Some service volunteers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints serving in the Middle East wanted to stay where they were when Iran began to launch missiles into the countries where they served.

They left this week anyway after receiving guidance from Church leaders that their region wasn’t safe enough.

The Church is taking a pragmatic approach to advising its members, service volunteers and staff in its Middle East/Africa North Area. Some were moved or went home, even before the first attacks. Others are sheltering in place. Still others have been advised to make individual decisions.

“Our prayers are for everyone in the region,” said Elder Anthony D. Perkins, a General Authority Seventy who is the area president and has been supervising the affairs of the Church in the region for eight-plus years.

Church statement on the evolving situation in Iran

The area presidency oversees a region comprising 21 nations and territories. The Church has members in 14 of those countries and had service volunteers in 11 of them until the recent hostilities began.

There have been no reports of any Church members, service couples or staff members being injured, said Elder Perkins, who receives daily updates.

The Church’s approach to keeping members and volunteers safe mirrors United States government policy. While the State Department issued a general recommendation for Americans to evacuate much of the Middle East, it has asked people to heed the advice of the U.S. embassy in each country.

In several countries, including Israel, the embassies have issued advisories that it is safer for people to stay in place than to evacuate. That is why the students, faculty and staff at the Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center, for example, remain in place in a safe area of the city that is outfitted with bomb shelters.

The Church does not have missionaries in the region because it has agreements not to proselyte in Muslim countries or in Israel, Elder Perkins said. Instead, it has service volunteers who are married couples who either do humanitarian work or support local wards and branches.

The Church is facilitating travel for service volunteers and staff who decide to leave and can do so safely. Some have been moved to Egypt, which has not been under attack.

Only 20% of Latter-day Saints in the region are Americans. Many are Filipinos. Church members work in most of the region’s U.S. embassies, Elder Perkins said.

Nonessential U.S. embassy personnel have been ordered to leave by the State Department. They have been advised to make individual decisions based on employer requirements and their personal circumstances.

Other Latter-day Saints work on U.S. military bases or for other international interests.

The Church provided guidance to general Church membership during today’s sacrament meetings across the Middle East — they are held on Fridays in the region instead of Sundays.

“We communicated to the Saints that the Church is very concerned about their safety and well-being, and we’re praying for them,” Elder Perkins said. “We communicated that we report to the Brethren on a daily basis, and we’ll provide counsel as we receive it from the local embassy or Church security.

“In the end, they should be following the Spirit about their own circumstances and what they do and not do. We don’t feel like it’s the Church’s position to mandate that members stay or mandate that they leave.”

Elder Perkins said he had spoken in the past 24 hours with each of the area’s stake and district presidents, each of whom is responsible for multiple congregations.

“Most of the members are approaching this with a spirit of faith and not a spirit of fear,” Elder Perkins said he was told. “For some of them, who’ve been out there for 20 years, it’s really become their home, and they’ve been through [conflicts] before.”

The Church released a statement on Saturday, Feb. 28, after hostilities began.

“The safety and well-being of people are always a priority in a situation of this kind,” it said. “This region is home to thousands of Church members.”

How the BYU Jerusalem Center is protecting students

The BYU Jerusalem Center released a security update on Wednesday, March 4, reiterating its decision to have students and staff shelter in place. The plan was shared with students at the center and with their parents via videoconferencing on Tuesday.

“Our first priority is student safety,” the statement said.

The center is located in a safe area of the city surrounded by sites considered holy to Muslims. The center also has extensive security and is equipped with shelters and safe rooms.

One piece of shrapnel, part of a missile intercepted by a defensive weapon, did land on the grounds of the center over the weekend while students were in shelters, according to the center’s security updates.

“Shrapnel cannot penetrate shelters,” stated one of the center’s updates. “Everyone in the center has been in the center’s shelters and safe rooms during these attacks on targets elsewhere in Israel. Typically, they have been in a shelter for 20-30 minutes — the time between the siren signaling the launch of missiles in Iran aimed at Israel and the all-clear siren at the end of the attack.”

The latest statement said that BYU’s security experts believe staying in place is the least risky option, better than evacuating by bus to Cairo, Egypt, or to Amman, Jordan, because Iran has launched missiles into urban areas west of Jerusalem, jeopardizing travel.

Staying put also allows the students to continue their studies, the statement said.

The statement said the center is following the guidance of the U.S. government.

“While a State Department official urged all Americans in the Middle East to evacuate to either Cairo or Amman in an announcement on Monday,” the statement said, “the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem urged its employees to shelter in place.

“Likewise, the government of Israel urged Israelis with U.S. or other non-Israeli passports to shelter in place. And in a broadcast around noon Tuesday [Jerusalem time], Ambassador Mike Huckabee also urged U.S. citizens in Israel to shelter in place.”

December 2025: Elder Bednar ministers in Middle East, central Asia

October 2023: First Presidency issues statement on Middle East violence

AI is a defining issue today, and artificial intelligence companies need to ensure that their programs have a moral compass and honestly reflect religious beliefs, Elder Gong said at the Collegio Teutonico in Vatican City on Tuesday, Oct. 21, during the Rome Summit on Ethics and Artificial Intelligence.

“When we promote human-centric, accurate and respectful, ethical and faith-based standards for artificial intelligence and embed within AI moral grounding and moral compass,” he said, “we embrace our divine identity and purpose and promote human flourishing for the common good.”

Elder Gong and other summit participants toured the Sistine Chapel on Monday night. They joined the summit at Pope Benedict Hall in the Vatican for wide-ranging discussions about the implications of AI.

“We do not fear AI, nor do we think AI is the answer to everything,” Elder Gong said. “AI is neither the sum of, nor the solution to, all our opportunities or problems.”

He shared some of the concerns raised by other religious leaders and public policy experts.

“God is God. AI is not and cannot be God.”

Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

“We deplore addictions and evils that AI is being used to enhance,” Elder Gong said, “including AI ‘adult companions,’ AI-generated pornography and AI-driven gambling.”

“We recognize AI can supercharge digital dopamine,” he said. “This includes social media algorithms optimized to increase each person’s use; draw in more users; maximize advertising; and monetize rage. And, for good and ill, we know AI-enhanced virtual reality, robotics and other leading-edge technologies are coming.”

He said Latter-day Saint computer programmers at BYU have begun creating a robust AI tool of their own to test how well artificial intelligence programs reflect faith and religion.

“Portraying faith traditions accurately or respectfully is not an imposition of religion on AI. Rather, it is a public necessity,” he said. “It is especially needed as increasing numbers of individuals ask AI about faith and belief, and as AI becomes a primary source of information about faith traditions.”

Some leaders noted during the summit that AI programs regularly return incomplete, inaccurate information to questions about their own faith’s beliefs.

“Ideally, AI should accord nondiscriminatory accuracy and respectful portrayal to as many individuals and groups as reasonably possible,” Elder Gong said.

He indicated that the BYU team is beginning to collaborate on the project with evangelical, Catholic and Jewish computer scientists at Baylor University, the University of Notre Dame and Yeshiva University.

“We look forward to adding other universities from across the international diversity of faith and ethical traditions,” Elder Gong said.

He likened the current age to Prometheus and his stolen fire, Icarus and his wings of wax, and the Tower of Babel.

“Today there is too much glib talk about ‘AI becoming God’ or ‘godlike AI,’” he said. “Let us be clear: God is God. AI is not and cannot be God.”

Elder Gong has a background in information studies. In the 1980s, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz assigned Elder Gong to study the information age’s impact on diplomacy.

Last year, Elder Gong was asked to share guiding principles about AI to the general authorities and general officers of the Church and its employees.

“The Church is creating protocols to guard against intentional misuse of AI, such as deepfakes,” he said, “to caution against overdependence on AI for companionship, life guidance or emotional support.

“We are warning against anthropomorphizing AI; AI undermining divine principles of work, faith and reasoning; and AI becoming a counterfeit for something it is not, such as a divine source of inspiration.”

New AI-powered search assistant added to General Handbook

Elder Gong gives 3 ways global faith leaders can act on AI-centered issues

At BYU Education Week, Elder Gong shares the most important thing a person should understand

Elder Bednar counsels young adults on artificial intelligence, moral agency during worldwide devotional

“It is the most significant time in my life where I have felt the love and prayer of other people,” Bishop Schaub said in a video from the Church released Monday on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.

He said members of the ward in Grand Blanc, Michigan, are “quite shaken in spirit and in body.”

“It hurts,” he said, adding that he knows Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are aware of the challenges he and his ward are experiencing.

“I know that through our Savior, Jesus Christ, we can find joy again. I know that with His help, there can be healing. And I know that as we focus on Him, we can have joy,” Bishop Schaub said.

Split-second decisions led to lifesaving actions

Brian Taylor was one of more than 100 people in fast and testimony meeting on Sunday when the alleged gunman ran his pickup truck into the front of the meetinghouse.

Taylor relayed the events of that morning to the Deseret News.

He said the chapel was rocked by what sounded like an explosion as one member of the ward was bearing testimony. Then a massive dent appeared in the wall behind the pulpit and the wall began to crack.

At first, he assumed a car had malfunctioned and accidentally jumped the curb, sped over the grass and slammed into the brick front of the church.

“He couldn’t have been going less than 50 mph to get over that curb and still hit the wall that hard,” Taylor said.

Taylor and other men hurried from the chapel and out the west side of the building.

There they saw a beat-up Chevy Silverado truck bearing two American flags with a collapsed fender right under the familiar engraved name of the Church and the words, “Visitors Welcome.”

Bricks from the wall were spread across the truck’s hood and on top of the cab.

One woman, who had left the meeting a minute before to retrieve fruit snacks from her car for her little children, yelled at the men.

“He did it on purpose!” she screamed.

Unaware that the driver had a gun and intended to kill all he could, the men still sprang into what proved to be lifesaving action. They ran back into the building and began to usher everyone out of the chapel.

Taylor and others encouraged everyone to evacuate through the back of the building to cars or across the vast field behind the meetinghouse and into the forest surrounding Smith Lake.

As he escorted the elderly and families to the back of the building, Taylor stopped in the east foyer to lock the glass doors in case the driver tried to enter the church.

He then remembered that his teenage son had been assigned before the meeting to help people in the west foyer.

As that realization dawned, he heard gunfire from where he knew his son had been.

“Sheer panic,” Taylor said.

The alleged shooter, Thomas Jacob Sanford, entered that west foyer and shot at least one child and other church members. He poured out gasoline and set the building on fire, police and eyewitnesses said.

Unable to see or get to his son, Taylor continued to shepherd people down the long east hallway and out of the building into the parking lot. He had found his wife and two older women who couldn’t run across the field. The couple helped the women into their sedan while Taylor called his son.

The boy answered and told them he was hiding in another car in the parking lot and felt safe there and was too scared to get out and join his family in their car.

As Taylor looked for a way out of the parking lot, he saw the gunman come out of the building and raise his gun.

Taylor said Sanford started to fire when he saw Taylor “put the pedal to the metal.”

He then was faced with another difficult decision. Only one avenue was available to put distance between the women in his car and the weapon. He had to turn the car so that the passenger side faced the shooter.

“I was conscious I was putting my wife on the shooter’s side, but I didn’t have any other way out,” Taylor told the Deseret News. “It was pure panic for five seconds as I wondered, have I put her in harm’s way?”

“I took a U-turn south along the building,” he said. “Then gunshots hit the windshield and glass exploded inside the car.”

Miraculously, the bullets didn’t strike anyone in the car, but the shattered glass hit Taylor in the face and arms.

