http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865604558/Travels-of-the-Apostles-Brazil---Part-of-the-heart-of-the-Church.html

Just so many places in the world like Brazil, India, Ghana, etc where LDS church cannot keep up with so much growth.

Wow...and the World Cup is coming to town...


Oh...the opportunities (like the 2002 SLC Olympics)




**sarcasm**

TSCC's only hope is to try and grow in countries like Brazil.


The USA, and European countries have begun to educate themselves regarding the lies and cover-ups perpetrated by the church. Mostly regarding its history. A lot of that knowledge is thanks to the internet.

Countries like Brazil that are relatively new to the teachings of the church will be more accepting of the lies. But in time, they'll learn the truth also, and their numbers will begin to dwindle just like the US and Europe.

I served in Brazil and the church, with 30 missions at the time, was NOT booming. I served in one branch where the 8 missionaries in the branch outnumbered the active members. I served in a ward with 1,200+ on the rolls, and ~15 active members, and only one priesthood holder...also the only tithe-payer. The entire mission had ~1,000 active members divided among 4 stakes and multiple mission areas.

If I remember correctly, census data has shown that only about 1/5 of baptized members in Brazil are self-identified LDS. I would bet that less than half of the self-identified members are active. 100K active members in a huge country with 30+ missions and a population of 200M. The church claims half of 1% as members, but only ~1/20% of Brazilians are active LDS.

Correct, not only is the LDS church NOT booming in Brazil, the "growth" is not even keeping up with population growth in general.

Bleeding, yes.

Booming, no.

Sounds similar to my experiences there, I was there when there were 26 missions or so. I gather from my Brazilian FB friends that 'anti-mormon' (truthful?) literature about the church has started leaking onto the web in Portuguese and as more and more Brazilians are getting Internet access, the awakening is spreading there too.

The Brazilian people are highly active on Social Media. The word should be getting out. Last 2010 Census showed a little over 200,000 self-identifying Mormons in a nation of over 100 million people. The Mormon church claims 1.2 million members in Brazil.

Too bad, so sad Mormon church. Your core international countries have a lower participation rate in Mormonism than your US participation rate. Keep the PR speakerphone booming. You can buy press and articles extolling growth--for a price, you can buy lies.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2014 09:24AM by gentlestrength.

Many of the people of other continents will Only hear the 'official version' of LDS things, some will associate the "prosperity" of N. America (industrial progress) with Mormonism.

and, btw, is the 'Perpetual Education program' still in effect???

TSCC has done (up until recently) a fair job of covering, 'explaining' lies. Inoculation has done its job.

But once people (converts, BIC) learn how micro-managing SL/GAs are, that's a #1 turn-off.

Mormonism is designed to take over about 90 % of your non-working hours life; IDK how that c/would work in other cultures. Some people (n. america) Thrive on it, some Tolerate, a few abandon-rebel.

absent any evidence, I'd say it's 50/50 historical & current challenges.

The numbers in Brazil are very misleading. I served a mission there and while baptism rates are generally pretty high, retention rates are abysmal. During my mission, of the 40 people I taught and got baptized, only about 3-5 were still active by the time I left the mission. Most of the people went inactive within the first few months. We even had one lady who got baptized then never returned to the church after that. She refused to go to church even on the Sunday immediately following her baptism. This was fairly common in my mission. Also, there were a lot of children who were baptized in my mission, most of whom I doubt would stay active for long without their family's support.

Each ward I attended as a missionary while in Brazil had several hundred members on its rolls but only about 80-100 members who attended faithfully each week. So while they may continue to have high baptism rates, that doesn't translate into long-term active membership.

Check the photos out on the link with the article...

"Look, it's the NOT EVEN ONCE CLUB lady traveling the globe selling her book on the dime of the church..."

Unbelievable.

Wait.

You said "booming," not "bombing."

:)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2014 06:45PM by steve benson.

heh heh, maybe it's explosive growth.

I just assumed that what they meant by "booming" was the sound of the Mormon Cult blowing-up in their faces...

Notice their use of the word "mature" to describe the church and its members in Brazil? That's keyword for "the church ain't growin here no more." Its the same word businesses use when they stop experiencing growth and instead focus on retaining the market share.

I saw a article on MSN about red lobster and they were blaming the mature/ older patrons for their problems running their restaurant! As if that's possible!

Nice article. God mentioned twice. Jesus (you know, *that* guy) a big zero.



But to be fair, it is all about the business.

I was in Brazil when there were two missions and one stake, so there has been some growth.

But India? Did they seriously say that was an area of rapid growth? It has a billion people, and a couple of stakes after 20+ years of missionary effort. I bet a good chunk of the members there were converted in the US and moved back, or are US expats living in India. That does not constitute "rapid growth".

Every year, more people are born in India than there are nominal Mormons around the world. If the entire LDS Church moved to India, it would make up less than 1% of the nation.

There are 1.2 billion people in India. There are 25.6 million babies born in India every year. That is 1.7 LDS Churches created every year in India alone. They are really falling behind the population growth.

With 1.2 billion people in India they need about 200,000 Stakes and 1.6 million Wards to cover that country once they turn half of them into Mormons. 2 Stakes down, just 199,998 to go :)

Brazil has 201 million people, about 2/3 the US population. The church claims 1.25 million members, or 0.6% of the nation. That's just enough not to round down to zero.

The church claims 250 stakes and 34 missions. If each stake has 3,000 members, then there are only 750,000 members accounted for. With an activity rate of 30% like most of S. America, there are probably less than 400,000 active members, or 0.2% of the nation.

