so how many branches are there in Buchana, Liberia? Harbel would only be the second district outside of the Monrovia Metro Area, which currently is covered by 5 stakes.
I used classic maps to look this up. So the general area of Harbel has 4 branches. The Boys Town branch mights also be moved from the Paynesville Stake to a Harbel district.
There are 2 branches in Buchanan. In the interior of the north there are branches at Ganta, Gbarnga and Totota. In the souther there are branches at Greenville and Zwendru. Zwendru appears to have officially the largest boundaries of any unit in Liberia. I have no clue why its boundaries are drawn so large. Zwndru branch extends to the Ivory Coast border, although Zwendru is not that close to the border. Ganta is on the border with Guinea, the branch appears to meet about a mile from the border. I am wondering if outreach to the town of Zimpa might make sense. On the other hand, missionaries crossing the border would probalby be a logistical nightmare, so this might have to be member initiaited outreach.
Ganta and Totota both look to be roughly 20 miles from Gbarnga, in opposite directions. I am not sure if this is a small enough area to make a district reasonable, and 3 brnaches for a district is on the low side. So it might be a little until that area gets a district.
Of course what I do not know is where there might be groups in Liberia.
Looking on the meetinghouse locator, no building seems to show up for Zwedru branch. Looking at the map more, I do not think Boy's Town branch would be relocated. I was thinking the south end of Boys Town branch, in and around Marshall might be split and reassigned, until I noticed that it looks like none of the roads go over the rivers there, so it appears you have to go back north-west to Boys Town, before heading inland to Harbel.
I sincerely hope that the new membership in Liberia and throughout fast growing Africa stays true to their new found faith, better than what we may describe as mass conversions in Latin America. There has been real growth in Latin America, yes, but hundreds of thousands of baptized members did not turn out to be loyal or steadfast in the faith. Perhaps this happened in Chile more than any other place, and I have been witness to it. 2200 hundred baptisms in one mission is awesome, no doubt. This pales in comparison to certain Chilean records over the years for one mission. I think 10 k had been achieved by multiple missions many times, but the success of those numbers was not sustained in activity rates. We pray Liberia and its neighbors will be better, stronger, more faithful. Exciting to see unit and temple growth, which seems to be an overall better way to gauge membership growth than the numbers of those who join.
Eduardo: hello countryman! You are right in Chile, the golden age of baptisms was lived, it is a pity that they were not maintained over time, it has been the subject of analysis, and currently, although very few are baptized and are inactivated anyway, so we have to see that they are is doing wrong.
Hopefully in Africa, Chile and throughout the world baptisms increase, those who remain faithful and that more temples are built nearby, since they are needed
I am sick and tired of people falsely speaking of Africa as if it is a country. It is not. If you say Chile you need to contrast it with Liberia.
Liberia has seen struggles at times. It has gone through 2 Civil Wars since missionaries first arrived in the late 1980s. This has caused significant numbers of members to emigrate.
Liberia also is one of only 3 countries that had its first stake discontinued and reverted yo having no stakes. The others that saw this were Nicaragua and Armenia.
Today there are 5 stakes in Liberia and it appears the growth there is on a fairly solid basis.
President Leavitt and his counselors have a clear vision of moving the Tabernacle Choir to be a larger force in the Church.
I am quite excited to see what they will do to accomplish this.
I would say the Tabernacle Choir was one of the most shut down things with Covid, but my stake still has no clear date when we will reopen our family history center so some things are even more shut down.
There are guys out there that are parroting the Church losing a lot of members over its response to the Coronavirus, albeit, reading blogs like this and analyzing other data, it is clear that their reports have been greatly exaggerated, and in large part, limited to some areas of the United States.
Here in Mexico, our Area has told us to remain masked in Church, and there is a protocol in place where they only unlock one door to the chapel and there are two priesthood holders that check everyone's temperature and give hand sanitizer. If the temperature of the brother or sister is higher than 99.5 degrees F (37.5 degrees C), they are NOT let in the chapel and are asked to partake of Sacrament at home, if no priesthood is available, a note is made to the bishop to bring the sacrament to their house.
I haven't observed members, except for one, who has been outspoken AGAINST those regulations. They have been largely obedient and attendance is essentially back to prepandemic levels.
So far, it appears to be a net gain of 15 wards and 8 branches, which would be a VERY low pace for the year, as we are now approaching the one-fifth mark of the year.
I said Latin America, which is divided by two continents plus the larger part of the Caribbean, which encompasses many sovereign nations and even more languages and cultures. Remind anyone of Africa, at all?
Liberia, the country and mission in question, was being used as a comment to compare to large numbers in the country of Chile.
Sorry for any misunderstanding. My dad always used the the phrase “sick and tired”. Sure.
Incidentally, I can speak the languages of about 40 nations in the continent of Africa. My parents lived and married there.
It’s a great place, and like Europe and Asia, or any land mass on our planet, can be referred to as such.
Healthy and enervated, that is the opposite of that sad trope.
2200 baptisms is solid, especially when they retain their membership. Unlike some cases in Church of Jesus Christ history.
The specific line I was responding to was "Hopefully in Africa, Chile and throughout the world baptisms increase." That is a clear example of false parity in writing.
My branch used to do temperature checks. In theory it was not a bad thing, but at this point it would be overly excessive.
The person who carried them out was the wrong person to do so. If it came in too low she would detain you until she got a high enough temperature, which was totally unneeded.
I am so glad that in Michigan we no longer have to wear masks at church.
We did last weekend, only thing not really done was a stake choir or any choir. Still ran a broadcast for those that could not mainly due to illness, I was one, had an intestinal bug which I am now almost fully over. Had 101 on the general session feed. Also was able to see the adult session.
Have you ever noticed that the same 3 people or so make up over 90% of the comments on this blog? Perhaps this is in part because whenever someone new posts, they get criticized for petty semantics, or get scoffed at because their opinions aren't as sophisticated or their accuracy in predictions isn't as high. Can we just not do that sort of stuff, please?
The Craig Colorado stake also just had stake conference. The leaders and speakers and some other members were at the stake center, but due to the large geographic size of the stake (or other reasons) it was broadcast on a live stream on the church's website that could be watched from the other chapels or from home. There was one special musical number in the general session (the only one I got to see due to working on Saturday evening), but the other music was playing a recording of the Tabernacle Choir. It didn't appear that anyone on the podium was wearing a mask, but some of them were socially distanced.
Our stake conference in 2020 was also the Sunday just before everything shut down due to COVID, in that case the conference was broadcast to all the chapels so I went to mine to see it.
JPL, you are acting toxic and disrespectful. We all know Africa and its 53 independent countries here, even though the rate of understanding of these aspects among the general American population is very low. May we continue the discussion with civility and without getting attached to minor aspects, please.
Re the question about stake conferences and covid: My stake had an in-person conference this past weekend at the regional center in Bountiful (a large auditorium space the church owns that is used by stakes in Davis County for stake conferences and other large events). Elder Neil L Andersen of the Twelve was presiding and in his talk made a point of noting that while he has been very careful the past two years about covid (he made a comment that he has been terrified of being the person who gives President Nelson covid), he had chosen not to wear a mask that Sunday as he felt it was appropriate for him to begin returning to a more normal way of doing things, at least when in that particular part of the world.
Here, where I live in the Little Rock metro, COVID caused a decline in attendance, but that was short lived as it's now attendance is back to or above pre-COVID levels. We just had a missionary return in my ward and said that baptisms in his England mission increased after COVID hit.
I think the 2,200 converts are great. Hopefully they will retain and continue to grow. I had a chat with the Arkansas Little Rock Missions wife about a week ago and said the previous month they surpassed their goal. Even though their numbers aren't near as high as other missions, they're breaking some of their own records.
As for it only being two new stakes, it's early in the year and there are a number of large stakes that appear ready to split. But again, regardless of how many stakes are created or discontinued, it's all about each individual.
We had an in-person stake conference in December, with a broadcast available where needed. My wife is the primary caregiver for her octogenarian father, and I have respiratory issues that make me vulnerable to COVID-19, so we continue to do the virtual participation. We were supposed to have another stake conference in January, which was postponed due to a spike of cases in our area. Our stake president has served for 9 years, so his release seems likely whenever that is rescheduled.
We had our last stake conference in person in November. I frankly don't remember if there was a livestream or not, but it was pretty well attended in either case. Generally, there seems to have been quite a bit of reluctance to implement health protocols beyond what the state is forcing us to do. Last Sunday was the first Sunday post state mask mandate. Attendance went up by a solid 30 people (conservative estimate) and about two out of 150 were wearing masks. No more social distancing either, and the broadcast of sacrament meetings is on the chopping block to encourage people to start attending in person again. There is definitely a push to fully normalize things.
Our stake conference was broadcast to chapels, but that happened long before Covid. There was a way for members to watch it from home but they discouraged overuse of this option because it has limits.
I really think my stake should rent a high school auditorium for our next stake conference. The stake center is essentially in the north-west corner of the stake. 4 miles from the north border and 6 from the west border, while 16 from the south border and 26 from the east border. To be fair the stake does actually go 10 miles north of the stake center, but that stops about 8 miles east of the stake center.
Of the 5 other chapels the conference was broadcast to 4 of them. One of those chapels they used to not broadcast it to and another one is a newly rented facility in the last few months.
My branch is one of the further from the stake center. It is probably an under 40 minute drive, but we have transportation issues being largely inner city. Still there was a sister from my branch who picked up another sister in her car and drove to the stake center. To be fair they live in the western part of the branch so closer to the stake center than much of the branch.
Last month a sister in my branch had a baby shower at the stake center, so it is not unbearably far.
@David Todd, I, for one, come to you with a humble heart and ask your forgiveness, if I have ever said or commented anything in my posts to offend you or make you feel that your comments or those of others had any less importance or validity than my comments/opinions, or just ideas. I greatly appreciate any and all who have shared their own GROWTH experiences here, be it personal or organizational or Church units and Temples. Of where the Church as a whole can make day to day improvements from the least of us to the greatest among us to improve our own relation with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Once again, I plead for your forgiveness for anything I may have said to offend.
Hopefully on this blog, in blog sites everywhere, and the forums of the Church of Jesus Christ, people will be edified and inspire and educate each other.
Any false parity in that line?
I hope to improve my writing skills every day.
I wonder what other missions in the sub-Saharan African missions have baptized as well as Liberia last year? Ones in Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, or DR Congo?
Christopher, thank you for your message. I should clarify that I have not been offended. More than anything just a bit annoyed when I read some comments, which is my own issue.
That said, it felt like a good time to remind people that the other people who read this blog have many varying backgrounds and ideas and education. For some people, English isn't even their main language.
Also I've seen a number of people correct others on things that they aren't necessarily even right on.
Hailing from the The USA's 51st State, also known as the Land of Maple Syrup, I can certainly report that the Canucks have had a profoundly different experience with Covid than our southern neighbors. There is a reason the "Freedom Convoy" originated here. Lest anyone should think this was about truckers honking up a storm much to Trudeau's dismay (and credit), let me assure you the Great White North's excessive Covid restrictions have penetrated all aspects of our lives and has severely impacted worship services of all faiths.
I cannot speak for all provinces, but I know that when religious meetings were allowed to reconvene in September 2021 in my very large neck of the woods, all worship attendees (12+) were/are required by LAW (not encouragement) to be vaccinated, provide a copy of the vaccination to the leadership, all (3+) are required to wear masks - including the speaker, there were temperature checks at the door, mandated every-other row seating, singing was prohibited, congregational limit of 30 people, each sacramental bread was placed in an individual water cup and the Priesthood passing the Sacrament wore gloves. Each and every time a member who attended services did catch Covid, it was publicly reported so Contact Tracing could be conducted, which resulted in a discontinuation of services for a week/two weeks to prevent a super-spreader event.
Members who: 1) had Covid, or, 2) were vulnerable and did not wish to attend in-person services, or, 3) were not legally allowed to attend Church due to vaccination status, were able to watch via Zoom and were able to bless/receive the Sacrament in their home if they were a Priesthood holder or lived with a Priesthood holder. Thus, if you were a single woman/mom (& her children), a woman/mom in an interfaith marriage (& her children), a man not yet ordained to the Priesthood, an investigator, etc. you were not able to receive the Sacrament. This went for receiving Priesthood Blessings for the entirety of 2020, the majority of 2021, and January during Omicron. Last month, our stake held stake conference and while it was technically in-person, there was a legal limit on attendance, requiring a reservation system. All our meetings have been and will continue on Zoom as the Pandemic is very much NOT OVER according to the governmental body of America's Hat.
As you can imagine, this has had a negative impact on all communities of faith, but specific to this discussion, Church membership in Lumberjack Country has not recovered at all from Covid. In particular, the children, the youth, the YSA, the sick, the elderly, and anyone without access to the Priesthood, have suffered greatly despite all the efforts of the Church.
Notwithstanding all this, we are most grateful that those of us who don't participate in the double-double ritual at Tim Horton's were blessed with another Temple here in Ursalia.
Firstly my prayers go out for our Ukrainian brothers and sisters. I knew at least one missionary that had come from the Ukraine.
Secondly growth can only happen if the church and its members are all being more honest and transparent. I.e. being clear about church ensign funds, paid clergy (which sickens me as an active LDS member), and some of the bending of truth from the past. I know many members which have left because it came as a shock to them. What keep me firm is only my personal spiritual experiences, and the hope things can change (repentance). Yes, no one is perfect but christ, but as his followers we need to be honest about human frailty even within just like the scriptures point out about the past.
I really hope too for all faithful people of all religions to work together more in harmony, and even with the non religious.
Growth happened for centuries without the church being "transparent." The quorum of the 15 presides over 16 million members, 30k+ congregations, has over $100 billion in assets, is doling out a billion a year in welfare, and still get combined stipends under $2 million, much less than any of them were making in their professional careers, and significantly less than any major non-profit CEO. My wife and I's average age is less than 30, and combined we earn more than they do with much less work and significantly less responsibility.
There are a lot of reasons people leave the church, but I doubt this was the primary reason for any of them, just what they decided to pin it on.
Expo 2020 is set to wrap up on March 31st. Dozens of properties have already been handed over to private corporations. I would expect to see at least a site announcement for the Dubai Temple in the coming weeks.
I can only speak for myself, the Church's lack of transparency is why I lost trust in it and a big part of why I've dealt with recurring faith crises for over a decade. I've never been okay with the fact that I first learned about Joseph Smith's polygamy, Joseph Smith's seer stone, Joseph Smith's treasure digging, Joseph Smith's multiple First Vision accounts, the Book of Abraham controversy, past prophets' and apostles' incredible amount of racism, etc. from non-church sources. My first and most obvious assumption was that the Church didn't talk about these things because they were damaging to its truth claims. I felt betrayed. And then apologists claim that I and thousands of others with similar experiences are entirely to blame for not reading everything the Church has ever published to find, for example, the one sentence about Joseph Smith seer stone in an issue of the Ensign published the year before I was born. And even if excuses like "We focus on the basics of the gospel" hold water for the dumbed-down and sanitized portrayals of church history in stuff like Sunday school manuals (which in my opinion, they don't), they fail to explain why, when *professional church historian* Leonard J. Arrington tried to be transparent and balanced in *professional history publications*, church leaders like Mark E. Petersen, Ezra Taft Benson, and Boyd K. Packer fought him at every turn.
I'm not crazy about the lack of financial transparency either - the only reason we know that $100 billion statistic is because a whistleblower leaked it in 2019. I know the Church isn't legally required to disclose things in the US, but in my view not being legally required to do something isn't a sufficient justification for not doing it. The Church could avoid a lot of misunderstandings, rumors, and time-wasting lawsuits if it was open about its finances.
Sorry, I know this is a bit off-topic and will upset some people, but since the subject of transparency was broached I wanted to share my experience. And I do think transparency is more relevant to growth now than it may have been in the past, because people no longer trust large institutions (for good reason) and because the internet exists. When members learn controversial information in Sunday school, they incorporate it into their paradigm and move on. When members instead learn the same information from hostile websites and podcasts, they feel like the Church has lied to them.
Does anyone have information about the Columbus Ohio Temple's Renovation? I know the exterior has been heavily modified, but what is being changed internally? Are the progressive endowment rooms remaining as they are, or are they converting them to stationary rooms?
Sometimes I have these same concerns. But what bothers me the most are not these historical aspects, because they already seem to me to be anachronistic. What bothers me is that the church's asepsis does not allow the creation of local community involvement initiatives and, if it does, does not sponsor them in any way, even with so much investment in the stock market and money in bank accounts.
I reaffirm the benefit that would be the creation of church schools across Latin America, in the same way that Adventists do. We are a territory where education is scarce and expensive. Pathway doesn't work for us in most cases, because not everyone wants or adapts to learn English, and they shouldn't. The Church should adapt to their native language.
Anyway, I say that I would engage in such an initiative voluntarily, but it is a pity that there is no support for an implementation of this in the third world, after all we are not among the main sponsors of the movement. In the meantime, I keep faith in the hope that the future will allow these things to happen.
I understand that there are three things that need to be done to increase the retention and participation of members in LA, things that are common there for you, but not for us: formal education with a religious bias (but the church preferred to close Benemerito), sponsorship for formation artistic and musical youth and investment in interstake cultural events, so that young people are won over and form large families within the church. While we don't do that, evangelical megachurches are doing so, so successfully that they have already begun to dominate the political scene in Brazil.
And once again I apologize for the googled English.
One of the things that I loved about the Saints books that are being created is the openness to talk about things that we never hear in church. I don't think we should be worried about lack of transparency causing people to leave as much as the benefits that can come from transparency to building our own faith.
For instance, how great would a Sunday School lesson on tithing be if in the part where we learn where tithing funds go- instead of glossing over it by saying it goes to building temples or even lying and saying no church leaders get paid, we actually got to discuss where our money is being used. Something could be written in the manual like- tithing funds are considered sacred and are used for funding the church's operations. A large portion of the funds are used for building and maintaining meetinghouses and temples. These funds are also used to support the missionary department of the church, produce church materials, and for advertising. Some of the money may be used to support humanitarian efforts. These funds may also be used to support initiatives that are in line with the teachings of the church. The church also uses tithing funds to purchase investment businesses and properties which help to sustain financial stability. While none of the local leaders of the church receive compensation from these funds, general authorities may receive stipends to support their travels and expenses as they devote their full time and efforts to supporting the worldwide church. Discuss: How do the many uses of the church's funds help to support the mission of the church? How does the church practice financial stability and why is this important?
I think the Church would have a great opportunity to release and utilize some of these excess funds by expanding education options and welfare programs worldwide. It's not like these $100 billion are going to go away if we build more universities and use actual qualified professors (not senior missionaries) to teach classes. Building primary and secondary schools, hospitals, and basic infrastructure would definitely be options to deploy these funds into as well.
All the while, we're still paying tithing. The Church won't have to survive and operate on these $100 billion until the second coming, but there is and there will be for the forseeable future a steady and probably increasing influx in funds that can again be used to do more good in the world. Build more chapels and temples, yes, but primarily I think spending should be humanitarian given the state of the world. This amount of wealth comes with a certain set of responsibilities, and it is time we use what we have to lift people up.
When it comes to the 100 billion fund (afaik it is approx 160 billion now) I then come to the construction of Zion as detailed in the Book of Revelation as well as the visions given to several early Church leaders particularly Parley P Pratt.
Then I look at a project like Neom that is being built in Saudi Arabia (https://www.neom.com/en-us) that has an INITIAL investment of 500 billion dollars. That's three times the Church's fund (as far as I know) and five times the known figure.
Neom is also about one one-HUNDREDTH the size of the dimensions of Zion as described in Revelation.
We're talking then an investment of about 50 TRILLION dollars, which is about a third to forty percent of global GDP.
Now this money does NOT have to come through just the stock market. There are a variety of things which the Church can (and does) invest in. Real estate is always going to be a definite plus.
Pascal, the Church already does all of that. Such efforts are regularly reported through the Church News and the Newsroom. The BYU-PW program is available to everyone worldwide, and the Church regularly contributes finances, manpower, and supplies where needed. The Newsroom and the Church News share at least one report on such efforts every few days. The Church does not need to pick and choose how to contribute to society. It does so all the time.
On the Church News homepage, I count at least 7 such reports currently available. And there are at least 5 reports on the Newsroom on such efforts this far in March. The Church makes these updates readily available on a regular basis, but won't compel anyone to read them. But they are out there. I wish more people would check those websites before voicing such concerns.
I tried leaving this on the temple predictions thread, but it wouldnt let me, so I'll just leave my predictions for this conference here.
Top 10 picks: 1. Tacoma, Washington 2. Flagstaff, Arizona 3. Austin, Texas 4. Charlotte, North Carolina 5. Northwestern El Salvador 6. Chiclayo, Peru 7. Abuja, Nigeria 8. Santiago, Philippines 9. Poza Rica, Mexico 10. Kampala, Uganda Wild Card Picks 1. Tirana, Albania 2. White Tank Mountain, Arizona (West Phoenix Metro)
The article states that they are going to make the temple more efficient overall. That can lead to assumptions that the progressive instruction rooms will be converted to Stationary rooms and either provide more capacity per room, or create additional rooms, though it doesn't really get into specific details. The other standard temples that were renovated didn't really change the rooms around much and kept the progressive endowment style.
