California
The Church organized a new stake in California on September 11th. The San Marcos California Stake was organized from a division of the Escondido California Stake and the Vista California Stake. The new stake includes the following six wards and one branch: the Buena Creek, Double Peak, Palomar YSA, Santa Fe Hills, Shadowridge, and Twin Oaks Valley Wards and the Las Posas Branch (Spanish). The creation of the new stake is essentially a reinstatement of the Escondido California South Stake (created in 1992, discontinued in 2011). This marks the first time the Church has created a new stake in California since the Lake Elsinore California Stake was organized in 2013. The Church has discontinued two stakes in California in 2022: the Concord California Stake and the Hayward California Stake.
There are now 146 stakes in California.
North Carolina
The Church organized a new stake in North Carolina on September 18th. The Lake Norman North Carolina Stake was organized from a division of the Gastonia North Carolina Stake and the Hickory North Carolina Stake. The new stake includes the following six wards: the Statesville, Cornelius, Huntersville, Lake Norman, Mooresville, and Mountain Island Wards.
There are now five stakes in the Charlotte metropolitan area - two of which have been organized in the past five years. There are now 19 stakes in North Carolina.
Philippines
The Church organized a new stake in the Philippines. The Naga Philippines North Stake was organized from a division of the Naga Philippines Stake (organized in 1985). The new stake includes the following five wards and one branch: the Calabanga, Camaligan, Canaman, Naga 1st, and Naga 5th Wards, and the Tinambac Branch. The Church announced plans to build a temple in Naga in October 2022.
There are now 125 stakes and 55 districts in the Philippines.
Utah
The Church organized a new stake in southern Utah on November 20th. The St George Utah Boulder Ridge East Stake was organized on November 20th from the St George Utah Boulder Ridge Stake. The new stake includes the following five wards: the Cobblestone, Stonehedge, Stucki Farms, Sugar Plum, and Treasure Valley Wards. There are now 26 stakes in the St. George metropolitan area (excluding Hurricane and La Verkin).
There are now 628 stakes and two districts in Utah.
Tanzania
Two new districts were organized in Tanzania.
The Arusha Tanzania District was organized on November 20th. The new district includes three branches in the city of Arusha that were previously mission branches in the Tanzania Dar es Salaam Mission. These branches include the Arusha, Morombo, and Njiro Branches. Of these three branches, two were organized earlier in 2022. This marks the first time the Church has organized a district in Tanzania outside of the most populous city of Dar es Salaam.
The Dar es Salaam Tanzania Chang'ombe District was organized on November 13th from a division of the burgeoning Dar es Salaam Tanzania District which had 16 branches after the creation of eight new branches in mid-2022. The new district includes four branches in the southern portion of the Dar es Salaam metropolitan area, including the Chanika, Kigamboni, Chang'ombe, and Mbagala Branches. Of these four branches in the new district, two were organized in mid-2022 and one was organized in 2021. It is unclear why the new district includes only four branches rather than evenly dividing the original Dar es Salaam Tanzania District into two districts of eight branches, but additional districts may be organized in Dar es Salaam in preparation of creating new branches and member groups. Recently returned missionaries report that the mission has aggressively organized member groups and small branches in Dar es Salaam to improve accessibility to the Church for Latter-day Saints and populations targeted by mission outreach. It appears that the focus has been to delay the creation of the first stake by providing greater saturation of congregations and meetinghouses in Dar es Salaam rather than trying to build up ward-sized units that cover large swaths of the city that include an average of half a million to one million people who live within the boundaries of each congregation. This type of strategy in Africa has generally be most effective in the long term for achieving greater growth. The population of the Dar es Salaam metropolitan area is 6.75 million. The Church in Tanzania is experiencing a period of rapid growth after decades of slow membership growth and stagnant congregational growth - a change that has appeared instigated by the creation of the Tanzania Dar es Salaam Mission in 2020 and transitioning to Swahili instead of English for church meetings. Church membership increased by nearly 30% between year-end 2019 and year-end 2021. In contrast, the Church had not reported annual membership growth rates year over year of 10% of higher since the early 2000s.
26 comments:
Confirmed on the Meetinghouse Locator website the new "St George Utah Boulder Ridge East Stake - 2217600", with at least the Cobblestone Ward - 2112132, as reported here in this thread by Matt. Once again, Matt, Thank you for all your hard work in posting all these wonderful growth updates in numbers.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/maps/meetinghouses/@37.071831,-113.523663,15s&id=ward:2112132
Also Fun Fact : the Cobblestone Ward - 2112132 meetinghouse is located on lot just east of the under construction site of the new Red Cliffs Utah Temple.
Matt, can you provide the location of the meetinghouse chosen as the new Stake Center? Since we no longer have access to the Classic Maps site. The Meetinghouse Locator does not tell us which Ward Building is the new Stake Center offices.
I'm not sure if the updated CDOL list gives that detail of the newly organized Units.
Thank you.
Dar es Salaam is super interesting. Wonder where that story will go next!
