The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints just organized a district in Ilorin, in Kwara State. This is a move into more traditionally Muslim areas of Nigeria, although less so than Jos and Abuja. Those two cities have large populations from the south due to mining and government respectively.
There are also some branches in the north in more traditionally Muslim areas. Still Ilorin is probably the first place to get a district that was a base of one of the Emirates in the Sokoto Caliphate. It was also part of the British Protectorate of Northern Nigeria before the unification of 1908, which some call the mistake of 1908, which gave us the modern, culturally bifurcated country of Nigeria.
The Church has had a branch in Ilorin since 1992, but didn't get a second branch there until 2016. It was long part of the Enugu Mission, after the 1992-1993 plan to have a mission based out of Ilorin was decided to not be a worthwhile use of mission resources.
Ilorin is now in the newly formed Ibadan Mission. I am not sure if prior to July it was in the Enugu Mission or the Lagos Mission. Enugu was where the Mabeys and Cannons lived on their mission to Nigeria in 1978-1979. Although unlike places further south there were no pre-existing believers, they did convert many Christians in that city.
However Ilorin is not Muslin at the same level of northeast Nigeria. There is not Sharia law there. Nor does it have as deep Muslim roots as the northwest in places like Kano.
Christian missionaries did not come to Ilorin until about 1905, although there were unsuccessful attempts earlier. However in the 1920s indigenous Christian Churches sprang up in the area. The exact balance of Christians and Muslims I have not yet learned. Ilorin has long been a place of many ethnic groups. The largest, the Yoruba, who dominate the whole of south-west Nigeria from Lagos north, are majority Muslim but with noticeable numbers of Christians. The Hausa, Nupe and Falani among other groups are thought to be almost all Muslim. However there have also been migrations from the basically all Christian south-east of Nigeria. Thus, religious plurality exists and better for LDS growth, it often exists in Churches that embrace the gifts of the spirit and notions of personal revelation through dreams.
Last year there were similar growth anniversaries of forming districts in the eastern parts of Nigeria's middle belt. This area in the time around 2000 saw some of the worst inter-communal violence in Nigeria. The violence has since moved north, where Boko Haram has more often attacked more moderate Muslims, instead of the Christian/Muslim fighting in the middle belt area. I hope the Church continues to grow in the middle belt. Still, there are large swaths in the southern third of Nigeria of places that are not yet part of a branch or ward. Akwa Ibom has a lot of rural presence of the Church, this is the area where many of the pre-1978 congregations waiting on the misisonaries were. However even in Cross River State, that included Akwa Ibom in 1978 and thus the Cross River district was the first one formed in Nigeria, even in Cross River State the northern part of the state there are just two branches, with boundaries in theory stretching 30 miles or more out of the location city, but probably much of the area still yet unreached.
On the other hand, the area between Calabar and the Cameroon border, is assigned to the mission branch. So there is a lot of potential for growth in much of Nigeria.
Showing posts with label The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Show all posts
Saturday, August 4, 2018
Breast feeding in Church
A local woman in Utah who has made waves and started a fight with her bishop wants The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to come out with a uniform policy on breast feeding. This is an idea so culturally specific I think only a Utah Latter-day Saint would ever come up with it.
To begin with, I am not convinced the actions of her bishop were as much a reaction to her breast feeding in public as opposed to her combative and rude reactions to others issues with it.
Actions in public society can never just be about a woman and her child and how they want to do things. They have to be navigated by other cultural considerations. Personally I can see values in opening more space for breast feeding. On the other hand I have read other places where people actually gripe that women's restrooms in LDS Church buildings have been made too comfortable for breast feeding.
I have known other buildings that had rooms specifically just for breast feeding, this is more common in newer buildings. I have also known other buildings with large numbers of mothers of young children to transform a classroom into a breastfeeding station.
The main reason why I think the demand here is unworkable is that breast feeding is a culturally navigated issue. In some cultures breast feeding in public is viewed very differently than others. Any possible statement on the matter would either offend people in some cultures where things are approached very privately, or those who allow it much more in the open.
Worse still, a lot of possible statements on the issue would offend people in both cultures.
This is clearly an issue best decided at the local level.
To begin with, I am not convinced the actions of her bishop were as much a reaction to her breast feeding in public as opposed to her combative and rude reactions to others issues with it.
Actions in public society can never just be about a woman and her child and how they want to do things. They have to be navigated by other cultural considerations. Personally I can see values in opening more space for breast feeding. On the other hand I have read other places where people actually gripe that women's restrooms in LDS Church buildings have been made too comfortable for breast feeding.
I have known other buildings that had rooms specifically just for breast feeding, this is more common in newer buildings. I have also known other buildings with large numbers of mothers of young children to transform a classroom into a breastfeeding station.
The main reason why I think the demand here is unworkable is that breast feeding is a culturally navigated issue. In some cultures breast feeding in public is viewed very differently than others. Any possible statement on the matter would either offend people in some cultures where things are approached very privately, or those who allow it much more in the open.
Worse still, a lot of possible statements on the issue would offend people in both cultures.
This is clearly an issue best decided at the local level.
