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| | Endowment Houses |
 | | temple ordinances may be administered, outside of the temple itself. |
 | | Before the Nauvoo Temple was completed, the large upper room of Joseph Smith's red-brick store building in Nauvoo, Illinois, was used to confer the first temple ordinances on a few leaders of the Church on May 4, 1842, and then on their wives. |
 | | In the meantime, the upper floor of the Council House, Salt Lake City's first public building, served 2,222 members of the Church as their Endowment house between February 21, 1851, and May 5, 1855. |
| www.lightplanet.com /mormons/basic/temples/endowment_houses_eom.htm (369 words) |
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