Stand in Holy Places

Ann M. Dibb, the second counselor to the president, spoke on the 2013 theme for the Young Women’s program. The theme is “Stand ye in holy places” and is taken from a verse of Mormon scripture found in Doctrine and Covenants Section 87 and the portion referred to includes the admonition to not be moved.

Sister Dibb suggests that while holy places can include temples, churches, and even homes, it can also include moments in time. This would refer to those times when we are receiving inspiration from the Holy Ghost, getting answers to prayers, or feeling God’s love in our lives. She encouraged girls to create their own sacred spaces, even in the hardest places or moments in their lives.

Our Choices Affect Others

Mary N. Cook, the first counselor, also spoke on standing in holy places. She suggested that our righteous choices will impact our families, past and present, and will also influence the world around us. She referenced a girl she knew whose father died when she was just fourteen. The girl was determined to hold on to her relationship with God and so she created holy places all around her as she read scriptures, attended church, and made good choices. In time, she was able to marry a good man and go on to raise a righteous family. Each decision she made along the path impacted her future options and led to the sacred place she made out of her life. These decisions can impact her family for generations to come and that gives importance to every seemingly small choice she makes.

Stand Firm

In her final talk as president, Elaine S. Dalton referenced a statue that can be found on a pier in Copenhagen. She has the replica on her desk. It is of a girl named Katrina, who became a Mormon and then came to America. The original statue faces the water and Sister Dalton noticed that she is facing into the wind, representing that she is doing something very difficult, but very right.

She likened this to the girls listening to her. They also stood poised on the brink of challenging changes in their lives and would need to stand strong against the winds that tried to blow them off-course. She encouraged them to “be not moved” regardless of worldly pressures.

Sister Dalton asked the girls to stand firm in four ways. First, she requested that they be not moved in choosing right.

Elaine S. Dalton told the girls she had recently revisited the high school she had attended. She was there for a religious conference, but in the audience were many people she had gone to high school with and even men she had dated as a teenager. She encouraged the girls to look ahead and to vow that they would never, as adults, be embarrassed by the choices they made as teenagers, particularly those choices they make in their relationships with others. The choices they make often impact other people, too. If they refuse to lower their standards on a date, it becomes easier for a boy to hold his standards high. When the two meet again at a reunion or somewhere else, they will not need to be embarrassed by the relationship they had.

This led to her second request, that they be not moved in their desire and commitment to remain virtuous and sexually pure. Satan was not allowed to have a body and in his fierce jealousy, he tries to convince us to abuse our bodies and to treat them disrespectfully. When we allow ourselves to practice addictions, moral sins, tattoos, and other poor choices related to the body God gave us we dishonor the gift God gave us and we also limit our own choices for the future.

Mormons are often taught that their bodies are temples. This is a comparison to the sacred temples in which Mormons go to make sacred covenants with God. Sister Dalton taught that our bodies house our own spirits, but they also have the potential to house the spirits of other children of God through motherhood. We have a sacred responsibility to keep that housing pure and ready to receive a precious child of God.

Third, Sister Dalton asked the girls to be not moved in being worthy to make and keep sacred covenants. A covenant is a two-way promise between God and ourselves. Mormons make their first covenants at baptism when they are eight years old (or older if they are converts). At this time, they promise to take on themselves the name of Jesus Christ and to keep His commandments. When they keep their promises, God vows to keep His own. Each week when they take the sacrament (communion) they renew those covenants. Covenants are made again in the Mormon temples in adulthood. They commit themselves to following the Savior and honoring and respecting their family relationships. However, they must have already achieved a fairly high level of faith and commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ before entering the temple and so they need to demonstrate their faith by actually living like a follower of Jesus Christ, rather than just saying the words. The teen years are critical to that process, since they often set the pattern for adult behavior.

“As you keep your baptismal covenant, you will look different, dress different, and act different from the world. Keeping this covenant will enable you to be guided by the Holy Ghost. Stand in holy places, and do not even go near those environments or music, media, or associations that might cause you to lose the companionship of the Holy Ghost.”

