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CHURCH OF THE PRESENTATION

A welcoming Catholic community leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ through Word, Worship, and Outreach.

271 W. Saddle River Rd. • Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458 • ph: 201-327-1313

FAMILY FAITH

Children’s Rainbow

“I SAY YES! MY LORD” | First Eucharist

Copyright © 2024 Church of the Presentation. All rights reserved.

The Building Blocks of Faith Toolkit

• What Are the Building Blocks of Faith?
• Building a Framework
• Ministry Settings
• For Parents
• Personal Faith Formation

For Parents: Family Faith Formation

Recent research from the Fuller Youth Institute has found that parents are the most influential factor in faith formation. The good news is that you have help! Grandparents, friends, and family members can provide support. Your church community also supports you and your child as you grow in faith together. But, most important of all, God is with you, and the Holy Spirit is working in children’s lives. 

So what does nurturing a child’s faith Involve? Lots of things you’re already doing! Loving your child, providing a safe place for them to ask questions, reading and talking about Bible stories, attending a church and participating in its congregational life. 

A tool called the Building Blocks of Faith can also help you nurture your child’s faith. The Building Blocks are four basic spiritual needs that are met in Christ:

• The need to BELONG 
• The need to KNOW and UNDERSTAND
• The need to have HOPE
• The need to be CALLED and EQUIPPED

Read more about the Building Blocks of Faith .

Building Blocks Resources for Families

Book: dear parent.

In Dear Parent: A Guide for Family Faith Formation , Robert J. Keeley and Laura Keeley, the originators of the Building Blocks concept, explain the Building Blocks of Faith and how they apply to family faith formation. 

Each chapter ends with discussion or thought questions, ideas for living the chapter topic out, and a short resource list.

Family devotions

You can use these Building Blocks-based devotions at home with your kids:

• I Belong: Even Before You Were Born
• I Belong: “Your God Is My God”
• I Belong: Four Devotions on Psalm 23
• I Know and Understand: Four Devotions on Psalm 1
• I Have Hope: God’s Promises
• I Am Called and Equipped: “Anointing Oil ”

Bible Story Books

Reading Bible story books with kids can support their need to know God and God’s story. Check out this list of some of our favorite Bible storybooks and picture books .

Ideas for using the Building Blocks of Faith in your home

• Encourage Christian family members (grandparents, aunts and uncles) to share stories of how they know they belong to God and to God’s family.
• Light a candle on the date of a family member’s baptism. Ask others to describe one way in which they see God working in that person’s life. 
• Read from a psalm for devotions on your birthday. Pick your favorite or use a psalm passage with belonging themes such as Psalm 22:23; 23:1-6; 24:1-6; 100:3.
• Attend a church and be part of the church community's life to help your kids see that they belong to God’s family.
• Research from the Fuller Youth Institute indicates that kids and teens benefit greatly from having at least five nonfamily adults who care about them and help them grow in faith. Build relationships with other adults who can be part of your child’s “Faith 5.”

Knowing and Understanding

• Equip your kids with an understanding of the arc of God’s salvation story. A Gospel Summary for Kids is a great place to start. 
• Use “wondering questions” to talk about Bible stories you read together. Ask, “I wonder what God is doing in this story?” “I wonder what this story tells us about God?” and “What do you wonder about this story?”
• Don’t be afraid to answer a question with “I don’t know―what do you think?”
• Remind each other of the ways that God has been faithful to your family in the past, and talk about how those experiences give you hope that God will be with you in the future.
• Take time to lament about difficult and sad things―and to celebrate God’s faithfulness and love for you.
• Teens especially need hope. Read more in " One Crucial Gift We Must Give to Teens " by Tim Elmore.

Calling and Equipping

• Tell other family members what you notice about the gifts God has given them. Talk together about how they might use those gifts to serve God and neighbor.
• Describe the things you feel God has called you to do and how God has equipped you to do those things. 
• Encourage your children to participate in faith-forming programs and activities that equip them to be disciples of Jesus.
• Provide opportunities for kids to meet people from other generations in your church and to hear their faith stories.

What the Building Blocks Can Look Like in Everyday Life

• George is crying. His friends told him that he couldn’t play with them, and he feels upset and lonely. George’s mom gives him a big hug and whispers in his ear that he belongs to God, to God’s family, and to her. She reminds George that he knows many things about God from stories in the Bible, and that one of those things is that God loves him no matter what. She prays with George that tomorrow will be a better day.
• You’re about to pull out of the driveway for a long car trip. Before you go, you ask everyone to quiet down for a minute. You pray together, asking for God to keep you safe on the road. Then you remind everyone that you all belong to God and that this is a good day to remember that you are all called by God to love each other (including siblings) and to do what you can to make this trip a good one for everyone. 
• As children head off to school, give them a blessing. You might use the Huguenot blessing from the article A Blessing: Reminding Us of God's Story . Or you can make up a shorter blessing of your own, like these:

“God bless you at school today, (Name). Remember that God will be with you there, and that you belong to God.”

“(Name), may God bless you and keep you today. May you grow in faith, live in hope, and share God’s love.”

“(Name), you are called by God to love others. God has given you many gifts to share with the people you meet. May you find many ways to use them today.”

• Jamie, I’m praying for you as you take your test today. May the God you belong to give you the ability to focus on the test and do well. 
• Esperanza, I’ve noticed that you often show the love of Jesus by being kind to your sister. I hope you feel God’s love today too!

209-472-2150

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Church of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Celebrate with us.

