On Friday, October 13, 2017, Pres. Henry B. Eyring
dedicated two new six story buildings known as "T3" and "T4" at the Provo MTC. These magnificent structures, the finest the Missionary Department has ever built, have been carefully designed to help missionaries train, study, and meditate in beautiful, light, airy, peaceful, uplifting surroundings. The architecture and furnishings in these new buildings are as attractive as you are likely to see in any LDS temple. Among the most impressive interior features are "disciple spaces" featuring life-size, back-lit, photo-realistic murals that depict outstanding missionaries from history. Multiple copies of this particular mural showing the four sons of Mosiah about to enter a Lamanite city are on display throughout the buildings. As with all images on this blog, click to enlarge.
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Stunning MTC Mural of the Four Sons of Mosiah
Photograph by LDS Church News |
The scene portrays the land of Nephi with stepped pyramids, in a tropical or sub-tropical setting with palm trees, beside a lake, surrounded by spectacular, densely-forested mountains.
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Another Copy of Back-lit Photo Mural Depicting the Land of Nephi
Photograph by LDS Church News |
Zooming in shows a scene very much like the ancient valley of Guatemala where we (and many others) think the city of Nephi was located.
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Representation of the Land of Nephi Set in Mesoamerica
Photograph by John W. Welch |
Tropical Kaminaljuyu (KJ), our candidate for the city of Nephi, was built on Lake Miraflores and is surrounded by imposing, densely-forested volcanoes. See the article "
Kaminaljuyu" for dozens of correspondences between KJ and the Book of Mormon text. These parallels are convincing enough that KJ is on our list of top archaeological evidences. See the article "
Top 10 Archaeological Evidences for the Book of Mormon."
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Scene Similar to Kaminaljuyu on Display in Provo MTC Mural
Photograph by John W. Welch |
All nine contemporary Mesoamerican correlations of which I am aware (Allen & Allen, Hauck & Andersen, Magleby & Tovar, Mask, Norman, Roylance & Terry, Saberon & Wright, Sorenson, Turner) place the city of Nephi within about 80 air kilometers of Kaminaljuyu in the Guatemalan highlands.
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| Proposed Locations for the City of Nephi |
It is gratifying to know that hundreds of thousands of missionaries entering the field in coming years will leave the MTC with a striking mental image derived from the best current LDS scholarship on Book of Mormon lands.
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Missionaries Studying in New Provo MTC
Photograph by LDS Church News |
Kudos to the LDS Missionary Department.