Finally, she asked them to be not moved in their acceptance of the Savior’s Atonement. Although girls should try to live a virtuous life at all times, everyone falls short. She advised them to accept the power of the atonement to bring about forgiveness when that happens. She invited them, should they be not feeling worthy to stand in holy places that day, to not live another day with that feeling. They can repent, something Satan does not want them to know. He doesn’t want them to believe they can ever change, but they can, with the help of God and Jesus Christ.

Love the Journey of Life

Dieter F. Uchtdorf was the final speaker. He is the second counselor to the president of the church. His theme was journeys. Our life is a journey that began in Heaven and ends with a return to Heaven. In between, we are here on earth. Our map for this journey is the gospel of Jesus Christ and can be found in the scriptures, in the teachings of God’s prophets (both ancient and modern) and in personal revelation we receive directly from God for our own lives. He reminded the girls that a map is useless if it isn’t read and followed.

He asked the girls to look around and to remember that every person in the room, every person they will ever meet, was valiant in the pre-mortal life, where Mormons teach we had to choose whether to follow God or Satan. Some people may have forgotten they were once valiant and might have lost their way, but they started out on the right path and so that potential for success is inside them. He reminded them that it is the Holy Ghost that converts, but it is their responsibility to be a good example, to share their faith, and to be kind to those who feel alone or lost.

To that end, he asked them to focus not always on what they want, but on the needs of others, to spend their mortality showing love to God’s other children. Finally, he also asked them to make this a joyful journey. Even though life is sometimes not ideal, and sometimes is even very painful, they can choose to be joyful.

This video was shown to the girls at the conference. It is about a teenager going to the temple and remembering all the things in her life that made her able to go.

Most Mormon classes are taught from a printed manual written many years ago. The new program is online, which means it can be updated as often as necessary. If a new talk or even occurs the week before the lesson is supposed to be taught, that can be included in the resources.

The new curriculum includes music, videos, and pictures, and many teachers are using their tablets or laptop computers to assist them in presenting the lesson. Teens can find those resources online, which means they can re-watch the videos or download the music at home. It brings in tools that are familiar and comfortable to teenagers and help visual learners process the material better.

The new lessons are not really teacher-taught. The teacher is more like a mentor or guide. Each month has a theme and the themes are listed with smaller topics, different ones for Sunday School and the class that follows, which is Young Men or Young Women. The students will study the same topic all month, but from different perspectives. The teachers select from a list that has more topics than can be covered, so she (or he) can choose the ones her class most needs. Students can even request a focus from the list.

The teacher studies all the materials and looks over all the suggested resources. Then she chooses the ones she feels will best help her own class. However, she won’t be standing in front of the class giving a lecture. Instead, she will guide the students to find answers to questions. For instance, she might ask why we have trials in life. She might show a video and play some music and then divide the class into groups. Each group will be given a reference material and a list of places the answers might be found. They study the materials, figure out the answers to the questions—and then teach it to their own classmates. In this way, a range of materials can be explored in a short time, with each group sharing the results of its research.

Students are free to ask questions that can be answered by the teacher or by the other students. Students, in fact, are encouraged to be the ones to give the answers. By asking and answering their own questions, a discussion begins and the lesson takes on a life of its own. It travels in the direction that meets the needs of the students. If they are particularly worried about something, or something is in the news that week related to the topic, they are able to explore it. At the end of the lesson, they decide if they understand that day’s topic well enough or if they’d like to continue it the following week.

During the week, students are expected to study the topic on their own in their own way, to have real-world experiences with the topic, and to come to class ready to share what they learned and to ask about what they didn’t understand. They take responsibility for their own spiritual growth—a method that is very different from the way they are used to learning. Many teens are finding it a challenge to learn this way at first, since it isn’t usually done that way in school and wasn’t done that way in church. However, once they get used to it, they love it. They love being able to participate, to have a variety of teaching methods, and to have more control over their learning experience.