Seconds later, Taylor and his passengers were safely across the street, where they parked in a neighborhood and found people readily willing to shelter them.

At the same time, an officer from the Michigan Division of Natural Resources and another from the Grand Blanc Township Police Department confronted and killed Sanford.

Taylor immediately returned to the church to reunite with his son, and they watched as the fire consumed the Grand Blanc stake center, the headquarters for seven wards in their stake.

Even after showering and changing clothes, Taylor said he “can’t get that smell out of my nose.”

Since Sunday morning, members of the Grand Blanc Ward have been messaging each other through the Church’s Gospel Living app, checking on each other.

Everyone in the ward is concerned for the families of those who have died and for those injured and missing.

Some, like Taylor, keep playing back what happened.

“What-else-could-I-have-done thoughts keep pouring through your head,” he said.

He is on the list of those called heroes by Grand Blanc Township Police Chief Bill Renye.

“They were shielding the children who were also present within the church, moving them to safety,” the chief said. “Just hundreds of people just practicing their faith, just extreme courage, brave — and that’s the type of community that we are.”

“It’s just scary,” Taylor said. “I’m super grateful the Church is sending trauma and grief counselors. We’ll probably take advantage of that. My son knows his parents were shot at.”

Dealing with grief

Counselors for the Church’s Family Services provide what is called Psychological First Aid, after crises around the world. It is an evidence-informed approach to help anyone after a traumatic event. Like with medical First Aid, it was developed to meet immediate crisis needs by reducing the initial distress and fostering coping skills.

Psychological First Aid is based on an understanding that survivors may experience physical, psychological, behavioral and spiritual reactions.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has used this approach to create training and resources for members and leaders, including a discussion guide titled, “How Can I Minister to Others During a Crisis?” and a self-help guide called, “Facing Challenges.” Other resources can also be found through the Church’s “Tips for Emotional Preparedness.”

The discussion guide includes basic steps that anyone can follow when working to help someone in crisis.

Those five principles in the discussion guide are:

• Be compassionate
• Allow others to express their feelings
• Empathize and normalize responses
• Suggest ideas for ways to cope
• Offer hope 

For anyone seeking help, the Church also created structured support systems, including a self-reliance course “Finding Strength in the Lord: Emotional Resilience.” Resources are also available for mental health in the Life Help section of ChurchofJesusChrist.org, with guides for parents, leaders and anyone currently experiencing mental health challenges.

President Oaks makes Church statement on President Nelson’s death, shooting in Michigan

4 dead following shooting, fire at Latter-day Saint church in what FBI calls ‘targeted violence’

Caring for the emotional well-being of Latter-day Saints assailed by disaster

The children of the Flint Ward, 12 miles to the north, were singing and speaking at their annual Primary program during sacrament meeting.

Thirty-two miles southeast of Grand Blanc in Rochester Hills, the Rochester Ward was holding its sacrament meeting, and the ward council of the Lake Orion Ward was discussing plans for this year’s Christmas activity.

The mind-bending minutes that followed were shocking and left a trail of trauma. This story is based on interviews with many Church members.

News traveled north a bit faster because the Flint and Grand Blanc wards are inextricably bound in innumerable ways. The Flint congregation is led by Bishop Christopher Barnes, who actually lives in the Grand Blanc Ward’s boundaries.

“We were helping the kids have their little Primary experiences in sacrament meeting and cheering on the ones who were being brave when we noticed the bishop’s wife walked out,” said Becca Jones, a ward nursery leader. “Then the bishop hopped off the stand where he had been sitting with us, and he walked out.”

The other leaders followed.

“Oh, no,” Jones thought, “something must be really wrong.”

Meanwhile, in the meetinghouse gym in Rochester Hills, 10 members of the Lake Orion Ward Council sat in a circle of folding chairs planning Christmas. The ward’s Sunday services weren’t scheduled to begin until noon.

Ashley Mathie, the Young Women president, suddenly interrupted. She had just received a text from her husband, who is in law enforcement.

It said, “There is an active shooter at the Grand Blanc Ward.”

“Stop talking,” she said, a statement that sounds rude to her now.

She read the text to the group and said, “We need to say a prayer.”

They knew almost nothing, so they prayed a simple prayer for protection.

Back in Flint, Bishop Barnes returned to the chapel as the Primary program continued, gathered members of the elders quorum presidency and left the chapel again with them.

“My guess was that somebody had been in a car accident outside the building and was hurt and in our foyer,” a ward member said.

On the stand, Jones, the nursery leader, stayed calm and sat with the 3-year-old children in her class at the front of the chapel. Her husband, Tim, was in the foyer with some of their children but had agreed to swap places with Jones at that point in the program.

When he didn’t enter the chapel, she left the stand to find him.

“I walked out and saw his eyes were rimmed with red, and three of my children had shocked faces,” she said.

Bishop Barnes’ wife told her husband she had received a text from someone at the Grand Blanc stake center who said, “Someone is shooting here. We can’t call 911 from inside the building. Will you please call 911 for us?”

A woman next to her said her husband and some of her sons were in the Grand Blanc meeting. Her other son frantically tried to reach his brothers by phone.

Some ward members watched as one of Bishop Barnes’ counselors in the bishopric, Michael Hayden, learned that his father, Craig Hayden, had been killed by the gunman in Grand Blanc.

Someone also called 911 to ask for help there at the Flint chapel.

“We didn’t know,” Jones said. “We didn’t know if somebody was targeting all the buildings.”

The other adults steered everyone back into the chapel, then Bishop Barnes canceled the meeting and people began to leave.

He instructed missionaries to walk people to their cars. Ward members had to ask the police, who had parked cars blocking the entrance to the parking lot, to move so they could drive home.

In Rochester Hills, two wards were at a crossroads.

The Lake Orion bishop received a message in the ward council meeting instructing him to cancel all of the day’s planned meetings, then stepped out for a phone call, Mathie said.

“Shut it down” was the message, said Brandt Malone, second counselor in the Lake Orion bishopric.

By this point it, was after 11 a.m. The Rochester Ward’s sacrament meeting had ended, and the members left in an orderly fashion.

Mathie sent a text to the ward’s teenaged girls in the Young Women’s program, instructing them that their meetings for the day were canceled.

“What do you say to them?” Mathie thought.

Malone’s wife, Ashley Malone, and their 11-year-old daughter had attended a youth fall festival activity at the Grand Blanc Stake Center the night before.

“It’s surreal,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been going through the stages of grief on an hourly basis.”

The Malones grew up attending meetings and activities at the Grand Blanc stake center.

“To see it down to smithereens is just hard,” Brandt Malone said. “We know all of those people and see each other because they’re in our stake.

“I’m not really an emotional person,” he said as water filled his eyes and he looked off in the distance. “This hits home. This is a really tight-knit community. We’re a minority of a minority here, so we rely on each other.”

Mathie recalled crying during the ward council meeting when news of the shooting reached her.

“I know it was much worse for so many people than it was for me,” she said, “but even where we were, we were devastated. It was something I don’t think anyone should have to go through.”

Her stake family was facing the worst, and it hurt.

“I feel traumatized,” Mathie said, “but I know people have gone through far worse than me.

“It’s a huge violation.”

Malone agreed.

“It feels like a security blanket was taken away,” he said.

The Lake Orion congregation long ago scheduled a temple trip for Wednesday night. Ward members still plan to travel together to the Detroit Michigan Temple in Bloomfield Hills.

They also are looking forward to watching a memorial service Wednesday for President Russell M. Nelson, the Church’s Prophet who died Saturday at 101, and the Church’s semiannual general conference on Saturday and Sunday.

In the meantime, they help as they can.

Latter-day Saints fought to save each other during Michigan church shooting

President Oaks makes Church statement on President Nelson’s death, shooting in Michigan

Two other people died inside the building that was set on fire during a shooting at a meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan, on Sunday morning.

The information was provided by Grand Blanc Township Chief of Police William Renye during a 6 p.m. news conference.

The attack was “an act of targeted violence,” according to Reuben Coleman, acting special agent in charge of the Detroit FBI field office.

Renye said that the entire building has yet to be cleared and there are still individuals who have yet to be accounted for.

Two other individuals died due to injuries from the shooting, as reported earlier in the day. In addition to the four deceased victims, the shooter was also killed.

Seven shooting victims are in stable condition, and one is in critical condition, Renye said in a brief 3 p.m. press conference where he didn’t take questions.

Police say the suspect, identified as 40-year-old Thomas Jacob Sanford from Burton, Michigan, drove his vehicle through the front doors of the meetinghouse where hundreds were gathered for services. The suspect exited the vehicle and began firing, police say. The fire that engulfed the building is believed to have been deliberately set by the suspect.

The suspect was killed in the parking lot after exchanging gunfire with officers who responded quickly to the scene, Renye said.

“A call came out at 10:25 a.m. and 32 seconds,” Renye said. “We had officers on scene at 10:25 and 57 seconds.”

Police said earlier in the day that they believed they “will find additional victims once we have that scene secure.”

“There was a large fire and we do believe that there (were) people up there that were near that fire, and they were unable to get out of the church,” Renye said.

The following statement was posted on ChurchofJesusChrist.org from Church spokesperson Doug Andersen:

“A tragic act of violence occurred today at a chapel of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan. During Sunday worship services a gunman opened fire, and early reports indicate that multiple individuals were injured. We ask for cooperation with local authorities as details become available.

“The Church is in communication with local law enforcement as the investigation continues and as we receive updates on the condition of those affected. We offer thanks to the emergency responders who are assisting victims and families.

“We are deeply grateful for the outpouring of prayers and concern from so many people around the world. In moments of sorrow and uncertainty, we find strength and comfort through our faith in Jesus Christ. Places of worship are meant to be sanctuaries of peacemaking, prayer and connection. We pray for peace and healing for all involved.”

Read the full story at Deseret News.

For three decades, he visited sub-Saharan Africa again and again, until he returned April 16 as the man Latter-day Saints revere as a prophet to the world to visit an emerging continent where a stake or district is created about every other week.

As President Russell M. Nelson walked into an oval arena in Nairobi, Kenya, that was part traditional wooden hut and part amphitheater in the round, he created connections to his past visits, to history made by one of his late predecessors as Church president and to 2,000 reverent African Saints.

They were so eager that they stood and sang, “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet” twice, once when his unseen vehicle arrived and then again when he entered the arena.

A beaming President Nelson stood under dark wooden beams and roof to address the crowd in a blue suit, white shirt and blue tie with white stripes. He laid his watch on the podium and looked out over a sea of men in white shirts, ties and suitcoats and women in dresses of colorful blues, oranges, reds and greens.

Then he laid out a mental framework for the Church’s future in the region.

“You perhaps don’t think of yourselves as pioneers,” he said, “but you’re just as much pioneers here now as Brigham Young and his associates were following the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith in the 1800s.”

Esther Wangeci and other Latter-day Saints throughout African nations continued to talk about and digest the visits to Kenya and Zimbabwe long after President Nelson left to complete his circumnavigation of the earth on a ministry tour that ended April 24.

“I prayed to Heavenly Father to help me prepare my heart to receive his message. I am grateful my prayers were answered,” said Wangeci, a member of the Ongata Rongai Ward in Nairobi. “When I saw the prophet, I felt the love of my Heavenly Father, especially when he looked into my eyes while we were singing.”

Fittingly on a continent with half a million members four decades after the 1978 priesthood revelation first opened the way for missionary work in most countries here, Wangeci’s congregation moved into a larger rented meetinghouse the day before President Nelson arrived.

