Ian's Story: Part I

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Welcome to another episode of Inside Out.
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My name is Jim Bennett, and a lot of you know me.
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You know my background, you know my history, but you don't know a whole lot about my partner, Ian Wilkes.
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And before we started this podcast, we spent hours discussing Ian's story, how he joined the church and how he eventually left the church.
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And it's a story of faith and integrity, and it's fascinating, and I would love to be able to share all of it with you.
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And I thought that at this point it might be wise for us to give you the beginnings of that story.
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And so that's what we're going to spend this hour doing is essentially introducing you to Ian Wilkes.
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and helping you understand who he is and where he's coming from.
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Ian, people listening to you can tell that you're not from the United States, but you don't sound like you're from Canada either.
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We live in Canada.
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We've
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been here for about 16 years, but we're from the UK originally, from the north of UK.
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My UK friends think I sound like I've got a bit of a Canadian twang.
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My Canadian friends say, no, no, no, you're definitely British still.
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So yeah, we're from UK,
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moved here great life.
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Well, I met you in the UK when we were both serving as missionaries in the Scotland Edinburgh Mission.
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And my understanding is that a lot of English missionaries feel that when they're called to Scotland, it's a bit like a Utah missionary being called to Idaho, that you're just being called to your own backyard.
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And they're very disappointed by that.
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Were you disappointed when you saw Scotland on your mission letter?
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I wasn't disappointed.
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I know others who were called to the same country were, but I wasn't.
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There were seven of us in the ward who got our calls at the same time.
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I think I was the only one that was called into the British Isles.
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I'm in the north of England.
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My mission, in the mission area where I went to the stake in the ward there, connects to the boundary of the mission.
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So the Scotland mission is only 120 miles away.
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It's like going from Salt Lake to, I don't know, Provo, maybe England.
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Spanish fork 100 miles away, right?
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So not even Idaho.
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But for me, going to Scotland was a fantastic experience, and I wasn't disappointed at all.
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And others went California and Philippines, and I
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was good.
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I was good with going to Scotland.
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Well, I can bear testimony that you were an outstanding missionary.
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You were a bit of an intimidating missionary, too, to some degree.
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Oh, dear.
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But...
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Well, I was intimidated by the fact that every time we drove anywhere near a pheasant, you wanted to drive the car over the pheasant in order to be able to bring the roadkill into the car and eat it for dinner.
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That actually happened, did it not?
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It
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did happen.
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It wasn't my idea originally, but I got the idea from a missionary who's from Utah originally, who used to hunt and kill pheasants.
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And we accidentally killed this pheasant on the road.
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And My companion said, look, we can take it home and cook it, eat it.
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I said, okay, you know what you're doing.
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And I was excited.
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This is great.
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Pheasant is kind of a great dish.
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And so we took it home and we put the bird in the back of the car.
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However, it wasn't quite dead yet.
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About 10 minutes into the journey, traveling back to the flat there, the apartment, the bird came alive somehow and started flying around the car.
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I was driving at the time.
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Terrifying experience.
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This thing was making such a noise, flying around the inside of the car.
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And it was quite a shock.
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So we had to stop, and other people were looking on, and other vehicles were looking on, wondering what was going on, this bird flying around the car.
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But we stopped, and my companion, who was a trained pheasant killer, got the bird and made sure a second time around the bird was dead.
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So we took it back and he skinned it and cleaned it and we ate it and it tasted absolutely delicious.
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It was one of the best meals on the mission I've ever had.
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Oh, that is a great, great story.
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I just remember I was driving with you at one point and we saw a pheasant and you reached out to the wheel and and almost tried to take the wheel, and you finally said, there's no reason why that pheasant shouldn't be in this car.
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Did I say that?
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Okay, so I'll trust your memory.
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I don't ever recall eating any roadkill when I was a missionary, so our experience may have been different in that.
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But I want to back up before that, before your mission, because you have not been a member of the church your entire life.
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Is that correct?
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Yes.
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That is correct, yes.
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I grew up in a working-class coal mining community in the north of England, a place called Castleford, in a small suburb of Castleford called Airedale.
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A very rough neighbourhood.
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It was government-funded housing.
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They called them council estates.
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You'll be familiar with them, having served in Scotland.
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The north of England is no different to Scotland in that sense.
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And these are brick government...
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owned, operated, funded, subsidized houses, quite small, go back to the 1930s, 1940s, 50s, et cetera.
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So these buildings have been around for quite a while.
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And you had a lot of large families that were assigned or placed into these communities.
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These are very large communities uh they're dotted all across the uk certainly across uh north of england and uh they certain people if you like uh are uh encouraged or pushed into those communities uh through often no choice and and that's where they they grow up so these are fairly rough places crimes pretty high um the closed communities in in in many ways or they used to be for sure and uh And that was the kind of environment that I was raised in.
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Coal mining, a lot of coal mines at that particular time before migrants actually shut them down during the, just, you know, after the strike that happened in 84.
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And you were expected to go down the pit, go down the mine.
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You know, at school, there was somebody who would come in from the National Coal Board and sit down with you and you'd have a conversation about which pit you were going to go down.
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A lot of my friends went down the mine.
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It was coal mining.
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Coal is everywhere in that part of the world.
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So again, working class, it was tough, a tough neighborhood, but great community spirit back then.
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And so that was the kind of environment that I was born and raised in.
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Did you expect to spend your entire career and essentially your entire life working in a mine?
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I
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didn't.
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No, I was one of the few that wanted to go to college.
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So I remember sitting down with a careers advisor teacher.
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Her name was Miss Priest.
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I won't forget her.
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And I had these aspirations of going to college.
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I wanted to go to college and I wanted to get eventually a degree.
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And within minutes, Miss Priest quickly said, dashed those hopes and made it very clear that nobody in my part of the community or certainly in our street, and we lived on one of the most difficult, most notorious streets in Airedale, rough end of the rough part of the community.
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But she said nobody had gone to college in your family or in your neighborhood.
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And my expectations were unrealistic.
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I was setting my goals too high, my aspirations weren't down to earth, etc.
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And she strongly recommended that I meet with the, what they called NCB, National Call Board.
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These were managers that would come into the school and interview the kids and try to put a plan together to get them down when they were 16.
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You leave school at the age of 16 in the UK.
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So after that meeting with Miss Priest, I remember walking home from school feeling pretty devastated, pretty upset.
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I was quite emotional.
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But something in me didn't accept that.
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And something in me stirred that.
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You know, something stirred within me that I felt I could do something different with my life, be something different, do something different.
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Not that there's nothing wrong with going down the pit of the mine.
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That was fine.
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But I wanted to move more towards private enterprise.
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And what was interesting, Jim, is at that time, if we know the history of that part of the world, there was a big conflict, a big showdown, political showdown.
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between Margaret Thatcher and the unions at that particular time.
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She was trying to introduce private sector into the industry, trying to close the coal mines, the pits, etc.
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The whole community was Labour.
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They were opposed to conservative Margaret Thatcher's policies, etc.
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Everybody in my entire neighbourhood was Labour and pro-mines, pro-pits, and keeping them open and keeping them running.
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I was one of the few that privately thought and felt that the private sector had a role to play in energy, etc.
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I couldn't, I learned very quickly as soon as I expressed a differing view or opinion in regards to these political positions and policies that the different governments had in that neighborhood that I was shut down and actually told directly, ordered directly never to even think like a private enterprise individual that you'll labor, you'll vote labor.
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So you were a closet Thatcherite?
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I was.
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I mean, there's certain policies of hers that I don't accept or agree with, but there's certain other things like private enterprise, investment, and very much some of those principles have stayed my business and investment career going forward.
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But in that neighborhood at that time, and it's still the same now, I believe, they all voted Labour, and you couldn't even express a different opinion other than what the Labour Party position was at that time.
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When I tried to do that around the dinner table, I was shot down pretty harshly.
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So I kept my views on what was going on at that time quite low.
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close to herself and didn't share those views.
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People that did speak out and speak up, they were met with some kind of physical violence.
