Podcasts about relief society president

Felipe & Petra Chou are back after their great episode about Mongolia to discuss their new book: Voices of Latter-day Saint Women in the Pacific & Asia. I wanted to speak to Felipe & Petra to learn about these incredible female pioneers. I am still thinking about the things I learned, this was a moving experience to me to learn about these women. I felt of Felipe & Petra's sincere admiration for them. Some highlights from this episode include when Moroni visited a member of Thai royalty, the stories of Temple Matrons in the Hong Kong Temple, and memories of the first Relief Society President in Korea.--You can find the book at the following link:- https://rsc.byu.edu/book/voices-latter-day-saint-women-pacific-asiaFollow For All The Saints on social media for updates and inspiring content:www.instagram.com/forallthesaintspodhttps://www.facebook.com/forallthesaintspod/For All The Saints episodes are released every Monday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVDUQg_qZIU&list=UULFFf7vzrJ2LNWmp1Kl-c6K9Qhttps://open.spotify.com/show/3j64txm9qbGVVZOM48P4HS?si=bb31d048e05141f2https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/for-all-the-saints/id1703815271If you have feedback or any suggestions for topics or guests, connect with Ben & Sean via hello@forallthesaints.org or DM on InstagramConversations to Refresh Your Faith.For All The Saints podcast was established in 2023 by Ben Hancock to express his passion and desire for more dialogue around faith, religious belief, and believers' perspectives on the topics of our day. Tune into For All The Saints every Monday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more.Follow For All The Saints on social media for daily inspiration.

Reflecting on the first public interview with Relief Society General President Elaine Jack regarding “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Dr. Barbara Morgan Gardner, professor of Church history and doctrine, and Olivia Osguthorpe uncover and clarify truths and perspectives never before documented and critical to historical accuracy.  In the months leading up to the general Relief Society meeting of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Saturday, September 23, 1995, then-General Relief Society Presidency Elaine L. Jack, Aileen H. Clyde, and Chieko Okazaki likely had no idea this meeting would become one of the most impactful and memorable of the twentieth century. For it was in this meeting that President Gordon B. Hinckley presented “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” which outlines the Church's doctrinal beliefs concerning the family, gender, and marriage. What was the Relief Society President's role in this critical meeting and decision-making process?  Why was the family proclamation delivered at this time, in this meeting, and to this audience? In this episode Dr. Barbara Morgan Gardner and Olivia Osguthorpe discuss answers to these questions and more. Through analysis of the journals, personal writings, and interviews with President Jack, Gardner and Osguthorpe provide much needed clarity on the inception and presentation of The Family: A Proclamation to the World.    Barbara Morgan Gardner Publications: “Delivering the Family Proclamation: Insights from Former Relief Society President Elaine L. Jack” (Religious Educator, 24.2, 2023) “Reanchoring Our Purpose to Jesus Christ” (Religious Educator, 23.2, 2022) “Using Section 84 to Emphasize the Priesthood Power of Women” (Religious Educator, 22.2, 2021) “‘Line upon Line': Joseph Smith's Growing Understanding of the Eternal Family” (in Raising the Standard of Truth, Religious Studies Center, 2020)     Click here to learn more about Barbara Morgan Gardner   Olivia Osguthorpe Publications: “Delivering the Family Proclamation: Insights from Former Relief Society President Elaine L. Jack” (Religious Educator, 24.2, 2023) “Mentoring: Covenant Women's Leadership” (Review Magazine, Fall 2024)  

In this compelling episode, Rian Anderson unites with her mother, Jen, to share their powerful journey of faith and family. While Rian served her Mormon mission, her entire family left the church. Jen is here to tell her side of the story. Jen shares about how her mother battled with cancer while she was in High School and after marriage Jen's husband struggled with pornography. As a former Relief Society President, Scout Leader, and member of the Stake Young Women's Presidency, Jen also reflects on her experiences with church leadership and the inequalities she witnessed. The conversation touches on her son coming out as gay and the impact of her decision to leave the church on Rian's mission. Join them as they candidly discuss their stories and the complexities of their faith journey. Show Notes YouTube Mormon Stories Thanks Our Generous Donors! Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today: One-time or recurring donation through Donorbox Support us on Patreon PayPal Venmo Our Platforms: YouTube Patreon Spotify Apple Podcasts Contact us:MormonStories@gmail.comPO Box 171085, Salt Lake City, UT 84117 Social Media: Insta: @mormstories TikTok: @mormonstoriespodcast Join the Discord

Gospel On The Nile - https://www.cwicmedia.com/gospel-on-the-nile   "This was Christ's Doctrine"  Former General Relief Society President Julie Beck throws "truth bombs" on "Theology Of The Family," the Family Proclamation, and The Family as The Doctrine of Christ. www.cwicmedia.com 

Rebecca Woolf was raised in Provo, Utah, the daughter of John and Shawna Edwards, with four brothers. She met her husband Landon at Brigham Young University. After graduation they lived in four different states as Landon studied and trained to become a pediatric anesthesiologist, and Becca studied and trained to become a mother of four incredible boys. They have now settled in Spokane, Washington. Becca has served in the Church as a counselor in Primary, Young Women, and Relief Society, as a Sunday School teacher, and as a Relief Society and Young Women president. Links When Being Released Hurts There is already a discussion started about this podcast. Share your thoughts. Transcript coming soon Get 14-day access to the Core Leader Library Highlights Becca vulnerably shares her experience as a Relief Society president in a new ward where the sisters embraced each other and she grew by striving to love as Jesus did. Highlights coming soon The Leading Saints Podcast is one of the top independent Latter-day Saints podcasts as part of nonprofit Leading Saints' mission to help Latter-day Saints be better prepared to lead. Learn more and listen to any of the past episodes for free at LeadingSaints.org. Past guests include Emily Belle Freeman, David Butler, Hank Smith, John Bytheway, Reyna and Elena Aburto, Liz Wiseman, Stephen M. R. Covey, Julie Beck, Brad Wilcox, Jody Moore, Tony Overbay, John H. Groberg, Elaine Dalton, Tad R. Callister, Lynn G. Robbins, J. Devn Cornish, Bonnie Oscarson, Dennis B. Neuenschwander, Anthony Sweat, John Hilton III, Barbara Morgan Gardner, Blair Hodges, Whitney Johnson, Ryan Gottfredson, Greg McKeown, Ganel-Lyn Condie, Michael Goodman, Wendy Ulrich, Richard Ostler, Kirby Heyborne, Taysom Hill and many more in over 700 episodes. Discover podcasts, articles, virtual conferences, and live events related to callings such as the bishopric, Relief Society, elders quorum, Primary, youth leadership, stake leadership, ward mission, ward council, young adults, ministering, and teaching.

In this captivating interview, Shannon Lamb takes us on a profound journey through her experiences within the Mormon faith, unveiling the intricate tapestry of her personal and spiritual evolution. Shannon's narrative is a thought-provoking exploration of the complexities surrounding sexuality, gender roles, and institutional authority within the Church. Her courageous questioning of long-held beliefs, her encounters with Church leaders, and her advocacy for a more inclusive and compassionate community paint a vivid portrait of a woman determined to navigate the path between tradition and progress. Episode Show Notes YouTube Link   Mormon Stories Thanks Our Generous Donors! Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today: One-time or recurring donation through Donorbox Support us on Patreon PayPal Venmo Our Platforms: Youtube Patreon Spotify Apple Podcasts Contact us: MormonStories@gmail.com  PO Box 171085, Salt Lake City, UT 84117  Social Media: Insta: @mormstories Tiktok: @mormonstoriespodcast Join the Discord

Welcome back to the second episode in my series for LDS (Mormon) parents of gay children. In part 1, Episode 155, Jake guided us through this first phase of his coming out journey as a 34 yo man to his parents a little over 4 months ago.    On today's episode, we have an additional special guest, Sue Petersen, who was the Stake Relief Society president in the Elk Ridge Utah Stake for the past 5 years. Sue has a grown daughter who has been in a lesbian relationship for the past 7 years. She shares with us how she has navigated that path, the mistakes she made and the bridges she has built by following Christ's example.   For those not familiar with the LDS church, the Relief Society is the womens organization within the church. In Elk Ridge there are 12 wards or congregations and Sue was the leader over all those.   I want to say in the spirit of disclosure, we are still only getting Jake's perspective at this stage. We don't use his last name or call out who parents are out of respect for their privacy so please keep that in mind as you listen.   Sue holds a support group for moms of gay children every month on the second Thursday, 7-9pm. If you are local to Utah County and would like to attend, please reach out to her at suepete@me.com   #LoveThyNeighbor #GayMormon #MomDadImGay #ThemGays #ComingOut #Suicide#LGBTQ #MormonStories #ItsWhoIAm #IDidntChooseThis #DreamsOfAParent#MourningTheLoss #IRespectMyParents #Disowned #ElkRidgeUtahStake  

Angela Okada earned a Bachelor of Arts from BYU and a Master of Arts from the University of Utah, both in Speech Language Pathology. She worked as a speech language pathologist in a northern Virginia school district lived for six years before moving back to Utah, where she continues to work as a school-based SLP. Angela has four nieces and a nephew who she absolutely adores, and she enjoys reading, watching college sports, and trying new restaurants with friends. She has served as a missionary in the Georgia, Atlanta mission, a Young Women counselor, temple ordinance worker, and as a Relief Society counselor and president in both a young single adult ward and a family ward. Links There is already a discussion started about this podcast. Share your thoughts HERE. Watch on YouTube Transcript coming soon Get 14-day access to the Core Leader Library Highlights Coming soon The Leading Saints Podcast is one of the top independent Latter-day Saints podcasts as part of nonprofit Leading Saints' mission to help Latter-day Saints be better prepared to lead. Learn more and listen to any of the past episodes for free at LeadingSaints.org. Past guests include Emily Belle Freeman, David Butler, Hank Smith, John Bytheway, Reyna and Elena Aburto, Liz Wiseman, Stephen M. R. Covey, Julie Beck, Brad Wilcox, Jody Moore, Tony Overbay, John H. Groberg, Elaine Dalton, Tad R. Callister, Lynn G. Robbins, J. Devn Cornish, Bonnie Oscarson, Dennis B. Neuenschwander, Anthony Sweat, John Hilton III, Barbara Morgan Gardner, Blair Hodges, Whitney Johnson, Ryan Gottfredson, Greg McKeown, Ganel-Lyn Condie, Michael Goodman, Wendy Ulrich, Richard Ostler, and many more in over 700 episodes. Discover podcasts, articles, virtual conferences, and live events related to callings such as the bishopric, Relief Society, elders quorum, Primary, youth leadership, stake leadership, ward mission, ward council, young adults, ministering, and teaching.

Christiane Lauener was born and raised in Switzerland to a Canadian mother and a Swiss father—both the only converts in their families. She has served as a ward Relief Society president, in Primary and Young Women presidencies, Sunday School, public relations, and probably every other calling a woman can have. She is currently serving as the stake Relief Society president for the second time. Christiane served in the Canada Winnipeg mission and later earned a bachelors degree in English Literature. She is married and the mother of four grown sons, including one with severe disabilities, and works as an assistant to a patent engineer. A recurring highlight is her weekly visit to the temple, and she counts her faithfulness to God and His to her as the greatest blessing in life. Links There is already a discussion started about this podcast. Share your thoughts HERE. Watch on YouTube Transcript coming soon Get 14-day access to the Core Leader Library Highlights 02:30 Christiane shares her background and what the church is like in Switzerland. Navigating church with multiple languages. 07:10 Christiane was surprised to be called a second time to be stake Relief Society president. She shares her leadership experience. 09:00 Visiting the wards in her stake and how they do meetings as a stake 11:15 What are the main concerns of Relief Society presidents right now? 14:50 One of the most important principles for Christiane is personal conversion. 19:40 Stepping up and speaking in stake council. Christiane has been bold in sharing her ideas but they aren't always well received. However, she keeps going and keeps speaking up. 23:00 Women need to be more seen in our wards and stakes. There is conflict over women leaders sitting on the stand. It's important for not only the women to be seen but so that they can also see the ward and who might be struggling. Also having young women contribute in sacrament meeting. 27:20 There seems to be more balance seeing men and women serve in the temple than in our Sunday meetings. People visiting our church aren't seeing the women and probably don't know that there is a whole organization for the women in our church. 29:30 Switzerland is the motor of Europe. For many years Switzerland had the only temple in Europe. Many of the members of Switzerland emigrated to the US and the growth of the Church there has been slower. 33:30 Do members understand the depth of the changes that President Nelson has made since becoming prophet? The importance of the work of the family and home. 36:15 Christiane shares the people and books that have changed her and inspired her life. 38:45 What motherhood and leadership have taught Christiane and made her a better follower of Jesus Christ The Leading Saints Podcast is one of the top independent Latter-day Saints podcasts as part of nonprofit Leading Saints' mission to help Latter-day Saints be better prepared to lead. Learn more and listen to any of the past episodes for free at LeadingSaints.org. Past guests include Emily Belle Freeman, David Butler, Hank Smith, John Bytheway, Reyna and Elena Aburto, Liz Wiseman, Stephen M. R. Covey, Julie Beck, Brad Wilcox, Jody Moore, Tony Overbay, John H. Groberg, Elaine Dalton, Tad R. Callister, Lynn G. Robbins, J. Devn Cornish, Bonnie Oscarson, Dennis B. Neuenschwander, Anthony Sweat, John Hilton III, Barbara Morgan Gardner, Blair Hodges, Whitney Johnson, Ryan Gottfredson, Greg McKeown, Ganel-Lyn Condie, Michael Goodman, Wendy Ulrich, Richard Ostler, and many more in over 600 episodes. Discover podcasts, articles, virtual conferences, and live events related to callings such as the bishopric, Relief Society, elders quorum, Primary, youth leadership, stake leadership, ward mission, ward council, young adults, ministering, and teaching.

Christiane Lauener was born and raised in Switzerland to a Canadian mother and a Swiss father—both the only converts in their families. She has served as a ward Relief Society president, in Primary and Young Women presidencies, Sunday School, public relations, and probably every other calling a woman can have. She is currently serving as the stake Relief Society president for the second time. Christiane served in the Canada Winnipeg mission and later earned a bachelors degree in English Literature. She is married and the mother of four grown sons, including one with severe disabilities, and works as an assistant to a patent engineer. A recurring highlight is her weekly visit to the temple, and she counts her faithfulness to God and His to her as the greatest blessing in life. Links There is already a discussion started about this podcast. Share your thoughts HERE. Watch on YouTube Transcript coming soon Get 14-day access to the Core Leader Library Highlights 02:30 Christiane shares her background and what the church is like in Switzerland. Navigating church with multiple languages. 07:10 Christiane was surprised to be called a second time to be stake Relief Society president. She shares her leadership experience. 09:00 Visiting the wards in her stake and how they do meetings as a stake 11:15 What are the main concerns of Relief Society presidents right now? 14:50 One of the most important principles for Christiane is personal conversion. 19:40 Stepping up and speaking in stake council. Christiane has been bold in sharing her ideas but they aren't always well received. However, she keeps going and keeps speaking up. 23:00 Women need to be more seen in our wards and stakes. There is conflict over women leaders sitting on the stand. It's important for not only the women to be seen but so that they can also see the ward and who might be struggling. Also having young women contribute in sacrament meeting. 27:20 There seems to be more balance seeing men and women serve in the temple than in our Sunday meetings. People visiting our church aren't seeing the women and probably don't know that there is a whole organization for the women in our church. 29:30 Switzerland is the motor of Europe. For many years Switzerland had the only temple in Europe. Many of the members of Switzerland emigrated to the US and the growth of the Church there has been slower. 33:30 Do members understand the depth of the changes that President Nelson has made since becoming prophet? The importance of the work of the family and home. 36:15 Christiane shares the people and books that have changed her and inspired her life. 38:45 What motherhood and leadership have taught Christiane and made her a better follower of Jesus Christ The Leading Saints Podcast is one of the top independent Latter-day Saints podcasts as part of nonprofit Leading Saints' mission to help Latter-day Saints be better prepared to lead. Learn more and listen to any of the past episodes for free at LeadingSaints.org. Past guests include Emily Belle Freeman, David Butler, Hank Smith, John Bytheway, Reyna and Elena Aburto, Liz Wiseman, Stephen M. R. Covey, Julie Beck, Brad Wilcox, Jody Moore, Tony Overbay, John H. Groberg, Elaine Dalton, Tad R. Callister, Lynn G. Robbins, J. Devn Cornish, Bonnie Oscarson, Dennis B. Neuenschwander, Anthony Sweat, John Hilton III, Barbara Morgan Gardner, Blair Hodges, Whitney Johnson, Ryan Gottfredson, Greg McKeown, Ganel-Lyn Condie, Michael Goodman, Wendy Ulrich, Richard Ostler, and many more in over 600 episodes. Discover podcasts, articles, virtual conferences, and live events related to callings such as the bishopric, Relief Society, elders quorum, Primary, youth leadership, stake leadership, ward mission, ward council, young adults, ministering, and teaching.

Kim Crump is a wife to Justin and mom of three kids.  She works for Weber School District as a Speech Therapist.  She enjoys traveling, shopping, chocolate, nice freshly laundered sheets on her bed and hot baths in the winter.  Kim has been a member of the LDS church since she was 8 and has held many callings including primary and Relief Society teacher, nursery leader,  many activities committees, Young Women's President and Relief Society President.  One of her favorite sayings to live by is “you can do hard things”.  ____________________________ The ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Beyond the Shadow of Doubt⁠™⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ podcast is a proud member of the Dialogue Podcast Network found at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DialogueJournal.com/podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Part of the Dialogue Journal, the Dialogue Podcast Network was founded by Eugene England, a Mormon writer, teacher and scholar. “My faith encourages my curiosity and awe,” Gene wrote in the very first issue of the journal. “It thrusts me out into relationship with all creation” and “encourages me to enter into dialogue.” My hope is that this podcast is an extension of his vision. Hopeful Spaces is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Dallas Hope Charities⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ component of Hopeful Discussions, which is sponsored by Mercedes-Benz Financial Services USA. Hopeful Spaces is a monthly parent support group facilitated by Meagan Skidmore Coaching. To join Hopeful Spaces is free; send an email to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠chc@dallashopecharities.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  If you are ready to get the care and attention you deserve through 1:1 coaching I invite you to reach out. Send an email to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠hello@meaganskidmorecoaching.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠ Connect with me at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠meaganskidmorecoaching.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠; subscribe to get my free Pronouns 101 guide & download my free 20+ page LGBTQ+ Resource Guide for families.  Please help the podcast grow by following, leaving a 5 star review on Spotify or Apple podcasts and sharing with friends.  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠CLICK HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to enter the PODCAST GIVEAWAY by Aug 31, 2023- I've extended it an extra month! Share it with a friend; if your friend's name is drawn you BOTH WIN.

Kim Crump is a wife to Justin and mom of three kids.  She works for Weber School District as a Speech Therapist.  She enjoys traveling, shopping, chocolate, nice freshly laundered sheets on her bed and hot baths in the winter.  Kim has been a member of the LDS church since she was 8 and has held many callings including primary and Relief Society teacher, nursery leader,  many activities committees, Young Women's President and Relief Society President.  One of her favorite sayings to live by is “you can do hard things”.  ____________________________ The ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Beyond the Shadow of Doubt⁠™⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ podcast is a proud member of the Dialogue Podcast Network found at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DialogueJournal.com/podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Part of the Dialogue Journal, the Dialogue Podcast Network was founded by Eugene England, a Mormon writer, teacher and scholar. “My faith encourages my curiosity and awe,” Gene wrote in the very first issue of the journal. “It thrusts me out into relationship with all creation” and “encourages me to enter into dialogue.” My hope is that this podcast is an extension of his vision. Hopeful Spaces is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Dallas Hope Charities⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ component of Hopeful Discussions, which is sponsored by Mercedes-Benz Financial Services USA. Hopeful Spaces is a monthly parent support group facilitated by Meagan Skidmore Coaching. To join Hopeful Spaces is free; send an email to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠chc@dallashopecharities.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  If you are ready to get the care and attention you deserve through 1:1 coaching I invite you to reach out. Send an email to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠hello@meaganskidmorecoaching.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠ Connect with me at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠meaganskidmorecoaching.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠; subscribe to get my free Pronouns 101 guide & download my free 20+ page LGBTQ+ Resource Guide for families.  Please help the podcast grow by following, leaving a 5 star review on Spotify or Apple podcasts and sharing with friends.  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠CLICK HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to enter the PODCAST GIVEAWAY by Aug 31, 2023- I've extended it an extra month! Share it with a friend; if your friend's name is drawn you BOTH WIN.

**This is a throwback episode of The Little Lessons Podcast. It was originally published on November 3, 2022**I love having the chance to sit down and talk with good friends! And for this episode I got to do just that. Megan Pizarro is the Relief Society President in my ward (she oversees the women's organization in my church congregation) and she is also a dear friend. She's also been one of the biggest supporters of this podcast and for that I am so so grateful! In this episode, Megan and I talk about her calling as the Relief Society president and the very important lessons that she's learned along the way as she served the women in our ward and as she has learned to rely on  Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the people that she serves alongside. We also discuss some of her unique life experiences that  help her be more effective at reaching out to those who are struggling and showing empathy to all of those that she encounters. She has an amazing story that it truly inspiring!

"If we are willing to step out into the dark, He will show us who is in charge." Stephanie gives an example of feeling "stuck" in growing her family and her education, and how following the prompting to stick out a hard job brought unexpected and miraculous results. She talks about being called as Relief Society President in a ward with high needs just after finding out she was pregnant. And she gives us Alma 36:27 to give us hope to show that we can rely on Jesus Christ because we have been supported through all of our trials, big and small. IF YOU LOVED THIS EPISODE, WILL YOU SHARE IT WITH THE WORLD? This podcast is nothing without your testimonies and your support.  Know someone who should be on this podcast? Email Lynzi at whyistaypodcast@gmail.com and we will get them on here. Follow along on Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/whyistaypodcast/ "Why I Stay" is a faith-based podcast exploring the lives and experiences of members of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This podcast is not produced or endorsed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All rights reserved. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/whyistaypodcast/message

Tune in to this gripping episode as we present the testimony of Relief Society President Alice Gilbert in the high-profile trial of Lori Vallow Daybell. Gain unprecedented insight into the case as we hear firsthand accounts and experiences shared by Gilbert, who held a unique perspective on Lori's life. Don't miss this chance to unravel the complexities of the case and better understand the events leading up to the trial. Want to listen to ALL of our Podcasts Ad-Free? Subscribe through Apple Podcasts, and try it for 3 days free: https://tinyurl.com/ycw626tj Follow Our Other Cases:   Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski (All Cases) - https://audioboom.com/channels/5040505-hidden-killers-with-tony-brueski-breaking-news-commentary Chad & Lori Daybell - https://audioboom.com/channels/5098105-demise-of-the-daybells-the-lori-chad-daybell-story The Murder of Ana Walshe - https://audioboom.com/channels/5093967-finding-ana-this-disappearance-of-ana-walshe Alex Murdaugh - https://audioboom.com/channels/5097527-the-trial-of-alex-murdaugh The Idaho Murders, The Case Against Bryan Kohberger - https://audioboom.com/channels/5098223-the-idaho-murders-the-case-against-bryan-kohberger Lucy Letby - https://audioboom.com/channels/5099406-nurse-of-death-the-lucy-letby-story Follow Tony Brueski On Twitter https://twitter.com/tonybpod Join our Facebook Discussion Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/834636321133

Tune in to this gripping episode as we present the testimony of Relief Society President Alice Gilbert in the high-profile trial of Lori Vallow Daybell. Gain unprecedented insight into the case as we hear firsthand accounts and experiences shared by Gilbert, who held a unique perspective on Lori's life. Don't miss this chance to unravel the complexities of the case and better understand the events leading up to the trial. Want to listen to ALL of our Podcasts Ad-Free? Subscribe through Apple Podcasts, and try it for 3 days free: https://tinyurl.com/ycw626tj Follow Our Other Cases:   Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski (All Cases) - https://audioboom.com/channels/5040505-hidden-killers-with-tony-brueski-breaking-news-commentary Chad & Lori Daybell - https://audioboom.com/channels/5098105-demise-of-the-daybells-the-lori-chad-daybell-story The Murder of Ana Walshe - https://audioboom.com/channels/5093967-finding-ana-this-disappearance-of-ana-walshe Alex Murdaugh - https://audioboom.com/channels/5097527-the-trial-of-alex-murdaugh The Idaho Murders, The Case Against Bryan Kohberger - https://audioboom.com/channels/5098223-the-idaho-murders-the-case-against-bryan-kohberger Lucy Letby - https://audioboom.com/channels/5099406-nurse-of-death-the-lucy-letby-story Follow Tony Brueski On Twitter https://twitter.com/tonybpod Join our Facebook Discussion Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/834636321133

Join Matthew and Meg as we discuss Elder Gong's talk, Ministering. Matthew recently finished a few years as Elders Quorum President and Meg is just starting in her calling as Relief Society President so there is a lot to discuss on this one!

