Recovery Board
: RfM
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2019 05:55PM by CrispingPin.
Recovery from Mormonism (RfM) discussion forum.
Thank you! That is exactly.....EXACTLY the inside information that I was looking for.
That looks like a HUGE lot they purchased.
Very interesting about the unused portion of the HK temple building, and you hit on my point about making an already underused temple larger. To what end? There will be more seating, but I doubt there will be more patrons especially since Thailand used to be in the HK temple district and BKK is getting a shiny new 44,000 square foot temple that is it's own temple building with a large (90,000+ sf) church office/mission home/mishie apt/ward facilities/stake facilities/distribution center in a different building, but directly behind the temple, and on-site.
I took a look at the temple district as it stands now for HK. It currently services the members in the following areas:
Bengaluru, India
Bangkok, Thailand
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
and all three of those areas are getting new temples, so the current HK temple, which now will be, what do you think - twice the size or so and the so-called "Temple District" will be reduced by three countries.
That looks like a HUGE lot they purchased.
Very interesting about the unused portion of the HK temple building, and you hit on my point about making an already underused temple larger. To what end? There will be more seating, but I doubt there will be more patrons especially since Thailand used to be in the HK temple district and BKK is getting a shiny new 44,000 square foot temple that is it's own temple building with a large (90,000+ sf) church office/mission home/mishie apt/ward facilities/stake facilities/distribution center in a different building, but directly behind the temple, and on-site.
I took a look at the temple district as it stands now for HK. It currently services the members in the following areas:
Bengaluru, India
Bangkok, Thailand
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
and all three of those areas are getting new temples, so the current HK temple, which now will be, what do you think - twice the size or so and the so-called "Temple District" will be reduced by three countries.
Levi -- I don't know much more than I've already said.
But, on mothballing, nothing ever gets mothballed in Hong Kong. Land and buildings are way too valuable. So that the LDS church got away with not only building a clumsy new building that countered Hinkley's revelation, but also managed to get away with having 3 stories of their beloved temple building vacant or underutilized, without anyone so much as commenting on the internet in a way that Google can pick up, is pretty impressive mind control...
Interesting that the HK temple will have exactly zero outlying areas as part of the temple district. If the wards are like they were 30 years ago (probably are) there would be about 25 adults that might attend a temple service. 25 people by 25 congregations = 625 eligible attendees. Plus 100 missionaries. 725 eligible attendees. Each one goes quarterly, (optimistic), 3000 visits per year. Temple open 5 days a week (optimistic) is 250 days of operation. That's about 12 attendees per day, after the thriving Mormon hotspots of Pnom Phen etc. are taken out of the mix. That's almost enough people to run a session per day, I suppose. And if my numbers are off, then it's 24 people per week.
Pretty low utilization for that handsome six-story building.
I surfed the HK missions reunion page a bit, it looks like folks are still attending. And still about the same number of stakes and branches as 30 years ago. So not shrinking either. I wonder what happened to all the fun Chinese sister missionaries I had such crushes on.
I've only been back once, in 2008, and it was surprisingly still the fun, freesprited place it was under British rule. I don't think much is changing in Hong Kong, way too much $ flows through there in too many directions for the mainland government to be willing to change things very much. So the COJCOLDS will soldier on as it has before, as a minor religion in city-state very crowded with competing ideas.
Best,
RG
But, on mothballing, nothing ever gets mothballed in Hong Kong. Land and buildings are way too valuable. So that the LDS church got away with not only building a clumsy new building that countered Hinkley's revelation, but also managed to get away with having 3 stories of their beloved temple building vacant or underutilized, without anyone so much as commenting on the internet in a way that Google can pick up, is pretty impressive mind control...
