Mission Resonance

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out.
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And I am here as always with my partner in crime, Mr.
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Ian Wilkes.
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Ian, how are you, sir?
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I'm doing very well today, Jim.
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How are you today?
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I'm doing just fine.
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Doing just fine.
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So...
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As we look at this, we have done two episodes where we've talked about our missions.
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We've also done an episode early on when you were telling your story where you've talked about your mission.
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And there's an awful lot of meat there.
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There's an awful lot of stories and wonderful experiences there.
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But I wanted to do just one final episode where we talk about our missions and sort of put it in the broader context of our lives to some degree.
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You know, we're 35 years removed now from all of the events, more or less.
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I mean, it's 35 years since 1988.
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So I went out in 87.
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You went out in 87, early 87.
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So it's 36 to 34 years.
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But...
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Yet the mission still has resonance in our lives now.
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You know, I'm a 55-year-old man with five grown children.
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It's been a little hard.
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My youngest son just went off to the University of Utah, and I'm now an empty nester.
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You know, we had everybody living here for the summer, so I knew this was coming.
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But my...
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I had three of my kids living here this summer.
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And, you know, all these people that are dreaming of the idea of being an empty nester, all of a sudden the kids are gone.
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They've got lives of their own.
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And it's just been very strange.
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There's some good parts about it, but I miss my kids.
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I miss having them around.
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And, you know, I'm an adult with all kinds of different interests and different priorities and different things going on in my life.
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And yet still that mission experience is still so resonant and still so powerful and front and center in many ways with how I live my life.
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I mean, I really look at that as the moment when I transition from being a kid to being a man.
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I remember growing up, listening to homecoming talks of missionaries of people that i knew before they'd left and they come and they give these really compelling talks when they'd return and i thought whatever it was that happened to you out there it was good it did something good to you and i kind of want that in my life i want to be able to have that but i always sort of assumed I didn't realize the price you pay for that.
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I didn't realize just how difficult and how much pain and how much struggle there is to get from here to there.
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And maybe that's why it still remains resonant for me.
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And I mean, you're no longer in the church, but is your mission still got that kind of resonance in your life?
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It does.
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It does.
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And the experience has never left me.
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I think about it a lot.
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It shaped my life in very profound ways.
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My background is I was taught by the missionaries, so I came in through the missionary effort, served in mini mission for a few weeks.
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That was, again, another wonderful experience.
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Notwithstanding the difficulty and the challenges associated with the level of effort to try to get people interested and invite them to be interested to the church.
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That was always a challenge.
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And so the whole experience for me, I'd say 98%, 95% was incredibly beneficial, successful, and very wholesome.
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New relationships, extraordinary relationships.
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I remember being, you know, I was trained in Dumfries Ward in the early months of 87 and, And got very close to the members, really close to the members.
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Had limited success.
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Worked tirelessly with the members to try to generate referrals.
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And I remember I was there, I think, for three months.
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And then I was transferred to Firmland.
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And I went round to some of the members that I was close to, quite a few of the members.
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I just got extremely close to them.
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And loved them dearly.
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And I said I was going.
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And I was just in tears, actually, at some of these...
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some of these farewells.
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And I gave my farewells.
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They let me do a farewell talk.
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And I was so in love with the ward and the members.
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I remember waking up early hours, very early, 4.30.
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We got ready and we're driving from Dumfries to Edinburgh.
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And the sun was coming up over the, what they call it, Devil's Beef Top.
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It's one of the hills, near the hills in the borders there, going from Dumfries to Edinburgh.
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The sun was coming up and I stopped and took a photograph, and I was quite emotional, and the priest was behind me, and firmly in a place I had no knowledge of whatsoever.
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I was going to meet with, going to be with Elder Jacobs.
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We were being whitewashed, which is the two missions that were there.
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Elder Spencer, Elder Blassard were there before us, I think, and they were moved out together to another area.
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reassigned and jacob's and i who i had great things about jacobs and he and i he was my senior companion he and i were uh parachuted or installed into the firmly ward
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whitewashed i think is the term
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whitewashed yes is that yeah whitewash
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like so they've moved they've removed the two missionaries that were there you put up two new missionaries
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that are new missionaries Yeah, which is the term.
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So brand new and new companionship, new area.
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And it just pulled on my heartstrings to leave Dumfries.
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I just was so close to them and didn't think I would ever have the experience again.
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The whole mission was a brand new thing for me.
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So I got very, very close to members and then went to Dunfermline and had a whole other similar experience than I did in Dumfries.
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I go very, very close to the members in Dunfermline.
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The bishop there, and I do want to mention his name, Jackie Watson, he, in my life, he asked me a question about, does my mission still resonate with me?
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And it does frequently, often, sometimes daily, I think about certain aspects of a mission.
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And I think back at some of the people I've met in those two years in Scotland, and there's a few that stand out that have left a you know, indelible impression or profound impact on my life.
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And one of them was Jackie Watson, Bishop Jackie Watson.
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He was the bishop when we arrived in Dunfermline.
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And he was the most extraordinary individual, Jim.
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He was, I think he'd been serving for nine or ten years, which is extraordinary in terms of the length of, you know, serving as a bishop.
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But he was a very humble man.
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He came from a humble background.
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He wasn't rich financially at all.
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I think he was living on a council estate in Dunfermline, and he was extremely humble and one of the most kindest spiritual individuals I met at the time and I've ever met in my entire life.
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And he had such an impact on Mel Jacobson.
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He served tirelessly, devoted, dedicated his entire life.
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I attended his...
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Funeral, actually.
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I got very close to him.
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And it was like a prison banks relationship.
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And I loved him dearly.
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And at his funeral, I traveled up from England at the time.
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And we went to the Dunfermline Ward.
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It was absolutely jam-packed, the whole building.
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And there were people trying to get in from outside.
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There was barely any standing room at that man's funeral.
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Literally, it was shoulder to shoulder.
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It impacted and blessed the lives of so many.
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And I was one of the few that was privileged to know Bishop Watson.
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And his qualities were just extraordinary.
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He just loved people.
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He was such a great leader.
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And you felt that he motivated you through love.
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And he was the epitome of what a real leader bishop should be.
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When I was called as bishop, I tried to emulate that kind of behavior and didn't come anywhere close to Jackie Watson.
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He was such a natural, gifted leader and a very humble man.
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And so I went to do firmly and had some extraordinary experiences.
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with members.
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I remember one time we were teaching an individual.
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I remember his name, but I'll leave his name out.
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I don't remember his name quite well.
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Jacob and I were teaching him.
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We had a couple of discussions and then this anti-Mormon tract pamphlet dropped through this individual's door.
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And this person had read it and we got to, we had an appointment in the third discussion and we arrived and this individual said they'd been This had dropped through the letterbox and this anti-Mormon or this negative comments about the church.
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And they were, I remember reading it.
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I've got it somewhere.
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I should pull it out.
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It was a pamphlet that was organized by a group of churches actually around, I don't know, firmly.
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I think the title was The Mormons Are Coming.
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And then it talked about some of the, what we now accept to be doctor of the church.
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It had some anti-Mormon statements like, Joseph Smith's polyandry, polygamy.
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There was a polygamist.
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I remember he talked about the stone and the hat, which this individual shared the pamphlet with us.
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We read this.
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We thought this is absurd.
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We said to the individual that this is anti-Mormon.
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And this is a sign, we said, that Satan is trying to stop you from joining the church.
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And he knows that.
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You know it's true.
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We'd had a prayer experience with him, Jim, I think on the second discussion where we knelt and this individual felt a burning in his bosom, in his heart, right in front of Elder Jacobs and I.
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It was a very real experience for him and for Elder Jacobs and I.
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That was a very personal experience for me and I think for Elder Jacobs as well.
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On the floor of that individual's flat, And so very physical experience as well for this individual.
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And then again, on the third meeting, they'd had this pamphlet posted in the letterbox.
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And we said it was a sign that we're doing the right things, we're on the right track.
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And so we continued to teach this individual, convinced that they would join.
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And we were so confident that things were going well.
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We had a date set for baptism.
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Bishop Watson was very involved, very supportive, he always was.
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We filled up the font.
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We had a few members together.
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We had some food organized, and it broke our heart when this individual didn't show.
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And what happened is that this individual's family, his girlfriend, and some of the people belonging to the other religions, I think, in the area had approached him and said, you need to think twice about joining the Mormon church because of these issues.