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And any thoughts, opinions that differed from the local regional position was seen as a betrayal.
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And as you know, in 84, you might not know, but many will, there was a year showdown, a physical political showdown between the unions and Margaret Thatcher.
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And it got very ugly, actually very ugly.
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Sadly, people lost their lives and it was a major event.
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And all that was happening and unfolding right in front of me in that entire neighborhood.
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In fact, my neighborhood was one of the more militant neighborhoods.
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coal mining communities in the entire country.
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My family, my brothers were going down the mine, the pit, etc.
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So me expressing an opinion or an aspiration of going and to do something different, going to college and going into business was frowned upon and absolutely ridiculed and actually laughed at, even by some of the teachers.
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So I didn't share many of my views.
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I didn't share my aspirations about what I wanted to do after I left school.
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I kept them to myself.
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people's opinions were so entrenched and fixed on those certain positions, it just was pointless to express anything other than what was the expected position of the community at that time.
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But inside, I always felt that I could go and do something different with my life.
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And that's what I did.
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I made sure that I was determined enough to not believe some of the recommendations or accept some of the recommendations and determined to go do something different.
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Again, not better.
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I don't think anything is anything wrong or bad going down the pit.
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I just didn't want to do it.
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I just wanted to do something different with my life.
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Your brothers ended up.
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going down.
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They did.
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Yeah, yes.
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David and Paul did go down the pits.
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Almost everyone did.
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I mean, we were in a triangle of three collars or mines in that area at that particular time.
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These are major, biggest employers.
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And we were right in the middle of the, you know, you could, there was plenty of jobs.
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You could go down any pit in the area.
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And so almost everyone, well, many people went down the pit, went down the mine for a few years or even longer.
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My brothers went to the mines pit for about 10, 12 years.
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And Even after that, they did start closing them down after the Thatcher won the strike there.
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They didn't close immediately.
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They were kind of phased out over the next 10 years or so.
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But it was very interesting time politically in the UK.
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And again, you know, viewers, audience here can do a quick search and they'll see all the interesting images that came up in 1984 during that strike.
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And I think the other thing as well, as I think about, as I share this experience with you about how I felt after I met with Ms.
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Priest there, that careers advisor, teacher, individual.
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For the most part, growing up in that neighborhood, and I wasn't alone by any means, I always struggled with self-confidence, self-esteem, self-worth, often doubting myself, not feeling good at certain things, not feeling good enough academically.
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And that position, I think, was reinforced, I believe, by the political landscape that was happening in those communities at that particular time.
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These are communities that are very socialistic in the nature.
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Socialism had been entrenched there for a long, long time.
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You had the situations where families over generations were what they called dole-dependent, dependent on benefits.
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Grandfather, father, son, often at some periods of their life, some more frequent than others, would be quite happy to claim dole or claim benefits because they felt that it was owed to them.
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That's not everyone in the community, and I'm not painting the community with that brush with everyone by any means, but there were people that I knew that were quite happy to claim benefit and not to work.
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I didn't think like that.
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I didn't feel like that.
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Although I...
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uh fought against the uh or tried to find inner strength against feeling a lack of self-confidence um self-worth self-esteem that was very much um prevalent in my life at that time something deep down inside me and i don't know what it was it certainly didn't come from my family or from any source that I can recall, but something in me felt I could do something different, something better with my life, that I was worth something because often I didn't feel, I felt pretty worthless a lot of the time.
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And again, the thinking and the mindset in the community was a certain set of thinking and you couldn't think outside of that.
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And you certainly weren't encouraged to think high or big or have these goals or dreams or these visions of other things other than a basic job which would keep you in the neighborhood or the community there for the rest of your life.
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Any idea of going beyond what was in part of the community there, the neighborhood, was seen as being lofty and unrealistic and this person needs to be brought down to earth with a very hard...
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crashed to the ground and so I fought against that and in the end I managed to get into college I got into college that was a little bit of a stroke of luck on my part and a little bit of a little bit of cheating if I may add cheating so she did your way I'll explain.
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My grades were good enough, but you needed your mother's signature to get into college, a guardian, right?
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And so when I went back and spoke to my mom about going to college, she wasn't happy about that.
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She frowned upon that.
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The college was 10 miles away.
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I think she thought...
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You know, me leaving home at the age of 16 or 17 to go to college was too much for me.
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I felt I was ready.
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And so I forged my mum's signature on the application form.
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I don't regret that.
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My grades were good enough, so I was okay there.
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So that was all legit.
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But I got this application with my mum's signature on, submitted, and I got into college.
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So, yeah, that...
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That's something that I did.
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I was determined and I didn't feel bad about doing that because I didn't believe what the teachers were saying about me, or my mother was thinking about me, that I can actually do this.
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I felt I could do this, and I did.
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So I don't regret that decision.
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Actually, it was an important pivotal point going forward in terms of my education.
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And going to the college 10 miles away was actually getting me out of that particular community.
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I was able to get out of that situation, move away, and go to college probably 10, 15 miles away.
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It's a very different environment in many ways.
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Very, very cool.
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So this is about the same time frame then when the church sort of makes an appearance in your life.
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Is that right?
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It is.
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It is.
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It is
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at the same time.
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Again, just to highlight that throughout my life in that neighborhood, and I wasn't alone, a lot of kids struggled with self-doubt, self-esteem, personal...
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worth worrying about the future, what they're going to do when they leave school.
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This wasn't just unique to me.
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But at the time, because my family was incredibly dysfunctional, any questions or concerns I had or any feelings or thoughts I had about my life or problems I had in my life at the time or doubts, I had no one to go to.
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There's nobody in my family that I could sit down with or talk to.
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My mum was a single parent.
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We had five boys, live in a council estate.
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She didn't work.
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We lived on government subsidised funding benefits, essentially.
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And we were raised with very, very little growing up.
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The family was dysfunctional.
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We'd lost one of my brothers in a motorbike accident, which actually caused more divisions.
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It didn't bring us close together.
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It pulled us apart, actually, rather than bring us together as a family.
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So the family dynamics were incredibly dysfunctional.
00:19:52.642 --> 00:19:54.223
you couldn't share feelings and thoughts.
00:19:54.263 --> 00:19:55.325
That was seen as a weakness.
00:19:55.526 --> 00:20:05.076
There's an element of this British stiff upper lip that came through in the parental approach, if you like, of my mother.
00:20:05.877 --> 00:20:17.893
She came from a, you know, at the time of the Second World War and post-war, very strict, conservative in some ways in terms of not sharing feelings or thoughts.
00:20:17.972 --> 00:20:18.272
It was...
00:20:19.394 --> 00:20:48.896
not done uh that's not that was seen as a weakness um and there's no i wasn't close enough to any friends to share any feelings or thoughts or certainly no family members to talk about anything frankly um other than just general stuff and so at my my life at that particular time i was uh quite i look back i was quite vulnerable um i had lots of questions very few answers little direction no support or help from anyone in the family.
00:20:48.916 --> 00:21:01.089
I remember going to school and coming back with homework and needing help and asking my brothers or my mother for help and either they didn't have time or they weren't available.
00:21:01.290 --> 00:21:07.596
They were off doing things themselves and there was no one really to turn to for help with homework or even talking about anything.
00:21:07.778 --> 00:21:13.584
And so I struggled through all of that and felt quite vulnerable.
00:21:13.604 --> 00:21:19.443
I look back now and I was very Looking for something I was lost on a very very personal level.
00:21:19.463 --> 00:21:36.402
I had lots of questions and lots of doubts and And so all these things that were happening in my life at that time were Me trying to find myself trying to search for a direction and a purpose and meaning to my life.
00:21:37.124 --> 00:21:44.115
There were times, Jim, where things were so bad at home, things were really bad at home that I just didn't think I could continue.
00:21:44.134 --> 00:21:52.728
I won't share too much of that right now, but there were times I just didn't feel I had any value whatsoever.
00:21:53.028 --> 00:22:02.900
And so I don't know what kept me going, but this hope that something better was around the corner, that I would find something that would make me feel differently.
