Branch shutting down

[Ironhold]

About 15 years ago, the stake I'm in petitioned Salt Lake for the purpose of creating a young single adult (18 - 30) branch. The reason for this is because according to official stake records we had over 400 young single adults living within the stake.

What the stake officials failed to consider is that this stake is wrapped around an Army base, and the US military reserves the right to transition people between facilities as it sees fit... often with little notice. Because of this, most of those 400 plus records were of individuals who had left the area without being able to request that their records be transferred with them. In reality, we likely only had about 50 at most, and some of these individuals lacked reliable transportation to get them to the site of a single YSA branch instead of their home wards.

Making matters worse is that we had an individual at one point who was the very definition of "toxic". He was an Army officer in a career field recently made popular by a controversial movie, and he let it go to his head. In hindsight it's clear he was called to be elder's quorum president because he needed to learn humility, and he never did. Instead, his arrogance and insensitivity to the needs of others drove quite a few people away from the branch, never to return. 

These two issues were such that even though I aged out a long time ago, I kept coming in order to help out as there were Sundays the branch didn't have enough priesthood to even do Sacrament without me. 

Well, it's officially been announced that the branch will be dissolved after the new year. There will be two final Sundays (the 1st and the 8th), then everyone will be going back to their home ward or branch. I guess it was determined that the branch was simply no longer viable. 

I'm not entirely surprised, as by all rights the branch should have been dissolved a long time ago. But at the same time, I find its dissolution rather sudden. 

[LDSGator]

Sorry it’s happening bro. 
 

Remember that just because the ward is broken up doesn’t mean friendships have to end. I only say that because I’ve seen things like that happen in the church. 

[laronius]

I was once in a mid-singles ward (a fully functioning ward) where during ward conference the Stake President announced that this was the last Sunday we'd be meeting together and everyone should start going to their family ward. So I get what you are experiencing. 

As a side note I was the ward clerk at the time and they wanted me to help shut things down but I had to remain in my calling to have access to everything. So for about 6 weeks I was the only member of the ward (according to the records).