Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 101

Guest [00:00:13] Come, thou fount of every blessing to my heart to sing thy grace Stream of mercy never ceasing Call for songs

John Dehlin [00:00:33] of loudness we're here today to listen to a personal friend of mine and an inspiration to me in many ways, although he hates flattery. His name's Dr. Dr. Ted Lyon. Dr. Lyon. I don't have a formal sort of resume for him, but I can tell you a little bit of what I know.

Ted Lyon [00:00:53] Make it up.

John Dehlin [00:00:55] I know that he's a PhD from UCLA, is that right? And his emphasis is Spanish. Spanish literature, I would say.

Ted Lyon [00:01:05] Latin American literature.

John Dehlin [00:01:06] Latin American literature. I came to know him after a very traumatic mission experience in Latin America. I was sort of just serendipitously guided into his office when he was sort of having a position at the International Studies center at byu. I was looking to learn about international relations, but he very quickly invited me to enroll in an Honors Colloquium class that he and Clayton White and Lynn England used to sponsor as part of the Honors program at byu. I believe Honors colloquiums have sort of been phased out for the most part, but at the time, it was sort of sort of sunstone for credit. At byu, you could learn about lots of issues about reconciling thought and faith.

John Dehlin [00:01:53] You could talk about evolution. You could talk about reproductive rights. You could talk about socialism, socialism, Marx, capitalism, whatever, environmentalism. We read Edward Abbey and Desert Solitaire and all sorts of really cool progressive books. But in many ways, I credit this. My association with Dr. Lyon and this course has sort of inoculated me and laying a foundation such that when I experienced some other very traumatic crises of faith later on in my life, I was able to sort of deal with them in a way that was constructive for me and my family. So Dr. Lyon also has served as a mission president in Chile, as a president of the MTC in Chile, as a personal interpreter to President Holland during his three years in Chile.

John Dehlin [00:02:43] So one of the things he's here. Two years, two. So one of the things he's here to talk about is the church in Latin America. He's also the son of T. Edgar Lyon, who was sort of the best buddy with Lowell Bennion in the creation of the University of Utah Institute of Religion. That became a precursor to, in my opinion, many of the great minds that founded Dialogue in Sunstone and sort of an attempt to sort of look at history and faith honestly and objectively and reconcile that in some important way. So Dr. Lyon's probably going to talk a bit about his dad. He's probably going to talk a bit about his experiences.

John Dehlin [00:03:18] He's about to go serve as the temple president. He and his wife of the Chile Santiago Temple. So here's a man who sort of has a bit of a sunstone, I would at least say had a sunstone sympathy, or at least definitely sympathy towards thought and faith. But he's also a very devout, believing member of the church. And for me, it's hard to find something like that, someone like that especially who's willing to talk and be filmed and go on the record. So he's going to talk to us about all that and what we might learn from trying to reconcile thought with faith. So without any further ado, I give you Dr. Ted Lyon. Sorry for the long introduction.

Ted Lyon's Background and Family Legacy

Ted Lyon [00:03:55] Thank you, John. Good to be here. I salute you. I don't really need the Dr. Lyon that seems to be a little formal. Ted Lyon is good enough for me. The doctor is something that happened a long time ago, 42 years ago, and we can leave it at that.

Ted Lyon [00:04:16] People ask me, I'm having to retire now because of the mission call to go to Chile. I would be 72 when I get back, and that would just be a little bit old. And plus I'd lose too much money if I don't get the retirement money while we're in Chile. So it's a monetary thing as well. But people ask me, have you seen a change in students at BYU since you've been here? We've been here for 35 years with five of those years in Chile. And I say no. And especially when I see a group like you.

Ted Lyon [00:04:45] You're intellectual, you're thoughtful, you're smart. I haven't seen any decline in the students that I have here. Really can't say that 30 years ago they were sharper than you. The one thing that I can say is that there is an incredible amount of gradeism at BYU now that didn't used to exist. You don't know what gradeism is, do you?

Ted Lyon [00:05:12] Requiring high grades. You're smart and you have to have good grades. And I'm not attacking you because I don't think you fit in that category. But if I give an A on a paper, a student is upset and wants to know why, and a B is a bad grade. It didn't used to be that way. I could give Cs and Ds without too much serious problem. So that's been an amazing change that I've seen. People come with a very high expectation of getting very high grades. I hope you don't fit into that category. I hope you're learning for learning.

