Provide the funds and food, the people and the amenities, the education and the equipment needed to keep the orphanages and ministries functioning. I pray for any outreach missions that actively seek to rescue those who have been abandoned to a life when they have to fend for themselves and are facing severe hardships.

Raise up orphanages and ministries that will actively seek out and help those that are alone in the world. I will find ways to reach out to them and to serve them.Lord Jesus, there are so many millions of children that have been orphaned or abandoned around the world, and we grieve for them in a world that seems to have lost its ability to care for the weak and help the defenceless.

Today, I will remember the people I know who have lost spouses or parents. To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. He defined the core activities of “pure religion” in this way: James warned us that there is a difference between talking about religion and actually living it.

“Why do ye build up your secret abominations to get gain, and cause that widows should mourn before the Lord, and also orphans to mourn before the Lord, and also the blood of their fathers and their husbands to cry unto the Lord from the ground, for vengeance upon your heads?” ( Mormon 8:40).

“I will be a swift witness against…those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless” ( Malachi 3:5, 3 Nephi 24:5).

“Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees…to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless!” ( Isaiah 10:1-2, 2 Nephi 20:1-2).

“When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands” ( Deuteronomy 24:19).

The Lord has always been concerned about the welfare of widows and orphans, and He has always expected His people to pay particular attention to their needs. “The storehouse shall be kept by the consecrations of the church,” He said “and widows and orphans shall be provided for, as also the poor” ( Doctrine and Covenants 83). In April 1832, the Lord provided specific instructions to the church on caring for those “who have lost their husbands or fathers.” If they lack the resources to support themselves, the combined resources of the church-the Lord’s storehouse-is available to them.

Jesus widows and orphans