I have to admit I didn't read all the posts on this thread, but I just want to quickly state my 2 cents before heading off to bed.
I'm a convert of 7 years... in our ward, all of the newly baptized members are still active - not counting those that moved out of ward boundaries (dunno how they are now) - except one. The one lady that is not active was the only black person in our ward at that time. She was the only person in her family who is LDS, her husband is a staunch baptist. I think that has a lot to do with it.
Now, I may be wrong in this count, but this is my impression in our ward.
Anyway, I do feel that the ward family is the main thing that impacts retention. I love my ward. It is one of the most diverse wards that I've known (close to a naval base, so we have a lot of come-and-go members) and we have become experts at fellowship. I was given a calling to teach RS 2 weeks after I got baptized. There was no excuse for me to skip on church as it takes me the entire month to prepare for my monthly 45-minute lesson! My home teacher was the awesomest. He loves basketball and my husband and I are both big basketball fans so I get to be invited to their weekly basketball scrimmage at church (no, I don't play - I just watch while my husband plays). The scrimmage is on Wednesdays which is the day when the YW/YM are meeting at church, so I get to hang out with their parents as well who are driving them to church. And my visiting teachers, I tell ya - they are cool as well! We usually go out for ice-cream (my favorite) or sing some karaoke (also my favorite) after a short "how are you on the gospel" thing. Both my VTs at the time were single women who are party-all-the-time types. I love it because that is so ME as well. Then there's ward activities almost every month that's always fun to go to. Then there's all these RS clubs - book club, cooking club, scrapbook club, exercise club, coupon club, choir... it is difficult to decide which ones to go to since they're all cool but of course, I don't have time for all of them... man, recently, they even have a facebook club where we get to be friends with everybody from the 7-year-olds to the 70-year-olds in the ward who are in facebook who make little comments like, "I just got done burping my baby and she puked all over me." which is a cute insight to some of our friends' everyday challenges...
Okay, so the past 2 years I got called as ward activity person. I was very worried about this calling. But, the past 2 years, I found out how easy this calling is. I just come up with the idea and everybody pitches in without much prodding. And every activity I have, we always have a huge showing. I heard from new ward members that this is not always the case in ward activities. So, yeah, I think our ward may have something special going on...
Anyway, I think all that has something to do with why we've been good in retaining new converts.
P.S. We have republicans, democrats, pro-life, pro-choice, married at 19, single at 46, divorced, stay-at-home moms, successful enterpreneur and career women, one-bedroom apartments, 2-million dollar homes, 4 generation families, all kinds of stuff, in our ward. must be because of the naval-base-proximity aspect of it.
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