Most pre-teens and teens like to pretend their families are a burden, even though they secretly love them. He didn’t seem to see any need to pretend. He talked about how his family worked hard to be a great family and how they planned to be a family forever—even after death. He had my attention with that one. I loved the idea of being a forever family.

Mormon Boys Were Trustworthy

In high school our drama teacher made a rule that only the Mormon kids could drive when we had club parties or field trips. He’d noticed they were the ones who never got drunk and that they tried to be responsible in our activities. They also tended to be the leaders. I noticed all that, too.

Then I moved to a new high school. It was a little school and my first day everyone just stood back and watched and waited, trying to decide which niche I belonged to before anyone spoke.

Only one person didn’t bother to wait around. He greeted me the moment I entered Spanish class and, learning I was new, invited me to join his friends during break and lunch so I wouldn’t have to be alone my first day. He didn’t know what niche I should belong to, but it appeared he didn’t care. I wasn’t surprised to learn he was Mormon. I’d noticed the Mormon boys were like that.

Soon he invited me to visit his church’s youth group and to go on a campout the church group was having. He said it would help me meet other students, who, as I quickly learned, also didn’t care what niche I should belong to.

It was at the campout that I really began to see how the Mormon boys were different from other boys I knew. They had beautiful manners and treated the girls with so much respect. When we exited the van, they took our hands to help us down. They carried things for us and waited on us hand and foot—not because they thought we were helpless but because they wanted us to feel special and cared for. They didn’t just reserve that for their girlfriends. All the girls got the same royal treatment.

Mormon Boys Treat Girls with Respect

I noticed how nicely the boys with girlfriends treated them. The girls never had to worry about the boys pressuring them. The girls told me they shared the same moral standards and the boys never tried to go beyond those appropriate limits. In my experience, Mormon boys and girls helped each other maintain their standards by setting and keeping rules for their relationship.

After a while, I understood that this was because they had bigger goals than enjoying high school. While they were definitely enjoying their teen years, they didn’t bother to spend them getting into trouble. The boys were all preparing to go on missions when they were older. (At the time, they could go when they were nineteen. Today, they can go at eighteen.) This meant they needed to keep their moral standards high and to spend time learning how to serve and respect others. They had spent a lifetime learning to treat people with respect.

Not all of them did, of course. There were some who hadn’t caught the vision yet and, even when they had, they made a few mistakes—who doesn’t? Overall, though, I found the Mormon boys I knew to be more mature, more responsible, more trustworthy—and more fun. It was a pleasure to be with a boy who treated you with respect, who paid attention to your needs instead of just his own, and who knew how to have the kind of fun that wouldn’t get you in trouble if your parents saw you doing it.

I liked them so much I ended up marrying one! It was this focus on eternal things that made the difference then and that continues to make the difference now.

Mormon missionaries are usually 19-21 years old. By treating them as stupid and incompetent, it leaves the idea that young adults aren’t mature enough to do anything important, to be smart, or to make a contribution in the world.

Mormon missionaries know the Gospel of Jesus Christ very well.

In the musical, two young missionaries are sent to Uganda, in Africa, to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, they learn their training is no help when they face the poverty and hardships there. One of them doesn’t even really know anything about his religion, so he just makes up things, using Star Wars and Lord of the Rings mythology as if it were the Book of Mormon teachings.

Now, here’s where they show they don’t know how to do their homework. Mormons probably have the best youth education program around. Studies show Mormon teens can intelligently discuss their religion better than kids from any other religion. If you’ve ever gone to church with a Mormon friend, you can probably guess why that is. Not only do they attend a basic worship service aimed mostly at adults, so it isn’t watered down into feel-good religious teachings, but they also speak in those meetings. Anyone twelve and older can be asked to give a sermon, which Mormons call talks. You see, Mormons are a lay church. That means everyone is a volunteer. Since the bishop (like a lay pastor) has a family and a regular non-church job, he doesn’t give a sermon every week. Instead, two adults give talks, and the teenagers also speak once a year or more. If there are enough teens, there are teen speakers every week. If not, they are assigned periodically throughout the year.

