The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced August 2022 groundbreaking dates for the Ephraim Utah and Lubumbashi Democratic Republic of the Congo temples.
Elder Matthew L. Carpenter, a General Authority Seventy and president of the Church’s Africa Central Area, will preside at the Aug. 20 groundbreaking ceremony for the Lubumbashi temple.
And Elder Walter F. Gonzalez, a General Authority Seventy and counselor in the Utah Area, will preside at the Aug. 27 groundbreaking for the Ephraim Temple.
Attendance at both events will be by invitation only.
Lubumbashi DR Congo Temple
To be built on a 2.57-acre site, the Lubumbashi temple will be 19,300 square feet in size and include two endowment rooms of 30 seats each. Ancillary buildings of 31,000 square feet will be built on the site, which will include a distribution center and patron and missionary housing.
President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple for Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in April 2020 general conference, one of eight new locations identified then. It was the second temple announced for that central African nation, with the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple dedication just a year previous.
While having an in-country temple was better than previously having to go to the Johannesburg South Africa Temple, Lubumbashi — a mining city of almost 1.8 million located in the southern tip of the Democratic Republic of the Congo — is nearly 1,500 miles (or 2,300 kilometers) from the capital city of Kinshasa, making temple travel still difficult.
Nearly 90,000 Latter-day Saints in 250 congregations reside in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Ephraim Utah Temple
President Nelson announced a temple for Ephraim on May 1, 2021, with the site location released on Oct. 22, 2021, and an exterior rendering published on March 4, 2022.
Projected as a three-story temple of approximately 39,000 square feet, the temple will be built on a 9.16-acre site at the intersection of 200 North and 400 East in Ephraim, Utah. The location is directly northeast of Snow College, with the temple less than eight miles away from the Manti Utah Temple.
The Ephraim temple is expected to serve more than 31,000 Latter-day Saints who reside within the temple district in central Utah.
With more than 2.1 million Church members, Utah is home to 28 temples that are operating, under renovation, under construction or in planning stages.
Dedicated temples include the Bountiful, Brigham City, Cedar City, Draper, Jordan River, Logan, Manti, Monticello, Mount Timpanogos, Ogden, Oquirrh Mountain, Payson, Provo, Provo City Center, Salt Lake, St. George and Vernal temples. Those under construction are the Deseret Peak, Layton, Lindon, Orem, Red Cliffs, Saratoga Springs, Syracuse and Taylorsville.
The Smithfield Utah Temple has a June 18 groundbreaking schedule; the other announced temple is the Heber Valley Utah Temple.
