Michael's Story Part 1

You're entering outer brightness. Well, listeners, welcome back to the Outer Brightness Podcast. This week we're going to be talking to Michael Flournoy and learning a little bit more about him. He's going to share his story with us. He says he's unavailable. Hmm.

Maybe we can do his interview with Adam. I can fill in the blanks. Well, you know his whole history. You could do it. I know some of it.

I'm sure I don't know all of it. All right, Michael, are you ready? What, are we doing something today? Well, Matthew and I, when you hadn't shown up, we were like, well, should we do his interview without him? Oh, that would be awesome. You just like pull clips from other things that I've said in the past. Oh, we should have done that. There's enough videos out there. Yeah, we could have made like a Michael Flournoy soundboard, you know, like where like there's a button you click and it's like a phrase we could string entire sentences together. Oh, yeah.

That would have been awesome. Actually, we should just go ahead and make that then if I'm like, for all of us, if one of us gets sick or something, this show goes on. Someone's listening and they're like, it sounds like he's repeating the same word over and over.

Is he OK? It's like we actually just have like three phrases each. That would be awesome. Yeah, I think I'm ready. I mean, it's just my my life. I think I know it since I lived it.

So, yeah, I'm ready. Michael, why don't you tell the listeners about your upbringing? Where were you born? Was your family always LDS? How did your family practice the religion?

Just take us through some of that. So I was born in Alice Springs, Australia. My dad was in the Air Force, so I was born out of country and don't have any recollection of that. They brought me to Texas pretty early on. Yes, they were LDS my entire life.

Me, my dad, my mom, all my siblings. And it's kind of interesting because my my mom's family goes back all the way to when the church pretty much started. They were just on the bandwagon right away. And every time my grandparents would be over, they'd be telling the, you know, the stories about our ancestors being in the wagon trains and all the spiritual experiences that they had. And my dad was actually a convert to the church. He was probably, I want to say, in his early 20s when the missionaries came by and they talked to his to his mom.

And she's like, you know, I don't want to talk to you guys, but you should come back and talk to my son because he's a Jesus freak. And so they're like, OK. So they came back and they talked to my dad and they gave him a Book of Mormon and he read it in one day. And, you know, they came back and they're like, you know, did you read that chapter that we gave you? And he's like, yeah, I actually read the whole thing. And they're like, what? They're like, well, what was your favorite part? He's like, well, Abinadi when he was talking to King Noah and then they they killed him. Yeah.

He's like, I really liked that part. And so they talked to him for a couple of months and he got baptized. But yeah, I grew up going to the ward and I hated it for a long time. I think like a lot of LDS children do. I mean, it was three hours of church.

Right. And for at least an hour of that, you're just sitting there in sacrament meetings. And it's very boring when you're a child. Like, I would just look at the clock and be like, is the hour up yet? It always felt like it was more than an hour. And then it turns out that it actually was.

It was like an hour and 15 minutes or something. And it wasn't until I was a little bit older, probably a young man, maybe 13 or 14 that I finally started making some friends in the church. There was a group of us guys, you know, they were just as dorky as me. We called ourselves the Odd Quad and just had a lot of fun together, going to the youth activities. And there were a lot of pretty girls.

And so I'm like, OK, well, I like it here. You know, I would go to the ward without being forced to go by my parents is kind of the only real social activities that I had, because I was real shy and didn't want to talk to people otherwise. But when I was over there, I actually had friends and got to go do fun activities. And I really enjoyed it. I loved being a member of the church, but I didn't really have any sort of...

I wasn't real firm in the doctrine. It was just a social thing. It was like a club that I got to go to.

And really, that's all that it was for me. So the Odd Quad, was that kind of in your preteen, teenage years? Yeah, I'd say it was about 14 is when I met these three other guys. They were all my age, you know, all in the same quorum with me. And we'd just do a lot of things together. We'd go, we'd do sleepovers. We wrestled a lot was another thing that we were really big into. And so, yeah, I just had my posse to hang out with during mutual and on Sunday.

And it was pretty cool. So I take it you were baptized at age eight, progressed through all of the various priesthood offices, deacon, teacher, priest. What do you remember about those experiences?

Well, my baptism brings back some traumatic memories for me because my dad was telling me for weeks that he was going to have to hold me down for an extra long amount of time to wash away all the sin from my life. And I kind of knew that he was joking. But then the day of the actual baptism came, and I wouldn't go down in the water. And I think he was a little embarrassed. He's like, hey, like, it's okay.