Giving a talk means the teens have to study the assigned topic in order to write their own talk. In addition, they are often asked to teach their youth classes, which requires a lot of study and preparation.

Then there are the classes. Every Sunday, teens attend the basic worship service, a Sunday School class that focuses on the scriptures in a four year rotation (two years are spent on the Bible, one on the Book of Mormon, and one on Church History and the Doctrine and Covenants) and one Young Men or Young Women class. This last class is often more focused on practical application of Christian living.

Every weekday morning during the school year, Mormon teens study the gospel in an academic-style religion class, usually held very early in the morning before school. In addition, they have a weeknight activity where they put gospel principles into actual practice. For instance, if they learned about service on Sunday, they might do a service project on Wednesday. If they learned to dress modestly on Sunday, Wednesday might be devoted to learning how to sew modest skirts. Then there are weekend activities, youth conferences, and spiritual camps.

If that isn’t enough, each family teaches the gospel on Monday nights to their own families, with family members taking turns doing the teaching. They have a daily scripture study as a family and regular prayers.

Once they finish high school they attend the academic-style seminary, where they study the gospel in great depth most days. These are often held on or near college campuses.

Before leaving on a mission, a young man or woman must be interviewed and shown to know his religion and to be living it. He attends training before he goes.

Does it seem likely to you a Mormon nineteen-year-old is going to get to Africa not knowing the difference between the Book of Mormon or Bible and Star Wars? Just a few minutes of homework would have told the creators of the show that they were on the wrong track. Very few religions put their children, teens, and young adults through such rigorous training. Not only do they have to have read their scriptures all the way through multiple times, but they spend more time studying and practicing their religion than do most people.

Mormons trust their young adults with the very important work of teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Even a three-year-old can be asked to give a talk to other children and by the time they are in college, they are considered mature and responsible enough to do the most important work there is–testifying of Jesus to the world. The creators of the musical seem to think young adults are only silly kids who can’t do important work properly, can’t know what they believe, and can’t be trusted to share Christ’s gospel. Othewise, they wouldn’t have portrayed them as people who know nothing. Whether you’re Mormon or not, if you’re a teenager or young adult, you should be offended by this attitude.

The musical gets a whole lot more wrong than just the missionaries or even the Mormons. Next article we’ll talk about how they get Christianity wrong in general.

Finding a church to join is like a quest. You can just guess which church is true, but that’s pretty dangerous. If you’re going to commit to a religion, you want to be sure it’s the right one. The only way to know for sure which church is the true church is to ask God.

Today, we’re going to learn about a  teenager who did just that. We’ve talked about him before, but we’re talking about him today as an ordinary teenager who wanted some answers. He was fourteen when he started to worry about which church to join. He wasn’t alone in this, though. All around him, people were worrying about which church they ought to join. His area was suddenly filled with ministers and pastors holding revivals and competing for new converts. Everyone was talking about religion, arguing about it, worrying about it. People went from one revival to another, trying to figure out which church they liked best.

Joseph Smith, the teenager in our story, was just like the others. His mother and siblings were all attending these revivals and he went with them. His father didn’t attend, not believing that was the best way to choose a church. He preferred to study quietly at home for now.

Joseph went and his family seemed to be deciding on one particular religion, but Joseph just couldn’t be sure. He thought that religion sounded pretty good, but he felt like it was such an important decision and he didn’t want to make the wrong choice.

The problem was that every minister said he was teaching God’s truth and yet, each minister taught something different. Sometimes it was just little differences, but sometimes they were big differences. Joseph Smith felt that God would have one set of truths, not lots of conflicting ones. After all, the Bible says, “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints” (1 Corinthians 14:33, King James translation of the Holy Bible.) Conflicting information was confusing.

But how was a person, especially a teenager, supposed to figure out who was right? While he was trying to decide, he started reading the Bible. One day he found a verse that caused him to stop what he was doing and to think about the problem in a whole new way. This verse was in the New Testament and was written by James, whom some people think is Jesus’ half-brother. The verse says:

5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed (James 1:5-6.)

