- There are 64,373 missionaries currently serving (previous high was 61,638 in 2002)
- An average of 1,400 missionary applications have been received a week since January 1st, 2013 (immediately following the announcement of reduced minimum ages for missionary service in October 2012 as many as 4,000 applications were received a week).
- Since January 1st, 57% of mission calls are for elders, 36% are for sisters, and 7% are for senior couples.
- Facilities nearby the Provo MTC are going to be utilized for accommodating the influx in missionaries within the coming months.
The Church may call as many as 70,000 missionaries in 2013 if it continues to perpetuate the average of 1,400 missionary applications per week for the entire year. This may result in the Church surpassing 100,000 missionaries serving by late 2013 or early 2014 and necessitate the organization of dozens of additional missions for 2014.
6 comments:
There's probably still the "surge" going on-- 19-year old boys who decided to finish a year of college are getting calls, but our first crop of High School Graduates are too.
On the other hand, perhaps the High School wave is just starting, so there could be 2000 or more calls a week for the next 2 months
A big part of the surge is in sisters. Not only are 21-year-olds (and older) still going out, but there are a lot who graduated from high school last summer. I think we are going to see a lot more sisters going on missions for the long term. This is more than just three "classes" of sisters going out in one year. Because of this change, perhaps twice as many sisters will go on missions than might otherwise have done so. They don't have to wait until 21. The stigma of sisters going on missions because they can't get married may finally be behind us.
As for the elders, we will probably have about 1.5 "classes" leaving per year for 2 years because many still stayed with original plans. Because they can plan a mission right out of high school, my guess is more will go anyway even in the long run because some in the past would leave their homes, go to college or get jobs, and decide for whatever reasons not to go. But, if the decision making occurs during their senior year of high school when they are still home, I think more will go. While most of them will be better off serving a mission, the numbers that go for "social" reasons will probably increase. And because more sisters are going, I think that will have an impact on the young men to want to go as well. 100,000 in the field at a time--probably for a year or so. But, I think it will settle down to around 70,000 or so, maybe more.
The Church has put out a video on the growth of the Church in Asia.
http://www.lds.org/prophets-and-apostles/a-great-work-in-asia?lang=eng
We may see an even larger surge as the school year comes to a close and for the first time 18-year-olds who have just graduated high school can go on missions. Although I did have a friend who got his mission call while in high school, but that was due to his turning 19 in July just after graduating.
Matt, I think you need to back off of your optimism here. 100,000 by the end of 2013? Really? I think that is a real stretch.
Please put some real numbers behind that projection. It is overly optimistic -- it assumes that there is an inexhaustible supply of potential missionaries.
OK, I ran numbers, worked hard on this, estimated how many Elders & Sisters will be in each year's cohort, and determined that the number of missionaries will top out at 110,000 at the end of 2014. If my numbers are good, we could hit 100,000 by the end of this year.
But by the end of 2015 the number of missionaries will be back down to 80,000.
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