More on Miss America
So the Philadelphia Inquierer published some quite informative articles on the Miss America pageant. This may be in part because Atlantic City where it is held is within the paper's greater readership area.
What we learn from all of this, and from thinking about it, is that Miss America is in crisis. The removal of the old board and the introduction of a new leadership has caused a break. Many people feel they were basically told the competition had to either drop the swimsuit portion, or be dropped by ABC. It is now clear that was never the case, and they feel lied to.
However a bigger break seems to be a fight over the wording of the contracts. The new leadership, if I am reading what is going on correctly, seems to want to make Miss America an at will employee of the Miss America organization. Weather they would remove her without good cause is hard to say, but I can see people not wanting to make removal easier. There is also talk of giving her bonuses if she does her job well.
Such changes are a lot bigger than ending the swim suit competition and opening the processional to any outfit, not just evening gowns.
Also unclear is how the trickle down from the national organization works. Will all state competitions no longer be allowed swim suit competitions and evening gowns as of next year.
Related to this there has been some argument over the amount of scholarship money given out by Miss America. It used to claim $45 million, but only around $2 million is actually traced. One issue often overlooked is scholarship awards are a funky thing.
Miss America compensated winners in furs and movie contracts in the 1930s. In 1944 it began giving out college scholarships. However contestants must be between age 18 and 26. Maybe it is time to reconsider the top age and move to 30. Either way, not all 26-year-olds will be going to college within the allowed time for the scholarship money. Others will have bills below what they win. This might not be a direct likelihood for those people the top prize, but many of these contestants will have other scholarship sources. So like most scholarships that awarded and that paid out is not the same.
However Miss America has another problem. It is actually the main motivation behind dropping the swim suit competition, although I am not sure that change will fix the other problem. In the 1980s annual competitors within the system could number 85,000. This year, only 4,000 women entered into the competition at its sub-state level feeder competitions.
Why this is I cant say for sure. Marriage rates for women in this age bracket have dropped. Have any competitors with out-of-wedlock children ever participated? Even if they are not formally barred, post-pregnant bodies are a hard fight against those that were never such in many cases.
There are many other issues. There are lots more options for women in sports, other scholarship options have also multiplied. Social stigma against pageants has increased. At the same time all youth organizations have struggled. Boy Scouts a little less since the LDS-Church propped it up, but the break between the LDS Church an Boy Scouts may have been because the system called for a level of social capital not workable any more. It also was mainly just the LDS Church and BSA and Boy Scouts Canada, and only on the boys not the girls side. All this made the attempt of leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints such as Russell M. Nelson to create a unifying worldwide program only workable if scouts was left behind.
There is another possible issue. This is competition inflation. Basically over time people run up the stakes of competitions by trying harder and harder to win. This increases the direct financial costs of winning and more often the opportunity cost, the amount of time diverted to winning as opposed to other things.
Closely related to this is the likelihood that the number of local level competitions has fallen. Whenever such a competition folds, it probably decreases the likelihood people will participate.
Right now Miss America is facing the effects of years of fewer competitors and apparently a loss of sponsors. The new contracts seem to say your scholarship money is unsure, and you will be more at will. I can see why people are reluctant to sign such especially with a lack of transparency at the top. Rewriting the contracts the same year the competition itself was so fully reformatted was a very bad idea.
What we learn from all of this, and from thinking about it, is that Miss America is in crisis. The removal of the old board and the introduction of a new leadership has caused a break. Many people feel they were basically told the competition had to either drop the swimsuit portion, or be dropped by ABC. It is now clear that was never the case, and they feel lied to.
However a bigger break seems to be a fight over the wording of the contracts. The new leadership, if I am reading what is going on correctly, seems to want to make Miss America an at will employee of the Miss America organization. Weather they would remove her without good cause is hard to say, but I can see people not wanting to make removal easier. There is also talk of giving her bonuses if she does her job well.
Such changes are a lot bigger than ending the swim suit competition and opening the processional to any outfit, not just evening gowns.
Also unclear is how the trickle down from the national organization works. Will all state competitions no longer be allowed swim suit competitions and evening gowns as of next year.
Related to this there has been some argument over the amount of scholarship money given out by Miss America. It used to claim $45 million, but only around $2 million is actually traced. One issue often overlooked is scholarship awards are a funky thing.
Miss America compensated winners in furs and movie contracts in the 1930s. In 1944 it began giving out college scholarships. However contestants must be between age 18 and 26. Maybe it is time to reconsider the top age and move to 30. Either way, not all 26-year-olds will be going to college within the allowed time for the scholarship money. Others will have bills below what they win. This might not be a direct likelihood for those people the top prize, but many of these contestants will have other scholarship sources. So like most scholarships that awarded and that paid out is not the same.
However Miss America has another problem. It is actually the main motivation behind dropping the swim suit competition, although I am not sure that change will fix the other problem. In the 1980s annual competitors within the system could number 85,000. This year, only 4,000 women entered into the competition at its sub-state level feeder competitions.
Why this is I cant say for sure. Marriage rates for women in this age bracket have dropped. Have any competitors with out-of-wedlock children ever participated? Even if they are not formally barred, post-pregnant bodies are a hard fight against those that were never such in many cases.
