Today, President Russell M. Nelson announced six new temples in the following locations:
- Tarawa, Kiribati
- Port Vila, Vanuatu
- Lindon, Utah
- Greater Guatemala City, Guatemala
- São Paulo East, São Paulo, Brazil
- Santa Cruz, Bolivia
With today's announcement, there are now 231 temples, including 168 dedicated temples, 22 temples under construction, and 41 temples announced in the planning stages. I will provide an analysis of these new temple announcements in another blog post later today.
Nice. The city of São Paulo need a New temple.
ReplyDeleteGreat conference! I love being surprised by the temple announcements.
ReplyDeleteTarawa and Port Vila will be huge blessings for the saints throughout the Pacific.
Santa Cruz was, of course, one of our top picks for several years and I'm happy to see a second temple announced for Bolivia.
Second temples in Guatemala City and São Paulo follow Lima and greater Manila of second temples being built in major metro areas with a large and growing church presence. I wonder what more cities we will see announced in the coming years.
Lindon is a surprise for me. Shout out to James Anderson for identifying it though as a possibility the past year or so. :)
Great news. I am especially excited for Kirabati and Vanauatu. They currently have to travel far over sea or air to go to the nearest Temples. Three of the temples in this list have other temples in their metro area. Which appears to mean that The Saints are keeping the temples busy and are taking good advantage of temple blessings to necitate the need for another nearby. Santa Cruz Bolivia has several stakes and are about 300 miles (driving) from Cochabamba. (About 200 if by air). There is a mix of good and bad roads that may impact the trip. Great Blessings for all in these areas of the world.
ReplyDeleteSão Paulo makes a lot of sense, and I would have put it at the top of a list of cities to get 2nd temples. I was just reading an Ensign article from 2018 about Elder Soares. It mentioned that he had to take a bus ride close to 3 hours (from one side of the city to the other) to date his future wife, and then stayed at the home of his future in-laws, Claudio Costa and his wife, to avoid having to repeat the bus ride home that night.
ReplyDeleteGuatemala City and São Paulo getting second Temples like Lima and Manila makes me think Buenos Aires, Argentina could also get a second temple.
ReplyDeleteI loved seeing more Temples announced in the Pacific. Tarawa and Port Vila will be amazing for those members currently thousands of miles from a Temple.
Very happy to see Santa Cruz announced as it was highly anticipated.
I had Lindon on my extensive list but did not expect it because Orem was recently announced. I guess it is like Syracuse following Layton. I think this shows there are still several Temples in Utah from Smithfield to Spanish Fork that could be announced as current Temples in northern Utah are heavily used.
I am so happy for São Paulo getting a second temple, the city where I served my mission. On another note is there a list of the missions and their geographic size. I was trying find something without any luck.
ReplyDeleteThe think is the Buanos Aires Argentina was expanded a few years ago so it is now 30,000 square feet. Manila is 26,000 square feet, Guatemala City just under 12,000 square feet.
ReplyDeleteLima is 9,600 square feet and the city has 48 stakes. I could actually see Lima getting a 3rd temple. Iquitos is the only city with more than 2 stakes outside of Lima in the temple district.
@John Pack Lambert
DeleteI like the idea of Lima area getting a third temple. Since the Lima Temple is one of the smallest in the Church, I had thought that perhaps after Los Olivos is finished (or shortly thereafter, like within a year or two), that they might announce a rededication for the original Lima one (which is still something we might see happen).
However, that might then overtax the Los Olivos Temple and be counterproductive as to why they were building Los Olivos in the first place.
But if they did build a third one in Lima, they could then shut down the original Lima Temple for an update, and still have two active temples in the area available to carry the load.
This could potentially be done in other areas as well, like Manila or Guatemala City.
I also just noticed that one possible pattern is that they are planning on adding additional temples in the Metro areas of the smaller-to-mid-size, sloped-roof temples the Church constructed in the 1980s. They've already done so with Lima, Manila, Boise, and now Guatemala City (with potentials for Buenos Aires and others).
The recent announcement that bucks this trend is the São Paolo Temple, which was built in 1978, is not sloped-roof, and is mid-size-to-larger-sized.
I will be interested, however, to see if there is a pattern that develops for 2nd-city and/or 3rd-city temples that we can possibly predict.
Perhaps they are trying to accommodate those in other countries with high membership in a similar way as we experience here in Utah and certain parts of the Western US, where there are numerous temples now in certain metro areas within close driving distance of one another?
Or especially accommodate those members when an older, smaller temple needs to be shut down and updated, so that the active temple goers have more convenient multiple options?
Another thought. Campinas is insanely close to Sao Paulo.
DeleteI still expect at least one more temple in Nigeria to be announced for somewhere less than 50 miles from Aba.
Interestingly enough, on the newsroom release for the new temples,(https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/october-2020-general-conference-temples ) the Church says there are 230 temples, not 231. Curious as to why they were one less than the rest of us, a friend did some digging. He found that the Church's official temple page (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/list ) does not list the Shanghai China Temple. Using Internet Archive to research some more, we found that as far back as April 28 of this year (the first Internet Archive scan of the page that occurred after the announcement,) The Shanghai temple has been missing from that page. Further research shows that the Shanghai temple is not listed in the Church's official directory (as of 8PM last night, even the 6 new temples announced yesterday are in that directory.)
ReplyDeleteFor whatever reason, the Church is not counting the Shanghai Temple announcement as one of the official temples.
The Church Bews says there are 231 temples though.
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