“What a wonderful, wonderful, growing, dramatic, significant component you are of this Church, the restored Church of Jesus Christ,” Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said to more than 4,000 Africans gathered in Harare, Zimbabwe, on April 17. “Your history has only begun, and really the Church’s history has only begun in terms of what it will yet be. But I’m thrilled to be with you, observing history.”

The tour appeared to energize an energizing prophet and those who had seen and heard him. President Nelson knelt to meet some children, held others and hugged and greeted members, many of whom had traveled for days and lined up 10 or 11 hours early to see and hear him in both Nairobi and Harare, Zimbabwe.

“It’s a global ministry and a global message — faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and strengthening your own families as they qualify for eternal life in the presence of deity,” President Nelson said at tour’s end.

“Really,” he added, “everything we’ve done in these last few days together circling the globe could be summed up in two words — the temple. In Jerusalem we talked about the temple Jesus loved. And in several cities we talked about the temple that is going to come to their place.”

The whole of Africa has three operating temples, but two more are under construction with another three announced — in Nairobi and Harare as well as for Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

“Members have been talking about his emphasis on the temple” since he left, said Elder Kevin S. Hamilton, a General Authority Seventy and president of the Africa Southeast Area, which is larger than the continental United States. “As we enter a new era of temple building in Africa, members are becoming more aware of the importance of the temple and the role it can play in our lives.”

The message resonated in a land where for centuries people have used song to memorize their family trees. In some countries, people put up plastic, roadside posters to celebrate anniversaries of an ancestor’s death.

President Nelson and Elder Holland, the latter holding up his own temple recommend signed by the former, encouraged those in countries near Kenya and Zimbabwe to prepare themselves for their coming temples by obtaining temple recommends and preparing family histories now.

“There are a lot of places around the world that want a temple, that need a temple,” Elder Holland said in Nairobi, “and now it’s your good fortune to have one (announced). I hope you will anticipate it with your life, with your love, with your prayers, with your devotions, with your missionary service and with your family home evenings and teaching your children, that in every way you will point this Church in Kenya and all who will participate in the temple district to prepare for this temple, work for it and look for it and then celebrate it when it comes and use that temple as a gift that has been given you.”

Imende Robinson Aliero was young when President Gordon B. Hinckley visited Kenya in 1998, but ever since he has shared President Hinckley’s message that Nairobi would have a temple if the members were faithful and paid their tithing.

“I have always found solace in his words,” said Aliero, also a member of the Ongata Rongai Ward in Nairobi. “Imagine the joy I felt when a temple was announced to be built in Kenya! To top it up, Prophet Nelson visited Kenya. I prepared my heart, mind and hands to learn and take note so that I may share much with generations.”

He and others took note of messages about Christ, the temple, revelation, family history, tithing and dowry from President Nelson and Sister Wendy Nelson, Elder Holland and Sister Patricia Holland.

“I’m really excited because when a prophet visits a nation, better things start happening,” said Lovemore Tenganani, who attended the tour stop in Harare. “Most of us haven’t had the opportunity to have a prophet grace our great nation.”

At the Africa West Area office in Accra, Ghana, excitement was building over the anticipated creation of the area’s 100th stake. In all, the continent now has 152 stakes and about 580,000 members, President Nelson announced in Nairobi, which is part of the continent’s other area, the Africa Southeast Area.

President Nelson first visited Kenya in 1992. He presided over the groundbreaking of the temple site in Accra, Ghana, in 2001.

During his 1986 trip to Africa, President Nelson became the first apostle to visit central Ghana, where he dedicated a meetinghouse in Kumasi and encouraged a small-but-growing number of Saints to keep the commandments, pay tithing and love their spouses, said Harry Kyere Sarpong, who had joined the Church in Germany.

Sarpong, now 70, had returned from Germany to Ghana in 1983. He found the Church in his homeland only after he chased a missionary van with the Church’s logo 300 meters down a Kumasi street. When he told the senior missionary couple he was a member, they jumped out of the van and hugged him.

Richard Samche also returned to Ghana in 1983 as a Church member after his conversion in Nigeria. The Saturday after President Nelson left Africa, Samche gathered his family in their one-room home, where his two daughters sleep on a triple bunk bed, and he and his wife sleep on a bed behind a bookcase. In the fading light of a hot Kumasi evening, he presided over scripture study that began with a hymn and ended with family prayer, surrounded by his wife, Anyamesem, 50, and four of their five children — Simmons, 30, Martin, 22, Dora, 15, and Esther, 10.

Samche spoke for many LDS African pioneers.

“I feel very great because I have been part and parcel of the people who helped to build Zion here in Kumasi,” said Samche, 65, who has served as a branch president, bishop and stake president. “I’m proud of the Church’s growth in Kumasi and always thank my Heavenly Father for making me part of His plan of salvation.”

It was a message President Nelson shared in eight meetings in eight countries on three continents in 11 days.

“Our message to the world,” he said in Nairobi, “is that Jesus is the Christ and that His way of life is the way of joy and happiness not only in this life but in the life ahead.”

The Rev. Dr. Brown spent 49 years preaching from the pulpit at Third Baptist, which he first visited as a 15-year-old who drove across the country from Mississippi with his mentor, Medgar Evers.

The Rev. Dr. Brown spent his late teens and 20s as a civil rights activist, marching with his teachers, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and conducting sit-ins, kneel-ins, sleep-ins and wade-ins to oppose segregation.

On assignment from the First Presidency, Elder Matthew S. Holland, General Authority Seventy, attended Sunday services at Third Baptist to honor the Rev. Dr. Brown.

“The world has improved under the inspired leadership of Dr. Amos C. Brown,” Elder Holland said, “and I thank and I love him for that.”

Today is Juneteenth. See what the Church has done to foster unity and condemn racism

What attendees said about the interfaith event at Morehouse College honoring President Nelson

On the day honoring Martin Luther King Jr., President Nelson asks all to 'labor together to abandon attitudes and actions of prejudice'

But below eye-catching ads for “Wicked,” perfumes and cellphones, three bright-red Giving Machines on the corner of 46th Street and Broadway drew together the leaders of 14 major national and international charities with visions of changing the world for the better on the eve of Giving Tuesday.

Church releases 2024 #LightTheWorld video, filmed around the world and inviting all to be someone’s angel

“We’re on a journey to create a world without hunger,” said Barron Segar, president and CEO of World Food Program USA.

“Our goal is to empower 1 million women entrepreneurs,” said Elizabeth Welch, CEO of iDE (International Development Enterprises).

“We provide food and medical packages to people who are either fleeing the front lines of war in Ukraine, or for the elderly and the disabled who are actually trapped in isolated villages with no access to food or medical supplies,” said Mary Carriero, board chair of Lifting Hands International.

One leader called the Giving Machines “the world’s greatest vending machine” because they bring donors to those major charitable movements. Another called them a unique platform because stepping up to a machine, swiping a credit card and buying a goat or a chicken or contributing to a well allows people to connect easily with those they didn’t know they could help.

“I am just so proud to be here with the incredible partners that have been brought together by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, both other religious groups and humanitarian, nonsectarian groups,” said Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, said Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York.

‘Don’t give up, give back’

“Motivated by love of God and love of our neighbors, these Giving Machines afford all of us a very unique giving experience,” said President Camille N. Johnson, Relief Society general president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Rather than purchasing a soda or a treat, we have the opportunity to bless those who are most vulnerable, to care for those in need, to address the needs of our neighbors, both those that live right around the corner from us and those that live on the other side of the world.”

The Church sponsors the machines, which are part of its annual Light the World initiative. Monday’s event, held on a morning with temperatures just below freezing, gave New York media an opportunity to do stories about the effort.

The machines, operating through the holiday season in 106 locations on five continents, supercharge giving by connecting givers in one place to those in need somewhere else, either locally or globally.

2024 Light the World Christmas initiative invites all to be someone’s angel

“You can go up to the Giving Machines and find a cause that speaks to you,” said Jessica Schneider, COO of Giving Tuesday. “The mere existence of them speaks to Giving Tuesday because it’s an open tent for religious organizations, nonprofits, universities, big (non-governmental organizations), neighborhoods and community schools. It’s for everyone.”

Carriero said Lifting Hands International is a smaller charity thrilled to be included in the Giving Machines.

“I want to start by thanking The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” she said. “Giving an organization of our size the ability to access the donor pool through the Giving Machines is truly transformational, and we are very, very grateful for this chance.”

She asked people to consider donating to help Ukrainian refugees “so we can literally enable them to survive.” She and others acknowledged global conflicts and their effect even on people who hear of them.

“We know this can be a discouraging time with the news throughout the world, but we would ask that you look at the light these Giving Machines provide and the wonderful work of all these groups. Don’t get discouraged.

“Please don’t give up, but give back.”

‘Takers eat well, givers sleep well’

Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, who has been called by a Church leader “the face of caring in New York City,” told the Deseret News, “It’s heartening for me to see the Church of Jesus Christ at the table here, to see the Church as a vocal partner.”

More than 100 Light the World Giving Machines locations announced for 2024

He said the Giving Machines help raise society’s moral compass. Rabbi Potasnik also shared one of his mother’s sayings.

“My mother used to say that there are two kinds of people in the world, the givers and the takers. She said the takers eat well, but the givers sleep well. We don’t need to eat more. We need to sleep a little bit more. By giving, we can do that.”

Providing dignity to God’s children

The president and CEO of UNICEF USA and the chief marketing officer for CARE, two of the world’s largest charities, also spoke at the event.

A total of 15 global charities joined the Giving Machine initiative this year, part of a total of more than 525 global, national and local charities to participate. Other groups represented at Monday’s event included Catholic Relief Services, Save the Children, the American Red Cross and WaterAid.

The Church has expanded the number of Giving Machines each year since the initiative launched in 2017. Last year, the effort raised $10 million, bringing the seven-year total to $32 million.

Last year, donors provided:

• 125,200 chickens.
• 16,600 goats.
• 662,000 vaccines.
• 2 million meals.
• 180,000 pounds of food.

This year’s selections range in price from $7 to $300. Items include feminine hygiene solutions for girls, polio vaccines, school supplies and more.

Monday’s event was held at Father Duffy Square where the Giving Machines sat about four feet from the statue of George M. Cohan, the father of Broadway musical comedy and the writer of American song standards like “Over There”, “Give My Regards to Broadway” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag.”

The Giving Machines will move. Beginning on Giving Tuesday and throughout the holiday season, New Yorkers and tourists can find them at 59 Park Avenue in front of the Church of Our Saviour, where Monsignor Sullivan is the administrator.

“I hope that everybody gets many of those wonderful gifts that are around us here in Times Square,” he said at Monday’s event.

“But what I invite you to do is to look at these machines, which will Light the World because we give not the gifts that [are] around us but the gifts that will enable our sisters and brothers to live in dignity.”

Leaders share how Light the World Giving Machines are a manifestation of the Savior’s second great commandment

More than 100 Light the World Giving Machines locations announced for 2024

This week on social: Church leaders celebrate Light the World Giving Machines in various parts of the world

Alaska opens its first Giving Machines in North Pole

The Big Apple has a rich history of interfaith cooperation, but the burgeoning developments of the past decade have been a happy boon to religious leaders across the city who have seen old barriers fall to new efforts to build bridges, said the Rev. A.R. Bernard of the Christian Cultural Center megachurch.

Elder Cook was in New York to honor the Rev. Bernard, as the New York Latter-day Saint Professional Association presented him with its Visionary Leadership Award on Saturday night, June 8. The professional association is sponsored by the BYU Management Society.

