Exactly 17 years — to the day — after the groundbreaking of the Quetzaltenango Guatemala Temple, ground was broken today for the Huehuetenango Guatemala Temple.
Presiding over the March 14 ceremony was Elder Patricio M. Giuffra, a General Authority Seventy and president of the Central America Area. He also offered the dedicatory prayer on the site and construction process.
Information and photos of the ceremony — which was also livestreamed — were published March 14 on the Guatemala Newsroom of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In his remarks to those in attendance, Elder Giuffra quoted Moroni 10:32, which invites, “Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness.”
He added, “The temple is one of the most sacred places where we respond to that invitation.”
Without the Atonement of Jesus Christ, said Elder Giuffra, the temple would be just a beautiful building. “But with the Atonement, it becomes a place of power, healing and eternal hope.”
He invited listeners to allow the power of the Savior’s Atonement to transform their lives as they attend the house of the Lord frequently and keep their covenants.
“Every time we enter the temple,” he said, “we reaffirm that we want to follow the Savior and remain on the covenant path.”
In his dedicatory prayer on the site, Elder Giuffra pleaded that the area become holy ground as the neighbors and community members feel the influence of the Holy Ghost.
“[May] their hearts be touched, and awaken in them the desire to know the reason why a sacred building is being constructed.”
That “reason” was reaffirmed earlier in the ceremony as a choir of young adults from Huehuetenango heartfully sang “Creo en Cristo,” or “I Believe in Christ.”
About this temple and others in Guatemala
As previously announced, the Huehuetenango temple is planned as a single-story edifice of approximately 10,787 square feet. It will be built at 18 Avenida, Zona 4, El Terrero, in Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
President Russell M. Nelson, then President of the Church, announced a house of the Lord for Huehuetenango on Oct. 2, 2022. It was one of 18 temple locations he identified in October 2022 general conference, alongside four temples for Guatemala’s neighboring country of Mexico.
Guatemala is home to six temples in various stages of operation, construction and planning.
Half are operating — in Guatemala City (dedicated in 1984), Quetzaltenango (2011) and Cobán (2024).
In addition to the Huehuetenango temple, one more house of the Lord is in the construction phase, the Miraflores Guatemala City Guatemala Temple. Ground was broken for this temple — to become the city’s second — in December 2022.
That leaves one more temple in planning stages, in Retalhuleu, announced in April 2023.
The Church in Guatemala
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.
