Another one down

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced it will close its missionary training center located in Buenos Aires, Argentina, effective July 2019. Plans for future use of the facilities will be determined in coordination with local leaders. Following the closure, missionaries who would have attended this center will be trained in the Mexico and Brazil MTCs.

This decision comes as Church leaders continue to seek the best use of resources worldwide according to the needs and demands of each area. Specifically, this closure is designed to better utilize the Mexico and Brazil MTCs, among others, to train the large numbers of missionaries who are assigned to serve in Latin America.

This is the fourth MTC to close after others in Dominican Republic, Chile, and Spain closed.



https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/argentina-mission-training-center-to-close-in-july

So there's 12 left?

Fantastic!!

Anyone know where the Buenos Aires center is/was located?

I think it's one of the cluster buildings that surrounds the temple.

https://www.google.com/maps/@-34.728862,-58.5197153,323m/data=!3m1!1e3

Thanks, messygoop. So it's not anywhere the missionaries can get into much trouble I was in what was then the Ezeiza Branch for 4 months decades ago--long before the temple was built.

Ah, the temptations of the big city not available to the poor missies.

Music Man sold all the instruments he could and is off to the next town where they aren't "onto him" yet.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Music Man sold all the instruments he could and is off to the next town where they aren't "onto him"

Hahahahah!!!!

Yes, I was sold a bunch of shiny trumpets myself!

Great analogy!

When the MTC in Provo closes, I'll know we're close to total victory. Sao Paulo is a hell of a long way from Buenos Aires. It would be cheaper just to use an old chapel for an MTC in Buenos Aires, then flying all the Spanish speakers to Brazil (where Spanish is a foreign language) and then flying them back to Argentina "if" in fact they are not in Brazil to learn Portuguese.

Rio is 1221 air miles from BA, not that far apart. Flying missionaries from around South America to either one would be about the same price. The Brazilian Government will care not at all that missionaries are being trained in Spanish in their country. They will be bringing in foreign money, and not taking any jobs from Brazilians. While missionaries won't bring in much money, they will cost the country essentially nothing, financially or politically. This would not be at all similar to the Russian situation.

"...to better utilize the Mexico and Brazil MTCs,..."

Meaning those two have been operating at less than projected capacity, too.

I don't think that expression has any meaning at all. I suspect it was just a CYA exercise to make the closing of the one in Argentina look all that more practical. The MTCs in Mexico and Brazil may be underutilized. Or they may be completely overtaxed. It doesn't matter either way. The leadership has decided to cut losses in Argentina and everybody just needs to put the best possible spin on it.

The number of full-time missionaries peaked at about 85k in 2014. By 2017, the number was down to about 67k (roughly a 22% drop in only three years). I wonder how much lower the number is now.

Weren’t there predictions of 100 thousand missionaries? I’m not going to hold my breath until that happens.

There were going to be 100,000 missionaries because when Mitt became president, the whole world would see what a cool spiritual giant he was, and flood into Mormonism so they could be cool spiritual giants too! "The Surge" was perfectly timed to catch that post-election wave of new converts.

Oops.

Who could imagine that Heavenly Father's only begotten son, The White-Horse standard-bearer, couldn't make it into the flippin' Oval Office?

...apparently, the Church had belatedly found out there were a few hold-out ex-Nazi's, who held mechanics liens on the property. The Church was having a hard time settling the claims, so they decided to abandon the facility. After an inventory of Church and other artifacts, it became apparent that the relationship went much deeper.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/world/americas/nazi-artifacts-argentina.html

....because THE (MORmON) church is growing so rapidly !

The MORmON stuff is getting old. We get it. Enough please.

Please stop with the
MORmON stuff. We get it. Enough please.

MORmON

That's awesome!

They must have access to the internet.

What happened to the revelation that temples would dot the globe?

Like every other revelation, it turned out to be an FPR. LOL.

T-Bone

The DesNews angle is that that Mexico City is under capacity since it took over the closed school.

Also, they figured out that it was move efficient to have fewer, larger centers. That God had known that before they built all of the small ones scattered all over.

https://www.thechurchnews.com/global/2019-02-08/heres-why-the-church-has-decided-to-close-4-international-mtcs-48962

Here's the remaining centers.

https://www.lds.org/callings/missionary/missionary-training-centers?lang=eng

So they still have MTCs in Peru and Colombia.

