This year so far two units have been dissolved Oban branch and Springboig Ward! That leaves Glasgow with 1.2 million people with two Wards! Glasgow Stake is down to six wards! Since April last year I know of eight units in the United Kingdom that have closed! The Church is dying a slow death!

Anyone who resists mormonism is better off.

Maybe they can start using haggis instead of bread during sac meeting. No true Scotsman can resist haggis.

On Many trips to Scotland I have love for the food be it Haggis, steak pie , Salmon all topped off a cold Irn Bru. The odd part is thatsoft drinks are not served with very much ice . Ordered an Irn Bru with lots of ice and the glass had 3 small ice cubes . The Walkers potato chips oops crisps are as they say "lovely" Fantastic place to visit but way too much rain for me .

Irn Bru is the best!

It's not served with a lot of ice because, in most of the British Isles, it's bloody cold enough already ;-)

ETA: and Haggis is the food of the gods... Miam, miam, as the French say ;-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/22/2018 04:32AM by Soft Machine.

Mmmmmmm some of my favourite foods there..plus scotch pies, bridies breaded haddock, cullen skink, tablet, macaroon bars, but even I ( Edinburgh born and bred) have never dared to try a deep fried mars bar.

When I was in Scotland some years back, I absolutely HAD to try haggis. Much to my surprise, and despite all the bad-mouthing one hears about it, I liked it.

It tasted pretty much like beef hash, with a shot of something hot, like Tabasco. I was surprised about the hot stuff, but it added up to a tasty meal.

Liver, heart, and lungs of a sheep (boiled in a sheep's stomach)...sounds tasty.

plus fine oatmeal,chopped onions, suet and spices. Haggis is yummy..especially when served with mashed potatoes, mashed swede and whisky sauce !!

"They'll be sorry when they are burning in hell! ...And can't have eternal sex, and babies, and stuff..."

Britboy, I'm in Scotland aswell. From a branch in Perth. It's a joy to hear it's all going downhill, I left last year. My old branch is dying a slow death.

I don't think Perth branch has ever been alive. It's always struggled from my experience.

It's building was a design with the specific intent to expand it easily as the Perth folks flocked to the One True Church. As you know, they didn't. Ha ha ha.

It was never a huge ward in my time but for a while it was really building up and growing well. One family ruined it all. It'll never grow again. May aswell knock it down now and turn it into flats.

One family ruined it all?

Tell us the story!!

I visited Perth decades ago... it was in a bad way then. Apart from the usual problems, it is in a bad site quite far out of the city centre. I had to try and find it on foot once. And it took me a couple of hours to get there.

Great news, the sooner the better.

Mormonism is changing and IMO becoming more dangerous the more it lies to conceal its past.

Elder Uchdorf will ride in a save the day for Europe.

In my mind I picture him dreading leaving the posh life in SLC to go bang his head against the wall in Europe, but that may just be me projecting my feelings on to him.

I picture Uchdorf showing up at the scotland rescue with a briefcase claiming that the contents of the briefcase contains evidence that mormonism is true.

Time for a Scotland temple to boost the ol' marketing campaign.

So what'll it be ... E'burgh or G'gow? :P

The church scouted locations for an Edinburgh Temple back in the 1990's.

A mini-temple, sited on an out-of-the-way plot, opened only by appointment.


Still, it will demonstrate that the "stone rolleth forward", even while membership falls.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/22/2018 11:16AM by 3X.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dull,_Perth_and_Kinross

The Dull, Scotland temple would be the most accurately named one of all time.

What do the members there say about the decline? It would be really interesting to know the reasons from both sides.

slskipper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What do the members there say about the decline?
> It would be really interesting to know the reasons
> from both sides.


Odds are they keep their heads down and try to ignore the slow collapse.

You know it’s porn

I was a member of a ward in Scotland for 32 years,resigned 4 years ago,one ward was closed in the Stake before I left,Oban was in this Stake and Campbelltown too,Have a friend who is still active and she tells me numbers in all wards are down,quite a few members moved to Chorley when the Preston Temple was built,know of 4 familys who moved and a good number of couples and single people,before I left one very long time member said to me that the Church was working folk into the ground,it should be one member one calling,before I left I was RS counsellor,Family History Consultant,Primary Teacher and the obvious VT, things don't look good here thats for sure.

I wondered how Chorley had so many wards!