Ted Lyon [00:05:43] Last semester I had Eric Bybe. I suppose some of you know Eric, don't you? In class. Where is Eric now? Doing what? Doing special ed with teacher American. Good for him anyway, and enjoyed that association. John Dehlin. It was contrary to my counsel and apparently about 22 other of his 24 friends told him to not accept his position as the executive director of Sunstone or suggested they not take it. He has, and I admire him very much for that. I hope that your lives from now and 5 and 10 and 20 years will reflect what John's life has reflected. Perhaps some struggle, but at the same time some faith that works together.

Ted Lyon [00:06:28] I do really want to talk about T. Edgar Lyon for just a little bit because that's going to get us into the topic that we want. When my father died in 1975, Dialogue published a special issue with a black cover, I guess to honor him.

Ted Lyon [00:06:46] Some people tell me that I look like him. I hope I do. At least we share the hairline anyway. And a few other things. There's a lot of articles in here that relate to him. But I was excited enough about my father that a few years back I wrote a book on him, which I enjoy. But you say, who in the heck is this guy? He's my father, but we'll talk more about that. Dad was quite well known in the church because he had been at the Institute for a long period of time, the Institute of Salt Lake City, when most of the children of the general authorities went to the University of Utah rather than going to byu.

Ted Lyon [00:07:23] That's changed now. General authorities get free tuition at BYU and automatic entrance. And so most of them are coming here now. Did you know that you don't have to even do well in high school? You can get into BYU if you're a child of a general authority. My father had wrote manuals that were used in the church. This was one that the whole Melchizedek priesthood of the Church used called Apostasy to Restoration. It was the last manual in the church that ever had a name on it of the writer. Have you noticed that manuals in the church now do not have names on them? They're written by committees and they're boring as heck.

Ted Lyon [00:08:04] Anyway, this was used throughout the church in 1960, and then some places repeated it in 61 as well. A very meaty, very deep involvement with what the apostasy was, what the original Church of Christ was, and a bit on the restoration as well. So I just Bring those to show you. But I want to begin with some stories that will hopefully show you some differences and perhaps how my attitude was formed toward the church.

Ted Lyon [00:08:33] My grandfather was bishop of the Ensign ward for some 20 years. Ensign Ward in the avenues in Salt Lake. Somewhat of the. Many of the general authorities lived on the that part of Salt Lake now where now the liberal Democrats live, the Avenues. But in my grandfather's ward was Heber J. Grant. Before he was the president of the church, and certainly after he was the president of the church, he often attended that ward.

Ted Lyon [00:09:01] General authorities didn't have to travel because the church wasn't as big in those days. This was in. I'm talking about 1915, 1920. There weren't even a million members of the church, not even a half million members of the church. And most were concentrated here in the Wasatch front.

Ted Lyon [00:09:16] My father tells a story that when he was a deacon, he was 15. You didn't become a priest in those days until you didn't become a teacher until you were 16 in those days. President Grant was then the president of the church. This would have been in 1919 or 20.

Ted Lyon [00:09:34] And he used to come and sit in the chapel on the stand. He would come up and stand. But there was only one entrance to the stand, not like our stands now that have two entrances. And President Grant would come in and sit right at the far end of the stair. He would walk all the way down and sit at the far end. So he was sort of in the corner and not too well known when he was there. On one occasion, my father was this older deacon passing the sacrament. They had received a letter.

Ted Lyon [00:10:05] My grandfather, the bishop, had received a letter saying that the highest authority who was sitting on the stand should be the first to receive the sacrament. That was something new that hadn't been done before, never been done in the church. This was in 1919.

Ted Lyon [00:10:20] And so my father was passing the sacrament and went up and walked across the stand right to the corner where President Grant was sitting and passed a sacrament, held a sacrament tray out. And President Grant said, what are you doing?

Ted Lyon [00:10:35] My father kind of humbled Deacon the sacrament. And he said, go down and start where you're supposed to start. My father was a little distraught by the president of the church telling him that he didn't want to take the sacrament first. So dad went down to the other end and passed the sacrament to the others first and then got to President Grant at the end of the row.