You know, like, I was I was just kidding. And yeah, I wouldn't go down in the water. And my dad was trying to coax me to go down. They actually had to close the curtains and make it a private baptism and kind of come back there. And my dad had to reassure me that he was joking and that it was okay. That actually ended up traumatizing me so much that when I went on my mission later, I didn't baptize a single person because I didn't want to get back in the baptismal font.

Wow. So how do you feel about that now? Well, I mean, I after I accepted Christ, I had no problem jumping back into the baptismal font at all. You know, it's just I remember on my mission, like, I mean, we baptize people, but I always made sure that I had a member doing it, which they said was better anyways, because they needed somebody that they were bonded to.

And I'm like, that's what I'm doing. I'm just I'm just bonding them to the members of these wards. And and the reality was I just didn't want to get wet. Did you have like a more general fear of water as a kid with swimming or anything like that? I know my sister did, but I'm just curious if you did.

No, no, I never had any issue jumping in a pool or anything like that. I just didn't want to go into the baptismal font. And I think a lot of it wasn't just that, but but it was also I never really felt like I was worthy.

And of course, to perform ordinances and to use the priesthood, you have to be worthy to do it. And I never felt like I really was. And so I think that was another one of the fears that I had. Well, that's probably because you didn't let your dad hold you under the water long enough. It's true. I mean, I probably would have drowned if I had.

I mean, let's be honest here. But yeah, I did. I went and I became a deacon and received the Aaronic priesthood and became a teacher and and a priest at 16.

And I don't remember a lot going on during those years. I remember they they went and got me my patriarchal blessing, which is such a big deal when you grow up in the church. You know, it's it's like those those movies like Hunger Games, you know, where they they say what or not hunger is what you know, like some of these movies where they say what your job is going to be for the rest of your life. And so like like what house you're going to be in and Harry Potter. Yeah, kind of like that.

Yeah, it's a big deal. And so I went and it was just it was a really generic blessing that I received. It basically I think half of it really just talked about stuff before my mission like, oh, you're going to, you know, go through the through seminary and it's such an important thing. And by the time I went on my mission, half of the stuff in my patriarchal blessing was invalid. It was stuff that had already happened. And there was it was just very, I don't know, I thought I was expecting something big.

And it was almost nothing but general statements that they could have made about anybody. And then there was a new patriarch that got called. And my younger brothers went and got their blessings and they were amazing. Like one of them said he would go serve in another country. And he would speak like a native and one of my brothers said he would be like Nephi and angels would minister to him. And I'm like, okay, what's wrong with me?

How come I don't have these amazing blessings promised to me in my blessing? Yeah, that's interesting. My wife had a similar experience. Like mine is very detailed and, you know, multiple, probably seven or eight pages and hers is just kind of very vanilla, one and a half, two pages.

And I remember when we first got married and she read mine, she kind of felt disappointed in her and different patriarchs, different stakes. And so, you know, just I guess they talk about, you know, having like a bishopric roulette or whatever. I guess you'd have a patriarch roulette as well when it comes to those blessings. Right. And theoretically, it shouldn't matter what a patriarch you get because it's supposed to be from revelation directly from God. And it is kind of disappointing when you grow up in a belief system that the whole thing that's so great about it is that there's ongoing revelation and then you get your personal revelation and it's just like, hey, what's up?

Have a nice summer. It's like, oh, thanks. Yeah.

So you talked a little bit about the Odd Quad. What other good memories do you have about growing up Mormon? One of the things I really liked was having the youth dances once a month. To me, that was that was really exciting, especially having my friends there.

I don't remember doing much dancing at all. I usually kind of hung out over by the snacks and, you know, leaned up against the wall. But I remember just having a big group of friends. And it was great because I was not a social person at school or anywhere else. But in this environment, I was able to be somebody else. And there were people that actually appreciated me for who I was and just the activities that they do.

I feel like the church, the LDS church is so good at having fun activities for the youth. And one in particular that just sticks out in my mind is I remember they put us all on a line and they blindfolded us and they had us lock arms and like, OK, your objective is to, you know, get to the other end of this field and don't let anybody distract you. And it was kind of like a spiritual lesson because the adults were trying to separate us from each other and lead us around in circles.

And we had to break free and stop trusting them, which is kind of interesting, kind of foreshadowing a little bit. And I remember going to EFY when I was 16, and that was one of the biggest things that happened to me in my early childhood or like teenage years. What does EFY stand for, for those who might not know?

