A global outlook: Latinos pleased about LDS efforts to reach out to them

Marco Diaz found himself living something a few weeks back that could have come out of "The Twilight Zone" had it ever been written as a television script.

He and other local Latinos were on Utah's Capitol Hill, opposing proposed legislation against in-state college tuition for undocumented students. The hostility from some opponents was palpable, but Diaz had no time to engage in hallway debate — he was late for a meeting on Temple Square.

As he dashed into the Assembly Hall, he was stunned to hear about "the most concerted effort to reach out to (local) Hispanics ever. It was such a contrast, being at the Legislature 15 minutes before." Several hundred Spanish-speaking missionaries — young and old — filled the hall, along with local Latinos. They heard Elder M. Russell Ballard of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve outline a program designed "specifically to work with and serve the Hispanic community."

Along with presidents of the church's Utah North and Utah South areas, Elder Ballard laid out "the praise and vision of how these (Latinos) are our brethren and we must love them." Diaz remembers someone saying it "is no accident that they are here, but (it's) by the hand of the Lord that they are." And in unprecedented numbers, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Having done verbal battle with the conservative Utahns for Immigration Reform — one member of which implied on Capitol Hill that Latinos here illegally and seeking a driver's license were in violation of LDS doctrine — Diaz and his colleagues have felt the political heat. He was pleased when the church sent a spokesman to make plain that members "should never infer that the church endorses their personal political positions."

But walking into the Assembly Hall that morning was "a little jaw-dropping to say, 'Wow, am I hearing what I'm hearing?' To hear the love they were expressing — it was magnificent." The dialogue was forceful in "taking a very compassionate view of individuals and not a political view of them," said Diaz, who serves as a counselor in the Granite Ward Elders Quorum presidency.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined to provide details about the meeting, but Diaz sees that gathering — and the scheduled performance by Brazilian soloist Liriel Domiciano during the church's general conference this weekend — as definitive signs that top church leaders are reaching out in unprecedented ways.