Temple Site Possibilities: South America Northwest Area, Part Six--Potential New Temples for Peru

Hello again, everyone! While I had said at one point in an earlier post that six posts for the South America Northwest Area would cover everything, it turns out I will need one more as well. Therefore, this post will be the second-to-last one for this area and will focus on the potential likelihood of two Peruvian cities that could get a temple of their own. After I get this post published, I will conclude my coverage of this area with a seventh post that will focus on Venezuela's likelihood of getting a temple, and that post will also serve as the wrap-up of the content covering this area.

I wanted to first note that the difficult thing in trying to determine if the Church would announce one or more temples for Peru while Arequipa is still under construction and while progress is pending for the Lima Peru Los Olivos Temple. But as we saw with Brazil, the Church did not wait until the temples in Fortaleza and Rio de Janeiro were completed, nor did the fact that the Belem temple has not progressed since its April 2016 announcement prevent the Church from announcing a temple for Brasilia. In fact, the odds are more likely than not that the temple in Brasilia, which already had its site confirmed by local leaders and inspected by Church engineers, will have a groundbreaking ceremony and begin its construction process perhaps before anything is done additionally on the Belem temple.

So because there are those four Brazilian temples in varying stages, it seems likely and even perhaps highly probable that the Church could easily announce other Peruvian temples while work continues on the temple in Arequipa and while the construction process is started for the temple that will be built in Lima's Los Olivos district.

And while we don't yet have an idea of how the stakes in Peru might be redistributed following the dedication of the temple now under construction in Arequipa (which is currently anticipated to occur in late 2019 or early 2020), or how they might be further redistributed following the construction and dedication of the Lima Peru Los Olivos Temple, it is apparent that the Peruvian Saints are keeping their temples busy.

So which locations in Peru are likely to get a temple of their own in the near future? I have felt that there is a strong argument in favor of Peru's fifth and sixth temples being built in the cities of Cusco and Iquitos. As with other candidates about which I have written in this series, there is also a very good chance that both temples could either be announced at the same time or have some degree of overlap in their processes. Digging into things a little more deeply, let's examine the merits of these potential locations.

First, we look at Cusco's potential for its own temple. With two stakes based in that city, a temple there would serve, at a very minimum, the 12 wards and 2 branches within those two stakes. As mentioned, I am not by any means or stretch of the imagination a geography expert, so I am sure many stakes in the surrounding region could also be served by a temple in Cusco.

A temple in Cusco makes sense as well in terms of the mileage metric. Saints in Cusco currently travel 680.8 miles to do their ordinance work, and since the temple in Los Olivos would be even further from them than that (the distance being 691.6 miles), the Saints in Cusco are far more likely to remain with the Lima district..

When the Arequipa Peru temple is dedicated (which, as already noted, is anticipated to occur during either late 2019 or early 2020). the distance for the Saints in Cusco will be cut by more than half, to 303.8 miles. Even so, that is still over 100 miles more than President Monson's set goal to have every member within 200 miles of their nearest temple.

Before moving on to discuss specific reasons for my feeling that Iquitos could get a temple, I wanted to note that, with Cusco being a distance of 682 miles, it would not be out of the question for one or the other to be announced first, nor would it surprise me to either see them announced at the same time or to have one under construction at the time the other is announced. So I can't rule out that possibility.

Let us now turn our attention to the potential merits of a temple in Iquitos. In addition to having its own mission, the city of Iquitos is home to two stakes of the Church. A temple in that city would, at minimum, serve the Saints in the 14 stakes and 1 branch within that city. While I am, as noted, not great with geography, if and when Iquitos does get its own temple, the Saints in surrounding areas would also be spared the journey of an inordinate distance to get to their assigned temple.

Regarding the distance involved, the Saints in the Iquitos region  currently have a 629 mile journey to get to the Lima temple. As with the city of Cusco, since the Iquitos Saints are over 200 miles further than that from Arequipa (the exact distance being 882 miles), the Saints within the Iquitos region would also likely stay in the district of the Lima temple until they have a closer one either in that city or the surrounding regions.

And whenever the Lima Peru Los Olivos Temple is dedicated, there is a possibility that the Saints in Iquitos could fall within that new temple district. But I can't be sure of that at the moment, since it would only cut their journey by a mere 4 miles (as the Los Olivos region is 625 miles from the Saint in Iquitos.

So there are my thoughts about these two potential candidates for Peru's next temples. I have felt that both will get their own temples at some point, but I look forward to hearing from you, my readers, on the following questions: Which temple might be announced first? Could both be announced simultaneously? What are the odds that while one of them is in the construction process, the other one might be announced? I look forward to the feedback.

That does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated. Thank you for the privilege of your time. I will be back very shortly with my final post, which will contain my analysis of the prospects for a temple in Venezuela, and which will wrap up my coverage of the South America Northwest Area. Until that time, I wish each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.