Last weekend, the Church announced the creation of a new mission headquartered in Wyoming. The Wyoming Mormon Trail Mission was organized on January 16th from a division of the Colorado Fort Collins, Montana Billings, South Dakota Rapid City Missions. Although boundaries for the new mission have not been announced, it appears that the mission will include several stakes in central Wyoming as evidenced by the mission being organized from three different missions. The new mission will have a strong emphasis on Martin's Cove and the Mormon Trail in proselytizing efforts - possibly in a manner similar to the Salt Lake City Temple Square Mission. The mission president for the new mission is the former director of the Mormon Handcart Historic Site. The new mission is the Church's first mission to be headquartered in Wyoming.
Click here to access the LDS Church News article on this development.
27 comments:
That would explain the South Dakota Rapid City Mission becoming the North Dakota Bismarck Mission - it won't have the Casper and Gilette stakes in Wyoming.
Another late CDOL update for a new ward in Brazil:
28 December 2014
Tamandare Ward, Fortaleza Brazil Messejana Stake (7 wards)
January Ward & Branch creations showing in CDOL so far:
4 January 2015 - 13
Araruama Branch, Macae Brazil Stake (5 wards, 2 branches)
Boca Rio Branch (Portuguese), Boynton Beach Florida Stake (5 wards, 1 branch)
Butterfield Canyon 8th Ward, Herriman Utah West Stake (12 wards, 1 branch)
Casper 7th Ward, Casper Wyoming Stake (12 wards, 2 branches)
Casper 9th Ward, Casper Wyoming Stake (12 wards, 2 branches)
Coal Creek 3rd Ward, Enoch Utah West Stake (9 wards, 1 branch)
Dumas Bay Branch (Spanish), Federal Way Washington Stake (9 wards, 3 branches)
Midvale YSA 2nd Ward, Murray Utah YSA Stake (8 wards)
Mount Baldy Ward, Anchorage Alaska Chugach Stake (8 wards, 4 branches)
Pioneer 8th Ward, Herriman Utah West Stake (13 wards, 1 branch)
Rose Canyon 8th Ward, Herriman Utah Rose Canyon Stake (11 wards)
Rose Canyon 9th Ward, Herriman Utah Rose Canyon Stake (11 wards)
Seke Branch, Harare Zimbabwe South Stake (5 wards, 3 branches)
11 January 2015 - 3
Bynum Run Ward, Baltimore Maryland Stake (7 wards, 1 branch)
Englewood Branch (Spanish), Selah Washington Stake (10 wards, 3 branches)
Kôtê Ward, Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire Toit Rouge Stake (12 wards)
There are two possible units involved from South Dakota Rapid City.
Gillette Wyoming Stake, unless this is also going to include regular proselyting areas, this would be the stake that South Dakota Rapid City has within it that is totally within Wyoming. It ends at the South Dakota Border, and is largely the towns along the I-90 corridor.
The other one may be Alliance Nebraska/Chadron Nebraska district, as it is fairly close to Scottsbluff, which is in anotehr mission anyway, although while I was in the area Scottsbluff TV came in with very good clarity if you didn't have cable.
This would also be the first significant realignment of boundaries for that mission in decades. Sometimes a unit would go from one mission to the other typically Worthington Minnesota was one we heard had been moved, but it did not involve typically a new mission.
According to CDOL, Chadron and Alliance are in the Rapid City stake.
Just posted for January 18th
Herriman Utah Pioneer Stake (8 Wards)
Pioneer 1st-8th
Granite Mountain Ward, San Tan Valley Arizona Stake (7 Wards, 1 Branch)
Holladay SA Ward, Salt Lake Winder West Stake (8 Wards, 4 Branches)
Washington 7th Ward, Washington Utah Stake (8 Wards, 1 Branch)
Washington 9th Ward, Ibid.
So it looks like some time ago they discontinued a district, as that is nearly a three-hour or more drive for stake leaders depending on if they are in Rapid city, or as far north as Belle Fourche, which is almost an hour from Rapid City to the northwest (Spearfish being about 11 miles south of that).
