On vacation with the family this past weekend and decided to attend church. I didn't want to go but thought it would be a good chance to see the "stone rolling forth to fill the earth"

North Hollywood has some history with Mormonism. I learned that there was originally one ward 30 or 40 years ago. It split a couple of times to become three wards. More recently it has shrunk back to just one ward. A rather small ward. I counted about 60 people in the pews when the meeting started. After the suckrament was passed I looked again and maybe 20 more people had found their way in.


The YW/YM have a handful in each. I think my sister said there are less than 10 regular attenders in the entire primary program. This is anything but a thriving congregation.

There were two talks given. One was the High Council guy and the other was in the Stake Young Men's presidency. Both talks were very heavy handed demands for more missionary work. The emphasis was on the inactives in your own family and that might live in your own house. I playfully nudged my TBM wife several times to point out how poorly she's done in reactivating her lost husband. She didn't think it was as funny as I did.

My sister asked if I was staying for other two meetings, I declined saying I'd probably break out in a rash if I didn't leave soon. At least that got a laugh.

Anyone on the board from that area? Were there any other non believers there on Sunday?

Stunted

I live kind of near NoHo. Driving around my neighborhood a few weeks ago, I realized I didn't know where a single LDS meetinghouse is for probably 50 miles in any direction. They're pretty easy to spot, but I have never noticed one in the two years I've lived here.

I'm not at all surprised there's only one small ward there.

and the only meetinghouses I know of were on Saticoy Street near I-405 (San Diego Freeway) and one on Sayre Street near the I-210 (Foothill Freeway), which is located about 1000 feet away from the condo where I used to reside.

Any others?

It's a nice old style meeting house. Probably built in the early 60's.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2012 01:43PM by Stunted.

I just checked Google Maps and not only is the one on Saticoy still a Mormon building, so is the one on Sayre Street in Sylmar.

this is totally unrelated and off topic but I have always chuckled that some idiot named the 405 the "San Diego Freeway" when it doesn't go anywhere near San Diego...hahaha

dumpweed Wrote:
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> this is totally unrelated and off topic but I have always chuckled that some idiot named the 405 the "San Diego Freeway" when it doesn't go anywhere near San Diego...hahaha

Hey, don't blame me. I didn't live in that area until 1972, and it was known as the San Diego Freeway back then!!! I think the reason it was called that was because the I-5 was the Golden State Freeway from where the 2 split off until where the 2 meet up again (from north to south, just north of Sylmar and just south of Long Beach).

I used to live right off the 405, on Palms Blvd and Sawtelle. There was a meeting house around the corner on Sawtelle. According to Google, its still there. I wasn't active at the time, this was 1972, so I didn't know any mormons at that time at that place.

When I was in the UCLA branch, around the time you lived in the area, we would occasionally have firesides or other activities in the Sawtelle building. It was close to UCLA married student housing.

After 17 years in OC/Long Beach, I figured out that "The Pasadena Freeway" didn't go to Pasadena.

Boy, do I feel stupid.

My little sis lives in El Segundo (a suburb of LA) and, while I have never attended her ward, I think she was relief society president a few years ago. Since she's not even thirty years old now, wouldn't that mean she was ridiculously young for that job?

Now, while she is exceptionally organized, charismatic, and bold, it still seems like they should have had someone older to fill that position. I've heard that in one of my brother's ward they have absolutely no one to be bishop. He's in his mid-thirties and would have to be a serious consideration.

His ward isn't in LA, but it is stil in So Cal. I surmise that ward numbers are dwindling (in disbelief, lol) so badly that they have to give callings to people a loyounger than they used to. Just less to choose from.

I live in the Los Angeles area and the current RS Pres. in what used to be my Ward can't be more than 30 years old. She works full-time as well. Two decades ago, when I joined, the RS Pres was in her 50's. The one previous to the current president was in her late forties to early fifties during her tenure.

Pretty soon, the Primary kids will be in charge of the Nursery.LOL

Back in the 50s, 60s, and maybe even 70s, CA was the hotbed of growth for Mormonism. The cool students at BYU (in their humble opinions, at least :) mostly seemed to be from CA.

