The First Presidency has announced a groundbreaking date for the Freetown Sierra Leone Temple, with a site location and exterior rendering for the temple released at the same time.
The date, site and rendering were published Wednesday, Dec. 15, on Newsroom.
Elder Hugo E. Martinez, president of the Church’s Africa West Area and a General Authority Seventy, will preside at the groundbreaking ceremony on Saturday, March 19, 2022. Attendance at the event will be by invitation only.
President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple for Freetown during October 2019 general conference, one of eight locations identified at the time.
The Freetown Sierra Leone Temple — planned as a single-story building of approximately 18,000 square feet — will be built on a 2.9-acre site located at Jui Road, Kossah Town, Freetown, Sierra Leone. A two-story ancillary building will contain an arrival center, patron housing, presidency apartments, ordinance worker apartments and utility buildings.
Africa is home to five currently operating temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the Accra Ghana, Aba Nigeria, Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo, Johannesburg South Africa and Durban South Africa temples. Another three temples are under construction — the Abidjan Ivory Coast, Nairobi Kenya and Harare Zimbabwe temples.
The Freetown temple is one of 10 Africa temples announced but not yet under construction. The other nine are the Antananarivo Madagascar, Beira Mozambique, Benin City Nigeria, Cape Town South Africa, Kananga Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kumasi Ghana, Lagos Nigeria, Lubumbashi Democratic Republic of the Congo and Monrovia Liberia temples.
The Praia Cape Verde Temple, under construction on that island republic some 500 kilometers off the coast of West Africa, is assigned to the Church’s Europe Area.
More than 21,000 Latter-day Saints in approximately 70 congregations reside in what will be the Freetown Sierra Leone Temple district.