This made complete sense to Joseph Smith. People might lie to him or they might be mistaken, but God knew what was true and he wouldn’t lie. Joseph Smith had been raised to trust God, so he felt this was the solution to his problem.

He decided to go into the woods near his home and put this promise to the test. He wanted to be alone and he lived in a typical small home filled with parents and siblings. He also wanted to pray aloud, something he’d never done before. He went into the woods and knelt down and prayed.

Now, if you decide to put this to the test yourself, you probably aren’t going to get the results he did, but this was a special situation because God had plans for Joseph, so His answer had to be bigger than usual. First I’ll tell you what happened to Joseph. Then I’ll tell you what you will probably experience when you give your own prayer.

When Joseph prayed, Satan tried to stop him from continuing. Satan, like God, knew the plan and didn’t want it to happen. Once that ended, a light appeared in the air above Joseph. He saw two personages in the light. One was God and one was Jesus. He knew this only because God pointed to the other personage and said it was His Son, Jesus Christ, and that Joseph must listen to Him.

Jesus explained that Joseph Smith must not join any of the churches then in existence because none of them completely taught the truth. They had pieces of the truth, but none of them had the entire truth or the authority to carry out the complete program.

Why not? After Jesus died, His apostles ran the Church, but they eventually died or were killed. Because most of the people were more anxious to kill Jesus’ leaders than to listen to them, God withdrew His authority from the earth for a time. The small number of Christians remaining were very brave and did their best to keep things going but it’s hard to keep things going in a straight line without a prophet.

Even before the apostles died, various church groups were falling into apostasy. The apostles wrote many letters trying to straighten out false doctrine that developed. When they were gone, there was no one with that authority. And to make it worse, sometimes new issues came up and there was no way to find out what God wanted them to do about those things, so they had to guess. Over time, people didn’t agree on those guesses and they’d break away and start a new Christian church. Eventually there were a lot of churches all teaching different things and none of them held the whole truth because they’d all pieced together doctrine from other religions or what they thought the Bible meant.

God told Joseph to wait, so he did. Eventually, an angel named Moroni was sent to help prepare Joseph to restore the Church to what Jesus had established.

In the meantime, though, Joseph was a teenager trying to decide what church to join. The solution he chose is the same one you can choose, because that promise from James wasn’t just for Joseph. It was also for you.

Next post, I’ll tell you how to pray, in case you don’t yet know how, and what to expect from your prayer, since God and Jesus probably won’t come visit you in person.

Mormon teens celebrate the birth of

Yes, Mormons celebrate Christmas. Mormon beliefs include accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior and so they celebrate His birth. They do a lot of spiritual things to celebrate, but most Mormon families also do the fun stuff associated with the more secular celebration. They’re just asked not to let that part become more important than the spiritual parts.

This means if you’re having a Christmas party, you can invite your Mormon friend. Mormons do go to parties—in fact, most of them are pretty big fans of parties, but they do have a few rules about the kinds of parties they will go to, especially if they’re teenagers. Here are the rules so you’ll know how to prepare:

Refreshments:

Mormon teens don’t drink alcohol, use drugs, or smoke. They don’t go to teen parties where people are doing those things, either, especially since it’s illegal, but also because they aren’t comfortable in that environment. If that’s the kind of party you have, don’t invite your Mormon friend because you’ll put her in an awkward position—but you might ask her to show you how to plan a different type of party one day so you can decide if her kind is more fun. You might be surprised.

Mormon teens don’t drink coffee or regular tea. (Herbal teas are okay, as long as there is no real tea in it.) They do drink sodas. Some Mormons choose not to drink sodas with caffeine, so ask your friend if you’re not sure. They can also drink other things, like juice or milk.

Music and Dancing:

Mormon teens are careful about the kinds of music they listen to. They can listen to most of the popular music but they try to avoid music with lyrics that send a bad message or music that stirs up the wrong kinds of feelings.

Your Mormon friend probably has a booklet called For the Strength of Youth. This book explains the moral standards Mormon teenagers try to live up to. You can ask your friend for a copy or read it online.

Read For the Strength of Youth.

