Couple creates online LDS movie rental

Rebecca and John Frech found it was getting harder and harder for them to find movies that met the standards of a Mormon family."As a family, we like to gather on the couch with a big bowl of popcorn and enjoy a good movie," Rebecca said. "However, we began to notice we were returning movies not fully watched on a regular basis," John added."We rented a few popular LDS-based movies that Blockbuster had available online and found them very entertaining," John said. Yet Blockbuster only had a small selection to pick from, John said. The Nashville, Tenn. couple had a hard time finding other places to rent church-oriented movies."Disappointed in our futile search to find a place that rented LDS movies, we decided to offer the service ourselves," John said. "In the process, we learned there were hundreds of LDS-based movies."So — the husband and wife team created LDS Movie Rentals, or www.ldsmovierentals.com, the first DVD rental Web site focused on an LDS audience.The movie-rental site allows subscribers to rent movies online and receive the DVDs by mail. Like Netflix, there are no late fees or due dates.Getting the business started took a year of research, John said. They researched everything from available church movies on the market to the mechanics of how the U.S. Postal Service separates mail.What they found was an "eye-opening experience," John said.After noticing a disconnect with film producers and Mormon movie goers, John and Rebecca realized how LDS Movie Rentals will connect the two on a larger scale and help promote and continue the growth of the Mormon film industry."The second eye-opening experience was realizing that the content of the movies has a larger potential to uplift souls and spread the gospel than we realized," John said.Aside from all church entertainment movies, LDS Movie Rentals also offers instructional DVDs that help train church members in their callings, DVDs for presentation during classes, motivational speaker DVDs, and DVDs for investigators and new members that help answer questions on basic church principles. Members can also find DVDs that help bring entertainment to family home evenings while still teaching doctrine."Every time we mail out a DVD we feel like we are sharing our testimony because we know the spirit that we have felt in our home from watching LDS-based movies," John said.John and Rebecca have been married for 18 years and have two children and "a big goofy Bullmastiff dog our 8 year-old insists is his younger sister," John said."My wife is my best friend," John said. "Our talents complement each other perfectly for this project, and we have such a great time putting the site together."From here John and Rebecca are currently working on adding gift certificates, and new movies to the site while trying to make the site available to customers outside the United States. They are also promoting the site during June by hosting a drawing for the HearSay interactive DVD game series, which is based on the twenty five scripture mastery versus from the churchs seminary program.John said he feels like what he and his wife do is like a full-time mission similar to handing out copies of the Book of Mormon and sharing the gospel, instead they are sending out DVDs."The 13th Article of Faith says if there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things. This was our family's personal goal when we began watching LDS-based movies," John said. "We are thrilled to be able to offer the service of renting wholesome LDS-based movies which are indeed of good report and sharing these good experiences with others."