Paul's Story, Pt. 2

This is a multi-part episode. If you've not listened to the previous parts, please go back and do so. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Okay, so you never really felt like you had a spiritual witness of the Book of Mormon or the truthfulness of the church. Was that what started you down the path to leading away from the church, or was it something else, maybe something doctrinally or historically that led you that way? I think that the main question for me has always been around archaeology and the Book of Mormon.

I grew up in the Ezra Taft Benson era. The Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion era, so if it fails, everything fails, which is a very logical way to think about things. If Joseph Smith did, by the gift and power of God, translate an ancient record as a young, unlearned man, then great. If that's not what the Book of Mormon is, then that's not what it is. So the idea that it would be an ancient record to me was indispensable, right? That's what it claims to be, an ancient record found by a young man in a hill in New York and translated by that young man into English. And it's supposedly an ancient record of peoples, real peoples, who lived in the Americas.

So that idea was indispensable for me. Before my mission, just a few months before my mission, the Dead Sea Scrolls were on exhibit, on loan, to BYU. It's a traveling exhibit that I've seen a couple of times now.

I've seen it once there at BYU and now once here when it was here in Cincinnati a few years ago. But I went to that exhibit at BYU and I remember standing in front of the large Isaiah scroll, which I understand is not the actual Isaiah scroll but it's a replica that they sent around with the traveling exhibit. But it's a complete replica of the full Isaiah scroll that was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. And I remember standing there and listening to the cassette tape description of what I was looking at on the Walkman that they handed me when I went into the exhibit. And just being kind of carried away in thought when the cassette tape described the Isaiah scroll as an actual ancient record that came out of the dust and then tried to make a comparison of that to the Book of Mormon.

Because I was like, well, we don't have the plates and not only do we not have the plates but we don't have anything like a predecessor to the plates on parchment or anything that would demonstrate that the plates or the English translation of them would actually represent an ancient artifact. And that leads into why I was in that headspace at the end of my mission thinking about archaeology because that for me has always been kind of the linchpin. And while I was on my mission, I talked about the city that I was in in southern Hungary that was a college town. I was there knocking doors with one of my companions on a hot summer day and we were out in this neighborhood of houses knocking on doors and Hungary is kind of a weird place because it was behind the iron curtain. So people have high iron fences or stone walls around their yards to where you kind of have to ring a bell that rings inside the house in order for them to come out and open the gate for you to even see in their yard.

There's a lot of kind of remaining anxiety and fear of their neighbors that comes from that communist era. So we rang the bell at this one house and instead of coming out to the gate. This house sat right on the sidewalk.

So there were windows on the front of the house that were right on the sidewalk and instead of coming out of the house and opening up the gate. The man stuck his head out the front window and asked us what we wanted. And so, you know, we explained who we were that we wanted to tell them about an ancient record that had been found.

And, you know, we have some time to talk about it. And he was kind of an eccentric guy. And he he was like, well, would you be interested in reading a real ancient record that was found? And I was like, sure. So he disappeared back into his house and came back to the window and held out to me like a sheet of papers that looked like it had been photocopied off of something. And he handed it to me and he's like, here, here's a real ancient document that has been found. And he's like, I'll tell you what, I'll take your book and I'll read it if you'll take this book and read it.

But you have to bring it back because this is my only copy and you've gotten it from a friend of his. So my companion thought I was crazy, but I made the deal and I took that sheet of papers back to our apartment that night and I read it. And, you know, it was describing a war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. And I had no idea what I was reading.

I realize now what I didn't know then. There were Hebrew characters on one side of the paper and then there was an English translation of them. So it was like a translation of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And it turns out now that it was it was a translation of the war scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls. And I had no idea what it was at the time.

You know, I was 20 years old and reading Nibley and trying to be more scholarly than I was, but took it back to him the next day. But I remember just kind of being struck by that. There were actual scrolls being found. Again, I was struck by the actual scrolls being found that demonstrated that the culture of ancient Judaism actually existed. It was a real thing.

