Becoming Christlike | Our Turtle House: Digital Fireside

[Music] hello everybody and welcome to tonight's our turtle house digital fireside my name is mark williams and i'm your host and we're so excited to be with you for another sunday night and another amazing r turtle house digital fireside we've got some amazing speakers that i get to introduce to you in just a few minutes but before we get to that if you haven't yet please go download the our turtle house digital app it's totally free you can go to turtle.link app it looks just like this the picture that you see on the screen and like i said it's totally free you get access to all the firesides that we've done this year there's a brand new podcast from carmen herbert called doing good where she talks with people who are doing good in their own way and it's so uplifting and and you can also upgrade and get some additional content from some of your favorite speakers like john by the way hank smith meg johnson and so many more so please go to ourturtlehouse.com or to turtle.link app and download the free our turtle house app today we love hearing from you about the firesides as well you give us ideas of things to talk about and speakers to have so let's let's talk look at some of the feedback that we've gotten this last week first from asher connor and mackenzie they said we love all the firesides each sunday they uplift us and fill our house with laughter and the peace of the spirit thank you thanks for all the inspiration you bring us each week asher connor and mackenzie thank you so much for writing in and we're so glad that you love these firesides we love putting them together for you we also have a note from isaac who said thank you thank you thank you these have been life-changing and so has the r turtle house app thank you for all that help and work so hard to provide these thank you so much isaac we're so grateful for your feedback and we love putting together these firesides and and working on the our turtle house app we're just we love the gospel we love the spirit and are so grateful that you're finding value in it as well now tonight's fireside topic again has come from one of you and this is from annalee and our our topic tonight is becoming christ-like such an important topic and so i'm excited to introduce our speakers tonight who are going to help us hit it home and talk about what it means and how we can become more christ-like so our first speaker our first speaker grew up in provo utah he served a spanish-speaking mission to san bernardino california and soon after he met and married the former stephanie gillespie he says when steph married me it was the kindest thing anyone's ever done for me he and stephanie have had six children and they recently became grandparents to three granddaughters he graduated from byu with a degree in zoology so he could one day work at a zoo or teach seminary which is kind of the same thing right he's been a professional teacher for over 25 years part of which his work directly at the church office building where he was responsible for the movies and media that you've seen as part of seminary and institute he has a passion for the scriptures and currently teaches at the utah valley institute of religion at uvu and he recently was released as a stake president where he served for nine years he says it was the privilege to have a front row seat for a while he got to see just how much the lord cares for us and interacts in the daily details of our lives let's welcome andy horton andy how are you doing my friend i'm doing well good evening great to be with you mark glad to be here so glad you're with us thank you so much i'm excited to to hear hear from the front lines what your thoughts are on becoming christ-like so thank you so much for being with us my pleasure thank you okay we'll go ahead and introduce our next speaker our next speaker grew up in potomac maryland she received her bachelor's degree in communication studies from brigham young university in 1994 she's the co-founder of endow what a bipartisan movement dedicated to educating and empowering people with endometriosis through a work with the marriott daughters foundation she's dedicated to elevating communities through educational human services and health initiatives and in 2019 mary alice founded the what now podcast which respectfully addresses the stigma that surrounds certain cultural norms in the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints she loves pickleball she's a temple worker and a mother of two and she's committed to creating positive change let's welcome mary alice mary alice how are you doing i'm great thank you so much for the opportunity i'm happy to be here now that's a nice view that you well those pictures behind you that's a nice view is that is that what you're looking at that is the view across the street from my house yes oh my gosh what can you do on earth oh it's starting to get cold here in utah and that that view is looking better and better every day come visit oh thank you so much mary alice thank you so much for being here happy to be here thank you we'll introduce our final speaker our final speaker travels as many as 300 000 miles per year inspiring motivating and moving audiences around the world to create experiences that touch hearts for a lifetime he's one of the youngest people ever to receive the council of peers award for excellence and to be inducted into the prestigious national speakers hall of fame in 2001 at the age of 27 his life changed an instant with a when a 2 000 pound bale of hay shattered his neck leaving him a quadriplegic but his dreams were not paralyzed that day and he became an example of what is possible he's a best-selling author a per the president of his own communications company and he's recognized a recognized world cha world-class wheelchair athlete in 2003 he said a world record by wheeling his chair from salt lake city to las vegas that's 513 miles he's also a member of the elite speakers round table which is one of 20 people 20 of the world's top speakers welcome let's welcome chad miss chad how are you doing i'm doing great thank you so much for having me it's a joy to be here oh you bet just a quick question for you chad like that's amazing well not question but that's amazing that you wheeled all the way from celtic to vegas that's just yeah that yeah we don't talk about that that's one of the dumbest things i've ever done in my life we can quickly we can end that conversation right now oh i love it i love it well thank you all so much for being here with us and and for being willing to share your thoughts about what it means to become christ-like let's go ahead and get things started off and so mary alice is going to offer us an opening prayer mary alice our dear heavenly father we are so grateful to be gathered together for this opportunity to speak of this live fireside and we ask for the spirit to be with our speakers and that we can all draw closer to christ and become more christ-like through this experience and this opportunity and we are thankful for that we say these things name of jesus christ amen amen amen well we'll go ahead and have our second and third speakers go backstage for just a few minutes and i'll chat with our first speaker which is andy andy so you were a steak president for nine years was that a family steak or a ysa steak or it was a family steak yeah and i did not see that calling coming i had not served as a so wow it's that's a whole nother story but uh the morning i was called my wife with a phone call that made it look like i was being called and then two minutes after the prank ended i really got the phone call and my wife looked at me not so funny now is it oh my goodness oh my goodness it's it's almost like heavenly father knows he's like okay you pranked your wife now i'm gonna prank you except this is for real i think that's exactly what he was thinking [Laughter] what an amazing experience for nine years to serve the people of your stake in that capacity and to like you said in that quote you know just to see on the front lines you know how how in intimately involved he is in the details of our lives yeah it was pretty amazing to see someone who had never had priesthood leadership experience how i could help others who had had lots of experience just through revelation just putting myself in the moment and and trying to be prepared to receive those revelations and it was amazing it was it really is a a war zone out there and i see god's hand in making lives better all the time it was great i love that and then not to mention with you know that your work at the at the seminaries and institutes and everything at uh yeah the institute at uvu so you've got a lot of experience a lot of perspective i'm i and i'm excited to hear what you have to share go ahead and take it away my friend all right thank you mark i appreciate that wow it's great to be with you all this evening i uh i crave moments to be able to teach and as you know covet has made that interesting if that's a part of your career i this past summer was the first time in about 20 years that i wasn't a part of efy directing or teaching and i really miss being with those thousands of youth every summer and uh but this is a way through technology like we're doing tonight that we can we can still try and do our little part to try and bless