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 history should be very interesting to teenagers because so much of it involves teenagers. How many teenagers do you know who got to make history? Lots of Mormon teenagers did. In past blog entries, I’ve talked about Joseph Smith, the first president and prophet of the Mormons. Mormon history begins with him, and he was only a teenager when the story began. I’ve also talked about teenage pioneers from Mormon history. Some of them kept journals and many of them wrote their stories later, so today, we know the important role of teens in Mormon history. They were often heroes and Mormon history is filled with stories of their sacrifices and challenges. But you won’t find any of those wonderful teenagers in the typical history book. In fact, school textbooks often overlook the amazing contributions of teenagers in general.

How do we know about most of these teenagers in Mormon history? We know about most of them through their journals and personal histories. They didn’t know, when they were pioneers, that they were becoming part of American history and they never guessed their journals would be read and admired in our time. Do you keep a journal? Your life might look pretty ordinary to you, but in one hundred years, your experiences will seem amazing to people living in that time. They will be amazed at the hardships you faced without their technology and at your ability to get through hard moral times with your testimony of Jesus Christ intact and your values strong. Do a good job with your journal—and tell the truth—and you might become part of history. If you’re Mormon, make sure your journal includes lots of information about your life as a Mormon, because you just might find yourself a part of Mormon history.

I’m going to tell you now a little about a Mormon teenager from Mormon history who kept a great journal. The next entry will tell you about another teenager, although she didn’t keep a journal—but she did dictate her history to someone before she died. But today’s story is about a teenager named Jebulon Jacobs, a pioneer driver. Yes, he became famous for driving—but only because he kept a really great journal. His journal shows he had worked hard to learn good writing skills and he understood how to tell a great story. If you want to be remembered in Mormon history, learn how to write.

Jeb, as he was known, was a driver. Brigham Young, the second Mormon prophet, knew teenagers loved to drive then, just as they do today. So when he needed people to drive, he chose teens. Of course, they weren’t driving cars back then. They drove wagons and carriages pulled by horses. But it was driving all the same, and teen Mormon boys loved doing it.

Even after the first Mormon pioneers came to Utah, there were always new pioneers trying to get there. Brigham Young was always trying to find the best ways to help them and one of his ideas was to try “down and back” wagons—someone would drive a wagon down from Utah, pick up passengers in Nebraska, and drive them to Utah. Sounds like a taxi or a bus, right? Well, Zeb, who was a teenager at the time, was one of the pioneer taxi or bus drivers sent to help bring pioneers to Utah. He kept a diary of the experience that is considered one of the best pioneer journals we have.

Going out, they carried passengers who wanted to go east for one reason or another and also supplies. They left supplies along the route to be picked up when they were returning, so they could live more comfortably on the trip back when they needed the space for passengers. In Wyoming, he and the other “Utah Boys” stopped at a spot where earlier Mormon pioneers had been forced to stop due to snow. They had buried a lot of their things in order to lighten their load, hoping someone could collect them later on. Jeb and his friends dug up an entire piano, still in perfect condition!

Jeb drove the down and back runs for eighteen weeks. You can read about his adventures on the trail here:

Diary of a Teenage Driver

Now, what about your own diary? Be sure to keep it up and think about things people in the future might like to know about your life. You just might become a part of Mormon history, or even world history yourself as a result.

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.

Tyler and his father started to get up very early in the morning during the summers. For two hours before his dad left for work they would run drills at the church, which had a basketball court indoors. They drilled over and over again, doing a hundred or more free throws each morning, for instance, which isn’t exciting, but which helped him master the basic skills. Because he drilled so often he was able to do the right things in real games.

Not only did Tyler make the team, but he went on to become one of the best basketball players in the country in high school, being named Mr. Basketball twice, a rare accomplishment.

His dad feels that having to work harder than the other boys, and not being naturally talented at basketball, was probably a really good thing for Tyler. He learned that what helped him become a good basketball player could help him in all the other parts of his life, too. Setting goals and working hard could get him many of the things he wanted in his life.

One of the things he wanted was to serve as a missionary for his church. Tyler is a Mormon and most Mormon men give up two years of their life to serve God full-time at their own expense. When Tyler was just a child he set a goal to do this when he was nineteen, the youngest age men can go on missions. He worked hard to do the kinds of things that would make that possible. To serve a mission, a young man has to live a morally clean life, even in his teens. He needs to avoid alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. He must maintain high moral standards in his dating life. He attends church weekly, studies and learns his religion well, develops self-discipline and builds a strong testimony. What Tyler learned from becoming a good basketball player also helped him become a good missionary. He’s now serving in the Philippines for two years.