00:22:02.920 --> 00:22:09.267
And by the way, I felt different and thought different to some of my friends, a lot of my friends.
00:22:09.346 --> 00:22:11.690
I didn't want to smoke or drink.
00:22:12.711 --> 00:22:16.695
There wasn't a drug scene back then in that part of the world at that time.
00:22:17.256 --> 00:22:18.317
But I didn't want to be...
00:22:19.298 --> 00:22:21.663
do all the things, if you like, that they were doing at that time.
00:22:21.703 --> 00:22:22.486
I just didn't want to.
00:22:22.526 --> 00:22:23.367
I just didn't interest me.
00:22:23.407 --> 00:22:26.115
I didn't feel the way they did at certain things.
00:22:26.194 --> 00:22:31.669
And so I was quite like an alien in some ways.
00:22:31.749 --> 00:22:32.852
It was a different...
00:22:33.665 --> 00:22:38.330
I'd been born at the wrong time at the wrong place because I had different views on so many things.
00:22:39.353 --> 00:22:42.036
And so I struggled with all of that.
00:22:42.056 --> 00:22:43.317
I couldn't reconcile that.
00:22:43.436 --> 00:22:45.839
I was trapped in this geography.
00:22:46.461 --> 00:22:54.509
And only when I was able to go to college was I able to physically free myself from that neighborhood.
00:22:54.951 --> 00:23:02.613
And at the time when I was applying, months before I was applying for college, that's when I came into contact with the church.
00:23:03.233 --> 00:23:05.636
And so this neighborhood, A.D.L.
00:23:05.676 --> 00:23:24.445
Castleford, was quite notorious for nothing, no serious gangs, nothing like that, but more mischievous, more small gangs of kids like me who would play mischievous acts on people.
00:23:25.026 --> 00:23:28.151
You know, different parts of the community there, etc.
00:23:28.250 --> 00:23:31.415
You know, the petty theft and petty break-ins and things like that.
00:23:32.037 --> 00:23:33.558
No extreme violence, nothing like that.
00:23:34.079 --> 00:23:43.153
And so when we saw the missionaries and they were always advised not to track or to go to this particular neighborhood.
00:23:43.778 --> 00:23:45.500
In fact, they were advised to stay away.
00:23:45.580 --> 00:23:46.321
This was quite a...
00:23:46.842 --> 00:23:48.744
Your neighborhood was off-limits to missionaries?
00:23:49.165 --> 00:23:57.498
It was off-limits to missionaries, and for good reason, because myself, and I regret this, and we were part of a...
00:23:57.518 --> 00:23:59.240
I was part of a small gang.
00:23:59.279 --> 00:24:10.276
I was part of a family that had a little bit of a reputation for being mischievous and doing petty things and just kind of...
00:24:10.296 --> 00:24:11.518
Did your date have a name?
00:24:12.001 --> 00:24:13.022
We did have a name.
00:24:13.103 --> 00:24:13.462
We didn't.
00:24:14.724 --> 00:24:15.204
No, we didn't.
00:24:15.665 --> 00:24:18.387
It would have been interesting to have a name, for sure.
00:24:18.788 --> 00:24:20.349
But we didn't.
00:24:20.390 --> 00:24:20.810
And we all...
00:24:21.230 --> 00:24:22.653
There were three streets, actually.
00:24:22.673 --> 00:24:25.776
Three streets that were quite notorious.
00:24:25.855 --> 00:24:29.019
Kershaw Avenue, Graham Drive, where I grew up, and Mills Grove.
00:24:29.098 --> 00:24:32.481
And these were three streets right in the heart of Airedale.
00:24:32.982 --> 00:24:33.864
And there was a few of us.
00:24:34.223 --> 00:24:38.628
And whenever we saw the missionaries, myself included, we would play...
00:24:40.673 --> 00:25:17.015
tricks on them and actually we would persecute them but not in a very serious way I remember one of the missionaries there I think it was Elder Southwick was on his bike there and he was we had these are council houses red brick they've got fixed fences at the front curb street and they've got like in Scotland privet hedges these large privet hedges and so And all the streets, many of the streets and properties there had these privet hedges and you could basically hide and seek behind them.
00:25:17.055 --> 00:25:22.241
You could, as a young kid, you could hide and crouch down and hide in these little hedges.
00:25:22.561 --> 00:25:37.761
And what I did, I was dared by my non-serious gang member, fellow gang members, to push a broom handle through the spokes of Elder Southwick's bike handle.
00:25:38.337 --> 00:25:40.540
which I did as he rode past.
00:25:41.563 --> 00:25:49.815
He rode past quite quickly and I stuck a broom handle through the front wheel and that was quite a bloody experience for him.
00:25:49.855 --> 00:25:53.641
He was very angry with our man and chased after us and we ran away as kids.
00:25:53.701 --> 00:25:57.105
I think I was 14 or 15 at the time.
00:25:57.707 --> 00:26:06.019
So whenever we saw the missionaries with their foreign accents, you know, the American accents, and they were dressed in these trench coats and we would think they were double agents.
00:26:07.682 --> 00:26:14.615
from America, why they're here, the religious cults walking around trying to kidnap people.
00:26:14.654 --> 00:26:22.849
We heard stories of tunnels, you know, that these missionaries would kidnap you and actually take you into these tunnels under the Salt Lake Temple.
00:26:23.590 --> 00:26:25.654
And I thought that was ridiculous.
00:26:25.694 --> 00:26:31.701
And then I learned many years later there are actually tunnels under the Salt Lake Temple because I've been in them to some of the ceilings.
00:26:31.741 --> 00:26:32.321
Yeah, me too.
00:26:32.362 --> 00:26:36.224
They don't go into the UK as far as I know.
00:26:36.266 --> 00:26:49.616
No, no, but the rumor was it that they would take you to a place in the UK and there would be a tunnel, tunnels, and they would take you to America and you'd find yourself in these dark tunnels going into their strange religion, these buildings.
00:26:49.696 --> 00:26:54.280
And there's some, in terms of the tunnels, I think that's where that came from.
00:26:54.781 --> 00:27:06.756
So, you know, these missionaries, you know, were mostly American, they were aliens as far as we were concerned, different accents, different cultures, spoke funny and dressed in trench coats and we would persecute them.
00:27:07.958 --> 00:27:19.614
One time they got a rental apartment above a store called The Spa, you probably remember this from Scotland, the spa store that we used to go to as missionaries.
00:27:19.874 --> 00:27:31.711
And we found out where they lived and we threw rocks at their windows and we put a chain on their door outside so they couldn't get out.
00:27:31.751 --> 00:27:42.808
So we did all kinds of crazy things, nothing serious, you know, apart from, I think the worst we did was pushing the broom handle through the missionary's front wheel.
00:27:43.362 --> 00:27:45.183
We didn't do anything beyond that.
00:27:45.203 --> 00:27:46.005
We were just kids.
00:27:46.105 --> 00:27:47.425
We didn't want to harm them.
00:27:47.445 --> 00:27:48.707
We just wanted to be mischievous.
00:27:48.767 --> 00:27:51.509
And so we played a lot of pranks on them.
00:27:51.650 --> 00:27:53.771
And I think we made their life pretty difficult.
00:27:54.211 --> 00:27:59.076
They were advised, though, Jim, not to go to my neighborhood.
00:27:59.657 --> 00:28:02.840
And so I don't know why they...
00:28:03.582 --> 00:28:05.903
So that's what you get for breaking mission rules.
00:28:05.943 --> 00:28:06.964
Is that what you're trying to say?
00:28:07.545 --> 00:28:11.028
If you break mission rules, you get a broomstick through
00:28:11.068 --> 00:28:11.950
your bison.
00:28:11.970 --> 00:28:12.349
You do.
00:28:12.481 --> 00:28:12.883
You do.
00:28:12.923 --> 00:28:15.125
They're a consequence of breaking mission rules, absolutely.
