Mormon Stories 1423: Giving up Major League Baseball for Mormonism - Marc Oslund Pt. 1

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of mormon stories podcast i'm your host john dulin it's april 9th 2021 three days after the uh the birth date of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints or the day jesus was born yeah according to uh you know how i was taught growing up uh anyway just kidding uh i'm john dolan and i am so excited for today's episode this is the type of interview uh i have wanted to do forever and i kind of have my golden interviewee who i get to interview about it uh today we are interviewing mark osland mark welcome to mormon stories podcast john i'm so excited to be here so excited and i'll just give you guys the preview have you ever wondered what it would be like to number one be in the church education system as a seminary teacher uh you know and we've had john mcleon you know talking about what it was like being in seminary institute um you know with when he was married to brooke and you know that was like a really groundbreaking episode and of course we had grand palmer on when he talked about being in the seminar institute program but but like imagine being in the nces oh i know i should say we had jeremy reynolds on talking about letter to a ces director what we've never had is somebody number one who was kind of like you know over the past 10 years in ces working as a ces instructor but it gets cooler like think about starting around 2013 kind of two years before everything broke right as the essays are starting to appear right as the mormon internet is really getting going and then you know boom okay kelly's excommunicated i'm excommunicated and then dealing with the you know ces letter comes out and then dealing with all the aftermath between let's just say 2015 and you know 2019 2020 when you lose your faith as a seminary teacher in utah and then you've got to figure out what to do how to leave this job can you even get a new job and then what you know when you've built your marriage and your kids and your whole family and your whole life on this career what the freak do you do then that is today's episode and we're interviewing mark osland some probably most of you won't have heard of mark but he's super cool he he grew up in california we're gonna figure out what made him convert to the to the mormon church as a dude growing up in california he ends up playing baseball at byu and um and and and then of course after he graduated becoming a seminary teacher for ces and doing all of that during this really volatile time where the mormon church is trying to modernize and deal with the internet so that's what this is like buckle up this is your multi-hour interview and uh it's gonna be really important so without any further ado mark osland welcome to mormon stories podcast i'm just so excited and yeah the story there's so many twists and turns and yeah somebody asked me how long do you think it'll be i'm like i don't know man we can go for days so yeah i'm excited to be here anything you want to correct about the intro oh you nailed it add to the intro no you nailed it perfectly i'm honored okay all right all right well here we go so uh i i don't think you know you're not going to be telling us this multi-generational pioneer heritage kind of stuff so my big question to you is what the freak would cause like an intelligent you know human born in the u.s from cali to freaking especially your baseball star like to join the freaking church of jesus christ of latter-day saints but take us back to wherever you want to start because there's usually a story that leads to someone converting 100 yeah 100 yeah you nailed it and so i'm glad you think i was intelligent looking back i'm like i don't think i was that intelligent it's probably part of it you know uh so when i think back and maybe even before i i start this like i have a lot of emotion meaning i sometimes get angry and it's it's not because i'm uh i'm angry at mormon people in particular i think there's maybe a handful of people in this whole story that i'm going to feel specifically angry towards like i don't know if i ever want to really see you but the majority like 99.9 of mormon people i just feel super compassionate for and and i have a lot of friends family members so that i want to say that off the bat but yeah like i i joined the church in 20 or so 2008 2007 right right at the end of 2007 december how did i get there well my dad was more men but i had no idea like no a clue at all didn't say a word to me until i told him i was gonna get baptized okay so where are you living where are we in torrance california it's in the south bay so uh 15 minutes south of lax okay and so that's like la la la proper the heart of l.a man yeah so like today the dodgers got their world series rings i'm pumped like i'm la through and through you know and i miss it i got it i got a shout out to alan mount who i know is a huge dodgers fan and uh and scott purvis who's a huge giants fan of my condolences yeah because i know he hates the dodgers yeah and i'm sure i i don't know of your followership like i don't know how many people are jazz fans but like the lakers are my team so okay i want to alienate people like i'm cordial you know but anyway i born and raised in torrance lived in a part of torrance called north torrance that was this scary l.a no no no we lived like where we grew up i mean we're we're five minutes from the beach right so you feel the ocean breeze i remember football practices feeling like oh two a days are so hard it's 75 degrees and the coach is like hey turn to the ocean and get the air in your lungs i'm like that's not normal you know and uh super spoiled and just so suburban cold suburban upper upper middle class kind of yeah okay i mean the house is there a million dollars they're 1400 square feet and not pretty but they're a million dollars yeah yeah so yeah i mean yeah it's a lot different than where we live right now in af but yeah so um my dad was mormon my grandma was mormon so my dad was adopted my dad was born and raised in the church but i'm telling you i knew literally nothing the only experiences i had with mormonism there was two before moving to a different part of our city the first one was my dad um he's a big dude so i you know i'm six five my dad six three is probably like 280 at the time and we had a little stained glass window and i remember sitting there i don't we were watching shows or playing trucks or whatever when i was young and we see two figures in white shirts you know not angels but like they're missionaries you know so we get a knock on the door and my dad this big dude he like gets really shocked everybody get down it's the mormons i'm like what like i never even heard the word mormon i know i don't know what that is and so he stands up six foot three two eighty jumps rolls over the couch huge thud it's evident that we're home and he's like everyone shut up some mormons and we're all just like what are you talking about you know that was my first introduction to mormonism i have no idea who they are what they are the next one is um i was playing catch like i was a i was a baseball player and in this home i was playing catch with my mom and somebody pulls up and again they're from the church i think it was a home teacher they pulled up and said something to my mom and my mom said oh that's the mormons that's all i knew wow that's all i knew right then we moved to a different part of our city and then you know i start watching south park and i start seeing other things and hearing about mormons and i'm like okay so mormons are weird right um you know the same thing that you've that we've always been told mormons are a cult jesus smith had lots of wives that's basically all i knew you knew that i knew that after watching south park and talking to a couple people about mormonism you know i'm gonna find out you know long run wow south park's actually right but anyway um i felt just very off about mormons i also had this impression that mormons were like quakers so like like or like amish yes or mennonites exactly like build your own furniture like don't watch tv like it was kind of i've combined amish mennonites jehovah's witness mormons all together right weird very yeah and old school weird exactly yeah and so many of these just misconceptions and and so i mean religion's just not a thing where we're growing up i know people were religious but like it's it's la like we're not focused on religion we don't talk about god we had churches it just wasn't a thing we didn't worry about it with my friends growing up through you know middle school i never ever talked about religion until my mom got baptized in a baptist church and i went to this baptist church and i remember thinking like okay we go to sunday school and the whoever they were i don't even know who they were i was too young to know and my mom is like you know up front in this like tank and she gets dunked and my dad was there i'm like i don't know what's going on we go to sunday school they start quizzing me on bible stories i don't know anything about the bible no clue and then i start feeling really bad because i feel like an idiot and i don't know about moses and noah and so then i go home i'm like i'm never going back there so that's that's all of religion for me like that's it that's all i knew and my mom said like hey if you pray and believe in god you'll be okay didn't teach me how to pray we said like family wrote prayers you know um it was more just like a family unity thing with my grandparents but it was never like dear heavenly father you know the mormon way so that's all of my background up until my junior year of high school so so just to just kind of weave the baseball stuff in it's not easy to play division one athletics uh so talk talk about kind of what you know led to that yeah thanks i i um i just love sport i feel like it was such a way for me and my dad to connect some of my favorite memories were just like going to dodger stadium being with my dad talking about dodger games you know dodgers playing on tv the most familiar thing in my entire upbringing was coming home after school after what have you uh you know practice and the tv being on and vin scully narrating dodger games and it was just such a family thing our whole family's athletic so i played baseball basketball you know football soccer my sister soccer softball basketball my brother basketball football baseball like this was just our family and so you know we'd play catch and we'd we'd hit and we'd have a ton of fun and i just fell in love with it and i was good at it i was tall i was big for my age i think people expected me to be you know a leader because just solely from my height i don't think i was more mature i think it forced me to grow up really fast and um and i was good i liked i liked hitting i liked throwing i wasn't i wasn't afraid of the ball i threw hard and so we just kind of kept honing those things because of my natural talents and my you know my love and my passion it gave me more opportunities and so i started playing on travel ball teams and we'd go all around southern california which sports baseball baseball was the main one okay i got offered to play uh soccer like a club soccer thing a week after club i got offered to play club baseball okay and so she kind of had to pick for sure and i chose baseball and i'm glad i do wonder what would have happened if i would have chosen soccer what would have happened um i loved basketball but i i wasn't a good dribbler i i was i'm tall i'm 6'5 but like i'd be a guard you know in college and i couldn't shoot yeah so that wasn't gonna be my future football does play in but not until later because i was i was heavy like i was man in fifth grade five five like 150 pounds big dude so i didn't play tackle football because i would have had to play up like four age like uh with ninth graders or eighth graders and my dad didn't want me getting hurt because the development is so different you know so we continue to play and i just kept getting more and more opportunities um we i went on different teams we'd go to cooperstown new york for tournaments we'd go to junior olympics in arizona i i performed really well at the junior olympics so they put me on a trial team the top 64 uh youth under 14. we went out to florida and i was on this trial team where they're going to have an opportunity for 32 people to go to venezuela and play in you know a national thing and i was number 33 i was the last one that was cut and they told me they're like hey we want you to have an amazing year go focus on footballs right before my freshman year and we're going to be watching you and so i it was just it was just something i was always good at um i felt like baseball was my long-term love like slow and steady and football was my passion and so all of this i just had my dad invested a ton of money um and i was grateful for it you know i got scholarship uh to byu eventually but i think my dad and mom ended up paying for it before right just with all the supplies clubs yeah trips yeah i mean thousands and thousands of dollars and some really cool memories and a lot of success a lot of my teammates and former people i've played against in the major leagues right now really yeah so chris bryant who's like the top he's like rookie of the year than mvp we played against him at san diego really yeah he he was the only guy that was straight up better than me like people i i mean i played against you know matt carpenter won the world series with with the cardinals we played against aaron hicks who's the center fielder for the new york yankees i mean some good guys trevor bauer uh he's on the dodgers now we played against him so like a ton of dudes that are that are just i mean me and my brother went through it probably 30 people that we played against or played with are in the major leagues and so i was right there right i felt like i was right there in it with them and um we moved actually from north torrance to west torrance because west high had like a pr a great baseball team and so we really wanted to be at west high make sure that i had the best opportunities you moved houses yeah to be in the school district yeah and we wanted to step up it was a little bit that's commitment yeah for sure so like we were really grateful and we loved west high it was again right by the beach so it's a nice benefit for the family but um but yeah baseball was fundamental for me for sure okay but not religion no never okay there's it just it just wasn't priority right family was uh hanging out eating food watching shows sports and it sounds like you had a pretty hap i mean i don't want to i'm not trying to dig but it sounds like you had a happy family life 100 like healthy happy generally moral productive family 100 like my mom and dad are so good they so we have a two-year-old now and the way that i feel for him i i think i really get how my parents have always felt for me like they just love me so much and they love all their kids um my dad told me right before we were about to have our two-year-old he's like mark you will never you you won't know what i felt uh seeing you for the first time i'm the oldest of three you you won't know what i felt until you hold your kid and i like i got it and i i felt like i understood their love for me on a totally different level they they believed in us like they just knew they gave us every opportunity educationally athletically with homes i mean my dad um worked super hard my dad was at every practice he was at every game i mean our baseball games are at 3 p.m so that means my dad has to drive to downtown l.a at 4 00 a.m 5 a.m work come right from work right to our games right to our practices same with my mom she would drop off you know i would forget my bag for baseball all the time and she'd come and drop it off and provide food and we'd always have people over at our house and they're just so loving and welcoming the only challenge that i ever really had growing up was my feeling of not being good enough and the irony is that i had every support in the world parents grandparents it came because i was big because i was forced to grow up really quick and it happened my seventh grade year so i'm a chubby kid big kid sixth grade we had a pe teacher and again i had my i had a baby fat i was a chubby kid come back to seventh grade and it sounds so stupid but for you know a 12 13 year old however old i was at the time it was this was like the moment that forced me to grow up so i had there's these shoes that were so dumb looking back they're called soaps and they have like this little plastic piece that like right on the on the midsole so you could like go and run and grind on like on ledges on curbs and i had a big foot at the time i was like size 13. and they only made them up to size 12. so all my friends had these soaps and i had like i just wanted so bad to have cool shoes and i remember going and my mom was like i know they're not the same but are you sure you're gonna wear them like you can't run very fast in them because she knew that i was athletic i'm like no mom i gotta get them they're cool they're air walks and i i rem when i moved out to go to college the box was up in my room unused because i just so badly wanted to fit in you know and i one of these days i'm after school seventh grade year my friends are hanging out wearing their dumb shoes and um i'm just kind of standing around because i can't do what they're doing and our pe teacher from the year before comes up and he's like mark so good to see you i'm like oh hey nice to see you too and he says i haven't seen you since last year i see you lost your baby fat and i'm like what like i i realized i was wearing like a goofy hawaiian shirt right my hair was like slicked back i just looked like a total dork and i saw my friends that were around kind of laughing at me and that was the first time i became self-aware that maybe the image that my family always had about me being so loved and lovable and good wasn't how others saw me and in that moment seeing so many people just looking around and just laughing and feeling so self-conscious i determined i would never ever let myself feel that again well how would i do that i would be the top dog i'd be the most popular person at school i'd do whatever the cool kids are doing and immediately my grades plummeted why because cool kids don't do good in school i had a teacher who looked right at me i was doing tutoring after school she's like mark i know you know this i was a 4.0 kid you know i know you know this why aren't you doing this i was like i don't know and everything changed right um i started noticing you know friends at that age in l.a people start smoking drinking i wouldn't do it that young right but freshman year again 9th graders or with 12th graders man like these people about to go to college they're 18 years old i want to be cool they thought i was cool so what do you do you got a drink you got to smoke you got to hang out with the cheerleaders right you got to be a part of this and so i grew up really really fast um but i was always a kid at heart and and i only recently have started looking back and saying wow like i really so much changed because i just wanted to feel like i belonged so yes long story short my family was overwhelmingly supportive and the only thing that caused that was that sense of shame that was not ever brought on by them yeah so you kind of committed in your high school years to kind of being popular and fitting in 100 and doing whatever it took to be popular yeah and i i watched the show like watch any stupid high school drama right if you call them chick flicks or whatever just watch any of them who's the most popular person it's always the quarterback right so i said well what i gotta do i'm gonna be the quarterback so that became my goal my freshman year was my first year ever playing tackle football and i was like you know i played with the freshman team then my sophomore year comes around and by the way my freshman year i played varsity baseball um as a freshman as a freshman yep that's not normal right no it was it wasn't in my house yeah no it was it was rare and i mean we had people that were going we people going to school in hawaii pepperdine i mean top top top people in the whole area and i'm playing as a starter on on the varsity baseball team so what do we do after will we go to parties i'm 14 years old 15 years old and these you know 18 year olds hanging out with their girlfriends and whatever drinking and so i'd be there i'd be there right there with them and and um in my heart i knew i was still that little kid but i also believe i really had to fit in right what position were you i was a so i ended up pitching at byu okay and but all through high school as a i was a first baseman and a pitcher okay yep so i thought i was gonna i thought i was gonna hit at byu but they didn't let me and i was surprised they wouldn't let you what they wouldn't let me hit i feel like you i thought that they were gonna have me be a position player too but i mean i was i was a decent pitcher but still so when you so when you i'm not a huge baseball fan i know it's different national league versus america correct at byu if you pitched you couldn't yeah you could i mean hypothetically but most of the time pitchers are like non-athletes they always give us a hard time like oh pictures you're not athletic i'm like i'm more than i follow you guys yeah exactly exactly so um okay so you were saying parties and stuff yeah yeah freshman year parties sitting in quarterback yeah exactly and so i remember like hanging out with like the senior cheer captain as a freshman right and like they were friends with somebody who's playing basketball at a different school in our city who ended up playing at university of north carolina so i'm like i'm i'm in the heart of like whoever again remember these are in quotes cool people okay because we're all high schoolers and we all think we're cooler than we are but i thought man i'm i'm really in it right now and so um i succeed you know i do well my freshman year on varsity baseball sophomore year so it's football season right and um start training for that and i tell my coach hey i want to be i want to be a quarterback and they knew i had a good arm and so because i was a baseball player i was like right there with another senior he ended up getting the starting job which obviously infuriated me because i'm like i'm competitive to my core kobe bryant was like my role model and kobe was like no take no prisoners and only looking back do i see like there is kobe hated losing more than he liked winning and i realized i hated losing more than i liked winning but it was to cover the deep wounds of feeling vulnerable like when i was a 14 year old being laughed at that was the core the core was i never ever ever want to feel vulnerable and losing was vulnerable and so that's why i i just i didn't lose in high school right like i i literally didn't lose a single game i pitched in high school at byu i only lost three games total out of out of man i was ten and one my freshman year and then i was eight and two my sophomore year before i got hurt so i just i just when i play i don't lose because it was it was shame right just obviously not healthy but it was utilized coaches loved it and so this guy gets the starting job we go to santa monica my first varsity game i've literally i've only played one year football i've never played quarterback our quarterback gets hit by somebody and punches the dude and gets thrown out so now i wasn't planning on being the starter they put me in and it was like a whirlwind right i'm just like i have no idea what's happening and we ended up losing that game i started the second game because my my coach got kicked or my quarterback got kicked out and so loved it we ended up losing that one too and like i just said so i don't lose in baseball but i did in football and it was like devastating eventually like the quarterback comes back and i'm we're still neck and neck and and seeing what we can do to you know get me in the starting job eventually they said hey we want to get you more snaps so they move me back down to jv and i get hurt um i just like planted my leg they roll into my knee i tear my knee uh i'm in a ton of pain right tear my mcl and my meniscus and it's hurting so at this point i'd already been at parties and a couple of my friends were like hey this might help and so they introduced me to weed i'm like oh okay let's we can do this and obviously it helps right for different reasons too um and and that was kind of like my introduction that was just kind of who i was and it wasn't a thing it wasn't um it wasn't a big deal it was just like that's what you do like my neighbors everybody had parties their parents knew they they just like just don't drink and drive don't do something stupid but the feeling of being like yeah yeah that's that's what high schoolers do was very felt by me um and like yeah we make dumb mistakes but my family is always like mark come on like just don't be dumb never shame never guilt that's so great yeah they got it so good oh dude the best like yeah i hope i can be half the parent to my kid that they were to us like they were just nothing but love you know [Music] so i rehab i play sophomore year varsity baseball we ended up losing in like the quarterfinals um i wasn't pitching i i i i don't want to get the wrong impression i'm i might come off arrogant i'm really not like i i don't want to portray that i'm like someone someone that's better than i am i'm i really am just like a big hurt kid um that was fortunate with some some you know natural talents right junior year comes around i'm the starter on the on the football team our running back was amazing he ended up playing at university of southern california with pete carroll i mean so he's he's awesome what was his name his name is ryan bockham he was he ended up playing cornerback uh and he got hurt uh he was driving a motorcycle down the 405 or