Saturday, December 29, 2007

Countries With the Most Members and Stakes With Only One Temple

Below is a list of the top five countries which have only one temple in them.


  1. Chile - 543,628 members, 74 stakes, 26 districts
  2. Peru - 432,547 members, 86 stakes, 24 districts
  3. Argentina - 355,987 members, 70 stakes, 36 districts
  4. Ecuador - 176,359 members, 33 stakes, 10 districts
  5. Colombia - 154,549 members, 26 stakes, 14 districts

I imagine a new temple will be announced for Peru among the next three temples to be announced.

Countries Where the Church is Emerging

I have made a list of nations throughout the world in which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is emerging. To qualify to be such a country, a nation has to have less than a 1,000 members and usually has a high growth rate. Below are examples of such countries and a final list will be provided with statistics and updated periodically. Countries in bold are ones which have rapid growth in Church membership and/or branches.

  • Angola
  • Aruba
  • The Bahamas
  • Barbados
  • Belarus
  • Benin
  • Cameroon
  • Croatia
  • Cyprus
  • Dominica
  • Estonia
  • Ethiopia
  • Georgia
  • Laos
  • Latvia
  • Lithuania
  • Malawi
  • Moldova
  • Namibia
  • Netherland Antilles
  • Pakistan
  • Saint Kitts and Nevis
  • Saint Lucia
  • Sanit Vincent and the Grenadines
  • Serbia
  • Slovakia
  • Suriname
  • Tanzania
  • Togo
  • Turkey

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Another Potential Temple to be Announced

A temple that I forgot to list with the others on my last blog entry is one for Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. If this temple were to be announced, there would probably be six stakes and eight districts in the temple district and four stakes in the metropolitan area of Kinshasa.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Potential Temple Sites

Below is a list of cities around the world (excluding the continental United States) which I believe are close to having a temple announced in them. I am not claiming that this is a definite list; just predictions of likely future temples. I have them ordered starting from the most likely to be announced as the next new temple. Temple attendance indicated by the number of sessions provided daily, the number of stakes assigned to, and distance of existing stakes to existing temples in the region are some of the tools I use to predict these new temple sites. Furthermore, this list is dynamic and subject to change. The numbers in parenthesis next to the predicted temple are the number of stake and districts that would be probable in the predict temple's temple district. Example: Brasilia (11,3) (11 stakes, 3 districts). The bold number at the end of the line is the number of stakes located in the metropolitan area where the predicted temple would be.


  1. Fortaleza, Brazil (16,3) 11
  2. Rio De Janiero, Brazil (22,9) 10
  3. Trujillo, Peru (20,9) 7
  4. Puebla, Mexico (21,3) 8
  5. Bangkok, Thailand (1,21) 1
  6. Paris, France (9,2) 2
  7. Rome, Italy (5,12) 1
  8. Concepcion, Chile (18,11) 9
  9. Lisbon, Portugal (6,10) 2
  10. Arequipa, Peru (17,11) 6

Other temples which are likely to be announced are Brasilia Brazil, Belo Horizonte Brazil, Salvador Brazil, Tarawa Kiribati, Dagupan Philippines, Culiacan Mexico, Managua Nicaragua, Quito Ecuador, Cordoba Argentina, and San Jose Puerto Rico. The United States has many temples which are not too far away for most members. Most likely temple sites in the United States include Kansas City Missouri, Pocatello Idaho and Tucson Arizona.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Top 10 countries with the most members without stakes

Below is a list of the nations with the most LDS members which do not have a stake organized in them yet.

  1. Russia - 19,180 members, 15 mission districts, 121 branches
  2. Cambodia - 7,874 members, 4 mission districts, 20 branches
  3. Mongolia - 7,306 members, 2 mission districts, 20 branches
  4. Sierra Leone - 6,938 members, 2 mission districts, 17 branches
  5. Cape Verde - 6,501 members, 3 mission districts, 18 branches
  6. India - 6,454 members, 3 mission districts, 26 branches
  7. Indonesia - 6,144 members, 3 mission districts, 24 branches
  8. Jamaica - 5,768 members, 4 mission districts, 21 branches
  9. Liberia - 4,522 members, 2 mission districts, 9 branches
  10. Marshall Islands - 4,439 members, 2 mission districts, 11 branches

Several of these nations are very close to having stakes organized in them. There has been talk of the first stake in Russia to be organized in St. Petersburg sometime soon. The Moscow Russia District could have become a stake last year, but was split into two districts to try to increase convert baptisms and retention. The LDS Church News reported that the Bo Sierra Leone District is preparing to become a stake as well as the Majuro District in the Marshall Islands. The Bangalore India District's goal to become a stake was commented on in a article on at http://www.lds.or.in/ when the KFG branch was organized earilier this year. The first stake was almost organized in Jamaica a few years ago, but was not due to a lack in priesthood holders.