life so it's a privilege a real privilege to be here i want to talk a little bit this morning let me introduce my family if i could um my wife and i stephanie we were well wow we're approaching almost 30 years of marriage to be honest but this is our little family and i want to kind of take you back a few years and tell you what what started all this i served a mission in california and when i got home from my mission uh i i dated here and there and that's a whole new experience because for for years two years you're told you can't look at girls and and talk to girls the same way you can't smell girls you can't nothing to do with girls for two years and so when i came home i started to date a little here and there i went i went out with stephanie for the first time about after i was home three weeks and loved her from the moment i met her didn't know i'd marry her but i i really was impressed with her a few weeks after that i got set up on a blind date and uh this plane date was very interesting we and it was a single day which can be frightening to go on a single date with someone you've never been with never met before so we uh i went and picked her up for dinner and as we were driving along just this little incident occurred she pulled she reached into her bag and she pulled out a piece of gum and put the gum in her mouth and she crinkled up the wrapper and she rolled down the window and she flicked the wrapper out the window and i remember thinking dang i've got a i've got a litter bug in my car and i have this thing it's my thing that are littering i don't i don't think it's good to litter it's a tiny thing but it was a big thing in the moment i thought all right well i got my weaknesses too obviously so we're driving along and we then come to a stoplight that was red so i stopped because that's what you do at red stop lights and as we're sitting there waiting for the light to go green the radio is playing and uh i noticed this young man starts to cross the the street and he has he has permanent crutches the kind with the armband and then you hold those handles and he was slowly making his way across the street and he got about halfway across and the light went green and of course you know no cars went for obvious reasons but i noticed as we sat there chatting that this young lady started to direct her comments kind of at him and started to say unkind things about how long it was taking him and we'll never make it anywhere tonight and i didn't like how how it came across and so now i've got a litter bug and a people maker funner of her in my car which um anyway the the light went green eventually he made it across the street and we continued on our date and i i saw lots of great things in this young lady as well but those two little incidents kind of hovered over me like a little a little cloud and i um i dropped her off that night and uh about a month later i am on a date with this young lady that would become my wife one day now we we were in the car driving to dinner believe it or not and we came to a stop sign which was also red um ironically and so i stopped and believe it or not i wondered if there was cameras posted somewhere because i see a different young man but a young man with some sort of disability in his legs and he's got crutches and he's making his way across the street in the crosswalk and that previous date came back in my mind and he made it halfway and then three-fourths of the way and then made it across the street and we took off well thought nothing more of it we're listening to the radio and some small talk but i noticed it got quiet for a minute with stephanie and and then i suddenly i hear her sniffle a little bit and i remember thinking to myself self what did i is she crying what did i say what did i what i do maybe she doesn't want to eat at arby's it's got to be it's got to be arby's and finally i said what they teach us to say at boy training and that is simply what's wrong and she said what they teach girls to say in girls training and that's nothing and i could tell something was wrong because the tears and emotions and so we we kept driving and i kept hearing these sniffles and so i took it to the next level i said exactly what they teach us a boy training no really what's wrong and she said without even referring to notes nothing comma i'm fine she didn't say the comma by the way but she said for vader nothing i'm fine and when i ask youth when i travel and i speak and i ask them what do you think her second answer was they always all the girls in the room say nothing i'm fine as if they've been trained well i had reached a point where look i feel bad if i did something i got to figure out what it is and gosh we could we could go to mcdonald's if you want or so i i do something that normally they tell us and they warn us not to do i pulled the car over into the shade and i turned the car off i turned the radio off and it was quiet and i said to her this is third level okay because i'm asking her what's wrong and the danger here is if i ask her and this and this girl starts to unload i have no training to handle what might come out of her mouth no training but i went out of faith and i said simply to her of course referring to my notes look we're not going to go any further until you tell me what's wrong i said that i don't know if it was brave or stupid but i said it and then silence for probably two minutes maybe one minute and all you could you couldn't hear you could hear the shade that's about all you could hear and finally this is what she says it's not fair that that boy and i'm thinking what boy did i run over a boy what boy and then it hit me wait is she talking about the stop sign and then she finishes it's not fair that that boy has to have legs that don't work quite right and she got a little bit emotional and i remember thinking wait she doesn't even know that boy and then she went on and she says he can have my legs and it was so sincere now in the moment i didn't think this scripture that the scripture comes to mind it's in mosiah 18 and verses 8 9 and it's if you're familiar with your baptismal covenants then you know what i'm talking about verse 8 simply runs through some of the you know it introduces us to baptism and there's four or five covenants we make that are pretty serious and one of them is being willing to bear one another's burdens and then you see willing to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort and stand as witnesses of god at all times and in all things in all places even on dates even with people we don't know and no i didn't think of that when this happened but what i do remember thinking was i can't remember or i can't believe how selfless this comment is how she's talking about this young man who she's never met before and it impressed me this light went on and said this this is a girl that you want to get to know better because she could take you places she could help help me become a better person more christ-like and it was so such a moment of charity that i was witnessing well about a year a little more than a year went by and we had continued to date and uh i this is a story for another time but i proposed to her on april fool's day as a joke that she initiated to get some other people but then i tweaked it so that i proposed to her and then said april fool's so it other than getting hit by my future mother-in-law in the arm it went fairly well but um three months later we went to a little chinese restaurant and there were a dozen roses on the table and we were actually on our way to a writing reception later that night well as we finished our meal the lady brought out i had come to the point where i decided i wanted to marry this girl and after we ate the server brought out our little plate with the fortune cookies and stephanie grabbed a fortune cookie and it said she cracked it open and pulled out a little paper and it said stephanie i love you will you marry me first of all what are the odds that a fortune cookie would say that and so i ran with it so i thought this was this was meant to be so uh she's staring at that and she says uh andy what are you doing and what i was doing was trying to get a ring box out of my sock that i'd stuff down my sock um at the bottom of my pant leg and i finally got it out and i popped it open and she's staring at that ring she goes oh and suddenly she forgot about the fortune cookie because there's a ring involved and she took the ring out put it on her finger and and i had to actually get her attention because she was kind of you know enamored by the ring and i said well and she didn't answer me right off she said well i think we probably should go talk about this and i'm thinking talk about this just say yes and let's kiss for a minute let's kiss just say yes and that's not how it played out we paid for the dinner and we went out we got in the car to drive just to go for a drive and visit i decided we'd go back to my parents house because i knew that no one was there at the time and we could have a nice conversation there and the air conditioner in the car for some reason wouldn't work oddly it always works but it would not turn on so i'm just sweating up a storm and all the way there i'm trying to convince her i thought i thought we were in love i thought i thought we talked about this i in fact i said i already called the salt lake temple