There are currently over one hundred and twenty LDS operating temples throughout the world. Additional temples are in the planning stage. Going to the temple is where one receives his/her own endowment and for marriage a sealing. After a member has received the endowment he/she can then do ordinance work for and in behalf of the dead. Redeeming the dead is an important belief of the church. Properly cleared names of deceased persons are sent to the world wide temples and church members or family members can go through the various ordinances for them. At the present time it is believed that the work for the dead should continue even if there is duplication of deceased persons receiving the endowment or sealing many times. The temple work for the dead will be straighten out during the Millennium.

Note: There are currently over 2,500 church geographical areas/units called stakes.

President Gordon B. Hinckley, fifteenth church president, has said:

If temple ordinances are an essential part of the restored gospel, and I testify that they are, then we must provide the means by which they can be accomplished. All of our vast family history endeavor is directed to temple work. There is no other purpose for it. The temple ordinances become the crowning blessings the Church has to offer.

(Remarks made on 5 April 1998 and published in Ensign 28 [May 1998]:88)

Dennis B. Neuenschwander, member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, in a conference address given on 4 April 1999 said:

Participation in temple ordinances is, after all, at the center of our gospel experience. . . . A more recent Church study reveals that early involvement in finding and preparing family names for the temple and, where possible, participating in vicarious baptisms for them are major factors in the retention of new members.

(Remarks made on 4 April 1999 and published in Ensign 29 [May 1999]:84)

Newspaper article may not be 100% accurate.

Salt Lake Tribune, 1 May 1999, p. C2:

As president of the 10.4 million-member church since 1995, [Gordon B.] Hinckley has worked to double the number of temples where Mormons in good standing perform sacred ordinances considered essential to the faith's concept of eternal progression.

Indeed, Hinckley's innovation to build smaller-scale temples in more places means most Mormons won't have to travel daunting distances to a temple. . . .

"Every temple that this church has built has, in effect, stood as a monument to our belief in the immortality of the human soul, that this phase of mortal life through which we pass is but one . . . part of a continuous upward climb, so to speak. And that as certain as there's life here, there will be life there," he said.

The temple, Hinckley said, serves as a bridge between mortality and immortality. As envisioned by church founder Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, temple rituals would embrace "the ancient order of things for the first time in these last days."