Walking into the Water Tower Branch’s meetinghouse in Ogden, Utah, visitors are welcomed by the smell of cigarette smoke and by tattooed individuals with arms open wide.
Elder Gary B. Sabin, while serving as a General Authority Seventy, said in October 2023 general conference, “I actually love the smell of tobacco in church because it indicates someone is trying to change. They need our welcoming arms around them.”
The Water Tower Branch is a congregation of men trying to change. It’s one of the Church’s correctional branches—a congregation composed largely of incarcerated or formerly incarcerated individuals.
After a brief hiatus from the building for needed renovations, the branch returned on Aug. 1 to a pristine, like-new, red-brick building the individuals who attend the branch have called home for more than 20 years.
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