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So this individual never showed.
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And there we were with a font that was ready and the food there and the members were there.
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I found that experience very difficult.
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And so to your question, I think about each area that I serve, so Dumfries, Dunfermline, Aberdeen, where I served with Elder Casper, who was an extraordinary individual.
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He and I spent some time together there.
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And then I came down to Edinburgh.
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Then I went to Stranra.
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I was the president of Stranra.
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I was there for six, seven, eight months.
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That was, again, another...
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You were in Stranra for eight months?
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Seven, I think, seven months.
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Seven months.
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It was quite a long time.
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And then I went to Inverness for a few months in my last area and got close to the members.
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I think a couple of things.
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I think...
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To your question, I think about my mission and how it shaped me and informed me from leadership, from confidence, from relationships, from dealing with adversity, dealing with rejection.
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You know, Scotland, it's a pretty tough mission compared to some and probably easier compared to others.
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But it was a tough time, a tough experience to get through.
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And it either broke you or shaped you or made you, you know, turn you from a boy into a man.
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And the second thought I have about the mission is the issues, you know, in terms of the culture of the church in Scotland, the leadership, the relationships with the leaders, the doctrine, the policies at the time.
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And you look back and you see that we accepted, without question, those doctrines and those policies, and we taught with complete obedience, literally with exactness, as President Dunn and President Banks would teach, And now I look back at those efforts, those policies, those principles of doctrine and history, and boy, has it changed so much.
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For me, the church has changed significantly.
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In some ways, for the better.
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In other ways, not so much.
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And back then, because we didn't have access to the internet, we just accepted whatever the church said.
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We just accepted it.
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that the church's position was always correct.
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I remember getting on a bus with all the Jacobs in Dunfermline, and I remember this very distinctly.
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There was an individual on the back of the bus who started talking to us and actually challenging us on some of the doctrines of the church and some of the claims that this person was saying that they were teaching false things and making false claims, again, just with polygamy.
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There was a few other items about, I think different, if I remember correctly, I think there was another version of the first vision that was completely new.
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Elder Jacobs and I were on the back of the bus.
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I think it was Jacobs and I.
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And this conversation started to happen.
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This person was asking us questions and why are you teaching all this false information?
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And we just dismissed it completely.
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We just accepted completely every narrative, every position, every policy, principle of the church, and completely blindly.
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And anything that deviated was different from the official narrative.
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We said it was Satan, anti-Mormon, and we dismissed it without question.
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Dunfermline, by the way, was one of the wards where there was a school opposite the building, And the godmakers, some of the people from other faiths and religions, had organized a meeting directly opposite the church to show the godmakers a little bit.
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And I think one time, some of those people came into the Dunfermline Chapel on a Sunday, and there was a bit of a confrontation, I think, at the foyer or just outside the building between people who were attending the God Meekers video that was happening in the school or in this building opposite the Ferdinand Chapel.
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And some of these people that came across and started challenging some of the members, I think, in the car park.
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I remember that was an interesting experience.
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So, you know, on the mission, you know, you deal with everything, you know, issues, policies, members.
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When I was a branch president in Stranraer, the confessions and the issues that members are dealing with were way beyond my capability of responding to and dealing with.
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You laughed with people and members and investigators.
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You cried with them.
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There were successes, not many.
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There were many times where people would just walk away from something that we couldn't understand why they walked away from the truth.
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I think the mission takes you through almost every experience in such a short time in the church.
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Leadership, Doctrine, policies, structure, rules, regulations, different leadership styles, members with all kinds of challenges and every aspect of church life.
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I think you have this crash course experience in going through two years of the mission.
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And so it's always with me.
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I'm grateful.
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Would I do it going back right now when I do it again?
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If I was in the church and I had the choice of doing a mission, I would be more focused on community service.
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And that's an area I think the church needs to do better at, is where I would want to be involved in physically working with other faiths, religions, charities, on good cause events, contributing in meaningful ways, rather than trying to proselyte and bring them into the church.
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Helping events, you know, fundraising, real charity stuff, and using the resources of the mission to get involved in more community-type work.
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I'd do that because I think that's powerful and it's quite universal.
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Instead of the mandate that I understood was to proselyte and to baptize, just baptize, teach effectively, baptize, retain them, and get them to— You and I were always taught that the goal is to get them in, and then the member's job is to get them to the temple.
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And to get them to the temple, it's tithing and all these other commitments and callings, et cetera.
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But the focus was baptize them.
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All those numbers were measured.
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I felt at times that I was a salesman.
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You remember the questionnaire program that we did?
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Oh, yeah.
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And remember, we as a zone in the Inverness Zone, when we achieved our target, I think we came number one in the mission one month.
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It was only one time we did that.
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And we were allowed to go down to the mission home, and we had pizza, and we watched a movie.
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I remember that.
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The Inverness Zone, I remember it was some zone.
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We watched The Robe.
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We did.
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We watched The Robe.
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It was a religious movie.
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No, no, no.
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I watched The Robe.
00:20:00.609 --> 00:20:02.492
My first Christmas, that was one of the approved movies.
00:20:02.953 --> 00:20:04.977
The movie we saw down there was Ben-Hur.
00:20:06.058 --> 00:20:07.201
Okay.
00:20:07.300 --> 00:20:08.903
I know there's a rule to just come on it to it.
00:20:09.384 --> 00:20:15.756
But I felt, I mean, Prison Ranks was extraordinary, but I felt I was, everything was being measured and the baptism was being measured.
00:20:15.796 --> 00:20:24.190
I felt a little bit of a, it was almost like it turned into like a business thing, like a sales thing.
00:20:24.385 --> 00:20:28.772
measuring the baptisms and the mission.
00:20:29.013 --> 00:20:35.825
The zone that did the most was the winner, like an Acme sales event.
00:20:36.707 --> 00:20:39.230
And so I didn't like that.
00:20:39.510 --> 00:21:00.962
But every aspect of my life right now, business, personal life, family, how I feel about myself, my confidence, self-esteem, self-worth, structure, my beliefs, every aspect has been shaped or influenced in some way, profoundly, perhaps a little bit in certain areas by my mission.
00:21:01.002 --> 00:21:09.472
I've got in my office here, I've got corpse, I've got my big wooden body with all the areas I served in.
00:21:09.553 --> 00:21:10.974
I've got a couple of scriptures around.
00:21:12.396 --> 00:21:22.696
And so I've got quite a lot of mission material around me and got my scriptures that I You know, I don't read, but they're still important to me.
00:21:22.897 --> 00:21:32.009
And they've got a lot of personal mystery, my journals, and they're important to me because they shaped me and they helped me become who I am.
00:21:32.068 --> 00:21:38.758
And overall, it's been a positive experience, mostly.
00:21:39.638 --> 00:21:40.940
So anyway, that's a long answer to
00:21:40.980 --> 00:21:41.922
your question.
00:21:41.942 --> 00:21:43.844
No, it's a good answer to the question.
00:21:44.003 --> 00:21:48.130
And it really sort of rings true with my experience.
00:21:48.609 --> 00:21:52.415
It's interesting that you've got all that stuff still on your walls.
00:21:53.317 --> 00:22:06.837
I've got a box up in my attic that has all of my mission paraphernalia, including the pamphlet that shows where Noah's Ark is and how the UPC code is the mark of the devil and a few other things.
00:22:06.877 --> 00:22:09.821
I've collected all that kind of stuff.
00:22:10.282 --> 00:22:11.885
You mentioned your missionary journal.
00:22:12.769 --> 00:22:16.996
And it's really interesting because I've gone back and re-read my missionary journal.
00:22:17.256 --> 00:22:21.962
I was a very conscientious journal keeper.
00:22:21.982 --> 00:22:28.051
I wrote in my journal every day a full page at least, sometimes more.
00:22:29.835 --> 00:22:44.153
But I find now my journal is kind of useless because what I felt was important at the time was was to sort of give my emotional weather report.
00:22:44.875 --> 00:22:45.997
Today I felt terrible.
00:22:46.017 --> 00:22:48.119
I didn't feel worthy.
00:22:48.140 --> 00:22:49.260
I felt lousy.
00:22:49.401 --> 00:22:57.231
So I'm reading about how I feel, and usually it's negative, and then every once in a while it's, oh, this is great, I had a great day, I felt great.
00:22:58.213 --> 00:23:00.717
And I go, okay, but Jim, what happened?