This booklet will help you figure out what your friend is comfortable with at a party. The booklet talks about music and says:

“Choose carefully the music you listen to. Pay attention to how you feel when you are listening. Don’t listen to music that drives away the Spirit, encourages immorality, glorifies violence, uses foul or offensive language, or promotes Satanism or other evil practices.”

Give some thought to the music you’ll be playing at your party. There are a lot of great songs that meet those standards. Your Mormon friend doesn’t expect you to only play Christian music, but do listen to the words of the songs you are planning to play to see what they’re really saying. Then choose the ones that won’t offend anyone. There are so many choices you won’t have trouble finding moral music that is fun for everyone else. Your friend will probably have some you can borrow, as well.

Mormons are allowed to dance. In fact, most congregations hold regular free dances for their teens and their teenagers’ friends. Before going to them, you have to meet with a church leader for a few minutes and learn the rules. You’ll have to agree to obey them and you’ll get a little card that says you’ve promised to do that. The card lets you into the dances. If you attend a few, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what kind of party Mormons like. Just like everything else, though, there are standards for the dancing your Mormon friend will do. Here’s what For the Strength of Youth says:

“Dancing can be fun and can provide an opportunity to meet new people. However, it too can be misused. When dancing, avoid full body contact with your partner. Do not use positions or moves that are suggestive of sexual behavior. Plan and attend dances where dress, grooming, lighting, lyrics, and music contribute to a wholesome atmosphere where the Spirit of the Lord may be present.”

The secret, then, is to imagine God or Jesus at your dance as a chaperone. If you think your friend would still be willing to be there with God in the room, it’s probably okay. After all, Mormons believe the Holy Ghost is always with them as long as they are where the Holy Spirit is comfortable being. If the Holy Ghost flees, they do, too.

And speaking of chaperones…your Mormon teen will expect a chaperone to be present. It’s likely her parents will call your parents to make sure your parents will be monitoring the party.

It really makes a party easier when responsible adults are watching. How many times have you found yourself in an awkward situation at a party and wished there was an adult to stop it so you wouldn’t have to? When a parent is around, kids are not likely to drink, be destructive, or try to put you in an uncomfortable moral situation. You will be free to have fun without worrying that someone will get carried away and ruin everything.

Mormon teens have high moral standards, so they aren’t going to want to go to a party where most people are kissing. They prefer to keep things light—dance, eat, talk, play games…it’s safer and really, it’s more fun. You get to know a lot more people when you don’t pair off in a dark corner all night. The best way to keep that from happening is to have a plan for the evening. Keep things moving along and when people start wandering off on their own, get them back into the mix by announcing a new game or activity.

If you’ve never had the kind of party we’re talking about here, gather up a few Mormon friends, or other kids with high standards, and ask them to teach you how to do it. The planning is more fun in a group and the party will be more fun, too. Your friends can help you co-host it and watch for problems.

Now for the other parts of Christmas:

It’s perfectly okay to give your Mormon friend a Christmas gift, but don’t spend a lot of money on it. A lot of Mormon teens like simple gifts or even gift certificates—not to a store, but for time with you or a service from you. Be creative. Offer to do a little sewing if she can’t sew and you can. Give a book of coupons for help with algebra or a special outing in which you let her choose the activity,

You could even give her a gift certificate that says you will go to church with her three times. She’d rather have that than anything else, and it won’t cost you a dime. (Mormons don’t pass a collection plate, even.) You wouldn’t have to join or commit to anything but a chance to learn more about her beliefs and an important part of her life you might not know too much about.

So, Christmas is coming and your Mormon friend is celebrating with a  mixture of hymns, uplifting stories, scripture reading…and parties and gifts. Enjoy the season with her.

Mormon teens were able to explain to her that the purpose of life was to grow spiritually and to be tested, with the eventual ability to return to Heavenly Father if they keep the commandments. Other teens, she felt, were more vague about the purpose of life, which tended to be that they were supposed to be happy and feel good about themselves.

