A June 6 groundbreaking date for the Springfield Missouri Temple has been announced by the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Elder Aroldo B. Cavalcante — a General Authority Seventy and second counselor in the United States Southeast Area presidency — will preside over the ceremony and dedicate the site for construction.
Groundbreaking information for this third house of the Lord in Missouri was published Monday, April 20, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
As announced last week, June 6 will also be the groundbreaking for the Missoula Montana Temple.
Plans for the Springfield temple call for a single-story edifice of approximately 29,000 square feet. It will be built on a portion of a 38-acre site located at 2720 E. Farm Road #188, Springfield, in southwest Missouri.
About the Springfield temple and the Church in Missouri
On April 2, 2023, then-Church President Russell M. Nelson announced a house of the Lord for Springfield. It was one of 15 temple locations he identified in the April 2023 general conference.
Once built and dedicated, it will join Missouri’s two operating temples: the St. Louis Missouri Temple, dedicated in 1997, and the Kansas City Missouri Temple, dedicated in 2012.
In the 1830s, Independence, Missouri, and its surrounding counties were an important gathering place for Latter-day Saints in the early days of the Church.
By June 1833, Jackson County, Missouri, had 1,200 members in 10 branches. The second stake of the restored Church was organized in Clay County, Missouri, on July 3, 1834, although it was later relocated to Far West in 1836 and discontinued in 1839.
Today, Missouri is home to more than 84,000 Latter-day Saints in around 180 wards and branches.