The two new districts in Tanzania is a,very exciting development. Tanzania is finally seeing significant growth.
Hopefully Ethiopia and Cameroon that saw new missions at the same time will see significant growth. I think in Ethiopia The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will see significant growth when there is an attempt made to reach the Oromo population. The Oromo outnumber the speakers of Amheric, and while a good portion of Amheric speakers are Orthodox Christians, the Oromo are largely Protrstant/Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians. There may still be a few remnwnymts of Animism among the Oromo, but pretty much no more.
Ethiopia also has many Somali speakers. That population is to some extent Muslim, and some would like to modify the Ethiopia/Somalia border.
Muslim populations are not as much a barrier to growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Africa as some suppose. The hard line Sharia law imposing, Boko Haram infested north-east states of Nigeria are, but they are a rare outlier. Lagos is a city with many Muslims, many Christians too, but I am sure some Church growth there has come from Muslims.
Sierra Leone is 85% Muslim or more, but also has the most religious freedom of any country on earth. I am sure some of the convers there have been Muslims.
The Gambia is another majority Muslim country where the Church has been fully welcomed. Senegal may be as well.
Good news all around. After stakes closing in recent years in California, we see growth or new stakes. Awesome for North Carolina. My son starts MTC training this week and is called to the Charlotte mission. He will be there before Christmas. Glad for St. George, Utah. I was raised there and have lots of family and friends there. Also very happy for the growth in Tanzania and the Philippines.
I agree, some very positive developments here, especially for California and Tanzania. With regard to Tanzania, the establishment of smaller branches throughout the city has the potential to significantly increase real growth thanks to improved access to the population and the development of more leaders. It would be interesting to see how small these branches actually are; I think a lot of us are imagining half a dozen people meeting in someone's living room, and while that may be accurate for a few of the new branches, it is quite telling that apparently there are enough members to staff at least two district presidencies and auxiliaries, in addition to the callings the branches need to operate comfortably. That is a very good sign.
Elder Soares, Elder Valenzuela and Bishop Waddell gave a devotional originating in Denver to Spanish-speaking members in the North America Central Area. They all spoke in Spanish.
Elder Soares waspresident of that area when he was in the presidency of the 70. Bishop Waddell was mission president in Spain. I believe Elder Valenzuela is a native of Mexico.
Colorado has a large Spanish-speaking population. So does Illinois, especially Chicago, which is in that area. Iowa especially has a significant population, many of whom work in meat packing plants in fairly small cities. Idaho has some Spanish-speaking population, as does Kansas City and Minneapolis. Other places do too, including some of the Canadian parts of that area.
This does cause me to wonder when there will be a native Spanish-speaking apostle. I have to admit that it looks to me like there will be no new apostles in the next few years, but I could be wrong.
John Pack Lambert, Also I am wondering about the location chosen for the Devotional in Denver, Colorado may be a precursor to a future announcement of a second Temple announced in Denver. Similar to many other Metro Areas or Cities that now have 2 temples, i.e. Salt Lake, Provo, Mexico City, Manila, Lima, Sao Paulo, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, then Denver could be numbered among this group in the future.
JPL, unless I am mistaken, Elder Soares himself grew up in various regions of Brazil that alternatively or concurrently included speakers of English, Spanish and Portuguese, so he was a native speaker of all three languages. If I am mistaken, someone can let me know.
Christopher Duerig that's a good possibility. If the Church is doing the multiple temples in major metropolitan areas outside the United States, it's likely they'd similarly be looking at major US areas with larger numbers of Church members as similar prospects.
I just randomly found out that missionaries in several missions in the Philippines are using Facebook (surprise!) and I have been looking through some of their profiles for baptism pictures. Unlike in other missions closer to home, the individual missionaries don't have accounts but the areas do, which is a lot nicer to track and gain accurate data.
In either case, my first quick survey has been turning up that some of these areas are seeing *a lot* of baptisms, primarily of youth and young adults, and of some complete families. I saw one area that apparently had 15 baptisms last month, while most seem to have had between 2 and 5 throughout November (that is still really good, given the number of missions in the Philippines and the scale on which this would be happening throughout the country if it was like this everywhere). Missionaries, as far as I can tell, skew heavily native, which is a good sign.
There are 111 million people in the Philippines, and a lot of room for growth.
I came back here just to inform you that in Brazil the only frank language is Portuguese. Elder Soares' training in English and Spanish was a tool in his work for the Church. Spanish is only spoken in Brazil in very specific places on the border.
Thanks for that correction, Daniel. I appreciate your clarification on this.
Border cities and towns often have Spanish and Portuguese, so it may not have been wrong at all to speak Spanish in Brazil, missionary descriptions say that near Paraaguay, the TV stations broadcast all or part in either Portuguese, Spanish, or Guarani, varies from station to station.