it's november 18th at 9 30 in the morning ceiling room 3 and in fact she was about the only person that didn't know that we were going to get engaged that day we pull into my parents driveway and she just by the way just kind of chuckled at these comments i'm making but she never really responded we walk into my parents house she goes downstairs into the basement and goes into the bathroom and shuts the door and now i'm all by myself sitting on the couch wondering what did i do wrong here of course i think back to arby's and about she was in there forever it was probably at least four minutes that's a long time when you're by yourself and you popped this big question and then she comes out and she's been she's been crying and i want you know i'm not over dramatizing this she was crying and she came up and she took my hand and she stood in front of me at first and then she said so i had a talk with my heavenly father and my when she's that part of the sentence i remember thinking that's it you wanted to pray and then she said i had to talk with my heavenly father and he says that i can marry you and uh touched my heart she sat down and she kissed me and that was we should pause just for a minute and remember that kiss because that was a kiss and we were engaged now why do i tell you all this well you might recall a scripture in ii nephi 32 8-9 and in those verses you can see where the lord is encouraging us to pray in fact he says we shouldn't perform anything unto the lord save in the first place we should pray unto the father in the name of christ and i love this sentence that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee that thy performance may be for the welfare of my soul you can replace performance with just about any verb going on in your life anything you're doing what was i doing i was proposing to the girl of my dreams and so in my mind if i read that now it says that he will consecrate thy marriage unto thee that thy marriage may be for the welfare of my soul it works for movies you watch it works for music you listen to friends you make and in that moment it was to become engaged so as i've thought back over this for the last almost 30 years i've thought every time i consider this experience i had getting engaged to her and how she just wanted a minute with her heavenly father she just wanted the chance to connect with him and make sure she was making the right choice her little efforts over her life scripture study prayer her her charitable attitude towards other people her little efforts to become christ-like had taught her how to become christ-like in every aspect of her life and it played a key role in us coming together for eternity i really believe that the more time we spend with christ the more time we spend with him in fact i intentionally wrote the sentence like this we need to learn to spend time with christ like our future depends on it and so as you feel satan whispering you're too tired to read your scriptures you're too tired to pray i'm too tired to do come follow me with your family remember it is those little moments of becoming christ-like that builds into important moments that impact our future greatly as you can see i saw patterns in her life and i continue to see patterns um this girl doesn't go to bed at night without looking at her scriptures that's without reading in the book of mormon for sure and she's an example to me um she's not she's not a superhero she doesn't wear a cape she is a regular fantastic person like you are but she has made the time in her life to put the savior first and so i really believe that as we do those little things and spend more time with christ like our life depends on it our life will improve and i'm grateful to have her in my life now i can't believe we have six children and three grandchildren but i really attribute that to at least partially to her efforts in living a christ-like life and i leave that with you in the name of jesus christ amen i love that so much just you know it's it's the little things and spending time with christ that that bring us closer to him but i've got to say that that four minutes had to have felt like a lifetime the worst ever movie sandlot and he says forever i was dying when you were telling that i was like oh i i can just appreciate the pain you must have been feeling right there i love your confidence with the proposal you had a temple date and everything yeah you know i like the part where you said let's just kiss because i think kissing solves everything that's great thank you that's awesome well thank you so much for for sharing your thoughts and your testimony about becoming christ-like and and that personal story just really hit home so thank you so much really really appreciate your time and sharing your thoughts andy thank you mark appreciate it we'll go ahead and move on to our next speaker our next speaker comes like i said earlier all the way from potomac maryland but now lives in san clemente california and i just have i just have to say again i'm so jealous about the weather that you get to have mary alice this is just beautiful it's just not fair hey i endured 17 winters in boston massachusetts i deserve it okay okay i appreciate that okay now the big big question is how far away away are you from the beach across the street oh my goodness my view is right right here so i grew up in northern california in the in the san francisco bay area but we were we were a good hour away from the beach and so we didn't get get to go as often i just i always i always love the beach and the water so you're you're living the dream right there i love it that's so we are blessed we are thank the lord every day for dropping me here i love it i love it well i'm excited to hear about your perspective and on becoming christ-like so go ahead and take it away mary alice okay so i'll just start by introducing you to my family i have a much smaller family we have two children um and this is a really happy moment in this picture my daughter was sealed in the san diego temple on friday after having her ceiling canceled three times because of covid and she actually was civilly married in our backyard in march so this was a really culminating event for us on friday and on the far left is my husband jess and my new son-in-law adam and white my beautiful daughter emily and then my son trevin next to me so we were very happy to celebrate this moment it was a long time coming okay so i will just jump in uh so i have a little bit more structured comments and when i was thinking about becoming christ like when they asked me to talk about that i was really thinking about those words what they mean becoming what is becoming mean and to become anything takes work there is a process involved if you want to become a professional tennis player it takes hours of training and focus and discipline if you want to be a great student it takes a lot of studying and going to class and reading your books so to become something you have to have a vision for what you want to become and it has to be intentional you have to have an action plan and the lord wants us to do that he wants us to be intentional in how we approach things and to become like someone else you have to understand their behaviors their personality their aspirations and their goals you know if you want to be like your neighbor susie you have to understand who susie is you have to understand what she likes and what her interests are and to become like christ we need to know what he was like and what his mission was and to study his life and we have so many incredible resources now with the day and age that we live in we have scriptures of course which are the most important resource which define his life in such a significant way we have books we have podcasts we have videos on i uh youtube which are incredible the come follow me videos the things our turtle house is putting out and there is a wealth of information online there's incredible tv show called the chosen that's out now that goes through and depicts christ's life in such a beautiful relatable way so we have these incredible resources that we can use so i'm going to just talk about five attributes of jesus christ that really have stood out to me charity and love so we have these opportunities to serve all around us we just need to be looking for them and sister craig in the recent conference she touched on this how she decided to put her cell phone away and really engage when she was waiting in lines instead of you know answering emails and kind of being in her phone and i love the story that she shared about how she had this opportunity to talk to the man in front of her and they got to talking and pretty soon he's disclosing that it's his birthday and he hadn't told anyone yet and she was able to you know kind of celebrate that with him in line and just to actually see him to see him and to communicate with him and to be with him and we do have opportunities like that every day and in our culture it's a distracted culture we have so much going on and we're all so busy and it's so easy to be distracted but you know christ really focused on the one and he took time for the one and when we do that in our individual lives we can have experiences like sister craig had all the time so let's talk about knowledge so spiritual and secular knowledge they will go with us beyond the veil and