Latter-day Saints Church set to build its seventh Arizona temple

The Mormons are on a mission! 😊

Latter-day Saints Church to build Arizona temple in Queen Creek - Phoenix Business Journal

Mormon temple in Mesa, AZ (Source)

LDS Church: Jesus wasn’t white nor European, and interracial marriage is fine

Have faith in the Mormons! Amen!

Why don't they bring back polygamy (and to be more modern polyandry)?

"Jesus was not a white European-looking man, God has no problem with interracial marriage, and Latter-day Saints should intervene when fellow congregants make racist comments. ..."

LDS Church: Jesus wasn’t white, and racism remains a problem in the faith

Salt Lake Temple

Utah Latter-day Saints Democrats are excited about Harris-Walz ticket. Really!

Since when do the Mormons vote for extremist candidates of the Dimocratic Party?

Is someone grasping at straws like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? 😊

"... Such statistics have galvanized the tiny but growing movement of Latter-day Saint Democrats, including those who are joining the drive to elect Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in 2024. ..."

LDS Democrats are excited about Harris-Walz ticket

‘Mormon Land’: Did Joseph Smith practice polygamy? What the evidence shows and why it matters. Really!

How often has this question been repeated? How tiring!

And if he had 100 women? Were these women staying voluntarily with Joseph Smith?

‘Mormon Land’: Did Joseph Smith practice polygamy? What the evidence shows and why it matters. Arguments and counterarguments • Two historians examine the documents, the motives, the words of Emma Smith, the testimony of the church founder’s purported plural wives, and how to ascertain the “truth.”

Joseph Smith, top left, and some of his purported wives, clockwise from top middle: first wife Emma Hale Smith; Eliza R. Snow; Martha McBride (Knight Smith Kimball); Marinda Nancy Johnson (Hyde Smith); and Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs (Smith Young).

Utah LDS Church finances: A deep dive into where it invests in innovation

Mormons invest with the help of God! 😊

"As The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints oversees its major holdings in U.S. stocks and mutual funds, filings show, it spreads billions of dollars across industries from Big Tech to real estate, from health care and banking to consumer goods. ...

A recent settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission made it clear the church must continue to be more transparent than it has in the past about certain holdings. That agreement — in which the church paid a $1 million penalty and its Salt Lake City-based investment arm Ensign Peak Advisors paid $4 million — was based on the requirement that any entity trading over $100 million on U.S. public stock exchanges must file quarterly public disclosures of the shares it controls and their value. ...

To discover these bets, The Salt Lake Tribune searched for companies that had disclosed church subsidiaries as early investors between Jan. 1, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2023. In that period, 14 companies received funding from Ensign Peak Advisors or its wholly owned subsidiary Marshfield Advisers LLC and hit milestones — such as moving to sell shares on stock markets — that revealed the investments. ..."

LDS Church finances: A deep dive into where it invests in innovation

Image of the day

In these times, it seems only the Mormons can resist the popular urge to create Firsts for women of color or LGBTQ or any women! How refreshing! 😊

Maybe the Mormons like to listen to the Wailers song:  No woman, no cry! (Caution: Satire)

Source

The first-ever photo was released of the [Mormon] church’s newly constituted Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, with acting President Jeffrey Holland and its newest member, Patrick Kearon.

Amazing Grace is coming to the new hymn book of the Mormons

Mormons never cease to amaze me! Amen! 😊

"I once was lost but now I'm found"

"Was blind but now I see"

"It seems likely that “Amazing Grace” will grace the church’s new hymnbook and “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” will, well, bless it. ...

The latter was “one of the top requests [from thousands of members] for inclusion in the hymnbook,” Ray Robinson, a key adviser to the hymnal committee, said on a recent “For All the Saints” podcast. And the former “was another top one.”

He suspects both songs will become “universal” favorites in the new volume, due out in full in 2026. ..."

Latest from Mormon Land: LDS ‘super’ coach Andy Reid; hymnbook hints; and Joe Biden's faith 

Mormons in Ghana

The gray scale or how the Mormons are run by several Methuselah

If you thought the U.S. presidency had an aging problem (Biden 81, Trump 77) in an aging society, then the Mormon leadership stands out.

