Latest Apostolic Statistics: Part Two--Updated Ages & Other Important Information

Hello again, everyone! Having set the stage in the first part of this apostolic age update, we now move on to talk specifics regarding the long-form and decimal ages of our current apostles, which will also include updated information on the average ages of the First Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and the 15 apostles as a group, current and future nonagenarians, and any other pertinent information. So let’s get right into all of that.  Again, all data is current as of today.

We start with the First Presidency. As noted near the end of my previous post, President Nelson is now 93 years, 9 months, and 22 days old, which is 93.81 decimal years. President Oaks, who will have his 86th birthday by the time I provide my next update, is now 85 years, 10 months, and 19 days old, with a decimal age of 85.88 years. President Eyring, who observed his 85th birthday on the last day of May, is now 85 years, 1 month, and 1 day old, putting his decimal age at 85.08 years.

The three now have a combined 264.77 years of life experience, which puts their average age at 88.26 years as of today. President Oaks remains closest to that average, with his age now being 2.38 years below that average. Obviously, Presidents Nelson and Eyring are still respectively above and below the average.

We move on now to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. As I did for the first time in the update posted six weeks ago, I will again be sharing the data about these 12 Brethren in groups of three.

President Ballard has now reached a long-form age of 89 years, 8 months, and 23 days old, with a decimal age of 89.73 years. Elder Holland is now 77 years, 6 months, and 28 days old, which puts his decimal age at 77.58 years. Elder Uchtdorf, at just under a month older than Elder Holland, is now 77 years, 7 months, and 25 days old, or 77.65 in decimal years.

As noted previously, Elder Bednar recently celebrated his 66th birthday, which puts his long-form age at 66 years, 0 months, and 16 days, which is 66.04 in decimal years. The oldest but least-senior of our three apostles born in 1940 is Elder Cook, who is now 77 years, 9 months, and 23 days, which is 77.81 years. His seatmate, Elder Christofferson, is 73 years, 5 months, and 7 days old, or 73.43 in decimal years.

Elder Andersen, who, as mentioned in the previous post, will have his birthday in just over a month, is currently 66 years, 10 months, and 22 days old, making his decimal age 66.89 years. Elder Rasband, who is only about six months older than Elder Andersen, has a long-form age of 67 years, 4 months, and 25 days, which puts his decimal age at 67.40 years. Elder Gary E. Stevenson, whose birthday is a mere three days before that of Elder Andersen, is currently 62 years, 10 months, and 25 days old, or 62.90 decimal years.

We now come to the final three apostles. Elder Renlund’s long-form age now stands at 65 years, 7 months, and 18 days old, with a decimal age of 65.63 years. Elder Gong is now 64 years, 6 months, and 8 days old, which puts him at 64.52 decimal years.  Elder Soares, whose 60th birthday is now 3 months and 1 day away, has a long-form age of 59 years, 8 months, and 29 days old, making his decimal age 59.75 years.

The current members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles have a combined 849.33 years, which averages out to 70.78 years. What I noted in my last update 6 weeks ago in terms of who is closest to that average and how many apostles fall above and below that average remains true today.

Among all 15 apostles, there is a combined 1114.1 years of life experience, which averages out to 74.27 years. The corrections I provided 6 weeks ago regarding how many of those 15 fall above and below that average, and the two apostles who are closest to it, remain unchanged.

We now move on to the nonagenarians. President Nelson remains the 7th oldest apostle in Church history, and now has just over a year before he moves up on that list. President Ballard will join that list 3 months and 1 week from now. Elder Soares, who marks his birthday six days before President Ballard, will mark his 90th birthday in roughly 30.25 years, with the other 12 apostles doing so at various times in between now and then.

I continue to track all of this information, and will do my level best to pass updates on to you regularly. As I mentioned in my previous post, my hope is to post on this subject once every month or two. 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.

Latest Apostolic Statistics: Part One--Updated Data for President Oaks, President Nelson, and Longest-Serving Apostolic Groups

Hello again, everyone! It has been 6 weeks since I last posted updated information on the latest apostolic statistics (which was done on May 20, 2018). So I have determined that today would be the best day to do so again. First, as always, I wanted to again mention that I will not be in any way offended if those of you who are not interested in this information skip over the data I will share in this update. Also, as I have previously done, I will split this update into two parts. That said, let’s get right into this first part.