the 110 and ended up getting hurt so yeah a mess but yeah like man we we were good we tied one game to one of our rivals and we went all the way to the state championship for the first time since man 1982. and is there like four a five eights yeah so we were a division i think they call it division three okay so it's opposite in california the the division one's the top two three and it goes backwards so medium-sized schools yeah for sure for sure they're still super competitive definitely we had probably two thousand people at our school yeah and we had four high schools in my city yeah public highs and we had a couple other private ones so super competitive i i consider ourselves to be one of the better ones in the area and um man it was awesome that year though that was the year when religion came into play right and knowing all of that about my background where i was kind of you know getting involved with drugs i wasn't i wasn't a druggie i wasn't like an alcoholic because recreational use exactly exactly and of course there's stupid moments you know uh getting blackout or whatever those things aren't good but that's what high schoolers do yeah to learn how to manage it exactly right exactly and we learned right we definitely learned the hard way um and so my first day of school junior year there's this girl that i had not seen before and i still remember today what she was wearing she wearing like you know a yellow shirt jeans and and rainbow sandals because it's la right and i'm walking from our high schools like outdoor the buildings are separated by just like green because we don't have to have everything inside um being in utah where it's cold you know you have to do that i remember walking from one building to another and we crossed paths and something about her she was tall she's like 5 10. a polynesian half polynesian so tan and i i was just drawn to her it's like who is this person right and um eventually like my friends tell me who she is her name is faith um you know faith playing volleyball at west now she came from redondo high which is just you know a block up the road or two blocks up the road i get to know her a little bit and um i at that point felt like i was kind of like the man i'm like nah i'm like like i'm a junior now i'm the starting quarterback i'm a i'm one i'm the best player on our baseball team like i'm i'm it and one day faith like walks right up to me at lunch and was like hey do you want to come over my house today and i'm like what like it was so straightforward i was just not prepared for that because i thought i thought i was really cool i knew i was now looking back i wasn't but i thought i was and faith was very direct so i came over to faith's house and and we hung out faith's super cool laid back really good family and um just really enjoyed it eventually faith and i kept hanging out more and more and more and uh you know one day we had we have just beaten a team that we hadn't beaten in years from manhattan beach called miracosta and uh i i am talking to faith after the game we were just texting you know back in the day when you don't get free texts and uh i'm texting and i'm like you know we're we're talking about how good things are and faith kind of says hey do you want to hang out with me this weekend oh for sure so i go over to your house on saturday come home we're texting again saturday night she said hey you want to hang out with me now yeah for sure she says cool well you got to come to church first church what what do i wear she's like a white shirt ty so right faith's mormon watch your tie button up i'm like wait i thought i thought you wore like bonnets and like you know whatever she's like we're not quakers man like and so literally that's what i knew right so i go over to her house and uh sunday morning and i go to church for the first time um in our ward in redondo beach and i see people i've known uh my wife now was actually in that ward we knew each other since fifth grade and oh wow yeah crazy right we didn't date and i knew she was mormon but i knew that mormons were like too good um and so i was like i'm kind of a sleazebag i am never gonna like approach her because i knew that she was too good right and she wouldn't be interested in some sleazy quarterback you know loser guy and so uh faith i had a good experience we were sitting next to each other in sacrament meeting then we went to sunday school and i was like this is great and then we split off for a priest and relief society and she's like hey bye go with my dad i'm like what like you know her dad's super super nice polynesian dude but i'm kind of scared because like hey that's my daughter man like you're dating my daughter and so anyway and then we split off again and i'm with the young man with the bishop and i'm just like what is going on right and we go back to their house after church and we kind of had a debriefing i'm like yeah it was better than i thought like there was no like you know goats being sacrificed or whatever cruelty things i had no idea because i i didn't know anything about religion really and so and nobody made fun of me in sunday school like they did at the the baptist church and that my mom went to and so yeah in general i had a good time even my baseball coach when i was in little league he was there i didn't realize he was i didn't know oh and and he wasn't going to church at the time but then he comes back and so all these people that i had community interactions with i'm like wait i've kind of been surrounded by mormons and so one day i'm at faith's house again we're hanging out at night and frank who's her dad's a great guy kind of pulls me aside and says two things um mark i i really love having you here you're a great person you've been really good to all of our kids they all love you i love like i love you say thanks frank that's so nice second thing he's like gives me a further strength of the youth pamphlet never seen it before he says if you want to date my daughter you live these standards whoa yeah i was like okay i read through it when i got home i'm like not doing that not doing that right none of it i'm just like that's that's intense and in my mind i'm like and faith's not doing that either and i truly don't think i would have been even interested in mormonism if it wasn't for faith being she she was a good person a great person but wasn't one who was keeping the rules the way that mormons should you know what i'm saying i don't think i was having fun for example yeah for lack of a better word right and we were having developmental high school 100 percent the way that the way that normal kids would develop right which plays into when i'm teaching seminary and the way that i interact with kids and what they bring to me i'm like uh that's normal right okay can't wait for that yeah yeah that's coming up right and so um you know oh i also have to tell you the first time i met faith's dad it was at faith volleyball game you know she did great she was really talented um and faith if it's like hey come meet my dad i'm like i don't i don't want to meet your dad like that's scary it's the first time i ever met a parent you know and so faith um brings me over and frank who's your dad looks at me he's like mark like real confused like he was like like we knew each other somewhere he's like is that mark i'm like that's me you know like he's like i home taught your dad frank was the guy that home taught when like the two experiences i had the mormons knocking on the door i think frank was one of them oh so it's like what in the world you know how mormon world can get really small yeah and so those are the tie-ins even in southern cal right yep yeah yeah it turns out our neighbor who's old old like 80 years old they're mormon mm-hmm two doors down they're mormon i'm like what is going on i had no idea you know and so i just continued to go to church just because i like hanging out with faith i like being with her family after um faith would invite me over for family home evenings and you know when the missionaries came by and just very casual never any pressure faith was really good about making sure that i um didn't feel like i had to do something i didn't want to do but she was also really good at just saying like hey this is what we do this is our family and i remember she invited me to watch general conference and like i said the image i have of religion in my mind is so i don't know if warped the right idea but i had this image of like somehow mormon corporation piping in like like the wizard of oz piping into their homes and just having like the prophet speaking in their home not on tv i don't know what i was picturing but it was just this really warped view of what was going to happen i'm like no thanks i don't want to have 10 hours of this random dude talking to me you know so i was still resistant eventually i got to the point where i said hey it's good for you but it's not for me and i continued to just go baseball was great that year we lost the state championship in football which was devastating the team we played was from compton and a couple of the people so richard sherman who was a cornerback for yeah yeah so he's seahawks yeah exactly so he went to that school he graduated year before but that whole team was stacked i mean guys going to usc washington ucla like fact 12 huge exactly like huge huge huge players my coach wasn't really good at recruiting um he didn't want to put his name on the line and have somebody not perform which was unfortunate um but that team just they fell in love with me they they all came up hey number 12 we love you we love you we're gonna anytime somebody comes and asks for a quarterback we're gonna tell them to go to west high and so i started getting looks in in football so i had you know arizona arizona state come by usc came by i think that was just a token like hey we're going to recruit your running back and we'll say hi to you too i don't think that was ever serious uh fresno state utah state oh fun yeah so utah state came by john this way this is why it's so hard for me to like i'm a utah now like and probably not leaving utah state came by when i was playing baseball said hey we'd love to offer you a scholarship we'd love to have you here and i remember saying oh that's such an honor like i'll think about it getting done turning to my friends and being like i'm never going to utah you know you know what i mean like it was just utah was the land of the weird i just never had any need to ever go to utah we did play like a tournament in taylorsville uh for like three days and that's all i knew so you know and what year was this you were getting recruited 20 uh 2006. okay 2006. okay so right at the heart of you know usc was really good at the time and man i was pumped i was honored and and uh it was really cool to see so many people coming by i had some some not official offers but they were really starting to get there but then i'd have to shift gears for baseball and then baseball started up so my first letter ever from baseball was stanford and they said hey send us your your transcripts and at the time i think i was probably less than a 3.0 why because popular people don't do good in school you know even though i was smart and um some of my transcripts never heard back you know because they're like we're not taking you but then i got letters you know from long beach state which was like a dream school for baseball for me uh again sc for baseball um usc usc yeah yeah usc university southern california ucla was like my dream my dad was a big brewing fan so i wanted to go there they never gave me a letter that was like it was it felt like a dig but i mean they they loved the orange county people we i guess in the south bay didn't get as much love but anyway um and then you know fullerton and irvine and these uc riverside and i started taking recruiting trips san diego state was another one and i think people and tell me if i'm wrong but i think some of the like the big known division one schools for like basketball or football aren't necessarily the top baseball schools correct and some of these schools you're mentioning that people go oh that sounds like a product school yeah there's some is that right there's numbers for baseball 100 yeah so like i mean you just you have to think the the hot spots for baseball in the whole country is california texas arizona and florida georgia right and so like long beach state is a as a cal state school it's a local school it's a commuter school but i mean they're they're top 25 they're putting out people like all the time multiple mlb players it's the closest school to my house i love the environment at blair field cal state fullerton same thing top 25 program uc irvine of becoming a top 25 program and again i never ever thought i would leave southern california i was going to grow up there the only time i would leave would be to play pro ball for some other team and then i'd have my home in southern california san diego state offered me a scholarship for basic for football they were also home to marshall fall yeah xc you know exactly and tony was the baseball coach there and so like they said hey if you want to play baseball two we're gonna look at that and i'm i'm pumped i'm like yeah i'm gonna play football and baseball in san diego like in my mind it's a party school i'm in san diego i'm playing two sports i love yeah let's do it where's kwai leonard where do you go to school same thing san diego state see those are some legends yeah exactly right exactly and like in my mind even though like now i'm literally nobody like i really thought i'm like that's the trajectory of my life my parents always instilled that confidence in me they always and i had all these opportunities um and i'm watching my teammates and my from high school my teammates from other schools go on to play college at top schools one of my teammates went to fresno state and they were in the college world series and i'm like this is this is what we're going to be doing you know and so in this time when all this recruit recruiting is happening and um it's it's just really exciting well faith and her family decide to move from redondo um to highland utah and so i was like devastated right because faith was such a of integral part of my junior year i wouldn't say that we were like we had a healthy relationship because i don't know if it's necessarily super possible to have a healthy relationship as a 16 year old um but nonetheless it was definitely a big part of my life and so faith moving up there like i went with them their first week and helped them moved in and i was just like flying home i was just like devastated but then i got really excited for football again right and so i would talk to faith on the phone and we'd stay in touch and our team was was i mean we were rolling we were just dominating people we made the state championship the year before lost just barely by seven by seven points in um against an amazing team we were the favorites we beat a team like 50 nothing 42 to six like we're destroying teams and um one day before practice it's our easiest practice this thursday before a game on friday uh we just have these this we wear like just shoulder pads and helmets we don't tackle anybody super laid back and i was the quarterback so i had it i forgot to get the ball that we needed you know and so i went into the locker room and our coach always said don't run in the locker room with cleats and i ran into the locker room with cleats and i slipped and immediately i was like something's off with my knee like it just differently than the one i tore my my sophomore year i'm like something's off here and uh i'm just kind of pretending like i'm not hurt you know i didn't just slip in the locker room and hurt my knee i i jog with the team and i'm like something's off i start trying to do a sprint for a warm-up and as soon as i do my knee just like explodes and um i'm like on the ground and i'm like holding my knee in pain and because it was such a laid-back non-contact practice i think my coach was just surprised like what are you joking so he came over laughing a good one i'm like oh my knee he's like okay oh yeah i'm like no my knees really hurt he's like uh-oh and um man so i didn't i didn't play that game i i got an mri and it was like hey my piece my pcl and my knee was torn my my meniscus was torn and there was something going on with my mcl and so i'm just like dang dude did i just lose my scholarship did i just lose this thing football was my my passion you know not my long-term love my passion and i was devastated i took like a bunch of pain pills before the week four game trying to play and it was evident man i had a knee brace on it was evident i couldn't do it my coach said nope i'm not playing you which is a good coach but i lost it like i started throwing stuff it's our our biggest rival i started beating in their like lockers and i'm i'm just i'm livid and um and then i tried to play the fifth game i finally convinced my coach to let me play and i look i know it wasn't good but my role models kobe right he tears his he tears his achilles he hits two free throws and walks off like i'm gonna play so i take a snap um and step and my knee explodes again and i'm a big dude i'm bigger than most people on the field even as a quarterback and they're not tackling me i'm just kind of standing there spinning around and the refs blow it dead and i limp off the field and that was the last time i ever played and san diego state never called me and uh man it it went from life's really good like i'm living the dream family's good friends are good like everything's good to what just happened so um as you know from my experience earlier like you know we go to parties and we do whatever and so i same thing trying to drown my sorrows um or smoke away my stars or whatever else and um i remember vividly sitting in and faith wasn't there this girl who i really liked wasn't there and so all of a sudden i'm realizing i'm not that good at school i'm not doing that good at school i don't have football i don't have this girl i don't have anything and i remember sitting in the corner of a party in the dark with like a hoodie on somebody walked up to me and i had like a drink i was like what like are you good i'm like no okay and they like walked off because how's the high schoolers supposed to cope with that you know but right around this time i'm just like going deeper and deeper and deeper into just feeling really crappy and um i'd been to church enough i didn't go without faith's family but i'd been to church enough where i knew that that was a that could be a part of my life and anyway it was kind of planted in in my mind and so faith um is playing at lone peak high volleyball team one of the best like volleyball teams in the state yeah and they make the state championship at uvu and um i end up saying hey i'm gonna fly up i'm gonna see you i'm gonna see you play we had a three o'clock game instead of a seven o'clock game that friday so i flew up uh met their family in salt lake hung out there with them in highland went to their state championship game they won state championship that weekend um in between games though frank her dad um takes me to byu it's like i want to tour around byu never been never thought about byu so i want to go introduce you to the baseball coaches okay uh i thought frank had an appointment with the baseball coaches he didn't he just showed up and the baseball coaches are never there they're always gone they're recruiting practicing doing whatever it just so happens as we came in there's two there's the head coach and the recruiter coordinator they're sitting right there and frank says hey this is mark osland you know from torrance california you really need to take a look at him like yeah sure well they call two people to ask about me they call the first one is an all-american um he he ended up baptizing me right long run his name's murphy and he's a great great guy he's not dale murphy no murphy sua okay so he got drafted by the dodgers he was an all-american at byu he was the one that introduced me to my travel ball team in la so we're family we had some family connections there and murphy's like uh you gotta get this guy like he's he's a stud they call the next person who's another one of my coaches the same thing you need to get this guy so a couple weeks after that byu ends up offering me a scholarship and um i wouldn't have taken it except for what happens that weekend so i'm i'm feeling this devastated sadness loss of football it's it's sunday morning i have to fly back home i just got an argument with my mom because she was like why do you love her family more than ours and just typical teenage stuff you know i'm just feeling really bad and i remember going to church with faith because that's kind of a requirement with you know their family and we sat in the back on like you know the folding chairs and i remember sitting in the back and just looking around and thinking about how miserable i was inside um and like outwardly miserable too right i just had like my my demeanor was just sad and depressed whereas everybody you know this in mormonism has that very cheerful like mormon joy tm like you know like make sure even if you're miserable inside you're smiling if you're smiling like then yeah for sure you're yep you're living the gospel so i now know that but at the time i'm thinking everybody's happy and i'm not and i remember sitting in the back the sacraments getting passed and during this all of this in my mind comes a couple thoughts i think maybe maybe the church is like good and true maybe that's why i'm not happy then when i thought maybe i remember faith's dad telling me just the brief story of joseph smith when he didn't know to pray and so i said like a super quick prayer i was like god if this is if this is true let me know and the sacrament gets passed and i'm just kind of waiting like what is supposed to happen now what do i do and then a member of the bishop gets up starts sharing whatever he's sharing and for some reason this like rush of emotion comes over me and i'm just sobbing and um in my mind the connection goes to oh the church is true i think looking back i can recontextualize and say i really wanted to belong you know i really wanted hope i really wanted perspective but in the moment that wasn't even a thought it was oh my gosh this is true everything they've told me is true and i'm sobbing right and faith's dad uh faith turns to me he's like are you okay i'm like just i know the church is true you know and then faith's dad turns to me and he actually could hear what hurt like he could make out what i said he's like we'll talk about that after you know so we go back home to their house right before my flight and frank says mark what you were feeling do you know what that was i was like yeah frank that's the holy ghost he's like do you know what that you know what that means i was like yeah i need to go on a mission he's like yeah you do but you need to get baptized first you know so there it was there it was and there's i mean this is the turning point everything where i am right now happens because of that moment and at the time i was pumped i'm like okay well i'm going to be 100 in i've always been 100 in on whatever i do so i'm going to be the best mormon i'm going to be i'm going to give up you know drinking i'm going to give up this i'm going to i guess you know i'll go to byu i went home and i i met with murphy he was an amazing guy and he was just asking me like tell me what you felt i told him my experience uh he his son gave me a copy of the book of mormon because we were friends and so i had that and he's like okay we'll set up the meetings with the missionaries and so uh my first missionary lesson was we had two sister missionaries um i still remember them there's they're amazing people i'm in contact with two of them which i love and and i still have fond feelings towards them and i remember driving up this big hill to this person's house i'd never been to and this the missionaries were riding bikes right the sister missionaries which is so sad i'm like why do what are these missionaries why you have bikes man like it's up this huge hill and they're just like dripping sweat and panting and i'm just like my heart feels so bad i had a truck and so i know it's the missionaries you know and i like pull over like hey you want to ride and they're just we're good and i'm like you're not like get in like i don't know mission rules like you can't be alone with a single guy like i didn't know that i'm just like these people are weird they're weird you know and i and so i have these doubts in my mind like what am i doing like these are weird people but then i had this that whole belief that i had been taught if you know it's true you have to do it you know so you know i have the missionary discussion at this person's house i tell my dad i'm going to my friend's house so they don't know they don't know just hanging out you know right no idea no idea so they end up coming i come i come back and uh you know i had a good experience i watched like the restoration the video the old one like the 20 minute one for which again it's there's so many like foreshadowing seminary you know joseph smith the baptist look look at these angry baptists or methodists and wow you're going to go to hell and just it it was so you know it's you know it's propaganda right where's a great father he's a great husband yeah you know loves people of color right all that right all of it all of it and so like he loves emma yeah loves his one wife emma exactly and he translated the place and i don't remember what the old video showed but i'm sure it was like him like you know looking directly and just reading it word for word instead of looking in the hat and so like it was just the very very soft happy version of it only one account where he where you know he sees god and it's perfect there's no angels or blah blah blah blah all the stuff that we don't get and so i'm watching this i'm like well i i had this experience so therefore