00:00
Elizabeth your brothers and sister know that you left the church. That's not a secret, right?

Correct

One of the reasons you want to do this speak with me, share some stuff with them Is there some things they may not know am I right about you leaving that you want them to know?

Yes, I want them to know that just like them what dad believed and

00:29
why he believed the things he believed, what his wishes were when he died, and what he would think of us now, or what, you know, obviously what we think dad would think of us right now. All of that matters to me. All of that is important to me. I know it's important to them.

00:55
Maybe some more than others. I don't know for sure. I don't know what degree or extent, but I know it's meaningful. So I want them to know that it also matters to me. Let's start with your decision to leave the church. My decision to leave the church wasn't just selfish, willy nilly, fly by the seat of my pants, just rebelling or making a point or anything.

01:25
I mean, if dad were still alive and I had been going through that process that I was going through, we would have went through a similar roller coaster that I went through. He would have been excited for me and I would love to know what he would have been willing to do. Would he have been willing to join me in going to the temple again? He wore his garments to the day he died.

01:52
don't think as far as if I'm correct, I don't believe that after he and my mom were sealed together in the temple, I don't think he went again regularly. I know my mom did later because she was always going through her process with the church of meeting just ups and downs and ins and outs. But my dad was a cigarette smoker and he drank coffee. And for those two reasons

02:22
He couldn't ever go into the temple again unless he gave those things up. He was a carpenter by trade, and he was just a dude from Virginia who'd been in the army, and he had forsaken those things long enough to go the first time, and I just don't think it mattered enough to him to do it again.

So what do you want your siblings to know about your dad?

What I'm wondering, and I want my siblings to consider, because it does matter,

02:51
It's like, would he have been curious too, with me? Would he have been curious enough to then start diving into all of the doctrine the way that I did? Because we know he loved it and was curious about it and did his own research and learning. Maybe he would have come along with me through the whole thing. And maybe he also would have come to the same conclusions that I came to. Maybe not.

03:19
I mean, anything is possible. Who knows if he were alive today? It's such a different world. I don't know what he would be thinking or believing. Maybe he would go, there's a part of me that thinks my dad would be inclined to have gone the way of, there are segments in the church, for lack of the precise word, but offshoots from the main body of the church.

03:45
And these are people that we call them preppers, just waiting for the end of the world. Like, God is, Jesus is returning any day now. The government is trying to take over our lives. And they are the ones that are stockpiling guns and ammo and food storage. And they're constantly predicting the end of the world is coming and the government and the world is falling apart. So he may have gone that way. I don't know. But.

04:15
My investigations led me to the conclusion that we have been seriously misled. We have been fed a lot of misinformation and disinformation. And for specificity, the difference between misinformation and disinformation is that misinformation is just kind of like happenstance. You know, you misunderstand, you didn't hear it, right? But

04:42
Disinformation is intentionally intended to dupe you. There is a lot of that and there's proof of it. I mean, it's all over. And as the world goes and as time goes on, just like with anything, we learn more, more information comes to light. Like one of the things that I was so into and excited about, pulled out my scriptures for reference here.

05:06
And I don't even know that my siblings know this, but there's a technical word for what the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants and all of these books that Joseph Smith wrote because he was receiving word from God from heaven. It's called a midrash because one of my earliest wonderings when I was going through learning about the church was why would he bother to just rewrite the Bible? I don't understand. Why would he bother to just

05:36
rewrite it. I mean, so much as this is maybe pejorative, but it's like fan fiction. What do you mean fan fiction?

What's not true?

There was this, so there's this planet called Kolob, this is where God lived. And then there were all of these, Joseph basically bought a mummy at one point. And then after he had this like Egyptian mummy, he started having all these revelations. Anyway, it's this really

06:04
cool looking hieroglyphic thing. And supposedly he's like interpreted it through the way, probably the same way that he received the Book of Mormon, which was by a seer stone. And he would put his head in a hat. By the way, this is also stuff that most average Mormons don't know. He would put his head in a hat and then he would know, right? And then he would put his hat and his stone up. It's very well known now.

06:33
that that's all bullshit. All of the things that he interpreted, because now people who can read these ancient hieroglyphics and have pieced together other things, they actually have the missing pieces of that one little thing that he bought from a traveling salesman that Joseph Smith bought. The rest of it is now part of history. It's like in a museum and it's like all put back together.

