Family a core principle of Mormon faith

<p>After a home-cooked meal almost every night, Amy and Blake Ambridge and their three young children gather for scripture reading, prayer and family bonding — the essence of their Mormon faith.</p><p>“The family is central to everything,” stay-at-home Windsor mom Amy Ambridge said. “Central to the Creator's plan.”</p><p>Family, in both literal and metaphysical sense, is a core principle for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has 6,000 members in Sonoma County.</p><p><NO1><NO>“We are an eternal unit,” Amy Ambridge said. “As crazy as family can be sometimes, that's the beautiful part. We learn and grow as a family.”</p><p>Amy, 41, and Blake, 50, a chiropractic neurologist in Santa Rosa, are raising daughters Kennedy, 12, and Hope, 9, and son, Forest, 5, in the faith founded by Joseph Smith in 1830.</p><p>The kids play Little League baseball and soccer, take dance and piano lessons, go to school and do their homework.</p><p>They also attend services for three hours on Sunday<NO1><NO> <NO1><NO>at the Latter-day Saints' church on Peterson Lane. After every dinner at home, they sit together for scripture reading and prayer.</p><p>“We talk about what's going on <QA0></p><p>in everyone's life,” Amy Ambridge said.</p><p>Ambridge used to sell educational software, making a good income, but now thrives on full-time motherhood. “I love it. I don't want to miss any of it,” she said.</p><p>Mormon women are “encouraged” to stay at home, she said, but many work out of economic necessity.</p><p>Ambridge belongs to the Relief Society, a Mormon women's organization that supports families in need. “You can get help, anytime, day or night,” she said.</p><p>The Ambridges grow fruits and vegetables and raise cattle and chickens on their property. Like many Mormons motivated to be self-sufficient, they maintain a year's supply of food.</p><p><NO1><NO>Family values permeate Mormon faith, and are reflected in members' conservative views.</p><p>A Pew Forum report last year found that 70 percent of Mormons say abortion should be illegal in most or all circumstances, compared with 42percent among the general population.</p><p>Two-thirds of Mormons say homosexuality should be discouraged rather than accepted by society, the report said, compared with 40percent of the population.</p><p>One in five Mormon households (21percent) includes three or more children, a rate far higher than the general population (9 percent).</p><p>To Mormons, family extends far beyond the household, the church and the temporal world.</p><p><NO1><NO>“We are all spirit children, the sons and daughters of God,” Amy Ambridge said. People of all faiths are “an eternal family here on earth together,” she said.</p><p>All will come to accept Jesus Christ, she said, but that “doesn't mean it's going to happen on earth.”</p>