All the temples currently being built have Stationary instruction rooms, so I'm just curious if they had planned to do the same for Columbus. I suppose the only way to find out will be when interior photographs are released when the rededication is announced. Thanks.
Eduardo, I think his point was that lumping all African countries together is pointless. A combined population of 1.4 billion compared to Chile with 20,000,000 people makes any comparison weak.
Africa is not a homogenous singular entity. Each nation has its own unique relationship and history with the Church.
To the point of the original post and supporting the split of the Columbus Ohio Temple District, the creation of the Zanesville Ohio Stake has been reported to have occurred last Sunday.
Not sure what you mean by that. If you're saying that the scale of the Church's charitable donations is smaller than the amount spent to build and operate the latest batch of temples, you'd have to explain why. Maybe we don't need the exact figures. I'd defer to the Church Auditing Department on this:
Those who have read and understood D&C 119 and 120, and those who read or hear the Church Auditing Department Report in April of each year have a choice: To trust the Brethren on this or not. Fact of the matter is that there are some aspects of Church finance that are none of our business. It's not my place to know how much the Church doles out to those receiving financial assistance. I have no qualifications or access to data that I have no business having. I don't need to know or question why the Church spends x amount on temples and chapels and y amount on other pursuits. It's more than enough for me to know that qualified auditors (including Church members and friends of other or no faiths) have been able to review that data and find no fault therewith. Sorry if that's not good enough for you, but if it's good enough for the Lord and His servants, it's good enough for me. I won't let the lack of that information affect my testimony of the Gospel, and I hope that no one else, yourself included, would either. No one's asking to see your financial records, so why would anyone feel entitled to see those of the Church? It's the Brethren that will answer to the Lord about those matters, and only He has a right to judge whether any Church funds have been misappropriated and to act according to that judgement.
Unless my count is off, the next Stake to be organized after Zanesville Ohio, will have the honor to become the 3500th active Stake in the Church. Any guesses on who will have that distinction?
My understanding is that the auditing report is essentially a declaration that the Church has followed GAAP. Which is crucial, but I wonder if there is a better way to instill actual transparency. Because I disagree with you somewhat; it isn't my place to make allocation decisions, but as a member of the Church who pays a significant sum of money in tithing each year, I would love to know how it is used for good. Perhaps in a way that extends beyond the notion that the Church is not committing fraud. Actually, I firmly believe that this transparency would increase people's willingness to pay a full tithe (the research on the topic is quite clear that greater disclosure is correlated with greater willingness to donate).
I also don't know from where you are taking the idea that I want fewer temples or meetinghouses or that humanitarian spending has to exceed construction spending. It's not my position and probably not the position of anyone who genuinely cares about the work of salvation. I genuinely want the Church to divest instead of sitting on vast sums of money despite a reliable influx of somewhere between 15 and 25 billion dollars a year. The easiest way to divest is through humanitarian efforts, but if we triple spending on temple construction next year, I will be the first to applaud. The liquifiable reserves of the Church were, at least informally, supposed to last for a year (as a similitude to food storage). My estimate is that we are likely in excess of five years now and I would rather see those funds put to use to advance the kingdom and fulfill the tree-fold mission of the Church than yield returns in unrelated stocks or real estate.
Christopher Nicholson - You did a good job summing up a lot of the big "controversies" that people tend to bring up when they doubt about the truthfulness of the Gospel. My response to your comment is that I am grateful that we have all of these controversies because it helps us to think critically about things and also realize that this is a real. Things that are real are not nice and neatly organized - they are messy and sometimes confusing or contradicting. I do not think the Church intends to try to hide information about all of these controversies or issues because it will destroy the faith of others, but I think that a lot of the Church's meta-history has to do with trying to make sense of it all in a easy way to understand. Furthermore, I think the Church is also cautious about giving the enemies of the Church more information to distort or use as ammunition with their detracting efforts.
My biggest issue I have is with the Church culture. This is a tough one because some of the greatest examples I know in the Church personally love the culture, and I find the culture to be a big barrier to growth. Another major issue I have is what others have mentioned already - the corporatization of the Church and how that creates a lot of barriers to developing more of a community. Control is a difficult thing with something like religion. Too much or too little both can have disastrous consequences.
Brett, I understand the false parity comment that is made. I know that Liberia vice Chile (which has had multiple missions, not just one, as compared to the 2200 baptisms counted for the year period in the West African country). I could easily say: I hope that African countries do not have the same numbers problem as Latin American ones with retention of converts. My point is this: I hope they do not have similar problems compared to Chile. This country I know well and others in LA have not had the extremes of Chilean numbers. I do not see much reason to nitpick or strain at gnats on this, the thought or idea is cogent. Obtuse understandings are what they are. We must infer that if I hope one person in the U.S does not have cancer, for example, I wish the same for 1.4 billion Chinese. False parity? That is how my brain works, sorry if that comes across as some odd thought that is “false” enough to make someone sick and tired. Africa is a continent, has different regions. I am well aware of this since at least 1976.
Chile essentially has 1 dominant language. Few African countries have such. DR Congo has 4 different regions of dominant lingua francas that exist on top of various other more localized languages. It has about 100 million people.
Ethiopia has 100 million people as well. Some will tell you it is an Oriental Orthodox Christian nation where Amheric is spoken. More Ethiopians speak Oromo as their first language than Amheric, and the majority of Ethiopia's population is not Orthodox Christian. 43% of the population is Orthodox, about 34% Muslim, 18% Protestant (a term which elidws huge amounts of variation), about 3% Animist, and less than 1% Catholic and less than 1% Jewish.
Oromo is spoken by 24% of the population and Amheric by 19%. The fact that 40% speak one of two languages as their mother tongue is extremely rare in countries on the African continent.
One example of the just plain unintelligent talk of "Africa" one sees is when people mention that many in "Africa" speak Swahili.
I grate my teeth at such stupid statements. Swahili is used in the Eastern third of DR Congo, Rwanda, possibly Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and at least parts of Mozambique.
It has no presence in Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, or Senegal. Any speaker in South Africa is likely a recent immigrant. Those who can speak it in Kinshasa are far from their ancestral homes, and Angola and Ethiopia are far beyond its range.
Truth about paid clergy? This is just plain rubbish. The Church has never been anything but transparent about the fact that general authorities got paid.
President Hinckley was explicitly honest that some of the funding for the revitalization of downtown Salt Lake, key to keeping the Salt Lake Temple viable, and something people anywhere else would cheer, was coming from the earnings on investments. That is why Huntsman's ludicrous lawsuit got thrown out, because President Hinckley was honest and transparent.
The reason you first learned about multiple First Vision accounts from non-Church sources is because you have under studied Church sources. I first learned about that from reading the Ensign.
10,700 was the size at build. Same with Detroit. For Detroit it is probably still the reported size, but it is clearly not the actual size because more space has been enclosed where the entrance is.
No one is "lying" saying no leaders of the Church get paid. This is a false and malicious claim. I have had lessons where we discussed the actual and varied uses of Church funds.
Anyone who pays attention has a realization that the main use of these funds is for creating materials, building and maintaining buildings, educational operations and do forth.
Leaders of theChurch on multiple occasions in both general conference and in publications available and aimed at Church members gave explained the Church has a policy of saving money and not spending it all.
It would be nice if people stopped repeating the misleading claim that the Church has not been honest about this and bothered to actually read the multiple cases where leaders have explained the fiscal principles used to build good funding.
The fact of the matter is that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints diversted itself of its junior colleges in the early 1930s because it literally could not afford to continue to operate them.
Operating educational facilities is very costly.
Based on Bishop Causee's statements the claimed reserves of the Church are almost certainly overstated.
The cost of operating educational institutions is huge.
That is even before you get into the logistical nightmare.
One issue is how do you avoid a coloniaistic set up. BYU-Hawai'i low has a president and Provost who are both culturally Hawai'ian. I know the president who has served less than 2 years is the first non-Haole president of BYU Hawai'i in its 67 years of existence, and the provost may be as well.
The Church has functioned in Hawai'i since 1851, longer than in any other area that is not culturally North American or European. True missionaries arrived in French Polynesia, or what was about to become French Pokynesia in 1844, but the French colonial authorities forcefully removed then in the early 1850s and then executed some of our Polynesian brethren. It would not be until the 1890s and the return of James Brown that the Church would be reestablished. An elders quorum would not be organized in Fewnch Polynesia until the 1960s.
A better approach to improving educational opportunities might be looking at ways to revitalize and reorient the Perpetual Education Fund as opposed to ways to start up more educational institutions.
The published stock holdings of the Church are only about 50 billion. So I have a strong suspicion that those who spoke with the Washington Post were lying through their teeth.
The federal government claimed it gave $0.088 billion to BYU, but BYU says it declined this money.
The cost for the Philadelphia Temple at an early stage was said to be $0.070 billion. That was before our most recent round of inflation.
To get an idea of how much BYU is costing the Church compare its tuition to say Stanford, and then realize even at Stanford student tuition does not cover the full cost if an education.
BYU-Pathway worldwide uses service missionary couples, but the classes themselves are taught by people who are paid.
There are huge amount of costs involved in lots of things.
Maybe you should read my post instead of jumping to accusing me of things. I'm saying that it would be beneficial to the faith of members for more transparency in our church lessons. The truth is, the ones that need it the most are not going to be spending time rifling through church materials to learn these things. I'm not suggesting that the current state of things is malicious, just that we could improve it.
As far as the statement that no one is lying- this is false. I myself lied about this (unintentionally) as a missionary when asked if the leaders of the church got paid because I didn't know better. It wasn't until later on in my mission that I realized I had been untruthful and had missed an opportunity to bear testimony of a true principle instead of repeating what I had learned in Sunday School.
The pandemic took away community in a huge number of ways.
We have began to regain it, but we are not there yet.
I understand the reasons why the leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are being cautious.
In some cases no matter how cautious they are people will falsely malign and attack them.
Some of this is a direct result of the truly high level of hate and animosity that is aimed at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The extreme example is when a plane chartered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Sainrs brought some cases of Covid-19 to Kiribati. I saw some people denouncing the Chuech for moving people across international borders.
The reality, under reported by some in the media, especially those connected with the Utah newspaper that cheered on the removal of Utah women's right to vote, was that this plane was bringing Kiribati missionaries back home.
In at least one case the returning missionary had served 44 months.Every possible precaution was taken in bringing the missionaries home, and they returned over a year after a vaccine was developed for Covid-19.
The level at which some engage in out right hate campaigns, and the level to which dome in the media try to turn every story into an attack is sickening.
Pascal, I apologize if I misinterpreted anything you said. I can see your point about people potentially having more faith in the principle of tithing if the Church was more transparent in how those funds were used. But as we are reminded by Paul in his epistle to the Hebrews: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." And as we are reminded by Moroni in Ether: "Dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith."
While financial transparency might build faith, based on those scriptures, the pertinent question that comes to my mind is "Do I have the faith to continue to pay a full tithing, even knowing that I might never know how it or other tithes are used?"
For myself, the answer to that question is again a resounding "Yes!" I hope everyone else can also answer that question and the one I posted in my earlier comment the same way.
With a Zanesville stake a Cleveland area temple could take 4 stakes, Columbus Temple 5 and Cincinatti 6 without counting the parts of Toledo stake that would go to an Ohio Temple and not Detroit Temple.
With a Mansfield stake also a possibility I would not be surprised if by 2025 there have are 3 temples operational or announced for Ohio.
Michigan getting a 2nd temple, most likely in Grand Rapids, also seems doable.
The one time I went to EFY (the predecessor of FSY) it was at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. I think one of the young women in my group was from Athens, Ohio and we did have one session where a member who was on the OU faculty, and his wife, who were both African-American spoke to us.
EFY was more free for all and less organized than FSY. There were only maybe 3 people there from the Bloomfield Hills stake, but my roommate was from Lansing stake, and there was at least one from the Westland stake, as well as some from much of Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania including the Philadelphia metro area, Delaware, and possibly a few more areas.
Our regular speakers were all from Utah including Brother Richardson a BYU professor who was later in the Sunday school general presidency and BYU Academic vice president. I believe the counselors had been recruited through BYU and the director was a Canadian who was on BYU faculty.
As I understand it FSY they call the director locally, recruit the counselors from more local YSAs, and the speakers are more likely to be local as well. That was in 1998 and by the time some of my younger siblings went in about 2004 or so I think a lot of that had changed.
I believe when I applied at BYU to be an EFY counselor in 2003 they had changed things so BYU only staffed counselors at BYU and not at other EFY locations.
I have to say the system I dealt with was too much an extension of the BYU EFY ecology. The new system I think is much better.
I did not see the Zanesville, Ohio Stake coming. After looking over the map, I still think a Mansfield Ohio is still in the works but it will consist of 6 wards if it is created.
The Akron Ohio Stake had 9 wards, one of which was used to create the Zanesville Stake. The Columbus South Stake had 8 wards, two of which were for Zansville.
Columbus East Stake had 7 wards, 2 of which were used to create Zansville.
Columbus Ohio North Stake had 11 stakes. Depending on how many wards were moved to the Columbus East Stake will determine whether a Mansfield Stake will be created.
But it appears to create Mansfield Stake, 2 wards would come from Akron (leaving Akron with 6), 1 from Columbus East (requiring at least 2 wards from Columbus North to move to Columbus East) and 3 from Columbus North, (leaving Columbus North with 6 wards). If this all makes sense.
With the creation of the Zanesville Stake (which will be served by the Columbus Ohio Temple), I am more bullish on the Church announcing a temple for Cincinnati, Ohio.
I appreciated your reply to Christopher Nicholson's comments above, and I agree with you about the idea that the process of coming to an understanding or of critical thinking can be complicated.
I think at times we can put forth the idea that a testimony is a simple, clear-cut thing without any attachments or doubts to go with it. True, there are certain principles, historical facts, or ideas that I in my own life have had a strong, clear-cut witness of. However, there are plenty of other aspects of the gospel, the history of the Church, or Church Culture that have baffled me, tried my faith, tried my patience, and to which I'm still hoping for a complete understanding.
You're right that this is a real Church, existing in the real world with real, messy, complicated facts and people attached to it.
@Christopher Nicholson
I empathize with you and your struggles to square the circle of the many different aspects of our complicated religion and culture. I've had my own doubts in the past, and I haven't had everything fully answered yet (either from over the pulpit, or through personal revelation) in ways that are completely satisfactory. However, neither can I deny the answers I have received (whether great or small) during my faith journey over these last 40 years.
One principal I have learned is that doubt is part of the process. Doubt is just having questions after all, just trying to figure things out in a way that makes sense to each one of us individually, and shouldn't be as taboo as we can and have made it out to be.
I don't know how much you're into LDS scholars, but Terryl Givens and his colleagues are some who have impressed me as of late with their unorthodox approach to different gospel topics (through the "Faith Matters" podcasts). I like how he and others dissect the process of having faith, and their conversations with others (both inside and outside of our faith) about their individual and disparate approaches to thinking about our religion and faith in general. It's been a breath of fresh air to me.
If you're interested, here's a 3 minute clip of Bro. Givens talking about doubt being an integral part of the faith process.
https://youtu.be/0SY85KR5xi8
And here's a longer, in-depth discussion from Faith Matters with a pastor not of our faith. It's called "Faith's Dance With Doubt":
@Johnathan Reese Whiting, To explain my previous answer to John Pack Lambert,
"Blogger John Pack Lambert said... Interesting. The website I saw the listing on made it seem otherwise. That website sometimes gets things very wrong.
Is the Karen spreaking unit in South Salt Lake even a ward?
March 9, 2022 at 9:46 PM"
"Blogger Christopher Duerig said... @John Pack Lambert, to answer your previous question :
"Columbus Branch (Karen) - 1064886", assigned to South Salt Lake Stake 501506.
JPL, that's not true at all, as you should know. In another recent thread here, I mentioned the fact that the first presidents for the Yigo Guam, Praia Cabo Verde, and San Juan Puerto Rico Temples were all announced well in advance of the COVID-19 construction delays. Looking back at my files of information, each of those presidents were announced in 2020 (I may have incorrectly said 2019 in the other discussion, so I'm correcting that now). If presidents were called in 2020 for these new temples that will only be dedicated this year, there's no way to state absolutely that the call of a new president for St. George "openly means" the temple will be rededicated this year. If you look at the Church of Jesus Christ Temples site, it currently lists the Tokyo Japan, Hamilton New Zealand, and Hong Kong China Temples as completed and awaiting the announcement of open house and rededication dates. Below that section, the Columbus Ohio Temple is listed for completion in mid-2022. And below that is the St. George Utah Temple, which, per the Church Temples page, is not anticipated to be completed until mid-2023 at earliest:
This year, the first presidents have been identified for the Helena Montana and Feather River California Temples. The former is anticipated to be completed in mid-2022, and the latter in late 2022:
The first president for the Abidjan Ivory Coast Temple was announced last year, and that temple has since undergone delays that will only see it completed in late 2022-early 2023:
What the announcement of new temple presidents actually indicates is that the temple in question is anticipated to be completed within a year, and the announcement of the new leaders is made to enable them to be publicly identified before they attend the fall training for new temple leadership. That way, whenever the temple is ready to be opened or reopened, they can hit the ground running. Based on my tracking of the progress on the St. George Utah Temple renovation, if it is completed in mid-2023, the earliest it could be rededicated is June or August of that same year. But the Church is announcing the information about the new leaders now so they will be ready to go from day one once the temple is again operational.
I meant to say "hopefully" in my comment on the St. George Utah Temple having a new president called.
The new president for the new Rwanda Kugali Mission has been called. It is Christian Mavinga, a resident of Kinshasa but a native of Mabuji-Maye both in DR Congo. His wife is a Kinshasa native. He is 51 and a temple sealer. He has been a bishop, a Seminary teacher, a ward temple and family history consultant, an elders quorum president and a counselor in bishopric and elders quorum presidencies thus other than Seminary teacher he as only had ward level callings, with even Seminary teacher being ward level even if stake issued. The other 15 new mission presidents announced this week have all been in stake presidencies, but only Brother Mavinga is a temple sealer.
His wife is currently a ward family history and temple consultant. She has been relief society, primary and young women president at the ward level. With the wives of mission presidents for this batch about half have not held stake level callings, and this is comparing 9 possible stake level presidency callings to the 3 for members of stake presidencies.
If I had to read anything I to this it appears that the Lord wants a leader for his church in Rwanda who can give the people a temple focused vision. Probably I am trying too hard to understand the matter, but that is as best as I can deduce things.
This article also talks about the growth of the program so far (with some stats), and plans for future growth, including opening up in 10 new countries this year:
I was wrong David Fallabella from Guatemala who will be mission president in Peru is only 38. His dad is Elder Erique R. Fallabella, who was a general authority 70. His granddad was the 1st stake president in Guatemala. His dad is the one who had the story of covering up the hole in his shoe with shoe polish on his toe.
Actually so far there was 1 65 year old in this group called as mission presidents, and no 63 year olds. 3 of the 16 announced this week are 63 though.
I am not sure how many more mission president announcements we will get.
They used to publish temple president ages with the announcements but no longer do that.
As recently as 2021 the ages of temple presidents were published. I amnot sure why the Church News stopped including that detail.
Interestingly they used to include the occupations of mission presidents but stopped that 2-3 years ago. Occupation and age are both included for stake presidents, but no longer past callings.
With the latest group of 16 New Mission Presidents 2022 biographies published today, I have only 20 biographies left for this year to be published. Including the Georgia Atlanta and Brazil Santos Missions Presidents yet "To be announced". And the only one I found that was not called to be replaced from this year callings list in January, of the replacement President for President David L. Chandler called for the 2019-2022 (3 year period, I believe) of the Poland Warsaw Mission.
Another note about President Chandler from this week :
"Poland is expected to be the European nation that will see the larger influx of refugees coming from impacted areas. President David Chandler of the Poland Warsaw Mission said: “Perhaps more than any other nation on earth, the people of Poland understand the tragedy that is taking place."
Christopher, that is interesting. I know a woman who is a native of Poland, though she has lived in the US for many years. She recently told me that she has been in contact with relatives through social media, and her hometown is overwhelmed with refugees right now.
I felt like expressing my love and appreciation for a few people and things: The Lord Jesus Christ. His servants of all types and backgrounds. Those who put His commands and wishes first, and seek to build His Kingdom. The creators and contributors to this blog. All men, women, and children that support God’s annointed and the priesthood of God. Those who sacrifice for others. People who join the Church and build it more. People who care.
I'm not sure which part of Canada was referred to as the 51st state. I'll call that a 'peculiar' description.
Anyway, in Ontario there was is no requirement for vaccination to attend worship services. Worship services have been exempt from gathering limits for most (not all) of the pandemic. We do have sacrament bread placed in cups and mandated every other row. This was an agreement made between the area presidency and local public health authorities so that sacrament could continue. It is my understanding that many churches that did not develop a plan to minimize contact between different people and so, were not allowed to hold their communion.
