The Houston Texas South Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been renamed the Fort Bend Texas Temple by the First Presidency.
This updated name — announced Feb. 23 on ChurchofJesusChrist.org — draws from the structure’s future residence in Fort Bend County. It’s also in the name of the road directly south of the temple site.
As previously released, this sacred edifice is projected as a single-story building of approximately 46,000 square feet.
It will stand on a 15.7-acre site along Fort Bend Parkway, just north of Sienna Parkway in Missouri City, southeast Texas. A meetinghouse and accompanying ancillary building are also planned for the grounds.
On April 7, 2024, President Russell M. Nelson announced this house of the Lord for southern Houston. It was one of 15 locations he identified in the April 2024 general conference.
Last Saturday, Feb. 21, ground was broken for the Fairview Texas Temple northeast of Dallas. Elder Jonathan S. Schmitt — a General Authority Seventy and first counselor in the Church’s United States Southwest Area presidency — presided over the ceremony and offered the dedicatory prayer on the site and construction process.
“We pray this will be a place where all Thy children may come to feel a unique outpouring of Thy divine presence, power and peace,” he prayed.
About the Church in Texas
The Southern U.S. state of Texas is home to 10 houses of the Lord operating, under construction and in planning stages.
Five are operating: the Dallas (dedicated in 1984), Houston (2000), Lubbock (2002), San Antonio (2005) and McAllen (2023) temples.
Three are in their construction phase: the Fort Worth (ground broken in October 2023), Austin (August 2024) and Fairview (February 2026) temples.
The Fort Bend temple, then, is one of two Texas temples in planning stages. The second was announced in October 2024 for El Paso.
In 1845, Elder Lyman Wight — then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles — led a company of Latter-day Saints to central Texas. Missionaries preached in the state in the 1850s, until missionary work came to a halt before the Civil War, and nearly 1,000 converts immigrated to Utah from Texas.
Church membership in Texas has grown rapidly in recent decades — from 132,000 Latter-day Saints in 1985 to just over 210,000 in 2000.
Today, Texas is home to more than 390,000 Latter-day Saints in over 750 wards and branches.