Check it out for yourself:

Come Follow Me

Deseret News
Published: Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012 7:00 p.m. MST

David Letterman knows how to get a laugh.Like most comics, he riffs on the day’s news, deadpans the camera and revels in audacity.”Oh, did you hear about this?” the host of CBS’ Late Show with David Letterman asked his audience recently. “A campaign staffer on the Newt Gingrich campaign was fired because he was making negative comments about Mormons. I thought, now, wait a minute — isn’t Newt in favor of multiple wives?”
Laughter rumbled from the audience followed by applause. The polygamy punch line is a familiar one when it comes to poking fun at Mormons — as though Mormons and polygamy are synonymous in mainstream media. Ironically, the practice that’s most linked to Mormons is a practice most Mormons oppose, according to a groundbreaking new study of Mormons in America released Thursday by the Pew Research Center‘s Forum on Religion and Public Life.

According to the study, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unequivocally reject polygamy — only 2 percent said the practice is morally acceptable — evidence of a yawning gap in what Mormons believe and how they are perceived. Mormons’ opinions are overwhelmingly conservative, the study shows, but in many ways, their views are also surprising — especially when it comes to opinions on moral issues, divorce, homosexuality and polygamy.

Morality

Mormons also take a significant stance on moral issues in other areas, such as divorce, sex outside of marriage and consumption of alcohol.

Although teachings from the LDS Church emphasize the importance and eternal nature of the family, only 25 percent of Mormons surveyed said divorce is morally wrong, according to the study. That means Mormons are slightly less morally opposed to divorce than the general public.

“For Catholics, divorce does not exist. They think it is not only wrong but it is impossible,” said Matthew Bowman, member of a board of expert advisers to the Pew Research Center for the study and author of “The Mormon People,” a book on the history of the LDS Church. “That has not been true for Mormons. There is theological space for divorce within Mormonism. It is undesirable, but Mormons recognize it is sometimes necessary and sometimes the right thing to do.”

Other moral views revealed in the survey — 54 percent said drinking alcohol was morally wrong, compared with 15 percent of the general public — set Mormons apart, Bowman says. The assumption on the part of non-Mormons is that if Mormons think drinking alcohol is wrong, then they must think everyone who imbibes is morally flawed. That apprehension can make people suspicious of Mormons, and wary of an elitist attitude, he says.

Differences in moral viewpoints can create a stumbling block for Mormon acceptance — not only in high-profile arenas, such as a presidential election, but also in communities.
“What you find throughout the report is a tension,” said David Campbell, assistant professor at Notre Dame and an adviser on the study. “Mormons like to use the phrase, ‘Be in the world but not of the world.’ They are certainly living their lives in the world. They are active and involved in their communities, but they have these beliefs and practices that set them apart a little bit, and sometimes there is conflict.”

Homosexuality

Mormons have some of the most conservative opinions when it comes to homosexuality. The survey asked Mormons if homosexuality should be accepted by society or discouraged by society, with an option for neither, both or “don’t know.” The response — 26 percent said homosexuality should be accepted, 65 percent said it should be discouraged — puts Mormons as the least likely to say homosexuality should be accepted by society. But a 26 percent acceptance rate, with roughly 1 in 4 Mormons saying homosexuality should be accepted, might be surprisingly high to some.

Of particular interest is the fact that only 8 percent of Mormons surveyed identified themselves as liberal, and 66 percent said they were conservative. That means some of those who said homosexuality should be accepted also identify themselves as politically conservative, Bowman says. That distinction illustrates the complexity of Mormons’ opinion on sexuality — that it is rooted more in religious precepts than politics.
Still, it’s difficult to draw a conclusion about Mormons‘ views on homosexuality based on the study, says Pew Research Center adviser Terryl Givens, professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond.

“Results need to be viewed cautiously,” Givens says. “Official LDS pronouncements insist there is a distinction between (sexual) orientation and behavior, but the survey blurs that difference, probably leaving many Mormons unsure how to answer that question. What is clear, however, is that Mormons are trending toward greater acceptance of same-sex relationships, just as society as a whole is, although by a much smaller percentage.”

