Groundbreaking Set For Quetzaltenango Guatemala Temple; Districts Dissolved in Spain

Temple Groundbreaking

The groundbreaking for the Quetzaltenango Guatemala Temple will we held on March 14th, 2009. The temple was announced late in 2006 and will be the second in Guatemala. The new temple will likely serve 14 stakes and six districts in the Highlands of Guatemala. The first stake organized in Quetzaltenango was in 1975. Church growth was rapid and sustained as manifested by new stakes and districts created up until 1999. Since then one stake has been dissolved in Mazatenango.

Growth in terms of convert baptisms has picked up recently as missionaries in the Guatemala Quetzaltenango Mission report that the month of February 2009 was the second best month for the number of baptisms in the past five years (172). Currently the Mission President in Quetzaltenango is focusing on turning the districts into stakes in the region.

District Dissolved in Spain

The Badajoz Spain District was recently dissolved. The district was near the border with Portugal in southwestern Spain. It was originally created in 1993 and recently only had two branches. The remaining two branches in Barajoz and Cáceres are now mission branches.

The growth of the Church in Spain has been the strongest in Europe in the past 20 years. Membership has risen from 31,700 in 2000 to 42,900 at the end of 2007. The number of congregations has fallen however during that time from 143 to 133. This has in part been due to the creation of a couple stakes from districts in which sometimes a couple branches are used to create one ward, resulting with fewer congregations in the end. The number of wards between 2000 and 2007 has increased from 40 to 61 and the number of branches have fallen from 103 to 72.