And there's nothing like that. Nothing tangible like that for the Book of Mormon. So long story short, it's always been archaeology. So for you, it came down to archaeology. And so was that the final straw that made you realize that you really wanted something tangible to prove or to provide evidence for the Book of Mormon? Is that is that really what sealed the deal for you as to why you no longer believed it to be true? No, it's not. It's not the final, but it's definitely it's definitely the thing that sent me searching. Sure.

Yeah. So so how did you what led you after that experience on your mission? What led you after that to start questioning and searching for answers? When I came home from my mission, like I said, I tried really hard to put on that mask.

And I was in full on struggle because I wanted there to be some type of evidence. So I came home and I subscribed to FARM's Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. It's now the Maxwell Institute. They had a publication, a journal that they produced quarterly called the Journal Book of Mormon Studies. I subscribe to that and read it every quarter when it would come out.

And what I found there is that most often the scholarly papers that were written in that journal were mostly walking back overly optimistic claims that had been made about archaeological finds in Mesoamerica 50 years prior. And that bothered me. So I was I was just looking for something to hold on to. But I still enjoyed the culture of the church.

I still enjoyed the fact that wards were generally a welcoming place. It gave me a family outside of my family. But I think probably a big piece of my beginning to question was was meeting my wife and and her family. So when I came home, I went back to work at the same company where my dad was working a small electronics firm in Salt Lake City and was working there with a friend of mine from high school.

And he would come in after a weekend. And there was a mutual friend of ours who was starting to meet girls online. You know, the the Internet kind of really came into being during my early high school years as a thing that people actually had access to, you know, with dial up and people had in their homes. And so it was kind of a weird idea that that this mutual friend of ours was meeting girls online. So my friend Keith would come in and tell about their their weekend escapades where they would go out dancing or whatever they would do. And and this mutual friend of ours would meet some girl there that that he had met online.

And he was always frustrated that they according to him, they didn't turn out to be like what they had presented themselves as online. So we would sit at work and talk about that and laugh about it. And we devised a science experiment that we would conduct where we would create a profile for ourselves. Because I asked him, I said, where is where is this friend of ours meeting these girls? And so he told me he was meeting them on a site called LDS matchmaker dot com. So we decided that we would do a we didn't we didn't really trust his his judgment because my friend Keith said, you know, these girls seem pretty cool.

He's like, I don't know what his thing is, but maybe he's a little too picky or whatever. But so we devised a science experiment where we would create a profile of ourselves. We had to respond to anybody who might happen upon our profile and strike up a conversation with us.

And we would just, you know, see what kind of bites we got. There was no intent really to meet anyone. It was just kind of we just kind of devised this experiment to test our our mutual friends judgment.

And so I created the profile. And within a couple of hours, I had probably six or seven emails of girls at BYU who were interested in talking and getting to know each other. And one of the emails was from a girl out here in around Cincinnati area.

And I thought, yes, that's weird. That's a long way away. Right. So responded to her email. Her name was Angela. And we started talking, started chatting online using ICQ, some old chat client. And then eventually, you know, it got to the point where we were talking on the phone and, you know, cell phones weren't really a thing then.

This was 1999. So we ran a big long distance bills. But, you know, eventually it got to the point where it was fairly serious after several months to the point where she invited me out here to be her date to her sister's wedding. So I flew out in November of 99 and attended her sister's wedding as her date at a Baptist church.

So we got to see how the other side lives when it comes to weddings. And while I was here, proposed and she said yes. So I went back. I flew back to Utah with the intent of moving out here at the end of 99 after Christmas. Spent that last Christmas with my family because I didn't think it would be a good idea to have come home from my mission in the middle of that year. And then leave my family before spending a Christmas with them. So decided to spend Christmas with them and then move out here to Cincinnati area.

So that's what I did. Moved out here and went to work initially at Fidelity Investments, doing some seasonal work there, preparing stock portfolios for tax season. The documents that that people would need related to those related to their accounts and then eventually got a job working for an insurance company that had Medicare contracts. And while I was working there, there was a security guard named Charlotte. She was an elderly African-American woman. And we would talk often. And when I would go down to the mail room to get the mail, we'd talk about religion because I was still in that mindset of being a good Mormon. And I was really trying to because Angela had gotten baptized the day after I got home from my mission. So I came home on May 14th. She was baptized into the LDS church on May 15th. And we both kind of took that as a sign.