07:00
And it says nothing like what Joseph made up. He made up this outrageous story. And I was so embarrassed because I like had this picture of it on my wall. I thought it was super cool. I loved one of the hymns. My dad told me that I would go to, I would go on after this life to have my own planet and I would be a goddess of my own planet.

07:28
This was my birthday gift in 1984. And he says that in here, he, he writes about, he knows I'll go on and, you know, become a goddess. Anyway, this stuff is all bullshit. And it's so hard to stomach as you start researching more and more, and then face the people at church, then as you come to these male leaders with your questions and your evidence, and you are just told that.

07:57
Um, you're believing misinformation. You're the one that is not having faith. You have been duped by the devil.

Well, how does it feel to be not believed?

It was hard. It was not an easy thing to go through to keep facing that over and over and over. And then as I got deeper into it, I was actually going to the temple, which again, as far as I know, none of my siblings, other than my oldest brother,

08:24
went and so they don't even know and it's so freaking bizarre. And after my first temple experience, I was just, I had to keep learning more. And the thing is, is you are told explicitly, you're not allowed to talk about anything that goes on in the temple. And so, but after you go through all these different ceremonies and rituals and things, it's, it's basically a reenactment of the beginning of time with Adam and Eve.

08:53
and then everything that happens and you move from room to room and then symbolically you end up in the celestial kingdom which is this amazing like white room with chandeliers and it's like heaven right it's like the mormon temples are very modest like the mormon churches on the outside they always stick with the same very plain plain plain but inside the temples they're extraordinary

09:20
It's real gold. Everything is plated in real gold and everything is amazing. And you feel like, I don't know, but that's the only place you're allowed to have questions. Because after I left, I was trying to talk to people about it at church and they're just kind of like, oh, by the way, that's one of the symbols you used to have one of the ritual things you used to have to do in the church. But they over time cut it out. And that was one of my questions. Like, why did you have why did you originally have to go through this?

09:49
ritual where you symbolically slit your throat, you know, to say that you would kill yourself if you commit any of these sins or if you're being pressed by the evil forces in the world, whether that's the government or whatever, to say bad things about the church, that you would kill yourself. Like, why did that get changed? Because supposedly these were all things that came down originally from the Word of God. Like, why did they change?

10:17
But I couldn't talk to anybody about it because they wouldn't. And they just kept saying, you can't talk about it. And so I would go and go. And then I would take a little piece of paper and take notes secretly, trying to take notes, when I would get into the bathroom right after. Oh my gosh, I just wanted to remember there's so much going on. And I wanted to pray about it because I would hope I would get the answers from God.

10:47
I didn't get the answers from God. There's so many weird things that they don't know that I want them if they really think that it's something that our dad would want us to continue with. I guess the one thing I want them to know is that I went back in his journal, the one thing he wanted before he became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

11:16
was him and my mom had a conversation and agreed that they wanted their children to be God-fearing. That's it. That was all he wanted. So are they God-fearing? You know, that's my question. Are you living your life as a God-fearing person? Yes, he did become more into the church. But one thing that I also want them to know in his journals too, where he actually wrote.

11:42
in 1980, he writes about his priesthood genealogy. He writes about Brigham Young and, I don't know, he writes about how one of the big reasons he knew the church was true was because they believed that the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost are not one, that they're separate beings. But by the way, if they do their research, they'll find out that Joseph Smith's original vision of that had four iterations before he finally...

12:12
landed on saying, he just kept saying like, oh wait, no, that's not what I saw. Oh wait, no, that's not what I saw. Anyway, he wrote about having learned some things about Joseph Smith. He said that I had never thought about before. So I started to study even harder. And I found that Joseph Smith, the prophet, and then it's cut out of his journal. And then the other side.

12:41
of the page, which is also that it's also cut off. All you see is it says from the household of Joseph and came through the loins of Ephraim. I am blessed greatly. We all know we're from the house of Ephraim. So it just, it's this mysterious thing that like, you're not allowed to talk about the things you discover about Joseph Smith. It's no secret that Joseph Smith was a con artist. It's no secret that Joseph Smith was

13:11
taking and stealing the wives of men. It's no secret that he was having affairs on his wife and then saying afterward, he had been told by God to do that. So I'll never know. And I only ever even know who cut it out. There's a part of me that wonders that didn't cut them out of his journal because I got these journals to read and I made photocopies for my own records of pages that I wanted.

