The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has released a site location and exterior rendering of the Retalhuleu Guatemala Temple. The sixth in the country, this house of the Lord will be the westernmost and southernmost temple in Guatemala once dedicated.
Retalhuleu’s temple will be built on a 5.51-acre site located at Km. 183, 5 Av., Calzada Las Palmas, RN-9, Municipio de San Sebastián, Retalhuleu, Guatemala.
The rendering and site map were first published March 31, the Monday before April 2025 general conference, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
According to the rendering, this house of the Lord will have a flat, multilevel tower above the center of the building, with rectangular windows surrounding the off-white exterior and rectangular archways around the entrance.
President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple for Retalhuleu on April 2, 2023. It was one of 15 new temple locations he identified in the Sunday afternoon session of April 2023 general conference.
Guatemala is home to three operating temples, the Guatemala City Guatemala Temple (dedicated in 1984), Quetzaltenango Guatemala Temple (2011) and Cobán Guatemala Temple (2024).
A fourth is under construction, the Miraflores Guatemala City Guatemala Temple, announced in 2020. Before Retalhuleu was announced in 2023, a fifth house of the Lord was announced in Huehuetenango in 2022.
The restored gospel’s influence in Guatemala started when John F. O’Donnal, a member of the Church’s colonies in Mexico, moved to Central America in 1942. In December 1946, he visited Church headquarters and made a personal appeal to Church President George Albert Smith to open missionary work in Guatemala.
The first Latter-day Saint missionaries arrived in Guatemala in 1947. O’Donnal was later set apart as district president in 1948, and more than 60 people attended the first meeting in a rented building in Guatemala City two weeks later.
Just five years after missionary work started in the country, the Central American Mission was created in 1952, with headquarters in Guatemala City.
When the Church received official government recognition on June 29, 1966, there were already 10,000 members.
Guatemala is now home to more than 290,000 Latter-day Saints in nearly 440 congregations.