00:28:15.465 --> 00:28:19.590
But we never harmed them too badly physically.
00:28:19.632 --> 00:28:20.532
It was more mischievous.
00:28:21.594 --> 00:28:35.893
However, that said, there were adults at that time that, you know, I was just a kid at the time, but there were people in the area that were much more aggressive and threatening towards the missionaries, including members of my family.
00:28:35.972 --> 00:28:40.839
So keeping in mind they shouldn't have been in this area in the first place.
00:28:41.681 --> 00:28:43.915
And I don't blame them for this at all.
00:28:44.355 --> 00:28:45.738
They had their own reasons for being there.
00:28:45.798 --> 00:28:55.171
But when they knocked on our door, and this wasn't unique, by the way, there were a lot of families that felt as strongly as my family did about being in the...
00:28:55.571 --> 00:28:57.855
So we grew up in a Protestant area, right?
00:28:58.435 --> 00:29:01.819
So you had, well, actually a Protestant and Catholic area.
00:29:02.902 --> 00:29:08.128
A lot of families, or some families that I was aware of at least, were very proud of their Protestant roots.
00:29:08.801 --> 00:29:44.660
um and i won't go into too much history on that and others were proud of the catholic rules that they all got along quite well when it came down to religion though there were there were people who were proud of protestant and people were proud of the catholic and if you were part of the same groups there then notwithstanding the historical divisions between those uh two religions but in our community you were still um accepted if you were catholic or protestant but anything outside of that like jehovah's witnesses or Mormons were seen as strange, weird, cultish, and just plain bizarre if you weren't part of the mainstream religion.
00:29:44.700 --> 00:29:47.086
And you serving in Scotland, you'll be aware of that.
00:29:48.430 --> 00:29:50.876
And that was no different in our community.
00:29:51.338 --> 00:29:52.300
And so any...
00:29:52.705 --> 00:30:05.784
The missions coming around, knocking on doors, were seen as a, at best, a pest, an unwanted pest, a strange, bizarre religion that we weren't interested in.
00:30:05.804 --> 00:30:09.749
And at worst, they would be met with, at times, violence.
00:30:10.190 --> 00:30:15.276
And I remember when they knocked on our door, my mum came to the door.
00:30:15.316 --> 00:30:32.234
My mum was very colourful, very strong in her political position in terms of labour and coal mines, very strong in her beliefs on the Protestant religion, and anything outside of that was seen as a betrayal of the family.
00:30:32.755 --> 00:30:45.458
She was always talking about, you know, how important the church was, even though we never went to church, and we never really practiced its principles, but being associated with the Protestant church was part of the...
00:30:48.001 --> 00:30:50.365
the history of the family and the generations.
00:30:50.527 --> 00:30:54.273
Was there a specific church, or was this just sort of a generic Protestantism?
00:30:54.994 --> 00:30:55.656
Generic.
00:30:56.357 --> 00:30:56.939
Church of England.
00:30:56.959 --> 00:30:57.680
That's right.
00:30:57.780 --> 00:30:57.961
Sorry.
00:30:58.080 --> 00:30:58.622
Church of England.
00:30:59.202 --> 00:31:03.391
Up and down the country, you can Google this.
00:31:03.431 --> 00:31:04.532
There's some history on this, of course.
00:31:06.698 --> 00:31:09.182
King Henry VIII broke off, et cetera, et cetera, formed the church.
00:31:09.742 --> 00:31:10.785
Catholic continued.
00:31:11.746 --> 00:31:39.413
you know side by side with the church of england and and uh but a lot of issues you know along the way between those two different religions depending on which part of the world you're talking about in our community they got along i think religion the religion wasn't an issue unless it was outside of those religions so when the missionaries came to knocking on our door i think i was 15 at the time so you know i've seen the missions on and off over a number of years um growing up, you'd see them now and again.
00:31:39.433 --> 00:31:55.940
And then when they came knocking on the door, my mum came to the door and basically chewed them out for coming, you shouldn't be here, you're a cult, you've got, you know, you talked about these tunnels, kidnap, more than one wife.
00:31:56.441 --> 00:32:06.507
In fact, Jim, quite extraordinary, my mum, and there's a It's an interesting connection, I think, to this, to other conversations that we might have.
00:32:07.088 --> 00:32:16.732
My mum seemed to have a bit of a grasp somehow, for some reason, on what is now a very different narrative that we have for the church.
00:32:17.292 --> 00:32:31.444
You know, with all the new information that we've learned about the history of the church, the doctrine, the policies, certainly the history about Joseph Smith being a polygamist, et cetera, et cetera, which is something that until only a few years ago, I didn't accept or believe.
00:32:31.484 --> 00:32:44.940
My mom seemed to have, aside from some of the strange, bizarre rumors she'd heard about tunnels and other things, but there were some things that she seemed to have a pretty good knowledge on that she'd read from a library somewhere She was great.
00:32:45.461 --> 00:32:46.403
My mom was a historian.
00:32:46.424 --> 00:32:48.791
She loved history, in particular religious history.
00:32:49.394 --> 00:33:42.563
And I think in her research, she'd come across different religious factions as it related to church of england you know methodist and um and beyond and i think she'd found a library somewhere some information about joseph smith unbeknown to me at that time and i was only 15 at this time when the missions came around so the missions knocked at the door my mom was very um uh reactive and very uh aggressive and warn them actually that if they come back to the house again that you know they wouldn't be met with such kindness and my mum was absolutely brutal when it came to a very feisty lady and a fighter, physical.
00:33:42.643 --> 00:34:04.913
She grew up as a bit of a tomboy and she would, you know, she was 12, 15 when the war was going on there, Second World War, and she grew up throughout the entire neighborhood, you know, and the war sirens going off and she had a bunker, you know, this military bunker at the end of the street there that all went down, you know, bomb shelter essentially.
00:34:05.346 --> 00:34:11.675
And she grew up in that kind of environment, which is something I hope I never experienced, but quite extraordinary.
00:34:11.974 --> 00:34:17.623
So a very tough lady, very religious, very focused on a religion, but didn't believe it or practice it.
00:34:18.403 --> 00:34:21.668
And warned very clearly the missionaries at that time not to come round.
00:34:22.108 --> 00:34:35.271
And what happened, what must have happened is the missionaries will have gone away and will have marked this house where we live, 28 Grims Drive house.
00:34:35.471 --> 00:34:36.693
That was the address that we grew up in.
00:34:37.474 --> 00:34:45.467
And should have marked it down as, don't visit this house again.
00:34:45.527 --> 00:34:49.353
However, somebody didn't mark that down.
00:34:50.054 --> 00:34:53.519
Someone didn't make a note of this, as they should have.
00:34:53.760 --> 00:35:12.188
And a few months later, they came back, other different missionaries, And as soon as they knocked on the door, and I was inside the house at the time, looking through the window, wondering who the strange accent was at the door, my mum called David, my oldest brother, second oldest brother, who had left school and was down the pit, a tough guy.
00:35:12.208 --> 00:35:14.170
I think it was David or Paul, I can't remember.
00:35:14.210 --> 00:35:21.461
And my older brothers, and they came down, and I think my mum woke them up.
00:35:21.601 --> 00:35:26.630
They were on shifts, and they were really pissed that they had been woken up.
00:35:27.329 --> 00:35:33.784
And they came down half asleep into this, what sounded like an argument on the door.
00:35:34.186 --> 00:35:38.916
Mum telling the missionaries to, you know, to go and not to come back, get lost, etc.
00:35:38.936 --> 00:35:42.284
My mum was very colourful with the language and get us stuck into them.
00:35:42.746 --> 00:36:24.327
And the missionary was quite feisty, was pushing back and uh and this was a mistake on his part because paul or david i can't remember which one actually um moved my mom out to the left and just smacked this missionary out cold uh the mystery yeah no mystery fell back um landed in the front yard out cold for a few seconds until he came to it was absolute and again that neighborhood that that's what we did we we we fought we didn't use knives or guns like that we had a you know people use their fists that's what that's how we that's how people fought right and so That's what happened.