13:41
And then I gave them back because he wanted them back. I mean, I have stacks of my own journals that are painful for me to read because I was so deeply believing. I was so devout and so just manifestly determined to understand things. And then, you know, I arrived at this statement that I still hold by, which is that.

14:08
I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned. And I kept coming with questions and then I would get answers and they would just be like, you're wrong for questioning that. That means you're lacking faith. But I'm like, wait a minute, if A and B and one and one and all these things aren't adding up to equal numerically or grammatically something correct.

14:38
That's why God gave us our brain. That's why God gave us our free will. That's why we're supposed to do this. That's actually what Joseph Smith embodied was that you are supposed to keep seeking.

So do you want them to keep seeking?

The final thing that I just would like them to do is just maybe if they challenge their own thinking and their beliefs and their reasons, maybe they'll get really into it and they'll be super.

15:04
Mormon and go to the temple and go to the celestial kingdom. Or maybe they will also deconstruct everything else and come to realizations. It's not for me to say or decide, but I will say that if my dad had been scholarly and had the access to the King Follett sermon and the sermon in the growth, which is that was what broke it for me. When I kept reading it over and over and over again, and I kept coming.

15:34
with questions. First, I kept being told over and over again, you're diving into the deep end. You're not blah, blah, blah. Don't do this. Don't do that. You can't be just stick to the canon of the four scriptures. Don't read any of these other things. Those are the final thoughts and words of Joseph Smith. The Kingfellow sermon, the sermon in the grove, he knew he was going to be killed. He knew that his life was in date. People were trying to murder him all over the place. And he was on.

16:03
fire with revelation. He was having revelation all the time. He gave these last sermons with more passion and vigor. Not only that, they're also, interestingly enough, the most recorded by other people. And when I say recorded, I think there were 13 witnesses. So there are 13 different handwritten accounts of those sermons when he gave them.

16:31
So there's a lot more than any of the other things. And those are the things in which he lays out what he believes is the whole gospel. And he starts talking about, he starts expanding on these ideas of having our own planets and being our, that we will become gods of our own worlds. You bring that up to an active member of the church today and they're not having it. They wanna deny it. They wanna pretend it never happened.

17:01
Unless you think he was a fraud, why would you be hiding this stuff? I was furious. When you really start digging deep and wanting to learn because you really care deeply about something and you're finding you're getting to the really good information and then that's what's been redacted, that's what's been closed. And, and you're told you can't go any further. My dad wouldn't have tolerated that. No way.

What do you mean?

17:30
I mean, he was a rebel. He gave us blessings in the house, which is breaking the priesthood rules. He would anoint us with the holy oil on our heads and give the Melchizedek priesthood blessings, even though he knew he wasn't technically qualified to because he didn't give up cigarettes or coffee. Even though he did everything else by the book in terms of the lower grade of being a Mormon that doesn't go to the temple, I don't know. He still believes.

17:57
that you would go to the celestial kingdom. So I just want them to know that it wasn't an easy and convenient thing for me to do because I just wanted to sin or prove that. I don't even know what they might think, but I just want them to know that there's so much more information about there. And if they really truly want to carry on what our dad's wishes were, they need to take into account.

18:26
new information that's available, which wasn't available to our dad. Is there anything about your leaving the church from the very beginnings of that process to today you want them to know that you didn't already talk about? Yeah, I mean, it's weird to have a one way conversation because I'm making assumptions about what they might be thinking or whatever. I know that my brother defended me and my intentions, which I'm

18:54
you know, I'm grateful for and what he really believes or thinks I don't know. But you know how every story has multiple perspectives, like, you know, here's your story, here's their story. The truth is somewhere in between. There's a million different versions depending on who's looking at it. I know that one of the narratives about me and my husband, Matthew, is that basically, yeah, we left the church because we wanted to sin.

19:23
He was the bishop of the church, but he was the person, the main person that was even open. Honestly, even the fact that he wasn't just trying to force, there was just something unique about the way that when I said one of the first visits that he came to our house to say, please sister, come to church, I was like, if I identified it as anything, it would be Buddhist.