(Slightly edited and audio only version) Mahonri Eteru has grown up in a devout fully active Latter-day Saint family. His mother is currently the Relief Society President in her branch, and his father serves in the District Presidency and has been Branch President as well. Virtually all of his extended family are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has served as a missionary for the Church in Japan and has studied for 4 years at Brigham Young University - Hawaii. But what is it really like growing up as a Latter-day Saint, in a part of the world where we make up about .05% of the population? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is often incorrectly called "The Mormon Church". This has never been the official name of the Church and we only mention it here to help us appear in searches. #churchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints #churchofjesuschrist #mormonchannel #churchofjesuschristpacific #churchofjesuschristworldwide #churchofjesuschristlatterdaysaints #churchofjesuschrist #ldsgatheringoftribes #saintsunscripted #comebackpodcast #dennisschleicher #denschleicher #hearhimdaily #declaremyword #itsettore

Mahonri Eteru has grown up in a devout fully active Latter-day Saint family. His mother is currently the Relief Society President in her branch, and his father serves in the District Presidency and has been Branch President as well. Virtually all of his extended family are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has served as a missionary for the Church in Japan and has studied for 4 years at Brigham Young University - Hawaii. But what is it really like growing up as a Latter-day Saint, in a part of the world where we make up about .05% of the population? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is often incorrectly called "The Mormon Church". This has never been the official name of the Church and we only mention it here to help us appear in searches. #churchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints #churchofjesuschrist #mormonchannel #churchofjesuschristpacific #churchofjesuschristworldwide #churchofjesuschristlatterdaysaints #churchofjesuschrist #ldsgatheringoftribes #saintsunscripted #comebackpodcast #dennisschleicher #denschleicher #hearhimdaily #declaremyword #itsettore

Welcome back for part two! A trip to Europe gives Kelsey a chance beyond her mission to see more of the outside world and the goodness and happiness that others have found while clearly outside of Mormonism. The trip also gives her the chance to tune in to herself and trust her intuition. Not ready to give up on her religion just yet, Kelsey returns home after the trip and ends up working with LDS Public Relations in various projects while also holding the calling of Relief Society President as she works through her active doubts. Kelsey moves back to LA and finally realizes how much of a “box” LDS doctrines & beliefs put herself in. Kelsey takes us on a journey of personal discovery as she learns who she really is & to trust her own authority, leading her to the freest and fulfilled life she's experienced thus far. Social Media: New Song: Life in a Box Insta: www.instagram.com/kelseymarieedwards TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kelseymarieedwards YouTube.com/@kelseyedwards Kelsey Edwards on IMDB Squad Goals: Courses.kelseyedwards.co (For teen girls about making/keeping good friends)  Episode Show Notes Mormon Stories Thanks Our Generous Donors! Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today: One-time or recurring donation through Donorbox Support us on Patreon Pick “Mormon Stories” as your charity on Amazon Smile or through the Amazon App  Our Platforms: Patreon Spotify Apple Podcasts Contact us: MormonStories@gmail.com  PO Box 171085, Salt Lake City, UT 84117  Social Media: Insta: @mormstories Tiktok: @mormonstoriespodcast Join the Discord

Grab the tissues, some frozen hot chocolate and put on your dancing shoes, because it's time for y'all to meet Sharla.What should have been just a random, one time visit to a ward on a Sunday, turned into a lifelong sisterhood. Sharla has had to go through a lot of things in her life, but one of the hardest ones most recently was losing her Dad to cancer in April 2020.  She is one of the happiest people I know and I can't wait for you to hear that, but also get to hear the real and raw emotion that she still works through everyday still, while grieving the lose of a parent.***Insta:@small_steps_and_big_changes Insta: @munchandminglepodcastE-mail: munchandminglepodcast@gmail.com

I love having the chance to sit down and talk with good friends! And for this episode I got to do just that. Megan Pizarro is the Relief Society President in my ward (she oversees the women's organization in my church congregation) and she is also a dear friend. She's also been one of the biggest supporters of this podcast and for that I am so so grateful! In this episode, Megan and I talk about her calling as the Relief Society president and the very important lessons that she's learned along the way as she served the women in our ward and as she has learned to rely on  Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the people that she serves alongside. We also discuss some of her unique life experiences that  help her be more effective at reaching out to those who are struggling and showing empathy to all of those that she encounters. She has an amazing story that it truly inspiring!

Karla Wallentine is the loving wife of Scott Wallentine and mother to Jake & Jesika. She loves being an empty nester and has three grandchildren that bring her great joy! She has served in many callings throughout her life including Relief Society President and counselor, Young Women's President and counselor, Primary Chorister, Gospel Doctrine Teacher, Choir Director, and her favorite, Stake Young Women's Camp Director! She loves the sun, running bear foot in the grass, and studying the gospel; especially the Second Coming and Isaiah. She's the owner of the podcast Isaiah Made Easier & more Exciting! She loves to write and inspire women of the church and shares her insights on her Facebook group, God Needs Strong Women of Faith! She loves Jesus Christ, her family, and being home; and yes, she loves dark chocolate! Join Her Facebook group God Needs Strong Women of Faith here

We sit down with Julie, our Relief Society President, and get to know more about her life including growing up in this area and then coming full circle in many ways after graduating from college and getting married.

During the October 2021 general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Primary General President Camille N. Johnson spoke to members about pondering their own personal narrative and allowing Christ to direct their story. Little did she know that six months later, her own narrative would shift as members worldwide sustained her as the Church's new Relief Society general president, effective Aug. 1. In this episode of the Church News podcast, President Johnson talks about allowing the Savior to be the “author and finisher” of her story — and the individual stories of all. The Church News Podcast is a weekly podcast that invites listeners to make a journey of connection with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints across the globe. Host Sarah Jane Weaver, reporter and editor for The Church News for a quarter-century, shares a unique view of the stories, events, and most important people who form this international faith. With each episode, listeners are asked to embark on a journey to learn from one another and ponder, “What do I know now?” because of the experience. Produced by KellieAnn Halvorsen. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sister Michelle Amos had just started to flourish in the empty-nest phase of her career when she got called to serve a mission instead.Having been a NASA Engineer at Kennedy Space Center for 30 years, Sister Michelle Amos is passionate about her career. But it's not the most important thing in her life. Instead, she prioritizes God and Family (in that order) above her work.Sister Michelle Amos and a colleague at NASA's Jet Propulsion LaboratoryHere are some of the ways she has shown allegiance to those priorities over the years:Engaging in Service. Despite working full-time, Sister Amos never turned down a church calling or an opportunity to serve in the community. She served as the Relief Society President, Young Women President, Stake Young Women President, Cubmaster, and more at church. She did plenty of outreach at schools for NASA and led community events in Orlando as well.Carefully Choosing Projects. When colleagues pushed for bigger and better opportunities at work, Sister Amos stood down, determined to be available to her children as much as possible. She went to the office early so she could leave in time to pick the kids up from school and rarely worked on projects that required overtime.Waiting to Further Her Education. Though she wanted to obtain a master's degree, Sister Amos delayed post-graduate studies until the kids were older and a little more self-sufficient. She recalls, "I was a mother, I had small children, so I had to wait until my children were in high school or out of the home to take on management training or get my master's degree. I remember sitting at the table with my kids; we were all doing homework."Partnering with Her Husband. President John Amos encouraged Sister Amos to apply for the job at NASA. He supported her desire to work after the kids came along as well. She says, "President Amos has always been supportive of my career as an engineer. ... President worked locally in the city, so he could be there if there were emergencies at school. We knew our positions. We were able to plan if there were school activities or school events."In addition to those daily choices, this successful engineer also had to make big decisions too.When the kids went off to college, Sister Amos finally got the chance to further her career and take on more significant opportunities. In November of 2018, she got selected to join a flagship project as a Systems Engineer for the Mars 2020 Rover--a role she relished and temporarily moved to California to fulfill. Then just as the team prepared for the launch, Sister Amos and her husband got called to serve as mission leaders for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.Once again, Sister Amos sublimated her career aspirations to put God first in her life.In this interview, you'll learn how she made the decision, what it cost her, and the unexpected blessings her obedience brought. Plus, as amazing as her career at NASA was, you'll hear why Sister Amos believes it was simply preparation for the higher calling she now holds.It's a good story. Have a listen.~~~~~Visit FaithfulCareerMoves.com and learn the secret to finding the career you were born to do.  Here's how it works:Identify Your StrengthsGet a Career PlanFind Your Calling in LifeFollow us:Instagram @FaithfulCareerMovesFacebook @FaithfulCareerMoves

Johanna Wood is currently serving as the Relief Society President in the Northridge Ward. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thenorthridgewardpodcast/message

Michele Portlock is a mother of four children living in Parker, Colorado. She earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education from Brigham Young University and worked as an elementary school teacher for two years before taking an extended sabbatical to raise her family. Michele recently completed a master's degree in behavior therapy from Arizona State University where she developed skills which enable her to help others navigate the autism experience. Michele has three neurodivergent children, and has spent countless hours researching and studying how to best provide necessary and adequate resources for her children. This learning sparked a desire in Michele to reach out and help other parents navigate the autism spectrum in a meaningful way. At church, Michele has served as a stake public affairs assistant director, in a Primary presidency and a Relief Society presidency, and as a teacher. She currently serves as the Relief Society President in her ward. Highlights 3:45 What does spectrum mean in the world of autism? 8:20 How can leaders help people that are autistic? Take autism on an individual basis Each autistic person has different needs 11:15 Autistic individuals don't always pick up on social cues. They can be very direct and honest, which could make others feel uncomfortable. 13:00 Many but not all autistic individuals have alexithymia, which is the lack of awareness of emotions. It's difficult to understand others' emotions. 16:00 Autism can be an invisible disability 17:30 Michele gives advice to the parents of autistic children and explains how she involves the leaders or teachers of her children 22:15 Is autism genetic? 25:00 Leadership and autism 30:00 Would it be possible for an autistic individual to handle a big calling? 35:30 Autistic individuals take a more logical approach rather than an emotional or empathetic one. Sometimes they can come off cold or harsh but that's just how they think. It's not them trying to offend. Learning to communicate with these individuals is important. 42:15 Michele shares her experience as a Relief Society president. Her number one takeaway is that we won't always connect with people but ministering is an opportunity to learn, love and listen. 47:10 When we accommodate one, we unknowingly accommodate many. We need to focus on inclusion because it's a way to show love. Links Podcast: Navigating the Spectrum with Michele Portlock MichelePortlock.com

Sharon Kaye Fisher has been a president of ward Primary, Young Women, and Relief Society organizations. She served as stake Primary president with one branch 800 miles away and one branch covering remote villages throughout Alaska. Sharon Kaye was raised in southern California and met her husband, Brent, at Brigham Young University where she received her bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Education. She taught elementary school for a short time at the beginning of their marriage and then devoted her time as a stay-at-home mother to their four daughters and one son. Although she has mostly served in leadership callings, her love is teaching in the classroom with any age group. Sharon Kaye and Brent currently live in Anchorage, Alaska where she serves as the stake JustServe specialist. Highlights 01:30 Sharon's background 03:00 Getting called as a Relief Society President and her experience calling counselors 06:30 Sharon shares her approach to ministering as a Relief Society president 09:00 Sharon breaks down her principles of ministering Be a safe place. Keep confidentiality and don't judge. Be a good listening ear. Validate and acknowledge their feelings and experiences. Ask permission to share a thought or message. Ask specific questions. What do you need? What do you want? How can I support you? Leaders are connectors. You don't have to meet everyone's needs but you can connect them to people that can help. Encourage them to connect with God. Express love. Let them feel your love and be the bridge to help them feel the love of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. 20:00 Principle one: Ask God what is most needed now 22:40 Principle two: Let God take you on detours. Make your plans but be willing to change course 27:00 Principle three: Give how you are able, God makes up the difference 29:30 Principle four: Strengthening those that you have stewardship over 31:45 Sharon shares her final thoughts on things that have worked for her to create unity and sisterhood Links Relief Society President Resources Listen on YouTube Get 14-day access to the Core Leader Library Read the TRANSCRIPT of this podcast The Leading Saints Podcast gets over 300,000 listens each month and has nearly 10 million total downloads as part of nonprofit Leading Saints' mission to help latter-day saints be better prepared to lead. Learn more and listen to any of the past episodes for free at LeadingSaints.org. Past guests include Emily Belle Freeman, David Butler, Hank Smith, John Bytheway, Liz Wiseman, Stephen M. R. Covey, Julie Beck, Brad Wilcox, Jody Moore, Tony Overbay, John H. Groberg, Elaine Dalton, Tad R. Callister, J. Devn Cornish, Dennis B. Neuenschwander, Anthony Sweat, John Hilton III, Barbara Morgan Gardner, Blair Hodges, Ryan Gottfredson, Greg McKeown, DeAnna Murphy, Michael Goodman, Richard Ostler and many more in over 700 episodes. Discover podcasts, articles, virtual conferences, and live events related to callings such as the bishopric, Relief Society, elders quorum, Primary, youth leadership, stake leadership, ward mission, ward council, young adults, ministering, and teaching.

Sharon Kaye Fisher has been a president of ward Primary, Young Women, and Relief Society organizations. She served as stake Primary president with one branch 800 miles away and one branch covering remote villages throughout Alaska. Sharon Kaye was raised in southern California and met her husband, Brent, at Brigham Young University where she received her bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Education. She taught elementary school for a short time at the beginning of their marriage and then devoted her time as a stay-at-home mother to their four daughters and one son. Although she has mostly served in leadership callings, her love is teaching in the classroom with any age group. Sharon Kaye and Brent currently live in Anchorage, Alaska where she serves as the stake JustServe specialist. Highlights 01:30 Sharon's background 03:00 Getting called as a Relief Society President and her experience calling counselors 06:30 Sharon shares her approach to ministering as a Relief Society president 09:00 Sharon breaks down her principles of ministering Be a safe place. Keep confidentiality and don't judge. Be a good listening ear. Validate and acknowledge their feelings and experiences. Ask permission to share a thought or message. Ask specific questions. What do you need? What do you want? How can I support you? Leaders are connectors. You don't have to meet everyone's needs but you can connect them to people that can help. Encourage them to connect with God. Express love. Let them feel your love and be the bridge to help them feel the love of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. 20:00 Principle one: Ask God what is most needed now 22:40 Principle two: Let God take you on detours. Make your plans but be willing to change course 27:00 Principle three: Give how you are able, God makes up the difference 29:30 Principle four: Strengthening those that you have stewardship over 31:45 Sharon shares her final thoughts on things that have worked for her to create unity and sisterhood Links Relief Society President Resources Listen on YouTube Get 14-day access to the Core Leader Library Read the TRANSCRIPT of this podcast

On March 17, 2022, the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will celebrate its 180th anniversary. This episode of the Church News podcast features Relief Society General President ​Jean B. Bingham on the importance of the organization and the essential role of women in the Church. With the motto “Charity Never Faileth,” the Relief Society for 180 years has blessed millions worldwide in its efforts to strengthen women and families, increase faith and offer relief across the globe. The Church News Podcast is a weekly podcast that invites listeners to make a journey of connection with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints across the globe. Host Sarah Jane Weaver, reporter and editor for The Church News for a quarter-century, shares a unique view of the stories, events, and most important people who form this international faith. With each episode, listeners are asked to embark on a journey to learn from one another and ponder, “What do I know now?” because of the experience. Produced by KellieAnn Halvorsen. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Relief Society President Toshiko Yanagida

Kessa Merrill is a young single adult member originally from Gilbert, Arizona, and is currently serving as stake Relief Society first counselor. Professionally she is an esthetician, studied public relations at Arizona State University, and is currently pursuing both of those passions as she works as the Operations Manager for the SkinBoss SkinSpa in Provo, Utah. During her time in Arizona she served as both the Latter-day Saint Student Association president and Interfaith Student Council president, and prior to that she served as her YSA ward Relief Society president. She has also served in several presidencies as secretary and held many music callings. In her free time she likes to cook dinners with friends, sing karaoke, and redecorate her home. Highlights 5:30 Kessa shares her experience working on the institute council and interfaith council at Arizona State University. 8:30 Getting called as a Relief Society president at 21 years old in her YSA ward 10:00 The most difficult thing about being Relief Society President 11:00 Visits with her counselors was one of the most important and consistent things that she did as a Relief Society president. 14:45 Those simple visits that Kessa took time to make every week impacted her life and helped her gain connections that have stayed in her life years later. 17:00 Kessa shares her experience getting called to be the first counselor in the YSA Stake Relief Society Presidency. 19:30 Kessa was one of the first YSA members that was part of the Stake Counsel. She has been able to speak up for YSA members in these councils. 21:30 Be organized and share responsibility Applying this principle has allowed her to reach out to more people They take advantage of technology. It's harder to reach YSA members with their schedules so they use text and zoom calls to communicate a lot. 26:20 Loneliness is one of the biggest hardships that YSA members struggle with. 27:45 What a leader can do to help with the loneliness that YSA members are experiencing It's not about more activities Make connections in small groups and through ministering 29:00 Serve with your eyes wide open and love. Links Read the TRANSCRIPT of this podcast Get 14-day access to the Core Leader Library

Kessa Merrill is a young single adult member originally from Gilbert, Arizona, and is currently serving as stake Relief Society first counselor. Professionally she is an esthetician, studied public relations at Arizona State University, and is currently pursuing both of those passions as she works as the Operations Manager for the SkinBoss SkinSpa in Provo, Utah. During her time in Arizona she served as both the Latter-day Saint Student Association president and Interfaith Student Council president, and prior to that she served as her YSA ward Relief Society president. She has also served in several presidencies as secretary and held many music callings. In her free time she likes to cook dinners with friends, sing karaoke, and redecorate her home. Highlights 5:30 Kessa shares her experience working on the institute council and interfaith council at Arizona State University. 8:30 Getting called as a Relief Society president at 21 years old in her YSA ward 10:00 The most difficult thing about being Relief Society President 11:00 Visits with her counselors was one of the most important and consistent things that she did as a Relief Society president. 14:45 Those simple visits that Kessa took time to make every week impacted her life and helped her gain connections that have stayed in her life years later. 17:00 Kessa shares her experience getting called to be the first counselor in the YSA Stake Relief Society Presidency. 19:30 Kessa was one of the first YSA members that was part of the Stake Counsel. She has been able to speak up for YSA members in these councils. 21:30 Be organized and share responsibility Applying this principle has allowed her to reach out to more people They take advantage of technology. It's harder to reach YSA members with their schedules so they use text and zoom calls to communicate a lot. 26:20 Loneliness is one of the biggest hardships that YSA members struggle with. 27:45 What a leader can do to help with the loneliness that YSA members are experiencing It's not about more activities Make connections in small groups and through ministering 29:00 Serve with your eyes wide open and love. Links Read the TRANSCRIPT of this podcast

Emily's amazing Relief Society President "saw her" when she needed most to be seen. Thankfully she invited Emily to speak out about her faith transition experience in a fireside, and that audio has been recorded for our benefit!  How can we be like this R.S. president and reach out with charity and give voice to someone who believes differently than we do?

Bishop Jensen has called our rogue Relief Society President, Sister Tyler, in for a disciplinary council. Elder Jaxxxon is conducting and Councilor Davis is here from the stake.

Melanie Wellman Stroud hosts the popular podcast Come Follow Me for Us. She served in both the Kobe and Tokyo South missions and graduated with a degree in Special Education from Brigham Young University. She has served in numerous church callings including Relief Society president, Young Women president, stake Young Women president, Gospel Doctrine teacher, and her favorite: nursery leader. Melanie currently resides in Surprise, Arizona. Highlights 4:45 Melanie explains why her podcast is different from the other Come Follow Me podcasts. Her podcast is more about practical application, for the everyday person trying to apply the scriptures to their lives. 6:15 Advice and tips for studying Come Follow Me. 8:15 Melanie relates her experience getting called as the Relief Society President. 10:50 Melanie's first principle of leadership: The importance of delegation. It's not always easy to ask others for help but it's very important not to get burned out. 13:50 Second principle of leadership: Ditch the fluff. Focus on needs first. Forget the tablecloths or decorations. 15:30 Third principle of leadership: Use the materials that you are given. Stick to the manual. Look closely at the questions asked. People spend way too much time on things that aren't going to get you to heaven. 18:30 Tips on teaching a General Conference talk in Relief Society. 21:15 The fourth principle: Use the Book of Mormon as much as you can. When the Church began all they had was the Book of Mormon. They didn't have any fancy manuals. Don't let Come Follow Me take the place of the Book of Mormon in your studies. 27:45 Melanie gives her advice on how to connect with the youth. Bond through having fun together and through spiritual discussions. Links Come Follow Me for Us Read the TRANSCRIPT of this podcast

Melanie Wellman Stroud hosts the popular podcast Come Follow Me for Us. She served in both the Kobe and Tokyo South missions and graduated with a degree in Special Education from Brigham Young University. She has served in numerous church callings including Relief Society president, Young Women president, stake Young Women president, Gospel Doctrine teacher, and her favorite: nursery leader. Melanie currently resides in Surprise, Arizona. Highlights 4:45 Melanie explains why her podcast is different from the other Come Follow Me podcasts. Her podcast is more about practical application, for the everyday person trying to apply the scriptures to their lives. 6:15 Advice and tips for studying Come Follow Me. 8:15 Melanie relates her experience getting called as the Relief Society President. 10:50 Melanie's first principle of leadership: The importance of delegation. It's not always easy to ask others for help but it's very important not to get burned out. 13:50 Second principle of leadership: Ditch the fluff. Focus on needs first. Forget the tablecloths or decorations. 15:30 Third principle of leadership: Use the materials that you are given. Stick to the manual. Look closely at the questions asked. People spend way too much time on things that aren't going to get you to heaven. 18:30 Tips on teaching a General Conference talk in Relief Society. 21:15 The fourth principle: Use the Book of Mormon as much as you can. When the Church began all they had was the Book of Mormon. They didn't have any fancy manuals. Don't let Come Follow Me take the place of the Book of Mormon in your studies. 27:45 Melanie gives her advice on how to connect with the youth. Bond through having fun together and through spiritual discussions. Links Come Follow Me for Us

Brigette Heller was born in Alaska and raised all over the Western United States. She is a life coach and speaker, and is determined to share life-changing mindset techniques using radical motivation to women in her Strong and Capable community. Brigette and her sister also own Deco-Crate Event Design, an event planning business. She has served in a variety of church leadership positions, including as a young Relief Society president. Brigette and her husband Mike are the parents of three children and live in Phoenix, Arizona. Highlights 3:00 Her calling as a young Relief Society president in a large, established ward 5:30 A comment from a luncheon and her choice to be dedicated and supportive anyway 7:10 Authenticity in loving and supportive people is what matters Alma 31:5 Try the virtue of the word of God instead of treats and handouts Let people know when you are struggling Delegate to others 10:25 Let go of more to have more 14:00 Successful leaders need empathy 18:45 Lawn example: sitting with someone instead of instructing them 20:20 Communication It has to be done in every way possible, and determine what works best for your people Communication is consideration Commit to living by your system 25:30 Paint the vision Finding the inspiration to bring hope of what could be Ask the Lord what vision He wants you to paint 27:20 Created a "journey journal" that tied in with lessons and activities 30:15 A lot of people have not been taught how to seek personal revelation through General conference Finding beauty in the journey 33:50 About her life coaching community and podcast 35:00 When you want to be a good leader and step into that role, you are letting go Links The Strong and Capable podcast The Strong and Capable website Read the TRANSCRIPT of this podcast. Note: This transcript was machine-produced. We would be grateful for help correcting errors. You can help! Simply copy/paste the transcript text into a document, make the corrections, and then copy/paste the corrected text into the comments (you will need to split it up) on the page and we will get it published!