00:36:24.347 --> 00:36:41.451
This missionary was knocked out cold and he was laying there quite dazed and his missionary companion picked him up and he came to and he just had his head down and he just walked off a little bit of a limp and we never saw them again for a while.
00:36:41.492 --> 00:36:43.655
And so that was the first...
00:36:44.215 --> 00:36:51.326
I was looking through the window wondering what the heck was going on and...
00:36:51.938 --> 00:36:56.222
You never see experiences like that in the motivational videos that they show you.
00:36:56.302 --> 00:36:56.983
You don't, you
00:36:57.023 --> 00:36:57.264
don't.
00:36:57.304 --> 00:37:04.572
We never got that on those, you know, those white tapes that you tape record it.
00:37:04.592 --> 00:37:10.958
You know, how to feel the spirit or how to ask questions, I think it was, or how to resolve concerns.
00:37:11.079 --> 00:37:11.980
I've got them in my...
00:37:12.101 --> 00:37:13.121
Resolve concerns.
00:37:13.521 --> 00:37:14.704
Remember the resolve concerns.
00:37:14.744 --> 00:37:16.505
This was in the 80s there and...
00:37:17.505 --> 00:37:23.193
I don't know if they existed in the 80s when I was joining the church at that time.
00:37:23.233 --> 00:37:24.715
This is before our missions there.
00:37:24.755 --> 00:37:29.240
But if they did, they should have listened to the Resolve the Concerns.
00:37:29.280 --> 00:37:30.202
That's right.
00:37:31.123 --> 00:37:32.585
Well, they should have focused on the effort.
00:37:32.625 --> 00:37:35.728
What to do when you've been knocked unconscious at a doorstep.
00:37:36.449 --> 00:37:39.853
They should have done one of those types of experiences on the tape.
00:37:40.355 --> 00:37:41.476
Yes, absolutely.
00:37:41.496 --> 00:37:42.436
Absolutely.
00:37:42.757 --> 00:37:46.001
The sound effects alone would have been just lovely.
00:37:46.561 --> 00:37:48.643
Just doing the sound effects would have been fun, wouldn't it?
00:37:51.007 --> 00:37:54.030
I actually had a friend who wrote some of those tapes.
00:37:54.570 --> 00:37:55.311
That's a whole other...
00:37:55.992 --> 00:37:56.893
Oh, right, right.
00:37:57.375 --> 00:38:00.739
But I used to listen to those tapes a lot on the mission.
00:38:01.219 --> 00:38:03.141
And then we went to the...
00:38:03.342 --> 00:38:05.664
We were in MTC there before the missions.
00:38:05.684 --> 00:38:10.010
There was a lot of so-called training, but it wasn't really...
00:38:10.594 --> 00:38:11.516
For me, it wasn't...
00:38:12.557 --> 00:38:18.130
My training relied on the fact that the Scots culture, Scottish culture, was very similar to the north of England.
00:38:18.670 --> 00:38:21.498
So for me, it was going back home.
00:38:21.597 --> 00:38:23.702
You know, going to Scotland was like going to the north of England.
00:38:24.123 --> 00:38:25.005
The accent was different.
00:38:25.045 --> 00:38:26.889
There are some differences in culture, absolutely.
00:38:27.329 --> 00:38:33.135
But the Scots, many of them will tell you, they can relate to the Northern England folk because we're very, we're Northerners, right?
00:38:33.175 --> 00:38:36.418
We're tough people and that's who we are and the Scots are the same.
00:38:36.458 --> 00:38:44.764
And so for me, I knew what was ahead of me in terms of the reaction to the church, but my companions in the MTC were not.
00:38:45.206 --> 00:38:52.871
They'd come from the States or come from parts of Europe and they weren't really as prepared as I was going on.
00:38:53.112 --> 00:38:54.853
Did you go to Provo for the MTC?
00:38:55.293 --> 00:38:56.215
No, I went to London.
00:38:56.255 --> 00:38:58.260
So London had an MTC Yeah, MTC.
00:38:58.280 --> 00:38:59.746
And they came up from Europe.
00:39:00.248 --> 00:39:02.335
There were no Americans, actually.
00:39:02.456 --> 00:39:03.139
There were no Americans.
00:39:03.239 --> 00:39:05.650
They were mostly from Europe and UK.
00:39:06.818 --> 00:39:11.403
And then, yeah, but if you're going abroad, you go to Provo.
00:39:11.664 --> 00:39:12.264
You go to Provo.
00:39:12.284 --> 00:39:16.349
So you're going anywhere abroad, you go to Provo and on to wherever your mission was.
00:39:16.731 --> 00:39:21.177
But UK, at that time, the MTC was in the UK.
00:39:21.818 --> 00:39:31.050
Well, I'll back you up if I can, because I'm still trying to figure out how you get from knocking a missionary unconscious on your doorstep to becoming a missionary yourself.
00:39:31.458 --> 00:39:32.099
Absolutely.
00:39:32.239 --> 00:39:32.480
Okay.
00:39:32.820 --> 00:39:34.103
So the missionaries,
00:39:34.884 --> 00:39:35.885
and thanks for keeping me on track.
00:39:36.146 --> 00:39:40.653
So the missionaries didn't come by for, I don't know, it must have been a full year.
00:39:41.114 --> 00:39:41.976
Jeez, I wonder why.
00:39:41.996 --> 00:39:43.338
Yeah, I wonder why.
00:39:43.619 --> 00:39:50.731
I think they went back to the apartment and said, you know, let's write this down in the book here and underline it three times.
00:39:50.751 --> 00:39:51.932
Let me hear your record.
00:39:52.418 --> 00:39:53.159
Absolutely.
00:39:53.199 --> 00:39:54.521
In the air record, that's what it says.
00:39:54.561 --> 00:39:54.740
Yeah.
00:39:54.760 --> 00:39:56.322
And so I think I was 15.
00:39:56.342 --> 00:39:58.505
So a good year or many months had passed.
00:39:59.106 --> 00:40:04.313
And keeping in mind as well, and I can't emphasize enough, family life was hell, frankly.
00:40:05.014 --> 00:40:05.976
Highly dysfunctional.
00:40:07.018 --> 00:40:10.963
It was just an awful, awful experience.
00:40:11.423 --> 00:40:13.706
And I might get into some of that at some point.
00:40:14.628 --> 00:40:21.757
But I was desperate for anything that I could do that would get me out of that.
00:40:22.465 --> 00:40:26.391
family situation and that community that I was in.
00:40:26.431 --> 00:40:30.436
It was very, very destructive for me and not just me, many others as well.
00:40:30.998 --> 00:40:37.987
Anyway, a year on, maybe nine months later, I should mention, by the way, there was an important point.
00:40:38.108 --> 00:40:44.516
I should have mentioned earlier, but there was a member, an active member who lived on our street.
00:40:46.981 --> 00:40:48.141
She kept herself to herself.
00:40:48.161 --> 00:40:50.304
She had two daughters, much younger than me.
00:40:50.978 --> 00:40:53.139
And we knew her.
00:40:53.159 --> 00:40:54.081
She's quite friendly.
00:40:54.101 --> 00:41:02.851
We heard she was part of the church, but she didn't talk about it, I think, through fear of how the community might react, to be fair to her.
00:41:03.231 --> 00:41:09.639
But we knew she was connected because we also saw the missionaries would call on them quite frequently.
00:41:09.659 --> 00:41:13.362
And I learned later that they were members of the church.
00:41:13.483 --> 00:41:21.092
Anyway, a few months after that Dorset missionary challenge, Resolving Concern Challenge.
00:41:22.074 --> 00:41:22.135
Yes.
00:41:22.775 --> 00:41:24.338
That's a delicate way to put it.
00:41:24.398 --> 00:41:26.001
That's a delicate way to put it for sure, yeah.
00:41:26.342 --> 00:41:35.201
This sister, lovely lady, was having a, what they called, I thought it was strange at the time, a family of evening.