00:23:00.737 --> 00:23:14.295
I mean, I have to sort of sift through all that sort of teenage dreck to try to get to the core of what actually happened and the memories.
00:23:14.816 --> 00:23:22.067
And I'm very frustrated with myself that I didn't realize just how precious it would be to have...
00:23:22.848 --> 00:23:26.614
But even if I had just put the real weather report, you know, today it rained.
00:23:26.894 --> 00:23:28.396
Well, I guess that's every day in Scotland.
00:23:28.978 --> 00:23:34.426
But, you know, just, you know, those are the kinds of details that I kind of left out.
00:23:34.686 --> 00:23:36.470
And I look back...
00:23:37.634 --> 00:23:41.178
at my mission as to what's important and what matters.
00:23:42.400 --> 00:23:48.607
And so little of that was captured in my journal that it's sort of surprising to me.
00:23:48.627 --> 00:24:18.605
I want to come back to what you were talking about with regard to Jackie Watson, because at this point in my faith journey, at this point in my life and my relationship with the church, the issues, you know, the historical issues the CES letter issues, if you will, you know, the God makers issues, the kinds of things that showed up in weird little pamphlets like the Mormons are coming.
00:24:20.267 --> 00:24:23.532
They just don't matter to me at all.
00:24:24.755 --> 00:24:31.164
Any frustrations I have with the church and any kind of problems I have with the church.
00:24:33.808 --> 00:24:40.242
The, the, They have little to do with Brigham Young or Joseph Smith or polygamy or whatever.
00:24:40.282 --> 00:24:41.765
You go down the laundry list.
00:24:43.567 --> 00:24:57.570
My relationship with the church now, and to some degree this was established on my mission, it's about, is the church making me a better person or is it making me a worse person?
00:24:58.673 --> 00:25:04.777
And the thing that I saw in Scotland firsthand I mean, I saw it before my mission, right?
00:25:04.817 --> 00:25:09.884
I've told the story about this girl that I was dating that I was able to baptize.
00:25:10.846 --> 00:25:13.971
And I saw the church markedly improve her life.
00:25:15.053 --> 00:25:22.864
And that was enough to sort of say to me, okay, going on a mission to help people improve their lives, this is a good thing.
00:25:22.903 --> 00:25:24.266
This is a good use of my time.
00:25:24.286 --> 00:25:25.567
This is a good use of my life.
00:25:26.750 --> 00:25:31.798
And I saw that in Scotland over and over and over again.
00:25:32.289 --> 00:25:34.733
I saw the church transform people.
00:25:34.773 --> 00:25:39.019
And I saw the goodness of the members of the church.
00:25:39.881 --> 00:25:47.813
And there's something about being in Scotland as opposed to being in Sandy, Utah, where everybody's a member of the church.
00:25:48.733 --> 00:25:57.768
You know, I grew up in Southern California and being a member of the church in Southern California was sort of this cool badge of honor to me.
00:25:57.788 --> 00:26:01.854
I don't know if anybody else saw it as cool, but it was me against the world.
00:26:02.369 --> 00:26:13.125
And you'd go to church on Sunday, and these were all the other warriors that were trying to stand up and be good in a world that was constantly trying to tear them down.
00:26:13.164 --> 00:26:19.433
And the older I get, the less patience I have with that model.
00:26:19.574 --> 00:26:28.205
The idea that the world is evil and that the church is all good is, I think, makes people worse in the church.
00:26:29.185 --> 00:26:32.632
It gives us this false sense of superiority.
00:26:32.672 --> 00:26:34.595
It makes us prideful.
00:26:35.557 --> 00:26:38.521
It messes things up.
00:26:39.182 --> 00:26:44.932
The us-against-the-world dynamic is something that the Brethren try to reinforce every conference.
00:26:45.973 --> 00:26:47.757
Be in the world, but not of the world.
00:26:49.539 --> 00:26:55.148
The opposition that is after you, the same kind of thing that you were telling these investigators that...
00:26:56.097 --> 00:26:57.059
This is opposition.
00:26:57.099 --> 00:26:59.103
This is Satan coming after you.
00:26:59.143 --> 00:27:03.230
The older I get, the less that resonates with me at all.
00:27:05.413 --> 00:27:10.020
It just, it cuts us off from good people outside the church.
00:27:10.340 --> 00:27:21.920
It makes us suspicious of goodness outside the church and saying, oh gosh, well, yes, this person seems like a really good person, but then why haven't they joined the church?
00:27:22.019 --> 00:27:26.205
And why, I mean, it, I just don't have any use for any of that.
00:27:27.248 --> 00:27:41.388
But I do have a use for the kind of powerful community and the kind of powerful goodness and service that I saw in action up close in Scotland in a way that I hadn't ever seen growing up in the church.
00:27:42.130 --> 00:27:44.373
Although, I mean, there were plenty of opportunities to serve.
00:27:44.393 --> 00:27:46.096
There were plenty of good people who were serving.
00:27:46.757 --> 00:27:49.961
But that was just kind of life.
00:27:50.702 --> 00:27:51.604
You know, that was just...
00:27:52.085 --> 00:27:52.546
These were...
00:27:53.314 --> 00:27:54.234
These were my neighbors.
00:27:54.295 --> 00:27:55.056
These were my friends.
00:27:55.115 --> 00:27:56.858
And this is just kind of how we live our lives.
00:27:57.019 --> 00:27:59.541
And I didn't see anything unique or powerful about it.
00:28:00.463 --> 00:28:09.556
And in Scotland, I was able to see just how unique and powerful that can be in the lives of people like Jackie Watson.
00:28:09.695 --> 00:28:15.944
The person I'm thinking of now, I mean, after in the last podcast, I talked about my time in Thurso.
00:28:17.346 --> 00:28:25.951
After Thurso, I got I had an interview with President Banks, and he said, we're transferring you to Mulgai.
00:28:25.971 --> 00:28:32.160
And I had no idea where Mulgai was, and I'd never heard of anybody serving in Mulgai.
00:28:32.180 --> 00:28:35.484
And I said, well, where is Mulgai?
00:28:35.525 --> 00:28:39.971
And he said, it's right next to Drum Chapel.
00:28:39.991 --> 00:28:46.241
And I was like, oh, so in other words, you're transferring me to Drum Chapel.
00:28:46.978 --> 00:28:50.781
And I had definitely heard of Drum Chapel, the Drum, as they called it.
00:28:51.663 --> 00:28:54.926
It was an area that every missionary was kind of scared of.
00:28:54.946 --> 00:28:57.128
I mean, you'd heard of Drum Chapel, hadn't you?
00:28:57.970 --> 00:28:59.551
I prayed I wouldn't
00:28:59.592 --> 00:29:00.633
get sent to Drum Chapel.
00:29:00.732 --> 00:29:02.394
You'd never get sent to Drum Chapel.
00:29:02.434 --> 00:29:04.757
And here I am, you're going to Mugai.
00:29:04.777 --> 00:29:06.519
I was like, come on, President.
00:29:07.140 --> 00:29:08.401
You're sending me to the Drum.
00:29:09.041 --> 00:29:09.663
Just say it.
00:29:09.843 --> 00:29:10.604
Just open up.
00:29:11.765 --> 00:29:16.069
It was in Drum Chapel where I saw cars burning on the street.
00:29:16.993 --> 00:29:21.000
It's where I saw sweetie vans selling drugs to people.
00:29:23.683 --> 00:29:33.018
Part of our area was Easter House, and we were told, not only don't tract at Easter House, don't walk at Easter
00:29:33.157 --> 00:29:33.959
House.
00:29:34.339 --> 00:29:36.323
I wasn't good enough to go to such areas.
00:29:36.462 --> 00:29:44.461
I never got to those areas, and I think it's a certain caliber of missionary that you have to get.
00:29:44.882 --> 00:29:48.045
So you must feel privileged to go there.
00:29:48.205 --> 00:29:49.046
It's a very tough area.
00:29:49.366 --> 00:29:50.587
No, I was not privileged.
00:29:50.607 --> 00:29:51.409
I was mad.
00:29:51.429 --> 00:29:59.137
I was mad to leave Thurso where I'd had my best success and where I'd had this wonderful family that had joined.
00:29:59.357 --> 00:30:09.409
And I felt like my mission was a success because President Banks had told me that if we didn't baptize anybody, that he was just going to shut the area down.
00:30:09.449 --> 00:30:10.309
And we saved it.
00:30:11.041 --> 00:30:12.022
We saved Verso.
