The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced an Oct. 11 dedication date for the Ephraim Utah Temple.
Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will dedicate the temple in a single 10 a.m. session, which will be broadcast to all units in the temple district and rebroadcast at 2 p.m.
Prior to the dedication, an open house will be held Sept. 2 through Sept. 19, excluding Sundays. A media day is also scheduled for Monday, Aug. 31, and invited guests will tour the sacred edifice Sept. 1.
These upcoming dates were first published April 20 on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
The announcement came nine days after the conclusion of the open house for the Lindon Utah Temple, located less than 70 miles to the north of Ephraim.
Ephraim’s temple dedication is planned for the same day as the Miraflores Guatemala City Guatemala Temple’s dedication.
About the Ephraim temple
President Russell M. Nelson announced the Ephraim temple May 1, 2021, in a prerecorded video that was played at a press conference inside the Manti Tabernacle. This was the only house of the Lord that President Nelson announced outside of general conference.
He later recounted that shortly after the April 2021 general conference, he “received very clear instruction” from the Lord that a new temple should be built in Ephraim.
President Nelson — whose mother was born in Ephraim — dedicated the site at the temple’s groundbreaking on Aug. 27, 2022. When he concluded his prayer, rain began to fall. One attendee called out to President Nelson, “These are the tears of joy of our ancestors.”
The first Latter-day Saints entered the greater Sanpete Valley, where Ephraim is located, in the fall of 1849. They established the first stake in the valley in 1877.
The Church in Utah
The Beehive State currently has 32 houses of the Lord operating, under construction, announced or undergoing renovation.
The following 24 temples have been dedicated in Utah: Bountiful, Brigham City, Cedar City, Deseret Peak, Draper, Jordan River, Layton, Logan, Manti, Monticello, Mount Timpanogos, Ogden, Oquirrh Mountain, Orem, Payson, Provo City Center, Provo Rock Canyon, Red Cliffs, Salt Lake, Saratoga Springs, St. George, Syracuse, Taylorsville and Vernal.
Of note, two of those temples are undergoing extensive renovations and reconstruction: the Salt Lake Temple, closed Dec. 29, 2019, and the Provo Utah Rock Canyon Temple, closed Feb. 24, 2024.
A temple in Lindon just finished its public open house April 11 and is scheduled for dedication May 3. Three houses of the Lord are in their construction phase in Utah: the Smithfield temple (since June 2022), Ephraim temple (August 2022) and Heber Valley temple (October 2022).
That leaves four temples in planning and design stages — in West Jordan (announced 2024), Lehi (2024), Price (2024) and Spanish Fork (2025).
The first wagons of Latter-day Saint pioneers arrived in the Utah Territory on July 24, 1847. Almost 180 years later, Utah is now home to more than 2.2 million Church members across nearly 5,400 wards and branches.
