Growth brings split to historic Logandale stake

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Moapa Valley witnessed an historic change on Sunday, May 5. At a special stake conference, the Logandale Nevada Stake of the Church was split and became two stakes: a West Stake and an East Stake.

Elder Jonathan S. Schmitt, a General Authority Seventy of the Church travelled to Moapa Valley from Salt Lake City, Utah to preside over the change. He was assisted by Elder Jonathan W. Bunker, an Area Authority Seventy of the Church.

“This is not an end,” Elder Schmitt told an audience that filled the Stake Center and flowed over to a congregation watching the proceedings via the internet at the Logandale Chapel. “This is just another beginning to the continued growth of the kingdom of God in this beautiful valley.”

A “stake” is an administrative unit of the Church composed of multiple congregations (called wards) in a geographic area. The Church takes the name “stake” from the Old Testament Book of Isaiah where it encourages God’s people to “Enlarge the place of thy tent…lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes.”

In Sunday’s action, the two stakes were each assigned a number of existing wards.

The Logandale West Stake, with a membership of 2,086, will include the Cottonwood, Hinckley, Meadow Valley, Muddy River and Pioneer wards.

The Logandale East Stake is made up of the Lake Valley, Mormon Mesa, Skyline, St. Joseph and St. Thomas wards. It has a membership of 1,927.
No changes were made to ward boundaries.

Logandale Stake President Brandon Leavitt will continue to serve as president of the new East Stake, with Charles Burt and Ryan Jolley as his counselors.

The new West Stake will be led by Chad Leavitt as president. Leavitt was previously serving as the 2nd counselor in the Logandale Stake. Serving as his counselors will be Corey Dalley and Cody Hughes.

In an address to the large crowd, President Brandon Leavitt assured that this important change brings with it tremendous opportunity for local church members.
“No longer are we one big stake with unlimited resources of people,” he said. “We are two small stakes now, which need every single willing and able person to step up and fill these opportunities. We are still united as brothers and sisters to accomplish our purpose. But now we have more opportunity for growth.”

President Chad Leavitt expressed gratitude to the congregation for sustaining him and his counselors in this new role. He requested that stake members show their support through providing help and showing love to their neighbors.
“I request that in your prayers you simply ask, think about and listen ‘Who can I serve?’,” he said. “Think of an action that you can perform for someone else. That is what you can do to sustain us.”

The Moapa Stake (later called the Logandale Stake) was first established on June 9, 1912. It was the the 64th stake in the Church and the first to be formed west of the state of Utah.

At that time, the stake’s 1,300 members were located in two states and three different counties. It included six wards: Overton, St. Thomas, Bunkerville, Mesquite, Alamo, Panaca; with branches in Logan (Logandale) and Littlefield, Arizona.

The first Moapa Stake president was Willard Jones; with John Bunker and Samuel Wells as counselors.

No building was large enough at that time to hold the anticipated crowd of over 250 people gathering in Overton for the conference. So a structure made of several posts supporting a roof of arrow weeds was erected between two large cottonwood trees to provide shade from the hot June sun.

The stake was formed roughly 47 years after the first settlement on the Muddy River by Mormon pioneers in 1865.

The Muddy Mission, as that first settlement was called, only lasted about five years. In 1870, these rugged “missionaries” were released from their service by a letter from then-Church President Brigham Young. Most of the original settlers abandoned the settlement at that time and moved back to Utah.

The few settlers that remained were soon joined by other families. The Church continued to grow in the communities and so did the population in the region.

By the 1950s, the Moapa stake included more than 7,000 members with an enormous territory which included the rapidly growing Las Vegas valley.

In October 1954, the Las Vegas stake was divided off from the Moapa stake. The Moapa stake retained five wards: Alamo, Bunkerville, Mesquite, Logandale and Overton.

It was not until 1988 that the Mesquite and Bunkerville wards were split off from the Moapa stake. At that time it was renamed the Logandale Stake.