Thursday, July 2, 2009

New Stake In Perú; 1,400 Stakes Outside the United States

A new stake was created in Lima, Perú. The Lima Perú La Libertad Stake was created from a division of the Lima Perú Callao and Lima Perú Maranga Stakes and has five wards. The Lima Perú La Libertad Stake becomes the third new stake organized in Perú this year and brings the total number of stakes in the country to 90. There are now 36 stakes just in the Lima metropolitan area. Some stakes which have grown large enough to split in the near future to create new stakes include the Lima Perú Puente Piedra and Lima Perú Canto Grande Stakes.

There are now 1,400 stakes outside of the United States and 1,445 stakes in the United States. During the month of June we have seen the creation of at least 14 new stakes, which is the most new stakes created in one month since the mid-1990s. We have not seen as many new congregations created in the United States this year as we have in years past, so hopefully we will see more congregations created in the latter half of 2009.

3 comments:

Spencer said...

Something you said about more congregations by the end of the year...

I'm just wondering what the stats are on new stakes/congregations before July and after July. I know that several of the new stakes created in Mexico were pushed from mission presidents ending their 3 year tenure and that they had been planned for the split just before they left July 1st...would this be a consistent trend or just something that happened this year?

Matt said...

We usually see the same number of new stakes organized in the first half of the year as we do in the second half of the year. I have been keeping track of whether more or less stakes are created in the first half of the year compared to the second half of the year since 2001. So far I have not noticed any trends, except that the number of stakes created before July 1st is about equal to the number created after July 1st.

As for congregations (wards and branches) I do not know. I would say that new congregations are created at a fairly constant rate, with stronger growth towards the end of the year at least in the United States.

It is true that most of the new stakes recently created in Mexico were in a mission were the mission president finished his assignment this year. Most of these new stakes have been preparing for years to become stakes. The stake in Colima, for example, took many months to get approved because the Area Presidency made sure all the standards put forth to become a stake were met. I would not say that this is a trend that we see every year with mission presidents going home and creating stakes right before their departure.

Mexico has more congregations and members than Brazil, but has fewer stakes and districts than Brazil. We would therefore expect to see an increase in new stakes and districts in Mexico eventually.

Spencer said...

Good to know; thanks!