this must be true i come back like three hours later right my dad's like where were you for three hours on like a tuesday night nowhere you know i go into my room and i'm like you know washing my face and i'm like i'm i've got to be mormon now like i remember for the strength of he's like be honest so i feel guilty and so i'm like dad i just had a missionary lesson he was like do you know i'm mormon i'm like no you know and then he asked are you doing this for your girlfriend i'm like no of course not exactly like no and he asked again and my dad has always been very trusting and they don't like i'd come home late from parties they wanted to ask like they just they didn't they weren't stressed about it they just knew that we were good kids but like my dad was serious he's like mark are you doing this for your girlfriend i'm like dad i really i think i believe it's true it's like all right well you know i'm not gonna stop you and um i end up finding out i have to talk to him more throughout you know the next couple months my dad never liked church my grandma who is the sweetest like the most typical like from springville just like so sweet never said a bad word like the old turkey was the meanest thing she ever said my dad's like oh yeah your grandma would dump cold water on me in the morning to get me to go to early morning seminar in manhattan beach i'm like what then my dad when he's 18. so he knows a couple people like um who's he's the waddell christopher waddell like they went to they're in the same ward my dad knows him very well so he's like the president in the presiding bishopric you know so my dad is like oh yeah i know all these people like featherstones and all like he's he's just aware of a lot of them and so um i start really like man mormonism is actually a little bit deeper than i thought my grandma's side uh you know not blood because my dad's adopted but i mean they're pioneers from england right and so i have that lineage even if it's not blood and um yeah so my dad decides to sit in on my second missionary lesson and he starts crying and my my current my wife right now rachel she was at the missionary lesson because she was my friend and that's who i started sitting with when faith was gone right so when i'm at church i have to sit with somebody i knew rachel so i sat with rachel and her family i love rachel's parents i love rachel's family i wanted to be you know associated with them so rachel came over and a couple other friends came over and my dad is just like he starts sobbing he's like i know what's true i'm just not living it you know really that's what he says isn't that crazy so i'm like what's going on and now i'm thinking like forever families this is it this is happening you know i know i know and then i my mom who's never been mormon never was mormon the only thing my dad ever told her my mom smoked before um they got married my dad's like you know you don't have to be mormon but i'm not gonna marry if you smoke my mom quit but like you know my mom and dad both drank my mom uh and and there's just again no religion really in our family and so i remember seeing my mom being cordial and kind when the missionaries came over but also being like i'm going in the back room i don't want to be associated with this so we get done and me and my dad are kind of debriefing he's like you got to tell your mom so a couple days later i woke up the courage to tell my mom i don't know why i had this sense maybe it was just her look that she kind of gave like i don't like this and i i told her and she starts crying she's like i just i don't want to lose you i think she i think she was thinking like what's that movie the the waco right where the mom of one of the kids who's there is calling is like please like come on just come back home i think my mom was thinking oh crap like he's joining in colt and my mom was being very like trying to be supportive but also like i really don't want this to happen so she starts crying i got mad i'm like mom like i'm not joining a gang like my friends are like i have bloods and crips for friends like i could be doing this i'm joining the mormon religion and she's still crying she's like i'm just gonna lose you and and i chalked it up to on the oldest she sees the what's coming next she sees going off to college not in california she sees getting going on a mission she sees getting married in the temple and she was right but i was not very um sympathetic to her of course because you're 17 or 18. exactly and it's true yeah and i'm like well whatever opposition and i remember being told whosoever loveth father and mother more than me is not fit for my kingdom and so right off the bat i feel like i'm being i don't i'll use the word indoctrinate i don't know what i was feeling then but these are being planted in my mind nope the church over everything and um man i remember getting um having a discussion with my dad well this is so i get baptized it is a good experience right i mean i i felt positive but i think the good experiences no so my dad my dad was active he was still drinking um sometimes they used that as an opportunity to reactivate a member because if he was just a priest he wouldn't have even had to be an elder yep he could have technically baptized exactly but that didn't happen no but they did allow him and this is what's so interesting i don't i don't know how this worked but they did allow him to be a part of my ironic priesthood ordination just to be in the circle right which is really cool and so i was he was an elder at some point yeah i think he was just a priest okay which is which i don't remember like can you be a priest and and maybe yeah yeah i was a seminary teacher like a year and a half ago how do i forget but yeah you could be a priest i think and ordain some anyway but like my dad was there and that was special for me but faith's dad gave me you know the gift of the holy ghost and murphy who was my baseball coach and and he was the one who baptized me my dad was there and my grandma this frail sweet tiny woman from springville i remember the day that i got baptized my tiny grandma who came up to like my waist gave me this hug and while it felt like nothing substantive because she's so frail i could hear her just like squeezing me as hard as she could so happy that somebody in her lineage is going to now be mormon wow and so she was like i found out she was like stake relief society president and loved in the ward and so my why did she going active she she was going i just didn't know oh really she kept that from you that's so weird i think it was my dad i think my dad said don't force it on them huh i think i don't know your dad had never lost his faith or lost his testimony he just became a jack mormont yeah basically yeah by mormon standing correct so he felt bad because like he was 18 and then you know how it happens are you going on a mission are you going on a mission are you going on a mission and my dad's just like i don't like want to do this so he goes off to cal poly in san luis obispo and is like i'm done i'm not doing mormon i'm free i don't need your pressure um i think he felt a lot it's not a bad school by the way it's a great school is that where we're at i went i don't know yeah probably i don't my my dad i love san luis obispo like i would have gone there if i guess aussies i think ozzy smith went to maybe i'm making that up but anyway so that would have been a baseball school but i had i had bigger sights and so yeah my grandma was just proud right so proud so happy just beaming there's pictures of me in this small jumpsuit because they didn't have one that fit me and i had this giant wedgie and it was miserable you know and um wow yeah super random and like a couple just a couple friends were there so rachel who's my wife she was there um and i had faith faith was there they came down right and so faith dad was there exactly and like and then ward members you know turns out i was golden convert man oh i was i was the golden one i think i might have been one of the only mission like baptisms for these missionaries who are ending their mission and i love the missionaries like one of them from south africa and i just loved her and she's amazing and i remember i remember getting taught about tithing and you know they did little skittles because somehow they found out i like skittles and and so they they gave me 10 and like if you give us one bag you know what i mean and then they dump the whole bag out and i'm just like this is amazing and like and i didn't catch and i i would never blame them because i as a missionary myself i now know like oh okay i know you don't know much of anything so whatever they're perpetuating or sharing is either been taught to them or forced on them by mission presence or what have you but the phrase families can be together not families are i didn't even catch how insidious that phrase was i was gonna say is that word it's insidious can be if there's so much conditional and i'm i'm not even picking up on how indoctrinated like that is you know do you know what i'm saying i mean it's such a it's so fraught because the teaching is is the hook it's like oh families can be together forever and what's not to love about eternal families and it just pulls in your heart strings and we did when i was you know i'm older than you for me it was it was a film called the families are forever and it's the same thing a kid dies and then the parents are worried will they ever see their kid again and then the missionaries come and they're like oh i'll see my kid again and so like what's not to love about that right yep yeah but then you're the the insidious part is that the church is creating the scarcity yep you know because christians are like of course we'll all be in heaven together yes but the church is like oh you can be together forever if you pass your tithing give us your life and that's that's the insidious yeah and while simultaneously bashing catholics for indulgences and whatnot and i'm like it's not like i'm not believing it right because i'm only hearing the good side and like looking back i i'm now thinking about my dad and i wouldn't like i wouldn't be as um yeah sure like whatever you need to do as my dad was with my kid because he's gonna grow up in utah and you know when everybody starts turning they hey my friend's getting baptized i i don't feel like i could just say yeah if you want to i feel like i owe it to him to explain you know what if you make this choice i can't stop you and i don't want to stop you but let me tell you this this this this and so that never happened and part of probably your dad still believed it exactly exactly and i don't think he knew a ton of it either like i think he did basic stuff but i i i didn't how would he have exactly yeah exactly and so like look the i still think the ideals whether or not i believe them that's that's irrelevant but the ideals of mormonism they're still compelling intellectually the idea is that you're known by a divine being that you're loved by a divine being that everybody matters we're all siblings the idea that we can be families forever like those are are are compelling ideas and so that's what i i was believing i the joseph smith thing just kind of came along second right or even the idea of prophets the idea that that god still speaks and that he still loves us that's a compelling idea the nuances that start coming the fine print the culture that stuff was never explained and i don't blame the missionaries they didn't know exactly yeah they don't know how would they know no they're just like you exactly i mean back then 21 years old right yeah yeah well they don't know anything and so but but i i'm i didn't realize the fine print for years dude i'm i'm teaching seminary before i start seeing the fine print of course can't wait for that oh man don't hurry yeah this is great this is important yeah well and it's fundamental and i just sometimes i wish that things would be different and like you know this wouldn't happen but man i've met so many good it's just it's tension so i mean i just this is just like a public service announcement like just from talking shop in mormon stores for a second every once in a while the church will come out with a promotional video where they'll say some harvard person or some you know chemist becomes mormon and i'm just like how in the world would someone in 2020 educated bright thoughtful successful join this church when like the members who love it and have been a part of it for their whole lives are like leaving in droves and this is answering that question yeah exactly because because we're not taught the nuances we're we're taught the things that i still think are compelling and the things when i was a missionary that i thought was compelling yeah and again i i'm not i'm not i don't believe it now but still intellectually i can tell somebody you know what i see the value yeah of course even if i don't believe it there is value right there is value tons of value part of me doesn't like no there's not you know like there's no value but like i i'm learning like now that hurt from some of the trauma that we'll talk about now that that's exciting i can see it more clearly like there is value to it but i am at the point now where i think in general i think mormonism is net negative well let's not let's not get ahead of ourselves yeah you're nice you know no no just because uh we don't you know there's still a lot of story to get to for sure um but but i mean we could talk about that yeah but i mean this is this is important so you know yeah you're the golden convert there was a lot of value for you for sure and look and it's during prop 8 too this is what you need to know so i remember before i got baptized like planning meetings in elders quorum look i'm in i'm in la and we're talking about prop 8 and i at the time i assumed i knew gay people but we didn't talk about gay people we would use you know the the slurs for gay people just because that's how idiots like us talked and i didn't know anyone's in my direct friend group that was that was gay or queer what have you and so i didn't feel super passionately i'm 17 16 17 years old what do i know about politics or anything but i do remember planning meetings in the redondo second ward about how we're going to knock doors and canvas neighborhoods about prop 8 about how we're going to stand on corners and how we're going to you know i don't remember if it's yes or no but like we're gonna be up there nope we do not want gay people to get married and while i was not in any way an ally or knew enough about politics to even know what was happening i remember thinking this feels weird it felt strange to me because i believe that we in church we just talk about god why why were we talking about politics and canvassing and protesting like the idea of protesting anything for what and so i i was i i wasn't aware enough to be able to be like oh this is wrong only in looking back do i think holy crap like this is happening like my mother-in-law who i adore was on corners protesting not because she doesn't like queer people because she does but because she felt like she had to and so like man like looking back holy crap i'm in the heart of prop 8 in california when i get baptized like i join the church when people are starting to say peace out i'm done i'm saying this is great but i don't i just don't know the fine print none of it historical doctrinal you know social political none of those fine print i didn't know any of it i was just so joyful so i'm guessing that when i talk about informed consent you that probably rings a bell because even though you loved it and and you were enjoying it and you chose it you how much did you know you were what did you how much did you know you were getting into nothing right like i was like oh i'll go i'll go to byu and i'll go on a mission i'll get married in the temple that's what i thought but all the others give your life to it yeah yeah exactly yeah and i'm like well what's 10 like i wasn't even thinking about tithing but that stupid lesson man that lesson stuck i'm like the skittles i want more blessings like man like you know what i mean like none of this is becoming like and so like looking back i wish i could look at myself and and and give myself the love that i needed because that's what i was craving i was craving community i was craving purpose i was craving healing from uh feeling totally unwelcomed and unloved and i just desperately felt like i needed a true belonging not one where we're partying and doing stupid stuff and i felt like now looking back i'm like that's what it was it was my subconscious or even my conscience saying you need a place where you can belong a healthy good place and i didn't realize that it wasn't healthy right because i didn't see it or it was healthy until it wasn't i mean i mean we can have that debate i think you're right i i still think my upbringing was healthy it wasn't perfectly healthy there were it was healthy and unhealthy uh but you you look at how many amazing humans and families come out of mormonism they're doing things right for sure you know for sure there's a lot of good yeah and and i'm that's where i'm still we'll get there we'll get there yeah don't don't let me forget because this is something i'm currently we'll come back to it so yeah so i get baptized and i'm pumped and like i told you just a couple of my friends were there that's on a saturday confirmed on a sunday go to school on monday and i remember being late to like my government and civics class or whatever in the top floor of our third story building outdoors and and miss ockerman who was just super sweet lady you know from indiana and always said washington instead of washington and we had just random busy work that we were doing because she didn't want to be there it's monday and i didn't want to be that nobody wanted to be there and it's dead silent and we're doing busy work and miss ackman goes mark i'm like yes miss hockman are you mormon now uh and for everybody everybody's like in front of the whole class whole class what remember we don't talk about religion nobody's a religious that i know i'm the quarterback people are people are aware of me and so everybody perks up they're like uh and i'm like yeah she's like why and i'm like what like right off the bat i'm i'm already having to defend all of this and i don't i truly don't know how people found out my next class the teacher found out there's people on campus i had never i never spoken to that when i walked by they were like like whispering i'm like how does this whole 2000 person campus know that i joined the mormon church how i still don't know i think maybe somebody who's there told somebody and then you know how teenagers are and even before you know we had a it's aol instant messenger you know so i'm sure that's you know where it was happening but it was so surreal i go to my football practice sixth period and my coach is like are you mormon i'm like yeah coach she's like what that's a cult man i'm like did he say that oh yeah because he's so he's a christian dude and like we weren't supposed to pray you know because separation church especially in california but before every football game he was the one who prayed for us so like and he like loved clay aiken and like you know like that was that was his thing and so he's like what do you believe and the missionaries because i think they knew that i was influential they're like hey carry these around with you articles of faith pass along cards oh my goodness so i gave a pass on card to my coach and he reads through it and it says like we the articles of faith are first blah blah and he's like what does this mean what does it mean articles of faith are first i'm like no no the articles of faith are comma first faith in the lord blah blah he's like okay i was going to say you don't put faith in the lord first i'm like why am i having this discussion i'm not ready for this i don't know john i truly knew nothing yeah uh i remember reading the first part of the book of mormon and just feeling like it was torture like yeah neffy i didn't know how to say it it was neffy and leahy like i i knew nothing and that's what i mean foreign consent like i didn't read it like they asked like yeah i have a testimony of it why because i had that one moment and if that was true then everything else is true and so man i just and it was i i felt and i totally i bore my testimony i was passionate about it like that moment when i felt that sense of community and that sense of like love and acceptance i i truly believed at the time that that was god speaking directly to me and it and i felt like it was powerful and i remember later reading about paul turning or saul turning to paul and being like that's me i was the sinner right i was the one that thought mormonism was a cold and laughed at south park and drank and smoked and do did all this bad and now i'm a witness you know and so yeah and it just it just kept going and and from that point i was branded as a mormon and for the first time since my seventh grade year i remember sitting with my friends outside our little lunch table my football teammates who were playing and i wasn't and i remember sitting there and then laughing at me and feeling like i was alone for the first time since seventh grade [Music] and so man a hard moment and what did i do well what i was taught to do was you turn to the lord you pray you read you go deeper and deeper and deeper in and so um i remember talking to my my center so i'm a quarterback at the center we were we obviously had a close relationship and uh he was a christian dude and we talked quite a bit and i asked him hey will you read the book of mormon he's like yeah i'll read it i'm like hey but you have to have an open heart and he's like okay a couple weeks later he came back he's like i read it i'm like and like i'm like that's true you know he's like nothing i'm like you didn't do it right and so i went through the whole moroni's promise like did you have a sincere and real intent you know the same i was like did you actually want to join he's like yeah i would have i'm like i don't believe you yeah and so anyway he's now he's now a pastor somewhere and i think he's in like south america so anyway um yeah what a crazy experience and i and like i'm feeling super isolated because my dad won't go to church because he doesn't want to alienate my mom i'm the only mormon i my grandma's in a different ward and she's old and she's not go oh my yeah she's not going just because she's old the sacrament that she'd get sacrament or whatever and so on sundays i'd feel super alone i'd sit with rachel who's my wife i'd sit with her family i'd go do all the things alone i'd be i was the priest corn first advisor or whatever and then i'd go home and i'd go to my sinning family who's drinking and watching tv [Music] you know and you start to look down on them 100 percent oh immediate judging these wonderful parents that have been so good to you i'm not trying to rub no no rub it in please because because it it emphasizes what my mom was feeling that i couldn't grasp at the time where she's like why are you like mark we've always been so good to you like how could you ever you know think about us this way and again what's the phrase like if you love father and mother more than me you're not fit for my kingdom so i'm like god comes first and because i had no one to teach me because my dad wasn't teaching me other people weren't teaching me where did i go i went to prophets so i read enzyme after enzyme after enzyme after and like i read and read for i'm talking about hours and i learned the gospel the gospel from prophets from the enzyme were these paper enzymes yeah where'd you get them i don't even remember missionaries friends others like in the church people would give them to me and i just i was hungry for him and i remember searching on my computer more and more and more right and i'm just i was just starving for it because i felt like oh crap i feel this thing my family's not living this thing i need support i need understanding people ask me questions i can't answer so i i just like became i would never say like a scholar but certainly someone who just wanted to learn everything possible and i mean you didn't get seminary no and so you you're basically using the ensign to give you the education you didn't get in seminar correct yeah right so rachel yeah rachel invited me to go to seminary and i was like so i had one semester left of high school yeah she that's how she explained it she's like well you wake up at 5 30 and you sit in and talk about church for an hour i'm like no thanks you know exactly yeah that sounds sounds absolutely miserable and uh and so obviously i didn't want to do that being a senior i'm like dude i'm at least going to try to sleep in you know so i never did that the enzyme was my understanding and of all things i could have read like i think the enzyme might have been the worst because it's just so correlated it's so and especially the older enzyme now we're starting to see like how to deal with a loved one oh that's nuts you know could you imagine like i wonder what i would have felt in 2008 right if that was the article and i'm thinking about my mom yeah what would have happened in my relationship because what did happen was she continued to be hurt i continued to be frustrated we grew very very strained um and my mom i think i get my hard-headedness from her and so i'm not budging i know this is true right and she's not budging and i just like i can't trust you then mom like that was basically the feeling and we grew much more separate then um and looking back i'm like the it makes me so sad because i was being loyal to this religion and then you know foreshadowing who just continued to stab me in the back after i gave everything to them it started with giving up my family then the next step i gave up was baseball where look byu is a great school like it is i don't think it's as good as we think it is like the harvard of the west it's not you