Mormons seem to enjoy a long life! 😊

"But both (Biden, Trump) would rank in the middle of the pack among the church’s current senior — emphasis on senior — leadership. Six of the 15 apostles are older than the Democratic president; seven are older than the Republican front-runner.

All three members of the governing First Presidency are in their 90s, led by 99-year-old President Russell Nelson. He is followed in age by his counselors, Dallin Oaks, 91, and Henry Eyring, 90.

Three apostles are in their 80s — Jeffrey Holland, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve, Dieter Uchtdorf and Quentin Cook are 83.  ..."

Salt Lake Tribune Mormon Land

Apostle Dale Renlund last week became the first top church leader to meet with Cambodia’s prime minister.

Ambassador of Iceland to the U.S. Visits Mormon Church Headquarters in Salt Lake city

We may call it a match made in heaven? 

The geopolitics of the Mormon church? Even the tiny Scandinavian island of the volcanoes is not unimportant.

Ambassador of Iceland Visits Church Headquarters, Pioneer Memorial Bergdís Ellertsdóttir, Iceland's ambassador to the United States, recently visited Salt Lake City, Utah, where she met with leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and toured Church sites.

The ambassador and the president of the church were holding hands

Indonesian Leader of 100 Million Muslims Visits Mormons in Orem, Utah

Amazing stuff! At the intersection of faith may perpetual peace (Immanuel Kant) evolve!

The Mormons are possibly one of the most successful international missionaries of modern times!

"KH Yahya Cholil Staquf, general chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama Central Board, and a delegation of six others visited the house of the Lord in Orem, Utah, on Sunday, December 10, 2023. Elder Adilson de Paula Parrella and Elder William K. Jackson of the Seventy led Pak Yahya’s group on a tour of this new temple, which will be dedicated in January 2024. ..."

Leader of 100 Million Muslims Visits Temple Square KH Yahya Cholil Staquf also visits the new house of the Lord in Orem

Who’s Buying Nebraska? After shopping spree, Mormon church is top land purchaser

What are the Mormons up to? Or is Nebraska such a backwater that a few land purchases by the Mormons make a splash?

"... Farmland Reserve Inc., a nonprofit owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church, has been quietly buying up ranch land in Nebraska’s Sandhills for the past three decades.

The Garden County shopping spree, coupled with more buys in four neighboring counties, made the church Nebraska’s top single buyer of land in the past five years. 

The church bought a whopping 57,500 acres – double the amount of the second largest buyer– between 2018 and 2022, according to a Flatwater Free Press analysis of data gathered by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications data journalism class. ..."

Who’s Buying Nebraska? After shopping spree, Mormon church is top land purchaser - Flatwater Free Press In the past five years, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bought twice as much Nebraska land as the second biggest buyer. If they keep it up, they’ll soon own more than anyone.

Credits: Salt Lake Tribune Mormon Land

Mormons Dedicate Bangkok Thailand Temple - The first in Southeast Asia

Good news!

"With Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles presiding over the October 22, 2023, dedication of the new Bangkok Thailand Temple, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints not only has its 185th operating temple worldwide but its first on the Southeast Asia peninsula. ...
48,525-square-foot, six-story and nine-spired temple  ..."

Elder Rasband Dedicate Bangkok Thailand Temple Southeast Asia peninsula's first temple is ‘cradled in the arms of prophets, apostles’

Can you find the temple?

Growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Country: 2022 Figures

Mormons in the Pacific Ocean!

"... Tonga is home to the highest percentage of Latter-day Saints, with 64% of the South Pacific nation belonging to the church. Samoa ranks second ..."

Growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church): Percent Latter-day Saint by Country: 2022 Figures

Salt Lake Tribune Mormon Land

Percent Latter-day Saint by Country: 2022 Figures

See below for a list of countries/territories ranked by the percentage of Church-reported membership in the general population.

Temples abound in Buddhist Thailand, but this new one is different. It’s for Latter-day Saints.

Mormons everywhere!

"... This new sacred structure in the nation, nicknamed the “Land of Smiles,” belongs to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is about to be opened to the public.

Exhilaration for their temple among the country’s 23,450 Latter-day Saints in more than 40 congregations is palpable. ..."

Temples abound in Buddhist Thailand, but this new one is different. It’s for Latter-day Saints. Members, missionaries and former missionaries exult as the edifice prepares to open. It’s evidence that, after a bumpy start, the Utah-based church has found its footing in Southeast Asia’s “Land of Smiles.”

