SALT LAKE CITY -- Stroll once, twice, around the grounds. Nothing. Stand beneath the magnificent gothic spires of the Mormon Temple and then wait for a few minutes. No one comes near.
Where is everybody?
For a religion synonymous with the state of Utah, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has adopted a different kind of approach leading up to today's start of the Winter Olympics.
That means no Mormon missionaries bearing testimony -- the practice of aggressively seeking converts that is the backbone of a faith representing 70 percent of the state's population.
"If people want to learn more about the church, they will have to come to us rather than us going to them," said Bryan Grant, a LDS member from England who will be attending the Salt Lake Games. "We want people to be comfortable when they're here. For anyone who was concerned that we were trying to turn this into the 'Mormon Olympics,' they will find the complete opposite. The Games belong to everybody."
But make no mistake, the spotlight will shine on the church over the next 2 1/2 weeks in Salt Lake City, home of the world headquarters for the 11 million-member LDS.
It begins tonight when the 360-member Mormon Tabernacle Choir performs at the Opening Ceremonies. And it will continue nightly in downtown Salt Lake, where the medals ceremonies will take place on a 10-acre parcel of land owned by the LDS.
The LDS claims five Olympians at the Winter Games, including lugers Werner Hoeger and his son, Christopher, who will compete for Latvia.
"In order for the Games to be successful, we need to have the support of the entire community," said Mitt Romney, president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee and himself a Mormon. "And we've gotten cooperation from everyone."
The church has been a key player in many ways for the Games, beginning with its real estate. In addition to the medals plaza, it has loaned to the Salt Lake Organizing Committee generous parcels of land for visitor parking near Park City as well as additional acreage for the construction of an access road to the Olympic Sports Park.
That's not all. Among the 60,000 volunteers recruited to assist during the Olympics, 4,000 are from Brigham Young University, named for the legendary Mormon pioneer. Many of those students who have done missionary work worldwide will serve as translators.
In addition, the Family History Library -- home of the world's largest genealogy research center -- will remain open for visitors during the Games.
Established in 1830, the LDS church was begun by Joseph Smith after, according to Smith's account, an angel led him to a hillside in upstate New York, where he uncovered golden tablets that he translated as the Book of Mormons.
The original Mormon pioneers settled in Utah in 1847 after Smith was murdered and his followers fled to escape persecution over their religious practice, which originally sanctioned polygamy.
Polygamy has been banned by the Mormon faith for more than century.
When Romney was hired to take over SLOC in 1999 and lift it out of financial crisis and the bid scandal, he said he was unprepared for the concern many non-Mormons had about the host city.
"It was very new to me because I was born and raised in Michigan, and my faith . . . no one asked and no one cared," Romney said. "If you're running for office, I understand it's going to get drawn into it, but day to day, what religion someone is is not a big matter.
"I personally feel that characterizing something like the Olympics, which is designed to unify the world and unify communities -- characterizing it in terms of any single faith demeans both that faith and all other faiths and cultures that make the Olympics successful."
With almost 182,000 residents -- more than half of whom are Mormon -- Salt Lake is the largest city ever to host the Winter Olympics. Conscious of its image, the church has opened a news resource center on its property aimed at assisting the 10,000 journalists covering the Games.
As of Wednesday, LDS public relations staff said it had received nearly 1,000 inquiries.
"Part of what we want to do is to eliminate the misconceptions and stereotypes," said Grant, who is volunteering at the center. "Mormons are not polygamists. In due respect, anybody who thinks that is ignorant. We don't apologize for our history, but we believe in the law.
"The second misconception is that Mormons are not Christians. We are. And the third is that we only care for our own; that we're inward-looking. We donate 10 percent of our income to the church. We give millions of dollars to charity."
Although Mormons observe a health code that forbids tobacco, alcoholic beverages, tea and coffee, visitors will find getting a drink in Salt Lake easy to do.
But just to be sure, Olympic committees from several countries, including Austria, Germany and Italy, applied for special status and have imported their own beer, wine and liquor.