Wednesday, September 28, 2011

New Stake in Peru; Stakes Discontinued in Arizona and Utah

Peru

A new stake was created in Lima, Peru two Sundays ago.  The Lima Perú Chaclacayo Stake was organized from the Lima Perú Chosica Stake and includes the following five wards and one branch: The Chaclacayo, Huaycan, Los Lomas, Moron, and Nana Wards and the Pariachi Branch.  There are now 97 stakes and 22 districts in the LDS Church in Peru.

Arizona

Previously comprising six wards, the Mesa Arizona Pueblo Stake was recently discontinued and consolidated with the neighboring Mesa Arizona South Stake.  The Mesa Arizona Pueblo Stake becomes the first LDS stake in the Mesa area to be discontinued.  As is the case in many older areas of the largest cities in the Western United States, the decreasing number of active Latter-day Saints in these communities appears to be the primary influence on the closure of the Mesa Arizona Pueblo Stake.  Total LDS membership has likely declined for several years prompting the consolidation of the stake with the Mesa Arizona South Stake.

Utah

Previously comprising five wards and one branch, the West Valley Utah Stake was recently discontinued and consolidated with the neighboring Salt Lake Granger Stake.  The West Valley Utah Stake became the fourth stake in Utah to be discontinued this year and the third in the Salt Lake City area.  Causes for the discontinuance of the stake appear similar if not identical to the closure of the Mesa Arizona Pueblo Stake namely declining numbers of active members as members move out of the former stake's boundaries and an already small number of congregations within the small geographic area of the stake.  The West Valley Utah Stake appeared to have a geographic area of less than four square miles.

2 comments:

Bob said...

The West Valley Stake (and I assume the other SLArea stakes discontinues) was an already-smallish stake that then became even smaller when the YSA wards were moved out of regular stakes and into their own stakes.

Matt said...

That is exactly what happened; some of these stakes also had regular family wards discontinued such as in Bennion Heights.