Another way to participate in our parish life are the various parish ministries, including liturgical ministries, such as choir member, lector, altar server, and Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist; social justice ministries, such as visiting the homebound, serving the poor, volunteering at food pantries and the St. Vincent de Paul Society; and others, such as youth ministry, men's and women's groups, and the annual parish bazaar, to name just a few. God calls us to use our gifts and talents to glorify Him and make life better for other people. Please prayerfully consider these opportunities for getting involved in ministry. And if you have an idea for a new parish ministry, please contact us.

With so many ways to be part of parish life, you'll want to stay informed by regularly reading the weekly bulletin, just in case you've misplaced the one you received at Mass. You’ll also want to check the parish calendar for a list of events and mass schedules.

Our parish has a rich history in our town, being founded by people who trusted in the Lord and gathered together under the leadership of our bishop. Who we are today is based on who we were yesterday. Find out more about our spiritual forefathers as you read the history of our parish.

We hope you'll also enjoy viewing photos of our parish, including some of the many enjoyable events and programs we've had over the years.

We welcome you all to be part of our Church community.

Office hours:, mon.-fri. 8:30am-4:30pm, useful links, contact info, church of the presentation (physical address), 1515 w ben holt drive, stockton, ca 95207 , ministry center (mailing address), 6715 leesburg place, stockton, ca 95207, ph: (209) 472-2150, fax: (209) 472-0541.

Parish School:

1635 W. Benjamin Holt Drive, Stockton, CA 95207

Phone: (209) 472-2140

Fax: (209) 320-1515

www.presentationschool.org

A potential Trump v. Harris race puts two competing ideas of Christianity on display

Following President Joe Biden’s announcement that he will no longer seek re-election in November, the 2024 presidential race juxtaposes two very different versions of Christianity: Donald Trump brandishes a performative rendition of the Christian faith as a political prop to advance authoritarian theocracy, while Vice President Kamala Harris , whom Biden has endorsed to take his place as the Democratic nominee, practices the Christian faith she was raised in, while embracing her interfaith family. 

In doing so, Harris embodies our nation’s founding ideal of religious freedom and models a Christian commitment to religious pluralism. 

Although he has reportedly mocked his conservative Christian leaders behind their backs, was not active in church before running for president and says he’s never asked God for forgiveness , Trump has manufactured mass far-right devotion among his base through moves like overturning Roe v. Wade. Surviving an assassination attempt will only heighten MAGA zealotry, as we saw with the surge of Christian nationalist narrative claiming Trump survived only by the will of God. 

Harris roots her personal Christian faith in the prophetic tradition of the Black Church.

Harris grew up attending 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland. “I was raised to live my faith,” she said at the National Baptist Convention, USA, Annual Meeting in 2022 . “Marching for civil rights, my parents pushed me in a stroller. That was faith in action.” I’ve witnessed her put her faith in action on the national stage. Four days after Biden picked her to be his running mate in 2020, I was invited by the Biden-Harris campaign to attend a meeting between her and national faith leaders. We heard directly from the Rev. Dr. Amos Brown, her pastor at Third Baptist Church in San Francisco. It was clear from the very beginning of her national political career that she would not shy away from talking about her Baptist convictions. Harris once served as Rev. Brown’s campaign manager when he ran for re-election to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. “She is an encourager; she encourages all people regardless of their social station in life,” Rev. Brown shared with Baptist news outlet Word&Way. “She is a role model for womanhood, and just human decency and dignity at its best.” 

Harris roots her personal Christian faith in the prophetic tradition of the Black Church. “Just think, after slavery was outlawed in our country, the founders of this very convention came together to protect the freedom of worship,” she said at the National Baptist Convention. “As Black people in our nation battled racist laws and ideologies, men and women of the cloth were the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in America. And they, then, following the teachings of Christ, built coalitions of people of all faiths and races and walks of life, because they understood and knew the importance of the collective.”

“I can trace my belief in the importance of public service back to learning the parable of the good Samaritan and other biblical teachings about looking out for our neighbors,” she said in a Religion News Service interview in 2020 . 

“Ever since I was a girl, church has not only been a place where I draw strength, it’s been a place for reflection, a place to study the teachings of the Lord and to feel grounded in a complex world,” she told RNS. “Church still plays that role for me. And I also draw something else from it as well: a sense of community and belonging where we can build lasting relationships and be there for one another in times of need.”

Harris grew up in an interfaith family and chose to form an interfaith family as an adult. Her mother, an immigrant from India, took her to visit Hindu temples growing up. Harris has said this teaches her “to see that all faiths teach us to pursue justice.” If elected, Harris’ husband Douglas Emhoff wouldn’t just be the first person to hold the title of first gentleman. He’d also the first Jewish spouse of a president. 

“From all of these traditions and teachings, I’ve learned that faith is not only something we express in church and prayerful reflection, but also in the way we live our lives, do our work and pursue our respective callings,” Harris said about the Hindu and Jewish influences in her life. 

Emhoff has also been a leader in the Biden-Harris administration at fostering interfaith dialogue and collaboration. I heard him speak at an interfaith iftar at the U.S. Institute of Peace in 2022 during Ramadan. Harris and Emhoff hosted an Eid al-Adha celebration in 2023 , the first Eid celebration at the vice president’s residence. 

One of the most exciting aspects of Harris’ potential candidacy is that she doesn’t shy away from making the religious case for abortion rights, meeting head on Trump’s alliance of Christian nationalist groups pushing to outlaw abortion on so-called religious claims. 

Harris spoke on this matter at the National Baptist Convention:

“As extremists work to take away the freedom of women to make decisions about their own bodies, faith leaders are taking a stand, knowing one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held religious beliefs to agree that a woman should have the ability to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do. And she will choose, in consultation with her pastor or her priest, or a doctor and her loved ones. But the government should not be making that decision.”

Harris’ boldness is representative, as most Christians in the United States support abortion rights . 