EFY is especially for youth. So it's a retreat for teenage Latter-day Saints. And 16 was the first year that I could go.

So me and the Odd Quad, we all went together and we were roommates at that. And they did a lot of just a lot of activities there as well. But the big thing that happened there was on a Thursday night, they took us into a room and they showed us this video about Jesus. Somebody was playing on the piano, I know that my Redeemer lives. They were bearing testimony in the video about Jesus and how he had changed their lives. And while I was sitting there, I wasn't really paying much attention because I wasn't that interested in church or doctrine or God.

I was there for the social club. And I just I just got to thinking about things. I'm the oldest in my family.

I've got four younger siblings. And I started to think, you know, my mom had had a miscarriage before I was born. And so if I'd had an older brother, what would he be like?

And so I started thinking about it. I'm like, I bet he would be amazing. He would love me to no end. And he would want to talk to me all night about the insignificant things that I thought were important. And I kind of looked up at the screen and saw Jesus and had this big spiritual moment where I'm like, oh, my gosh, like, that's my older brother, which is what Jesus is in Mormonism.

He's he's your older brother. It was it was almost like a big like these big charismatic events where like people were falling down, like couldn't even stand up because they were so overwhelmed with emotions after this. The big thing that happened to me that night is so I think they were I think they were trying to inoculate us.

I think that's what was going on. They were trying to to give us a little antidote, you know, with a vaccine so that later in life, if we if we heard about Jesus, we would say, oh, yeah, yeah, we're we're Christians. I know Jesus. And I think that it backfired a little bit because I think that I had what I had was a real experience with God. And I was suddenly just just faced with God's holiness. And then I saw how sinful I was.

And I felt filthy and I was sorrowful. And if God had decided to destroy me, I would have been happy about it. But then I was just overwhelmed with this feeling of love and grace that that God loved me despite my sins, which later I would learn is not really compatible with LDS doctrine at all. But after that event, I was convinced that God was real and that God cared about me for the first time in my life. So do you feel like that was the first time that God had revealed himself to you truly or that you felt like you had a connection with God? I absolutely think that that was a true connection with God and that that even early on, he was throwing seeds in my life that were later going to sprout and turn into a problem for me. But he allowed me to continue to to stay in the church and and keep believing, you know, and I associated that event with the Mormon Church being true. I said, OK, I'm at a Mormon sponsored event and this happened here. So it must mean that the church is true.

I think that's I think that's totally true. I think about that in my life, too. Like, when I mentioned there were experiences where I had that just witnessed to me that there is a God that's just this this wonderful, just powerful creator out there that that loves us. And like you said, you attributed that to the LDS church being true. I kind of attributed those experiences to the LDS view of God.

And even though the LDS view of God isn't correct, I still feel like that was God trying to communicate to me. So, yeah, that's why I asked, because I had kind of a similar experience, like during my mission and before my mission and things like that. Yeah.

Yeah. And honestly, later on, when I would be talking to Christians and and they would immediately tell me that I didn't know God, it was such a turn off for me because I'm like, well, you don't even know what I've experienced. And it was actually Paul that finally made a statement that helped me pass that hurdle. And eventually he told me, you know, I need to give credit where credit is due.

In other words, yes, God has been courting me. And I need to acknowledge that. But it doesn't necessarily mean that the church is true, because I had attributed every single spiritual experience to the Mormon church being true.

And he opened up a whole new door that I needed to go explore at that point. Yeah, you know, it's interesting that experience you had at that. And it's funny, I always want to call it Christ in youth, but it's especially for youth retreat that you were at. And what you said about realizing that the sense that God loved you in spite of the fact that you were a sinner, and not really being compatible with with LDS doctrine. I remember one time preparing to give a talk in sacrament meeting.

It was when I was a young adult after I was married, we had three kids at the time and I was up late, you know, the week before preparing. And you know, in in the LDS church, you know, there's there's there's kind of lip service given to while we study each of the standard works once every four years. But if if you follow if you if as a member of the church, you follow the reading guide that they give you, you certainly don't read all of the New Testament or all of the Old Testament in those years, you read, you know, what is presented to you to read. And I remember coming across this passage in Romans, when I was preparing that talk, Romans five, eight, but God shows his love for us and that while we were yes sinners, Christ died for us and decided to put that in my talk. And I remember having a similar experience to you, Michael, where I was like, that doesn't really fit does it with what with what LDS doctrine is about the way that repentance works and the way that worthiness is supposed to work. But it was one of those experiences where I came upon this Bible passage that I had not seen before.

