The Leeds Stake in England has had some recent changes. Three Wards were closed and consolidated into two new ones and Skipton branch was closed! The church is dying a slow death in England!

Great news Britboy...former Great Britain missionary here.

By the way, I was thinking the other day, how nice the English were to me as a missionary. They have to be the most tolerant and hospitable people on the planet. They could have been very mean to me as a missionary since I and so many other "mericans bugg the crap out of them - but they were not. Brit's are good folks.

Just last week I was talking to some LDS local leaders and they were telling me
1 church is growing especially in Japan where they have grandchildren on missions there.
2 we are the fastest growing church.
3 we just created 2 Spanish speaking wards on Edmonton. At last Stake Conference they changed ward boundaries and created a new ward in their stake and SP said these changes show how Church is moving forward and growing in Edmonton.
4 look at all the new temples

But wait, their ward has not had one convert baptism in 4 years. Their stake had I think 4 last year. Other people are telling me that attendance in down. The singles rep tell me they have about 2000 to 3000 singles in Edmonton and can only get 15 to an activity. When I drive by temple or church parking lot it’s not as full on Sunday or weekdays as it used to be.

The good news according to them is Dusty Rusty is greatest prophet ever.

This certainly is a strange reality we are talking about.

Funny. In Japan, the church is (literally) a joke. Several missions have been closed, the temples are barely used.

In Canada, the Montreal mission has recently (as of July) absorbed the Halifax mission. The Halifax mission had existed since at least the early 1980s.

Rustle Nelson, greatest *ever*? Greater than Jo Smith Himself? Praise to the Man!

I was a mishie in Japan 89-91 when there were 10 missions in the country.

They are down to 6, yet they have 3 temples and one new one coming up in Okinawa.

the temple they built in Sapporo is 48,480 square feet. That is over 4 1/2 times the size of the one in Fukuoka, yet the Sapporo temple is only open for 3 sessions per day, 4 days per week. The Fukuoka temple is open 3 or 4 days per week with only 2 or 3 sessions available a day. Okinawa's temple size hasn't been announced yet, it could be tiny or huge, who's to know, but I'm pretty sure it's not even needed. I went to ldschurchgrothblogspot.com and cut and pasted the following:

"Okinawa City Okinawa Temple
The Okinawa City Okinawa Temple will be the Church's fourth temple in the sovereign nation of Japan. The new temple will likely serve only one stake and one district - both of which are headquartered on Okinawa. The Church previously had two stakes in Okinawa, but closed one of the stakes (Ginowan Japan Stake - created in 1999) in 2014 and combined many of the Japanese-speaking congregations on the island. Today, the Okinawa Japan Stake (organized in 1980) has five wards and three branches. The Okinawa Japan Military District (organized in 1979) has four branches, three of which are located on Okinawa. The Church also briefly operated a mission in Okinawa between 1990 and 1996. Okinawa has a population of 1.4 million people. The announcement of the Okinawa City Okinawa Temple came as a complete surprise to me given the small size of the Church in Okinawa and the lack of growth on the island in recent years. This development suggests that the Church may announce temples in many additional, remote locations around the world where only one or two stakes operate, such as Fairbanks, Alaska; Puerto Arenas, Chile; and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia."

--above source is

http://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/search/label/Japan


http://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/2014/06/stake-discontinued-in-japan.html

In the second link, they discuss the potential of a "Swedish Rescue" type of event that happened, or didn't happen, in Okinawa.

They don't need any temple, but even if they DID need one, all they would need would be a 7,000 SF structure.

So true. The Japan Sendai Mission was by far the highest baptizing mission while I was there in the late 1980's (~60/month), but to my surprise that mission was recently closed and absorbed into the Sapporo and Tokyo North missions. The combined population of the northern half of the former Sendai mission and the Sapporo mission is about 7 million people, or about one missionary for every 35000 people. Missionaries in the Sendai mission already had to travel relatively long distances to mission conferences compared to other Japan missions. I am not sure where they put the dividing line, but I assume Morioka was put in the Sapporo mission. The train ride from Morioka to Sapporo, which goes through a tunnel under the ocean, takes 6 hours and 40 minutes. It appears that the church in that region is now a miserable failure as far as missionary work is concerned.

I don't know where in Japan as statistics show it's shrinking! Both Jehovah's witnesses and Seventh day Adventist church is growing faster and has many more active members than the Mormon church!

SEcular Priest Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This certainly is a strange reality we are talking about.
====================

delusion noun
de·​lu·​sion | \ di-ˈlü-zhən , dē-\
Definition of delusion
1a : something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated
under the delusion that they will finish on schedule
delusions of grandeur
b psychology : a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary
the delusion that someone was out to hurt him
also : the abnormal state marked by such beliefs

"I been told my whole life that this church is going to fill the whole earth so don't confuse me with facts."

