Public Open House Tours Underway for Jordan River Utah Temple

Hello again, everyone! As St. Patrick's Day is marked today, public tours are officially underway for the Jordan River Temple, and, as previously noted, they will continue to be offered for 36 of the 42 days between now and April 28. In an earlier post, I had mistakenly noted that those public tours would begin yesterday (March 16). I apologize for the unintentional error.

I have also repeatedly offered my opinion that, since this is the first major temple event of President Nelson's presidency (I should perhaps say that it is the first major public temple event of his presidency, as the rededication of the Houston Temple is private), and since he is in very good health, it is likely safe to assume that he will preside at this event.

What will be interesting to see going forward is if, how, and how soon President Nelson will divide responsibilities for presiding at temple events with his counselors. They have all had experiences presiding at such events (I seem to recall that then-Elder Nelson, as a senior apostle, presided over one or two rededications prior to becoming the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, in addition to presiding at the final session of the Provo City Center Temple dedication (with then-Elder Oaks presiding at the first two), and he (President Nelson) also presided at the dedication of the Sapporo Japan Temple.

But it is interesting to consider that during President Hinckley's tenure, he first delegated responsibility for presiding over temple dedications to his counselors and President Packer (then Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles) around 4.5 years after he became Church president.

And it was around 3.5 years following President Monson's ordination that he began delegating the opportunity to preside at such events to his counselors (and later senior members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles), and the last temple event at which President Monson himself presided was around 3.5 years prior to his death.

If we go further back, President Hunter presided at both of the temple dedications held during his brief administration, and President Benson was only well enough to preside over the second and third temple dedications of his administration. President Kimball's health only allowed him to preside at temple dedications for the first 3 years or so of his administration.

I hope that gives some insight into how recent Church presidents have handled temple events of their administration, and how early in such administrations those presidents shared responsibility with their counselors for presiding over such events.

Whatever President Nelson might opt to do in that regard, you can find more information on all of that here as I receive it.

That does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated. Thank you for the privilege of your time. Until my next post, I wish each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.