HOMESTEAD, Florida — When her father, a lifelong Mormon, returned to active participation in the church in south Florida in 1981, the closest LDS temple to little Eliza Gomez was in Washington, D.C., more than 1,000 miles away.
Since then, Gomez, like millions of other Mormons, has seen new temples dot up closer and closer to her home, cutting down the time and sacrifice necessary to access the temple blessings, which are revered above all others by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Gomez joined the church in 1984 when she was 11. A year earlier, the church had completed a temple in Atlanta, about 650 miles away. Gomez fondly remembers annual 12-hour bus rides to Atlanta for weekend temple trips with other LDS teenagers from her congregation and others in south Florida.
"We would save up our money, do service projects and fundraisers to raise money," she said. "It was a lot of fun, and for me and the other youth it was a great adventure, but I'm sure for the adults the bus trips were long."
The Atlanta Georgia Temple was the church's 21st.
Then, in 1994, the church opened the Orlando Florida Temple, its 46th, about 215 miles from Gomez.
"We went to the Orlando open house," she said. "It was pouring rain. I said, 'This is where I want to get married.'"
And she did, in 2000.
In May of this year, the church opened the Fort Lauderdale Florida Temple, the church's 143rd and newest, about 30 minutes from Gomez's home. She directed public affairs for the temple open house.
She recalls those long bus trips and the single stake in her south Florida area that now has six stakes in the Fort Lauderdale Temple district, and now rejoices in the church's growth and the proximity of the new temple.
"I'm 41. In just a blink of an eye so much has changed," she said. "It's just staggering. It shows the Lord's work is going forward. It speaks to the hastening of the work. In the face of opposition, there are still miracles every day."
In the late 1970s, just before Gomez joined the church, on average a Mormon lived 450 miles from a temple. That average dropped to 220 miles as LDS temple-building accelerated through the mid-1990s. The biggest surge of temple construction came between 1999 and 2002, when church leaders dedicated 61 temples in four years.
Today, the average distance is about 90 miles, said Brandon Plewe, editor in chief of the book "Mapping Mormonism."
There is a long tradition of LDS Church presidents, apostles and members retelling stories of sacrifices made by members like Gomez to travel to distant temples.
In April 2011, LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson told two such stories: The first was about church members in the heart of the Amazon journeying by boat for four days on that river and then three days by bus to reach the São Paulo Temple, about 2,500 miles away.
The other was about a family in Tahiti that worked four years to save up money for the entire family to travel to New Zealand to be sealed together in a temple. (A sealing is a temple ordinance that joins a man and a woman and their children for eternity.)
Today those long trips are unnecessary because there is a temple in Manaus, Brazil, and another in Papeete, Tahiti.
At the church's most recent general conference, President Monson did not announce any new temples. Instead, he said the church would concentrate its immediate efforts on completing previously announced temples.
Six months later, the church has 14 temples under construction. One, in Phoenix, is nearly complete. Its open house will begin Oct. 10 and the temple will be dedicated in November.
Others are in various stages of construction — Cordoba, Argentina; Payson, Utah; Trujillo, Peru; Rome; Indianapolis; Provo (Utah) City Center; Tijuana, Mexico; Philadelphia; Hartford, Connecticut; Sapporo, Japan; Paris; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Meridian, Idaho.
Two temples — Montreal and Mexico City — are being renovated and could be completed in 2015.
Another 13 temples have been announced. Ground has been broken in Fortaleza, Brazil, but construction has not begun in earnest. Ground has not been broken on the other 12 — Concepción, Chile; Lisbon, Portugal; Urdaneta, Philippines; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Barranquilla, Colombia; Durban, South Africa; Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Star Valley, Wyoming; Tucson, Arizona; Arequipa, Peru; Cedar City, Utah; and Rio de Janeiro.
Having temples closer to home is the only way some members can participate.
"We have so many elderly and sick in our congregations, and their situations were a huge barrier to participation in temple worship," Gomez said of the Fort Lauderdale area. "Now having a temple on our doorstep, it removes that barrier and makes it so much easier for them to do the temple work for their ancestors."
In the church's April general conference, Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said 85 percent of Latter-day Saints live within 200 miles of a temple.
Most of the 14 temples under construction won't make a major impact on that percentage for several reasons, both religious and statistical.
First, bringing temples closer to all members isn't the purpose of every temple announcement. Some areas have high concentrations of members who max out a temple's capacity.
"A lot of these (temples under construction) are not reaching out to new areas much," Plewe said.
Temples in Payson and Provo, for example, serve areas where temples are in heavy use and will operate at or near full capacity once they open.
Second, building a temple in a new, but remote area with a smaller concentration of members can be critically important but mute the statistical impact.
"A lot of the new temples are in places with three or four or five stakes," Plewe said. "The larger statistics mask the great benefits those temples have to 15,000 members."
Gomez, whose temple district has six stakes, sees the impact among the area's teenagers and young adults, who have flocked to the Fort Lauderdale Temple to do baptisms for the dead for ancestors whose genealogy they have done themselves.
"Now that the temple is in our midst, it seems they have caught fire even more," she said. "They're going so much more often. It's so powerful and special. The lense, the focus is off the Fort Lauderdale Temple now, but seeing them be so valiant and diligent is a special honor and brings a sweet spirit that is strengthening our wards and stakes."
Email: twalch@deseretnews.com