Traveling Temple Goer

I first visited the San Diego, California temple in June of 2022. It was the second temple I ever visited. I got the opportunity to do an endowment session with a group of staff members for the FSY camp I was working at while in San Diego. I’ve only ever been that one time, but it still stands as one of the most impactful temple visits I’ve ever had.

My Life When…

When I visited the San Diego temple for the first and only time during my time working for FSY, it was by all accounts an entirely new chapter for me. I was experiencing a life unlike the 21 years I’d lived leading up to it and suddenly I was at a temple with a group of about twenty other people I had met in the airport like three days earlier.

While the experience of both FSY in San Diego and this temple trip could definitely be categorized as overwhelming experiences, I look back on both of them fondly.

This was my first time ever in California, and it was also my first time on the West Coast. Fresh off of my new experiences in Utah, I was venturing even further out of the comfort zone of my home of Delaware. However, the weather was amazing, the temple was gorgeous, and I made some really good friends during my three weeks in San Diego.

History of the Temple

The San Diego, California Temple was first dedicated on April 25, 1993. The San Diego Temple was the third to be completed in California. At the time California was coming to the end of a two decade long stretch of very rapid membership growth, and a third temple to serve Southern California would help provide more capacity for Californian members to attend the temple.

This temple also added more opportunity for missionaries and their converts to attend the temple, as at the time California had more missions than any other US state.

The temple was officially dedicated on April 25th, 1993, but construction began almost 5 years earlier in 1988 when the groundbreaking for what would become the San Diego Temple happened on February 27th, 1988.

President Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated the San Diego Temple following an open house that ran from February 20th until April 3rd. President Hinckley would be called as President of the LDS Church just under 2 years after dedicating the San Diego Temple, and he would go on to have a legacy of building temples and increasing access for members across the globe.

The temple was first announced the week prior to the April 1984 General Conference. It was announced alongside four other new temples to be built.

This temple came as a great gift to the Saints of California because at the time of it’s dedication there were approximately 730,000 members of the LDS Church in California, but they only had two temples in the entire state. Both of these temple were also already decades old at that point, as Oakland had been dedicated in 1964 and Los Angeles in 1956.

The San Diego Temple gave a breath of fresh air to the faithful members in California and sparked an great increase in temple presence in California, as the state is now home to 12 temples (including the 3 that have been announced, but construction has not yet begun on.)

The San Diego Temple is also well known for its design. Often compared to a castle-like appearance, I can say after having been outside and inside this temple it really is a marvel to look at. One of the most impressive parts of its design is the indoor atrium with a flower garden.

Since the First Time…

Since the first time I went to the San Diego Temple I have; finished my FSY summer, moved to Utah full time, switched jobs twice, gotten in to a bachelors program, and have started this blog. If you think that’s a lot, trust me-that’s only scratching the surface of the last two and a half years of my life.

The San Diego Temple is now closed, and has been undergoing reconstruction since July of 2023. While I very much hope to one day find myself back in San Diego and able to attend the temple again once it’s reopened, I feel slightly melancholic about the potential of going back for a second time. The temple will likely look very different, and I worry I may miss the old temple I got to experience in the summer of 2022.

But, I’ve also changed a lot. San Diego was crazily enough, only the second ever temple I had been in! Now, as of writing this post in March 2025, I’ve been in twenty temples. With that experience I’ve come to enjoy and appreciate the history of each, but also embrace the difference between temples and the difference that time makes on old temples. The Provo Temple was my home temple when I moved to Utah, and is similarly closed for reconstruction now. There is a level of grief in knowing it’ll never be the same experience, but I feel excitement over the thought of making new memories in a freshly reconstructed temple.

And who knows, maybe, like that first time with my FSY staff group in 2022-I’ll get to crash a wedding when I go back to San Diego.

We all exist in the wedding photos of a couple we’ll probably never see again, and there’s a bit of comfort in that too. I’ve stayed friends with some of the people in that group, and even saw one of them come home from his mission in 2024.

That’s one thing I personally love about the temple. Much like the analogy of fleeting life changes in comparison to the continuity of a lake to a duck, there are things in life that are fleeting, but the temple is always a home we can go back to. Even if it’s been reconstructed since the last time we visited.

The Future of CA

As of March 2025 when I’m writing this post, California now has 6 open and operational temples. Fresno and San Diego are under reconstruction, and 4 additional temples have been announced and are in various stages of progression towards opening.

The most recent addition to California’s operational temples was Feather River, which was dedicated in October of 2023.

As much as I love seeing more and more temples being built in Utah, I am eagerly waiting to see California get it’s hey day with temple construction. I hope to see many more California temples be opened in my lifetime.

California is a beautiful and diverse state with over 700,000 members of the Church. I hope that they get the opportunity to have so many more beautiful temples to worship and make memories in.