At that time of the incident, Mitt Romney was the congregation’s leader or Bishop. He had been vacationing with his family at Cape Cod when he received word of the fire. He returned almost immediately. The Arlington Ward was meeting in the Cambridge building, and with school resuming in just a month, the student wards at Cambridge University would fill the Cambridge chapel to capacity. That meant his congregation would need to meet elsewhere while their new meetinghouse was being rebuilt.

The community of Belmont solved that problem in a tremendous outpouring of concern and love. Father Rodney Copp of St. Joseph’s parish extended his condolences and offered his school for the LDS ward to meet in.

Within days after the fire, Bishop Romney received letters from seven other churches in the town, also offering their buildings. The Board of Selectmen of Belmont offered the town hall. Other churches not only extended their sympathy but also held fundraisers to help with the reconstruction of the LDS meetinghouse.

‘So many people wanted to help,’ says Brother Romney. As a man of vision, he felt all those offers should not be turned away by the Belmont Ward. Seeing the good that could come from this disaster, he responded to all the ministers and pastors who had offered their buildings and looked at each building.

However, not every church had the twenty-one classrooms the ward needed. “While it would have been far more convenient to use just one building, we decided to use every building where the facilities were sufficient for our needs,” he recalled. It was very difficult to adapt the meetings to these non-LDS meetinghouses, but Bishop Romney wanted the people in Belmont to get to know his ward members and accept them as friends.

Not only had the parking lot dispute caused some bad feelings among the townspeople, but according to Brother Romney, there had been hints ‘that we weren’t wanted. Some people in Belmont thought of Latter-day Saints as bizarre, and we were not part of the church community.’

During the nine months of reconstruction, the Belmont Ward met in the town hall for one fast meeting, in the Catholic school for three months, then in the Protestant Armenian Church meetinghouse, and finally in the Congregational Church. Connie Eddington, who has lived in Belmont for several years, says, ‘It gave us a different feeling to hold church elsewhere. When we were in the Catholic school, my feelings immediately changed toward every Catholic I knew. Every time I would see one of my Catholic neighbors, I would tell him or her that we enjoyed meeting in their church. I really wanted to thank them for their kindness to us.’

But most of all, Bishop Romney feels that the members of his ward learned about other faiths and the goodness of people. “They, in turn, learned about us,” he adds. Although he didn’t feel there was a lot of antagonism toward the Church in the town, he does feel that there was a good deal of ‘benign neglect. We weren’t considered part of the church community,’ he says. ‘Now the ward is part of the Belmont Church Council, which is an organization to further religious purposes. It has no ecumenical ambitions.’

No one in the Belmont Ward could have anticipated the great blessings the fire would bring. Although costly and inconvenient, the disaster increased community awareness of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Belmont and also served to foster feelings of love and concern toward Latter-day Saints. As one Belmont Ward member points out, “There is no question that it brought the ward closer together, and deepened our feelings of love and appreciation for our neighbors (Janet Peterson, Ensign, April, 1986, p. 21).

In downtown Boston, turnpikes and rapid transit and rail lines spill their streaming traffic into a compact maze of narrow, twisting streets shaded by the press of luxury hotels, opulent shopping galleries, and corporate skyscrapers. Thronged sidewalks intensify the sense of big-city bustle and commotion.

In contrast is the Charles River, its serene waters rippled by the quiet passage of sleek collegiate rowing shells and sailboats whisked by salty Atlantic breezes. The park-lined waterway divides Boston from Cambridge, where the festive air of Harvard Square fades into the tranquility and rarefied atmosphere of outlying suburban communities.

Another refreshing scene is the Boston Massachusetts Stake. But unlike the banked, slow-flowing Charles, this dynamic, evolving stake of eight wards and five branches is overflowing its borders.

At the helm is President W. Mitt Romney, who, assisted by other stake members, is helping ensure that . . . Mormons are not lost in crosscurrents or in the wake of surging membership growth (Ensign, Don L. Brugger, Climate for Change, Sept. 1993).

In the Church of Jesus Christ, congregations are grouped into “wards,” and “wards” into larger groups called “stakes.”  Leaders of a ward are known as “Bishops” and leaders of stakes are called “Stake Presidents.”  In Boston, Mitt Romney is known, as well, as “President Romney.”  And that’s not because of his campaign, but because of the calling he received to serve the Lord by presiding over those in his geographical area in Boston.

