LDS temple news in Brazil, Guatemala and France

Ground was broken Tuesday in Fortaleza, Brazil, for that country's seventh temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Fortaleza Brazil Temple.

"This temple will be a source of hope, light and faith in God for all who come and walk here and in this field," said Elder David A. Bednar of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who presided at the groundbreaking ceremony. "This city will always be better and different because of the temple to be built here."

The temple site is on Avenida Santos Dumont in the coastal neighborhood of Dunas. According to LDSChurchTemples.com, the temple will be "an exquisitely detailed double-towered edifice surrounded by lush landscaping and built into a slope to permit a daylight basement. Plans for the site also call for an Accommodation Building, a meetinghouse, and maintenance buildings."

Plans to build the Fortaleza temple were announced by LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson during the church's October general conference in 2009. It will serve LDS Church members who live in the 13 stakes in the Fortaleza area. Those members must currently make a 500-mile trip to Recife to worship in the temple there.

In addition to the Fortaleza and Recife temples, the other five temples either functioning or being built in Brazil are in Manaus, Campinas, Sao Paulo, Curtiba and Porto Alegre.

In other LDS temple news, the public open house for the LDS Church's Quetzaltenango Guatemala Temple began Friday, Nov. 11, and are scheduled to continue through Nov. 26. The new temple is then scheduled to be dedicated on Sunday, Dec. 11, during three dedicatory sessions presided over by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the First Presidency.

The Quetzaltenango Guatemala Temple will be the Church's fifth in Central America, and will serve approximately 60,000 Latter-day Saints. Other temples in Central America are located in Guatemala City, Guatemala; San Jose, Costa Rica; Panama City, Panama; and San Salvador, El Salvador.

Another Central American temple is under construction in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

And in France, http://www.leparisien.fr/espace-premium/yvelines-78/le-maire-a-dit-oui-au-temple-des-mormons-09-11-2011-1709366.php Le Parisien is reporting that the final hurdles have been cleared for the construction of the Paris France Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"It's now a done deal," Le Parisien reported on Nov. 9. "The city council has just given its green light by validating the building permit filed by La Fonci?e des Régions on behalf of the Mormon Church."

In July, LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson announced the church's "hopes" to build the temple a temple at Le Chesnay, near Versailles, in response to French media coverage of the negotiations and discussions that were then taking place.

In October, President Monson made the official announcement of the church's plans to build the temple during the opening session of LDS General Conference.

In order to build the new temple, the story indicates that "the imposing EDF-GDF (the French gas and electric company) building located on Boulevard Saint-Antoine will be demolished. In the near future the church will complete the purchase of the . . . land, which still belongs to La Fonci?e des Régions."

Once that is done, the church will "build its temple where . . . weddings will be celebrated and where the members of the church will perform baptisms for the dead. They will build a large hotel residence as well and at the heart of the project, a landscaped garden open to the public. The project is estimated to cost ? 80 million [approximately $108.3 million U.S. dollars]."

For more information on all of these temples go to lds.org/church/temples?lang=eng.

EMAIL: jwalker@desnews.com