Lléida Spain - created November 11th, 2012
Cartagena Spain - to be created December 2nd, 2012
Madrid Spain Centro - to be created December 2nd, 2012

Are all the unemployed Spaniards flocking to the Morg or what?!

Source: http://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/

I think it's more like putting the cart before the horse....if we build it, they will come! Or rather, if we build it, it will make us LOOK like we're growing and we have the extra cash to do it anyway so why not? Then TSCC can brag about having chapels "all over the world!" I honestly think this is what's happening. I can't imagine that people in Europe of all places would fall for this BS and grow enough to need more buildings. It just doesn't add up.

Growth is not an illusion. It either happens or it doesn't. One of my offspring just arrived in Barcelona this week. He will let me know if it is an illusion or whether it is real. My next door neighbors' daughter arrives home from Barcelona next week. She will let me know as well. I will report if anyone is interested.

I'm interested.

cumorah.com has an interesting bit about how they can find no correlation between active membership, number of congregations and number of stakes.

They have an example of a stake being established somewhere in Russia with only a handful of members.

link please

The more churches the Mormons have, the more true the church is. Sounds far fetched enough for them to believe it.

ST

exactly. We are also supposed to be impressed that TSCC is "growing" in Africa. Nevermind the number of members who actually bother to attend. They have chapels...it must be true!

People are getting a picture of how big the church is by wards/stakes instead of the fake numbers they publish. Therefore, they need MORE wards/stakes.

To get the straight answers in the Mormon church, follow the money. Is land in Spain cheap right now? Would Spanish land be a good investment? It is economical, and good PR, to build a temple on the land they buy, so they invent a reason to have a temple. Maybe I'm wrong, but I recall that missionaries have never been allowed in Spain. I think Spain's main industry is cattle, so there would be a definite LDS, Inc. connection there.

Wow, just wow. Do you just make up "facts" in your head? Did you know that Google is only a click away?

Well Jared, no offense buddy, but I don't see where you're coming from your comments of Alice's post. Seems like she's not actually stating fact, but rather, speculating. Perhaps you misread the intent of her post? But than again, perhaps I'm misreading your post.

I think you might be thinking of Venezuela?

... move there and bring his EIGHT COW wife!

Especially if one can pay cash.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324156204578276044270637554.html

In Chile a lot of people would get baptized because they'd heard that the church will give you welfare (though they didn't understand the rules/strings around it).

I'd wager that is at least a part of what's going on in Spain.

Plus for about a decade now the Catholic church has been hemorrhaging members, & they tend to go to other churches rather than becoming atheist or agnostic. So, that's a big bucket being spilled, and some I'm sure is shunting into TSCC.

Yes, and plus, there are a lot more South and Central Americans migrating to Spain in recent years. Perhaps some of them are joining up?

Please note that the one announcement reads:

"Earlier this month, the Church created a new stake in Spain. The Lleida Spain Stake was created from the Hospitalet Spain Stake and Spain Barcelona Mission and includes four wards (Lleida, Sabadell 1st, Sabadell 2nd, and Terrassa) and three branches (Andorra, Zaragoza 1st, and Zaragoza 2nd). Missionaries serving in the Spain Barcelona Mission report that the two branches in Zaragoza may become wards within the near future. Currently the Hospitalet Spain Stake has only four wards and two branches. With few wards in either stake, it appears that the decision to create the new stake in Lleida was under the expectation that some branches in both of these stakes will mature into wards and that some wards may divide to create additional units."

It's hard to know what this means. Normally, when I see that a new stake has been "created," it's usually because to other stakes have been combined, i.e., 2 minus 1 equals 1. No matter that you now have one less stake, it is universally (within Mormonism) seen as "success." Also, I have lived through this kind of thing before where they cobble together a small stake out of only a few wards and one or two branches, and then expect good things. The branches will turn into wards! The wards will divide into two! I have NEVER seen this work, and at some point in the future, the ailing stake will be reabsorbed into another stake which will be given a new name, and voila!--you now have *drum rolls* ANOTHER NEW STAKE! It seems to me to be a constant shell game to confuse the public and the members. They can never just let it alone because that would indicate a stale, static situation in which the church does not appear to be growing.