CA no longer feels like the happening place for Mormonism. It was already in decline when Prop 8 came along, but that put an enormous psychological strain on the membership, and they will be feeling the fallout (or falling away) of that for years to come.

I anticipate CA will see Mormonism decline more quickly than places like ID, UT and AZ.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2012 01:59PM by Brother Of Jerry.

This is proved by the fact that in the last 20 years, the net number of new stakes in CA has been ONE. When I was on my mission in San Diego, I remember thinking to myself "How depressing it is to serve a mission in the one place where the church is shrinking the most." The Santee Stake in SD East County had 8 regular wards in 2002, but now has 5. Many meetinghouses in SD have room for 2 or 3 wards, but currently have 1 or 2 actually meeting in them.

The decline of TSCC in California is probably due to several factors. Not only are a lot of people in CA waking up and smelling the coffee, but between the early 90s and the recent recession, a lot of California Mos cashed out on their houses and moved to the Morridor.

Santee had a meetinghouse? Was it even it's own stake? That's crazy, I grew up in Santee. The only thing Mormon about SoCal was the San Diego temple. Back then we weren't mos, but my mom did invite mishies in for company when I was a baby. I don't know if they did lessons or just chatted though.

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Edited bc stoopid iPhone.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2012 07:39PM by GoneNative.

The Santee Stake center on Magnolia (across the street from Santana High) was built in about 1984. When I was there, the stake covered much more than Santee. It also included Lakeside, San Carlos, and the northern fringes of El Cajon.

I am in Orange County, which according to the rest of the U.S. is probably considered the same thing as Los Angeles, but from my perspective, North Hollywood/Los Angeles is a world away. My old OC ward is a typical white-bread upper middle class ward w/ probably 100-120 in attendance on any given week. Last time I checked in, which was maybe 2 years ago, there were only two 16-18 yr old boys, no 14-15 yr old boys, and about eight 12-13 yr old boys. My son is now 15, and offhand, out of those eight that were in his age group, I can only think of 3 other boys that now regularly attend. The rest have moved. I've never paid much attention to the stats on the YW, so I couldn't tell you anything there, even though my daughter is beehive president.

One of my last callings was ward missionary, which meant driving one of the full-time missionaries around once a week to visit inactives in the ward. We visited a few people that I'd never met, and it was very apparent to me why they didn't come to church.
In this area, people have money, or at least they pretend to, so they are satisfied with their lives.

I have lived in San Diego for two years and I have never seen a ward building. Unfortunately I pass the Morg temple everytime I drive up the I-5. I always flip it off as I drive by

I was in San Diego. The temple there is an embarrassment. It looks like something from Disneyland. And it's completely in your face. I guess they thought everyone would ooh and ahh and say "how can I become Mormon?". But thanks to Mitt people generally think it's weird, and wonder why it's even there.

That SD Temple sure is way too close to the freeway, ain't it? I would think that all the traffic and its noise and fumes would be distracting to the rituals they do in there, just like the squeaky escalators in the Provo Temple.

Wouldn't it be a kick if some out-of-control car were to crash right into the corner of the temple that's exposed to the freeway traffic?

As for Hollywood, I don't live there exactly, but I do live about fifty miles from it.

A Christian friend of mine down there got in to see the "holy of holies" (or whatever it's called) before it got "consecrated" and asked me why they needed a hotel lobby inside.

I toured it twice before it was "consecrated," and I thought the interior looked like a hotel lobby as well. What I really wanted to see was the veils, which I couldn't imagine what they would look like. We never saw them on the tour.

http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/sandiego/

Kind of reminds me of a set of spiky micky mouse ears. Do they sell hats shaped like the temple?

Does anyone remember a meeting house in North Hollywood that was on the corner of Collins and Cleon? I had family that lived across the street from it in the eighties. There were always people at it when I would visit my family.

I haven't lived in Los Angeles since the early nineties. When I saw "North Hollywood," I checked to see if it was that meeting house. From Google Street View I see the building is still there, but it is now a Syrian Roman Catholic church, complete with a cross where there once was a spire.

