I just received word that the Church has approved the organization of a second stake in India. The new stake will be organized from the Bangalore India District on November 15th. Missionaries report that the Rajahmundry India District has almost reached the minimum criteria to become a stake. With multiple stakes in the country, prospects appear more likely for the Church to announce a temple for India within the foreseeable future as the closest operating temple is located in Hong Kong.
Awesome news.
ReplyDeleteGreat!
ReplyDeleteAlbeit, I think a temple is still at least 5 years away there as they just announced one for Bangkok. Not necessarily close to India but a LOT closer than Hong Kong is.
How close is Delhi to becoming a stake? I would figure they are pretty close; they have seven units.
Hi, new Delhi do have 7 branches but we are still working to match criteria for stake UT would take a little more time as we have huge amount of inactive members.
DeleteHi, new Delhi do have 7 branches but we are still working to match criteria for stake UT would take a little more time as we have huge amount of inactive members.
DeleteGreat news.
ReplyDeleteGreat news! With two stakes in southern India I wonder if it won't be more likely that a temple is announced in southern India than in New Delhi. Of course, there will need to be temples in both locations (and more) in the long term...
ReplyDeleteHi,
DeleteI'm from New Delhi and I've travel around other cities in India and temple most likely to be in Delhi as it's capital and more convenient for people to come to even for southern Indian people, but I will not mind even if it's anywhere in India as long as we get temple.
Too bad the country will not allow more missionary visas. But there does seem to be some critical growth occurring. Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh would all go to an Indian temple, even though most members would be foreign expatriots. India should be pressured to allow more visas; there are millions of Indians throughout the world.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that it's a global benchmark but each of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Cote d'Ivoire were told they would have a temple when thet had seven stakes -- and their temples were announced shortly after the formation of the seventh stake in each of those countries.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI'm so happy about another stake in India 2 year in a row :)
ReplyDeleteand after Rajahamundary hopefully New Delhi would be 4th stake in India as we are looking forward to it and definitely working towards it. I'm so excited about it.
Did you know that the butterfly that was named for Mormons is now a state butterfly in one state of India?
ReplyDeleteTelugu-language broadcast clip on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCB4aj3iihc
Some more footage of this butterfly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUra7jA_koI
The name comes, according to Wikipedia, from the fact that a naturalist who had heard of the Church, when assigning English names to local animal life, observed a male of the species courting three females. This was during hte time when polygamy was being practiced, and he knew of that too, so he called this one the Blue Mormon. It's the second-largest butterfly in India. There are other species of Mormon butterfly, but this is fairly common in southern India, Sri Lanka, and a few nearby places. The other species are found throughout southern Asia.
Hi... This news may not be all that true. This is what the mission president of India Bangalore mission had to say -
ReplyDelete"Today I read several posts announcing that a new stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be created in Bangalore on Nov 15. Unfortunately, as well meaning as these posts are, they are premature. The leadership of the Church has not approved a new stake. There is NO announcement that it will happen on 15 Nov. These posts are based on assumptions. Please wait until there is an official announcement from Church leaders before posting the information. President David Berrett"
Hope this was helpful... :)
Thank you Serah for this information. I obtained this information from two missionaries serving in the India Bangalore Mission. I will keep this post up for now. If it becomes clear that the stake has not been officially approved, then I will remove the post and explain the situation to our readers. I have had previous instances of mission presidents contacting me who have even denied that no new stake or district will be organized, yet one or two months later these units are in fact organized.
ReplyDeleteNew stake in northern Colorado created yesterday. Windsor Colorado Stake created from the Greeley and Loveland stakes. The Windsor stake will include wards in the towns of Johnstown, Windsor and Severance. Everything east of I-25.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough the new stake center will be the Trilby building in Fort Collins across the street from the new Fort Collins temple. However that stake center will house no actual wards from the new Windsor stake. Wards from Loveland stake continue to meet there. I have no clue as to Fort Collins stake however we do have stake conference next week so we will see.
The new building in actual Windsor is housing the Colorado Fort Collins Mission offices.
The temple looks to be done mid next year 2016. Exciting times here :)
I don't mind conjecture and second hand faith promoting rumors. Part of the allure of this blog is the combination of the facts and other peoples' ideas and speculations.