That’s the old narrative. The new narrative involves separating the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff, and only the very elite remaining faithful.

This is exactly how they will play it.

Does that mean that ghawd held back boatloads of losers for these last days so that the few elites would look good, if only to themselves?

So might it be said that ghawd is into image more than he's into actual numbers?

If Mormons are right, and ghawd was once a man, I'm pretty sure of three things:

This is his first attempt at a planet, he did not receive the training manual, and in his mortal existence, he worked as a DMV clerk.

That would explain a lot.

That is unfair. DMVs have grown much more competent and polite over the last decade or so.

You have a point. You can actually do appointments in Utah, and they work. My last encounter was fast and painless.

I just couldn't think of another human organization stereotypically known for poor service. God of course is the gold standard for unreliable service, and I was trying to illustrate how he acquired such an awesome skill!

You have never dealt with China's customs "service"!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2019 02:30AM by Lot's Wife.

I think missionaries are hyped up to believe that the area where they are serving is on the brink of amazing growth. It's just a matter of time...

I was a missionary in Zurich, Switzerland in 1983 - 1984. At every mission conference it was drummed into our heads: "the field is white, already to harvest, blah, blah, blah..." It never happened. Most missionaries went home without a baptism. I helped baptize two individuals who went inactive in just a few weeks.

Today there is no Zurich Switzerland mission. The mission home is now occupied by a local business. American missionaries are no longer allowed to proselytize there, but the way the mission president predicted growth over 30 years ago, you'd think the mission would be growing strong instead of evaporating into non-existence.

Haha! Kind of like selling Pontiacs and being told the brand is really going to take off now because we have made some new and improved changes.

Then a few years down the road Pontiac is gone and the dealership is either gone or selling something else.

The Swiss are well educated... that is why the church emphasis has been the 3rd world countries... The more superstitious the individual the easier it is for them to buy into the BS!

Why, if things 'keep progressing', it will be Joe & Russ together having the say on whether or not individuals can get to the CK...


you heard it here first!!

I wonder what's to be had by building expensive temples in expensive places, like Okinawa or anywhere else in Japan, where membership is actually declining. It's such an odd phenomenon that they do this.

I remember reading ensign articles when I was a Mormon, and articles on the temples would usually have a message about members sacrificing their time and money to get it done. Maybe that was church history. But pretty sure I saw this was happening in poor places like South America. Plus it is a statement - TSCC is putting their stamp on the area, giving the impression it is flourishing even if it’s not.
Just some ideas. I don’t know why otherwise. But let’s face it, the mormon church can afford to do what it likes.

I think having all these temples will become a problem. Some say the church is investing in prime real estate building them. Well real estate is overvalued right now. Not a great time to buy it and even if it's a prime location you ruin the value putting a temple on it. Real estate is specialized. It's either good for commercial purposes or residential purposes. Temples are specialized buildings and not very useful for other purposes.

Another take is temples are bridges to nowhere. Contractors related to the church leadership make money building the temples. There might be some truth to this. It's hard to imagine so many temples are being built to skim the money off of building them.

I just see the whole situation as stupid. There is going to be a point of diminishing returns with all the temple building. Maybe the church leaders really do believe their own bullshit. If you live a lie long enough you start to believe it yourself. Maybe that's what Mormonism really is. Getting high on your own supply.

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Maybe the church leaders
> really do believe their own bullshit. If you live
> a lie long enough you start to believe it
> yourself. Maybe that's what Mormonism really is.
> Getting high on your own supply.

I think you may really have a point here. It would also explain a lot of other stuff they do which does not make sense.

I have no idea where people get the idea that a temple is an investment in prime real estate. It is only an investment if you can sell the land at profit at some point. There has never been a temple lot sold as far as I know, and before they could sell a current temple lot, they would have to demolish the temple first. That'd be one hell of an expensive "tear down".

Ditto the "skimming construction money" urban legend. They could skim money off chapel construction just as easily, and there are a lot more of them, yet they squirm every which way to avoid building more ward houses unless they absolutely have to.

They build local temples as architectural billboards for the Mormon Church (look how big, rich and powerful we are - we get to build this monstrosity in one of your most expensive residential neighborhoods!), and to bring in tithing as the fee for getting a temple recommend. Period.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2019 01:13PM by Brother Of Jerry.

it's been rumored that ChurchCo will purchase property close to a planned but not yet announced temple (or chapel?) location & slide it to one of their many real estate / development companies.

I'm referring to enough property for several homes, perhaps a neighborhood business.

'of course' no one can verify this bc ChurchCo doesn't disclose it's investments or most of its holding companies.