00:30:12.644 --> 00:30:18.049
And I thought, jeez, and so you reward me by sending me to the drum?
00:30:18.089 --> 00:30:20.432
Come on.
00:30:20.451 --> 00:30:28.580
I went down there and I trained a new elder, Elder Rose, who was the fastest typist I had ever met.
00:30:28.701 --> 00:30:31.865
And I think he spent the rest of his mission in the mission office.
00:30:32.445 --> 00:30:38.571
I don't think he proselyted ever again because he was just this amazing typist and office guy.
00:30:40.013 --> 00:30:40.094
Yeah.
00:30:41.026 --> 00:30:42.768
I'd forgotten about Elder Rose.
00:30:42.928 --> 00:30:45.049
I haven't even thought of him for ever and ever.
00:30:45.730 --> 00:30:55.180
I was training him, and we were living in this apartment with a guy named Eddie, who was a constant investigator.
00:30:55.839 --> 00:31:01.806
We were living in an area that was not our actual area, so Eddie wouldn't have been our investigator.
00:31:02.205 --> 00:31:05.568
The zone leaders would come over every once in a while and teach Eddie lessons.
00:31:06.951 --> 00:31:08.451
But Eddie would drive us places.
00:31:09.192 --> 00:31:17.152
Eddie, at one point, painted a copy of the first Abraham facsimile on his wall.
00:31:17.573 --> 00:31:18.073
In color.
00:31:18.334 --> 00:31:19.193
He colorized it.
00:31:20.055 --> 00:31:21.356
It's the coolest thing ever.
00:31:21.416 --> 00:31:25.319
But he was the sort of constant investigator.
00:31:25.359 --> 00:31:28.903
He never quite was willing to join.
00:31:28.943 --> 00:31:30.204
I don't think he ever did join.
00:31:31.165 --> 00:31:33.749
But he was a good guy.
00:31:35.109 --> 00:31:38.913
But getting down to the drum, it was just a difficult...
00:31:39.842 --> 00:31:44.026
area for anybody to live in was just a hard part of Glasgow.
00:31:44.067 --> 00:31:49.491
It wasn't right in Glasgow.
00:31:49.551 --> 00:32:04.428
I'm not sure what the municipality, how those boundaries work, but I got down there and our ward mission leader was a 17-year-old kid by the name of Gary McNaughton.
00:32:05.670 --> 00:32:06.770
I think you know Gary.
00:32:07.551 --> 00:32:08.673
Indirectly, yes.
00:32:08.732 --> 00:32:09.693
I've heard his name.
00:32:09.986 --> 00:32:11.367
I think you're his Facebook friend.
00:32:11.428 --> 00:32:13.109
I think he's actually stepped off of Facebook.
00:32:13.810 --> 00:32:20.079
But Gary, at the age of 17, was made an acting high priest.
00:32:20.881 --> 00:32:22.784
They got permission from Salt Lake City.
00:32:22.864 --> 00:32:29.292
They didn't ordain him as a high priest, but they said he could function as a high priest in order to hold all of these callings.
00:32:29.953 --> 00:32:34.279
And this 17-year-old kid was holding the entire ward together.
00:32:34.319 --> 00:32:36.563
It was just amazing.
00:32:36.762 --> 00:32:38.726
And he was just so fired up.
00:32:39.298 --> 00:32:42.840
And so excited and just so helpful and friendly.
00:32:42.881 --> 00:32:50.689
And, you know, we had this one program where we were supposed to go to everybody and get them to give them the name of their friends.
00:32:51.469 --> 00:32:52.810
And Gary kept talking about this.
00:32:52.830 --> 00:32:57.394
And he goes, so how are we doing on the betray your friends program?
00:32:57.414 --> 00:32:59.196
I mean, he was funny.
00:32:59.217 --> 00:32:59.977
He was witty.
00:33:00.136 --> 00:33:03.079
I mean, he was just one of the best friends I made on my mission.
00:33:04.300 --> 00:33:09.086
And during this time, my father had just...
00:33:10.241 --> 00:33:18.275
his company had gone public and he found himself a multimillionaire.
00:33:18.996 --> 00:33:27.770
You know, I'd grown up and my father was consistently unemployed and we didn't have any money growing up and he'd get mad when we'd ask him for lunch money because we couldn't afford it.
00:33:28.751 --> 00:33:35.563
And then all of a sudden now he had this company that had gone public and he was sitting next to L.
00:33:35.603 --> 00:33:38.557
Tom Perry at lunch and And L.
00:33:38.597 --> 00:33:41.421
Tom Perry was asking him about his career.
00:33:41.441 --> 00:33:45.325
And he says, well, my first son, my older brother, went on a mission.
00:33:45.345 --> 00:33:46.686
I was here.
00:33:47.067 --> 00:33:48.347
And then it got better.
00:33:48.509 --> 00:33:50.911
And then my second son went out right after he got back.
00:33:51.030 --> 00:33:52.593
And now my company's gone public.
00:33:53.733 --> 00:33:55.875
And I'm worth all this money.
00:33:56.056 --> 00:33:56.296
And L.
00:33:56.336 --> 00:33:58.459
Tom Perry says, well, it's time to get another missionary.
00:33:58.959 --> 00:34:00.961
Sounds to me like you need another missionary out there.
00:34:01.781 --> 00:34:08.204
And so dad wrote to me and said, do you know of anybody that would need support on their mission.
00:34:09.846 --> 00:34:12.688
And I was in Drum Chapel and I went, yeah, I do.
00:34:13.409 --> 00:34:20.057
Gary McNaughton is planning on going on a mission and he doesn't have the money or the resources to do it.
00:34:21.458 --> 00:34:25.003
And he says, I'd be happy to sponsor him on his mission.
00:34:25.643 --> 00:34:28.327
So my father paid for Gary McNaughton's mission.
00:34:29.849 --> 00:34:33.893
And Gary McNaughton had a very successful mission from what I hear.
00:34:33.952 --> 00:34:37.536
I think he went to Brussels, if I remember correctly.
00:34:37.576 --> 00:34:47.766
But he came home and he left church because Gary McNaughton is gay.
00:34:48.146 --> 00:34:52.931
He was deeply in the closet while he was serving as the ward mission leader.
00:34:52.951 --> 00:34:54.492
I had no idea that he was gay.
00:34:54.532 --> 00:34:58.576
But he left church.
00:34:59.836 --> 00:35:01.318
And I've since seen him.
00:35:01.358 --> 00:35:04.782
He's since come over to Utah at least twice.
00:35:05.505 --> 00:35:15.340
And one time he came over, and we had this big gathering at my parents' house, and my father was there, and I think it was the first time my father had a chance to meet him.
00:35:16.902 --> 00:35:21.268
And Gary was very frustrated with how he'd been treated by the church.
00:35:23.052 --> 00:35:25.615
I don't know if he was excommunicated or if he resigned.
00:35:26.396 --> 00:35:29.722
I know they were threatening to excommunicate him, and they may well have.
00:35:31.423 --> 00:35:38.862
But it was so clear, too, that At one point, he messaged me.
00:35:39.222 --> 00:35:45.331
I mean, he'd be on Facebook, and he would talk about the church, and he'd be frustrated with the church, and he'd be angry about the church.
00:35:46.474 --> 00:35:55.228
But then on Facebook, he sent me, he says, I can't tell you how much I love the church, how much I wish I could have made the church work.
00:35:56.590 --> 00:35:57.431
And I couldn't.
00:35:58.271 --> 00:36:01.177
I couldn't do it because there wasn't room for me because of who I am.
00:36:01.217 --> 00:36:04.262
And it sort of broke my heart.
00:36:05.378 --> 00:36:32.684
But I look at Gary's life, and it's very clear, even having left the church on really bad terms, all of those values, all of that service that he offered as a kid and as a missionary, all of that shaped him into the wonderful, decent person that he is now, despite all of that other kinds of stuff.
00:36:33.443 --> 00:36:42.817
And so I look at at him and his experience as kind of the core contradiction at the heart of the church.
00:36:43.597 --> 00:36:57.117
Because the church can do things like reject a gay person who has devoted their life to the church and just inflict this level of trauma on them.
00:36:57.998 --> 00:37:06.990
And yet still there is this goodness at the core of it that survives those moments.
00:37:07.692 --> 00:37:19.208
You know, Gary's faith and goodness didn't disappear when he left the church, and that's still a part of him and still a part of what he does.
