New stake in Brazil
The Church created a new stake in Brazil last weekend in Para State. The Castanhal Brazil Stake was created for the Castanhal Brazil District and includes five wards, all of which were created from the five branches in the former district. Full-time missionaries have reported that the district would soon become a stake for several months. The new stake become Brazil's 234th stake. There are now 49 districts in the country. Four stakes now operate Para state, one of which was created from a district (Santarém ) earlier this year.
A new stake will likely be created in Belem region of Para in the near future as the Belem Brazil Cabanagem Stake now has 11 wards and one branch as two new wards were recently created. Despite recent growth in Para, it remains one of the least reached states by the Church in Brazil as there are dozens of large cities without an LDS presence.
New District in Papua New Guinea
A new district was recently created in Sogere, Papua New Guinea from one branch in the Daru Papua New Guinea District. Four new branches were organized in the new district, bringing the total of branches to five. New branches in the district include the Bimaramio, Miruwo, Oropai, and Sisiami Branches. These branches likely functioned as groups or dependent branches prior to the creation of the district.
The Daru Papua New Guinea District now has six branches.
The creation of this new district is exciting and illustrates the potential for rapid church growth in remote, rural areas through coordination of member-missionary activity. Sogere and other villages with congregations in the new district are small villages not on most maps of Papua New Guinea and are located in the remote Western Province (or Fly Province) on the Indonesian border. Strong local Priesthood leadership appears to have been developed as other regions of Papua New Guinea have clusters of LDS congregations and yet remain outside the boundaries of stakes or districts.
The red shaded area on the map below is where the Sogere District was created.
View Sogere Papua New Guinea District in a larger map
15 comments:
Great news! Rapid Growth in Papua New Guinea and Continued sustained growth in Brazil.
I dont know how fast stakes have grew in Brazil over the past year but it appears in the past few months the number has jumped rapidly.
Growth in Papua New Guinea also seems to be at a higher rate than in previous years. I can never recall congregations and districts jumping that quickly.
A new stake was created in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this sunday.
The Macae Stake was created from the Macae district, and it has 5 wards (Macae, Cabo Frio, Rio das Ostras, Cavaleiros, Aeroporto) and one branch (Conceição de Macabu).
As you said, Belem is due for a split. Cabanagem has 11 wards and a branch, Cidade Nova has 10 wards. A new stake in Icoaraci would split them into 7's nicely.
As for PNG, I wonder why they have not made a district in the Kukipi area, 100mi NW of Port Moresby. There are 5 very close branches, in some very small villages.
And I wonder if they will combine the Gerehu (3 branches) and Nine Mile (5 branches) districts with the Port Moresby Stake (8 wards) to create a second stake.
How is the Church doing in Australia? I read somewhere where the Church was the fastest growing religion in Australia, but there doesn't seem to be any progress (aside from the dissolution of the Brandenburg District). Either the place I read it from is misinformed, or all the other Christian churches are growing very slowly.
Hey Matt, have you seen the new Almanac? What a mess--in one day I found dozens of typos, 5 2009 stakes completely missing and 3 stake closings they missed. And the country histories still haven't been touched since 2004. It was notable for reporting membership for UAE and Senegal for the first time ever, and a few that were missed in the newsroom website.
LOL... Yeah it happens every year with the almanac. Deseret News really needs to put more effort into the almanac besides lightly touching upon some church growth issues. It's like they forget about it until October and then scrambled to put something together at the last minute. The Church News has provided some quality articles about LDS Church growth, but these tend to become less frequent than 10 or 20 years ago.
There are some positive developments. I am fascinated that you said statistics are include in the new almanac on the Church in Senegal and UAE. What are the membership and unit totals they report for Senegal? What countries have they added that have not previously been in the almanac or on the Church News Site?
To Tom:
I'm showing that Brazil stakes have grown by 5 this year so far and all other non-US countries have increased by a net of 5 stakes (one new stake each in Uganda, Cote d'Ivoire, Mexico, Taiwan, Venezuela, and Italy, with an English-speaking stake in Japan having been discontinued).
New US stakes in 2010 so far total 14: 10 in Utah (including 2 YSA stakes), and one each in Texas, Washington, Kentucky, and North Carolina.
I'm also showing 2 new Brazil districts and one discontinued (not counting those converted from districts to stakes).
Overall stake growth is down a lot from last year, but there are many, many stakes ready to be divided and districts ready to become stakes throughout the world.
To Ryan: It's true that membership growth in Australia has been great but that hasn't shown up yet in stake and congregational growth.
For the year the number of stakes is unchanged at 33, and as you pointed out districts have decreased by one to 9. Wards and branches still total 284 but that reflects an increase of 3 wards and a drop of 3 branches, so the number of wards is up 1.5% to date for 2010.
Where do you guys think the winter Temple announcement will be?
2008 - Trujillo
2009 - Payson (announced in Jan 2010)
2010 - ?
I figure it would either be Pocatello, ID or Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Where do you suppose?
I estimate a temple in Rio de Janeiro would serve approximately 24 stakes and 6 districts in Rio de Janeiro, Espirito Santo, and southern Minas Gerais.
A temple in Pocatello would serve approximately 17 stakes in southeast Idaho from the Idaho Falls and Logan temples.
What would you think of the likelihood of these districts being dissolved and combined with a nearby stake?
~ Paterson New Jersey District (3 branches), Caldwell New Jersey Stake (9 wards, 2 branches)
~ Brooklyn New York North District (5 branches), Brooklyn New York Stake (6 wards, 3 branches)
~ Lynbrook New York District (5 branches), Queens New York Stake (7 wards, 4 branches)
@ Ryan: I think your projections for Pocatello and Rio de Janeiro are good ones, and I second them as possible choices for the next temple announcement. Other likely possibilities, in my opinion, include Wyoming and Nicaragua.
My vote is for Puebla or Layton
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