Right. I then, you know, with with the wedding approaching, I was feeling the pressure of being a good priesthood holder, a good representative of the LDS church. Both, you know, within my relationship with Angela and also in my work relationships. So I would try to do missionary work with Charlotte and whoever else I could talk to. And eventually got to the point in my conversations with Charlotte where she was taking missionary discussions. She was reading the Book of Mormon. And then one day when I thought things were going fantastically well, I came into work and talked to Charlotte and she looked upset. And she handed me back the Book of Mormon that I had given her that had posted notes that she had stuck in there as she had read and studied.

And she said, I can't read this anymore. I asked her why. She said she had talked to her pastor and that he had told her that Mormons were racist. And I tried to argue that point because here I was every day talking with her. I certainly wasn't racist.

Didn't have any racist tendencies. She agreed with that. But she handed me a stack of papers that her pastor had printed off for her that, you know, went into the church's history with blacks in the priesthood. And that sent me searching on that issue, which sent me down the rabbit hole of LDS church history and doctrine and changes and policies. And you both know where all that goes.

Sure do. Did you have the same reaction with any of the other policies or was the racism the main one? Like did you slip the other ones under the rug before polygamy? Yeah, polygamy was a shelf item for me. So, yeah, race in the priesthood kind of coming back to to to bite me like that was tough because I remember sitting I remember on my mission. You know, I had that goal that I talked about right to read all of the standard works. Well, that, of course, included the official declarations that are in the Pearl of Great Price. Right.

So, you know, the official declaration ending polygamy, the official declaration ending the ban on blacks in the priesthood. And so I remember being troubled by both of those. But, yeah, you put them up on the shelf and you you you don't touch them.

You leave them there until they they kind of fall off the shelf at a time when you don't expect it. So polygamy did a similar thing as well. So in so let's see, Michael, you're not from Utah, but Matthew, you are. So you you may you may be able to resonate with us a little bit.

But like in Utah, at least when I was growing up there in Elders Quorum, when I was a young man getting ready to go on a mission and a young man having just come home from a mission, I would go to Elders Quorum. That was like speculation time. Right. That was time for every Bob in the ward to start speculating about when we're going back to Missouri. When is polygamy coming back? You know, those types of things that are kind of outside the mainstream of obvious thought. But people kind of hang on to there in Utah.

And so I was kind of swimming in that pool of, you know, people suggesting that there was a time when polygamy was coming back. And what are you going to do? You know, how are you going to handle that?

Right. So Angela and I met on my flight back from from attending her sister's wedding. I had a layover in Phoenix and they overbooked the flight that I was supposed to get from Phoenix to Salt Lake City. So they were offering five hundred dollar flight vouchers for anyone who would be willing to take a later flight. Well, at that time, a five hundred dollar flight voucher would buy a lot.

So I agreed to take a later flight through Denver to get back to Salt Lake. And I took the five hundred dollar flight voucher and I sent it out here to Angela. Now, something I haven't mentioned up until now, but I will now, is that when Angela and I met, she had two little girls already. You know, one of the things that the people were concerned about around me and me beginning to date her was that I would have a ready made family.

And they wondered whether I was old enough and wise enough to to manage that, which I can totally understand their concern. But that five hundred dollar flight voucher was was going to allow her to travel out there with Kelsey and Holly in order to meet my family. So took the flight voucher. She flew out there. And while she was out there, we took a drive and we went out into the southwestern corner of the Salt Lake Valley, which at the time was just farmland to get out by Herriman.

It was nothing but farmland. Now it's all Dr. Seuss cat in the hat houses out there in in Dayspring. I don't know if you've seen that, Matthew or not, but it's just filled up with houses now. But anyway, we took a drive because it was what that was one of my favorite things to do when I was in high school was to take a drive out there by the copper mines. It was dark out at that end of the valley.

