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.