In 2021, Rev. Lauren Jones Mayfield was invited to the White House to participate in a roundtable discussion on reproductive health care with Harris. “Harris honored my religious voice as I intended for her to hear it, a deep valuing of American religious liberty and reproductive freedoms,” Jones Mayfield told me. “The vice president made clear her own support for reproductive health for all Americans alongside her ongoing commitments to religious liberty. For those of us who engage in reproductive rights activism of our faith, not in spite of it, Harris honored our collective, clerical voice that celebrates the American right for a patient to choose their best course of medical treatment with their doctor, family and faith leader if it’s so desired.”

Rooted in the Black Church tradition, deeply informed and inspired by her interfaith family, and a trailblazer for reproductive freedom, Kamala Harris’ Christian faith is the antithesis of Donald Trump’s Christian nationalism, in which the Christian faith is wielded as a tool to oppress, exclude and limit basic rights of people who believe or pray differently. 

If elected president, she would make history on multiple fronts: the first female president, the second Black president, and the first president of South Asian descent. She’ll also be a role model for confidently living out your faith in public while respecting others’ religious values.

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons is a religion contributor and the author of "Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity."

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13 things to know about J.D. Vance’s Catholic journey

By Matt McDonald

National Catholic Register, Jul 21, 2024 / 07:00 am

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance is one of the most overtly religious major politicians in America.

Vance has written extensively about his life in faith, both in a mega-selling memoir and in a long essay that describes how a drug-using teenager with anger problems, family problems, school problems, and doubts about God became an accomplished, successful family man excited about being a Catholic.

But nowadays, he’s also the most questioned of religious politicians, as pro-lifers ask if he’s still one of them.

Where did he come from in faith? And how did he get where he is now?

Vance, who comes from a long line of culturally Protestant Scots-Irish Americans from Appalachia, was baptized Catholic in August 2019.

Below are 13 items about his meandering journey to Rome and the aftermath, drawn largely from his 3-million-copy-selling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” and a 6,777-word essay he wrote about his conversion for the Easter 2020 issue of The Lamp, a Catholic magazine. 

Vance also talked about his conversion in an August 2019 interview with Rod Dreher published in The American Conservative.

1. J.D. Vance rarely went to church as a child.

Vance was largely raised by his grandmother, whom he called “Mamaw,” who believed in Jesus and liked Billy Graham but didn’t like what she called “organized religion.”

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Vance wasn’t baptized as a child. The family members he spent the most time around generally didn’t go to church unless they were visiting their Appalachian ancestral home in Jackson, Kentucky.

Even so, he says in his memoir, his grandmother had “a deeply personal (albeit quirky) faith.”

2. Vance had a crisis of faith as a child.

When he was about 10, Vance had a moment of doubt.

“Mamaw, does God love us?” he asked his grandmother after a major disappointment, mindful of the fractured family life he and his half-sister were growing up in.

The question caused his grandmother to cry.

Vance doesn’t say how his grandmother answered the question. But he describes another instance when Mamaw accidentally went the wrong way on a three-lane interstate before making a U-turn, causing him to scream in terror.

(Story continues below)

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“Don’t you know Jesus rides in the car with me?” his grandmother replied.

3. As a teenager, Vance was a Pentecostal.

As an adolescent, Vance reconnected with his biological father, whom he hadn’t seen much of after his parents split up. For a while, he stayed with his dad every other weekend.

“With little religious training, I was desperate for some exposure to a real church,” Vance wrote in “Hillbilly Elegy.”

His father had given up drinking and became a serious Pentecostal, and he would take Vance to a large Pentecostal church in southeastern Ohio with his new wife and their children.

Vance drank it in. Among other things, he rejected evolution and embraced millennialism, including a belief that the world would end in 2007.

“I’m not sure if I liked the structure or if I just wanted to share in something that was important to him — both, I suppose — but I became a devoted convert,” Vance writes in his memoir.

4. Vance didn’t like the Catholic Church when he was a kid.

Even before he started going to a Pentecostal church, Vance thought he knew certain things about Catholicism — which he didn’t like.

“I knew that Catholics worshipped Mary. I knew they rejected the legitimacy of Scripture. And I knew that the Antichrist — or at least, the Antichrist’s spiritual adviser — would be a Catholic,” Vance wrote in his April 2020 article in The Lamp of his once-misguided impressions.

5. Vance’s image of Jesus when he was growing up differed from his image of the Catholic Church’s image of Jesus.

One of Vance’s aunts married a Catholic, whom Vance liked and respected.

“I admired my uncle Dan above all other men …,” Vance wrote in “Hillbilly Elegy.”

His grandmother liked Dan, too.

But Catholicism seemed too formal and impersonal to her.

“The Catholic Jesus was a majestic deity, and we had little interest in majestic deities because we weren’t a majestic people,” Vance wrote in his conversion essay .

6. “Hillbilly Elegy” isn’t a conversion story.

Vance mentions the word “Catholic” or “Catholics” only five times in the 264-page book, and he never engages with Catholic teachings in it. He wrote it between 2013 and 2015, several years before he became a Catholic, and gives no hint that he had ever considered Catholicism.

He also doesn’t dwell in his book on his atheism as a young man, a period he describes at length in his conversion essay in The Lamp.

7. An Anglican philosopher provided the first crack in Vance’s atheism.

While he was still a nonbeliever, Vance encountered the work of English philosopher Basil Mitchell (1917–2011) in an undergraduate philosophy course at Ohio State.

As Vance describes it, Mitchell, who was a member of the Church of England, presented difficult experiences in life as a trial of faith that requires trust in God without fully understanding what God has in mind.