You got away from them from the light pollution of the city and you could actually see the stars. And so I used to love to drive out there. And so I took her out there to to kind of share that with her. And, you know, we're driving along and I'm thinking, you know, thinking about one of those conversations in Elders Quorum about like, you know, what are you gonna do if polygamy comes back? And here I am, you know, engaged to be married to this woman. And I'm thinking, man, you know, like, what would I do if polygamy came back? And so I strike up this conversation with her about, you know, some people speculate that someday polygamy is going to come back in the church. What would you think about that? Let's just say I'm surprised that she actually married me after that conversation. But, yeah, not not a bright thing to do.

It didn't didn't lead anywhere good. But, yeah, that's that's the kind of thing that that Mormonism does to you. Well, she's still married to you, so she must love you a lot.

She did. Yeah. And it's it'll be 20 years next year.

So that's amazing. I guess that conversation didn't hurt me too much. So we talked a lot about archaeology, polygamy is one issue. Were there were those the main issues? Was there anything else that was kind of detrimental to your faith or something that made you question or or do you do you have anything else that you would like to say about that?

No, I don't I don't think so. You know, I just got to the point after after years of study. So I talked about the experience with Charlotte and how that sent me on on a down the rabbit hole of searching, you know, Google searching various issues with the LDS church. And that led me to into discussion boards online, started out at belief net dot com in a discussion board there on Mormonism. And then, you know, several of us that discussed regularly there and elsewhere eventually kind of founded our own private message board where we discussed things.

We even got together in person once in Salt Lake City to discuss things. And, you know, that group of men and women really kind of I mean, it was indispensable to have them help, you know, help think through things, help discuss through things that I was learning. I think probably one of the one of the straws that was almost too much on the camel's back was was reading Rough Stone Rolling and just kind of realizing that there were logical, rational explanations for what Joseph Smith produced, both in terms of his writings and in terms of the success of the LDS church.

That don't result in the conclusion that God did it. And so I reached a point probably around 2007 or so where I didn't I wasn't a literal believer anymore in the LDS church and its truth claims, but wanted to stick in for the for the cultural aspect of it. Didn't want to lose my family, wanted to be that strong priesthood holder that held his family together.

And so I kept pushing and kept trying. And Michael, you alluded to, you know, my time teaching an elders quorum. I would I would teach lessons and be very open. So to back up a little bit, I spent a number of years in the Young Men's Organization where I didn't feel as safe to be open about my doubts. I felt like there I really had to tow the party line because there was a responsibility on my shoulders to raise up the next generation of Latter Day Saint youth in a faithful way.

And so I just kind of swallowed my doubts while I served there. But when I when I moved when I was moved from the Young Men's Organization to the elders quorum, I will for one thing, the two men that I was in the elders quorum presidency with were they were willing to be open to. And so we had discussions that were somewhat refreshing, but then I would teach lessons that in which I was very open about my doubts about the Book of Mormon, about whether or not Joseph Smith was actually a prophet. And it sparked conversation in the elders quorum. And, you know, people would would come and tell me, other men would come and tell me that they appreciated my candor, that it was it was refreshing.

I never got into trouble with the bishop or anyone else over it, but, you know, it was it was a difficult time because I was I was still trying to be still trying to be faithful, trying to find goodness in my church activity, trying to find community, trying to find like minded people who would be for me in person what I had experienced online with people and eventually got to the point where it just wouldn't work anymore. And for a number of years there, I just kept pushing, just kept trying, just kept trying. And, you know, Angela and I were very open throughout all of that about what we were going through, what I was learning, what she was learning. You know, there was a time when I read the book in Sacred Loneliness, which is, I don't know if either of you have read it, but it's it's a history of Joseph Smith's wives and in their own words describes, you know, what living polygamy was like for them.

And that was a that was a rough book to read. And I remember hiding it from Angela because I didn't want it to harm her faith. And she found it one day while I was at work. And, you know, that sparked a conversation and told her, you know, that wasn't sure that I believed in God anymore, wasn't sure that I believed in the church anymore. And that crushed her. I remember her crying.

And she she said, so wait, you don't you don't believe that we have the truth. And so we, you know, throughout the years we were we were open and we talked about things and she was supportive. And it got to the point where, you know, she tried, she pushed. There was a time probably around 2008 or so when our bishop had challenged the Lord to read the Book of Mormon through and she had never done it. We had tried to read it together, but it never really interested her.