ReplyDeleteLike the first temple on Virginia soil in ... Chesapeake/Richmond/Buena Vista/Roanoke...
Just read that the Fort Collins Temple site was vandalized yesterday. This article wasn't very detailed, and I don't think the temple itself was damaged, but it says mostly that construction equipment was vandalized, including one being driven into a building. There have been several churches "hit" over the summer in the area.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2015/08/24/vandals-damage-latter-day-church-construction-site-fort-collins/32290303/
At stake conference on Sunday, the stake president read a portion of an email from Elder Lansing, the area seventy in Richmond, about a temple in Virginia. Basically, Elder Lansing encouraged more family history efforts as that is apparently the main factor in not having a temple in Virginia.
ReplyDeleteThe Church just discarded the 'Members Guide to Temple and Family History Work' and the accompanying instructor's guide, deleting both from the Church website and Gospel Library app. But this is not a bad thing though.
ReplyDeleteThe material was dated, the videos save for a couple, were all stale as they had old softwware and website screenshots that are no longer in existence having been replaced by Family Tree and also PAF being discontinued.
Elder Bednar introduced 'Find, Take, Teach' in 2011, and it has been formulated from that talk. The Church website now has a large amount of new material for family history under 'Callings', > 'All Callings' > 'Family History'. There are broken links to the old materials, but all the new stuff is there, and it's all on the app under 'Family History' too.
The 'Find our cousins' effort of early 2014 has also led to more temple work. A video is on the Church website from February of last year,
We still have not gotten past the 3 percent of all members doing family history. But there is a huge backlog in endowment work, it takes only a couple weeks for baptisms to be done at the temple for names you want to have them do, but a FamilySearch employee went to the temple in Fukuoka Japan recently and he picked up a card, baptisms were done almost five years ago. He was doing the endowment for the name on the card. Reports are that Utah County has that big of a wait to get family names through where they are left for the temple to do.
So it goes without saying that to get a temple in Virginia, first get more members doing family history and submitting names, and second, more people attending the temple more often than before.
So Utah County has to wait 5 years to do family names? Huh? No comprendi...
ReplyDeleteI put about thirty female names of distant ancestors into the Temple system last year -- everything up to initiatories has been done, much of it in Utah Temples in about a month. I am still waiting for endowments. I have actually reclaimed the sealings to do them with my future wife at some point (it is doubtful that they would ever get done). Still, it is surprising that it would take that long, simply because of the large volume of ordinances performed by regular Temple goers who would likely run out of their own names at some point.
ReplyDeleteIn Temples outside of North America, that makes much more sense. Less members to travel longer distances means less Temple attendance, usually. And that means that during their visits, many probably receive ordinances for their own ancestors.
The catch is that it is not that hard to find more people to do temple work for than you will ever manage if you are willing to submit anyone who is a grandchild of a direct ancestor. Another way to look at it is that you need about 10 or more people doing endownment sessions for one person coming and doing baptisms or initiatories. Actually, sealings are unlikely to be the hold-up, just endowments.
ReplyDeleteI know in my ward we have a few people who have sudmitted enough named for temple work that are in the ward family file, that everyone going from the ward can be kept busy. We have had some success in youth submitting names for temple work, but still have a long way to go.
On the other hand, there are those people who are working to be ready to get their own endowments. Should they submit the names of ancestors now, or wait until they can do the work themselves?
Most wards typically have 3 percent for the percentage of members who have submitted names for temple work in the last year. That stat now prefills as line 9 on the Quarterly Report on LCR.
ReplyDeleteOne of the factors in the Ivory Coast temple announcement was that a couple of the stakes in Abijan were doing better than that. I heard 12 percent for one stake, and although that still seems low, that is still something anyway given the conditions in the area for things like Internet connectivity, etc.
While many countries have had their first temple in their capital, not all have. The United States, Canada and Germany and Brazil are four prime examples. I think Brazil is probably the best model to see why India would see its first temple in Hyderabad or Banglore. That is where the stakes are at present.
ReplyDeleteWell, the Church has decided to stay with the BSA. I do not think I will be able to bring myself to donate to Friends of Scouting after Mr. Gates has shown a willingness to go back on his word and change policies he said he would not. He has also shown a greater willingness to seek corporate support than to stand by principals.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure if posting this image will work. OK, it didn't. Here is a link. http://metrocosm.com/the-global-extremes-of-population-density/ To me this shows that on a wolrd scale the LDS Church has not made much of an impact. The red area has maybe 5 branches if that. The blue area has close to half the Church's membership.