Elder David L. Buckner, formerly an Area Seventy, was sustained in April as a General Authority Seventy and has sat for several years on New York’s Commission of Religious Leaders, which the Rev. Bernard described as a catalyst for increasing cooperation that has blessed the lives of congregations and those in need throughout the city.

“We have the Commission of Religious Leaders, which is a body of different faiths coming together and seeking to respond to social issues, especially when they’re issues of tension within communities,” the Rev. Bernard said during an interview with Deseret News. “Whether it is along racial lines, class lines, especially religious lines, we come together and demonstrate what can happen when we sit at the table and have civil discourse, seek to understand, find common ground and work toward the common good, so I think that what we do here in New York City is quite unique compared to the rest of the country.”

Elder Cook agreed and suggested the council is a model.

“As an outsider, to watch the council of church leaders operate in New York has been just absolutely marvelous,” he said. “With you and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Rabbi Joseph Potasnik and Rev. Que English and all of you that are on that council, I think it’s something that really could be duplicated in other ways that would really bless other major metropolitan areas.”

Video: In response to pandemic-related crisis, Church links arms with Christian Cultural Center to help New York families

Cardinal Dolan speaks on religious freedom in Utah, meets with President Nelson

N.Y. interfaith commission tours Church headquarters, participates in BYU’s religious freedom review

Podcast Episode 177: The Rev. Que English on the power of and need for interfaith efforts

Elder Cook also praised the Rev. Bernard, whom he accompanied when he met President Russell M. Nelson and the First Presidency in Salt Lake City.

“And your role in that has been very significant,” Elder Cook said to the Rev. Bernard. “You’ve brought to [the council] this concern for those that have challenges that is so deep inside of you, and that’s been a very important part of what’s happened there. So we want to congratulate you on that as well. Thank you so much.”

The Rev. Bernard and Rabbi Potasnik host a Sunday radio program on WABC in New York City called “Religion on the Line.” They often refer to it as “The Rev and the Rabbi.” When they had Elder Buckner on recently, they called it, “The Rev and the Rabbi and the Elder.”

Elder Buckner called the Rev. Bernard “a great example of a trusted voice.” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed the reverend as chair of the executive committee of the state’s interfaith council.

“When you sit on that commission, you find that trusted voices can have civil discussion and illuminate political leaders, educational leaders and others,” Elder Buckner said to the Rev. Bernard. “You’ve been a magnificent example of how to do that. If the rest of the world can capture this, and encapsulate it in the way in which [New York leaders] rely upon religious leaders, we would have less contention, more peace, and, truly, we’d be augmented in our own faiths.”

The banquet to present the award to the reverend doubled as the professional association’s fundraiser for needs-based scholarships for college students in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region.

More than 400 people attended the sold-out dinner, including New York and New Jersey religious and government leaders. Those leaders included representatives of Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, African Methodist Episcopal, Greek Orthodox and other Christian denominational organizations.

“My plea this evening is that all religions work together to defend faith and help bless all of God’s children,” Elder Cook told them.

Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, who is a member of the Church, also spoke at the dinner, and he praised the religious and government leaders for their charitable efforts.

“I love what you’re doing,” he said. “I love what you do, bringing it together, putting aside all the [divisive] stuff that’s going on in this world today and having a purpose, one purpose.”

The Rev. Bernard’s Christian Cultural Center was feeding 25,000 hungry New Yorkers every year before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the crisis expanded the need, the Rev. Bernard worked with Elder Buckner, and he engaged senior Church leaders to help meet it. Today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints helps support the Christian Cultural Center as it feeds 135,000 people a year.

The Rev. Bernard drew on that partnership again in 2022 after the Tops supermarket massacre in Buffalo, New York. The market was the only grocery store in a food desert in the city. The governor asked the Rev. Bernard for help, and he reached out to Elder Buckner. The Church then dispatched a tractor-trailer of food from a bishops’ storehouse that fed 2,000 families and supplied local food pantries for four months.

Reid, whose team has won consecutive Super Bowls, used a football analogy built around his MVP quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, to cheer on the Rev. Bernard, Rabbi Potasnik and other religious leaders for their interfaith cooperation on behalf of others.

“I tell Pat Mahomes once a week: You have the keys to the car,” Reid said. “‘You make that throw through that little hole. You do it to the best of your ability, and there is no hesitation.’ And the people in this room are doing that. They’re doing that. They’re taking the guidance that they’ve learned through whatever faith you are and you’re leading. You’re leading the charge.”

He pounded his chest above his heart and said: “I mean, it gets you right here. It’s unbelievable what you have done in this city.”

Elder Cook praised Reid for the efforts he and his wife, Tammy Reid, have made to help the Church’s missionary efforts wherever they have lived, supporting mission presidents and missionaries.

The banquet was held in the historic Riverside Church, a massive cathedral on the Upper West Side of Manhattan built by John D. Rockefeller. Elder Cook noted that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke several times in the Riverside Church and that the Rev. King called its founding pastor, Harry Emerson Fosdick, the greatest preacher he knew.

Elder Cook quoted a Fosdick saying from memory: “He who picks up one end of a stick picks up the other. He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end.”

“I think we have two examples here,” Elder Cook said of Reid and the Rev. Bernard, “of people who have chosen good roads, righteous roads, and pursued them in different ways but have accomplished great good for enormous numbers of people. So to have these two tonight be the primary speakers and to give the Visionary Leadership Award to a great reverend who has just accomplished so much, A.R. Bernard is just marvelous.”

Sponsored by the American Council on Education, the commission launched with a conference at the historic National Press Club near the White House in Washington, D.C., that brought together presidents from 35 religiously affiliated schools, including Georgetown, Yeshiva, Baylor and Pepperdine.

Elder Clark G. Gilbert, General Authority Seventy and Church commissioner of education, is one of the inaugural co-chairs of the new commission, along with Shirley Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, which represents 180 schools.

“This is a precarious time where schools of diverse faith backgrounds need to work across boundaries to strengthen areas of shared emphasis, from religious freedom to accreditation protections,” Elder Gilbert said. “These relationships didn’t just start around this commission. The Church Educational System has worked with the presidents of other faith-based universities for a generation.”

He said those relationships built a foundation of trust with peer institutions and their presidents.

“Doing this with the American Council on Education gives this effort increased credibility and collective support,” Elder Gilbert said. “Increasingly, our friends of other faiths and our colleagues in the academy are looking not only for engagement but also leadership from the Church Educational System.”

Hoogstra said the American Council on Education serves 1,700 schools, of which 200 identify as faith-based. In all, 1.8 million students are enrolled at religiously affiliated U.S. colleges and universities, she said.

ACE’s president, Ted Mitchell, a former U.S. Undersecretary of Education, said: “We want to increase the visibility of the important contributions of faith-based institutions, and we want to create collaboration amongst you.”

BYU President C. Shane Reese spoke on a panel about how religion can be a source for innovation in research and scholarship. He said BYU leans into scholarship that is of strategic interest for the school and the Church.

How C. Shane Reese went from 1st-generation college student to university president

“So often, I think that there is this false dichotomy set up, that you have to choose between being scholarly — academically rigorous — and leaning into a life of faith,” Reese said. “We see those things not as competing interests but rather things that are mutually reinforcing. That pursuit of truth really is a grand and glorious aim that we can achieve because of our faith mission, not in spite of our faith mission.”

He said BYU pursues research in areas that reinforce the core institutions of society.

“We’ve been keenly interested in how we might strengthen the institutions of family, of religion and human flourishing and the institution of the constitutional government that really protects those interests. We love that scholarly, rich, rigorous scholarship can support that very aim.”

Baylor President Linda Livingstone said some Baptists initially found it difficult to embrace research, but Baylor made the transition to a top-level research institution in part by embracing what it can do differently. For example, a researcher who had independently studied how people with disabilities are or are not included in Christian congregations volunteered to move his research to Baylor for the support of like-minded researchers.

“That pursuit of truth really is a grand and glorious aim that we can achieve because of our faith mission, not in spite of our faith mission.”

BYU President C. Shane Reese

Several presidents of Latter-day Saint schools attended the conference, including BYU–Pathway Worldwide President Brian K. Ashton, Ensign College President Bruce C. Kusch and President Bonnie Cordon of Southern Virginia University, an independent private university aligned with the principles, values and teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, though it is not endorsed or sponsored by the Church.

President Ashton spoke on a panel about religion as a source of innovation in providing students access to higher education and helping them complete that education.

President Ashton said BYU–Pathway’s religious mission spurred innovation to dramatically reduce the costs of admission so students in economically disadvantaged areas of Africa, for example, can access higher education. BYU–Pathway now has 70,000 students in 180 countries who pay as little as $5 per credit, depending on where they live.

This spring, Ashton added, BYU–Pathway also began to offer three-year degrees after winning approval for them from its accrediting agency.

“Now that’s thinking outside the box,” said the panel’s moderator, Ilana Horwitz, the Fields-Rayant Chair in Contemporary Jewish Life at Tulane University.

President Reese said BYU’s academic and spiritual missions are inseparable.

“We don’t fundamentally see that there is a conflict between science and faith,” he said. “I think far too often those are pitted as rivals and things that compete with one another.”

Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, said his school also is guided by the idea that faith and science are partners. He said the discussion of whether faith can be compatible with science should be turned on its head.

“I don’t think it’s faith-based schools that need to be asking that question,” he said. “I think it’s your secular university that needs to ask what happens when you have a science that’s not undergirded by values? And where does that lead? That to me is the essential question that needs to be put on the table. I think, particularly, we can help drive that conversation.”

The commission’s two keynote speakers were respected educators who separately delivered BYU forum assembly addresses earlier this year, Harvard law professor Ruth Okediji and Freeman Hrabowski III, the president emeritus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

At BYU forum, Rabbi Ari Berman highlights the power of a covenantal education

Okediji said she grew up uncertain whether it was possible to be a “deep intellectual and passionately in love with the gospel of Jesus Christ,” because she didn’t know many Christians who were serious intellectuals.

Hrabowski said he was able to insist that his installation ceremony as UMBC’s president include both the minister from his youth and his minister at the time because a university needed to learn about its president as much as its president needed to learn about the university.

The two keynote speakers said faith-based institutions should focus on their unique purposes and identities at a time when many students in higher education never encounter scripture, the values taught in scripture that have undergirded American citizenship or other faith-related information. Because many students now are not exposed to that in education, they said, those students often misunderstand what scriptures actually say and what religions actually teach.

“Help them understand and learn about faith-based universities. What they think is often wrong,” Hrabowski said.

“I challenge you to think about your moral vision and your moral values,” he added, “and to reach out to other institutions, understanding there will be differences but will be commonalities, also.”

Hrabowski said it is incumbent on religious people to help bridge divides.

“We in faith-based higher education,” he said, “must connect with each other to say to our society, we want to do the right thing.”

The theme of building bridges is one that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ President Russell M. Nelson has modeled during his tenure as leader of the global faith.

As he has met with groups large and small of Latter-day Saints and with world political, social and religious leaders, President Nelson has invited the building of “bridges of cooperation rather than walls of segregation.”

The ‘surprising’ activity that helps students feel a sense of connection to BYU

What this BYU professor told the United Nations about why marriage and family matters

What this BYU study found about how repentance strengthens families

Bishop W. Christopher Waddell shared Friday, March 17, a sweeping vision of water conservation on Temple Square and at the Church’s temples, meetinghouses, farms and universities.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been reducing its water usage throughout the state of Utah for over 20 years, but Bishop Waddell, first counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, provided new information about the Church’s current and future efforts, during a presentation at the 28th annual Wallace Stegner Center Symposium at the University of Utah.