There is no major realignment of the missions. According to the article, the Martins Cove Branch is being transferred from the Casper Stake to the new mission, which implies that the Casper Stake is not in the mission. I think this is exactly like Temple Square (and how Nauvoo was for many years). Just the historical sites and the missionaries who serve there, not the general population.
The interesting question is why.
From the article: "The Wyoming Mormon Trail Mission, effective Jan. 16, is being created from a division of the Colorado Fort Collins, Montana Billings and South Dakota Rapid City missions. In the process, the Martin’s Cove Branch is being transferred from the Casper Wyoming Stake to the new mission."
That to me means that the new mission will include at least some of the eight Wyoming stakes from those three missions. Rapid City (becoming Bismarck) has Casper and Gilette; Billings has Cody, Lovell, and Riverton; Fort Collins has Laramie, Cheyenne, and Cheyenne East. The Martin's Cove Branch will be directly under the mission, as opposed to being part of the Casper stake. (CDOL says its branch president lives in Salt Lake.) CDOL doesn't have the new mission listed yet, so we shall see what happens.
I was thinking along the same lines as Brandon. I certainly read the article thinking the new mission only has the 3-site historical site (from Rapid City) and the branch from the Casper Stake (which would also be from Rapid City. The map also seemed to suggest the same. So, I wondered what the mission is getting from Fort Collins and Billings.
With the renaming of the South Dakota Rapid City Mission, I think it has to mean some stakes are transferring to the new mission.
What about the branch transferring to the mission from the stake? I think this simply means that the branch will now report directly to the mission. Stakes don't report to missions. Technically, stake and mission presidents are equals serving on Area Coordinating Councils chaired by Area Seventies. CDOL talks about parent and child relationships (wards, branches, and family history centers are "children" to stakes and stakes are the parents of these. Similarly, stakes and missions are children to areas. Stakes, have assigned missions and assigned temples outside the parent-child relationship.
With a mission president nearby, it would not make sense any more for the members in the branch to obtain temple recommends, etc, from the stake any more. More convenient for them to direct report to the mission. Thus, the branch is becoming a child to the mission. But, that doesn't stop stakes from having a mission assigned to them or that the boundaries of the three missions aren't being realigned to form a fourth mission.
Wouldn't this be a step backward for the Martin's Cove Branch? Because now, it can't become a ward, unless it's under a stake.
Ryan, that is an interesting question.
I don't think so. Whenever the branch becomes on the verge of becoming a ward, it will simply be transferred back to a stake.
We had a branch in our stake become a ward two years ago. While I was happy for the members of the new ward, I wondered what the difference was. I spoke with a member of the stake presidency about the benefits for the stake and ward. The stake president nominates the branch president and the high council approves. The stake president nominates the bishop of a ward and the First Presidency approves. So, I asked, what is the advantage to the stake? He had no answer. But, he did have an answer for the benefit to the ward--the bishop has more authority to delegate functions to counselors than branch presidents have. Temple recommend interviews, for example, can be delegated to counselors in a bishopric, but not to counselors in branch presidencies. Wards also generate high priests because of callings that require that priesthood, while no branch calling requires one being a high priest. I think this means that men are provided increased opportunities to commit to their covenants and that should have an effect in a ward.
I read the transfer note as that the branch is no longer in a stake, but directly under the mission. This does not tell us what stakes are also under the mission.
On the issue of Nauvoo, the current Nauvoo Mission is just the historical sites. However there was a previous Nauvoo Mission that covered the historical sites and lots of other areas. The Ohio Cleveland Mission and the New York Rochester Mission both have large numbers of their missions assigned to the historical sites.
Do we even have a clue what the Martin's Cove Branch is? My guess is that it is a branch made up of the senior missionaries assigned to Martin's Cove, and any people visiting the area on Sunday. I am not even sure there are any non-missionary members in the branch. I could be wrong, but that was always my impression of what it was.
