Day truly special for LDS moms

FRESNO, Calif. — Reiko Elledge of Clovis, Calif., doesn't want to be disturbed from 6:15 to 7 p.m. Mother's Day, which is Sunday. It's reserved for a long-awaited phone call with a son, Christopher, an LDS missionary currently in Belo Horizante, Brazil.

Mother's Day is one of just two days a year when missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are allowed 45-minute phone calls from back home. The other is Christmas Day. Missionaries are allowed to call home for a brief chat of a couple minutes before those two days to set up a time and to give a phone number for the parent to call.

Several days ago, Elledge and her son made their arrangement. She says she'll use a speaker phone so six other family members can join in the call.

"We'll come out of church service, then call after Sunday dinner," says Elledge, an office worker in the graduate studies department at California State University, Fresno. "Everyone will be there."

Elledge is one of 175 mothers in the central San Joaquin Valley arranging Mother's Day phone calls with their missionary sons or daughters. More than 35,000 missionaries from the United States are currently serving overseas or in the United States and Canada.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been sending out missionaries as early as the 1830s, soon after the church was founded. The early missionaries were mainly men with families. Now they are mainly young unmarried men. There also are young unmarried women missionaries.

Males become missionaries at age 19. The church gives women the option to become missionaries at age 21. Missions range from 18 months to slightly more than two years.

Mission presidents oversee the missionaries — and encourage them to write weekly letters to family or via e-mail through public computers such as at Internet cafes.

However, mission presidents place restrictions on the number of phone calls. Families are on their honor to adhere to the requirements. They want missionaries to remain focused on the task at hand. Typically, missionaries visit homes to share their faith with others and take active roles with local churches helping others.

Mother's Day and Christmas Day are designated the phone-call days because they are holidays that are important to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and they are spaced at least nearly five months apart. Jon Parker, president of the Fresno North Stake, says the Mother's Day phone call, in particular, means a great deal to mothers and their missionary sons or daughters.

"What a great thing for a mother to receive a call from her child," says Parker, who has had two children serve missions.