With the birthdays of President Eyring and Elder Bednar having come and gone within this last 1.5 months, the next apostolic birthdays will not occur for another 5 weeks or so (36 days, to be exact). In light of the deaths of 2 apostles that had their birthdays in August, only 3 of those remain (for Elders Stevenson and Andersen and President Oaks, which will occur in the course of a 6-day period on August 6, 9, and 12 respectively).

As usual, all data is current as of today (Sunday July 1, 2018). This update will again feature the data in the same order as previous updates. We will start with some data about the Presidents of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, then turn our attention to the Presidents of the Church. After discussing those things, the first post will end, and the second (to be published shortly after the first) will then highlight the latest data about all 15 of our apostles.

So let’s address President Oaks’ current tenure length as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which will include exploring how soon he will move up on this list. The length of his service has currently spanned 5 months and 17 days. As noted in previous updates, he will be marking 2 additional tenure milestones before the end of this year, and will be marking 5 others in 2019.

To review the milestones he will reach by the last day of 2018, on Sunday September 16, he will become the 26^th longest-serving Quorum President, as by that time he will have served longer than President David O. McKay. Just over a month later, on October 22, he will become the 25^th longest-serving Quorum President, having served longer in that capacity than President Gordon B. Hinckley. Then in 2019, he will mark 5 milestones, one in April, two others in July (which will be observed two days apart), and the remaining two in November, and December. I will mention the specifics of those milestones closer to that time.

Moving on now to President Nelson, since he was ordained and set apart as Church president on the same day he set apart President Oaks as Quorum President, his tenure has spanned 5 months and 17 days as well. He has now reached the age of 93 years, 9 months, and 22 days old. Nothing has changed since my last report regarding where he stands among the 16 other Church presidents in terms of his tenure length or age rank.

He will observe the first tenure length milestone of his presidency roughly 3.5 months from now, on Thursday October 11 (when he will have served longer than President Howard W. Hunter). He will observe both another tenure-related and his first age-related milestone two days apart in July of 2019, with subsequent milestones more spread out in the years following that. And again, I will be detailing those more specifically closer to the time when they will be reached.

Let me now close out this portion of the update by reiterating very briefly some of the information I shared for the first time in the previous update. By all accounts, President Nelson remains healthy, vigorous, and fully involved in the day-to-day work of moving the Church forward. And as far as I know, neither of his counselors (who are both around 7-9 years younger than he is) are suffering from any major health issues.

With that in mind, I have no doubt these Brethren will be serving together for at least the next several years, and I could easily see them at least making the list of the longest-serving First Presidencies in the Church, which will, as previous noted, occur on Sunday April 1, 2024.

And by the end of that same year, not only will the current First Presidency reach a couple of other milestones, but President Nelson will by then have become the first centenarian apostle and Church president.

As for the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, except for President Ballard (who will be 90 on October 8, which is 3 months and 1 week from today, and who appears to be in good health as well), all other apostles are younger than 80.  With that in mind, the current members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who have served together since March 31 of this year, will most likely easily make the list of the longest-serving apostles on that same day in 2021. By the end of that year, same year, they will have moved up 3 spots on the list. I will give more specific data in this regard closer to that time.

By the end of 2021, the current group of apostles in the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will have made and moved up on the list of other apostolic groups to become the 12th longest-serving such group in Church history, and other milestones will be reached in the years following. All of those milestones will depend on how long Presidents Nelson and Ballard live and serve, and on how much they (or anyone else) are affected by health issues. I continue to track the health and ministry of these Brethren and will keep you posted.

With that said, I want to conclude this portion of the update. 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 (which should be the second one on this subject and will be published here within the next few minutes), I wish each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.

Additional Temple Progress Reported

Hello again, everyone! I continue to share the latest updates I have on a variety of subjects. This post will cover some of the latest temple developments of which I have become aware. Let's get right into it.

First, I wanted to note an update on where the Church stands in terms of potentially having 200 operating temples by Saturday April 6, 2030, which will mark the Church's bicentennial anniversary. As there are still 41 temples that would need to be dedicated in the 11.77 years between now and then, if the Church dedicates an average of 3.48 per year during that time, that could easily occur.

As I have also noted, with this year only seeing 2 dedications, since there will be 5 or 6 in 2019, and at least 3 the following year that we know of so far, it is likely that there will be at least 170 temples in operation by the time there are 10 years remaining until that bicentennial, and since that would leave 30 others that would need to dedicated that average would go down to at most, 3 per year. And since we are very likely to see several other temples dedicated in the years following that, I have no doubts the Church could manage that, whether or not an official goal is made to do so.