This year’s symposium focused on the future of the Great Salt Lake, which fell to the lowest level in its recorded history last year after two decades of drought in the West.

Earlier this week, the Church donated 6.5 billion gallons of annual irrigation water to the Great Salt Lake. The donation could be the largest permanent donation of water to benefit the Great Salt Lake ever received by the state. “We are committed to be a part of the solution to help the Great Salt Lake,” Bishop Waddell said.

The Church operates 2.4% of Utah’s irrigated agricultural land, and an ongoing evaluation could lead to additional donations. A future donation could happen under a new Utah law that allows water share owners to lease their shares rather than forcing them to sell shares that aren’t being used.

“In accordance with HB33 passed last year [by the Utah Legislature], we are conducting an evaluation to identify other Church-owned water assets that can feasibly be delivered to the Great Salt Lake — a continuation of our efforts that began in 2021,” Bishop Waddell said.

“As a first priority, we are evaluating the water assets within the five counties surrounding the Great Salt Lake as well as water assets diverted from Utah Lake, which we expect will have the highest likelihood of successful delivery to the lake.”

He said he hoped other large water owners would follow the Church’s example.

“We know that every bit helps, and we invite other water asset owners to consider the new opportunities afforded by recent legislative changes and determine how they might help in this important effort.”

Water conservation

The wise use of water in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stretches back to the faith’s first moments in the arid Great Basin in 1847, continues globally today, and will reach into the future.

Bishop Waddell mentioned research by BYU faculty that helps Church leaders and others know how to best save the Great Salt Lake.

“We are indebted to the subject-matter experts who study the conditions of the Great Salt Lake and the impacts and future risks of its declining water levels,” Bishop Waddell said. “We encourage engagement and responsiveness to legislative changes and other recommendations from subject-matter experts recognizing the need to act with urgency and unity towards the future we hope for — one with a healthy Great Salt Lake.”

Bishop Waddell mentioned several other ways the Church is using water wisely. For example, on its farms, the Church uses soil-moisture probes to inform irrigation decisions. It is also developing water management plans for all the Church’s agricultural properties and meetinghouses, temples and other facilities.

“We have expanded our teaching of the guiding principle of wise stewardship to emphasize the need to care for our natural resources and encourage our global employees to lead out in their efforts to implement creative solutions within the Church’s operations that [in the words of President M. Russell Ballard, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles] ‘protect the future for all God’s children,’” he said.

In addition to its efforts to help save the Great Salt Lake and conserve water at its Utah facilities, the Church of Jesus Christ continues to study how to implement water-wise practices globally.

“Our aim is to understand more fully what sustainable landscaping should be based on local climates and identify opportunities to conserve water and natural resources,” Bishop Waddell said.

This includes improving runoff water quality, collecting and reusing stormwater, mitigating the heat-island effect and integrating the landscape into the existing and regional context.

Temple Square

The Salt Lake Temple is far from the only part of Temple Square under renovation. Workers also are overhauling the entire landscaping plan for the space around the temple and a new Church Office Building plaza.

Those changes are designed to save vast amounts of water while maintaining the beauty of the grounds.

Bishop Waddell said the new Temple Square landscape will have one-third the grass and half the number of annual plants, which complete their lifespan in a single growing season.

In their places will be 30% more trees. The trees will establish canopies to protect plants below them and reduce what is called the heat-island effect. Heat islands are urban areas hotter than surrounding rural areas because of a lack of vegetation.

The trees also will help buildings on Temple Square stay cooler.

Grass on Temple Square will be placed in a summer dormancy program that will use 35% to 40% less irrigation water from June to September, Bishop Waddell said.

When the renovation is complete, the landscape changes will save 40 million to 50 million gallons of water a year compared to pre-renovation amounts, he said. Once the grass and trees are more established, that savings will increase by an additional 15 million to 20 million gallons a year.

“Though our efforts have not been and are still not perfect — we recognize that — there is a continuing ongoing Churchwide effort to improve our care of natural resources, including the implementation of best practices and available technology to improve our water efficiency,” Bishop Waddell said.

Meetinghouses

Beginning with the Church’s Improvement and Beautification Committee in 1937, leaders encouraged lawns for member homes and meetinghouses, he said. Changing conditions have led the Church to alter its own landscaping practices.

At the turn of the 21st century, due to drought conditions in the West, the Church began to take steps toward water conservation at meetinghouses, temples and other facilities.

For example, workers have installed smart controllers, hydrometers, rain sensors and drip irrigation systems. Those measures, and higher lawnmower settings that allow grass to retain more moisture, created a 25% reduction in water used for landscaping.

From 2018 to 2022, these practices have saved nearly 40 million gallons of water a year at Church headquarters in Salt Lake City, Bishop Waddell said.

As the drought continued and deepened last year, the Church released an official statement on water conservation. The statement said the Church would allow some temple and meetinghouse landscapes to go dormant or brown.

The Church also established a Sustainability Office and Sustainability Leadership Committee under the Presiding Bishopric last year.

The Church now mandates a dramatic decrease in the amount of lawn at new meetinghouses. Where some buildings were surrounded by as much as 90% grass, new ones now have landscapes with as little as 35% lawn, Bishop Waddell said.

All of those changes led to a 35% reduction of water use at meetinghouses in Salt Lake County from 2020 to 2022.

Additional new water conservation practices include delaying the first watering as long as possible and applying water-saving products to lawns.

All of those efforts have allowed the Church not only to save water but also keep lawns nice despite using less water. Church lawns often look greener than others now because they use better soils and turf and plants that can thrive with less water, Bishop Waddell said.

For older buildings, the Church is in the midst of a retrofit pilot program designed to use sustainability landscape principles.

Brigham Young University

BYU has reduced its culinary water use by two-thirds over the past 20 years, Bishop Waddell said.

The campus now conducts regular water audits and uses smart irrigation systems and water-wise landscaping, including drought-tolerant plants and mulch made of campus green waste.

“This mulch reduces water usage in flower and shrub beds by 30%,” Bishop Waddell said. “In response to heightened water concerns over the last decade, most of BYU’s campus is now watered using secondary sources. The water master monitors stream flows and reduces flows, depending on conditions, by as little as 20% in spring to as much as 100% in late summer. As needed, campus lawns go dormant during dry spells.”

Prayer

In addition to all the Church has done and is doing to conserve water, Bishop Waddell said prayer is critical and has proven providential.

In June 2022, the Church invited Latter-day Saints to “join with friends of other faiths in prayer to our Heavenly Father for rain and respite from the devastating drought.” The invitation emphasized that “we all play a part in preserving the critical resources needed to sustain life — especially water — and we invite others to join us in reducing water use wherever possible.”

Utah’s mountains have had a historic winter for water-packed snow. The Utah Department of Natural Resources reports that as of March 16, 2023, water content in the snowpack across Utah is at an all-time high for the date.

“We are grateful for the snow and rain we have received this season — though perhaps not when we are shoveling our driveways,” Bishop Waddell said. “We should acknowledge God’s hands in providing us this blessing and that our work is not done yet. We must continue with all diligence if we are to make the difference that is needed. May the Lord grant us all the faith and perseverance to be wise stewards of our water, our land and the resources that flow through them.”

Read his full remarks from the 2023 Stegner Symposium: “A Perspective from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Brigham Young University–Idaho and BYU–Pathway Worldwide are now scaled in ways that allow them to grow without adding operating costs for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which sponsors them, said Elder Clark G. Gilbert, commissioner of the Church Educational System and a General Authority Seventy.

Growth is vital because the Church is trying to provide higher education opportunities to hundreds of thousands of members worldwide while controlling costs at a time when inflation is pummeling higher education.

BYU–Idaho’s enrollment tripled between 2000 and 2020, but operating costs now are growing below inflation because of innovations designed to make the university more affordable both for students and the Church, said Elder Gilbert, a past president of both BYU–Idaho and BYU–Pathway.

“Variable tuition at BYU–Idaho exceeds variable costs, so the bigger you get, the less it costs to run the institution,” he said.

The Church already spends about $1 billion a year to support higher education, Elder Gilbert said, citing a statement made last year by Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Elder Gilbert, BYU President Kevin J Worthen and BYU–Hawaii President John S.K. Kauwe III made presentations at a Jan. 12 summit on the fate of religious universities, sitting on panels with presidents from the University of Notre Dame, Yeshiva University, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and others.

“You all represent a super significant part of American higher education, and we need to figure out ways to take the work that you do and make it as important in the national dialogue as [your numbers reflect],” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education.

The American Council on Education convened the summit in its building on Dupont Circle, less than a mile from the White House.

Latter-day Saint beliefs and higher education

Elder Gilbert, President Worthen and President Kauwe each shared Latter-day Saint theological underpinnings for making higher education accessible to as many Church members as possible.

“It is our fundamental belief that all human beings are beloved spirit sons and daughters of heavenly parents, with a divine nature and destiny. That is [a] firm, core belief of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” President Worthen said.

President Kauwe added: “We believe every person on earth deserves a chance to magnify their talents.”

Despite that belief, Elder Gilbert said, “the Church can’t afford to build another BYU in Manila [Philippines]. The Church can’t afford to build another BYU in Accra [Ghana].”

That has led to a quest to innovate and provide new models for providing higher education that have positively benefited students at BYU–Idaho and BYU–Hawaii and also to the launch and global rollout of BYU–Pathway Worldwide, which now reaches about 60,000 students in 180 countries.

For example, President Kauwe explained how BYU–Hawaii’s work programs make college education affordable for its first-generation students from Oceania and the Asia Rim.

BYU–Hawaii offers a work-study program called IWORK, which stands for International Work Opportunity Return-ability Kuleana (Responsibility). Students work 19 hours a week during school and 40 hours a week during breaks and receive housing, food, tuition and fees and a stipend. The program funds about half of the university’s 3,000 students, President Kauwe said.

The goal is to expand to provide IWORK to reach two-thirds of students.

Also, 800 students work at the Church’s Polynesian Cultural Center, which President Kauwe said is Hawaii’s most visited and most culturally authentic tourist attraction.

President Kauwe was joined on the panel by Brad Johnson, president of the College of the Ozarks, who said his school’s work program requires students to work 15 hours a week and covers tuition for all 1,500 students, the vast majority of whom could not otherwise afford college.

The College of the Ozarks is aligned with the Presbyterian Church, and Johnson said its efforts to provide low-cost quality education also is motivated by the Christian belief in human dignity.

Notre Dame President John Jenkins said that was a theme of the summit, alongside the successes religious schools are having in graduating students and in other areas that are challenging many sectors of American higher education.

“One of the things that struck me as it came through in several presentations is the importance of a mission that sees each and every student as possessing a particular dignity and engaging them at the level of a personal call to be something worthwhile,” the Rev. Jenkins said. “That’s a kind of theological framework, but that’s a very powerful educational attitude to have, as you can see in the graduation rates, as you can see in the great work with low-income students. That’s true of us, and I think it’s true of these other institutions.”

Undergraduate research

President Worthen joined a panel with the Rev. Jenkins and Rabbi Ari Berman of Yeshiva University. He told them the Latter-day Saint belief in the divine nature of God’s children also informs BYU’s education in Provo, Utah.

“This core belief is that each of our students has the potential to become like God, and that part of our process is to help them progress changes how we think about our entire educational endeavor, including scholarly research,” President Worthen said.

He said that belief in the worth of students led to BYU’s unique emphasis on having faculty include undergraduate research work with students.