Polygamy

At one point 120 years ago, some Mormons practiced plural marriage, hence the association between Mormons and polygamy. The practice was discontinued in 1890, but the cultural association persists, perhaps in part because Mormons are sometimes confused with members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church, a polygamist group not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In the October-November 2011 study of a national sample of 1,019 Mormons, 86 percent said polygamy is morally wrong. That’s a number that surprises Bowman.

Were it not for the confusion surrounding Mormons and the FLDS Church practice of plural marriage, Bowman says that statistic might not be as high.

“It’s my experience that Mormons have a fraught relationship with polygamy,” Bowman said of the study results. “There is a sense that rejecting polygamy identifies a member of the LDS Church and distinguishes us from the fundamentalists. That is a cultural signifier as much as a theological statement.”

Some who responded to the survey, 11 percent, said polygamy is not a moral issue.
Email: achoate@desnews.com

Immigration is a controversial topic in the United States. The survey asked one question on this topic. They were asked which of two statements most closely matched their view, even if they didn’t completely agree. They were asked whether immigrants strengthen or burden the nation. No distinction was made between legal and illegal immigration, leaving those polled to decide for themselves what the question meant.

In the general U.S. population, 45 percent of Americans feel that immigrants strengthen the country, while 44 percent burden it. 12 percent feel that neither or both are true or they have no opinion on the subject. Mormon views closely mirror these statistics. 45 percent of Mormons also believe immigrants strengthen the nation, although a smaller number, 41 percent, consider them a burden on society. The number of Mormons who accept both or neither or who have no opinion is higher, at 14 percent.

These numbers put them at odds with evangelical Christians, one of the few political areas in which they disagree. Within the white evangelical population, 59 percent believe immigrants are a burden, and 27 percent believe they strengthen the country. Like Mormons, 14 percent answered both, neither, or no opinion.

The statistics for Mormons shows a strong divide based on age, income, and education, as well as on religious commitment. Only 36 percent of highly committed Mormons see immigrants as a burden, while 50 percent of those who are less committed see them as a burden. This largely correlates with economic status. 84 percent of Mormons who are highly committed to their religion are college graduates. (The church strongly encourages education, which may be a factor in this.) Only 50 percent of those with high school educations are strongly committed to their faith. This statistic is very unusual in the religious world. For most religions, the least educated are the most religious.

49 percent of Mormons under age 50 see immigrants as a strength. 39 percent of Mormons over 50 see it as a strength.

Beyond the study’s statistics, several other factors influence the Mormon view of immigration. Many Mormons serve missions for their church. For two years, they live wherever they are sent, learning the language and living as the people in that community live. They go into the homes, attend the churches, and do service work in addition to their missionary work. Many of those serve in Spanish countries and have a realistic view of the hardships faced by those people. They come home with a compassionate view of the world and an understanding that Americans have much easier lives than most. The love missionaries almost invariably develop for the people they served influences their views on immigration.

Finally, the church has taken very specific stands on the subject of illegal immigration in recent years. Mormons believe God has sent a prophet to lead His church, just as He has always done in ancient times, and so, Mormons are asked to sustain the prophet as the leader of the Church. Official statements from the prophet or the Church are considered to be from God.

The Church officially endorsed the basic principles of the Utah Compact, a law working to create a balanced legal approach to immigration. In November, 2011, L. Whitney Clayton gave an official statement from the church in honor of the first anniversary of the bill. The statement said in part:

The Utah Compact is consistent with three principles we believe should be carefully balanced when considering immigration:

• We follow Jesus Christ by loving our neighbors. The meaning of neighbor includes all of God’s children, in all places and in all times.
• We recognize an ever-present need to strengthen families. Families are meant to be together. Forced separation of working parents from their children weakens families and damages society.
• We acknowledge that every nation has the right to enforce its laws and secure its borders.

