Latter-day Saints planning new temple in Lethbridge
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on April 8, 2023.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com Almost 110 years after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced plans to construct a temple in Cardston, the church has unveiled plans for a second one in southern Alberta.During the closing session of its annual general conference last Sunday in Salt Lake city, church spiritual leader President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple will be built in Lethbridge.
The temple will be the 10th in Canada and is one of 15 new ones that will be constructed worldwide.
The Cardston temple, which was completed in 1923, presently serves about 31,000 members in 14 stakes -which the church says is the equivalent of a diocese- in southern Alberta, southeastern B.C. and northern Montana.
It was built on Temple Hill on an eight-acre plot which was expanded to more than 10 acres in the 1950s. The land was donated to the church by Charles Ora Card, an American who founded Cardston on June 3, 1887.
The location for the temple site has not been publicly released yet.
Temples, according to a press release, “are not regular places of Sunday worship for members of the church. They are quite different from the many regular chapels or meetinghouses all over southern Alberta that are used for Sunday services. Anyone, regardless of religion, may enter a Latter-day Saint meetinghouse and attend services. However, because of the sacredness of temples as - houses of the Lord – only members of the church, who are in good standing are allowed to enter temples. They provide places where church members make formal promises and commitments to God and where the highest sacraments of the faith occur – the marriage of couples and the  sealing of families for eternity.”
Temples are also the only places where ceremonies including baptism and eternal marriages can be performed on behalf of people who have died which is a practice church members believe was followed in the times of the New Testament.
Once the temple construction is finished, an open house will be staged before its dedication in which tours of the interior will be available to the general public.
“Jesus Christ is the reason we build temples,” Nelson told members during the conference. “Each is His holy house. Making covenants and receiving essential ordinances in the temple, as well as seeking to draw closer to Him there, will bless your life in ways no other kind of worship can. For this reason, we are doing all within our power to make the blessings of the temple more accessible to our members around the world.” Follow @albeebHerald on Twitter 4
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