President Worthen said 28.5 cents of every dollar in external research funding is used on undergraduate students doing research.

“That is four times, five times, six times of what high research institutions do,” he said.

The outcome for students can be tremendous. For example, BYU punches well above its weight by ranking ninth in the nation for the most bachelor’s degree students who go on to earn doctorates.

The other 49 schools in the top 50 are classified as R1 institutions, meaning they have high research activity done mostly by faculty and graduate students. BYU is an R2 institution with high research activity.

“Our research does require some kinds of tradeoffs,” President Worthen said. “As it turns out, undergraduates are not as effective or efficient in doing research as graduate students.”

The fallout is that BYU does less research than it would if it reoriented as a more expensive R1 institution. However, President Worthen said, that research quantity suffers because it is slowed by less experienced students and the need for faculty to ensure quality doesn’t lag and reduce the positive impact on students.

“That requires a different motivation and a different kind of faculty,” President Worthen said.

Impact on American society

The summit’s participants said they hope the successes they shared can be replicated beyond religious institutions.

They also expressed support for each other’s religious identities as faith-based schools and the overall impact they make on American society.

Eboo Patel, the president of Interfaith America, spoke to the university presidents and said their uniqueness is needed in an American society where identity communities increasingly stick to institutions that serve only their identities.

“There is no diversity without particularity,” said Patel. “There is no diversity without your particularity.”

He encouraged them to model interfaith cooperation.

“America is in a place right now where people think that, ‘For me to be me, I need to extinguish you,’” Patel said. “But you prove every day that there is a different way.”

He also argued the schools play an underappreciated role.

“I think [this summit] highlights a dimension of American democracy that too many people take for granted, which is that institutions founded by particular faith communities serve people of all faith communities in some way, shape or form,” Patel said. “You cannot have a diverse democracy, unless you have civic institutions that are able to express a particular identity and build positive relationships across diverse communities.”

Faith-based colleges and universities as a group tend to have higher graduation rates and have found success reducing tuition costs.

Students pay 25% less for tuition on average at the 185 schools in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, said its president, Shirley Hoogstra.

They also find meaning, Rabbi Berman said.

“I would say the crisis of our generation is a crisis of meaning,” he said. “Our students are looking for meaning, and you don’t have that often in a [broader] society where many have turned their back on these generations of tradition.”

Peter Kilpatrick, president of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., said students can find meaning and purpose in religious service. Students at his university who don’t engage in campus ministries graduate at rates seven to eight points below the school’s average.

“Students who engage in five or more of our campus activities graduate or persist at a rate 15 points higher,” he said, “and 92% of our students persist if they get engaged [in ministries].”

The French word crèche describes a distinctive Nativity scene displayed during the Christmas season. These scenes, depicting the birth of Jesus Christ, became popular in the Christian world beginning in the 13th century.

The Nativity scenes in the visitors’ center, along with the international dolls placed on Christmas trees next to the Christus statue in the center’s lobby, are intended to showcase how different cultures depict the sacred historical moment.

“It’s very seldom that we can feel we are part of the celebrating here,” said Mariana Million, a Costa Rican working in international relations in D.C. “To see a doll from our country on one of the trees and a Nativity scene from our country makes us feel like we can participate. Featuring so many cultures was very nice.”

See photos from ten countries below.

More than 400,000 lights burst into view on the temple grounds Tuesday night, Nov. 29, when Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and Singapore’s ambassador to the United States, Ashok Mirpuri, pressed a red button together.

The ceremony launched the 45th annual Festival of Lights at the temple, the first complete festival since 2019.

Elder Cook said the lighting ceremony represented the commencement of the Christmas season celebration, which “commemorates the birth and life of Jesus Christ, who we revere as Savior and Redeemer of the world.

“As Christians, we believe that all of us are children of a loving Father in Heaven and that Jesus Christ is His only Begotten Son. Our scriptures speak of Jesus Christ as the light and life of the world” (3 Nephi 11:10-11).

Elder Cook called Jesus Christ “the ultimate symbol and champion of how to vanquish the superficial distinctions that otherwise divide us from our sisters and brothers in the family of man.”

Latter-day Saints take that “universal injunction seriously,” he said. “Members of our faith are committed to doing what we can to help better communities and break down barriers that prevent God’s children from sharing in the peace and goodwill that ought to be a common inheritance for all humankind.”

The ceremony took place in the lobby of the temple visitors’ center. Dozens of invited ambassadors to the United States from around the world, diplomats and interfaith leaders sat with their families in front of the Christus statue. They faced a window that looked out at the brightly lit temple.

“Across the world, the Festival of Lights carries a deep symbolic and spiritual significance,” Mirpuri said. “In many religious traditions and cultures, light is celebrated as a representation of life and joy, the triumph of good, of hope, of warmth.”

President Russell M. Nelson announced in April of 2021, that the Church would build its first temple in Singapore. Mirpuri said it would be the Church’s third in Southeast Asia, and Elder Cook praised Singapore for a rich legacy of religious tolerance.

“We look forward to welcoming the temple as a feature of Singapore’s multiethnic and multireligious landscape,” Mirpuri said.

Elder Cook told the ambassadors that their responsibilities reminded him of the shepherds who first received the news of Christ’s birth.

“You, like shepherds, must look to the welfare of your nations, communities and families as you seek to protect them from a multitude of dangers. It is no easy task,” he said.

He encouraged them not “to despair amid the continual doom loop of data that bombards us” but to confront challenges with a confidence “that comes from an understanding of the ‘good tidings’ and ‘great joy’ that the angel brought to ‘all people.’”

The lighting ceremony symbolized a diversity of cultures, faith traditions and beliefs, said Elder Cook, who said his Christmas prayer was that all people would apply Christ’s principles of peace and goodwill.

He told the ambassadors about the Church’s efforts to do so.

“We work to feed the hungry, clothe the needy, welcome the stranger and care for the sick,” he said. “We seek to combat racism and prejudice, protect the natural environment and strengthen the bonds of understanding and fellowship that separate disparate groups.”

Elder Cook said the Church provides assistance to people within and beyond the Church because the good news delivered to shepherds about Christ’s birth was universal in nature.

“Our actions are motivated by a foundational belief that we are all God’s children,” he said.

The lighting ceremony included J.W. “Bill” Marriott and his wife, Donna Marriott, and the Washington D.C. Temple Choir. Everyone joined in singing Christmas carols together.

During the program, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney introduced Ambassador Mirpuri; Bill Marriott introduced Elder Cook. 

Bill Marriott, who has participated in every one of the temple’s Festivals of Lights, called Christ “the bright and morning star with light that can never be dimmed.”

Mirpuri and others expressed joy that the festival had returned.

In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Festival of Lights became a drive-thru. The event was canceled in 2021 as workers focused on completing the temple renovation.

The temple — which closed in 2018 to renovate mechanical and electrical systems and refresh finishes and furnishings —  was rededicated in August by President Nelson.

Green, red, white, purple and blue lights will illuminate the temple grounds each night from Dec. 1, 2022, through Jan. 2, 2023. In addition to the lights and decorated Christmas trees on the temple grounds, visitors can see 87 créche displays or Nativities from 64 countries inside the temple’s visitors’ center.

No ticket is required to see the lights or créches. Free tickets are required for the nightly performances — which include the Gay Men’s Chorus on Dec. 6, Polynesian dancers on Christmas Eve and Washington D.C. North missionaries singing Christmas carols on Christmas night. The Beijing Opera will perform on New Year’s Eve.

Tickets are available at dctemple.org.

Ambassador Frédéric Hegbe of the Republic of Togo and his wife, Izmira, were two of the 347,152 who attended the Washington D.C. Temple open house this summer. They returned Tuesday night for the Festival of Lights lighting ceremony.

“It was a wonderful, inspiring night,” Hegbe said. “I’m very attached to Christmas traditions. They are very meaningful to me. So are my friendships with many Latter-day Saints. I’m grateful for the humanitarian work the Church does in Ghana and Togo.”

Hegbe said he agreed with Mirpuri that the event and the lights pulled together people from around the world despite their different cultures and beliefs. He praised his peer for his nation’s religious tolerance.

“If everybody followed what they do in Singapore, we would have peace on earth, what Jesus wished,” Hegbe said.

The festival’s director, Mauri Earl, invited the ambassadors to the open house of the Richmond Virginia Temple from March 25 through April 15, 2023, excluding Sundays and the weekend of April 2023 general conference.

Until then, she said, “I hope the return of these lights this year will shine a spotlight on the kindness of the human soul.”

“This world needs light. It needs your light,” she added. “So I hope the return of the lights this year will glow brightly in your hearts and in your homes that you may feel and radiate more light, more love, more peace, because of your attendance here today.”

“It’s a miracle,” BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe said. “If people want to see a miracle, we saw one tonight.”

Mel Hamilton, John Griffin and a dozen other Black Wyoming football players were kicked off their top-20 team a day before their game with BYU in 1969. They were banished for going to ask their coach if they could wear black armbands during the game to protest a now-lifted ban on Blacks holding the priesthood in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which sponsors BYU.

Griffin and Hamilton spent the past four days talking with BYU’s football team, students and administrators, topping it off Saturday night by lighting the Y before No. 19 BYU’s 38-24 win over Wyoming.

“The fact we’re in this stadium is surreal for me and for Mel,” Griffin said. “I haven’t felt this well in a long time. It’s adding to the healing that’s been under way for a lot of years.”

The Black 14 reconciled with the Church in 2020, when they collaborated to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of food to food pantries in the players’ hometowns.

Being banished from their team was incredibly painful for the 14 Black players. Griffin harbored anger for a decade. Hamilton quit watching the sport he loved and picketed the Latter-day Saint Institute next to the Wyoming campus.

“That’s 53 years ago,” Griffin said. “Now, it’s entirely different. We want to work together to help mankind. We’re brothers and sisters. We’re friends. The LDS food coordinator for Colorado, we’re the best of friends. He’s helped me fight the battle of food insecurity.”

Griffin said he got big hugs Saturday night on the field from Wyoming coach Craig Bohl and BYU coach Kalani Sitake. They also received cheers from 60,042 fans.

Though Elder S. Gifford Nielsen, a General Authority Seventy and former BYU and NFL quarterback who has been the Church’s liaison with the Black 14, is now assigned in Africa, Griffin said he has spent the past three days working on a strategy for the Black 14 to do more with the Church through Elder Randall K. Bennett, a General Authority Seventy.

Elder Nielsen and Elder Bennett attended the game, and Elder Nielsen pushed Hamilton in his wheelchair onto the field before the ceremony.

Read more about the game on Deseret.com.

The investigation included interviews with more than 50 eyewitnesses, including Duke and BYU volleyball players and athletic department personnel. The university also said its investigation reviewed extensive video and audio of the match.

“We reviewed all available video and audio recordings, including security footage and raw footage from all camera angles taken by BYUtv of the match, with broadcasting audio removed (to ensure that the noise from the stands could be heard more clearly),” the BYU release said.

Read the entire story in the Deseret News.

Read below for the statement from BYU.

“As part of our commitment to take any claims of racism seriously, BYU has completed its investigation into the allegation that racial heckling and slurs took place at the Duke vs. BYU women’s volleyball match on August 26. We reviewed all available video and audio recordings, including security footage and raw footage from all camera angles taken by BYUtv of the match, with broadcasting audio removed (to ensure that the noise from the stands could be heard more clearly). We also reached out to more than 50 individuals who attended the event: Duke athletic department personnel and student-athletes, BYU athletic department personnel and student-athletes, event security and management and fans who were in the arena that evening, including many of the fans in the on-court student section.

