There seems to be no shortage of calls among Latter-day Saints: follow-up calls, mission calls, calls to teach, and calls to talk and lead. There are even calls to repentance.
The Lord's kingdom appears to be ringing off the hook with opportunities to answer.
But as more and more Mormons abandon phone landlines for an all-wireless lifestyle, many of those calls are going unanswered.
Paradoxically, the very cell phone technology that's credited with connecting its mobile users to everything and everyone is largely leaving many Saints disconnected with the church and each other.
"It's really frustrating when you're trying to get a hold of a sister, but all you have is their husband's (cell) number," said Alison King, a Relief Society president in Chicago. "It happens all the time … There you are, catching him at work and asking for his wife."
It's awkward disturbing Brother Smith during his afternoon executive meeting, but confirming whether his sweetheart is still whipping up a broccoli and cheese casserole for craft night is still necessary.
Ward directories all over the United States are reflecting data confirmed by the National Center for Health and Statistics — about half of American households have completely dumped their landline to save money.
And because an overwhelming majority of ward directories, both in print and on LDS.org., list only one phone number per household, many Latter-day Saints are suffering from "Single Cell Syndrome," a Mormon phenomenon describing the discouragement church leaders feel when having to rely on the only person listed in the directory, often a distracted cell phone carrier on the run, to relay messages to family members.
Yester-decade, when the phone rang, everybody in the house heard it. If the requested individual wasn't home (determined by one or two ear-piercingly loud yells of the person's name), a message was scribbled on a notebook that sat beside every phone, a once-stationary fixture. Or, if no one was home, a message about upcoming youth conference was recorded on a family answering machine, where the whole family could hear it.
Cork boards next to the phone, although cluttered, served as another public axis of information, a record of the family's last week's worth of interaction with the world. The board's loosely tacked, dangling papers of phone numbers, scribbled messages, a couple of Grandma's recipes and doodles of mostly stick-figured fantastic creatures all chronicled the communication of a household.
No matter the nostalgia it stirs, the system was still a clumsy one, and getting hold of someone was still hit-and-miss. Someone was always in trouble for not relaying a message.
Then, like the sudden thrust of a sports car's second gear, cell phones took off in the early 2000s. By 2004, they became as common to the public as white socks among a deacon's quorum.
Communication had never been better. The home phone was a catchall, and when it didn't get you what — or whom — you needed, the cell phone had you covered.
Nowadays, that kind of overlapping coverage between cell and home phones is halfway out the door and on its way to wherever defunct things go to die, like portable CD players and letter openers.
Terri Hatch, the wife of a Chicago bishop, says her ward's printed ward directory is on its way down the same fateful path of extinction. She lives in an extremely transient inner-city ward, which receives as many as dozen or more member move-in notices a week.
"To focus on maintaining an updated paper version just doesn't make sense for us," Hatch said. "And it would be expensive."
Instead, the ward is encouraged, and sometimes trained by their ward clerk, to use the ward's online version at LDS.org.
The church's site may be more up-to-date because clerks can edit information automatically, but the current LDS.org directory still only allows for one number per family, "which often tends to be the husband's cell number," said Tamra Staiger, a Relief Society president in Dallas.
Like so many leaders in the church who are expected to keep in contact with their part of the flock, Staiger feels one number — especially if it's a husband's personal number — just isn't good enough. The "Single Cell Syndrome" spurred her to compile a comprehensive Relief Society directory that includes every home and cell number in each household. She and her counselors keep it updated at the stroke of a keyboard by posting it to Google Docs, a free, web-based word processor that allows multiple users to collaborate remotely on a single document.
"It's so extensive I've got priesthood brethren calling me for people's numbers," Staiger said.
The one-number phone directory problem isn't going unnoticed by church officials.
Scott Trotter, spokesman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said the church is addressing the issue. He said IT leaders aren't ready to discuss exact details because their solution isn't ready, but the church's newest beta site, beta.LDS.org , gives a good indication where technology will take members in the future.
Currently the site is full of bugs, broken links and service error messages, but if the same product — or something very similar — makes it through its semi-discreet testing stage, it will no doubt impress its users.
Besides the capability of editing the family phone number (which still may be Dad's cell phone in some cases), families can type in a separate phone number for each family member.
And instead of the barely intelligible black-and-white, grainy family photos that ward directories are known for now, the site will allow each family to upload a current color photo of each person.
Until the site escapes the beta chute, though, youth leaders like Paulo Peternes, a Young Men president in Davenport, Fla., will have to continue to wrangle their own extended ward directories, ones that include youth phone numbers as well as their parents'.
The new site will also be particularly helpful to leaders like Peternes, who says his primary communication to youth and their parents is through e-mail. The site allows each family member to include an individual e-mail address.
For seasoned leaders who've been at their calls for a while and have found a communication groove that works, the site may not be as valuable. But for the thousands of leaders who are called into leadership positions each week in the church, the site, with its personalized photos and information, will surely provide a boost of efficiency from the start never before experienced by former leaders.
On the new site, however, there is still no way to tell if a listed phone number is to a cell phone, home phone, work phone, etc. Knowing the difference is meaningful to a host of leaders in each ward and stake who routinely rely on texting as an efficient means of quick communication, especially when getting the word out to a group.
When officials in a Utah County city recently discovered the city's water supply had been contaminated and was dangerous to drink, stake leaders blasted a text message to each ward. The message went through each bishop to each elders quorum, through each home teacher, and finally to each family in fewer than 20 minutes. The technology allowed a ward with 26 percent home teaching to quickly warn 100 percent of their neighbors.
Matthew Maroon, a Young Men president in Harlem, N.Y., where most of the boys have non-member parents, regularly calls each of the boys and their parents but says sometimes that's not enough.
"Texting is sometimes our only lifeline to the boys," he said. "It's that simple."
When Lori Harrison, a bishop's wife and seminary teacher in Albuquerque wants to get a message to all her students, she says instead of taking an hour to call each person individually or start a complicated phone tree, she sends a quick text blast that "gets through to everyone 100 percent of the time," she said.
And when Chantel Logston, a Young Women president in Dallas, wants to remind her girls about an activity, she sends a text.
She says it's not her primary communication but a great tool with a great response rate.
"During the school year, I text at least some of the girls every day," she said.
Logston remembers when she started her calling with one number for each girl, the number listed in the ward phone directory.
"That was really difficult," she said.
Now, instead of ailing from "Single Cell Syndrome," she's formulated a list of about 100 numbers to stay in contact with her two dozen girls and their parents.
Has Logston discovered "Multiple Cell Syndrome"? And how might that affect the next generation of communication among Latter-day Saints?
e-mail: jhancock@desnews.com