Public Invited to Tour Mormon Temple in Farmington Before Its Dedication

Leaders for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have announced that the Hartford Connecticut Temple will be open for a free public open house period from Friday, September 30 to Saturday, October 22, 2016 (excluding October 1, 2, 9 and 16). Once dedicated, this first temple in Connecticut will be open only to faithful members of the Church.

A few weeks before the open house, the public can make reservations at <templeopenhouse.lds.org> . Meanwhile, information about the Hartford Temple’s progress and open houses can be found at https://www.facebook.com/hartfordmormontemple/

The temple will be formally dedicated on Sunday, November 20, 2016. There will also be a cultural celebration featuring music and dance performances by local Mormon youth on Saturday, November 19.

Named officially for the nearest large city, as is customary, the Hartford Temple is located in Farmington at the corner of Melrose Drive and Farmington Ave. (Rte. 4). Its Groundbreaking ceremony was held there on 17 August 2013, with Church President Thomas S. Monson presiding.

Currently 150 temples of the Church are in operation worldwide with 23 more announced or under construction, including Hartford. The 37,000-square-foot temple will serve approximately 20,000 Latter-day Saints in 4 states: Connecticut, western Rhode Island, southwestern Massachusetts, and eastern New York. This one will be the only LDS temple in Connecticut and only the second Mormon temple in New England; the Boston Temple opened in 2000.

Temples are distinct from Mormon meetinghouses. The latter are more numerous, where Sunday services and other events, classes, and activities are held, and meetinghouses are always open to the public.

Temples are considered “houses of the Lord” where the teachings of Jesus Christ are reaffirmed through marriage, baptism and other ceremonies that unite families for eternity. Sister Rosemary M. Wixom: “The temple becomes the bridge between this life and eternal life that lies beyond. The purpose of the temple is three-fold: to turn hearts to the Savior Jesus Christ, to unite families, [and] to provide sacred ordinances necessary for exaltation.”

The temple’s graceful steeple is evocative of Farmington’s First Church of Christ Congregational, a landmark designed in 1771 by master builder Judah Woodruff, who also designed other period architecture in Farmington. The architect of the Mormon temple now being built in Farmington studied the 1771 landmark and other churches in the area. Judah Woodruff’s great-nephew, Wilford Woodruff, was born in Farmington (now Avon) in 1807 and converted to the Mormon faith. In 1889 he became the fourth president of the Church.

The statue on the steeple is known as Angel Moroni. Clad in gold leaf and standing over 13 feet tall, counting the golden ball upon which he stands, he symbolically announces with his trumpet that the fullness of Jesus Christ’s gospel has come. Moroni, believed to be an ancient prophet in the Americas, is a prominent feature atop most LDS temples.

In selecting building materials throughout the temple, the Church settles for nothing but the best. The precedent for this is found in the description of Solomon’s Temple in 1 Kings 7 of the Bible. “They used the finest materials and the finest workmen to build the temple. And that’s the pattern we follow,” Elder William R. Walker, former executive director of the Church’s Temple Department, has said. “Not to be ostentatious, but to be beautiful in a wonderful tribute to God.”