The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced the groundbreaking for the Arequipa Peru Temple will be held March 4, 2017.
| Temple Square is always beautiful in the springtime. Gardeners work to prepare the ground for General Conference. © 2012 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. | 1 / 2 |
Elder Carlos A. Godoy, South America Northwest Area President, will preside at the groundbreaking services. Attendance at the site will be by invitation only. The groundbreaking ceremonies will be transmitted via internet to Church stake centers in the proposed temple district.
President Thomas S. Monson announced the temple in the October 2012 general conference.
The Arequipa Temple will be the third in the South American country, where missionary work officially began in 1956. The Trujillo Temple was dedicated in 2015 and the Lima Peru Temple opened in 1986. A fourth temple in Peru, the Lima Peru Los Olivos Temple, was announced in April 2016.
Peru is home to nearly 569,000 Latter-day Saints. Church members in Arequipa, Peru’s second most populous city, currently attend temple services in Lima, which is nearly 500 miles away.