My struggle has not been with the restricitions so much as they have been with the consistent and predictable lack of following of protocols by our local leadership (particularly youth leadership). It is difficult to send kids to activities when you know that masking, distancing, etc.) are not going to be followed or encouraged and that your kids are likely to be the only ones trying. My kids have been to 4 activities over the past 2 years and each time my kids' reports, or my own observations have given me enough pause to not let them attend for a while until I feel guilty and repeat the process.
I don't know if this is a culture issue, or if it is just random people doing what they think is best; but in all the places I've lived, I haven't struggled with trusting my fellow members and questioned whether I belonged this much before. I mean, if they were at least following the protocols laid out by our leadership I would understand where they were coming from. Very often local directives are contrary to area and general leadership directives. To me, this is a problem.
Today the Bountiful 5th, 22nd, and 43rd wards (all in the Bountiful Utah Stone Creek Stake) were consolidated into two wards - the Meadowbrook Ward and the Bountiful Park Ward, both still in the Bountiful Utah Stone Creek Stake.
It was announced today that the Rangely 2nd ward (in the Craig Colorado stake) will be dissolved and absorbed into my ward, Rangely 1st. This will be a very interesting process to be part of. The wards have been separate since 1995 (before I lived here).
Downtownchrisbrown, here is some information on the reference to Canada as the 51st state:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51st_state
It's kind of a tongue-in-cheek reference to the possibility that some parts or all of that nation might someday become an annexed addition to the US. The 51st state reference also can apply to Puerto Rico, the non-government portions of Washington D.C., state partition proposals, or any U.S. owned island nations. Hope that helps.
Puerto Rico or DC would be a first state, I think the former will be. Canada has 10 proud provinces and 3 territories. Canada is a great sovereign nation Bigger than the U.S. or China. Mexico is more likely to fall under the U.S. than Canada. Or Honduras or El Salvador.
Are stake creations going to pick up as C-19 gets done with? I like how stakes are using fewer units now. Temples are more locally based. Both good trends in my opinion. How is the Church growth in Cameroon lately?
(20 Picks whittled down from my previous regional picks)
-Herriman, UT -Springville/Mapleton/Spanish Fork Area, UT -Coeur d'Alene, Idaho -Colorado Springs, Colorado -Bakersfield, California -Austin, TX -Jackson, Mississippi -Charlotte, NC -Cancún, MX -Santiago, Dominican Republic -Ribeirão Preto, Brazil -Florianopolis, Brazil -Iquitos, Peru -Jakarta, Indonesia -Abuja, Nigeria -Kampala, Uganda -Majuro, Marshall Islands -Angeles or Olongapo, Philippines -Naga, Philippines -Edinburgh, Scotland
Wondering when Washington and Arizona will get new temples. Moses Lake was announced in 2019, and Arizona has not had a temple announced since Tucson in 2012. (These two were the only mainland US states west of the plains states- the tier extending from North Dakota south to Texas- that did not get a new temple last April.)
Also, there are now only 2 states west of the Mississippi that do not have a temple- Kansas and Iowa.
@twinnumerouno I'm honestly surprised everytime they dont announce a new temple in Arizona. Right now Arizona has by far the greatest need in the US with an average of 19.3 stakes per temple (only Utah and Virginia is higher. Virginia isn't truly higher as the DC temple in Maryland serves many of the stakes there). For comparison, states that often have predicitons on this site include Idaho (17 stakes per temple), Texas (13 stakes per temple), California (16.3 stakes per temple), and Washington (15.3 stakes per temple) to name a few. In order for Arizona to meet the national average of 14.4 stakes per temple about 2 or 3 more would need to be announced (the most obvious 3 would be Flagstaff/Prescott, far-east Phoenix metro (Queen Creek/San Tan Valley, and west Phoenix metro (Surprise/Goodyear). I dont expect three to be announced as both Mesa and Gilbert are both high capacity temples and the Phoenix temple is mid-high capacity, but I do expect one to be imminent and maybe even a second one shortly after that.
Regarding potential temples that might be announced in General Conference 3 weeks from now, I do have a somewhat updated list of locations for which a temple might be announced:
But I have also created a list of the top locations I feel are most likely to have a temple announced. The following document breaks down the temples announced by President Nelson per conference, then alphabetically by geographic Church areas. Based on Elder Kevin S. Hamilton's statement about 300+ temples in various phases (made during my stake conference in December), I am anticipating at least 35 temples will be announced this year. Assuming the number is exactly 35, I think that the Church might break that down by announcing 16 in April, with the other 19 announced in October, once the current queue has been cleared out a bit more than it is now.
At the bottom of that document, you'll see the 16 areas listed. 6 of those 16 just have one candidate city listed. For those with 2 or more, any listed appear likely to be announced in April. Hope this information is helpful to all who read those documents. Thanks again, everyone!
Things are really getting out of hand in Wikipedia. Someone has now tried to delete the article on Mark E. Peterson. This despite the fact that a full length biography of him was published. The article is in pretty sorry shape, and relies too much on sources antagonistic to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and spend way too much time trying to paint Elder Peterson as an unredeemable racist. The nominator is trying to argue that any publication of Deseret Book Company is not a usable source. This disallowing full books based on their writer is a truly insane argument. Wikipedia keeps articles on Catholic Bishops sourced to one blog source, now there is an attempt to kill the article on Mark E. Peterson. This article needs way better sources. We also need someone to counter against the attempt to disallow any book published by Deseret Book as being used as a source. This is an argument set up to try to turn Wikipedia into a source built only on sources antagonistic to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With books, the evaluation needs to be first based on how close the writer was to the subject. If a full book is published by a commecial published on a subject, people need to have very good reasons to disallow the book as a source at least adding towards passing GNG. The article very clearly does not cover the whole of who Mark E. Peterson was, but deleting it is clearly not justified.
The Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint history has an article on Peterson. Incorporating and cititing that article would help. Also more incorproation of what Thomas S. Monson said on Peterson in his Ensign bio would also help. At least at the balance level. I am convinced that the Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History should be treated by Wikipedia as a 3rd party source adding towards passing GNG.
One issue with Arizon is that north-west Arizona has several stakes that are served by the Las Vegas Temple (at least 3). What temple is Yuma assigned to? Are there any stakes in Arizona assigned to a temple in Utah? The areas closest to St. George Temple are actually in Utah or Arizona stakes.
I am not sure if that makes a huge difference with the balance.
Another possible calculation would be stake per temple capacity. Clearly a temple like Mesa Arizona will need to have more stakes to operate than a temple the size of Lima Peru. Although I suspect that at present Lima (until Los Olivos is finnished) has more stakes currently assigned to it.
I know people have suggested a temple for Prescott, Flagstaff, Queen Creek, or somewhere to the west of Phoenix. Although Phonix Temple is on the border with Glendale, there is a lot of growth much further west in Metro Phoenix, although the Church is not as big there as in the east valley.
I personally hope the decide to build a temple on top of (yes, as in adding floors) the existing Institute Building in Tempe, Arizona. I know such has never been done (Manhattan involved converting existing floors, Hong Kong involved building a new building including the temple after tearing down the existing building, Provo City Center, Vernal and Copenhagen involved converting a previous building into a temple, San Juan and Taylorsville involved demoliting an existing building, Tegucigalpa they eventually moved the temple to a site other than adjacent to the institute building (after groundbreaking) because of propest at putting the temple so close to the Catholic Cathedral), but there is no particular reason why a temple could not be built on top of an exiting building. I guess they would have to convert or create a basement space for the baptismal font, but Hong Kong and maybe Manhattan had essentially non-adjacent temples, with maybe an elevator shaft through the whole building being technically temple, but there were at least original non-temple floors between temple floors.
I know some people think my temple at Arizona State University idea is crazy, but I think it would be the ultimate in the gathering place for young adults plan.
Mark E. Petersen's page on Wikipedia is not the only page for a former apostle that does not do justice for the lives they lived. Henry D. Moyle and Delbert L. Stapley are among others.
I am curious, did they call Elder Peterson a racist based on statements he made pre-1978 about the priesthood restriction? He died in 1984, and was one of the apostles involved in the 1978 revelation on the priesthood, which to me suggests that he was not really a racist, or if he was, was humble enough to recognize his errors and try to do better.
Elder Stapley was also serving as an apostle at the time of the revelation, but he died shortly thereafter, and I have read that he was too ill to participate.
Pres. Moyle was a counselor to David O. McKay, and died in 1963, creating the vacancy in the quorum (technically, it was the calling of Pres. Tanner to replace him as a counselor) that was filled by Thomas S. Monson.
I see from that article that he did make statements about race which were later declared to be doctrinally incorrect- though the article did not mention that!
Elder Petersen was on assignment in South America at the time of the revelation. Elder Stapley was in the hospital. Both accepted the revelation, but I don't think it's a coincidence that they, probably the two most racist Apostles alive at that time, were denied the opportunity to participate. (Elder Stapley wrote a letter to US presidential candidate George Romney urging him to cease his support for civil rights and implying that every president who supported civil rights had been removed by God. At least he, unlike Elder Petersen, said that he was writing as a friend and not as an apostle.)
After Elder Petersen's death, Church Historian Leonard J. Arrington wrote in his diary, "The talk which he gave in 1963 [sic; 1954], 'Race Problems as They Affect the Church,' opposing granting the priesthood to blacks, a talk widely circulated, apparently with his approval, was one of the most bigoted and narrow-minded talks ever given by a 'disciple of Christ.'" And that is, frankly, the only thing that anyone born after his lifetime remembers him for. ("Opposing granting the priesthood to blacks" wasn't even the worst part - Elder Petersen, frightened by the recent Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, championed racial segregation in every aspect of society and claimed that the civil rights activists' goal of integration would destroy the work of the Church. He also said that faithful black members would only go to the Celestial Kingdom as servants.)
Bruce R. McConkie was arguably worse than Petersen before the 1978 Revelation, but his page on Wikipedia includes his remarks on how he and all those before him were completely wrong.
Regarding a proposed temple for Northern Arizona - there would be a problem with selecting either Flagstaff or Prescott for the temple. The temple is announced for Flagstaff, the temple would serve 6-8 stakes. If it is build for Prescott, the temple would serve 6-8 stakes but different stakes as a Flagstaff Temple would. For both temple locations, it appears likely that either temple would serve only 6 stakes.
If Flagstaff - 2 Flagstaff stakes, Tuba City, Page, Winslow, Cottonwood, and possibly two stakes in Prescott. Prescott happens to be of equal distance, if not slightly closer to the Phoenix Temple.
If Prescott - 2 Flagstaff stakes, Tuba City, Cottonwood, 2 Prescott stakes, and possibily, but not likely, Kingman and Lake Havasu City. Those two stakes will likely remain with Las Vegas. Page, AZ would remain assigned to either temple in St. George. Winslow would remain with Snowflake.
The Yuma Stake is assigned to the San Diego Temple, btw.
I wonder if we look more at where the most wards are in a stake relative to closest temple rather than just the stake center. For example with the Prescott stakes, are there more wards to the south or more to the north. That might determine if they would stay with Phoenix or be part of the possible Flagstaff temple. It is about halfway between the two cities. (It may also be determined by what side of town the temples are built relative to the highways and distance.
Hello! the forecasts of possible announcements of temples, is always a reason for sympathy, I think that we all wish that in each place where the Church is established, temples closer to the baptized and faithful can be announced. More so now that the church is increasingly announcing and building smaller temples in places unthinkable decades ago, even more so knowing that there are money funds available for the construction of temples, and that they are in the planning that the church does. In my case as a Chilean, I am anxious that temples be announced for us, especially thinking that it is supposed that by being closer to the baptized, people attend more regularly, it is not always the case, but it would be nice to have advertisements for Arica, Viña del Mar, Osorno, Punta Arenas. There are places where there are few baptized people in the world and even so temples are announced, of course, in Chile there are many inactive as everywhere. You said that perhaps 30 or more temples could be announced, in both general conferences, hopefully the day will come when we have temples everywhere. Today I live walking to the temple 35 minutes away, and by bus 10 minutes away, I recently got baptized again and I have to wait a year to enter the temple again, I have a lot of pending temple work to do, and being able to enter the temple again temple I will be able to do it. I will move to another city and there is no temple in that area, despite the fact that there are several stakes
In my experience Chilean stakes are not that strong because the wards tend to be not very robust, compared to many U.S. wards and stakes. So, I am suggesting that 5 stakes in Chile are not going to have the same support by active numbers and draw of membership as elsewhere. I wish I were wrong. I am hopeful that Chile, Latin America, and the worldwide faith will fulfill their covenants and be a temple people, helping usher in the Second Coming of the Messiah. Interesting to watch the small oak seed grow into a tree, the tree that it has been prophesied to be. Africa (I know it has many nations, many of which have little or no Church presence) is quickly becoming part of the strongest part of the world faith, the Restored Gospel. It is great to see all of it. ¡ Viva Chile! Vivre le Afrique! ¿ Serán estas frases falsas parejas? Ojalá que no.
When I was serving as a Stake Clerk in a stake with limited experienced leadership, I came to realize that sometimes it made sense for a bishop to serve for longer than 5 years and sometimes it made sense to have a bishop called from outside the ward boundaries. However, doing so was usually inappropriate for at least a couple of reasons, one being that doing so was only a short-term fix and did nothing (in and of itself) to build leadership in the ward. It occurred to that the Lord will call a bishop from the ward that is good enough and in line with his will IF such a person exists within the ward. This means that Bishops tend to be higher quality in wards where higher quality leadership exists.
I believe it was similar with Joseph Smith’s calling of the first apostles in this dispensation. As there are more top notch members of the Church, the Lord has more top notch people to choose from as apostles. i believe that the Lord will continue to reveal great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God, some of which will likely result in realizing that some current sentiments and statements are off.
Joseph Smith, President Hinkley, Elder Bednar (and probably many others) insisted that we learn for ourselves. Unfortunately we have to varying degrees been like the children of Israel who wanted Moses to take care of his responsibilities AND their responsibilities when it came to learning from God. As we continue to learn by study and by faith the true doctrine sinks deeper and deeper into our spiritual hearts and other things don’t. Until we have a perfect knowledge it is error to assume that something is wrong because it hasn’t sunk into our hearts. But as we give more head to what has, our understanding increases.
I am an accountant. There is an ethics principle in accounting that a certified public accountant must never subordinate his/her or his judgement to another. There is a whole method to reconcile differences of judgement and what to do when you can’t reconcile. I find these general principles to be helpful beyond just accounting (as is the case with all true principles).
A key problem I see is that members of the church sometimes rely on other’s judgements when they would grow immensely in judgement and in understanding the true doctrine and principles if they would evaluate information themselves and gain a true understanding via not just study but by the faith aspect. faith is NOT blind acceptance. Faith moves its possessor to some kind of action (lectures on faith) which results in refined understanding and evidence. Sometimes when I follow assembly or installation instructions I have to go back and forth between the manual and the doing. Sometimes I identify opportunities to improve the instructions and sometimes I realize I mis read or misunderstood something. However, after the assembly or installation is complete I not only understand how to assemble or install the thing, but also have the evidence right in front of me that the instructions lead me to a correct understanding and resulted in the hoped for result. Reading the instructions alone cannot give me a perfect understanding nor give me an assembled or installed item.
When we just metaphorically read the instructions by people doing their best to describe things and then later get frustrated that the instructions were not clear or accurate and put all the blame in people trying to explain, claiming they should have known better, it is actually quite silly!!! Lol we should put our trust in things we learn line upon lone, precept upon precept!!!
Eduardo, sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you. I am a very proud Canadian. I am well aware Canada is a sovereign country! The reference to the "51st state" is just one of the many facetious nicknames Americans have for Canada -- it's not meant to be taken literal. But thanks for clarifying for those not familiar with the banter! :)
Downtownchrisbrown, I am a British Columbian, specifically, a Vancouverite. I didn't/don't have an issue with all the mandates, I was just explaining the impact it has had on our membership/activity levels. In Vancouver, we had to be very diligent about following all the rules to a "T" because we didn't want to be issued a very hefty fine or risk being shut down (like so many of the other faith communities in our area). I don't have children so I cannot report how mandates were upheld outside of Sunday services. Randomly, BC announced last Thursday (maybe because the Freedom Convoy was headed to Victoria) that most mandates will be lifted mid April, and that night, we all received an email from our Bishop that permission for "At Home Sacrament" will be discontinued mid April -- so we will see if how fast our ward rebounds to pre-pandemic levels.
(Sorry, I don't know how to "reply" to comments from a laptop).
News recently posted by the Church News site about an unexpected newly called Mission President for the Alaska Anchorage Mission to begin service next month, April 2022, to succeed President Gregory G. King.
"New Alaska Anchorage Mission president and companion called to serve"
Right, my point is that there are legitimate candidates for a U.S. 51st state, and it is likely that they would be Spanish speaking. Americans or others referring to Canada as an extension of the U.S. are annoying and trite. Long live Canada, the best foreign neighbor a country could have. I hope our Church continues to grow there. Is Alberta the most dynamic growth spot among all the provinces?
Christopher Duerig, it might interest you to know that the outgoing president and "mission mother" for the Alaska Anchorage Mission have only served for 2 years, having been called in 2020. Makes me wonder if either the president or his wife will be called to general Church leadership. The Relief Society Presidency has served for 5 years, and the president in this case is still at a target age when general Church service might be an option. Just an interesting sidenote.
The outgoing mission president is the target age for new GA Seventies, but if he's not called as such, he could be called to potentially succeed Brother Jan E. Newman as Second Counselor in the Sunday School General Presidency.
I say that because, with the exception of Elder Bednar, all apostles called since 2004 have served as General Authorities for several years, and since Brother Jan E. Newman, Second Counselor in the Sunday School General Presidency, is the only other current general Church leader who directly descends from the Smith family line, so if he becomes the next such apostolic descendent in the next 2-5 years, the Church might want him to have a few years of service as a General Authority before that time.
If the early release results from the mission president's wife being called to the new Relief Society General Presidency, that explains the timing as well.
It might also be worth mentioning that I think if it's the mission mother called to the new RS General Presidency, it might be as a counselor.
I see two fairly strong prospects for the new RS President: Since mental illness has become more prevalent, that subject has been the focus of talks by current Second Counselor Sister Reyna I. Aburto, they might select her as the new president. And since Sister Susan H. Porter was on the RS General Board prior to becoming First Counselor in the Primary General Presidency, she could also potentially become the new RS President. Just some additional thoughts for you all.
Just a thoughtful question—what are the chances that the Church might consider remodeling a cultural hall within one building if a stake or couple stakes that are remote from the nearest temple, and making that cultural hall into a temple?
Very unlikely. A cultural hall is far too small to contain a lobby, dressing rooms, a baptistry, an instruction room, a sealing room, and a celestial room. It is much more likely that the Church would build a temple the size of Yigo Guam in those areas. Fairbanks is probably the smallest in terms of membership of the remote areas without a temple that is likely to have a temple soon with just 2 stakes.
Per what Elder McConkie said in his 1978 address to Church Educational System Employees lots of people said things pre-1968 that were doctrinal incorrect. A key issue is to give such things due weight and understand the whole person.
There is far more to Elder Peterson than such reductionist assessments of his view. I would recommend reading the article on him written by President Monson to get a fuller view of him.
JPL, not sure If understood what you meant above. The release of the mission leaders in this case is effective in April of this year rather than July. There have been several times when a new GA Seventy or new General Officer is sustained in April, but they only assume their new assignments once they've returned from the mission assignment. Please explain what you mean by "Normally they announce the call as general authority, etc. And then announce a replacement." That wording lacks context, so please elaborate. To which of my comments above were you replying? Thanks.
There are a lot of articles in Wikipedia that need more balance. I believe it was the article on Marvin J. Ashton I noticed was under sourced and under informative. That may be the article that speaks of his connections to Hawai'i because I found a source on it. He did a lot more that is under covered.
Once I read through the history of the article on Dallin H. Oaks. That was atrocious under sourced for the first 2 years it existed. It may have taken that long for it to even mention he was BYU president.
On the other hand at one time it was determined Elder Gong past Wikipedia academic notability guidelines in about 1984 with the level of citations and reviews of a book he wrote on international politics. His article was not actually created until 2010 after he became a general authority. I think I considered doing so before, but I knew Special assistant to the BYU president for assessment and planning was not quite default notable and my crazy plan to create lots of articles on area seventies had been dashed. I didn't know the scope of Elder Gong's work with John's Hopkins and then a DC think tank to have even begun to search for the information to show he was notable.
To date as far as I can tell when they call a new general authority who is currently a mission president they announce the call and then start the process of replacing them as mission president. There are a few cases where a mission president was about to finish in the coming July so they left him in place. In other cases like Elder Mutombo he was not a full 2 years into his call and so they replaced him in Baltimore just after conference, but they did not announce a replacement until after conference.
The other Congolese general authority, was technically twice a mission president before he became a general authority. He served 3 years in Mabuje-Maye (I think I botched the spelling) and also was for a short time acting president of the Kinshasa Mission. He was an area seventy before he became mission president and an area seventy again before he became a general authority.
