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Cedar City Utah Temple of LDS church opening for public tours

Posted at 10:19 AM, Oct 23, 2017
and last updated 2017-10-23 20:58:15-04

CEDAR CITY, Utah - The Cedar City Utah Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is opening for public tours this week.

Visitors will have several weeks to go inside the temple for a guided tour of the main rooms, including the baptistry, an instruction room, a sealing room, the celestial room and the bride’s room, officials said.

Free tours of the temple start Friday, Oct. 27 and run through Nov. 18, except for the Sundays of Oct. 29 and Nov. 5 and Nov. 12.

Reservations for the complimentary open house tickets are available online here.

The temple will be dedicated Sunday, December 10, in several sessions at 9 a.m., noon and 3 p.m.

Church officials said the dedication will be broadcast to members of the Church at meetinghouses in the temple district.

The three-hour schedule of meetings will be cancelled for that Sunday for those congregations to enable members of the Church to participate and focus on this sacred event.

The temple is nearly 40,000 square feet and sits on 8.51 acres of land. Its construction is somewhat unique – modeling historic pioneer buildings.

“The design team has worked hard. They’ve tried to put together something that would be Pioneer-esque that would show the different features of the pioneers that settled this area here in southern Utah,” Mark Berry said, Cedar City Temple project manager.

Church leaders said they hope visitors will take the opportunity to learn more about the purpose of LDS temples and why they are so important to members.

“Our temples are very sacred to us," Berry said. "They’re opportunities for us to know more of the Savior, to understand the Savior."

The church says about 140,000 tickets for the open house have been reserved so far.