May 2, 2025

Ciudad Juarez Mexico Temple

This Friday, I am visiting the Ciudad Juarez Mexico Temple. It will be my third temple visited in Mexico (Tijuana & Merida). My good friend Conal Whetten, from the Washington DC 3rd Ward, is a former temple worker whose family lives in El Paso, Texas, which is just across the border from Ciudad Juarez. He took this photo of us today to send out on the text chat to his former temple workers!

This is a first for my temple trips: I’ve never been announced to the temple workers in advance before!

I left Washington DC at 7 AM this morning and arrived in Denver around 9 AM. An hour later I was on the flight to El Paso. There’s an awful lot of dirt around El Paso because you’re out in the desert! Very brown compared to the greenery of Washington DC!

I took an Uber about 12 miles to the Santa Fe bridge where you can walk across the border. It cost $.50 (To walk across the bridge.) And just like that, I’m in Mexico!

The Uber driver, who took me to the border, had three phones on his dashboard: on the far left is the one for DoorDash, in the middle, is the one for Uber, and on the right is the one for Lyft. Pretty resourceful guy!

History of the Ciudad Juarez Temple

The Ciudad Juarez Temple was announced on my birthday, May 7 of 1998! It was built to serve about 12,000 members of the church in the state of Chihuahua Mexico plus Church members in the El Paso Texas area. The local leaders did the unique thing here: they announced that every man, woman, and child would receive a print of the temple for themselves! That’s a wonderful gesture on their part.

The temple is the 71st temple put into operation and the third one in Mexico. It was dedicated in February 2000 by President Gordon B Hinckley.
I arrived at the Ciudad Juarez Mexico Temple about four hours early. I spent a couple of hours just resting in the waiting area that the security people showed me, then got a brilliant idea. There’s a small half-hallway that has a couple of cribs in it with mattresses! I pulled those out, put them on the floor end-to-end, set my alarm on the phone for 90 minutes and took the most heavenly siesta! God bless these wonderful facilities managers, who lay out these kinds of buildings! I loved my little child’s napping area and made the most of it!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go into the temple and do an endowment session for another relative! 🙏🇲🇽

The endowment session was great. I love doing endowment sessions in Spanish without any headsets for translation. It’s one of the best ways to learn Spanish that I know of. I mentioned Connell Wetten’s name to a number of the workers and they think the world of him. I even met the temple president, who greeted me at the recommend desk.

The flowers around the temple grounds are spectacular.

After the session I walked about five blocks to a recommended taco spot but it was Friday night and it was busy and I was a little nervous about getting back across the border. So I passed on the authentic tacos and went with Taco Bell instead when I got back to the hotel!

I checked into the La Quinta Inn using my Wyndham points, and there was no deposit required! I’m so excited to be here in my king size bed with nowhere that I have to go tomorrow morning.

Crossing back over the Santa Fe bridge into the United States was a fun walk. It cost $.40 to come back across the bridge.

By the way, there are lots of dogs on the streets in Mexico. Many of them run, free up and down the sidewalks!

It was a glorious experience to be here and just goes to show you how small the world is these days.

The people are so friendly! This guy was passing by, and when he saw me taking a photo insisted on jumping in! I was happy to have him do it.

I just finished my Taco Bell meal inside the hotel room and I’m now ready for a long winters nap!