Situations in which the church DOES grow (places like in the Congo) is also pretty dodgy. One has to inspect just why it grows there, and to what end. Using the and Republic of Congo and DR Congo as examples, it grows there for several reasons: They really, really believe in magic and sorcery, so the Joseph Smith story really resonates in a way that is difficult for us to comprehend; they lead rough lives, and the nice buildings that the church builds gives them respite on a Sunday, but moreover, it has electricity and a bunch of outlets--something they don't have at home, so they can sleep in sacrament meeting while letting their phones charge (I kid you not, that is a huge draw that gets people out); you get to hang out with old white American people, which is also a weird, huge draw.

Getting missionaries to serve is so easy there. It is a chance for a boy or girl to leave home for a couple of years and have an income. They even get to train in a different country (Ghana), which means getting a passport and flying on a real live airplane. After that, they get to live in real flats for two years with a door, a flush toilet and possibly electricity. This presents its own problems for the church, however, since there is no real return except for numbers, which, I guess, is its own prize. But otherwise, the missionaries are just a financial liability, bringing in the poorest of the poor. And these impoverished missionaries carry out shenanigans during their missions that you don't see among the First Worlders. For instance, quite a few Congolese see their missions as a time in which they can afford what they haven't been able to up to now, like marriage to their girlfriend. They've often done this with full knowledge and even complicity of their mission companion.

Anyway, point is, none of this truly means anything. It may, in fact, just point to an increasing failures.

It's true you can't draw too many conclusions from the info provided.

When I was in Spain in 2005, I would say the ward I attended had about 220 members attending on Sunday, and 2 or 3 investigators each Sunday. So they were definitely not a stagnant/dying ward.

But it was also the ward that meets on the same lot as the Madrid temple, so it's probably not the most representative sample in Spain.

I'm with you. We've seen this before. I once did a thread on this when they said something like 7 stakes were created in Europe, but it turned out that it was like a net loss of 11 or something. One of the "new" stakes that was "created" at that time was the merging of three stakes that was then given a new name. It's part of the magic of the gospel, I guess. Smoke and mirrors. Or, as Jesus would say, bullshit.

Spain is also enduring a severe economic crisis with no end in sight. Fear and uncertainty may make Spaniards more susceptible to Mo lies. The welfare program may also be attractive; Spain isn't far, economically, from Greece. The morg follows the "never waste a disaster" theology.

Yeah, but I don't think that is what is happening. I think a lot of poorly educated immigrants from other parts of the world, a whole lot of inactive US servicemen whose last known address was when they were stationed in Spain eleven years ago, and Mos already in Spain having a lot of kids.

This all sounds so different from my experience growing up.

The church divided wards and built new buildings because they were over flowing with people.

They basically created new stakes for the same reason. I don't ever recall them forming a stake in hope that it would grow into what they normally call a stake.

That was never done. We had to 'earn' our buildings by filling them up with people. These people also had to be there for awhile on a consistent basis, not just a one time stand.

Well I've seen creation of stakes out of nothing. I think it was about 20 years ago. Stockholm had only one stake until someone came up with the bright idea: 'Hey, what if we include every mormon congreation in a 150 mile radius, then we have just enough members for 2 stakes!' In no time at all, and with no new buildings needed, the church had "grown". In fact the only thing that grew was wasted gallons of gasoline to attend boring meetings!

Wouldn't surprise me if this is what's going on in spain right now. Creating the illusion of growth on the expense of it's members time and money.