19:52
And instead of just doing what typically people in the past would do when I would say that, he was curious about it. Then was not willing to let me try to teach him about Buddhism, but he was curious about why I was, why that had been what I had been studying over the years instead of Mormonism. It was like the first time that I actually felt, because you see, the church believes that

20:22
You know, if at the beginning of time, all of the truth was a piece of glass or a mirror and it got shattered, like everybody picked up little pieces. This is like one of the primary stories they tell you when you're little. Everybody picked up a little piece of it, but we got most of it, right? And then because we have living profits, those living profits are constantly giving us more and more and more of the truth. Because of that, it's like...

20:51
there's this belittling kind of attitude toward any other religion. It just went against why I would even wanna set foot into a church again, because they're so self-righteous, but in a really feigned, modest, humble way, it's another weird, I don't know, dichotomous behavior that you are presented within the church is, like, they're really judgy, but do it in a really underhanded way, behind your back kind of way, or.

21:20
I don't know, but he didn't do that. And so I was willing to kind of investigate why my parents had become Mormon. I was like, this seems like maybe why I'm here after all here. I am living just down the hill from this little church that I went to when I was young and a teenager and I'm living back in this horrible

21:45
place that I don't want to be living in and wondering why I'm even alive. So maybe I need to figure out what is my connection between that little white building with the steeple a few yards from my house and my parents who are buried not far, like what is the connection? And yeah, it was just this culmination of particular events and people that led me there. Well, the end of that story is that that Bishop

22:13
lost his testimony in the church over time directly because of what he was open to. Now that's where people would say that's where he fell, right? That was his sin. Like I had sisters come visit me who were really worried for my salvation and his salvation and would say, I'm more worried for him because he was in a position of power. He should have shepherded you.

22:42
and kept the gates closed tight and not allowed you to continue to ask these kinds of questions and share the kinds of information you were learning, he should have had a tighter ship, right, and not allowed that in. And so the narrative is that, you know, whether it was intentional, I was the evil seductress, or whether it was unintentional, I was just the...

23:09
person with a voracious appetite for learning who, you know, like Icarus flew too close to the Sun, right? Like I can't stop. I had to keep questioning and questioning. And so they think we're just fallen souls because of our evil weak minds. And I don't think my brothers think that though. Again, it's unique because I went in deeper than any of them. I think I was more deeply believing and had a

23:39
broader, deeper knowledge of obviously church history, but even the depth of being really involved, invested in it. None of them have ever been.

Do you have any questions for them?

Yeah, I guess I also just wonder, what is the attachment to it? Why do you continue to want to identify as something that other than just that it was what our dad

24:08
happened to believe. And that was, I don't wanna say shallow, but like it just, there was never a deep dive. I mean, his sister and his mom were the reason that he joined. They had been searching and almost became Jehovah's Witnesses. And then one day the Mormon missionary showed up at his sister's house. Within a year, she joined the church, was baptized. And then a year later,

24:38
her mom, my dad's mom, to join. But they never even talked, according to my dad's journals, they never even really talked about it. Prior to those Mormon missionaries, his sister and mom had never even heard of Mormons, let alone seen one in real life is what he wrote.

Do your brothers know this? and your sister?

24:59
Well, like me, I'm not sure if they know it. Like, I wouldn't have known those details until I read them in his journals a couple of years ago. So you shared with me before I hit record, the stuff that mostly, hopefully, your siblings will hear one day, that you have tried to talk to them about this before, and that it mostly fell flat. Yeah, surprisingly. But I don't know, I guess not surprisingly. I don't know why I'm surprised because I'm similar.

25:29
We believe what we believe. People don't like to be have their beliefs questioned. Uncertainty is very uncomfortable. It was awful. Especially because I had already been going through a hard time in my life. Taking that deep dive into the Mormon religion felt like my reason and purpose for being alive. You can't unknow what you know though. Like you can't unlearn what you've learned and, but you can.

25:55
add to and develop and grow and expand and then make the correction. You know, if you've acted erroneously or, you know, your thinking was uninformed or, you know, you were acting just within the information you had. Like when you have more, it gives you more freedom, but it is harder. I think that gives something to the ignorance's bliss. Given that you've shared this with them before.

26:23
And interestingly, they're not as invested, for lack of a better word, or into the Mormon church as you had been and your dad. I'm asking you to speculate, why do you think they're not open to hearing more then or now, maybe? Because it's a connection to our dad. Death is weird. When they're gone, all you have to keep you connected are your memories, your feelings and emotions about those memories.