Now I'm wondering if I had it all wrong. It was probably built in the fifties or sixties, white stucco, had a row of nice large windows, could pass as a protestant church.

An aside, the Santa Clarita Valley is packed with LDS meeting houses. (I'm a nevermo, so I might have the terminology wrong there. Stake centers? Meeting houses? Sorry.) In the sixties there was one. In the early seventies they built the second one at the end of our street. Now there are six.

From what I heard a couple of years ago, the wards that met in the local building in Long Beach had to be combined since so many Mormons left the state because they could no longer afford to live here when people lost their jobs. Many of those Mormons did move to the Morridor or other areas where the cost of living is lower than it is in California.

I live in S CA - close to Marina del Rey/Santa Monica. There are a few wards buildings and a stake center here but the parking lots are always empty...

The No.H. "Collins" bldg. was sold when the new Stake center was built on Saticoy in N.H. (which has become one of the worst districts in the N.H. area). The Collins bldg. was charming, but was small and had no parking to speak of.

The Collins bldg., if I remember it correctly, was the first N.H. LDS bldg. in the "valley" area, and for a long time the only one. It is where the Tanners (of ex-Mormon fame, Sandra and her husband) met (and she and her mother/grandmother? lived in that ward).

Another ward in the N.H. Stake, The Studio City ward, is just So. of N.H. proper (on Riverside Dr.). Very nice bldg., with its "own" design (not a copy of many other LDS wards).

The Saticoy Stake center bldg. has two wards meeting in it, one Spanish speaking.

Another ward in the N.H. stake is on Glenoaks Blvd. (or just a block away).

None are nearly as full as they were a couple decades ago (having shrunk maybe 2/3rds or 3/4ths of their old selves).

It’s very expensive to live in the L.A. area (and N.H. is a suburb of L.A., and in L.A. county).
Its shrinking is sad to see, and more sad for the reasons which brought it about.

I'm from La Crescenta, right next door to La Canada. Was born and raised here in the 1950's and 60's, moved away while in college and during marriage until my husband died, spent a few more years moving around the northern part of the state, then came home to La Crescenta to help care for my elderly mom.

I went to high school with LOTS of Mormon kids. My first boyfriend was a Mormon. Some cousins living very nearby were members of the church (not anymore).

There are two meeting houses here, still, only about two miles apart. One on Foothill in La Canada, and one off of Rosemont Blvd just north of Foothill, in La Crescenta. I don't know how well-attended the La Crescenta one is, but the La Canada one always has lots of cars in its parking lot on Sunday mornings.

About four or five months ago, there seemed to be a lot of missionary guys wandering around. Now I don't see them anymore. I got rather testy with a couple of them who got pushy with me while I was trying to take a walk near Two Strike Park.

I used to live in La Crescenta, about 27 years ago. It's where I met my (never-mo) husband, who had come there from Ireland to live with his sister and her family. His sister had immigrated years before. She still lives there. I loved La Crescenta.

This was after I'd left the cult, so I had nothing to do with it there. I remember the building in La Canada, but I don't remember a building on Rosemont.

Hi Lorraine, it's great to hear from a former La Crescentan. This is a wonderful place to live, and to raise a family - if you can afford it.

The LDS meeting-house on Rosemont is relatively new. It's on the hill just above the big Ralph's shopping center at the NW corner of Rosemont and Foothill. It's funny, I can't for the life of me remember what was there before the church went in - it might have just been empty land. The actual main entrance (and street address) for the church is on Raymond, which runs parallel to the lower end of Rosemont one block west - but you can enter their parking lot from the Rosemont side as well.

I drive by there all the time and I do see cars in the lot but it never seems very busy.

The La Canada one has been there a long, long time. I went to a service there with my cousin Patty and my aunt way back when I was in 6th grade, in the early sixties. I spent the whole time there making goo-goo eyes at my boyfriend, who was sitting across the aisle with his family. The service itself meant less than nothing to me.

My aunt and her three kids left Mormonism behind about 10 years later (my uncle was never in).