So she at that time when the when the bishop challenged the ward, she, you know, she decided that she was going to take up that challenge. And she got the Book of Mormon on CD and she would sit and listen to the CDs and read along. And she went through the entire book in a couple of weeks.

And I remember feeling a little bit excited because I had kind of hoped that, you know, hey, I've never received the witness. But if she receives the witness, then maybe there's still hope for me. And we had a conversation after she had read it. And I asked her, you know, what do you think now having read it all the way through? And her response was very disheartening for where I was at the time. She said that, you know, she struggled to believe it before she had read it all the way through.

And now that she had read it all the way through, she was certain that it's not what it claims to be. And so from that time on, she kind of fell off attending church for the most part. And I would kind of try to push her to go.

I would take the kids and go. And a lot of times she wouldn't, but sometimes I would nudge her until she would go with us. And we would come home from church on Sunday afternoon and sit down to lunch. And I could just see in her eyes that I described at the time and still do as a dead look in her eyes, she was not being fed at church. And I thought, you know, that if we just kept trying, it would eventually work out.

And it didn't. So one day, one Friday, I came home from work and she said, you know, we really need to talk. And she said, let's go grab some dinner, take it to a park and we'll just talk. So that's what we did.

We went and grabbed dinner, went to a park and sat down. And I was wholly prepared for her to tell me that she wanted a divorce because I knew that church wasn't working for her. And I had been pretty clear with her that although I had my doubts and my questions about the LDS church, that I didn't think I could ever be anything but Mormon. Her family was Southern Baptist.

So, you know, she felt like she had some place to go back to. And I, like I said, I didn't feel like I could be anything other than Mormon. And I told her that on a number of occasions.

So I thought we had reached the point where, you know, irreconcilable difference over religion. And I was certain that that's what she was going to tell me that night at the park. That's not what she told me. What she did tell me was that she could not go back to the LDS church anymore. She didn't care if I did, but that she couldn't and that she would like to take the kids and try to find somewhere else to go to church. And, you know, I was welcome to go with her if she wanted, if I wanted to. But if I wanted to stay going to the LDS church, that I could do that, too. And it was like, it was like a weight lifted off of me. I felt free to say, yeah, let's go.

Let's go try something else. And so that's what we did the next week. We started church hopping around the area until we landed at Lakeside Christian Church. So, Paul, you only went to one church mainly?

I'm just wondering, because I know that in my experience, at least at first, I, you know, you're brought up Mormon, right? You just expect the church to be perfect. Did you find yourself criticizing churches at first, like for little flaws or things that you thought were imperfections?

No. So I guess for me, it was, we had been, we had been going to services at my in-laws Baptist church for so many years, whether, you know, that was an Easter cantana or a Christmas cantana or an Easter morning service. And, you know, we had attended services there so often that it, I had kind of gotten away from the idea of, I guess, of criticizing. At that point, I was really open.

I wasn't always that way. So I remember going to one service at my in-laws Baptist church when our oldest daughter, Kelsey, was probably seven or eight years old. And it was, I don't remember what kind of service it was.

It wasn't, anyway, I don't recall what kind of a service it was, but it was in the evening. But we had gone and the, you know, the pastor preached and then did an altar call. And Kelsey got up out of the pew and went forward for the altar call. And she must have been eight because I think she was just baptized.

Because I remember that that's why I was freaking out. So she went forward for the altar call and I'm nudging Angela, like, what is she doing? What is she doing? We're LDS.

Like, she can't be doing this. And I remember taking our son out in the hall. He was a toddler and, you know, Angela had gone with her. Angela had grown up Baptist. So, you know, for her it was not anything to see someone go forward for an altar call. And, you know, for her that was a legitimate expression of one's need for a savior.

And so, you know, she went up there to be with Kelsey. Our son was starting to fuss a little bit, so I took him out in the hallway. And I remember just pacing the hallway, kind of freaking out, like, thinking, you know, we're Mormon. We're LDS. Like, how can she go forward for an altar call?