We continue to encourage lawmakers everywhere to consider laws that properly balance love of neighbors and the importance of keeping families together, within the framework of just and enforceable laws.” (See Utah Compact One-Year Anniversary Marked by Utah Community Leaders.)

The official Mormon position is to encourage its members to stay in their homelands or to immigrate legally, but once they are here, however they came, they are to be treated with love, dignity, and respect, and laws should not separate families.

For a more in-depth look at the issue of Mormons and immigration, read the Deseret News article: Mormons’ immigration attitudes set them apart, by Eric Schulzke, Deseret News, published: Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012 8:12 p.m. MST.

Mormons in Uganda

Throughout Uganda, work is being done by religious groups to help out and many people have moved above poverty.

The musical hints that religion can’t do anything to help with the serious problems of the world. In the last article, we showed how basic faith can make a big difference in the life of someone who is suffering. Today we’re going to look at what churches are doing to try to make poverty a thing of the past. Since this is a Mormon site, we’ll be talking about what Mormons are doing, but lots of faith-based groups are doing similar types of work. God’s people don’t just preach the gospel—they work to take care of God’s children.

In 2009, missionaries got together in Uganda, not to preach the gospel, but to just live it. A lot of refugees were pouring into the country because of dangerous rebel activities in the Congo. These refugees often arrived with nothing at all. The missionaries worked long hours to put together emergency supply kits for them, including blankets, cooking pots, rice, sugar, salt, cooking oil, soap, and mosquito nets. The Church had, at the time of the article linked to on the word missionary at the start of the paragraph, delivered more than 7,000 pounds of food to refugee camps, as well as blankets, cooking pots, and farming tools. Musa Ecweru, Uganda’s Minister of State for Disaster Preparedness, received some of these kits and said, ““Our good friends, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, go about quietly, without a lot of publicity, helping the needy people of Uganda,”

One serious problem in Uganda is that too many babies die. Often their lives could be saved if someone knew what to do for a baby who was not breathing at birth. The Mormons put together a program to train midwives and others in neonatal resuscitation. This means helping babies to breathe if they aren’t. The minister of health in Uganda took the class himself and he told the doctors that every time a baby dies in his country, it creates a 100,000-dollar deficit in his country’s economy. That means it hurts the economy that much. In the first six months after the May 2006 training ended, 646 babies were saved from death. How good is your math? Figure out how much that single effort by the church helped the Ugandan economy. When the economy improves, poverty is easier to fight.

Read how Mormons are saving babies from dying.

Mormons have a huge humanitarian aid program. This program isn’t just for Mormons. It’s for everyone in the village or area where they are working. They bring clean water into villages that never had it. Can you imagine drinking dirty water or having to walk hours to get water at all? That’s how a lot of people around the world live until the church goes in and helps the people to create a clean water source. They provide wheelchairs, glasses, vision treatments, farming help…all sorts of things that make life easier for those who are suffering. They also do things that will help people learn to help themselves so they won’t always have to depend on outsiders.

Some people might think it’s pointless to send missionaries into areas where there is a lot of poverty. But God loves all His children, no matter how poor they are. He wants them to know about Him, but He also wants them to be taken care of and made self-sufficient. For that, He needs His other children, the one with greater privileges, to go away from their comfortable homes and get to work. The Mormons have humanitarian missionaries in addition to their regular missionaries.

But it isn’t just missionaries helping out. Ordinary teenagers in Mormon churches also pitch in to make Uganda a better place. In their own communities they assemble kits like the ones mentioned above or go out into their villages to make something better. One group of teens in the US donated their old clothing to a church program. Their clothes were sent to a prison in Uganda. The women there were not given anything to wear and so they had to remain undressed until some teens in Utah decided to donate some of their clothing.

