MODESTO — The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced the groundbreaking for the Modesto California Temple on Saturday, Oct.7.
Elder Gary B. Sabin, General Authority Seventy and First Counselor in the North America West Area Presidency, will preside and offer the dedicatory prayer.
The Modesto California Temple was announced in April 2022.
It will be built on a 17.63-acre site adjacent to an existing meetinghouse located at 4300 Dale Road, Modesto. Plans call for a single-story temple of approximately 30,000 square feet.
Although in-person attendance at the groundbreaking ceremony will be by invitation only, everyone is welcome to join the 10 a.m. live broadcast at: http://templegroundbreaking.churchofjesuschrist.org/
Latter-day Saints consider temples to be the “house of the Lord” and the most sacred places of worship on earth.
Temples differ from the Church’s meetinghouses (chapels). All are welcome to attend Sunday worship services and other weekday activities at local meetinghouses.
The primary purpose of temples, however, is for faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ to participate in sacred ceremonies, such as marriages, which unite families forever, and proxy baptisms on behalf of deceased ancestors who did not have the opportunity to be baptized while living.
There are nearly 730,000 Latter-day Saints in more than 1,130 congregations in California. The first Latter-day Saint immigrants arrived in San Francisco in 1846. The Mormon Battalion, a group of Latter-day Saints preparing to fight in the Mexican-American War, arrived in San Diego the following year.
LDS part of early
Manteca history
Sam Brannan arrived in what is now rural south Manteca at the confluence of the Stanislaus and San Joaquin rivers in 1847.
Brannan had headed west under direction of Brigham Young to establish a colony in what was then Alta California. The one-time publisher of the New York Messenger had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints several years earlier. Young was the second president and LDS prophet.
Brannan had a group of 200 men join him on his trip around Cape Horn sailing from New York to Yerba Buena that would later be rechristened San Francisco.
Brannan had sent a company of 20 men with supplies up the San Joaquin River in a bid to establish a settlement in the interior. They landed near what is today Mossdale Crossing where the massive 1.2 million square-foot Mayfair distribution center is located just down Interstate 5 from the Tesla manufacturing plant.
They moved down river and found what they hoped would be the proverbial promised land for a new LDS settlement just up from the confluence of the San Joaquin and Stanislaus rivers amid thick riparian oaks woodland harboring Tule elk, California grizzly bears, geese and a plethora of wild animals from rabbits to foxes.
Near present-day Caswell State Park is where the 20 men built a central house, cleared and plowed fields, and planted wheat and potatoes in a place they called New Hope.
Mother Nature did not cooperate. Heavy January rains in 1847 caused the rivers to burst their banks creating a flow of water that reached three miles in width at one point. Brannan was summoned from San Francisco 176 years ago. After a church meeting to hear grievances due to the flood and how the company was being led, Brannan soothed dissension by setting aside the house and farm to be used by the 12 LDS Apostles.
The undoing of the colony ended up being a subsequent potato crop where the centers were all rotten due to the excessive water.
