Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Church Obtains Official Recognition in Mali
Local members in the West African nation of Mali report that the Church obtained official recognition from the Malian government today. The announcement was made to local members by President Nash of the Africa West Area. The Church has been in the process of obtaining official registration with the government for several months. The first official branch, the Bamako Branch, was organized in mid-2017. One member group also operates in Mali on the outskirts of Bamako in the village of Frako. Additionally, prospects appear favorable for the establishment of a second member group in another village nearby Frako in the immediate future. In November 2018, there were approximately 50 who attended meetings in Frako and 30 who attended meetings in the Bamako Branch. Mali is assigned to the Cote d'Ivoire Abidjan Mission. The Church reported 42 members in Mali as of April 2018. At least an additional 20 converts were baptized before the end of the year, suggesting that church membership may be as high as 60-70 as of year-end 2018. With today's announcement, prospects appear favorable for the assignment of full-time missionaries within the near future. Full-time missionaries have previously taught investigators over the Internet from Cote d'Ivoire.
The entire world is dependent on Jesus Christ; there are places in acute cases of need that make that fact more apparent. Rich Norway or struggling Sahel countries, it is great to see His restored faith advance. Thanks for the report on these happenings.
ReplyDeleteThis is John Pack Lambert again. The momentum seems to be growing to delete the Wikipedia article on Benjamin de Hoyos. This despote the fact that his leading out in getting the Church to oppose the redefinition of marriage in Mexico merited attention. I am sick of Wikipedia creating sunstandard articles on people who played for 3 minutes in a pro soccer game once and deleting articles on men who were general authorities for over a decade. I still think the application of rules by Wikipedia is capricious and I take major exception to the excluding of the Ensign and Church News as sources. The whole process of mass deleting articles on Church leaders while keeping articles on apostates is one practice that makes people leery of Wikipedia. I actually want to like Wikipedia but the destruction of so much of the work I did in creating articles is frustrating.
ReplyDeleteThe rules applied make no sense. Every Catholic bishop is considered default notable. The area president in Mexico oversees more Latter-day Saints than most Catholic bishops oversee Catholics. Plus many articles on Catholic bishops are literally sourced to one blog.
Seems like Wikipedia suffers from some institutional bigotry and bias. All the people who cry " do not source them!" appear to be very correct. Sad that people have such biased agendas, ir are anti- certain movements.
ReplyDeleteThat is exciting news about Mali. Can't wait to see the growth!
ReplyDeleteSome of you may find this article about LDS topics on Wikipedia interesting. https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/mormonism-and-wikipedia-the-church-history-that-anyone-can-edit/
ReplyDeleteAll of these statements are part of my drive to build up Mormon.Wikia.com as an alternative source for information on EVERYTHING about the the church. And I'm encouraged to liberally source LDS references here. Again - it is open to everyone to edit and contribute.
ReplyDeleteI've completed the list of Stakes and am now working on the list of Temples.
https://mormon.wikia.com/wiki/Mormon_Temples_List
That is cool, Maintour. Of course there will be detractors that say that those sources will be biased, but better than nothing at all.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia sounds like a perpetuated stupor of thought.
I did some papers about Church growth at UCLA and cited Deseret News/Church Almanac too much according to professor Stephen Bell, because of questionable bias from the faith, in his opinion.
I guess I should have used other sources more, and given it more reliability. Also, he said he would have liked other church stats more, like Adventists or Jehovah's Witnesses, or I know in Chile Assemblies of God would have been compelling statistically, for comparison.
My main purpose in the papers was to see trends in growth of Chile and Brazil.
Wikipedia is supposed to follow published sources. The attempts to exclude BYU Studies Quartely and every book with Deseret Book as publisher are disturbing. Especially as it will end up giving greater weight to ax grinding sources like Dialogue.
ReplyDeleteAt least the article on the Kinshasa Temple survived.
I am going to try this weekend to incorporate information from the article on the new MTC presidents training meeting into Wikipedia.
The article indicates a few unsung Nelsonian reforms. I am beginning to suspect that the big changes that have been publicly announced are just the tip of the ice berg.
In the case of Nelsonian reforms we have the following although the time frame is not fully clear. The Missionary executive committee has been expanded. Historical sites directors were moved to working under the Church history department. Visitor Center directors are now trained on cite
The explanation of the roles of MTC operations managers versus president and relief society president are illuminating. The fact that all these roles are held jointly in some ways by mission presidents is more instructive. I think all 5 involved MTC operations managers are named.
Deseret Book is the 9th largest book publisher in the United States. We also know it is one of the few bookstore chains still extant as a brick-and-mortar chain with I think 31 stores albeit regional in nature, and has been around for well over 100 years.
ReplyDeleteHello again, everyone! First, Matt, thanks for the great news about Mali. That is fantastic. And it is sickening to hear that the deletions of articles on Wikipedia have continued. The one tool I had left in my arsenal was to report the clear bias to the powers-that-be on Wikipedia, as that would fit the definition of a clearly non-neutral perspective. But I have had to step back from Wikipedia yet again. I accessed it the other day and made an edit that someone else took personally, and in responding to that, the editor in question promised to suspend me/see me suspended if I dared to make an edit to the article again that he didn't like. I am hoping my time away will help his temper to cool.
ReplyDeleteI am considering establishing a presence on MormonWikia (which I assume at some point will be renamed), but haven't got the time presently to do so. In the meantime, as I have said all along (about which the article about Latter-day Saint editors on Wikipedia concurs), what is needed in relation to articles about the Church is more editors who would be willing to work within or repair the broken existing policies on Wikipedia and to improve the articles about the Church as they now stand so as to eliminate the prospect they will be nominated for deletion by editors who might have a bias against the Church.
That said, there have been a lot of exciting Church news and temple developments reported in the recent past, and I have tried to continue to cover it to the best of my ability. With my ongoing thanks to Matt for continuing to allow me to do so, and for creating this place where we can have positive discussions about the great things that are happening for the Church, I want to again share the address of my blog for all who would like to catch up on the latest.
http://stokessoundsoff.blogspot.com