On the specific issue of length of bishop's serving, I think I understand the idea of the comment.
However 5 years for bishop's is a relatively recent development. L. Tom Perry's father was bishop of his ward the entire time he was growing up, and bishop's serving about 20 years was not uncommon in the early 20th-century. In the 19th century some bishop's served longer than that.
My stakes 1st president, George Romney, served for 10 years after having served as district president for about 5 years before that, and they only released him because he became governor and moved out of the stake boundaries.
There are advantages to leaving leaders in long term.
I do like that the new handbook seems to be trying to encourage leaving people in callings a little longer.
There are lots of issues, and some wards have so many people moving in and out keeping people longer is hard.
My branch for a long time had about every 2 year turn over of presidents. Some of this was people moving out but some was deliberate changes. Then we got a new stake president who felt that longer terms were better. So our last branch president served 5 years and our current one seems to be under the impression he will serve that long. Our new stake president has not indicated any changes along those lines.
The other inner city branch in our stake has had its current president for about 5 years, since it reverted to being a branch. However that man previously was branch president for about 5 years, and district president for maybe 7. He was branch president until it became a ward, then they had 2 bishops, then they went back to being a branch and he was made branch president again. He was on the high council most of the time it was a ward.
One other interesting fact. When President Hinckley announced the smaller temples he said presidents would serve for 5 years. They did that the first round but then starting in about 2004 or so most new presidents served 3 years. I think only Colonia Juarez Temple had more than 1 president serve over 5 years. Even that temple has gone to 3 year terms for presidents.
I also noticed that so far this year no new temple president is a former General authority. At one time it seemed like most temple presidents were former general authorities.
Actually in the 1970s there were a few cases where current general authorities served as temple presidents.
To date 4 presidents of the Church have been temple presidents. All served as temple presidents while apostles. In fact Joseph F. Smith was president of the Salt Lake Temple and Church president concurrently. He was also general young men president and general Sunday School president while Church president. After he died Heber J. Grant decided to devolve things a bit and so he made Anthon H. Lund temple president if the Salt Lake Temple, George Albert Smith general young men president and David O. McKay general Sunday School president. Yes, all three of those men were current apostles. This was Anthon H. Lund's 2nd time as temple president while an apostle. His first time was over Manti in the late 1880s and early 1890s.
Merrier W. Merrill may be the only apostle who was temple president before he became an apostle. He was fairly young when he was president of the Logan Twmple.
Thomas S. Monson was the first president of the Church to have been a mission president before being an apostle.
On another note President Hinckley was the 1st and to date only president of the Church to have been a non-apostle general authority. Elder Bednar is the only member of the 12 to not have been a non-apostle general authority. President Nelson and President Oaks are the only other two non-apostle general authorities called since President Monson.
Some of this reflects the fact that non-general authorities called as apostles can be quite young, and so outlive others, and some of this is just other factors. For example Elder Maxwell was younger than President Nelson with more seniority in the 12, but his having cancer took him far too young.
When Elder Nelson was called to the 12 there were 3 more senior members of the 12 who were younger. Few in 1984 would have predicted that Elder Nelson would one day be president of the Church.
I have to admit that a little bit of me is surprised that when the Church got rid of young men's presidents at the local level they did not also eliminate the general young men president.
Mainly I understand that the presiding bishopric already has a huge responsibility in overseeing the welfare program, humanitarian services, the properties of the Church, and I know Bishop Davies was closely connected with the Salt Lake Temple rebuild so I think they have key roles on temple building overall.
Bishop Causse also seems from some things I have read to be the general authority directly over the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, but I believe earlier President Monson held this position when he was president of the Church. It seems to be an assignment rotated from person to person and not with specific callings.
So I can understand how putting the young men program under the presiding bishopric would be a big call. Especially with the rolling out of the new program over the last few years where the Church has directly taken over top level supervision where before a lot of the higher level supervision of the Church's youth program was outsourced to the boy scouts.
Thanks for clarifying, JPL. Yes, that is the way things have usually occurred with mission presidents called to general Church service, but, as we know, last year, the traditional releasing and sustaining for area seventies was altered, with April changes presented in the Leadership Session and the First Presidency counselor leading a proposal to sustain the changes as a group. And the Church now issues area seventy releases effective August 1, with those releases ratified in October. Perhaps releasing mission leaders early is the next evolution for sustaining general leaders, so that those so sustained can assume that role when sustained and set apart. We'll know either way in 2.5 weeks when General Conference is held. Thanks, JPL.
I dont know if anyone else has heard anything from their localities, but I have heard from a temple worker of one of the Provo temples that they are planning on lifting the mask mandate at that temple very soon. Has anyone else heard anything from a different temple?
I should have clarified further…. I was thinking of a building where a font is adjacent to a stage, which is adjacent to a large cultural hall, and next to some classrooms and a foyer that could be remodeled into a temple? Some cultural hall ceilings are tall enough from the floor to permit a two-story construction….
My thoughts are how to best facilitate the blessings of weekly temple attendance to members even in fairly remote areas of the world. Who knows what the Lord has planned for the blessing of the faithful? These ARE exciting times!!!!!
Still for a standard meeting house, that would be too small to fit all the rooms of a functioning Temple, not even including offices and a laundry room which I'd assume would be taken from another area of the meeting house. Today the only operating Temple that houses a meeting house is the Manhattan New York Temple. The Hong Kong and Tokyo temples used to, but have since been remodeled. The Fukuoka Japan Temple is built on top of the Mission President's residence. I'm not entirely sure if the Bangkok and Bengaluru temples include spaces for meeting houses or mission offices.
If my count is correct the recently organized "Virginia Liberia Stake - 2195461" has the honor of becoming the Church's 3500th "active" Stake this week. Thoughts?
JPL, the Young Men General Presidency might have been phased out, but as long as the Presiding Bishopric has other doctrinally-designated responsibilities than merely presiding over the Aaronic Priesthood, they cannot devote most of their focus to leading young Men around the world. That's what differentiates the Presiding Bishopric from ward bishoprics.
The 3000th stake was the Freetown Sierra Leone Stake. I think there are now 12 stakes between Liberia and Sierra Leone, while when the Freetown stake was formed it was the only stake in either country.
West Africa in general is seeing really good Church growth, between the English derivative and Francophile nations. I hope that more neighbors pick up growth like the two Portuguese speaking ones. The Muslim countries are picking up more, Sierra Leone counting as one of them and foremost among them.
My point is that the Presiding Bishopric, who have doctrinally-mandated and time-consuming assignments in the work they do, serve full-time and cannot solely focus on the young men worldwide. Meanwhile, in the scriptures, there is a doctrinal mandate that the congregational bishoprics are the local presidency of the Aaronic Priesthood. Anyone who has carefully studied the relevant revelations pertaining to the presiding bishoprics vs. local bishoprics would know that, so I'm surprised that the difference didn't occur to you.
And just as the Presiding Bishopric relies on the Young Men General Presidency and congregational bishoprics to assist them with their Aaronic Priesthood roles, at the congregational level, bishoprics are assisted in their other roles by the Elders' Quorum and Relief Society presidencies so they can devote more focus on youth, which they are doctrinally-mandated to do.
JPL, I assume you meant the Kossoh Sierra Leone Stake, since the stake in Freetown was created a while ago. But if you did mean Kossoh, that is incorrect. The Church Temples site updates the stake count once a new one is shown on Classic Maps, and that count only totaled 3500 once the stake Christopher mentioned appeared on Classic Maps today. Before you attempt to assert that someone is incorrect here, kindly check and double-check your facts. I always do so before commenting here, and I stongly suggest you do the same.
Additionally, because congregational bishoprics cannot solely focus on the youth (due to other doctrinally-defined and policy-designated responsibilities that they can't delegate to Elders' Quorum or Relief Society presidencies, that's why they can call "specialists" to support Aaronic Priesthood Quorums.
James, JPL is not incorrect in his statement that the "3,000th Stake" organized was the Freetown Sierra Leone Stake. As verified with this article from Church News :
He may not have realized that I had stated in todays comment the following "3,500th active Stake", and not the "3,000th". So I did not feel the need to correct his statement of the previous goal of 3,000th met by the Freetown Sierra Leone Stake in 2012. I hope this clarifies my previous comment for both of you.
Thanks. I guess I should take my own advice and double-check context before I comment as well. Just goes to show that none of us, especially me, is perfect. Thanks for setting the record straight here, Christopher. I appreciate it.
I thought it was obvious that I was creating a comment showing the continuity and changes between the 3,000th stake and the 3500th stake.
Specifically I thought it was obvious I was showing how while overall stakes increased by about 18% those in Liberia and Sierra Leone increased by 1100% percent.
I was not trying to correct anyone, but build more information and context to their comment. I at least thought that was obvious.
The extreme short history of the Church is this. The 1000th stake was organized in Nauvoo by Ezra Taft Benson. The 2000th stake was organized in Mexico City by Howard W. Hunter and the 3000th stake was organized in Freetown by Jeffrey R. Holland.
When the organizations occurred President Benson was president of the 12, President Hunter was president of the Church and Elder Holland was 6th most senior member of the 12.
Virginia Liberia Stake at 3500 is the only 500 stake I know. There I do not know who organized it.
The 500th stake seems to have been organized in 1970, the year President McKay died, but since President McKay died early in the year probably while President Joseph Fielding Smith was president of the Church. It was organized in Fallon, Nevada. I will look for more data.
The 1500th stake was the Caliche Chile Stake. It was organized in 1984. The 100th stake in Nauvoo was organized in 1979. The Caliche Chile Stake was organized by A. Theodore Tuttle, a general authority seventy and area president.
From 1979 to 1984 may have been the fastest 500 stakes were organized. It took 10 years to get from 1500 to 2000 stakes. The one question is when 2500 stakes was reached.
Here is an article on the Caliche Chile stake being organized with a broader overview. https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1985/01/news-of-the-church/church-marks-a-milestone-1500-stakes?lang=eng&adobe_mc_ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.churchofjesuschrist.org%2Fstudy%2Fensign%2F1985%2F01%2Fnews-of-the-church%2Fchurch-marks-a-milestone-1500-stakes%3Flang%3Deng&adobe_mc_sdid=SDID%3D62381C509AB0AC3F-01920825F67A5794%7CMCORGID%3D66C5485451E56AAE0A490D45%2540AdobeOrg%7CTS%3D1647517679
The 100th stake was Lehi Utah in 1928. The 200th stake was what is now Provo Utah Sharon East. It was split out of the Sharon Utah Stake in Orem so I am not sure how big it was when organized. I was a member of that stake for a few months at one point. The BYU stadium, the MTC and the Provo Temple are all in its borders.
So when David O. McKay died over half the stakes had been organized while he was president of the Church. He became Church president in 1951 about a year before the 200th stake was organized.
I am really having a hard time staying out of the Mark E. Peterson deltion discussion on Wikipedia. So far no one has agreed with the nominator to delete the article, but he is going all out in his truly bizarre claims. He is insisting that the full length biography of Mark E. Peterson is a "primary source" because it was published by Deseret Book Company. That is just not how you determine the primarness of secondariness of a published biography. He is also trying to claim that somehow Bookcraft is not a legitimate publisher because its market was members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This despite the fact that Bookcraft was an indepdent company not in any way owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If these arguments are allowed to stand they will constitute a broad disallowance of any subjects related to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Wikipedia.
https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog-elder-mark-e-petersen-and-the-adam-god-theory/ Here is an article from the Interpretor Foundation which talks about Elder Petersen in more detail. I just noticed I had been misspelling his last name. He published 43 books. I am wondering if there are any reviews out there on them. The above refers to his book as having been popular.
Lon William Sorensen and Marie Ellen Hardy Sorensen, Lehi 25th Ward, Lehi Utah Jordan River Stake, called as president and matron of the Saratoga Springs Utah Temple.
Not unlikely, but not super likely either. There are 2 stakes and 1 District on the island of Ireland, which is more than Norway, Austria, Belgium, and Hungary.
Ireland, Scotland, Albania, and Spain (Catalonia) are the most likely locations for temples in Europe, but Europe has not seen much growth for a while. Wales might also be a sleeper candidate over a third Temple in England.
Facebook report on the creation of the new Virginia Liberia Stake, from a division of the Bushrod Island Liberia Stake. https://www.facebook.com/MLcrarea/posts/today-march-13-2022-was-an-amazing-day-for-the-saints-in-liberia-the-monrovia-li/502673578093088/
Yes. My understanding is that Quito has some logistical issues which may or may not be related to COVID-19, but have resulted in a delay on the announcement of the first couple to oversee that work, with those same issues preventing the Church from opening it. Hopefully whatever the issue is can soon be resolved.
My candidate for the next temple in Europe (and United Kingdom) is Scotland, likely Edinburgh, due to the central location of the Scotland stakes and overall distance from the Preston Temple. I'm not expecting a temple in Ireland due to the small Church presence there, but it is an island, so you never know....
I got some interesting information about the temple in Puebla.
While the dedication date was not announced, and this temple will be a medium-sized temple by Mexican standards (which would be like the Dallas temple more than likely) they are opting for two four-hour-long schedules, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon-evening, on weekdays. This necessitates the calling of 300 workers per 4 hour schedule.
You probably don't need as many workers for one of these smaller, modular temples, maybe let's say 100 to 200 workers that live in the area (200 would be if there were a double shift).
So the next question, as far as temple building goes, is how many people can be called upon to be temple workers within the potential temple district, prioritizing the immediate area where the temple is to be constructed?
If we had detailed stats on that information, something which the Church would not give for obvious privacy laws in many countries, predicting where the next temples would be announced would be a virtual cinch. We are best left with stake information, from whence we could gain a MINIMUM of 120 MPHFTP, and from there maybe about half of those with active recommends, and about half of those with time to go to the temple.
We are going to need about five stakes worth, on average, within a temple district, to announce a temple in an area that were a medium-sized temple. Puebla proper had 7 stakes when the temple was announced. Torreón, five stakes. Querétaro, 3 stakes but with others fairly nearby.
This is why I say Cancún is next, or maybe a second temple on the south side of Mexico City (Mexico City by itself has over 40 stakes). Darker horses being Chihuahua City and La Paz BCS (both of those would be small temples, and La Paz might get the nod for distance reasons; it is SUPER far to Tijuana.
Our stake up in Montana just had all Covid restrictions lifted by decision from our assigned Seventy. We also just had stake conference (one could attend in person, but my family and I watched through Zoom), and we has ward conference the week before that.
Well 2 stakes and 1 district beats Okinawa's 1 stake and 1 district or French Polynesia's 1 stake when temples were announced. However the time and relative cost of travel to the nearest temple may be more severe in those other 2 cases. Also not all stakes are created equal.
@Butterflies and Bones, happy St. Patrick's Day! I think there is about a 15% chance of a temple being announced for Ireland (probably in Dublin if it happens) in the next few years. As to why: 1 stake and 1 district are in Ireland, and another stake in Northern Ireland. Given that people can pretty freely cross the border between the two (supposedly Brexit wasn't going to change that -- haven't heard if that is indeed the case or not) any temple on the island would probably serve all 3 of those stakes/districts. While temples have been announced for that few (or even fewer) stakes/districts elsewhere in Europe, given slow growth (maybe even shrinking, if the church total fertility rate there is in line with that of other protestants on the island) I would doubt it is an especially high priority for a temple relative to other places with single-digit numbers of stakes that have better growth potential. Of course, the church (and the Lord) does seem to have a soft spot for the isles of the sea, and while I think we usually picture the Pacific islands when hearing that phrase, maybe it applies to Ireland, too. Also, it does seem that there is a desire to build temples in areas where, though growth prospects are dim, there are very faithful multigenerational church families -- a desire not to forever deprive them of a temple simply because the society where they live is not generally receptive to the gospel.
Well the person who nominated the article on Mark E. Petersen for deletion gave up and withdraw the nomination after 4 people voted keep. The last produced at least 4 examples of coverage that is clearly indepdent. I have to admit I do not like this result because it does not lead to a clear rebuking of this editor who has clearly been carrying out a campaign to destroy as many articles in Wikipedia connected with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as possible. At one point he was nominating 5 or more articles I created for deletion a day.
@JPL, I am aware that in terms of doctrine and history we are of course not a protestant church. However, culturally we fit the same niche and in many countries have similar demographic profiles, which is why the church is often included with protestants in surveys where church membership is not a large enough subset of the populace to justify its own categorization. For these reasons, I feel the phrase "other protestants" was the most apt in the particular context. Clearly you disagree. I think you will find your interactions on here to be more fruitful (and certainly more pleasant) if you don't attempt to pick every nit and cast out every mote you encounter.
I think I heard that the term "protestant" was developed to mean christians who are not Catholic. As in they "protested" against the Catholic church. But I don't remember who I heard that from.
248 comments:
1 – 200 of 248 Newer› Newest»so how many branches are there in Buchana, Liberia? Harbel would only be the second district outside of the Monrovia Metro Area, which currently is covered by 5 stakes.
I used classic maps to look this up. So the general area of Harbel has 4 branches. The Boys Town branch mights also be moved from the Paynesville Stake to a Harbel district.
There are 2 branches in Buchanan. In the interior of the north there are branches at Ganta, Gbarnga and Totota. In the souther there are branches at Greenville and Zwendru. Zwendru appears to have officially the largest boundaries of any unit in Liberia. I have no clue why its boundaries are drawn so large. Zwndru branch extends to the Ivory Coast border, although Zwendru is not that close to the border. Ganta is on the border with Guinea, the branch appears to meet about a mile from the border. I am wondering if outreach to the town of Zimpa might make sense. On the other hand, missionaries crossing the border would probalby be a logistical nightmare, so this might have to be member initiaited outreach.
Ganta and Totota both look to be roughly 20 miles from Gbarnga, in opposite directions. I am not sure if this is a small enough area to make a district reasonable, and 3 brnaches for a district is on the low side. So it might be a little until that area gets a district.
Of course what I do not know is where there might be groups in Liberia.
Looking on the meetinghouse locator, no building seems to show up for Zwedru branch. Looking at the map more, I do not think Boy's Town branch would be relocated. I was thinking the south end of Boys Town branch, in and around Marshall might be split and reassigned, until I noticed that it looks like none of the roads go over the rivers there, so it appears you have to go back north-west to Boys Town, before heading inland to Harbel.
I sincerely hope that the new membership in Liberia and throughout fast growing Africa stays true to their new found faith, better than what we may describe as mass conversions in Latin America. There has been real growth in Latin America, yes, but hundreds of thousands of baptized members did not turn out to be loyal or steadfast in the faith. Perhaps this happened in Chile more than any other place, and I have been witness to it.
2200 hundred baptisms in one mission is awesome, no doubt. This pales in comparison to certain Chilean records over the years for one mission. I think 10 k had been achieved by multiple missions many times, but the success of those numbers was not sustained in activity rates.
We pray Liberia and its neighbors will be better, stronger, more faithful.
Exciting to see unit and temple growth, which seems to be an overall better way to gauge membership growth than the numbers of those who join.
Eduardo:
hello countryman! You are right in Chile, the golden age of baptisms was lived, it is a pity that they were not maintained over time, it has been the subject of analysis, and currently, although very few are baptized and are inactivated anyway, so we have to see that they are is doing wrong.
Hopefully in Africa, Chile and throughout the world baptisms increase, those who remain faithful and that more temples are built nearby, since they are needed
I am sick and tired of people falsely speaking of Africa as if it is a country. It is not. If you say Chile you need to contrast it with Liberia.
Liberia has seen struggles at times. It has gone through 2 Civil Wars since missionaries first arrived in the late 1980s. This has caused significant numbers of members to emigrate.
Liberia also is one of only 3 countries that had its first stake discontinued and reverted yo having no stakes. The others that saw this were Nicaragua and Armenia.
Today there are 5 stakes in Liberia and it appears the growth there is on a fairly solid basis.
President Leavitt and his counselors have a clear vision of moving the Tabernacle Choir to be a larger force in the Church.
I am quite excited to see what they will do to accomplish this.
I would say the Tabernacle Choir was one of the most shut down things with Covid, but my stake still has no clear date when we will reopen our family history center so some things are even more shut down.
There are guys out there that are parroting the Church losing a lot of members over its response to the Coronavirus, albeit, reading blogs like this and analyzing other data, it is clear that their reports have been greatly exaggerated, and in large part, limited to some areas of the United States.
Here in Mexico, our Area has told us to remain masked in Church, and there is a protocol in place where they only unlock one door to the chapel and there are two priesthood holders that check everyone's temperature and give hand sanitizer. If the temperature of the brother or sister is higher than 99.5 degrees F (37.5 degrees C), they are NOT let in the chapel and are asked to partake of Sacrament at home, if no priesthood is available, a note is made to the bishop to bring the sacrament to their house.
I haven't observed members, except for one, who has been outspoken AGAINST those regulations. They have been largely obedient and attendance is essentially back to prepandemic levels.
So far, it appears to be a net gain of 15 wards and 8 branches, which would be a VERY low pace for the year, as we are now approaching the one-fifth mark of the year.
