The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Sunday that it will build a temple in Marysville, Washington, adding a new house of worship in a state that already has six. Elder Hugo E. Martinez made the announcement during a devotional in the Marysville Washington Stake.
The First Presidency said the specific location and timing of construction will be announced later. When it is built, the Marysville temple will be Washington's seventh, joining the Columbia River, Moses Lake, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma and Vancouver temples.
The announcement lifts the church's total number of temples worldwide to 384. It also gives Marysville a place in a Washington story that stretches back to the 1850s, when the faith first took root in the state.
That history has grown in fits and starts. In the 1880s, many Latter-day Saints helped build railroads in the region. By 1930, church membership in Washington stood at 1,900 people in eight congregations, with chapels in Everett, Spokane, Seattle and Olympia. More members came in the early 1940s, when the completion of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River drew workers and their families to the state.
Washington's first temple was completed in Seattle in 1980. Today, the church says the state is home to some 278,000 Latter-day Saints in more than 470 congregations, making the new temple another marker of how far the faith has spread across the state.
The church says future temple announcements will be made on location by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles or a member of the Area Presidency. For Marysville, the key details are still ahead, but the decision itself is now fixed: Washington is getting its seventh temple, and the church says it is something to celebrate.