00:41:37.224 --> 00:41:43.452
And they'd invited a girl, there's always a girl, It's always a girl.
00:41:43.592 --> 00:41:44.092
Always a girl.
00:41:44.552 --> 00:41:46.795
They invited a girl who I fancied.
00:41:46.835 --> 00:41:53.324
There was a girl on the next street who had somehow made a connection with the missionaries.
00:41:54.405 --> 00:41:57.849
I think actually another part, not on those streets, but further away.
00:41:58.731 --> 00:42:05.418
And this sister who lived down from where we lived was having this Palm of Evening event.
00:42:06.039 --> 00:42:10.545
She invited the missionaries and this girl...
00:42:11.074 --> 00:42:12.775
had invited me.
00:42:12.835 --> 00:42:15.900
Well, I like this girl very much.
00:42:16.460 --> 00:42:25.070
And so I went to my mum, my mother, and I said, look, there's this thing going on and there's this event happening and this girl's going.
00:42:25.110 --> 00:42:27.052
And I was quite open with my family.
00:42:27.092 --> 00:42:29.456
You know, I didn't keep secrets.
00:42:29.876 --> 00:42:31.518
I think I was the only one that didn't keep secrets.
00:42:32.179 --> 00:42:36.724
And my mum was very, no, no, you cannot, you must not go there.
00:42:36.764 --> 00:42:37.525
She's a member.
00:42:37.545 --> 00:42:40.630
My mum had more knowledge about this lady than I did.
00:42:41.313 --> 00:42:46.869
You know, she's a member of that cult, you know, the missions go there from time to time, et cetera, et cetera.
00:42:47.048 --> 00:42:48.373
You shouldn't go there.
00:42:49.135 --> 00:42:56.715
And so I didn't say anything after that, but the girl had invited me and my...
00:42:57.730 --> 00:43:02.215
the influence that the girl had over me was greater than my mother.
00:43:02.275 --> 00:43:04.458
It's a mathematical thing, Jim.
00:43:04.597 --> 00:43:05.059
Yeah,
00:43:05.099 --> 00:43:05.318
funny
00:43:05.378 --> 00:43:05.960
how that works.
00:43:06.460 --> 00:43:07.621
A power of the universe.
00:43:08.583 --> 00:43:12.829
It had a greater pull over me than my mother.
00:43:13.188 --> 00:43:18.135
Anyway, I said, okay, I won't go, but I did.
00:43:18.175 --> 00:43:24.963
And so I went and they had this, the missionaries were there.
00:43:25.003 --> 00:43:32.202
And by the way, as soon as they saw me, When I went into the house, we had to introduce ourselves.
00:43:32.302 --> 00:43:34.425
And I said, oh, I'm Ian Wilkes.
00:43:35.228 --> 00:43:38.713
And one of them said, are you part of the Wilkes family?
00:43:38.934 --> 00:43:40.617
And I said, yeah, yeah.
00:43:41.117 --> 00:43:43.161
And they went, up on Graham Drive?
00:43:43.181 --> 00:43:43.623
I said, yeah.
00:43:44.063 --> 00:43:47.289
And he went, okay, are you okay being here?
00:43:47.489 --> 00:43:48.311
And I said, sure.
00:43:48.992 --> 00:43:50.534
Does your family know that you're here?
00:43:50.695 --> 00:43:51.757
And I went, yeah, of course.
00:43:52.322 --> 00:43:53.262
And they're okay with that.
00:43:53.483 --> 00:43:54.824
And I said, yeah, no problem.
00:43:55.686 --> 00:44:02.215
And so they looked uncomfortable when they learned I was part of the Wilkes family, this notorious family.
00:44:02.655 --> 00:44:03.458
And we weren't the worst.
00:44:03.518 --> 00:44:03.878
Why?
00:44:03.898 --> 00:44:04.838
I don't know.
00:44:05.019 --> 00:44:05.519
We weren't the worst.
00:44:05.559 --> 00:44:06.742
We weren't the best, by the way.
00:44:07.202 --> 00:44:14.273
And so we had this video.
00:44:14.432 --> 00:44:15.574
And it wasn't a video, actually.
00:44:15.594 --> 00:44:17.016
You talked
00:44:17.137 --> 00:44:18.077
about this on your mission.
00:44:18.097 --> 00:44:19.199
I do.
00:44:19.500 --> 00:44:20.581
They showed you.
00:44:21.250 --> 00:44:27.177
I'm going to guess they showed you the Families Are Forever, I'll Build You a Rainbow.
00:44:27.197 --> 00:44:27.358
They did.
00:44:27.998 --> 00:44:29.940
I'll build you a rainbow.
00:44:30.021 --> 00:44:31.103
That's
00:44:31.202 --> 00:44:31.282
it.
00:44:31.463 --> 00:44:32.063
That's the one.
00:44:32.623 --> 00:44:35.228
Way up in the sky.
00:44:35.327 --> 00:44:37.610
Sprinkle down, sun drop.
00:44:37.891 --> 00:44:39.152
We showed that so many times.
00:44:39.193 --> 00:44:41.315
I thought it was the dippiest, goofiest video.
00:44:41.396 --> 00:44:43.998
And I remember talking to you about it on our missions.
00:44:44.619 --> 00:44:46.262
And you said, that's why I joined the church.
00:44:46.626 --> 00:44:47.367
I did.
00:44:47.666 --> 00:44:48.146
I did.
00:44:48.166 --> 00:44:49.307
So what?
00:44:49.909 --> 00:44:51.190
Yeah, it was amazing.
00:44:51.210 --> 00:44:51.730
So what happened?
00:44:51.750 --> 00:44:55.193
I'm in this home with this sister who didn't know.
00:44:55.653 --> 00:44:56.393
The girl's there.
00:44:56.815 --> 00:44:57.835
There's a couple of other members there.
00:44:57.856 --> 00:44:58.436
The missions are there.
00:44:58.456 --> 00:44:59.217
There's some food there.
00:44:59.297 --> 00:45:00.498
So, you know, food, that's great.
00:45:00.557 --> 00:45:02.018
You know, went for the food as well.
00:45:02.500 --> 00:45:03.481
You know, girl food.
00:45:03.601 --> 00:45:04.822
You don't get much better than that, right?
00:45:05.422 --> 00:45:08.085
And they played this Farmers Are Forever.
00:45:08.244 --> 00:45:09.246
And it wasn't a video.
00:45:09.445 --> 00:45:12.688
It was a film strip.
00:45:12.809 --> 00:45:15.471
And so they put the projector on the books there.
00:45:16.072 --> 00:45:16.391
And they...
00:45:16.592 --> 00:45:17.833
And there was a tape recording.
00:45:17.934 --> 00:45:19.556
And every few seconds, it would go beep.
00:45:19.657 --> 00:45:20.898
And then they would turn the...
00:45:21.639 --> 00:45:22.340
That's how old I am.
00:45:22.440 --> 00:45:23.222
That's how old I am, right?
00:45:23.682 --> 00:45:25.166
And so they would turn that.
00:45:25.346 --> 00:45:26.648
And they showed this video.
00:45:27.429 --> 00:45:28.371
And it got me.
00:45:28.630 --> 00:45:31.094
By the time it finished, I was in tears.
00:45:31.815 --> 00:45:33.358
I was like, wow.
00:45:33.458 --> 00:45:37.686
And what happened was I had a very strained relationship with my mother.
00:45:39.007 --> 00:45:41.411
You know, I wanted to have a close relationship with mum.
00:45:42.313 --> 00:45:42.492
And...
00:45:44.577 --> 00:45:46.960
desperately failed.
00:45:47.019 --> 00:45:47.621
I thought it was me.
00:45:47.880 --> 00:45:48.922
It was never me.
00:45:48.942 --> 00:45:50.284
Is your mother still with us?
00:45:50.983 --> 00:45:52.144
No, she passed away.
00:45:52.184 --> 00:45:55.248
There's an interesting story what happened there, actually.
00:45:55.268 --> 00:46:01.173
A very powerful experience I had with her just before she passed away.