People thought it was a little weird for him to leave the Brigham Young University basketball team to serve a mission. He was doing great, was important to the team, was following in his dad’s footsteps as a basketball star. Why give that up to serve a mission?

Because he’d promised God to serve Him first, and that meant a mission came before basketball. And his father served a mission, too.

Tyler admits it would have been a hard decision to make if he’d waited until he was an eighteen year old basketball star to make his decision. He was able to make the right decision because he made it young and devoted his life to working toward it. He says he has learned that when he puts God first, God blesses him.

And basketball will always be there when he returns. For now, Tyler is putting first things first, just as he always has.

Meet Tyler Haws by watching this video about him.

His parents credit his education for his accomplishments, but it’s his education at home that has made the real difference. Although Robert goes to a good traditional school where he learns a lot, his parents supplement what he learns at home. This is called afterschooling.

What did Robert do after school that made him able to win out over the professionals? He went to school and worked hard, but at home, he devoted a lot of his time to learning even more. Schools don’t have time to teach everything and a lot of times, they don’t teach what you are most interested in. You can do that at home on your own or with the help of your parents.

Robert spends a lot of his free time at the library looking for great books to read. He reads and writes when he doesn’t actually have to. When he was little, his parents took him on a lot of “field trips.” They went on family outings that were fun, but were also educational.

As he’s gotten older, he’s taken on more of the afterschooling himself. He started teaching himself HTML and CSS, both necessary for building websites. In fact, he built his very first website in third grade for his class. He’s been learning web development for five years.

Robert’s parents encouraged their children to learn more than the school requires them to learn and to do the best they know how to do. They watched to see what excited their children and then showed them how to learn about it themselves.

What do you want to learn that your school isn’t teaching you at all, or that they aren’t teaching you enough about? Just because your school doesn’t teach it doesn’t mean you can’t learn it. The library is filled with books on practically everything. There is a lot to learn on the Internet if you’re careful to choose reliable sources. There are people at church and in your neighborhood who would love to help you learn the things they love to do.

You might not end up inventing a popular app, but whatever your talent, there is a lot you can do. Some teens have written best-selling novels by learning how to write on their own. Other teens start charitable programs. Or maybe your goals are a little smaller. Maybe you love the Revolutionary War but your teacher only spent two weeks hitting the highlights. The really good parts of any subject aren’t usually found in the highlights. They come when you dig way down deep into the subjects.

Start then by figuring out what you would love to know more about. It might be a subject you’re learning in school or it might be something your school doesn’t teach. Then figure out how to get your hands on more information. Think about the museums near your home, libraries, bookstores, teen clubs, programs at colleges…there is more learning going on in most towns than you probably know.

Now think about how you want to learn the material. If you love to read, you’ll probably want to find the best books. If you intend to become a best-selling author someday, write a book. You don’t have to try to get it published unless you want to. You can start a website on the subject and put all your articles up there. Make a list of the places, people, and books you used to learn the subject, so other afterschoolers can use them, too. If you’re an artist, maybe you’ll want to draw or sculpt or build what you learn. Songwriter? Write a song about it. There are hundreds of ways to show what you’re learning. Choosing a project helps you figure out what you really understand and where your learning gaps are. Another good way to test your knowledge is to teach the material to someone else. You have to learn something really well to teach it. All these methods let you test yourself without taking a boring test.

How much do you need to study? Well, you’re in charge of your afterschool education, so it’s up to you. Sometimes I’ll read a few articles on a subject and decide I know as much as I’m interested in knowing for now. Other times I’ll get really excited about something and keep right on reading book after book.

But here’s how it usually works. I will read a book about George Washington. Then I’ll get curious about his wife Martha, so I’ll switch and read about her. That book talks about her friendship with a former slave and I’ll realize I’m kind of interested in the history of slavery, so I’ll study that for a little while. Along the way, I’ll find a novel by an interesting author and read more of her books and maybe a biography of her life. One of her books is about time travel and I start wondering if it is even scientifically possible to travel in time. I find some books on the science of time travel, which get me interested in…you get the idea. One subject gets me interested in another and after a year or two, I’ve explored all kinds of different things. I’ve studied some of it a lot and some of it a little, but my world just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

That’s what learning is really meant to do—to make your world more interesting, more exciting, and a whole lot bigger.

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.