Vance was surprised by Mitchell’s presentation because as a young Christian he had always thought that “[d]oubt was unacceptable” and “that the proper response to a trial of faith was to suppress it and pretend it never happened.”

“But here was Mitchell,” Vance wrote in his conversion essay , “conceding that the brokenness of the world and our individual tribulations did, in fact, count against the existence of God. But not definitively.”

8. A homosexual billionaire influenced Vance’s outlook on life.

While a student at Yale Law School, Vance went to a talk by venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who was Facebook’s first outside investor and co-founded PayPal .

According to Vance, Thiel argued that elite professionals got themselves trapped into climbing rungs on the socioeconomic ladder at the expense of happiness.

Vance realized that he was “obsessed with achievement” for itself — “not as an end to something meaningful, but to win a social competition.” He also concluded that he “had prioritized striving over character.”

Thiel introduced Vance to the thought of René Girard (1923-2015), a French historian and philosopher whose writings, among other things, attracted Vance through the way he described Christianity as transcending the scapegoat myth of various cultures because Christ “has not wronged the civilization; the civilization has wronged him.”

Thiel, now 56, who identifies as a Christian and a conservative, is civilly married to a man . Vance worked for Thiel in venture capital, and Thiel was Vance’s major contributor in Vance’s successful run for U.S. Senate in Ohio in 2022.

9. Vance’s family ties kept him from becoming a Catholic for a long time.

Vance connected with Catholic doctrine several years after his grandmother died in 2005. It made sense to him.

“Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I converted I would no longer be my grandmother’s grandson,” Vance wrote in The Lamp.

That left him in a sort of limbo.

“So for many years I occupied the uncomfortable territory between curiosity about Catholicism and mistrust,” he wrote.

10. Vance credits his Hindu wife with helping him convert to Catholicism.

Vance acknowledges having problems with anger stemming from his chaotic childhood and the destructive behavior of people in his family, especially his mother, who abused prescription drugs and went through a string of boyfriends and husbands.

That anger affected his relationship with Usha, his girlfriend in law school, but she helped him work through it to try to become the kind of husband and father he wanted to be. They married in 2014.

“The sad fact is that I couldn’t do it without Usha. Even at my best, I’m a delayed explosion — I can be defused, but only with skill and precision,” Vance wrote in “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Usha is the daughter of immigrants from India and a Hindu. Vance felt hesitant about joining the Catholic Church because he wasn’t a Catholic when they got married.

“But from the beginning, she supported my decision, so I can’t blame the delay on her,” Vance wrote in his conversion essay.

Vance has said the Church’s clergy sex-abuse scandal delayed his conversion by a few months.

11. Dominican priests helped draw Vance to Catholicism.

What Vance calls “a few informal conversations with a couple of Dominican friars” led to a period of serious study of Catholicism.

The process was gradual, with no a-ha moments.

But it included what he calls “some weird coincidences.”

During a late-night conversation at a hotel bar with an unnamed conservative Catholic writer, Vance says, he challenged the man for criticizing Pope Francis.

“While he admitted that some Catholics went too far, he defended his more measured approach,” Vance wrote in his conversion essay, “when suddenly a wine glass seemed to leap from a stable place behind the bar and crashed on the floor in front of us.”

That ended the conversation.

Another: While on a train from New York to Washington, D.C., Vance listened to a recording of an Orthodox choir singing a Psalm during Pope Francis’ visit to the country of Georgia in 2016.

When he got to Washington, he asked a Dominican friar to coffee.

“He invited me to visit his community, where I heard the friars chanting, apparently, the same psalm,” Vance wrote.

Vance was baptized in August 2019 by a Dominican priest, Father Henry Stephan, at St. Gertrude Priory, which is attached to a Dominican parish in Cincinnati, where Vance now lives.

Despite his Dominican connections, his confirmation saint is Augustine .

“I was pretty moved by the ‘Confessions ,’” he told Rod Dreher. “I’ve probably read it in bits and pieces twice over the past 15 or so years. There’s a chapter from ‘ The City of God’ that’s incredibly relevant now that I’m thinking about policy. There’s just a way that Augustine is an incredibly powerful advocate for the things that the Church believes. And one of the subtexts about my return to Christianity is that I had come from a world that wasn’t super-intellectual about the Christian faith. I spend a lot of my time these days among a lot of intellectual people who aren’t Christian. Augustine gave me a way to understand Christian faith in a strongly intellectual way. I also went through an angry atheist phase. As someone who spent a lot of his life buying into the lie that you had to be stupid to be a Christian, Augustine really demonstrated in a moving way that that’s not true.”

12. Vance credits practicing Catholicism with making him a better person.

Vance says practicing his Catholic faith has helped him increase his patience, curb his temper, forgive more easily, and choose his family over his career.

After he became a Catholic, Vance wrote in his conversion essay: “I realized that there was a part of me — the best part — that took its cues from Catholicism.”

13. Vance hasn’t yet explained how his current position on abortion squares with his Catholic faith.

Vance began public life as thoroughly pro-life.

In September 2021, several months after he began running for U.S. Senate in Ohio, Vance said he supported Texas’ law banning abortion.

“I think in Texas they’re trying to make it easier for unborn babies to be born,” Vance said during an interview with Spectrum News 1 .

Asked about abortion in the cases of rape and incest, Vance said the question is “whether a child should be allowed to live.”

“Look, I think two wrongs don’t make a right. At the end of the day, we’re talking about an unborn baby,” Vance said (at 11:11 of the interview ). “What kind of society do we want to have? A society that looks at unborn babies as inconveniences to be discarded?”

His tone shifted during a debate in October 2022 when he said he supported “reasonable exceptions,” including allowing a pregnant 10-year-old girl to have an abortion.

