| If you think of where the earliest still-in-use temples were built, you will have about half the answers (including Hawaii), then include states (and neighboring states) that the pioneers traveled through on their journey westward, and were not massacred, and you will have about 30% more! Independence, Missouri was determined to be the center of the new Zion, and temple building began. It stopped when local skirmishes forced Smith to move his headquarters to Illinois. Not everyone left: local converts, families, and the elderly could not simply pick up and go, so they stayed and kept things low-key. Folks still believe that new Zion will arise here, and the temple foundation begun in 1838 sits waiting to be completed, parts of the plot held by the three groups that developed from Smith's original church. |
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