There are many other issues. There are lots more options for women in sports, other scholarship options have also multiplied. Social stigma against pageants has increased. At the same time all youth organizations have struggled. Boy Scouts a little less since the LDS-Church propped it up, but the break between the LDS Church an Boy Scouts may have been because the system called for a level of social capital not workable any more. It also was mainly just the LDS Church and BSA and Boy Scouts Canada, and only on the boys not the girls side. All this made the attempt of leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints such as Russell M. Nelson to create a unifying worldwide program only workable if scouts was left behind.
There is another possible issue. This is competition inflation. Basically over time people run up the stakes of competitions by trying harder and harder to win. This increases the direct financial costs of winning and more often the opportunity cost, the amount of time diverted to winning as opposed to other things.
Closely related to this is the likelihood that the number of local level competitions has fallen. Whenever such a competition folds, it probably decreases the likelihood people will participate.
Right now Miss America is facing the effects of years of fewer competitors and apparently a loss of sponsors. The new contracts seem to say your scholarship money is unsure, and you will be more at will. I can see why people are reluctant to sign such especially with a lack of transparency at the top. Rewriting the contracts the same year the competition itself was so fully reformatted was a very bad idea.
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Thomas S. Monson, rest in peace
Thomas S. Monson passed away last night. Although when he died was just after midnight Michigan time.
It is hard at this juncture to say a lot. I am saddened by the passing and glad he has rejoined his belowed Frances.
President Monson was first called as an apostle in 1963. The president of the Quorum of the 12 then was Joseph Fielding Smith, whose parents had lived in exile in Hawaii for some of his formative years, and who was a teenaged before the Salt Lake Temple was completed.
The president of the Church who called President Monson was David O. McKay. When President McKay had become president of the Church all stakes were in the US, Albetrta, Canada or the Mormon colonies in Hawaii. No stake operated in a language other than English. It was only while President Monson was president of the Canadian mission that missionary work to French-speakers in Canada was initiatiated.
In 1971 Elder Monson was one of the apostles involved in setting apart the leadership of the Genesis Group. This group was created to serve the needs of African-American Latter-day Saints. In 1973 in his journal as noted in a Deseret News article published today, Elder Monson expressed the hope that the African-American brethren leading the Genesis Group could soon receive the priesthood. He was the last man alive who had been present in 1978 when President Kimball received the revelation on the priesthood. He was also present at the first sacrament meeting of the Genesis Group, and performed the first temple sealing involving a couple including an African-American. Also as a member of the Priesthood Executive Committee he was involved in issueing the first mission calls to people of African-descent in the 20th century (Elijah Able had been a missionary in the 19th-century). Among those then called was Marcus Martins who would be called as a mission president by President Monson.
President Monson dedicated Haiti for the preaching of the gospel in 1982. His first assignments as an apostle had been to Oceania. He organized the first stake in Tonga for example.
President Monson had a vision of a church where all wards and branches were lead by local brethren, and not by full-time missionaries. Where as many people as possible lived in stakes and could receive patriarchal blessings and where no members lived more than 200 miles from the temple.
From about 1969-1985 President Monson oversaw the Church in Eastern Europe. It was truly a labor of love. He was centrally involved in the negotiations that lead to missionaries in East German before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germans called as missionaries, and the building of the Friberg Germany Temple. While most of the major progress in eastern Europe happened after President Monson was called to the First Presidency, and it was Elder Russell M. Nelson who was the main point man on that, President Monson was key in laying the groundwork.
President Monson was also a key figure in the LDS edition of the scriptures that came out from 1979-1981.
He was a man who had a vision of ministry to the one.
His role while a counselor to Presidents Benson, Hunter and Hinckley is hard for me to directly assess.
As preisdent of the Church, he oversaw many major developments, although many were continuances of policies of those before.
The biggest change under his administration was the lowering of the missionary age, especially for young women. This also lead to a reformating of mission counsels. There were also major advances in missionary use of technology and changes in various other guidelines for misisonaries.
Another big change was seen in major revisions of Church curriculum. This started in 2013 with new youth curriculum. The CES curriculum went through major revisions as well. Then in 2016 came teacher councils. The 2010 revision of the Church Handbook of instructions also emphasized more the importance of the ward council. The Church moved to be more strongly governed by councils at all levels. The new melchizedek preisthood and relief society curriculum move this central role of councils and new approach to curriculum even more broadly. The adult Sunday School curriculum has not seen much revision. The Doctrine and Covenants online materials did include some very useful connections and additional material, but I have to say it was not uniformly utilized. On the other hand the online edition of the Old Testament student manual still uses the Old Bible dictionary name for an article, not even reflecting the alterations in the Bible Dictionary published in I believe 2013.
On the political and social issues front President Monson has largely reflected a continuation of policies from before. The 2008 support of Proposition 8 and similar measures in other states was in line with previous support. The move of the Church voicing its support for legal protection of man/woman marriage outside of the US may have been new under President Monson, but was a result more of the issue being voiced in areas where there was a chance for public comment combined with situations like an all Mexican area presidency in Mexico being about the only group that could have lead out on the issue in the political climate of Mexico. The Church seems to have possibly been more vocal in its support for finding solutions to immigration issues that would allow families to remain together, but I have not studied the issue in depth enough to be able to time Church statements on this issue very clearly.
