A Saturday, March 14, groundbreaking date has been announced for the Huehuetenango Guatemala Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Elder Patricio M. Giuffra — a General Authority Seventy and president of the Central America Area — will preside over the ceremony and offer the dedicatory prayer on the site.
With its March 14 date, the Huehuetenango temple’s groundbreaking will happen exactly 17 years — to the day — after the groundbreaking of the Quetzaltenango Guatemala Temple.
Information about the future groundbreaking was first published in a Jan. 12 news release on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
According to previously released site plans, the Huehuetenango temple will be a single-story edifice of approximately 10,787 square feet. It will be built at 18 Avenida, Zona 4, El Terrero, in Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
About this temple and the Church in Guatemala
On Oct. 2, 2022, then-Church President Russell M. Nelson announced a house of the Lord for Huehuetenango, one of 18 temple locations he identified then. In the same general conference, he announced four temples for Guatemala’s neighboring country of Mexico.
Six temples are operating, under construction or announced in Guatemala.
Half of them are currently operating — in Guatemala City (dedicated in 1984), Quetzaltenango (2011) and Cobán (2024).
One of the country’s temples is under construction, the Miraflores Guatemala City Guatemala Temple, which will become the city’s second house of the Lord. Ground was broken for the temple in December 2022.
In addition to the Huehuetenango temple, one more temple is in planning stages, in Retalhuleu, announced in April 2023.
In 1942, John F. O’Donnal, a member of the Church’s colonies in Mexico, moved to Central America. He visited Church headquarters in December 1946 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.
Today, Guatemala is home to more than 292,000 Latter-day Saints across nearly 440 congregations.