00:46:01.253 --> 00:46:01.675
I had a...
00:46:03.697 --> 00:46:11.523
Something happened where I learned that she wasn't going to be with us and the feelings wouldn't leave me and I...
00:46:13.858 --> 00:46:20.786
responded to the promptings or feelings, which were very strong and very consistent, very clear.
00:46:21.367 --> 00:46:22.288
And thank goodness I did.
00:46:22.807 --> 00:46:24.990
And that's another quite an extraordinary experience.
00:46:25.672 --> 00:46:29.576
And so I'm in this house, they're showing this video.
00:46:32.298 --> 00:46:39.568
The girl has got my interest for the first few minutes, and then I get involved in the video.
00:46:40.027 --> 00:46:48.085
And As you know, the story there depicts this relationship with his mom and his mom passes away and his tears and the sound.
00:46:48.146 --> 00:47:03.164
I mean, you know, this technique of imagery and sound and the tactics and the skill and strategy for associating imagery with sound and emotions.
00:47:03.809 --> 00:47:11.438
which is a very, very smart way that different organizations do these days, including the church, by the way, not just the church, but other organizations.
00:47:12.019 --> 00:47:15.222
For me, I took it hook, line, and sinker.
00:47:15.963 --> 00:47:19.829
I watched this video.
00:47:20.969 --> 00:47:21.931
It was quite emotional.
00:47:21.951 --> 00:47:24.855
I tried to hold my tears back, but my eyes were watery.
00:47:25.876 --> 00:47:28.458
I didn't cry or bawl my eyes out, but I was quite emotional.
00:47:28.880 --> 00:47:29.920
Mysteries could see this.
00:47:31.041 --> 00:47:33.485
The girl could see that she was in tears.
00:47:33.525 --> 00:47:35.527
She looked across and smiled at me.
00:47:35.608 --> 00:47:36.849
And I remember that.
00:47:37.530 --> 00:47:40.715
And it was quite an emotional experience for me.
00:47:41.335 --> 00:47:51.768
And I think for me, what resonated with me was the, you know, that's the first time I've been able to have the experience with other people who I didn't really know that well.
00:47:52.385 --> 00:47:55.449
Any such experiences happened on a very personal level.
00:47:55.791 --> 00:48:02.059
I didn't share my emotions or any tears that I had shared or any emotions that I experienced was all done in private.
00:48:02.139 --> 00:48:06.824
You don't do such things in front of your family or friends, obviously, because that's a weakness.
00:48:07.385 --> 00:48:13.134
But there I was quite emotional with these people I hardly knew.
00:48:13.153 --> 00:48:18.961
And the missionaries then moved into a discussion.
00:48:19.782 --> 00:48:21.885
They called it the Holy Ghost Dialogue.
00:48:22.882 --> 00:48:28.072
And you might recall that, because I think we had that in Scotland when you and I were serving in Scotland.
00:48:28.112 --> 00:48:29.155
There was a Holy Ghost dialogue.
00:48:29.175 --> 00:48:36.811
It was a yellow card that you'd have taped into the missionary discussions before the first discussion there.
00:48:37.353 --> 00:48:38.836
It was called the Holy Ghost dialogue.
00:48:38.896 --> 00:48:40.018
And essentially that's what they did.
00:48:40.059 --> 00:48:48.336
They went into this conversation about what we'd just seen, very clever, actually, very smart, and very genuine.
00:48:48.376 --> 00:48:50.559
The missionaries were very genuine, very sincere.
00:48:50.579 --> 00:48:51.940
That came through very strongly.
00:48:52.481 --> 00:48:55.885
You could tell that they believed what they were going to teach me.
00:48:56.547 --> 00:49:08.643
And they said that they taught us what the video was about, the principles of eternal life, eternal family, being with people that love you and accept you, that value you.
00:49:08.702 --> 00:49:14.360
And keeping in mind what I said earlier, Jim, that These words, these feelings really resonated with me.
00:49:14.559 --> 00:49:23.297
There I am as lost boy, lost guy, so much doubt, so much fear, low self-esteem.
00:49:23.318 --> 00:49:26.242
I can't begin to tell you how worthless I felt at times.
00:49:28.001 --> 00:49:34.829
And there I was with a group of people I didn't know talking about things that I'd never discussed or felt before.
00:49:35.510 --> 00:49:37.391
And they then said to me, that really struck me.
00:49:37.431 --> 00:49:42.317
They said that these feelings that I'd felt and that we'd all felt were in actual fact the Holy Ghost.
00:49:43.559 --> 00:49:53.168
And that this was a message from God to come into his fold, that they'd been searching for me and others who were in that room at that time.
00:49:53.208 --> 00:50:13.788
I think there were three investigators that they felt, they testified, in the name of Jesus Christ, that they had been sent to this part of the world at this time to seek those who were looking for truth and looking for meaning and purpose and looking for value and looking for acceptance.
00:50:14.128 --> 00:50:16.231
And I was listening and I'm like, that's me.
00:50:16.431 --> 00:50:19.255
That's everything they said is me.
00:50:19.596 --> 00:50:21.838
There wasn't one thing they didn't say that wasn't me.
00:50:22.498 --> 00:50:24.561
One thing that they didn't say that was me.
00:50:25.083 --> 00:50:27.226
And so it just...
00:50:27.458 --> 00:50:59.849
resonated with me so strongly and I felt for the first time that I'd found some sense of purpose it was a hope it was a hope that what they were saying was true and real even though the whole experience I didn't fully understand what was going on at the time it was very emotional but it was just a light if you like at the end of the tunnel and boy did I need at that time I can't stress enough how lost I was And so they said, this is the Holy Ghost.
00:51:00.869 --> 00:51:01.971
The Lord's been looking for you.
00:51:01.990 --> 00:51:07.476
You are invited to take up the discussions, et cetera, et cetera.
00:51:07.496 --> 00:51:12.201
And if you do and you follow these principles, your life will be transformed.
00:51:12.240 --> 00:51:15.963
All the things that you ever hoped and dreamed for can be yours.
00:51:15.983 --> 00:51:21.929
You can get yourself out of the situation that you're in, find solutions to your problems, find meaning and purpose and value.
00:51:21.949 --> 00:51:25.853
And my gosh, that just really, really hit me hard.
00:51:26.050 --> 00:51:27.831
in a very significant way.
00:51:28.612 --> 00:51:32.016
And so we stayed a little bit longer.
00:51:32.056 --> 00:51:33.378
We had this discussion.
00:51:33.418 --> 00:51:36.581
They asked me about how I felt, and I didn't answer.
00:51:36.661 --> 00:51:41.327
I think what I was feeling was written all over my face, really.
00:51:42.288 --> 00:51:45.751
They knew I'd felt something, and I did, but I didn't talk about it.
00:51:46.072 --> 00:51:47.173
I listened to what they were saying.
00:51:47.454 --> 00:51:50.556
I think when they asked me how did I feel, I said I felt really good.
00:51:50.637 --> 00:51:54.181
I mean, that was the best I could do at that time in terms of sharing my emotions.
00:51:54.818 --> 00:52:00.065
But I left that meeting, that gathering, feeling very, very different.
00:52:00.766 --> 00:52:07.498
And actually, something happened there that I was trying to figure out what happened, trying to explain to myself what on earth just happened just then.
00:52:07.538 --> 00:52:12.826
And I walked back on like cloud nine, back to where I lived up the road there.
00:52:13.867 --> 00:52:19.436
That's not before I had a chat with a girl and arranged to have a date with a girl, by the way.
00:52:20.338 --> 00:52:22.342
You covered all your bases?
00:52:22.753 --> 00:52:23.954
I curled my bases, yeah.
00:52:23.994 --> 00:52:24.755
I ate some food.
00:52:24.775 --> 00:52:26.677
Was she a member of the church or was she also?
00:52:27.239 --> 00:52:28.380
No, she was investigating, yeah.
00:52:28.440 --> 00:52:39.833
So the missionaries had found her through tracking on another street, maybe a few blocks away, and she'd come to this house, which is close to our island.