00:37:19.228 --> 00:37:30.083
And so I look at my own life now and go, you know, even if I were to leave the church, I wouldn't really leave the church.
00:37:30.322 --> 00:37:31.925
There's just too much there.
00:37:33.090 --> 00:37:36.034
And most of it is good.
00:37:37.014 --> 00:37:38.978
And some of it is wonderful.
00:37:38.998 --> 00:37:44.184
I mean, some of it is the core, the very core, the very essence of who I am.
00:37:45.565 --> 00:37:49.831
And I could no sooner deny that than I could cut off my arm.
00:37:50.853 --> 00:37:52.534
It's just who I am.
00:37:52.554 --> 00:37:56.559
And would I be that person without the church?
00:37:56.820 --> 00:37:59.284
I mean, those are the kinds of hypotheticals that I can never answer.
00:37:59.304 --> 00:38:00.786
I remember going on with John DeLand.
00:38:01.570 --> 00:38:04.333
And he's like, well, what if you were raised in a Muslim family?
00:38:04.414 --> 00:38:07.958
Wouldn't you feel all this stuff about Muslims and Islam?
00:38:08.719 --> 00:38:09.260
I don't know.
00:38:10.021 --> 00:38:10.581
Probably.
00:38:10.621 --> 00:38:13.847
There are a lot of good Muslims out there.
00:38:13.887 --> 00:38:15.728
There's some goodness in there.
00:38:15.768 --> 00:38:22.998
But at the core of all of it, I guess, this is where I'm going with it.
00:38:23.599 --> 00:38:25.262
At the core of all of it is God.
00:38:26.302 --> 00:38:28.505
That goodness, that wonderful, that's God.
00:38:29.547 --> 00:38:34.195
And you can find God in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
00:38:34.295 --> 00:38:35.858
And I did, and I have.
00:38:35.898 --> 00:38:40.842
And so this is where God, this is where I found God.
00:38:40.882 --> 00:38:44.626
And conversely, this is where I feel like God wants me.
00:38:45.307 --> 00:38:46.668
This is where God has put me.
00:38:46.708 --> 00:38:50.972
And so that is what preoccupies me.
00:38:52.175 --> 00:38:54.456
And that is what matters to me.
00:38:55.237 --> 00:39:03.802
And so when you start talking about the kinderhook plates, or the stone and the hat, or the this, that, and the other.
00:39:03.822 --> 00:39:13.894
I just, there was a time when I really cared about stuff, and I really wanted to engage in those battles and defend the church on all of that.
00:39:13.914 --> 00:39:17.278
And now, it just doesn't matter to me.
00:39:17.798 --> 00:39:18.820
It just doesn't matter.
00:39:18.880 --> 00:39:23.786
What matters is my personal relationship with the divine.
00:39:25.128 --> 00:39:29.873
And is the church helping me in maintaining that?
00:39:30.114 --> 00:39:32.215
in strengthening that?
00:39:34.177 --> 00:39:35.539
Or is the church getting in the way?
00:39:35.579 --> 00:39:42.067
And I think there are people, I think I'm talking to one right now, where the church was getting in the way.
00:39:43.407 --> 00:39:51.777
Where the church had reached a point, you know, Radio Free Mormon, who's this podcaster, that's not his name, but that's the only name I think of him by.
00:39:51.797 --> 00:39:54.559
His name is Corbin something or other.
00:39:55.601 --> 00:40:01.251
He always tells people, I have graduated from Mormonism.
00:40:01.992 --> 00:40:03.432
I haven't left Mormonism.
00:40:04.074 --> 00:40:05.695
I don't want to frame it as a negative.
00:40:06.115 --> 00:40:07.056
I graduated.
00:40:07.717 --> 00:40:14.346
You know, Mormonism taught me this much, but now I've gone on and I can be better outside the church.
00:40:14.505 --> 00:40:22.193
And yet he spends his time engaging the church and criticizing the church to a large degree.
00:40:22.755 --> 00:40:32.188
You know, if you graduated from Mormonism, I think you'd move on to something better rather than move on to tearing down the institution you graduated from.
00:40:32.228 --> 00:40:39.016
But I always wondered, do I need to graduate from Mormonism?
00:40:39.318 --> 00:40:43.603
Is it possible to continue sort of this journey?
00:40:43.643 --> 00:40:49.309
Or is the church, is there a box?
00:40:49.590 --> 00:40:50.510
Is there a limit to it?
00:40:51.733 --> 00:40:55.617
Because I have less and less patience for the idea of God in a box.
00:40:56.449 --> 00:41:08.626
that the church, this is the only place where you can find God, this is the box, this is it, everybody outside the box doesn't have it, which is what I taught on my mission, and I no longer believe that.
00:41:10.088 --> 00:41:17.197
I believe God is so much more expansive, so much more inclusive than we can possibly imagine.
00:41:17.237 --> 00:41:23.592
And I wish Mormons would recognize that our own doctrine teaches that.
00:41:23.793 --> 00:41:31.523
If not, then what are we doing all this goofy temple work for if we don't think that everybody is going to be saved?
00:41:32.724 --> 00:41:33.726
I'm a universalist.
00:41:33.846 --> 00:41:35.788
I think everybody gets there eventually.
00:41:36.528 --> 00:41:38.231
And I do that through a Mormon framework.
00:41:38.311 --> 00:41:41.135
I still believe in celestial, terrestrial, telestial.
00:41:41.815 --> 00:41:44.760
But I believe there's movement in those kingdoms.
00:41:44.880 --> 00:41:47.222
I don't think God ever abandons us.
00:41:47.342 --> 00:41:49.746
I think eternity is a very, very, very long time.
00:41:50.338 --> 00:41:52.900
and eventually everybody gets where they need to be.
00:41:53.722 --> 00:42:09.802
And if it means that Adolf Hitler has to burn in hell for a billion years for each of the Jews who was murdered in the Holocaust, which means he would be burning for six trillion years, that's still nothing, because eternity continues.
00:42:11.585 --> 00:42:21.349
So the idea that at some point, okay, God is done with us, There's a final judgment and you're just stuck in this telestial kingdom and you can never be with your family.
00:42:21.389 --> 00:42:22.952
That doesn't make any sense.
00:42:23.072 --> 00:42:26.076
I don't believe in a God that works that way.
00:42:26.096 --> 00:42:34.807
But I believe in a God that can work through the framework of the church to which I belong to improve lives and to get us closer to him.
00:42:34.827 --> 00:42:41.818
And I think that the church at its best does that and continues to do that.
00:42:42.719 --> 00:42:44.822
But I think the church at its worst...
00:42:45.697 --> 00:42:46.559
gets in the way of that.
00:42:47.400 --> 00:42:49.402
And I saw that on my mission as well.
00:42:50.884 --> 00:42:51.965
I served in Drum Chapel.
00:42:52.005 --> 00:42:54.387
We had some good experiences in Drum Chapel.
00:42:55.748 --> 00:43:01.094
Then I served in an area, although I went back to Dundee after Drum Chapel.
00:43:01.114 --> 00:43:02.655
I went back to Dundee as a zone leader.
00:43:03.978 --> 00:43:07.501
And I thought, okay, I finally arrived.
00:43:07.581 --> 00:43:08.503
I'm a zone leader now.
00:43:08.983 --> 00:43:16.880
Although I moved to Dundee in an emergency transfer because there was an elder that had a woman that was chasing after him.
00:43:16.920 --> 00:43:22.286
And so they transferred him out in the dead of night and put me in there.
00:43:22.465 --> 00:43:28.211
And then the rumors started that the reason I had been transferred from Drumchapel is that I was having an affair.
00:43:31.376 --> 00:43:36.320
And I remember President Banks walking into an interview with me and didn't even say hello.
00:43:36.420 --> 00:43:38.804
And he said, are you having an affair with a woman in Mulgai?
00:43:38.824 --> 00:43:44.030
The first thing I want to say was, first of all, it's not Mulgai, President.
00:43:44.449 --> 00:43:45.570
It's still Drum Chapel.
00:43:45.610 --> 00:43:48.755
You can't pretend this is anything else but Drum Chapel.
00:43:48.795 --> 00:43:53.579
And then my second answer was, no, absolutely not.
00:43:53.719 --> 00:43:55.181
And he's like, I didn't think so.
00:43:55.902 --> 00:43:57.505
Didn't have time to have affairs.
00:43:57.565 --> 00:43:58.244
We were so busy.