Take a look at the picture at the top of this article. It’s of a Mormon family in Uganda. The musical portrays Ugandans as primitive and stupid. Do you think they got Uganda right? How would you feel if all people in your country were portrayed the way Ugandans are treated in the musical? It might have made the musical’s creators feel “cool” to make fun of people, but Christians know we don’t treat others with that complete lack of respect. Nor do we just goof around being silly when there is serious work to be done, despite what the musical suggests.  While there are some people in Uganda who are poor, more and more are learning the skills and getting the health they need to move on—and Mormons and other religious people are helping to make that happen.

Mormon youth learn not to send mixed signals about Mormon beliefs.

The thirteenth is the longest but it gives a good summary of how Mormons try to live their lives. While no one is perfect Mormons try to keep their eyes on this goal. Here is the thirteenth Article of Faith:

“We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”

That’s a lot to remember in one article—and you might be interested to know that Mormon children and teenagers are asked to memorize all thirteen. Let’s take a look at what is covered by it.

We believe in being honest.

Honesty is an important part of Christian life. Most of us were taught as children that we should tell the truth. Many of us also heard the old folk tale of the boy who cried wolf. He was in charge of watching the sheep but because the job was dull, he sometimes livened things up by yelling that there were wolves when there were none. After a while, people stopped running to help when he called, since there never were any wolves and they knew he was lying. But one day there really were wolves. The boy shouted and shouted for help but no one came and many of the sheep died.

This boy’s dishonesty cost the village a great lost. If he’d had a reputation for truthfulness, the people would have believed his calls for help and come to his aid. You may not be in a position of responsibility for an entire village, but everyday your word is put to the test and there are consequences when you fail. Lies have a way of being found out and once people see you are not trustworthy you will have a hard time convincing them you’ve changed. You’ll find it hard to get them to trust you when you need them to do so. Trust is something that has to be earned by proving, over time, you are trustworthy.

Another aspect of being honest is mentioned in the next part of the thirteenth Article of Faith: “We believe in being honest, true….” What does it mean to be true? Being true means we are live what we know is right. We keep our promises. We live what we believe. People who watch our actions will know exactly what we believe and what kind of person we really are.

Suppose you tell everyone you go to church each Sunday. You belong to a church most people don’t know too much about. Because of this, your friends, teachers, and others watch you to find out what your church believes. Sometimes they might ask you questions, but mostly they just watch. If you cheat on exams, make fun of unpopular students, or are rude to adults, the people watching you will decide your church has low standards and will not think much of its power to change lives.

Perhaps you notice this and start telling people what your church believes. “My church teaches me to dress modestly.” However, at the next party, you show up in a skimpy outfit. Will your friends believe your words or your actions? They will believe your actions. It is easy to talk about beliefs; it is harder to live them. It’s what you live that tells people what you really believe. You might want to believe in modesty, but unless you are dressed modestly they won’t believe you really believe in it. Being true means to live the way you know you should. If you know you should live a certain way, live that way. Be true to yourself, your family, and God.

The next part of the statement is to be chaste. This means you show respect for yourself and your body. You dress modestly, knowing that the kind of attention you get for dressing immodestly is not the kind you want. You want to be noticed for who you are, not for what you look like. A person who respects herself (or himself) doesn’t try to get attention through revealing clothing. She works to become the best person she can be and takes pride in her skills, her intellect, and her character. That is how she wants to be noticed.

Chastity also refers to our intimate relationships with others. God gave us our bodies and planned for us to be attracted to people of the opposite gender. However, he placed rules on that attraction. Young people are advised to avoid serious romantic relationships until they are old enough to marry and then to avoid intimacy until marriage. While this may not always be fashionable, it is a safer way to live, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Be the sort of person who can present a special gift of intimacy to your spouse that you have never given anyone else. The law of chastity refers to both boys and girls, who are held to the same high standards.

In the next article, we’ll talk about the other parts of the thirteenth article of faith.

Many of the teenagers in the area served by the Kiev Ukraine temple are from small countries. Some of them said they were performing because they wanted the world to know their country existed. Coming from little countries like Belarus, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, and Ukraine, they are very proud of their national heritage, but feel the world may not remember them among all the bigger countries. One teen also said they wanted the prophet to know there was a rising generation he could count on to do the Lord’s work.