I said Latin America, which is divided by two continents plus the larger part of the Caribbean, which encompasses many sovereign nations and even more languages and cultures. Remind anyone of Africa, at all?
Liberia, the country and mission in question, was being used as a comment to compare to large numbers in the country of Chile.
Sorry for any misunderstanding. My dad always used the the phrase “sick and tired”. Sure.
Incidentally, I can speak the languages of about 40 nations in the continent of Africa.
My parents lived and married there.
It’s a great place, and like Europe and Asia, or any land mass on our planet, can be referred to as such.
Healthy and enervated, that is the opposite of that sad trope.
2200 baptisms is solid, especially when they retain their membership. Unlike some cases in Church of Jesus Christ history.
The specific line I was responding to was "Hopefully in Africa, Chile and throughout the world baptisms increase." That is a clear example of false parity in writing.
My branch used to do temperature checks. In theory it was not a bad thing, but at this point it would be overly excessive.
The person who carried them out was the wrong person to do so. If it came in too low she would detain you until she got a high enough temperature, which was totally unneeded.
I am so glad that in Michigan we no longer have to wear masks at church.
Has everywhere returned to in person stake conferences, or are some areas still doing them remote.
In 2020 my stake had stake conference the last Sunday they allowed them in North America.
We did last weekend, only thing not really done was a stake choir or any choir. Still ran a broadcast for those that could not mainly due to illness, I was one, had an intestinal bug which I am now almost fully over. Had 101 on the general session feed. Also was able to see the adult session.
Have you ever noticed that the same 3 people or so make up over 90% of the comments on this blog? Perhaps this is in part because whenever someone new posts, they get criticized for petty semantics, or get scoffed at because their opinions aren't as sophisticated or their accuracy in predictions isn't as high. Can we just not do that sort of stuff, please?
The Craig Colorado stake also just had stake conference. The leaders and speakers and some other members were at the stake center, but due to the large geographic size of the stake (or other reasons) it was broadcast on a live stream on the church's website that could be watched from the other chapels or from home. There was one special musical number in the general session (the only one I got to see due to working on Saturday evening), but the other music was playing a recording of the Tabernacle Choir. It didn't appear that anyone on the podium was wearing a mask, but some of them were socially distanced.
Our stake conference in 2020 was also the Sunday just before everything shut down due to COVID, in that case the conference was broadcast to all the chapels so I went to mine to see it.
JPL, you are acting toxic and disrespectful. We all know Africa and its 53 independent countries here, even though the rate of understanding of these aspects among the general American population is very low. May we continue the discussion with civility and without getting attached to minor aspects, please.
Re the question about stake conferences and covid: My stake had an in-person conference this past weekend at the regional center in Bountiful (a large auditorium space the church owns that is used by stakes in Davis County for stake conferences and other large events). Elder Neil L Andersen of the Twelve was presiding and in his talk made a point of noting that while he has been very careful the past two years about covid (he made a comment that he has been terrified of being the person who gives President Nelson covid), he had chosen not to wear a mask that Sunday as he felt it was appropriate for him to begin returning to a more normal way of doing things, at least when in that particular part of the world.
Here, where I live in the Little Rock metro, COVID caused a decline in attendance, but that was short lived as it's now attendance is back to or above pre-COVID levels. We just had a missionary return in my ward and said that baptisms in his England mission increased after COVID hit.
I think the 2,200 converts are great. Hopefully they will retain and continue to grow. I had a chat with the Arkansas Little Rock Missions wife about a week ago and said the previous month they surpassed their goal. Even though their numbers aren't near as high as other missions, they're breaking some of their own records.
As for it only being two new stakes, it's early in the year and there are a number of large stakes that appear ready to split. But again, regardless of how many stakes are created or discontinued, it's all about each individual.
We had an in-person stake conference in December, with a broadcast available where needed. My wife is the primary caregiver for her octogenarian father, and I have respiratory issues that make me vulnerable to COVID-19, so we continue to do the virtual participation. We were supposed to have another stake conference in January, which was postponed due to a spike of cases in our area. Our stake president has served for 9 years, so his release seems likely whenever that is rescheduled.
We had our last stake conference in person in November. I frankly don't remember if there was a livestream or not, but it was pretty well attended in either case. Generally, there seems to have been quite a bit of reluctance to implement health protocols beyond what the state is forcing us to do. Last Sunday was the first Sunday post state mask mandate. Attendance went up by a solid 30 people (conservative estimate) and about two out of 150 were wearing masks. No more social distancing either, and the broadcast of sacrament meetings is on the chopping block to encourage people to start attending in person again. There is definitely a push to fully normalize things.
Our stake conference was broadcast to chapels, but that happened long before Covid. There was a way for members to watch it from home but they discouraged overuse of this option because it has limits.
I really think my stake should rent a high school auditorium for our next stake conference. The stake center is essentially in the north-west corner of the stake. 4 miles from the north border and 6 from the west border, while 16 from the south border and 26 from the east border. To be fair the stake does actually go 10 miles north of the stake center, but that stops about 8 miles east of the stake center.
Of the 5 other chapels the conference was broadcast to 4 of them. One of those chapels they used to not broadcast it to and another one is a newly rented facility in the last few months.
My branch is one of the further from the stake center. It is probably an under 40 minute drive, but we have transportation issues being largely inner city. Still there was a sister from my branch who picked up another sister in her car and drove to the stake center. To be fair they live in the western part of the branch so closer to the stake center than much of the branch.
Last month a sister in my branch had a baby shower at the stake center, so it is not unbearably far.
We had in person stake conference 6 months ago with masks. Our next one is right after conference weekend, masks optional.
@David Todd, I, for one, come to you with a humble heart and ask your forgiveness, if I have ever said or commented anything in my posts to offend you or make you feel that your comments or those of others had any less importance or validity than my comments/opinions, or just ideas. I greatly appreciate any and all who have shared their own GROWTH experiences here, be it personal or organizational or Church units and Temples. Of where the Church as a whole can make day to day improvements from the least of us to the greatest among us to improve our own relation with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Once again, I plead for your forgiveness for anything I may have said to offend.
Hopefully on this blog, in blog sites everywhere, and the forums of the Church of Jesus Christ, people will be edified and inspire and educate each other.
Any false parity in that line?
I hope to improve my writing skills every day.
I wonder what other missions in the sub-Saharan African missions have baptized as well as Liberia last year? Ones in Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, or DR Congo?
Christopher, thank you for your message. I should clarify that I have not been offended. More than anything just a bit annoyed when I read some comments, which is my own issue.
That said, it felt like a good time to remind people that the other people who read this blog have many varying backgrounds and ideas and education. For some people, English isn't even their main language.
Also I've seen a number of people correct others on things that they aren't necessarily even right on.
@David Todd
I agree, too.
I apologize if, in the past, I've made anyone feel unwelcome here. I've been trying to curb my comments as of late.
Hailing from the The USA's 51st State, also known as the Land of Maple Syrup, I can certainly report that the Canucks have had a profoundly different experience with Covid than our southern neighbors. There is a reason the "Freedom Convoy" originated here. Lest anyone should think this was about truckers honking up a storm much to Trudeau's dismay (and credit), let me assure you the Great White North's excessive Covid restrictions have penetrated all aspects of our lives and has severely impacted worship services of all faiths.
I cannot speak for all provinces, but I know that when religious meetings were allowed to reconvene in September 2021 in my very large neck of the woods, all worship attendees (12+) were/are required by LAW (not encouragement) to be vaccinated, provide a copy of the vaccination to the leadership, all (3+) are required to wear masks - including the speaker, there were temperature checks at the door, mandated every-other row seating, singing was prohibited, congregational limit of 30 people, each sacramental bread was placed in an individual water cup and the Priesthood passing the Sacrament wore gloves. Each and every time a member who attended services did catch Covid, it was publicly reported so Contact Tracing could be conducted, which resulted in a discontinuation of services for a week/two weeks to prevent a super-spreader event.
Members who: 1) had Covid, or, 2) were vulnerable and did not wish to attend in-person services, or, 3) were not legally allowed to attend Church due to vaccination status, were able to watch via Zoom and were able to bless/receive the Sacrament in their home if they were a Priesthood holder or lived with a Priesthood holder. Thus, if you were a single woman/mom (& her children), a woman/mom in an interfaith marriage (& her children), a man not yet ordained to the Priesthood, an investigator, etc. you were not able to receive the Sacrament. This went for receiving Priesthood Blessings for the entirety of 2020, the majority of 2021, and January during Omicron. Last month, our stake held stake conference and while it was technically in-person, there was a legal limit on attendance, requiring a reservation system. All our meetings have been and will continue on Zoom as the Pandemic is very much NOT OVER according to the governmental body of America's Hat.
As you can imagine, this has had a negative impact on all communities of faith, but specific to this discussion, Church membership in Lumberjack Country has not recovered at all from Covid. In particular, the children, the youth, the YSA, the sick, the elderly, and anyone without access to the Priesthood, have suffered greatly despite all the efforts of the Church.
Notwithstanding all this, we are most grateful that those of us who don't participate in the double-double ritual at Tim Horton's were blessed with another Temple here in Ursalia.
Вау, то је строже од Србије.
Firstly my prayers go out for our Ukrainian brothers and sisters. I knew at least one missionary that had come from the Ukraine.
Secondly growth can only happen if the church and its members are all being more honest and transparent. I.e. being clear about church ensign funds, paid clergy (which sickens me as an active LDS member), and some of the bending of truth from the past. I know many members which have left because it came as a shock to them. What keep me firm is only my personal spiritual experiences, and the hope things can change (repentance). Yes, no one is perfect but christ, but as his followers we need to be honest about human frailty even within just like the scriptures point out about the past.
I really hope too for all faithful people of all religions to work together more in harmony, and even with the non religious.
Growth happened for centuries without the church being "transparent." The quorum of the 15 presides over 16 million members, 30k+ congregations, has over $100 billion in assets, is doling out a billion a year in welfare, and still get combined stipends under $2 million, much less than any of them were making in their professional careers, and significantly less than any major non-profit CEO. My wife and I's average age is less than 30, and combined we earn more than they do with much less work and significantly less responsibility.
There are a lot of reasons people leave the church, but I doubt this was the primary reason for any of them, just what they decided to pin it on.
Expo 2020 is set to wrap up on March 31st. Dozens of properties have already been handed over to private corporations. I would expect to see at least a site announcement for the Dubai Temple in the coming weeks.
I can only speak for myself, the Church's lack of transparency is why I lost trust in it and a big part of why I've dealt with recurring faith crises for over a decade. I've never been okay with the fact that I first learned about Joseph Smith's polygamy, Joseph Smith's seer stone, Joseph Smith's treasure digging, Joseph Smith's multiple First Vision accounts, the Book of Abraham controversy, past prophets' and apostles' incredible amount of racism, etc. from non-church sources. My first and most obvious assumption was that the Church didn't talk about these things because they were damaging to its truth claims. I felt betrayed. And then apologists claim that I and thousands of others with similar experiences are entirely to blame for not reading everything the Church has ever published to find, for example, the one sentence about Joseph Smith seer stone in an issue of the Ensign published the year before I was born. And even if excuses like "We focus on the basics of the gospel" hold water for the dumbed-down and sanitized portrayals of church history in stuff like Sunday school manuals (which in my opinion, they don't), they fail to explain why, when *professional church historian* Leonard J. Arrington tried to be transparent and balanced in *professional history publications*, church leaders like Mark E. Petersen, Ezra Taft Benson, and Boyd K. Packer fought him at every turn.
I'm not crazy about the lack of financial transparency either - the only reason we know that $100 billion statistic is because a whistleblower leaked it in 2019. I know the Church isn't legally required to disclose things in the US, but in my view not being legally required to do something isn't a sufficient justification for not doing it. The Church could avoid a lot of misunderstandings, rumors, and time-wasting lawsuits if it was open about its finances.
Sorry, I know this is a bit off-topic and will upset some people, but since the subject of transparency was broached I wanted to share my experience. And I do think transparency is more relevant to growth now than it may have been in the past, because people no longer trust large institutions (for good reason) and because the internet exists. When members learn controversial information in Sunday school, they incorporate it into their paradigm and move on. When members instead learn the same information from hostile websites and podcasts, they feel like the Church has lied to them.
Does anyone have information about the Columbus Ohio Temple's Renovation? I know the exterior has been heavily modified, but what is being changed internally? Are the progressive endowment rooms remaining as they are, or are they converting them to stationary rooms?
Sometimes I have these same concerns. But what bothers me the most are not these historical aspects, because they already seem to me to be anachronistic. What bothers me is that the church's asepsis does not allow the creation of local community involvement initiatives and, if it does, does not sponsor them in any way, even with so much investment in the stock market and money in bank accounts.
I reaffirm the benefit that would be the creation of church schools across Latin America, in the same way that Adventists do. We are a territory where education is scarce and expensive. Pathway doesn't work for us in most cases, because not everyone wants or adapts to learn English, and they shouldn't. The Church should adapt to their native language.
Anyway, I say that I would engage in such an initiative voluntarily, but it is a pity that there is no support for an implementation of this in the third world, after all we are not among the main sponsors of the movement. In the meantime, I keep faith in the hope that the future will allow these things to happen.
I understand that there are three things that need to be done to increase the retention and participation of members in LA, things that are common there for you, but not for us: formal education with a religious bias (but the church preferred to close Benemerito), sponsorship for formation artistic and musical youth and investment in interstake cultural events, so that young people are won over and form large families within the church. While we don't do that, evangelical megachurches are doing so, so successfully that they have already begun to dominate the political scene in Brazil.
And once again I apologize for the googled English.
One of the things that I loved about the Saints books that are being created is the openness to talk about things that we never hear in church. I don't think we should be worried about lack of transparency causing people to leave as much as the benefits that can come from transparency to building our own faith.
For instance, how great would a Sunday School lesson on tithing be if in the part where we learn where tithing funds go- instead of glossing over it by saying it goes to building temples or even lying and saying no church leaders get paid, we actually got to discuss where our money is being used. Something could be written in the manual like- tithing funds are considered sacred and are used for funding the church's operations. A large portion of the funds are used for building and maintaining meetinghouses and temples. These funds are also used to support the missionary department of the church, produce church materials, and for advertising. Some of the money may be used to support humanitarian efforts. These funds may also be used to support initiatives that are in line with the teachings of the church. The church also uses tithing funds to purchase investment businesses and properties which help to sustain financial stability. While none of the local leaders of the church receive compensation from these funds, general authorities may receive stipends to support their travels and expenses as they devote their full time and efforts to supporting the worldwide church. Discuss: How do the many uses of the church's funds help to support the mission of the church? How does the church practice financial stability and why is this important?
I think the Church would have a great opportunity to release and utilize some of these excess funds by expanding education options and welfare programs worldwide. It's not like these $100 billion are going to go away if we build more universities and use actual qualified professors (not senior missionaries) to teach classes. Building primary and secondary schools, hospitals, and basic infrastructure would definitely be options to deploy these funds into as well.
All the while, we're still paying tithing. The Church won't have to survive and operate on these $100 billion until the second coming, but there is and there will be for the forseeable future a steady and probably increasing influx in funds that can again be used to do more good in the world. Build more chapels and temples, yes, but primarily I think spending should be humanitarian given the state of the world. This amount of wealth comes with a certain set of responsibilities, and it is time we use what we have to lift people up.
Noah, I did some digging and found the following article from a local newspaper that details what that renovation involved:
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2020/12/06/latter-day-saints-making-design-changes-columbus-temple-upgrade/6427377002/
If you need additional information, please let me know and I'll see what else I can find.
When it comes to the 100 billion fund (afaik it is approx 160 billion now) I then come to the construction of Zion as detailed in the Book of Revelation as well as the visions given to several early Church leaders particularly Parley P Pratt.
Then I look at a project like Neom that is being built in Saudi Arabia (https://www.neom.com/en-us) that has an INITIAL investment of 500 billion dollars. That's three times the Church's fund (as far as I know) and five times the known figure.
Neom is also about one one-HUNDREDTH the size of the dimensions of Zion as described in Revelation.
We're talking then an investment of about 50 TRILLION dollars, which is about a third to forty percent of global GDP.
Now this money does NOT have to come through just the stock market. There are a variety of things which the Church can (and does) invest in. Real estate is always going to be a definite plus.
Pascal, the Church already does all of that. Such efforts are regularly reported through the Church News and the Newsroom. The BYU-PW program is available to everyone worldwide, and the Church regularly contributes finances, manpower, and supplies where needed. The Newsroom and the Church News share at least one report on such efforts every few days. The Church does not need to pick and choose how to contribute to society. It does so all the time.
On the Church News homepage, I count at least 7 such reports currently available. And there are at least 5 reports on the Newsroom on such efforts this far in March. The Church makes these updates readily available on a regular basis, but won't compel anyone to read them. But they are out there. I wish more people would check those websites before voicing such concerns.
I tried leaving this on the temple predictions thread, but it wouldnt let me, so I'll just leave my predictions for this conference here.
Top 10 picks:
1. Tacoma, Washington
2. Flagstaff, Arizona
3. Austin, Texas
4. Charlotte, North Carolina
5. Northwestern El Salvador
6. Chiclayo, Peru
7. Abuja, Nigeria
8. Santiago, Philippines
9. Poza Rica, Mexico
10. Kampala, Uganda
Wild Card Picks
1. Tirana, Albania
2. White Tank Mountain, Arizona (West Phoenix Metro)
A Karen speaking ward in St Paul Minnesota was recently downgraded to a branch.
The article states that they are going to make the temple more efficient overall. That can lead to assumptions that the progressive instruction rooms will be converted to Stationary rooms and either provide more capacity per room, or create additional rooms, though it doesn't really get into specific details. The other standard temples that were renovated didn't really change the rooms around much and kept the progressive endowment style.
All the temples currently being built have Stationary instruction rooms, so I'm just curious if they had planned to do the same for Columbus. I suppose the only way to find out will be when interior photographs are released when the rededication is announced. Thanks.
Also noticed that the article stated the temple being 12,000 Sq feet as opposed to the 10,700 Sq feet reported from most sources.
Eduardo, I think his point was that lumping all African countries together is pointless. A combined population of 1.4 billion compared to Chile with 20,000,000 people makes any comparison weak.
Africa is not a homogenous singular entity. Each nation has its own unique relationship and history with the Church.
I'm well aware of this. It is mostly a matter of scale.
To the point of the original post and supporting the split of the Columbus Ohio Temple District, the creation of the Zanesville Ohio Stake has been reported to have occurred last Sunday.
Not sure what you mean by that. If you're saying that the scale of the Church's charitable donations is smaller than the amount spent to build and operate the latest batch of temples, you'd have to explain why. Maybe we don't need the exact figures. I'd defer to the Church Auditing Department on this:
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2021/04/22larson?lang=eng
Those who have read and understood D&C 119 and 120, and those who read or hear the Church Auditing Department Report in April of each year have a choice: To trust the Brethren on this or not. Fact of the matter is that there are some aspects of Church finance that are none of our business. It's not my place to know how much the Church doles out to those receiving financial assistance. I have no qualifications or access to data that I have no business having. I don't need to know or question why the Church spends x amount on temples and chapels and y amount on other pursuits. It's more than enough for me to know that qualified auditors (including Church members and friends of other or no faiths) have been able to review that data and find no fault therewith. Sorry if that's not good enough for you, but if it's good enough for the Lord and His servants, it's good enough for me. I won't let the lack of that information affect my testimony of the Gospel, and I hope that no one else, yourself included, would either. No one's asking to see your financial records, so why would anyone feel entitled to see those of the Church? It's the Brethren that will answer to the Lord about those matters, and only He has a right to judge whether any Church funds have been misappropriated and to act according to that judgement.
@Josh, Thank you for reporting the great news about the new Stake in Zanesville Ohio.
Zanesville Ohio Stake - 2189232
https://classic.churchofjesuschrist.org/maps/#x=find&find=stake:2189232
https://classic.churchofjesuschrist.org/maps/#ll=39.809016,-81.910057&z=10&m=google.hybrid&layers=stakecenter&q=Zanesville&find=ward:42854
Unless my count is off, the next Stake to be organized after Zanesville Ohio, will have the honor to become the 3500th active Stake in the Church. Any guesses on who will have that distinction?
My understanding is that the auditing report is essentially a declaration that the Church has followed GAAP. Which is crucial, but I wonder if there is a better way to instill actual transparency. Because I disagree with you somewhat; it isn't my place to make allocation decisions, but as a member of the Church who pays a significant sum of money in tithing each year, I would love to know how it is used for good. Perhaps in a way that extends beyond the notion that the Church is not committing fraud. Actually, I firmly believe that this transparency would increase people's willingness to pay a full tithe (the research on the topic is quite clear that greater disclosure is correlated with greater willingness to donate).
