Comments on: Random thoughts on conference so far

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:29:22 +0000

I don’t know what church membership in Hokkaido is, but I can give some data about travel to the nearest temple in Tokyo. The trip from Sapporo to Tokyo by train takes about 10 hours, and the one-way fare is 22,680 yen, about $500 round trip. One-way airfare from Sapporo into Haneda Airport (the old Tokyo airport on the harbor near Yokohama) is over 33,000 yen.

I suspect that there may be excursion fares available at lower prices, and there are buses that cost about half what the train costs (but you’d have to take the train or a bus and a ferry to get onto Honshu–the only tunnel crossing the strait is for trains. (And that tunnel is the deepest undersea tunnel in the world, and the longest–although the undersea portion of the Channel Tunnel is longer.)

Anyway, the travel times and costs seem likely to have been significant contributors to the decision to build a temple in Sapporo.

By: J Daniels

J Daniels — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:57:18 +0000

I currently live in the Ft. Lauderdale Stake. As you can imagine members here are very excited about the prospect of a temple here… there were literally cheers at the stake center when the announcement was made.

Currently our Stake sends 2 temple buses every month (~50 people per bus)…besides other individuals that drive up on their own. Our stake President began this bus schedule several years ago and I believe that other stakes here in South East FL do the same. This is an all-day event…travel time 6 hours (3 hours each way), 2 session times (4+ hours) + other time. The buses leave at 4:30 or 5:30 am and get back around 5 or 6 pm. While this is certainly not bad compared to many members in the world, we are over the 200 mi Pres. Monson mentioned in his talk There are also a lot of young families in our stake that simply cannot make such a trip very often. A temple in our stake (or nearby) would allow members that currently go 2x per year to go at least monthly or even weekly.

While a temple in Fort Lauderdale will not run at capacity for some time, it is certainly a start and fills a definite need.

By: Geoff B.

Geoff B. — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:51:36 +0000

Daniel, I’m sure you meant to write “Fort Lauderdale area.” . Anyway, if you’re going to put a temple in South Florida, Fort Lauderdale is definitely the place to put it. The Church is a lot stronger in Broward and Palm Beach counties than in Miami-Dade (per capita). The mission presidency is in Fort Lauderdale. I still think Miami is bigger for cruise ships than Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, and the Miami airport is also bigger than the Lauderdale airport.

I’m sure Fort Lauderdale was chosen for the same reason that Joe Robbie chose to put the Dolphins Stadium near the Broward county/Dade county line: it is a more central location for the South Florida population.

By: Daniel ortner

Daniel ortner — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:17:07 +0000

As someone raised in the Fort Lauderdale temple, I am so thrilled to hear that a temple will be built in the area. One of the big reasons for it might be that international flights from the Bahamas etc are much more likely to fly in fort lauderdale than to Orlando. Also, cruise ships stop with fort lauderdale as a port of call. Having a fort lauderdale temple will allow lots of day trippers and visitors to have a nearby temple. I am confident the temple will bless the area
and help the church to grow.

By: R Biddulph

R Biddulph — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 10:47:31 +0000

Rio de Janeiro’s promotional video in English can be found here:

By: Hunter

Hunter — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 05:12:43 +0000

Well, I’ll just wait till the text is available. Thanks for that.

In the meantime, we will both just have to do our best to catch portions of the talks while chasing after our 4-year-olds . . . (well, 4 in December).

By: Geoff B

Geoff B — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:41:10 +0000

Ben, if everything comes together for the Rio Olympics (meaning if everything gets built on time and under budget, etc, etc), it will be an absolutely spectacular event.

By: Geoff B

Geoff B — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:37:21 +0000

Curt H, good point on Ft. Lauderdale. Hopefully we will be able to keep that temple busy. Book, good comments as always. I would just caution you that there are basically about eight stakes in southern Florida. Perhaps some of the Caribbean branches will also go there. The level of activity until now has not been good compared to other areas of the country. Just to give you an idea, my ward in central Miami had about 450 people on the ward list, and we were lucky if 80 people showed up for sacrament meeting. This was very common in the Miami area. Hopefully this will change, and hopefully more people will come to the temple now that it is closer.

By: Geoff B

Geoff B — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:32:44 +0000

Hunter, I was distracted taking care of my 4-year-old during parts of all of the afternoon talks, but here is how T&S described it:

“Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Twelve, on God’s love and law:

Despite mortal confusion over the relationship between love and law, love does not supercede or render inapplicable law or God’s commandments. Mercy cannot rob justice.
Counsels a balanced response rather than extreme reactions (ignoring it or bringing harsh family disapproval) to “cohabitation” by adult children.”

That sounds like a good summary to me.

By: sister blah 2

sister blah 2 — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:27:59 +0000

Second BrianJ that the best talk of this conference has been Barbara Thompson’s in the RS Broadcast. It was amazing in a bunch of totally different ways.