While the Church has clearly endorsed a level of housing and employment protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation that I do not think was announced before, it has signaled that man/woman marriage will remain the only accepted place for sexual interaction in Church policy. The policy to excommunicate those who enter same-sex marriage has caused outrage to some, and others to misrepresent it.
The Church has also lead out in interfaith work, and a push for religious freedom.
At the same time the Church has majorly increased its openess and scholarly publications. The Chuirch Historians Press was launched under President Monson, although much of the initial legwork for this initiatiate was started under President Hinckley. Starting in 2013 the Church published several gospel topic essays, that dealt frankly with difficult subjects like race and the priesthood. The fact that a few weeks ago I was able to show such to an active Church member who had never read them shows that they have not been read as much as they need to be.
The role of women in the Church has also beeen changed in significant if not fully comprehended ways. Women giving prayers in regular sessions of general conference, and the women's conference being made for all women 8 and up and being clearly indicated as part of general conference are significant changes. The most recent, with the alternating general priesthood meeting and general women's meeting on Saturday evenings of general conference is also a big one. Also the role of the mission president's companion (wife) has been given a more formal place in mission structure, and the mission council now includes female missionaries, and there is the new leadership title for sister missionaries (the exact name escapes me at the moment).
The BYU pathway program has been another major initiative during President Monson's presidency.
Lastly, we have seen a push forward in the number of temples. Not on the level of what we saw under President Hinckley, but still a major push forward. We have seen temples announced for several places very far from existing temples.
I know there are lots more things to cover, but I think this is a good start.
Latly, President Monson was a man of compasion who was able to lead to Church to better reach out in service and caring to meet the needs of the individual.
It is hard at this juncture to say a lot. I am saddened by the passing and glad he has rejoined his belowed Frances.
President Monson was first called as an apostle in 1963. The president of the Quorum of the 12 then was Joseph Fielding Smith, whose parents had lived in exile in Hawaii for some of his formative years, and who was a teenaged before the Salt Lake Temple was completed.
The president of the Church who called President Monson was David O. McKay. When President McKay had become president of the Church all stakes were in the US, Albetrta, Canada or the Mormon colonies in Hawaii. No stake operated in a language other than English. It was only while President Monson was president of the Canadian mission that missionary work to French-speakers in Canada was initiatiated.
In 1971 Elder Monson was one of the apostles involved in setting apart the leadership of the Genesis Group. This group was created to serve the needs of African-American Latter-day Saints. In 1973 in his journal as noted in a Deseret News article published today, Elder Monson expressed the hope that the African-American brethren leading the Genesis Group could soon receive the priesthood. He was the last man alive who had been present in 1978 when President Kimball received the revelation on the priesthood. He was also present at the first sacrament meeting of the Genesis Group, and performed the first temple sealing involving a couple including an African-American. Also as a member of the Priesthood Executive Committee he was involved in issueing the first mission calls to people of African-descent in the 20th century (Elijah Able had been a missionary in the 19th-century). Among those then called was Marcus Martins who would be called as a mission president by President Monson.
President Monson dedicated Haiti for the preaching of the gospel in 1982. His first assignments as an apostle had been to Oceania. He organized the first stake in Tonga for example.
President Monson had a vision of a church where all wards and branches were lead by local brethren, and not by full-time missionaries. Where as many people as possible lived in stakes and could receive patriarchal blessings and where no members lived more than 200 miles from the temple.
From about 1969-1985 President Monson oversaw the Church in Eastern Europe. It was truly a labor of love. He was centrally involved in the negotiations that lead to missionaries in East German before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germans called as missionaries, and the building of the Friberg Germany Temple. While most of the major progress in eastern Europe happened after President Monson was called to the First Presidency, and it was Elder Russell M. Nelson who was the main point man on that, President Monson was key in laying the groundwork.
President Monson was also a key figure in the LDS edition of the scriptures that came out from 1979-1981.
He was a man who had a vision of ministry to the one.
His role while a counselor to Presidents Benson, Hunter and Hinckley is hard for me to directly assess.
As preisdent of the Church, he oversaw many major developments, although many were continuances of policies of those before.
The biggest change under his administration was the lowering of the missionary age, especially for young women. This also lead to a reformating of mission counsels. There were also major advances in missionary use of technology and changes in various other guidelines for misisonaries.
Another big change was seen in major revisions of Church curriculum. This started in 2013 with new youth curriculum. The CES curriculum went through major revisions as well. Then in 2016 came teacher councils. The 2010 revision of the Church Handbook of instructions also emphasized more the importance of the ward council. The Church moved to be more strongly governed by councils at all levels. The new melchizedek preisthood and relief society curriculum move this central role of councils and new approach to curriculum even more broadly. The adult Sunday School curriculum has not seen much revision. The Doctrine and Covenants online materials did include some very useful connections and additional material, but I have to say it was not uniformly utilized. On the other hand the online edition of the Old Testament student manual still uses the Old Bible dictionary name for an article, not even reflecting the alterations in the Bible Dictionary published in I believe 2013.
