Tad Talk Last October, President Russell M. Nelson caused a stir in the Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City when he announced 12 new temples at once.
I reported later that the 19 he announced during the church’s two general conferences in 2018 were the most announced in a single year since 1999, when the faith was in the midst of a temple-building boom.
Then this April, President Nelson announced another eight temples. Now, the church’s semiannual general conference is approaching again on Oct. 5 and 6.
“We’ll announce more temples in October conference,” he said on Sept. 1 in São Paulo, Brazil, during an interview at the end of his latest ministry to South America.
This is a temple-focused prophet-leader. Let me share an additional example. He now has visited 27 countries and one U.S. territory during his administration. Every one of them either has had a temple (Jerusalem), has a temple or has an announced temple (Kenya, Zimbabwe, India, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Thailand).
In the late 1970s, the average Latter-day Saint lived 450 miles from a temple. That dropped to 220 miles as temple-building accelerated in the mid-1990s. The last time I checked with Brandon Plewe, the editor of “Mapping Mormonism,” the average distance had dropped below 90 miles. Today the church has 166 operating temples. | 