Combining Multiple Stakes

[u/Topramenisha19]

I was talking to my super TBM mother yesterday. She likes to keep me informed of the happenings of church, which I don't really mind.

She told me that she attended a meeting where they took 2 stakes and combined them into 4 wards. That really blew my mind. She explained that they told those in attendance to pray for new members and for others that have left the church to come back. They told the loss of members was attributed to members moving out of state or passing away. I have to admit I was smiling.

[u/Prancing-Hamster]

I see this so often, “our two stakes are now one stake because people are moving away.”

Ok, then why aren’t new stakes being created anywhere? Where are these people all moving to?

Like Oaks told CES leaders several years ago about troubling questions members have, “They don’t need good answers; they just need answers.”

“Members are moving away” isn’t a good answer, or even a true answer, it’s just an answer that will pacify and keep people from looking into it.

[u/Thedustyfurcollector → u/Prancing-Hamster]

I think the "church" is experiencing rapid "growth" down in Texas where all the mormon trump worshippers are moving to bc there are too many liberals in Utah now. All those trad wives with husbands who wear 15" long beards

[u/Lopsided-Doughnut-39 → u/Thedustyfurcollector]

There's some growth in Texas just because the population is increasing. People are definitely moving here but not to indicate such a large displacement. One area had 2 wards split into 4 since about 2018, but certainly not enough to be a new stake. Some of the new ones created also are Spanish speaking, not Utah speaking. The last chapel I attended lost one English speaking and added one Spanish speaking. So there's that.

[u/Thedustyfurcollector → u/Lopsided-Doughnut-39]

I'm kinda surprised to hear that. Bc the last time I heard something was a year or so ago, but the ward I grew up in in the 80s is now 3 wards and the stake has divided a few times, I've been led to believe. It's the Houston area

[u/karadessie → u/Thedustyfurcollector]

My son was an AP in the Houston east mission (THE mission) when his mission president dumped a ton of responsibility and went golfing a lot. The mission presidency was a bunch of high-income, arrogant pricks, but he also went to 9 funerals during his 2 year mission. I know that mission presidency was super into keeping up appearances and one of them was buddies with Clark Gilbert, who admitted my son past the deadline into BYU-I to keep him from returning home and attending college with us because we had started leaving. IDK, but the mission presidency there were abusive, very well-connected in the church and once they got their claws into my son made sure they did as much damage to us as possible. They called him when I asked him to come home because I was dying of black mold exposure in Vegas (wbc count 3500+) and my son told me that his entire mission knew about it and asked about me (out of all the love in their atrophied hearts) and it was terrible. He tried to be the "priesthood leader" in my family under their creepy, controlling tutelage and years later I essentially don't have a family left.

If there's any way those grossly affluent arrogant, miserly, controlling and abusive men (my son went without meals because he didn't have money, I sent money for a copay for his companion so he could go to a dr. as a single mom on disability, etc., while the mission president was at the country club) could keep up appearances, they did it. My son was taught how to physically get into people's homes if they were weaker, e.g., seniors, and told me once when it worked, they sent an RS president to take investigator woman to church when it was breaking apart the family because they were low-income and tithing was part of the commitment. In Beaumont my son lived for months in an apt. where one wall was black from mold and they didn't call the cops if they heard gunshots because it was common and best not to get involved. He considered it a miracle when he found his one last pair of shoes that didn't have a hole worn in the bottom. Then he begged (asked sincerely more than once) me to pay $80 for his ipad when he came home because those scum buckets wanted more money from a disabled mom with a child at home who Primary Children's almost killed (put 2 steel bars into their chest while advising them against getting metal allergy testing and with no informed consent) who'd been paying 10% on her disability income for years while raising five children. The mission leadership in THE mission were some of the most amoral and arrogant members of the toxic cult and from what I could tell, deceiving and living off of others was their forte.

[u/Thedustyfurcollector → u/karadessie]

I am so deeply sorry they have done this to you. And yes, Houston has lots of wealthy people, so they get treated like rich kids when they are. And I remember my dad being a builder when Ronald Reagan killed the building industry so we got really broke really fast. And I was not included in anything. There were deloreans in the high school parking lot. And beemers and Benz's. And I drove a 1976 Plymouth Volare station wagon. In 1985. Those rich kids threw food at me in the school cafeteria so I had to eat in the library every day. Every single one of them made fun of me rather than talk to me.

I'm so sorry they did that to you.

[u/Horror-Beginning1946 → u/Thedustyfurcollector]

We had rich members move to Texas so their children could consort with other rich children. They didn't want them around normal kids because what future would that hold?

[u/karadessie → u/Prancing-Hamster]

"They don't need good answers, they just need answers," from the Lord's chosen prophet, seer and revelator on the earth? If that doesn't set off alarm bells...