“From our extensive review, we have not found any evidence to corroborate the allegation that fans engaged in racial heckling or uttered racial slurs at the event. As we stated earlier, we would not tolerate any conduct that would make a student-athlete feel unsafe. That is the reason for our immediate response and our thorough investigation. 

“As a result of our investigation, we have lifted the ban on the fan who was identified as having uttered racial slurs during the match. We have not found any evidence that that individual engaged in such an activity. BYU sincerely apologizes to that fan for any hardship the ban has caused. 

“Our fight is against racism, not against any individual or any institution. Each person impacted has strong feelings and experiences, which we honor, and we encourage others to show similar civility and respect. We remain committed to rooting out racism wherever it is found. We hope we can all join together in that important fight.

“There will be some who assume we are being selective in our review. To the contrary, we have tried to be as thorough as possible in our investigation, and we renew our invitation for anyone with evidence contrary to our findings to come forward and share it.

“Despite being unable to find supporting evidence of racial slurs in the many recordings and interviews, we hope that all those involved will understand our sincere efforts to ensure that all student-athletes competing at BYU feel safe. As stated by Athletics Director Tom Holmoe, BYU and BYU Athletics are committed to zero-tolerance of racism, and we strive to provide a positive experience for everyone who attends our athletic events, including student-athletes, coaches and fans, where they are valued and respected.”

In a recent article, the Deseret News looks at tension between the doctrines of confession and the impulse to protect through mandatory reporting legislation — and the important legal, societal and religious questions being raised.

With cases in Arizona, Louisiana and elsewhere having raised the issue’s profile, the Deseret News has reached out to scholars, legal experts and leaders of different faiths to explore the priest-penitent privilege.

The article also highlights policies and practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Key questions addressed include:

What is clergy-penitent privilege? A look at how different faiths view the privilege and how some religious leaders see confessions as having “a sacramental seal” that goes beyond mere confidentiality.

How is the priest-penitent privilege being pierced? Beginning in 1960s, state legislatures began passing laws limiting doctor-patient and clergy-penitent privileges, and the result is that the U.S. now has a hodgepodge of laws regarding confessional privilege.

Does mandatory reporting work? Some studies on mandatory reporting laws are starting to question if mandatory reporting laws are effective, with lower percentages of abuse cases being reported in states with stringent reporting laws. Some religious leaders say removing confessional privilege would create ambiguity in protecting some parts of confessions and not others.

What have U.S. courts said about confessional privilege? A 1980 U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion said “the priest-penitent privilege recognizes the human need to disclose to a spiritual counsellor, in total and absolute confidence, what are believed to be flawed acts or thoughts and to receive priestly consolation and guidance in return.” The court may have to revisit the conflicts between clergy-penitent privilege and mandatory reporting laws.

The piece also looks at how both legislation and confessions help protect child abuse victims and help uncover abuse, with religious leaders saying confession works for the truly penitent is not a form of malign secrecy.

It also provides a state-by-state breakdown of clergy privilege, with state-specific notes:

• Clergy have mandatory reporting obligations — seven states
• Clergy are mandatory reporters but retain some privilege — 24 states
• Clergy receiving penitential communications are not subject to mandatory reporting requirements — 19 states and the District of Columbia

The complete article can be found online at Deseret.com.

The statement reiterated the Church’s policies that leaders and members who become aware of child sexual abuse should ensure that it is stopped and that victims receive care.

It also criticized the AP story for what it called “significant flaws” and for drawing “erroneous conclusions.” It said the help line is set up to protect child victims and that the story’s suggestion that the help line is used to cover up abuse is false.

The statement comes 12 days after the Church’s initial response to the story, which the Church then said had “seriously mischaracterized” the help line, was “oversimplified and incomplete” and was “a serious misrepresentation of the Church and its efforts.”

The new statement was released, it said, because Church leaders were aware that journalists and others wondered after the first statement what exactly the Church believed was incorrect in the AP story. The second statement was designed to help media, members and others understand how the Church handles child abuse, including particulars about the Arizona case, the statement said.

Read the entire story in the Deseret News.

Following is the entire statement released Wednesday, Aug. 17, by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

For generations, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have spoken in the strongest of terms about the evils of abuse and the need to care for those who are victims or survivors of abuse. From the thundering rebuke of former President Gordon B. Hinckley to the recent words of healing offered by Elder Patrick Kearon of the Presidency of the Seventy, our feelings are clear. We echo those sentiments and teachings today. Our hearts are broken as we learn of any abuse. It cannot be tolerated. It cannot be excused. The Savior Jesus Christ wants us all to do better and be better.

It is important to us that our members and friends understand how deeply we feel about this subject. It is also important that they have accurate information about how we approach this matter.

Church leaders and members are instructed in the Church’s “General Handbook” that their responsibilities related to abuse are as follows:

1. Assure that child sexual abuse is stopped; 
2. Help victims receive care, including from professional counselors; and
3. Comply with whatever reporting is required by law.

Since the Church released its first statement about the Associated Press story, many have wondered about what was incorrect or mischaracterized in their reporting. The information and details below are provided to help media, members and others understand how the Church approaches the topic of child abuse, particularly as it relates to this specific case.

What did the Associated Press story get wrong?

The AP story has significant flaws in its facts and timeline, which lead to erroneous conclusions.

We are puzzled as to why or how a media source as respected as the Associated Press would make such egregious errors in reporting and editing.

Each of the facts below is contained in public filings in the pending case and is taken from the sworn testimony of Leizza Adams, the mother of the victims. The Associated Press was directed to those filings prior to the publication of their first story, but they chose not to include any of them. Those filings, accessible to and familiar to the Associated Press, are the source for the following facts:

• In late 2011, Paul Adams made a limited confession to his bishop about a single past incident of abuse of one child. The bishop then called the help line, where he was advised about how to fully comply with Arizona’s reporting laws. In compliance with that counsel, from that time forward, the bishop repeatedly tried to intervene and encourage reporting, including by:
• Counseling Paul Adams to repent and seek professional help;
• Asking Paul Adams to report (he refused and also refused to give permission to the bishop to make the report);
• Encouraging Paul Adams’s wife, Leizza, to report (she refused and later served time in prison for her role);
• Encouraging Paul Adams to move out of the home (which he did temporarily);
• Urging Leizza to seek professional counseling for Paul and their children, which would trigger a mandatory report (they refused).
• In 2013, Adams was excommunicated for his behavior and lost his membership in the Church.
• Prior to and after his limited confession, Paul rarely attended Church or talked to leaders.
• It wasn’t until 2017, nearly four years later, that Church leaders learned from media reports the extent of the abuse, that the abuse had continued and that it involved a second victim born after Paul’s excommunication.

The AP story ignores this timeline and sequence of events and implies that all these facts were known by a bishop as early as 2011, a clearly erroneous conclusion. 

The suggestion that the help line is used to “cover up” abuse is completely false.

• The Church’s abuse help line has everything to do with protecting children and has nothing to do with cover-up. It has been in existence for more than a quarter of a century. Its purpose is to:

1. Comply with the various laws of child abuse reporting in all 50 states and the provinces of Canada, ministering to the needs of victims and their families where we can, while reporting abuse consistent with the law.
2. To encourage victims, family members and perpetrators to seek professional counseling and to report abuse to the authorities themselves.
3. To directly report the abuse to authorities, regardless of legal exemptions from reporting requirements, when it is known that a child is in imminent danger. The help line routinely reports cases of child abuse to authorities. Outside experts who are aware of the Helpline have regularly praised it.

• Even when a report is not required or is even prohibited by law (because the confession is “owned” by the confessor), the help line encourages leaders to pursue ways to ensure these three goals are met.
• Those who serve on the help line are parents and grandparents themselves and include former government child abuse investigators and child abuse prosecutors. Some are even themselves survivors of abuse. The notion that there would be any incentive on their part to cover up child abuse is absurd.

Conclusion

We strive to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, who spoke powerfully and repeatedly about the precious value of children and condemned those who would mistreat them. These are the ideals that characterize our understanding and approach to the issue of child abuse. What happened to the Adams children in Arizona at the hands of their parents is sickening, heartbreaking and inexcusable.

The Church has issued a strong response because this is a topic where there can be no mincing of words, no hint of apathy, and no tolerance for any suggestion that we are neglectful or not doing enough on the issue of child abuse. It is a matter that strikes at our hearts and is so deeply offensive to everything that we value. We will not stand by while others mischaracterize or completely misrepresent the Church’s long-term efforts and commitment. Nor will we tolerate the Associated Press or any other media to make such gross errors on the details of such a tragic and horrific incident as what occurred in Arizona. We are constantly striving to be better and do more, and we invite others to join us in such efforts.

President Gordon B. Hinckley

“Countless numbers of [children] cry out in fear and loneliness from the evil consequences of moral transgression, neglect, and abuse. I speak plainly, perhaps indelicately. But I know of no other way to make clear a matter about which I feel so strongly. 

“… There is the terrible, inexcusable, and evil phenomenon of physical and sexual abuse.

“It is unnecessary. It is unjustified. It is indefensible.

“… There is the terrible, vicious practice of sexual abuse. It is beyond understanding. It is an affront to the decency that ought to exist in every man and woman. It is a violation of that which is sacred and divine. It is destructive in the lives of children. It is reprehensible and worthy of the most severe condemnation” (President Gordon B. Hinckley; “Save the Children,” October 1994 general conference).

Elder Patrick Kearon

“There is no place for any kind of abuse — physical, sexual, emotional, or verbal — in any home, any country, or any culture.

“The abuse was not, is not, and never will be your fault, no matter what the abuser or anyone else may have said to the contrary. When you have been a victim of cruelty, incest, or any other perversion, you are not the one who needs to repent; you are not responsible.

“You are not less worthy or less valuable or less loved as a human being, or as a daughter or son of God, because of what someone else has done to you.

“God does not now see, nor has He ever seen, you as someone to be despised. Whatever has happened to you, He is not ashamed of you or disappointed in you. He loves you in a way you have yet to discover. And you will discover it as you trust in His promises and as you learn to believe Him when He says you are ‘precious in [His] sight’” (Elder Patrick Kearon, “We Can be More than Conquerors,” April 2022 general conference).

“Consider how Christ’s teachings during His mortal sojourn transcended both space and time — having application to all lands and peoples in every era — and yet His ministry took place among an astonishingly small segment of the earth’s geography and population,” he said. “He spoke the local language, lived the local culture and participated in local events and ceremonies like weddings.”

His practice of loving everyone was radical in His time, from conversing with the Samaritan woman at the well to healing untouchable lepers, from dining with publicans to defending the woman taken in adultery.

“All who were excluded by society found a welcome place in his company,” he said. “Can we not see through His example that strong communities are never achieved by ignoring or isolating strangers or those who seem weak, different or misplaced?”

Bishop Caussé said Christ’s example is more needed now than ever. He said Latter-day Saints have a responsibility as Christ’s disciples to kindle His love within their communities.

Church culture, he added, is intended to be inclusive, not exclusive, to look outward instead of inward.

“The Lord invites us to be conscious of the broader world in which we live — something which the increased worldwide connectivity now facilitates — and, at the same time, to stay rooted and engaged within our immediate communities. In other words, He expects us to form and strengthen associations on both a global and local scale.”

The Savior showed everyone the perfect example of how to do this today, Bishop Caussé said during his presentation to the International Society, a global network for Latter-day Saint professionals with international interests from business to development to Church growth, during the group’s annual conference on Monday, April 4.

