BREAKING TEMPLE NEWS: Site Location and Preliminary Information Confirmed for the Budapest Hungary Temple

Hello again, everyone! This afternoon, on the heels of the late September visit of Hungary's first female president to Church headquarters, the First Presidency has released the site location and preliminary information for the Budapest Hungary Temple, which had, before today, been the last temple announced in April 2019 that had not had any official information confirmed. Let's break down the details:

An arrival center and patron housing will join the planned single-story 18,000-square-foot temple, all of which will be built on a 5.92-acre site at Kocsis Sandor ut and Borsikafu utca, Harsanylejto, Budapest, Hungary. Though not explicitly stated, I take it as a given that project managers will begin working with government officials through the approvals process.

As a result of today's update, all temples announced between October 2018 and October 2020 have had official information confirmed. Between today's announcement (which also confirmed the Modesto California Temple groundbreaking) and the 20 new temples announced by President Nelson in General Conference over a week ago, of the 98 announced temples, 55 lack official information.

That may change in the near term (or so I hope). I was also surprised that there were not any temple openings announced, but hopefully such announcements will either come later this week or as the major announcement next week. I continue to monitor all such updates and will be sure to pass those along here as time and circumstances allow.

In the meantime, that does it for now. All comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated on any post at any time, as long as the offered feedback is made per the established guidelines. I hope any of you who would like to share anything will take your opportunity to “sound off” in the comments below. 

Please subscribe if you liked what you read here and would like to be informed of newly-added posts and comments. Thank you for the privilege of your time. Until my next post, I wish you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.

President M. Russell Ballard Observes His 95th Birthday

Hello again, everyone! With the wonderful spirit of the October 2023 General Confeence still strongly impacting all of us, I wanted to post in honor of President M. Russell Ballard, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who is observing his 95th birthday today. Among the 20 total nonagenarian apostles, President Ballard is currently the seventh-oldest and he will next move up on that list in September 2024. That said, let's get to some biographical details: Melvin Russell Ballard Jr. was born in Salt Lake City Utah to Melvin Russell Sr. & Geraldine Smith Ballard, on this day in 1928. Both his paternal and maternal grandfathers (Melvin J. Ballard and Hyrum M. Smith) were apostles, and Elder Ballard is thus a direct descendant of the early leaders of the Church (Hyrum M. was the son of Joseph F., who was the son of Hyrum Smith, brother of the Prophet Joseph).

As I previously mentioned, the Church has, by tradition, had at least one apostle currently serving who has ancestral ties to the Smith family. It is further interesting to note that Bruce R. McConkie, who was the last apostle indirectly related to the Smith family (being the son-in-law of Joseph Fielding Smith, who was the son of Joseph F. who was the son of Hyrum, who was the brother of the Prophet Joseph Smith), was the apostle whose death resulted in the apostolic vacancy that necessitated Elder Ballard's call.

As a young man, now-President Ballard served as a missionary in England, as has been noted in previous blog posts. Upon his return, he served in the US Army Reserves, where he rose to the rank of First Lieutenant. As a result of obtaining his secondary education from the University of Utah, he met a young lady named Barbara Bowen, whom he married on August 8, 1951 in the Salt Lake Temple. Sister Ballard passed away roughly five years ago.

They became the parents of 7 children, and one of their daughters, Brynn, married Peter Huntsman, whose mother, Karen Haight Huntsman, is the daughter of Elder David B. Haight, one of Elder Ballard's apostolic colleagues. It is interesting to see the additional relationship Elder Ballard has to other LDS apostles. Brother Ballard worked professionally in auto sales. His Church service included serving as a counselor to his mission president, as a bishop twice, and as president of the Canada Toronto Mission. He completed the final year of that assignment as a General Authority Seventy, having received that call in April 1976.

Less than four years later, on February 20, 1980, he was called to the Presidency of the Seventy. Both before and as a result of that assignment, he served in a wide variety of capacities. Particularly, the Church had established an International Mission in the late 1970s, and in 1985 then-Elder M. Russsell Ballard was called to serve as president of that mission, overseeing the isolated congregations within it from Church headquarters. During his roughly 5 years and 7 months or so in the Presidency of the Seventy, he had moved up in that Presidency from being the junior member thereof to the third most senior member.

A few short weeks after rising from his sickbed to give his powerful final testimony, Elder Bruce R. McConkie passed away, and Elder Ballard was then called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Now-President Ballard is known and respected for the emphasis he has placed on missionary work in his apostolic ministry. Since October 1985, he has moved from the position of the junior apostle to now being the third in apostolic seniority. In his 45 years as a general authority (with 38 years as an apostle), he has given a grand total of  88 addresses in General Conference, including the one he gave just this last weekend. Of those 88, 7 were given prior to his apostolic call.

