Word: mormon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...church. Octaviano M. Ledesma Jr. '76, a Math major living in Canaday Hall, attended the Cambridge church regularly the first year after he arrived from his home in Calexico, California, a town of 11,000 near the Mexican border and about 120 miles east of San Diego. The Mormon church there had about 100 members, with only 15 or 20 Anglos. Ledesma's parents converted to Mormonism when he was four or five; missionaries had come to their home, then in Los Angeles, and, he says, "My ma had a hunch." This interest led to conversion for Ledesma, his mother...
...year, although his participation in Calexico has not lagged. The dark-haired, pudgy and mustachioed senior explains that he doesn't "feel the same kind of closeness here." He attributes much of this to the reorganization of the church here several years ago, which sent some of his close Mormon friends to other wards. While the University branch is "very, very friendly" and more open than Harvard itself, Ledesma says, its members are not as tightly knit as those in the Calexico ward. "When you sit down with others, that is where you actually learn. But when...
Ledesma, who hopes to become a math professor, protrays himself as someone who clashes with Mormon stereotypes. First, he says, his liberal preferences clash with the church's generally conservative leanings; "I believe in strong government intervention," he says, his hands bobbing and weaving to stress his points. Ledesma says that while he finds some church doctrines (such as eating in moderation) make a lot of sense, he follows them "only as well as I can. I recognize them as good practices, but do not regard them as gospel." Finally, many of his companions live a life that violates fundamental...
...secretary in University Hall and lives in the master's residence in Kirkland, grew up a Protestant, a leaf on a family tree overgrown with Congregationalist ministers. But the family church had become an empty routine to her. As a high school senior, Hagee visited the Mormon church in her home town, St. Joseph, Missouri, on a dare from a Utah Mormon she had befriended at a student conference. Hagee found "a lot of spirit there, something very real, something I wanted to know about...
That visit brought Mormon missionaries, whom the family "just made fun of for a while," to the house, Hagee says with a touch of regret. But a few months later, Hagee's interest took a serious turn and by the end of May she had been baptized. Within a year her whole family--a widowed mother and younger brother--had also converted...