They've discussed it in the Church News before, and I believe it is a unit created to service the missionaries associated with the historic sites. One might have to dig in the archives on their website to see for sure.
January 18th update
Attecoube Ward, Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire Toit Rouge Stake (14 Wards)
Stirling 3rd Ward, Lethbridge Alberta East Stake (9 Wards)
Sante Ward, Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire Toit Rouge Stake (14 Wards)
Lots of activity in the Toit Rouge Stake, this makes 3 wards created in 2 weeks
Reading this http://www.ksl.com/index.php?sid=33203651&nid=148&title=town-once-run-by-polygamist-leader-is-sharply-divided&fm=home_page&s_cid=topstory article made me wonder if the LDS Church has tried doing missionary outreach in Colorado City/Hilldale.
The Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire Toit Rouge Stake looks to be likely to split soon.
Looking over the new mission presidents listed in this week's Church News, I noticed one is from western Germany and will be serving as president of the Berlin Germany Mission. We seem to be getting more non-American mission presidents of late.
Another new mission president is President Mkhabela, previously the first black stake president in South Africa and most recently an Area Seventy. His wife is a member of the Young Women General Board.
In all 3 of the 8 listed new mission presidents this week are from outside the US. I guess this is above what we would expect based on distribution of church membership. However one week is not a good sample, and there are other factors.
On the ethnic diversity of Church leadership the most recent Church News encorages me. In one stake in West Jordan, Oscar Canals, who I think is from Uruguay, is a counselor in the stake presidency. In the Midlothian Stake in Richmond, Virginia the president has the last name of Baltich, which I have not discovered what its ethnic origin is. His wife's maiden name was Ochoa, which is a Spanish last name. The 1st counselor has the last name of Garofaio, which almost sounds Portuguese to me, but I am not sure.
The nationalities of some mission president our complex. The new mission president of the Nigeria Calabar Mission, Mathias Oghenebrorhie Eguko, is a native of Nigeria. He lives in Ghana though where he is manager of training and operations at the MTC there. He is originally from Lagos and his wife from Benin City, Nigeria. It appears they moved to Ghana for his current job. Also last week we learned the new president of the Nagoya Japan Mission is currently a member of the Nagoya Japan East Stake. There seems to be a growing trend of not only non-American mission presidents, but mission presidents called from within their mission. Although to make things more complex, President and Sister Ishii don't actually reside in Nagoya right now, since they are serving as missionaries in Fukuoka. Last week 5 of the 8 were from outside the US, so the two-week average is 50% of mission presidents from outside the US.
The background of the mission presidents is a fascinating way of tracking the growth of the faith. My wife who served in Spain in the mid 90s had a native Spanish mission president. Spain has done okay as European growth area despite contraction of number of missions and the terrible employment numbers. They have a successful MTC and temple complex from all accounts, and the stake creation there is better than many countries in the 21st century.
Viva Espana!
That's interesting about President and Sister Mkhabela. When they first called the international YW board, I wondered if they were targeting certain regions or if they just considered a worldwide pool now. It'll be interesting to see if her replacement on the board is from South Africa (or even Africa) as well. Of course, I think it would be beneficial for Africa to be represented, but it'll be interesting to see who is called to replace her.
There is the possibility that, given the way the YW Board operates, Sister Mkhabela may even be able to remain on the board.
Unit report 25 Jan 2015
Darkoman Ward, Accra Ghana Kaneshie Stake (7 Wards)
Timpview 7th Branch, (9 Wards, 2 Branches)
Washington Fields 15th Ward, St George Utah Washington Fields Stake(12 Wards, 1 Group)
Yellowhead Ward, Edmonton Alberta North Stake (10 Wards, 3 Branches)
There was a piece on the lds.org site about how they held a board meeting, at 6am local time in Salt Lake, so that everyone could be there via Ingternet connection.
They then proceeded to transact the business of the board at that time.
I think Sister Mkhabela may need to be replaced on the YW General Board for two reasons:
1. Wives of Mission Presidents have a more than full time responsibility with the mission.
2. YW General Board members do more than attend board meetings.
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