LDS bishop's wife -- one tough 'calling'

Night after night, Mario Durrant pored over the thick handbook, learning how to conduct services, how to handle interviews, how to provide welfare aid -- how, in short, to be an LDS bishop.

Finally, his wife, Karla Durrant, half-jokingly asked, "Isn't there one for me?"

Nope. There is no detailed church manual telling a Mormon bishop's wife how to shoulder all the child care when her husband is in endless meetings, how to support her spouse as he juggles a career and a seemingly full-time church assignment, how to be a role model without acting as if she has been appointed mother of the ward.

"Everybody knew I wasn't perfect," Karla recalls.

Clarity about her new role as the bishop's wife -- which began a year ago this month -- came only when she followed her grandfather's advice, passed down through her mother, Blanding resident Renee Pincock.

Crack open the LDS scriptures, the advice went, to a revelation given to Emma Smith through her husband, church founder and prophet Joseph Smith and recorded in Doctrine & Covenants Section 25.