Members in Peru report that in two weekends the Church will organized its 100th stake in the country through a division of the Lima Peru La Molina Stake. Currently only three countries have more than 100 stakes: The United States (1,503), Brazil (247), and Mexico (226). One country (Chile) once had more than 100 stakes currently has 74 stakes as a result of the consolidation of over 40 stakes a decade ago due to inactivity and leadership problems. Once the stake is organized there will be 42 stakes in the Lima metropolitan area - the second highest for any metropolitan area outside the United States after Mexico City.
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I was recently listening to an interview with an LDS author about his book. This author said that he was a mission president in Chile (and much earlier a missionary in Chile) when Elder Holland served there. He mentioned that it was a trying time. During the two years Elder Holland was there, he discontinued 50 of the 125 stakes that were there when he started. They called it pruning and felt that pruning was needed for the church in Chile.
I note a 2006 Salt Lake Tribune article by Peggy Fletcher Stake who sites Ted Lyon, Brigham Young University specialist on Latin America, with the following statistics in Chile:
535,000 Members on the LDS Church rolls
200,000 Names in the "Lost Addresses" file
120,000 People who identified themselves as Mormons on the 2002 Chilean census
57,000 Average attendance at sacrament meeting, nationwide
That was Peggy Fletch Stack (not Stake, Freud might say something about such a slip).
Great news, thanks Matt, we need a list of most stakes in metropolitan area outside the United States and United States.
So far this year there have been discontinued seven branches in Peru, hopefully this is reversed, thanks again.
Freud made references to subconscious or unconscious slips of the tongue or brain, but in this case probably not entirely appropriate to this example or forum, for that matter. My Chilean professor Hilda Rojas thought that LDS were more applicable to Carl Jung's way of thinking as a pyschologist or philospher, speaking of 20th century thinkers. I think Jung has more credibility today that Sigmund.
Profesora Rojas was involved with a lot of BYU students when BYU-Provo had a study abroad exchange in Chillan, Chile, for about 5 years. Married to national poet, Gonzalo Rojas, who anchored the program. Neither were LDS but they had an affinity for us Mormones.
The last time I lived in Chile was 2005, after the fusing of the stakes referred to above. Thousands of converts have been baptized in Chile, all the way back to the 1960s, and many newly baptized chilenos barely make it to church again, so to have 1 in 10 remain faithful is about the best to be expected sometimes. The good thing is that there are strong 4th generation members, but the growth there has not been as dynamic or potent as many like me had hoped. Interesting society, there are still good numbers who join but more at the rate of US missions, nothing like the peak of conversions back in the 1980s and 1990s. The last 10 years has seen a slow down but probably a more realistic way for advancing the Church of Jesus Christ as a formidable presence there.
Peru next door, but in many ways far from most of Chile, has done some good grwoing with soon to be 3temples going.
The second Chilean temple in my old missionary sector in Concepcion will hopefully add to the overall steady growth and/or reactivation of many old members, as well as a few new ones.
It is great that Chile has 9 missions and with the recent surge some towns should get missionary exposure that have never really had it before.
This is great news about Peru. With that many stakes, I am wondering if we might see another temple in the Lima area. Although, with the temples in Trujillo and Arequipa not completed, that might be a ways away. Still, Campinas is not all that far from Sao Paulo and it has its own temple.
The non-official LDS temples site tells us the main exterior walls of the Trujillo Temple are done, and apparently no site has yet been announced for the Arequipa Peru Temple. The new president of the South American North West Area is Peruvian, Elder Uceda, although he had lived in the US for a few years when called as a general authority. He had been an area seventy in Peru before he moved to the US.
The new stake will be ''Santa Patricia'' official confirmation.
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