our leaders are constantly asking us to seek knowledge out of good books to seek learning to seek intellect because it is one of the great things that we can take with us patience be patient in your trials and turn it over to the lord it allows us the opportunity when we have patience to exercise our faith and we will have situations that come into our lives that test our patients and i have learned to stop praying for patients because every time i pray for patients i get an intense trial that really tests my patients but it's interesting because when we start seeking after these attributes like patience and charity and love they naturally involve and we become better at other attributes when you're forced to be patient when you're forced to endure a trial you have humility you have an increase of love and compassion for other people you have the opportunity to become more obedient so you can get the miracle so you can get the help that you need so it's interesting how when you acquire an attribute or two others start coming naturally because of our commitment to that attribute we're working on humility humility is not a weakness but it is a spiritual power and humble people are more respected i know the work that i've done in different organizations and with different foundations the people that i work with who are humble are more respected people listen to them they want to work for them they want to execute whatever the goal is because they have such a humble manner about them that makes people want to listen to them and christ was the ultimate example of humility when he was performing his miracles he didn't brag or boast about his divinity he wanted to do it for the benefit of the person that was sitting in front of him and he i love what we've been talking about recently and come follow me how when he was speaking to the 2500 people how he had the opportunity to talk one on one with each of those children to bless each of those children it was important to him he was humble and he was able to connect one-on-one with those people and i love that obedience listening and acting on promptings and obeying god's commandments allows us to strengthen our faith and to help other people and i had a unique experience when i lived in boston with a mother of five and i was out to dinner with a friend and i was coming home and i was sitting in my driveway and i normally don't just kind of sit in my driveway because it's so cold in boston in the winter i just go in my garage shut the door and go inside but on this particular saturday evening i was sitting in my car and i had this intense prompting about this woman in our ward and that she was in danger and that she needed my help and i just kind of sat with that for a minute because i didn't know her and i was kind of uncomfortable reaching out to her and but the prompting kept coming to me all night and the next day on sunday i walked into the foyer and i ended up seeing her down the hallway and she was leaning against the wall and she just dropped her child off at the nursery and i got that same prompting you have to go talk to her right now and i kept kind of resisting it from my own fear of i don't know this person and this is really awkward and what if nothing's wrong in her life and i say this and it's really weird and um but i just kind of took the opportunity to follow the prompting and to walk down the hallway and i leaned against the wall next door and i just said i just keep getting this prompting that you're in danger are you okay and she disclosed to me a very disturbing situation where her husband had been abusing her and her children and that it had become so bad she was considering taking her life to escape the situation because she had tried so many times to leave but she couldn't afford it financially and she couldn't take care of her kids if she had left and so she was thinking of taking her life and in that moment i caught her on a day she was considering that opportunity for her life and that was a very important reminder to me that christ is aware of us that he will send people to help us in her moment of need and that we as members of the church and disciples of christ have opportunities to save people this is a dramatic instance but we do have opportunities to be that angel on earth for people if we're willing to be obedient to the promptings that he gives us so charity and love jesus christ he sees people deeply he sees individuals their needs and who they can become and even in our busy lives we can follow the example of jesus and see individuals their needs their faith their struggle and who they can become and that was from michelle craig in the recent conference and that is so true jesus sees people deeply he doesn't just look at them and see them like we do most of the time he sees them deeply and i love that word deeply so knowledge there are so many different things that we can look to for knowledge there are so many great books and the scriptures and byu pathway is an incredible resource for knowledge for anyone in the church i mean you can be in a third world third world country with dirt floors and get a byu pathway education it is incredible what they're doing it is so affordable you can go on youtube and listen to inspiring videos and educate yourself on the come follow me and just anything you want to learn about christ is there podcast there's great content that can draw us closer to christ and we want to use these books and we want to use these platforms appropriately we want to use them productively we want to use them to draw closer to christ and become more like christ and it can really increase our faith and knowledge of christ exponentially okay and patience so i'm going to share a personal experience i've had with this um in a significant way so i have this beautiful daughter in the middle emily and when she was 13 she started experiencing chronic debilitating pain to the point where she was missing months of school she couldn't walk down the street she couldn't interact with friends because she was having pain attacks constantly and it and it was really scary as a parent and i remember going to mayo clinic and taking her to mass general children's hospital boston and some of the best medical facilities in the country to see what was happening with her and no one knew what was wrong with her and months became years and it wasn't just a year it was six years of chronic pain and i remember turning to the lord and and deciding i was going to go to the temple every week and i was blessed to have a temple in boston 20 minutes from our house and i made this commitment that i was going to go every single week and it didn't lift the burden at that time but it did give me patience in that trial and i don't think i could have endured it as well unless i was going to the house of the lord and speaking with him and being with him in the celestial room and it got to a point where my patience was tried so significantly and i needed the suffering to end for her and i turned to the lord and i surrendered my child to the lord and that was a very humbling experience and after six years and three surgeries she had a turning point surgery that gave her her life back and that was a trial of patience for me and it taught me to rely on a higher power and the the good thing about these things that try our patience is it teaches us humility it teaches us love it allows us to be more empathetic and it allows us to build on the attributes of christ and to become more like him and i learned that right when you feel like you are going to get broken from a trial is sometimes when the miracle happens and i was blessed to have that experience humility so being humble means recognizing that we are not on earth to see how important we've become that's of the world but to see how much difference we can make in the lives of others and that is of christ and when we're humble he will allow us these opportunities to help and serve others patience oh obedience so each time we have faith to be obedient to god's laws i love this quote from president russell nelson this last talk each time we have the faith to be obedient to god's laws even when popular opinions belittle us or each time we resist entertainment or ideologies that celebrate covenant breaking we are exercising our faith which in turn increases our faith when we're obedient and we're trusting that god will help us we are showing faith in him and it gives us that opportunity to increase our faith and i just want to close with saying it is a choice so we can choose each day to become like christ we can choose each day to accept opportunities to draw closer to him and to our brothers and sisters and i say these things in the name of jesus christ amen mary alice i love that just how it's the it's the small things that we do and and how we interact with each other and looking for the one like one-on-one interactions and and really at the end of the day it's our choice it's the way that we choose to show up and the person that we're trying to be i love that thank you so much for sharing sharing that mary ellis i love your story about your daughter height i deal with chronic pain and i have friends that deal with chronic pain and so i i felt her pain as you described that what a touching experience thank you i loved it thank you thank you oh when she shared that personal