On the political and social issues front President Monson has largely reflected a continuation of policies from before. The 2008 support of Proposition 8 and similar measures in other states was in line with previous support. The move of the Church voicing its support for legal protection of man/woman marriage outside of the US may have been new under President Monson, but was a result more of the issue being voiced in areas where there was a chance for public comment combined with situations like an all Mexican area presidency in Mexico being about the only group that could have lead out on the issue in the political climate of Mexico. The Church seems to have possibly been more vocal in its support for finding solutions to immigration issues that would allow families to remain together, but I have not studied the issue in depth enough to be able to time Church statements on this issue very clearly.
While the Church has clearly endorsed a level of housing and employment protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation that I do not think was announced before, it has signaled that man/woman marriage will remain the only accepted place for sexual interaction in Church policy. The policy to excommunicate those who enter same-sex marriage has caused outrage to some, and others to misrepresent it.
The Church has also lead out in interfaith work, and a push for religious freedom.
At the same time the Church has majorly increased its openess and scholarly publications. The Chuirch Historians Press was launched under President Monson, although much of the initial legwork for this initiatiate was started under President Hinckley. Starting in 2013 the Church published several gospel topic essays, that dealt frankly with difficult subjects like race and the priesthood. The fact that a few weeks ago I was able to show such to an active Church member who had never read them shows that they have not been read as much as they need to be.
The role of women in the Church has also beeen changed in significant if not fully comprehended ways. Women giving prayers in regular sessions of general conference, and the women's conference being made for all women 8 and up and being clearly indicated as part of general conference are significant changes. The most recent, with the alternating general priesthood meeting and general women's meeting on Saturday evenings of general conference is also a big one. Also the role of the mission president's companion (wife) has been given a more formal place in mission structure, and the mission council now includes female missionaries, and there is the new leadership title for sister missionaries (the exact name escapes me at the moment).
The BYU pathway program has been another major initiative during President Monson's presidency.
Lastly, we have seen a push forward in the number of temples. Not on the level of what we saw under President Hinckley, but still a major push forward. We have seen temples announced for several places very far from existing temples.
I know there are lots more things to cover, but I think this is a good start.
Latly, President Monson was a man of compasion who was able to lead to Church to better reach out in service and caring to meet the needs of the individual.
Saturday, September 16, 2017
The evolution of missionaries in the 20th-century
At the dawn of the the 20th-century the missionary force was still largely composed of married men who left behind their families, normally containing young children, and traveled far from their homes to serve as missionaries.
This was the case with Joseph Fielding Smith, or as he was then often known Joseph F. Smith, Jr., who left behind his wife who had just had a miscarriage to go serve as a missionary in the United Kingdom. This was the case with Goege D. Benson, Jr, when he left behind his wife and children in about 1909 to go serve a mission in the United Kingdom. Brother Benson's oldest son was a boy they called T, who would later be known as Ezra Taft Benson.
The modern model of young, single missionaries serving before their marriage had began. On the first day of the 20th century the first marriage ceremony performed in the Salt Lake Temple was the marriage of David O. McKay and Emma Ray Riggs. Brother McKay was a graduate of the University of Utah, who had a few years before served a mission in the United Kingdom (mainly in Scotland).
Joseph F. Smith, Jr's cousin George Albert Smith represented all these trends in his missionary experience in the 1890s. First he had been called as a mutual improvement association missionary. He was sent from his home in Salt Lake City (where he went after completing high school at Brigham Young Academy, although as a child in school he had often put Lucy Woodruff's pig tails in the ink well in their Salt Lake City school.) to southern Utah where he served as a mutual improvement association missionary. At the dawn of the 20th-century Francis M. Lyman was serving as president of the British Mission. None of his wives had accompanied him on this assignment. Before the 20th-centuries first year (1901) was out, Heber J. Grant would open the Japanese mission. He was accompanied on this assignment by one of his two living wives (he had had three at once at one point, but his first wife, Lucy Stringham Grant, whose father was the man for whom Bryan S. Hinckley was named, had died a few years before, not long after the birth of their only son, they had a few daughters, who also died. Elder Grant traveled with his daughters throughout the US to get their minds off their mother dying, and one of his daughters fell ill and nearly died, but was saved by a blessing from George Q. Cannon in which he revoked the power of Satan and his having claimed the life of this child.
Geogre Albert Smith receieved the call to be a Mutual Improvement Association missionary on Sep. 7, 1891. In this capacity he traveled with a friend of his who was a grandson of Brigham Young, thus repeating their grandfather's being co-members of the first presidency. The were called by the first presidency and sent to Juab, Millard, Beaver and Iron counties to build up the mutual programs in those counties. Elder Smith was 21 at the time.
Elder Smith would after a few months return to Salt Lake City, where he married Lucy Woodruff, a daughter of Wilford Woodruff Jr and thus a granddaughter of Wilford Woodruff and his wife Phoebe. Wilford and Phoebe had a daughter Phoebe who was one of the wives of Lorenzo Snow. So Phoebe Woodruff is probably the only woman to have been both mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law of presidents of the Church, sort of a slight difference from Mary Fielding Smith who was the only woman to be both a mother and a grandmother of president of the Church.
