Friday, January 4, 2008

Potential Mission Districts

Predicting when and where the Church organizes new mission districts can be very difficult. Sometimes districts mature into stakes, othertimes they are absorbed into surrounding stakes, dissolved or are split into two or more districts. These predictions are not taking into account previously existing, large, spread out districts becoming stakes.
Usually the growth of the Church in an area of the world begins with a few members moving to a city or region of a country where there are no members of the Church. They fellowship friends and associates and over time a group or a mission branch is organized. After several branches have been organized close to each other, a mission district can be organized. Finally, once the branches have grown to a considerable number (both the number of branches and the number of members within the branches) a stake can be established. Stakes generally have between 2,000 and 5,000 members; districts can have anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand members.
Below is a list of probable districts to be organized. The number of potential branches within the district is the number to the right of the name of the possible district.

Bintulu Malaysia 5
Bandung Indonesia 3-4
Coimbatore India 4
Rajahmundry India 5
Vanadzor Armenia 3
Krasnodar Russia 6
Vladivostok Russia 4
Irkutsk Russia 4
Nizhniy Novgorod Russia 3
L'viv Ukraine 4
Bratislava Slovakia 4
Fier Albania 4
Shumen Bulgaria 5
Arad Romania 5
Nyiregyhaza Hungary 4
Athens Greece 3
Addis Ababa Ethiopia 3
Eldoret Kenya 3-5
Marromeu Mozambique 3
Yaounde Cameroon 3
Ogwashi-Uku Nigeria 6
Nyenasi Ghana 3
Yamoussoukro Ivory Coast 3
Chalatenango El Salvador 4
Jacmel Haiti 3
Lakatoro Vanuatu 4
Tafea Vanuatu 3
Aoba Vanuatu 3

There are many cities in the world, especially in countries where the Church is very young, where there are two branches in the city. These cities will probably have districts organized in them within the next couple years and here's a list of some examples

Pointe Noire Republic of the Congo
Lome Togo
Chennai India
Zaporizhzhya Ukraine

1 comment:

Eduardo said...

A blast from the past! I wonder if there could be some follow up as to how these projections turned out.

Would it be possible to make a graph of what units were created per country, and the growth rates stacked up to each other per region, year to year?

Is that too much work? It would be very informative. That reminds me: I have been out of the country a lot...Do I have the 2012 Church Almanac?

Maybe I do at home. I will be there in a couple of weeks, in sha' allah.