know it's not stanford it's it's not but it's a good school and it's certainly i think better than long beach state or cal state fullerton academically academically baseball wise it wasn't yeah it's a cold weather school look i'm from l.a man i i don't know how to exist in the winter still i've lived here for since 2009. i still don't know how to live in the winter and i would have loved to have played and like i remember i signed my letter of intent a couple weeks later i think it was like february before baseball started and so your knee didn't take you out of basement no i rehabbed it and it was fine and and like i i was never super fast um and so it didn't affect me a ton i rehabbed it all's all good thanks for remembering i totally forgot that even happened but um yeah so i i signed the letter of intent and you were a first baseman first baseball you were running around yeah yeah exactly exactly and like i was i you know hopefully i'd hit ball pretty far so i wouldn't have to run you know super fast either but you're a decent hitter i was yeah i hit like 420 in high school like yeah i mean i i led the league in home runs like two or three years so like yeah that's why i was surprised i'm like wait i'm not hitting at byu what the heck you know so anyway i um i had gotten you know offers uh for different different schools i signed with byu i had a great year i was the player of the year in our area um i mean and we were we were a very good team again we lost so nolan aronado who's like a stud third baseman he plays for the saint louis cardinals making hundreds of millions of dollars we lost to his team i wasn't pitching let me pitch every all four years this one guy who is a good guy but he just lost every year and i'm like why i literally i've never lost but anyway stupid it's like high school why am i why do i care i'm still passionate but uh three days yeah exactly i never want to be like i remember watching friday night lights like the movie and thinking i'm never gonna be like tim mcgraw's character who's just like all you got is memories and babies man and now i'm looking back i'm like dang it like no like you know there's more to my life exactly and so uh anyway like i it was a great year and um i i ended up going to like a showcase tournament and i i dominated this team like i had 10 strikeouts in man four innings like i mean everybody but two i struck out and all of the players were going to pac-12 school arizona arizona state usc and right there on the spot uh uh coaches from irvine and fullerton who again top 25 programs walked up to my dad and said we're gonna give him a scholarship right now if he'll sign with us my dad says sorry he already signed with byu and he told me this after i didn't know because i was pitching and my dad said that they turned left byu and i'm like now looking back i'm like man again i love i love my teammates i love my coach i love my experience but it's true like byu is not a nationally recognized we're starting to become better our current coach i love super proud of what he's doing and and byu baseball is the only byu sport that i'm like proud of you know i'm like byu baseball by football like i love that you lost to coastal carolina and byu basketball like ucla sorry you know like but byu baseball defend because i i'm super proud of them and and all of my experiences but that was hard for me to realize wow i was gonna be the stud um in la to being like well i guess i'll just be the best player in utah and be the best player we were in the mountain west conference at the time and so i i guess i would do that i ended up getting drafted that year by the kansas city royals so i had kansas city royals miami marlins um cincinnati reds i had their scouts come come to my home say hey we want to draft you and um i was i mean that's that's that's the dream right and i remember telling them because what do you do as a good mormon person you go on a mission i said every time they came by i said i'm going to byu and i'm going to go on my mission they're like okay and so it was i felt like i was you know defending the truth this is what we'll do i'm standing for truth in righteousness and again what would have happened so we're going to the senior all-star game i'm the starting pitcher i'm like playing like madden on xbox with my with my friend before and i get a call from one of my teammates who's also in the game like hey what's up he's like dude you just got drafted i'm like shut up man no i didn't i hung up the phone and my friend was like hey what was that he's like oh he said he said i got drafted he's like yeah a good one and the next call is from the kansas city royal scout that had been in my home he's like hey mark i just want to let you know we drafted you in the 42nd round i know that you said you were going to go on a mission we would have drafted you way earlier but we thought hey if there's any chance this guy might sign with somebody we want to make sure we have his rights it's like we'll be we having papers coming out and i'm like i just got drafted like my dream i was gonna play pro ball man and um they sent over the papers and the the contrast of the two different papers you you had to choose a sign the first one was a beautiful color document the kansas city royals logo declaring giving your rights um to the kansas city royals you're gonna sign your contract mine would have been like 1600 bucks like it would have sucked you know i would have been living in arizona and making no money um and then there's another papers like yellow just kind of like photocopied crap like hey i'm not gonna sign but the royals have my rights for a year nobody else can draft me and i remember this moment of holding them both in my hands literally my dream of playing a professional sport in my hands putting the paper down picking up the yellow one and thinking god will make it worth it in the end okay tell me what the two papers were again one was two one was to say i'm gonna i'm gonna play pro ball pro ball ball the other one was i'm not gonna play pro ball thanks for drafting me but i'm declining you're declining yep yep and i signed the declining one because i was going on a mission and of course i was gonna go to byu because the sabbath you know and um again my thought was i'm going god will make this worth it for me in the end um and so i was kind of holding on hope for that yeah hard moment for me and finish up the year go on to byu's it was religion that it was religious 100 oh wow if it wasn't if it wasn't for that moment in highland if it wasn't for me joining the church i would have first off i would have been drafted way higher they don't even have 40 second round anymore they only have 40. i'm confident i would have been in the top 20 based on what they were telling me and i would have made a lot more money probably would have had a signing bonus etc etc and i would have done it like if like i really think i would have i remember that i remember being in that mindset yeah i had that mindset it's it's heartbreaking i remember thinking like there you know there's byu players you have steve young who didn't go on a mission and then you have other byu players and the byu players that did go on missions had lds living articles written about them and how they're good examples and i thought well this is it remember the enzyme i'm reading these enzymes or wherever else i read it and i'm seeing these people are idolized so therefore this is the right thing there's just so much of this subtle culture stuff that i'm not i didn't realize i was getting myself into or that it was even happening to me while it was happening yeah you know yeah so yeah i mean and then i come up to byu and truthfully i i love byu yeah so i i think it's cool it's an amazing school and and provo provo in the spring and provo in the fall on campus i think it's beautiful it's pristine my dad said it's always like disneyland like there's no there's no trash anywhere and it's super beautiful and look i came up here and like i had my past of being a mormon or being non-mormon and you know i did my my sexual escapades and i had my non-word of wisdom living days and i came up to byu thinking like okay i'm gonna be a good person and then i see like just so many beautiful people i'm like oh crap like how do i how do i do this but i enrolled in like three religion classes my first year two of them with randy bott right and um yeah yeah and so i immediately begin i don't know where this message came from exactly i think it's just in the air but this message of shame for or or disgust or or just negativity towards people who are breaking the law of chastity people who have broken the law of chastity people who have done things like drink or whatever else i don't i can't pinpoint a moment but i internalized that message that because i had done that in my past even if i was baptized i was a terrible person and i i said i will never let anyone know that i did these things and i thought how can i justify this like how am i able to if a girl were to ask me some sweet girl from provo or aurum mormon their whole life like tell me about your life i'm like i can't tell her what i've done because immediately nope you're cut you're not nope you uh you're tainted and so in randy bot's class in mission prep i remember this this hit me like spell this out so we have a ton of never mormons oh thank you uh i'm surprised i get emails every day from people that have never been mormon who love mormon stories and watch every episode what were the types of teachings that would make you feel so horrible about yourself man it's just like i remember being at church stake presidency lessons like so much at byu especially for young unmarried people is get married but along with that stay clean stay clean stay clean that's the phrase right clean as if anything else is dirty bad wrong and it's like constant i mean we have a chastity lesson once a month in in in our in our um ward right our young our young a young adult ward and like we get in state conference talks we get it in in sacrament meetings we get it in testimonies i was i did this wrong and i repented and now i'm clean stay clean means what stay clean means no sex no no masturbation no pornography no drugs no those things are likened unto what like the the sin next to murder that you're not exaggerating like literally it's that like it's like it's interpreted completely wrong which i found as a seminary teacher i'm like oh crap right but the i was told that is the sin next to murder because it says it pre-marital sex premarital sex you're the book of mormon exactly so you have murder sex and like denying the holy ghost and then like i don't know everything else nothing else matters seriously i'm like wait so murder and sex like how like so you can imagine the internalized shame that i'm getting if you take that seriously absolutely which i did because there's other people that are like meh but like but you were highly conscientious 100 and the reason why john is because i come up to byu thinking i've never been i've never been around real mormon like i was around my ward and in california they do have a general sense a little bit more ease i think in general they're happier when people come because they're like thank you you could have done anything it's called the mission field exactly exactly and so i definitely felt more supported there yeah whereas and by the way do you remember i told you like all the the community members that like they knew we were drinking and whatnot yeah as soon as they found out that i was mormon the weird looks i got it's it was like i had done something horrid i could drink and do all of those bad things for mormons and they'd be like yeah no problem and as soon as i said i'm going to church on sunday they're like who's this weird guy and so yes the mormons are saying that no no no no sorry my neighbors like my people like my friends they're like dude you're a freak and i'm like yeah you would think it would be the opposite you think that maybe people would be more like hey maybe don't drink when you're 16 like you know don't get blackout drunk it's not very good you know but being weird wasn't trying drugs or alcohol being weird was joining the mormon church right that's exactly it again there's all these things that i like i'm like people telling me it's a cult or even me knowing or thinking it's cool or quakers or whatever i'm like you don't know you've never been wait for the temple but anyway like i i um i felt that and and i came to byu thinking this is the epicenter of mormonism it's us exactly right yes you have to see the wizard 100 and so if these people whatever yes if they believe it if they think this way i should think that way too because this is it so they've been mormon their whole lives wow they've been to seminary release time seminary right they've had all of these things and so i think whatever they're doing or saying or thinking that's right well i mean we know that's not true we know that so much of it is culture that has just been passed on that is so harmful but i couldn't i didn't have anyone to coach me through it and i thought i'm just going to be like everybody else and internalize all of these harmful things like sex being this next murder like repentance like if you if you make a mistake like if you if you masturbate or if you go have sex or if you make out with somebody and you do that after you've repented all of your former sins come back so now i'm thinking crap like yeah i was baptized in 2007 but like it should have cleaned you mm-hmm but dang it i i made out with a girl oh crap like i went with a girl somewhere else like uh oh now it undoes your baptism correct it's like this waterfall of shame exac it's just shame on shame on shame on shame and i didn't have a word for it other than that's that's what god wanted that's the holy ghost that's the spirit leaving you and i'm like oh crap like how do i get it back well you go to sacramento meeting and you repent with a sincere heart i'm like please god take away this desire for me take away i don't want to be attracted to girls like you know because i knew if i was attracted that i want to kiss them if i want to kiss them i would do more but like and he'd already had you know sex yeah so genie's out of the bottle exactly i didn't have to deal with that until after i was married for sure and so i'm like oh crap like extra sins like the sit next to murder is back i'm a murderer yeah so it's like you know me and judas are hanging out because i had sex and judas like had jesus killed and so i'm like i'm just going to be with judas you know like it's it's like the book of mormon musical with like jeffrey dahmer and johnny cochran and yep i got a starbucks coffee cup the spooky mormon hell dream yes you're basically having a spooky moment yes and so like i actually saw that in london as a seminary teacher oh yeah they didn't know that but i'm like yeah this is awesome like that's exactly what all of my fellow teachers are teaching people you know so again foreshadowing but but um yeah man like it's just there was so much internalized shame and so randy bott who's a a famous religion professor at the time right he's teaching doctrine covenants he's teaching mission prep and he's the one that got in trouble for um saying some racist stuff very racist stuff right what did he say the curse of cain right that black people come from from kane that it's a curse they're si they're sending their pre-mortal existence they were fence sitters in the pre-mortal existence and then the washington post gets gets word of it and is like let's be clear he didn't teach anything that any of us weren't taught for decades and decades and decades his only mistake was it becoming public news that he taught these things during mitt romney's campaigns for president which then ended up embarrassing the church so he becomes in some ways the fall guy for just teaching what all of us had been taught for decades exactly am i right you're 100 percent right you're spot on and truthfully i i love randy bot like you knew him yeah yeah exactly i just i just think that he taught the way that i wanted to to teach and seminary which is position yeah charismatic fun he made things applicable and real and and down to earth and he had real conversations and and once i found out about that i'm like oh come on because maybe i didn't hear it or maybe i was gone playing baseball um and i missed those letters did that thing happen while you were like it happened right around that time and i mean obviously he was obviously he was teaching that like it didn't just come out of nowhere right and so like when he's teaching dnc which i had for him both semesters and dnc 84 comes around you know and then official declaration whatever one or two like it was brought up i just don't think i was either there or recognized it yeah i'm kind of going by in this convert like new energy you know right and so he uh he did teach one thing that stuck with me because the the hardest thing for me at byu was my shame about feeling like i had this bad past and i remember him teaching in mission prep and saying what do you do if someone asks you while you're on your mission have you ever done blank blank blank and his comment was you tell them you're a new creature in christ yeah and your former self is washed away yeah and i clung to that life yeah i'm new though your sins be a scarlet they shall be white as snow yeah right exactly and so i'm like there it is okay so how do i make sure that i always feel good about myself i'm always repenting because look i would wake up in the morning and think i'm gonna i'm gonna be perfect today i don't want to sin and then i'd stub my toe on my stupid dorm bed and i'd swear under my breath and i'd be like i ruined it that day and then i'd be like god please forgive me for that and then i'd be late to class i'm like forgive me for being late and i'm like well forgive me for stopping the the prayers like i could never catch up you're on the hamster wheel of worthiness with a little bit of scrupulosity thrown in exactly not fun no and nobody nobody said that was bad in fact i think that was maybe even admired this idea that yeah that if you were you're so diligent you're giving your life like that that's who you should be people that go off and they listen to bad music with swear words i don't know like i wanted to be the model mormon you know what i'm saying yeah and so yeah i would repent repent repent and um i i when i was at byu i told myself i wouldn't swear you know i wouldn't i wouldn't go too far with girls right we'd make out we'd do whatever else but i would never go like break the law of chastity which is no sex no touching you know over under the shirt i wouldn't do any of that and um but man like i i had a lot of girls i was interested in and my former kind of past like came out i think people were interested in this california i think i was charismatic way more than i was now than i am now and um baseball player i did really well i i was an all-american my freshman year what yeah i i mean i legit not like i was a freshman all-american varsity yep yep like america i led the team in wins um i think i was like seven and one my only loss was to oregon state in at in corvallis they had won the college world series like two years before um i threw like a complete game shutout against new mexico in the mountain west tournament i like played pitched three games against tcu who's a top 10 program at the time like and i i don't i'm not afraid i'm like dude i was gonna go to ucla or usc or who's new mexico who's unlv why do i care like i'm not overwhelmed by you and so i had a great season i got offered to play summer ball which is like for uh serious baseball players you are always playing baseball summer ball is what you do for college athletes kind of get looks by pro teams and the one of the premier leagues at the time was called the cape cod league and it's out there you know in cape cod and i got offered to play there again turned it down so i could go on my mission and um yeah got my mission call in in uh in april got called to the north carolina rally mission i called it rally because i i didn't do very well i guess on my state capitals and um was kind of bummed i i wanted to go to either south africa and teach um the sister missionaries family who who had taught me or samoa where faith and her family were from and i got north carolina and i'm like north carolina like that sucks you know and it didn't i i still have super fond memories of people and and that state but yeah so during this time i actually opened my mission call on byutv not live but it ended up becoming a feature called the marcoslan story and i read my mission call and they talked about my conversion experience and i was kind of like a darling you know and and there was a mormon times article that was written about me and my conversion and then of course i mean right yeah i'm the golden child and and look like i i'm also a talented baseball player and you know mormonism will maximize their popular people as much as possible for a good pr and i was proud of it i'm like yeah like if i'm gonna be mormon i might as well be popular too you know but yeah yeah a mess you were celebrated oh yeah and and it just that celebration john i think only served to confirm what was already happening yeah so i'm like i for example i i remember being at university of utah playing against some of these heathens you know at the u with beards like how could they and i remember we had a double header and i i had a pocket-sized copy of the book of mormon i got from the byu bookstore and in between games i'd be eating lunch and reading the book of mormon and i remember one of my religion professors said like you need as i think as uh ezra benson who's like read the book of mormon for 30 minutes every day if you do this blah blah and then marion romney who says if you read the book of mormon i promise you that not one of your kids will ever be lost and i'm like well if it works that way maybe it works in reverse so that the kid will bring the parents back so there's so many of these reinforced things that i was picking up that were reinforced and i think unintentionally but also i think i was the model i think what i was doing was exactly what you should be doing as a convert you've given up your old life and you're brand new and i was all in man and at the cost of losing my friends separating myself from my family losing college scholarships losing a you know top programs baseball uh professional baseball offers i would give at that point i would give anything up for mormonism and so it was really it was hard because it kept being affirmed and i kept getting and i was doing well right i was seven and one for some reason i forgot that i had always been good at baseball and i'd always been successful but now mormonism gets the credit i'd be in on my head in in the in the mount on on the mound in my head i would be saying prayers god please please help me like my arm would hurt but please help my arm not hurt just silently and so anytime i did well god got the credit which is fine um except it just reinforced all of the internalized shame you know that i only was succeeding because i was repenting and i had to repent because i was bad and so that wound just got deeper and deeper and with shame it gets more and more silent and and shame grows in the dark and so i told nobody nobody knew anything the more i did bad things you know if i if i hooked up with girls or you know got angry at somebody when they cut me off on the road i would just tuck it down nobody knew and i i do remember talking to my um my bishop like about my my past life like before i was baptized because i still felt guilty about it and he's like well you were baptized and i'm like i know but i'm still guilty he's like have you done anything else and i i begin searching and plumbing the depths every day i'm like what could i have possibly done and um you know even in anything remotely close kissing for too long or being like whatever like just all of it i just felt like i always needed to get it off my chest and again from mission prep with randy bott he's like hey you know you you have these these interviews so that when you're on your mission and these thoughts come back into your mind you say i've met with my bishop and my stake president and i am clean so i'm just like you know constantly trying to get these things off my chest whether it be through prayer and once it wouldn't work with prayer i'd go back to my bishop my stake president and i i wasn't doing anything wrong so therefore i shouldn't have any like restrictions but i was still so afraid because i didn't want to miss out on a mission or you know be shamed or or not take the sacrament have girls look at it and be like oh my gosh like what's gonna happen here you know and so all that goes to say i'm we're we're in kansas um my mission call arrives at fate's family's house in highland and we're flying all the way back from kansas it's this long miserable day with multiple flights and trips and we go all the way to highland to provo and then i have to go back to highland wait for byu tv cameras to get there open up my my mission call and it's just this whirlwind day and you know my mom and dad are on the phone and i think you know looking back my mom's probably hurting because it's like why is he there why is he doing this and i don't i i don't register um what like where i got called to later that night and then i immediately start temple prep class at this point i'm living with um faith brother and a couple other of of her brother's friends in provo uh going to a family ward up in grandview and um [Music] had temple prep class and temple prep prepared me for nothing you know um i just have to say your parents had to have felt like they were losing you like they had i can't it's hard to imagine from what you've told me of two parents that were more dedicated to their sons yeah son son daughter son so three kids loving gave everything and from their perspective and i guess especially