Hello again, everyone! Some of you may have already seen the comment from longtime reader Daniel in the threads of my previous post. For those that haven't yet seen that, and/or are interested in my analysis of the development in question, I am pleased to announce that the Church has set groundbreaking arrangements for two Utah temples, namely, Taylorsville and Red Cliffs.
In conjunction with the announcement of these arrangements, an exterior rendering has been released for the Taylorsville Utah Temple, and it is another that will not include the Angel Moroni statue, demonstrating that the Church may be moving away from widely using that in the futhre. Today's announcement notes that the two Utah temple groundbreakings will be done by members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Here's the interesting thing, though: for the first time, in conjunction with the groundbreaking announcements, no specific dates have been noted. Rather, the Church has instead indicated that the groundbreaking for the Taylorsville Utah Temple will occur in October, under the direction of Elder Gerrit W. Gong, with attendance at the site by invitation only. With the Taylorsville Utah Temple planned to be roughly 70,000 square feet, I'd estimate construction may take between 2-3 years.
Meanwhile, for the Red Cliffs Utah Temple, which will have a groundbreaking at some point in November, the Church has, as I previously conjectured would be the case, tapped Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, a St. George native, to break ground for the city's second temple named after the prominent red cliffs in that area of Southern Utah. That temple is planned to be roughly 90,000 square feet in area, for which I'd anticipate construction will take somewhere around 3 -4 years to complete.
With these announcements, the number of temple groundbreakings that will have occurred after these two now rises to a total of 11 of the 18 for which groundbreakings were anticipated to occur this year, as Elder Bednar indicated would be the case during General Conference roughly 4 months ago. The interesting thing is that, with no specific dates mentioned in connection with either groundbreaking, pinning down the specific iming for these two or any others this year may have just gotten more tricky.
That being said, with the very recent announcement of the somewhat unexpected timing for the groundbreaking of the Brasilia Brazil Temple, which will have that occurring 5 months after its' rendering was released, I don't think we can count out any international temples from that prospect this year either, whether there has been no information confirmed, a site announced, or a rendering released. I am particularly anticipating that the Phnom Pehn Cambodia Temple, which is set to be built in the nation that has done very well in handling COVID-19, could have a groundbreaking roughly a year after the release of its' rendering.
We could see a scenario wherein all sorts of surprise announcements of an unexpected nature could be coming down the pike relative to any of the announced temples. It will be interesting to see what happens there. In the interim, while I was putting my thoughts together here, a Church News article covering this latest announcement, and that article noted that Sister Gong is a Taylorsville native, so the fact that Elder Gong is being assigned to preside at this groundbreaking also involves a personal connection.
Additionally, above and beyond that, although Elder D. Todd Christofferson had been originally assigned to preside at the Alabang Philippines Temple groundbreaking when it was to take place in early May, when those plans fell through, the Church has had a season of groundbreakings done by either area presidents or area seventies thus far this year. So that means that these temples will be the first this year to have groundbreakings at which a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will have presided.
Aside from these notes, I continue to monitor all Church news and temple developments, and will be sure to bring word of those to you all as I become aware of such things. That does it for now. 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.