I also don't know from where you are taking the idea that I want fewer temples or meetinghouses or that humanitarian spending has to exceed construction spending. It's not my position and probably not the position of anyone who genuinely cares about the work of salvation. I genuinely want the Church to divest instead of sitting on vast sums of money despite a reliable influx of somewhere between 15 and 25 billion dollars a year. The easiest way to divest is through humanitarian efforts, but if we triple spending on temple construction next year, I will be the first to applaud. The liquifiable reserves of the Church were, at least informally, supposed to last for a year (as a similitude to food storage). My estimate is that we are likely in excess of five years now and I would rather see those funds put to use to advance the kingdom and fulfill the tree-fold mission of the Church than yield returns in unrelated stocks or real estate.
Christopher Nicholson - You did a good job summing up a lot of the big "controversies" that people tend to bring up when they doubt about the truthfulness of the Gospel. My response to your comment is that I am grateful that we have all of these controversies because it helps us to think critically about things and also realize that this is a real. Things that are real are not nice and neatly organized - they are messy and sometimes confusing or contradicting. I do not think the Church intends to try to hide information about all of these controversies or issues because it will destroy the faith of others, but I think that a lot of the Church's meta-history has to do with trying to make sense of it all in a easy way to understand. Furthermore, I think the Church is also cautious about giving the enemies of the Church more information to distort or use as ammunition with their detracting efforts.
My biggest issue I have is with the Church culture. This is a tough one because some of the greatest examples I know in the Church personally love the culture, and I find the culture to be a big barrier to growth. Another major issue I have is what others have mentioned already - the corporatization of the Church and how that creates a lot of barriers to developing more of a community. Control is a difficult thing with something like religion. Too much or too little both can have disastrous consequences.
Brett, I understand the false parity comment that is made. I know that Liberia vice Chile (which has had multiple missions, not just one, as compared to the 2200 baptisms counted for the year period in the West African country).
I could easily say: I hope that African countries do not have the same numbers problem as Latin American ones with retention of converts.
My point is this: I hope they do not have similar problems compared to Chile. This country I know well and others in LA have not had the extremes of Chilean numbers.
I do not see much reason to nitpick or strain at gnats on this, the thought or idea is cogent. Obtuse understandings are what they are.
We must infer that if I hope one person in the U.S does not have cancer, for example, I wish the same for 1.4 billion Chinese. False parity? That is how my brain works, sorry if that comes across as some odd thought that is “false” enough to make someone sick and tired.
Africa is a continent, has different regions. I am well aware of this since at least 1976.
I am convinced the rules and regulations we have faced in the US have been far too draconian, but the rules in Canada sound insane.
The requirement of vaccination to attend worship service is a violation of basic human rights.
Here in Michigan we resumed singing in Church service in March 2021.
@Christopher Duerig...the St Paul Branch (Karen) was discontinued at some point and on March 6th was reinstated.
Chile essentially has 1 dominant language. Few African countries have such. DR Congo has 4 different regions of dominant lingua francas that exist on top of various other more localized languages. It has about 100 million people.
Ethiopia has 100 million people as well. Some will tell you it is an Oriental Orthodox Christian nation where Amheric is spoken. More Ethiopians speak Oromo as their first language than Amheric, and the majority of Ethiopia's population is not Orthodox Christian. 43% of the population is Orthodox, about 34% Muslim, 18% Protestant (a term which elidws huge amounts of variation), about 3% Animist, and less than 1% Catholic and less than 1% Jewish.
Oromo is spoken by 24% of the population and Amheric by 19%. The fact that 40% speak one of two languages as their mother tongue is extremely rare in countries on the African continent.
One example of the just plain unintelligent talk of "Africa" one sees is when people mention that many in "Africa" speak Swahili.
I grate my teeth at such stupid statements. Swahili is used in the Eastern third of DR Congo, Rwanda, possibly Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and at least parts of Mozambique.
It has no presence in Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, or Senegal. Any speaker in South Africa is likely a recent immigrant. Those who can speak it in Kinshasa are far from their ancestral homes, and Angola and Ethiopia are far beyond its range.
Truth about paid clergy? This is just plain rubbish. The Church has never been anything but transparent about the fact that general authorities got paid.
President Hinckley was explicitly honest that some of the funding for the revitalization of downtown Salt Lake, key to keeping the Salt Lake Temple viable, and something people anywhere else would cheer, was coming from the earnings on investments. That is why Huntsman's ludicrous lawsuit got thrown out, because President Hinckley was honest and transparent.
I do not believe the claim that the Church has over $100 billion in assets. Published stick holdings are far below that.
At the same time I am 100% sure that the naysayers are severely under estimating the total operational costs of the Church.
The reason you first learned about multiple First Vision accounts from non-Church sources is because you have under studied Church sources. I first learned about that from reading the Ensign.
10,700 was the size at build. Same with Detroit. For Detroit it is probably still the reported size, but it is clearly not the actual size because more space has been enclosed where the entrance is.
No one is "lying" saying no leaders of the Church get paid. This is a false and malicious claim. I have had lessons where we discussed the actual and varied uses of Church funds.
Anyone who pays attention has a realization that the main use of these funds is for creating materials, building and maintaining buildings, educational operations and do forth.
Leaders of theChurch on multiple occasions in both general conference and in publications available and aimed at Church members gave explained the Church has a policy of saving money and not spending it all.
It would be nice if people stopped repeating the misleading claim that the Church has not been honest about this and bothered to actually read the multiple cases where leaders have explained the fiscal principles used to build good funding.
The fact of the matter is that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints diversted itself of its junior colleges in the early 1930s because it literally could not afford to continue to operate them.
Operating educational facilities is very costly.
Based on Bishop Causee's statements the claimed reserves of the Church are almost certainly overstated.
The cost of operating educational institutions is huge.
That is even before you get into the logistical nightmare.
One issue is how do you avoid a coloniaistic set up. BYU-Hawai'i low has a president and Provost who are both culturally Hawai'ian. I know the president who has served less than 2 years is the first non-Haole president of BYU Hawai'i in its 67 years of existence, and the provost may be as well.
The Church has functioned in Hawai'i since 1851, longer than in any other area that is not culturally North American or European. True missionaries arrived in French Polynesia, or what was about to become French Pokynesia in 1844, but the French colonial authorities forcefully removed then in the early 1850s and then executed some of our Polynesian brethren. It would not be until the 1890s and the return of James Brown that the Church would be reestablished. An elders quorum would not be organized in Fewnch Polynesia until the 1960s.
A better approach to improving educational opportunities might be looking at ways to revitalize and reorient the Perpetual Education Fund as opposed to ways to start up more educational institutions.
The published stock holdings of the Church are only about 50 billion. So I have a strong suspicion that those who spoke with the Washington Post were lying through their teeth.
The federal government claimed it gave $0.088 billion to BYU, but BYU says it declined this money.
The cost for the Philadelphia Temple at an early stage was said to be $0.070 billion. That was before our most recent round of inflation.
To get an idea of how much BYU is costing the Church compare its tuition to say Stanford, and then realize even at Stanford student tuition does not cover the full cost if an education.
BYU-Pathway worldwide uses service missionary couples, but the classes themselves are taught by people who are paid.
There are huge amount of costs involved in lots of things.
Where is Poza Rica? What state is that?
Poza Rica is in Veracruz state, but much further north than the city ofVeracruz where the existing temple is.
Interesting. The website I saw the listing on made it seem otherwise. That website sometimes gets things very wrong.
Is the Karen spreaking unit in South Salt Lake even a ward?
Maybe you should read my post instead of jumping to accusing me of things. I'm saying that it would be beneficial to the faith of members for more transparency in our church lessons. The truth is, the ones that need it the most are not going to be spending time rifling through church materials to learn these things. I'm not suggesting that the current state of things is malicious, just that we could improve it.
As far as the statement that no one is lying- this is false. I myself lied about this (unintentionally) as a missionary when asked if the leaders of the church got paid because I didn't know better. It wasn't until later on in my mission that I realized I had been untruthful and had missed an opportunity to bear testimony of a true principle instead of repeating what I had learned in Sunday School.
Community is very important.
The pandemic took away community in a huge number of ways.
We have began to regain it, but we are not there yet.
I understand the reasons why the leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are being cautious.
In some cases no matter how cautious they are people will falsely malign and attack them.
Some of this is a direct result of the truly high level of hate and animosity that is aimed at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The extreme example is when a plane chartered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Sainrs brought some cases of Covid-19 to Kiribati. I saw some people denouncing the Chuech for moving people across international borders.
The reality, under reported by some in the media, especially those connected with the Utah newspaper that cheered on the removal of Utah women's right to vote, was that this plane was bringing Kiribati missionaries back home.
In at least one case the returning missionary had served 44 months.Every possible precaution was taken in bringing the missionaries home, and they returned over a year after a vaccine was developed for Covid-19.
The level at which some engage in out right hate campaigns, and the level to which dome in the media try to turn every story into an attack is sickening.
@John Pack Lambert, to answer your previous question :
"Columbus Branch (Karen) - 1064886", assigned to South Salt Lake Stake 501506.
https://classic.churchofjesuschrist.org/maps/#ll=40.716719,-111.897664&z=14&m=google.hybrid&layers=stakecenter&q=(karen)&find=ward.karen:1064886
It appears that the new "Zanesville Ohio Stake - 2189232" includes the following Wards and Branches in no particular order :
New Philadelphia Ward
Coshocton Branch
Newark Ward
Lancaster Ward
Athens Ward
Zanesville Ward
Cambridge Branch
I'll pretend I didn't read this. The old discussion about community health x absolute freedom, descending to human rights
Pascal, I apologize if I misinterpreted anything you said. I can see your point about people potentially having more faith in the principle of tithing if the Church was more transparent in how those funds were used. But as we are reminded by Paul in his epistle to the Hebrews: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." And as we are reminded by Moroni in Ether: "Dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith."
While financial transparency might build faith, based on those scriptures, the pertinent question that comes to my mind is "Do I have the faith to continue to pay a full tithing, even knowing that I might never know how it or other tithes are used?"
For myself, the answer to that question is again a resounding "Yes!" I hope everyone else can also answer that question and the one I posted in my earlier comment the same way.
With a Zanesville stake a Cleveland area temple could take 4 stakes, Columbus Temple 5 and Cincinatti 6 without counting the parts of Toledo stake that would go to an Ohio Temple and not Detroit Temple.
With a Mansfield stake also a possibility I would not be surprised if by 2025 there have are 3 temples operational or announced for Ohio.
Michigan getting a 2nd temple, most likely in Grand Rapids, also seems doable.
That makes the idea that the unit in Minnesota was ever a ward seem hard to believe.
I believe Minnesota does have some Hmong speaking wards, but that is with a much longer back history of outreach.
The one time I went to EFY (the predecessor of FSY) it was at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. I think one of the young women in my group was from Athens, Ohio and we did have one session where a member who was on the OU faculty, and his wife, who were both African-American spoke to us.
EFY was more free for all and less organized than FSY. There were only maybe 3 people there from the Bloomfield Hills stake, but my roommate was from Lansing stake, and there was at least one from the Westland stake, as well as some from much of Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania including the Philadelphia metro area, Delaware, and possibly a few more areas.
Our regular speakers were all from Utah including Brother Richardson a BYU professor who was later in the Sunday school general presidency and BYU Academic vice president. I believe the counselors had been recruited through BYU and the director was a Canadian who was on BYU faculty.
As I understand it FSY they call the director locally, recruit the counselors from more local YSAs, and the speakers are more likely to be local as well. That was in 1998 and by the time some of my younger siblings went in about 2004 or so I think a lot of that had changed.
I believe when I applied at BYU to be an EFY counselor in 2003 they had changed things so BYU only staffed counselors at BYU and not at other EFY locations.
I have to say the system I dealt with was too much an extension of the BYU EFY ecology. The new system I think is much better.
I did not see the Zanesville, Ohio Stake coming. After looking over the map, I still think a Mansfield Ohio is still in the works but it will consist of 6 wards if it is created.
The Akron Ohio Stake had 9 wards, one of which was used to create the Zanesville Stake.
The Columbus South Stake had 8 wards, two of which were for Zansville.
Columbus East Stake had 7 wards, 2 of which were used to create Zansville.
Columbus Ohio North Stake had 11 stakes. Depending on how many wards were moved to the Columbus East Stake will determine whether a Mansfield Stake will be created.
But it appears to create Mansfield Stake, 2 wards would come from Akron (leaving Akron with 6), 1 from Columbus East (requiring at least 2 wards from Columbus North to move to Columbus East) and 3 from Columbus North, (leaving Columbus North with 6 wards). If this all makes sense.
With the creation of the Zanesville Stake (which will be served by the Columbus Ohio Temple), I am more bullish on the Church announcing a temple for Cincinnati, Ohio.
@Christopher Duerig
He said sardonically, "It'll probably be somewhere in Utah."
@martinml
I appreciated your reply to Christopher Nicholson's comments above, and I agree with you about the idea that the process of coming to an understanding or of critical thinking can be complicated.
I think at times we can put forth the idea that a testimony is a simple, clear-cut thing without any attachments or doubts to go with it. True, there are certain principles, historical facts, or ideas that I in my own life have had a strong, clear-cut witness of. However, there are plenty of other aspects of the gospel, the history of the Church, or Church Culture that have baffled me, tried my faith, tried my patience, and to which I'm still hoping for a complete understanding.
You're right that this is a real Church, existing in the real world with real, messy, complicated facts and people attached to it.
@Christopher Nicholson
I empathize with you and your struggles to square the circle of the many different aspects of our complicated religion and culture. I've had my own doubts in the past, and I haven't had everything fully answered yet (either from over the pulpit, or through personal revelation) in ways that are completely satisfactory. However, neither can I deny the answers I have received (whether great or small) during my faith journey over these last 40 years.
One principal I have learned is that doubt is part of the process. Doubt is just having questions after all, just trying to figure things out in a way that makes sense to each one of us individually, and shouldn't be as taboo as we can and have made it out to be.
I don't know how much you're into LDS scholars, but Terryl Givens and his colleagues are some who have impressed me as of late with their unorthodox approach to different gospel topics (through the "Faith Matters" podcasts). I like how he and others dissect the process of having faith, and their conversations with others (both inside and outside of our faith) about their individual and disparate approaches to thinking about our religion and faith in general. It's been a breath of fresh air to me.
If you're interested, here's a 3 minute clip of Bro. Givens talking about doubt being an integral part of the faith process.
https://youtu.be/0SY85KR5xi8
And here's a longer, in-depth discussion from Faith Matters with a pastor not of our faith. It's called "Faith's Dance With Doubt":
https://youtu.be/-qzVFFcbdXA
@Johnathan Reese Whiting, To explain my previous answer to John Pack Lambert,
"Blogger John Pack Lambert said...
Interesting. The website I saw the listing on made it seem otherwise. That website sometimes gets things very wrong.
Is the Karen spreaking unit in South Salt Lake even a ward?
March 9, 2022 at 9:46 PM"
"Blogger Christopher Duerig said...
@John Pack Lambert, to answer your previous question :
"Columbus Branch (Karen) - 1064886", assigned to South Salt Lake Stake 501506.
https://classic.churchofjesuschrist.org/maps/#ll=40.716719,-111.897664&z=14&m=google.hybrid&layers=stakecenter&q=(karen)&find=ward.karen:1064886
March 9, 2022 at 10:59 PM"
JPL, that's not true at all, as you should know. In another recent thread here, I mentioned the fact that the first presidents for the Yigo Guam, Praia Cabo Verde, and San Juan Puerto Rico Temples were all announced well in advance of the COVID-19 construction delays. Looking back at my files of information, each of those presidents were announced in 2020 (I may have incorrectly said 2019 in the other discussion, so I'm correcting that now). If presidents were called in 2020 for these new temples that will only be dedicated this year, there's no way to state absolutely that the call of a new president for St. George "openly means" the temple will be rededicated this year. If you look at the Church of Jesus Christ Temples site, it currently lists the Tokyo Japan, Hamilton New Zealand, and Hong Kong China Temples as completed and awaiting the announcement of open house and rededication dates. Below that section, the Columbus Ohio Temple is listed for completion in mid-2022. And below that is the St. George Utah Temple, which, per the Church Temples page, is not anticipated to be completed until mid-2023 at earliest:
https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/st.-george-utah-temple/
This year, the first presidents have been identified for the Helena Montana and Feather River California Temples. The former is anticipated to be completed in mid-2022, and the latter in late 2022:
https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/helena-montana-temple/
https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/feather-river-california-temple/
The first president for the Abidjan Ivory Coast Temple was announced last year, and that temple has since undergone delays that will only see it completed in late 2022-early 2023:
https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/abidjan-ivory-coast-temple/
What the announcement of new temple presidents actually indicates is that the temple in question is anticipated to be completed within a year, and the announcement of the new leaders is made to enable them to be publicly identified before they attend the fall training for new temple leadership. That way, whenever the temple is ready to be opened or reopened, they can hit the ground running. Based on my tracking of the progress on the St. George Utah Temple renovation, if it is completed in mid-2023, the earliest it could be rededicated is June or August of that same year. But the Church is announcing the information about the new leaders now so they will be ready to go from day one once the temple is again operational.
@Christopher Duerig
Thanks for clarifying. :)
I meant to say "hopefully" in my comment on the St. George Utah Temple having a new president called.
The new president for the new Rwanda Kugali Mission has been called. It is Christian Mavinga, a resident of Kinshasa but a native of Mabuji-Maye both in DR Congo. His wife is a Kinshasa native. He is 51 and a temple sealer. He has been a bishop, a Seminary teacher, a ward temple and family history consultant, an elders quorum president and a counselor in bishopric and elders quorum presidencies thus other than Seminary teacher he as only had ward level callings, with even Seminary teacher being ward level even if stake issued. The other 15 new mission presidents announced this week have all been in stake presidencies, but only Brother Mavinga is a temple sealer.
His wife is currently a ward family history and temple consultant. She has been relief society, primary and young women president at the ward level. With the wives of mission presidents for this batch about half have not held stake level callings, and this is comparing 9 possible stake level presidency callings to the 3 for members of stake presidencies.
If I had to read anything I to this it appears that the Lord wants a leader for his church in Rwanda who can give the people a temple focused vision. Probably I am trying too hard to understand the matter, but that is as best as I can deduce things.
My favorite name of a new mission president is Ngqubuyo F. Mother
He is the president of the Zimbabwe Bulawayo Stake and will be mission president of the Zambia Lusaka Mission.
Brother Moyo and his wife are both natives of Bulawayo. He served his mission in the Accra Ghana Mission.
President Moyo at 39 may be the youngest mission president called this year.
New President of BYU Pathway inaugurated today.
This article also talks about the growth of the program so far (with some stats), and plans for future growth, including opening up in 10 new countries this year:
https://www.deseret.com/faith/2022/3/10/22971271/elder-jeffrey-holland-installs-brian-ashton-as-byu-pathway-worldwide-president-latter-day-saints
I was wrong David Fallabella from Guatemala who will be mission president in Peru is only 38. His dad is Elder Erique R. Fallabella, who was a general authority 70. His granddad was the 1st stake president in Guatemala. His dad is the one who had the story of covering up the hole in his shoe with shoe polish on his toe.
President Kiatias N. Niambe from Ivory Coast who will head the Nigeria Legos Mission is 40. The rest so far are scattered in age from 41 to about 63.
Actually so far there was 1 65 year old in this group called as mission presidents, and no 63 year olds. 3 of the 16 announced this week are 63 though.
I am not sure how many more mission president announcements we will get.
They used to publish temple president ages with the announcements but no longer do that.
As recently as 2021 the ages of temple presidents were published. I amnot sure why the Church News stopped including that detail.
Interestingly they used to include the occupations of mission presidents but stopped that 2-3 years ago. Occupation and age are both included for stake presidents, but no longer past callings.
With the latest group of 16 New Mission Presidents 2022 biographies published today, I have only 20 biographies left for this year to be published. Including the Georgia Atlanta and Brazil Santos Missions Presidents yet "To be announced". And the only one I found that was not called to be replaced from this year callings list in January, of the replacement President for President David L. Chandler called for the 2019-2022 (3 year period, I believe) of the Poland Warsaw Mission.
https://www.thechurchnews.com/callings/2019-02-17/new-mission-leaders-called-to-serve-in-poland-honduras-australia-and-other-areas-around-the-world-4770
Another note about President Chandler from this week :
"Poland is expected to be the European nation that will see the larger influx of refugees coming from impacted areas. President David Chandler of the Poland Warsaw Mission said: “Perhaps more than any other nation on earth, the people of Poland understand the tragedy that is taking place."
https://www.thechurchnews.com/global/2022-03-06/how-the-church-its-leaders-members-in-europe-are-providing-aid-and-relief-245265
Christopher, that is interesting. I know a woman who is a native of Poland, though she has lived in the US for many years. She recently told me that she has been in contact with relatives through social media, and her hometown is overwhelmed with refugees right now.
Rexburg temple to close for extended maintenance:
https://www.rexburgstandardjournal.com/townnews/architecture/rexburg-temple-to-close-from-april-to-july/article_998d9b16-cca7-59c1-9feb-544edcc86d57.html
I felt like expressing my love and appreciation for a few people and things:
The Lord Jesus Christ.
His servants of all types and backgrounds.
Those who put His commands and wishes first, and seek to build His Kingdom.
The creators and contributors to this blog.
