Thursday, February 11, 2010
10 New Missions to be Created, 14 to be Discontinued
I do not have the names of all the missions to be created or discontiued, but I have learned that the Ireland Dublin Mission, one of the missions in Chicago, and a mission or two in Australia will be discontinued. Additional new missions to be created include Peru Cuzco and Democratic Republic of Congo Lubumbashi. The mission in St George will stretch all the way to Farmington, New Mexico. I will provide more information once it becomes available. The total number of missions worldwide will fall by four from 344 to 340.
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This is my latest list of missions to be discontinued. So far I have identified at least 11:
Australia Sydney (2 to make 1)
Germany Hamburg
Illinois Chicago (2 to make 1)
Illinois Peoria
Ireland Dublin
Italy Catania
Korea Seoul West
New Jersey Cherry Hill
Ohio Cincinnati
Puerto Rico San Juan (2 to make 1)
Switzerland Zurich
A couple missions may be discontinued in Japan, but I cannot confirm this yet.
Missions to be created:
Democratic Republic of Congo Lubumbashi
Guatemala Retalhueleu
Mexico Mexico City Northwest
Mexico Villahermosa
New Mexico Farmington
Nicaragua Managua North
Peru Cuzco
Peru Lima West
Philippines Ilolio
Utah St George
I checked population and membership statistics for year-end '06 (the latest I have for LDS membership) and it was 49,654 for the 2 NW counties of NM, 2 SW counties of Utah, and 5 SW counties of CO out of 397,914 total population, or 12.5
The new missions all make sense. At first I didn't think so about the Farmington, NM Mission, but the LDS percentage of the population of around 400,000 for the area is 12.5%, so it will work well. The area I included is SW UT (2 counties), NW NM (2 counties), and SW CO (5 counties).
Maps of some of the new boundaries are already up on the Church News website: http://www.ldschurchnews.com/gallery/58775/New-missions-10-announced-in-seven-areas.html
Click on the "view gallery" link to see all the maps:
http://www.ldschurchnews.com/media/photos/2010/41831-m.jpg
BTW, the map of the new Farmington Mission shows the St. George area remaining part of the Provo Mission.
I’d venture to say the only part of Utah in the new mission is that covered by the stakes in Blanding and Monticello.
Missionaries in the Sydney South mission report a combining of the Sydney North and Sydney South missions. But they say also that the Melbourne West and Melbourne East missions will combine into one.
I served in the Sydney North Mission in 1996-96 and there was usually 200 missionaries in the mission. They report now that there is lucky to be 100 most of the time.
The Japan Hiroshima Mission is closing. The Okayama Stake is being added to the Kobe Mission.
It's all here now: http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/58775/New-missions-10-announced-in-seven-areas.html
A couple things I found interesting about the announcement:
1. two more missions without the standard "state/country city" name: Scotland/Ireland and Alpine German-Speaking, joining the West Indies and Baltic missions. I think that's it, but I wonder if there is a trend toward being more flexible about the name when the country name isn't representative of the boundaries or a city doesn't really make sense.
2. The Farmington mission looks almost identical to the old Arizona Holbrook mission, which was the last vestige of the Southwest Indian mission. I wonder if this represents a renewed effort among the native americans.
One more really surprising thing: according to the church news map, Spanish Fork and Salem will be in the St. George Mission, but Payson and Santaquin will stay in the Provo Mission! And I wonder why St. George didn't pull Mesquite and Logandale from Las Vegas East.
I served in Madrid, Spain and a member friend told me they were cutting 1 mission there as well. There will only be Madrid, Malaga, and Barcelona. Q fuerte tio.
Interesting re-alignment of resources.
13 close (11 in the OP, plus Hiroshima and Melbourne mentioned in the comments).
10 created.
Unless the number of missionaries per mission has increased, it's not a good trend in terms of raw numbers. However, I suspect that it may also be a delayed reaction to the reduction of missionaries from "raising the bar" that occurred from 2003 through 2004.
I don't have the figures handy, but the total number of full-time missionaries seems to have either gone down or remained constant since 2004.
Another trend is: moving away from developed countries to less-developed, or 3rd world, countries.
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