Is One Mortality Enough, and Other Easy Existential Questions

I firmly believe in the immortality of souls.   While others may wrestle with the idea, I do not.  It makes no sense for us to deal with the pains and sufferings of this life without some purpose or reason.  And while this certainty is one of faith, I am as sure of this truth as I am that I am writing here.   I assume that I exist!

My faith in my LDS religion informs me that we come to this planet from a premortal realm, experience life while growing and becoming, and at an unforeseen time are called back to our heavenly home.  My faith informs me that there are experiences in mortality that can only be obtained here, and that my purpose on earth is to have those good and bad experiences, learning to choose wisely but learning from my mistakes.  I have confidence that I exist for a reason!

I also believe that my mortal sojourn is choreographed by an all-knowing, all-loving Supreme Being who is only interested in giving me learning and becoming opportunities.  That is not to say that everything in my walk is predetermined.  While He may know my beginning and end, I don’t.  He knows what is going to happen in my life but I still have choice, or agency.  And I believe that every mortal's life is likewise choreographed.

However, those who are mentally incapacitated lack the ability to choose and to experience the full breadth of life, although their lives can often be a blessing to those who care for them. Others who become truly addicted to a substance or behavior, or who were born with or developed psychological maladies like obsessive compulsive disorder or schizophrenia, or whose upbringing caused these mental dysfunctions to happen, have limited agency and lack the ability to fully experience life. 

Those difficult conditions beg some questions: what learning and becoming experiences can such persons have?  Do they "get a free pass" for the tests of mortality, or are their conditions for the learning and becoming of those who interact with them?  Did they choose these deficiencies in that premortal realm?  Is it possible that they will learn all that they need to learn in a future time (the Millennium period, in LDS belief), free from the chains of their dysfunction, before they are judged? Or are they just out of luck?

On a related subject, can someone who did not have a full mortal life in which to experience mortality learn all there is to know in a millennial period (another LDS belief), assuming they have all 1000 years in which to experience "life?"  The Church teaches of a terrestrial, peaceful 1000 years.  How can one experience how to choose between good and bad, or much more difficult, good and good, when there won't be bad?  LDS belief dictates that the Devil "will be loosed for a season."  I wonder how long that "season" is, and what really can be learned in a "crammed test?" 

And how can physically and emotionally sound people (are there many of us?) experience all that there is to learn in mortality in 70 to 90 years? I’m 61 and I am still learning so much, and arguably, I am on the downside of my mortality and don’t have 61 more years left.  How can I learn experientially about mortality in a postmortal spirit world (yet another LDS belief)?  Are we put in charge of overseeing mortals in that realm?  I can learn theory there, learning from my experience in life, but I believe that I knew theory before I came to earth and I needed this mortality to actually experience what I had learned theoretically.  

Is one mortality enough to gain the experiential insight we need?

Because of LDS doctrine which teaches an exclusive salvation, I have wondered about the literal tens of billions (a billion is a 1000 million!) of people born on earth through the millennia, most of whom never will hear about God the Father or His Son, Jesus Christ.  There is the LDS doctrine of performing “ordinances of salvation” for ancestors and others who did not have the opportunity to participate and accept such works, as well the genealogical work to account for dead ancestors. LDS people believe that temples will be open 24 hours a day during the millennial reign of Christ, but work in the temple for tens of billions?  Will there be more billions of bodies born in the millennium for those spirits who were aborted naturally or by man, have been given another body?  

Most of my LDS brothers and sisters will read my esoteric questions and either roll their eyes or pat me on the head and say something to the effect of “there are answers to all of these questions and God knows them all, so just have faith that He’ll take care of things.” Just because I have questions does not mean that I am on the road to apostasy, nor does it mean that I am tempted to abandon all that I do know.   I just don't see with my limited experience how all of this is going to work out.

I'm glad that I have these questions.  But at their core, I wonder if a single mortality is enough to experience and learn all that is needful to experience and learn in order to become a god (yet another and very uniquely LDS doctrine)?  And yes, it makes perfect sense to me that if in fact God is the father of my spirit that inhabits my physical body, He would want me, His son, to become like Him!