"I've never seen anything like that, and I didn't know what it was for," Glover said. "This is something I never expected to happen over this way."
The mother of four said she first noticed some changes near Sorensen Parkway and Fort Street when a "garage-like" building went up across the street. Soon cars were lining the street and parking in the grass near the building.
The building, at 3812 Fort St., marked the progress of a group of Vietnamese Buddhists who had sought to establish a place of worship closer to home.
Many Vietnamese Buddhists from Omaha had been traveling to Lincoln every Sunday, said Dau Nguyen, the president of the Tinh-Tam Council of Buddhist Study in Lincoln. So he decided to help members of the group build their own temple.
Nguyen, 56, became the adviser for the Vietnamese Buddhist Association of Omaha and organized an advisory board.
Members donated about $100,000 over the past four years to buy land, build a temple and buy a nearby house. They also bought a statue - shipped from Vietnam - of Bodhisattva, an enlightened being who seeks to show compassion to others.
After they cleared away brush for aesthetic reasons, the statue became visible to drivers along Sorensen Parkway.
Nguyen said the plan is to one day have a resident Buddhist monk, who would conduct religious ceremonies in the temple and live in the house. For now, the group rents out the house.
Members also have planted gardens of herbs that worshippers can take home, regardless of how much they have or haven't contributed.
When members see how much work the temple's leaders are doing for them, "they start to give," Nguyen said. "They want to contribute. They want to have a temple for Vietnamese people."
The temple is open every Sunday for services from 10:30 a.m. to noon. After lunch, classes for young people in the Vietnamese language are offered until about 3 p.m.
During the week, members volunteer time to cultivate the garden, maintain the temple or offer incense to the Bodhisattva.
This Bodhisattva, in the form of a woman, is depicted on her pedestal, emptying the contents from a slender vase with her left hand while using her right hand to ward off evil by touching her thumb and ring finger together to form a circle.
The statue sits in the middle of a circular bed of caramel-colored rocks. Flower pots sit on the corners of the pedestal.
During Sunday's service, rhythmic prayers mingled with the thick aroma of incense in the temple as worshippers sat cross-legged and barefoot on carpet. Older worshippers occupied plastic lawn chairs and kept their feet warm with socks.
In front of them stood two men facing each other at opposite ends of a table, keeping the rhythm with wooden and metal drums. A third man knelt and led the group in prayers and readings.
Offerings of pineapples, oranges, apples and flowers rested on golden plates in front of each of the three peach-colored Buddhas mounted on wooden chests.
The bright garb on the statues presented a stark contrast to the sky-blue walls and the mural of a deep brown tree trunk sprouting leafy branches.
Nguyen starts the weekly ceremonies as the leader of the recitations. Later in the day, he becomes a teacher as he prepares his laptop for the Vietnamese language lesson.
He said he is comfortable pulling double duty in Lincoln and Omaha.
"To me, I don't think it's too much," Nguyen said after the service, unfastening the cotton buttons that run diagonally from the shoulder of his light blue prayer robe. "I just try to limit my sleeping time or entertainment time. I just want to make people happy and that's my goal, to follow Buddha teaching."
The group's next goal, Nguyen said, is to construct a more elaborate temple at the site and possibly turn the current temple into a children's center.
Ha Nguyen, who is no relation to Dau Nguyen, used to travel from her home in Omaha to Lincoln on Sundays to attend the temple there.
Nguyen said she has attended Buddhist temples since she was a young girl and feels that the religion is part of her family's culture.
With the Omaha temple now built, Buddhists from surrounding areas can come to worship, especially during special events such as Buddha's birthday, which drew up to 400 people at the end of last month.
"We come here and we feel at peace," Nguyen said, referring to herself and her parents. "We learn from the Buddha."