and you've already said this but from your mom's perspective it's like i've given everything and they're just taking they're taking my my golden child yeah they're taking him away and losing him for sure and it was like even you mentioning that just like it makes me sad for what i didn't know are you an emotional yeah for sure like i i i feel that the tears welling up just because i didn't even know what i was doing i obviously we're self-centered when we're young and i think that's you know intentional and and good but like and my mom who still like even if they like pushed back my mom and dad it was never out of they were just like we don't want you to lose who you are they loved my personality they loved that i was fun and gregarious and they didn't want me to become a robot they didn't want me to be uptight about what i wore on sundays they didn't want me to stress out if i if i drank like a snapple you know with tea they just wanted me to be happy and i was telling them this is what will make me happy and and at the time i really believed it and they wanted to i think they wanted to believe it for me especially my mom um but i think they also had the wisdom of being older and saying i don't think so and even like we'll we'll get to it later but like eventually i you know leave seminary and i am telling my mom about what i'm going through and i still had a hard time admitting that she was right because i think there's some sadness i'm like crap i just like we'll come back to that yeah for sure yeah so so your dad your dad didn't like reactivate and your mom didn't join no i yeah yeah none of that so like my i went to the temple they supported you by letting you do it for sure for sure my my dad started coming back to church after i went on my mission um because we'll get there let's go follow the calendar so yeah perfect so my so i go to the temple in may i go to the draper temple because it was the first open house it was the first one i'd ever actually been through i'm like wow this is gorgeous and to be honest i think temples are really pretty i think they're of course they are i think they're goddamn they're multi-million dollar edifices exactly and like man we just know like conference just happened why are there 20 freaking temples announced don't get ahead of yourself sorry yeah burly and i'm just still mad but anyway like like and it's and it's beautiful and so i i'm floored and they don't tell you what's going on i'm in temple prep they don't they talk about very abstract like read about the garden of eden like none of this prepared me not a word about what covenants were going to be made just covenants will be made you know and like you will have blessings and promises and all of those things remember the ideals of it sound really good then i show up and i like i go to you know lds distribution i buy like the temple clothes i'm like what is this green freaking thing like what am i going to be doing with this apron what is i i don't even know it's called the apron at the time i just bought what they told me to and i like knew about garments but i'm like look i'm like dude i wear like a white shirt underneath and like boxers like what's different you know and i remember getting there with faith family and i felt so loved and supported by them that this is none of this is a critique on them but i remember getting there and doing like the washing and anointing and being like this is getting really cruelty really quick [Music] and and faith's mom said just focus on the words of the of the anointing and and to be honest i still think they're like they're powerful i don't believe them but i still think that there's there it's a powerful idea but i i'm focusing on that and then we get into the room and it gets really really quick really cruelty really quick where i'm like okay like why are we separated god will not be mocked i'm like like very very mormons don't show emotion really other than just like hi brother like really chipper and happy in the temple where it's like god will not be mocked i'm like what on earth or you will be in my power exactly exactly and so i'm like what is going to happen like they they said we're going to hear about the the garden of eden story i don't know we're going to be watching a movie and that movie was bad i mean it's bad it's bad acting it's bad there's a lot of bad about it um and just like all of a sudden i'm like raising my hands and i'm doing stuff and then like once they're like okay now you will put on the robes of the priesthood and i'm seeing people get dressed and in my mind it was like red alert colt colt colt colt cult colt cole it freaked me out i'm like this is exactly what people were warning me about like immediately i'm like uh oh and i i hated it i hated it i hated the whole experience i absolutely but but here's the thing the temple is supposed to be the pinnacle of our mormonism yeah the sacred thing yes and the closest we can get to god and and so i'm just sitting there like i'm not even thinking about what i'm saying man and all of a sudden i'm making covenants i'm like give my whole life like what like but it's like if oh and beforehand they're like if you want to leave leave now i'm like i don't even know what i'm gonna do at that point i was like i guess it's probably gonna be fine and we're just wearing white clothes that's cool we're all united you know and then all of a sudden i'm like now i'm in i can't where do i get out yeah for those who don't know we're talking about when you go to the temple for the first time right before everything starts they give you a chance to get up and leave but like you're surrounded by your loved ones and where you're gonna go and are you gonna make a big dramatic scene so that's kind of the way for them to say well you know you chose to be here but you have no idea what you're about to experience and it's like this roller coaster ride of weirdness yeah and you've been mentioning a lot recently which i totally love about informed consent there is no informed consent with the temple and recently there's been books like rosie card who wrote like house of light you know and it's about being explicit about the temple with the covenants early and like good on her you know i i'll talk about this in seminary i taught very clearly as clearly as i could from quotes about about the temple because i didn't want people to be blindsided and then david benner gets up and says hey let's make sure that we are explicit about this so my traumatic experience there by the way that's only because we pummeled them for over a decade you know to where we kind of forced them yep to make changes yep and and only you know somewhat recently like i mean within the last three four years have i found out oh crap like they changed it dramatically from the 90s yeah that's what i went through yeah i truly and we'll have to talk about i don't know how you like i was freaking nothing same thing i mean you're doing things you're making these hand motions of slitting your own throat of literally cutting out your own heart and then disemboweling yourself and you're you're you're told that's what you're doing and you make the these motions and you're feeling like this is the most violent uh scary uh thing i've ever been involved in and immediately it's like but it's the most righteous it's the pinnacle of mormon righteousness so it must be good so i must be uh the exact same thing that's crazy it's so like yeah because for me i that makes total sense and i just i just can't believe like man like people were that in like you were that in you were that committed oh yeah and then how insulting when people are like oh you just didn't want to commit i'm like do you know what we had to do to stay anyway yeah it's just i get heated about that lazy learners and lacks disciples just conference anyway so i i'm still like the whole rest of the experience and then we start you know uh you know a prayer circle where there's like hand motions and like repeating words i'm like this is straight up a cult like kind of chanting yes yes yeah yeah i'm lit like literally i'm thinking this is a cult like just red alarms i i don't hear a single word of what's going on because all it is is red alarm like danger danger danger get out get out get out and um by the time we get to the celestial room which which truthfully i still i i would never go back there i still think there could be repurposed uses for that of meditative places think of notre dame in paris and how just therapeutic and beautiful these beautiful spaces could be but like seeing everybody wearing temple robes there takes the whole thing away from me you know like i it's not that but it's this beautiful room it's quiet it's one of the few places at the time for me where i could make you know just quiet in my own life and i sat there with faith's family and i'm just trying to justify and justify and justify and finally it hits me i'm thinking of the leadership of the church and how they're branded as very smart doctors and phds and theologians harvard mbas yep and i'm like shaken law school yes yeah they're you know supreme court justice they utah state supreme court justice and i'm like if they're smart if they can keep doing it i can keep doing it yeah so my anchor was prophets yeah my anchor wasn't myself my anchor wasn't even jesus it wasn't this is from jesus because where does it ever say any about this in scripture no i mean the garden of eden i'm like the garden of eden that's not the temple like you know and so like for me i i clung to we know this from my experience reading enzymes clinging to prophets uh at byu loving living prophets class clinging to prophets temple prophets it's all about prophets my whole faith truly was built on what they were saying and their interpretation of scripture right because i didn't know how to read this what mark twain calls chloroform in print i don't know how to read this so i need uh you know my my book from my religion professor that has all these quotes to explain why these verses matter and so it was prophets that i without realizing that i was really like clinging to yeah which ends up setting up a massive fall later because we find out oh they're not what they claim to be but i um that that's what i felt i thought profits can do this and then what does everyone say just keep going back keep going back keep going back keep going back it will get better so i like once a week at least i'm in the temple with a full class load baseball i mean we're gone literally half 22 days of school not days days of school we missed in one semester and i'm still in the temple at least once a week before i'd pitch i would go to the temple like i was always trying to make it work it never got better it just got more i'm more used to it every time those freaking green aprons every time i'm like why it's so weird and the hats i'm like what is this and then i would hate it and i get to this last room i'm like okay finally peace yeah and so yeah but just so much self-distortion and the sadness of not trusting my own authority man like i i'm i'm proud that i'm getting that back i think that's the focus of what i hope to do with my friends and others hey you you trust yourself you know what's right trust yourself and definitely was with my students and so we'll obviously get to that but um yeah but you knew you knew there was something wrong oh totally totally and the literally the only thing was these guys are smart they can't be deceived and you had that feeling that one time absolutely right absolutely deny that yep well if i feel that then i guess everything else has to be true too right if you had that feeling that one time yeah the rest has to be true correct and they have you for life for life because you had that feeling that one time right and if you get back then then you're bad because god spoke to you yeah and like obviously they tell us like hey keep getting more and so i can justify and say yeah yeah i'm getting spiritual experiences where you know i i read a verse about being angry and then i had an opportunity to practice it later i'm like that was divine you know or i'm feeling crappy about myself and someone says god loves me i'm like wow that's the spirit so there's more and more of that like yeah look it's just piling up the evidences are piling up and none of it was really um doctrinal evidence that i was worried about or historical evidence i truly didn't know anything i just wanted it to feel good yeah and so yeah i get my you know i get my mission go to the temple keep going to the temple i go back home to la for a couple um a couple weeks before going on my mission there's obviously family tension there my mom and i kind of had like a big falling out where she was really getting on me and my grandma not my mormon grandma my mom's mom we were out to dinner my grandma was like michelle stop do not talk anymore and i've never heard my grandma like kind of talk that way because it was it was getting heated but now looking back it's just my mom wanting to be protective of her baby you know and um yeah so i go to north carolina um or i go to the mtc you know i'm uh i forget what i'm a zone i'm a zone leader a district leader one of the two you know yeah yeah one of those and like again i feel like i was charismatic talented convert whatever else and so i i was kind of like the golden child and i loved it man i was in i was in i was in but man i was home sick even though i was right there in provo i had lived just a couple miles down the road at the dorms and it just hit me bad bad bad it just was the worst like so so rough my companion is really sweet but he actually was on the autism spectrum got honorably excused from serving a mission got a second opinion came back and i'm a jerk cocky kid i don't know how to how to cope with somebody who is not uh i speak really fast i think really fast i move really fast somebody who's not like that i felt tethered i felt bound it was just just so much you know and you know the mtc is just like a water hose of indoctrination and all of these things and i was just pumped to get out to north carolina all i wanted to do was to tell people they were loved and i thought that the best way for that to be done was for them to join the mormon church but truthfully i just wanted people to feel that sense of security and safety the way that that i had craved since i was a seventh grader you know so i get out to um north carolina meet my mission president he's a great he's a good man very strict you know how mission presidents can kind of fluctuate you'll get some that are very loose and understanding and others that are like by the book the mission president before very loose our mission president comes a transfer right before us so he's he's new and he like cleans house sends a bunch of missionaries home like gets rid of missionaries in a lot of areas and is like elders you're going to be doing this this this this read the missionary handbook every day have it memorized like buy the book here's the problem it wasn't so much i mean there are problems with that approach but it's the person that i was i was already that yeah i needed somebody to be like hey elder rosalind just relax you're doing good you've given up your life god is happy with you you know you're already high strung yes you didn't need to be strong dude i read i read my my the most heartbreaking things i read my first couple months of my missionary emails to my mission president and like trying so hard to be happy and just being like i'm working really hard nobody wants to hear from us but we're biking 17 miles a day and knocking on thousands of doors and like i'm hurting a little bit and he's like well if you don't feel like you're doing good then you're not doing good and the lord will tell you and like i had a moment like a couple years ago where i just read these journals and i just like i just said like to my former self i'm like all you needed was somebody to say that you're doing good i never got that from anyone in mormonism i got it from the people i love from my you know my in-laws i got it from faith family i never ever got it from the leaders that i i had and so i'm so sorry hey thanks john i but the problem was that i kept going deeper and deeper to earn love and i bought into conditional god and i bought into all these things and my mission president was very big on personal revelation read the book of mormon every day with a question in mind you'll get an answer and write in your journal and i did it diligently and um so i i got really big on that idea of getting guidance revelation what have you and i truly felt like i was inspired and but but i was so worked up like there was days that i would just be here's the i think the best example of how high-strung i was there's a day i was in my third era i'd been out 18 months and i was just so i felt so guilty if i wasn't out the door at 10 a.m and back at 9 00 or 9 30 hopefully we were teaching some 9 30 but then i was guilty if i was back at 8 59 or 9 31 you know it was just non-stop and we woke up and it was like a rainy day in north carolina windy miserable gray just horrible i just knew it was going to be terrible day we had literally nothing on our schedules we had go by 16 miles to a place we've never gone hopefully we'll knock some doors find somebody we've never found and the weather just kept getting worse and worse we were living with members um and who again who i love and i i just i had this internal battle where i'm like i'm the zone leader i'm the senior like a senior zone leader i'm the one that needs to make sure that we're doing what's right i just like we can't knock doors it never works who wants to see two i'm six foot five most of my companions are around six foot in dark clothes knocking who wants to open the door you're a single mom like you're gonna open up the door it's creepy it's scary like i i hated knocking doors but i did it because that's how you get the spirit of missionary work and i never had a single person not one person i don't we barely taught anybody that we knocked on doors with but definitely nobody got baptized from from um tracting you know so i'm working myself up i know it's not successful but i feel this pressure and oh man like the weather keeps getting worse so i think okay what can we do okay we can call members and just say hey we're thinking about you which to be honest i think is really good we care about you how can we help you i feel guilty for it because it's not missionary work we're supposed to be finding new people and you know it's noon we took an early lunch because i'm like i still don't want to go and i'm beating myself up and then the weather gets really dark and the power goes out and the members come home and they're like elders there's gonna be a tornado you know and i'm like okay well i guess we're not going now and sure enough tornado hits and it's it north carolina didn't really get tornadoes too often but it hits literally in the area that we were supposed to go we were going to be only on bikes 16 miles away from where we were we would have been destroyed i still felt guilty that night that i didn't knock doors i'm glad i didn't die but i'm like god please forgive me that i wasn't out doing missionary work that day that's the type of high-strung missionary i was and i had nobody that would ever tell me that i was doing good enough and all i needed was was just my mission president to be like elder rosen you're a hard-working missionary you're a good man i i think i was successful in north carolina we don't get a lot of baptism we had 40 baptisms or 24 24 with families you know and so like i feel like that's successful one a month yeah in the south yeah and um yeah i still didn't feel good so it's just it's just shame on shame on shame my mission president was very driven we met elder richard scott when he was there and he he was very loving um but i i have this aura about prophets right like they're just they see into our soul i believe that and then uh david bednar comes man he is he's just like my mission president he's high strung stand up when we're there we were we had this whole thing and he's like hey we'll have dinner and then we got too loud and he's like and you wonder why we're not baptizing the spirit has left we had such a sacred like you see what i'm saying and i'm just thinking it's just reinforced over and over my mission president is getting he's a businessman he's all about numbers which i get and he's getting pressure from his leaders so he's passing it on and my mission president only towards the end started finally saying he he would say i trust you um which i knew meant a lot to him to say that only towards the end of my two years and his last 12 months did he start saying i love you to the elders and um like it totally meant a lot and we're always supposed to follow our mission president so it's so hard to even even talk badly about him because i i messaged him recently like he doesn't know a lot of what's going on um but like i still have internalized affinity for them and and i believe in the goodness of every person but it's still hard for me to even convey a sense of dislike for them you know or for him or for anyone totally and so my mission was an experience my first cr another example of strictness my my first christmas zoom had our or what was it at the time not facetime skype was a thing and missionaries were getting to skype i didn't have that opportunity one hour call and you're done and i felt guilty because my call went like 102. you know i was praying like forgive me for talking to my family you know so is this so sad like it's so sad man like they've and they've changed a lot of this absolutely made huge stinks about all this and that's and that's the thing and then and then now people are like see we're good and i'm like dude but the the people you've run over in your wake without an apology like an apology like we're not just i'm glad for the missionaries i don't want them having to not talk to their families every week i want them to be able to call whenever they want yeah but man wouldn't it have been nice we are so sorry for all the strictness we've provided to our missionaries before and the harm we've caused we are so excited to announce these following changes that statement would have done so much for me yeah but it's just the no we're moving on revelation you know anyway so i had 102 my i called my mom and my mom was like so you're not having a good time huh interesting and she was like kind of making digs i think she was again just trying to help me tap into my own trusting myself but i was like mom i'm not leaving and she backed off and from that point on like i was committed and that homesickness went away and i don't know why what that was but that was kind of the moment where i'm like i'm here my mom knows i'm here i'm staying here and ended up having a really good experience meeting good people well fairly good right like i didn't realize the um the internalized pain trauma that happened from that you know yeah so then go home and and had a again successfully was the stuff with elder gonzalez oh crap yeah okay thank you jeez can't believe i forgot there's also something about questions inviting revelation yeah so a big one was keep asking questions keep asking questions of my mission president which is gonna be a huge foreshadowing of just it's okay to ask what's the matter with asking well i mean we know what the matter with asking is because if you're honest in your search you're going to come across things that will not mesh with the the predominant narrative so you're having questions as a missionary a little bit but but more presented from me like from others like oh do you know that joe smith had multiple wives i'm like no he didn't truly uh nope did you know that like black people could have the priesthood so i'm like yeah yeah yeah but that was just that wasn't doctrine you know but people in north carolina were smart right they're they are biblically savvy they're like where does it say this in the bible what does it say that and i'm like i don't know i just joined the church a year ago please stop you know so enough yeah enough where i could like the seed was planted um but even just the idea that it's okay to ask questions we don't need to be afraid of questions that was planted very strongly um i don't think the intent was ever yeah but go look it up on these sites or see these things and i definitely think the intent was always remain faithful to scripture which i was my entire time teaching seminary and and and forward but i feel like it allowed me to say questions are good david benner same thing our whole thing was ask questions and get guidance from the spirit and so it was instilled in me that questions are acceptable not just acceptable but a good thing a necessary thing to growth that's good yeah and that will be passed on to my seminary students that eventually will lead me towards other directions my experience with elder gonzalez so we had one of those i don't know what was going on but i think my mission present was getting some belated confessions from people and in between the time i was at byu they you know had sex masturbated you know any number of things you know drank something touched a girl touched a girl's breasts or whatever correct they didn't repent correct and then they'd get out to the mission field feel guilty and then confess exactly and he was not liking that people were waiting until correct getting out to the mission to repent and confess for things that they should have taken care of yep back home spot on spot on so and i felt that's for not i know i always like it's so weird because i consider you know i've been on the non-mormon side i've been on the super mormon side now the post-mormon side and i remember i forget how even like words like steak center i literally thought we were gonna have steak like just all of those things it's so much so i think he was getting tired of having so much so he taught a ver like he went around zone conferences and did like a very repent repent repent