Branches Offer Winter Haven for Seasonal Visitors

A growing number of Latter-day Saints who travel to sunbelt areas of the southwestern United States during the cold winter months are finding an unexpected source of spiritual warmth. They bask in the love and friendship that abound in winter-only branches organized to meet their needs.

Seasonal visitors from the northern United States and from Canada swell the winter population of many areas in the southern U.S. In the Southwest, hundreds of those visitors are LDS. For them, winter branches offer a Church home away from home and at the same time give them an opportunity to serve and strengthen the stakes of Zion there.

One of the largest is the Yuma Sixth Branch of the Yuma Arizona Stake. But there is also a large winter branch in the Blythe California Stake, at Quartzsite, Arizona, and a small branch of the El Centro California Stake in Bombay Beach, California. In the southwestern corner of Utah, both the St. George Utah East Stake and the Washington Utah West Stake have winter-only branches.

Leslie H. Farley, president of the Yuma Branch, says his service there “is one of the most joyful things I’ve ever done in the Church.”

There are many members in the branch, he says, “who have found the Church again.” They have opportunities for service in leadership and teaching positions that are not available in well-staffed home wards. For some, it is the first time in years they have had the opportunity to bless or pass the sacrament, to offer a prayer or usher, or to serve on a committee planning an activity. Sometimes members who were less active in their home wards come back into full activity in the warm, congenial atmosphere of the branch.

President Farley says the branch has made special efforts to locate all Latter-day Saints in the area to provide home and visiting teachers, particularly those who might not come out unless a concerted effort is made to reach them. “We’re just trying to love them back into the Church,” he says.

Many of the visitors make valuable contributions in their winter areas. Those who are former ward and stake leaders often take on fellowshipping, teaching, and missionary roles. President William Vaughn Neve, second counselor in the presidency of the Washington Utah West Stake, says winter visitors give a tremendous boost to the stake’s work in the St. George Temple. In Yuma, where visitors work on the local welfare project, service there has helped reactivate some members.

In some places, winter visitors find unusual meeting places and conditions. The Bombay Beach Branch meets in a local health club and spa. Glenn McMillan, who was until recently the El Centro stake’s high council adviser to the branch, says average attendance usually reaches no more than sixty-five during the winter. But he says members are good about fellowshipping non-LDS winter visitors and local residents.

Fellowshipping could bring a welcome problem to the Blythe stake’s Quartzsite Branch, says branch president Bud Layne. The branch was expected to reach a peak of nearly six hundred members this year, with regular attendance straining the community building in which the branch meets. In addition, members had to move out of the building for two weeks to make way for Quartzsite’s annual rock show.

The winter visitors are welcomed wherever they go. Many choose not to attend winter-only branches; they contribute their Church experience and leadership skills in year-round local units as they are invited to do so. But where a winter unit is provided for them, it is probably done in the spirit expressed by Earl Neeley, president of the Yuma stake: “We wanted our winter visitors to feel at home and let them know that the Church needs them and offers them something when they get here.”

Correspondent: George Morrison, public communications director for the Yuma Arizona Stake.

Winter visitors sort grapefruit as part of a Yuma Arizona Stake welfare activity. Work on the grapefruit project has helped bring some members back into full activity. (Photo by George Morrison.)