Stokes Sounds Off: Temple Site Possibilities: Pacific Area, Part Four--Overview of Temple Prospects and Exploration of Reasons for a Second Temple in New Zealand

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Thursday, December 21, 2017

Temple Site Possibilities: Pacific Area, Part Four--Overview of Temple Prospects and Exploration of Reasons for a Second Temple in New Zealand

Hello again, everyone! I am back yet again to wrap up my coverage of the Pacific Area by discussing the future temple prospects I see in the near future for this area. After providing the list of my personal picks, I will be commenting on the reasons for my selections of each. Let's get right to it.

I believe temples may be announced in the near future for the following locations (listed in order of likellihood): Auckland New Zealand, Port Moresby Papua New Guinea, Pago Pago American Samoa, and Neiafu Vava'u Tonga. Subsequent posts will explore the other possibilities on this list, but in this post, I wanted to focus on my reasoning for the selection of Auckland.

First, Auckland New Zealand has a couple of factors in its favor for a temple. The one temple in New Zealand serves the 3 missions, 30 stakes and 2 districts in New Zealand, which break down further into 173 wards and 51 branches, or a total of 224 congregations.

Auckland also has the best chances to be the location of the second New Zealand temple for two reasons. I got a tip about a year ago that the Church has held land in reserve for a temple in Auckland for several years. Auckland was also the city out of which the first mission in New Zealand was established.

Additionally, while the distance to their assigned temple is less than half of the 200 mile goal President Monson has set (being just 77.5 miles away from it), the size of the current district is compelling enough to venture an opinion that an Auckland temple is just a matter of time.

And a potential temple in Auckland would, at minimum take in the 13 stakes based in Auckland, which break down into 85 wards and 2 branches, for a total of 87 congregations at minimum. And since I don't know much about geography generally or that of New Zealand in particular, I would imagine that an Auckland temple would serve other congregations in the surrounding regions, which would split the Hamilton temple district roughly in half.

So that is the reasoning behind my selection of Auckland. 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.
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1 comment:

  1. James G. StokesJanuary 1, 2018 at 6:10 PM

    Does anyone have any thoughts in response to what I shared above about the possibility of an Auckland temple? If I have overlooked or failed to consider anything, let me know. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete

In addition to my life-long love for the subjects which I cover in the posts of this blog, I have long held the belief that we can disagree without becoming disagreeable. Differences of opinion are natural, while being disagreeable in expressing those differences is not. And in that sense, I have no desire to close the door on anyone who earnestly desires to contribute to the ongoing dialogue on subjects covered in the posts on this blog.

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