ReplyDeleteI've just returned from my mission in Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines and a friend of mine referred me this site. This is pretty great. Just a vision in our mission, ever since the surge of missionaries, our mission president opened a lot of areas, some of them are branches and groups now. Stake wise, there is no near future possibilities of creating one through division though Cagayan really need to strive to upgrade those branches to wards. There is a district in malaybalay that goaled to be a stake next year and their leadership is pretty great, that district is the highest baptizing zone so far in the year. I am back here in the capital Manilaĺ and I cannot help but compare the maturity of the units here. I've just heard the creation of a 5th ward in mandaluyong. They are really trying to hvve a separate stake there and getting 2 wards from a nearby makati east stake to sustain the original. So that's 3 stakes with 5 wards each. There are other stakes that goal to be divided as well like the Iloilo north stake with 9 wards. I hope they create another stake in Davao in the island of mindanao so a temple could be announced.
ReplyDeleteThat's so far in the pearl of the orient, what I've heard ☺
Really cool site that helps get your head around how big countries actually are.
ReplyDeletehttp://thetruesize.com/
Unit Update
July 19
Balimo Branch, Sogere Papua New Guinea District (10 Branches)
Aug 16
Tooele Utah West Stake (6 Wards)
Overlake 1st Ward
Overlake 4th Ward
Overlake 5th Ward
Tooele 7th Ward
Tooele 18th Ward
Tooele 26th Ward
Mandaluyong 5th Ward, Makati Philippines Stake (8 Wards)
Aug 23
Windsor Colorado Stake (7 Wards)
Bison Ridge Ward (555932)
Carlson Farm Ward
Johnstown Ward
Milliken Ward
Peak View Ward
Severance Ward
Windsor Ward
Barber Acres Ward, Syracuse Utah South Stake (10 Wards)
Eastgate Ward, Hooper Utah Pioneer Trail Stake (7 Wards)
North Tapps Ward, Puyallup Washington Stake (8 Wards)
Suncrest 11th Ward, Orem Utah Suncrest Stake (10 Wards)
Tysons Ward, McLean Virginia Stake (9 Wards)
YTD 375(11.03/week 34)
Africa 121, 32.3%
Asia 10, 2.7%
Europe 13, 3.5%
North America (w/ Caribbean) 102, 27.2%
Pacific 28, 7.5%
South and Central America 36, 9.6%
Utah & Idaho 65, 17.3%
Totals no-sensitive
Areas Temples Miss Stakes Dist Wards Branch Totals
Global 25 148 418 3,144 547 22,432 7,327 34,041
Us/Can 11 81 131 1,588 11 12,512 2,066 16,408
US n/a 73 124 1,541 8 12,184 1,914 15,844
Utah n/a 15 10 577 1 4,671 326 5,600
Canada n/a 8 7 47 3 336 152 553
Out 14 67 287 1,556 536 9,912 5,261 17,633
With Sensitive
Areas Temples Miss Stakes Dist Wards Branch Totals
Global 25 147 418 3,144 558 22,436 7,417 34,146
Mac Jison -
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't yet, go ahead and take the returned missionary survey that you can find on the right side of the blog's homepage. I'm sure you have a lot of data and insight that helps for when they make reports on various areas. I've been back from Bacolod and Iloilo for over 4 years now, its great to see the improvement that the Philippines has been experiencing over the past 5 years.
Any word on the temple in Urdenata?
ReplyDeleteProlly have this same site...
ReplyDelete"Announcement: 2 October 2010
Construction Status
The Urdaneta Philippines Temple is currently in the planning and approval phase. No groundbreaking date has been announced.
Temple Rendering
Renderings of the Urdaneta Philippines Temple and site plan have not yet been publicly released.
Temple Site
The site selected for the Urdaneta Philippines Temple sits off the MacArthur Highway, just south of Urdaneta City."
Regarding the Urdaneta Temple, they are just waiting for the groundbreaking. I think tithing and temple recommend holders are main factors for this. A friend of mine told me.
ReplyDelete