experience i um i had to grab a tissue i even turned my camera off backstage because i didn't want to see mark matt it hit it hits home it does so thanks for sharing something more you know just very very personal effect i think you can all relate to that mary ellis we can all relate to something like that um so i really appreciate you being that vulnerable today it was very very good for me thank you definitely thank you so much well thank you so much mary ellis for sharing your testimony and your thoughts and and like chad's and andy said just the personal stories that really hit hit this topic home so thank you so much for for being willing to share those things today thank you it really gave me the opportunity to really dwell and think about what it means to become like christ so thank you for that you're welcome thank you so much we'll go ahead and introduce and bring on our final speaker our final speaker i'm sure you can guess who that might be chad what what is it like to travel 300 000 miles in a year that just is that seems like a lot for me it's been um it's been freedom i am and that's a great question i i i you know people i hear people complain about travel a lot and for me it's um i know when we when we get married we say for better or for worse and and we we don't plan on certain things happening in our life and uh and so for me it's been a it's been freedom in that the woman that i'm in love with that i've been married to for 26 years i i um i i the truth is i'm not independent that's why tonight is so special for me in that i'm a big fan of turtle house and the founders of turtle house i know them very very well and and uh megan uh it's it's not a secret that that megan is a quadriplegic and she's uh and so and wit and they're married and they have two beautiful children and so it's it's we don't plan on our spouse helping us with you know whether it's cutting cutting up steak on a meal or helping shower or getting dressed and those things i can do by myself i'm on the road but my wife doesn't like me to do that because it takes two hours and she'd rather have me she would rather have me come to come follow me with the kids can you believe that she'd rather have me go do scripture study with the kids and allow me my independence to get dressed for me travel is freedom it is freedom and i hope i hope that that comes across the way that i mean it too totally totally i i followed you for a while and uh and before i started traveling with with meg johnson and john by the way and hank smith i i'd never traveled with somebody in a wheelchair and so it was cool to you post a lot on instagram about what your experience when you're traveling is like and so that that was really cool for for me to see your perspective and i can totally see how how it would be freedom for you so i know you've got a lot of things that you want to share so i don't want to take up any more time i can talk to you for a long time so go ahead and take it away stay unmuted so we make sure we come across crosstalk clear and again uh welcome tonight can i just ask um please feel free to chime in the chat box we can see and respond back and i uh chime in and let us know where you're coming from um let's give kudos out to turtle house as well and again as mentioned earlier what topics you're looking for next like i'm a big fan of turtle house and i'm a big fan of the founders and as i mentioned just a few minutes ago i am i'm i've always talked to myself and comparison is the advocate of the adversary so but i've always compared myself to just to megan um because i've always thought you know what there's no way i'll ever be able to be on total house because they already have uh you know some they can share some of those experiences because megan's paralyzed and megan became injured a few years after i did and so it um it's been good to get to to know her but i always wonder if i'd be able to do this i'm honored to be able to do this i'd love to see your comments in the chat box and on and so on sunday night tonight we'll be able to breathe respond back and communicate with you the police officer questions you might have for formality for andy um uh president i'll call him because he's gonna stay president and put that box that took place afterwards when i was introduced to an apostle um and the apostle came to me um i met elder maxwell prior to my accident in bangkok thailand so i met lmax on thailand when i was a missionary there he came over there to set up for the first date and then he came and visited it with me in the hospital because my mission president of my accident again i'm not going to talk about the accident or my paralysis i just want to know that that the apostle maxwell he gave me a blessing and in that blessing he told me a couple of things and here's what he told me he told me that he wanted me to be a better father he wanted me to be a better husband he asked me to be a better contributor to my society and he asked me to be a better disciple and so i um again if i have the sound he's going to ask mark even unmute and i think that'll clear it up um yeah hey chad the the mic is it's not working right so i'm just going to hang in here with you so it'll be like we're talking with each other yeah yeah so it should be sound better now all right with you hanging in there yeah exactly yeah it's sounding crystal clear now so go ahead go ahead yeah with me that'd be great that that would be awesome and hopefully that'll cloud will clear that up so i don't mind that at all i i think it's great i always do better with my companion right by my side anyway so right now perfect that's right much better i think the sound's coming across better so i apologize for that so with that said um i just want to share with our listeners tonight elder maxwell comes in and he gives me a picture and this would be good for my mark to kind of quote out i want to show in the picture that he gave me so this is somebody that i consider to know christ in fact we just got off of a general conference where elder holland was the concluding apostle right before president nelson came on and do you remember what elder holland said he said similar to what we heard from mary ellis tonight and what we heard from uh andy as well that that we we all go through challenges but how would you feel to be in christ's presence at the end of our day when we when we go to the judgment seat and have a have an have a free life or a life without without adversity and be in his presence it wouldn't how can you become christ-like if we don't have adversity elder maxwell says it this way one can't be refined without enduring a little bit of heat and i loved what elder holland said as he closed out conference for us this last this last general conference when he said that how would it be for each one of us to be in christ's presence without us knowing to some extent of what he experienced and we all go through that in some form or another as we've heard from our other speakers tonight so let's go back to elder maxwell and i want you to see this a bit more this is unreal he gives me this picture and i want the audience to see this this is unbelievable this is so cool so he gives me a picture as a gift i'm pulling it up on my screen on my end and this is the picture that i was given so i want to give some detail i just pulled it up on the screen there it is for all of our viewers to see look at that picture close look at that so again we got to keep me unmuted so we um or mark you're gonna want to stay in neuter but look at that picture awesome yeah isn't that awesome yep so purpose you're muted and you can so it is awesome and you can see there's a little bit of a some verbage down beneath and this is what elder maxwell told me now i need our listeners to listen very carefully elder maxwell told me that that picture was drawn by a member of the church his name is wendell johnson it's what it says in the white script down beneath so wendell johnson is the is the artist of that picture and elder maxwell gave that to me telling me that it has been hanging in his office for years and that that picture was drawn by a man with no arms and no legs now mark i'm assuming you're still with me on the call you can yeah i'm still here yeah yeah yeah can you get my chat okay i think this would be good to go back and forth for a minute yeah for sure a question as i show you that picture again mark check this out how do you suppose that a man with no arms and no legs can draw a picture like that where elder maxwell in the hospital told me verbatim that that is the closest depiction of the savior that he has ever seen in his life because you can't find that picture a desert book right yeah find that picture a single book and tape it's not there but elder maxwell calls that picture who knows christ i believe with my faith as well as anybody else on earth as i believe the apostles and the prophets know christ so how is a man that's not a prophet or an apostle by title or decree able to as we listen to our other speakers tonight describe how to how is he able to come up with a depiction that an apostle elder maxwell calls the closest depiction of the savior does do you have any thoughts on that i mean the the first thing that comes to mind is just having spent time with them you know studying the scriptures and and in prayer and and pondering and and and obviously