I have recently created these five maps which show where each mission of the Church is located. If you click on a mission, you will see when it was created as well as which mission(s) it was created from. The different colors indicate when the mission was organized. The exact location of the mission offices is not provided.
1837-1969
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1970-1979
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1980-1989
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1990-1999
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2000-2009
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A mission in the Church tends to have anywhere from 50-200 missionaries proselyting within its boundaries, which serve under the direction of a mission president. The most rapid growth in the number of missions was during the 1970s and the 1990s, when the number of missionaries serving increased dramatically.
Missionaries from most of Europe, the United States, Taiwan, and Russia report that the Church is reducing the number of missionaries called to these areas. The Taiwan Kaohsiung Mission will also be combining with the Taiwan Taichung Mission this summer. I was rather surprised to hear that Taiwan is lowering the number of missionaries serving there considering it is the most productive modernized country in Asia for the Church. I would not be surprised to see a couple missions in the United States combine with other missions considering that roughly a third of the missions of the Church serve only 4.5% of the world's population. Currently the Church is seeing tremendous success in Africa (especially Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and South Africa) as well as areas of Brazil and Mexico to name a few.
I noticed the China Hong Kong Mission (1955) shows Japanese as the principle language. This should be Cantonese. When I was there we had 5 Cantonese speaking Stakes and 4 English speaking units (1 Ward and 3 Branches) but no other languages.
ReplyDeleteJapanese does not indicate what language was spoken in the mission, but rather what mission the China Hong Kong Mission was organized from. Considering the Japanese Mission was later discontinued instead of renamed when missions were renamed in the early 70s, I left the mission's name as just Japanese.
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