My name is Lecia. I am 37 years old. I’ve been married for 17 years and I have four children, ranging in age from 15 to 4. I’ve long regretted the fact that I have no interesting hobbies to reveal, but I do love to read and write. I’m currently serving as first counselor in the Primary, where my little charges insist on telling me a lot more about their families than their parents ever wanted me to know!

I was born into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but I believe I was converted around the age of 16. At the time, I was serving as a youth tour guide at the Arizona Temple Visitor’s Center. Because of this, I was spending a lot of extra time studying the gospel and trying to find answers to questions that people of other faiths often ask about the church. I spent quite a bit more time than usual on my knees during that period of my life, and I just remember one night when I felt a sweet, peaceful feeling that what I was learning and teaching others was true. I have often found that the experiences I’ve had with the Spirit came with the sacrifice of extra time and effort on my part.

Inside my own head, I often think of my life as a quiet crucible. I haven’t experienced any of the truly heart-rending sorrows this world seems to hand out so readily – my children are healthy and sound, I have a loving and supportive family, and have never suffered abuse or handicap. What I do have is a sweet spouse who has been dealing with chronic pain for the last fifteen years. This long and tedious trial has certainly been worse for him than for me, but letting go of my ideas about being a full-time mom, and learning to carry all of the responsibilities that two parents would generally share has had its difficult moments, to be sure. But I have seen in my own life the Lord blessing me with compensating blessings, and that is what helps me when I feel down. I know Heavenly Father loves me and is aware of my struggles because of the many little hand-holds he leaves for me as I climb this mountain. For every hardship, a compensating blessing is given. For me, these blessings are simple, but many – I almost never get sick, so I have been able to run our household and take care of my family every day, with very few exceptions. My children were blessed with sharp minds, so the time that I don’t have to struggle through their homework with them isn’t missed, because they don’t need it.

This past year has added yet another blessing. Like so many others, my hours of employment shrank, along with my salary, and even my strictest budget tells me that I have a $300 shortfall every month. But somehow, after a whole year of this, I have yet to dip into my savings. I simply can’t explain it, but I know that I am living out my own story of the woman with a little bit of oil in her cruse that lasted until the famine was over. I’m afraid to even discuss it too much, it’s such a wonder.

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I am a 25 year old single Mormon Woman.  I love watching and playing soccer, BYU football, reading, playing piano and being with family.

I feel that God knows and loves me every time I am with my family. I see all the little things that come together to make up our family and I can’t help but believe that I was supposed to be a particular member of that group. I have 11 older brothers, and I am the only girl. All my brothers are married. All of them have children. As such—our family grows larger and louder every year. Gatherings are hectic and overwhelming. But more than that, they’re wonderful. My testimony is strengthened at every reunion, big or small, because I can’t think of anything more wonderful than being with that large, crazy, loud group for forever. And I know that it was a loving Father in Heaven who has made that a possibility in my life. Knowing that one day I will have a husband and children to add to that mix and to keep with me forever because of our Father’s love and our Savior’s sacrifice and example is the most wonderful part of the gospel to me. I feel like I belong, I feel like I’m important and I feel like I’m loved, not just by my earthly family, but by my Father in Heaven.

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I am a forty-eight year old wife and mother and a former school teacher. I enjoy reading, logic games, spending time with my family and volunteering in my daughters’ school. I have two interrelated stories that demonstrate how I know that God is aware of me and loves me, and that He answers our prayers.

In the mid nineteen eighties I served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Belgium and France. The President of the Belgium Brussels Mission at that time was G. Perrin Walker, an attorney from Tacoma, Washington. In 1992, I moved from Virginia to Washington state. In 1993, I met the man who is now my husband and we were married in 1994. We were married in the Seattle, Washington Temple, and my former mission president and his wife were able to join us there. Both my husband and I were looking forward to having a family and hoped to have four children, ideally, two boys and two girls. In 2002, when our third daughter was seventeen months old, we learned that we were expecting another baby. We were thrilled since I had just turned forty-one and we were eager to have our fourth child before I got much older.

