(Both Adolfo and Charlotte have asked that their real names not be used because of Adolfo's undocumented status.)
The pair plan to be married and have lots of Mormon children. Though women in the church are not obligated to serve missions, they can, and Charlotte did hers in a Spanish-speaking area of Houston.
Stephen Lemons
A statue of Jesus Christ welcomes all to the Mesa temple's state-of-the-art visitors center.
Jamie Peachey
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney addresses supporters during a recent rally at Mesa Amphitheatre.
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Before her mission, she never thought about the issue of immigration. But dealing with new arrivals from Latin America changed all that. They told her stories of violence, drug cartels, and stepping over dead bodies in grocery stores. It opened her eyes.
"I gained a very strong opinion that there are some people who need to be here," she says, holding hands with Adolfo. "I think we should be extending help to those people. They're like refugees, escaping circumstances that are unlivable."
She concedes that some illegal immigrants cross the border with bad intentions and become involved in crime, but she believes most here are hard workers who simply want to better their lot and that of their families.
Asked what most Mormons think of the illegal immigrants in their midst, she contends that it depends on personal experience.
"All my friends who served with me [in Texas], we have such a love for the Hispanic people," she says. "They have such a loving, welcoming culture and are so family-oriented."
The Mormon Church has no stats on how many of its members are undocumented, though the former bishop of one local Spanish-language ward estimated that nearly 80 percent of his congregation was illegal.
It is not uncommon to hear an Anglo Mormon tell of an undocumented 19-year-old doing his mission within the United States to avoid detection.
In June 2011, the church issued a statement reiterating that its leadership "has for many years taught that undocumented status should not by itself prevent an otherwise worthy Church member from entering the temple or being ordained to the priesthood."
The statement also admonished church members from "making judgments about fellow members in their congregation."
The dictate came just days before two undocumented LDS men in Utah — one from Guatemala, the other from El Salvador — were deported from the country. Both were former branch presidents. (A branch is somewhat smaller than a Mormon ward.)
The Guatemalan man had been in the States for decades, and was well known as a kids' soccer coach. The man from El Salvador's family was removed with him by immigration.
A spokesman for the LDS church, commenting on the matter for Salt Lake City's Deseret News, stated that the case "reminds us all of the need to address immigration reform."
He continued, "We believe any solution should include the following three principles: The commandment to 'love thy neighbor;' the importance of keeping families intact; and the federal government's obligation to secure its border."
Though former Massachusetts Governor Romney is by all accounts an observant Mormon — who tithes millions of dollars each year to the church, who abstains from alcohol and tobacco, and who has served both as a stake president and a bishop in the Boston area — only the third part of that formula seems to appeal to him as he runs for president.
As he's campaigned for the GOP primary in various states, he's staked out the hardest of hard-line positions on immigration, using the issue to prove his conservative bona fides to primary voters and to portray his competitors as weak-kneed.
He supports a border fence and is opposed to in-state tuition for undocumented college students, no matter what laws a state's Legislature passes.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, who unlike Romney actually has experience dealing with border issues, opposed a border fence, calling it impractical.
Perry also defended legislation that he signed into law, which allowed undocumented students to pay in-state tuition, if they met certain requirements and pledged to seek legal status.
Some refer to the law as Texas' version of the DREAM Act, proposed federal legislation that would create a pathway to legal residency for undocumented students brought here by their parents, as long as they attend college or serve in the military.
"If you say we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they have been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart," Perry declared during a GOP debate in Orlando, Florida.
Romney and other party restrictionists pounced, deriding the plan as a "magnet" for illegal immigration.
Following the debate, Romney insisted that if you're against illegal immigration, "you have a heart and a brain." His campaign soon rolled out a video of the Perry quote along with footage of former Mexican President Vicente Fox praising Perry for the in-state-tuition law for undocumented students.
In the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, Romney exploited Perry's perceived softness on the issue, hitting Iowa voters with a robo-call featuring the voice of anti-immigration poster boy Paul Babeu criticizing the Texan on the border fence and on in-state tuition.
"Rick Perry is part of the illegal immigrant problem," the Pinal County sheriff and congressional candidate insisted in the recorded message.
