Introduction and About This Blog
My fascination with the temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints began on my mission (I served from 1986-88). While in my first area my companion tore his ACL and was therefore immobile for several weeks. In addition to studying we read church magazines to fill the time we would have spent tracting. In doing so I realized something that I had only vaguely been aware of previously, during the 1980s the Church was building more temples then it ever had before. In fact they had dedicated 22 new temples since I had become a deacon, more than doubling the total number of dedicated temples. I set out to collect a picture of each of the Church’s temples. Since this was long before the internet it was actually a pretty difficult task. However, by the time I finished my mission, during which the Church dedicated two more temples, I had succeeded. Unfortunately I accidentally left my collection of temple pictures on the bus I took back to the mission home at the end of my mission.
I started over and also began keeping up on news of temples under construction so I would be able to get a picture of each new temple as soon after dedication as possible. This led me to discover open house brochures which include pictures of many of the rooms inside the temples. I was surprised to discover how different these rooms could be from each other.
After my mission I lived in Utah for a while so I had the opportunity to attend the temple frequently and to visit a wide variety of temples, including both the Salt Lake and Manti Utah temples. Attending a live endowment was another eye opening experience for me, it was so different from the video endowment I was gradually becoming used to.
I also had the opportunity to attend a lecture given by Paul L. Anderson an architect and temple historian. He talked about the Church’s first temples and I was amazed to discover how different Kirtland and Nauvoo were from Salt Lake and Manti let alone the more modern temples I had attended the most. All of these experiences have fueled my fascination with the temples and led me to collect pictures and information about them. I even created a Geocities web page that can still be viewed at: http://www.oocities.org/athens/parthenon/4909/. Unfortunately I can no longer update this site.
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The most important thing about temples is the sacred ordinances available in them. Those ordinances, especially the endowment strongly affect the way temples are designed and built. However my focus is on how changes to the way temple ordinances are presented have changed the way temples are designed and built. If you are more interested in temple ordinances the best information is available at churchofjesuschrist.org/temples.
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