Ted Lyon [00:10:57] I was a little in a dilemma as he was passing the water. Then what should I do? Well, he passed. He started where he had always started. He first came up on the stand and didn't go to the end. Got to present Grant at last. As soon as the meeting was over, President Grant called.

Ted Lyon [00:11:11] He said, david, what's going on? My grandfather? And David said, well, we got a letter that said we were supposed to pass the sacrament to the highest authority on the stand. President Grant said, who sent that letter? My grandfather said, I'm not sure. He said, well, go get it. My grandfather went to his office and brought it back and it was signed by the quorum of the 12.

Ted Lyon [00:11:36] And he showed it to president Grant and President Grant read it and he said, those darn core materials. They're always doing things and not telling me. Now, we couldn't handle that very well in the church today, could we?

Ted Lyon [00:11:50] Because we expect order and we expect much stronger structure than that. The president of the church is going to know about every letter that goes out from the quorum of the 12. They get together and make that decision.

Ted Lyon [00:12:02] But I grew up with that idea as a young man that the church was pretty open and there were pretty things. And there were a lot of human beings in the church that had different personalities. We often talked about them around our table. We were six boys in my family, no girls, sorry.

Ted Lyon [00:12:18] So there were seven men and one woman. My poor little five foot three mother. We almost had to raise our hands to talk at the table because there was so much going on at our dinner table. I got the feeling as they talked about their friends who were general authorities, that these were men, human beings, individuals. My mother was on the primary general board of the church and talked about the general authorities with whom she worked in very human ways. We've come to extol them often beyond the way they want to be extolled. I believe a second story, 1923, when my father was called on a mission.

Ted Lyon [00:13:00] Just at that time, just exactly the time In June of 1923, the church had issued some new requirements for temple that people could now start wearing garments that had short sleeves and short legs in them. Up to that point, up to 1923, all garments were down to here and down to here. Did you know that? And they were of course, one piece garments as well. And what you did was you simply went to the store, bought yourself a pair of long handles or whatever they were, and then you brought them to the temple and the temple put the marks in the garments.

Ted Lyon [00:13:35] I hope I'm not embarrassing anyone. And if some of you aren't lds, you'll learn something about the LDS tonight. I guess that's perfectly fine, too. My grandfather was part of the prayer circle. It was called the John Taylor prayer circle, something that doesn't exist in the church today. But back in the 19th century, many of the general authorities, and even John Taylor, before he was president, had a group of men and women that he gathered around him. And they met in the temple once a week, like you're doing, and they talked about current events and current activities, and they introduced them about what someone would say about you when you first introduced him or whatever.

Ted Lyon [00:14:15] No, they talked about current activities and. And the general authority, John Taylor in this case, would tell him. And then his continuation was a man named an elder or President Richards. What was his first name? George F. Richards.

Ted Lyon [00:14:30] Maybe you don't know these people, but they were names that are familiar to me. George F. Richards was part of the first presidency. My grandfather participated in his prayer circle. And George Richards, who was also president of the temple, besides being the first counselor to the. In the first presidency, told him about this change with garments that had been approved and letters had been sent out to bishops and stake presidents. My father, as he was preparing for his mission, got a pair of long handles, underwear, came to the temple, went through the temple thing, and you had to wear a special temple garment in those days, a little different from the regular garment.

Ted Lyon [00:15:07] Then after he was through with that temple session, his very first time through, he brought this pair of garments that was indeed one piece, but they had short sleeves and short legs. My grandmother had cut them off and stitched them up, hemmed them up.

Ted Lyon [00:15:26] The officiator in the temple refused to put them on. Refused to put them on. My father, he said, these are not authorized. There's no such thing as this, as you're a heretic or whatever you want to do for dressing this way. And he wouldn't do it. My father was, of course, concerned after the temple is a very delicate experience for you who have done it the very first time especially.

Ted Lyon [00:15:46] My father was almost in tears. And fortunately, he got his father. And his father quickly went around, had to go outside the temple and go get George F. Richards and bring him in. And George F. Richards came in and told the temple, he said, we talked about this this morning in the meeting, you know, that these are now authorized garments. But this man just felt that. He said, missionaries, special missionaries should be wearing the really authorized garments, the long legs and the long sleeves.

