"The standard of truth has been erected..."

Elder Damon Joshua Mele-- Philippines Bacolod Mission-- August 2010 to August 2012--The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church)

Received Temple Endowment at the Vernal Utah Temple



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The Standard of Truth

"The standard of truth has been erected: no unhallowed
hand can stop the work from progressing, persecution may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done." ~~Joseph Smith

About Me

Elder Damon Joshua Mele
Vernal, Utah, United States
Currently in the Provo, Utah MTC and will be serving in the Philippines Bacolod Mission.
View my complete profile

Local Time in the Philippines

Philippine Links

  • LDS Bacolod Mission Office (Bacolod City) Wikimapia
  • Bacolod, Philippines Weather Forecast
  • Interactive Weather Map for Philippines

Addresses:

LDS Missionary Training Center (MTC) Address--Elder Mele's address for the next two months until he leaves for the Philippines:
Elder Damon Joshua Mele
MTC Mailbox # 146
PHI-BAC 1025
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604-1793
"POUCH SYSTEM" mail:
To send a letter to Elder Mele in the Philippines using the pouch system (the safest way) Address your letter as follows:
Elder Damon Joshua Mele
Philippines Bacolod Mission
P O Box 30150
Salt Lake City,
UT 84130-0150
(Please note you can only send a letter. You can not enclose cash, checks, stamps, photos or any other items. If you enclose any other items your letter will be returned.)

"PACKAGES" & "NON-POUCH" mail:
Elder Damon Joshua Mele
Philippines Bacolod Mission
Galo St between Lacson & Mabini,
Bacolod City
6100 Negros Occidental
Philippines


Philippines Bocolod Mission

LDS Links

  • Philippines Bacolod Mission
  • Official Site of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  • The Family:A Proclamation to the World

Other Links:

My Home Town--Vernal, Utah

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Facts About The Growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons)

Facts about the LDS Church:

2010 Yearbook of U.S. and Canadian Churches shows:
The LDS Church is fourth largest Church in the U.S. and has been for almost a half decade. (see earlier Yearbooks)
It is the third fastest growing Church in the U.S. with only five reporting increases. All others reported declines or did not report. (Catholics, Mormons, Assemblies of God growing; Mainline churches report a continuing decline)

LDS Growth in the last 10 years:

Year

Growth

Ranked

2001

3.38

6th

2002

5th

2003

2.00%

5th

2004

1.88%

5th

2005

1.71%

4th

2006

1.74%

4th

2007

1.63%

4th

2008

1.56%

4th

2009

1.63%

4th


Not only is the LDS Church the fourth largest religious body in the United States it is the sixth largest international Christian religious body in the world.


Church membership today is over 13 million with over 6 million in the U.S. And of those 6 million plus the majority of them live outside of the state of Utah.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was formally organized in a small log cabin in upstate New York in 1830.

It took 117 years — until 1947 — for the Church to grow from the initial six members to one million. Missionaries were a feature of the Church from its earliest days, fanning out to Native American lands, to Canada and, in 1837, beyond the North American continent to England. Not long after, missionaries were working on the European continent and as far away as India and the Pacific Islands.

The two-million-member mark was reached just 16 years later, in 1963, and the three-million mark in eight years more. This accelerating growth pattern has continued with about a million new members now being added every three years or less. Growth consists both of convert baptisms and natural growth through the birth of children. (Growth of the Church)

The Next World Religion?

In 1969 Jack W Carlson boldly predicted that by the year 2000 the Mormon population of the world would rise from 2.6 million of the world's 3 billion inhabitants to 8.5 million of a projected 5 billion inhabitants. Carlson was mistaken. The world's population and LDS Church member­ship both exceeded his predictions, but not equally. World population grew approximately 20 percent higher than predicted; LDS membership exceeded the prediction by 29 percent. In the year 2000, world population reached 6.1 billion persons, and LDS Church membership surpassed 11 million mem­bers (with slightly more than half living outside the United States).

In 1984 Rodney Stark, the eminent sociologist of religion and profes­sor at the University of Washington, wrote an important article in which he made an even bolder prediction. He claimed that with Mormonism we are witnessing the rise of a new world faith. In that article he attempted to demonstrate "that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mor­mons, will soon achieve a worldwide following comparable to that of Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and the other dominant world faiths." He stated: "Indeed, today they stand on the threshold of becoming the first major faith to appear on earth since the Prophet Mohammed rode out of the desert."'

Stark went on to examine the patterns of growth in the then-150 years of Mormonism's existence. He considered various factors that are known to slow the growth of other religious movements and found that Mormonism has historically grown even when those factors were present. This is due largely to the fact that Mormonism is unsurpassed in its missionary efforts and has many social benefits to offer converts. These and other factors favor a continued rate of rapid growth.

Stark initially projected that if Mormonism continues to grow at a some­what slower average rate than it did in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, it will have a membership of more than 265 million people within a hundred years." In a 1996 update of his original study, comparing his projections with fifteen years of actual growth," Stark found that actual growth exceeded his most optimistic prediction by nearly a million persons. If one recalculates from 1997 membership figures with the same rate of growth Stark used in his ini­tial study, Mormonism will have a membership of over 580 million by the end of the century.? (for the rest of this article see, the Non-LDS book, The Mormon Challenge by Evangelicals Carl Mosser and Paul Owen, excerpts from Chapter 9; And the Saints Go Marching On, Mormonism's Challenge for World Missions.)

In a recent article in the Los Angles Times it was reported from research at the Pew Forum that, "Mormons, who are not considered Christians by many fundamentalists, showed greater knowledge of the Bible than evangelical Christians."

At the beginning of 2010 it was reported by the Gallup Daily Tracking that, Mormons Most Conservative Major Religious Group in U.S.
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