SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Nov. 1 2023 (Gephardt Daily) — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced Wednesday it will create 36 new missions worldwide in 2004.
Three of them will be close to home, in northern Utah. The newly defined missions in the Beehive State will be Utah Salt Lake City East, Utah Saratoga Springs, and Utah Spanish Fork.
The new areas of service will help accommodate the rising numbers of missionaries, a statement from the LDS Church says.
“To accommodate rising numbers of missionaries (now at more than 72,000), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will open 36 new missions on July 1, 2024,” the Church statement says. “This puts the total number of missions at 450 — the highest number in Church history.
Church leaders will create these new missions from existing missions, the statement says.
“This adjustment will allow mission leaders to have more interaction with missionaries and more missionaries to be assigned to wards and branches. More missionaries are serving now than the 69,000 who were sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The increase is thanks in large part to Church President and Prophet Russell M. Nelson’s April 2022 call for more missionaries, the news release says.
“We are incredibly grateful for the response we have seen by so many young people to our beloved prophet’s clarion call for missionary service in April of last year,” said Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who chairs the Church’s Missionary Executive Council. “We are witnessing an increased enthusiasm for sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world. These new missions, spread all around the world, will be a blessing locally as we desire to have more missionaries supporting the units of the Church.”
President Nelson’s call was for missionaries young and old. He said the “decision to serve a mission, whether a proselyting or a service mission, will bless you and many others. We also welcome senior couples to serve when their circumstances permit. Their efforts are simply irreplaceable.”
New missions are coming to 18 of the Church’s 22 areas around the world. These additional areas of service will be created in the following locations, effective July 1, 2024:
Africa Central
- Democratic Republic of the Congo Kinshasa South
- Democratic Republic of the Congo Kolwezi
- Kenya Nairobi East
Africa South
- Madagascar Antananarivo North
Africa West
- Ghana Accra North
- Ghana Takoradi
- Nigeria Calabar
- Nigeria Port Harcourt North
- Sierra Leone Bo
Asia
- Cambodia Phnom Penh East
- Thailand Bangkok East
Asia North
- Japan Sendai
Brazil
- Brazil Manaus South
Caribbean
- Dominican Republic Santo Domingo North
Europe Central
- Germany Hamburg
Europe North
- Portugal Porto
México
- México Mexicali
- México Puebla East
North America Central
- Montana Missoula
North America Southeast
- Florida Tallahassee
- South Carolina Charleston
North America Southwest
- Nevada Henderson
- Texas Dallas South
- Texas El Paso
North America West
- California Modesto
Philippines
- Philippines Dumaguete
- Philippines General Santos
- Philippines Tuguegarao
South America Northwest
- Bolivia Cochabamba South
- Ecuador Quito West
- Perú Lima Northeast
South America South
- Argentina Tucumán
- Chile La Serena
Utah
- Utah Salt Lake City East
- Utah Saratoga Springs
- Utah Spanish Fork
