So I have some dear friends who are a married couple and TBM. She's BIC and from a huge family; he converted as a teenager. They both went on missions and continue to be very active.

Anyway, they have been unable to have biological kids and recently were chosen to adopt a sibling group of several children. Some of the kids have special needs. My friends will make wonderful parents and have the patience, dedication and resources to be successful at such a huge challenge, but my worry is:

Is their church going to help them, or at least ease off the demands with callings, etc? Taking on these children is such an enormous undertaking that will require all their strength, and I'm worried for them that instead of helping support them through this time (i.e. backing off the demands on their time; asking for volunteers to go take them dinner, fold a load of wash, etc) the church will continue to take, take, take.

It never would have occured to me to have this specific concern, if I hadn't seen another aquaintance suffer a near-breakdown, trying to handle five kids with another on the way, a husband deployed with the military, volunteering at the kids' school and in general trying to be supermom, in addition to not dropping any of the stupid Mormon balls she was supposed to keep in the air. I never once heard of anyone ever helping her, but she was expected to keep conforming to expectations. I would have liked to be more of a friend to her, but honestly she was kinda standoffish to those outside her circle (I know, what else is new).

I'm a nevermo myself, so maybe there's stuff going on behind the scenes that I don't know about and doesn't get talked about. Should I worry for my friends that the church is a hindrance instead of a help, or is there a secret SWAT team of kind Mormons who go help other members in times like these?

No, the Church will not back off.

Doing things for the cult is considered a blessing.

If you are having a hard time in life, serve the cult.

Need a job? Don't spend time job hunting, serve the cult.

You have special needs children? Your burdens will be lightened by serving the cult.

Short on cash? Don't forget that tithing payment, plus fast offering, plus any other contributions they can sucker out of you.

Serve your family by serving the cult, first.

Oh, that didn't work? Then you either didn't do it right or didn't do it enough.
You must not be worthy of the blessings that come from serving...tsk tsk

Yeah most likely they will not back off at all.

I have a cousin who has mental problems (attempted suicide multiple times and has severe anger problems), and the church has not given his parents any relief as far as church callings go. The mom is the Primary President and the dad is a High Council person.

You would think they would not give them any callings, but since callings are such great "blessings", the leader's probably assume they're helping the family grow strong.

And even if they don't give them *too* demanding of a calling, they will still be expected to be a home teacher/visiting teacher, which eats up time.

LOL!!!!!!

Um, no.

Why on earth would they load this on themselves?

The church won't help them or scale on back demands. Your friend will have to be a SAHM and the husband will carry the financial burden.

It's a receipe for disaster.

And all this to gain some celestial brownie points.
Deluded fools.

Yea,they will back off. For about 10 minutes.I have seen many cases where a family desparately needs help with the special needs of their kids,or poor health of one of the parents,or just a mom pregnant with child numer 16.They still expect the same from you. I was pregnant for the first time,already had 4 young kids (adopted),the youngest being not even 1 year. So they called me to be the Stake Primary Prez. They told me how the Lord needed me now to serve the stake. Are you kidding me? Who would 'serve' my kids? I took the calling because I was such a molly mo,but it was soooo hard.