Valued Family : Couple’s Household of Faith Is Built on Tough Times and With Hard Work

After 12 years of marriage, Renan and Evy Disner seem to have created the model family. Their kids consistently make the honor roll. They do their chores regularly. They help neighbors in need.

Evy teaches school and Renan, a life insurance salesman, shares cooking, housework and child-care duties. They both volunteer at soccer games. She is a Cub Scout den leader; he is a regional leader in their church.

Yet, Renan, a native of Mexico, and Evy, a product of Anglo Orange County, readily admitted they are not perfect and that it has not always been easy.

Recently named Hispanic American Family of the Year by a North Hollywood service and scholarship organization, the bilingual, bicultural Santa Ana family is not a “superman family,” said Evelyn Leyva, spokeswoman for the Hispanic American Family of the Year Foundation. Rather, she said the Disners were chosen to show “there are outstanding Hispanic families involved in their community and to serve as role models. Maybe they will be an inspiration for other families. If they did it, another could do it too.”

The Disners attribute whatever success they have achieved mostly to the high standards of family togetherness set by their church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Like other devout Mormons, they said they do not smoke or consume alcohol or caffeine. They begin and end each day with prayer, asking for blessings for church missionaries, the country’s leaders and for each family member’s individual worry of the day.

Monday nights--”family night” for the Disners--are spent playing games, eating out or having a barbecue on the beach. They spend Sundays in church just a block from their home.

In addition, Renan Disner said that he and Evy specifically set aside time each week to be alone with each other, away from their four children who range in age from 4 to 10.

The couple met in Torreon, Mexico, where they were both serving as missionaries for the church. Fluent in Spanish, Evy had spent several summers working in Latin America. Renan, a native of Tonala, Chiapas, had converted at age 14. The couple married there and Renan became a church bishop, an unpaid position similar to a parish priest, providing marriage and funeral services and counseling to church members.

Renan Disner said counseling other married couples in Mexico led him to recognize the injustice in the traditional approach to marriage, in which the wife took sole responsibility for the children and housework, particularly when both had jobs.

“I saw all the problems they were having. Many times I saw myself,” he said.

In the macho society in which he was raised, Renan Disner said, “women stayed home with the children. Men did whatever they wanted. Women had to ask permission from the boss. Men never washed dishes. If they did, they were considered not a man.”

Over the years, he said, he learned to overcome those and other attitudes he grew up with.

The Disners call their marriage a democracy, and say their approach is supported by Scripture. While women cannot hold positions of priestly authority in the Mormon Church, Renan Disner said men “cannot take advantage of the priesthood and cannot impose improper dominion on wife and children.”

The family moved to Santa Ana in 1984. Since he spoke no English, Renan--who held an administrative job in Mexico--had to work as a custodian while he went to school. “It was the only job I could get,” he said. “It happens to a lot of people. It was not humiliating. I was grateful to have a job.”

But English proved difficult for him. He sometimes was enrolled in as many as 22 units and worked overtime until 2 a.m. in addition to his church and family responsibilities. Frustrated and worn out, he said he sometimes came home and collapsed in tears.

“I grew up not letting anybody know I cried,” he said. “At church they make me realize you cry because you have feelings. A man and a woman have feelings.” Still, he said, he tried not to cry in front of his children. “Those times when it got really hard, I tried to do it in the bedroom.”

After starting at Rancho Santiago College, he was graduated in 1989 from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in international business.

As he worked his way up in business, he also became president of seven Hispanic Mormon congregations with a total 3,000 members in Orange County.

Meanwhile, Evy earned a bilingual teaching credential. She took a year off from teaching with the birth of each child. She said she continues to work out of need, but looks forward to a time when she can afford to stay home with the children.

The Disners said education is one of their primary family values along with teamwork at home.

Evy Disner said she does not check her children’s homework, but she does expect them to turn it in consistently on time. “I don’t count A’s,” she said.

As far as chores go, the family rotates responsibility for vacuuming, cleaning the bathrooms and taking care of the animals. “It teaches responsibility, cooperation and sharing,” Evy Disner said.

The couple also said they value respect, although they differ on what it means. For Renan, it is important for children to show respect for parents. For Evy, who teaches a parenting class, it means parents should show respect for children’s feelings and ideas. “If they don’t feel you respect them, they won’t communicate with you,” she said.

They also said they try to keep a sense of humor and stay positive.

“The church prepares you to be open-minded and expect the best,” Renan Disner said.

But even in a model family, Evy Disner added, “we never expect perfection.”