Ted Lyon [00:16:16] But George Efric said, no, he's going on a mission, and this is Fine. So he put on his short sleeve and short legged garments. Then these garments had no marks in them. The officiator would cut the marks in at the appropriate places and then you were expected to take them home and your mother was to sew them up. Did you know this? You're learning stuff about church history. This officiator was shaking and was so angry at my father because he'd been reprimanded by the member of the First Presidency and the President of the Temple that as he cut my father's marks, he actually cut my father's nipple.

Ted Lyon [00:16:56] A very sore situation, as you might imagine. And on the side of it they had great big shears that they were doing. And my father to his dying day, still had a scar right there on the side of his nipple. Well, I tell you that.

Ted Lyon [00:17:10] Why do I tell you that? For a second reason, you've chuckled and laughed. The church had a lot of fun and excitement for me as my parents told me stories about individuals and the participation of individuals in different ways. My father, after his mission to the Netherlands, was then called by President Grant to be mission president when he was just age 29 to return to the Netherlands. My mother had two children by then and she was pregnant with twins at that time. I wasn't one of those, but they used to tell fun stories. And President Grant came to my father's farewell and he said, how old are you?

Ted Lyon [00:17:54] And he said, well, I just turned 30 the other day and. And he said, okay, that's fine. He said, I was a stake president when I was 26. He said, the Brethren been getting on my case because you're too young.

Ted Lyon [00:18:03] We don't hear much about the Brethren getting on some other's case or getting on the case of the President of the Church. My father told us those stories. During the 1930s, when my father again was on a mission, there were wonderful conflicts in the church between the brethren.

Ted Lyon [00:18:23] This was a time, a very heady time, that President Grant had chosen for his counselors. And the new apostles that he was calling had chosen people like Joseph F. Merrill, the first Mormon to ever get a PhD. James Tallmadge, John A. Widtsoe. You've heard of these names. Two of them have been presidents of the University of Utah, not at byu.

Ted Lyon [00:18:48] And it was a heady time. Those men ran into some conflict with Joseph Fielding Smith and some others who were much more in the conservative realm. And it was public and they talked about their conflicts and they thought, you don't hear that now in the church, do you?

Ted Lyon [00:19:06] You don't hear it. I think there are plenty of strong personalities in the quorum of the 12, but they've learned to mitigate and keep things well. I tell you those stories just to say I grew up with that and it was a fun experience, and the church has been considerably fun because of that reason. I want to say it hasn't been so difficult to be a Mormon in my family and to somehow learn to harmonize that thought and that faith.

Guest [00:19:53] Come, Thou fount of every blessing Tune my heart to sing thy grace Streams of mercy never ceasing Call for songs of loudest praise Teach me some melodious sonnet Sung by flaming tongues above Praise the mount I'm fixed upon it Mount of thy redeeming love. O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be Let thy goodness as a fetter Bind my wandering heart to thee Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it Prone to leave the God I love here's my heart O take and seal it Seal it for thy courts above Seal it for thy courts above. Sam.

LDS Membership and Retention in Latin America

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 102

Guest [00:00:13] Come thou fount of every blessing to my heart to sing thy grace Streams of mercy never ceasing.

Ted Lyon [00:00:32] Now let's leave that alone and we'll come back to it in a minute. But I want to go to Latin America. Some of you have had experience in Latin America, either as missionaries or travel. Can I just see who's been in Latin America? Because it looked like quite a few of you. Good. So we'll talk about that just a little bit. John Dehlin brought to me. What year did you come to BYU?

John Dehlin [00:00:54] 87. But you met me in 90.

Ted Lyon [00:00:57] In 1990. A dilemma of him while he was serving a mission, being almost pushed. Well, I shouldn't say being pushed to baptize people who probably weren't being ready to be baptized. I actually encouraged you and I know you wrote a letter to Elder Oaks and got a good response from him. Quite a long response as I recall.

Ted Lyon [00:01:21] I would just give you my experience. In 1996, we were called to serve as president of Osorno, Chile Mission. Osorno, Chile is the farthest mission south in the world. Goes all the way down to Tierra del Fuego and even the last, last island before Antarctica, called Navarino, Isla Navarino.