Brigette Heller was born in Alaska and raised all over the Western United States. She is a life coach and speaker, and is determined to share life-changing mindset techniques using radical motivation to women in her Strong and Capable community. Brigette and her sister also own Deco-Crate Event Design, an event planning business. She has served in a variety of church leadership positions, including as a young Relief Society president. Brigette and her husband Mike are the parents of three children and live in Phoenix, Arizona. Highlights 3:00 Her calling as a young Relief Society president in a large, established ward 5:30 A comment from a luncheon and her choice to be dedicated and supportive anyway 7:10 Authenticity in loving and supportive people is what matters Alma 31:5 Try the virtue of the word of God instead of treats and handouts Let people know when you are struggling Delegate to others 10:25 Let go of more to have more 14:00 Successful leaders need empathy 18:45 Lawn example: sitting with someone instead of instructing them 20:20 Communication It has to be done in every way possible, and determine what works best for your people Communication is consideration Commit to living by your system 25:30 Paint the vision Finding the inspiration to bring hope of what could be Ask the Lord what vision He wants you to paint 27:20 Created a "journey journal" that tied in with lessons and activities 30:15 A lot of people have not been taught how to seek personal revelation through General conference Finding beauty in the journey 33:50 About her life coaching community and podcast 35:00 When you want to be a good leader and step into that role, you are letting go Links The Strong and Capable podcast The Strong and Capable website TRANSCRIPT coming soon

This week, I'm taking a closer look at a surprisingly heavy talk from this past General Conference. Elder Holland is traditionally known for his upbeat messages, but in April he deviated from the norm and took on a difficult discussion about some uncomfortable topics in his address, “Not as the World Giveth.” Joining me in a discussion about Elder Holland's talk is Julia Stolworthy. Julia is a mother to 3 teenagers, and wife to her favorite human. She and her husband recently celebrated their 20 year anniversary. But those 20 years weren't all sunshine and rainbows. They started down the barrel of divorce a couple of years ago, but when one of their kids began battling severe mental trauma, they dug in deeper, with more vigor than they knew they had in them. Their family underwent major changes in every facet of life. Julia and her husband were given a second chance and let me tell you, they are not wasting it! Julia's conversion to the gospel began not too many years ago, although she was born under the covenant. It was when her beliefs began to be challenged that she really started to make conscious decisions about what she believed. Today, you don't have to be around her for long before you come to the conclusion that Julia's heart belongs to the Lord. She's quirky. She's cool. She's got a heart of gold. And she's my Relief Society President. KEY POINTS:Don't confuse comfort with peace."We cannot afford our failure to put these gospel concepts and fortifying covenants to full use personally and publicly."The "Covenant of peace""In spite of frightful prophecies and unsettling scriptures declaring that peace will be taken from the earth generally ... it does not have to be taken from us individually."The world considers knowledge as power, and some have "learned" God right out of their lives.Sometimes gospel knowledge gets "to us," but not "in us.""...the help and peace we need is not the kind the world giveth...No, for the truly difficult problems we need what the scriptures call 'the powers of heaven,' and to access these powers we must live by what these same scriptures call 'principles of righteousness.'""Understanding that connection between principle and power is the one lesson the human family never seems able to learn...so says the God of heaven and earth.""Love," the verb, precedes "Love," the noun."In no case are we to be guilty of any form of abuse or unrighteous dominion or immoral coercion--not physical or emotional or ecclesiastical or any other kind.""Everyone has the right to be loved, to feel peaceful, and to find safety at home.""Pledge total loyalty in word and deed to the Lamb of God."DO ONE THING INVITATIONWrite about the gifts you have received from the Lord that bring peace to your soul. If you aren't into journaling, then consider creating a post on social media and sharing how you are accessing God's peace in your life. Most importantly, express your gratitude to the Lord for the blessings His peace brings to you. RESOURCES"Not as the World Giveth" -- Jeffrey R. Holland“Watchful Unto Prayer Continually” — David A. Bednar Life Help — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — Click here to access resources for abuse, addiction, disability, pornography, suicide, and other issues facing our world today. 

Sue Peterson has been a stake Relief Society president in Elk Ridge, Utah, for three years. She joined the Church at age 21 and has previously served as a ward Relief Society president, with the Young Women, in Sunday School, and as a Webelos leader. Sue enjoys writing and has taught journalism and drama classes. She and her husband Jack have been married 40 years and have six daughters and 12 grandchildren. Highlights 5:45 Her calling as stake Relief Society president 7:30 Calls herself a realist and believes in dropping the facade 11:15 Being brave and modeling vulnerability and openness from her own difficult life experiences 14:30 Others may be uncomfortable with vulnerability, but all that matters is what God thinks of you, not what others think 16:45 The Lord is always working on people, whatever their circumstances 19:10 Focusing on the Relief Society presidents in her stake: her job is to help them have every tool they need and be their advocate 24:15 "The Pretty Presidents Press" for her Relief Society presidents; being there in Relief Society regularly 26:00 One-on-one meetings with presidencies before ward conferences 30:45 Visits Relief Society meetings regularly but purposefully doesn't intrude on the meetings as a leader. Even ward conference was a discussion of two questions and not a lesson. 34:00 Actions she takes when a new ward Relief Society president is called 35:20 Teaching delegation; getting out of the way 36:10 Promoting Just Serve with specialists in each ward 41:20 Changes due to lessons learned from technology during the pandemic Stake Relief Society YouTube channel 46:00 "The Lord can do a lot more with my life than I can" Links Outline for new ward Relief Society presidents Read the TRANSCRIPT of this podcast. Note: This transcript was machine-produced. We would be grateful for help correcting errors. You can help! Simply copy/paste the transcript text into a document, make the corrections, and then copy/paste the corrected text into a comment on the page (below) and we will get the corrected text published!

Sue Peterson has been a stake Relief Society president in Elk Ridge, Utah, for three years. She joined the Church at age 21 and has previously served as a ward Relief Society president, with the Young Women, in Sunday School, and as a Webelos leader. Sue enjoys writing and has taught journalism and drama classes. She and her husband Jack have been married 40 years and have six daughters and 12 grandchildren. Highlights 5:45 Her calling as stake Relief Society president 7:30 Calls herself a realist and believes in dropping the facade 11:15 Being brave and modeling vulnerability and openness from her own difficult life experiences 14:30 Others may be uncomfortable with vulnerability, but all that matters is what God thinks of you, not what others think 16:45 The Lord is always working on people, whatever their circumstances 19:10 Focusing on the Relief Society presidents in her stake: her job is to help them have every tool they need and be their advocate 24:15 "The Pretty Presidents Press" for her Relief Society presidents; being there in Relief Society regularly 26:00 One-on-one meetings with presidencies before ward conferences 30:45 Visits Relief Society meetings regularly but purposefully doesn't intrude on the meetings as a leader. Even ward conference was a discussion of two questions and not a lesson. 34:00 Actions she takes when a new ward Relief Society president is called 35:20 Teaching delegation; getting out of the way 36:10 Promoting Just Serve with specialists in each ward 41:20 Changes due to lessons learned from technology during the pandemic Stake Relief Society YouTube channel 46:00 "The Lord can do a lot more with my life than I can" Links Outline for new ward Relief Society presidents Read the TRANSCRIPT of this podcast. Note: This transcript was machine-produced. We would be grateful for help correcting errors. You can help! Simply copy/paste the transcript text into a document, make the corrections, and then copy/paste the corrected text into a comment on the page (below) and we will get the corrected text published!

For Mothers' Day, Religion Today Host Martin Tanner shares the stories of four amazing, inspiring Latter-day Saint women, Jane Elizabeth Manning James, African American mother who walked over 1,000 miles to join the Saints in Nauvoo; Torah Bright, world champion snowboarder from Australia; Hannah Clayson Smith, extraordinary First Amendment, religious rights attorney; and, Eliza Roxy Snow, abused and beaten by a mob in Missouri, yet became Relief Society President, penned lyrics to "O My Father" and many other LDS Hymns.  An inspiration to all. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the podcast, we talk to two Relief Society Presidents. We learn about the journey we go on each time we accept a calling. Learning what it is like to be a Relief Society President and how we can support them.

Edified: Insights for LDS WomenEpisode 46, "Learning to Trust God" with Featured Guest, Dawn HeathSeason Two FinaleAirdate:  28 MAR 2021The day I was baptized, Brother Lambert, the man who baptized me, had to repeat the ordinance three times, because I had a very stubborn knee that would not yield to submersion in the water! Little did I know that my stubborn knee foreshadowed three decades of stubbornness and a wrestle with the Spirit that did not cease until I finally learned to trust God’s love for me. To trust His plan for me, and to trust in the saving and enabling powers of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. To truly trust that God’s way is so much better than mine. This episode spotlights the principles and promises taught in President Russell M. Nelson’s talk, “Let God Prevail.” I am so excited to introduce this week’s featured guest, Dawn Heath. Like me, Dawn is a convert to the church; but unlike me, Dawn learned early on how to trust God and let Him prevail in her life. Dawn is married to Dr. Terence Heath, and together they have four children and six grandchildren. Shortly after her baptism, Dawn was called to serve a mission in the Wellington, New Zealand mission. She has served in leadership positions in pretty much every auxiliary. She taught seminary for three years, taught Sunday School, has served as Relief Society President, and multiple times as Young Women’s president. Currently, Dawn is serving as our Stake Young Women’s president. And let me tell you, she is a tremendous blessing to the families of our stake. Spend one afternoon with Dawn, and you will walk away knowing three things:  She loves the Lord. She loves the temple. And she loves the youth!I met Dawn when Ron and I moved to Cedar City, and the instant I met her, I knew she and I were going to become great friends! Today, I consider her to be one of my closest and dearest friends of all time--and my sister forever. Key Segments (Time Stamped):(7:25) -- What thoughts come to mind when you think about the phrase, "willing to let God prevail?"(15:14) -- What is our role in the work of gathering Scattered Israel?(20:40) -- How does being myopic interfere with our ability to let God prevail in our lives?(31:15) -- Six questions President Nelson asked us to consider:Are you willing to let God prevail in your life?Are you willing to let God be the most important influence in your life?Will you allow His words, His commandments, and His covenants to influence what you do each day?Will you allow His voice to take priority over any other?Are you willing to let whatever He needs you to do take precedence over every other ambition?Are you willing to have your will swallowed up in His?(43:20) -- What are some of the blessings President Nelson promised us if we are willing to let God prevail in our lives?(48:35) -- What edifies you?(50:20) -- Do One Thing:This week, as we prepare for General Conference, let's do everything we can to remove as many distractions as possible so we can better focus on the messages delivered by our leaders. The first episode of Season Three will air on Sunday, May 2, 2021, but following General Conference weekend, there will be a couple bonus episodes of the podcast that you for sure will not want to miss! These are messages that come straight from my heart to yours.Resources:"Let God Prevail" Russell M. NelsonFollow me on Instagram @melinda.r.morganHave a great week everyone! Until next time . . .