Spanish-speaking missionaries from Argentina could go there -- instead of Brazil... (As the article suggested.)

At one point they had MTCs in Chile, Argentina, Dominican Republic etc.

They were certainly delusional about their "phenomenal" growth in Latin America. Now they seem to be waking up.

After all, the relatively high number of poor women and children that they manage to dunk there don't miraculously turn overnight into missionaries who will fill endless MTC buildings...

The first MTC to close that I noticed was Tokyo. IIRC, it was adjacent to the Tokyo mormon temple. I think the property was sold do a neighboring embassy or somesuch.

When it happend i realized in tokyo it was probably inevitable, but I also had a nagging feeling of "why?"

Why would you, if you were the lord's one true church that is only going to get bigger (you know, 'cause it's troo) sell off an asset that butted up to your crown jewel? (mormons think of their temples as most holy, am i wrong?)

Yet, here they go under the auspices of efficiency.

Yeah, not sure, but then they closed the one in Seoul and I figured they didn't have much use for home-grown mishies.

But this last one....first off, how much money does it take to keep this going? The building is all paid off, correct? So now, it's maintenance and utilities. The church is clever enough to score free labor most of the time as well. They don't pay a ton for the MTC teachers.

Really, how much will they be saving versus having to fly the mishies to and from the MTC in wherever?

Is it possible that the closing of this MTC and possibly others is a knee-jerk reaction to the church reducing the church's budget for the missionary program?

What if Rusty or which ever committee watching the spending told each church department to trim its allotted budget by 10, 15 or 20%?

Realistically, we'll never see how the church spends its money nor an actual spreadsheet of a yearly budget. However, we know that the church no longer likes pushing Mormon pageants and possibly have curtailed their "singing club" by having them sing and travel less.

This is a very interesting thread.

They probably made bank selling the property in Tokyo.

Not many years ago, the PPSR (pronounced PeePisser--President, Prophet, Seer and Revelator) and his gang of 14 "Apostles" were inspired, impressed upon and generally revelationized into thinking that it was a GREAT IDEA to create a whole bunch of MTCs and they believed that would lead to the great stone rolling forth, the church covering the land, the gospel reaching every heart and mind and all that yadda yadda blah blah blah wackadoo.

Fast forward just a decade or so later and those MTC are having to be closed down. Apparently all cost-benefit analyses have "revealed" to the Brethren that keeping them going is a waste of money and resources.

Watching the Mormon leaders' game of "inspiration ping-pong" is giving me whiplash.

If you live long enough, your perception of time compresses and eventually, just observing the changes that come and go from the leaders at the top starts to feel like you're watching a schizophrenic homeless man arguing with himself, while standing without pants in a cardboard box under the highway overpass on the bad side of town.

"It's good! No! It's bad! No! Wait! It's okay, but not great! Shut-up! You're evil! But stop! It's bad again! No, good! Stop! Stop! It's not to be talked about! It's just a couplet! It's an eternal truth! No, it's not an eternal truth! It's a policy of unknown origin! But wait! Look here! The veils are bad! The Mormon nickname is something to be proud of! No, it's horrible! It's from Satan himself! Satan laughs when you call them Mormons. The Book of Mormon is my precious...my prreessssshusss! Not it's not. It's racist! Not racist! It's misunderstood! It's my prreeessssshusss! No more disembowelment, no more throat slitting! No more pay, lay ale, no more submission to a husband that is male! I quite liked the five points of fellowship. Knee to knee, breast to breast...we are the kings of the West! I hated it! It was disgusting! Breath of death, the old man had. He was not my prreeessshusss!"

When you see something like that going on, the safest thing to do is quietly walk away and try to avoid making eye contact.

way to improve your chances of not getting hit when he starts flinging at you whatever it is that he pulls out of his "pocket".

"And the Lord commands me to smite thee! Behold my thunderbolts of condemnation! Stop that! No! It is commanded by God! No it's not! Yes it is! We loves our precious. We hates this cardboard box! Look! He goes zig-zag, zig-zag. He's a tricksy fellow. We must smites him. Tricksy fellows are eeevil...."