Putting a Mormon temple in Cody, Wyoming is a PR stunt, just for show.

Lovell, Wyoming has more Mormons than Cody. It is where one should be if any.

Cody gets it because it is a Tourist town. The East entrance to Yellowstone National Park and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West museum.

Big Nellie & Co want the temple building SEEN. Activity in it really doesn't matter as long as it is visible to those driving through. Just like the Washington, DC Temple. Sited for visibility over everything else.

Go in and ruin the place - they don't care as long as people can see their buildings.

Exactly. It's a way to mark their territory, like a dog peeing on everything to let everyone know they are around.
Temples are their "McMormon" golden arches to draw attention.

Mormons want their temples to be seen - from space!

Temples bring in Lots of $$$$$$ for ChurchCo bc wealthy people (ChurchCo's Home Base) desire the prestige of donating. That's a Huge part of the reason they're built.

No. The Huge part of why they're built is so the top dogs can skim $$$$ from intentionally inflated construction costs. It's a way to wash tithing dollars into the pockets of those at the top of the Ponzi scheme.

My ex and I went to the Mt. Timpanogos Temple for our sealing. The whole BIC thing pisses me off... anyway.

The temples are just there to 'dot the earth'. Why not the moon? They gotta be everywhere. All for showing of the cleanliness of the things. Show offs. I am mad at you for ruining my life. Stinking temples.

If that’s the case, then why aren’t they building more wardhouses? If the purpose of construction is grift, then there is plenty more opportunity there. Every single ward should have its own building. That is clearly not what they are doing. They double and triple assign ward buildings whenever possible.

I have yet to see anyone offer a single shred of evidence of intentionally inflated construction costs. Claiming it is obvious that that is what is happening does not actually constitute evidence.

OTOH, I have had the experience of my dad working directly with the SLC church construction people where they were bureaucratic skinflints to the point of being monumental pains in the butt.

I’m not buying the inflated construction cost grift fantasy. They build temples to increase tithing receipts, keep the members in the corral, and as advertising to non-members. That is sufficient reason to explain why they do it. Occam’s Razor and all that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/20/2024 01:39PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Gee. Let's see. Skimming from a 150K wardhouse or skimming from an 70 million dollar temple. Gee, tough choice.

You can't build a 1,400 sq foot town home for 150K anymore. Ward buildings cost way more than that.

And while some temples may cost $70 million or more, the McTemples are nowhere near that expensive. Prefab popup trailers anymore.

You still have provided no evidence they are skimming money off construction. Why would they need to? They already control the checkbook. They have vacation property in Hawaii and New Zealand, among other places. They can travel most anywhere paid for by the church. They have no living expenses. They have a very sweet deal as it is.

They build temples all over because they increase donations from members and act as billboard advertising the presence of the church to nonmembers. That is the reason.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/2025 10:54PM by Brother Of Jerry.

"OTOH, I have had the experience of my dad working directly with the SLC church construction people where they were bureaucratic skinflints to the point of being monumental pains in the butt."

You or your Dad have zero clue as to what "the" church claims on its books. You know real costs. You don't know what claimed costs that the church reports.

OTOH, if the top dogs want to skim money from the church into their own pockets, they don’t need to build anything. They have the ability to simply pay themselves for anything they want. Since church financials are not open to the outside, no one is going to know.

That would be taxable income.

What you claim the leaders are doing would also generate taxable income.

The IRS considers the money obtained from kickbacks, embezzlement, bribes, extortion, or other nefarious activities to be taxable income. Remember Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion, not an of the other stuff he did.

How do you propose that the leaders are skimming money from intentionally inflated construction costs? Having contractors build a temple for $70 million, and then paying them $100 million with the contractors then giving 50% or even 100% back to the Big 15 to distribute among themselves? That would be considered a kickback, and would be taxable.

Announce that the temple cost $100 million, while only actually paying $70 million, and then pocketing the extra $30 million? That accomplishes nothing. If they want that $30 million, all they have to do is give it to themselves without announcing an inflated cost of the temple and then withholding some of that amount. The church audits itself, so who is going to find out?

If any of the leaders were to just skim some money off the top without the approval of the church president/ presiding bishopric, it would be illegal and still taxable.

Are you proposing that the church leadership are not reporting taxable income to the government?

This is starting to sound like the old conspiracy claim that the church is building temples to launder money to reduce their tax burden - which they have no need to do. They are tax exempt.