And, as we know, the death of President Thomas S. Monson in early January of 2018 resulted in the First Presidency being reorganized on January 14, with President Russell M. Nelson choosing his apostolic seatmate and the new President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Dallin H. Oaks, as his First Counselor. Consequently, President M. Russell Ballard was set apart as Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve. He thus is tasked, with the approval of the First Presidency, with giving the other 11 members of that Quorum their various assignments around the world and at Church headquarters. I am grateful for the life and apostolic ministry of President M. Russell Ballard, and on this, his 95th birthday, testify of the divine inspiration that attended both his apostolic call and the way and timing by which he has moved up in ranks of apostolic seniority and among all apostolic nonagenarians. I gladly sustain him and the other apostles in their foreordained roles. I continue to monitor all Church news and temple updates and will bring word of all such developments to you all here as I learn about them.

In the meantime, that does it for now. Thank you for the privilege of your time. All comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated, on any post at any time, as long as the offered feedback is made per the established guidelines. I hope any of you who would like to share anything will take your opportunity to “sound off” in the comments below. 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 2023 General Conference: Post-Conference Document Analysis

Hello again, everyone! As I have indicated on a few occasions, with General Conference weekend concluded, I anticipate a significant uptick in major temple construction announcements. Among those to which I think we can look forward in the near term are opening arrangements for the Red Cliffs Utah, Puebla Mexico, Layton and Taylorsville Utah, Urdaneta Philippines, Salta Argentina, and Coban Guatemala Temples. 

We could also potentially see groundbreakings set for the Knoxville Tennessee, Cleveland Ohio, Tarawa Kiribati, Cali Colombia, and Cape Town South Africa Temples (with the first two likely to be the only other temples likely to have groundbreakings before the end of this year), and something more official (whether just a rendering, or in addition to a groundbreaking) for the Teton River Idaho, Vitoria Brazil, and Charlotte North Carolina Temples, based on their latest updates). 

And I'm hoping it's not too long before we hear information about the Dubai UAE Temple, since the land for it was supposed to be turned over to the Church before the end of 2022.  These potential announcements aren't relevant to what I want to share in this post, but the anticipated announcements are the reason I am choosing to post a new update now. This post will share my post-conference document analysis. So let's get right into it. 

First of all, I have updated my document showing how many talks have been given by each of our apostles. That document reflects one more apiece for 13 of our 15 apostles. President Eyring's presentation of the sustaining of Church officers gives him 2 for this conference, and Elder Holland's number has not changed since last Octoer, since he was absent from and didn't speak during either conference this year. By next conference, the number of talks given by our apostles should total just above 800.

Second up is my document showing the length of each of the 15 talks given by our apostles, which should speak for itself. I have also put together my projection for what the table of contents for the November 2023 Liahona (General Conference edition) might look like. I also wanted to provide a look back at my projections for the speaker lineup, the projected changes in general Church leadership, and potential temple locations.

Based on my analysis on each of the predicted elements, the results are displayed in a scorecard. Longtime followers of this blog will know how I calculated the scores on each element, yielding the total. 

But in a nutshell, I assigned each predicted element a total of 3 points. For the speaker lineup, every time I correctly predicted the right person in the right order in the right session, 3 points were awarded. If I had the right person in the right session but the wrong slot, 2 points were awarded. 1 point was awarded if I correctly projected any speaker, even if that was in the wrong session and the wrong position within that session. 0 points were awarded if something happened that I didn't predict.

I noticed something interesting that I hadn't noticed before this go-round. With the exception of the first two General Conferences of President Nelson's prophetic administration and the April 2022 General Conference (which featured a Women's Session) Presidents Oaks and Eyring have alternated between conducting 3 and 2 sessions apiece per conference. But for the last few General Conferences, President Oaks has conducted 3 and President Eyring the other 2. That will likely be a trend that continues.

For the changes in general Church leadership, since I and several others had been convinced that an additional counselor in the First Presidency might soon be called, I gave myself half-credit for a potential change in the First Presidency and the resulting change that would then have been necessary for the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Every other element was graded on whether I correctly predicted each change, whether I was half-right, or whether I was incorrect. And for the new temples, 3 points meant I had the right exact location, 2 meant I had the right general area but the wrong specific one, and 0 was for anything I wasn't expecting.

The results are otherwise self-explanatory, but if any of you have questions, feel free to ask. As I stated at the beginning of this post, I wanted to get this post-conference document update out of the way before what I expect will be a windfall of major temple construction announcements to round out the final quarter of the year. I will be sure to report on any such updates as they are announced. In the interim, when I am not focused on updates for this blog, I will be starting to work on my predictions for the April 2024 General Conference, and I will have an initial version of those predictions available ASAP.

One key consideration for those predictions will be the likely prospect that any GA Seventies likely to be granted emeritus status on August 1 of next year who have not spoken within the last few years or so will likely do so, which includes 2 current members of the Presidency of the Seventy. It is also likely that only 2-3 female speakers will be featured as a result. Stay tuned for those predictions as I can formulate them. In the meantime, that does it for now. 

All comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated on any post at any time, as long as the offered feedback is made per the established guidelines. I hope any of you who would like to share anything will take your opportunity to “sound off” in the comments below. Please subscribe if you liked what you read here and would like to be informed of newly-added posts and comments. Thank you for the privilege of your time. Until my next post, I wish you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.