Thanks kizzie. You commented - "before I left one very long time member said to me that the Church was working folk into the ground, it should be one member one calling, before I left I was RS counsellor, Family History Consultant, Primary Teacher and the obvious VT."

That is way too much to be expected of someone who is a volunteer. There is never any reward for such activity and rarely, if ever, any accolades - only the demand to do more. This will only drive more out of the corporation.

Thanks for the update.

Your comment about working people into the ground.

That's partly why I left. They were trying to give me a 3rd calling when I was about to start a very difficult graduate school. I just couldn't do it all. I had already found the DNA tests that show the BOM was bs, and that was what made me stop pretending to believe it all.

If you don't have a ward in Campbelltown, there is nowhere to go for miles. Kintyre is sixty miles long.

Basically it means that most of the west Highlands have no wards. It is a combination of low population and low interest. Most of the converts they get in the Highlands seem to be English settlers not native Scots... I think all the union jack waving alienates all but Rangers fans.

Perhaps Chorley will become some sort of elephant's graveyard for aging Mo families in the U.K.

I think it already has!

I suspect the gene pool there will be too shallow in a few decades and we'll have inbreeding problems. They can't have more than 1500 members in the entire area if half of that.

Many of them are drawn from the third generation of the same big families. I know some who live on one street there - three LDS families all married to each others sisters/brothers.

As the church declines the pool will be small. However, i suspect Chorley is a form of entrenchment for Mormons. They gather there to keep enough numbers to do two more generations.

Chorley is England's Utah........
The growth of the church there is mostly due to members relocating from other areas. Every time we heard of somebody moving out of the ward it got that we didn't need to ask where they were moving to....
It was almost like a show of righteousness, lets move to Chorley to be near the temple...
The consequences of this is that wards in other areas are now struggling more than ever due to no convert growth, and members either leaving the church altogether or the ones who stay active moving to Chorley.
And yes, I agree about the gene pool getting smaller, I noticed most of my church life that the children of the dominant families in the church in the UK mostly marry within. Very few marry converts.

I like the idea of Chorley as "Britain's Utah" but it's a pity they didn't get the scenery instead of the mormons...

"A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes"

Mark Twain

The truth is catching up in Scotland. Good news!

My first thought was, What a great quote!

But then it occurred to me that mormons have to hang their eternal salvation on it.

I knew there was a reason I liked Scotland so much.

The Scottish are known for their agility.

"Here are the top 20 ways to tell if you are Scottish:
You might be Scottish if……
1. You could swear before you could count.

2. You’ll wait at a store counter for a nickel of change.

3. You still enjoy watching ‘Braveheart’ even though it’s more Hollywood than historical.

4. You prefer to measure things in feet, pounds, and gallons.

5. Your eyes are a lovely shade of blue or green or a light hazel-brown

6. Even though you know what haggis is made with…you still eat it.

7. Your eyes tear up at the sound of bagpipes playing ‘Amazing Grace’.

8. Your speech becomes more colourful after a wee nip or two

9. If someone insults those dear to you, they’ve may have a fight on their hands

10. You’ve got lovely skin, and pleasant facial features

11. You’re a hard worker, and always make sure that every job is done well

12. You’ve likely remained loyal to the same sports team for years, even if they always lose

13. You’re strong willed, with a steely determination.

14. You have a stubborn streak and have been known to hold a grudge

15. You would dive into the street to retrieve a penny during a parade and risk death and injury.

16. You re-use your plastic bags and keep them in a drawer.

17. You’ve got a wonderful sense of humour and enjoy a joke or two

18. You stop talking and listen when bagpipes are playing.

19. You are fiercely loyal to family and friends and extremely proud of your heritage

20. Above all, you possess a strong sense of honour, and always keep your word."

https://arlenestaffordwilson.wordpress.com/tag/scottish-personality-traits/

Confirmation of my 23andMe DNA results! And I like my scotch a wee bit 'peaty'. That should be added to the list.

I don't know what a nickel is worth Amy Jo. I am Scottish and often tip people or ask them to keep change. I'm not sure that doesn't count as ethnic stereotyping.

Also Amazing Grace isn't a Scottish tune, despite Scotty playing it for Spock's funeral in the film.

I know a few Scots who can't stand bagpipes...

I am overjoyed to learn of the LDS decline in Scotland. The area of the U.S. where I live has suffered a similar fate. It feels wonderful to walk the streets of a town where Mormonism has not existed for more than 20 years and where the vast majority don't even know what a Mormon is, except for the T.V. shows that show weird polygamous cults in Utah. The whole county, and several counties surrounding, have no Mormonism anymore. What a paradise!

