in front of fans cooling the waiting crowds, their clothing billowing around them.

As a crane lifted the statue into the air, the watching crowd whipped out smartphones to film the moment. When the crew began to ease the statue into place at the top of the temple after a delay, a girl in the crowd exclaimed, “Finally!”

Bystanders broke into cheers and then song, harmonizing the LDS hymn “The Spirit of God.”

“Everything in the faith points to the temple,” said Jakob Montandon, a Mormon missionary from Alpine, Utah. Montandon has been in Tucson for about 19 months and joined three other missionaries at the construction site Thursday.

Construction on the Tucson temple at 7281 N. Skyline Drive began in October 2015. As work on the exterior wraps up, the temple still has a ways to go before completion. The grounds and interior still need significant attention.