Like, this doesn't even make any kind of sense. And, you know, in my Mormon brain at the time, I'm thinking, you know, she's being influenced by Satan because that's what other churches are, right? But by the time we left, I was so far beyond that mindset that I was just open and ready to see what else was out there. So in terms of whether we tried just one church, so Lakeside Christian Church is directly across the street from the stake center where we attended Mormon services for a decade. And so we tried to avoid that church. We tried a United Methodist Church that's nearby where some of our children went through preschool.

We liked it. They had both a traditional hymn service and a contemporary service. We went to the traditional hymn service the first week because we thought that that would be more like what we were used to. The youth pastor for that church lived, her backyard fence backed up against our backyard fence, so we knew her fairly well. We thought we might go back to that church the next week for the contemporary service. But I kind of freaked out a little bit and started researching the community of Christ and tried to take us in that direction because I thought, well, you know, if we're not Salt Lake Mormon, maybe we'll be Mormon in some way, right? So I started corresponding with a female pastor from a community of Christ congregation that's near here, but kind of farther away than you would want to travel for church. And we kind of made preliminary plans the next week to go there, but then ended up deciding not to do that because it was like an hour away and we didn't want to travel that far every week for church.

So we decided not even to investigate that, but we made that decision on Sunday morning. So then we were like, yeah, we'll just stay home this week. And then the third week is when we decided to just, okay, whatever, we're going to try Lakeside. The reason we tried Lakeside is because I could see when I was sitting in the foyer with our kids in the Mormon church, I could see people going into Lakeside and they always looked so happy. I was not happy in the LDS church at that point.

And the people going into Lakeside always looked happy. They looked like they were excited to go to church. And that's not what I saw at the Mormon church. I saw people struggling to get a bunch of kids in the church.

I saw, you know, myself in the mirror realizing that, you know, thinking about how long can I go on trying to put on this mask. And so I just wasn't happy. And so I wanted to try Lakeside, but we had kind of agreed that we weren't going to because it was directly across the street. And we didn't want our Mormon friends to see us going into Lakeside. And it's a very casual environment at Lakeside. So people wear, you know, shorts and a polo. Football weeks, people might wear their team's jersey. So it's kind of the complete opposite in terms of style and culture than the LDS church is.

And so, you know, there are a lot of reasons why we avoided it. But, you know, that first week we walked in there and worshiped for the first time. It was like, wow, this is this makes sense. It just felt like home from from the beginning and people welcomed us.

And, you know, we've made really great relationships there. So, yeah, I was just going to ask if there was like, what was the point where or was there a point that you reached where you really just kind of thought, like, I'm in a good place and I would never return to Mormonism? And did that take a while? It did take a while because I had known in my in my talk, I alluded to an online discussion group that we kind of took and made private. And I had known people in that group who had gone and become evangelical Christians and then, you know, find out that after four years or eight years, they're going back to the LDS church.

So I did for a while think, you know, is this just another mask I'm putting on, you know, or or will this stick? And, you know, so I I didn't I spent a year, actually more than a year, maybe a year and three months really kind of digging in and trying to learn and and give my bearings before I was at a point where I was like, OK, I I'm ready to make it official and join this church by, you know, by being baptized and becoming a full member of this church. So we left in May of 2010 and Curtis and I were baptized, my son and I were baptized in August of 2011.

So I'd say that's probably the point where where I was I was ready to say I'm ready. And up until that point, I did I did do a doctrinal compare. But as far as like the church goes, I was I wasn't critical of the church per se. I was curious to know how it's different, right? How it's structured.

Is there anything like priesthood? You know, I was curious about all those kind of things, but I wasn't I wasn't critical. Like you asked me earlier if I was critical.

I wasn't critical. Just just very curious. So, yeah. So my question I was going to ask is, so throughout this process of leaving the LDS Church, finding the church you're at now and feeling like you're home, if someone were to ask you at what point do you feel like the Lord saved you? Could you give a specific moment in time? Was it back in your mission when you were praying for Jesus to save you? Or or is it a little bit difficult to nail down a specific time?