In 2010, Brazil had 1.1 million members. That is an average growth rate of around 3%. I suppose you could call that booming, but it will take a few centuries before Mormons are even a blimp on the map in Brazil.

in my anecdotal experience, activity rates in Brazil are 10-15% in the areas I served but who's counting :D A family I baptized and a young man I baptized are still active, out of the 26 people I baptized, so 4/26 is... less than 20% of my converts personally. They're good people, we just don't talk about the church on Facebook.

"30% activity rate like the rest of South America"

No way, you are off by about 20 percent. About ten percent is more like it.

Agreed. The activity rate in my first area was ~1.25%. However, based on our "reactivation" work, I don't believe that half of the members on the rolls had ever actually been baptized. In most of my areas, activity rates were probably less than 10%. Most wards/branches had one or two long-time member familes and recent converts...that's it.

I baptized around 30 people in Brazil. Only 2 were still attending when I left. Last ward I served in had 1400 on the rolls with 70 or so attending. Pretty common to have really low activity rates in Brazil. People Change their religion like they change their underwear there.

They wear underwear in Brazil?!?

Excited to see Brazil through the World Cup! Ótimo!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2014 09:30AM by gentlestrength.

The mo's prey on third world countries.

I work with a woman from Bolivia who spends every summer there. She told me that there are Bolivians who become Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses because it helps them to get jobs. Apparently, employers often try to avoid problems with drinking by hiring from these religions, but my colleague said that the Bolivians join these churches to get jobs and are not at all believers. Perhaps that occurs in other countries as well.

I was in Brazil 95-97, went back to visit twice in the last 4 yrs. My first area's ward has about the same number of people attending as it did when I was there as a greeny. Also, when I was there, we had 2 sets of missionaries in this town - at the time of my recent visits, none. Not sure why they were pulled.

Yes, many people living below the poverty line are extremely interested in investigating the church's welfare system...

In the wise words of Deep Throat: follow the money. Member numbers, real or imagined mean nothing. What does matter is what has Brazil (or India, Nigeria, ...) done for 50 E North Temple lately? We all have a real good idea on that.

I live in Brazil. I haven't seen a missionary in the streets for months now, and I live in a medium sized city. TSCC is never EVER mentioned in the news for anything they did, good or bad. I don't know any mormons here at all. The chapels seem always deserted. It's like TSCC doesn't even exist, here.

They can't compete with money-grubbing pastors from evangelical churches galore, and there are also the Spiritists and esoteric people who just laugh at the exotic teachings of TSCC.

No "booming" whatsoever, that's for sure.

I'm from Brazil too and I live in a medium city too, with 200 thousand people and one Stake.

The Church is in no way booming in Brazil. There's no mass apostasy like in Europe so far, but that's because of the language barrier. Not many people can speak English and few are interested in Church history. If you can speak english and is well educated, chances are you are already in a leadership position, detering you from going deep enough in history.

The Church throughout Brazil have a very grave problem with Young Men. Most wards have to ask Elders to bless and pass the sacrament as there aren't even enough young men to do that.

There was an Area wide push a couple of years ago to reactivate men in missionary age and send them. At least in the areas I know, it failed miserably.

Retention rates are terrible, around 10%. The few that are baptized are children and youth from very poor and uneducated families. When you see an adult investigation at SM you can be certain he will be either a drunk or a lunatic.

The number of Stakes and Wards have been stable for the last 10 years. The growth is minimal.

The attrition rate for BICs is high also, simply because of a general lack of interest. I can only imagine what will happen when the wave of apostasy caused by Church history arrives.

As for myself, I'm making sure I do what I can to hasten it.

Back in 2011, there were visa problems which prevented US missionaries from going to Brazil. So they lowered the missionary age in Brazil to 18 years to fill the missing spots, which resulted in a whopping 60 MTC-spots being filled (out of 700).

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/51121821-76/brazil-missionaries-lds-visa.html.csp

Interestingly, the article also states that the lack of missionaries could "hamper the stability of LDS congregations there". The average Brazilian ward had 580 members on the books in 2011. How did the absence of a few inexperienced American highschool graduates destabilize those wards?

Maybe there aren't as many Mormons in Brazil as the church claims? In a year 2000 census, 200.000 Brazilians self-identified as Mormons, who claimed to have 750.000 members at that time.

Instead of the 1.25 million members the church currently claims in Brazil, 330 thousand is probably closer to the truth - spread over the area of the world's fifth largest country with a population of around 200 million.

Booming? Hahahahahaha...

I've got a cousin serving there now who says they are really struggling trying to find people to teach and when they do these people don't want to give up sinning (drinking and living with a partner). His MP is constantly annoyed at the missionaries because they aren't working hard enough to bring in investigators or get any baptisms. Same story as most places I think.

The Church is still getting baptisms? Sure, but they're mostly in the poorer and less developed areas. Broken families, unemployed and socially challenged people that like the american missionaries, go to Church once or twice, get baptized, and never return. Those people won't have any means of transportation or money and will require perpetual rides and fast offerings help. The growth here is mostly smoke.

I don't see a bright future for the Church in Brazil.

I emailed the "journalist" of the Deseret News article and gave her The link to the Salt Like Tribune article by Stack on the disappearing Mormons in Brazil.

I accused her of being a PR shill for the Mormon church and not a journalist and that there will come a time that a Deseret News reporter will have to write about the decline on an inflated membership number in Brazil and that there are not 15 million Mormons by any honest measure.

She said she was too busy to make the time to do the research on my claims in order to reply (too busy to research Church claims I am sure too), but "back in 1981" the Church was small and now it is big, so that is growth to her. Why yes I grew 300% taller and 2500% heavier from when I was small, not that it is a useful marker to my current growth or decline.

The Deseret News is part of the PR machine of the Mormon church, its master and owner.

I think it is valuable to keep challenging these shills. If they don't have time to report well, make them use their time justifying their lazy, inaccurate, PR work--posing as journalism.