During a second debate that month, he said he supported a proposal in Congress at the time that would have banned abortion nationwide after 15 weeks.

More recently, Vance has aligned his public positions on abortion with those of his running mate, former president Donald Trump, who has said he wouldn’t sign a federal limitation on abortion and that he wouldn’t ban abortion pills.

On abortion pills, Vance told an interviewer on NBC on July 7 that he supports a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that, according to him, said that “the American people should have access to that medication.” Pressed about mifepristone , one of the two abortion chemicals, he said he supports access to it.

Vance has not at this writing publicly explained how he integrates his Catholic faith with his current position on abortion.

But he seemed to contemplate this sort of situation in an interview with Dreher in August 2019, shortly after his conversion and three years before he was elected to public office.

He noted that politics “is in part a popularity contest,” and he pointed out a tension between getting votes and living a life of faith.

“When you’re trying to do things that make you liked by as many people as possible, you’re not likely to do things that are consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church,” Vance said then. “I’m a Christian, and a conservative, and a Republican, so I have definite views about what that means. But you have to be humble and realize that politics are essentially a temporal game.”

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.

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From Peru to Lithuania to Africa, how Church members around the world are using FamilySearch

Church members all over the world are using familysearch to connect with ancestors and come closer to christ.

By Kaitlyn Bancroft

From South America to Africa to Ireland, Church members all over the world are using FamilySearch to connect with ancestors and come closer to Christ. Here’s a look at some recent FamilySearch projects.

Nearly 500 young adults and their teachers from 14 educational institutions in Huancayo, Peru, learned about their ancestors through FamilySearch at the First Exhibition of Historical Documents, held by the Provincial Municipality of Huancayo.

The Church’s Spanish-language Newsroom shared information about the event on June 22. Participants displayed a variety of historical documents, including books of minutes from municipal council sessions, newspaper libraries and paintings.

The Church, using its FamilySearch platform, was one of multiple organizations invited to exhibit archives of its historical documents. Other participating institutions included local museums, the Regional Archive of Junín, the Decentralized Directorate of Junín and the Central Archive of the Provincial Municipality of Huancayo.

FamilySearch’s participation at the event marked the first time that historical information was provided to the public on such a large scale in Huancayo. The FamilySearch station was managed by local Church member Pedro Poma Santiago, with support from Marco Sueldo Ochoa, who coordinated their participation with José Albino Arge, general secretary of the municipality.

“It is a surprise to have valuable information about my mother, who died when I was 2 years old and who I am sure no one in my family knows,” said schoolteacher Alejandrina Huaroto Alonso. “I congratulate and thank The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for this valuable information that helps people learn about their ancestors.”

Johel Valdivia, a manager of welfare and self-reliance for the Church in Peru, recently represented the Church during a photography exhibit in Lima, Peru, that highlighted the importance of senior citizens.

The exhibit, titled “Wise Men on the Path of Life,” was held June 12-14 by the National Solidarity Assistance Program Pension 65 of the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion, the Church’s Spanish-language Newsroom reported.

The National Solidarity Assistance Program Pension 65 provides subsidies to adults over age 65 who lack basic resources.

Julio Mendigure, executive director of Pension 65, highlighted the importance of senior citizens in cultural, social, family and personal development settings, and recognized the positive influence they have on families and society.

Church members in Cusco, Peru, volunteered at the “First Meeting of Andean Archives and Archivists,” held by the National General Archive and the Regional Government of Cusco from June 10 to June 13.

The international archival event featured renowned speakers from around the world, the Church’s Spanish-language Newsroom reported.

Among those speakers were Dulio Delgado, FamilySearch manager for the South America Northwest Area, and Pedro Bravo España, a FamilySearch institutional relations manager for the same area, who shared FamilySearch’s free records digitization service.

Francesco Galiano Abanto, director of communications for the Church in Cusco, also attended the event.

Mario Silva, master of ceremonies, thanked the Church for its help in translation presentations.

Gonzalo Suarez Barriga, a coordinator for the Church Educational System, added that his team is working with FamilySearch to start a new Institute course focused on family history.

In early June, FamilySearch introduced a new website and app built specifically for family history work in Africa, the Church’s Africa Newsroom reported.

In many African cultures, records were memorized and recited orally by designated members of a tribe or village. But several years ago, FamilySearch began visiting villages, recording these oral records. Separate teams then transcribed the information to make it searchable.

Now, the Find Ancestors in Africa tool allows users to select an African country and then search for ancestors by tribe, village or surname.

In addition to viewing transcribed records, users can listen to recordings of the information made in the native language of the person reciting it. Languages include Twi, Ga, Guan, Fante, Kibemba, Bamoun and Tshiluba. Pictures of the speakers, tribes and villages are also available.

The new website is continuously being updated with improvements and new records. See the website at familysearch.org/africa , or download the Android app from the Google Play store.

A representative from the Church’s Family History Department of the Northern European Region met with local Church members in Vilnius, Lithuania, on May 29, the Church’s Lithuania Newsroom reported.

Liusija Fernandes spoke with the members about the importance of cultivating a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through temple covenants.

She also reviewed a plan to organize family history and temple work at the local level, which includes creating FamilySearch accounts, engaging youth in family history work and helping members find four generations of their ancestors.

Fernandes shared the opportunity for Church members over age 26 to serve one- to two-year service missions while staying home, helping with FamilySearch user support requests and assisting with individual projects like processing digitized materials.

“Serving God and your loved ones will help you overcome personal difficulties and problems that we all face in our lives,” she said.

FamilySearch set up shop at the Ventura Mall in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, part of a series of events May 10-17, the Church’s Spanish-language Newsroom reported.