I think it's hard to nail down a specific time. I do believe that I was saved before I left the LDS Church, because as as I became sort of a I guess what you might call a progressive Mormon in regards to my beliefs about the LDS Church and and its truth claims, the non-negotiable was Jesus. And so although I did teach those lessons in others quorum where I openly shared my doubts about the LDS Church and its truth claims, most of my lessons were focused on Jesus and what he did for us, what his sacrifice was for us.

That's that's really where my heart was at the time. And so I guess I guess that's why church at the end of in the end of the time in the LDS Church became so difficult because I kind of grown weary of studying out all these church history and doctrine and issues. And I really just wanted to focus on Christ and and his love and and I wasn't getting it there. And so it became kind of kind of difficult. But I enjoyed I enjoyed kind of teaching lessons to elders quorum where I really tried to focus in on on Jesus. So I do believe that it was before I left.

And Michael, I've told you this story, I think, in one of our conversations and I'll share it now with you, Matthew, as well. But there was a time when I was still struggling. And this would have been trying to think when this was where we were living at the time to get engaged on what year it was.

It was probably it would have been the spring or summer of 2004. We'd just gone through a miscarriage as a couple. My wife had miscarried and that was incredibly difficult for her and painful and awful for me as well. And, you know, we were grieving from that.

We were trying as a couple to navigate through that pain and still remain connected as a couple. And, you know, I remember in your Mormon head, you go to a really kind of unhealthy space when when things like that happen sometimes where you think you must have done something wrong or you must not have been as faithful as you should have been or that wouldn't have happened to you. And so that's kind of the headspace I was in at the time. And I was just, you know, just praying at the time to know whether I was accepted of God.

And I even wrote a couple of short stories during that time that kind of touch on the headspace that I was in through various things that the characters do and say. And I was writing one where, you know, a character realizes that he's never really heard from God. And that was representative of what I was going through at the time where I was realizing I had never really heard from God, even though I prayed for the witness of the Book of Mormon, the witness of Joseph Smith as a prophet, all of that for years. At that point, I was realizing I'd never really heard from God. And I remember thinking that it was odd that I had never dreamed about Jesus because Jesus had been really important, a really important part of my life for a very, very long time at that point. And I had never dreamed about Jesus.

And I thought that was weird because I dreamed about all kinds of stuff, obscene things, you know, obscure, odd things, mundane things, you know, but never about Jesus. And I remember mentioning that to Angela, you know, that I thought that that was strange in one of our late night conversations and just kept praying to know if I was accepted of God. And one day, I went into the bedroom to lay down, take an afternoon nap and close the door behind me because Angela was out in the front room with the kids and they were making a little noise. So I closed the door behind me, laid down to take a nap. And as I was laying there, I heard a voice whisper my name. It sounded like it was right next to my ear, you know, and I had my eyes closed. And I thought, you know, I must have missed Angela coming in, you know, and thought I must have dozed off and maybe she came in to try to wake me up, you know.

So I opened my eyes and there was nobody there and the door was closed. And I thought, you know, that's weird, you know, to hear a voice say your name. So I closed my eyes and went back, tried to go back to sleep and heard the voice again and thought, you know, that's really weird. And that time I got up out of bed and walked over the door and opened up the door and just kind of listened out through the hallway to see what Angela was doing.

And I could hear that they were out in the front room watching TV and just kind of playing around. And I thought, man, that's weird. So I closed the door and laid back down and thought, man, that was a weird experience. I'd never experienced anything like that before.

And then I don't know how much longer, how much after that it was a week or two weeks, I don't know. But one night I had a dream that I was walking up a hill. And so when I was on my mission, there was a hill in Buddha where, I'm assuming a church had done it, had set up kind of like statues of each of the 12 apostles. And it was like a round hill and there was a walkway around the outside of it up to the top.

And along that walkway, there were statues of each of the 12 original apostles of Jesus. And then at the top, there were three crosses. And, you know, my companion and I kind of stumbled onto that one day while we were out, you know, attracting and knocking on doors. And I remember that that was a it was kind of a cool experience to see that out in the middle of this field. And so anyway, I had this dream where I did dream that I was walking up this similar hill and got to the top and looked up. And there there was Jesus hanging on the cross.