00:52:40.634 --> 00:52:46.340
I'm sure more details will come to light as I think about this experience, but it was a very profound experience for me personally.
00:52:46.940 --> 00:52:49.864
And I left, I walked home, I felt very different.
00:52:49.943 --> 00:52:51.485
I felt I'd found something.
00:52:52.097 --> 00:53:11.141
And I was on cloud nine and I walked back and I went through the door at my home and I had forgotten in that moment the risks of sharing with my family or at least the warnings.
00:53:11.202 --> 00:53:16.668
I'd forgotten the warnings of my mother who told me very clearly not to attend this event.
00:53:17.369 --> 00:53:20.173
And so I went back into the house and she said, oh, where have you been?
00:53:20.898 --> 00:53:34.195
and I told her, she was absolutely furious, very angry, very colorful language, swearing, struck me physically, which was common back then.
00:53:34.315 --> 00:53:40.985
If you got a slap across the face or the backside or you got hit on your butt with a belt, it was common.
00:53:41.125 --> 00:53:45.871
Even at school, by the way, that happened at school quite frequently and was quite normal back then.
00:53:46.773 --> 00:53:50.237
It's very different now, but back then, to get...
00:53:50.690 --> 00:54:00.425
get clipped around the ear hole, as they say, or around the face or the butt with a belt or a ruler was not uncommon.
00:54:00.847 --> 00:54:06.422
And so It was a very sharp rebuke, physically, verbally, from my mum.
00:54:06.443 --> 00:54:08.465
I had to go to my room, very angry.
00:54:08.846 --> 00:54:13.992
My mum then stormed off down the road to this member and banged on the door.
00:54:14.092 --> 00:54:32.177
My mum was very feisty, just a real fighter, banged on the door and just tossed strips off this member and warned her that significant repercussions would happen to her and her family and her property should she try to proselytise me into the church.
00:54:32.961 --> 00:55:02.568
So that happened, you know, I went from this feeling of euphoria and cloud nine to being brought down to earth very, very bluntly and very directly crashed onto the ground there and reminded actually that, you know, I think the contrast between the two experiences was even more difficult because when you live in an environment, you can get numb to it.
00:55:03.088 --> 00:55:05.672
You can become desensitized.
00:55:05.711 --> 00:55:15.163
Things that aren't normal can become normal, like the physical things back then that everybody thought was normal but weren't really in terms of the physical.
00:55:16.344 --> 00:55:32.090
I'm not sure if I put violence to it, but being smacked or being clipped, which was quite normal back then, and the shouting, the arguing, all the dysfunctionality, which happened with lots of farmers at that time in that neighborhood, that you come to accept as being normal, which isn't normal.
00:55:32.811 --> 00:55:38.820
And so going from that very profound experience back to reality was quite a shock.
00:55:39.458 --> 00:55:41.840
Anyway, so just moving forward here.
00:55:41.880 --> 00:55:49.452
So basically what happened, as I thought about the experience on the nighttime, I couldn't not think about how this experience made me feel.
00:55:50.713 --> 00:55:51.835
I thought about it all the time.
00:55:51.855 --> 00:55:53.416
I couldn't stop thinking about it.
00:55:53.516 --> 00:55:59.485
And I longed, Jim, I longed to have that feeling of value again, which I didn't have anymore at the house.
00:56:00.246 --> 00:56:01.327
And so I sought it out.
00:56:02.009 --> 00:56:03.391
I went to knock on the neighbor's door.
00:56:03.451 --> 00:56:05.432
She said, Ian, you cannot be here.
00:56:05.985 --> 00:56:40.447
I've been warned by a family you can't be here if you want to learn about the church you must contact the missionaries directly here's where they live and so that's what I did I was so desperate to feel that sense of belonging that I'd felt before that I it's the thing that completely consumed me and so I went to the the spa the flat above the spa store the one whose window I'd put through months before, perhaps, or a year before.
00:56:40.467 --> 00:56:44.413
And I knocked on the door and the missionaries came to the door and they're quite shocked.
00:56:44.472 --> 00:56:46.996
And I said, I'd like to learn more.
00:56:47.036 --> 00:56:47.797
I want to learn more.
00:56:47.838 --> 00:56:52.385
And they said, well, okay, you need to get permission from your mother.
00:56:52.737 --> 00:56:54.880
because I was 15, 16 at the time.
00:56:55.702 --> 00:56:58.025
And I said, that's not going to happen.
00:56:58.606 --> 00:57:01.871
She says, well, we'll speak to our mission president.
00:57:01.971 --> 00:57:07.057
Anyway, they got permission to teach me, but I couldn't be taught anywhere near where I lived.
00:57:07.157 --> 00:57:17.934
I actually went, I don't know, maybe three miles away and I was taught in a place called Ferry Fryston, probably two miles away, quite a bit away from where I lived in this other member's home.
00:57:17.974 --> 00:57:24.001
And the missionaries would teach me secretly the discussions, and they took me through all
00:57:24.061 --> 00:57:25.463
the six discussions all the way through.
00:57:25.664 --> 00:57:30.251
So you're saying you were taught by the missionaries without the permission of your mother.
00:57:31.032 --> 00:57:31.353
That's correct.
00:57:31.373 --> 00:57:37.262
Missionaries told you you needed to get permission from your mother, and you said that's not going to happen, and they taught you anyway.
00:57:38.603 --> 00:57:38.704
They
00:57:38.744 --> 00:57:38.844
did.
00:57:38.884 --> 00:57:42.530
Very cool.
00:57:44.152 --> 00:57:46.615
Or very scandalous, depending on your point of view there.
00:57:47.456 --> 00:57:47.918
And what that...
00:57:48.097 --> 00:57:52.184
Reminds me, Jim, in life, you've got all these rules and regulations and everything.
00:57:52.244 --> 00:57:55.829
In my line of work, I do a lot of regulations and rules, and they're all very, very important.
00:57:56.170 --> 00:58:00.476
But some things in life need to be bent.
00:58:01.478 --> 00:58:13.817
If we follow every rule strictly, some of the more draconian rules, if you like, and others will disagree with this, I'm sure, that's fine, but sometimes certain rules are...
00:58:15.074 --> 00:58:17.318
need stretching or bending.
00:58:17.358 --> 00:58:26.331
And I think in this case, and by the way, it's no exaggeration to say that the church, the missionaries, the gospel actually saved me.
00:58:28.215 --> 00:58:31.380
There were times I just didn't feel I could continue with my own life.
00:58:31.500 --> 00:58:35.846
There were three moments where I was right at the end of my tether, right at the end.
00:58:35.867 --> 00:58:41.996
And one particular moment that it was so desperate, so unhappy, so sad.
00:58:42.797 --> 00:58:45.168
And And then the missionaries doing what they did.
00:58:45.208 --> 00:58:46.728
And they loved me.
00:58:46.768 --> 00:58:47.489
They cared for me.
00:58:47.530 --> 00:58:47.969
They were genuine.
00:58:48.050 --> 00:58:48.771
They were sincere.
00:58:48.811 --> 00:58:55.677
There's no exaggeration to say they saved me from what could have been a very, very awful state.
00:58:56.358 --> 00:59:05.327
Those very, very dark moments, very black, very dark moments, which no one should go through, especially a young kid should go through that, right?
00:59:05.947 --> 00:59:12.614
You know, questioning whether they want to continue living anymore in a very serious way on one particular occasion.
00:59:13.250 --> 00:59:25.329
So being taught without permission, you know, is actually, which saved me, is a rule that I would gladly have them break again, frankly.
00:59:25.911 --> 00:59:32.601
Well, there's a great deal more to this story, but one of the rules I don't want to break is trying to keep these to around an hour.
00:59:33.342 --> 00:59:37.588
So this is part one, and we will end up releasing...
00:59:38.081 --> 00:59:40.614
Further parts in further episodes.
00:59:41.257 --> 00:59:44.353
Until then, we will see you next time on Inside Out.