26:53
and any shared beliefs that you may have shared. I think that for them, it feels like it would be a betrayal of our dad's beliefs, wishes, and desires. But you're the opposite because you were saying earlier that had he had the information, you're pretty sure he may have followed a similar path to you. So I suppose that just speaks to, well, you're one way and they may not be that way.

27:23
Imagine we're done and then I do some fancy editing, which isn't so fancy.

Will one or all or some of them listen? Will they actually hit play?

I don't know. I would hope so. I think they would if I told them that I really want them to. If I conveyed that to them that it really mattered to me, then they probably would.

Do you think you're going to convey to them that it's really important to you?

Wow. It's.

27:52
just made me just go, my brain just like exploded into a thousand different dimensions of my core beliefs now, my epistemology, why I think what I think. So I can't answer that just simply. I would like to say that it really matters to me that they listen, but honestly, okay, here's what would matter to me.

28:18
is yes, if I decide that it really matters to me that they listen and I tell them that, then it wouldn't matter to me if they did or if they didn't. Because if they didn't, it would signify that they really don't care about what I think or feel. And that matters. It would be hurtful. And I have definitely felt that way many, many times in my life. But more often I have felt like my brothers do care about me. We have that familial.

28:48
love despite our many differences. And we have many differences over the years that have developed into, I would say pretty strongholds like most of our country.

So there's a risk that because you care, you send this to them and they don't listen, that it could create now additional friction or more layers of disconnect?

29:12
Yeah, it wouldn't be friction, it would be disconnect. And that's what I mean by how deep it is and how my brain just fractioned off into all these different pieces, because that is the complexity of love, right? Love is a risk. Because when you care about somebody else, you therefore care about how much they care about you in return. It makes me think about just philosophies of true love, like what would be most Christ-like even within that paradigm.

29:42
would be that you love no matter what and you give no matter what. You don't give to be given back in return. But these are ideals, right? And that's what I mean by epistemology. It's like the way we think, why we think what we think and believe, like the theory of our thoughts. I'm not that invested emotionally at this point in how it's kind of weird. It's kind of sad. And in a way what our dad feared.

30:12
has already come to light. I mean, we already have, for the most part, lost. I mean, okay, granted, we still, most of us will come to the family reunions, but we're not deeply connected, and that is because of our ideologies, our beliefs, our way of being in the world, what we prioritize, how we communicate, how we show we care, how we receive care. We're very different. Love, it's a weird thing.

30:42
So you're willing to take a risk and being vulnerable. Like just speaking about this again. Yes, you might've come to new realizations.

You've tried. It didn't go anywhere. Is it an act of love in that you're trying again?

I guess it would only really be an act of love if I was willing to put myself. And so I have to ask myself this, am I willing to actually engage in that process? Let's say one of them is like, you know what, Elizabeth, I want to do the deep dive. I want to know.

31:11
I want to learn, I want to discover maybe what you discovered. And then going along with them on that journey. I think that I could do it. I know that I feel a little impatient with it because I have like one of my closest friends was still very active and involved while I departed. You know now five, six years later, she has thanked me profusely for not.

31:39
ever talking about the process that I had gone through or ever sharing the information that I had learned with her because she says she knows she would have just dug her feet in deeper. Like when somebody comes against your beliefs, very seldom does it ever work to undo your beliefs. It usually people become more rigid and defensive. I just don't know. I would be willing to be there for them and answer any questions and

32:07
that they would have of me. But I wouldn't want to be engaging in just another warfare, like another debating session about who's right or who's wrong. I'll take your hand and hold your hand if you want while you're on this journey and I'll support you like I have with my friend. And I've said, you know, whatever you want to ask me, whatever, you know, but that's only now years later. She's been very grateful that I didn't try to.

32:36
But what I'm also experiencing is that she's still not done with it. What I mean by that is this, like, I think she's finally coming through it, but it's taken years. Like, just constantly wanting, even Matthew too, it's just a difference, maybe because they were both really much. My family never really was deep in it. Both of their families, you know, go back a long way in the church. And so it's harder for them and their families are all very active. And so there's a lot of...

33:05
There's a lot of pain in that because when your family are very strong believers in the church and you've left it, you're severing. It's really hard to continue a relationship. This is making me realize that really it's not with my family, it's not the church, it's my dad. And my dad being the thing, the glue that holds us together, that wouldn't change whether he believed in the church or didn't.