The Church also exemplifies this pattern, from the prophet down to individual members, he said.

“We are led by a prophet who is one of the greatest ambassadors for peace and harmony in the world today. Throughout his apostolic ministry, President Russell M. Nelson has developed friendships and opened doors among nations, cultures and communities that might previously have been deemed impossible. He has led the Church in becoming known as a key voice in promoting brotherhood, mutual respect and religious freedom,” he said.

Members around the world are following these models, he said. He shared examples of wards, stakes, areas and missionaries doing service both in their larger communities and in their local areas.

• In Haiti, members have planted 120,000 trees over the past decade.
• In the United States, members engaged in ward- and stake-level blood drives and contributed more blood to the American Red Cross than any other group, the organization’s CEO said last year.
• In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Wisconsin North Stake joined with local Muslim and Episcopalian congregations last fall to clean up 20 blocks in one of the city’s neighborhoods.
• In Brazil, missionaries and Brazil Area leaders accepted and helped integrate 10,000 Venezuelan member refugees into their wards and branches over the past four years.

“The knowledge provided by the gospel that we are all children of an Eternal Father motivates us to be more sensitive to the brotherhood and sisterhood that should exist among the peoples of the earth,” Bishop Caussé said.

It is motivation to seek to engage in service beyond one’s immediate sphere of influence, he said.

“The fact that you are a member of this international society presupposes a longing on your part to cast your influence across the world. My encouragement to you would be to act on those ‘macro-level’ desires, to use the modern blessings of technology and travel to extend your efforts for good far and wide,” he said.

“At the same time,” he added, “I would ask you to not lose sight of the reality that — as with the mortal Savior — some of the most profound and lasting impacts you may ever have could be upon those with whom you associate individually at the ‘micro-level’ — those within your families, wards, neighborhoods and local communities.”

Today, members across Europe are helping fellow members and others among the refugees from armed conflict in Ukraine, said Bishop Caussé and Latter-day Saint Charities Director Sharon Eubank.

The International Society presented Sister Eubank, first counselor in the outgoing Relief Society general presidency, with its distinguished service award.

She said the Church is following Bishop Caussé’s concept of a dual approach as it responds to the Ukraine refugee crisis. It is providing aid at an international level and at a micro-local level.

Latter-day Saint Charities has 30 projects underway. That includes providing $5 million in food to people in and around Ukraine, Sister Eubank said. The conflict has displaced nearly 25% of Ukraine’s population.

Read more: What the Church is doing to help in Eastern Europe

“We are buying food in Europe, trucking it through those bordering countries and getting it into the pipeline that is going into the cities, and we’re letting the government of Ukraine do the distribution, as they should,” she said.

Meanwhile, ward and stake councils across Europe are mobilizing individually and as part of the area to provide aid to individuals.

Ministering to all and to the one is the pattern after which the Church is organized, Bishop Caussé said. It is the Savior’s pattern.

“One of the great paradoxical but highly comforting truths of the gospel,” Bishop Caussé said, “is that even though the Lord’s love and mercy are so vast as to encompass all — the full infinity of His creations — it is nonetheless infinitesimal in its reach, touching every one of His children in an amazingly intimate and individual way, as if he or she or us — you and me — were the only person on earth.”

U.S. President Joe Biden, former U.S. President Barack Obama and other important American leaders spoke during the memorial service, and several of them added to its spiritual nature, talking about faith and Jesus Christ.

“A lot of the gospel was taught in gentle and loving ways, and the Spirit was felt by those in attendance,” President Ballard said. “It was a great tribute to a great man who has rendered tremendous service to his country as a senator and in other political offices.”

Reid died Dec. 28 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 82. He had an abiding love for the gospel of Jesus Christ, according to President Ballard, who knew him well and considered him a dear friend.

President Ballard shared with the family the love and concern of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and personally delivered a letter from the First Presidency to the family.

“The depth of the real Harry Reid that I knew intimately is a Harry Reid who loves the Lord Jesus Christ, and who absolutely is true to the Restoration of the gospel and the reality of the life and mission of Joseph Smith the Prophet,” President Ballard said.

Reid loved and embodied King Benjamin’s injunction that, “When you are in the service of your fellow beings you are only in the service of your God,” President Ballard said during the funeral.

He exemplified that phrase, said President Ballard. He asked his ward leaders to assign him to home teach and minister to those who were out of work and most in need.

“Of Harry Reid’s religious leaders, many have commented that he was the best minister in their congregations,” President Ballard said. “Even during his years as one of the nation’s most powerful political leaders, he always made time to minister ‘to the least of these,’ one by one,” and did so “because of his faith in Jesus Christ.”

The other speakers all shared examples of Reid’s service and how he saw his work in Congress as a way to help the vulnerable.

“For Harry, the whole point of holding office, the whole point of wielding power, was to actually get things done on behalf of those you represent,” Obama said. 

Reid and Biden were friends for 50 years. Biden ordered all flags on federal property lowered to half staff on Saturday to honor Reid, whose friendship made Biden feel like they were brothers.

“A Catholic boy from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the Latter-day Saint from Searchlight, (Nevada),” Biden said. “Harry would always have your back, like the guys I grew up with. Harry had my back and I had his.”

Biden and Obama said Reid and his wife, Landra Reid, were a great love story.

“Jill and I are here for Harry,” Biden said, “but he wouldn’t want us here just for him. Landra, we’re here for you and the family. Eulogies are for the living.”

At the end of his remarks, he added, “Landra, God bless you. God bless the entire family. God bless my friend, Harry.”

The service, also attended by numerous local government and community leaders in addition to the national leaders, was conducted by Marcus Faust, a Latter-day Saint lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, D.C. and the son of the late Latter-day Saint apostle President James E. Faust.

He began the funeral by saying, “Like the apostle Paul, Harry Reid can now say, ‘I fought the good fight. I finished my course. I have kept the faith,’” which was displayed on a screen at the front of the Smith Performing Arts Center above Reid’s casket.

A quartet played Latter-day Saint hymns, including “In Humility, Our Savior” as prelude music. Church beliefs were scattered throughout the service.

One of them was shared by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who said that he is Jewish and appreciated Reid’s spirituality, noting that Reid kept a Book of Mormon in his Senate office. 

“I’d like to read a verse from 2 Nephi, chapter 9, that gives me great comfort after the loss of my dear, dear friend and mentor,” Schumer said. “‘O how great the plan of our God! For on the other hand, the paradise of God must deliver up the spirits of the righteous, and the grave deliver up the body of the righteous; and the spirit and the body is restored to itself again, and all men become incorruptible, and immortal, and they are living souls…’ They are living souls. When you lose someone special, they are never truly gone. They always stay with you.”

Reid’s daughter, Lana Reid Barringer, said her father was loving, thoughtful and fun.

“Nobody loved me the way my dad loved me,” she said. “He was a wonderful father who loved me unconditionally, and he always made me and my brothers his priority. … I am grateful families are forever.”

One of his sons, Key, said his father manifested charity as taught by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. Another called his father his best friend.

“I was delighted by the children’s remarks,” President Ballard said.

Reid had developed friendships with a Latter-day Saint singer from Nevada, Brandon Flowers of “The Killers,” and the Hall of Fame singer and songwriter Carole King. Both performed during the funeral.  Flowers sat at a piano and played and sang his groups’ ballad, “Be Still” — which included an addition of the Latter-day Saint hymn “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.” King played “In the Name of Love.”

Several of the speakers, including his children and President Ballard, noted Reid’s penchant for abruptly ending phone calls by hanging up without saying goodbye.

As he closed the service, Faust adapted a phrase from a popular 1970s song to describe Reid’s phone etiquette.

“Love means never having to say goodbye,” Faust told the dignitaries in attendance. “Because of the love of the Savior Jesus Christ, neither do we. Instead we say to Harry, God be with you until we meet again.”

President Ballard said Reid had been a good friend to the Church. He said he regularly called Reid for help with visas for missionaries.

The two spoke and visited even more frequently after Reid retired and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

“In my calling as an Apostle of Jesus Christ, I had many personal visits with my friend Harry,” he said. “We would counsel together and share personal experiences of faith. In more recent years, we shared a similar plight. We each lost sight in one eye at about the same time; he in his right eye and me in my left. We used to remind each other that we could walk down the street, arm in arm. He could help me see things on the left and I could help him see things on the right!”

President Ballard went to the Reid home on Friday night to visit Landra Reid and some of their families.

“The opportunity to visit with Landra and the children was very special,” he said. “The family is very devout and the gospel is carrying them through this time.”

Sister Reid invited President Ballard to pray with the family on Friday night and to give the family prayer during its gathering at the Smith Center before the funeral on Saturday. He also visited with them following the service, sharing “the peace and assurance that this parting is for a short season.”

Reid’s casket will be flown to Washington, D.C., next, where he will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol. Afterward, Reid’s body will be buried in Searchlight.

President Ballard’s full remarks at the funeral:

President and Dr. Biden, Vice President Harris and Mr. Emhoff, former President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Leader Schumer, and other distinguished friends, I greet you warmly as we gather to honor and remember our friend and colleague, Harry Reid.

To Landra, Lana, Rory, Leif, Josh and Key: It is an honor for me to be invited to speak as we pay tribute to your beloved husband, father, grandfather, and our dear friend. I know Harry loves each and every one of you deeply.

I bring the love of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Harry and Landra joined our church soon after their marriage at age 19, and they have been faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, with a firm belief that we are all brothers and sisters — children of a loving Father in Heaven.

In my calling as an Apostle of Jesus Christ, I had many personal visits with my friend Harry. We would counsel together and share personal experiences of faith. In more recent years, we shared a similar plight. We each lost sight in one eye at about the same time; he in his right eye and me in my left. We used to remind each other that we could walk down the street, arm in arm. He could help me see things on the left and I could help him see things on the right!

At times, Sen. Reid, he really was all business. When he would call, the conversation was usually quick and to the point. And when our conversation was over, I don’t ever remember him saying “goodbye.” The phone clicked, and the line was dead. That was Harry Reid. This morning, as I was with his family, I was finally able to say to my dear friend, “Goodbye.”

But there was another side to Harry. From his humble beginnings in Searchlight, Nevada, to his eventual prominence as a world leader, Harry Reid was a man of faith — in word and in deed.

In the New Testament, Jesus Christ taught: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Harry cared for “the least of these” — those who were less fortunate, hungry, sick or those who had any number of challenges.

Sen. Reid was also a great teacher of this principle. On one occasion when speaking to students at the Brigham Young University he taught about his conviction for service. He said: “Many have chosen to pursue an educational direction pointed toward a lucrative field. … There is nothing wrong with seeking a career that will bring you financial success. But never forget the clarion call of (the Book of Mormon prophet) King Benjamin: ‘When you are in the service of your fellow beings you are only in the service of your God.’” My dear friend Harry lived what he taught.

In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we strive to visit and care for the individual needs of others.

When we minister in this way, we are representing Jesus Christ and acting as his agents to watch over, lift and strengthen those around us. Of Harry Reid’s religious leaders, many have commented that he was the best minister in their congregations. Even during his years as one of the nation’s most powerful political leaders, he always made time to minister “to the least of these,” one by one.

Because of his faith in Jesus Christ, he never forgot to reach out to “the one.”

To you, Landra, and to your family, we have the assurance that Harry has returned to the God who gave us life and awaits his joyful reunion with you after this life. And through the perfect and eternal Atonement of Jesus Christ, you and your family can be reunited. I share my love for you and my witness as an Apostle of the Lord, Jesus Christ, that this is true, and I do so in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.