Eight New Missions to be Created in July 2020

Today the Church announced plans to open eight new missions effective July 2020. This is the earliest that the Church has announced plans to organize new missions, as these announcements are traditionally made in January. As such, today's announcement proceeded my predictions for new missions that I usually make every year. The world total for new missions will be 407 in July 2020. No mission consolidations were reported in the announcement. There are currently more than 68,000 missionaries serving in 399 missions. There were 65,137 at year-end 2018, indicating a more that four percent increase in the number of members serving full-time proselytizing missions thus far in 2019 - the first year with significant increase in the number of full-time missionaries serving since the "surge" in the full-time missionary force ended in the mid 2010s.

The Church announced plans to open the following eight mission:

• Brazil Recife South 
• Cameroon Yaounde 
• Ecuador Guayaquil East 
• Ethiopia Addis Ababa 
• Mozambique Beira 
• Tanzania Dar es Salaam 
• Texas Austin 
• Texas Dallas East 

Of these eight missions, three are located in countries where the Church currently does not have a mission headquartered within the country (Cameroon, Ethiopia, and Tanzania). Today's announcement signals a major development with greater allocation of mission resources to receptive and under-serviced areas of the world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Also, the creation of three of the new missions in Central/East Africa will coincide with the opening of the new Africa Central Area in August 2020.

BRAZIL RECIFE SOUTH
The Brazil Recife South Mission will be organized from a division of the Brazil Recife Mission. It is unclear whether any additional missions will be involved with the creation of the new mission. There are 11 stakes in the Recife metropolitan area, and the current Brazil Recife Mission has 13 stakes and 1 district, and services most of Pernambuco State which has a population of 9.6 million people. The Brazil Recife Mission currently numbers among missions with the most stakes in all of Brazil. The Church has experienced slower growth in Recife than most missions in the Northeast of Brazil in the past two decades. For example, the most recently organized stake in the Recife metropolitan area was created in 2006. Once the new mission is organized, there will be 36 missions in Brazil - more missions than any other country outside of the United States.

CAMEROON YAOUNDE
The Church will be reestablishing the Cameroon Yaounde Mission in July. Cameroon has a population of 25.6 million as of July 2018. The Church originally created a mission in Cameroon back in 1992, but relocated the mission to Cote d'Ivoire in 1993. The Church in Cameroon has had a long history of being reassigned from mission to mission and has received little attention from mission and area presidencies in regards to the allocation of missionary resources. More specifically, Cameroon pertained to the Cote d'Ivoire Abidjan mission from 1993-2005, the Ghana Cape Coast Mission from 2005-approximately 2008, the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa Mission from approximately 2008-2014, and the Republic of Congo Brazzaville Mission since 2014. The Church in Cameroon experienced stagnant growth from its initial establishment in the early 1990s until the early 2000s. However, growth rates have been high since the 2000s. Church membership in Cameroon totaled 155 in 2000, 374 in 2005, 1,003 in 2010, 1,480 in 2015, and 2,215 in 2018. Annual membership growth rates have generally exceeded 10% since the early 2000s. There are only two cities in Cameroon with an official Church presence (the first branch was created in Yaounde in the early 1990s, whereas the first branch in Douala was organized in 2004). In the 2010s, the Church has grown most rapidly in Yaounde, where the ninth branch in the city was recently organized.

The creation of the new mission in Cameroon has been desperately needed given the country's large population that has been chronically under-served by mission resources available. Tens of millions have never received mission outreach, including English-speaking areas in the highlands near Nigeria. The new mission will allow for the Church to expand into previously unreached areas. It is likely that the new mission will also include the Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea for a total of 32.2 million people within the mission boundaries. Gabon appears most likely to remain assigned to the Republic of Congo Brazzaville Mission.

In 2018, the Church reported 7,903 members in the Republic of the Congo, 2,215 members in Cameroon, approximately 300 members in Gabon, and 239 members in the Central African Republic. There is no Church presence in Equatorial Guinea and likely fewer than 10 members in the country.

ECUADOR GUAYAQUIL EAST
The Church will organize its fourth mission in Guayaquil in July. There are 17 stakes in the greater Guayaquil metropolitan area, two of which have been organized since 2017. The Church organized its first mission in Guayaquil in 1978, followed by two additional missions in 1991 and 2013. The Church in Guayaquil has experienced slow growth for most of the past two decades, with only four of the 17 stakes having been created since 2000. Nevertheless, reports from scores of local members in Guayaquil I have collected since approximately 2015 have noted that most wards in the city have 100-200 active members, and there has been a significant increase in the number of active members in most congregations for the past 20 years. Additionally, several new wards have been created in Guayaquil in 2019 to accommodate growing numbers of active members, particularly in northern areas of the city.

With the creation of the new mission, there will be six missions in Ecuador, with an average of 2.8 million people per mission.

ETHIOPIA ADDIS ABABA
The first mission of the Church in Ethiopia will be organized in July. With 108 million people, Ethiopia currently ranks as the country with the third largest population without its own mission, after Pakistan (208 million people) and Bangladesh (159 million people). The Church organized its first branch in Ethiopia in 1994 in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia originally pertained to the Kenya Nairobi Mission until it was assigned to the Uganda Kampala Mission when it was created in 2005. The Church has experienced inconsistent growth rates that have vacillated from stagnant to rapid growth. At year-end 2018, there were 1,933 members and four branches. Unlike most Sub-Saharan African countries, the Church in Ethiopia has significantly struggled with achieving steady, rapid growth and local leadership development. Furthermore, the Church in Ethiopia appears to experience the lowest member activity rate of any country on the continent. In contrast, other nontraditional, proselytizing-focused Christian denominations have achieved rapid, steady growth in Ethiopia. For example, at the end of 2018 Seventh-day Adventists reported approximately 185,000 members and Jehovah's Witnesses reported approximately 10,500 members.

