OCR Text |
Show ...... . , J . LDS growth steady during '88 vance. Salt Lake City's Temple ' Square, with its historic buildings, its visitors' centers, statuary and. gardens, recorded an all-time record number of visitors for one year, surpassing the four-million mark in mid-December. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints experienced steady growth during 1988 and by the end . of 1989 v worldwide membership mem-bership should be approaching the -seven million mark. ' Official year-end statistics for 1988 will not be announced until the Church's annual general conference confer-ence in April. ; However, growth over the past few years has averaged aver-aged approximately a 'quarter-' million members a year, and if offi- V cial statistics eventually show that trend has. continued for the past . year, membership will have increased in-creased from 6.4 million at the be-. be-. ginning of the year to somewhere between 6.6 and 6.7 million at the end of 1988. . Meanwhile, the Church has grown from 1,666 stakes a year ago to 1,707 at the close of 1988, and there are now some 16,500 congre-' congre-' - gations in the world, up more than 500 during the year . The number of full-time missionaries mission-aries increased from 34,750 a year ago to just over 36,000 today, and the number of missions has grown from 205 to 221. v : Among the major non-statistical milestones during 1988: . The German Democratic Republic Re-public announced that it will allow Latter-day Saint missionaries into the country and also will allow members who reside in the DDR to serve as missionaries outside tha: . country, . . , .' . . . The Hungarian People's Repu-, Repu-, blic granted legal recognition, to the- l , , ,The first all-black stake of the Church was organized in Nigeria. President Marion G. Romney of the Council of Twelve Apostles and former member of the First Presidency, died at the age of 90 and was succeeded by President Howard W. Hunter. J- r Elder Richard G. Scott was ' called to be a member of the Coun-t Coun-t cil of Twelve Apostles, filling a va-'; va-'; cancy caused by President Rom- ney's death. Michaelene P. Grassli ; was ' ' called to be general president of the Primary, worldwide children's organization or-ganization of the Church., V The Church observed its 75th anniversary as an official sponsor of scouting. . ' The Mormon .Tabernacle Choir . represented ; the United States at ' Australia's bicentennial obser- |