I mean, I'm sure I read it because I know I read the through the whole New Testament on my mission, but it's just one of those things where it didn't jump out at me and I and I you're not going to see something like that on a regular basis because you just as a Mormon, you're just not in the Bible that deeply, if you're if you're just kind of following the teaching curriculum that that's kind of given to you. Yeah, and and you're not really conditioned to think that way. So even when you do come across a passage of scripture like that, like I would tend to just kind of glaze over things like as a as a believer, I look through Romans and I'm like, this is completely new material and yet I know I've read it before, but it's like it's like a completely new book. Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's like you read it, but you think to yourself and even even if you recognize what it's saying, you kind of think to yourself, it can't mean that. It's got to mean something else. Matthew, did you have any other questions for Michael? I'm just trying to think, just trying to soak it all in.

It's really, it's really interesting to hear about this experience you had. So you were 16 at the time, you said, right? Yep. 16. I was going to make a joke earlier asking if you know, you went to EFY so that you could pick up the girls there.

Yeah. I've never been to EFY, but I heard that's where that's kind of what happens a lot of times. I did almost have a romance at EFY. Didn't work out.

I ended up giving this girl like a little love note and then she was reading it with all her little girly friends and then I ended up getting really scared and ran off and didn't work out. So confession time, I had, I never heard about EFY until I was on my mission. And that that could be partly because I was largely inactive during my teenage years. But I did go on like pioneer tracks and to scout camps and youth conferences, but I'd never heard of EFY until I was on my mission.

I was talking to one of my mission companions and he had a cassette tape of music from EFY that he was listening to one, one day and I asked him what EFY was and he explained it. I was like, man, I've totally missed out on what might have been the best experience of my teenage years. Yeah, you did. You totally missed out. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't hear about that either.

Like I'd heard something about it, but I don't know. I was, I'm kind of glad because yeah, I heard that some kids got some crazy stuff in EFY. It was kind of like there wasn't really like a whole lot of adult supervision, right? It was kind of like you sort of did. You sort of had some people around there, but it was kind of like you're, had a lot of time to yourself.

At least this is what I'm hearing secondhand. Yeah, it was a lot of freedom. There were a lot more, a lot more kids than there were adults.

So there was no way for them to really keep that close of an eye. I mean, we had like two counselors and that was really it. I didn't, I didn't, I was pretty straight laced at the time. So I mean, I didn't, me and my friends were, were goody two shoes and we didn't do anything crazy. But I heard stories like that too.

See Michael, Michael's getting to know Jesus at EFY and scoping out the ladies and, and I'm marching through the desert, the Western Utah desert pulling a handcart. There's a funny, quick, funny story is that I did the handcart thing too. And, uh, one of my friends that lived like right next door to me, he, he claimed that he had a sprained ankle or was tired or something. So we had to push him in the handcart the whole way.

But really all he wanted to do was play Pokemon on his Gameboy. So that's awesome. So Michael, this experience at EFY, were, were there other, other experiences besides that one or any other times when, when kind of religion and God became real for you?

Not really. Um, things didn't start to get real for me until I was preparing to go on my mission because some, like one of my friends, maybe two of them actually from the Odd Quad went before I did. You know, one of them was actually a year older than me and, and so he ended up going and it's like, okay, once my friends kind of started dropping away, I'm like, oh, I'm like, you know, this thing that I'm supposed to do for two years is coming up and that's a, that's a big deal. Actually, seminary was another thing. You know, I'd go there every morning at the break of dawn to, to learn the LDS doctrine and for the first three years of high school, I just joked around with my friends and it was a total nuisance. And then in my senior year I had a, a teacher, Sister Almond, and she really got me interested in the scriptures and it was one of those things where I'd get there in the morning and she'd be in my seat and she would not let me have my seat until I beat her at a scripture chase or quoted a scripture or something of that nature and so it kind of made it fun for me and, and I actually started kind of getting into the scriptures a little bit more and actually read the Book of Mormon for the first time before my mission and I didn't get anything out of it at all. But I kind of just ignored that and turned in my papers and, and got ready to go on my mission and I had, I was working at a thrift shop right before my mission and somehow we ended up getting the elders from our ward to come as volunteers and help me break furniture that nobody wanted in the back parking lot with an axe and a sledgehammer, so that was a lot of fun. But I really looked up to these guys and I wanted to be like them and I kind of started wanting to be out there and be a missionary. MATT, Was going on a mission something you always planned to do?