President Romney noticed that many non-English-speaking members living long distances from meetinghouses, were struggling to attend English speaking wards. Some of these members worked long hours in multiple jobs and had unreliable transportation.  Sensitive to the diversity and to their needs, President Romney and Bowen sought inspiration and moved in a new direction.

Their plan was (1) to take the Church to where the people live; (2) to conduct worship services in the language of an area’s dominant ethnic group; and (3) to soften the cultural gap by focusing all Church activities on Jesus Christ. The branches draw on designated “sister wards” for various resources.

Other recently created branches serve close-knit Spanish, Portuguese, and Asian enclaves. Stake leaders call these units storefronts branches or “boutiques” because they represent a street-level effort to display the beauty of the gospel before people [of all faiths]” (Ibid).

President Romney has created a haven for the Saints in Boston, unity in diversity. Again, he championed a new solution to existing problems.

Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann Romney, converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints before they were married in 1969. They have five sons together and have been touted as having a strong marriage, based on Christian values taught by the Mormon Church.

Mitt Romney has also served in the Church as a part-time lay minister (Bishop and Stake President). Due to his religious beliefs, which include adhering to what is referred to as the Word of Wisdom, Mitt Romney abstains from drinking alcohol, using tobacco, and any illegal drug use. He also pays a full tithe to the Church which means he donates 10% of his income to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He also attends the temple of the Mormon Church and recommends that people learn more about the temple by visiting The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The LDS Church teaches first and foremost that there’s a God who is our Heavenly Father, that all the children of the world are his, that humanity is one great family, that we have a duty to serve one another and that we should try and live better lives. Believing in humanity as one great family is why the members refer to one another as “brother” and “sister”.

Being a member of the Mormon Church can be difficult at times due to the extreme beliefs that the members are held to. They are to attend church services every week, attend the temple on a regular basis, donate 10% of their earnings to the church, have a food storage system in place, love thy neighbor, be financially sound, help others, avoid caffeinated drinks such as coffee and tea, and more. There are of course benefits to being a member of the Mormon Church. They believe in life after death, families forever, the ability to become a God, repentance, Christ-like love, salvation, and more.

This has been the background of Mitt Romney’s life. He learned throughout the years to do whatever needed doing. In 1968, when he was a young man, he accepted a call to go to France for two and a half years to teach the people there about the church. Missionaries are sent away from their homes and families and expected to learn to thrive in and understand the new culture they’re placed into.

France was a troubled place, and an unnerving experience for a young American man. There were riots, disrupted communication, and a government near collapse. Romney, who had already faced the hardship of trying to teach religion in a country filled with chaos, was just preparing for a new challenge as assistant to his mission president. Already he was consistently a leader in the accomplishment statistics of the mssion. He worked hard and got results. He was ready for leadership.

Unfortunately, as he drove the mission president, the man’s wife and Romney’s missionary companion to an appointment, another car came speeding around a curve, missed a turn and swerved into Romney’s lane, hitting his car. Romney was pronounced by police to be dead. He wasn’t, but for a time, no one was sure he’d survive. The mission president’s wife did die. Romney’s grief was intense.

However, despite grief and the physical pains of the accident, Romney was not allowed much time to recover. His mission president left for a time to take his wife’s body home. Romney, only 21 years old, and his companion, found themselves in charge of an entire mission, a task normally assigned only to much older men. They were to oversee two hundred missionaries and assist in serving 3000 church members. Another mission president, assigned to Geneva, was sent in to provide emergency training and support, but he quickly found the young men knew what to do, and so he returned to his own mission. He said they were quite capable. Romney pushed aside his grief and pain and focused on the task in front of him. He was excited by the opportunity to learn to do something extremely difficult under difficult circumstances.

The expectation was that they would do the minimum required to keep things functioning, a tremendous task in itself. However, Romney was not then, as he is not now, content with doing the minimum. He decided that although they’d only baptized 70 people the first half of the year, they’d baptize a total of 200 for the entire year. He went around the mission, speaking to the young missionaries and getting them excited about this new goal. He learned to speak to large audiences, a skill which has benefitted him greatly in his secular life.

Mitt Romney’s mission introduced him to a life of unselfish service, of putting the needs of others before your own, even in the midst of great trials. This is one of the blessings that can come from a well-served mission.

Sources:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/09/AR2007120901473.html?hpid=artslot&sid=ST2007120901595

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/18/romney.missionary/index.html

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/14/america/romney.php

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20070701/ai_n19342537/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1

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