All men, women, and children that support God’s annointed and the priesthood of God.
Those who sacrifice for others.
People who join the Church and build it more.
People who care.
I'm not sure which part of Canada was referred to as the 51st state. I'll call that a 'peculiar' description.
Anyway, in Ontario there was is no requirement for vaccination to attend worship services. Worship services have been exempt from gathering limits for most (not all) of the pandemic. We do have sacrament bread placed in cups and mandated every other row. This was an agreement made between the area presidency and local public health authorities so that sacrament could continue. It is my understanding that many churches that did not develop a plan to minimize contact between different people and so, were not allowed to hold their communion.
My struggle has not been with the restricitions so much as they have been with the consistent and predictable lack of following of protocols by our local leadership (particularly youth leadership). It is difficult to send kids to activities when you know that masking, distancing, etc.) are not going to be followed or encouraged and that your kids are likely to be the only ones trying. My kids have been to 4 activities over the past 2 years and each time my kids' reports, or my own observations have given me enough pause to not let them attend for a while until I feel guilty and repeat the process.
I don't know if this is a culture issue, or if it is just random people doing what they think is best; but in all the places I've lived, I haven't struggled with trusting my fellow members and questioned whether I belonged this much before. I mean, if they were at least following the protocols laid out by our leadership I would understand where they were coming from. Very often local directives are contrary to area and general leadership directives. To me, this is a problem.
Today the Bountiful 5th, 22nd, and 43rd wards (all in the Bountiful Utah Stone Creek Stake) were consolidated into two wards - the Meadowbrook Ward and the Bountiful Park Ward, both still in the Bountiful Utah Stone Creek Stake.
It was announced today that the Rangely 2nd ward (in the Craig Colorado stake) will be dissolved and absorbed into my ward, Rangely 1st. This will be a very interesting process to be part of. The wards have been separate since 1995 (before I lived here).
That change is happening next Sunday, I forgot to mention that.
Downtownchrisbrown, here is some information on the reference to Canada as the 51st state:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51st_state
It's kind of a tongue-in-cheek reference to the possibility that some parts or all of that nation might someday become an annexed addition to the US. The 51st state reference also can apply to Puerto Rico, the non-government portions of Washington D.C., state partition proposals, or any U.S. owned island nations. Hope that helps.
Puerto Rico or DC would be a first state, I think the former will be.
Canada has 10 proud provinces and 3 territories. Canada is a great sovereign nation Bigger than the U.S. or China.
Mexico is more likely to fall under the U.S. than Canada. Or Honduras or El Salvador.
Are stake creations going to pick up as C-19 gets done with?
I like how stakes are using fewer units now.
Temples are more locally based.
Both good trends in my opinion.
How is the Church growth in Cameroon lately?
My New Temple Prediction List:
(20 Picks whittled down from my previous regional picks)
-Herriman, UT
-Springville/Mapleton/Spanish Fork Area, UT
-Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
-Colorado Springs, Colorado
-Bakersfield, California
-Austin, TX
-Jackson, Mississippi
-Charlotte, NC
-Cancún, MX
-Santiago, Dominican Republic
-Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
-Florianopolis, Brazil
-Iquitos, Peru
-Jakarta, Indonesia
-Abuja, Nigeria
-Kampala, Uganda
-Majuro, Marshall Islands
-Angeles or Olongapo, Philippines
-Naga, Philippines
-Edinburgh, Scotland
Wondering when Washington and Arizona will get new temples. Moses Lake was announced in 2019, and Arizona has not had a temple announced since Tucson in 2012. (These two were the only mainland US states west of the plains states- the tier extending from North Dakota south to Texas- that did not get a new temple last April.)
Also, there are now only 2 states west of the Mississippi that do not have a temple- Kansas and Iowa.
Sorry, South Dakota makes three.
@twinnumerouno I'm honestly surprised everytime they dont announce a new temple in Arizona. Right now Arizona has by far the greatest need in the US with an average of 19.3 stakes per temple (only Utah and Virginia is higher. Virginia isn't truly higher as the DC temple in Maryland serves many of the stakes there). For comparison, states that often have predicitons on this site include Idaho (17 stakes per temple), Texas (13 stakes per temple), California (16.3 stakes per temple), and Washington (15.3 stakes per temple) to name a few. In order for Arizona to meet the national average of 14.4 stakes per temple about 2 or 3 more would need to be announced (the most obvious 3 would be Flagstaff/Prescott, far-east Phoenix metro (Queen Creek/San Tan Valley, and west Phoenix metro (Surprise/Goodyear). I dont expect three to be announced as both Mesa and Gilbert are both high capacity temples and the Phoenix temple is mid-high capacity, but I do expect one to be imminent and maybe even a second one shortly after that.
Regarding potential temples that might be announced in General Conference 3 weeks from now, I do have a somewhat updated list of locations for which a temple might be announced:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HaK2euKIea0XIpAhkr0pS7AVpwL78qHO0zrl1SZnZvI/edit?usp=sharing
But I have also created a list of the top locations I feel are most likely to have a temple announced. The following document breaks down the temples announced by President Nelson per conference, then alphabetically by geographic Church areas. Based on Elder Kevin S. Hamilton's statement about 300+ temples in various phases (made during my stake conference in December), I am anticipating at least 35 temples will be announced this year. Assuming the number is exactly 35, I think that the Church might break that down by announcing 16 in April, with the other 19 announced in October, once the current queue has been cleared out a bit more than it is now.
Here is that document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AHEJOqAjEJDN7aXQLlfrkzc2yTVer6E0TRR5eYdNKB8/edit?usp=sharing
At the bottom of that document, you'll see the 16 areas listed. 6 of those 16 just have one candidate city listed. For those with 2 or more, any listed appear likely to be announced in April. Hope this information is helpful to all who read those documents. Thanks again, everyone!
I could see Wichita KS and Des Moines IA getting smaller temples.
Things are really getting out of hand in Wikipedia. Someone has now tried to delete the article on Mark E. Peterson. This despite the fact that a full length biography of him was published. The article is in pretty sorry shape, and relies too much on sources antagonistic to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and spend way too much time trying to paint Elder Peterson as an unredeemable racist. The nominator is trying to argue that any publication of Deseret Book Company is not a usable source. This disallowing full books based on their writer is a truly insane argument. Wikipedia keeps articles on Catholic Bishops sourced to one blog source, now there is an attempt to kill the article on Mark E. Peterson. This article needs way better sources. We also need someone to counter against the attempt to disallow any book published by Deseret Book as being used as a source. This is an argument set up to try to turn Wikipedia into a source built only on sources antagonistic to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With books, the evaluation needs to be first based on how close the writer was to the subject. If a full book is published by a commecial published on a subject, people need to have very good reasons to disallow the book as a source at least adding towards passing GNG. The article very clearly does not cover the whole of who Mark E. Peterson was, but deleting it is clearly not justified.
The Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint history has an article on Peterson. Incorporating and cititing that article would help. Also more incorproation of what Thomas S. Monson said on Peterson in his Ensign bio would also help. At least at the balance level. I am convinced that the Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History should be treated by Wikipedia as a 3rd party source adding towards passing GNG.
One issue with Arizon is that north-west Arizona has several stakes that are served by the Las Vegas Temple (at least 3). What temple is Yuma assigned to? Are there any stakes in Arizona assigned to a temple in Utah? The areas closest to St. George Temple are actually in Utah or Arizona stakes.
I am not sure if that makes a huge difference with the balance.
Another possible calculation would be stake per temple capacity. Clearly a temple like Mesa Arizona will need to have more stakes to operate than a temple the size of Lima Peru. Although I suspect that at present Lima (until Los Olivos is finnished) has more stakes currently assigned to it.
I know people have suggested a temple for Prescott, Flagstaff, Queen Creek, or somewhere to the west of Phoenix. Although Phonix Temple is on the border with Glendale, there is a lot of growth much further west in Metro Phoenix, although the Church is not as big there as in the east valley.
I personally hope the decide to build a temple on top of (yes, as in adding floors) the existing Institute Building in Tempe, Arizona. I know such has never been done (Manhattan involved converting existing floors, Hong Kong involved building a new building including the temple after tearing down the existing building, Provo City Center, Vernal and Copenhagen involved converting a previous building into a temple, San Juan and Taylorsville involved demoliting an existing building, Tegucigalpa they eventually moved the temple to a site other than adjacent to the institute building (after groundbreaking) because of propest at putting the temple so close to the Catholic Cathedral), but there is no particular reason why a temple could not be built on top of an exiting building. I guess they would have to convert or create a basement space for the baptismal font, but Hong Kong and maybe Manhattan had essentially non-adjacent temples, with maybe an elevator shaft through the whole building being technically temple, but there were at least original non-temple floors between temple floors.
I know some people think my temple at Arizona State University idea is crazy, but I think it would be the ultimate in the gathering place for young adults plan.
Moscow, Idaho as the birthplace of Institute I also have on my possible temple sites list.
Mark E. Petersen's page on Wikipedia is not the only page for a former apostle that does not do justice for the lives they lived. Henry D. Moyle and Delbert L. Stapley are among others.
I am curious, did they call Elder Peterson a racist based on statements he made pre-1978 about the priesthood restriction? He died in 1984, and was one of the apostles involved in the 1978 revelation on the priesthood, which to me suggests that he was not really a racist, or if he was, was humble enough to recognize his errors and try to do better.
Elder Stapley was also serving as an apostle at the time of the revelation, but he died shortly thereafter, and I have read that he was too ill to participate.
Pres. Moyle was a counselor to David O. McKay, and died in 1963, creating the vacancy in the quorum (technically, it was the calling of Pres. Tanner to replace him as a counselor) that was filled by Thomas S. Monson.
I see from that article that he did make statements about race which were later declared to be doctrinally incorrect- though the article did not mention that!
Elder Petersen was on assignment in South America at the time of the revelation. Elder Stapley was in the hospital. Both accepted the revelation, but I don't think it's a coincidence that they, probably the two most racist Apostles alive at that time, were denied the opportunity to participate. (Elder Stapley wrote a letter to US presidential candidate George Romney urging him to cease his support for civil rights and implying that every president who supported civil rights had been removed by God. At least he, unlike Elder Petersen, said that he was writing as a friend and not as an apostle.)
After Elder Petersen's death, Church Historian Leonard J. Arrington wrote in his diary, "The talk which he gave in 1963 [sic; 1954], 'Race Problems as They Affect the Church,' opposing granting the priesthood to blacks, a talk widely circulated, apparently with his approval, was one of the most bigoted and narrow-minded talks ever given by a 'disciple of Christ.'" And that is, frankly, the only thing that anyone born after his lifetime remembers him for. ("Opposing granting the priesthood to blacks" wasn't even the worst part - Elder Petersen, frightened by the recent Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, championed racial segregation in every aspect of society and claimed that the civil rights activists' goal of integration would destroy the work of the Church. He also said that faithful black members would only go to the Celestial Kingdom as servants.)
Bruce R. McConkie was arguably worse than Petersen before the 1978 Revelation, but his page on Wikipedia includes his remarks on how he and all those before him were completely wrong.
Regarding a proposed temple for Northern Arizona - there would be a problem with selecting either Flagstaff or Prescott for the temple. The temple is announced for Flagstaff, the temple would serve 6-8 stakes. If it is build for Prescott, the temple would serve 6-8 stakes but different stakes as a Flagstaff Temple would. For both temple locations, it appears likely that either temple would serve only 6 stakes.
If Flagstaff - 2 Flagstaff stakes, Tuba City, Page, Winslow, Cottonwood, and possibly two stakes in Prescott. Prescott happens to be of equal distance, if not slightly closer to the Phoenix Temple.
If Prescott - 2 Flagstaff stakes, Tuba City, Cottonwood, 2 Prescott stakes, and possibily, but not likely, Kingman and Lake Havasu City. Those two stakes will likely remain with Las Vegas. Page, AZ would remain assigned to either temple in St. George. Winslow would remain with Snowflake.
The Yuma Stake is assigned to the San Diego Temple, btw.
Thanks, Christopher, most of those details were not in the Wikipedia article.
I wonder if we look more at where the most wards are in a stake relative to closest temple rather than just the stake center. For example with the Prescott stakes, are there more wards to the south or more to the north. That might determine if they would stay with Phoenix or be part of the possible Flagstaff temple. It is about halfway between the two cities. (It may also be determined by what side of town the temples are built relative to the highways and distance.
Hello! the forecasts of possible announcements of temples, is always a reason for sympathy, I think that we all wish that in each place where the Church is established, temples closer to the baptized and faithful can be announced. More so now that the church is increasingly announcing and building smaller temples in places unthinkable decades ago, even more so knowing that there are money funds available for the construction of temples, and that they are in the planning that the church does.
In my case as a Chilean, I am anxious that temples be announced for us, especially thinking that it is supposed that by being closer to the baptized, people attend more regularly, it is not always the case, but it would be nice to have advertisements for Arica, Viña del Mar, Osorno, Punta Arenas.
There are places where there are few baptized people in the world and even so temples are announced, of course, in Chile there are many inactive as everywhere.
You said that perhaps 30 or more temples could be announced, in both general conferences, hopefully the day will come when we have temples everywhere.
Today I live walking to the temple 35 minutes away, and by bus 10 minutes away, I recently got baptized again and I have to wait a year to enter the temple again, I have a lot of pending temple work to do, and being able to enter the temple again temple I will be able to do it. I will move to another city and there is no temple in that area, despite the fact that there are several stakes
A Historia Familiar, quiero felicitarle por su recién bautismo. Que bueno!
In my experience Chilean stakes are not that strong because the wards tend to be not very robust, compared to many U.S. wards and stakes. So, I am suggesting that 5 stakes in Chile are not going to have the same support by active numbers and draw of membership as elsewhere.
I wish I were wrong. I am hopeful that Chile, Latin America, and the worldwide faith will fulfill their covenants and be a temple people, helping usher in the Second Coming of the Messiah.
Interesting to watch the small oak seed grow into a tree, the tree that it has been prophesied to be.
Africa (I know it has many nations, many of which have little or no Church presence) is quickly becoming part of the strongest part of the world faith, the Restored Gospel.
It is great to see all of it.
¡ Viva Chile! Vivre le Afrique! ¿ Serán estas frases falsas parejas? Ojalá que no.
When I was serving as a Stake Clerk in a stake with limited experienced leadership, I came to realize that sometimes it made sense for a bishop to serve for longer than 5 years and sometimes it made sense to have a bishop called from outside the ward boundaries. However, doing so was usually inappropriate for at least a couple of reasons, one being that doing so was only a short-term fix and did nothing (in and of itself) to build leadership in the ward. It occurred to that the Lord will call a bishop from the ward that is good enough and in line with his will IF such a person exists within the ward. This means that Bishops tend to be higher quality in wards where higher quality leadership exists.
I believe it was similar with Joseph Smith’s calling of the first apostles in this dispensation. As there are more top notch members of the Church, the Lord has more top notch people to choose from as apostles. i believe that the Lord will continue to reveal great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God, some of which will likely result in realizing that some current sentiments and statements are off.
Joseph Smith, President Hinkley, Elder Bednar (and probably many others) insisted that we learn for ourselves. Unfortunately we have to varying degrees been like the children of Israel who wanted Moses to take care of his responsibilities AND their responsibilities when it came to learning from God. As we continue to learn by study and by faith the true doctrine sinks deeper and deeper into our spiritual hearts and other things don’t. Until we have a perfect knowledge it is error to assume that something is wrong because it hasn’t sunk into our hearts. But as we give more head to what has, our understanding increases.
I am an accountant. There is an ethics principle in accounting that a certified public accountant must never subordinate his/her or his judgement to another. There is a whole method to reconcile differences of judgement and what to do when you can’t reconcile. I find these general principles to be helpful beyond just accounting (as is the case with all true principles).
A key problem I see is that members of the church sometimes rely on other’s judgements when they would grow immensely in judgement and in understanding the true doctrine and principles if they would evaluate information themselves and gain a true understanding via not just study but by the faith aspect. faith is NOT blind acceptance. Faith moves its possessor to some kind of action (lectures on faith) which results in refined understanding and evidence. Sometimes when I follow assembly or installation instructions I have to go back and forth between the manual and the doing. Sometimes I identify opportunities to improve the instructions and sometimes I realize I mis read or misunderstood something. However, after the assembly or installation is complete I not only understand how to assemble or install the thing, but also have the evidence right in front of me that the instructions lead me to a correct understanding and resulted in the hoped for result. Reading the instructions alone cannot give me a perfect understanding nor give me an assembled or installed item.
When we just metaphorically read the instructions by people doing their best to describe things and then later get frustrated that the instructions were not clear or accurate and put all the blame in people trying to explain, claiming they should have known better, it is actually quite silly!!! Lol we should put our trust in things we learn line upon lone, precept upon precept!!!
Eduardo, sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you. I am a very proud Canadian. I am well aware Canada is a sovereign country! The reference to the "51st state" is just one of the many facetious nicknames Americans have for Canada -- it's not meant to be taken literal. But thanks for clarifying for those not familiar with the banter! :)
Downtownchrisbrown, I am a British Columbian, specifically, a Vancouverite. I didn't/don't have an issue with all the mandates, I was just explaining the impact it has had on our membership/activity levels. In Vancouver, we had to be very diligent about following all the rules to a "T" because we didn't want to be issued a very hefty fine or risk being shut down (like so many of the other faith communities in our area). I don't have children so I cannot report how mandates were upheld outside of Sunday services. Randomly, BC announced last Thursday (maybe because the Freedom Convoy was headed to Victoria) that most mandates will be lifted mid April, and that night, we all received an email from our Bishop that permission for "At Home Sacrament" will be discontinued mid April -- so we will see if how fast our ward rebounds to pre-pandemic levels.
(Sorry, I don't know how to "reply" to comments from a laptop).
News recently posted by the Church News site about an unexpected newly called Mission President for the Alaska Anchorage Mission to begin service next month, April 2022, to succeed President Gregory G. King.
"New Alaska Anchorage Mission president and companion called to serve"
https://www.thechurchnews.com/callings/2022-03-14/new-alaska-anchorage-mission-president-and-companion-called-to-serve-246093
Right, my point is that there are legitimate candidates for a U.S. 51st state, and it is likely that they would be Spanish speaking. Americans or others referring to Canada as an extension of the U.S. are annoying and trite. Long live Canada, the best foreign neighbor a country could have.
I hope our Church continues to grow there.
Is Alberta the most dynamic growth spot among all the provinces?
Christopher Duerig, it might interest you to know that the outgoing president and "mission mother" for the Alaska Anchorage Mission have only served for 2 years, having been called in 2020. Makes me wonder if either the president or his wife will be called to general Church leadership. The Relief Society Presidency has served for 5 years, and the president in this case is still at a target age when general Church service might be an option. Just an interesting sidenote.
The outgoing mission president is the target age for new GA Seventies, but if he's not called as such, he could be called to potentially succeed Brother Jan E. Newman as Second Counselor in the Sunday School General Presidency.
I say that because, with the exception of Elder Bednar, all apostles called since 2004 have served as General Authorities for several years, and since Brother Jan E. Newman, Second Counselor in the Sunday School General Presidency, is the only other current general Church leader who directly descends from the Smith family line, so if he becomes the next such apostolic descendent in the next 2-5 years, the Church might want him to have a few years of service as a General Authority before that time.
If the early release results from the mission president's wife being called to the new Relief Society General Presidency, that explains the timing as well.
It might also be worth mentioning that I think if it's the mission mother called to the new RS General Presidency, it might be as a counselor.
I see two fairly strong prospects for the new RS President: Since mental illness has become more prevalent, that subject has been the focus of talks by current Second Counselor Sister Reyna I. Aburto, they might select her as the new president. And since Sister Susan H. Porter was on the RS General Board prior to becoming First Counselor in the Primary General Presidency, she could also potentially become the new RS President. Just some additional thoughts for you all.
Just a thoughtful question—what are the chances that the Church might consider remodeling a cultural hall within one building if a stake or couple stakes that are remote from the nearest temple, and making that cultural hall into a temple?
Very unlikely. A cultural hall is far too small to contain a lobby, dressing rooms, a baptistry, an instruction room, a sealing room, and a celestial room. It is much more likely that the Church would build a temple the size of Yigo Guam in those areas. Fairbanks is probably the smallest in terms of membership of the remote areas without a temple that is likely to have a temple soon with just 2 stakes.
https://www.thechurchnews.com/temples/2022-03-15/first-presidency-announces-temples-to-gradually-return-to-normal-operations-246283
Per what Elder McConkie said in his 1978 address to Church Educational System Employees lots of people said things pre-1968 that were doctrinal incorrect. A key issue is to give such things due weight and understand the whole person.
There is far more to Elder Peterson than such reductionist assessments of his view. I would recommend reading the article on him written by President Monson to get a fuller view of him.
Lots of temples serve 6 or less stakes.
That would surprise me. Normally they announce the calls as general authority etc. And then announce a replacement.