And that is not taking into account the temples that will likely have a groundbreaking within the next two years and beyond, along with others that will be announced. So I see no scenario that would prevent the Church from having 200 temples by that date, whether or not an official goal is made to do so.

That said, I have two other updates, both for new temples currently under construction. As I noted two days ago, the angel Moroni statue was installed at the Fortaleza Brazil Temple. The LDS CHurch Temples Facebook page provided some additional photographs that have been submitted from that day. I am still trying to figure out the likely possibility of the Fortaleza Brazil Temple potentially being dedicated before the Kinshasa DR Congo Temple and will post more on that once I know more in that regard..

The other update relates to the Lisbon Portugal Temple, where scaffolding has been removed from the adjacent meetinghouse, and where trees and shrubs have been added to the temple grounds. As always, I continue to monitor all temple developments and will do my level best to bring word of those to you as I receive them.

That does it for this post. Any and all comments continue to be both 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.

Elders Gerrit W. Gong and Ulisses Soares Meet with Media

Hello again, everyone! This will be the first of at least three or four posts which I will be publishing here over the next several hours to pass along the latest Church news and temple updates, since there have been a number of significant developments in that regard. In this, the first of those posts, I wanted to pass along some very interesting information I found out about late last night but have not been able to blog about before now.

As most (if not all) of you are aware, the Church has customarily held a press conference to allow the media to introduce newly called First Presidency members or members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and to allow media representatives the opportunity to ask them questions on all subjects that are of interest to everyone around the world.

Prior to the January 2018 press conference for President Nelson and his counselors, the last such event was held in October 2015 to introduce newly-called Elders Rasband, Stevenson, and Renlund. And, as was recently observed in another post on this blog and the comments responding to it, Elders Gerrit W. Gong and Ulisses Soares did not have that chance, at least initially.

But late yesterday, reports indicated that the newest apostles had met for two hours with local and national media representatives to respond to questions and to talk about their first three months in the apostleship. Two reports of those interviews were carried in the Church News and on Mormon Newsroom (with the latter also carrying a brief video summary of those interviews).

Not surprisingly, the interviews covered topics such as how they were adjusting to their new callings, the paramount support of their wives and families, their extensive international experience that, in many ways, helps them relate very well to the needs of members worldwide, and the kindness of both members of the Church and their fellow apostles, including and especially President Nelson.

But my two biggest takeaways from these reports had a profound influence on me. I am sure I knew this already, but apparently, when new apostles come into the Quorum of the Twelve, one of their senior apostolic colleagues mentor them to help them transition well to the new responsibilities and opportunities. Elder Christofferson is mentoring Elder Gong, while Elder Andersen serves as a mentor to Elder Soares.

Above and beyond that, however, is the significant fact that, for the first time that I can recall, the new apostles shared with the media a complete list of their current assignments. As I have previously noted, it used to be standard procedure in the late 1990s and early 2000s for the Church Almanac to share details of the specific assignments held by each of the apostles, but by the time I started purchasing the Church Almanac in 2005 or so, those details were no longer included.

Sometimes, through various sources, information has been provided as to some of the assignments held by the current members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles are detailed, but we have not had a full list of individual assignments for the apostles in at least the last decade or so. This may go back to what I have previously said about President Nelson's efforts to promote more transparency in terms of Church matters.

But I digress. Elder Gong has the following assignments: He chairs the Church Scripture Committee, and is a member of both the Leadership and Training Committee and also the Outreach Committee. He has additionally been assigned as a member of the Priesthood and Family Council, and has been given supervisory responsibility for the Church's Asia & Asia North Areas.

Before detailing Elder Soares' assignments, I wanted to note that, while it may seem somewhat irregular to some that such a junior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles is chairing a committee, Elder Gong's wide experience as both an educator and one who has lived and worked in many nations uniquely qualifies him to oversee efforts to get the scriptures translated into additional languages. And the fact that he both has Asian ancestry and has lived and worked in various Asian countries makes him uniquely suited for those area assignments he has been given.

Getting back to Elder Soares, he has been assigned to serve on the Missionary Executive Council (as I noted yesterday) and also on the Human Resource Councils, and he has been given an assignment to oversee the Central America and Africa West Areas of the Church. Prior to his service in the Presidency of the Seventy, Elder Soares was president of the Africa Southeast Area, so he has no small familiarity with how the Church is progressing on the African continent.

