A One-Year Anniversary and Some Additional Thoughts About Temple Construction

Hello again, everyone! While I fully intend to follow through on my promise to bring you all a look at temple progress which has occurred between New Year's Day 2019 and today (which I will probably get done around 10-11 hours from now), I wanted to post some additional thoughts I have been having about the upcoming General Conference. First, as many of you might have realized, today marks one year exactly since the Solemn Assembly was held for President Nelson, and since Elders Gerrit W. Gong and Ulisses Soares were appointed as the first Asian-American and Latin American apostles of the Church.

Within this last year's time, the Church has seen unprecedented changes, and this has been brought on primarily due to President Nelson's willingness to formally acknowledge how much of what he has done since he became Church President has been inspired by the Lord. As I mentioned in the comment threads of another post, I reference this opinion article written by a product manager for the Church, which focuses on what needs to happen for us as individuals, families, and congregations in order to be prepared for the Church's unprecedented future.

But above and beyond that, one of the major highlights I have treasured the most in terms of what has happened during President Nelson's prophetic administration is the announcement of so many new temples, which was significant due to the specific locations being announced for 17 of the 19 temples. And that got me thinking about some aspects of what we have seen in terms of the temple construction program of the Church. More specifically, in August of last year, this article highlighted days in Church history on which more than one temple had a groundbreaking.

And for the first time since March 4, 2017, that will be occurring again this year, when the Yigo Guam, Praia Cabo Verde, and San Juan Puerto Rico Temples all have their groundbreaking ceremonies on May 4. I am anticipating and hoping that that will mark the first of many occasions during President Nelson's prophetic administration when the Church will see that occurring.

With that in mind, I want to take this a step further. As part of the Church News coverage leading up to, during, and directly following General Conference weekend, this article was published earlier today, which provided an overview of the most significant circumstances which resulted in one or more temples being announced outside of General Conference. That history is well worthy of review.

Given that the Church published an article about multiple temples having a groundbreaking on the same day roughly 9 months before 3 more temples would have that occur, I wanted to offer a theory that perhaps, once President Nelson outlines and details the extent, timing, and other specifics of his temple expansion plans and intentions, the Church could very well see the announcement of several additional temples outside of General Conference.

That said, I still believe and strongly feel that President Nelson will continue to announce temples over the General Conference pulpit every six months for the foreseeable future, but I would anticipate several temples being announced at other times going forward, given the precedent for which I have provided an overview here.

Either way, it will surely be exciting to see what comes of General Conference in a general sense, and what happens going forward with the temple-building program of the Church in both the near and more distant future. And I fully believe that temple construction developments and milestones will be playing a major part in the "unprecedented future" President Nelson described for the Church.

We are blessed to have a prophet who makes it clear how much the Lord is inspiring his decisions, and that will continue to be the case. I look forward to seeing that occur. In the meantime, I will do my level best to continue to keep all of you informed on any major Church news or temple developments leading up to General Conference throughout this week, and will be providing full and complete coverage of all major developments as they occur next weekend.

That does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated, on any post at any time, as long as such comments are made in accordance with the established guidelines. Thank you for the privilege of your time. If you enjoyed what you read here and would like to stay informed of newly-added content, please feel free to subscribe. 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.