Following the opening session of World Congress of Families IX, Big Ocean Women (founded by Provo’s Carolina Allen) met briefly with Sheri Dew and Kristen Oaks (wife of Elder Dallin H. Oaks) in front of delegate flags. “The work you are doing is so important,” Kristen Oaks said to the LDS women who flocked to WCF9 from Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma and beyond.
Prior to the opening session of World Congress of Families IX, a group of 40+ LDS women gathered in a nearby room to meet, bond and explain the serendipitous ways they had been drawn to attend the international pro-family conference.
Authors, bloggers, homeschoolers, grandmothers and single moms affected by pornography each stood to share why they were sacrificing to attend WCF9, which is being held on U.S. soil for the first time.
Provo’s Carolina Allen, who founded Big Ocean Women, told of staying up late on a stormy night reading three articles back to back on the challenges facing the traditional family. “The gravity of it sunk in, and I prayed and then sobbed into my pillow,” she said. “I knew I could take care of my five children, but what about the rest of the kids in the world?”
An image came into her mind of a mother hen tucking in her baby chicks. “And I thought if enough women could stretch themselves a little bit more, we could tuck more children under our care and do more good in the world,” Allen said.
She didn’t know what that “stretching and caring” would look like, but the idea gave her peace. Since that time, Allen led a delegation to the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women and now a group nearly 50 strong at WCF9 where she oversees groups focusing on Religious Liberty, Education/Parental Rights, Global Family Advocacy, Pro-Life Perspectives and Combatting Pornography.
Big Ocean Women has been mentored by long-time family advocate, speaker and author Susan Roylance, who is also attending WCF9.
“My youngest was 3 when I got involved in the pro-family movement and it didn’t make any sense at the time, but I knew I had to do it,” Roylance said. “I felt such a need to help protect my children.”
Roylance’s seven children have given her 33 grandchildren, and she said she has tried to quit her intense pro-family involvement four times to focus on other things.
Just before WCF9 began, Roylance spoke to Big Ocean Women, “My wave is dying, but yours is picking up and carrying it on. You are part of the next wave of the pro-family movement.”
Other LDS members are standing strong in the pro-family tsunami at WCF9, including Pleasant Grove’s Stan Swim who is the chairman of the weeklong event.
“We will have four days of wonderful conversation, inspiration and entertainment,” Swim said as he emceed the opening session, including an introduction for Nu Skin’s Steve Lund who is also charged with putting together the festivities surrounding the opening of the Provo City Center Temple early in 2016.
Lund said to the capacity crowd, “The conversation about the family started long before the Supreme Court started thinking about it, and it will continue as long as mankind is on this planet.”
Lund, who is known for his humor in business and church settings, said that in a society like ours that demands an environmental impact before we can install a mailbox, “we must insist on our best thinking being brought to bear as it relates to the cornerstone component — the family.”
After Lund’s message he introduced Elder M. Russell Ballard who explained doctrinal reasons that traditional families play an important role in the LDS Church. He played a video showing families interacting to the background music of “I Lived in Heaven.” One of his primary messages was to explain that before this life, “we lived with God who is our Heavenly Father. He is the literal father of our spirits, and we are his spirit children.”
Music for the opening session of WCF9 included Jenny Oaks Baker and her children, who performed an instrumental version of “Love is Spoken Here.” Nathan Osmond ended the session with his energetic rendition of “God Bless our Homes & Families,” written by Provo’s Janice Kapp Perry and Senator Orrin Hatch.
The post LDS ‘wave’ building momentum at World Congress of Families IX appeared first on UtahValley360.