33:34
So why are they so attached to this belief in the church? Like, I wanna be attached to the good human that my dad was because he was a good human. He was a decent man. He truly was a decent human, but not because of the church. Yeah, unlike these other like friends of mine, my husband, the people who are going through this, their process is even more torturous than mine because their families want to exile them and because...

34:03
they're not part of it anymore. And in fact, the new prophet just recently gave advice that if your family members become inactive, nothing they say should you ever believe, almost verbatim. Flat out said, you should not believe anything they say if they're not an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So my husband's children have just been explicitly told that their dad can never give them advice.

34:32
Do not ever take advice from anyone who isn't an active member. I haven't had to reconcile that kind of bullshit, and I'm grateful. But it's almost like it was our dad who is the prophet and said, I don't know exactly what he said to my oldest brother, but I know he said some things to him about the way that he was supposed to keep our family together. So yeah, I guess maybe this is a plea to say it's not the church that is the glue that bonds us to our dad.

35:02
It never was. Yes, there was this belief that we were sealed together in the temple for time and all eternity and that we would all frolic together again in the celestial kingdom on friggin Harris Boulevard, right? But even by the doctrine, none of us would go there. My dad wouldn't be there. Neither would my mom. So it doesn't even make any sense. It's incoherent.

35:31
Dig in their heels and have more rigid. So presumably that's how your siblings will feel when they hear this. I think so. I mean, that's how I felt as well at first. And I guess in a way that's how I feel now on the other side of the coin, right? Like I'm pretty rigid about that. This is not the truth. Well, I guess I'm trying to better understand if they're likely to just dig in even more, is this.

36:01
less about changing beliefs and more about them helping them as best you can understand you. I think so. And really with the, for the purpose of understanding that, I guess my hope is like what I said, I'll just say it again, is that they can feel like the bond that glues us together with our dad. Even if you

36:25
don't claim to be a Mormon or a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I mean, I would frankly like them all to remove their name from the church records, but that's because I've dug my feet in, you know, my heels in. I just want them to, rather than that, understand that our bond through our Father doesn't have anything to do with the Church. If one or perhaps more of them listened and reached out and said,

36:53
I want to know more about what you went through.

Would you have that conversation with them?

Yeah, absolutely.

If one or more of them came to you and said, Elizabeth, I actually want to know more about what you've gone through because I'm having doubts myself. Would you have that conversation with them?

Of course I would. And if that conversation was a long or probably a series of conversations, which led to you talking about some of the things you've learned, call it misinformation, disinformation, whatever information, would you take the time to do that with them?

37:23
Yeah, I would. And that's the beauty of the emergent process that just we now went through because I don't know, a few minutes ago, I wasn't so sure, but I think I feel more open to it. I mean, if that was something that they really wanted to do. And again, it was because I had to be clear on the purpose and the purpose being that the journey really isn't about the end result of whether they believe

37:52
that the church is true or it isn't. It's more about realizing that maybe our dad didn't have all the information and maybe he wouldn't even be a member if he knew the things that are available to be known now. Maybe therefore claiming to be a part of this institution, this religion isn't necessary.

38:20
So you'd said earlier that you don't want it to lead to more fighting, debating, that kind of thing. So if one of them picked up their phone, his, her, their phone, and made a recording, or maybe even reached out to me, said, hey, I wanna hop on Zoom for an hour and I wanna do kind of what Elizabeth did, but I have some different things to say. And we did that, and it wasn't nobody raised their voice, but they wanted to share more about what they've gone through. And maybe some things you don't know about them. But in that process, you know, they're disagreeing with some things you've said. Would you listen?

38:47
I would love that. Yeah, of course I would. Is there anything you wanna say directly to them that maybe you haven't said that feels important? You have covered a lot. Yeah, I mean, I guess I just want them to know that although I'm pondering the validity of the concepts we, myself and just people in general hold about love, what it is or isn't and family bonds,

39:17
want our children to suffer less. I think within the statement my dad made about wanting to raise their children as God fearing, that had certain meaning to him. Given everything that happened before, James Curtis Harris wrote those words and he and Lois decided, you know, they were going to investigate this church that his mom and his sister had recently joined. We want

39:46
life to be better for our kids than ourselves. So with that in mind, again, I don't know my mind fractions because I start thinking about I start to say we want to save them from having to go through this kind of thing. Like I don't want my nieces or nephews to someday down the road be like what or maybe it's you know their children and my great nieces and nephews and be like, wow, why were they members of this church? I'm going to go investigate it. Then again,

40:15
I shouldn't want them not to go through that. We have to go through what we go through, but we just do. So maybe it's just the information is available. And then we do what we choose to do with the information. That's why I think information is so important. And it's why I think truthful information is most important of all, because when we're given misinformation and disinformation, it creates more suffering.