The events presented computer systems that help patrons find genealogical information. Service missionaries Teófilo and Martha Flores said they’re grateful for the chance to help people open FamilySearch accounts, build their family trees and discover new information about their ancestors.

Silvia Gutiérrez Ortega de Miyagi, a Church member who married a Japanese citizen, shared her experience of finding a document used 70 years ago during the Japanese migration to Bolivia. This led to her seeing a picture of her father-in-law, Tokusho Miyagi, from when he was young.

“It was a joy and a blessing for the whole family, especially for my children and nephews,” she said. “The great work that FamilySearch does is incredible. It is truly uniting the hearts of parents to their children and children to their parents.”

Teresa Vaca, who participated at a FamilySearch station, said it was “amazing” learning things about her parents that she previously hadn’t known — like when they got married.

“I felt like my mother was close to me,” she said. “I saw photos of my uncle, my father’s brother, and I felt so happy.”

More than 125 people in Dublin, Ireland, gathered Feb. 3 for a family history event hosted by the Dublin Ireland Stake.

“Why Family History?” connected Church members and friends of other faiths who share an interest in genealogical work, the Church’s Ireland Newsroom reported.

The event included several speakers, such as Lucy Reynoldson from FamilySearch, who emphasized the sense of identity, connection and resilience that comes from doing family history work.

Fiona Fitzsimons, from the Irish Family History Centre, said everyone has a story worth preserving and encouraged attendees to chat with family members and explore records, photos and keepsakes.

Fiona Tipple, from the National Genealogical Society of Ireland, highlighted how technology has made family history research more accessible than ever before.

Local Church member Denise O’Farrell closed the event by sharing practical tips for gathering information and touching on the power of prayer in aiding family history work.

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The role of religion in JD Vance’s family life

Usha vance recently spoke about how being raised hindu shaped her childhood.

By Kelsey Dallas

Sen. JD Vance and his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, do not share a faith, but they do both believe that religion plays an important role in family life.

During a June interview with “ Fox & Friends ,” Usha Vance described how her Hindu parents helped her recognize that personal faith can make you a better parent.

“My parents are Hindu and that was one of the things that made them such good parents, that make them really good people. I’ve seen the power of that in my own life,” she said.

That’s one reason why Usha Vance supported JD Vance’s religious journey . The Ohio senator, who this week was chosen by former President Donald Trump to be his running mate, grew up attending evangelical Christian churches but was baptized as an adult when he joined the Catholic Church, as the Deseret News previously reported.

JD Vance’s family

JD and Usha Vance met at Yale Law School.

In addition to taking the same classes, they worked together to create a campus discussion group on “social decline in white America,” according to The New York Times .

The pair got married in Kentucky about a year after they graduated from Yale Law School. They had a traditional Christian ceremony, as well as a separate ceremony in which “they were blessed by a Hindu pundit,” The New York Times reported.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by JD Vance (@teamjdvance)

Over the past decade, as Vance navigated newfound fame after the publication of “ Hillbilly Elegy ” and then entered the world of politics, Usha Vance worked as a lawyer, specializing in topics like higher education, entertainment and technology, and completed a Supreme Court clerkship, per The Washington Post .

She, along with her husband, also focused on raising their young children. JD and Usha Vance have three kids: Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel.

Vance referenced the difficulties of balancing a political career with fatherhood while speaking on the Senate floor earlier this year.

“I have a little guy named Vivek who was 3 years old yesterday but turned 4 today. And I’m sorry that they could I can’t be with you for your birthday dinner, but I want you to know that Daddy loves you very much,” Vance said in February during a debate on Ukraine, according to The Hill .

Vance was seen out and about in Milwaukee with his three kids on Tuesday morning, one day after being named as Trump’s running mate.

Republican vice presidential choice J.D. Vance walks through downtown Milwaukee with his family Tuesday morning pic.twitter.com/Y0FKIb1jkJ — Glen Stubbe (@gspphoto) July 16, 2024

JD Vance’s religion

Vance referenced being a father during a 2019 interview about his Catholic faith.

He told Rod Dreher of The American Conservative that, before converting to Catholicism, he had to consider what that choice would mean for his son, Ewan, who was then 2.

“(My conversion) probably would have happened sooner if the sex abuse crisis, or the newest version of it, hadn’t made a lot of headlines. It forced me to process the church as a divine and a human institution, and what it would mean for my two year old son,” Vance said in 2019.

Vance ultimately chose to move forward with getting baptized and received in the Catholic Church. That decision followed a period of religious exploration and, before that, a period of near-atheism.

“I’ve been going to church for the past year or so. Not as much as I should, but more than I have been,” Vance told the Deseret News about his faith in 2016.

JD Vance’s wife

In the June interview with “ Fox & Friends ,” JD Vance and his wife, Usha, spoke about Vance becoming a Catholic and their family’s approach to faith.

Vance noted that Usha Vance was not raised Christian and that she’s not a Christian today. He added that she was supportive of his religious journey.

The interviewer then asked if the Vances find it difficult to raise kids in an interfaith household. Usha Vance said they stay focused on the beliefs they hold in common.

“There are a lot of things we just agree on when it comes to family life and how to raise our kids. I think the answer is we really just talk a lot,” she said.

On This Day: Cathedral of Christ the Saviour Founded in Moscow

Paul Gilbert

September 22, 2015

On September 22 (O.S. September 10), 1839 the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was solemnly founded by the Metropolitan of Moscow Filaret on the Alexeevsky hill in Moscow to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the end of the Patriotic War and storming of Paris in March of 1814.