In my advanced (intensive) classes of Portuguese at UCLA in the early 2000s, our textbook... Check that. Maybe it was textbooks at Indiana University for education, but either way, I read in print about Portunol (enye over the n) that was spoken and understood at border regions of Brazil and the Spanish speaking neighbors, which had maybe 10 to 20 million people who would mix the two. Even radio stations. Reminds me of hearing a radio station from Phoenix that was complete Spanglish.
Anyway, it is time to have a native Spanish speaker as an apostle, even one with possible Lamanite blood. Remnants of Lehi would be sweet indeed.
Any guesses as to which greater DF temple will finish first in Mexico?
How many more temples for Brazil? I think another 20 or so.
My bet is 10 more: Rio Branco, Cuiabá/Campo Grande, Palmas, Teresina, Natal/João Pessoa, Florianópolis, São Paulo #3, oeste de SP, oeste de RS (Santa Maria?), Goiânia/Uberlândia
I think Brazil could see a significant number of temples announced. Every city/metropolitan area with two stakes is probably a candidate; more remote areas with one stake may also be candidates for small temples. This puts the number somewhere in the vicinity of 20, not considering additional temples for large metros.
Mexico and the Philippines may be reaching similar saturation levels where this kind of policy makes sense, assuming there is enough of a habit of attending the temple frequently. As mentioned earlier, nowhere does it say that temples need to operate five days a week with endowment sessions every half hour; two or three sessions a day are absolutely enough to warrant construction.
You're welcome, dear friend
I noticed the site Fullerconsideration is no longer posting updates on Wards and Stake changes. I'd be keen to know if any other sites report this information.
Daniel, another question for you on Brazilian temples for the near term. Unless my memory is mistaken, late last year or early this year, a temple discussion on these threads included a comment from someone (can't recall if it was you or someone else familiar with Brazil), and an observation was made that the Sao Paulo Brazil East Temple could potentially be built in Guarulhos, Santo Andre or Diadema. (sorry for any misspellings). Since that temple will actually be built in Vila Carrao within the state of Sao Paulo, does that, in your opinion, alter or remove the prospects for temples in the three locations you mentioned then?
As someone who always does a deep dive into the most likely locations for future, I rely heavily on information and insights from Church member contacts worldwide. So I'd appreciate any information I can get from you on Brazilian prospects.
If you're willing to provide feedback, either by replying here or on my blog, or via email, I'd appreciate your insights. Thanks.
In Sao Paulo, the new temple will still be in the city proper, not the eastern suburbs, so another east of where SP-381 (Rod. Fernao Dias) comes down, but still inside Rodoanel is possible, or two, one south and one north of Rod. Presidente Dutra. Maybe northwest in Osasco also, near Rod. Castelo Branco.
My dear James, the location of the São Paulo East Temple holds a curious fact. The city's ground zero (the Sé de Piratininga square and the Pateo do Colégio Jesuita, where the sacred hill of the Indians once stood between the Anhangabaú and Tamanduateí rivers and from where the millenary road to Peabiru departed -- watch The Mission again) it is exactly 9km from both the old temple of São Paulo, close to the Pinheiros river, and the temple of São Paulo East, close to the Aricanduva river. It has an impressive symmetry.
That said, I believe that the location of the new temple will have an impact in the short and medium term for the locations I mentioned earlier. It is impossible not to compare it with the situation in Mexico City, where there are two temples in the metropolis itself and four (or five, depending on the point of view) temples in a kind of macro-metropolitan outer circle.
From this perspective, I believe that the chances increase for the eventual São Paulo Temple #3 to actually be announced for Sorocaba or São José dos Campos, forming this outer circle together with Campinas and Santos, in the same way as it happened with Pachuca, Toluca, Tula, Cuernavaca and Puebla.
I end by thanking you for the opportunity and for appreciating my participation. My English is bad and I use Google translator to express myself in the best way. Contrary to the thinking of some divisionists, I believe I'm no worse than anyone else here just because I'm not a native English speaker on an English blog. If I had the same prejudice shown regarding the use or tone of some expressions considered 'inappropriate' for a space written in English, I could equally ignore or disqualify any analysis of Brazil made by Americans, even if anyone claimed to have that right because of a great-uncle who served a mission in Curitiba in 1926 or something like that. On the contrary, I believe in a world without borders where everyone has a voice and I appreciate every comment. Finally, I would like to say that Lula's election will restore respect for religious freedom and the economic growth necessary for the people to have the material conditions to pay their tithes and attend temples without fear. Thanks!
Jim, as I wrote to James before, I believe that Osasco, ABC's region and Guarulhos remain candidates, but if the same thing that happened in Mexico happens in São Paulo, Sorocaba and São José dos Campos may have more chances in the near future due to the distance factor.
What other metropolises might end up receiving this planning? In addition to Lima, Manila and Santiago, could Tokyo and London be on the list?
Hey, Daniel. I was impressed again by your response. I think your Spanish-to English comments are much better than any English-Spanish comment from me would be.
I appreciate you addressing the subject of temples in Brazil. I will take your feedback here to guide my own analysis of other near-future temple prospects. Thanks again.
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