Interesting that the HK temple will have exactly zero outlying areas as part of the temple district. If the wards are like they were 30 years ago (probably are) there would be about 25 adults that might attend a temple service. 25 people by 25 congregations = 625 eligible attendees. Plus 100 missionaries. 725 eligible attendees. Each one goes quarterly, (optimistic), 3000 visits per year. Temple open 5 days a week (optimistic) is 250 days of operation. That's about 12 attendees per day, after the thriving Mormon hotspots of Pnom Phen etc. are taken out of the mix. That's almost enough people to run a session per day, I suppose. And if my numbers are off, then it's 24 people per week.
Pretty low utilization for that handsome six-story building.
I surfed the HK missions reunion page a bit, it looks like folks are still attending. And still about the same number of stakes and branches as 30 years ago. So not shrinking either. I wonder what happened to all the fun Chinese sister missionaries I had such crushes on.
I've only been back once, in 2008, and it was surprisingly still the fun, freesprited place it was under British rule. I don't think much is changing in Hong Kong, way too much $ flows through there in too many directions for the mainland government to be willing to change things very much. So the COJCOLDS will soldier on as it has before, as a minor religion in city-state very crowded with competing ideas.
Best,
RG
"I've only been back once, in 2008, and it was surprisingly still the fun, freesprited place it was under British rule. I don't think much is changing in Hong Kong, way too much $ flows through there in too many directions for the mainland government to be willing to change things very much."
Significant leople have been going missing in Hong Kong in recent years such as several book shop owners who stocked material critical of Beijing.
That is neither fun nor free spirited.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/magazine/the-case-of-hong-kongs-missing-booksellers.html
"The Case of Hong Kong’s Missing Booksellers
"As China’s Xi Jinping consolidates power, owners of Hong Kong bookstores trafficking in banned books find themselves playing a very dangerous game."
Significant leople have been going missing in Hong Kong in recent years such as several book shop owners who stocked material critical of Beijing.
That is neither fun nor free spirited.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/magazine/the-case-of-hong-kongs-missing-booksellers.html
"The Case of Hong Kong’s Missing Booksellers
"As China’s Xi Jinping consolidates power, owners of Hong Kong bookstores trafficking in banned books find themselves playing a very dangerous game."
Hong Kong RM 1979-81. I was actually sad about the chosen location for the temple. I loved that mission home on Cornwall Street.
You are correct that Hinkley had a love for HK. Shook his hand on the basketball court in the Stake Center in Ho Man Tin in 79 when he came to create what would become the second stake in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Island Stake. The original stake became known as the Kowloon Stake. It was then as he peered into my soul with his eye contact I realized he had no discernment of the pre-mission errors of my youthful ways.
I am out of the church now...but I don't regret the mission experience.
You are correct that Hinkley had a love for HK. Shook his hand on the basketball court in the Stake Center in Ho Man Tin in 79 when he came to create what would become the second stake in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Island Stake. The original stake became known as the Kowloon Stake. It was then as he peered into my soul with his eye contact I realized he had no discernment of the pre-mission errors of my youthful ways.
I am out of the church now...but I don't regret the mission experience.
(Note to some posters: Hong Kong is supposedly still autonomous of the PRC to some extent. Mormonism is legal in HK, but not in "Mainland" China a few miles away.)
I think the big dream of the LDS was that HK would become a gateway to the PRC, and that the PRC would open up to them in the same way the former USSR has (although you still can't wear a badge as a missionary in Russia). That hasn't happened, although I know for a fact that the LDS have been baptizing a number of Chinese students in the west - apparently most of them don't stay active long, but some do go back and try and practise being LDS within the PRC.
Recognition of the LDS did happen in Vietnam a few years ago, which is presumably served by Hong Kong. (I've no idea of the numbers in Macau - I'd imagine they're low, but there is now a bridge linking the two places.)
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/church-receives-official-recognition-in-vietnam?lang=eng
Nothing like this seems to be happening in "Mainland" China. As the rule stands, all churches/religions must be under state control there. (The Falun Gong refused to be so, which is why they got in such trouble.) This means churches such aa the RCs and LDS are forbidden since they are headquartered abroad. The Chinese state has set up a Chinese Catholic church which does many of the things that the RCs do, but whoch is not under control of Rome. The LDS may one day find itself in a similar boat - an independent Chinese Mormon church, it's possible perhaps.
