The Moses Lake Washington Temple begins its open-house phase this week, starting with a media day gathering for local journalists and invited guests Monday morning, July 31.
And in conjunction with the day’s event, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released interior and exterior images of the temple, which when dedicated in mid-September will be the Church’s fourth house of the Lord in Washington and 182nd worldwide.
The images were first published Monday on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
The open house precedes the temple’s scheduled Sept. 17 dedication by Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Presiding at Monday’s media day is Elder Gary B. Sabin, a General Authority Seventy and counselor in the North America West Area presidency.
Special tours for invited guests run Tuesday through Thursday, Aug. 1 through 3, with the public open house running Friday, Aug. 4, through Saturday, Aug. 19, excluding Sundays. Reservations are available online to tour the Moses Lake Washington Temple during the public open house via reservations.churchofjesuschrist.org. Tours start at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, and the last tours start at 8 p.m. Pacific Time.
The Moses Lake Washington Temple will serve Latter-day Saints in Grant County and surrounding areas, who currently have to travel to the nearby cities of Spokane and Richland to worship in the house of the Lord.
About the Moses Lake temple
The single-story temple of 28,933 square feet is located at 401 E. Yonezawa Boulevard, between Division Street and Road K NE and across the street from Yonezawa Park. A 17,000-square-foot meetinghouse was built adjacent to the temple on the 17.2-acre site.
The temple’s exterior — featuring a single, central spire — is made of Branco Cristal stone, a granite quarried in Portugal.
The interior design draws on regional crops, such as potato and alfalfa blossoms, with the art glass in both interior and exterior settings using an apple blossom motif. And the border pattern is a prairie-style design, reflecting the Native Americans who inhabited the area long before Moses Lakes’ first farms were settled.
Flooring inside includes marble, carpet and porcelain tile. Cherry wood was used for millwork throughout the temple, while hardwood doors have been stained in a cherry finish and painted maple. And the lighting fixtures in the bride’s room have blown glass from Venice, Italy.
Landscaping around the temple along the outer edges of the property consists of trees, shrubs and plants representing the mountain environments common to western Washington.
About the Moses Lake area
Located in a rural central area of Washington that blends agriculture and industry, Moses Lake is named in honor of Quetalican — or Chief Moses — a peaceful leader of the Native American Sinkiuse-Columbia people in the early 18th century.
The first Latter-day Saints moved into the Moses Lake area in the early 1900s, purchasing land there. When word spread to others about the rich farmland and the irrigation opportunities following the completion of the Grand Coulee Dam, others followed. After many years of meeting first in a local Presbyterian church and then a local air base, Church members completed the area’s first meetinghouse in 1951.
Washington is home to nearly 290,000 Latter-day Saints in more than 520 congregations and three operating houses of the Lord — the Seattle Washington Temple (dedicated in 1980), the Spokane Washington Temple (1999) and the Columbia River Washington Temple (2001) in Richland in the south-central Tri-Cities area. A fifth temple is in planning for Tacoma.
Moses Lake temple milestones
President Russell M. Nelson announced a house of the Lord for Moses Lake, Washington, during April 2019 general conference, one of eight temples announced during the closing session. The temple site location was identified six months later, and an exterior rendering released a year after the temple’s announcement.
Ground was broken for the Moses Lake temple on Oct. 10, 2020, with Elder David L. Stapleton, an Area Seventy, presiding.
In March 2023, the First Presidency announced the Sept. 17 dedication and August open-house period. The two dedicatory sessions — at 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Pacific daylight time — will be broadcast to congregations in the temple district.
The Moses Lake dedication is one of three temple dedications by members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles scheduled for Sept. 17. Earlier that day, the Bentonville Arkansas Temple will be dedicated by Elder David A. Bednar and the Brasília Brazil Temple by Elder Neil L. Andersen.