Look, you seem smart, but you're naive. Laundering money through real estate and construction are some of the oldest tricks in the books. And, no, nobody's doing it without church approval. Read a few things first;

https://www.firstaml.com/resources/5-ways-criminals-launder-money-through-real-estate/

https://www.abrigo.com/blog/uncovering-real-estate-money-laundering/

https://www.fincen.gov/money-laundering-commercial-real-estate-industry

"The" church got caught laundering money and tax evasion in Australia and Canada. They recently got caught and paid fined for having Shell companies to hide and wash money. There are no rouge leaders doing this-it's all from the top down.
Plus, do you think that the companies that are awarded construction contracts aren't involved. Many leaders families have ties to those companies. You think a legit, good contractor has a shot of gaining a bid for a temple? Ha! A legit, non-mormon company can't get a landscaping contract in Utah for a Stake territory. The church makes no deals where they don't get a slice of the deal. They didn't amass 250+ BILLION by being legit.
Conspiratory theorist? How about looking at it from a perspective that you have no clue as to whom the professionals that church employs and how many hours a week they spend on hiding funds.

>"The" church got caught laundering money and tax evasion in Australia and Canada. They recently got caught and paid fined for having Shell companies to hide and wash money. There are no rouge leaders doing this-it's all from the top down.

None of which has anything to do with temple construction. In Canada, they used a loophole to transfer money to BYU. in Australia, they may have violated tax law in the structure of their charitable organization. Neither of those relate to temple construction. As far as the shell companies they were created to keep the church's investments secret, and had nothing to do with temple construction or even tax avoidance (the church is tax exempt).

Your links refer to the real definition of money laundering which is a scheme to take money from a source that cannot legally use the US financial system (narcotic cartels, certain foreign individuals and governments, organized crime, etc), and get it into the US financial system.

Do you have any evidence that the church is taking any money from a prohibited source and using it to fund Temples? Otherwise, why would the church "launder" its own money? It already belongs to them and is tax free.

>Plus, do you think that the companies that are awarded construction contracts aren't involved. Many leaders families have ties to those companies. You think a legit, good contractor has a shot of gaining a bid for a temple? Ha! A legit, non-mormon company can't get a landscaping contract in Utah for a Stake territory. The church makes no deals where they don't get a slice of the deal.

So you are suggesting that the contractors are paying kickbacks to church leaders. Again, why? The argument might make sense if the temple were being built with funding from the government or some outside private entity. But the church is building temples with its own money. That is a very, and unnecessarily convoluted process. It is simpler to just pay their preferred contractor the actual temple cost and just keep the rest. If the GAs want a piece of the money, all they have to do is raise their stipends or find some other thing to compensate thmselves for. No need to create some convoluted scheme to do so.

I may be naive, but you increasingly demonstrate being conspiratorially minded.

plus he has yet to produce a shred of evidence that what he incorrectly refers to as money laundering is actually happening.

Money laundering has an actual legal definition. It is taking money obtained through illegal activity, and making it appear as if it came from legal transactions. Drug money has to be laundered. The church money was legally obtained, and is tax-free to boot. In no sense does it need to be laundered.

I looked up the ward stats for the area. There are three cities/towns in north central WY, Cody near Yellowstone, Powell, medium size (by WY standards!) about 35 miles east of Cody, and Lovell, a small town about 25 miles east of Powell.

Cody is very much a tourist town in the summer, pretty quiet the other 8 months of the year. It has 4 wards.

Powell has a WY state tech college, so there are some LDS students there. It is also centrally located between Lovell and Cody. It has 4 regular wards and a YSA ward.

Lovell is small, but the town is heavily Mormon. It has 5 wards, and the nearby very small towns of Cowley (2 wards) and Byron (1 ward), so the Lovell area has 8 wards.

So yes, from a member convenience perspective it would make more sense to put the temple in Lovell (largest Mo population) or Powell (centrally located, and LDS college students that they want to keep in the church).

Cody is more visible to outsiders. Also, in the coming decades, I suppose it is more likely that Cody will grow and Powell and Lovell will shrink, so maybe that is their rationale for building in Cody.

I visited the temple site last summer. It is on a bluff overlooking the highway on the west side of town as you leave town heading for the east entrance to Yellowstone, so nearly every tourist will see it looming over the town as they leave on their way to Yellowstone. And yeah, I agree that is likely the main reason they put the temple in Cody, and on that bluff in particular, and why they want that big ****ing steeple. Looming over the town is the whole point.

