Hello again, everyone! As noted in my last post, since my wife and I are stuck at home with illness today, and since I am past the point where my body, mind, and spirit will allow me to get additional rest and relaxation, I have opted to continue putting together and publishing my thoughts on potential future temples.
While my focus now turns to the South America South Area, which will involve an area overview in this post, and subsequent posts providing an overview of temples within it, the history of those temples, the number of stakes and districts currently served by the district of each of those temples, district, and, to conclude the area coverage, the final post will share the list I have compiled of other potential locations within this area that I have felt could get a temple soon.
So let's start with the area overview. The South America South Area boundaries take in the nations of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. I don't know how many of you noticed or would remember this, but for a long time, the nation of Chile, which has a high concentration of Latter-day Saints, was its own area of the Church.
In 2002, Elder Holland was asked by the First Presidency to preside over that area for two years, at the same time Elder Oaks was assigned to do so in the Philippines. And at the conclusion of those two years, the First Presidency called Elder Perry to preside for one year over the Church in the Europe Central Area. So 2002-2005 marked a rare time in the Church where these apostles were sent to fill assignments that had traditionally been handled by General Authority Seventies.
While I cannot say with any certainty that these assignments may have been necessary due to large-scale issues these areas were facing at the time, what I do know thanks to dear family friends who served in the area office of the Philippines under Elder Oaks during his time there, and which appears to be true of Chile and Europe as well, during and as a result after the fact of this ministry by the three, Church growth appeared to stabilize at take off.
Anyways, my reason for mentioning these unusual apostolic assignments was to note that while Chile was its own area for several years, in 2011, the First Presidency announced that the Chile and South America South Areas would be consolidated into one area, and would be known as the South America South Area.
I apologize for being long-winded, but I figure that these details do, to a certain degree, set the background for my coverage of this area. The next post in this series will be published hopefully later today to cover the history of the six temples within this area, and also perhaps go into the specifics of the number of stakes and districts in each nation that are served by these six. And again, hopefully, I will be able to wrap up my coverage of this area before the end of this Christmas Day, which would ideally allow me to have my coverage of the three areas in Utah published on this blog within the remaining six days of 2017.
So for now, that does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated. Thank you for the privilege of your time. Until my next post, I wish each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.
Monday, December 25, 2017
Temple Site Possibilities: South America South Area, Part One--Area Overview
I have had a lifelong love for Church history, which has extended to ongoing reports of the ministry of our apostles and prophets, General Conference, and all temple developments. This blog enables me to share that love with all who read my thoughts on these developments, which are sometimes reported multiple times per day as needed.
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In addition to my life-long love for the subjects which I cover in the posts of this blog, I have long held the belief that we can disagree without becoming disagreeable. Differences of opinion are natural, while being disagreeable in expressing those differences is not. And in that sense, I have no desire to close the door on anyone who earnestly desires to contribute to the ongoing dialogue on subjects covered in the posts on this blog.
At the same time, however, I recognize that we live in a time when incivility, discourtesy, unkindness, and even cyber-bullying has regrettably become part of online interactions. With that in mind, while anyone who wishes can comment on anything if they choose to do so, I hereby reserve the right to immediately delete any comments which are critical, unkind, lack civility, or promote prodcuts, services, and values contrary to either the Church, or to the rules of online etiquette.
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And in order to better preserve the spirit and pure intentions for which this blog was established, I also hereby request that anyone not commenting with a regular user name (particularly those whose comments appear under the "Unknown" or "Anonymous" monikers, give the rest of us a name to work with in addressing any replies. If such individuals do not wish to disclose their actual given names, a pseudonym or nickname would suffice.
Any comments made by individuals who opt to not give a name by which they can ber identified may, depending on the substance and tone of such comments, be subject to deletion as well. I would respectfully ask that all of us do all we can to keep the dialogue positive, polite, and without malice or ill-will. May the Lord bless us all in our discussion of these important matters.