George Albert and Lucy were married in the Salt Lake Temple on May 25, 1892. On June 23, 1892 George Albert left on a mission to the southern states, which he would mainly spend as the secretary to President J. Golden Kimball. The position of secretary was not like is found in most modern missions. President Kimball did not have counselors. Elder Smith was thus a cross between a one man pair of assistants to the president, a one man set of counelors to the president, and did many of the things missions secretaries, in modern missions often multiple men and women, do. Do make things more interesting, there were no stakes in the south (actually I think none outside of Arizona, Utah and Idaho, southern Alberta might have just gotten a stake, but even much of the inter-mountain west lacked stakes, Boise would not see a stake until about 1912. That is also the year Nevada got its first stake, although some areas had been part of the St. George Stake before then.)
So with no stakes, the Southern States Mission oversaw all the operations of the Church in the area it covered, which was Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and maybe Kentcky and Ohio. I am not sure how much of Virginia was in the mission.
After being in the mission from June to Novemeber, Lucy W. Smith came and joined her husband, and stayed with him for the remaining year and a half of his mission.
As the 20th-century progressed thins were beginning to change. When LeGrand Richards went out as a missionary in 1905 at age 19, he was ot yet married. Yet David M. Kennedy in the 1920s left on a mission the day after his married, leaving his wife behind. Hugh Nibley's father served as a mission pesident in the Netherlands as a young, unmarried missionary. Yet he was succeeded by 27-year-old LeGrand Richards, who was now a married man.
With the disruption caused by the World Wars, the Church started to move away a little from the model of relying on American missionaries.
Especially during and right after World War II, Germany saw many local missionaries, and due to migration controls, they became a key part of missionary efforts in places like Tonga by mid-century. In the 1930s LeGrand Richards was one of a large number of married men, mostly former missionaries, sent on short term missions. He had also been called to go to California to serve as a stake president, although this was a slightly different case because he remained gainfully employed.
By 1952 and the close of the Korean War the Church pretty much ceased to send out married men as missionaries unaccompanied by their wives. I am much less sure about the rise of the senior couple missionarires.
I know such missionaries existed by the late 1970s. I have little if any evidence clearly placing their emergence in earlier times.
During the 1950s while David O. McKay was president of the Church, it became standard to call counselors to mission presidents. While Mission presidents served full time and came from elsewhere, their counselors were most often local men called from the area. Local in the sense that they lived there, some were from that area, and some had moved there for work, but they were resident there as opposed to called from elsewhere.
More so than in other cases, these counselors were like Aaron and Hur, able to hold up arms about to drop. They tended to know the area much better than the mission president.
During the first decade of the 20th-century the standard term was "lady missionaries". I think this was still the common term when my grandmother served in the 1940s. I have not found a definitive time of the switch to "sister missionary" as the term, but guess it was never intentional and always gradual.
Ezra Taft Benson is to date the only president of the term whose wife served as a missionary prior to marriage. On the other hand for about half of his mission Sister Flora Amussen had her mother as her companion. Ezra Taft Benson was the first president of the church to hold a master's degree, and the first to have done work on a Ph.D. He is also the one who was most clearly notable for work done outside of being a general authority. He like President Smith was a young unmarried missionary (in Britian with David O. McKay as his mission president), a married missionary leaving behind his wife (in Europe as President of the European Mission just after World War II), and a married mission president with his wife along with him (in this case in the Germany based European Mission, with a house in Frankfurt, that they shared one Christmas at with the Hinckley family.)
To be fair, in both his assignments as mission president, Elder Benson was closer to an area president than a mission president. He was both times a member of the Quorum of the 12, both times he presided over all missions in Europe, not any specific mission. The first was in the days just after World War II. The second was in the mid-1960s when the long standing US military agreements with countries such as Italy and placment of US servicemen there were bearing fruit in the dedication of the land for the preaching of the gospel. On August 2, 1966 Elder Benson oversaw the reestablishment of the Italian Mission.
Starting in the 1970s two other trends emerge. The Church begins to centralize missionary calls and training. More and more missionaries are called through the formal channels of Salt Lake City, and the local missionary begins to become a thing of the past. Mini-missions, stake missionaries and some other such assignments fill in the force, but formal mission calls come from Salt Lake City.
While missionary training had been centralized in Salt Lake City at the mission home beginning in 1925, this was a one week course, and only applied to centrally called and not mission called missionaries. In the 1960s visa problems lead to a formal language training curriculum. The Language Traning Mission begins at BYU, and later spreads to Ricks (now BYU-Idaho) and the Church College of Hawaii (now BYU-Hawaii).
In 1976 the whole operation is recentralized, both mission home and LTMs, as the MTC in Provo, Utah. In 1977 however a missionary training center was opened in Brazil. Over the years more MTCs outside the US opened, they trained missionaries from those areas of the World, and generally had no language training, just missionary gospel teaching training.