Kari Ferguson is the author of "The OCD Mormon" and "For and In Behalf Of" and creator of the blog, "Of Faith and Great Anxiety." She is a current member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has served as Primary and Relief Society President.  Kari runs the bookstore Oh Hello Again (ohhelloagain.com) in Seattle. She received her MA in Communication, Culture and Society from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and her BS from Brigham Young University. Kari lives in Seattle, WA with her husband, two children, two bunnies, and giant puppy.   Kari's book https://amzn.to/30N5iF6, Vice Article https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7qjzm/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-dirt-cleanliness-how-i-have-sex, Website https://www.faithandanxiety.com/   Full Transcript: 0:00:00.3 Narrator: Welcome to Improving Intimacy, a podcast to help single and married Latter-day Saints strengthen their family connections and marriages. Daniel A. Burgess is the host of Improving Intimacy. Daniel's a marriage and family therapist, father, husband, and author. Here's Daniel on this episode of Improving Intimacy.   [music]   0:00:28.6 Daniel A. Burgess: Welcome to another episode of Improving Intimacy. Today I'm excited to have a special guest with us, Kari Ferguson, who is the author of OCD Mormon. Oh, did I get the title right? The OCD Mormon. I'm curious, have you even been interested or wanting to change the title now with the whole name change? Or have you felt like, "No, I'm gonna accept this."? I'm curious about that title. What has been your thoughts?   0:00:57.7 Kari Ferguson: We published it and then... 'Cause that's what my blog was called before, and then they had the whole, "Don't call yourselves Mormons," and... I don't know. We were just like, "Oh, whatever," I guess. That was who I was known as, is that at that point I thought it was just... I don't know. [chuckle]   0:01:14.7 DB: In the...   0:01:15.6 KF: Yeah, it's good for my scrupulosity as well, in a weird way.   0:01:18.7 DB: That's what I was wondering.   0:01:19.6 KF: Yeah, because of... Yeah, I have to keep it that. I'm bucking against what the church tells me to do.   [chuckle]   0:01:28.1 DB: Yeah, this is your form of exposure therapy.   0:01:31.5 KF: Exactly.   0:01:32.2 DB: Okay, I gotta accept it.   0:01:34.0 KF: I can't change it, yeah. It's out there.   0:01:35.6 DB: Well, I'm excited. I've been thinking about this a lot, and you and I were talking offline just a minute ago about why didn't I find you until now? In fact, when did you publish the book? How long ago?   0:01:47.1 KF: It came out in September of 2017.   0:01:50.6 DB: Okay, so not too long ago.   0:01:52.6 KF: Yeah, it's about three, four years ago now, yeah.   0:01:55.4 DB: A friend of mine who... So for my audience who doesn't know, I actually deal with a large amount of anxiety, something I've actually been coming to terms with it, or rather discovering more over the most recent years here, and have been reaching out to some friends and family.   0:02:13.1 DB: I have made a good friend with someone and we were talking about this this morning about, "Let's write our story about this," and he's like, "Yeah, this is so triggering for us." And I don't know if I can, I've got myself into a good place. I'm curious, so let's start off there. We'll get into some of the meat here and I have some quotes from your book that I really, really valued. I wanna start off that way, what motivated you to write this book, especially as somebody who struggles with anxiety and putting your story out there.   0:02:47.5 KF: For sure.   0:02:50.2 DB: What made you decide to do that?   0:02:51.8 KF: Yeah, well, I've always been a writer, so that's how I emotionally process things, I guess. So just for me, that was the logical step I would say. But I went through, like I wrote in the book, I went through a really intense OCD breakdown, we'll say, without knowing what it was, and then I finally got help with the help of my husband and therapy and medication.   0:03:17.6 KF: And I made a friend at church who also has obsessive-compulsive disorder, and so we had been talking about it, and I just, I thought, "There are a lot of people in our religion who have anxiety, who have these problems, but we don't know what to call it. We don't know what it is, we don't even know that it's a mental illness really." And I thought, "I'm gonna start a blog just about that, about having this issue as a Latter-day Saint, and maybe I could help some people."   0:03:55.6 KF: Because for me, if I had known 10 years before, it would've been a lot easier if I had realized fully what it meant and how I could get help, it would have changed my whole married life and my mission and everything. So I thought, "I can use my skill that I have, my writing, in order to help other people."   0:04:14.2 KF: So I started the blog, I think it was in... I don't know, 2016, summer. And so I just did that and it got sort of popular, not huge or anything, not viral, but enough that I was like, "I could write a book about this." And so I started just in general, "Mental illness in Latter-day Saints."   0:04:39.1 KF: And then on Twitter, I had this friend who's an LDS author named Mette Harrison, and so she kinda was my mentor and helped me really form the book, and she's like, "No, you need to go into your story personally. Don't be general, don't talk about... That's too much, that's too broad, all mental illnesses in LDS faith." So she really was like, "No, focus in. This is what you're known for. Write about having OCD and your story."   0:05:09.7 KF: So I did, and yeah, Cedar Fort said, "Yeah, this is great." The person who read my submission had a sister I think with scrupulosity, and so she was like, "Yes, we need this in the church and in the discourse."   0:05:26.3 DB: Well, I wanna explore more, 'cause you made it sound so easy to get this written here, and I am confident even though I don't know your story in getting the book published, I'm assuming it wasn't that simple or easy. But let's define this for the audience here. We've said a couple of times this word "scrupulosity" and "OCD." Explain, what is OCD and what is scrupulosity? How are they the same and how are they different?   0:05:54.9 KF: Okay. OCD, obviously Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, so by nature you have these thoughts that keep coming, and then it leads you to do things in order to make yourself feel better. So for instance, you have a thought like, "My hands are dirty," and so you say, "Okay, well, I have to wash my hands," but then your brain says, "Oh, well, you didn't wash them well enough." And so then you have to keep washing your hands or you touch something and then, "Oh, your hands are dirty. You have to wash your hands again."   0:06:26.0 KF: So it's this kind of call and response where your brain is saying, "Oh, something's wrong, something's wrong," and then you physically... There's even mental OCD as well where they do mental compulsions, so it doesn't have to be a physical compulsion. But anything that you do to try and relieve these thoughts that you're having, if it's enough that it's causing you disturbance to your life, to your day, to your life, then it becomes OCD, where it's a disorder and you need... You should get treatment or help.   0:07:00.3 DB: It interferes with your life.   0:07:01.0 KF: Yeah, if it interferes with your life, exactly. And then scrupulosity specifically is a type of OCD. And that's something I didn't really know at first, was that there were different types of OCD. 'Cause people just throw around OCD so flippantly. Like, "Oh, I like to have books organized, I'm so OCD." But it's not an adjective. It's a disorder and it's serious.   0:07:23.3 KF: See, I didn't realise there were so many different types until I went to therapy, and people were telling all their different stories, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, all these things are OCD that I've had." [chuckle] But scrupulosity is religious OCD basically. And so it has to do with maybe worthiness or things like, "Oh, I'm not good enough" or, "Oh, I'm not worthy to go in the temple" or, "Oh, I shouldn't have said that thing." Anything that relates to our religious upbringing and our thoughts there.   0:07:53.8 DB: But wait a second, you just described empathy, right? I said something wrong, I may have hurt somebody's feelings.   0:08:04.2 KF: Yeah.   0:08:04.6 DB: What's the difference between empathy and...   0:08:09.0 KF: And repentance.   0:08:09.5 DB: And reasonableness, and repentance. So what's the difference? Help the listener know.   0:08:15.2 KF: Yeah, that's something my therapist and I talked about, and he was not... He's not LDS. But he said, "It's so hard with scrupulosity and people who deal with that, because a lot of times for them, it's like the therapist versus God." And who is gonna win that? Obviously, God is gonna win that. Right?   0:08:31.9 DB: Yes.   0:08:32.1 KF: For a religious person, you're gonna say, "No, this is like the Spirit telling me I'm doing something wrong and I need to repent." So it can be really difficult to say, "Okay, where is this line between this is a mental illness and it's telling me I'm doing everything wrong, and I actually am doing something wrong and I need to repent and change." So it's really difficult.   0:08:57.8 KF: For me, my OCD really started with scrupulosity back in college. And yeah, I just thought it was I'm having a "come to Jesus" moment and I'm realizing all these horrible things I'm doing wrong. And so I really, I beat myself up and I... So many issues. I couldn't be alone really, 'cause I was worried and my brain would just keep going and I would say, "I have to fast on this random Thursday because I need help," and nothing was helping.   0:09:27.3 KF: I would take a nap and I remember one time I had sleep paralysis, which I never had before, where you can't, your body can't move. "Is it something? This is not normal." And so, I don't know, I think I realized that then, that something wasn't normal, but I didn't actually get help until 10 years later. I did go on medication then.   0:09:48.3 DB: Wow.   0:09:48.4 KF: But yeah, I didn't really understand what it was, or the other things that it could cause. So it is really difficult. I think if you're... If you know, Mormons, we tend to know... Or LDS, sorry. We tend to know what is right and wrong. Right? And if you're really pushing yourself past the normal right and wrong...   0:10:11.0 KF: If you're worried about every single thing, and it's so bad to the point where you feel like you can't be alone, or that's all you think about, or you're so worried that God hates you. Or whatever, these are kind of warning signs that, you probably have a problem.   0:10:27.3 DB: Big time.   0:10:27.7 KF: And you should get help.   0:10:30.0 DB: Yes.   0:10:30.0 KF: Because it should not feel like that. God does not want you to feel like you're a terrible person all the time. That's not what Heavenly Father wants for us. So if you are feeling like that...   0:10:40.0 DB: That's an excellent...   0:10:41.2 KF: You'll be fine, yeah.   0:10:42.7 DB: Yeah, that's an excellent point, and I think it's... You're right, this is one of the most difficult things, mental health issues, to identify within our faith, because it's one of the few mental health struggles that we actually praise. So for example, we reinforce scrupulosity a lot in the church and we idolize people who have it.   0:11:11.1 DB: And we don't even know that they have it, or they may not even recognize they have it. Usually it's in the context of, "I study the Scripture for two hours a day. I pray for 30 minutes twice a day."   [chuckle]   0:11:22.6 KF: It's not healthy, really.   0:11:24.1 DB: No, it's not healthy, but yet it's the focus. When we see people like that, we admire them, we often say, "Wow, I wish I had that." Let me clarify, these are non-scholars, non-BYU professors, non-religious teachers. It's one thing to have a... Sorry.   0:11:44.1 KF: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And after realizing this, I read through the Book of Mormon, and I'm like, "Oh man, Jacob, I'm worried about Jacob." I feel like he probably had... He even says that he has, "My great anxiety of faith and great anxiety in my soul." I'm like, you feel bad for him, because they probably we're dealing with these things. Even Enos, praying all day and all night, like... I don't know. [chuckle] Maybe...   0:12:07.8 DB: I've even thought... I love that you bring that up because I've even thought about Nephi's prayer or his poem. It's, "O wretched man that I am." And I'm like, holy cow, this...   0:12:21.3 KF: Right? It's been around the whole time, we just didn't have the words to describe it. Even my therapist said, I think Martin Luther, they think had OCD, who began basically the whole Protestant Reformation. [chuckle] Which makes sense, he was very worried about everything. And so, I don't know. It's good and bad.   0:12:41.4 DB: It is.   0:12:42.6 KF: Yeah.   0:12:44.6 DB: It's a fine line, because clearly, there's nothing wrong with people who wanna study the Scriptures for two or three hours a day, and that's not, I'm not exaggerating.   0:12:55.0 KF: Yeah.   0:12:57.0 DB: But like going back to your earlier definition, it's when it interferes with your life. One of the measurements I use is if you place those concepts of perfection above your loved ones, and above your relationship with God, and you base your relationship with God off of those measurements, you may have scrupulosity.   0:13:23.7 KF: Yes, yes. No, I totally, I totally agree. And that's the point it gets to, and like I said, for me, I wish it had gotten... I realized that it was scrupulosity, and so the OCD didn't branch out into other areas of my life. Because it did. 'Cause OCD, if you get used to it in one way, it will try and get you in another way eventually.   0:13:46.5 DB: Yes.   0:13:47.2 KF: Yeah, I don't know. It's a tricky thing.   0:13:50.2 DB: Personally, I don't know if I would define myself having elements of scrupulosity, but as someone who does battle with anxiety and ADHD, my personality type is very different from what those we tend to admire in the church, somebody who, going back to that example of routine Scripture study. Now, I used to force myself and judge my worthiness based off of my ability to perform like somebody else, let's use the word neurotypical person.   0:14:29.6 DB: When I came to grips that my form of study and prayer takes on a very different look than somebody who's neurotypical, it was a breath of fresh air. And to be okay with that, the way I study, the way I pray, I felt closer to God immediately when I put off this... It gets me upset now, when I get people who bear their testimony, who says, "If you study the Scriptures the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning, you will be closer... " I go, "Nope, that's number one way to upset me and draw me further away from God."   [chuckle]   0:15:07.6 KF: Yes, everyone, it's so, that's so true. We all worship in different ways, and that I think that's meant to be, but we, for some reason in the church we're taught, "This is the way you do it." And so, yeah, for me it was like with the scrupulosity it was like, I felt so much duty, like my relationship with the church was really just like, "I have to do these things because this is what I've committed to do. And this is how you get to heaven."   0:15:33.8 KF: And so it was very like, this is my duty that I have to do this, if that makes sense? It wasn't so much out of love. I have testimony, but it wasn't like I'm doing this because I love the Savior, necessarily. The first and foremost was like, "Okay, this is what I have to do because this is what God expects me to do. And this is what I've covenanted with Him to do. And my family, I have an eternal family, they're relying on me to stay true," and all of these things.   0:16:00.3 KF: It was like all this pressure that you have to keep doing it in a certain way. But it's really unhealthy, and you get to a point where you're just like, "I can't, I can't anymore," and you have to realise maybe you don't have to accept every single calling, or maybe you don't have to be the perfect ministering sister or brother. Because I'm an introvert and it's hard for me to do certain things, but other things I can do really well.   0:16:30.5 KF: Even listening to general conference, I don't get much out of it, but reading it, I can. Where my husband is basically the opposite 'cause he has ADHD. So yeah, everyone is different, and it's fine. That's, we're made this way, it's not a sin to have mental illnesses or developmental...   0:16:47.4 DB: Differences.   0:16:48.2 KF: Differences of any kind. Yeah.   0:16:51.1 DB: So I'm gonna read off of page seven in your book. What was... It touched me to just... I struggle to put words into what I experience on this. Again, I may have some degree of scrupulosity, as I looked more and more inward, I don't think I fit the classic definition definitely, but again, it may be more of my anxiety and ADHD, just the differences in approach, but I loved what you said here on page seven.   0:17:22.4 DB: It says, "I spent evenings alone wanting to burst into tears but not feeling like it would do any good. I questioned why God would let me end up here alone. I wondered why I felt guilty and why I worried about every single thing. I was at a loss for what to do with myself. Uncertainty ate away at my sanity, and I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown at any second. Last year, I did, and it was a surprise because I have always coped."   0:18:01.3 DB: What I would have said well, with my anxiety, I think because ironically, my ADD allowed me to break free of rigidity, and I actually think I was blessed with ADHD, for that reason. I don't know if "blessed" is the right word, 'cause that's not fair to others, but it definitely allowed me to cope.   0:18:29.7 DB: I fortunately have a wife who is like, "Tell me, share with me," and I never felt like I could. It's like, "You really wanna know what's going on in here?" And as I shared, now she's like, Oh, this is what... " In fact, yesterday, Sunday, I was having a really bad day. And when we came home from church, we're going to church now, and I told her, I said, "I can't even be touched, I can't. This is, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I have to go isolate myself."   0:19:02.2 DB: And she goes, "Oh my goodness, I had no idea." This is how I've pretended for so long. Are you wanting me to share this with you? I have felt alone, even in the midst of the most beautiful support system, because I don't feel like people could relate to me. When I read that paragraph, it tells me you know exactly what that was like. Share with me. Well, I guess...   0:19:35.0 KF: Yeah, yeah, no...   0:19:37.8 DB: Let me formulate that question a little bit better here. You said earlier... Well, in general, you have so much insight right now about why you did things, and you wish you'd known this 10 years earlier.   0:19:53.7 KF: Yeah.   0:19:54.4 DB: But the truth of the matter, most people with scrupulosity will not receive that information.   0:20:00.3 KF: No.   0:20:00.6 DB: Do you feel... 'Cause as I look at this and I say, "If somebody told me 10, 15, 20 years ago, I would have said, 'What are you talking about?'"   0:20:09.4 KF: Right. Yeah, especially in college.   0:20:10.6 DB: Even with just anxiety.   0:20:12.0 KF: Yeah. Right.   0:20:12.9 DB: Do you feel like you would have listened to your... You, 10...   0:20:17.3 KF: No, no. Well, you know, it's interesting, when I was writing the book, I got out my old journals. I had journalled through college, basically. And so I was reading from this time period of when it went... When it went down, when it was really bad, like I wrote about there. And I was just reading like, "Oh my gosh."   0:20:38.1 KF: And then I read about how, I went back to BYU, I was doing an internship at the time in Seattle. And so I went back to BYU and went to the health center, so I was like, "I'm gonna... You know, I need to get help of some kind." My mum's a nurse, so she was like, "Just go to the health center and tell them." And I had written down in my journal, like, "I went to the health center and they told me I had obsessive compulsive disorder."   0:21:01.4 KF: And I was like, "What? I knew. They told me." So exactly, I was told, but it just like, it went over my head. They didn't really... They must not have explained or I wasn't ready to accept that that's what I had. I don't know, and that's how I got on medication, was that visit. But I literally, until I re-read it, that journal years later, I was like, "What? They told me. I didn't know." Literally, it didn't come to me. So that's your answer, they did tell me and I was like, "No, no, I'm not gonna listen."   0:21:37.0 DB: Yes...   0:21:37.4 KF: "I don't care." Yeah.   0:21:39.1 DB: So I guess, the next question is, this is what I... What I think is the most difficult aspect about this, is, one, being able to recognize that this is actually a problem.   0:21:49.4 KF: Right.   0:21:49.9 DB: We've reinforced this within our church culture to idolize admire and even encourage this type of behaviour, thinking it's good.   0:22:00.6 KF: Yeah.   0:22:01.7 DB: I get a lot of pushback when I identify this, especially around sexuality.   0:22:06.3 KF: Yes.   0:22:07.1 DB: Which is what I deal with the majority of the time, is, "Are you telling me not to listen to the prophets? Are you telling me to not be perfect?" How would you recommend, knowing what you know now, to talk and to... I realise we can't convince people, but...   0:22:27.0 KF: Right.   0:22:27.8 DB: What are your thoughts? How would you go about helping people recognize this?   0:22:32.1 KF: Yeah, you know, it is so hard. When I was writing the book and publishing it, I was really Society president at the time as well.   0:22:41.9 DB: It's alright.   0:22:42.7 KF: So it was like also I had this overwhelming calling. And so I was able to talk with a lot of sisters and realise like "Oh, they have mental health problems." And the ones who did and knew, they felt more comfortable talking to me because I was so open about my mental health issues. And so it was actually a benefit having that openness.   0:23:07.5 KF: So I don't know, it's, I think those of us who do have mental health issues need to be more open at church about it and more vocal about it. Because then those people who do have it, but maybe don't realise it, can start saying, "Oh, I recognize that in myself." Or, "Oh yeah, I've done that." And then you get that seed planted.   0:23:30.7 KF: And it does take years sometimes for people to be diagnosed with anxiety or OCD. Anxiety is more when people are like, "Oh yeah, I have anxiety." I don't know, everybody seems like they're willing to admit that. But yeah, I don't know, so for me, it's like...   0:23:47.0 DB: It's an acceptable mental health issue.   0:23:48.7 KF: It's an acceptable. Exactly. Where scrupulosity it's like, "No, that's good you're like that." So I think also church leadership, which they've done a lot better recently, really begins to say like, "Okay, this is an issue that we have," stating it and coming out and being really just, yeah, really transparent about it.   0:24:08.8 DB: And, "It's okay, and this is... We don't wanna be like this. We wanna get help. It's not good to be obsessed about being worthy or perfect." I think as the more the higher-ups start to talk about it more, it will become something that people are like, "Oh, okay." You know, and Elder Holland gave a great talk a couple of years ago about that.   0:24:32.4 DB: He's great.   0:24:32.7 KF: They've done Ensign articles about these things as well. So they are working on it, I feel like. We did a conference called Anxiety Disorders in Mormonism, shortly after the book was published, and that was great. I think we had church leadership there from some department, I don't know. So you know, kind of probably checking up on us, seeing like, "Are they really teaching good things?" But also I hope it helped them to realise that this is an issue.   0:25:00.4 DB: Oh, wow.   0:25:00.5 KF: And it was sold out this conference at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. This is something in the church that we need to talk about more. So yeah, I don't know.   0:25:09.3 DB: My goodness, yes. I think that's what's interesting here is... And I apologize, I think we're on a slight delay here, so I don't mean to be talking over you. You've published this book now three years ago, or four years ago, and this is the first time I'm hearing it.   0:25:30.5 KF: Right.   0:25:30.5 DB: And I'm a mental health professional. And to your point, I am surprised. I am absolutely baffled why you haven't been on... And this is not a criticism to my colleagues, but I am surprised that you haven't been on every mental health podcast in the LDS community. Being that this is such an important topic and it is related to anxiety, depression.   0:25:57.4 DB: Even if you don't have scrupulosity specifically, this is prevalent in the church. And so you're right, this needs to get out. And so if I could do my part. I agree with you. There's kind of a paradox, because as you said, and I 100% agree. The upper leadership need to be talking about it more. But that's also kind of fueling the problem. We're waiting for our leaders of authority to say, "This is what you need to do."   0:26:28.2 KF: It's true. And you know, there is this divide, I think, with a lot of church members. I did a book signing at a church book store in Washington after the book came out. I was sitting there and I have the books, and I heard someone walking by like, "Ugh, OCD Mormon." Like, "Oh, that doesn't matter. OCD doesn't matter" Yeah, I was like, "I'm right here." [chuckle]   0:26:53.1 KF: But it is one of the, specifically OCD is one that people don't really realise is a real mental health disorder. If that sounds... That sounds terrible, but it's true. Because we use this so flippantly, the "OCD" term. So I don't know. Yeah, it's really hard I think anxiety is an easier one, people will say, "Okay, yeah, you have anxiety."   0:27:14.4 KF: But all the mental illnesses is really are so co-morbid with each other where you can have one and the other. They kind of like to pair up and be friends, which is not fun. So yeah, I have OCD, but I also do have anxiety, generally. I've been having suicidal thoughts before because of all of these things. So they really, they all go hand in hand. And they can get so deep if you don't address them, and cause other problems and cause even like physical problems.   0:27:47.5 KF: One time, I thought I was having a heart attack after my breakdown in college. And so I had to go and do EKG testing. So I thought I was having heart attack.   0:27:57.8 DB: I've been there.   0:27:58.5 KF: Yeah, it's like if you're having these things, there's something wrong and let's get help, because it's available, and it's great. When I went to the BYU Health Center and they just gave me the medication. And there wasn't, as I remember, not really a discussion about other options. I think a lot of us do want just like, "Okay, give me the drugs, and I'll be fine." We don't wanna put in the work and put in the time.   0:28:25.8 KF: Because we're so busy too, in the church. We're so busy. We have all these callings, and we have our kids, and we have this, and the school, and all the jobs. And it's like, "When do I have time to go to a therapist? When am I gonna do that?" But it's so...   0:28:39.3 DB: We need an immediate solution.   0:28:41.4 KF: Yeah, we want the immediate solution. And the medication is great. It helps kind of take it down a notch, at least for me, and I don't know for you if you're on anything. But being in therapy just helps you understand why and what it really is, and how you can behaviourally take care of it and get better, and when it comes up in other areas, you recognize it more, than just taking a medication.   0:29:09.0 KF: It really, yeah, therapy is so important. And it's so hard to get, for some people. It's hard to find the right therapist. It's hard to get an appointment with a therapist. These are things that are also obstacles, that are huge, yeah.   0:29:22.3 DB: And one... And you addressed this in the book very well. I have so many questions. This is such an exciting topic for me, so let me organize my thoughts here. Because you brought up this and you talk about this in the book really well too. It's one thing to find a therapist and to find a therapist who really knows how to address this.   0:29:41.9 KF: Yes.   0:29:42.2 DB: But before... Before I ask that question, I wanna talk about the nuance around this. And one of the things that really prevents, I believe, prevents us from, at least in the church community, that... Recognizing we need help. Is, what we perceive is the spiritual... And I'm curious, 'cause I don't remember you talking about this in the book, or at least bringing it up, is what we perceive as the spiritual reward we get when we are following our scrupulosity.   0:30:15.8 DB: I often hear people will say, "Are you telling me this is a mental illness? When I read for two hours a day, I pray repetitiously. I feel closer to the Lord." That.   0:30:31.0 KF: Right. "You're telling me that's wrong?" Yeah.   0:30:34.2 DB: How do we... Is that something you experienced? And if you did, how did you address it?   0:30:40.9 KF: Yeah, it is something that is so hard. And I've been doing research for a different project about generational differences in worship. And so I was reading articles, and there's actually, they're doing experiments, and they actually use LDS people, which I thought was great for these experiments, about... Neuroscientists and neurologists are doing this, about how our brain reacts to religion. I read this article, it's called Your Brain on God. And this doctor...   0:31:13.3 DB: Great article out of University of Utah.   0:31:16.6 KF: Yeah, yeah, and just basically how our brain over, probably over the thousands of years since we came up with religion, our brains have become... Yeah, religion helps. It turns on different parts of our brain, like the responses for pleasure. Like cause and effect. We're like, "Oh yeah." So we pray and we feel better about it. And it's literally hard-wired into our brain to feel that way now with religious experiences. Especially for LDS people, apparently.   0:31:47.4 KF: So yeah, if you talk about God or something in the experiment, and you probably know as well as I do, but yeah, they were happier. And so it really is part of our brain. But it's just like a drug where you can get addicted to that in a way. And that sounds awful, right? Probably people will be like, "Oh, you can't say you're addicted to religion, it's not bad, it's good."   0:32:13.3 KF: But God also says moderation in all things, and for the average person, average LDS individual, I don't think He wants us praying two hours a day or reading two hours of Scriptures a day. There's so many... He wants us to be with our family and enjoying the Earth and being good examples out of our own home. So it's hard. It's really... [chuckle] I don't know if I answered any question. But it's hard, yeah.   0:32:39.4 DB: It is hard. You did. And actually, that research, I'm glad you brought it up because it's one that I've written about and we talked a lot about, you bring it up, it's like a drug. It actually shows something quite the opposite, and this is what I mean. We've been doing a lot of brain scans around people who are behaviourally addicted to pornography or these other things, forms of media.   0:33:08.5 DB: And they found that this brain response of studying the Scriptures and following the leaders or reading quotes from the prophets, lit up the brain in a similar way as those who look at porn. And so what we've been identifying, what some of the best researchers have been identifying, is there's something else going on that's beyond this chemical addiction.   0:33:32.4 DB: Which is not like a drug, actually. It's what we are creating in our belief system, what we're expecting to receive from it. And so, what we're identifying is we need to redefine how we experience those relationships. So I think you actually did answer the question, is I don't need to read three hours a day to have this feeling of closeness with the Lord. I can create this in a way that's pleasing to Him, in a way that's more appropriate for me.   0:34:09.3 KF: Right.   0:34:09.8 DB: Does that make sense?   0:34:10.8 KF: Yes, more is not always better, you know?   0:34:13.7 DB: Correct.   0:34:15.8 KF: Yeah, it's interesting, and I read this book, I'm trying to see if I have it here on myself. About George Albert Smith, with the prophet and how he, basically his... Youu know, he had mental illness, mental health problems, but they didn't really diagnose it 'cause he was back in the...   0:34:37.1 DB: I love this example.   0:34:38.6 KF: Yeah, and reading it, I was like, "Oh, he has anxiety obviously, and probably obsessive-compulsive disorder." And they tried to do ridiculous things to the poor man, like, "You have to live outside in the back cottage, "or all these just crazy things, "You have to take time off from being an apostle," and all of these things.   0:34:58.0 KF: And I just, it helped me feel better about my own problems 'cause I'm like, "Okay, even the prophet had this." And I think it allowed him to be more empathetic when he became prophet, he was prophet right after World War II. And so I think having those experiences and having the mental health problems that he did, I think it made him the prophet he needed to be for that time period, even though it was awful and he didn't have the correct treatment because they didn't have it then really.   0:35:29.5 KF: But to know like, "Okay, it can be a blessing in some ways," like you said. It could be awful too. And so it is awful, but it can help us learn empathy and learn different skills that the Lord can then use to help the Kingdom. I don't know.   0:35:49.0 DB: I believe it was George Albert Smith, 'cause as I was telling you offline, I've done such extensive research, sometimes stories cross, so I hope I'm remembering correctly, and I find it was a missed opportunity when we're studying him as a prophet, that they didn't include that in the material. And how he would actually isolate himself in California for months at a time, to escape it all and to recover. What a benefit that would be to here as a church community. I think... And I have no idea. I am...   [overlapping conversation]   0:36:22.1 KF: Needed to do that for his mental health. Yeah.   0:36:25.1 DB: Yes. And I don't wanna pretend I know what the leadership is thinking when they develop this material, but maybe my only guess is maybe they don't want us to have a negative light on George Albert Smith. But I don't know. I thought that would be... So when I teach that lesson that I sometimes get asked to teach, I make sure I include that. It's like, oh my goodness, isn't he more relatable now? Isn't it make you feel good?   0:36:53.8 KF: Yeah. I even think about Christ when He had to go and He would go up into the mountains and pray by Himself, I'm like, "Yeah, I relate to that needing to get away from all of the people and all the things going on around you, and just have the solitude." I'm like, "Yeah, I can relate to that." Or just being asleep in the boat and, "Go take care of it yourselves." [chuckle] Solve the problem on your own.   0:37:17.4 DB: Absolutely.   0:37:18.5 KF: I think it does, it humanizes everyone, these leaders. And just, you know, the thing is, it's sad, but like you said, there's such a negative perception of mental illness, not just in the church, but everywhere. And so end of therapy and things like that, and people think, "Well, I'm not being good enough, or I'm not praying enough if I'm depressed." If you're unhappy, you're just not being a good enough Latter-day Saints.   0:37:52.5 KF: And you hear that a lot, like, "You just have to pray it away, or fast more or pull up your bootstraps." And it's...   0:37:58.0 DB: Correct.   0:38:00.9 KF: That's not the right way to deal with this. I think it's hard to change that demographic of the church and of society, that thinks that like mental illness is a personal weaknesses. Because it's not. It's not a sin, it's not a weakness. It's a real thing, just like if you had cancer or if you had endometriosis or whatever. It's a real illness.   0:38:29.0 DB: But to your earlier point, I'm gonna come back to that other question, is when we do seek help... So let's step out of even the LDS community right now, let's talk about the medical community. So I'm putting the pieces together myself over the years and I had a nervous breakdown, oh, I don't remember the year now, it might have been around 2006 or 7, and I thought I was...   0:38:57.2 DB: So your story about heart attack hit home for me because I remember checking myself in, and thought I was dying. At that time, I was also 265 pounds, and so I thought I was prime heart attack whatever, and I checked myself in and they did all the tests and they're like, "You're fine."   0:39:19.6 DB: I said, "I am not fine." And they looked at me like I was crazy, like, "Get out of here." It felt like it was more just they were protecting themselves from liability to keep me there, and I was of course feeling a lot of shame like, "I don't understand. I am... " You can't even describe. People who have had a severe panic attack understand. And that's what it ended up being.   0:39:50.1 DB: But there was no... No one sat me down and said, "Look, what we believe is happening here and how we think we can help this... " I realise it was an emergency urgent care facility, but that also goes to the point. Our society, we're now in 2020, and even with me having a nervous breakdown last year in 2020, the help and the insight...   0:40:15.8 DB: And I'm a mental health therapist and I was struggling to identify what was happening, and it's always harder when it's happening to you, but to be able to identify it and to get the help, it's just like, "Here, take this Klonopin or whatever. Let's just calm you down and get you home."   0:40:33.6 DB: And then, as you talked about in the book, and this is where my next question is, is how? It's one thing to identify that you may have a problem and then another to find a therapist who really knows how to deal with this. And as a therapist, I struggle to find people who are adequately trained to refer people to. What was your process? And I know you brought it up a little bit in your book, but how did you find the right therapist for you?   0:41:06.8 KF: Yeah, luck, really. [chuckle] No, but...   0:41:10.3 DB: It's true.   0:41:11.2 KF: It's true, it's true. I was having this... At the time, it was contamination OCD, I got really bad. And my husband was like, "This is not normal. You need help." And I was like, "No, no, I'm fine, I can do... I am a strong person, I don't need help." And he was like, "No, you need help."   0:41:32.9 KF: So I was really blessed with a husband who was really supportive and had a family with mental illness, and so he could recognize this and not take "no" for an answer really. He was like, "No, you need help." So I was like... I was too involved or too emotionally upset to even call doctors.   0:41:55.6 KF: Which, a lot of people are at that point, when you're going through a breakdown, you can't. You're not like, "Okay, let me go research all the different doctors that I could go to." No, you're having a breakdown. So I was lucky, he started calling the doctors. It was to the point where he was even calling the in-care, yeah, people like, "Can she come in and stay there?" and they're like, "No, we're full," or, "Oh, no, we don't have any appointments for two months." And he's like, "This is not... We need something now."   0:42:23.1 KF: And so he called someone, a doctor in Seattle. We were living on an island in the Puget Sound at the time, near Seattle, but he called the doctor in Seattle and he's like, "My wife's having a really hard time with this," and he's like, "Well, we have a group session tonight that she could come to. And I have a cancellation the next day too for an appointment."   0:42:48.4 KF: So it was just totally random that he called this doctor that day at that time and the cancellation. So I was very lucky, I was very lucky. I went to the group and that's when I was like, "Oh yeah, this is what I have." And then, yeah, I went to him for the appointment and he told me, "Go to your GP, general doctor and get on medication for now, because it will help you in the meantime to calm down. And then we'll work on the therapy once you can... You're well enough that you can actually do the exposure therapy and do the things that you need to do."   0:43:32.3 KF: So I went to my other doctor, got on medication, then I went home for Christmas to my parent's house with our family. And I was suicidal, having suicidal thoughts because of everything.   0:43:46.1 DB: Yeah.   0:43:46.3 KF: So I was like, "I can't go back," to this island where we lived 'cause I was like, "It's dirty, and contamination." And so we flew home and drove to Portland and started looking at houses down there to move, because we were building a house on Vashon Island, but we were like, "We need something better in the meantime that's closer to therapy," because I didn't wanna take a ferry and then drive a half hour to go to the therapist every week. I was like, "That is a two-hour commute, it's too much."   0:44:18.3 KF: So we were lucky enough that we could do that, and we bought a house down near Portland. And so I came back to my therapist and I'm like, "We're moving," and he's like, "What? What are you doing?" I'm like, "No, we need to move, various reasons." And so he said, "Well, I have a friend down there, another therapist in Portland, and I will transfer you over there." And so I was like, "Oh, great." He's like, "He's me, but in Portland."   0:44:43.2 KF: So I was like, "Okay, that's fine, that's great." So I moved down there and I met with him, and he was great. He was like... We hit it off even better than I did with the one in Seattle. And I don't know, we just, I met with him every week at first and was able to make progress on the things that we're really bad. We started with the contamination, which is really the one that was awful for me.   0:45:05.6 KF: And then once that was kind of under control, then he looked and said, "Okay, now, what else? What else is the OCD touching?" And then we were able to go to the scrupulosity or the hitting around OCD, or whatever, there's all these different sub-types. But it was just a luck, and so I feel really lucky that I had that experience. It's been really hard to...   0:45:28.3 KF: Now, I didn't... I stopped going to see him once I was better, and I was like, "Oh, I'm doing so well with this whole behavioral therapy, I know what to do now, this is great." I'm like, "I'm gonna go off my medication, I'm not... I don't need to see my therapist very much, I know what I'm doing now." And I had a total breakdown while I was writing the book, total...   0:45:57.3 DB: Wow.   0:45:58.0 KF: Right back where I was basically. And I'm like, "What it's going on? I know what I'm supposed to do." Like you, you're a therapist, you're like, "I know the tools but I can't use them myself. What is going on?" And my friend that had to come and she checked me...   0:46:13.5 DB: Let me pause you for a second. Let me pause for a second, 'cause I think this is important to emphasize to those people who don't experience this, when they're trying to be loving and supportive, that there... One of the things I discovered, really quick, I understand all the concepts, techniques and tools with grounding with mindfulness, but when your brain gets into a place of ruminating, no amount of grounding, mindfulness, breathing techniques... Now, help.   0:46:47.6 DB: And I wanna say that with a caveat, I'm not saying that, "It's not gonna be helpful. Don't do it." You definitely do it. I'm not saying don't do it. But when you're loving network, your family, your support system is getting frustrating, saying, "Aren't you doing this?" Or, "You need to do this." I think it's important for them to remember, because it may help you and get you into a good place, it does help us, but it's not the solution, and it's probably not as effective as it may be for you. Is that your experience?   0:47:27.2 KF: Yeah, for me it was like, yeah, I knew what I should be doing, but I was like, "No." I think it was pride too. I don't wanna have to go back to the therapist and tell them I failed. I know what I should be doing, but I just I can't do it. My brain, it was just like, "No, no."   0:47:47.7 DB: So you couldn't even get there, your brain wouldn't even let you do it?   0:47:51.8 KF: Yeah. I had a friend, the friend who had OCD and that I mentioned earlier, and she was like, "I'm taking you to the hospital." Because I would tell her things about going on a walk, "I could just walk out into traffic right now, it wouldn't matter." She's like, "I'm taking it in to the hospital 'cause that is not normal thoughts to have."   0:48:12.8 KF: And so I went and they gave me some drugs. And then the next day I went to my doctor and got back on medication. No, it's hard, and I think it's... Even now, I'm not going to the therapist regularly, and I'm like, "Oh, I don't need to go to the therapist," but I should, I should. Not every week, but I should check in once a month or once every three months. The accountability is important.   0:48:44.1 KF: And that's what keeps me on track, I'm on medication again, still, and that's keeping me fine, but if something happened, something major, I would probably have another... I would probably go back to the same spot. It's really hard. It's a constant, it's a life-long...   0:49:03.2 DB: Understood.   0:49:04.1 KF: Yeah, and medication doesn't always work as well as it used to, and so you have to have these tools in your toolbox and recognize like, "Okay, I can't do this on my own."   0:49:17.2 DB: I wanna be respectful of your time. I have many thoughts and questions. Are you okay if we go beyond the hour?   0:49:22.9 KF: Yeah. It's fine.   0:49:24.6 DB: And what you don't really address in the book is how this affected your intimate relationship with your husband. And not just sexually, but connection in all of it. Are you comfortable in explaining that?   0:49:43.8 KF: For sure. I mean, I laugh because I remember these instances, and to me they were like, "Oh my gosh," like life and death. But now I'm like, "What was I doing?" But when I had the contamination OCD, he would take the laundry downstairs or something, let's say, and I always say, "You have to go wash your hands." He was like, "Why." 'Cause you touched a dirty laundry, and he was like, "I'm not gonna do that," and I'm like "then you're not gonna sleep in the bed tonight."   0:50:12.3 KF: And he's like, "What?" "No, you have to sleep on the couch unless you wash your hands." And he's like, "What are you talking about?" Things like that or even just touching, he would go by and pat me on the bum or something, and I'd be like, "What are you doing? Don't touch me, don't touch me there!" He was like "What? What's the problem?"   0:50:34.7 KF: These little things that are natural husband and wife things, I'm like, "Whoa!" I'm thinking, "This is wrong, this is... You're dirty, this is awful." And yeah, even sex, I was like, "Whoa, this is dirty. We can't." It was very like, we have to have it on a certain sheet, or have sex in a certain time, or what... I take off my garments, my underwear, I have to pull them and put them in a spot, put them on like a Kleenex 'cause they're dirty. And it really ruins the the moment.   0:51:09.3 KF: He used to be like, "Oh my gosh, what are you doing?" Or if you touch anything, you have to go wash your hands. Yeah, it really does affect your intimacy and your relationship with your spouse, because in your mind, you're like, "This is totally logical. And this is what I have to do to maintain my sanity." And to them, they're like, "What is going on? This is not okay."   0:51:34.7 KF: So yeah, it's really hard on spouses. And children too. I was like, "I'm not gonna color with my kids 'cause they touched the markers and maybe they didn't wash their hands after they went to the bathroom." So I'm not gonna color with them. Or I'm not gonna sit on the floor with them because the floor is dirty or... You know, just all of these things would factor into it. It changed my whole relationship with my whole family. Yeah.   0:52:00.1 DB: So with... Because my group is focused on intimacy specifically, what do you do now?   0:52:09.5 KF: Yeah.   0:52:11.2 DB: Do you feel like sex is now pleasurable for you, or? I guess I made an assumption. It sounds like sex was not a pleasurable experience before?   0:52:17.6 KF: No. No, it was kind of like a...   0:52:18.7 DB: Do you feel like it is now?   0:52:20.6 KF: You know, it's not totally better. I have tried to be better about it, but there's still... It becomes a habit when you do these things often enough. And so even without thinking about it, I'm like, "Okay, we're gonna move over to your side of the bed if we're gonna have sex, because I don't wanna get my side dirty." Like, still. [chuckle]   0:52:43.6 KF: And I try...   0:52:44.0 DB: I'm glad you can laugh about it.   0:52:45.6 KF: I try not to be obvious about it, but I'll scoot over or whatever. Or I'll be like... I'll look like where he puts the underwear when... [chuckle] Like, "Okay, is it in a good spot? Okay, we're good." Because we've talked about it. We were interviewed for Vice on this topic, OCD and Intimacy. So you can look that up.   0:53:10.7 DB: We'll include the link.   0:53:12.4 KF: It was really good, actually. He was in the conversation obviously. It was like couples therapy, just talking it out. And him saying, "Okay, this bothers me when you do this." And I was like, "Really?" So I think couples need to be able to open up to each other about that, about sex, and what are problems or issues that each person has, because it's really healthy actually.   0:53:37.8 KF: And I think we don't talk about it at church 'cause we're like, "That is a private thing. I'm Mormon and I can't do this and we can't talk about it. Or we can't use sex toys." Or whatever people think. Because we don't talk about it, we have all these assumptions of what we can and can't do, I think. Or should and shouldn't do. But really, is that even like a thing? I don't know.   0:54:02.1 KF: Like using sex toys, I was like, "I cannot. No, we don't do this." He's like, "No, it's fine." So these are things that we've had to work on and still work on, but talking about it and being open about it with some random stranger actually really helped us to come to terms and to be like, "Okay, you know, we need to be better at this. Or I need to be better at it and not let the OCD take over that." And be okay with having pleasure.   0:54:28.9 DB: Again?   0:54:30.6 KF: Yeah. With... You know, it's okay...   0:54:33.3 DB: Yes.   0:54:33.7 KF: If you feel good about this. Which for some reason I never did. Well, you know.   0:54:39.1 DB: You bring it up again.   0:54:40.6 KF: Yeah.   0:54:41.3 DB: Yeah, it's interesting because it's, again, the taboo and the somehow... Someone predefined we're not supposed to talk about certain things. Like my wife was just telling me she was at book club and they brought up Emily Nagoski, one of Emily Nagoski's books, which is great, about female pleasure. And one of the people says, "Let's do that for our book club." And she was excited, she says, "It's changed my relationship for the better."   0:55:09.3 DB: And the response... Again, I'm not criticizing anybody, I wasn't there, but the immediate, the automatic response was like, "No, gross, we don't talk about that thing." And it's like, oh, we're feeding the problem, we're feeding the problem. And we're not allowing ourselves to identify, "Well, I know I can have pleasure, but I'm not allowed to talk about it."   0:55:32.8 KF: Yeah.   0:55:33.1 DB: And if we don't talk about it, how do we learn about it? I mean, it's...   0:55:38.1 KF: How do we learn... How do we even know, yeah, what it is. What, yeah. No, exactly.   0:55:42.8 DB: Even like with sex toys, it's like, "Yes, absolutely." So has that been a helpful thing for you? Has incorporating tools, I like to call them sex tools. [chuckle] "Toys" makes it sound... Which, there's nothing with saying "toys".   0:56:00.1 KF: Yeah, no.   0:56:00.1 DB: But for therapeutic mind, it's like it's a tool, it's to help you. [chuckle]   0:56:02.5 KF: No, and it has. And just... My husband wasn't always active at church, and so I was not his first sexual partner, we'll say. And I was very worried about that at first. This is like, "I don't know anything about this, and I could be very bad and he would know." 'Cause I'm not the only person he's been with.   0:56:25.6 KF: So then I was also like, "Oh well, this is just because you weren't always active at church, so that's why it's okay to do... You think it's okay to do these things?" But no, it's fine. And yeah, the tools have been very helpful and... But it has taken me a while to be like okay with it, or to be okay with doing it myself...   0:56:47.5 DB: Yes.   0:56:49.0 KF: When he's... Things like that, having pleasure. Like, is it...   0:56:52.9 DB: Has that been helpful for you, allowing you to be in your own space and to...   0:56:58.0 KF: Yeah.   0:56:58.0 DB: Does that help manage your anxiety so that you don't feel like you're having to perform for anybody, just yourself?   0:57:04.1 KF: Yeah, yeah. You know, and I... Yeah, I always used to be like, "Okay, well," when he's done, then it's like, we're done. But now I'm like, "No, now it's my turn." And so we'll use the tool. And we'll use the tool, and it's...   0:57:16.6 DB: Toy is fine. [chuckle]   0:57:18.3 KF: You know, it really has helped to be like, "You know, this is... It's not just for him that this needs... This is for pleasure. I should also enjoy this." And it can be really stress-reducing as well for me, and not just a stressful occasion like, "Okay, I have to be good for him," and then he gets his pleasure, and then we're done. It's not just a one-way thing. We're not the tool, the women. We also deserve to have pleasure.   0:57:50.4 DB: Yes. Yes.   0:57:51.8 KF: That's something that took so long for me to realise. And also to even allow myself to get to that point of orgasm. My body was always just like, "No, no, no, no, no, no. I can't lose control," 'cause of my mental illness and my health. "I have to always be in control. I can't not know what's gonna happen." And so you had just to being able to let that go.   0:58:15.5 DB: The way you just phrased that there...   0:58:17.3 KF: Yeah.   0:58:17.9 DB: The way you just phrased that, "I can't let myself lose control." I have heard that from many, many women in counseling. That they feel like when they're on the verge of orgasm, they're losing control. I clearly can't identify as a woman in what you're experiencing. But that was a very triggering word or phrase for you.   0:58:41.5 DB: As I'm listening, I'm thinking, "Oh my goodness." And I wanna be careful, I don't wanna do a broad stroke of scrupulosity across everyone who may have experienced it that way. But that does sound like possibly a symptom of, "I'm losing control."   0:59:00.0 KF: Yeah.   0:59:00.1 DB: "What's gonna happen here?" What do you think?   0:59:02.5 KF: I think it is. I think... No, I think you're right. And I think, I don't know. Yeah, I was just like, "I can't... " It's very real even every time really. I'm like, "Okay." You have to make a decision like, "It's okay. It's okay to not be in control."   0:59:18.2 DB: Experience it.   0:59:18.5 KF: Experience it, yeah. And then you get past that, and you're like, "Oh, okay. This is what they're talking about." [chuckle] But if you don't get past that point, you never get past that point, and you don't realise what's on the other side of it. And so, yes, it's a huge thing, and it can be so good for women.   0:59:39.8 KF: I was reading a book about hormones for women. It's called the Hormone Cure, and it talks about that, too. That women need to have this time where they're just massaged there. It's really helpful actually for our mental health. I was like, "Oh, okay." And I was telling my husband, he's like, "I'll do that. That's great. Like I will help you with that whenever you want, we'll have our massage time."   1:00:09.9 KF: But just realizing it's not bad. I think so much in church we're taught like, "This is bad." Because just growing up, it's like, "It's bad, bad, bad, until you're married, and then it's great and fine. But we're not gonna talk about it, or what you do, or what it's supposed to feel like. At all."   1:00:21.7 DB: Exactly.   1:00:23.6 KF: It's not helping.   1:00:24.0 DB: A very good point.   1:00:24.9 KF: It's not helping to be like that. To have it be such a taboo, and then suddenly it's fine. Our brains can't really process that. It takes...   1:00:34.2 DB: That's... One of the hardest things for me to communicate with people who I'd only, I wouldn't diagnose as having scrupulosity. It's just a general, cultural belief is, "Once you get married, everything's okay. " No, it's not. The exception is not the rule. I'm not gonna throw a percentage out there, I have no idea. But I have yet to see that be the case where, "Yes, marriage is now, you get to... "   1:01:04.4 KF: Do it.   1:01:05.4 DB: "You understand your body, and you're experiencing the full benefits of it."   1:01:09.4 KF: No. No, not at all. Yeah, I'm like, "I don't know. I don't know what's down there." My husband's like, "What? What are you doing?" [chuckle]   1:01:18.4 DB: And you're not alone. We now have family discussions.   1:01:24.1 KF: Prudish.   1:01:24.7 DB: Yeah.   1:01:25.0 KF: Like, "I didn't know." Yeah.   1:01:28.6 DB: It's such a blessing, we have family discussion. Now I have three girls, and they're all married. And one of the most... Believe it or not, it's one of the most... What's the word I'm looking for? Not humble, but I'm proud. It feels so good when we're even at the dinner table, just us family, and we're talking about, in a very appropriate way but very open, about marital sex, and what it looks like, and how we can improve.   1:01:56.2 DB: We're not crossing boundaries or anything. Well, people might be listening who say, "You've already crossed a boundary." No, the fact that we can openly discuss, that is a good thing. That, "Oh, you know what, have you considered this? This may help." All of our bodies are different, and we go through phases.   1:02:12.7 DB: You talked about having an hysterectomy in your book. My wife has had a hysterectomy, that changes the body dramatically. What does sex look like after a hysterectomy? No one talks about that. And now, we do.   1:02:27.0 KF: We should, yeah. Because it's such an important part of our lives. And not in a gross way, but we think of it like, "Ooh." I know especially probably women who've grown up LDS, who are just like, "Ooh, you don't talk about that. That's not okay." Like you wife's book club like, "Ooh, no, we're not gonna do that." But...   1:02:48.7 DB: "I'll do it in private in my closet where no one sees me."   1:02:51.3 KF: Yeah, "I won't tell anyone."   1:02:52.4 DB: Maybe.   1:02:52.6 KF: Yeah, and I had a... My former sister-in-law, who's since divorced, but she was very open with these things. And so, after we got married, she's like, "Okay, what's gong on?" They let us use their hotel room right after we got married, before we went on our honeymoon. [chuckle]   1:03:09.4 KF: They're very...   1:03:10.3 DB: Cool.   1:03:10.8 KF: Very open. She's very open. So she's like, "Yeah, use the tools, this helps so much." And I was like, "What, we can? We're allowed to do that?" And she's like, "Yes." I'm like, "Okay." So just having people be open about it, really changed my view like, "Okay, other people are doing this, it's not just in the dark or sneaking around. You can't do this anymore."   1:03:32.4 DB: Absolutely. So I wanna be respectful of your time, and I have so many thoughts and questions. And maybe someday we'll have you back. I'm excited to hear the reception on this podcast. But the final question maybe I have for today is, this is a difficult experience, like we were talking at the beginning. How... First of all, how do recognize that this is an issue? And then, how can family best support us?   1:04:03.9 DB: What would you recommend that people can do? What is the best way to... I realise there's a broad experience here. One, being able to identify you have a problem. But let's take it from a place of... Well, you're welcome to go with it wherever you want, but I'm thinking specifically, how does a spouse help you now? How do they best support you?   1:04:28.8 KF: Yeah, that is, it's really difficult with OCD. First of all, they need to research it themselves and understand what's going on. If you're going to therapy, have them come with you to a session and talk to the therapist about, "Okay, what should I do in these situations?"   1:04:49.1 KF: Because we look to our spouses a lot of times for reassurance, which is a compulsion too. "Are my pants dirty? Can you look? Can you tell me if they're dirty or not?" And if they're like, "No, you're fine." "Okay I'm fine." For five minutes or something. And then you ask again, "Are you sure?" And as they provide that reassurance they're just really making the OCD worse. Even though we're like, "No, it feels better." It's really, it's not good.   1:05:16.2 DB: They're enabling it.   1:05:17.1 KF: It's enabling it, yeah. And they have to understand that that is... That is a bad thing to do. You think you're supporting your spouse, you're helping, you're helping them by saying, "No, you're okay, you're fine." But really that is, that is not what they should be doing, it seems counter-intuitive. I think if the spouse knows that also and doesn't say, "I'm not allowed to tell you." But, "What would your therapist say about that? What do you think... "   1:05:41.0 KF: We call him Dr. Bob, my therapist. "What would Dr. Bob say? Would he want me to tell you that?" I'm like, "Oh okay." "It's not that I don't love you, it's just this is for your own good." You have to stand up sometimes to the person who has OCD if you're the spouse. Which can be really difficult. But as long as they understand that that's what you're doing. [chuckle] You're not just being a jerk. That's important too.   1:06:08.2 DB: Do you have some sort of plan? Or did you... You both discuss possible solutions or approaches. You come up with it beforehand, so that doesn't feel so abrupt or whatever in the moment?   1:06:20.5 KF: Yeah.   1:06:20.8 DB: Okay.   1:06:21.3 KF: "Okay, I'm not gonna get you reassurance anymore." I'm like, "Okay. This is... It's your deal, you'll have to do this." And so yeah, just being really supportive. Supporting going to therapy. It can be hard. Especially if you have little kids. Who's gonna watch the kids? My husband was really supportive.   1:06:40.5 KF: Luckily he worked from home, so we were lucky. But he would sometimes... I was like, "Mum, come over and babysit." Or something when I had to go to therapy, because he knew it was important. Not demeaning your spouse for getting help, which I see sometimes. Husband's like, "Oh you don't need therapy."   1:06:56.6 DB: Oh absolutely.   1:06:58.2 KF: No support that. Support them getting the help that they need. Yeah, don't just say, "Oh stop. Just get better. Make yourself think what you're supposed to." You can't do that, you can't force yourself out of a mental illness. So I think just the support for spouses and parents. And knowledge. Like my mum, she read a book about how, supporting your loved one with OCD.   1:07:25.2 KF: What is his na

