One Current of the Mormon River, Highly Active Members in Bolivia

Many Latter-day Saints have expressed concerns over the loss of members, especially among the young. These are very important concerns, but they can easily cause us to not see other aspects of the Mormon community. 

At the moment, I am in a working class, proto-middle class part of El Alto, Bolivia, the fascinating city on the edge of the nation’s de facto capital, La Paz, staying with a Latter-day Saint family, the elder members of which became LDS in the seventies. 

The parents are very active and have occupied positions of considerable responsibility in their ward. Last evening, to celebrate Bolivian Mother’s day (which was Wednesday) the father spent almost the whole day in Church work. He carried out the preparation and cooking of a meal for the ward’s women and families. 

The father is a return missionary. Their son is also one and he married, a couple of years ago, his girlfriend who waited for him while he served. She too is a returned missionary and the Church is a large part of their life. They now have a one year old child who is the focus of their extended, heavily LDS family.

Yesterday morning, a young man came over. He is a secretary to the Bishopric and relayed how disappointed he was that for health reasons he could not serve a mission. He told how from the time he was very little he had dreamed of becoming a missionary, especially since both his parents are returned missionaries. He is very excited with his calling and loves working closely with the bishop because they are old friends. 

His world view is market by the Book of Mormon’s position, as he understand it, on the history of indigenous Americans, including Bolivians, and by the teachings of the prophets as found in the Liahona and Church manuals. 

Every Tuesday and Thursday he takes institute classes which are held in his ward house. He loves his classes. 

This is a sample of what I often see and hear, not only in Bolivia but also in Utah, in Arizona or in Peru. There is a core of the Church that is strong and growing, as best I can tell. Their lives are organized by LDS ways and issues whether they live in Bolivia or Orem. Those things are the topics of their conversations and inform even the ways they talk and think. 

I realize this is anecdotal—like ethnography almost always is—and hence cannot speak to the whole Mormon population among which there are, no doubt, an increasing number of people whose faith has been challenged and who are finding themselves uncomfortable or outside the Church. Many people I know have left. 

We should not, however, let the experience with those people cause us to forget the others, who are a key minority, if not the majority, of the Church. I asked how many people actually are considered active in the ward here in El Alto and was told about 120. That is a good number, even if the whole number of members of record is closer to 500. 

The others provide a field for activity and a concentration for efforts among the 120. This ward in El Alto has a core of very committed, multi-generational, active Latter-day Saints and they are important if we wish to understand Mormonism, just as those who depart or find themselves challenged are also important. The Church, after all, is a very complex body composed of all members, and not just one sector or another.