40:45
We waste time, we waste energy, it causes confusion, it creates division. And that that's unnecessary, we should avoid or eliminate because there are enough natural problems popping up in everyday life that we shouldn't have to deal with the added unnecessary confusion. So I would want them to dispel their children of the lie. This is important because at one point at the end,

41:13
before I removed my name from the records, I was like questioning all of my reasoning and all of my motivations and everything. And so I asked myself, what would the church have to do or be like in order for me to stay? Because interestingly, I've come across many people who've learned all of the things, all of the falsification that has occurred and all of the truths that came out to point out the previous lies.

41:43
but that yet they still are devout members. And their reasons for that are different, but most of them come down to because it's overall more good than bad. Basically, that's kind of the tagline. It's like overall, it does more good than bad. Yeah, that was a lie and that was a lie and that's bullshit and that's bullshit and this and blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, it keeps our family unit strong. And it has the elements of

42:12
The pillars of a healthy life, which are strong relationships, number one, first and foremost, there's the discouragement from using drugs and alcohol that are going to lead to less problems in life. And then the service and the giving and all of that. It's all, it's good. What does it matter if Joseph Smith made the whole thing up? Does it really matter? That's kind of like where...

42:40
And so I was thinking to myself, the answer to that question I came to was, I would need them, the church leaders, the current prophet, and everyone to come out and explicitly admit the truth and admit outright, like, okay, we've been lying, we've been carrying on a facade, we've known for a long time, we've known for 15 years that this wasn't true, and we've continued to distract you over here. And if they did that.

43:09
If they came out right out and was like, it was just invented. Joseph Smith was just a dude and he just created this and it doesn't matter that he made up all this stuff and that wasn't really revelation. We all have revelation and everybody thinks they're getting some idea from God, you know, one way or another here and there. So it doesn't matter. We're just going to do good and we're going to be together. Then I thought maybe I would keep going, but only if they did that. And then.

43:38
the floodgate opens and then I was like, but wait, what about the equality of women? They are so far from egalitarian and they're so still so sexist, but then they deny it. And I was like, no, even if they did that, I'm not okay with their feigned modesty and all of their shaming. And no, even if they said.

44:01
Maybe if you just die, we don't even know if there's a heaven. Even if they came out and said that, I still wouldn't because of the way that they continue to make people pay tithing and shame people for this sin or that sin and tell them they're not worthy for this room or that room. It doesn't facilitate real health and wellbeing. You can have healthy relationships and be a giver and do good in the world without being affiliated with that. You can in fact be atheist.

44:29
and have healthy relationships, live a healthy lifestyle, and be philanthropic and serve and give generously. I mean, I must also say that there are things that I love about them. I love that they're irreverent, really kind of just down to earth people.

When was the last time they heard from you about anything relating to this because I know you've had the conversation.

Yeah, it was at a family reunion and we were driving.

44:57
like out in the middle of nowhere to go on a hike. And from like, we had our family reunion up in the mountains. We like to go to a place where my dad loved to go. That's where we go up in the mountains these days. That's a new progression for a family reunion. But anyway, yeah, we were on our way to go for a hike and it came up and I can't remember exactly what was said, but it was pretty shocking how much pushback I got.

45:25
And how they did that thing immediately. It just like dug in their heels, put up the armor. No way. It doesn't matter. Don't even start talking about it. Like we are Mormon end of story.

So this is it. You think maybe, maybe the last time you try to communicate about this stuff with them so specifically.

Yeah, for sure. My brother and I, um, have exchanged some texts. I think it was like maybe eight months ago.

45:53
And again, I was actually surprised by his responses. Oh, actually it was just last summer. Yeah, because Matthew and I were gonna go, so Matthew and I went to New York. We were gonna go see the Book of Mormon on Broadway while we were there and it opened up that door with my brother and then he was wondering why he was asking questions and I was giving him some responses and he definitely pushed back big time.

46:21
Yeah, no way. This is what dad believed. There is no going back on that. And that surprised me because he also doesn't go to church.

Last words for your siblings. I love you.