And that same voice that I'd heard when I was trying to take the nap said my name again and said, you're mine. And, you know, I've thought about that a lot. I don't know what to make of it, but that's kind of that's that's why I say I think that that I was saved before I left the LDS Church is because of that experience. Man, I'm trying to I'm trying to absorb everything.

It's a lot of great stuff. Maybe maybe we can. Is there any final thoughts you'd like to say or? Yeah, I think, you know, we've talked in another episode and quite a bit in depth here about fears that are involved in leaving the LDS Church and making a transition into broader Christianity. One of the things that really kind of opened up to me when we left as I, you know, and really when we left, I made mention of the fact that I kind of grown weary of studying out LDS Church history issues and doctrinal issues and policy issues. And when we left, it's like the world opened up to me. I suddenly had desire to study again.

I was I've always been someone who who studies things out and wants to learn as much about things as I can. And when we left, it's like the world opened up to me. And with the LDS Church's teachings on the great apostasy and how broader Christianity is apostate, there's a lot of fear about studying too much about other churches or the history of Christianity. And really there was a sense in which I felt like it was not mine, right? Because the LDS Church has its Genesis in 1830 and it's like everything before that is broken.

So why would you even look at it? And I remember making a comment to someone online because they were they were surprised at how quickly I made the transition from studying Mormonism so deeply. And this was this person that I was making this comment to was someone who had been in that private discussion group with me.

So it's someone I had met in person and had become a real friend and he made the comment to me like you're making this transition like really fast and you're jumping like headfirst into studying out Christianity. And I was like, yeah, but you know, it's like all of that history, all of that doctrine is mine now. It wasn't before. It was broken.

I didn't touch it. But it's all mine now. I get to look at it and I get to reason through it and think about it. And so I think what I would say is that the world is out there and there's some really amazing beautiful stuff in historic Christianity, whether it's the writings of Augustine in his Confessions or it's the writings of St. John of the Cross or it's the experiences of Martin Luther or John Calvin or whoever else.

There's a lot out there that's just waiting to be discovered. All right. Well, thank you very much for your witness, for your testimony of Christ.

And you've already explained your belief in Christ and how God has called you to him. So really thank you for your witness and for sharing that with us today. We thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Outer Brightness podcast. We'd like to hear from you. You're invited to visit the Outer Brightness podcast page on Facebook. Feel free to send a message there with comments or suggestions 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 podcast group on Facebook where you can join and interact with us and others as we discuss the podcast, past episodes, suggestions for future episodes, etc. We would love to hear from you and hope to speak with you soon. Stay bright, Fireflies. You can subscribe to the Outer Brightness podcast on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Google Play, Castbox, Podbean, Spotify and Stitcher. If you like what you hear, give us a rating or review wherever you listen. Thank you, Fireflies. You can also connect with Michael the Ex-Mormon apologist at FromWaterToWine.org where he blogs and sometimes Paul and Matthew do as well. In the past I believed in my own righteousness In hope that I was worthy of the blood that Jesus shed But now I know that all the works I did were meaningless Compared with Jesus' lonely death on the cross where he bore sin And now I have the righteousness that is by faith in Jesus' name I consider everything a loss Compared to knowing Jesus for who's sake I have lost all things because of the cross On the cross Jesus took away the red and gold The law of words that stood opposed And nailed it there for me Through the cross he put to death hostility And in his body reconciled us to God and brought us peace And I am crucified with Christ And I no longer live but he lives in me I consider everything a loss Compared to knowing Jesus for who's sake I have lost all things But when I came Jesus it was worth the cost All my righteousness I count as a loss Because of the cross Some demand a sign And some seek to be wise But we preach Christ crucified A stumbling bottle of sun The foolishness of God But wiser than the wisest man The power of the cross May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Through which the world has been crucified to me An eye to the world So I take up my cross And follow where Jesus leads Oh, I consider everything a loss Compared to knowing Jesus for who's sake I have lost all things But when I came Jesus it was worth the cost All my righteousness I count as a loss Because of the cross