Recently I was super fortunate to sit down with reality tv stars Heather Gay and Dre Nord - who are both currently appearing on BravoTV's "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."  In this three-part series, we focus on Heather and Dre's life experiences within the context of Mormonism (and Utah Mormonism).  Part 1 covers... Heather and Dre's early years as devout Mormons. Dre's marriage, divorce, and faith crisis as a Mormon in her early 20s.  This includes how Dre navigated her life as a divorced single ex-Mormon Utah Mom without a college degree. Heather's experiences at BYU and serving an LDS mission in France. Heather's somewhat challenging efforts to find a faithful Mormon husband (Billy Gay). Dre shares how she almost lost her mother to death by suicide, in part due to pressures of "perfectionism" that many Mormon women experience. Heather shares some of the reactions she has received from members of the Mormon and ex-Mormon communities, as well as from the Utah LGBTQ community, regarding her participation in the show. https://youtu.be/svHV0bQEHwA Part 2 covers...  Heather's marriage to Billy Gay III, which culminated in Heather becoming Relief Society President ended in divorce. How Heather and Dre met, and how they were able to build a successful, multi-million dollar business together (Beauty Lab Laser) as divorced Mormon single women in Utah. Dre shares the tragic story of losing her brother to suicide last year, and how she and Heather created a 501c3 non-profit called "Don't Leave" to help "break the stigma around mental health." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtUYWOc_JOo&feature=youtu.be Part 3 covers... Heather's struggle to accept the end of her "Eternal Marriage," which included years of denial. Heather's life as a divorced single Mom, which included experimentation with things she never considered trying as a devout Mormon (e.g. alcohol). How Heather's perspective on Mormonism changed once she became dear friends with two wonderful gay Mormon men. Heather and Dre discuss their opinions about how harmful the LDS Church's doctrine around LGBTQ members is. Heather and Dre also discuss the ways in which the LDS Church's "Proclamation on the Famly" harms not only LGBTQ members, but also Mormon women/girls and men/boys as well. Heather discusses her current struggle to reconcile her longstanding orthodox Mormon beliefs as they conflict with her developing beliefs about life. This is a heartwarming, epic, and inspiring story of resilience.  I was deeply moved by this vulnerability, wisdom, courage, and resilience of these inspiring women. Please share any questions or comments you have for Heather and Dre below.

Recently I was super fortunate to sit down with reality tv stars Heather Gay and Dre Nord - who are both currently appearing on BravoTV's "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."  In this three-part series, we focus on Heather and Dre's life experiences within the context of Mormonism (and Utah Mormonism).  Part 1 covers... Heather and Dre's early years as devout Mormons. Dre's marriage, divorce, and faith crisis as a Mormon in her early 20s.  This includes how Dre navigated her life as a divorced single ex-Mormon Utah Mom without a college degree. Heather's experiences at BYU and serving an LDS mission in France. Heather's somewhat challenging efforts to find a faithful Mormon husband (Billy Gay). Dre shares how she almost lost her mother to death by suicide, in part due to pressures of "perfectionism" that many Mormon women experience. Heather shares some of the reactions she has received from members of the Mormon and ex-Mormon communities, as well as from the Utah LGBTQ community, regarding her participation in the show. https://youtu.be/svHV0bQEHwA Part 2 covers...  Heather's marriage to Billy Gay III, which culminated in Heather becoming Relief Society President ended in divorce. How Heather and Dre met, and how they were able to build a successful, multi-million dollar business together (Beauty Lab Laser) as divorced Mormon single women in Utah. Dre shares the tragic story of losing her brother to suicide last year, and how she and Heather created a 501c3 non-profit called "Don't Leave" to help "break the stigma around mental health." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtUYWOc_JOo&feature=youtu.be Part 3 covers... Heather's struggle to accept the end of her "Eternal Marriage," which included years of denial. Heather's life as a divorced single Mom, which included experimentation with things she never considered trying as a devout Mormon (e.g. alcohol). How Heather's perspective on Mormonism changed once she became dear friends with two wonderful gay Mormon men. Heather and Dre discuss their opinions about how harmful the LDS Church's doctrine around LGBTQ members is. Heather and Dre also discuss the ways in which the LDS Church's "Proclamation on the Famly" harms not only LGBTQ members, but also Mormon women/girls and men/boys as well. Heather discusses her current struggle to reconcile her longstanding orthodox Mormon beliefs as they conflict with her developing beliefs about life. This is a heartwarming, epic, and inspiring story of resilience.  I was deeply moved by this vulnerability, wisdom, courage, and resilience of these inspiring women. Please share any questions or comments you have for Heather and Dre below.

In this How I Lead episode, Kurt talks with two stake Relief Society presidents about their experiences and the principles of leadership they have learned while serving. Angela Griffiths Angela Griffiths lives in Sale, UK, near Manchester, England, where she has served as a stake Relief Society president for four years. She is an IT teacher and also has a degree in educational leadership and management, and has also served as a stake Primary president and stake Young Women president. Highlights 4:25 About her stake in the Manchester area 5:20 Had not been a ward Relief Society president first 6:40 Principle 1: The importance of being organized Regular monthly meetings with minutes, planning ahead, seeing what training is needed for the wards and being proactive 9:40 Principle 2: The importance of relying on prayer Recognizing inspiration and being flexible to follow it 11:45 Brainstorming ideas and creating mind maps 12:45 Praying to help the sisters become more unified: inspired to have a Relief Society camp for three days with a variety of activities 17:10 Manchester pageant: change management and getting people on board 23:15 Working with the stake presidency to plan the ward conferences for the year 24:30 Meeting with the bishops, preparing to reopen church meetings 26:15 Learned to rely more on her counselors Jennifer Coleman Jennifer Coleman lives in Rutland, Vermont, where she serves as a stake Relief Society president. Originally from Seattle, Washington, she and her husband also serve in mission leadership in the New Hampshire Manchester Mission. Highlights 30:50 Receiving the call to serve 32:10 Church experience and also serving in the mission 34:00 Coordinating council of stake Relief Society presidents 37:10 About her stake and visiting each unit 39:30 Principle 1: Speak up in meetings 42:00 Principle 2: When discussing a topic or challenge with your presidency, before telling them what you think, ask them first what they think 43:25 Principle 3: Decide what is of most value to you and your leadership and don’t try to duplicate what others have done Choice to visit the units more frequently instead of putting their energy into a project the previous presidency had established 46:45 Not being afraid to fail Simplifying projects 50:00 Principle 4: When problem-solving, you may need to take some non-traditional approaches Suggestion to use a talking stick to keep sisters who talk over others in meetings Having difficult conversations 55:15 Principle 5: Often the little things you do as a leader are much more important than the big things Decision to put more energy into one-on-one interactions than into big events

Shaunie Schow was a small-town Idaho woman who served as a Relief Society President and in the Stake Relief Society presidency. Jennifer Saunders was the complete opposite. Individually, they navigated their desires to love and be loved. They both worked to do good in the world and to cultivate Christlike attributes. Together, they found the measure of their creation. This is story of hope, of love, and of rising above the expectations of a community to live an authentic and honest life. In this episode Jenn discusses her TEDtalk: “Loving Outside the Lines”. The link to that talk is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8H1BDHvbyk The video version of this episode is available on the LatterGayStories Facebook page and YouTube channel. You can find more than 100 stories like this online at www.LatterGayStories.org/episodes  

Betty “Red Ant” LaFontaine Navajo Educator, Speaker and TeacherPresentations:The Book of Mormon “The Light of Christ” Betty “Red Ant” LaFontaine is a full blooded Diné (Navajo) born of the Red Clay Bottom Clan, for the Salt Clan. Raised on the Navajo Reservation, she lived most of her youth in New Mexico in the traditional ways of the Diné. Betty is the middle child of eleven children, most of whom continue to live on the Reservation. Her father is Charlie (Man in the White Meadow) White, and her mother is Helen Yazzie White. Her ties to her family and homeland remain strong. Her family was taught by missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and in about 1967 her mother was baptized by LeGrande Richards. Her mother later took out her endowments in the Mesa Arizona Temple. Helen served as a Relief Society President in her hometown of Crownpoint, New Mexico, and has always been very sensitive to the Spirit, despite her lack of a formal education. Betty did the Temple work for her father Charlie, after he passed away.At age five, Betty began her formal education. While attending school she was taught English as a second language. She was not permitted to speak her native tongue during the school day. Betty’s mother Helen chose to have Betty attend the LDS Indian Student Placement Program, giving her access to a better education and an introduction to the modern world. During her seven years in the program, Betty met her husband of 38 years, Mike LaFontaine originally from Florida, and is of Chippewa heritage. Mike’s parents are Melvin J. and Dellene M. Peterson LaFontaine. Mike and Betty were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple in 1982 and they currently live in Orange Park, Florida where they have been for 25 years, spending time with their beautiful 5 children and 18 grandchildren.As a modern urban Indian, Betty’s passion is to educate others about the realities of reservation life, and the history and culture of her people. Betty loves helping others become outstanding members of their communities, and especially loves strengthening her brothers and sisters in the LDS Church. As an Indian educator, Betty makes presentations about her native culture, life-ways, heritage to school assemblies, clubs, groups, organizations, and business employees. Betty has served in Relief Society, Young Women, and as a teacher in Sunday School, and Primary. She is from the tribe of Manasseh. Her testimony of the veracity of the Book of Mormon has engendered in her an interest in recent archaeological and DNA evidences and the ties she has to her heritage and native culture. Her Native American brothers and sisters are a chosen yet scattered people and her passion is to bring them home to the Savior where they may lead in building the New Jerusalem.Support the show (http://www.bookofmormonevidencestreaming.com)

