President Nelson announces 200th temple of his presidency, including one in Spanish Fork

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• President Nelson announced 15 new temples Sunday, including one in Spanish Fork.
• This brings the total number of temples to 382 worldwide, with 31 in Utah.
• President Nelson has now announced 200 temples in the seven years of his tenure as church president.

SALT LAKE CITY — During the closing session Sunday of the 195th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Russell M. Nelson announced 15 new temples to be built around the world, including one in Spanish Fork.

The new temples will be built in each of the following locations:

• Reynosa, Mexico
• Chorrillos, Peru
• Rivera, Uruguay
• Campo Grande, Brazil
• Porto, Portugal
• Uyo, Nigeria
• San Jose del Monte, Philippines
• Nouméa, New Caledonia
• Liverpool, Australia
• Caldwell, Idaho
• Flagstaff, Arizona
• Rapid City, South Dakota
• Greenville, South Carolina
• Norfolk, Virginia
• Spanish Fork, Utah

The newly announced temples bring the total number across the earth to 382, including those that are dedicated, scheduled to be dedicated, under construction or under renovation.

The Spanish Fork temple will be the 31st temple in Utah, which is home to more than 2.2 million Latter-day Saints, and the ninth in Utah County that will be operating, under construction or announced.

In 1851, early Latter-day Saints first settled in Spanish Fork, which has grown to about 50,000 residents today. Just over 80% of Spanish Fork residents identified as church members, according to a study conducted by Utah State University in 2022, with 13.9% identifying as agnostic, atheist or nonreligious and 5.9% as "other religion."

Other temples in Utah are located in American Fork, Bountiful, Brigham City, Cedar City, Draper, Layton, Logan, Manti, Monticello, Ogden, Orem, Payson, Saratoga Springs, Taylorsville, Tooele and Vernal, along with two each in Provo, South Jordan and St. George. New temples are also under construction in Ephraim, Heber Valley, Lindon, Smithfield and Syracuse, while Lehi, Price and West Jordan were announced last year.

In neighboring states, the temple in Caldwell will be the third in the Boise metropolitan area and the first since a temple in Meridian, Idaho, was dedicated in 2017. More than 475,000 church members live in 1,225 congregations in Idaho, which has 11 temples in operation, planned or under construction.

Located 150 miles north of Phoenix, the temple in Flagstaff, Arizona, will be the ninth in the Grand Canyon state that is home to around 450,000 Latter-day Saints in 925 congregations. Other temples in Arizona include Gilbert, Mesa, Phoenix, Snowflake, the Gila Valley, Tucson, Queen Creek and Yuma.

South Dakota will receive the state's first temple in Rapid City, while Greenville will be just the second in the state of South Carolina. Other first temples announced Sunday include New Caledonia, a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean that is home to more than 2,500 Latter-day Saints.

President Nelson has announced 200 temples since 2018, more than half of all temples in the church. He also announced extensive renovations to the Salt Lake Temple, which will be available during a six-month public open house prior to being rededicated in the fall of 2027.

The 100-year-old church president also recently dedicated the 200th operating temple in church history in finishing the Deseret Peak Utah Temple last November.

"We are grateful to the Lord for the acceleration of temple-building in recent years," President Nelson said in closing the conference. "I testify that Jesus Christ, the redeemer of Israel, leads this, his church. He is preparing to come again. May we likewise prepare to receive him."

Latter-day Saints view each temple as the most sacred place of worship on earth, where church members in full standing go to receive "peace, inspiration and spiritual power as they enter into sacred agreements with God," according to a church statement.

"Regular worship in the house of the Lord increases our capacity for both charity and virtue," President Nelson said. "Thus, time in the temple increases our confidence before the Lord. Increased time in the temple will help us prepare for the Second Coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We do not know the day or the hour of his coming. But I do know that the Lord is prompting me to urge us to get ready for that great and dreadful day."

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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day SaintsUtahSalt Lake CountyReligionUtah County

Sean Walker

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KSL.com BYU and college sports reporter