There are several reasons for the lack of growth in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ethiopia, such as translations of Church materials only in Amharic, infrequent visits from mission leaders based in other countries, significant challenges with young, full-time missionaries learning local languages, intermittent visa problems for foreign missionaries, negative societal views of the Church, a lack of teaching materials tailored to Orthodox Christians, and internal challenges with long-term convert retention and self-sufficient local leadership. The creation of the new mission will provide many opportunities to rectify these issues with greater mission president oversight and more mission resources allocated to this minimally reached East African country. Furthermore, the mission may also include neighboring Eritrea and Djibouti, which currently are not assigned to a full-time mission.

MOZAMBIQUE BEIRA
Perhaps the most surprising new mission announcement for 2020, the Mozambique Beira Mission will open in July from a division of the Mozambique Maputo Mission. South Africa is the only other country in the history of the Church in Africa that had its second mission organized with as few members of the Church as Mozambique at present (approximately 12,200 at year-end 2018). Generally, the Church in Africa does not organize a second mission in a country until there are at least 20,000 members of the Church and 70+ congregations. The Church created its first mission in Mozambique in 2005 from a division of the South Africa Johannesburg Mission. The Mozambique Maputo Mission also administered Angola until 2013 when the Angola Luanda Mission was organized. The Mozambique Beira Mission will service northern areas of Mozambique, whereas the Mozambique Maputo Mission will service southern areas of the country. There are 27.2 million people in Mozambique.

The Church in Mozambique has undergone two periods of rapid growth, the first of which occurred in the early 2000s and the second of which has been ongoing since 2013. The Church in Mozambique has grown from 200 members in 1997 to 4,216 in 2007, to 10,835 in 2017. The most impressive recent growth developments in Mozambique have been the proliferation of stakes and congregations. The Church organized its first stake in Mozambique in Maputo in 2015, and there are currently four stakes and one district in the country. Growth in active membership and the number of new converts joining the Church in 2019 has reportedly accelerated in 2019, and the mission president earlier this year anticipated the organization of two additional stakes in the next year. Earlier this year, the Church noted that average sacrament meeting attendance in the country is nearly 70% - much higher than most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. One of the most extreme examples of growth in Mozambique has been in the northern city of Nampula, where the number of branches increased from one in mid-2017 to six in March 2019. The creation of a second mission of the Church in Mozambique will allow for more penetrating outreach in the two most populous cities of Beira and Maputo, as well as expansion of the Church into additional areas.

TANZANIA DAR ES SALAAM
The Church's first mission in Tanzania will be organized in the capital and most populous city of Dar Es Salaam, where the first branch in the country was organized in 1992. Tanzania has been minimally reached by the Church despite widespread religious freedom and a highly receptive population. As such, the Church reported only 1,726 members and six branches in the country as of year-end 2018, whereas the estimated population for Tanzania at the time was 55.5 million. The Kenya Nairobi Mission has administered Tanzania since the first branches were organized. Slow growth has generally occurred for the Church in Tanzania since its initial establishment. Most recently, the Church organized two new branches in Dar Es Salaam earlier this year - the first new branches created in the city in approximately 15 years. There are only three cities with a Church presence in Tanzania: Dar Es Salaam, Mwanza, and Arusha. Other proselytism-focused groups originally from North America, such as Seventh-day Adventists, report significant membership in Tanzania. Adventists reported nearly three-quarters of a million members in the country at the end of 2018. Jehovah's Witnesses maintain a more limited presence than Adventists, but nevertheless claim 18,705 active members organized into 455 congregations. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Tanzania switched its official language for the Church from English to Swahili in 2011, which reportedly made major improvements in the Church's outreach and functionality to meet local language needs. The new mission will undoubtedly permit greater allocation of mission resources and will likely permit the organization of congregations in additional cities.

TEXAS AUSTIN
The Church will create a new mission headquartered in Austin, Texas in July. The Texas Austin Mission will be organized from a division of the Texas San Antonio Mission and likely the Texas Fort Worth Mission. The new mission will probably include nine stakes in central Texas. The first stake in Austin was organized in 1973, and the most recently created stake was organized in September 2019.

TEXAS DALLAS EAST
The Church's third mission for the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area has been long overdue as significant growth in the number of active members, congregations, and stakes has occurred since the last new mission was organized in this urban agglomeration in 1986. The first mission was organized in Dallas in 1961 when there was only one stake in the metropolitan area. When the Texas Fort Worth Mission was organized in 1986, there were eight stakes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Today, there are now 22 stakes in the metropolitan area. The most recently organized stake is the Little Elm Texas Stake, which was organized in August 2019.

With the creation of the two new missions, there will be 10 missions in Texas, with an average of 2.9 million people per mission. The number of missions in Texas will equal the number of missions in Utah - the state that currently has the second most missions of any state in the United States (California has the most with 15). However, Utah's population of 3.2 million is almost the size of the average population served by a mission in Texas. The most recently organized mission in Texas is the Texas Lubbock Mission, which was created in 2002. There are currently 77 stakes and 2 districts in Texas. At year-end 2018, there were 357,625 members and 698 congregations. Much of the Church's growth in Texas has been attributed to members from the Western United States who move to the state, albeit many Spanish-speakers have also joined the Church in the past several decades. These changes will result in the number of missions in the United States totaling 119.