I think the big dream of the LDS was that HK would become a gateway to the PRC, and that the PRC would open up to them in the same way the former USSR has (although you still can't wear a badge as a missionary in Russia). That hasn't happened, although I know for a fact that the LDS have been baptizing a number of Chinese students in the west - apparently most of them don't stay active long, but some do go back and try and practise being LDS within the PRC.
Recognition of the LDS did happen in Vietnam a few years ago, which is presumably served by Hong Kong. (I've no idea of the numbers in Macau - I'd imagine they're low, but there is now a bridge linking the two places.)
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/church-receives-official-recognition-in-vietnam?lang=eng
Nothing like this seems to be happening in "Mainland" China. As the rule stands, all churches/religions must be under state control there. (The Falun Gong refused to be so, which is why they got in such trouble.) This means churches such aa the RCs and LDS are forbidden since they are headquartered abroad. The Chinese state has set up a Chinese Catholic church which does many of the things that the RCs do, but whoch is not under control of Rome. The LDS may one day find itself in a similar boat - an independent Chinese Mormon church, it's possible perhaps.
Levi wrote, "Very interesting about the unused portion of the HK temple building, and you hit on my point about making an already underused temple larger."
Something similar happened to the Christian Science "Mother Church" headquarters in Boston in the late 1950s/60s. They bought a lot of property around their core campus, gentrified some residential sections, and built a huge corporate campus designed by prestigious architect I.M. Pei:
http://en.hmc.lowebhost.com/resources/project_details.php?lang=en&id=34#PhotoSwipe1562909900949
[The expansion was the now little-used Sunday School building (bottom, pie-shaped), building, the high-rise office tower (top right), and the long "colonnade" building fronting the reflecting pond. All those structures are now rented to non-CS parties. (Nice cash flow!)]
My point: CS was IN DECLINE at that time, but didn't know it, or ignored the drop in membership. They overbuilt in a frenzy of optimistic expansionism. Could this be happening to LDS? What about that compulsion to announce more temples every year? Hey, I'm not ex-LDS, but it seems to me that, like the CS building, there was a blindly optimistic feeling of "if we build it, they (new members) will come."
Except with CS, they didn't.
Something similar happened to the Christian Science "Mother Church" headquarters in Boston in the late 1950s/60s. They bought a lot of property around their core campus, gentrified some residential sections, and built a huge corporate campus designed by prestigious architect I.M. Pei:
http://en.hmc.lowebhost.com/resources/project_details.php?lang=en&id=34#PhotoSwipe1562909900949
[The expansion was the now little-used Sunday School building (bottom, pie-shaped), building, the high-rise office tower (top right), and the long "colonnade" building fronting the reflecting pond. All those structures are now rented to non-CS parties. (Nice cash flow!)]
My point: CS was IN DECLINE at that time, but didn't know it, or ignored the drop in membership. They overbuilt in a frenzy of optimistic expansionism. Could this be happening to LDS? What about that compulsion to announce more temples every year? Hey, I'm not ex-LDS, but it seems to me that, like the CS building, there was a blindly optimistic feeling of "if we build it, they (new members) will come."
Except with CS, they didn't.
I was just wondering what your thoughts are about the mormon church removing the spire with it's moroni.
Apparently, they are doing a number of renovations, like completely refacing the building.
It doesn't sound like they are adding a bunch of patron facilities, but I could be wrong, but the removal of the spire and not replacing it is, well, just odd for the mormon church.
Apparently, they are doing a number of renovations, like completely refacing the building.
It doesn't sound like they are adding a bunch of patron facilities, but I could be wrong, but the removal of the spire and not replacing it is, well, just odd for the mormon church.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2019 05:55PM by CrispingPin.