00:43:58.885 --> 00:44:01.889
Well, and I just kept thinking, who would I be having an affair with?
00:44:01.909 --> 00:44:08.657
I wasn't meeting a lot of ladies that I could go out and be dating.
00:44:08.697 --> 00:44:12.541
It was in Drum Chapel where we started having to...
00:44:14.146 --> 00:44:22.376
We got the call to do an hour's worth of GQing every day.
00:44:22.396 --> 00:44:33.208
So GQing, the golden questions, which President Nelson will be mad about because the golden questions were, what do you know about the Mormons and would you like to know more?
00:44:34.230 --> 00:44:36.393
And usually the answer was nothing and no.
00:44:38.335 --> 00:44:43.722
But we were given these little handouts for Together Forever.
00:44:44.641 --> 00:44:47.606
This was one, Together Forever, the video that was going out.
00:44:48.626 --> 00:44:49.929
We were showing it to everybody.
00:44:50.769 --> 00:44:52.713
Were you together forever when you were out there?
00:44:52.753 --> 00:44:53.793
Together forever,
00:44:54.014 --> 00:44:54.755
yeah.
00:44:54.775 --> 00:44:59.581
Because I know they did our Heavenly Father's plan before that.
00:44:59.762 --> 00:45:01.684
Yeah, there was one that hit in the 80s.
00:45:01.764 --> 00:45:08.293
We were very much involved in rolling that out in the British Isles and around the world.
00:45:08.514 --> 00:45:09.536
That was in our time, for
00:45:09.556 --> 00:45:10.257
sure.
00:45:10.577 --> 00:45:13.902
Yeah, because the first time I was doing that, it was in Thurso.
00:45:14.434 --> 00:45:16.076
And we got this referral from it.
00:45:16.376 --> 00:45:20.762
I mean, they put an ad in the Scottish newspapers.
00:45:21.945 --> 00:45:26.650
And we got this referral and we called her and she said, where have you been?
00:45:26.670 --> 00:45:28.233
I'm waiting for you.
00:45:29.554 --> 00:45:30.637
Get here as soon as possible.
00:45:31.478 --> 00:45:34.521
And we were like, oh my gosh, manna from heaven.
00:45:34.541 --> 00:45:37.565
So we get in the car and we drive to this address.
00:45:39.349 --> 00:45:40.751
And it's a mental institution.
00:45:41.731 --> 00:45:42.974
And she was a mental patient.
00:45:43.842 --> 00:45:45.204
And they let us see her.
00:45:45.644 --> 00:45:47.007
They said, she's asked to see us.
00:45:47.067 --> 00:45:54.838
And they said, okay, but we don't want you to think that this is, understand the limitations here.
00:45:55.719 --> 00:46:00.206
And she was severely mentally ill and it didn't go anywhere.
00:46:00.347 --> 00:46:10.501
And I can remember teaching her the first discussion in this group room where there was this one guy pacing back and forth, muttering to himself, like something out of a movie.
00:46:11.106 --> 00:46:18.512
And there was a guy sitting next to her who had this piece of drool that was just coming out the side of his mouth.
00:46:18.532 --> 00:46:20.074
And it just sat there.
00:46:20.155 --> 00:46:25.199
It never, it was just this, it took a stream down to his shirt.
00:46:26.101 --> 00:46:32.847
And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this is not, this is not what it's supposed to be.
00:46:32.887 --> 00:46:36.030
This was supposed to be the answer all of our questions.
00:46:36.650 --> 00:47:15.306
And when I was in Drum Chapel, we were passing out these little pamphlets that's you know saying hey here click here and you can watch together forever click here that's not internet it was hey this is whatever it was and we would do it in a mall there was a mall in Clyde Bank where that had the best custard donuts and uh Elder Rose and I would be passing them out and uh Elder Rose hated it so much I kind of got into it I was just like The way I would GQ is I would stop somebody and I'd say, hey, and I'd have no idea what the next thing I would say would be.
00:47:15.347 --> 00:47:18.371
And sometimes it was, hey, are those your shoes?
00:47:19.351 --> 00:47:20.072
Like, yeah.
00:47:20.574 --> 00:47:21.014
Oh, great.
00:47:21.235 --> 00:47:23.557
Well, I'm from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
00:47:24.378 --> 00:47:29.326
And would you, you know, what do you know about the Mormons and would you like to know more or whatever else it was?
00:47:30.327 --> 00:47:42.990
And we found a family that way that we ended up baptizing and I was able to come back from Dundee when I was a zone leader and baptized this family and attend their baptism.
00:47:43.211 --> 00:47:45.713
And that was a really wonderful, special experience.
00:47:46.715 --> 00:47:50.699
But I remember going up to Elder Rose while he was GQing and saying, are you doing all right?
00:47:50.878 --> 00:47:53.141
He says, go away or die.
00:47:53.181 --> 00:47:56.043
Okay, I'll leave you alone.
00:47:56.804 --> 00:48:05.492
And so we'd go, I mean, we were always in view, but he would just stand there and watch people walk by and just was so terrified that he wouldn't stop anybody.
00:48:05.512 --> 00:48:09.177
I felt like, Oh, you're just not doing the work, elder.
00:48:09.217 --> 00:48:14.663
And poor guy was just so shy and it was just so painful for him.
00:48:15.804 --> 00:48:24.516
But, uh, you know, I think it was a drum chapel when we got a visit from a general authority elder, Robert E.
00:48:24.655 --> 00:48:25.217
Sackley.
00:48:25.416 --> 00:48:26.217
Do you remember that name?
00:48:26.237 --> 00:48:26.918
I do.
00:48:27.079 --> 00:48:27.219
Yes.
00:48:27.539 --> 00:48:28.400
Do you remember him coming?
00:48:28.940 --> 00:48:30.043
Yes.
00:48:30.643 --> 00:48:32.945
What, what are your memories of what he said?
00:48:32.965 --> 00:48:34.668
No memory whatsoever.
00:48:35.670 --> 00:48:38.016
Uh, It rankled me.
00:48:38.036 --> 00:48:39.016
It made me so angry.
00:48:40.659 --> 00:48:51.273
Because he got up there and he said, you are not, clearly, look at the numbers of baptisms in this mission.
00:48:51.954 --> 00:48:53.916
You guys are not righteous enough.
00:48:54.077 --> 00:48:56.219
You guys are not doing the job.
00:48:56.320 --> 00:48:57.842
You guys are not doing the work.
00:48:58.882 --> 00:49:03.869
He says, when I was a mission president, we were baptizing over 200 people a month.
00:49:04.449 --> 00:49:06.753
And last month you baptized 15.
00:49:08.936 --> 00:49:15.887
And I sat there and I went, okay, well, were you a mission president?
00:49:16.469 --> 00:49:16.849
Yes.
00:49:17.731 --> 00:49:18.753
President in Scotland?
00:49:19.494 --> 00:49:22.978
And as he talked, he finally said he was a mission president in the Philippines.
00:49:24.561 --> 00:49:32.054
And he said, don't try to tell me that it's any different in the Philippines than it is in Scotland.
00:49:32.706 --> 00:49:34.909
Because the Lord is the same everywhere.
00:49:34.949 --> 00:49:49.347
And I don't know who I was sitting next to in the pews, but I pulled out my Book of Mormon and I pulled out the story of the Sons of Mosiah in prison and showed it to the guy sitting next to me.
00:49:49.608 --> 00:49:54.693
And the verse was, it was their lot to have fallen among a more hard-hearted people.
00:49:56.777 --> 00:49:57.016
Right?
00:49:57.217 --> 00:50:00.322
The idea that the Philippines and Scotland are interchangeable.
00:50:00.737 --> 00:50:04.202
And I should be having as much success in Scotland as I am in the Philippines.
00:50:04.682 --> 00:50:06.405
It just made me so mad.
00:50:06.445 --> 00:50:11.833
And it made me so frustrated that it's like, why are you doing this?
00:50:12.634 --> 00:50:14.115
You are a general authority.
00:50:14.155 --> 00:50:17.860
Everybody in this room is looking at you as if you are a god.
00:50:18.902 --> 00:50:20.324
You have so much authority.
00:50:20.403 --> 00:50:21.826
We are so impressed with you.
00:50:22.327 --> 00:50:27.773
We are out telling everybody that people like you speak to Jesus differently.
00:50:27.969 --> 00:50:30.253
face-to-face on a regular basis.