asking for answers to prayers and stuff like that i think the same things that we've heard tonight from our other two speakers that have set a tone for this i i think you're spot on um and i want to transition this into and how it's kind of happened with me and my life but but not with my circumstance my wife went to ethiopia on a mission trip just to do some service a few years back and while my wife was there she heard a noise in a in a brick building as she describes it um it was not a noise of cheer or laughter but it was a noise of of um of of tears a noise of crying and the brick building was uh an outhouse um a bathroom in in kind of a small village um that was next door to an orphanage and so my wife decided to walk over to that outhouse and as she walked over to it it got louder and louder and the noise was coming from the men's part of the restroom my wife walked into that that room and what she witnessed was absolutely unreal she saw a little boy hiding behind what we would call a a a toilet i guess um my wife called it something it's different than the toilets we have here but but none of that's important all you need to know that there was a little beautiful dark-skinned boy hiding behind a toilet soiled floor dirty floor and a kid hiding behind there my wife doesn't know what to say because obviously she doesn't speak amharic which is the ethiopian language and not sure if this little kid speaks english so let's talk about becoming like christ it is unreal my wife simply gets on her knees on the soiled floor bathroom floor third world country and she tries to communicate to no avail the kid's not coming out he's staying behind and so my wife does what this artist does she starts to draw but she's not quite as talented as the as wendell johnson as far as artistry goes so my wife draws a stick figure and she just draws a smiley face with a circle and and she sticks that paper according to shondell's journal she sticks the paper behind the toilet so that the young kid can see it the kid takes the pen off the paper and draws on it and returns it back only this time on his stick figure with a smiley face it's got a circle on the top and so he returns that back around so they're communicating just by way of drawing is unbelievable my wife then colors in a heart where the heart goes on a stick figure in red and returns it back to him and then he comes out and gives her a hug and that's when my wife sees it huh he drew a circle because he had a a double clef on the left side so that's both keys sticking out open clef and uh and and my wife is just her heart was pierced as much as we heard from mary ellis tonight about her heart being pierced with her child that's what i thought of in fact that's what led me to talk about tonight what we're talking about now because i had something else planned but mary ellis just screwed up my whole entire thought process and so we're just going to kind of go with this tonight um my wife was determined to bring him home because he was in an orphanage took her 11 months you guys 11 months don't get me started on that because i i don't get that uh but but we got him we got him across the atlantic and um i wanted to show you a video of when my wife and my daughter went to pick him up and how that all transpired keep in mind we don't begin to know christ until perhaps we lose something if not lose everything look at the apostles and what they had to sacrifice look at some of the greatest disciples that ever lived look at elder maxwell what did he lose well he lost his health he lost his ability to travel the world when he came to see me he had no hair he had leukemia and even he questioned our father in heaven one can't begin to become like christ until perhaps we lose something as elder holland pointed to how would you feel entering christ's home his his mansion his fortitude and not having any challenges or tragedies in life we wouldn't fit in so it helps us to embrace those challenges with the lessons that we were taught today i want you to see the live video footage which i don't share very often in fact i don't think i never shared it in a fireside prior to tonight and i am i was uh i felt the impression after hearing mary ellison and president horton speak i wanted to share it with you tonight so here it is this is absolutely unbelievable this is when shondell first picks him up look at the embrace they don't even speak the same language but it's been 11 months language is not a barrier to becoming christ the translator is right there look at all the kids that are just looking for love looking for look at him look at him my wife is very christ-like they're all kind of coming to her just like we will all flock to christ [Music] he speaks no english as i mentioned we've been waiting very long time [Music] they spend two months in ethiopia to fill out paperwork my daughter went with my wife to pick him up there's the nuns god bless those nuns that helped take care of him and now she's taken him to the hotel where they gotta wait for two months look at shondell that's how you feel when you have christ like love i mean you just can't help but but weak like i did when mary shared that story today i lost it just above the ethiopian capital that's the person that took care of caleb for months still in ethiopia and then remember they don't speak the same language and they're making that bond and then here's salt lake city airport when we first got to see him watch what happens here watch no hesitation watch what this little boy does he shares abundance because abundance compounds never met him before he hasn't met me and he runs to my wheelchair based on pictures that he sees as seen in the past look at this i've never even met him and i'm thinking about what i've been taught by elder maxwell and elder holland first day of school and i want to stop it right there because i want to end it with something powerful in the next two months as he began to capitalize on the losses of his life he got his mouth fixed um over in ethiopia and here with primary children's hospital and he made the choice to become baptized and the best part about that is he was sealed and baptized by the same by the same person um in the temple and the salt lake temple we got permission to do this on this in the same day and i have a picture of this he took the discussions here in utah with ethiopian missionaries that spoke his language and the best part about that picture is this my oldest son was struggling on whether or not he should go on a mission i got a picture right here here it is there it is so that's the solid temple he was baptized and still the same day by his oldest brother and my son was debating on whether or not to go on a mission or go play basketball first and that day in the temple president samuelson all he did was ask my son to say the opening prayer before caleb went to be baptized and after my son said the prayer so that kid right there the tall one on the right after he said the prayer all elder samuelson said was this so president cecil samuelson who was the president of the solid temple said i can tell by your prayer that you know christ that you know christ more than most your age so he's saying this to my son my my oldest boy he said i need you to escort your father and your younger brother to places in the temple today that are very sacred that only most that only endowed people are allowed to go to and after my son had that experience something happened to him where he felt like he was closer to the savior than ever before whereupon when we left the temple that day he had made his decision to go on a mission to serve and he got his calling to serve in micronesia guam which is an uh a mission that encompasses 13 islands similar to some well we got samoa you got saipan you got pompeii chuuk that's the micronesia guam mission all because he lost something just like elder holland taught elder maxwell all because he followed what we've been taught by andy and mary today and our family today is well we're all back together here's our latest family photo here's the two boys one boy returned back from australia the other boy returned back honorably from micronesia there's gracie right there there's caleb in the back and there's shondell we just celebrated 26 years and we're on the ranch which is our dream and the last thing i'll share with you is this you want to talk about becoming like christ you want to talk about knowing what it looks like there it is right there no look at him look at him if you think that he's wearing church clothes because it's sunday you're wrong if you think it's photo day at school you're wrong why is my son wearing church clothes well he wears them every day i know it's a little odd a little different he goes to public school not private and he wears a shirt and tie every day to school because his dream is to go be christ-like and serve other people the way that he was served when he got his mouth fixed my son's dream is to do his missionary and and discipleship by helping other people get their mouth fixed like he got his mouth fixed i guess i'll end with my testimony in the form of a question do you have the same ability as my son to be willing to lose everything in order to gain everything that kid was willing to sacrifice everything in order to one day he will be a surgeon i can tell right i mean he's in sixth grade he's