Within the past week, the Church has released a beta version of a new meetinghouse locator website at beta.lds.org/maps. For the first time since the Church has maintained an online meetinghouse locator, information regarding the spoken language of each congregation is provided. This information provides valuable information regarding the study of the growth of the Church among specific ethnolinguistic groups. For example, I was unaware that the Church in Cote d'Ivoire operates two congregations that conduct worship services in Baule, and one congregation each that conducts worship services in Bete and Gwere. Additionally, the website notes scores of congregations in Nigeria that conduct worship services in the Igbo language and dozens of congregations that conduct worship services other Nigerian languages such as Efik, Ibibio, and Yoruba.
I plan to update the LDS International Atlas to include information on the spoken language of each congregation. See below for an example of an updated map for the Nigeria Calabar Mission.
13 comments:
That's great! I'll be excited to see the languages come out.
Continuing a conversation from the previous post's comments ... Speaking of urban churches, does anyone know if anything has actually happened to bring about Chicago's new downtown church that was announced in 2013? (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-01-23/news/ct-met-new-mormon-church-20130123_1_mormon-church-lds-church-church-spokesman-eric-hawkins) The announcement was back in 2013, but Google street view from last August don't show even broken ground.
Grant Emery, I can answer that question. The Lake Shore 1st Ward, Lake Shore 2nd Ward, Lake Shore YSA Ward, and Chicago Midsingles Branch all meet in a school. The bishops' offices, institute for the stake, and location for the YSA activities is a 12th floor office space a few blocks away. I don't know how the family wards are doing (I assume well), but the single adult branch is brand new and the YSA ward was a branch until recently and is growing very well. Lots of units+ growth + rented space + opportunity became available is why they're putting the downtown church there. It took a while to get all the permits, but I think ground was broken since that street view was taken. I live in a different part of Cook County than the building site, so I have no idea how it's progressing, but it should be ready in a couple years.
Large cities in the US tend to have beuracracies that heavily delay the building of new chapels. I know in Detroit the building of the Belle Isle Chapel took a long time, in part because of strong opposition from ministerial groups in the city. I am not sure if this was from a view of Mormons as an anti-black religion in an overwhelmingly black city, or if it arouse from Baptist/Evangelical Christian dislike of Mormons.
I have also heard the stake president at the time express the view that some city officials were hoping the Church would grease their palms to faciliate a faster building process.
The Detroit River Branch is listed as English on the new lds.org site, however it is functionally both English and Spanish.
Two of the wards in the Brazzaville Republic of the Congo Stake are listed as holding meetings in Lingala. Interestingly they both meet in the same building. As far as I can tell the rest of the units in the stake all hold meetings in French.
On further review I found another two units in that stake that hold meetings in Lingala.
In Kinshasa I was able to find 1 Lingala-speaking unit and 1 English-speaking unit.
The English speaking ward in Kinshasa is apparently the Mikonga 1st ward, despite its name being listed in French at the current lds.org maps site.
Nairobi appears to have 5 Swahili wards and a Swahili branch plus a Kamba speaking branch, the rest all English-speaking. Of the 3 branches in the Mukaa/Woke area, 2 are Kamba speaking and 1 is English-speaking. Around Darajani one finds 6 branches, 2 English-speaking, 3 Swahili-speaking and 1 Kamba-speaking. The 3 branches in the Mombasa district are all English-speaking.
In Lilongwe, Malawi 3 of the 4 branches are Nyanja speaking, the remaining is English-speaking. Yet in Blantyre it appears all 4 branches are English-speaking.
In Lumbumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo there are 21 wards, 10 French speaking and 11 Swahili speaking if I paid attention correctly. It can be hard to tell because if you are too far out you will only see one meetinghouse for a city.
Of the 3 units in Lesotho, 1 holds meetings in Sotho, the other two in English. In South Africa most units use English, but I found 3 Zulu-speaking branches. No Afrikaans unsing untis through. As best I can tell the Port Elizabeth and East London stakes each have 1 Xhosa speaking ward.
On Madagascar most units meet in Malagasy, but a few use French.
In India the Visakaputna branches are designated Telugu. This is also true of the Kakinada branch. In Rajamudry there are 2 Telugu and 1 English branches. In Chennai there are 2 English and 2 Tamil branches. In Banglore there are 3 English, 1 Tamil and 21 Kannada wards. In Hyderabad there are 3 English and 3 Telugu wards. The rest all appears to be English, with no unit designated as Hindi speaking. In northern India there are states like Uttar Pradesh, with 200 million residents, and not 1 branch anywhere in it.
Interestingly the beta program shows the international, non-citizen, English speaking branches in places like Beijing and Shanghai. Not surprisingly it does not show the local units.
Here is a report on a case about Jehovah's Witnesses getting access to gated communities in Puerto Rico http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2016/02/jehovahs-witnesses-in-puerto-rico-win.html
I am hoping LDS missionaries can also take advantage of this ruling.
While I like the new indication of language, it appears to me that one can no longer view mission, ward, stake and such boundary maps. Is there still a way to do so on lds.org that I am missing?
I was just looking over the list of LDS owned campgrounds. Besides a lot in Utah, Arizona, Idaho, California, Colorado, Washington and Oregon there are also ones in New Zealand, Vermont, New York (2), Ohio, Pennsylvania, Alaska, Alberta, Ontario, Nevada, Alabama and Florida.
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