I had reported earlier this week that Elders Andersen and Soares recently traveled through the Africa West Area together, which makes sense, since Elder Andersen is serving as mentor to the junior apostle, and since Elder Soares is supervising the Africa West Area.

I apologize. This post ran a lot longer than I had anticipated it would. That does it for now. 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.

Updated Information Provided on the Seminar for New Mission Leadership

Hello again, everyone! I wanted to post now to share some big news that has come out of the coverage of the Seminar for New Mission Leadership. The Church continues the tradition of having all members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles participate in that seminar in some way. As noted in previous reports (specifically from my coverage of last year's seminar), some apostles have been given the opportunity to speak with their wives to those new mission leaders.

So the first thing I wanted to mention is that Elder Jeffrey R. Holland and his wife spoke together to these new leaders. Their address focused on the most important character mentioned in the pages of the Book of Mormon. Elder Holland mentioned that when he asked people who they thought that character was, he got a lot of the standard answers you would expect: several of the prophets whose words had a great impact.

But he noted that none of those answers were correct. The most important figure mentioned in the Book of Mormon is our Savior, Jesus Christ, who is mentioned both in the subtitle of the Book of Mormon, and is mentioned very frequently within its' pages. Elder and Sister Holland went on to highlight and emphasize how important that book should be to all Latter-day Saints, but particularly those who are involved in the Church's missionary efforts.

That address also provided some interesting information of which I was not aware. Apparently at some point in the recent past, Sister Holland had to deal with an illness which she described as "nearly fatal". She noted that while she was comforted and cared for by Elder Holland to the extent that he could do so, there were times when, due to his ecclesiastical obligations, he could not be with her.

So during those times, she ensured her Book of Mormon was always close by. She said that the doctors doubted she would survive, but that she was able to because of her faith in the principles of the gospel that are taught so well within the Book of Mormon's pages. There were several other significant things Elder and Sister Holland shared during their address, and you can read more on that in this article.

In the meantime, the Church News section on lds.org also continues to carry coverage of the seminar, with subsequent articles being added to this article as they are published. Among the many significant things covered in that main story was the note that Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf spoke on both the opening and closing days of the seminar, and that he was asked to do so because he chairs the Missionary Executive Council.

When I learned that information, I did some research, and I found out that the reason then-Elder Oaks gave addresses to open and close last year's mission president's seminar was because he was the chair of the Missionary Executive Council at that time.

As I noted in mid-January of this year, among the key assignments that Elder Uchtdorf was given following his return to the Quorum of the Twelve was oversight for the Church's two European areas, and that those assignments had previously been held by President Nelson and then-Elder Ballard.

And since Elder Uchtdorf also was asked to take over the assignment to chair the Missionary Executive Council from now-President Oaks, we see that the key assignments he has been given were previously the responsibility of the three most senior members of the Twelve prior to the reorganization of the First Presidency. If that is not a clear indicator of the trust the senior apostles have in Elder Uchtdorf, I don't know what would clarify that point further.

But there was something even more interesting in the "home article" for coverage of the seminar. The article cited above also notes the membership of the Missionary Executive Council, which is as follows: Elders Dieter F. Uchtdorf, D. Todd Christofferson, Neil L. Andersen, and Ulisses Soares of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; General Authority Seventy and Executive Director of the Missionary Department Elder Brent H. Nielson, Bishop W. Christopher Waddell, Second Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric; Sister Bonnie H. Cordon, Young Women General President; and Sister Cristina B. Franco, Second Counselor in the Primary General Presidency.

I find this information significant for one simple reason. As some of you may know, in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the Deseret News published the Church Almanac every year, it had been somewhat common for the biographies of the Quorum of the Twelve to include details of their memberships in the councils and committees of the Church. By 2005 (at which point I made sure to buy the newest edition of that almanac every year), that information was not included.

And until now, except for articles published by the Church that identified certain assignments of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, we have not seen any complete lists of all Church leaders who serve on those councils and committees. So the fact that we now have that complete list of the members of the Missionary Executive Council is very noteworthy.

Although the page to which I shared a link above will carry full coverage of the other addresses that were given during the Seminar for New Mission Leadership, I will also do my level best to bring you coverage of individual articles as they are published.

That does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated. Thank you for the privilege of your time and also for wading through the content in this post, which was longer than I originally intended it to be. 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.