JPL, not sure If understood what you meant above. The release of the mission leaders in this case is effective in April of this year rather than July. There have been several times when a new GA Seventy or new General Officer is sustained in April, but they only assume their new assignments once they've returned from the mission assignment. Please explain what you mean by "Normally they announce the call as general authority, etc. And then announce a replacement." That wording lacks context, so please elaborate. To which of my comments above were you replying? Thanks.
@John Pack Lambert - Yes, lots of temple do serve 6 stakes or less. My prediction is that a temple will be announced for Flagstaff.
There are a lot of articles in Wikipedia that need more balance. I believe it was the article on Marvin J. Ashton I noticed was under sourced and under informative. That may be the article that speaks of his connections to Hawai'i because I found a source on it. He did a lot more that is under covered.
Once I read through the history of the article on Dallin H. Oaks. That was atrocious under sourced for the first 2 years it existed. It may have taken that long for it to even mention he was BYU president.
On the other hand at one time it was determined Elder Gong past Wikipedia academic notability guidelines in about 1984 with the level of citations and reviews of a book he wrote on international politics. His article was not actually created until 2010 after he became a general authority. I think I considered doing so before, but I knew Special assistant to the BYU president for assessment and planning was not quite default notable and my crazy plan to create lots of articles on area seventies had been dashed. I didn't know the scope of Elder Gong's work with John's Hopkins and then a DC think tank to have even begun to search for the information to show he was notable.
To date as far as I can tell when they call a new general authority who is currently a mission president they announce the call and then start the process of replacing them as mission president. There are a few cases where a mission president was about to finish in the coming July so they left him in place. In other cases like Elder Mutombo he was not a full 2 years into his call and so they replaced him in Baltimore just after conference, but they did not announce a replacement until after conference.
The other Congolese general authority, was technically twice a mission president before he became a general authority. He served 3 years in Mabuje-Maye (I think I botched the spelling) and also was for a short time acting president of the Kinshasa Mission. He was an area seventy before he became mission president and an area seventy again before he became a general authority.
On the specific issue of length of bishop's serving, I think I understand the idea of the comment.
However 5 years for bishop's is a relatively recent development. L. Tom Perry's father was bishop of his ward the entire time he was growing up, and bishop's serving about 20 years was not uncommon in the early 20th-century. In the 19th century some bishop's served longer than that.
My stakes 1st president, George Romney, served for 10 years after having served as district president for about 5 years before that, and they only released him because he became governor and moved out of the stake boundaries.
There are advantages to leaving leaders in long term.
I do like that the new handbook seems to be trying to encourage leaving people in callings a little longer.
There are lots of issues, and some wards have so many people moving in and out keeping people longer is hard.
My branch for a long time had about every 2 year turn over of presidents. Some of this was people moving out but some was deliberate changes. Then we got a new stake president who felt that longer terms were better. So our last branch president served 5 years and our current one seems to be under the impression he will serve that long. Our new stake president has not indicated any changes along those lines.
The other inner city branch in our stake has had its current president for about 5 years, since it reverted to being a branch. However that man previously was branch president for about 5 years, and district president for maybe 7. He was branch president until it became a ward, then they had 2 bishops, then they went back to being a branch and he was made branch president again. He was on the high council most of the time it was a ward.
One other interesting fact. When President Hinckley announced the smaller temples he said presidents would serve for 5 years. They did that the first round but then starting in about 2004 or so most new presidents served 3 years. I think only Colonia Juarez Temple had more than 1 president serve over 5 years. Even that temple has gone to 3 year terms for presidents.
I also noticed that so far this year no new temple president is a former General authority. At one time it seemed like most temple presidents were former general authorities.
Actually in the 1970s there were a few cases where current general authorities served as temple presidents.
To date 4 presidents of the Church have been temple presidents. All served as temple presidents while apostles. In fact Joseph F. Smith was president of the Salt Lake Temple and Church president concurrently. He was also general young men president and general Sunday School president while Church president. After he died Heber J. Grant decided to devolve things a bit and so he made Anthon H. Lund temple president if the Salt Lake Temple, George Albert Smith general young men president and David O. McKay general Sunday School president. Yes, all three of those men were current apostles. This was Anthon H. Lund's 2nd time as temple president while an apostle. His first time was over Manti in the late 1880s and early 1890s.
Merrier W. Merrill may be the only apostle who was temple president before he became an apostle. He was fairly young when he was president of the Logan Twmple.
Thomas S. Monson was the first president of the Church to have been a mission president before being an apostle.
On another note President Hinckley was the 1st and to date only president of the Church to have been a non-apostle general authority. Elder Bednar is the only member of the 12 to not have been a non-apostle general authority. President Nelson and President Oaks are the only other two non-apostle general authorities called since President Monson.
Some of this reflects the fact that non-general authorities called as apostles can be quite young, and so outlive others, and some of this is just other factors. For example Elder Maxwell was younger than President Nelson with more seniority in the 12, but his having cancer took him far too young.
When Elder Nelson was called to the 12 there were 3 more senior members of the 12 who were younger. Few in 1984 would have predicted that Elder Nelson would one day be president of the Church.
I have to admit that a little bit of me is surprised that when the Church got rid of young men's presidents at the local level they did not also eliminate the general young men president.
Mainly I understand that the presiding bishopric already has a huge responsibility in overseeing the welfare program, humanitarian services, the properties of the Church, and I know Bishop Davies was closely connected with the Salt Lake Temple rebuild so I think they have key roles on temple building overall.
Bishop Causse also seems from some things I have read to be the general authority directly over the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, but I believe earlier President Monson held this position when he was president of the Church. It seems to be an assignment rotated from person to person and not with specific callings.
So I can understand how putting the young men program under the presiding bishopric would be a big call. Especially with the rolling out of the new program over the last few years where the Church has directly taken over top level supervision where before a lot of the higher level supervision of the Church's youth program was outsourced to the boy scouts.
Thanks for clarifying, JPL. Yes, that is the way things have usually occurred with mission presidents called to general Church service, but, as we know, last year, the traditional releasing and sustaining for area seventies was altered, with April changes presented in the Leadership Session and the First Presidency counselor leading a proposal to sustain the changes as a group. And the Church now issues area seventy releases effective August 1, with those releases ratified in October. Perhaps releasing mission leaders early is the next evolution for sustaining general leaders, so that those so sustained can assume that role when sustained and set apart. We'll know either way in 2.5 weeks when General Conference is held. Thanks, JPL.
John, have you seen this? https://www.calledtoshare.com/2019/09/11/who-will-be-the-next-prophet/
Virginia Liberia Stake (2195461)
13 Mar 2022
Virginia Waterside Branch (2128861)
Banjor 1st Ward (1978977)
Banjor 2nd Ward (2124807)
Brewersville Ward (1710974)
Duala Ward (320145)
Lagoon Ward (2033496)
St Paul Bridge Ward (2109115)
Virginia Ward (2128888)
CHRISTOPHER DUERING
THANK YOU
A HUG, THAT YOU ARE VERY HELL
I dont know if anyone else has heard anything from their localities, but I have heard from a temple worker of one of the Provo temples that they are planning on lifting the mask mandate at that temple very soon. Has anyone else heard anything from a different temple?
The mask mandate was lifted at the Mount Timpanogos Temple yesterday shortly after the announcement from the First Presidency.
I should have clarified further…. I was thinking of a building where a font is adjacent to a stage, which is adjacent to a large cultural hall, and next to some classrooms and a foyer that could be remodeled into a temple? Some cultural hall ceilings are tall enough from the floor to permit a two-story construction….
My thoughts are how to best facilitate the blessings of weekly temple attendance to members even in fairly remote areas of the world. Who knows what the Lord has planned for the blessing of the faithful? These ARE exciting times!!!!!
Still for a standard meeting house, that would be too small to fit all the rooms of a functioning Temple, not even including offices and a laundry room which I'd assume would be taken from another area of the meeting house. Today the only operating Temple that houses a meeting house is the Manhattan New York Temple. The Hong Kong and Tokyo temples used to, but have since been remodeled. The Fukuoka Japan Temple is built on top of the Mission President's residence. I'm not entirely sure if the Bangkok and Bengaluru temples include spaces for meeting houses or mission offices.
If my count is correct the recently organized "Virginia Liberia Stake - 2195461" has the honor of becoming the Church's 3500th "active" Stake this week. Thoughts?
JPL, the Young Men General Presidency might have been phased out, but as long as the Presiding Bishopric has other doctrinally-designated responsibilities than merely presiding over the Aaronic Priesthood, they cannot devote most of their focus to leading young Men around the world. That's what differentiates the Presiding Bishopric from ward bishoprics.
I have heard the mandate for Star Valley Temple is either lifted or about to be. I have heard nothing about the mandate for Detroit.
The 3000th stake was the Freetown Sierra Leone Stake. I think there are now 12 stakes between Liberia and Sierra Leone, while when the Freetown stake was formed it was the only stake in either country.
The young men general presidency serve on a church service basis and so do not dev9te their full time to supervising the young men program either.
West Africa in general is seeing really good Church growth, between the English derivative and Francophile nations. I hope that more neighbors pick up growth like the two Portuguese speaking ones. The Muslim countries are picking up more, Sierra Leone counting as one of them and foremost among them.
My point is that the Presiding Bishopric, who have doctrinally-mandated and time-consuming assignments in the work they do, serve full-time and cannot solely focus on the young men worldwide. Meanwhile, in the scriptures, there is a doctrinal mandate that the congregational bishoprics are the local presidency of the Aaronic Priesthood. Anyone who has carefully studied the relevant revelations pertaining to the presiding bishoprics vs. local bishoprics would know that, so I'm surprised that the difference didn't occur to you.
And just as the Presiding Bishopric relies on the Young Men General Presidency and congregational bishoprics to assist them with their Aaronic Priesthood roles, at the congregational level, bishoprics are assisted in their other roles by the Elders' Quorum and Relief Society presidencies so they can devote more focus on youth, which they are doctrinally-mandated to do.
JPL, I assume you meant the Kossoh Sierra Leone Stake, since the stake in Freetown was created a while ago. But if you did mean Kossoh, that is incorrect. The Church Temples site updates the stake count once a new one is shown on Classic Maps, and that count only totaled 3500 once the stake Christopher mentioned appeared on Classic Maps today. Before you attempt to assert that someone is incorrect here, kindly check and double-check your facts. I always do so before commenting here, and I stongly suggest you do the same.
Additionally, because congregational bishoprics cannot solely focus on the youth (due to other doctrinally-defined and policy-designated responsibilities that they can't delegate to Elders' Quorum or Relief Society presidencies, that's why they can call "specialists" to support Aaronic Priesthood Quorums.
The mask mandate has been lifted for patrons and workers at the Monticello Temple. They are also increasing capacity.
James, JPL is not incorrect in his statement that the "3,000th Stake" organized was the Freetown Sierra Leone Stake. As verified with this article from Church News :
https://www.thechurchnews.com/archives/2012-12-08/churchs-3-000th-stake-48232
He may not have realized that I had stated in todays comment the following "3,500th active Stake", and not the "3,000th". So I did not feel the need to correct his statement of the previous goal of 3,000th met by the Freetown Sierra Leone Stake in 2012. I hope this clarifies my previous comment for both of you.
Thanks. I guess I should take my own advice and double-check context before I comment as well. Just goes to show that none of us, especially me, is perfect. Thanks for setting the record straight here, Christopher. I appreciate it.
I thought it was obvious that I was creating a comment showing the continuity and changes between the 3,000th stake and the 3500th stake.
Specifically I thought it was obvious I was showing how while overall stakes increased by about 18% those in Liberia and Sierra Leone increased by 1100% percent.
I was not trying to correct anyone, but build more information and context to their comment. I at least thought that was obvious.
The extreme short history of the Church is this. The 1000th stake was organized in Nauvoo by Ezra Taft Benson. The 2000th stake was organized in Mexico City by Howard W. Hunter and the 3000th stake was organized in Freetown by Jeffrey R. Holland.
When the organizations occurred President Benson was president of the 12, President Hunter was president of the Church and Elder Holland was 6th most senior member of the 12.
Virginia Liberia Stake at 3500 is the only 500 stake I know. There I do not know who organized it.
The 500th stake seems to have been organized in 1970, the year President McKay died, but since President McKay died early in the year probably while President Joseph Fielding Smith was president of the Church. It was organized in Fallon, Nevada. I will look for more data.
Actually the Fallon Nevada Stake appears to have been organized the day David O. McKay died.
It was January 18, 1970. Thus why just knowing Fallon Nevada Stake was organized in 1970 I thought it was likely after President McKay died.
The 1500th stake was the Caliche Chile Stake. It was organized in 1984. The 100th stake in Nauvoo was organized in 1979. The Caliche Chile Stake was organized by A. Theodore Tuttle, a general authority seventy and area president.
From 1979 to 1984 may have been the fastest 500 stakes were organized. It took 10 years to get from 1500 to 2000 stakes. The one question is when 2500 stakes was reached.
Here is an article on the Caliche Chile stake being organized with a broader overview. https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1985/01/news-of-the-church/church-marks-a-milestone-1500-stakes?lang=eng&adobe_mc_ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.churchofjesuschrist.org%2Fstudy%2Fensign%2F1985%2F01%2Fnews-of-the-church%2Fchurch-marks-a-milestone-1500-stakes%3Flang%3Deng&adobe_mc_sdid=SDID%3D62381C509AB0AC3F-01920825F67A5794%7CMCORGID%3D66C5485451E56AAE0A490D45%2540AdobeOrg%7CTS%3D1647517679
The 100th stake was Lehi Utah in 1928. The 200th stake was what is now Provo Utah Sharon East. It was split out of the Sharon Utah Stake in Orem so I am not sure how big it was when organized. I was a member of that stake for a few months at one point. The BYU stadium, the MTC and the Provo Temple are all in its borders.
So when David O. McKay died over half the stakes had been organized while he was president of the Church. He became Church president in 1951 about a year before the 200th stake was organized.
I am really having a hard time staying out of the Mark E. Peterson deltion discussion on Wikipedia. So far no one has agreed with the nominator to delete the article, but he is going all out in his truly bizarre claims.
He is insisting that the full length biography of Mark E. Peterson is a "primary source" because it was published by Deseret Book Company. That is just not how you determine the primarness of secondariness of a published biography.
He is also trying to claim that somehow Bookcraft is not a legitimate publisher because its market was members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This despite the fact that Bookcraft was an indepdent company not in any way owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
If these arguments are allowed to stand they will constitute a broad disallowance of any subjects related to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Wikipedia.
https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog-elder-mark-e-petersen-and-the-adam-god-theory/ Here is an article from the Interpretor Foundation which talks about Elder Petersen in more detail. I just noticed I had been misspelling his last name. He published 43 books. I am wondering if there are any reviews out there on them. The above refers to his book as having been popular.
Lon William Sorensen and Marie Ellen Hardy Sorensen, Lehi 25th Ward, Lehi Utah Jordan River Stake, called as president and matron of the Saratoga Springs Utah Temple.
https://www.thechurchnews.com/callings/2022-03-17/new-temple-presidents-matrons-japan-canada-mexico-saratoga-springs-virginia-dominican-republic-246137
Noticed the Richmond Virginia Temple president was called too.
Just for fun, since it is St. Patrick's Day, what is the likelihood that Ireland will have a temple announced in the next few conferences and why?
Not unlikely, but not super likely either. There are 2 stakes and 1 District on the island of Ireland, which is more than Norway, Austria, Belgium, and Hungary.
Ireland, Scotland, Albania, and Spain (Catalonia) are the most likely locations for temples in Europe, but Europe has not seen much growth for a while. Wales might also be a sleeper candidate over a third Temple in England.
Facebook report on the creation of the new Virginia Liberia Stake, from a division of the Bushrod Island Liberia Stake. https://www.facebook.com/MLcrarea/posts/today-march-13-2022-was-an-amazing-day-for-the-saints-in-liberia-the-monrovia-li/502673578093088/
I see people beat me to it on the Richmond Virginia Temple and Saratoga Springs Utah Temples having first president and matron announced.
Is the Quito Ecuador Temple still waiting for the president and matron to be announced?
Yes. My understanding is that Quito has some logistical issues which may or may not be related to COVID-19, but have resulted in a delay on the announcement of the first couple to oversee that work, with those same issues preventing the Church from opening it. Hopefully whatever the issue is can soon be resolved.
My candidate for the next temple in Europe (and United Kingdom) is Scotland, likely Edinburgh, due to the central location of the Scotland stakes and overall distance from the Preston Temple. I'm not expecting a temple in Ireland due to the small Church presence there, but it is an island, so you never know....
I got some interesting information about the temple in Puebla.
While the dedication date was not announced, and this temple will be a medium-sized temple by Mexican standards (which would be like the Dallas temple more than likely) they are opting for two four-hour-long schedules, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon-evening, on weekdays. This necessitates the calling of 300 workers per 4 hour schedule.
You probably don't need as many workers for one of these smaller, modular temples, maybe let's say 100 to 200 workers that live in the area (200 would be if there were a double shift).
So the next question, as far as temple building goes, is how many people can be called upon to be temple workers within the potential temple district, prioritizing the immediate area where the temple is to be constructed?
If we had detailed stats on that information, something which the Church would not give for obvious privacy laws in many countries, predicting where the next temples would be announced would be a virtual cinch. We are best left with stake information, from whence we could gain a MINIMUM of 120 MPHFTP, and from there maybe about half of those with active recommends, and about half of those with time to go to the temple.
We are going to need about five stakes worth, on average, within a temple district, to announce a temple in an area that were a medium-sized temple. Puebla proper had 7 stakes when the temple was announced. Torreón, five stakes. Querétaro, 3 stakes but with others fairly nearby.
This is why I say Cancún is next, or maybe a second temple on the south side of Mexico City (Mexico City by itself has over 40 stakes). Darker horses being Chihuahua City and La Paz BCS (both of those would be small temples, and La Paz might get the nod for distance reasons; it is SUPER far to Tijuana.
Also in honor of St. Patrick's Day, LDS Living magazine has an article about the church in Ireland:
https://www.ldsliving.com/the-pluck-and-luck-of-the-irish-saints/s/10502?utm_source=ldsliving&utm_medium=email
Our stake up in Montana just had all Covid restrictions lifted by decision from our assigned Seventy. We also just had stake conference (one could attend in person, but my family and I watched through Zoom), and we has ward conference the week before that.
Well 2 stakes and 1 district beats Okinawa's 1 stake and 1 district or French Polynesia's 1 stake when temples were announced. However the time and relative cost of travel to the nearest temple may be more severe in those other 2 cases. Also not all stakes are created equal.
Ireland has the same number of stakes as Belgium, Norway and Austria and more stakes than Hungary.
Scotland does have 5 stakes. I could see both Scotland and Ireland having temple announced now. Cork becoming a stake might make this more likely.
Of course Brazil has lots of areas fairly far from existing temples that have 3 or more stakes, so there are questions of priority.
@Butterflies and Bones, happy St. Patrick's Day! I think there is about a 15% chance of a temple being announced for Ireland (probably in Dublin if it happens) in the next few years. As to why: 1 stake and 1 district are in Ireland, and another stake in Northern Ireland. Given that people can pretty freely cross the border between the two (supposedly Brexit wasn't going to change that -- haven't heard if that is indeed the case or not) any temple on the island would probably serve all 3 of those stakes/districts. While temples have been announced for that few (or even fewer) stakes/districts elsewhere in Europe, given slow growth (maybe even shrinking, if the church total fertility rate there is in line with that of other protestants on the island) I would doubt it is an especially high priority for a temple relative to other places with single-digit numbers of stakes that have better growth potential. Of course, the church (and the Lord) does seem to have a soft spot for the isles of the sea, and while I think we usually picture the Pacific islands when hearing that phrase, maybe it applies to Ireland, too. Also, it does seem that there is a desire to build temples in areas where, though growth prospects are dim, there are very faithful multigenerational church families -- a desire not to forever deprive them of a temple simply because the society where they live is not generally receptive to the gospel.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not a Protestant Church and so the line "other Protestants" is not an appropriate phrase.
Well the person who nominated the article on Mark E. Petersen for deletion gave up and withdraw the nomination after 4 people voted keep. The last produced at least 4 examples of coverage that is clearly indepdent. I have to admit I do not like this result because it does not lead to a clear rebuking of this editor who has clearly been carrying out a campaign to destroy as many articles in Wikipedia connected with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as possible. At one point he was nominating 5 or more articles I created for deletion a day.
@JPL, I am aware that in terms of doctrine and history we are of course not a protestant church. However, culturally we fit the same niche and in many countries have similar demographic profiles, which is why the church is often included with protestants in surveys where church membership is not a large enough subset of the populace to justify its own categorization. For these reasons, I feel the phrase "other protestants" was the most apt in the particular context. Clearly you disagree. I think you will find your interactions on here to be more fruitful (and certainly more pleasant) if you don't attempt to pick every nit and cast out every mote you encounter.
I think I heard that the term "protestant" was developed to mean christians who are not Catholic. As in they "protested" against the Catholic church. But I don't remember who I heard that from.
https://www.thechurchnews.com/global/2022-03-18/church-members-help-refugees-in-eastern-europe-through-online-and-offline-efforts-246476
Thank you for this
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