The Church announced the discontinuation of 12 missions and the creation of four missions today. These changes will go into effect this July. Missions to close this July include:
- Argentina Posadas
- California Irvine
- California Long Beach
- California Rancho Cucamonga
- Canada Halifax
- Florida Tallahassee
- Georgia Macon
- Idaho Nampa
- Japan Sendai
- Korea Daejeon
- New York Utica
- Virginia Chesapeake
- Democratic Republic of the Congo Kinshasa East
- Guatemala Antigua
- Perú Limatambo
- Philippines Antipolo
I'll provide more information analysis about these changes in the next couple days. The official announcement can be found here. I have been a bit behind working on the monthly newsletter as well as the top 10 most encouraging and the top 10 most discouraging Church growth developments for 2018.
8 comments:
I am surprised that 3 greater LA area missions are being discontinued. I am also surprised only 1 new mission is being formed in Africa. I was expecting Cameroon to get a mission and a new mission in Nigeria as well.
It's hard to gauge what you know since you are unknown.
I am glad Chile lost no missions. From what I know the missionaries there are busy. New Haitian immigrants are getting attention in small towns like Linares.
Eduardo, what you said is key to the Brethren's intent, I think. If missions are being successful, then there is no reason whatsoever to close missions, and there may, in fact, be more of a reason to create new missions there. The areas in which missions are being discontinued seem to be areas which, according to some of Matt's latest reports on such locales, have not seen great Church growth in recent years. By merging the missions in areas where, for whatever reason, people might not be as receptive to the gospel, or where call centers enable effective contacts without tracting makes a lot of sense to me. We had some indication consolidations were coming, and there is every prospect they will continue over the next few years, until there is no longer a need to consolidate, or until the trends of growth in areas impacted by previous consolidations reverse themselves. These are, of course, nothing more than my own observations, based on what has been reported previously on this blog. I hope, however, that these thoughts might be helpful to the ongoing discussion. My thanks to Matt for this report. I look forward to his more in-depth analysis.
Limatambo from what I can determine is not a city but a district. I am not really familiar enough with the geography and political division of Peru to make strong statements beyond this. It has about 8,600 people. This is a major change from other missions in Peru, since no other mission is based in a city with less than 360,000 people in that country.
Limatambo covers just under 200 square miles, and has about 44 people per square mile. Actually, the capitol of the district is also called Limatambo, and so is probably more densely populated but has even less than 8,500 people. It is 80 km (about 50 miles) from Cusco. It does not from my search of maps on lds.org seem to even have a branch of its own, but seems to be in a branch or ward to the west which in turn is part of the Cusco Peru Stake. I am wondering if there will be some stake/district boundary changes before they form the Limatambo Mission.
In some ways I am surprised it is not being formed as the Cusco Peru East Mission, but I have to say I am glad they are doing it this way.
Cusco province is 80% Spanish speaking and about 18% Quechua speaking. This is for Spanish about the total average for Peru, but a little higher than the national average for Quechua speaking. On the other hand Limatambo district is 80% Quechua speaking and 20% Spanish speaking. Anta Province where Limatambo is, to the west of Cuzco Province, is 70% Quechua speaking. Despite this Cuzco Province has nearly twice as many Quechua speakers as Anta Province. Some provinces of Cuzco Region are over 90% Quechua speaking.
This leads me to think the new Limatambo Mission would be a location to put Quechua-language missionaries. One question I can not speak to is how fluent Quechua speakers are in Spanish.
No, this mission is another one in Lima headquartered in the Limatambo area.
Didn't quite follow the correction of the Limatambo area in Lima... So John's description of the rural district with high Quechua is not the new mission?
I knew a missionary in Chile from Peru in 2005 who spoke Quechua, but his Spanish was fluent.
I also taught with a Peruvian native in Provo back in 1993 who was raised Quechua speaking, but was a Spanish teacher. I am imagining that many Quechua speakers learn pretty good Spanish, but maybe my friends were exceptional. They both were strong priesthood holders and motivated Gospel wise.
This is confusing. Sorry for the misleading information. I still hope outreach in Quechua picks up.
Unless I am mistaken, Matt's comment above was to indicate that the new Limatambo mission had nothing to do with the Limatambo district, as John Pack Lambert conjectured. Rather, within the capital city of Lima, there is a Limatambo region, and that is the area that the newly-announced mission will serve. In other words, this is another mission to serve the large area which the Peruvian capital of Lima covers. And it makes sense that another mission would be needed there. As evidenced by the April 2016 announcement of a second temple to serve the Saints in Lima Peru, the Peruvian capital city has a strong Church base. Hope this additional comment is helpful in terms of clarifying Matt's corrections. And Matt, please do let me know if I am incorrectly interpreting your correction. Thanks.
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