BREAKING TEMPLE NEWS: Halloween Groudbreaking Held for the Taylorsville Utah Temple

Hello again, everyone! Having published a brief post on the Taylorsville Utah Temple groundbreaking, which was held today, I am now providing more expansive coverage by recreating as much as I can of the original post content I tried unsuccessfully to share earlier. As I mentioned, a report from KSL published roughly three hours ago confirmed that Elder Gong had presided over that event at some point this morning. 

The Church had assigned Elder Gong to do that in view of his wife's connections to the Taylorsville area in which the temple will be built. The interesting thing is that, although KSL is a subsidiary of a parent company connected to the Church, there has been no official confirmation through either the Church News or Newsroom of this same inforlmation, at least not at the time this post was published. 

But there may be a good reason for that. The KSL article notes that: "[t]he grounds will remain open Saturday for anyone in the Taylorsville area to come ceremoniously break ground for the temple with a few turns of a shovel." Directly after that sentence, Elder Gong is quoted in the article as saying, ""Anyone who wants to come and be part — we hope they will all come and be part — we feel like this is a special day for them."

So the Taylorsville Utah Temple groundbreaking thus has two firsts for the Church: today marked the first Halloween day in the United States on which a temple of the Church had a groundbreaking, and I also believe this is the first time ever (or at least the first time in a long time) that the Church has left a dedicated temple site open for the day for anyone who may be interested in so doing to participate in the ceremonial groundbreaking for that temple.not

Having said that, a few other tidbits from me may be helpful for contextual purposes. The Church announced this temple's groundbreaking (and Elder Gong's assignment to preside at that  event) roughly 2.5 months ago.  Between now and then, Elder and Sister Gong were diagnosed with and have receovered from COVID-19. If the tradition relative to temples in the United States continued with today's groundbreaking, Elder Gong may have offered a general anticipated completion window for this temple, along with noting how soon full-scale efforts are anticipated to get underway. 

But I'd be remiss here if I didn't also note that that optimism about how quickly construction efforts can begin (usually within a window of the week following the groundbreaking cremony) for temples in the United States has apparently been overstated. We have seen delays of varying lengths for the commencement of construction on the Richmond Virginia, Layton Utah, Feather River California, Orem Utah, and Moses Lake Washington Temples.

I will even go a step further and note that the groundbreaking for the Moses Lake Washington Temple took place 3 weeks ago today, and nothing has been done in relation to that temple within that time. Of course, that temple could be considered an exception anyways, since the city officials granted  approval for that temple as long as the Church sees to it that the land is platted within a year of when cconstruction commences.. If the Church is working on platting that site before beginning to build on it, that could explain the delays in that case.

So what I'm trying to convey here is that, whether or not Elder Gong mentioned a general time-frame for full-scale construction to begin on the Taylorsville Utah Temple, or gave any indication of when the Church anticipated completing it, the completion estimate may or may not need to be shifted forward or back. Until more inforrmation is known, given that the temple is anticipated to be just  under 500 square feet bigger than the Orem Utah Temple, I am applying mid-to-late 2023 as an initial general estimate for that temple's completion.

But as with all other estimates I have provided, those are subject to confirmation or denial through any official Church announcement or through any new information provided to me by the sources I use for temple construction updates. Either way,, I continue to monitor all such developments, in addition to any and all Church news updates, and will be sure to pass word of those along to you all here as I become aware of any such updates.

I should also note that I hope to be able to publish updates of information in my temple files at some point between now and November when the bulk of temple groundbreakings held in that maonth have taken place. I will also be setting scheduled posts to publish here in honor of the two apostles celebrating their birthdays in November (with Elder Uchtdorf turning 80 on November 6, and Elder Renlund observing his 68th birthday exactly one week later).

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.

October 2020 General Conference Predictions Results

Hello again, everyone! With almost 3 full weeks having passed since the October 2020 General Conference took place, I am pleased to now provide the resultp s of my predictions for it. First, I felt that it might be helpful for many of you if I provided more specific information and examples on what I score, how it is scored, and how that leads to the overall point total and accuracy percentage for them. That new section sets the backdrop for the results of the predicted speaking order, those of the projected changes in general Church leadership and a look at how my list of prospective temple lcations compared to the locations in which a temple was officially announced.

The information largely speaks for itself, but if any of you have questions about any of that, I'd welcome the chance to address them. 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.

UPDATED: Observations About Temple Groundbreakings in 2020

Hello again, everyone! While I continue to get the results of my October 2020 General Conference predictions ready to present here, and am also making updates as I can to the temple documents I want to share here as well, something else has come up that warranted a new post.  Aside from the Church News updates I provided in the threads of my previous post, one other article was published on the subject of the 21 temple groundbreakings that the Church has scheduled to take place this year. 

The article in question sheds some light on why 18 temple groundbreakings were originally planned, how that number increased to 21, and why President Nelson referenced only 20 in his remarks opening the October 2020 General Conference. It appears that 21 are indeed scheduled to occur, but that the logistics related to the arrangements of 1 of those may result in that groundbreaking being pushed back on the schedule. 

Although the article did not specify which temple might be delayed, I had a few thoughts in that respect.  When the Deseret News published an article on the 2020 groundbreakings, the Mendoza Argentina Temple had not been on that list. So it’s possible that, logistically, there are or may be issues with that temple. We also know that the Salta Argentina Temple’s groundbreaking has been pushed back twice, so any additional delay relative to that temple might push it back into next year. 

Similarly, we know that there are some political, environmental, or systemic issues going on in Zimbabwe’s capital city, which might delay that one. And it appears that Bengaluru India is somewhat of a hot spot for COVID-19 at the moment, so that temple could have its groundbreaking pushed back. While I don’t know if any of these thoughts are correct in defining which temple might not have a groundbreaking, I am personally hoping that all goes well and that the full 21 will be able to occur. 

I’ve previously mentioned a personal theory I have: Since each of the three members of the South America South Area will preside at the groundbreakings for the Salta and Mendoza Argentina and Antofagasta Chile Temples, it seems possible that the three temples could all have groundbreakings on the same day. 

As I’ve also mentioned, with no exact dates specified for any of the remaining 12 temples in the queue for this year, it may be hard to know when each might occur.  That being said, with only a handful of exceptions, most of the temple groundbreakings that have occurred since the beginning of 2017 have taken place on a Saturday. With that in mind, I am fairly certain that Elder Gong will break ground for the Taylorsville Utah Temple this Saturday, October 24. 

I will be interested to see what happens next month with temple groundbreakings. 8 of the remaining 12 groundbreakings are set to take place in November, and there are 4 Saturdays in that month. As a result, even if the Salta, Mendoza, and Antofagasta temples have their groundbreakings on the same day, that still leaves 5 that would need to take place over the other 3 weeks in that month. And for those parts of the world that observe Thanksgiving Day on the final Thursday of this month, that holiday may impact the timing on those groundbreakings as well. 

Similarly, for December, where 3 groundbreakings have been scheduled, the final 2-2.5 weeks of the year focus on Christmas and New Years’ celebrations through most of the world. Even with COVID-19 impacting the customary large-scale public celebrations, the Church likely will not want to detract from the focus particularly on Christmas. With that in mind, it will be interesting to see how the Church handles the remaining 12 groundbreakings. I will keep my eyes open for any such updates, in addition to all Church news and other temple construction developments, and remain committed to passing word of those along to you all as I become aware of that information. 

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.