Things begin to change again in the 1990s. It was determined that new missionaries could often be better trained for their new assignments on sight. It also made the logistics of arrivial to the mission more simple.
So beginning with the Brazil MTC, missionaries foriegn to Brazil joined native Brazilians in being trained. By 2000 the Madrid Spain MTC joined with an initial plan where missionaries from the US would spend the first half of traning at the Provo MTC, and second half at the Madrid MTC.
At some point, and I don't know when this happened, the process became even more focused on evening out use of facilities. Thus at some point missionaries heading to Russia, no matter where they came from, begin training in Spain.
The first decade of the 21st-century saw "raise the bar" and Preach My Gospel. Missionary work was moved from being an expected rite of passage to being a work emphasized on teaching. A higher expectation of worthiness and contrite repentence was imposed, as well as more stringent health requirements. Programs were developed for service missions for those unable to be regular full time missionaries.
The 2010s saw lots of new developments. The most seminal was the 2012 age change for missionaries. This facilitated a one year creaton of over 50 new missions. It was connected with many more sister missionaries, the mission council replacing the zone leaders council, the mission president's companion (wife, but we are trying to find a clearer title) was made a formal member of the mission council. The position of coordinating sister was created.
Along with this, missionaries called Spanish-speaking from the US were normally sent to train at the Mexico City MTC. No new MTCs were created, but several existing ones were greatly expanded.
This was the case with Joseph Fielding Smith, or as he was then often known Joseph F. Smith, Jr., who left behind his wife who had just had a miscarriage to go serve as a missionary in the United Kingdom. This was the case with Goege D. Benson, Jr, when he left behind his wife and children in about 1909 to go serve a mission in the United Kingdom. Brother Benson's oldest son was a boy they called T, who would later be known as Ezra Taft Benson.
The modern model of young, single missionaries serving before their marriage had began. On the first day of the 20th century the first marriage ceremony performed in the Salt Lake Temple was the marriage of David O. McKay and Emma Ray Riggs. Brother McKay was a graduate of the University of Utah, who had a few years before served a mission in the United Kingdom (mainly in Scotland).
Joseph F. Smith, Jr's cousin George Albert Smith represented all these trends in his missionary experience in the 1890s. First he had been called as a mutual improvement association missionary. He was sent from his home in Salt Lake City (where he went after completing high school at Brigham Young Academy, although as a child in school he had often put Lucy Woodruff's pig tails in the ink well in their Salt Lake City school.) to southern Utah where he served as a mutual improvement association missionary. At the dawn of the 20th-century Francis M. Lyman was serving as president of the British Mission. None of his wives had accompanied him on this assignment. Before the 20th-centuries first year (1901) was out, Heber J. Grant would open the Japanese mission. He was accompanied on this assignment by one of his two living wives (he had had three at once at one point, but his first wife, Lucy Stringham Grant, whose father was the man for whom Bryan S. Hinckley was named, had died a few years before, not long after the birth of their only son, they had a few daughters, who also died. Elder Grant traveled with his daughters throughout the US to get their minds off their mother dying, and one of his daughters fell ill and nearly died, but was saved by a blessing from George Q. Cannon in which he revoked the power of Satan and his having claimed the life of this child.
Geogre Albert Smith receieved the call to be a Mutual Improvement Association missionary on Sep. 7, 1891. In this capacity he traveled with a friend of his who was a grandson of Brigham Young, thus repeating their grandfather's being co-members of the first presidency. The were called by the first presidency and sent to Juab, Millard, Beaver and Iron counties to build up the mutual programs in those counties. Elder Smith was 21 at the time.
Elder Smith would after a few months return to Salt Lake City, where he married Lucy Woodruff, a daughter of Wilford Woodruff Jr and thus a granddaughter of Wilford Woodruff and his wife Phoebe. Wilford and Phoebe had a daughter Phoebe who was one of the wives of Lorenzo Snow. So Phoebe Woodruff is probably the only woman to have been both mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law of presidents of the Church, sort of a slight difference from Mary Fielding Smith who was the only woman to be both a mother and a grandmother of president of the Church.
George Albert and Lucy were married in the Salt Lake Temple on May 25, 1892. On June 23, 1892 George Albert left on a mission to the southern states, which he would mainly spend as the secretary to President J. Golden Kimball. The position of secretary was not like is found in most modern missions. President Kimball did not have counselors. Elder Smith was thus a cross between a one man pair of assistants to the president, a one man set of counelors to the president, and did many of the things missions secretaries, in modern missions often multiple men and women, do. Do make things more interesting, there were no stakes in the south (actually I think none outside of Arizona, Utah and Idaho, southern Alberta might have just gotten a stake, but even much of the inter-mountain west lacked stakes, Boise would not see a stake until about 1912. That is also the year Nevada got its first stake, although some areas had been part of the St. George Stake before then.)
So with no stakes, the Southern States Mission oversaw all the operations of the Church in the area it covered, which was Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and maybe Kentcky and Ohio. I am not sure how much of Virginia was in the mission.
After being in the mission from June to Novemeber, Lucy W. Smith came and joined her husband, and stayed with him for the remaining year and a half of his mission.