You kind of mentioned that when one of your friends from the Odd Quad went that it was like, oh, here's this thing. Was it something you'd always planned to do or did you kind of decide to go in your late teen years? MATT, It was a, it was a big struggle for me to decide to go.

I had not planned on going one way or the other. It actually hadn't been, it wasn't something that my family pressured me to do a whole lot. Actually, I take that back because some of my family members were pressuring me ridiculously, especially my grandparents on my mother's side, because I was the first florinoi to go serve a mission from my dad's side. And so to them, it was a big deal.

My grandpa would call me the torchbearer and then he'd get all teary-eyed. So there was that pressure. But my parents hadn't really pressured me to go that much until right before it was time to go. And suddenly out of nowhere, my mother began to pressure me a lot to go and she would get real emotional. And I kind of got to a point where I, I decided to go.

But I also, it was, it was interesting because I had my non-member cousin started pressuring me to go, but not for any good reasons in particular. But he was like, he was so fascinated by what I was going to be doing. And he's like, so they can send you anywhere in the world.

I'm like, yeah, anywhere that they see fit to put me. And he's like, oh my gosh, like maybe you'll go somewhere and learn another language, like Spanish. And he's like, if you go to Brazil, I'm going to be so jealous. And my friend had gone to Hong Kong and he was learning Mandarin Chinese.

And so I was like, man, he's like, kind of like my rival growing up too. So I was like, I gotta go. I hope I go somewhere really cool like that.

I ended up getting my letter back and it turned out I was going to the foreign nation of California, Orange County, English speaking. And I was so disappointed again, just like with my patriarchal dressing. I was like, man, God could have sent me anywhere and he doesn't trust me enough to take me outside of the country. To be fair, I wouldn't either. I wouldn't either knowing myself like I do now. But at the time I thought that I deserved to go to Mexico or something like that.

I was just immediately disappointed by a lot of unholy thoughts, right? Like, OK, like, I'm not going to have this second language to help me get a good job when I come home and I'm not going to have amazing stories to tell my dates when I come home because I'm just going to California. Like, nobody wants to hear about that.

I don't know. I mean, Led Zeppelin has a whole song about it. So about serving a mission in California. Well, about going to California. Did you get any kind of ribbing from your family or friends because you're going to California or are they just excited for you? No, they were just excited for me to go. My mom did say that she was disappointed as well initially, but then she prayed about it and God confirmed to her that that was exactly where I needed to go.

And so she told me that there was somebody there waiting and I had a purpose and I just needed to trust God and that it was going to be great. I ended up going at 19 to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. And I really liked the Missionary Training Center. The only thing I didn't like about it was that being from Texas, I was not used to the climate in Utah. And I'm lucky I went in April, so it wasn't too bad. But there was no humidity, so I would wake up in the middle of the night with bloody noses.

I would probably get like three of them a day and just have to run to the restroom and fix it because it was just a tough issue for me there. And then it turned out it was because I wasn't drinking enough water because I was just like slurping down all their sodas and blue jello that they have at the MTC. I was just going to ask a little bit more about your experience at the MTC. I know when I've heard interviews with other people who are ex-Mormons or post-Mormons, a lot of time that time in the MTC, the high pressure is something that they cite.

What was your experience there? When I first got to the MTC, I was really nervous. I was like, okay, it's like that moment where you realize like, okay, I'm a huge introvert and I am going on a mission. Like what am I thinking? In fact, I had looked at the, I looked, I remember looking at myself in the mirror right before I left and thinking I'm never going to stand in this spot again. Like my life is over.

Two years is never going to pass. And I get to the MTC and I'm really nervous. And I find my district, you know, the other group of missionaries that I'm there with and they were all really chill people. I really liked my district. They were friendly, made me feel at ease, but a lot of, they were a bunch of Utah Mormons.

And I realized real quick that I did not really fit in with that group, especially once we started practicing teaching because unlike me, these guys knew their stuff. They even knew the myths, you know, but they could talk about it so well. Like it was absolutely true. You know, like, oh, the star, when they were looking for Jesus, it was a brand new star being created, which I'm like, where did you find that? Is that, is that hidden in the Doctrine and Covenants somewhere?

When you said myths, I thought you were talking about like the stories about the three Nephites or something like that, like the urban legends. Yeah, I mean more like quasi doctrine as well as, you know, the real doctrine of the church. And they were just so much more well versed in it and they were interested in the theology. And I was like, oh, wow. I actually was really intimidated because I couldn't teach worth a darn.

