LDS congregations are reaching out to combat infant mortality and help immigrants

The Hyde Park Second Ward Choir is hardly a typical Latter-day Saint congregational choir.

On the one hand, there is often clapping – during and after the songs. Second, most of its members do not belong to Chicago's Hyde Park Second Ward itself. In fact, they are not even members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some are Pentecostals, others Baptists, a few Seventh-day Adventists.

“That’s intentional,” choir director Randy Hulme said. Led by the ward's current bishop, the goal was to create a choir that would reflect and serve the larger community.

Thanks to a little help from a Facebook ad, it worked. Today the choir sings regularly to audiences of Latter-day Saints and non-Latter-day Saints, including at other churches in the city. When they're not performing, members exchange daily encouraging messages via the group's text chain, host birthday parties for each other, and help other choir members with car maintenance and job hunting.

“The choir is just one part of a larger effort,” Hulme said, undertaken by local Latter-day Saint leadership to outward-orient the community and its facilities and create a vibrant community center open to all.

The church joins a growing list of other Latter-day Saint outposts that are finding ways beyond the occasional blood or food drive to address the specific needs of their communities through sustained outreach.

Some efforts are more grassroots; others are initiated from above. But the doubling of church meetinghouses as places to learn English, as in Utah, or immigration reception centers, as in Arizona and Nevada, only works with the support of members and missionaries who live and serve in those areas.

Chicago: “Bringing People Closer to Christ” with Yoga and Child Care

Other gatherings in the Chicago community include early morning yoga taught by the Relief Society president, a summer camp for immigrant children supported by the community's youth, and an annual Halloween haunted house held in recent years has recorded an average of 5,000 visitors over the years.

“I've never walked into the church building and had no one there,” said Alyssa Calder Hulme, Randy's wife, “except when we were the first people there for yoga at about 5 a.m.”

On Sundays, instead of rushing to the door after church meetings end, members of the congregation gather together – on the lawn if it's nice outside, or inside if it's not nice – and share a meal prepared by volunteers while the children walking around while the adults chat.

If you visit on a Saturday, you might spot another faith group celebrating a holiday at the Latter-day Saint building. Because the community center has become a space that immigrant communities can use for their own events.

At each of these community events, those responsible enforce a strict ban on proselytizing, including for missionaries.

Yet the area has become a hotbed of missionary activity, with so many new converts arriving each week that the lay leadership has given up on confirming them during sacrament meeting, according to Alyssa. Around 2019, the community split and two Hyde Park communities emerged. The event the Hulmes are attending is, according to Randy, “already bursting at the seams” thanks to all the new additions.

“We do some things that are out of character,” Alyssa said, “but it brings people closer to Christ and we support people’s basic needs for food, community and childcare.”

Memphis: A Joint Effort Against Child Mortality

For nearly two years, Latter-day Saints in Memphis, Tennessee, have been working with the city's NAACP branch to reduce the region's infant mortality rate, historically one of the highest in the country, through a program called MyBaby4Me.

The ongoing project was free to the public and aimed at young and expectant parents. It began as a conversation between regional NAACP and Latter-day Saint leaders. Since then, it has grown into an ongoing ministry supported by Latter-day Saint volunteers with backgrounds in medicine, social work and related fields.

Other church members, including young people, have stepped up to provide meals and childcare for parents taking classes on newborn nutrition and safety. Some sew blankets and burp cloths, while others outfit expectant parents with baby clothes, cribs, car seats, and other essentials.

This past December, the program hosted a community-hosted Christmas party that came together to provide food, decorations and gifts.

“Our goal was to have a wrapped gift for every child,” said Joell Archibald, a missionary who helped launch the program with her husband, Lynn. “But many people got several.”

The effects are clear and increasing. Within the 18 months the Archibalds were involved, class sizes grew from zero to 20 or more. In total, they worked with 100 women during their tenure and saw the birth of 21 healthy, full-term babies.

Further proof of their success: the program is expanding to Nashville and Little Rock, Arkansas.

At the same time, an ever-growing and impactful project we have been able to champion has brought common cause to Latter-day Saints in the region.

A particularly moving experience occurred to Lynn after he and Joell completed a presentation about MyBaby4Me to an area church about the program's progress and needs.

Lynn became emotional at the memory and said that a man in the audience came up to the couple and said he couldn't come often, but that during the presentation he received a witness saying he needed to help. “And that’s why I’m going to help as much as I can,” Lynn recalled him saying.

The former Latter-day Saint missionary said the experience was one of many “tremendous times where we really felt like this wasn't particularly in our hands.”