As the 20th-century progressed thins were beginning to change. When LeGrand Richards went out as a missionary in 1905 at age 19, he was ot yet married. Yet David M. Kennedy in the 1920s left on a mission the day after his married, leaving his wife behind. Hugh Nibley's father served as a mission pesident in the Netherlands as a young, unmarried missionary. Yet he was succeeded by 27-year-old LeGrand Richards, who was now a married man.
With the disruption caused by the World Wars, the Church started to move away a little from the model of relying on American missionaries.
Especially during and right after World War II, Germany saw many local missionaries, and due to migration controls, they became a key part of missionary efforts in places like Tonga by mid-century. In the 1930s LeGrand Richards was one of a large number of married men, mostly former missionaries, sent on short term missions. He had also been called to go to California to serve as a stake president, although this was a slightly different case because he remained gainfully employed.
By 1952 and the close of the Korean War the Church pretty much ceased to send out married men as missionaries unaccompanied by their wives. I am much less sure about the rise of the senior couple missionarires.
I know such missionaries existed by the late 1970s. I have little if any evidence clearly placing their emergence in earlier times.
During the 1950s while David O. McKay was president of the Church, it became standard to call counselors to mission presidents. While Mission presidents served full time and came from elsewhere, their counselors were most often local men called from the area. Local in the sense that they lived there, some were from that area, and some had moved there for work, but they were resident there as opposed to called from elsewhere.
More so than in other cases, these counselors were like Aaron and Hur, able to hold up arms about to drop. They tended to know the area much better than the mission president.
During the first decade of the 20th-century the standard term was "lady missionaries". I think this was still the common term when my grandmother served in the 1940s. I have not found a definitive time of the switch to "sister missionary" as the term, but guess it was never intentional and always gradual.
Ezra Taft Benson is to date the only president of the term whose wife served as a missionary prior to marriage. On the other hand for about half of his mission Sister Flora Amussen had her mother as her companion. Ezra Taft Benson was the first president of the church to hold a master's degree, and the first to have done work on a Ph.D. He is also the one who was most clearly notable for work done outside of being a general authority. He like President Smith was a young unmarried missionary (in Britian with David O. McKay as his mission president), a married missionary leaving behind his wife (in Europe as President of the European Mission just after World War II), and a married mission president with his wife along with him (in this case in the Germany based European Mission, with a house in Frankfurt, that they shared one Christmas at with the Hinckley family.)
To be fair, in both his assignments as mission president, Elder Benson was closer to an area president than a mission president. He was both times a member of the Quorum of the 12, both times he presided over all missions in Europe, not any specific mission. The first was in the days just after World War II. The second was in the mid-1960s when the long standing US military agreements with countries such as Italy and placment of US servicemen there were bearing fruit in the dedication of the land for the preaching of the gospel. On August 2, 1966 Elder Benson oversaw the reestablishment of the Italian Mission.
Starting in the 1970s two other trends emerge. The Church begins to centralize missionary calls and training. More and more missionaries are called through the formal channels of Salt Lake City, and the local missionary begins to become a thing of the past. Mini-missions, stake missionaries and some other such assignments fill in the force, but formal mission calls come from Salt Lake City.
While missionary training had been centralized in Salt Lake City at the mission home beginning in 1925, this was a one week course, and only applied to centrally called and not mission called missionaries. In the 1960s visa problems lead to a formal language training curriculum. The Language Traning Mission begins at BYU, and later spreads to Ricks (now BYU-Idaho) and the Church College of Hawaii (now BYU-Hawaii).
In 1976 the whole operation is recentralized, both mission home and LTMs, as the MTC in Provo, Utah. In 1977 however a missionary training center was opened in Brazil. Over the years more MTCs outside the US opened, they trained missionaries from those areas of the World, and generally had no language training, just missionary gospel teaching training.
Things begin to change again in the 1990s. It was determined that new missionaries could often be better trained for their new assignments on sight. It also made the logistics of arrivial to the mission more simple.
So beginning with the Brazil MTC, missionaries foriegn to Brazil joined native Brazilians in being trained. By 2000 the Madrid Spain MTC joined with an initial plan where missionaries from the US would spend the first half of traning at the Provo MTC, and second half at the Madrid MTC.
At some point, and I don't know when this happened, the process became even more focused on evening out use of facilities. Thus at some point missionaries heading to Russia, no matter where they came from, begin training in Spain.
The first decade of the 21st-century saw "raise the bar" and Preach My Gospel. Missionary work was moved from being an expected rite of passage to being a work emphasized on teaching. A higher expectation of worthiness and contrite repentence was imposed, as well as more stringent health requirements. Programs were developed for service missions for those unable to be regular full time missionaries.
The 2010s saw lots of new developments. The most seminal was the 2012 age change for missionaries. This facilitated a one year creaton of over 50 new missions. It was connected with many more sister missionaries, the mission council replacing the zone leaders council, the mission president's companion (wife, but we are trying to find a clearer title) was made a formal member of the mission council. The position of coordinating sister was created.
Along with this, missionaries called Spanish-speaking from the US were normally sent to train at the Mexico City MTC. No new MTCs were created, but several existing ones were greatly expanded.
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