The early part of the pregnancy went smoothly and the baby seemed to be developing normally. Then at nineteen weeks we learned that the fetus had died. It was a baby boy with trisomy 18, a chromosomal abnormality. After delivering the baby our doctor strongly suggested that we not have another child. My initial feeling was that I didn’t want to risk going through that experience again.

However, within a few weeks I realized I still longed for another baby and my husband felt very much the same. We soon began trying to conceive but as the months passed without any success we began to worry that my age was making it unlikely. Our daughters were so disappointed that we had lost their baby brother and they prayed each night that Heavenly Father would send a baby boy to our family. My husband and I offered similar prayers. Not only did we pray about it, but we fasted on several occasions to be blessed with another child.

After months of disappointment I began to consider that the Lord didn’t intend for us to have another baby and started to ask the Lord if it was His will that we have another child or if I should stop focusing on that and put all my energy into caring for the children I already had. I tried to feel some response in my heart to these prayers but I really didn’t feel that I was receiving an impression either way. One particular weekend I chose to fast about this issue. As I fasted, I prayed fervently that I would feel an assurance either that we should continue trying to conceive, or that I should try to lay aside my hope for another child. In spite of the effort I expended I did not feel that I was any closer to an answer to my prayer. I went to Church Sunday morning feeling very frustrated and questioning my ability to feel the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

During the worship service my toddler became disruptive and I got up to take her out of the chapel. As we walked through the back of the chapel I saw my former mission president sitting in the congregation. Though we live only about forty minutes away from one another, we had only seen one another a handful of times since returning from Europe. He was (and is) serving as an Area Authority for the church in addition to his work as a lawyer so he had very little free time. When I asked what he was doing there he told me that I had been very much on his mind recently and he felt he needed to come see me. His wife told me later that day that it was only the second Sunday in a two month period that he had been free from assignments at Church conferences and he chose to spend his free Sunday driving all the way out to see me at Church. It was a wonderful surprise, and I was thrilled to be able to spend time with the two of them.

It was only later that I recognized that this was a response to my fasting and prayer. I could no longer deny that the Lord was aware of me when He had prompted one of his very busy servants to go well out of his way to check on my welfare. I was overcome with feelings of humility and gratitude. Although I still didn’t know if there was another baby in our future, I did know that the Lord was aware of me and I felt surrounded by His love.

Later that year a good friend of ours gave birth to a beautiful baby girl and early the next year a young family with a particularly cute baby girl moved into our ward/congregation. Our family had continued to pray for a baby boy to join our family but as my daughters saw those two baby girls at Church each week they decided it might be fun to have another baby girl. Soon, we began praying that, though we had all hoped to have a baby boy in our family, we would also be happy to welcome a baby girl. Within a few months of beginning these prayers, we learned that our fourth daughter was on the way.

We realized that our Heavenly Father had been answering our prayers all along: we had been asking for a baby boy, and
in His wisdom, He knew that this was not what was best for us, so he answered no; when we asked for a baby girl, His answer was yes.
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Growing up, I didn’t know how good I had it. I had a mom and dad who loved each other, a sister to quarrel with over clothes and friends, two baby brothers to wrestle with, two dogs waiting by the door for me when I came home from school and some lively fish who liked to jump out of their tank. Life was good — so good in fact, that I’m trying to recreate my childhood with my own family. (Well except for the pets part; my husband and I are delaying the inevitable “poop scooping” era of our lives.) Aside from that, we’re following good example set by our parents.

This YouTube video entitled “Life in a Mormon Family” made me reflect on the fun times I had with my own family.  While not all LDS families are this large, we are a people who prize children as wonderful blessings from our Father in Heaven. I admire the time and sacrifice these parents have put into raising their eight children.

Here is the intro provided by the parents for their own heartfelt family video. Have fun getting to know this wonderful family.

You might call us the stereotypical Mormon family. With Mom, Dad, and 8 kids, we are just a little larger than the national average. 😉
Having a big family may not be for everyone and may not always be considered “cool”, but we’ve loved every minute of it.

Do you have fun family videos you’d like to share with others here at mormonwoman.org? Please email us at mormonwoman(at)gmail(dot)com.

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