already taking college courses on the anatomy of the body in the face he's brilliant and whenever i see him and i see him a lot now because i'm not traveling as much with the pandemic i want to be like him i want to have that kind of heart i want to have that kind of a well the humility the patience that we've heard about today i want to have i want to have that kind of closeness to my savior so i can become like him remember you can only become like those that you hang around the most maybe that's why that gentleman wendell johnson was able to draw that picture he knew the savior because he hung around by way of prayer sacrifice study fasting showing the savior the savior allowed him to become friends with him to know him maybe that's why he was able to draw what an apostle called the closest depiction of the savior i would like to have that in my life as well and i leave that with you in the name of jesus the christ amen amen chad your your message really hit home for me today just the the image that came to my mind while you were speaking you might have seen this this picture before this meme where there's a picture of the savior and he's holding a teddy bear behind his back and the girl in front of him or the the kid in front of him is just so sad because because of whatever reason it's just like just just come at least the idea is like come to me i've got something so much better just waiting for you behind me you know and uh and i just i loved your message thank you so much for sharing your testimony today i apologize for the sound thanks for muting mark thanks for joining me it made it better i as well we'll figure that out here for the next week but i i appreciate you doing that it's all good really stood out to me was your your wife's closeness to the savior is what saved your son that's powerful and i could just see the love in her eyes in that picture and then that video yeah when they were in their car i mean it hits her like yeah like maybe mary magdalene and she couldn't leave right and my wife that's how i picture you're you're right i'm not comparing my wife to mary magdalene per se but but when you feel that close to the savior how can you not weep yeah how can you wait for joy i mean i so yeah i'm striving for that you know being being home now and now i'm happy i'm learning how to be married all over again we've been together for 26 years and i'm i'm learning how to be like that because my skate don't drug of choice has been a hotel room for 20 years that's good that's okay i go too right so anyway chad can i ask you a question about something you said um you've made the statement we don't become to know jesus we don't become let's see we don't become like jesus christ until we lose something or don't become to know him till we lose something do i attribute that quote to you did you hear that somewhere it's very profound for me yeah i i haven't heard it anywhere but i'm sure somebody has said something similar i just i i i feel like as i've watched meg johnson and her losses and what she and what she her videos that she posts and how happy she is she talks a lot about that um and and the people that i know to be the most christian they've lost something whether it be a child uh challenges with their own health you being a stake president you've dealt with kids that have lost their their faith their hope we have a lot of people right now in our world that are going through fear uncertainty and doubt those are all losses but yeah look what's happening to people's closeness to their savior we have never had a greater attendance a conference between members and my members alike something's happening right now god's i i can't put my finger on it but something's happening right now because of the losses that we're going through so again you don't have to be paralyzed physically to go through a loss i think we've heard that today from from you know our speakers um but i i do believe that we have to experience loss in order to become like him in order to understand them better hence the guy that didn't have any arms and legs that drew that picture with his mouth i mean he used his mouth and he knew that he was drawn andy that's the way i can explain it i don't even i don't even speak well with my mouth let alone draw with it that was amazing no it was and uh i'm still trying to to fathom this journey you made to las vegas in a wheelchair we'll have to we'll have to to talk about that so typically what we do after the firesides is we just kind of chat for a few minutes so why don't we close things up here and then yeah chad you got to talk a little bit about that uh that journey so well thank you all who are watching at home from around the world let us know in the comments where you're from we'd love to see where you're from and where you're tuning in from and so thank you so much for participating in tonight's our turtle house digital fireside i know i've felt uplifted and and edified and we hope that that you wherever you are around the world have felt the same way as well we're gonna to have a closing prayer by chad actually so chad would you mind offering that for us we're not a problem our father in heaven we come before the sabbath day grateful for the inspiration the thoughts that have gone into the preparation for tonight's talks we're grateful for mary ellis and for andy uh being willing to give their time their talents and their knowledge and share with all of us we are especially grateful for those that have chosen to listen to tonight's uh fireside and and to glean from that we pray on behalf of those that they will take this these messages and whatever else they've heard and that they will follow the example that we've heard in the new testament about not hiding under a bushel but letting their light shine that that their works might glorify the um based on the impressions that they've had we are also grateful for those that have put this fireside together working behind the scenes and have gone forth with impressions they've had to to create this kind of a platform where we can enjoy these fire sides in a time where they are needed father these things we pray for and we show our gratitude to thee for we do so in the name of jesus christ amen amen [Music] well thank you all for uh for being with us again for taking your time tonight to to share your thoughts and your testimonies and it's just been it's just been awesome being with you so thank you thank you chad thank you andy thank you mary alice for for being with us tonight so let's let's hang out we can chat for a few minutes and anybody watching can hang along with us but uh but i think andy kicked it off the right way chad you got to tell us so so uh carmen herbert does the doing good podcast and she just recently interviewed you chad so i i heard a little bit about your story and for those of you who are who are listening in there there's an episode with chad coming out uh here in the next few weeks that where he talks a little bit about this story but i'd love to hear you tell it hear you tell it i don't know if i'll tell the whole story just because i don't want to take up time but i'll show a couple of photographs i'm just i wasn't planning on this um again like mary alice did she screwed up my whole message today sorry about that oh a couple of photographs for this so you can kind of so check this out this is kind of this is so i i did this because i wanted to do something a little bit different there's a kind of there's a picture right there so that we we trained for 18 months and look close at that um i think there's some great parabels and analogies that relate to the gospel so i'm right there with the white hat there's my dad with his motorcycle hat because he's certainly not going to run to vegas and so he's going to be on a motorcycle thanks for making that a little bigger mark and there's chandelle and you know there was about 3 000 people there at temple square to send me off and um abc4 is there nbc in utah cbs and fox there's a lot of people that are there and the reason why i bring that up is because i think that when that's why we have to go to church we need to be in touch with christ i think that we we feel this renewal we get we get motivated we watch this fireside tonight on the sabbath day we feel this energy enthusiasm ambition um perseverance um patience as as was talked about tonight we're the humility that we need to be more like christ but then throughout the week as like the marathon there's a lot of space in between i mean salt lake and vegas there's a lot of empty space and i'll just get i'll just jump right to it um have you ever felt like given up have you ever felt like you know this is just too much i just don't i just don't know if i can take another school closure i just don't know if i can take another cancelled soccer game or football game i just don't know if i can wear a mask i mean this is just this is just too have you ever felt like that before in your life um every day all the time in the pandemic yeah yeah i i felt like that on the marathon and i wanted to share one quick point and we'll be done and then we can share that story another time mark and we can do that maybe that's kind of a little promo for me to kind of behind the scenes to whitt and meg to get me i want to come back on the turtle house but i will share this if you've seen the movie forrest