For many it’s a familiar story: active Latter-day Saint, hiding the feelings of same-sex attraction, and doing the things society requires of you to remain “normal”. But what happens when you can no longer do it all? Laura Root shares her story of hope, love, pain and progress. Hers is a story of finding a path that is her own and at the same time staying close to her faith and her personal revelation. Laura came out while serving as a Relief Society President in her ward. The sisters in her ward threw her a bridal shower, soon after the wedding, her new bishop excommunicated her. But she found happiness in the journey.  We invite you to share an hour and better understand Laura’s story. Watch the video on our Facebook or YouTube channel or catch the audio podcast version everywhere you find your favorite podcasts (just search LatterGayStories and click the subscribe button). #ComingOut #FaithAndSexuality #LatterDaySaint #GayMormon    

EXCITING NEWS ALERT~This Is the Gospel is going to join Deseret Book at this year's RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City! To celebrate, we are sharing one of our favorite episodes all about the power of our ancestors' faith stories, "The Roots of Faith." Stories in this episode: An extraordinary lesson from her family history helps Sister Linda K. Burton find the right words to minister to the women of the Relief Society when she is called as president; Deserey is called to be the Family History specialist in her single adult ward and receives a special spiritual confirmation from her father beyond the veil about the value of her calling. SHOW NOTES To find pictures and more from this episode, please visit LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel TRANSCRIPT: KARYN LAY: Did you know that reviews on iTunes help new people find the podcasts that inspire you most? Well, they do. So if you found something valuable in the stories that we share on This Is The Gospel, would you take a minute to rate our podcast and maybe even leave us a review on iTunes? Every written review helps us to show up in the search results for more people who could use a little bit of storytelling magic in their week. We really appreciate it. Welcome to This is the Gospel. An LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay. A few years ago, I got a phone call from my grandma who we call Nanny. And it was routine stuff. She was telling me all the details for the upcoming family party. So I took notes. I wrote it all down like a dutiful granddaughter and I hung up the phone. About five minutes later, the phone rang again. And it was Nanny. So I assumed she was calling because she had forgotten something. And instead, she proceeded to tell me the exact same thing she had said five minutes earlier, almost word for word. When I hung up the phone, I sort of laughed about it. Because in my family, we have a tradition of finding the humor in just about everything, but it didn't take long for the weight of that phone conversation to settle in. Not long after that nanny was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and it didn't take long for her short term memory, her long term memory, and her ability to communicate clearly, to disintegrate. It was around this time that I also got my very first iPhone. I'm a late adopter. So it took me a little while to get one. But when I did, I realized that it had this app, the voice memo app, and all I would have to do is push a button and It would record anything. So I started to record everything. I would take that iPhone and put it in the middle of the room during family parties, and push the record button, just to try to capture whatever I could. I was looking for stories. I wanted to make sure that even though my grandmother's memory was going away, the stories that she had, wouldn't. As you can imagine, sometimes I got stories. Sometimes I got grocery lists, and sometimes I got testimony and other times I got the tail end of a phone conversation. My hunger for the routine and the mundane have made me a bit of an indiscriminate recorder but honestly, I just didn't want to miss anything. And I'd like to think that I was actually rewarded especially when recently I stumbled upon this little story from my mom. KARYN'S MOM (SUE): There was a big box that we used to keep up in the storage closet for like in the wintertime our summer clothes went in the box. In the summertime, our winter clothes went in the box. And whenever I would get into trouble, I would go up there and go in that closet and hide under the clothes and cry. And I'd just be like, "They're never  gonna find me." And then I'd be KaRyn's Aunt (Kathy):Which house are you talking about? SUE: The one in Middletown. That we added on to on Aspen Street. And I'd be up there singing the song."Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me so I'll eat worms. Big ones, fat ones, small ones, skinny ones. Oh, how I'll eat worms. I'll bite their heads off, suck the juice out, throw the skins away. I don't see how birds can stand them for three meals a day."And the kids would come in that closet and they'd go, "She must be in here. I know she must be in here. Sue? Sue?"And I was just quiet as a mouse. And then they go out and I'd laugh quietly and say, "They didn't find me." NANNY: Oh my goodness, oh, it's funny how you probably don't even— KARYN: I am so glad that I captured that moment of unbridled laughter from my Nanny, especially now that she can't remember who I am most days. There's also this really cool little snippet of audio where I caught my mom and my aunt and my grandparents telling the story of their trip to Idaho Falls to receive their temple blessings and to be sealed together as a family a few years after my family converted to the gospel. You will hear my aunt on the phone, in the background, trying to find a place to get scrapple for me. And if you don't know what scrapple is, please don't look it up. You will not think more highly of me after you find out what it is. Anyway, here's the story. SUE: This year we're actually going to Idaho Falls temple. We had a station wagon  Kathy (in the background): ...someplace that has scrapple for KaRynnie SUE: and the back didn't have any seats.  KARYN: Were all of the kids born then?  SUE: Yeah. Thank goodness we didn't have to have seat belts and car seats and all that junk or we wouldn't have been able to go. And Kathy was responsible for handing out the sandwiches when it was lunchtime. And we were only allowed to take a shoebox full of stuff with us. Each person could take a shoebox. That's it because you didn't have room for right people to bring all their facts. If we wanted to buy any trinkets we had a room in our shoebox to put it or we couldn't get it. And we had- did we pull our camper? Our popup tent? And it sometimes would rain so hard that our sleeping bags would get wet. Right? It's not hurting but we- PAPPY: ...slept in the car, or out in good weather we just slept out on the ground in our sleeping bags. KARYN: Like did anything difficult happened on the trip?  SUE: Oh yeah the brakes went out.  Pappy: Yeah.  SUE: Coming down a mountainside  Pappy: Yeah. KARYN: Down a mountain?  SUE: Yeah it was a mountainside. Where were we? Yellowstone area?  Pappy: I don't remember exactly.  SUE: But it was— Pappy: I made all these side trips too. If there was something interesting, I'd go there. SUE: Yeah the bear came. One time we were in the sleeping thing. And we started screaming. Pappy: The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Yeah. KARYN: So I forgot to ask anything about the actual sealing in that conversation. But it was still so cool for me to know about the details of a trip that changed the eternal trajectory of our extended family forever. And aren't we so glad that there are seatbelts now? Though the recordings are totally amateurish and ham-handed. I love listening to them because they represent my newly found desire to hold on to the people, and the places that have shaped me. And all of the stories that are the basis of my own faith. I think we actually call that the spirit of Elijah, right? The turning of the hearts of the children towards their parents and the parents towards their children. Well, today we've got stories from people who found their faith in Jesus Christ rooted in the power of their family history, and that turning of the hearts of the children to their fathers. Our first storyteller is Sister Linda K Burton. And she's telling a story from her family history. The miraculous, yet simple experience from her great grandfather's life that became a guide to her during her time as the general Relief Society President of the Church. Here's Linda. LINDA K BURTON: Well, I don't really remember the very first time I heard this story. I can kind of put it in a time frame of when I was a very young mother, I must have been doing some family history at the time. When the little ones were in bed just to have a break from my regular routine. But I did come across this story of my great-grandfather that he had written down. I don't know at what point in his life he wrote it down but by the time the story took place was when he was about 10 years old. And that intrigued me, but the thing that really intrigued me was the broken English that he wrote it in because he was right from Denmark. And so it was so charming for me to read his own account. And I just was drawn in by this story, because he tells about his mother. And so I could see myself. I could actually relate to her as a young mother of several children. And so this is my great-great-grandmother, Caroline Catherine Holmes Kjar. And at this point in her life, she was pregnant, with I think her seventh child. She had lost one. And her husband had been sick in the hospital for about 26 weeks, so about a half year, six months. And as a struggling young mother, trying to provide for her children with her husband unable to work, she was taking in laundry, she was doing whatever she could make ends meet, and could not make ends meet. So they get to the point where the landlord comes and says, you know, pay up or move out basically. And as it always happens in sad stories, this is in the middle of the winter. So from my great grandfather, Joseph Julius point of view, he remembers looking out the window with his older brother Peter. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself, I got a back up a little bit.  My great-great grandmother was discouraged. And so she gathered the children in prayer after the landlord had come and kind of given his ultimatum. She kneels down with the children in prayer, puts her arms around them and, and says a heartfelt prayer and tells Heavenly Father, she's done everything she can do. She can't do anymore at this point in her life. I remember feeling that way at that point in my life as well. And she told Him that she couldn't think of anything else that she could do. So would He please, please help them. And after she said this beautiful prayer, she didn't get up right away. She said, "I have a feeling that Heavenly Father's gonna send someone to help us. I don't think he's gonna let us suffer anymore."  Well, the next morning is when my grandfather and my great grandfather and his brother looking out the window and it's snowing hard. And so the children are all there in the apartment. That's a second story of an apartment building. And they see a man coming up the walk, and he looks like he some kind of policeman or somebody a little bit frightening, intimidating to them. And they see him go around the back. And then they hear someone coming up the stairs and it frightens them because they think this is the man coming to evict them. So they run to their mother and get her and she hears a knock at the door. And she answers it. And she's I'm sure as frightened as they are. And so this man says to her, "Are you Mrs. Care?" Which kind of takes her back because she doesn't know who this man is. And she says, "Yes, that's me." And he says, "My name is Johan Nikolai Modvic." Sorry, this makes me teary. He says, "I had a dream last night that there was a hard-working woman. And then he gives the address 29 Field Strada who needs my help. I'm here to help you. How much money do you need?" And so she tells him that she needs 30 krona, to bring it current. He immediately gives her the money. And of course, she's just overwhelmed the generosity of this man. She has no idea who he is. And he gives her a card and says, "If you need any more, this is how to contact me." And she goes to kiss his hand and he kind of pulls away and says, "Don't thank me. You thank the Lord because the dream I had came from Him." And then he leaves. And as a sweet young mother, she gathers her children before she does anything else, and kneels in prayer again, and thanks the Lord for sending help in their hour of need, and then she says to the children, "Don't ever forget this. And don't forget the name of this man." This is the story that my grandfather remembers as a child at age 10, which I think is pretty significant because he didn't forget. There's a sequel to this story I don't tell in the book. So we found out later that Johan Nikolai Modvig, and actually my great grandfather remembered his name wrong. He remembered his Johan Lodvic Modvic. We actually had our friend, he kind of specializes in Scandinavian family history. And so he looked up to see if he could find anything about him. He was the one that discovered that Nikolai was his middle name, not Ludvic, and he was a prominent Professor apparently. And, interestingly, about the time that this story happened, I think Brother Modvic, was actually serving as like Speaker of the House type thing in Copenhagen. This was a wonderful man. So besides the all the things he was doing professionally where he listened to the voice of the spirit in a dream and responded to it. I thought that was impressive about him.  You know, I was thinking about how this story changed my faith. I don't know that it changed my faith as much as it deepened my faith. As a young mother, we had ups and downs financially. Yeah, I knew what meager meant and how does scrape things together. And we had a turn when things were really bad financially, the early 80s. And that's when I think this story I ran across the store. So the timing was significant to us, because we'd had quite a drought in our finances. And so this resonated with me. I could feel to a degree what Caroline must have been feeling. So I was grateful to have a story to hang my hat on. I have also drawn on this story numerous times when I was serving in my calling as General Relief Society President. As you can imagine, I was traveling all over the world and seeing women in difficult circumstances. Everyone is in difficult circumstances. When I would stand up there, and I would sometimes prepare something that I- or an outline what I thought I might say, sometimes I could feel this is not the right thing. And I put it aside and he would bring this story to my mind. And that's what would be what I would share. And almost without fail, it was the connecting point to the sisters, no matter what language I was trying to be translated in. And I was able to say and able to use this story to say Heavenly Father has not forgotten you. He is aware of you in your extremities, and you will kneel on your knees and thank Him for these experience someday because you will know that He has had His eye upon you. Like He had my great great grandmother. She was just a regular little person who didn't feel like she was probably worthy of anything great. And yet He saw her in her need and was able respond to that need because she allowed Him to with her prayer of faith.  We were lucky enough to go to Denmark a few years ago when our daughter was living in, in Ireland with her family for a year. We decided to go visit them. And one of the things my daughter had decided that we needed to do while we were visiting there was to go over to Denmark. It was a not too far of a jaunt to go even though she had three little tiny children at the time. But that gave us an opportunity to tell the story to these three little children. Let them know where we were going to go and that we were going to try and find this apartment where this story took place. And that was pretty precious. To go down that street, see the name of that street that we knew, and then find that number 29 was kind of a sacred moment to stand there in front of that and look up into that second story window where we could match and Joseph, Julius, and Peter, looking down. We didn't have to go there to see that it was real. But just standing there and remembering the faith of that mother, that was influencing my life generations later. It was this connecting point. It was this "I love you" moment. It was like my way of saying "I love you, I thank you for being the kind of woman that's influenced my life for many years now." And that my grandchildren were there with me that I hope this would be significant for them to look back on. I knew they were too tiny to maybe remember it in the immediate future. But as the story is retold to them, they might have some remembrance, they were there too, and that this is part of our sacred heritage. KARYN: That was Linda. After listening to this story, I was struck by the realization that Caroline, Linda's great-great-grandmother probably had no idea that this tiny moment, in the cold snowy world of Denmark, would someday reach beyond time and space to inspire women across continents to believe and trust in Christ. Her everyday devotion to the Savior has become a legacy so much greater than she or even her family could have imagined. And it makes me want to reevaluate my own faith practice. Am I living in a way that could someday provide a blueprint of faith for the people I love? Am I seeking to demonstrate deep trust in Jesus? And more importantly, am I writing down the moments that have changed me? The fact that a small transformative moment in our lives could have a lasting impact on generations beyond us is something that was actually reinforced to me during a drive through Amish country, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with my mom, I had my phone recorder turned on because that's what I do. And I must have asked my mom to tell me the story of our first known Amish ancestor.  KARYN: Mom telling me why the Amish Fultz got shunned. SUE: So the story is that the- and I don't remember his name, I think it's John Fultz, was raised by the Amish. So they took him in because his parents died on the ship coming over here to America. And he grew up Amish and then he was planting his field and he decided he was going to plant... wasn't malt. KARYN: Something you could make liquor out of?  SUE: Yes, I can't seem-  KARYN: Barley?  SUE: Barley. And it's not unusual to plant barley. But it is unusual for them to sell it to someone who uses it to make liquor. And he did not appreciate them telling him he could not sell it to this man who was making liquor with it. And so because he did that, he was told that he had to leave the Amish and he was shunned by the rest of the Fultz. So that's who we come from.  KARYN: Do you know when that was? Was it the 1700s? 1800s?  SUE: I could tell you if I had my genealogy in front of me but I don't. And kind of found all that out because Uncle Tim was driving down Lancaster County. Came across the street sign that said Fultz Lane and so he pulled over and had his son taking a picture of them. And a Fultz Amish man, whose last name is Fultz, came out. And he told us the story of the Fultz. And sure enough, it was the same, Fultz.  KARYN: That's really interesting that he would... that that's like folklore in their-  SUE: Yep.  KARYN: In their family, right? Like the Fultz who got shunned because of- SUE: Yep. In the Amish eyes, we're the bad Fultzes. KARYN: That was my mom Sue O'Daley. Certainly, John Fultz wasn't thinking about the future spiritual growth of his family when he stubbornly refused to stop selling his barley for liquor. I'm sure that shunning felt awful. But regardless of whether you think that was a good thing or a bad thing, it was a choice that opened the door of the world to the Fultz family who became ardent Methodists, and eventually ardent members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's also interesting to note that the same gift of stubborn individualism that sent John Fultz out from the Amish is the same gift of stubborn individualism that sent my Pappy, Robert Fultz, the first in our family to join the church in search of a new faith tradition. Our physical and spiritual genetics are hard to escape. But I'm more and more convinced that they are often the thing that will move us forward along our earthly plans towards the Savior, just as they were meant to. Our next story from Deserey illustrates that connection that comes to us from honoring those gifts as we work on our family history. Here's Deserey. DESEREY: So to truly understand my story, I feel like you have to know a lot about hearts. Not only scientifically how they work and how they're made up, but also the hearts of my father, who was a very important man to me, and my brother, who I have not yet met on this earth. My older brother Corbin, he was diagnosed with a heart condition known as aortic stenosis. And this is a defect where your aorta valve is different. So usually, on your aortic valve, you have three cusps, they call them. And when you have aortic stenosis, instead of having three you have two cusps, and that can cause a lot of issues with blood flow and with your aorta. It was recommended that he gets surgery at Primary Children's Hospital. And he was so little and unfortunately, he did not survive that surgery. Fast forward, years later, my dad, he was out working in the yard and came in later that night and was having some chest pain. Well, when he went in to see the cardiologist, they found out that he also had an aortic stenosis. And this kind of shows you my dad's personality and character, because in that moment, when he's finding out this life-altering diagnosis, essentially, that he never knew about his whole life. He felt so bad that he had given that to his son. They didn't know when Corbin was diagnosed that aortic stenosis can be genetic. But in that moment, he turned to my mom, and he said, "I feel so bad that I gave this to my son without knowing." Which just shows how selfless my dad was. He was just always worried about other people more than himself. So, after this, my dad continued on with his doctors, and they recommended surgery for him. My dad's heart was really, really weak after this long, extensive surgery. And so they had trouble taking him off the heart and lung machine. They decided that life flight was needed to come and take him to a hospital that had the equipment that they needed. And while my dad was in the ICU, and life flight was getting ready to take him on the helicopter, he crashed.  My family and I were waiting in the hallway to watch him get put on the helicopter. And unfortunately, we had to watch my dad get rolled down the hallway. With life flight crew giving him CPR and working on him. That was a very, very hard experience for my family to witness. Three days later, after a lot of waiting and a lot of hopelessness, we were informed that we were going to have to take my dad off of life support. We had to say goodbye.  Now I am the youngest of eight children. And after I lost my dad, I was really concerned about him, not being able to be at all my life's big events, I I felt kind of cheated. I was really worried that, you know, I wasn't going to fill him in my life. I was upset that things we could have been doing together that those opportunities were taken away. I had a dream that I was getting married. And I kept looking for my Uncle to give me away. So I said, "Where's my Uncle, he, he needs to give me away?" And I was searching through these crowds of people. And I kept looking. And all of a sudden, I ran into a huge crowd of people. And they were all dressed in white. At the very front was my dad.  I just was shocked. And I said, you're here, you're actually here. And he laughed at me. And he said, "Why I'll always be here. And I've been here the whole time." And I started thinking who were all those other people behind him. And I started asking questions like "Who is he with on the other side of the veil?" And later, within my ward, I was called to be the family history lead. And I had been interested in family history ever since that experience and ever since going through the temple, but I wasn't really sure where to start or how to begin. And I remember driving home from meeting with my Bishop and hearing the news that I was going to be the family history lead. And I just remember the voice of my dad saying. "This is something we can still do together." And, and I could just feel him there with me. He was proud of me.  I know that, that he was he knew my worries, he knew he knew that I was upset that that time was taken away from me and that I was worried that he wasn't going to be there. And this was the way that he was telling me that he was still there. And that there were still things that we could do together, even though he's on the other side of the veil. Ever since then, I have immensely felt his hand in my family history work. And it's been a real comfort to me. And it has really helped heal me and help me in my grief. And I know for a fact that family history work is essential, and that the other side is here with us. And if we could only put on our spiritual glasses, we would see them. When angels minister to us, it's not- they're not strangers. They're our family. They're our ancestors. And I know that him and my brother are helping me on this side of the veil. And I find it so amazing that they're there. And they're working on finding ancestors and teaching them the gospel. And I know for a fact that they helped me find those names so that I could take and do their work for them in the temple KARYN: That was Deserey. I don't know about you but I'd never thought of family history work quite that way. I love her perspective that it's a bridge and an opportunity to work together with those who have passed on before us. And I think that her perspective will change the way I view this work. I want to see it more as an opportunity and a blessing rather than a boring chore that I feel some guilt and shame about. I'm going to try a little bit harder to see it that way. As I was listening through all of my family's poorly recorded voice memos for this episode, I realized that there was one very important thing missing from my library. Apparently, and all of my recording I'd never asked my Pappy to record his conversion story. He's written it down in a few places. But I wanted to get it in his own words. So I begged my Aunt Kathy to record him. Here's what he shared. PAPPY: I mean, I was at work when two missionaries came to our door. My wife, she talked to them, and she invited them back when I would be home. And they came and taught us the gospel, which was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When I first heard it, as I just thought it was another church, but when they taught me, I found out it wasn't just another church. I knew that it was true. I changed churches because when they taught me the word of wisdom, I was smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. At that time, and I threw them away and never smoked again. The Gospel changed my life. What I know about Jesus Christ. Christ when on the cross, setting the example for us. (singing)"The old, rugged cross where the dearest and best. For a world of lost sinners..." I'm trying to remember it."On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross The emblem of suffering and shame And I love that old cross where the dearest and best For a world of lost sinners was slain So I'll cherish the old rugged cross. And exchange it someday for a crown." What do I like about that song? I like to tell what our Savior did for us. I love you too. If I can do anything else for you, just call me. KARYN: That was my grandfather Robert Charles Fultz Jr. That short sweet story and song sum up so much of what I've learned from my Pappy's legacy of faith: Open the door to spiritual experiences. Bare your testimony through song. Always serve others no matter what's going on in your own life. And believe in the power of Jesus Christ to help you do whatever hard things are in front of you, even if you're trying to quit smoking three packs a day.  Elder Packer once said, "Family history work has the power to do something for the dead. It has an equal power to do something to the living. Family history work has a refining, spiritualizing and tempering influence on those who are engaged in it." I think our stories this week are absolutely proof of that truth to me. We are not alone in our desires to live the gospel well. And I know that we have countless family members whose stories can influence our lives and who are rooting for us, rooting for us to have the kind of stories that will strengthen the faith of those who come after us. That's it for this episode of This is the Gospel. Thank you for listening and thank you to Deserey and Sister Burton for sharing their stories. If you want to see the gorgeous children's book that they've made out of Sister Burton's family story, head on over to our show notes for this episode at ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel. We'll have a link there to her book "A Mother's Prayer." A special thank you to my family Robert and Shirley Fultz, Susan O'Daily, and Kathy Yanks, for letting me share our family stories and for showing me an example of true discipleship with a sense of humor. If you have a story to share about living the gospel well, whether it's funny, touching, or miraculous, we'd love to hear it. Call our pitch line at 515-519-6179 and leave us a message with a short synopsis of your story. We get so many of our stories from this pitch line and we love hearing what you have to say. This episode was produced and edited by Katie Lambert and me KaRyn Lay. It was mixed and mastered and scored by Mix at Six Studios and our executive producer is Erin Hollstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and the other LDS Living podcasts at ldsliving.com/podcasts. That's ldsliving.com/podcasts. Have a great week.

Tony Overbay is a marriage and family therapist, author, speaker and podcast host. He began his career in the high tech world but felt the call to become a therapist and help men. For the past 14 years, he has been a licensed marriage and family therapist with a practice in Roseville, California. While Tony grew up in Utah, he is an adult convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has been married 28 years, is a father of four, an ultra-marathoner, host of the Virtual Couch Podcast, author of He's a Porn Addict…Now What?, creator of The Path Back pornography recovery program, and currently serves on the Leading Saints Professional Therapists Advisory Board. In this episode, Kurt and Tony discuss how leaders can deal with co-dependency, overcoming the nice guy syndrome, and how we can be more successful focusing on values instead of goals. Highlights 4:00 Co-dependency: what is it? 14:30 Nice guy syndrome in leaders = co-dependency 17:20 Acceptance and Commitment Therapy 20:00 God isn't disappointed in me 24:25 Bad things happening aren't correlated to our behavior 30:35 Relief Society President example 31:40 Values and the Bishop Monson dynamic 36:40 System vs. goals 37:45 As you make goals, focus on values that you've established 41:30 As an organization (or ward) we should be focused on values, not goals 47:00 How do we see signs that we're trapped in the nice guy syndrome? 55:00 Values: find what's important to you 1:00:00 Truth, beauty, and goodness 1:04:00 Values vs. identity 1:06:00 The importance of vulnerability as a leader Links TonyOverbay.com He's a Porn Addict...Now What?: An Expert and a Former Addict Answer Your Questions Clarifying Values PDF, from The Confidence Gap by Russ Harris

My friends David and Kathleen Cook, who presided over the Chile Santiago South Mission from 2013-2016, join me to talk about Service Missions. The Cooks are currently serving as Service Mission Leaders in the upstate NY area. David’s prior service includes Area 70 and Stake President. Kathleen’s prior service included Relief Society President, Young Women President and Public Affairs Director for New York. They are the parents of 4 children and 6 grandchildren. They have wonderful insights on how to help parents, local leaders, and future missionaries understand Service Missions and Teaching Missions. They share the importance and equality of both types of missions. How both types of service bring people to the Savior and follow His example. They have suggestions how to overcome some of the cultural hurdles to help everyone see both types of missions as needed, equal and serving like the Savior served. Thanks for being on the podcast Brother and Sister Cook and all you do to serve and lift others. I am very excited about the new Service Mission opportunities (for more information, see https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/callings/missionary/church-service-missionary).