A mormon-free zone in the US? Let the trend continue.

There is a ward 25 miles from here, but it is shrinking. It now has less than half of the population that was there ten years ago.When they get a convert, (s)he is less educated than the old members who dropped out or moved away. They can only get the type of people that aren't in a postion to do a thorough internet research to find out the truth. The missionaries and members can easily convince them that the negative things they hear are "anti-Mormon lies".

Not Scotland, but Wisconsin....my son is on a mission and they are meeting in a Masonic temple for crying out loud. Really? The church is getting cheaper and more desperate. Makes me laugh.

A Masonic temple would be a good match for the Mormons. Your son may see much that is familiar there.

This is nothing new. My local branch met in a Masonic lodge in the 70s or 80s before they merged it with the city centre one.

And today Scotland beat England at Rugby,the singing of Flower of Scotland always brings me to tears.

The only thing better than beating England at Rugby, is beating them at football.

When I joined the church in the 70's as a teen, they were meeting at the Knights of Columbus Hall. K of C is a Catholic charity organization for men, and the area where I lived was very, very, Catholic. After a few years, however, the K of C became embarrassed about having the Mormons meeting in their place (we were in the basement!), decided they didn't need our rent money, and shooed us off.

I was astonished at this action. Why on Earth wouldn't they want us in their building? We were deeply devoted Christians, quite conservative, just like them. They must have been reading ant-Mormon literature, which they should know is just a bunch of lies (cough). Or maybe it was Satan. Everyone knows that the Catholic church is full of Satan. Funny, though, that all these nice Catholics don't seem to realize it. No wonder they believe all those lies in anti-Mormon literature; they are full of Satan and don't know it!

I'm wondering now where my head was when I was a teenager. Why did I fall for it? Why was I so naive? I know that I was isolated in an area that my parents had moved to out of the clear blue sky (there was a job, but my father got fired for drunkenness) where we didn't fit in. Many other teens, however, have been in my situation and didn't become Mormons. Some day I'll start a thread on why I think it happened.

Back in the late nineties, a friend from that ward called me and told me how much the church was blooming there. Before it had been a fairly small branch, meeting wherever they could with nobody wanting them around. Now they were a huge ward with a large meetinghouse of their own, and when you went to Sacrament meeting you couldn't find a place to sit! I have had no contact with anyone from that area since that time. I recently looked at someone's facebook where they mentioned the ward, so I know it's still there. Is it blooming? I have no idea, but I hope not. In the late nineties, there wasn't the huge build-up of information that we have now. I didn't get hit in the face with hordes of documented information until 2006. Every year it got worse, until I finally "got it".

A person can fool themselves into continuing belief for a long, long time. There were a lot of "comfort" sites that I went to. It's amazing how people can rationalize and stretch the craziest of issues! You can stay in belief mode for a long, long time after anything makes sense anymore.

Can you say which Ward and we can look it up and find the attendance numbers!

Rugby was brilliant,Scotland thrashed the Auld Enemy,Flower of Scotland always brings tears too my eyes.

English scrum halves seem to think a box kick every few minutes is the gentlemanly thing to do to give their opponents their turn at possession. Stupid or what. Well done Scotland. England were too complacent by far. An Enland fan.

Using bagpipes and beer in Sac mtg., may help with retention.

Most leaders here refuse to let irn bru be served at church events.
And that's why the church is fucked in Scotland.

I've seen Irn Bru at many church events - what are you on about?

One thing many parents don't want is their kids on Irn Bru. It is full of caffeine and until recently bucketloads of sugar - give children that and you'll have to peel them off the ceiling.

I've drunk Irn Bru in church many times... not a problem.

To be fair, the new Irn Bru which came out recently is disgusting. Full of aspartame.

I know of a few leaders who won't allow it, like the asshole branch president in my old branch. Maybe some allow it but could see a lot of uptight bishops saying no. Anyway, irn bru or no irn bru, church is fucked.

Scotland the brave: Go, Scotland!!!!!

As a Scot, one of the things I can't stand is all the Union Jack waving. I voted for independence in 2014, I do not identify as "British" or wish to be part of that imperial project...

In Scotland the church is run by Stephen Kerr who is a Tory. The fourth party here... and he keeps projecting his unionism onto the church. My flag is the saltire not the butcher's apron.