Speaking of the San Diego Temple, I drive right by it whenever I visit a dear friend of mine who lives near South San Diego. It looks like a temple-shaped wedding cake, all covered with sticky white icing. I'm always happy when I see it, because it means I'm almost done with my long trip on the I-5.

But it also gives me the creeps. I have an instinctive repulsion for things that are TOO white and pretty-pretty. "Whited sepulchers full of dead men's bones" is what comes to mind.

I'm trying to visualise where the Rosemont church is. I'll look it up on Google maps, but I think I can see it in my mind.

In fact, I lived only a few years in La Crescenta, but it was significant in my life in many ways. I loved the small-town-at-the edge-of-the-big-city feel to it, its rustic character and the look and feel of the leaves cluttering the streets in the fall. I loved that there were persimmons glowing in the funny little gardens. I liked the funny old cramped Trader Joes too.

It's changed a lot since then, of course, and I haven't even in California for five years now. Thanks for the memories!

Anybody here from La Canada?

Anybody know the status in the Costa Mesa or Huntington Beach areas?

The only contact I've had with Mormons is through work. But you'd never really know it. They were such a minority that if it came up, it was never discussed for very long. In professional circles, if you don't have anything nice to say, wait until everybody's had a few drinks...

Anyway, I see the LA temple when I go to Westwood. I see he rare LDS chapel here and there, and I've even driven past one at noon on a Sunday. There were a few cars there, but the parking lot didn't look full at all. I have seen a few cars at a chapel once on a weekday, really early in the morning (forget where that was) so I assumed it was seminary. I felt bad for the kids in the brainwashing sessions. Teenagers need sleep.

I guess I'm so far out of the loop here in SoCal that I couldn't say if *the* church is growing, shrinking, or just stinking. (OK, my bet is on stinking.)

Here, so many couples live together that it's not even a surprise. So many people do recreational drugs that nobody even bats an eye. You can walk through downtown (financial district) and smell marijuana and nobody even mentions it. And going out to drink with co-workers is a given. I don't know how a Mormon would get along in LA. No wonder they all went to BYU and pretended to be the shiz.

T-Bone

Anyone from the Rancho Santa Margarita area? My DD and her DH attend the ward on corner of Oso and Antonio Parkway.

I am originally from The Riverside area. The stake I was baptized in no longer exists. I was baptized in 1999 and my home ward was combined and also no longer exists.

Quite a few of my friend's parents sold their homes and cashed out before the recession and oved to Nevada/Utah.

I lived in Palo Alto, and went to Stanford. The old Palo Alto ward house was sold to the Scientologists! LOL! There used to be two Palo Alto wards in a meeting house, two Los Altos wards in a meeting house, and a Menlo Park ward and married and single Stanford student wards in their meeting house. I think those 7 wards made up 1 stake. There were about 60 regulars in the student ward, but much more who drifted in and out. Best ward I ever attended! Now, all those wards are combined into one ward that meets in a pretty ward house on Valparaiso in Atherton. The Stanford wards used to meet there, too, but I think they have their own institute building on campus, now. It still adds up to 1 stake, so no stake losses are reported. BTW, that church property in Atherton is worth at least $3 million. My cousin, and my high school boyfriend both have houses on that street.

This makes me want to add up the values of all these CA chapels we've been describing....I stand all amazed....$$$.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2012 04:35AM by forestpal.

While it is very different from the Utah version of Mormonism it is still very committed and very powerful in its "California" way.

The Church does a masterful job of suppressing (I guess that's the word) faith damaging material, and promoting faith building info.

I really enjoyed my experience with the Cali-mo's. They were a far less venemous version than their Utah/Idaho cousins. Far less uptight. Far more open and accepting of other cultures and ideas.

Will alway have great respect for my California Mormon friends.

Jon Huntsman (pre-billionaire) lived in the ward until he went off to join the Nixon administration. Lots of interesting people there.

The church seemed to be booming in those days. DH lived in East Pasadena ward (which is falling down now, as predicted by one of the members who saw how the amateurs were putting it together.)

Looking back I realize that I was very unhappy in the church then, but I wasn't ready to do anything about it. It took me another ten years to finally quit. We still keep in touch with some of the members of that old ward though, as well as the Northridge Ward.