In this podcast, Kurt interviews Mary Alice Hatch, who is serving as the Relief Society President in her California ward, and Søs Gram, who is serving as a Stake Relief Society President in Germany. Sister Mary Alice Hatch Mary Alice Hatch lives in San Clemente, California. She is originally from Potomac, Maryland, a mother of two, has previously served as a Young Women's president, twice in Relief Society presidencies and in a stake Relief Society presidency, and also serves as a temple worker. She co-hosts the What Now Podcast, addressing cultural stigmas surrounding topics in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in an effort to create more understanding, hope and healing. 9:00 Her son’s mission story and how that experience led to starting a podcast 16:25 Where the podcast has gone from there 22:00 Leaning on the Lord as a Relief Society President: confirmation and motivation that this was the right thing and the Lord would sustain her, and felt she needed to be even more thoughtful when choosing her counselors Principles: 26:40 Delegation and empowerment: Allows her counselors to do what they want and need to do for meetings and other tasks without her direction or input; ask questions instead of commanding change when something seems questionable 30:30 Maintaining composure: Others will mirror how you are behaving, so if there’s a crisis it’s important not to panic (and to have a sense of humor) 33:30 Staying humble and going to the Lord: makes you more receptive and in tune with the Spirit 36:20 Mix of different people in her ward, including military wives. Created walking groups of women on the military base and weekly at the beach, a monthly birthday social, a cooking class, and a writing group. 42:15 Ministering interviews: split up between her and her counselors, meet with the same people every quarter, and make sure they connect Sister Søs Gram Søs Gram was born and raised in Denmark, and moved to Frankfurt, Germany, for her husband's job with the translation department of the Church about 20 years ago. She is a language teacher, teaching English and Danish, and has previously served as a ward Relief Society President. 48:10 Attended an international ward for many years, and are now in a German branch in Frankfurt. There are 14 stakes and 3 missions in Germany. Her farthest unit is about 90 minutes away by car. 50:15 Frankfurt temple reopening soon and Elder Uchtdorf will be there for the rededication 51:25 Her call as a stake Relief Society President came as a surprise following many years in music callings Principles: 54:20 Counseling with stake president as well as counselors: maintains an open conversation with the stake president, participation in community activity, sitting on the stand at stake conference, working as a team with her counselors and the high council 1:00:10 Delegation: ask others to return and report, and to do things their own way 1:01:40 Enabling: Give others opportunities to do things that may be difficult, but will stretch them 1:02:15 Ministering is a real challenge with the travel involved. One ward had an all-day ministering interview plan, another uses WhatsApp. 1:07:00 Ministering interviews involved some ministering to the sisters in the interview, taking notes to refer to next time 1:08:45 Presidency meetings work better for them to meet in person, and they use WhatsApp for daily communication 1:11:30 Arranging temple trips for the sisters in the stake while the Frankfurt temple has been closed Links What Now Podcast on iTunes and Spotify What Now Podcast on Instagram @podcastwhatnow, Twitter @podcastwhatnow, and Facebook What Now Podcast website

Daniel Duckworth is a leadership professional. He works primarily as a transformational teacher to transform the leadership performance of executives and managers, and also as a transformational consultant to facilitate strategic execution of major change initiatives. He is affiliated with the University of Michigan Center for Positive Organizations. After a decade in Michigan, he returned to Utah, where he founded Crux Central, LLC in 2019 to facilitate his new mission to learn to make deep change accessible to the masses—not just to the executives. Highlights 07:00 Deep change for all: work experience is sucking the life out of people, and they can’t bring their best selves to their families and everything outside of work, such as church. His purpose is to help people get to the point where their work builds and motivates them instead of draining them. 09:30 Found these problems in Utah just as he had found everywhere else We need to change Utah doesn’t prioritize leadership development, despite a high-tech startup environment that claims to subscribe to a positive organizational culture Nice guy syndrome: the ego shifts people’s true priorities and leads to poor leadership, micromanagement, and a negative cultural dynamic 18:40 Caring what other people think about you interferes with your ability to be a transformational leader 20:40 Church leadership creates subtle culture with hierarchy, but this is holding us back 22:35 Robert Quinn’s four strategies to change: Telling 24:30 Coercion 27:45 Participation 29:20 Transformation: transformational leadership lets go of control and focuses on building relationships while setting a vision and high standards 30:10 Example of the ward cleaning specialist: how can I get this person to do what I want them to do? Defeating assumptions that come with that question: The task becomes more important than the relationship There is one right way to complete that task, and it’s my way (church culture is the same everywhere: not a good thing) If you don’t do it my way, there’s something wrong with you: people are problems 34:35 These assumptions limit your leadership and tools: let go of control and focus first on building a perfect relationship with the custodian Get to that euphoric experience with the cleaning specialist first, and not from a hierarchical perspective: minister to the one and transform the relationship Example of the ward and stake leaders cleaning the building before an apostle visits This transformation is palpable and draws people in 42:15 Example from newsletter article of a phone call from the bishop/executive secretary 46:30 Defies the culture and lets go of control Jesus Christ defined transformational leadership Trust in the personal line of revelation and the relationship 50:35 Negative example of Relief Society President who was sent back seven times, and positive example of bishop and priest giving sacrament prayer with a speech impediment 54:00 Start with positive deviance: there are normal leadership behaviors that the culture enforces which reinforce mediocrity 57:00 The performance standard is the covenant path: we can both set that high expectation and also draw people in through transformational leadership 59:20 Break the cultural rules, not the commandments or the policies: peel back the cultural layers and look for opportunities to create a more powerful culture with better outcomes Experiment, reflect, and learn: study how you can become better 1:04:00 Examples of individuals who created programs through positive deviance: pornography self reliance group, Primary, scouting 1:07:45 Why don’t people make changes through positive deviance? Other people’s reactions paint them as laughable, unusual, or simply wrong. 1:11:50 Dan’s moment of self awareness: list of things he wants to be (not do) Links Deep Change for All

Jill talks about her love for therapy and Zoloft, discusses the importance of setting boundaries with ward members as a Relief Society President, and shares her experience of standing her ground when confronted by a seventy. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

What could cause one of the Mormon church's "best and brightest" women to lose their faith in the church?  For part 2 of today’s interview with Donna Showalter, we will hear how an east bench, Provo, Utah Mormon mother, former Relief Society President, former Stake Young Women’s President, and BYU employee navigated her Mormon faith crisis. - This story includes the gripping account of what happened when they asked Mormon apostle Jeffrey R. Holland to heal their son of his gayness. - It also includes Donna's touching experiences as a Relief Society President. - We also learn about the impact of the November 2015 LGBTQ policy on Donna, Michael and her family - along with the 2019 policy reversal.

What could cause one of the Mormon church's "best and brightest" women to lose their faith in the church?  For part 2 of today’s interview with Donna Showalter, we will hear how an east bench, Provo, Utah Mormon mother, former Relief Society President, former Stake Young Women’s President, and BYU employee navigated her Mormon faith crisis. - This story includes the gripping account of what happened when they asked Mormon apostle Jeffrey R. Holland to heal their son of his gayness. - It also includes Donna's touching experiences as a Relief Society President. - We also learn about the impact of the November 2015 LGBTQ policy on Donna, Michael and her family - along with the 2019 policy reversal.

What could cause one of the Mormon church's "best and brightest" women to lose their faith in the church?  For part 2 of today’s interview with Donna Showalter, we will hear how an east bench, Provo, Utah Mormon mother, former Relief Society President, former Stake Young Women’s President, and BYU employee navigated her Mormon faith crisis. - This story includes the gripping account of what happened when they asked Mormon apostle Jeffrey R. Holland to heal their son of his gayness. - It also includes Donna's touching experiences as a Relief Society President. - We also learn about the impact of the November 2015 LGBTQ policy on Donna, Michael and her family - along with the 2019 policy reversal.

What could cause one of the Mormon church's "best and brightest" women to lose their faith in the church?  For part 2 of today’s interview with Donna Showalter, we will hear how an east bench, Provo, Utah Mormon mother, former Relief Society President, former Stake Young Women’s President, and BYU employee navigated her Mormon faith crisis. - This story includes the gripping account of what happened when they asked Mormon apostle Jeffrey R. Holland to heal their son of his gayness. - It also includes Donna's touching experiences as a Relief Society President. - We also learn about the impact of the November 2015 LGBTQ policy on Donna, Michael and her family - along with the 2019 policy reversal.

What could cause one of the Mormon church's "best and brightest" women to lose their faith in the church?  For part 2 of today’s interview with Donna Showalter, we will hear how an east bench, Provo, Utah Mormon mother, former Relief Society President, former Stake Young Women’s President, and BYU employee navigated her Mormon faith crisis. - This story includes the gripping account of what happened when they asked Mormon apostle Jeffrey R. Holland to heal their son of his gayness. - It also includes Donna's touching experiences as a Relief Society President. - We also learn about the impact of the November 2015 LGBTQ policy on Donna, Michael and her family - along with the 2019 policy reversal.

Interview transcript available below. Julie Bangerter Beck served as Relief Society General President from 2007-2012. She was born in Salt Lake City, Utah with nine siblings in Granger and Alpine, Utah, and in Sao Paulo, Brazil where her father served as mission president. She is a graduate of Dixie College (now Dixie State University) and Brigham Young University. Before her service as Relief Society General President, she served on the Young Women general board, as First Counselor in the Young Women General Presidency, and with her husband, Ramon, at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. Sister Beck is currently vice-chair of the Board of Trustees of Dixie State University. She also serves on the executive committee of the BYU Alumni Association. Her new book Joy in the Covenant shares deep-seated feelings and beliefs and draws heavily from her own experiences, the lives of her parents, and the lessons she learned from them. Highlights 5:40 Sister Beck's father and his service in the church 7:00 Sister Beck's parents' leadership examples 7:30 Advice from her parents as she served in leadership callings 8:30 Lessons from her father 9:10 The Lord builds his church through building people 9:40 Experience working with a general Young Women board member 13:20 Delegating in callings 15:00 Delegating as General Relief Society President 16:50 Her role as General Relief Society President- Agent of the Prophet 20:15 Relief Society President is an agent to the bishop and serves under his keys 22:35 Relief Society President's keys when set apart/Daughter's experience as Relief Society President 25:30 How to navigate the relationship between a Relief Society President and the Bishop 29:10 How to measure success in leadership/ Preach My Gospel pages 10-11 32:00 Sister Beck's experience being called as General Relief Society President with President Hinckley 34:00 President Hinckley's counsel and emphasis that presidents choose their own counselors 37:30 Counselors help the president be the best they can be 40:45 Best practices for a sister that sits on a ward council 44:00 What was her first day like as General Relief Society President 51:00 How being a General Relief Society President has made her a better follower of Jesus Christ Links Joy in the Covenant Interview Transcript [00:04:00] Kurt: Today, I’m in downtown Salt Lake City in a room with sister Julie Beck. How are you? Julie: I’m doing great. Thank you. Kurt: Good. Well, this is quite an opportunity. I’ve seen you on TV a lot but never in person, so this is a great opportunity. Julie: People look different in person. Kurt: Right? You’re a little more blonde than I think I remember you. Julie: It’s called being outside and sun-bleached hair. Kurt: Nice, okay. Good. You recently poured your heart and soul into a book project that you recently released called Joy in the Covenant. What was the impetus for this book project? Julie: The impetus was that I had been preparing messages for a number of events and things, and I wanted to share them with my family. But in today’s world, you can’t just send out an email, and I decided I needed to protect those messages, and they needed some refinement. I wanted them for my family and friends, people who have been asking me to share. So I thought, “We’ll see if we can collect these into something that would [00:05:00] be a book. And I am quite pleased with it, how it turned out. Kurt: I was able to read a good amount of it, and there are some engaging stories here, some that I never realized we’re part of your past like going to Brazil, and some of those things that obviously had an imprint on your life. Julie: Well, these are messages prepared after my release as General President. So they’re much more autobiographical or personal just because of the places I was able to share each message. They’re all standalone messages but they connect with themes running throughout,

The world is filled with challenges, insecurity and uncertainty. Many individuals struggle to find purpose, passion and joy in life. A lack of confidence in self and faith in a divine purpose leaves many straggling in the foothills and off the mountaintops of success, fulfillment and meaningful service. Could the answers be found in covenant living? Sister Julie B. Beck, author of the new book "Joy in the Covenant," shares personal insight on this week's episode of Therefore, What?

Jason Mount is a medical doctor practicing emergency medicine in Georgia, originally from California. He is near the end of his third year serving as a bishop, after previously serving as a counselor in the bishopric. Highlights 5:20 Calling as bishop 8:20 Making calls as the bishop: sometimes the Lord leaves the decision to him 10:50 Demographics of his ward 12:35 Principles of servant leadership he has applied as a bishop 13:50 Learned the principle of servant leadership that "whatever works for them, works for me" 15:50 Habits of being a servant leader as a bishop: makes a greater effort to be more accommodating with his schedule 16:50 Refers to his office as "The Bishop's Office" 18:00 Personal prayer before leaving home to serve as bishop: "What would you say? And I will say it" 19:30 General advice is not always the best advice: taking it case-by-case 21:30 Drawing boundaries and delegating: doesn't give out his cell number, food orders through Relief Society President, interviews 24:30 The Lord can use different types of leaders to do the same calling 27:25 Experience as a ward mission leader, learning to report back on his calling 32:30 The insight as a leader to see others as the Lord sees us is humbling and gives hope

Rebecca Petho currently serves as a Relief Society President in her Philadelphia, PA ward. She has spent her career working with non-profit organizations as a fundraising expert and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Leading Saints. Sister Petho grew up in the Gettysburg, PA area in a home where hard work and the expectations to contribute and play a role in the home were emphasized. Those lessons have helped shape the type of leader she has been in her church service in Young Single Adult wards and traditional family wards from West Virginia to Salt Lake City to Philadelphia, where she now lives with her husband. In this episode, she talks about the lessons she learned while immersed in the Young Single Adult culture, the importance of being authentic when serving in leadership roles, and helping others to be authentic themselves. Highlights (11:45) How can individuals avoid getting trapped in culture and traditions? Try to avoid focusing on perceived external perceptions of ourselves (16:30) How has her identity as a Latter-Day Saint woman been shaped by her YSA experiences? Truly embrace the opportunities that are right in front of you Controlling what you can control and embracing it Faith that our lives will come together in a way we can’t even imagine Recommended reading: “Where There is No Vision” – Elder L. Tom Perry BYU Devotional address Identify the things that bring us true joy and finding ways to be involved in those things What did you learn from the YSA culture? So many who are willing to serve and support YSAs, but it becomes an extension of the YM/YW program Provide opportunities for YSAs in the ward to be the true leaders in the ward Help them feel more needed and empower them to be leaders in the ward (29:15) What lessons were learned serving as Relief Society President in YSA wards that have helped her serve in the same calling in a family ward? Examine our self-talk, fears, and past experiences in order to fully embrace the current opportunity to serve Every individual and every ward is different and we must keep an open mind in how we approach our current calling (38:10) What does it look like to be patient with others and allow them to be who they are in our leadership callings? Being authentic with people and knowing who we are ourselves Being willing to allow others to be authentic themselves (41:30) How does she approach leadership while adapting to the needs of the ward A groundwork of order and consistency After those principles are established, allowing for individuality and authenticity Approaching authenticity with humility (51:30) Where do we put our energy? (54:45) Sister Petho gives Kurt an assignment: How can the stewardship of the Relief Society President, Elders Quorum President, and Bishop work together more effectively? Links "Where There is No Vision", by Elder L. Tom Perry: text | video

