“Site of Temple in Caribbean Announced,” Ensign, Feb. 1994, 75
Site of Temple in Caribbean Announced
The First Presidency has announced the location of the Church’s fifty-fifth temple—Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
The new temple will be in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
The new temple will serve seventy thousand members in the Caribbean—members in the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Lesser Antilles (a chain of islands stretching from Puerto Rico nearly to the coast of South America). There are six missions located within the new temple district boundaries.
The construction of the temple will begin after necessary government approvals and completion of architectural plans.
The temple marks the growth of the Church in the Caribbean, where expansive growth has occurred during the last two decades, though missionaries visited in the mid-1800s. In 1970, expatriate families started holding meetings in Jamaica, the country where missionaries had made brief visits in 1841 and 1853. A branch was formed in 1970, and in 1978 missionaries arrived in the country, which now has approximately three thousand members.
Missionaries have been preaching in Puerto Rico since the mid-1960s, and nineteen thousand members now live in that United States territory. The largest population of Church members is in the Dominican Republic, where the first mission was created in 1981. Currently, forty-five thousand members live in that country. Membership in Haiti has reached the five thousand mark, with the gospel being preached by Haitian missionaries since 1991, when all foreign missionaries were removed.