Hello again, everyone! With another Tuesday comes the latest weekly updates on the process of reopening all Church temples worldwide in a phased manner that adapts week-by-week on the variables assosciated with COVID-19. As always, those updates have been detailed in the latest update from the official Newsroom, with updates also mentioned by the Church News, and reflected in the latest updates to the temple reopening status tracker.
Before I get into my analysis of those changes, I wanted to note one other thing. I've found through my coverage of the weekly updates that the Newsroom's coverage thereof is always featured at the same web address, while for the Church News update on each week's change and the temple reopening status tracker have been shared with almost-identical web addresses (but on any given week, the dates in those articles are updated weekly as each new update is shared).
That has made it easier to pre-set a version of this post for publication at the time of day when those announcements have typically been released. But today, I had other things I needed to get sorted out. So although this post bears the original time-stamp I had preset, in the hours leading up to that time, I reverted the post to its' draft version. Because of the other priorities I needed to focus on first, it was around noon before I could actually detail the updates in this post.
Having acknowledged those circumstances, let's get to the updates themselves. As early as next Tuesday (September 14), 2 temples in Peru (Lima and Trujillo) and 1 in Bolivia (Cochabamba) are anticipated to move to phase 3, allowing all living ordinances in priority order and limited proxy work by appointment. In addition, the Church also noted today that the Manila Philippines Temple, which had been puased in its' reopening, will unpause now.
But in consideration of COVID-19 conditions and restrictions, the Church will donwgrade the Manila temple from phase 2-B, allowing all living ordinances and limited proxy baptisms by appointment, to phase 1, only allowing living ordinances in priority order. Additionally, a pause has been announced for the Papeete Tahiti Temple, which had been operating in phase 3.
It has also been noted that the Medford Oregon Temple, for which an anticipated shfit to phase 3 had been tentatively announed to occur sometime last month but has not yet actually done so, will make that shift at a yet-to-be-determined date. The Church now has a total of 11 temples which are not in a phase that allows proxy work. 6 of those are in Latin America, with 1 each in the Philippines and Asia.
The remaining 2 temples (Hong Kong China and Tokyo Japan), currently closed for renovation, have not been given any phase designation, while the districts of the other 6 temples closed for renovation have been given phase 3 designations. And with the latest adjustments announced, as of next Tuesday, 5 temples will be paused in their reopenings, with 4 of those 5 in phase 3, and 1 in phase 2 at the time their reopenings were paused.
There are also 2 temples in phase 1, 6 in phase 2, 7 in phase 2-B, and the remaining 140 in phase 3. With 140 of the 168 temples worldwide now in phase 3, roughly 83.33% of all temples will be in phase 3. It is humbling to see how the Church has adapted to constantly-shifing COVID-19 facttors, and I gratefully testify of the inspired process whereby these reopening adjustments continue to occur. I will continue to monitor all major Church news and temple updates, and remain fully-committed to bringing you all word of those as I become aware thereof.
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.