Because the church has so few members in these areas, many of the youth are aware that they are pioneers in their country, helping to spread what is a new religion to most of the people in their country. They know their examples will help to decide the future of the church there. This performance was one way they showed their commitment to bringing a new faith to their countries. They dressed in traditional costumes and danced the traditional dances of their cultures. Youth provided the orchestra as well. These were just ordinary teens, not professional performers and for many dancing in public might have been a challenging new experience. However, the prophet came to see their performance and when he clapped, they felt all their hard work had been rewarded.

Many of the teenagers said their testimonies were strengthened during the week they spent at the temple dedication and cultural celebration. For some, it was where they first received a testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel. Although fun, it was also a powerful spiritual experience for them.

The building of a temple in the Ukraine is something of a miracle. The church was organized for missionary work only six years ago. In that time, membership has grown to five thousand people. The first meetinghouse was only dedicated there in June. (There must be enough people in one area to have a meetinghouse built.) The temple will serve a large portion of Eastern Europe, allowing people to attend without having to go so far from home.

A Mormon temple is different from a meetinghouse. A meetinghouse, or chapel, is used for regular Sunday worship services and weekday activities. Anyone can enter these buildings, even if they aren’t Mormons.

The temple is different. Only members of the Church may go there and they must first be interviewed by a church leader to be sure they are living the moral standards of the church and have a testimony. Teenagers can go to the temple once they are twelve, but they can only enter certain parts of it. While they are there, they are baptized on behalf of people who died without having an opportunity to accept the gospel. This does not make those people Mormons and they are not listed on the church records as Mormons.

Mormons believe a loving God would never punish someone for not being a Christian or accepting the gospel when he had never even heard of it. That wouldn’t be fair and God is always fair. They believe if a person dies without that opportunity, God will allow them to be taught the gospel when they die and then they have the choice to accept it or reject it, just as they would have if they’d learned about it on earth. Even if a person knows it is true because he is dead, he might still prefer not to live according to the Savior’s teachings. However, the Bible says a person must be baptized. In the Bible, Paul mentions baptism for the dead in a way that shows the people listening knew about it:

Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead? (1 Corinthians 15:29.)

They can’t be baptized after they die, so even then, it would not be fair. They would have learned the gospel, accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, and then not be allowed to have a part in it. Because God loves all His children, even those who have never heard of Him, he prepared a way for this to be taken care of. People twelve and older can go to the temple and be baptized by immersion (being placed completely under water for a moment, as Jesus was) in someone else’s name. They must have already been baptized for themselves, of course, in a regular font in a chapel. It is then recorded that this was done for the person, but they are not made members of the church.

The names come from Mormons who research their own genealogy and turn in the names of their ancestors. Teenagers can help to give their ancestors a very special gift of love by doing this research and then being baptized for their families.

Watch the video below and see how Mormon teenagers in Eastern Europe are celebrating their new temple.

The first of the four items the author, Kenda Creasy Dean says is that teenagers need to know exactly what their religion expects from them and they need to be taught this by their parents and by their church community.

Teenagers in the survey mostly believed the purpose of life was to feel good about yourself and to be happy. The author suggests this feel-good doctrine isn’t what the Bible teaches and it isn’t enough to make teens committed to their religions.

In the last article, I mentioned Mormon teens attend a religion class every day. This class is one thing the author thinks the Mormons are doing right. By the time a teenager spends three hours in church on Sunday, forty minutes or so in a weekday religion class, and a few hours on weekends and one weeknight a month, they have a pretty good idea of what their religion teaches them

But the church meetings are only meant to help the parents out. It’s the parents, in a Mormon family, that have the main responsibility for teaching religion to their children. How do they do this?