I was a missionary in Lerida a few years ago. I spent 18 weeks there and 12 more in Hospitalet, and I also did exchanges in Sabadell and Terrasa, visited Zaragoza for zone conference. My 18 weeks in Lerida were the second worst of my entire life (Mataro was the worst and Hospitalet was the third worst).

Guess what? I've seen all the church buildings in this stake except Terrasa. And guess what? It looks like there are no new units (except I can't remember if Zaragoza and Sabadell were one or two at the time). Looks like they just took the same old wards that have always been there and rearranged them into their own Stake.

I only ever saw South American and African immigrants baptized in Lerida. The ward is mostly Latino since the native Spaniards don't get baptized and the Africans don't speak Spanish and just leave eventually. Hospitalet is where ALL the South American immigrants live who work in Barcelona. That ward is almost 100% Bolivian and Ecuatorian. If I remember right, the train ride from Zaragoza to Lerida is 3 hours, and to Hospitalet is probably another 2. This is a HUGE stake.

My main memories of Lerida are longing for night to come so I could finally lay in bed and do nothing, trying not to fall asleep or else I'd wake up and have to go tracting again, giving an African woman a blessing to cast out a spirit but it kept "haunting" her in her dreams afterward, and my companion that deep-fried bacon. Oh yeah, and another companion passed out one day while going to the bathroom.

Spain had 5 missions when I was there in 1990. Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, Sevilla and the Canary Islands. Now there are only three missions: Barcelona, Madrid and Malaga.

I can't believe that the number of missions were reduced almost by half in a country that is showing significant growth. They can split stakes and create new ones all day long because it really doesn't cost anything. But if they need fewer missions, that is the real number to watch IMO because it says that they aren't willing to spend money there, meaning the dollar return on investment isn't significant. They aren't getting enough baptisms to justify the expense of five missions.

She is right in the heart of the city where the vast majority of the members are from S. America! The missionaries say that you have to move to the suburban ring in order to find Spaniards in the wards.

Spaniards are typically European when it comes to religion by the accounts I've heard. They are nearly impossible to baptize. If they really are growing (which I doubt), it's because they're baptizing immigrants. My first suspicions is that they are purposely creating the illusion of growth.

Whatever they build it is for long term investment purposes with something to gain financially, or a power move of some kind. It is not for the flock.

If there is any growth its probably from the Latin American immigrants. Otherwise, I bet they simply lowering the bar for requirements of a stake to give the impression of growth.

Hmm...I wonder. Let's see who was the Mission President of the Barcelona Spain Mission in 2012:

http://thespainbarcelonamission.blogspot.com/

Of course, it's Gordon Hinkley's son, Clark Hinkley. I'm sure it's a coincidence that he got his mission president call to serve in Barcelona, Spain -- which happens to be one of the worlds most beautiful, expensive and beloved cities in the world:

http://travel.cnn.com/explorations/life/10-most-loved-cities-068149

In order for Hinkley Jr. to get promoted to GA when he gets home, he has to have proven his awsomeness as a mission president while in beautiful Spain. What better way to show this by creating three stakes under his tenure as mission president. ;-).

its a flank attack on the Catholic church and also Islam, remember southern Spain has a lot of Islamic people. Pentecostals are very afraid of the Muslims taking over the world via a route of Turkey and southern Spain

What they forgot to mention was that those three stakes were created by combining 6 other stakes.

AHHHHHHHH!!!! I get it. November last year, when this started, I was only a week into the MTC. The MTC was full of people who were called to go to Spain, but ended up going to Texas or somewhere else because of so-called "visa issues". Perhaps that's a symptom (or cause) of the topic at hand.

Stakes schmakes. They are a Morg organization that does not necessary reflect actual attendance.

What counts is that Spain is close to 20% unemployed. The CULT won't be getting much $$$, and once those in need who are turning to the churches find out Mormonism doesn't walk the talk of Christianity - ie, they are as tight as a duck's arse - they will leave. Hopefully the CULT will invest money in construction there and at least give some contractors work.