Bangkok Temple

What's it like being an asexual couple and members of the Latter Day Saints Church in Utah?

The diverse and inclusive Mormons! I bet you did not know about it!

Can I get a witness! Amen!😊 

Caution: Irony!

What's it like being asexual as a member of the LDS Church?

Love conquers all!

LDS prophet Brigham Young’s drag-performing son skirted traditional norms and now stirs speculation. Really!

Where are the famous drag kings! I am so tired of reading about drag queens!

Don't they say there is always a black sheep in every flock.

During the pride month 2023, the Salt Lake Tribune combed the archives for a story or did the newspaper just rewarm something well known.

Here is the Wikipedia entry of Brigham Morris Young. Was he really a drag queen as implied? I doubt it! He was e.g. married! My guess, his singing voice sounded female and perhaps he was a gifted singer: "He could produce a convincing falsetto, and many in the audience did not realize that Pattirini was Young."

"Attired in an elegant long-flowing dress, a shawl draped over her shoulders and adorned with jewelry, the reputedly famous Italian singer Madam Pattirini thrilled Utah audiences over a century ago with her décolletage and high-falsetto soprano voice.

The performer in these shows, however, was no madam. Neither was she famous nor Italian. Nor was she really a she. He was a foot soldier in the faith of his father who served four proselytizing missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, married in the temple, sired 10 children and helped found the faith’s Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association (YMMIA).

Turns out, Madam Pattirini — one of his drag alter egos — was Brigham Morris Young, Utah pioneer leader Brigham Young’s 35th child from his plural marriage to Margaret Pierce Whitesides Young. Commenting on his father’s death in 1931 from a ruptured appendix, Gaylen S. Young extolled his virtues in his biography, a “Brief History of Brigham Morris Young.” ..."

LDS prophet Brigham Young’s drag-performing son skirted traditional norms and now stirs speculation

Mormons ended all discrimination against black Americans 45 years ago

So much for white supremacy, structural racism in America and all this other related nonsense and demagoguery!

"This week represents the 45th anniversary of the end of the church policy that barred Black members from entering the priesthood or temples for nearly 130 years." (Source)

"... In 1852, President Brigham Young publicly announced that men of black African descent could no longer be ordained to the priesthood, though thereafter blacks continued to join the Church through baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. ..."

Race and the Priesthood

Mormons buy an Amazon warehouse in London

Amazon sells a lot of stuff, don't they! 😊 Will it become a temple?

" ... [Mormons] just bought a 186,455-square-foot Amazon warehouse in the London suburb of Wembley for more than $89 million in U.S. currency.
“The purchase … furthers our efforts to make prudent, long-term investments,” Dale Bills, spokesperson for the church-affiliated buyer, told the Evening Standard. “Earnings from our investments are expected to support the religious and charitable work of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United Kingdom.”
The church’s Covent Garden IP clinched the deal. It is registered as a charity that seeks to “promote and further the religious and other charitable work”of the church in the United Kingdom “by investing in and holding commercial property” for the faith’s benefit. ...
The U.K. is home to nearly 187,000 Latter-day Saints, more than 300 congregations and two operating temples (London and Preston) with plans for a third (Birmingham)." (The Salt Lake Tribune

Tattoo taboos fading among younger Latter-day Saints

God is merciful and forgiving! The content of the tattoos matters! 

"Some faithful members, however, like married couple Stockton and Brielle Barney, flaunt heavy ink showcasing their love of Utah, their faith, trials and triumphs. While tattoos may be taboo, they say, ink has never been forbidden. ..."

Video: Tattoo taboos fading among younger Latter-day Saints A couple talk about the tattoos they have and the meanings behind them.

Global Latter Day Saints membership reaches a new high of over 17 million

Success by the numbers!

"Thanks largely to a surge of converts, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reached a membership milestone last year, topping 17 million worldwide.

Overall membership rose by 197,061 to 17,002,461, according to 2022 statistics released during Saturday’s General Conference, a 1.1% bump from the 16,805,400 reported the previous year. ..."

Global LDS membership reaches a new high. See how it got a post-COVID boost. Numbers still lag behind gains that were common earlier in the past decade.