lesson like now search your soul find the sins i you need to dig up whatever's there and you know that was already a problem for me but in between the time i was at uh byu and went on my mission there were a couple girls that i had possibly gone maybe a little bit too far with and my memories hazy john i have to tell you my wife if she was here she would tell you the same thing i have the worst memory now and i truly think it's because i forced myself to forget every time i was reminded of the bad things i did before i was mormon i just nope i don't want to remember and like my memory sucks now bad and so i'm making up stories of i know that this happened but did this happen here and etc etc and i just i had a couple incidents with girls that i could think of and i'm like is this pre-mission like preview where you went did i confess to a bishop i don't remember so i told my mission president very seriously he's like okay i will need to have a conversation i'll let you know how this goes and so i'm in limbo fearing what so afraid that i'm going to get sent home because i'm home early yeah and i mean look at at that time i was probably 20 something months in and like i was a good missionary yeah and like and so i i just felt so worried because we know what happens in mormon culture especially at byu if you're an early return missionary it's changing a little bit now but if you're an early return missionary girls are like he's he's defected nope not marrying him and so i was like my life will be ruined if i go home early and even if it's only four months so my mission president calls his uh area you know supervisor whatever who's elder marco gonzalez of the 70 and explains the whole thing he says hey i just had to talk with elder gonzalez he's gonna have to go to his supervisor i don't know who he goes to to see if you can stay and i'm like oh my gosh she's like here's what i want you do in the meantime you need to hand write letters to all of these girls you need to call your or you need to email your parents and tell them what you've done like another thing was a friend stole an ipod and he left it in my car and i kept it and it's like you need to give back all those things so my my dad who you know how good like he is my dad can't find this stupid ipod um he buys an ipod for 400 gives it to this friend and says hey um mark took this from you and he's like i don't even remember that but thanks my dad goes to sports chalet and gives him 50 bucks for her glasses that one of my friends sold my dad's going around doing all of this work um like i remember calling him because my mission like we never get to call him like dad this or i was actually via email and told him what might happen he's like i'm so sorry how can i help what's going on and and then i was like sorry dad like the hour of email's over and and like i couldn't even break that you know so anyway um elder gonzalez comes back and says tells my mission prison i can stay my mr prison says cool i need you to write letters now to your baseball coach to tom holmoe who's the athletic director at byu let them know what you've done because it was right around the time of brandon davies who had broken the honor code you know had sex with a girl and left out of the sweet 16 or whatever um jimmer for debt area right i remember and everyone north carolina big basketball place like you're byu you you know jim i'm like yeah no jim we're in the same weight room yeah for sure like is he good they're like yeah he's amazing because jimmy our freshman year wasn't anything and then all of a sudden gym romania you know and i missed it all so of course i did but but um i got to stay and i was like instead of feeling abused and violated i felt grateful thank you church thank you for being merciful to me um for these things that i may or may not have done or may or may not have already repented for and on top of all of that that aren't even bad right like i'm a 19 year old dude who made out with a girl and maybe went too far that's bad but the internalized shame and trauma that came from that man it was just so deep and um yeah i should have to say i my master's thesis was on for my um psychology degree it was on scrupulosity which includes hyper confessing it also includes making up memories about possible sins you committed because you're so desperate to be viewed as clean and righteous and it sounds like you were experiencing some like this is obsessive compulsive disorder diagnosable major 100 major anxiety disorder yeah no question about that and and like i there's the church is kind of exacerbating exactly they're not only the cause because previous to doing this there's nothing wrong yeah it's normal yeah you go smoke weed you go like i don't think that's like i'm not i never would tell somebody like no it's just high school stuff exactly exactly and so like but now all of a sudden it's bad so now they've created the problem and they're the cure but by being the cure it's also creating more harm yeah and so um yeah it's a it's so true and i've had a couple students that and that's a huge part of my story seeing their trauma similar things to me and me wanting to protect them like you're not doing what i had to go through and so that that shapes me as a teacher but um yeah i get to stay my mission present moves me to another area um which was which was fine for the last six weeks i also have to tell you i was so strict that i got an email from the detroit tigers while i was on my mission hey we want to draft you just reply to this email say you're interested but we had a rule no meeting with people outside of your family or mission president so i let the email sit deleted in my inbox never got drafted holy moly yep drafted twice yep so yep they uh man this is why there's so much hurt where i'm like i gave up everything for you and it's left and right from the beginning to the end just constant abuse and not feeling good enough the limited praise i got or the reward of baptism or seeing people find joy i'm like i'll suffer all of that like i'll suffer all the pain i have so i can see those that little bit of joy so that maybe my family can be together like my patriarchal blessing says one day your family will will be an eternal family as you have anticipated as long as you remain faithful so i'm like well i want my family forever therefore i will endure whatever the church does to me so that i can ensure families not just can be but will be forever that conditional man the conditional nature of god in mormonism was internalized in ways that i couldn't realize at the time you know and it and it's toxic and it's so far it's so far from who god is or should be you know so anyway that's that's my experience we turned down detroit tigers just deleted the email didn't even say a word i think i might have emailed my mission president said hey can i email them back and i didn't maybe hear back and so that just went by the wayside you know oh yeah great my coach writes me a letter after i confessed my sins to him for some reason and he's totally understanding mark i'm really proud of you love him uh vance law one of one of the best people i know he's just truly a good good good man um i think i got a letter back from tom homo too that was like mark you're you're it's so weird right so weird you're like writing the athletic director of byu to confess since from high school that you may or may not have committed yeah what a grueling yeah inhumane process for sure and even my my like this girl's weird yes the girls i wrote they're probably getting these letters saying why why is he writing these letters yes what are they doing like what i yeah i don't know what the rationale was and that's not a normal thing like people don't confess to their athletic directors like you know at division one university exactly i'm like dude if i would have gone to irvine man i would have been fine like i wouldn't have to write letters about having like touching a girl's boob over like you know like over their shirt you know but anyway it's just it's just so sad and so um did you tell us what the final gonzalez verdict was yeah i could stay okay and i think it was largely because i had four months left okay no he's so close he's like just like yeah my mission president was very direct he's like all i knew was basically you should feel so lucky that you're staying and write these letters write these girls confess don't do anything again blah blah blah blah like i mean oh he took my recommend i forgot what he took my recommend that's holy temple recommended he took my recommend and because i remember on my exit interview he gave it back he's like you can now have it or he signed it actually he's like i will now give you a recommend but i'm like how in the world am i going to be a missionary and not be able to go to the temple how does that make sense how am i so now i'm like asked to give a priest a blessing i'm like wait but i can't go to the temple he didn't restrict that he just said no you can't have your recommend i didn't miss a temple trick but he was just like nope nope you have to basically you have to earn it again and i'm thinking like what in the world what what more can i do i can't work harder i can't read more scripture i can't like i literally am spending every minute like repenting confessing reading like you i wish maybe we'll have my mission trainer who's a part of the story because he gets fired from freaking seminary but like you can ask him i am the strictest human in the world especially on my mission nobody worked harder than me maybe people worked equally as hard but i'm telling you like i was so in i literally couldn't do more and so all that does is i will never be good enough i physically cannot give up more i can't work harder i can't be more so if it's still not good i'm not good i will never be good and that was the message that just kept getting perpetuated perpetuated and eventually i get my recommend back as i go home and i'm clean again and i have to email my stake president and all that crap too so so you know we when you study like scientology and you learn about their auditing and how they use stuff against you later you think oh well that's just awful right but we've got our own form of that because these confessions and these worthiness standards that no one can really or few can really ever live up to then you you you add the guilt and the shame and kind of this weeks or months of like we may send you home you're really lucky what does that do to your psychology what does that do to your commitment to the church when they've got you on this worthiness hamster wheel where you're always feeling terrible about yourself what is that what type of bond does that create for you to the church i'm asking i mean it's so deeply unhealthy it's so what does it make you feel i i feel like i can't exist without them like i need them yeah it becomes very co-dependent right where we fuel each other and it's this toxic terrible terrible relationship if this was i eventually start teaching this in seminary but i say if god is that i don't want that god yeah but i didn't i didn't realize that at the time you're like i'm bad yep because that is god because only way for me to be have a chance is what is is i have to keep repenting i have to keep being mormon i have to keep tithing i have to keep serving i have to i have to be perfect as a mormon person i have to do everything right or i have to repent nonstop and it's i mean it's just it's psychological torture and it's slow and it's it's unseen and it's here's the hardest thing for me to recognize because i my default is to want to demonize people and be like no it's this one man that did it no it's not no he's a victim of the system too yeah and even prophets where did they get that crap from i don't know but i want to blame them more they're i'm easier to blame them sure but but the truth is there's no like dude sinister dude in like a in like a control center going let's do this to mark it's it's what the system does to otherwise pretty probably really good people yeah absolutely and it's just like it's like a it's like a stone cut out of the mountain without heads it's like a machine that just uh just grows and grows and can't be controlled anymore 100 right you're spot on yeah and i just yeah so one part of the story that we'll get to is just me recognizing everybody is good at their core i truly believe everybody so if that's true where do bad people get bad things oh must be bad systems and then i start you know critiquing but but yeah the trauma man it's it's so real and so heavy and so hard and getting back to la i was like i mean north carolina is a lot slower a couple of the times i served in were you know one stoplight towns or what have you um and even in general the bigger cities like raleigh compared to downtown l.a like night and day and i come back and i feel like i'm just in a like the epicenter of sin you know and i'm driving again you're gogging vegas are being taken first you know and uh maybe san francisco because i guess like i was told that i had hate gays on my mission people on my mission and so it's just so um it was so hard you're in sodom and gomorrah when you get off your mission yep and i'm just like get me out of here like my sinning family and um that's the worst and i i knew i i didn't want to be that but i couldn't help it and the judgment i don't remember what i said or did but i know that my sister was like you sucked when you came home we did not like being around you you were so judgmental you were so mean and um yeah really tragic i i did fail to mention my my brother ends up getting baptized while i'm on my mission okay about a month in my dad starts going back to church because my brother can't drive so um that's the thing my mom now feels very talk about your brother getting baptized yeah so i i was super pumped i'm like it's happening right like i'm faithful i'm on a mission my first month my brother gets baptized what how did he give it so he i think just kind of saw me i've kind of been i think i was a role model and i think he saw me and was like i'm interested in this and we had a conversation right before i left we went to this nice like resort with my grandparents in palos verdes california and we had to talk about hey tommy like you need to read this book if you can if you can read this and you get a testimony i want you to get baptized and so i think he was looking up to me and um he you know he said he read it and then he had his own internalized shame because he he joined before high school or like yeah right before high school started for him then he did a lot of the similar things i did but he was mormon at the time so he had same internalized shame but he was actually mormon mine was i was washed clean i got all the bad out you know and so my dad um was watching him and my dad started coming back to church and my dad got reactivated wow crazy right he ends up doing really good he stops drinking um he's able to get a temple recommend before i go to byu i'm my dad's escort at the temple and at in la temple and it's i feel so vulnerable because i know how much i hate the temple and seeing my dad like very kind of childlike like i don't really know what's going on here and me feeling like responsible for that and being like i'm like wanting to soften the blow of like this is weird crap man um but yeah so my dad uh you know he'd wear garments but i think they just got uncomfortable he's a bigger dude so he was hot and anyway my mom felt very alienated it became very divided in my family it's the it's the three guys um versus the two girls and the three guys are mormon and the two girls are not and there's a lot of division and a lot of frustration i think with my mom feeling like my dad betrayed her um i i thought you were gonna take my side and now you've taken their side which will play out significantly when i get married in the temple because that was a big big big deal for um a lot so yeah then i go to go back to byu play baseball so your mom didn't succumb to the peer pressure no her husband reactivates her two sons not your sister didn't get baptized but but you but the lady the women held out yeah which is interesting because i i mean my experience has been that especially on my mission and in seminary more typically females have been receptive to spiritual things whereas guys are kind of like i don't want to talk about it you know and so it's interesting i actually think my mom and sister are very wise and hard-headed and i think they're able to see through some of the crap that perhaps me my dad and brother who are very um i think shame-prone i think we succumb to it because we found an idea of hope and healing and peace and all of those things that perhaps my mom and sister were more resistant to in a good way yeah so and my sister is at texas christian university like she's not going to be mormon like that's not going to happen there and then goes to grad school at university of north carolina and like it's just she's not surrounded by it you know um that's lubbock right yeah okay no it's in uh foreign yeah so the rich the rich girl they always said like the oil the oil family's cool you know okay but yeah so she loved it um and yeah okay fun so you uh so you're you uh get off your mission yep and what do you do then go back to byu okay um after a sophomore uh sophomore yep so after going to the temple with my dad go back to byu uh and immediately man i wish i would just love like some of my teammates to be in here i was so judgmental of some of them who you know were non-members or less active members and being like this is the lord's school like how could you swear you're insufferable i was the worst and like i'm i'm very um strong in my opinions and so like if they were listening about i'm like get this off and i would never get this crap off you know and uh and they just hated me and they should have i was a freaking jerk right like this guy is so uptight and i'm just in i'm literally insufferable that's that's the word um and i'm getting you know ready at that time i come back home and i try to meet up with faith again and i just didn't feel i think probably because there's shame associated with our past yeah i want to separate and also we didn't have like we weren't always happy we were like we were 16 year olds dating and we weren't ready and so yeah flights of fights or whatever so that ship kind of sailed but i came home and i saw rachel who's my wife now right who i'd gone to school with since fifth grade and now i'm like i'm a return missionary i'm clean i'm good maybe now would be a good time i i you know i i liked her i was i thought she was pretty and all of those things now might be the time where i can maybe try no time's gonna be better than now i'm only gonna get worse right after my mission so um i asked her if she wanted to hang out i actually went on like a date with another girl um after my homecoming talk because i was just like so spiritual you know like and i could just tell that she just won and she she did want to go on a date with me and then she married a by football player uh because he was way more normal than i was and so then i asked rachel to go on that date with us to bring a date and she was like that's the weirdest thing i've ever heard why would i go on your date i'm like no bring a friend because in my stupid brain i was thinking like in the movies i would be on a date with this girl she and i'd be on a date with that guy and we'd switch because i i didn't know how to bridge that friend zone gap with her you know and so um we hung out a couple times i went up to byu before she went up to rexburg she was at byu idaho which sad story we found out i got into byu and she didn't she had always wanted to go to byu a mormon family yeah exactly so she her dad was a bishop her grandpa's a patriarch her uncle was our bishop now is the steak president in in torrance north state like byu through and through like the most mormon family you've ever seen you know like if you watch the south park episode like the nice happy blonde like that's her family and um and she didn't get in we were in ceramics class and we found out together and i'm like uh i did i just heard of byu three months before like so that was tragic but she uh she decides to come up and visit me she stays with her sister who was at byu provo and um and then we hung out and one day like we went up provo canyon and i told her that i had liked her for a long time and kind of revealed that to her and she was just listening and listening like hearing me finally share feelings i had had for her and so we i said rachel i i can't come up on playing baseball if we want to make this work you're gonna have to drive from rexburg to provo to visit and so she was willing to do that so we became an item i had to break up with like another girl that i not break up but cancel a date it was very awkward story that rachel loves to rub in on me but anyway um it was great and i had a great baseball season my arm really hurt really bad because you you had not played for two years right yeah so you were probably out of shape totally out of shape i didn't realize the pain i was in like going back lifting running all those things until my junior year when i realized wow you're not supposed to hurt just existing you know the muscles i hadn't used remember i i had signed the letter saying i'm not going to play professional baseball yeah and knowing that the lord would make up for it i did the same thing with my on my mission where i said you know what i'll go i'll work out for 30 minutes but i didn't bring a glove i didn't i did nothing and i thought god will make up for this he will make it work and um like i was in decent enough shape and i played well uh but like my arm just hurt like my elbow and like my velocity like my my speed it was typically between 88 and 92 it was down to like 84.85 which is that's not college baseball college baseball i had a minute you got to be hit in 88. and i would still get people out because i think i was competitive and what have you but something was was lacking you know and i i have an opportunity to get drafted again by the detroit tigers again okay so third time the third time they said hey we know you're in gay so eventually rachel i get engaged awesome i obviously i love her but they said we know you're engaged you're going to get married in august we need you to be playing baseball between june july and august so if you want to get drafted you can't get married in august and i'm like no i'm getting married because the temple is the most important thing in the temple marriage and i love rachel and all those things so i turned them down again so three times now once an actual like i actually got drafted the other two i would have gotten drafted but i said no because i want to prioritize other things you know which rachel and i talk all the time like we love each other i'm so glad we're married but like the reason people get married at age 22 is because they want to have sex and not feel bad about it i mean maybe not solely they love each other but also because their mission president says your number one goal now that you're leaving your mission is to get married as soon as you can and have as much babies as you can i don't know if you had that experience 100 yeah when i left so he gave me back my recommend said now go find a wife and uh and like so now i've gone from hey i just want to see pretty girls too i'm going to marry somebody and fortunately like rachel is amazing i've i think she's been amazing since i've known her but like the rush through it was certainly inspired because of mormonism yeah and and i i wouldn't i don't wish i wasn't with rachel that's what makes this story hard because i love rachel i love our life together i love our son so much but man all the other stuff became it's it's it's all mormonism i took a quiz like the life's biggest decisions and most people like did not put religion as number one but like religion is number one two three four and five for me like it's it's everything nothing in my life would be what it was if it wasn't for religion and so i'm really grateful that i'm married to rachel but yeah we got married are you sad why are you feeling sad yeah i'm feeling sad because i just what would my life have been like would i have lived in la i still love la i feel like an angelino at heart like in the winters in utah i get seasonal affective disorder and i start thinking what am i doing here and now i think about our sun where i'm like are we gonna live in utah county forever which there's nothing wrong inherently with utah county but my experience was so good like going to the beach in in october and seeing the sunset and being around people who were different being around my best friend i had black best friend i had a mexican best friend i had you know all of these people in my life from different places different i found out later religions you know we had muslim people and and hindu people and we had japanese people in utah county and it's the most homogeneous place in the whole world and i want my son to not be like one of my friends who went to school in utah county in the 80s and had their first black student show up and they had to have an assembly of how to treat a black kid in the 80s and or 90s and i'm just like that was never a thought for me and so i get sad thinking what could have been yeah and i'm like dude i gave my life to mormonism like god where were you like why am i not making millions of dollars playing baseball right now yeah and so most people most people don't make the high school varsity team but if you do you usually don't ever get to play college ball but then if you do you pretty much almost never go pro but you certainly don't get three offers to go pro right yeah yeah yeah and you gave that up for something that you believed what i believe was right true good necessary um the only way i i don't feel like the the if i would have done anything different i do i did want to like make like wow look at what i'm giving up but i also thought if