00:50:30.793 --> 00:50:32.034
And that's what we all believed.
00:50:32.135 --> 00:50:36.338
I don't know if I believe that the 70s were doing that, but I certainly believe the apostles were doing that.
00:50:37.380 --> 00:50:56.661
And for you to come to this group of young people who have put everything aside to go out and face rejection and pain and trauma and frustration every stinking day of their lives, and then just say, the reason you were not baptizing is your fault.
00:50:58.146 --> 00:51:00.688
What a terrible message.
00:51:01.590 --> 00:51:03.251
It just made me so angry.
00:51:03.291 --> 00:51:05.775
And it makes me even angrier now.
00:51:07.956 --> 00:51:14.945
Because that was the message that my son, who experienced all this trauma on his mission, you know, I've talked about that.
00:51:15.385 --> 00:51:18.028
And I think my son wants to come on the podcast.
00:51:18.590 --> 00:51:25.838
Somebody had said to you, hey, is Jim's kids okay with him talking about this mission trauma?
00:51:26.561 --> 00:51:29.385
And not only are they okay, they want to get out there and talk about it.
00:51:29.405 --> 00:51:37.054
Because he was diagnosed with a condition called scrupulosity, which is obsessive compulsive disorder in a religious context.
00:51:38.376 --> 00:51:42.461
And missions are a breeding ground for scrupulosity.
00:51:43.302 --> 00:51:48.028
I didn't have a label for it, but I'm pretty sure that's what I experienced.
00:51:48.989 --> 00:51:50.532
I think I've moved beyond it.
00:51:50.632 --> 00:51:52.735
I don't feel that anymore.
00:51:53.735 --> 00:52:34.175
But the mission sort of drilled that into you so so so yeah there's all this goodness and then there's that there's the elder sackley's there's the you are you're not good enough you're terrible in your mission you spend the entire time thinking you're not good enough and the fact that you're not baptizing it's your fault you're doing something wrong it's never the church's fault it's never the fact that this is not a message that's resonating with people and And I'm seeing that more and more now, particularly as the church sort of doubles down on a message that doesn't work.
00:52:35.657 --> 00:52:39.762
The message we're going out and telling everybody is that we're the one true church.
00:52:41.264 --> 00:52:51.838
And Jana Reese, who's a columnist for the Religion News Service, and she's also a member of the church, she wrote a thing about, she says, millennials aren't asking which is the one true church.
00:52:52.610 --> 00:52:55.373
They're asking, why do I even need a church at all?
00:52:56.775 --> 00:53:03.505
And I think we have the capacity to answer that question, but we don't do it.
00:53:04.306 --> 00:53:04.907
We don't do it.
00:53:04.987 --> 00:53:07.251
We continue to frame this in a way.
00:53:07.271 --> 00:53:17.244
I think our missionary efforts are 30, 40 years behind or more because this message wasn't really resonating 35 years ago.
00:53:17.284 --> 00:53:20.710
Maybe it was resonating 50 years ago.
00:53:21.217 --> 00:53:40.956
I think the message that resonated 50 years ago, the message that fueled the meteoric rise of the church through the 70s and 80s, when we thought this is going to become a major new world religion to rival Islam and Christianity as, you know, Orthodox Christianity or Judaism.
00:53:42.197 --> 00:53:45.742
Mormonism is going to become the fourth major Abrahamic religion.
00:53:46.802 --> 00:53:49.925
There were all kinds of social scientists who believed that.
00:53:50.914 --> 00:53:51.934
in and out of the church.
00:53:54.077 --> 00:53:59.445
But the message that I think resonated was the power of the nuclear family.
00:54:00.387 --> 00:54:03.050
The Mormons sort of just sold, we're the family religion.
00:54:03.110 --> 00:54:06.155
This is where your family can be together forever and all that.
00:54:06.195 --> 00:54:13.045
And we still talk about that, but we're now talking about that in an environment where you're saying, well, wait a minute, what about my family?
00:54:13.605 --> 00:54:14.626
I'm married to a man.
00:54:14.666 --> 00:54:19.773
Does my family fit?
00:54:20.929 --> 00:54:22.231
No, your family doesn't fit.
00:54:22.271 --> 00:54:23.353
Your family doesn't count.
00:54:24.355 --> 00:54:39.114
And so that message no longer has the kind of resonance it had back when everybody was a homophobe, back when everybody assumed that there was just something evil or wicked about being gay and about being queer.
00:54:39.155 --> 00:54:49.829
And so that didn't come up on the mission much because the church's position was consistent with the world's position.
00:54:50.657 --> 00:54:54.902
And the world now has moved towards acceptance and the church has not.
00:54:56.085 --> 00:55:09.021
So the message that we're out there spreading is a message, either one that doesn't resonate or one that comes into direct conflict with the values of the world.
00:55:09.320 --> 00:55:10.041
Does that make sense?
00:55:10.943 --> 00:55:10.983
It
00:55:11.003 --> 00:55:11.463
is, yes.
00:55:11.623 --> 00:55:12.065
Makes sense.
00:55:13.847 --> 00:55:17.751
Everything you said, listened to, and it resonates with me.
00:55:17.771 --> 00:55:25.695
Just some thoughts, because I know we probably coming up to the end of the podcast here, I think, in the few minutes.
00:55:26.036 --> 00:55:28.159
We have more to talk about here than I realized.
00:55:28.739 --> 00:55:29.902
Yes, we do.
00:55:31.324 --> 00:55:42.942
But as I listen to you, and I go back to the extraordinary, profound impact emissions have had on our lives, I think, you know, I now see it in a...
00:55:44.605 --> 00:55:45.365
I see it in its...
00:55:45.858 --> 00:55:56.273
as it was in its original state, but I see it also from a different perspective for where I am in my life and see the changes that the church has gone through and the challenges that it faces.
00:55:57.135 --> 00:56:11.117
And to one of your points that you mentioned in the last 15 minutes was the profound positive impact and benefits that the church had on people's lives in Scotland.
00:56:11.157 --> 00:56:14.202
And I saw that, like you, all the time.
00:56:15.297 --> 00:56:31.360
And so for me, the experience of the mission, my memories of the mission, and not necessarily the doctrine or the policies so much, they are to some extent, but it's the relationships that I forged, that I built.
00:56:32.061 --> 00:57:08.342
And I just saw myself actually helping people in real terms, helping, building their self-esteem, their self-worth, helping them to become happy, helping them to make good choices, helping them to keep their families together, helping them to see the value of the relationships and to help them make good judgments and to help them feel good about who they are and the value that they're a child of God, that they're worth something, that God loves them and they're important to God and that they have a place and a purpose in life.
00:57:08.402 --> 00:57:10.786
And that, I see...
00:57:11.585 --> 00:57:25.139
My role in that is actually helping people realize those eternal truths, notwithstanding how the church has changed and some of the issues that the church is going through right now.
00:57:25.159 --> 00:57:34.467
So I saw that the church is a vehicle for serving others, an extraordinary vehicle, organized, structured.
00:57:34.967 --> 00:57:42.739
You mentioned about John Dillon, and would you feel the same way if you grew up in a Muslim faith or We have the same experience today.
00:57:43.099 --> 00:57:55.434
You know, I grew up in the Church of England, and I can tell you, growing up up until I was 16, the organization structure of the Church of England is completely different entirely in every way to the Church of Jesus Christ, like they say.
00:57:55.914 --> 00:58:02.302
There's no real structure organization to serve, or badly at all, in the Church of England.
00:58:02.864 --> 00:58:23.396
Growing up is a family, or whatever your family dynamics are, if you're youth or regardless of your age, unless you learn about it, and you go to school, and you become a vicar or a priest, or you become some administrative assistant, which is a paid job, or you have professional training at church.
00:58:24.297 --> 00:58:29.965
And I think that can be said for most organizations, most faiths, many faiths, certainly.
00:58:31.027 --> 00:58:47.289
It's different in that it allows anyone from any background, including people like me, who came from a very dysfunctional community, you know, council estate background to serve in different capacities, leadership.
00:58:48.110 --> 00:59:01.186
You know, no matter where your background is, where you come from, the church provides opportunities to serve, to lead, and to have a profound effect, or at least help people in very meaningful and very significant ways.
00:59:02.268 --> 00:59:15.724
And I think that's an extraordinary offering that the church, even today, provides people who are willing to serve and willing to commit and to use the church as a vehicle.