It has been difficult to establish stakes in Russia due to membership spread accross such a large area as well as inactivity. Cambodia and Mongolia are two nations which 10 years ago both had less than a 1,000 members and have experienced rapid growth. Cambodia's growth has slowed recented, probably due to an emphasis on reactivation. Although most Mongolian members reside in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, 70% of the members are single, which indicates the young age of most of the members in that country. This has also prolonged the time for the first stake to be established in that country. Liberia had its first stake established back in 2000, but was dissolved earlier this year for reasons I am not quite sure. However, it coincided with the organization with the first mission in Sierra Leone which administers to Liberia and is probably related. Sometimes this occurs in preparation to make two stakes in the future (as was the case in Tuxtla Gutierrez which dissolved a stake there back in 2005 and ealier this year two stakes were organized in the region).

There are other countries with a smaller LDS membership which are also close to having a stake established in their country. The countries which fit this criteria also tend to have membershp focused to one or a couple cities and also have high growth rates. Examples of these kind of countries include Armenia and Uganda.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Countries with the highest membership growth rates

Below is a list of the top 10 fastest growing countries for the Church during 2006 (over 300 members).

  1. Cameroon - 492 members - 31.6%
  2. Malaysia - 3,633 members - 24.5%
  3. Estonia - 874 members - 16.4%
  4. Ethiopia - 708 members - 15.7%
  5. Zambia - 1,905 members - 15.6%
  6. Sri Lanka - 1,108 members - 15.1%
  7. Armenia - 2,359 members - 13.3%
  8. Ghana - 32,965 members - 12.5%
  9. Guyana - 2,072 members - 12.3%
  10. Latvia - 920 members - 11.8%

The top three nations which have the highest increase (not %) in membership per year usually are the United States, Brazil (which also just reached over 1,000,000 members) and Mexico.

Analysis on Top 10 Countries without a Temple

Several reasons why there are not temples yet in these 10 nations are provided below
  • Church has not been established long in the nation.
  • High inactivity/lack of full tithe payers (which one must be to have a temple recommend)
  • Dispersed membership
  • Government approval and land allocation

Nicaragua provides a good example of a nation which exhibits some of these points. Membership is relatively young; seven out of the past eight stakes have been organized in the past seven years. High inactivity is illustrated by the high member to unit ratio of 615 members per unit. Of course this activity indicator has limitations such as countries which have many branches can lower this ratio even though inactivity can be quite high. Nevertheless, a ratio of over 550 members per unit signifies high inactivity even in a nation predominantly covered by wards and stakes.

The Church in Europe tends to have difficulties finding land for temples. People who have been in Europe have indicated to me that this is one of the reasons why Itay and France do not have temples yet. However, President Hinckley told a group of saints in 2004 in France that a temple will someday be built in that land.

Most the information I use in these blog postings are taken from the Church Alamanac by the Deseret Morning News, lds.org, mormon.org, mission.net, personal contacts, and ldschurchtemples.com. Most of the maps I use are from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection from the University of Texas.

Countries with the most members without a temple

Here is a list of the top 10 countries which do not have a temple. Information is provided about the number of units in each country as well as a ratio of the number of members per unit. Data is from Dec. 31st, 2006 or more recent. Maps for each country showing stakes and mission districts for countries with a membership over 20,000 and wards and branches for nations with a membership under 20,000 are also provided and are current as of the date of this blog entry. Yellow squares are stakes; green squares are mission districts.
If you click on the map, it will open up in a new window and be much clearer.








1. Nicaragua – 55,369 members

8 stakes
6 districts
46 wards
44 branches
1 mission
615 members per unit













2. Portugal – 38,130 members

6 stakes
4 districts
34 wards
43 branches
2 missions
495 members per unit












3. France – 33,828 members

9 stakes
2 districts
61 wards
63 branches
2 missions
277 member per unit











4. Italy – 22,212 members

5 stakes
9 districts
25 wards
79 branches
3 missions
213 members per unit






5. Puerto Rico – 19,609 members

5 stakes
2 districts
27 wards
15 branches
2 missions
445 members per unit

NO MAP AVAILABLE YET





6. Russia – 19,180 members

0 stakes
15 districts
0 wards
121 branches
8 missions
158 members per unit




























7. DR of Congo – 18,276 members

4 stakes
4 districts
43 wards
17 branches
1 mission
305 members per unit












8. Zimbabwe – 16,240 members

2 stakes
2 districts
18 wards
27 branches
1 mission
360 members per unit














9. Papua New Guinea – 15,517 members

1 stake
8 districts
5 wards
48 branches
1 mission
292 members per unit








10. Thailand – 15,108 members

1 stake
5 districts
7 wards
32 branches
1 mission
387 members per unit

Just Starting

This is the beginning of a blog for information about the international growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Information will be updated periodically. Examples of what will be listed on this site include maps of church units and stakes in different countries, possible temple locations, possible new missions, countries and membership statistics, and projected membership growth.
This blog has no formal connection to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and serves as a way to excel the creator's hobby in examining LDS Church demography and provide accurate information to viewers.