i did something different i'm going to hell like or i will be punished or whatever else because i would not be true to my testimony and um that was the most important thing just remain faithful at all cost and i there's certainly some cost everybody has cost right to be mormon there is a cost for every person and i don't know if it's necessary to weigh them and say oh mine were more mine were bigger but they certainly were huge for me yeah um and so this is something that you know i've been talking to um people don't know this yet but they might by the time this episode comes out i've been talking to leah remini and mike rinder um a little bit and one of the things that uh you know they're trying to wrap their brain around it's like well mormonism doesn't put people in prisons they don't abduct people's spouses and then they disappear forever they don't send out as far as we know they don't send out you know people to harass you and and sue you into oblivion like so mormonism's it's okay like it's just this nice pleasant good people friendly and what i you know i'm not trying to say it's all bad either there's so much good like we we had that discussion at the beginning of our of this episode for sure but what it does do is it is it it persuades you to base your whole life on something that if it's true then yeah give it all up but what if you give it all up and it's not true correct that's the thing it turns out to not be true for you that's the thing what's that called oh manic get trauma let down heartbreak shat like earth shattering just i mean that there's the whole talk right it's true isn't it it's what else matters yeah and i'm like i love baseball but i guess i don't love it as much as i love mormonism i love this but i don't like man and then when the when the when the rug falls out underneath you and the irony of here's the irony of my story that we're getting to is i would still be mormon today if i wasn't so abused by seminary leaders i would still be enduring it or maybe i don't know 2020 was kind of a beast we'll get there we'll get there but yeah so um so you fall in love fall in love get married wait okay but this is the hard thing okay the hard thing is i have to tell my mom who's not welcome at the temple and so wait you and get you get engaged to rachel how many months after your mission so i get home in august and we're engaged in march okay we i i justify it by saying and it's true we did know each other since fifth grade we didn't know each other and romantically i mean it's weird because in my mind i'm thinking well it's a little bit late you know like six months you know for sure brother but for non-mormons it's like why did you get engaged in six months it's so true like my friend's not like you know i'm 31 all of my friends we graduated you know high school in 2008 they're like just not like most of them don't have college degrees they're not even thinking of settling down some of them just barely settling down yeah and i'm like i've been married since 2012. like and i have a two-year-old a couple of my friends have kids but it's not because yeah anyway but you know so um yeah it's just it's it was so i i love rachel i want and i am so grateful i'm with her i really am um but having to tell my mom because i knew i i knew it was hard um when i went on my mission but i'm the first one to get married i'm the first grandkid to get married i'm the first grandkid to you know leave home all of those things so i tell her and i mean she knows what that means i said mom we we want to do a ring ceremony for you and she's like don't patronize me i know what what you're doing in there like okay and so anyway i asked my dad who's still active at the time i asked him to be a witness he's the only member of my family at the temple in the temple um all of rachel's and mercifully we know the same people because we grew up in the same place so it did feel like i i had support but i will tell you like thinking of my family being outside thinking of my grandparents when my brother ends up getting married and had at a a wedding that wasn't in the temple um my i was talking to them at the reception and they were like our first wedding i'm like i've been married for four years like that wasn't a wedding i'm like oh i guess from your perspective it really wasn't like how would that have been a wedding so my dad does come he is our our witness and then we go on our honeymoon okay wait so your parents were not allowed to go in the temple my dad was my mom wasn't so your dad got to go but your mom had to sit outside and what was that like for her a horrid and and for her parents who were there like it was just horrid and feeling unloved and my mom who wants to be kind and supportive i know she was fighting back bitterness of who are these random people like like friends that we know my former little league baseball coach was in there who's mormon and my mom's not and just so much like she ended up telling me later she's like i'm not worthy in your god's eyes to go to this building not good enough because i drink tea because i wear dresses that don't have sleeves on them and i'm how do i answer that you know like in my mind i'm like i'm here i want you there you deserve to be there and at the same time i feel like i have to defend the church and say no the church's way is right like the word of wisdom if you drink tea you're not worthy to go to heaven what the hell sorry kind of teaching is that what is that what is that how how how can i like i did believe it i taught it but like what would that be like to be my mom and hear that and man i just it infuriates me and she ended up like she was really hurt understandably so and she basically told my dad like you have chosen your son over me we were supposed to be a team why did you go there how could you be there that's unacceptable and my dad was like i'm not choosing the church over your mom and so my dad's like i'm not going because my mom your mom is so hurt from how this was so my dad stopped going at the time i'm like but dad like jesus what would jesus want you to do i had a conversa he's like mark if your family was sick on a sunday and you had to go to the store and buy medicine would you do i'm like no keep the sabbath day holy my dad's like you're insane like you're crazy my dad's like your family mark should always come first and like it's so hard right because now as a dad i'm like yes dad you got it right family should always come first but as a son i'm thinking dad you're totally wrong look at you you're being deceived by satan mom is mom is inspired by satan mom is dragging our family down and like the fact that those were even thoughts in my head is so embarrassing is not the right word because it's not my fault but it's so like how could i have ever thought that about two people who in my whole family who have forever been so good to me you know how could a religion that's supposed to be so loving that's supposed to be all about family do this to my family you know i gave dude i gave it all up for mormonism and all it gave in return was strained family relationships heartache frustration bitterness between me and my mom like it destroyed our relationships that we're still rebuilding very slowly now and i can't like i tell my mom and i'm like i'm sorry what's are you gonna do does sorry bring us back to 2012 in the temple did sorry you know bring back the the judgment that i passed on her no it doesn't and she doesn't get it completely because she was never in so from their perspective it was my choice to be this way and for me i'm like mom i would never have like just chosen this freely like i didn't i was just doing what i thought i was supposed to do you know so yeah a lot of freaking anger there for sure and sadness obviously so your mom was left out of the temple you said your dad did or didn't my dad did go okay because you said he had said he wasn't gonna but he ended up i i'm wondering if he was really worthy or if they kind of pulled some strings he might have or or if he was he didn't tell anyone because i think my dad's always been like why don't i tell this guy like some random bishop you know yeah yeah um not to judge him no no no no like he he definitely i don't like he wasn't wearing his garments like i know that you know which is funny but like and he wasn't drinking he hasn't he hasn't had a drink of alcohol since you know my brother gets baptized or whatever so like awesome for him because it's mainly a health thing like it helps him it helps but yeah so i don't think you my dad has never been like i was in mentally like i i knew the doctor back and forth like i was a freaking seminary teacher my dad was never that way like he knew the bare bones of mormonism and so therefore yeah worthiness was not a thing for him and that's another thing like we talk about scientologists or jobs witnesses that like ostracize you know that like sean and you know you can't ever talk to your family member again kind of thing we don't do that but look at the stress and division that look at the wedge that the church was putting between you and your your mom and between your mom and your dad for sure for sure that's real it's so real it's yeah i think the word um that has come to me as i thought about that is the church allows plausible deniability no we're not look we're not scientologists we don't have that kind of shooting correct no look we're happy we love family like they they have just enough to be like we're not like them therefore we're not doing those things and that's not true but they have the right language and the right ways and their pr team and enough to be like again plausible deniability no no no no that's not you've interpreted that wrong that's not what we intended but we know look i i really truly think i was the epitome of the golden convert doing exactly what i was supposed to do join the church give up my whole life go to byu go on a mission come back teach seminary like is that not the dream if you had a convert like that wouldn't you be like wow like so i'm doing this be an all-american athlete don't don't forget that yeah thanks you're nice yeah i i i smell a small thing you're nice you're nice i like and so that's the thing though like they're like no but that was just you you didn't have to interpret it that way i'm like what do you mean like i i didn't want to but you told me or quotes from prophets or some culture some talk that got ingrained and so that possible deniability gives them enough leeway to be like i would i don't i don't think mormonism is a cult but there's cult-like behavior the plausible deniability allows them to say we're not a cult we're a religion yeah but the plausible deniability also for me says that's cult-like behavior yeah for sure and we can't call you out so there's the there's the stress of that you know yeah i it was so hard and and like so rachel i come back to provo and happy you know but my mom and our relationship is strained wait you uh you also got to mention rachel's experience of the temple and and uh reading the book of mormon thank you okay i'm so you're i got your outline here good yeah you're gonna get yourself there like for everyone that's watching like i have to draft this because i literally forget things i don't know if it's trauma response or just because i taught myself to have a bad memory because i didn't want to remember my past self so i literally have to write things down i forget so um before we get married i know that rachel's not reading the book of mormon every day which is you know again my mission president made a promise twice in our mission newsletter said for mary and romney if you read the book of mormon every day not one child will ever permanently go astray you know he said i promise you in the name of the lord my mission president multiple times so i'm i'm holding this as doctrine you know and so i'm dating rachel and realizing she's not reading the book of mormon every day like rachel you need to read every day and she comes from this awesome family exactly she so this is what i've always said about rachel rachel is what mormonism should be without having to do any of the steps to do it she is just she is good and kind and loving and funny and all of those things i had to force it into myself rachel's like what do i need to read scripture for like you know and i i couldn't compute i couldn't compute i'm like no but this is mandatory and she's like i try they're boring i'm like the scriptures are not boring like how dare you it's like so insulting you know and and um i mean she's just like looking at me like dude you are weird but she's putting up with it because she remembers that i'm normal because my high school she's like i know that this guy is normal in here somewhere you know so i think that gave me some benefit of the doubt with her um but poor rachel i just kept hounding her and hounding her and hounding her about reading reading reading and eventually said mark you need to stop i'm not going to read the scriptures and i remember saying um this is a deal breaker rich i don't think we can do this and like i go on a drive around the provo temple and i'm talking to my dad and i tell him what i'm worried about and my dad his response was mark are you an idiot he's like are you stupid you're gonna break up with rachel because she's not reading the book of mormon every day i'm like dad this is he's like mark you will be making the biggest decision of your life if you do this and i'm like well my dad's never said that before so i you know i eventually um i start praying desperately desperately like god help me like i want my family to be forever but rachel's not reading and i love her and ah and i remember having the thought like it was it was shocking to me it was it was not what i was expecting but the thought that i had was yeah and she's loved anyway and it was literally a foreign concept to me that you could not be doing all of the mormon things and still be loved i like it i i believed it when i had that like realization but i didn't believe it from my i didn't believe it because i didn't believe it for myself because i wasn't loved right by anyone nobody showed any love for me and i was doing everything so how could rachel still be loved and not even be reading the basic the book of mormon the keystone you know and that was like groundbreaking for me to to think about the fact that she was just loved perfectly so you kind of got that revelation so to speak for sure for sure and and like i again there's there's a lot of recontextualization that i know like if you know seminar teachers that i have that are friends that will listen and be like look at that justifying i'm like no but we have we have revelation that comes that we interpret in certain ways because we've been told to interpret it in those ways i think that with further understanding we can look at the same experience and say no i don't think that was god that was the name i gave for it then and that's fine but that moment i don't that doesn't have to be a divine being speaking into my ears which i don't even understand the mechanics i never understood the mechanics of how that worked but like i truly sensed my like subconscious was saying everybody's loved mark your love it was trying to like bring that back out of me so that's how i've reinterpreted it and the hard thing is in telling the story is that i know that there's judgment of like look at that like he just gave up on his testimony he just he he's denying his testimony from god and i'm like that's but but man with all the other information you know so like it's hard it's hard to be open about that but the other thing that's weird is that rachel's this good human yeah and you're like having to do all this work just to get to the point where you could think she's a decent human because she doesn't read a book that's like super hard to read and not always helpful when you do read it yeah what i mean yeah like mark twain says gloriform and print and like it wasn't until i saw that like a couple years into teaching seminary i'm like dang it rachel like she knew it you know with mark twain but but no you what you just conveyed is exactly what she would say if she was here like and what she told me she's like mark do you know how hurtful that is that i'm not loved as i am by you that i have to be doing this in order to be loved fully yeah and i'm like no but she's like no you don't get it she hung up and i was like like she held my feet to the fire what am i supposed to say like because she's right that is how i thought it's not what i deep down felt but it's what i felt like i had to feel and um there's also an element of patriarchy to it where you're like this return missionary and you're like getting all righteous and she's not living it like she could so it's there's a power dynamic there where you're kind of making i'm not saying you're trying to do this but the system is leading you as the returned missionary as the guy who's doing all the things that you should be doing to make her inferior to you 100 percent in the relationship i'm not i don't know i'm just no you're you're a spot on you're you're spot on and like for me it was like how do i how do i not manipulate that was never a word i would ever use but how do i like convince her how do i show her and i'm like well the doctor of government says with an increase of love and da da da da but i'm like do i do it with anger do i do it by withholding affection like none of that is healthy and that's totally patriarchal that i can't just listen to my my wife or my future wife and say yeah for sure the way that you feel is the way you feel and i'm just gonna let you do it because you have your own agency and your own thought process like i absolutely was not on board with that and so it was it created a lot of tension eventually i got over it which i'm glad for but i just want to make the point that like even when you're on your mission like if we're thinking about like just general humans on this planet trying to do what's right compare you to like all these high school buddies right or or rachel like not reading the book compare her and like what type of life she's living with like so many other humans on the planet at that age these are like some high quality humans and you're all feeling like you're worthless and terrible and there's all these manufactured crises that are literally just like made up and and causing all this sadness and trauma when it's two really good people that should be like feeling like you're on cloud and top of the world doing all this good stuff and everybody feels awful yeah it's it's so like it's so like it's seriously the irony i i remember at one point it hit me when i was teaching seminary like what in the world like i literally i told my because i felt guilty one day when i was teaching and i told my uh my students about my friends i'm like dude they're they didn't i don't think they went to college like i don't think they have a job right now like and how on earth am i being like oh my gosh like i didn't read the scriptures i read it for 22 minutes and not 40. like like literally i got home at 9 35. it's 9 30. yes like how on earth is that a healthy thought on a volunteer mission but that you're paying for it yes like man like how on earth like it's just that perspective it was it's just not there and you know it really missed her yes yes yes like oh man like how how can we think that about ourselves and like absolutely this internalized this misappropriated like there's just no perspective that i'm gonna somehow be going to like god was stricter with somebody who was mormon and not reading scripture than he was with somebody who never heard about mormonism and i'm like that is backwards man like why on earth would god hold me to a higher standard doesn't he love all of us equally and yes the i'm so glad you point out that the sick irony of it it's just so bad you know so what i want to do um i don't want to rush your story and um so what i want to do is for today's segment it's going to be something like you know giving up major leagues giving up a major league baseball career for mormonism or whatever but i i don't i want next episode we'll have you come back and i want you to talk about like seminary institute and that and then maybe a third thing will be like faith crisis stuff love it but i want but let's definitely get in rachel's temple experience and everything up and and the dissolution of your baseball career right now we'll start next time with your seminar perfect so take us to the yeah so rachel's experience in the temple is just like it was exactly what i felt except for she was did you warn her were you like hey this is i didn't love this or yeah i was too it was so hard i was supposed to ever talk bad about it or or you're not supposed to talk about it at all outside the temple so you can't warn her necessarily or if you do you'll feel bad and dirty yep and i was kind of trying to hope like i was thinking maybe shove a good experience exactly if i could be positive with her like maybe she'll have a good experience and just really front loaded with it's really good like some weird things but we're going to be okay i had it it was kind of weird you know what i'm saying like you're really trying to soften it in advance and like her mom and dad talk to her about it and what would happen so they were much more open than i had i didn't have anyone you know i had to do it myself and i think that prepped her um i think she was probably even more prepared than i was and we're in the la temple and it's huge it's like on a saturday i i did tell her i was like don't go on a date there's a lot of people go on like a thursday afternoon in l.a when there's like two people in this giant freaking temple but she wanted to go on a saturday because she wanted family to come and i'm like i want to invite a lot of family if i were you and she's like but it's my family i'm like okay you know like it's like there's no way out you know like and everyone's gonna come up to you and be like it's so good right and hug you and you just like get away you know what did i just do exactly and so like in the la temple the only day it's ever busy which is the irony of them building more temples is just so thick because the only day the la temple's ever busy is saturday morning and so we go then and um there's a ton of people and rachel's doing i'm kind of watching her because you know she's on the other side because for some reason we have to be separated and i'm just kind of watching this like sink in for her and i'm just like she's not liking it we get to the celestia room and you know her her family comes up and gives her hugs and and i could i know her well enough to know this isn't she's not happy she's you know she's smiling but she's not she's usually very few so very kind very outgoing bubbly even more than me like i'm bubbly right now because i'm talking about deep things rachel is just a joyful person all the time and i saw that and i'm like oh crap but she didn't cry she was she was all good we go to the car she has her garments on everything's done and she just starts sobbing like like among the hardest i've ever seen her cry and i am just like what is happening and so i'm like comforting her i'm like what's going on she's like not talking and she like sh i mean it's like i don't know i felt like an eternity that she's crying she's like i hate these garments i don't want to wear them i hate them i feel and she's just like she can't even get like her full sentences out she's just like i hate that i hate this i hate what i'm wearing she didn't love the temple no no and she like and and i don't know what it was i think i especially i think for females the garment sucks like the way that it's cut the way that it feels it's not flattering it's so like it makes you feel so unattractive and i think she's feeling all of those things and it's hot like all of that and i think she's just feeling like oh crap i'm in this i'm in this for good i can't get out either and i'm thinking john this is where i was and this is what i hate so much about what mormonism does i want to comfort at first but then i'm like rachel this is god's house this is god's way yeah yeah yeah you become the enforcer yep and i'm even if you feel the same way even if you were felt the exact same awful things you become the enforcer yep and that makes me feel like disgusted because i'm hearing what she's saying and i totally agree with what she's saying and i'm telling her she shouldn't feel that or that we should justify or rationalize it and that just like i hate that that was a thing that ever happened and it happened multiple times and all of those things and so i'm really um sad about that and that obviously put a strand i'm like crap like this girl's not reading the book of mormon and she's struggling with the temple but then the irony of i'm not even thinking about how much i hate the temple i'm like but she's not gonna go i hate it but i'll go and so i'm just thinking oh my gosh like is this our marriage and i know from her perspective she's thinking oh crap look at this guy that i'm marrying he's a religious zealot and we're gonna have a terrible marriage and so right off the bat this strain from both sides it's just a great way to start a no marriage no not at all and mercifully my experience where i realized that rachel's love no matter what she does won over and my love for her like she's so good that it's really hard for me to um [Music] how could i how could i continue to believe this about her that she wasn't doing good or she wasn't like she is good she she's always been good everybody that knows her knows this about rachel everybody that knows both of us loves rachel my students when they met rachel loved rachel more than me like everybody loves her and so for me to be the one person being like nah i don't think you're doing good enough i refuse to be that person um at some point it took a while and i know rachel blessed her for just waiting and being as patient as she was i feel sad and sorry for the trauma that i caused