Ground has been broken for the Missoula Montana Temple, with the Saturday, June 6, ceremony one of the day’s two groundbreakings held for new houses of the Lord for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The services in Missoula, Montana, came just an hour after the groundbreaking for the Springfield Missouri Temple. Both ceremonies were first reported on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Elder José A. Teixeira, a General Authority Seventy and president of the Church’s United States Central Area, presided over the Missoula event and was accompanied by his wife, Sister Maria Teixeira. He both spoke and offered a dedicatory prayer on the temple site and the sacred edifice’s construction.
“May this temple that will be built here stand as a beacon of light and truth to the youth of Thy Church,” Elder Teixeira prayed. “May they come to know the Savior more deeply within these sacred walls.”
Now in its construction phase, the Missoula temple will be the third house of the Lord in the state, joining the Billings Montana Temple, dedicated in 1999, and the Helena Montana Temple, dedicated in 2023.
Isabelle Duncan, a youth from the Missoula Montana Stake who spoke at the groundbreaking, recalled both her excitement upon hearing then-Church President Russell M. Nelson announce a house of the Lord for Missoula in 2022 and her experience attending the Helena temple’s open house in 2023.
“There are pictures of Christ in the temple to remind us of Him and why we choose to live the gospel,” she said. “He is the perfect example of kindness, charity, service, obedience, grace and compassion.”
Craig Bell, also of the Missoula stake, spoke about the purpose of temples throughout ancient and modern history.
“They are places where God’s people seek to draw closer to Him, participated in sacred ceremonies and deepened their commitment to follow Him,” he said.
About the Missoula temple, Church in Montana
On April 3, 2022, President Nelson announced this house of the Lord for Missoula. It was one of 17 temple locations he identified in that general conference, including one in the adjacent state of Idaho, for Montpelier.
As previously announced, this house of the Lord in Missoula will be a single-story building of approximately 19,000 square feet. The sacred edifice will be built on a 5.08-acre site at the corner of Old Bitterroot Road and Lower Miller Creek Road, Missoula, in western Montana. An ancillary building is also planned for the site.
The Church’s first branch in Montana was established in 1895, in Lima in the southwest area of the state, and the Montana Mission was organized the year after. The first stake, in Butte, was created in June 1953.
By the end of the 1920s, the Church in Montana had grown to 10 branches and a membership of 1,181. Membership increased to 5,210 in 1940, then 6,416 in 1950.
Today, Montana is home to more than 52,000 Latter-day Saints across 140 wards and branches.
—Church News reporter Joel Randall contributed to this report.
