A Mormon Woman's Reflections on Life and the Gospel of Jesus Christ

Mormon Youth: Lights to the World

Dear Friends:

Here is a simple way you can really really help promote positive images of members online!

More Good Foundation, as you know, is working to provide honest seekers with correct information and accurate perceptions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members.  We have found that many of the public at large equate us either with the Amish, or with the polygamous groups that have recently been in the news.  In spite of the rise to stardom of many LDS people (David Archuleta, Chelsie Hightower, etc.) and the general knowledge that they are Mormon, people still aren’t figuring out who we are.  Because of this, we desire to add additional images to all the articles on all of our sites to show Mormons in action, going about our daily routines, jobs, church work, recreation, and milestone events. We’ve just created a site called LDSImages dot com where we will place these photos, so that those Googling Mormon images can find something positive that reflects our enjoyments, families, friends, activities rather than those that confuse our image with other religious groups.

This is a request that you will network with your own friends, even forward this message, so that we may gather in some great photos.  We need the images in jpg format, and you can email them to me at email@moregoodfoundation dot org. These can be pics of your own family, in your home or yard; photos of weddings, missionaries, humanitarian aid projects, groups of kids playing at games or sports, family home evenings, proms, seminary/institute gatherings, reunions, anything at all that shows who we are and how we look.  If you have a couple of paragraphs of content to go with the photo, it would be awesome. If not, send them anyway. If you send us a picture, that means we have your permission to use it.  Please include any info identifying the scene–”Joe and Lizzie Sikes upon their marriage at the Provo Temple, 4/08.” We will upload images without identifying individuals, with generic captions such as “Mormon family temple wedding,” or with first names only, so let us know your preference.  If you have images of Saints in other countries, we would also be very interested in using those permissible as well.

Whether amateur photographer, scrapbooker, or professional, we’d love your clean, crisp photos of Mormons in action.  If you are an artist who does charcoal or pencil drawings of Mormons, or who is willing to share any other images of members’ or Church-related images, please feel free to contribute.

By the way, if you are posting photos on Flickr, or other photo-sharing sites, and if you don’t have descriptions on them, friends of other faiths may not stumble upon them.  If you share them with us so we can add them to our repository with titles and descriptive post, they will make a difference in what is visible to those seeking to see who we are online.

Thanks so much for all your help. Please circulate this everywhere you can within the circles of your LDS community.

Hi all. I’ve decided to change course a bit, and to share more consistently personal reflections on various Mormon themes and other gahoozits that cross my mind in the course of a day. I’m going to parlay some of the other issues–cultural action alerts, etc.–onto another site.

I’d really love for anyone to come and ask questions about my life as a Mormon woman. Have I been exempt from challenges? No, hardly. The gospel is a resource in times of difficulty and when the fire gets really really hot, not an exemption from those trials. I’ve learned that we don’t need to bow out or duck down but that our testimonies can stand the heat, and I want the world to know that I know who I am, what I stand for, why I stand for it (and what I don’t stand for ).

I’d ask the press to talk with us, individuals, not as official spokespersons, but as real, genuine livers of the faith, to find out what you’d like to know about us. Peer into our lives. Avoid the temptation to share controversy for the sake of hoping you get better bylines or exposure. Find us. Ask us. I’d be happy to talk with you about my life, the temple, my conversion, my faith–as an ordinary member of the Church. Having lived it for 30 years, I have at least one valid perspective.

Thanks for coming. Let me know your thoughts.

Karen

The HBO show, Big Love, in its third season, is a drama created around a modern  polygamist Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) dealing with his immoral and power-laden relationships in a shared suburban home.  HBO claims that it is about the “evolving institution of marriage” and justifies its viewership in that context.

Set in Salt Lake City, it confuses the public about who Mormons are and how distinct they are from polygamist sects.  “Mormon Polygamist” in our day is an oxymoron. Anyone who is a practicing polygamist at this time is not a recognized member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Marriage as an institution is natural and everlasting; what individuals do to alter it, and what diseases creep into it, are human-made.  It itself doesn’t evolve; where the world’s standards  decline, the institution suffers and the forms of love become warped or diluted.

A statement by the Church Newsroom and a video clip follow:

Over the past few weeks, Church Public Affairs has received numerous calls from newspaper, magazine and TV entertainment writers about a new television series called Big Love. In the series, set in a modern suburb of Salt Lake City, the main character keeps up a deceptive life in a fringe world of polygamy with his three wives and households. Journalists want to know what the Church thinks of the program, the subject matter and HBO’s decision to promote it. (more…)

This is a Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) video clip of an early filmstrip about the purpose of our lives. All of us seek to know why we’re here, where we’ve come from, and where we are going after this life. There are real answers to these questions of the soul.
For more information, visit mormonbeliefs.org or lds.org.