It’s a monument to the arrogance of the Mormon church.

The steeple is the middle finger.

Most folks are not aware the lot was donated to the church, specifically to be a temple lot.

Heartless Wrote:
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> Most folks are not aware the lot was donated to
> the church, specifically to be a temple lot.

----------------

Why would they feel they have to honor that? They don't honor any specifics from those who specify a use for monetary donations.

Plus, the church is known for arm-twisting when it comes to real estate donations.

I do not know the location of the proposed Knoxville TN temple. The Smoky Mtn National Park is the most visited park in the US. Most likely it will be visible to visitors going to the Park, Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge (Dollywood) for the publicity.

The 'Seattle Temple' which is actually in Bellevue, WA., is highly visible from I90 at MP 11; IDK what the daily traffic count is there, but likely in 10s of thousands including interstate truckers & Eastside commuters. I90 is the main road between Spokane & Seattle.

The billings temple is only 105 miles away. No need for a Cody temple.

KSM Wrote:
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> The billings temple is only 105 miles away. No
> need for a Cody temple.


This shows the great heavenly inspiration for the Cody temple. A decent horse will take 2-3 days to get to the Cody temple - if starting from about half way to Billings.

In the hard times to come horses will become a lot more important, right?

Do the Three Nephites know how to shoe a horse?

I was just in Grand Junction, CO, and popped into a Safeway grocery store. When I came out, what was staring me in the face was an LDS temple. It wasn’t in a residential neighborhood. The church opted for high visibility instead of fancy neighborhood. They did exactly the same thing in Winnipeg, where the temple is on a major intersection with commercial businesses on other parts of the intersection. The Grand Junction temple is on a major intersection that leads to the airport and interstate. Lots of traffic

I don’t think the Grand Junction temple is dedicated yet, but it looked like it was all dressed up for the dance.

So get your maps out. There are temples in Monticello, UT (literally a one stoplight town), Grand Junction, CO, and 2 planned for Price, UT and Vernal, UT.

Hardly anyone lives in eastern UT/western CO and they will have 4 temples. Looks like the 4 towns together have about 100,000 people. ETA: Grand Junction is far and away the biggest at 70,000.

Rusty is carpet bombing the world with temples.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2024 11:17PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Interesting. Thanks for the update.

Some of my family were log cabin dwellers near Vernal. The big joke in the family while I was growing up was that the "filling station" there was a horse trough.

Grand Junction was such a quaint area. Now it will be McMormon like everywhere else.

I cannot believe that area needs so many temples. There are so many other things that money could do for those areas. Sigh.

temples built & places for high-vis?

is this something new???


Maybe it will change during 2025, but I'm not expecting anything different as long as Russ is (facially at least) in charge.

I have much more respect for the recently departed former US POTUS than any LDS / ChurrchCo leader; LDS leaders would get more respect, at least from me, by being caretaker at a cemetery.

Godt nytt ar, alle!

High visibility has always been a priority, clear back to the SLC Temple. The Washington DC temple looms over the DC beltway. Many of the temples are in high visibility location. I was recently in Mesa, and their temple, about 100 years old I believe, fronts Main Street in Mesa. The light rail stop near the temple is named "Temple"

Even the Cody WY temple is high on a ridge overlooking the road exiting Cody for Yellowstone NP, very visible. It is mostly coincidence that it is in an expensive neighborhood, and the neighbors are pissed.

I have heard that they do care about the neighborhood the temple is built in because the Oakland Temple is in not the best neighborhood now, so members are reluctant to attend. If any Oaklanders can confirm/refute that, please do.

LDS temples are just glorified 4-sided billboards

It doesn't matter if they are full or empty...

Open or Closed, This block or That, Wrong town or Right town (hint: there's no difference), turned sideways or looking like an accident or mistake, they look the same, either way.

Mormonism is an image. Symbology. Representation.
Not location based, grass-roots natural growth.

Have you ever thought maybe this is orchestrated?
Maybe MORMON wants MORE members in Cody.
Maybe it's aim is to lure members to the area.

There is a definite retirement-age cohort of people who would love to live close to a billboard … er LDS Temple; from my pov, the world would be infinitely better with those folds voluntarily serving with Habitat, the Peace Corp, or something similar.

That's true... but that's too much like "work" because it would be helping the community-at-large with no Mormon recognition.