LDS Church

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also called the LDS Church or the Mormon Church, is a christian primitive church and considers itself a Jesus Christ church. The headquarter is in Salt Lake City but there are congregations and temples worldwide. There are over 80,000 missionaries worldwide and has a membership of over 15 million people. The National Council of Churches ranked them as the fourth largest Christian religion in the United States.

The worldwide members of this this church are about 14.7 million people; divided in the following way: 

-Members living in the U.S. and Canada are 46%

-In Latin America 38%

-In the rest of the world 16%

-Only 8.3 million members live outside of the united states.

   Countries and territories with at least one LDS temple

   Countries and territories with no LDS temple, but with 

   organized congregations and missionaries

   Countries and territories with no official LDS presence

“The history of the LDS Church is typically divided into three broad time periods: the early history during the lifetime of Joseph Smith, which is in common with all Latter Day Saint movement churches; a pioneer era under the leadership of Brigham Young and his 19th-century successors; and a modern era beginning around the turn of the 20th century as Utah achieved statehood.”

The rituals performed in the Mormons temple are called “ordinances” and the main ones are:

    - Baptism for the dead
    - Endowment for the dead and the living
    - Sealings* for the dead and the living
    - Sealing of husband and wife (marriage)
    - Sealing of children to parents
    - Second Anointing or Second Endowment

All of this rituals are performed in the temples owned by the church. “One of the most visible characteristics of the Mormon church (officially "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", also called the "LDS Church") is its temples. These imposing structures, situated on beautifully landscaped sites, attract attention; they are often local landmarks. As late as the 1950's there was scarcely a handful of such temples in existence, four of them in Utah, and one each in Hawaii, Alberta, Arizona and Idaho. (The first Mormon temple to be built, in the 1830s, is still standing in Kirtland, Ohio, but is no longer owned by the church, and was not designed or used for the same rituals as the later temples.) Since the 1960's, however, the church has built an imposing temple in most of the major cities of the world, and there are now over one hundred worldwide.”

The Salt Lake Temple,which took 40

 years to build, is one of the 

most iconic images of the church.

*“Mormons believe that the family relationships - between husband   and wife and between parent and child - can be made eternal by the authority of the Mormon priesthood. The ceremonies in which this is done are called sealings.” 

Thomas S. Monson, President of the

 LDS Church since 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints

http://home.teleport.com/~packham/temples.htm#ENDOWMENT