The difference between those things is part of the secret to why Mormon teens did better in the interviews. If the purpose of life is to be happy and have good self-esteem, it creates a very self-centered focus on life. Life turns out to be all about you, which is why some people are calling young people part of the Me generation. Mormon teens are taught it isn’t all about them and it isn’t all about this life. They have an eternal goal that requires hard work, sacrifice, and a focus on other people. Now, it just so happens that when you’re working hard, sacrificing, and focusing on other, you will be happy most of the time and you will have good self-esteem, but those are not the only focus.

Yes, God wanted us to be happy, but not in a worldly way. Happiness in a worldly way might mean you get to spend your teen years playing video games and hanging out at the mall. What Mormons are after is joy. They have a scripture that says that man is that he might have joy. Joy is different than plain old happiness. It is the feeling that comes when we make Jesus Christ the center of our world and let our love for Him determine how we will live.

Mormons believe we are saved by grace. Grace came to us because Jesus took on Himself our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane. That doesn’t mean we don’t have to pay any price for our sins; it just made it possible for us to be forgiven for them if we repent. He also died on the cross for us and then was resurrected. Because He overcame death, we can too. So grace allows us to live forever, to choose to repent of our sins, and to return to live with God if we are worthy. This gift of grace is given to everyone who has ever lived on the earth and there are no requirements and there are no actions required, not even believing in God. It is a free gift.

However, what’s free is pretty much never as amazing as what we can get when we’re willing to work for it. So, although living forever is a free gift, we can upgrade our eternal status by keeping the commandments. You can’t just work your way back into heaven, though. This is a little tricky. The truth is that when we love someone we want to make them happy and we want to be what they want us to be. Because we love God and Jesus Christ, we want to do what They’ve asked us to do and to be what they’ve asked us to be. The more we love Them, the more we want this and the easier obedience becomes. So our actions must come from love for God, not for the mere desire for rewards. If we do all the right things on the outside, but our hearts are wrong, we get nothing for it. If we love God and we’re doing what we’re supposed to do because we love Him, that’s when the rewards come.

God said that everyone who says “Lord, Lord” won’t get into Heaven (Matthew 7:21).To get into Heaven, you have to keep the commandments. This is because believing isn’t enough. Jesus also taught even the devils believe in Jesus. It does no good to believe in Him if you aren’t also willing to obey Him and if you don’t love Him.

All of this is part of a great plan of salvation God taught us and that we agreed to before we were born. Mormon teens know they lived with God before they were born. They were spirits there, but they were themselves. After living there and learning and deciding what kind of person they were going to be God taught them it was time to grow up and leave home for a while—just as you will someday. The place we’d be going was called Earth and we’d be born into families and get bodies. But we’d also be tested  here. We’d have trials and be expected to learn how to resolve them and overcome them.

This means Mormon teens don’t expect life to be always easy and fun. They know God won’t always step in to keep us from experiencing hardships because we wouldn’t  learn anything that way. They do know He is listening when they pray, and they know He will answer their prayers, but He won’t always answer them the way we ask Him to. God is in charge and knows what is best for us. He can see much further into the future than we can. Sometimes what we think we want is all wrong. Still, if He makes us suffer for a while or gives us something different than we asked for, He will be there to comfort and guide us. Mormon teens trust God.

Trusting God gives them hope. They know what He promised them—eternal happiness in His presence and the privilege of being with their families forever. They want this and they believe they are capable of getting it. It might be hard work, but Mormon teens aren’t afraid of hard work. They’ve grown up with it.

Can you see how all of this gives them hope? They are in charge of their eternal futures. That doesn’t mean everything on earth will happen just the way they want it, but if they do God’s will, serving God and serving others, they will get the very best God has to offer. It’s entirely up to them. No other person can keep them out of Heaven. God has told them exactly how to get there and they’ve confirmed it through personal prayer, not the promises of men. They’re in charge because they know God is in charge and will always keep His promises.

God makes covenants with His children. He sets the terms but if we do our part, He always does His part. This brings Mormon teens an extraordinary sense of stability, comfort, and hope for the future. It’s even more than just hope…it’s knowledge that their eternal life can be perfect.

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.

You have to see this!