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Do all wards/branches have missionaries?

Guest MormonGator

By Guest MormonGator,
in Learn about The Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints

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Guest MormonGator

Guest MormonGator

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The lovely LadyGator and I have finally and gloriously left New England. We are looking for a new ward home, and she asked "Do all the wards/branches have missionaries?"

Honestly, I can't imagine not having them in my life. I want to live in a ward that has them. 

 

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zil

zil

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If you mean full-time missionaries assigned to them, in my experience, they're assigned to the stake, and there aren't enough for one set per ward.  (But I'm in Utah and the demographics may dictate some of that.)

 

If you mean ward missionaries, I don't remember ever being in a ward that didn't have them.

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Guest MormonGator

Guest MormonGator

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If you mean full-time missionaries assigned to them, in my experience, they're assigned to the stake, and there aren't enough for one set per ward.  (But I'm in Utah and the demographics may dictate some of that.)

 

If you mean ward missionaries, I don't remember ever being in a ward that didn't have them.

 Thank you. I've only been in the church for two years, so a lot of it is new to me. 

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Vort

Vort

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Congratulations and good luck!

 

If you're moving someplace in the US that isn't called Utah or southern Idaho, the odds are pretty good of having missionaries. At the very least, you will have some assigned to your stake, and maybe you can sign up to have them over for dinner.

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Guest MormonGator

Guest MormonGator

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Congratulations and good luck!

 

If you're moving someplace in the US that isn't called Utah or southern Idaho, the odds are pretty good of having missionaries. At the very least, you will have some assigned to your stake, and maybe you can sign up to have them over for dinner.

First week down here we took them out for pizza, but we will almost assuredly not be in that ward.  We were just desperate to go to church. I don't like missing a week. 

For me, the missionaries are huge. These young people give up two years of their life for us and the church. 

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Vort

Vort

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First week down here we took them out for pizza, but we will almost assuredly not be in that ward.  We were just desperate to go to church. I don't like missing a week. 

For me, the missionaries are huge. These young people give up two years of their life for us and the church. 

 

Where did you guys move to?

 

(Apropos of nothing: I had a cousin about a year younger than me who introduced me to Pink Floyd in a way I hadn't heard them before. This was right before I left on my mission, and if he had not been murdered while I was gone, I probably would have talked with him and listened to Pink Floyd more than I did. Pink Floyd remains one of those bands that, had I made an investment of time at the right period of my life, would certainly have had me as a big fan, but is instead another of my "yeah-I-know-them-they-have-some-pretty-good-tunes" bands. Kinda like Rush.)

Edited by Vort
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zil

zil

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Am surprised to hear that Utah does not have a couple of missionaries per ward. Is this because there are so many wards per square inch? I had heard that there are many baptisms in Utah.

It may vary by where in Utah you are, I'm certainly no expert, but I would think it does have to do with "Mormon-density".  My stake probably takes up a few blocks.  Some stakes take up a hundred square miles (guessing).  If my stake lived in NYC, we'd probably take up 1000 square feet (of ground space, a lot more vertical) and the missionaries could just ride the elevators. :P   Missionaries and members can only cover so much ground and so many people.

 

I wouldn't know how many baptisms there are in Utah vs. anywhere else, but there are a lot of us, and some believe we're gonna catch you and dunk you eventually.  :eek:

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Vort

Vort

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For a while growing up, I lived in the Spokane East stake, which I believe was about 50 or 60 miles N-S and probably 40 or so E-W, so covering somewhere around 2000 square miles. Later, as a young married man, I lived in State College, PA, where our stake encompassed more or less a circle about 30 miles in radius, or roughly 3000 square miles. Once you get outside of the US mountain West, stakes tend to cover much larger geographical areas.

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bytebear

bytebear

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I grew up in Salt Lake, and we never had missionaries.  Maybe once every 5 years, the missionaries would give a talk in church, but that was it. 

 

When I was on my mission in New England, we had at least two sets of missionaries per ward, and a set of missionaries for a branch.  Some wards had 6 missionaries, and since two wards met in a building, that meant there were really 8 to 10 missionaries to a building. 

 

So, I guess it just depends on how dense your Mormon population is, how many stakes your mission covers, and how many missionaries are in your area.  You can probably guestimate it if you find out how many wards/stakes are in the mission area, and assume there are about 200 missionaries covering the area.

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EarlJibbs

EarlJibbs

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In my ward outside Houston we have 3 pairs of Sister Missionaries. 2 English and 1 Spanish. Our boundaries are about a 45 minute drive from one end to the other though. We probably have a baptism or two a month, sometimes once a week. Come Sunday it seems there are missionaries all over the place  :). It's funny to see them all walk in a row down the hall (we have a small chapel) when they have somewhere specific to be. 6 missionaries in a hurry in a crowded small church. 

 

Back in Utah, even with a small ward boundaries we had our own missionaries. I think the church was trying something new out to really get the ward members involved. We also had older couple missionaries called from the ward, also something new back then as well as the Mission President being called from the local mission area. 

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Guest

Guest

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MormonGator!  We gotta meet up!

 

Okay, our Stake has been split up so many times that missionaries get moved around a lot.  We just had another one of our wards in the Stake split up with half the ward moving to a different Stake all together just last month.  My ward building has 3 wards meeting in it with our ward in one Stake and the other 2 wards in another Stake that is different from the Stake that last month's split ward moved to. 

 

So, for a while there we had no missionaries in our ward.  The other ward that shared our Church Building had them, so if we need a missionary to visit, we just call them.  They're a different Stake but we're still the same Mission Office.

 

Then the missionary age got lowered and we had 4 sets of missionaries just in our ward alone.

 

So, in my ward, we've had a period of years where we didn't have full-time missionaries and then we've had a period of years where we had a lot of them.  But, we've always had missionaries in the Mission Office which is not too far from us so we can always call the Mission Office to get missionaries to come have dinner.  They are just too excited to get a dinner invite.  :D

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Guest

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One ward I lived in was so weak in member-missionary work that the mission president removed the missionaries from our ward.  In another ward, the mission president doubled up the missionaries for the same reason. --Interesting.

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Blackmarch

Blackmarch

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The lovely LadyGator and I have finally and gloriously left New England. We are looking for a new ward home, and she asked "Do all the wards/branches have missionaries?"

Honestly, I can't imagine not having them in my life. I want to live in a ward that has them. 

missionaries aren't a requirement, so technically there could be one without missionaries.... but I think you'd be hardpressed to find one.

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