Where are the Mormons?

My strong convictions are biased by my personal experiences, and I admit that.

Seeing others not living up to my particular brand of expectations can sometimes trigger a strong finger-pointing-response in me, and the only means of combating it is to remind myself of whatever easily-judgeable skeletons I have hiding nearest me at the time (or, you know, not so hidden ones. Like my sink of dirty dishes), and that we are all children of the same Heavenly Father. Essentially, I'm careful to remember that we're all just different shades of faulted; none of us better or worse than the next. Each of us is called to different things, and there are many different beautiful ways to do good in the world.

So setting judgment aside, let's talk about orphans. The 150 million orphans, some starving and dying, but all lost and forgotten. The least of these. The children Christ, again and again, commanded us to care for. 150 million. In crowded orphanages, foster homes, and on the streets. Without love, no amount of food and medication can help these children. Man cannot live on bread alone, and neither can his children. They need families, unconditional love, support, education, nurturing, and positive models. These children need mothers.


And I find myself having to ask... Where are the Mormons?

We devoutly preach the teachings of Christ in our churches and homes and, more so than any religion or denomination I've come across, we emphasize the importance of family. From birth, we lovingly teach our children of God's love for us, and how we should strive to mirror Christ's love for us in the way we treat our family. Consider all the Children's Hymns that speak of families. Most notably on my mind lately are the words to "Love is Spoken Here":

"I see my mother kneeling, with our family each day
I hear the words she whispers, as she bows her head to pray
Her plea to the Father quiets all my fears
And I am thankful, love is spoken here"


But what about the millions of precious children every year who are orphaned by death, or abandonment?


Does our Savior not want them to have the same peace and love, and to be free from fear?


For me, prior to becoming a Mormon, adopting was high on my list of dreams. For years prior to marrying, I had little desire to even have biological children.
Then I was married. I had a wonderful life, and was very comfortable and happy. Slowly, my priorities changed and I began looking forward to my little newborn, created and welcomed into the world with love. And so that became our focus.
Adoption, after all, can be so difficult and expensive... and well, we were newlyweds stationed in Germany, and conceiving was natural and far more reasonable than adopting.

Thankfully, God had very different plans for our family, and we had troubles with fertility. I think all children are gifts from God, and would gladly accept a pregnancy right now if that were in his plan for me. I don't feel that He wants us to stop procreating (quite the contrary! :-), but His orphans are also out there. It's easy to see injustice and pain in the world when it's been brought to you, and I look back now and see how easily I could have been swept away by my own comfortable circumstances, never to consider the world's forgotten again, and it frightens me.


I see it everywhere in the LDS church. We're a happy people. We love our families, we thrive on structure and tradition, and gee golly do we love getting our fairy tail endings, lol.

LDS Family Services, for example, offers such a wonderful resource to birth mothers hoping to provide their children with a stable family environment which they couldn't otherwise provide.
Further hoping to simplify the pain of infertility for members of our church, the financial cost of adopting through LDS Family services is subsidized by tithing funds. I love this! Forming families is a high priority to our church! However, when taking a step back, I can't help but wonder why so much effort and money is put into finding children for families instead of families for children. True, there are 150 million orphans, but most come with various imperfections (most notably, not being infants), and that can be a hugely detracting factor for someone in the Mormon culture, so strongly conditioned to want things the way they should be.

Things the way they should be. The only thing more comforting than that idea, is knowing that the lives of my future children will be almost the way they should be once they're adopted. No child deserves to have suffered as an unwanted orphan, and all I can offer them is being an orphan-no-more, and hope for their future in a family where "Love is Spoken".

From a non-denominational, evangelical Christian background, I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints when I was 18 years old. I have seen first hand the great and wonderful things that the LDS church does every day, both for its members and non-members alike. Its expansive humanitarian and welfare programs have been a blessing in the lives of millions worldwide.

But a church can't give families to children. Only its members can. We are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We are His hands and His feet, and our Heavenly Father's forgotten are out there waiting for us.

So again I ask,
Where are the Mormons?