Hi everyone! This is Connie Sokol, and you're listening to Balance Redefined Radio. I've spent over 20 years teaching people how to redefine what balance really is, meaning a more purposeful and joyful life.   They’ve paid off credit cards, lost weight, organize their homes, and created a meaningful life plan and they've managed their time, changed habits and experience greater success both at work and at home.   So now I decided to take the plunge and help about 100,000 new people who want to redefine balance in their lives. People ask me all the time, “How do I go from an overwhelming and chaotic life to more purpose and organization and joy?”   That's the reason why I'm doing this podcast, to give you trusted answers and create a space where you could find balance. My name is Connie Sokol and welcome to Balance Redefined Radio…   Welcome to Balance Redefined, and I am podcasting right now. If you haven't listened to the other ones, I am podcasting for my friend's basement apartment…   We'd been evacuated for the pole creek fire. We were evacuated on Thursday. It has burned 70,000 acres. It is one of the worst fires, actually the worst fire in Utah history and it is now the number one fire concern in the nation and has been upgraded to federal status and we have all that federal health that's coming in, but it is.   It's threatening homes, has been threatening homes for the last two days and it is. It is out of our hands as to far as far as what actually can be thoroughly done.   All the firefighters are doing all they can. They have been incredible…   Four hundred and 50 firefighters last night at 10,000 are expected today.   They are cutting lines, fuel lines all the way down in certain areas to try to protect the homes. They have been tireless and incredible in what they have done in fighting this fire and the horrible red flag conditions that have been present. High winds, the drought, the underbrush that is just prevalent up in the, in the forest, it's been truly a nightmare, sort of convergence of factors, but they have been incredible and how they move forward.   And I talk in my other podcast, hidden blessings about the organization of things that has been stellar…   That as far as from what I understand, what I have seen and experienced as a person that's been displaced and, and all of those things, it has been so incredible and smooth and clear and understandable and citizens have been patient and kind and helpful. It's been amazing.   So what I want to talk with you about in this particular podcast is lifesaving routines because as I alluded to in my other podcast I talked about in our community and then in my church the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints we have this particular...we have women, you know, an organization within our church that's, there's the men that are watched over and stored and their stewardship over and it's called the elders quorum and some other things there.   And then we have the women. It's Relief Society.   And that's what we call it, just because if I throw out those terms then you'll know what I'm talking about. But with this, the, the women... we had spent the last couple of years, and the person that's over that relief society (president) had been over making sure that we had emergency preparedness and I mean thorough and so helpful.   This is like, her lifeblood is doing this. And we were so prepared that as I mentioned, and I'm not gonna go into detail here, but when we had the call to evacuate, I literally walked in, grabbed my emergency binder by vital documents tub and my scrapbooks and boxes and we were out the door.   I had everything I needed, absolutely needed and was ready to go. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.   And I want to talk about that today with those routines, these life saving routines. I want to ask you, and I'm not going to be dramatic about this, I just want to ask you in your soul, if you were told right now, get out. If like I texted my, my leader, “What should I do?” And she said, “Leave. Get out right now.” This is a real deal. What would you do? What would you take?   Who would be the first people you call?   What would be the things that you would need to wear? What would you need to have on hand?   These were things that went through my mind and I remembered this thing that my, this gal that had told me, my Relief Society President, her name's Terry. I remember her saying, “You want to have this prepared because in an emergency your mind is in a fog.”   “...Like it, it does weird things. It sort of shorts out and you'll grab one shoe, but forget the other, like those kinds of things.”   And I thought that's so true. I grabbed my little makeup bag but it didn't have any foundation in it, right? So I mean small, silly thing.   But of course I had an event that night that we had prepared for an interfaith women's event for close to 300 women, and were we going to cancel it?   We were way down south. It didn't affect them. They've made all their sacrifices to be there. Was I going to cancel it? Was I going to cancel my part in?   That was I going to let everybody just dropped that and so all of these things come into play and your mind can't really focus and even though I felt very calm and peaceful and focused, there were things that were dropped that I didn't realize that were dropped because your mind is so focused on survival and making sure that you're surviving.   It's really an incredible experience and that's why I wanted to share this with you in real time because I hope that whatever I share with you today will help you in dealing with whatever crisis you might be dealing with now or especially in the future that you will be prepared because there's that scripture.   “If you are prepared, you shall not fear,” so that you will not fear. I can tell you right now, in three days since Thursday, uh, it's Saturday now, I have not feared. Not once. There had been a few moments of tears where I have thought about the magnitude of what could happen to people in their homes and and things that could occur like this, sorry, but when I don't focus or think about it, so we're moving on.   When I don't think about it, I am good and not once in those feelings it's more of a sadness and a loss, but it is not a fear I have not feared and as a mother, a single mother of children, I have four of them with me. Then I know that that is exactly what they need.   They need a mother who is not afraid and who knows what they're doing...   Now, on the second part, I don't know so much about that, but I need to make sure I show that I know what I'm doing so that they can feel confident, that mom does know and even if not, she's moving forward. That's when you need to give to my children and that's what life saving routines will do for you.   So back to that question, what is it you would take? What is it you would put on and wear and taken that initial moment at that moment, I grabbed a tub, dumped out the laundry and put in clothes for each of us.   Just a quick underwear and shirt, pants, whatever. Dress, and through in wipes, and that little bag of makeup, and the dress that I knew I'd need to wear for that Reboot Event it was called “You got this,” reboot event, and shoes, a curling iron and just things that I knew we'd need for right now because it was just pre-evacuation status.   It was for right now that I knew that we needed. Now I didn't know that we weren't gonna be able to go back. Right. But I knew that we had everything we needed to function for that day and for the next couple of days after I had it in the car and I could get it at the store.   So I encourage you to consider, as I'm talking today, write down some notes of things that you say, “You know what? This is what I think I would need to bring her. I would need to do, or I would need to call or whatever.”   Jot these things down. Don't worry about having it in a beautiful plan where it's all laminated.   Don't worry about that. Just write things down that come to mind and you can go back and organize your thoughts later. The main thing I want to share with you before I share a couple of these thoughts is that it works.   I was given a real view and lens and understanding that this works…   What I teach to women and balance redefined women and men, what I teach to families, what I live, what my community did and my church did for being able to do these emergency preparedness things. They all worked.   Sometimes you're doing this stuff and you're thinking, oh, it's a pain and I'm doing food storage.   Like how exciting is that? Not.   And you're doing carpool. You're doing all these things. You got busy lives, right, and you're thinking, I'll get to that. I'll get to that. It all matters and it all works.   Even if I didn't use my exact emergency tubs that I used for, if we had to evacuate and I needed the meals and I did whatever, I still had those file drawers in my mind and soul and I could retrieve whatever pieces I needed in the moment to do the things that needed to be done with clarity, with joy, with confidence, with energy.   So I want you to know that this works. It cemented for me that what I've been practicing, what I've been teaching and what people have been teaching me worked. So let me share a couple of those things.   The two main categories that I'm doing right now are. The first thing is predictable rituals.   That's what I call them now. When I say rituals, I’m on not talking about some kind of a weird thing that you're doing, you know, on some sacrificial thing. I'm not talking about that.   I'm talking about these daily practices that we put into our lives, so maybe I'll call it predictable practices.   That's probably a little bit more across the board feeling and it's not in having this sort of vision in your mind that I don't want, so these predictable practices are those things that your children will be able to take and your, your spouse, your extended family members will be able to take heart in and feel confident in because these are things that you're doing on a daily basis.   These are things that are rhythms in your life, rhythms that they, that happened when they get up in the morning, it's good morning, loves they come down and there's some breakfast, wait out on the counter. Or even if it's a breakfast burrito in the microwave, it's just a predictable practice.   They know we have in our home, I have these things that we make, we call them scripture strips and so we have scriptures from different scripture, um, cannons and we have them on strips, colorful yellow, golden strips, and we put them in a cookie jar.   And then every morning we pull a scripture stripped before they go to school and we say, okay, let's read the scripture and what does that mean?   And they cannot say Jesus loves us because that's all they would say everyday, so they have to actually get a thought out of that and wow, first thing in the morning, it sets their whole mindset on that spiritual plane and opens that up for them to have any kind of spiritual download during the day.   So not that they necessarily do or they even think that they do, but I as a mom, belief they do. So that makes me a stellar mom. So that's why we do it. So again, that's a predictable practice. Then we have family, we have the family prayer in the morning before they leave.   We have family prayer at night. We do this before our meals. These are predictable practices. We have scripture at night that we listened to. Now I have to tell you, last fall, when I talked with my kids, I said, “What is a way that we can study scripture? Because I know, I know studying scripture matters. I know it creates a protection to us spiritually and even temporarily, I know that it creates this spiritual force that opens us up to blessings and protects us from certain things. I know that it does that no matter who's reading it.”   And so I know that it's important, but, you know, try to get your kids excited about scripture. Reading okay, right?   I've been doing this for years and we've like about condo fisticuffs and scripture reading, right?   That, I mean, well, you know, wars are in the Bible, so there you are. But anyway, so I said, “Okay, family, what do we want to do? How do we want to do this?” And we said, “Let's listen to scripture at night.”   Now in my mind I'm thinking, “How loser is that?” Like we're just laying there listening to scripture, you know, there are tuning out, you know, they're not really listening. Most of the time they're getting one thought and they're like, okay, put that in my back pocket in case mom asks, but we did it. And do you know the Canon of scripture that we're reading? We're almost done.   It's September. It's almost been a year and we're almost done with that Canon of scripture just by reading it. I mean listening to it at night, what I thought was so lame when guess what?   We added on listening at the fire pit outside and we added on being able to have a yummy herbal tea and having a snack or cuddling on the bed. So we've added these things.   Again, it's been a predictable practice. Doesn't mean we've done it perfectly, but we've done it. I would say my, you know, I'm a b plus or so about 80 to 90 percent of the time and I have to tell you these things.   Oh, the other two that I wanted to share was a family council. We have family council, we have family night on Monday and we have family councils especially about like our schedule for the week or about things that were going to do trips.   We're going to take what we want to do for the weekend when different things come to us are unexpected. I say KC Family Council and we get the family by and I help them to get their opinions, want to know what they think is the best way to do something and then move forward.   So family council and the last thing was gratitude…   We emphasize gratitude and our home, and I'll tell you, sometimes it's through clenched teeth.   I'm so grateful that you picked up your room even though your bathroom looks like something's going to come out of the toilet. Right? I've tried to practice gratitude and try to help them to say it in a kind way like, “Oh, if you were saying that your sister is total annoying and frustrating, maybe you could say, wow, she's not being as helpful today as she could be.” Right?   And you know how well that's gone over...   Like it's not like they jump up and there they're carrying a basket of daffodils to each other, but trying to be practicing gratitude. Okay, so predictable practices.   I have to tell you, this works. This works in this crisis. I have to tell you, we've been displaced.   We went to a friend's house for a couple of hours and then we went to our friend's house that we're at now.   We're in podcasting and this tripod is sitting on top of my son's Lego box. As I'm sitting on her bed. You can hear lawnmowers outside... we are, we are displaced. And yet we are doing these predictable practices.   We had family council last night. We had, we'd been having family, scripture and listening, and it's been soothing and comforting.   In fact, the place we chose last night happened to be this beautiful section of scripture that was just perfect of the savior actually surrounding the children with this protective fire.   Isn't that incredible? Like the chances of that are, you know, unreal…   But it was, it was amazing to be able to go through that and we all felt comforted and we even had a community united prayer last night at 8:00. I mean, that's these practices that are working.   We've talked about gratitude. We have family council about what we want to do with this, where we're staying and we don't know how long we're gonna stay.   And so we had a family council and said, “You know what, let's make it our home. Let's go to Walmart today and let's go get some stuff and we'll just get some plants, will get some cute little things and just a few. Just things that make us feel like we're at home and let's make our home where we are.”   These are predictable practices. This has made all the difference. It has kept us calm. It has kept us focused...   It is kept as in tune with God and remember, whatever that is for you, higher power, the universe, whatever. It's kept us in tune and open to receiving his gifts and his love.   So that's predictable practices. What are the predictable practices in your life, in your family's life?   What are those that your children can count on when trouble comes, because now is the time to do them. When the skies are clear, when there isn't smoke, literally billowing over a mountain range. When the skies are clear, is that time for you to do it? Now we know that fire is still burning. We know it's burned. Seventy thousand acres.   We know we're still not in our home and we don't know if we'll ever be able to go back, but we have faith. We have faith that we will. We have faith that those firefighters are doing all they can.   We have faith that we can pray and there's nothing more we can do. There's nothing they want us to do to go down and help so we can pray and I gotta tell you...   I have another podcast that talks about what happened at that reboot event and why I chose to go there and the blessings that came out of that, but I have to tell you the power of prayer is real and so this predictable practice gives my kids and myself as a life tool belt to be able to turn to during these moments and whatever that is for you. My kids are going to have…   One of them is getting ready to leave home. She's already had an experience of being out on her own for the last three months. She was nannying in France and she had to turn to prayer and to these spiritual practices that she knew and have been using in our family, so these predictable practices are real and they work, so write down three to five predictable practices that you think will be key in your family and they don't even have to be quote unquote, spiritual.   I wake my children in a joyful, happy matter every morning. I do...   This is something that I've made a promise that I will greet them with joy and love. After that, all bets are off, but I greet them with joy and love and how do I get responded to have a more minutes. I'm so tired, right? It doesn't matter.   I greet them with joy and love, and then after that, it's their choice how they're going to face today, so predictable practices, three to five. What are those things that you can feel are gonna need to be put into play in your family that will also help you through a crisis?   The second piece of this is regular routines. This is so crucial. This is a little different than predictable practices. Those are more of those touchy feely, got to have that spiritual, intuitive feeling, groundedness, right?   Regular routines are the day to day pragmatic things. These are the things that need to happen. I've got a snack laid out for them when they come home from school now, not every single day, and it's not like it's out on pinterest. Right? It's not like that.   Put a little cheese and crackers and some grapes. Okay, we're good. Or some yummy quito cookies or something like that. It's not like I have this big gourmet fair, but they have a predictable routine and they know I'm going to get a download of their day. Okay.   Your life may be different. Maybe you work full time right, and you're not there. That's fine. Get rid of the guilt and set up a regular routine that you can say, this is how this flows so that they know when you're going to be there and how it's gonna roll.   So the thing that struck me with this regular routines, it was so tender I cannot even express to you...   So here we've gone and stopped at a friends house just to sort of re retool and have a few hours and then we came here to my friend's basement apartment, which the space, I swear it was left open for us because she'd been looking for someone to be in here and haven't found someone yet and we're able to just come right in.   So it's, you know, it's in one of these beautiful older homes in Provo.   So we're down in the basement and it's one of those, it's like she has a, she has a daybed, kind of like a fold out couch kind of thing and then she has a bed in the other room but it's a little bit minimal, you know, as far as like actual furnishings and things and she hasn't really moved forward on it.   So it's not like it's all like incredibly, you know, decked out and things like that.   But it is lovely. And she has, she goes, come, I've got beds, I got linens, I've got, I've got whatever you need. Got Towels. So we come in here and we were not prepared for the sweetness.   That was awaiting as we come in at this time, it's Friday, that's yesterday and it's September 14th and it's my daughter's birthday, so my 18 year old turned 19 during this whole melee. Right. In fact when it hit midnight from the Thursday, the Friday, her and I were still up and we were the only one's awake and I had a cupcake from the event, the reboot event that you got this reboot and I had brought up a couple of cupcakes for the kids up to the room and I had one cupcake left and so she pulled up on her phone.   My daughter pulled up a candle that was lit on the phone and she put it right by the cupcake and I sang happy birthday...   To her it was the most tender experience…   I posted about it on Instagram, but it was the most tender experience. So here it's her birthday. Right. But it's kind of getting shoved back in a little bit at this melee.   So we go to this friend's house, then we come to here to this basement apartment. We walk in...It's at night. What's time was it like...I don't know what 8:39 at night. We're tired. I haven't showered. I, I'm really needing to just like get everybody set and get them where they need to be in trying to keep all happy and positive…   We walk in and this good woman, we come into this basement apartment and she has the bed is made up like Ikea. I'm going to post pictures of it with the little rose pillows, and the turn down comforters, and we go into the kitchen, and we opened the fridge, and she has snacks, and yogurts, and drinks, and goldfish, and bottled water, and milk.   And then we look on the counter and she set out breakfast items and paper plates and there's cops in their spoons. She did, I mentioned is a mother of nine.   She's also going to school and it isn't until later that I found out that she has an assignment that she didn't know it was due by midnight and it's like by now it's like 9:30 or something at night.   And she is talking to me like she's got all the time in the world!   We go into the other rooms. She has got the bathroom set up beautifully. We go into the hallway and she's got a little “Happy Birthday.” You know those little letters that say happy birthday hanging on the wall. I literally was almost in tears. Can I tell you that is a regular routine? She set up our home. That is what I'm talking about.   A routine. What are the routines that make your home run like a home? We came in, we had bathroom things, we had towels, we had a place to sleep. She even had a little pad and a sleeping bag and a steamed Lightening McQueen pillow for my six year old son all set to go.   It fit all of us…   Everything that could have been considered was considered for our comfort. She had created a working home and she said it took her only about an hour. I'm like an hour. I was dying. That's an hour. She could have been doing her stuff. And she said, “I did it with a cheerful heart.”   She said, “I considered it a joy.” Isn't that so her? I, I just, I can't wait. I'm going to have to interview her. You got to meet this woman, so I just want you to know this is what we came and were greeted with.   She had set up our home so quickly that we were able to then put our stuff away and get ready for our predictable practices our scripture, our prayer... I'm getting notices the whole time on the fire and I'm able to just move through it because all of these things are set.   So think in your mind, “What are some of the regular routines?”   Food, how do you do your groceries so that there's food in the house and there's things for this kind of a situation where you would have paper plates, you'd have extra in your pantry. Doesn't mean you have to have a huge pantry. Doesn't mean you have to have this extensive food storage, but what's in your food pantry?   You don't think that I'm writing notes on this. I have these things in my house, but now I know when someone is a refugee, these are some of the things that they need right off the bat.   When you're in crisis, these are some of the things you're going to need. How can you set up your home quickly? You need a space for the bathroom stuff.   You need a space for being able to have the toothbrushes and the toothpaste, the whatever you need for your evening, like taking off your, your makeup or whatever. Wipes. Definitely need wipes.   You need a place for the food and the kitchen. We didn't have a dining room table or anything in here and she said, wait a second, I've got this old table out in the hallway, so are in this closet.   So we went to the closet and yet was an old card like flip table thing, you know, and she's like the top. It was kind of ripped the melamine or whatever it was was ripped and she's like, I'll get a table cloth.   We set that table up with this cute little checkered cloth.   Boom. Four chairs done for folding chairs.   Done are eating space is set up, so now we have a wash cleaning space, we have a food space in the kitchen, we've got food now we have our sleeping spaces, we've got those set up and now we have our eating space together as a family.   So can you see these routines? How predictable this is because guess what those regular routines are, where do you eat and when? When do you shower? When do you bathe? When do you grocery shop? When do you do your laundry? When do you do your cleaning as a family, where do they keep their things?   All of those regular routines matter and having a routine, and I'm loving this because I teach women how to do this simply and easily to do the cleaning, the deep clean, the daily do's, how to do their laundry quickly and streamline it, how to do their, their organizing of their bills and things like that and streamline it.   How to make it so it's total so you can take it as you go, oh my goodness, am I having such a validation of the things that I've been teaching women for 20 years and how important this is because in a crisis, it doesn't matter if you're being evacuated or if you're staying at home and you're just experiencing a health crisis or something.   You are able to in that moment, recreate your home environment wherever you are, and that's what we did in the most beautiful thing to close this up. This morning I woke up and I walked out into the other room where the kids were sleeping and right there on that makeshift table with that tablecloth.   My daughter had set up for the table ready for breakfast. Was that the cutest thing? We watched these scripts for videos and we watched one on ruth and it.   It was showing depicting when ruth left with her mother in Law Naomi and how she went with her and they went into Satan's old kind of rundown home. That used to be.   I was imagining it used to be their home, but they went in at night and it was just kind of a sort of a scriptural depiction of what it could be like and so ruth has Naomi go to sleep because Naomi's elderly and ruth works through the night to clean and tidy this, this really poverty stricken home.   There's hardly anything there, but she makes it all nice and pretty for when Ruth and Naomi wakes up in the morning and I looked at this table that was set up for breakfast and I'll post it on social media and she even put a little block that I got at the reboot event that you got this women Reba reboot.   We got a little block, the three founders from one of the founders, mothers that said, you got this. She had found it at a bookstore and so I had thrown that into the tub to take with us when we left the hotel and she put that little block on the table.   So I stood there staring at this beautifully made up table with paper plates and spoons and little napkins in the paper.   The plastic cups and this little block at this at the top of the table that said, you got this beautiful. That's regular routines. That is the power of my friends have these life saving routines. It creates calm, it creates order. It creates peace. It creates continuity. It creates security.   It creates regular rhythms that children and adults can rely on so that their energy can be used for dealing with whatever comes emotionally and whatever may come physically that is unexpected.   So I implore you to write down what are three to five of those predictable practices and what are three to five of those regular routines that you can get working to a b plus degree in your home right now to create without a crisis.   That calm assurance, confidence and and consistency. All right.   Stay tuned for more and have more podcasts and things I'm learning from this Pole Creek Fire experience and hopefully you're learning some great things to remember. You got this with Balance Redefined. You got it. Thanks for listening and remember to rate and subscribe. And if you are feeling the need for real balance in your life, get your free five step life plan, and get started today! Just go to conniesokol.com/download.

Brooke Romney is a freelance writer, speaker, and blogger about motherhood and life in general, and writes monthly for the Deseret News. She served as a Relief Society president when she was a young mother in Arizona. After living in several locations around the United States, she currently resides near Salt Lake City, Utah, with her husband and four boys. Highlights 2:45 Writing for the Deseret News —3:20 Being a friend instead of just being friendly —3:50 Being a stonecatcher —6:50 Mistakes and difficulties don't equal failure 10:40 Calling as a young Relief Society president 12:00 Involving everyone in activities Leadership Principles: —18:00 Utilizing the talents of others —20:00 Learning from the experience of others —21:30 Harnessing your own abilities 24:40 Advice for handling welfare situations 28:00 Reaching out to nonmembers 34:00 Relationships are key 37:40 Jesus calls leaders because he needs someone to take care of people Links BrookeRomney.com Brooke's Deseret News articles Facebook: Brooke Romney Writes Twitter: @BrookeoRomney Pinterest: Brookerom Instagram: @brookeromneywrites

Laura Root, in her 40’s, bravely shares her journey as a single gay Mormon woman which eventually led her into a same-sex marriage. She continues to attend her Idaho Ward where she has attended for 16 years and where she once served as the Relief Society President. Laura is no longer able to participate fully in Mormonism. While Laura is living outside of the doctrine of our church she is not living outside of the circle of humanity to extend our love and kindness. Thank you Laura for sharing your story to help us understand how to minister, support and honor our LDS LGBTQ members living outside the doctrine of our church.

Nola & Mike Patterson have been married for more than 26 years. Originally from the Alberta, Canada area, they now make their home in Las Vegas, Nevada. Brother Patterson has served in various callings, including Young Men presidencies, as an Elders Quorum President, in bishoprics, and as a bishop. He currently serves as an early-morning seminary teacher. Sister Patterson has served as a Young Women’s President and Relief Society President, among other responsibilities. Brother and Sister Patterson have found success in their leadership responsibilities as they have focused on ministering to individuals and families not well known to the ward and creating opportunities for those individuals to participate and serve. They have also focused on finding others to assist them in these efforts, realizing that there was only so much they could do on their own. In this episode of How I Lead, Brother and Sister Patterson discuss with Kurt their approach to reaching out and helping those who need ministering to. Leadership Principle #1: Focus on Ministering (19:00) Leadership Principle #2: Be respectful of people’s time (37:45) Leadership Principle #3: Do what you can and then let go (46:40) Leadership Principle #4: Seeking out those who are under utilized (52:30)

Gail Miller is the owner and chair of the board of directors of the Larry H. Miller group of companies, which includes 65 car dealerships, the Utah Jazz basketball team, Utah Bees baseball team, a chain of movie theatres, and related businesses. She is also a mother, a former Relief Society president, and the author of “Courage to Be You: Inspiring Lessons from an Unexpected Journey”. Episode Highlights 1:45 How the book came to be 6:15 Gail’s service experience as a Relief Society president 10:55 Coming back from inactivity in the church 16:40 Saying the right thing to those who are grieving 18:10 Developing yourself as the spouse of a leader 20:55 Patience as the wife of a busy entrepreneur and as a woman in the church 25:00 Making decisions as a leader 27:30 Stewardship and service Links Courage to Be You: Inspiring Lessons from an Unexpected Journey

Being a newly called elders quorum president can be nerve-racking! So many things to organize and consider. Thankfully, Leading Saints is here to help. In this episode we have gathered experiences from current and former elders quorum presidents from around the world sharing what they wish they knew before they were called as elders quorum president. You will find their advice inspiring and practical. Contribute Your Own WIWIK Experience In an effort to help other elders quorum presidents to learn some quick leadership experience on day 1, we are organizing future podcast episodes that will feature many current and past elders quorum presidents sharing what they wish they knew before they were called as elders quorum president. You will only have 5 minutes to record so write some thoughts on a paper and then record! How to record: Click the green button below Answer the following question in less than 5 minutes: What do you wish you knew before you were elders quorum president? Start your answer with “Before I was elders quorum president I wish I knew…” Stop recording Listen to recording and record again if you would like Enter name and email Submit recording by clicking “send” Episode Transcript KURT: Hello and welcome to [00:00:30] the Leading Saints podcast. My name is Kurt Frankham. I'm the executive director of Leading Saints and also the host of the Leading Saints podcast. If you're new to Leading Saints I welcome you. We produce a regular podcast where we discuss topics that will help lay leaders in the LDS Church enhance their leadership ability and capacity. And we do that through various methods. One of those being we interview really smart and intelligent people who have experience in leadership whether in or outside the church, and we talk about strong leadership principles in the context of the LDS church. We [00:01:00] also have a segment called “How I Lead” where we interview everyday leaders and ask them how they go about their day to day, week to week responsibilities as a lay leader in the church. And what you're bound to hear is that we weak segment where we crowdsource the community of Leading Saints and ask them to finish the sentence, what I wish I knew when I was Elder's quorum President, when I was Bishop, Relief Society President, Young Men's President, Young Women's President whatever it is and in this episode, we focus on what I wish I knew before I was Elders Quorum President. Each voice you'll hear we've given them [00:01:30] five minutes or less to talk about what they wish they knew before they're called as Elder's quorum President. Thank you for all the support you show to Leading Saints. And now what I wish I knew before I was Elder's quorum President. CALLER: My name is Adam Elsworth I'm currently an Elder's quorum President. I have been for about two years now. What I wish I knew before I was called or when I was called as an elders quorum president. It's a little bit of a challenging [00:02:00] question, so I feel like I had all the spiritual tools I needed to go to Heavenly Father and find out what my quorum needed and I already somehow, because I didn't have them had a strong sense that I shouldn't be having one on one interviews with my quorum members regularly. So we have done that and those have been very effective and very helpful for ministering in my quorum and to those we home teach. So I had those tools in place. But one thing that is maybe a little surprising or didn’t[00:02:30] suspect although it obvious  is that the more things that I can put on auto pilot, or better said the more things I can have pre scheduled that I don't have to go through the process of scheduling each month, the more effective I've been. So for example with my first elder’s quorum presidency my two counselors moved away, but with those two we didn't necessarily have a set time each month that we would have our presidency meeting.

Sahar Qumsiyeh is the author of Peace for a Palestinian: One Woman's Story of Faith amidst War in the Holy Land where she tells of her life as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Palestine. In this interview we hear her story of converting to the LDS Church at Brigham Young University and then serving in church leadership positions when she returned to the Jerusalem Branch and also in Turkey during her graduate school. Sahar currently lives in Rexburg Idaho where she teaches Mathematics. Episode Highlights 2:20 the development of her faith before joining the Church 4:20 What lead her to BYU 5:45 What she knew about Mormons before going to BYU 7:30 Her conversion story 9:30 The transition from Provo, Utah to Palestine as a member of the Church 12:15 Why going to Church was difficult for Sahar as a Palestinian 21:25 Sahar’s experience serving in the LDS Church in Turkey while she attended graduate school 23:15 Being in the Relief Society presidency in Turkey 28:00 Being called as Relief Society president in the Jerusalem Branch 29:30 What the Jerusalem Branch is like 34:00 The creation of the Bethlehem Branch 42:00 Serving as Primary President in the Bethlehem Branch 47:00 Leadership principles learned as a leader in the LDS Church Links: Buy Sahar's book Kurt Francom from Leading Saints with Sahar Qumsiyeh during the interview Interview Transcript Kurt Francom (LS): Today I'm sitting down in downtown Salt Lake at the [00:03:30] Deseret Book headquarters with Sahar Qumsiyeh. How are you Sahar? Sahar:  I'm doing good thank you. LS: Awesome. Now you are not from Salt Lake. You were from the other side of the globe. Sahar: Yeah. LS: When people  ask you where you're from what do you tell them? Sahar:  Palestine. LS: Nice, And is there specific city? Sahar:  I tell them I'm from Biet Sahour but a lot of people don't know Biet Sahour but it's right next to Bethlehem is about a five minute walk from the Church of Nativity where the Savior was born so its just down the hill. LS: I've heard of Bethlehem [00:04:00] this is good. You're born in Jerusalem right? The reason we were together is you recently wrote a book about being a Latter-day saint in Palestine.  Obviously there's a story behind this but what led to this book actually coming to reality? Sahar:  Well actually it started out by a very simple Relief Society Project where they encouraged us to write our personal history and I decided I'm going to write my life story. And I did. And I kept adding to it.[00:04:30] As time went by and then one of my friends is like well why don't you publish this. This is interesting because I was sending her my weekly e-mails about sneaking in to get to church and all the difficulties I was facing. She's like you have an interesting life.  You should publish this. People could be interested in my life? So I changed the format a little bit and made it look like something kind of inspirational and kind of topic base. So it's not a biography format. LS: [00:05:00] Here it is, nice!  There is a few things I want to talk about. Obviously it's interesting you've served as early Relief Society president and District Relief Society president in Palestine and obviously there's some interesting stories from that and some unique leadership principles you learned from that experience but maybe back up you converted the church when you attended BYU but before that how would you describe the development of your faith? Sahar:  So I  grew up in a place of conflict and it was kind of difficult  [00:05:30] to live there and I was depressed a lot. I participated in demonstrations I saw a lot of people get killed and shot and then imprisoned, and tortured, in jail and all that and it was kind of a difficult life and I became very depressed. Then when I went to BYU, and I grew up as a Christian I knew God existed I just didn't know that God actually...

Today we head down to Friendswood, Texas to visit with Beth Young. Prior to becoming a Texan Sister Young was raised in Arizona in a family without the blessings of the Gospel. In this episode Beth shares what it was like to be raised in a home without the restored gospel by a father and mother who loved her but struggled with alcoholism. Sister Young was introduced to the Gospel in high school which ultimately led to her being baptized, serving a full-time mission, being sealed in the temple and holding leadership callings such as ward and stake relief society president. Beth discusses how her leadership and experience in her own home prepared her to be a leader in the church as she shares how she navigated the waters of motherhood when her children experienced the struggles of mortality. She is very candid in discussing her experiences with one child who battled drug addiction and another who experiences same gender attraction and the heartache of his excommunication. Sister Young teaches us how to show tough yet unconditional love to our children.

Thanks Bishop, but now what? As a newly called bishop in the inner city of Salt Lake, there were a lot of things I didn’t know, but this was one of the questions that worried me the most. I felt that if I gave a member a Bishop’s Order for Commodities (food and supplies, clothing, household goods or an authorization for services) that I should be able to let them know what happens when they go to redeem it. I found that some members were well versed with the Church’s Welfare Resource program, while others had no i

Atlanta based attorney Bryndis Roberts is the chair-elect of Ordain Women.  In 2008 Bryndis joined the LDS church from the Black Baptist church, served for a number of years as a  Relief Society President in an inner city Atlanta Ward  soon discovering several concerns with gender inequality in Mormon leadership.  In this podcast Bryndis talks about why she is so passionate about women's ordination.  We discuss the hope that she believes gender equality will offer the church in terms of its spiritual health and survival.

So often the conversation in the Mormon moment is dominated by white  men and women who are both dominant numerically in the church, but have also claimed the space at the heart of contemporary LDS cultural debates. In this episode I discuss the dilemmas facing women of colour in Mormonism with Bryndis Roberts and Jennifer Gonzalez.  Both are busy women both in the church and in their legal professions.  Bryndis is a relatively new member of the church who lives in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as a Relief Society President.  Jennifer Gonzalez works in immigration law and has served most recently in the Young Women organization.   Both women are active participants in the 'Feminist Mormon Women of Color' - FEMWOC group.  Bryndis is on the Executive Board of Ordain Women.  

What would you do if you were the only Latter-day Saint you knew in your entire country and the only way to attend sacrament meeting was to get over, around, or through a massive wall meant to keep you and your people out?  And how would you make peace with your situation and learn to forgive?Sahar Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian from the West Bank town of Bethlehem, found unorthodox ways to attend her meetings for 12 years until a job at a UN agency allowed her to pass through the checkpoints freely.  As Relief Society President in the Jerusalem District, she shares the same responsibilities as her counterparts throughout the world, but with an added challenge of a wall which prevents many of those in her care from ever meeting.  Through it all, she has learned to trust the inspiration and peace of the Holy Ghost, giving her the peace Jesus promised; a peace not of this world.That's this week on The Cricket and Seagull—be sure and Click Here to listen.