Warm side of L.A.
E-mail story
It's easy. Send a link to the story you were just reading to a friend. Just fill out the form on this page and we'll send it along.
Your name and e-mail address are transmitted to the recipient. Otherwise, it is considered private information; see Privacy policy.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — To be a stranger attending Sunday meetings at the Southwest Los Angeles Branch, Inglewood California Stake, means receiving a personal greeting from nearly every member there. It means watching the several dozen branch members intermingle as good friends. It means watching members sit patiently at the end of the meetings for those giving them a ride home to finish interviews or presidency meetings. It is reverence and friendship — toward each other and toward visitors.
The branch meets in a small but attractive meetinghouse near the southern border of Los Angeles. The heart of the branch is its branch president, 79-year-old Robert L. Lang.
A native of Mississippi, President Lang moved to California in 1940. In the late 1960s he investigated the Church and was impressed.
"When I was baptized, I realized that I couldn't hold the priesthood," he said, sitting with his wife, Delores, during a Church News interview in his office. Asked how he felt about that as an African-American, he responded, "I knew the Church was true. It was what I had been looking for. I hadn't belonged to any other Church before."
And, he said, he had a feeling that the time would come that he could hold the priesthood.
During that time, he was working in an appliance repair shop. Sister Lang said that she, as a single mother at the time, got to know him through buying a washer and dryer from him. As they became better acquainted, he began taking her children to Primary. She tried to give him money for the Church and he told her they didn't take collections. She finally decided to go to the Church to see what was going on. They ended up getting married and she was baptized in 1973.
They have been stalwarts in the Church through the years and have lived in the same home for more than 40 years. Over that time, they have been within the boundaries of different stakes, wards and branches, but said they have always been faithful.
Though it wasn't totally unexpected, President Lang said he was surprised when President Spencer W. Kimball announced the revelation on the priesthood in 1978, enabling him to receive the priesthood. That opened the way for him and his wife to go to the temple.
"We were worthy right then," Sister Lang said, "so there wasn't anything but to get a temple recommend."
Accepting the counsel of their bishop, they attended the temple seminar course. Then, Sister Lang said, they became the first African-American couple to be sealed in the Los Angeles California Temple. She said the national and international media interviewed her husband about the priesthood and the opportunity to go to the temple.
Their faithfulness continued, with the added blessing of priesthood in the home. They have served in various callings in the Church. He is a branch president for the second time and she is the Primary president.
The area where the branch is located has some reputation for being socially rough, but the Langs don't believe that there are serious problems. And the gospel works anywhere, they said. They recalled a time when they were in a different branch where a gang member accepted the gospel, was baptized and served a mission.
Indeed, the neighborhood where the meetinghouse is located looks far from prosperous, but is well-kept with tidy houses and yards, and clean streets.
One of President Lang's counselors, Steve Allen, said the branch is growing. He said when the branch started, a former beauty parlor was leased and converted to a meeting place within a week. There were about 12 members then, he said.
During meetings one recent Sunday, there were more than 60 in attendance, and Sister Lang noted that about 30 more active members were away on vacation trips that day.
The message circulated among members throughout the block time was the need to use family home evening, and effective home teaching and visiting teaching, to activate members and reach the goal of becoming a ward.
There are advantages to being a small branch, President Lang said, primarily the ability for him to stay close to the members. "With a small branch, it's not as difficult to recognize everybody." But he firmly believes a well-organized ward can serve and bless the members in even greater ways.
The foundation of the Southwest Los Angeles Branch is evident in the way members and visitors are treated. "You teach love and you show love, and it becomes contagious to the members," President Lang said.
Sister Lang added, "Everybody loves everybody here."
E-mail to: ghill@desnews.com
