As some of you may be aware, the First Presidency announced the changes in Area Leadership for this year just a few days after the April General Conference. Among those changes was the fact that what had been 10 areas in the United States and Canada, for which the members of the Presidency of the Seventy have had oversight since 2004, would now be overseen by 6 area presidencies.
And that led to questions about whether or not what had been 7 separate areas of the Church had been consolidated into 3 areas, as one area presidency had oversight of the entire state of Utah, one would be overseeing what had been the Idaho & North America Central Areas, and the third would be overseeing what had been the North America Northwest & North America West Areas.
Since that time, as a Utah resident, I have received correspondence and read news releases from the Church which seem to indicate that the 3 Utah areas have been merged into a singular one. So I wondered what that meant in terms of whether or not the other 2 area presidencies had oversight of 2 separate areas each, or whether the 4 previously-separate areas had been consolidated to 2.
Particularly, if there are really only 6 areas in North America now, how would that change the composition of area seventies Quorums, since the Idaho and North America Central area seventies had been serving in two different Quorums? (Those in the former area had been serving in the 5th Quorum, and those in the latter had served in the 6th Quorum).
Before General Conference, I was able to do some more digging in relation to these questions. Particularly, I looked at the online biographies for the 9 Brethren in the 3 presidencies (both via the main biographies via the Church website's section for that purpose, and through the Newsroom's Leadership section).
The following information was found in that regard:
Wilford W. Andersen—President, Idaho and North America Central Areas (plural)
Craig C. Christensen—E-mail sent to Utah members by him as “Utah Area President” (singular; his Newsroom bio uses the plural)
LeGrand R. Curtis Jr.—Counselor, Utah Area Presidency (singular)
Randy D. Funk—Area Presidency (singular) of the Utah Areas (plural)
Jörg Klebingat— “Area assistant in the North America Northwest and North America West Areas” (plural)
S. Gifford Nielsen—First Counselor. Idaho and North America Central Area Presidencies (plural)
Kevin W. Pearson—President, North America Northwest & North America West Areas (plural)
Brian K. Taylor—Second Counselor, Idaho/North America Central Area Presidency (singular)
Scott D. Whiting—Serving at Church headquarters
Craig C. Christensen—E-mail sent to Utah members by him as “Utah Area President” (singular; his Newsroom bio uses the plural)
LeGrand R. Curtis Jr.—Counselor, Utah Area Presidency (singular)
Randy D. Funk—Area Presidency (singular) of the Utah Areas (plural)
Jörg Klebingat— “Area assistant in the North America Northwest and North America West Areas” (plural)
S. Gifford Nielsen—First Counselor. Idaho and North America Central Area Presidencies (plural)
Kevin W. Pearson—President, North America Northwest & North America West Areas (plural)
Brian K. Taylor—Second Counselor, Idaho/North America Central Area Presidency (singular)
Scott D. Whiting—Serving at Church headquarters
From this research, aside from the personal knowledge I have (based on the letter I received from Elder Christensen on the medical marijuana ballot initiative) that the three Utah Areas are now one singular one, it appears that more information will be needed to determine what the situation of the other areas (Idaho, North America Central, North America Northwest, and North America West) actually is.
I continue to search for information in that regard and will post updates here as I am able to do so. That does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated, on any post at any time. Thank you for the privilege of your time. If you enjoyed what you read here and would like to stay informed of newly-added content, please feel free to subscribe. 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.
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