Mormon families get together one night a week for Family Home Evening. They don’t generally invite friends or anyone else—it’s just a special time for the family. If you live in a busy family with parents who are always in a hurry, you might be able to appreciate how special it makes kids and teens feel when their parents put aside everything else one night a week, just for them. The evening is a combination of fun and learning. They usually have a prayer, a song, and family business. Then they have a lesson followed by games and treats. Everyone helps plan and carry out the evening, with each family member having a job. The jobs are usually rotated, so one week you might be teaching the lesson (yes, you’d get to teach your parents things and they’d have to listen as long as you followed the rules) and the next you might be baking the cookies for refreshments. Other weeks you might lead the music, conduct the meeting, or say the prayer.

The lesson is on some part of the family’s religious beliefs. Since even kids are teaching these lessons, everyone gets a chance to learn from everyone else. Parents get a chance at every lesson to explain what they believe and how they feel—but so do the kids. This way the parents understand what the kids believe and can help them correct or strengthen their beliefs as needed. There are a lot of opinions you could collect about almost anything, but as you grow up, you’ll find your parents’ opinions matter the most.

Mormon parents also pray with their children. Mormon teens were 79 percent more likely to pray with their parents more often than just meal time. Mormons do pray at meals, but they also have both family and personal prayers every morning and every evening. They pray before family home evening, before leaving on vacation, when people are sick or worried, or any other time they feel a prayer is needed.

So, what all this shows is that the Mormons give their teenagers a lot of chances to find out what their religion believes. They give them the same information they give adults. The teens aren’t treated like they aren’t smart enough to understand the hard stuff. They’re taught the hard stuff.

Now that we know how Mormon teens learn what is expected from them, let’s find out what Mormons actually expect their teens to know and do.

It started with Karl’s friend Helmuth Hübener, who was seventeen. Helmuth had a short-wave radio, which let him listen to broadcasts that weren’t approved by Adolph Hitler or the Nazi regime. The Nazis were gathering up and killing Jewish people and others they didn’t approve of and taking over many countries. However, the German people were only able to hear the news the Nazis wanted them to hear. When Karl, age sixteen, and Rudolf Wobbe, who was fourteen, started listening to broadcasts in German from the BBC, the British radio station, they realized there was far more to the story than their country was telling them. Helmuth was especially upset by this and felt his people should know the truth. He began to write what he was learning. He convinced his friends, who were initially nervous about this, to get the articles to the people by handing them to those passing by, sticking them in coat pockets, or posting them.

This was extremely dangerous, because people were encouraged to report anyone defying the Nazis. They could never be sure the people getting their fliers wouldn’t turn them in. They were Mormons, all in the same branch, and this made it even more challenging. Some Mormons supported the Nazis, not understanding what they were doing, and some did not. They knew some church members would disapprove of what they were doing, since Mormons are normally taught to obey laws.

Eventually they were caught. Helmuth was caught first. He was tortured for many days until he finally revealed the names of his friends, but he saved their lives through his courage. Despite the torture, he insisted it was all his doing and that his friends only handed out whatever he gave them. Because of this, the other two boys were not killed. Helmuth was beheaded.

The other two boys were sentenced to a work camp for five years. However, after a few years, Karl was captured by Russians while being sent to fight for the Germans and was put in a prisoner of war camp. By the time he was released, he weighed about 100 pounds even though he was six foot two inches tall. He had been given little food and made to work hard in terrible conditions.

You’d think he’d have spent the rest of his life hating the people who did this to him and that he’d be sorry he’d taken such risks. Instead, he learned to forgive those who had persecuted him. He often spoke to groups of teens and told them he’d do it all again. He worked hard to convince teens to stand up for what they believe, no matter what the consequences.

Karl immigrated to the United States, where he worked on gold leafing on the Salt Lake temple—he was a painter and craftsman. He also worked as a temple worker and wrote a book. A documentary was made about his life and next year a major motion picture starring Haley Joel Osment as Karl will be released.

Karl died recently, but his message to teenagers will live on: Stand for truth and righteousness. Be proud of who you are and what you believe. Fight for the right—no matter what the consequences or how young you are. You’re never too young to change the world for the better.