00:59:15.744 --> 00:59:16.726
It's quite extraordinary.
00:59:16.746 --> 00:59:24.876
And we've said that that's one of the most significant things that the church can offer, the structure and the vehicle to extraordinary service.
00:59:26.057 --> 00:59:43.501
The second point I would add to that is that the church allows that structure and organization and it focuses its resources internally to allow you to serve people internally, mostly, And the thing that's missing is the external piece.
00:59:43.760 --> 01:00:09.869
I think if it could achieve the same level of structure and organization and power where it serves itself and each member serves each other internally within that organization, within the structure, which it does extremely well, extremely effective, perhaps more than most, if it could replicate that or leverage that or build on that, it'd become even more efficient and effective at serving the community.
01:00:10.626 --> 01:00:27.614
In the same extraordinary ways that members serve each other internally within the structures of the church, auxiliaries serving each other and supporting each other's stake at the higher levels of the church, which is incredibly organized, well-structured.
01:00:28.315 --> 01:00:42.422
It really is a professionally organized structure where people can form extraordinary and extraordinary spiritual events on a very, very personal level.
01:00:43.083 --> 01:01:00.965
If he could extend that structure beyond its own walls to the outside community, be more inclusive and bring that organization, that power, that structure, that system to other...
01:01:06.018 --> 01:01:11.744
or those tools or instruments, et cetera, in the structure in a way that delivers more service to the community.
01:01:11.804 --> 01:01:15.027
And I think it would be even more powerful force for the good.
01:01:16.128 --> 01:01:19.934
You talked about the Mormon God, and God is not in a box.
01:01:20.313 --> 01:01:30.686
And I used to think God was this very clear, distinct, structured individual that was a certain type of individuals and was a Mormon God.
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I'm like you, I don't see that anymore.
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The idea of eternity, I find it difficult to fathom.
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The idea of how the judgments are made, all the complexities of, you know, you gave the Hitler example there.
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You know, I can't even fathom how you can, or anyone, not you personally, but how God can arrive at a wise judgment assessment of someone like that and how that individual's life works out in the next life.
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And I do believe there is a next life.
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The complexity of And the responsibility and accountability for making that extraordinary judgment of where people end up after this is like, I can't fathom how that works or even begin to understand that.
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And then the other piece for me is the church provided extraordinary opportunity for spirituality and spiritual experiences For me, that's gone now.
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I'd made the decision to remove myself from that in a formal way, not understanding or knowing that that meant the church would also do the same, the members would also disarm me and disconnect with me.
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And losing a community experience like that, a community of relationships, which I valued so enormously, almost overnight, has been very, very painful for me.
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So I've had to find that spirituality somewhere else.
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And I find it in my family, my friends.
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We connected with my old school friends who I, to one of your points earlier, where you feel, I don't think I felt superior in the church, but I think I was way too judgmental of people who did not live the modern life.
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People who, like friends I grew with, who had tattoos, who drank, who smoked.
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I don't drink or smoke, but I have two tattoos, which I'm very, very proud of.
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And so my new perspectives on life and the church has changed my judgment.
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And so I've reconnected with people who I thought were unrighteous, perhaps, or not the type of quality person that I should be associating with.
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And again, following the church's doctrine that we shouldn't associate or spend too much time with people who are not living, you know, the least basic standards that the church subscribes to and make a judgment of who you hang out with and your friends, et cetera, which it does.
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It does that a lot.
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And I can understand why it would do that.
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But that brings some level of, you know, that's a judgment that you make.
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And sometimes you can be quite harsh and judge people and, People are not good enough and you can feel a bit superior or be quite just mental and they're not to your standards or to Mormon's standards.
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Therefore, they're not good enough to associate with you or don't associate with them and they could pull you down and be a bad influence on you.
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I don't want to say that right now.
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I've actually re-engaged with old friends that are extraordinary people.
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They drink and they smoke and they swear and they have tattoos and they're very colorful and the people I grew up with.
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But now I've grown to love them and I adore them and I love them for who they are.
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They've not turned me into an alcoholic or anything like that.
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And so my whole perspective on human nature has improved.
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I like the idea of graduating from Mormonism.
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I think that resonates with me because of where I am.
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Your position is different than my position, Rana.
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You're still active.
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You're still very much involved in the church.
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You attend the choir.
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You're in a different position to me.
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I feel I have graduated.
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I've matured.
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There's aspects of the church I value, but those aspects, those elements of the church, Jim, I've learned they're universal now.
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They're not exclusive to the church.
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Love, service, kindness, forgiveness, community service, being a good friend, keeping a confidence.
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Those values are not exclusive or universal to the church.
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The relationship with God is not exclusive to the church.
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I think anyone can have a relationship with God and have spiritual experiences.
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You don't need walls or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to have spiritual experience.
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I know many people who have profound experiences and they're not members of the church, and they're extraordinary people.
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And so this exclusivity that the church has on certain things like the family, I think that's gone.
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And the whole religious dynamics in Christianity is changing now.
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We're becoming more, you know, Christian countries are becoming more secular.
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France is the most secular.
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I think UK is extremely secular.
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United States is becoming more secular.
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And Canada, I think, is certainly becoming more secular as well.
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So what's the need for religion?
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What's the need for faith?
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Why go to church?
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Can you get that experience by going walking, going hiking, going sailing or serving the community, doing a food drive?
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A lot of people get meaning and purpose by doing things in the community.
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And that, to me, is spiritual.
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And I think it is to them as well.
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So this exclusive play that the church has had, that you can only be happy if you're a member of the church of Jesus Christ.
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You're going to be your complete self and fulfill your complete, achieve your full experience of life.
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That can only be achieved if you're a member of the church and you're fully active and you go to the temple and baby tithing.
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Only full and total, complete happiness wholesome happiness can be found within the church.
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I think that argument has gone.
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Being the only true church upon the face of the earth in whom the Lord is pleased with, collectively, not individually, that claim that we're the only true church, I've not heard that said in very many talks for a long time, and I think the church can no longer make that claim.
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I think there's other paths up the mountain, and some of those paths are more treacherous, yes, but they also offer...
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a different perspective, different viewpoint, and also could open up other beauties and other panoramas along the way, even though it's a different path.
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There's no one set path to God.
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So I see life and people and human nature in a much broader, more universal prism than I did through this very narrow, prescribed, prescriptive, missionary view that you've got to be exactly like this into this mold and live exactly like this etc and I was very committed to that didn't question that and so I've gone you know my experience has completely gone more universal less judgment and I feel a better person for it
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well and I'll I can let that be the last word uh See, the only thing I'd add to it is, you know, I was asked, the first question I was asked when I went on John DeLand was, how do I reconcile the idea of being the one true church with my personal faith?
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And one of the ways I look at it is everybody gets saved, but it's the Mormons who do the paperwork, right?
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All these ordinances and everything else, they're being done in order to to connect us to everybody else.
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And so all of that work gets done for everybody, and it's the church that is doing it.
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And so I think you can sort of still embrace that idea of priesthood authority and that importance, as long as you inclusively interpret what that means.
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That being the only true church does not mean You are the only good people.
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It means you have more responsibility than anybody else to improve the lives of those around you.
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We have been given a charge to make heaven on earth, to make it on earth as it is in heaven.
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And I think we have misunderstood that charge and sort of embraced the worst aspects of it.
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the aspects that say we are special, we're on our rameumptoms, we're better than everybody else.
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I think that there's still too much of that.
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I haven't heard, you're right, I haven't heard a lot of general conference talks lately about this being the one true church, but I've heard plenty of testimonies on a local level of people who stand up and talk about how wonderful our church is and how nobody outside this church He's really, truly happy.
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I think that actually needs to be the subject of one of our podcasts, is happy inside the church.
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Back to that a lot, the only true church, there's exclusivity, et cetera.
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It is a topic.
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I think it's worth exploring in detail because that's a very significant and a very serious statement and quite a ballsy statement to say quite a lot on the mission that essentially, basically, ours is the only way to God and And if you're not a Mormon, you will not go back to God, essentially.
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That was what people heard.
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So, yeah, it is still in there, you know, section 130, I think it is, and in the Doctrine and Covenants.
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I think it's such an important, profound, pivotal scripture that we should explore that a bit further.
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All right, so we have a topic for next time.
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But until then...
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Thank you for listening, and we hope to see you again next time on Inside Out.
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Thank you very much, Ian.
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Thank you very
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much, Jim.