BOISE — Now an elder in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Pocatello native K. Brett Nattress fondly recalls his childhood return visits to the Idaho Falls LDS Temple with family.

    “If we came back from California, or wherever we came from, when we would see that temple, it meant, oh, we’re home,” said Nattress, noting that his family lived in California, Utah, and Idaho when he was growing up. “So, for me, it meant coming home.”

    Still, at a recent media tour of the newly renovated Boise Mormon Temple, Nattress — now 47 and a Fruitland resident — evenly applied complimentary adjectives to the four LDS temples in Idaho.

    “They’re all beautiful,” Nattress said with a quiet laugh. “They’re all beautiful. That’s like choosing which of your children are the most beautiful. They’re all beautiful.”

    Nattress and his wife, Shawna, who in 1990 moved to the Boise area, now have seven children.

    “Our children think of the Boise temple as their temple,” Nattress said. “And, it’s a wonderful thing to see how they see it as a wonderful place to go.”

    Nattress also said: “Idaho Falls — that’s a beautiful, beautiful temple, that’s served … its purpose well. This (Boise temple) is a beautiful temple, too. And, we’re just really grateful we have it.”

    The Mormon Church also has Idaho temples in Twin Falls and Rexburg. Both were dedicated in 2008.

    Public tours of the Boise LDS Temple have been scheduled to run daily except Sundays through Nov. 10.

    Updates to the 35,868-square-foot Boise temple on South Cole Road next to Interstate 84 include a new white granite exterior, a new “gold-leafed” statue of the Mormon angel Moroni that was installed on the 112-foot east tower in February and things such as extensive woodworking changes inside the opulent building.

    Those many extensive changes, according to Temple Department Executive Director William R. Walker, include in the baptistery all-new brass work, woodwork, art glass and murals.

    Walker said the multi-million-dollar Boise temple renovation made it “a great day for Mormons in this part of Idaho.”

    Kim Farah, a representative of LDS public affairs in Salt Lake City, Utah, noted that cameras aren’t allowed in the temple. “This is a very reverent, sacred space for us,” she explained.

    LDS President Thomas S. Monson is scheduled to travel to Boise for the Nov. 18 three-session Temple dedication.

    Mormon Church officials expect that 200,000 people will tour the updated Boise Temple, Walker said, noting that LDS church membership in the Treasure Valley is about 100,000; in Idaho it’s estimated at 420,000.

    Earlier-announced plans by the church for a new LDS Temple at Meridian “have not been finalized,” Walker said, adding that it may be three to four years before that second Treasure Valley temple “is completed.”

    “So, this is a wonderful opportunity for people to come and .… see our temple,” Walker said.

    Superlatives like those expressed by Walker and Nattress flowed for much of the early Wednesday afternoon in promotions of the building improvements including the all-new “Temple White” granite stone exterior.

    With the Boise Temple renovation, children now have their own special entrance to the baptismal area, a key feature in Nattress’ estimation.

    “That’s probably a very significant fact for me — the fact that they’ve renovated it and made it even more accessible to the young people,” Nattress said.

    The Idaho Falls Mormon Temple, the eighth of 140 exclusive LDS temples worldwide, was dedicated Sept. 23, 1945. Construction on the Boise Temple, the 27th LDS temple, was completed in April 1984 — and was dedicated the next month. Worldwide, LDS chapels, which are regularly open on Sundays to the general public — number about 20,000.

    The tour events of this fall mark the second time Mormons have opened the doors of the Boise temple to non-LDS members of the general public. The first general public viewing availability was at the time of the original Boise temple opening in 1984.

    There had been talk in the late 1930s among Mormon officials of constructing a temple in Boise during that era. But according to a church history, it was decided that since “there were many more Church members concentrated in southeastern Idaho at that time,” Idaho Falls was selected as the original Idaho Mormon temple site.

    Nattress said a basic uniformity exists among LDS temples.

    “It’s very consistent, whether I attend the Idaho Falls temple, or the Boise Temple … or if I went to New York to the Palmyra Temple — the experience would be very similar. There really is a consistency. The teachings are the same, and the commitment that we have … is all the same.”