gump you remember he just he just stops and he says i think i'll go home now i mean do you ever seen that yeah the pacific to the atlantic and then from the northern border to the southern border and then he just all of a sudden this i don't know where he just stops and he says i think i'll go home now i did that same thing before i completed the race i was in mesquite nevada and i am i was tired i had had enough i was worn out i was beat up i mean sometimes even death seems like a better option than some of the things that we go through in this life so i decided to give up and stop so i stopped right in the middle of the highway where upon my father came out from the motor home behind the police car stopped in front it was two o'clock in the morning and my dad said is everything all right and i said well i think i'll go home now and you know i'm done and then my dad asked me a very profound question he said son how have you been measuring your progress and i said i don't i don't understand your question so i he said how have you been measuring your success on this journey because las vegas he said well i i'm counting he said what are you counting i said well i'm just counting the the green the greens the mile markers the numbers so i know how close i am he said well that's not a bad way to measure but i'm not sure that heavenly father measures metrically like how many years were you a state president he's probably not going to ask you that son how many years did you serve in a bishop or how many years were you a member of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints god is not overly well with statistics and you shouldn't be either but if you want to count he said why don't you start counting the yellow stripes in the middle of the road and it sounded really stupid to me to do that see my dad wanted me to count the yellow stripes which sounded stupid so reluctantly reluctantly i agreed they carried me back out of the motor home and i got back on the wheelchair and i just i stayed away from the green signs and i started looking at the stripes and that night i pushed just over a couple thousand stripes day number nine i pushed eight thousand stripes and day number ten i pushed just over ten thousand six hundred stripes and that's when i hit apex junction for those of you that don't know where apex junction is it's only 17 miles away from my goal and it's all downhill from there i mean it's downhill so we waited until nine o'clock on day 11 they shut down the strip full police entourage all on motorcycles there was a helicopter above us and i coasted my way into the mirage and it was unbelievable i mean people were running out of the the casinos cheering me on now granted they were all drunk but i didn't care i mean they made me talk about my thing and many people have sent me off welcomed me and when i cross when i cross the finish line i have a picture i again please forgive me because i wasn't prepared to share but i'd like to share it if i can yeah yeah when i when i crossed it there it is there's the yellow stripes let's just let's just do this photograph there's the all stripes right there i'm just right in the middle i'm counting on a frontage road and when i crossed that finish line there went up a cheer from a bunch of drunk people and non-drunk people alike that made me weak and it made me it made me think of what my dad and what i believe heavenly father also believes that it's not by one big grand event that we're saved we're not saved because of christ's atonement we're not we have to work we have to get dirty we have to we have there's calluses on my hands um jesus christ had holes in his nobody wants hands like that but i think god is not going to ask us about our callings in our church what religion we were i i do think he's going to want to look at our hands and i think he's looking for the closest hands that resemble that of his sons and we don't have to stick nails through our wrist our hands to do that so that's that's what i learned from the marathon power of the mindset shift where your dad introduced a different way to look at it and the power that that had on you that is incredible that instead of looking at the markers you were looking at the yellow lines and then that gave you the motivation to keep going and to finish the race when you were totally defeated when he said that it's incredible i love that and mine said today right it's huge today in today's world for our high school students for adults that have lost their job now doing homeschool with their kids it's yeah you have to shift the mindset i think you're right i think you're absolutely right it's powerful totally yeah i think thank you chad one more statement you made language isn't a barrier to being christ like what a profound sentence for what we're going through in the world right now language skin color uh background yeah what a great statement so thanks for everyone had great comments and you two married amazing women but you two are also amazing men [Laughter] well my wife's name is stephanie i always say though she's one step ahead of me so question for you andy how how have things uh changed with teaching institute and everything uh with covid and the pandemic and stuff like that what i mean are you is everything online or are you able to teach in person a little bit or how does that all work this year for you half my classes half of our classes are face to face with masks and the other half are on zoom and to be quite honest i don't have the same hatred for zoom most people have i have seen benefits come from it it's actually really hard to teach face to face with a mask on because when you you know how it is when you get talking you need air and you can't get air so i'm constantly pulling my mask out of my chin so i can breathe while i teach but i will testify of this the spirit teaches the same way regardless of the interface but yeah i teach five face to face two zoom three zoom and then it's it's amazing hopefully we get to keep going not helping us so yeah things are a little crazy right now hope everybody's staying safe so that's awesome and mary ellis i still can't get over that view oh i know i'm going to go enjoy it after this it's nothing like living in a cold like sub-arctic temperature like boston for 17 years to make you appreciate good weather i'm telling you no joke what are what are some of your favorite your your family's favorite things to do down there at the beach uh we're good pickleball players actually i know that was big in utah but it's gotten huge in california and i got my kids i have to say this whole quarantine thing i was a little nervous about close proximity the kids come home from college we're all in the house 24 7. that scared me a little bit but it ended up being great you know we started learning things together and cooking together and having three meals a day together and my daughter just went back to utah and i was like practically chasing the movie rock when she went back like i miss you i love it it's fun it's the nice thing about living here is we're so close to our kids that are in utah so you know it's like an hour and a half flight it's so easy or a 10-hour drive so we get to see our family all the time there's so many good benefits to that we should just move i know we feel great i tried to move to midway having it midway is amazing i would i would have no problem living in midway at all yeah it's so pretty no but we love it we're in utah a lot and my son's a big surfer so we came out here for him to have more friends in the church and from nerf and so um yeah yeah it's it's a good life here and you're all welcome to visit anytime if you're ever speaking here we have a guest house in the backyard you're welcome to stay in uh [Laughter] natural phenomenon created by the carp or whatever it is it comes out oh i love it i love it well thank you guys again thank you all again for being here with us and participating in tonight's our turtle house digital fireside you the talks that you've given have been amazing and i'm sure that all those who are listening around the world have just been uplifted and edified and and feel spiritually strengthened because of the messages that you've shared so thank you so much and for all of you that are listening at home if you haven't already go to turtle.link slash app and download the free our turtle house app again that's uh it's just a little turtle so it's really easy to find the content's free there's all these digital fire sides that that we've done this year are totally free as well as as a bunch of other content and then if you'd like to upgrade you can do that as well and otherwise go to turtle.link share and share your thoughts your feedback and if you've got ideas for future speakers or or topics that you'd like to hear on these firesides please send them our way we'd love to hear them and and just like you saw at the beginning of tonight's fireside we pull experiences from you and ideas from you every single week so thank you so much and with that we'll we'll say it goodbye until next week we will have another art turtle house digital fireside so thank you again for

Channel: Our Turtle House

Views: 5,813

Rating: 4.9379845 out of 5

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Id: tjxHOnjOFi0

Length: 86min 45sec (5205 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020