The idea to build the cathedral in order to mark the rescue of the Motherland appeared already in 1812. Originally the magnificent building was planned to be built by the design of the architect A. L. Vitberg, but in 1832 the new project prepared by the architect K.A. Thon was approved instead. The place for the erection was chosen by the Emperor Nicholas himself. It was the territory of the old Alexeevsky monastery, whereas the monastery itself was decided to move to Krasnoye Selo (today the Novo-Alexeevky monastery). Money for building was collected in all the churches of Russia, the enormous sum totaling over 15 mil. roubles was provided by the treasury.

The laying of the foundation stone of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was a national holiday with military parade and a procession through Moscow to honor veterans of the Patriotic War of 1812 and the prayers for those who perished on the battlefields.

22 (O.S. 10) September 1839 "... Russia’s mother - Moscow seethed in solemn ecstasy ... Moscow residents flocked from all sides to the place of the solemn procession. The army already in order deployed from the Assumption Cathedral to the very place of foundation of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. On the other side, to the right of the Cathedral of the Assumption, on sidewalks, in windows and on rooftops crowded spectators of the great capital; everywhere prevailed silence ..." The solemn procession - the clergy in full vestments, the emperor and the entire retinue followed on horseback, "... to the place of execution, by the church of St. Basil, along the embankment and Prechistenka by Carriage Court; it was led by Saint Filaret, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna.

Upon arrival at the foundation site and having pronounced a prayer, Emperor Nicholas I in the base of the temple laid a cruciform bronze plaque with the inscription: "In the summer of 1839, the day of September 10th, by order of the Great Sovereign Emperor Nicholas Pavlovich the sacred vow, given by Emperor Alexander I who had passed away, is to be fulfilled by his own hand of Emperor Nicholas, failing to erect a temple of Christ the Saviour on the Sparrow Hills, as planned before, the foundation stone is laid at this place for the construction of the temple thereof.

The cathedral was being built from 1839 to 1883. Its height from the base to the cross reached 103.5 m, the wall thickness was 3 m 20 cm. The double walls had corridors, which contained 177 marble memorials with the description of the events of the Patriotic War of 1812 and Russian campaigns 1813–1814 in the chronological order. The cathedral was decorated by 38 painters: V. V. Vereshchagin, V. I. Surikov, K. E. Makovsky, F. A. Bruni, I. N. Kramskoy, G. I. Semiradsky etc.

The solemn ceremony of the cathedral’s opening took place on 26 May 1883, the year of Alexander III coronation. The veterans of the Patriotic War of 1812 were invited to the ceremony.   

On 5 December 1931 the cathedral-memorial of military glory was destroyed by the explosion. It was decided to build the Palace of Soviets (height 500 m.) on its place, but the Great Patriotic War broke out and the building was disassembled. In 1958 the swimming-pool “Moskva” was constructed on this place.

In 1989 it was decided to rebuild the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and in 1990 a temporary cornerstone was laid to the east of the pool. By December 2000 the decoration work was completed. The new cathedral differs from the original one by the stylobate part (too prolonged basement floor) that houses the Museum, the Hall of Church Assemblies, the Church of the Transfiguration, the Conference Hall of the Most Holy Governing Synod, refectory chambers and different technical services. However the new cathedral includes some old elements – marble memorial plaques from the bypass corridors and the fragments of the main iconostasis.

After the restoration the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour became the Cathedral of the Metropolitan of Moscow, where the main church festive services are held.

Royal Russia

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‘Sinners’ and ‘Russian Talibans’: A Holy War Roils a Once Placid Village

A battle has erupted in Moldova over its links to the Russian Orthodox Church, seen by many as a tool of Moscow’s influence abroad.

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By Andrew Higgins

Reporting from Balti and Rautel in northern Moldova

The village was a placid place until the local priest, disoriented by the war in Ukraine, succumbed to Satan, according to the retired teacher in northern Moldova. Before that, people got on well and attended Sunday services at the same Russian Orthodox Church.

Now, said Tamara Gheorghies, the teacher, “they don’t even say hello to each other.” The reason, at least in her telling, is simple: a decision by the village priest to sever his allegiance to Patriarch Kirill in Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Moscow Patriarch has for decades commanded the loyalty of Orthodox Christians across the former Soviet Union. But in March, the village priest joined a rival ecclesiastical hierarchy based in neighboring Romania, a member of the European Union.

“He has taken the path of terrible sin,” said Ms. Gheorghies, a member of a group of residents who are fighting to restore the primacy of the Russian church and defeat what they see as a rush to ally with decadent Western forces.

The rift over ecclesiastical allegiance in Rautel, a village of around 4,000 people 50 miles from Moldova’s northeastern border with Ukraine, is just one of many now playing out across the country and in other former Soviet Republics. Patriarch Kirill is a zealous ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. He has been pressing to maintain the loyalty of Orthodox faithful beyond Russia’s borders, and with it, Russian influence.

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Will JD Vance's religious background sway Catholic voters? What experts say.

WASHINGTON — Five years ago, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, former President Donald Trump’s newly minted running mate, was baptized into the Catholic Church.

His journey to Catholicism is a complicated one, as he describes in a 2020 blog post titled “How I Joined the Resistance. ” His grandmother, he says, “was a woman of deep, but completely de-institutionalized, faith” who rarely attended church.

Though his father was part of a large Pentecostal congregation, he turned to atheism by the time he left the Marines in 2007, saying there was a lack of “church or anything to anchor me to the faith of my youth.” 

The writings of French philosopher René Girard, along with his personal reflections, are what led him to Catholicism in more recent years, he wrote.

Now, Vance will campaign side by side with Trump, who has increasingly used Christian-centric rhetoric to appeal to evangelical supporters. If elected, Vance would be the second Catholic vice president in U.S. history, following President Joe Biden’s tenure in the position during Barack Obama’s presidency. 

But religion experts told USA TODAY it is unlikely Vance’s religious background will sway Catholic voters as he seeks to shore up support for the Republican ticket.