And I didn't really know anything. They would practice teaching and it was so eloquent compared to me. They just seemed like they knew what they were doing. And I was like, man, I'm never going to catch up to these guys.

I remember one day we went to go clean one of the buildings, but we went, we cleaned this floor of this building and we got done pretty fast. We were a big district and there was an older guy there and he sat us all down and started talking to us. And he's like, how many of you guys have girlfriends back home? And most of the guys did.

I didn't. And then he shared the fun statistic that says only 1% of LDS women will wait for their missionary boyfriend to come home. It was like, you just feel like the pressure in the room, like, oh.

And he goes, but I have found a way to make it a hundred percent. And then he goes into this long story about how when he was on his mission, him and a bunch of the other missionaries made a covenant with God that if they would serve him the way he wanted them to, that he would protect their relationships. He said everyone who did that went home and married the girl who was waiting for them, except for one of them.

And in his case, when they got married in the temple, like the guy said that they had made that promise in the preexistence. So it was like, you know, this really spiritual moment. And after that, all the guys, they were all like, oh my gosh, we're going to do that tonight. And so we all went to our dorm, our dorms that night, and they all, I think a bunch of them did that, that night.

And I never followed up with any of them to figure out what happened. But I didn't have anyone waiting at home for me, and I was really concerned about the fact that I couldn't teach, that I couldn't do any sort of public speaking at all, because I was so, I had so much anxiety. And so I knelt down by my bed and I made a deal with God that if I would serve him the way he wanted me to, that he would teach me how to speak. And I immediately felt this feeling like, like God was saying yes to me.

And so again, you know, I took that to mean that, okay, you know, covenants are real, and the LDS church is definitely true. Now I didn't experience, like my whole mission, I was really awkward and had an incredibly hard time talking to people on the streets. But then magically when I came home and I was speaking over the pulpit, I felt like I could speak a lot better.

And I attributed that to that instance of the MTC. Are there any particular experiences that you had in California that have been important to your faith journey? Yeah, I think just the whole experience overall was really important. I kind of learned that I have a hard time getting along with people. I think I went, I cycled through like 17 companions on my missions. I was just with new people all the time. But I got to learn how to actually work with others.

And I really enjoyed teaching people in their homes and studying the scriptures every morning. I had some excellent trainers too. Like Emma, Matthew, you were talking about how yours made you go running.

Mine was exactly the same way. I wonder if they were like brothers or something because this guy, he'd have us go out and run like two miles. I was actually in a threesome and the other guy was really not fit and he looked like he'd be dying.

I'd just be like, man, why do you like to run so much? And he was like a huge bodybuilder too. So we'd try to wrestle him down. We'd try to gang up on him and it never worked. He was a monster.

He was like Samson. Did you keep up with him then or was he kind of like my trainer and then he kind of ran you into the ground? No, I could never keep up with him. I was just happy to be able to stay ahead of my other companion. I'm just not a runner. I can sprint really, really well, but if I'm doing a long distance, it kills me.

I would rather do just about anything than go running. So yeah, he would stop me into the ground and he was kind of that way when it came to teaching too because he was another just really good teacher, really knowledgeable and you couldn't really get a word in when he was talking. So I did a lot of listening and just really learned how to teach I think from him. We thank you for tuning into this episode of the Outer Brightness Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Please visit the Outer Brightness Podcast page on Facebook. Feel free to send us a message there with comments or questions by clicking send a message at the top of the page and we would appreciate it if you give the page a like. We also have an Outer Brightness group on Facebook where you can join and interact with us and others as we discuss the podcast, past episodes, and suggestions for future episodes, et cetera. You can also send us an email at outerbrightness at gmail.com.

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You can also connect with Michael the Ex-Mormon Apologist at fromwater2wine.org where he blogs and sometimes Paul and Matthew do as well. Music for the Outer Brightness Podcast is graciously provided by the talented Brianna Flournoy and by Adams Road. Learn more about Adams Road by visiting their ministry page at adamsroadministry.com.

Stay Bright, Flyer Flies! Music for the Outer Brightness Podcast is graciously provided by Adams Road. Learn more at adamsroadministry.com. Music for the Outer Brightness Podcast is graciously provided by Adams Road. Learn more at adamsroadministry.com. Music for the Outer Brightness Podcast is graciously provided by Adams Road. Learn more at adamsroadministry.com. Music for the Outer Brightness Podcast is graciously provided by Adams Road.