Hi, I'm Elizabeth Louise

I work with At-Risk high school students. I'm a Mormon.

About Me

I grew up in a small town in Illinois. I am the oldest of five children and love being a big sister. My parents are both professional musicians and taught me to play several musical instruments, but I chose academics and studied mathematics in college.

I taught underprivileged students in Mississippi for a few years after graduating from Brigham Young University. I learned so much about myself while serving kids who lived in extreme poverty in my own country.

I got married and came back to my home town where I still teach high school math. Now I teach at a special alternative school for children who have "fallen through the cracks" of the traditional high school system.

I enjoy practicing my music, reading, writing, and spending time outdoors with my family. We are big soccer fanatics. I also enjoy technology and computers and continuing to increase my knowledge of the world around us.

Why I am a Mormon

I am a Mormon, because this Church brings peace to my life. The world is so heavy with sorrow and despair. The message of Jesus Christ is so sweet and is the only true source of comfort in a challenging world. I have felt the Spirit of the Lord on many occasions and know that this is the only Church that can bring that peace in its fullness.

At times in my life I have had great pain and anguish. My family and my knowledge of the restored gospel and the true church of Christ are the only things that have brought me out of that pain.

In this church we also believe that families can be together forever. This is another reason why I am a Mormon. I cannot imagine a heaven without the people I hold most dear. Thanks to the Prophet Joseph Smith, we know that we can be sealed to our families in holy temples so that death will never separate us.

Personal Stories

What is hope and what do you hope for?

Hope is the expectation that we have of the promised blessings of living righteously. If we have hope, we long for those blessings and anxiously look forward to the day when they will be bestowed upon us.

I have a hope in the resurrection of my own body and the salvation of myself and my family. I have a hope of eternal life with my Father in Heaven and with those who are beloved of me in this life. I have a hope that one day, all the mysteries of this life will be made clear and there will be no more pain, sorrow, contention, or death.

How I live my faith

Currently I serve in the church as one of the youth Sunday School teachers. I love teaching my teenage students and I think they like me too.

In the community, I spend a lot of time serving the children that I teach at school every day. Even though it is my job to teach them, I work long hours trying to find better ways to not only teach them, but to serve them. I find great joy in my students.

Why don’t women hold the priesthood in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? How do Mormon women lead in the Church?

Elizabeth Louise answered...

Women have many divine gifts that do not necessitate holding the priesthood. Women are by their very nature, nurturers and doers of good. Their callings and responsibilities are different and therefore they do not need to hold the priesthood to fulfill them.

Women lead in many positions in the Mormon Church. They lead the womens' organization called the Relief Society. They hold leadership positions for youth groups and childrens' groups. They are leaders in their homes and families and are equal partners with their husbands.
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Kathryn answered...

As a primary president in my ward, I share in the direction and leadership of our ward. I don't feel secondary in any way. Whether you have the priesthood or not, you are still responsible to listen to the direction of the Savior. The priesthood is a tool and power that is the same power of the Savior. It allows the human authority to do work on earth, particularly perform ordinances, and bless others. As if the Savior was here in person during His ministry accounted for in the New Testament. I would use an analogy to compare the priesthood as a car. A car is an amazing tool allowing you to get you from here to there. I don't mind my husband driving and I can offer some navigation or work the radio, as long as we and our children get there.

What is faith?

Cary answered...

Faith is a huge topic, rarely fully understood even by people who talk about it a lot. In the Mormon conception, it's a step of confidence between mere belief and full knowledge. It's perhaps best described by contrast with these two extremes on the continuum on which they all lie. First, faith is not that passive thing we call belief because it's a principle of action. So for someone to have faith, they have to be motivated to put a belief into practice, not merely be content with keeping it in their mind. For example, we believe that Christ is the Savior, but because we have faith we ACT as if this were true, and follow His example as best we can. In fact, "acting as if..." is a fairly good phrase to define faith. On the other hand, faith is not "perfect knowledge" either. There is enough of an element of uncertainty about the thing we have faith in, that it takes an effort of conscious decision-making to test our faith's hypothesis. If we had a full knowledge of a thing, that whole test, and the faith to find out if it's true, wouldn't be necessary. Atheists will argue that faith is mere belief (and baseless, at that), but what I have described for faith here leads to a more "scientific" approach that Atheists would like to admit is operable in the minds of the faithful. The proper response to a scriptural assertion, then, becomes not blind obedience, but rather careful thought, hypothesis forming, and testing. As tests come back proven or unproven, faith will grow in the right direction until it approaches "perfect knowledge".