My daughter and I attended Church in Banff Alberta today, She is getting married next year and wanted to see what Branch President was like and whether he would do a civil marriage at the big hotel. She decided that after not attending Church for 2 years and listening to what was said today, she does not want any Mormon stuff said at her wedding. So we left at end of SM without talking to anyone.

The first speaker said that he and his wife and another couple they are friends with have been called to serve in the Branch for two years. Its a long drive from Calgary to Banff to do that. What might be a reason for the Church to do that? They seemed to have enough Priesthood without these 2 men. Never heard of it before.

What was interesting is we met a minister the day before at the hote that was conducting a wedding. We both liked him but lived too far away.This guy was really a nice minister.

they ship in folks in branches to teach them how the church is run.

A branch indicates lack of church managerial knowledge

BANFF huh!

On the way home my daighter asked me about that She thought everyone had a 3 hour service. Not a lot of small kids in the branch. I had no answer. I was surprise. It was Dry Council Sunday so the stake knows.

Maybe they other funny rules too.

Who knows!

I'm surprised there would be enough mormons in Banff to actually field a Branch. It just doesn't seem a "mormony" type of place to me!

On any given Sunday there will be hundreds of LDS visitors. Some of them will want to attend services. So have a ready made branch for the tourists.
That's be my guess

Yeah...well I did email you!

I lived in a branch for a while. I think it is easy for the leadership to get tired and abused. There are only so many men and women that can fill the stressful callings. Outsiders are brought in to bring fresh blood.

We drove by chapel yesterday and missionaries were cleaning building!!!!

I wounder if they 2 retired couples will be doing the cleaning now??

We drove past chapel yesterday to find SM time. Missionaries dressed in white shirts and ties were cleaning the building. Maybe these older couples will be picking up the slack and cleaning the building so missionaries can convert people.

If they were my parents I would not be happy knowing they were called to clean the building as part of their calling.

Steeleville Branch in So. IL is entirely run by members from the Carbondale ward b/c the branch is made up of only one family with children and some older single brothers and sisters. Average attendance is 20ish people every week.

There has been talk of absorbing this branch for a couple of years but the stake president is loathe to lose a unit (read here loss of $). Any loss of funds is hard to take when you're living quarter to quarter.

Some units become too small to function, and I've seen couples called to merely be in the audience and to perform normal "callings" so as to keep the church unit from drying up. So rather than letting the branch or group die a natural death, they sometimes initiate an artificial situation to make it look like everything is okay.

But sometimes there are enough people to make up a good ward or branch, but the stake president or mission president does not trust any of the men in the unit to act as bishop or branch president. So then they will bring in a ringer, often in the form of some old missionary couple. I was on a high council in Germany, and one of the wards was like this. The stake president took issue with the bishop and fired him. Then they didn't see anyone who seemed promising as a new bishop. So they called in an old American couple. The man didn't even speak German, and a good part of the ward was offended by the action. The old American guy called two counselors, and started his job as bishop. I moved away shortly afterward and don't know how the situation went.

Rather than leadership, it was pure numbers they were after. It was a lowly Branch that really wanted to be all grown up and become a ward. Extra missionaries were assigned including a pair of seniors from Birmingham and it was enough. The small building in front of the temple was expanded to include a chapel etc. Now it's a ward but I don't think attendance really justifies it.

Stunted

There's nothing that bugs me more than going on vacay to a nice spot and seeing a Mo church.

When on vacay, I want to get away from traces of Mormonism but alas, it is not to be. Ugh!!!!!