“People are already pretty committed to their positions. And JD Vance being Catholic or not Catholic is really, I don't think going to change anything,” said Cristina Traina, the Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. Chair of Catholic Theology at Fordham University. 

No evidence Catholic VP pick swayed Catholic voters in the past, researcher says 

Vance’s selection as Trump’s running mate was unsurprising to Chris Devine , a political science professor at the University of Dayton, a Catholic university in Vance’s home state of Ohio. But it’s because of Vance’s loyalty to Trump, not his religion, that Devine believed he was added to the ticket. 

For instance, contrary to former Vice President Mike Pence, Vance has said he would not have certified the 2020 presidential election results.  

Vance is also unafraid of bold – even if unsubstantiated – public statements, such as his claim that Biden campaign messaging directly led to the assassination attempt against Trump on July 13. 

“That seems to be the kind of thing Trump likes — someone who is a warrior, someone who will double down rather than back down,” he said. “That is who JD Vance has shown himself to be.” 

Devine co-authored the 2020 book , “Do Running Mates Matter? The Influence of Vice Presidential Candidates in Presidential Elections” alongside Kyle Kopko . The duo’s research suggested Catholic vice presidential nominees did not move the needle among Catholic voters in past elections.

That includes the 2012 nominations of Republican Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and Biden as the incumbent vice president, as well as Democratic Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine in 2016.

“In those cases we saw no shift in voting preferences following the selection of those Catholic candidates,” he said.

Biden, Vance showcase political diversity within Catholic Church 

Susan Reynolds , a Catholic studies professor at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, is also skeptical that Vance’s religious background will sway independent Catholic voters toward the Republican ticket. 

After all, Biden is also a practicing Catholic. He regularly attends Mass and referenced the Catholic hymn “On Eagle’s Wings” in his victory speech as president-elect in 2020.  But the presence of two Catholics on the 2024 ballot does showcase the nation’s departure from widespread anti-Catholic sentiment seen in earlier centuries , she said. 

Such prejudice stemmed from concern that Catholic leaders would be more responsive to the Vatican than the American public, Reynolds said. 

“It wasn’t like people were suspicious of Kennedy for thinking the Eucharist was the true presence of Christ,” she said. “It was about, where do Catholics in American culture and politics place their primary loyalties?” 

Catholics “perennially feel like political misfits,” said Reynolds. That’s contributed to tension within the church , showcased by Vance and Biden’s dueling versions of Catholicism. 

“These two men are lightyears apart politically and are a demonstration both of how diverse Catholics are, in terms of political attitudes and social attitudes, and also how polarized the American Catholic Church is at the present moment,” she said.

Traina agreed, noting there are different groups within Catholicism, including conservatives and progressives, that already have an established set of political beliefs.

“They're not going to be kind of convertible because they already have very strong political opinions. And so… the progressives don't vote for Biden because he's Catholic. They vote for Biden because his policies are in line with social justice teachings of the church,” she said.

“The conservatives vote for Trump because he seems to be anti abortion,” she said. “And also, there are conservative Catholics that are very much in line with keeping the government out of business.”

But Vance is different from both Biden and Trump in that he’s a conservative who hasn’t embroiled himself in scandals or criminal trials, said Emily Crews, the executive director of the Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

“Christians who are looking to vote for someone who regularly invokes his religious identity, but who has a more polite veneer and more pragmatic perspective on politics than Trump, could find Vance really compelling,” she said.

Who is JD Vance's patron saint?

Vance chose St. Augustine as his patron saint when he converted to Catholicism in 2019, he told The American Conservative . 

He told the outlet he was affected by the theologian's fourth century autobiographical work “Confessions,” and that “The City of God,” a fifth century writing in response to the sack of Rome in 410 ,  is “incredibly relevant now that I’m thinking about policy.” 

The latter work defends Christianity's place in society and argues that it spared Rome from complete obliteration. 

A certain interpretation of Augustine’s writings can therefore be “very, very functional” to the modern GOP, according to Massimo Faggioli , a theology and religious studies professor at Villanova University. 

An array of Republican politicians cited divine intervention as the means through which Trump survived a July 13 assassination attempt, for example, and Trump has said “no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration.”

Just as Augustine wrote of the decline of an empire, so too has Trump warned of the end of the American experiment under a second Biden presidency. And that’s where Vance’s self-description as a fighter for Christianity could come into play for Trump. 

“I believe the calculus is to offer a ticket that is unapologetic for a more Christian America,” Faggioli said. 

Augustine is, however, a multi-dimensional figure invoked by leaders across the political spectrum. Biden referenced Augustine in his 2021 inaugural address to support a call for national unity, and Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-California, has said he “(highlights) our duty as public servants to fight for justice.” 

Vance will strengthen religious discourse

Vance will likely use religious rhetoric and defend faith-based values on the campaign trail as he’s done previously.

When he was running for Ohio Senate in 2021, Vance told the Christian Broadcasting Network he sensed a concern about censorship from faithful voters.

“They're really worried, whether at their workplaces or on social media, can they actually speak their mind? Can they actually speak about Christian values without being shut down?" Vance said.

He added that "we need to allow conservatives and Christians to actually live their values, to pass those values onto their children.”

Vance also spoke about Christian faith guiding American identity last year with American Moment , a conservative group that says on its website that it seeks to identify young Americans "who will implement public policy that supports strong families, a sovereign nation, and prosperity for all."

“We’re a multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious democracy that’s heavily exposed to the economic forces of globalization, and I think that we have not yet figured out how to harmonize that with some basic sense of what it means to be an American in the 21st century," he said. "I happen to think that the Christian faith is a good way of helping provide an answer to that question."