her that i didn't help with you know i didn't want to be that person i was just perpetuating i think the harm that was perpetuated on me right now we see how systems do it right now we see how my mission president perpetuated harm because he had a mission present like that right and where he get it from so we see exactly how it happens and it's it's tragic and we we don't have the freedom to break out of that cycle we think we do we think we have the mental freedom to be like oh yeah we're good we're not good we're we're not we're not free to do that it's the plausible deniability there is no real way to break out of it without being labeled and branded and all of those things you you have to be this and um it's it's just tragic for what it does i it destroys and harms and mercifully my mom and dad loved me so much that they endure it my sister loves me so much my brother rachel they loved me enough to continue to put up with the person that i had become um their religious zealot just the the letter of the law just intense judgmental judgment insufferable yep that wasn't your personality in high school right i was the most laid back like other than feeling like not good enough like i was so laid back and that's what my mom said fun yeah i laughed all the time i was i did stupid stuff like i mean we did like we would just go egg things like i mean we were we were exactly who you would hope a high school boy to be um like you know you think of just boys getting dirty and rolling around and doing all that stuff in their little kids like that's i had the freedom and the privilege because of my family taking care of me to just be the most carefree taking care of youth in the history of the world it feels like and um mormonism changed who i was because and i just i hate it and my mom predicted it and i i hate that i was wrong i hate that i didn't listen i hate that i didn't see it but i absolutely became a different human um and i'm still overcoming that yeah you know let me ask you let me ask really quickly so uh in the spirit of informed consent and i had a really cool listener reach out to me uh during one of my interviews with chelsea nick homer where i asked about sexuality stuff and they're like you need to be more careful about asking people about sexuality and make sure you get their informed consent so i'm gonna i'm gonna invite you to uh say no or not answer anything that i say for sure but i do want to ask a question that again i only want you to answer if you want to sure and that's this you had been sexually active and i have no idea and i'm not even asking you to disclose rachel's past sure but what i do know is that if if in mormonism if one has been sexually active and one hasn't been that can be a huge thing huge not just because you know you may have had experience but they hadn't but they can also be resentful that you they waited but you didn't and there's just the whole worthiness thing do you disclose or not do you hide it and i want to just say i'll pass on that if you want to or if there's any part of that you want to discuss only talk about and there's also the wedding night of like you know for some it's wait wait wait wait wait and then it's your first time for sure but then for others it may not be your first time for sure is there anything that you want that is relevant to your story that you want to share about any other yeah definitely i i'm glad you asked and yes i for all the listeners yes i accept a consent absolutely thank you for the disclaimer i i'm i'm glad to share some of this is rachel's story exactly yeah and for sure so i and i i yeah she it'll come up later because it's a part of seminary okay um but the truth is that she knew who and what because she had been to the same parties right she knew the rumors that's so the pros of meeting somebody who was a part of your high school she knew exactly and that's also the con she knew everything yeah so when she asked i'm like no no what no i didn't do anything oh you you i denied you oh i for your life so super righteous self-righteous insufferable returned missionary who's like scrupulously trying to be righteous flat-out lies to his fiancee according to yeah according to randy bott i wasn't lying because i was a new creature right so do you see what i'm saying right like you see what i mean so i clung to i'm like no i'm new it wasn't it wasn't me you were a virgin you had been made you had been made a virgin virgin in christ jesus yep through righteousness correct and so no i didn't do it old mark did but i didn't tell her that either so i was like and she's just like looking at me like she she didn't say it this way but eventually we talked about it and she was like mark i was at the party i watched you with this person like how could you look at me and say no and i'm like and that's what i did i'm like and and i there was two years in the lie sometimes absolutely yep lie for maybe this wasn't lying for the lord but you know kind of get a little bit time for the system for sure to to continue it and i yeah it eventually comes out because i'll get to it with therapy after i've been harmed by something no but it's important but at the moment just what happened at the moment yeah in the moment like she she asked and i was like no i never did and she literally looked at me like i was just like nuts and i got very defensive because it's shame now looking back i'm like i don't think it's a bad thing but at the time i did and so the internalized shame made the ego put up a ton of walls and i'm like nope you're not getting in i'm not letting you in here and obviously she is thinking well i can't be close to you how can i be close to you because i literally know you're lying but she didn't call she didn't call me out word for word on that and so not a great way if emotional intimacy is the key to a healthy happy marriage and i believe it is not a great way to start a marriage lying to your wife and no feeling like you have to hide who you have been and really are and pressuring them because you're looking down on them because they're not living up to you not a great way to start a love affair no it's not and and it's and it's so real and again for rachel to be able to deal with it and all like man i she tells me a lot because i i'm very passionate i can get very heated and she's like if only you knew what it was like to live with you i'm like well i do have to live with myself and that you know that's a struggle but but she has been it's different when it's um she doesn't see all the internal workings and so she puts up with the law and i that was it right off the bat starting that way with the scrupulosity with the the patriarchy even if she didn't have the name for that i didn't have a name for it at the time and um definitely with just the lying i mean that's what it was and then yeah like i have expectations from my experience of what what it's like to have sex and what that's like and she's never had it so i i'm understanding and i i've always been very kind i i i really and maybe she i hope she would agree i think i've always been about consent i've never ever ever wanted to pressure her but she you know has the good girl syndrome right it's it's still a thing and it's still hard and it definitely was a way bigger when we first got married right right off the bat in the honeymoon it just was how can you flip a switch yeah how can you flip a switch from this is literally the sit next to murder which she got way longer than i did right for her whole life and in rexburg which is like i mean probably byu pro on steroids right and then and then she also has this like this message that where we get sealed and the sealer says like i now command you to multiply and replenish so it's not just it's not just oh it's okay now it's it was the worst thing you could have done to this is now what you have to do and that distance for her i know was difficult and in a lot of ways we're still working through it it's just so hard to overcome you know it's just not a great way to start absolutely and and then i know i i think we'll talk more about this but definitely like when i finally was clear with her i think for her it was like not just the betrayal that i lied but also like our i think she ended up saying she i know she ended up saying she's like what if you had an std like i knew you were sexually active what if you did and you didn't tell me and she continued to put up with it so bless her but yeah it's just tragic you know so to end there's the there's the meeting with bednar and the catholic teammate and then i just want to hear what happened to the end of the end of i mean this episode is going to be about the giving up your baseball here so how did that all end yeah good question so i i end up my sophomore year i do really well i turned on the draft my junior year i get a new set of coaches because we just weren't performing right so we get a new set and they take over and they see that my velocity is at 84 miles an hour yeah way low way low so it should be it should be no less than 88 right it's only four miles an hour though it makes a huge difference in terms of the reaction time and like even from 88 to 92 um and then you have guys in the major leagues are throwing 95 plus and so like i grew up with nolan ryan 100 miles an hour yeah and so the reaction time just it changes things so much so like when i i played against university of san diego and chris bryant who's one of the best players in baseball and uh rookie of the year national league mvp and i'm throwing 84 miles an hour i mean he absolutely obliterated but he was the only player that was just straight up better than me and i was at my worst but like i just wasn't getting it done so the coaches had a conversation so so he got a home run oh yeah not many people can say you know that uh that they played against major league players they got home runs for sure that's still cool it makes me feel a lot better i'll tell you so like when he when he gets home runs off clayton crusher who's like my favorite player for the dodgers a hall of famer and clinton kershaw gives up a bomb to chris bryant i'm like hey me too man i'm not as bad as you think you know so like it totally is my justification if i'm not that bad so yeah i do take pride when he does well and and trevor bauer who's another one who just overpowered me when i was hitting uh when he does well i'm just super pumped so it justifies it exactly validating exactly yeah so he um so yeah i i tell my coaches they ask what's up and i'm like my arm is hurt for like two years like maybe you should get it looked at and so i go get an mri it reveals a tear um and that's just like the worst i mean there's there's a surgery that baseball players often get called tommy john it was named after the person who's named tommy john who got the surgery to allow him to keep pitching there's this little ligament in your elbow called the ulnar collateral ligament and basically the amount of pressure that is put on that ligament while you're throwing is i think they said it's like the equivalent to like raising your body weight like 50 times or something like it's just so much on this little tiny thing and so i go get this mri it shows that it's it's a it has a tear we go back to l.a at like the top the people that invented tommy john's surgery at curling job the the angels team doctor he is the best in the world at this surgery and he says i don't know i don't see enough of a tear maybe we shouldn't do it and i'm like but i know it hurts something's wrong and i'll just i'll i'll grin and bear it right but i know it's not right he ends up dying of cancer which is tragic um but i have to go see another doctor who's the university of southern california team doctor and he sees it and he's like look you have two options you can either do this thing called prp that allows you to get um some fluid injected into your elbow and hopefully it heals it or you can get surgery and i'm like i just don't think it's gonna work i think i think i need to get surgery so they opened me up um in la and they find out that the mri the way that it located it it was actually torn almost all the way through it had like just a millimeter left and like at any pitch it could have just gone so i'm glad i did it they moved my my funny bone nerve from down in that little well up to my forearm so like when i hit my elbow now it actually hurts worse because it doesn't send the tingle and i got like a nice scar and anyway um i started rehabbing and with baseball and i i tried to get back into it they had to take a piece out of long story short who pays for the surgery so my byu was gonna pay for the one in utah but since i went to a different person they paid for whatever my dad's insurance wouldn't cover okay so ours was extra expensive eventually they didn't pay the bill and when i tried to take out a mortgage i had a credit like hit on my thing because byu didn't pay my bill and i was so pissed because we had to pay like an extra like thirty thousand dollars yeah they forgot so it was like did they end up paying they did okay but i mean i had the credit hit so like when we bought a house i i think it was like ten thousand dollars that we ended up losing because of it i'm like dang it byu but anyway um i started rehabbing they take a piece out of my hamstring because they have to wrap it around it's just this crazy procedure you can look it up it's it's really fascinating and as i'm rehabbing um my first time back on the mound so it takes a while it's a long process if i were to be a first baseman typically about six months for a pitcher it's shortening now but it's about a year to get back to full speed where you can pitch again and um the first day back on the mound it was like tryouts and we had this this kid try out and his last pitch he threw in his arm literally snapped like it snapped in half like i've never seen my stomach just sunk and i thought i'm not getting on that mound like i'm not ready for that so my rehab was delayed because of mental fear of getting hurt eventually i started rehabbing as i pitched on the mound i felt another thing it felt in that elbow but not in the same spot so i went back to the doctor and they're like you they did an ultrasound not an mri but they saw a little tear and a different like tendon or ligament or something in there and so i did this whole prp treatment it was miserable and at that time i was in a bishopric a young married bishopric so i wasn't a high priest but i was i was like the first counselor in the bishopric and i'm thinking baseball is falling apart i'm not probably ever going to play again if i will i'm never going to be the same what on earth am i going to do and i've talked to a couple people and somebody said you know you can get paid to teach seminar i'm like no you can't seminar teachers that's a calling like no you can get paid i'm like really you know and um so that was in my mind talked to another person in our award our elders corn president actually was a seminary teacher or was a student teacher and i remember sitting on like the stand one day and being like god what do i do you i trusted that you would take me through this and all that's happening is my life is falling apart in terms of baseball right everything else was pretty decent um help me and i had the thought like go talk to the seminary people and um a couple days later i go on campus meet with the seminary people and we can leave that for next time and pick up where how that picks up but i i was ready to move forward um was it hard to give that out oh tragic tragic i mean i i still ended up technically playing uh i was on the team i registered that year i was on the team my senior year but i was also teaching seminary at the time um and i just my coach knew and i walked in one day and i was like coach this is what's going on i've been teaching seminary for the last however long and i just i think i have to quit and i was sobbing i was i lost football now i'm losing baseball and my coach in tears was like mark we love you so much they made it they made me a captain on the team even though i never played for this coach um this coach got me the job that i currently have after i quit seminary this coach was so good to me took me on trips when i wasn't playing like and he said i we love you here we're going to honor your scholarship you'll graduate this year we're going to keep your scholarship go do seminary um whenever doors closed i found in my life that's what he said whenever doors closed other ones open i want you to go run through this door and be the best you can be and um like i'm just bawling and i go to a byu devotionals on a tuesday and gary stevenson speaking apostle you know i sit up at the top i'm just wailing like as as i'm not wailing because i'm not loud but i'm just sobbing you know and he gives a talk on trusting the lord with all your heart lean not to your own understanding and um that was like my confirmation that i was doing the right thing and that things would work out great for me in seminary and fast forward to nope and i have to ask like if you had gone to the majors would your elbows still have probably unravel it's a good question i mean i've thought about that so i definitely think i had some pain from high school but here's what would have been different i i threw like a quarterback like i pitched i pitched like a quarterback and the way that my arm was short instead of being like nice and long and it's supposed to be very smooth i was very like they called it herky jerky and i'm just kind of moving and fidgeting and they would have tweaked all of my mechanics to make them as streamlined as possible and it's likely it would have alleviated a lot of it i do think there are still some and to be honest like a large percentage of major league baseball players get tommy john but being in a system they would have tweaked my mechanics made it better and i would have had all the uh resources be why you had great ones but that would have been my sole focus right is just getting this thing right so i i do believe it probably would have happened rachel says that all the time like mark you probably wouldn't have been a pro baseball player but i refuse to believe that i'm like no i would have been a hall of famer you know not a hall of fame right i wasn't ever that good but i definitely think i could have been um yeah i made a couple millions exactly exactly and lived the dream for a little bit exactly for sure um do we save the bed in our store for later or does it yeah i mean and we don't even have to get there but here's but the main the main point is it was just another experience with bednar i'll tell it it's fun my coach benart comes to our baseball team and uh comes to our locker room same setup as before questions about revelation super intense and we're going through all of this and it's just super um orthodox i don't know how else to describe bednar you know it's just very intense and the thought of him being you know future profit is extremely worrisome and anyway very intense and um we're doing a question answer session and everyone's like on pins and needles and we're just feeling i mean loved but also anxious about like getting called out and he was very firm about i don't remember all the questions that were asked at the very end one of my um my catholic teammates who i just loved he raised his hand and was going to ask a question and right when he did that elderbender was like i'm really sorry i have to leave like let me bear my testimony and my teammate kind of put his head down he's like oh you know another one of our teammates saw that told our coach and our coach um contacted elder bednar and said hey i have a non-member teammate who would like to have a question ask a question he says cool can he be up in salt lake to meet with me on you know thursday or whatever and it just so happens that i was walking down from the stair the big stairs at byu by the joseph smith building and i was standing next to this friend and my coach had just pulled into the only available spot for you know a parking for the the athletic people and popped out and i'm right there and he says hey can you be tells one of my teammate what are you doing on thursday uh nothing coach just practice nope you're not going to practice and he's like what he's like you're gonna go meet with elder bednars like what i do you know like did i do something wrong which i thought was very telling you know but um he said coach i don't have a car i was like i have a car you know like i want to go meet in the office of an apostle and then i just with a prospective convert exactly yes and so we get there and uh i bring rachel uninvited and so i didn't i didn't tell rachel she was uninvited but i the secretary lets us in and says uh elder bednar you have three guests and rachel's like you didn't tell but bender were coming like uh i thought he'd want to see you you know and um it was interesting how it felt diff the reason i added it in here is because it felt different for me the approach was much warmer from the previous two times i'd been with elder bednar and then there will be a third time that we meet with elderberry it's interesting i've i've had him so many times you know um but the approach was much warmer and it was much more inviting and it was much more understanding and empathetic and the reason i say that is because i felt like it was what was happening to me when i was getting my missionary lessons where i'm like wait but you didn't talk to me that way in north carolina and i'm it was a cruel experience because how often do you get to meet with an apostle in their office but i'm also like wait that that doesn't seem real like it felt it felt way more open and genuine he gives him a card and just i i think for me it was also kind of presumptuous like the card that said like david bednar apostle of jesus christ like that's all it said i'm like like that's kind of bold like at the time i was like smitten and star struck right but looking back and the reason i added it is because i'm like that did not it does not mesh with all the other things we know and it doesn't mesh with the bednar who makes people stand when he walks in and and it doesn't mesh with the bed now he says there's no gay latter-day saints it didn't feel that way it felt very minus what he had said on your mission yeah so i'm he he was just like when we were in in um in the cultural hall and he was like oh right yeah you lost the spirit that's why you're not baptizing oh yeah and i'm like geez like that it just felt very different it felt very salesy but i was obviously happy right because this is a freaking apostle yeah and um i asked my teammate if he was converted and this was this was huge for me later with seminary and i was like are you gonna read the book more he's like nah probably not and i'm like wait but an apostle sat down with love compared to maybe other things that have been used sat down looked you in the eyes bore his perfect witness of jesus christ and at the truthfulness of the church and you weren't swayed at all and i thought like maybe the power of like i know i used to use that all the time i used to think if i said i know powerfully enough i know beyond the shadow of a doubt that it would just like magically compel somebody to be like oh i believe and so listening to elder ben are do that and having my teammate be not swayed at all he's like i'm still catholic like it was like how could this be like and i i just thought preach my gospel like elder better it was like he was reciting the lessons as perfectly as you would ever hope and nothing and so these are just little seeds that are planted that i'm not owning until i start kind of evaluating saying what the heck like things start lining up really go on your shelf correct on your shelf exactly yep thanks for the story yeah all right listeners so uh we're going to stop this episode and we're going to have him back so there's like way more ahead of us than is behind us because we're going to talk about how mark goes from being convert to a potential professional athlete to you know a seminary teacher and what that was like but then we're going to talk about what it's like to be a seminary teacher as the church is confronting the internet age with with me and kate kelly and ces letter and the gospel topics essays and how they're you know the church is teaching their seminary institute teachers to deal with the problems and then we're going to talk about how a ces teacher mark ends up questioning his faith and dealing with that knowing that if he loses his job he can do what could he do and then you know what what does he do what what does a seminary teacher do when they lose their faith and and if they end up leaving ces how do they rebuild a life when they have a young family and a wife who doesn't work this is like more cool stuff ahead this is part one stay for parts two and three i'm sure there's going to be a part two in a part three but mark this has been awesome and thank you so much for being willing to tell us your cool story so far thanks and thanks for listening i i i came here because i wanted um people to know they're not alone and i'm i'm honored that i can be here and for anyone listening like i often listen to podcasts on like two-speed or i judge people on it so rude yeah i'm like it helps me like when i'm slow no no no because i'm busy because i'm busy my brain works fast i have adhd but i uh but like i thank you for listening and continue like it's it's humbling that you would think of my story worth any time of yours so thanks for being here all right you're awesome all right stay tuned come right back by the time you watch this the next episode is there so just uh go to youtube or go to your podcast app and just click on the next episode and we'll hear part two thanks everybody thanks mark you're awesome thanks

Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast

Views: 24,530

Rating: 4.8238993 out of 5

Keywords: lds, mormon

Id: 7LXUrovlCTM

Length: 203min 31sec (12211 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021