Abidjan Cote d’Ivoire Temple
The Abidjan Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) Temple was one of three new temples — along with ones for Bangkok, Thailand, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti — announced by the late President Thomas S. Monson on 5 April 2015, during the Sunday morning session of Sunday Morning Session of the 185th annual general conference. The temple will be constructed on the site of the stake center for the Cocody Cote d'Ivoire Stake in the commune of Cocody, known for its beautiful residential districts. A rendering of the temple’s exterior was released on 4 October 2018.
The Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) is home to approximately 20 million people, including nearly 44,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with 14 stakes, 211 congregations, and two missions. Missionary work officially began in Côte d'Ivoire in 1988. Church members in Abidjan, the country's largest urban center on the southern Atlantic coast, currently attend temple services in Accra, Ghana, which requires a 12-hour one-way trip by car to reach.
Over the past few years, Church membership growth in Côte d'Ivoire has been among the highest in the world. The number of members and congregations has multiplied in this West African nation where twelve stakes and thirteen districts operate. Eleven of the twelve stakes are headquartered in the greater Abidjan region. In 2012, three of the five stakes in Côte d'Ivoire were among the top 25 in the Church in the percentage of adults submitting family names for temple ordinances.
The Abidjan Cote d’Ivoire Temple will be the Church’s 8th temple announced or operating in Africa and the first built in the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire). The other temples that have been announced or are in operation include Johannesburg South Africa Temple, Durban South Africa Temple, Kinshasa Democratic Republic of Congo Temple, Aba Nigeria Temple, Accra Ghana Temple, Harare, Zimbabwe, and Nairobi, Kenya.
The Church currently has 160 operating temples worldwide. The Abidjan Cote d’Ivoire Temple will be the sixth temple built in Africa and the first built in the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire).
Groundbreaking Ceremony
A groundbreaking ceremony was held on Thursday, 8 November 2018 at 10:00 am. Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles presided. Attendance at this ceremony was by invitation only, with the general public invited to view the proceedings live from local meetinghouses. A media section was provided at the ceremony and the media was respectfully asked not to record the dedicatory prayer. Elder Andersen offered the dedicatory prayer in French, the official language of the West African nation.
During his remarks, Elder Andersen said, "Today is a sacred day, a holy day, a day that will long be remembered in the records kept in heaven and by the Saints of God here in the Ivory Coast. The building of this temple means that the restored kingdom of God will be established here in Abidjan and throughout the Ivory Coast until the Savior returns to the earth and that there will be covenant people here to receive Him when he returns."
Category: Temples