Ted Lyon [00:01:46] We really were excited about it. I'd had quite a bit of experience in Chile before that time. I went there to do my dissertation on a Fulbright fellowship and had been back through reading papers and arranging a book to be published in Chile and so on. So we knew Chile fairly well.

Ted Lyon [00:02:02] We got to the mission on a rainy Sunday afternoon. It rains a lot in southern Chile. We got there in July, the middle of winter. As we were driving from the airport into the mission home, the two assistants who were riding with us said, president, the mission is going tremendously well. We had 462 baptisms last month.

Ted Lyon [00:02:30] That's good. Tell me a little bit more. I said, we're most proud of our two hour baptisms. I hadn't heard of that. I said, what are two hour baptisms? We meet people and our goal is to get them in the water within two hours.

Ted Lyon [00:02:49] All the missionaries had keys to the chapels. They would often meet people at 9 or 10 at night and go into chapel at 12 or 1 in the morning and turn on the baptismal font and sometimes have to get in and pull out the plug and baptize people at 11, 12 or 1 o' clock in the morning.

Ted Lyon [00:03:10] I said to these elders, I'm going to. You're serious? Yes. Where does that direction come from? Because that's not what we've received direction in our mission president's seminar, said, well, that's what we're all doing here in Chile. The church is really progressing in Chile. I said, what about repentance? I understand that repentance has to come before baptism. They said, no, no, no. He said, they get the Holy Ghost immediately when they're baptized, right at the font edge, right after they've been baptized, they receive the Holy Ghost and then that helps them repent.

Ted Lyon [00:03:49] I said, that's not the way I understand it. I think that you're supposed to be pure or clean before you get that Holy Ghost to function in you. And I said, what about meeting the bishop? He said, oh, they all come to church the next Sunday. Well, you can imagine that's not true at all.

Ted Lyon [00:04:03] The missionaries were baptizing the people of the lowest will, people who would submit to being baptized at a late hour. Sometimes it wasn't that late, but they were baptizing a lot of children. They were baptizing a lot of street people, a lot of uneducated people, a lot of out of work people as well, because those were the ones who were home. They met men and women who were out of work and baptized them in the chapel. Not all baptisms were two hours and a good many people resisted, but the majority of the baptisms were two hour baptisms. I don't know if yours weren't quite that fast.

Ted Lyon [00:04:40] Maybe you weren't pushed to do it in two hours, John, but the concept was the same. We've baptized a lot. Let me just give you a statistic for Chile. We look at Chile and the people throughout the church say, terrific. One of the great, most faithful countries in the church. We have on our records about 545,000 members in Chile.

Ted Lyon [00:05:05] A little over a half of a million members. But on any given Sunday, there are only 58,000 who go to church. In other words, about 11 and a half or 12% who are in church. That statistic is fairly true for most of Latin America.

Ted Lyon [00:05:28] Comparing the total number of people baptized to the total number of people who are participating in church on a Sunday. Of these 545,000 members, over 250,000 have been baptized in the last 15 years. But church attendance has only increased 2,000 during that period of time.

Ted Lyon [00:05:53] So what are we talking about? Terrific problem of retention. Although some of those people who were baptized have been retained very well, but others who were active 10 years ago have gone out the back door. And you may have seen those. It's a rotating revolving door. You're active for a few years and then you leave the church. Right now in Chile, There are about 210,000, 210,000 members on the lost records. The members unable to find membership.

Ted Lyon [00:06:30] That's not really possible because Chile has a very good system of finding people. There's a national registration card that everyone has. Everyone in Chile has to vote. It's required to vote. So the government knows where you are. But we can't find over 210,000 people in the church.

Ted Lyon [00:06:53] Some of those, and I don't know how many, but some of those are invented people, Some of those are tombstone people. You may have heard of that type of thing as well. Missionaries who were pressured to baptize did what their mission president wanted them to do.

Ted Lyon [00:07:08] And maybe you do. I found that out very, very early on as a mission president, that if I required something, the missionaries would do it. And so I was very careful about what I required, or tried to be anyway, not requiring something that was incorrect. Our first zone leader, our first assistant, who had been his own leader, we made his own leader after I'd only been there two weeks because the other one went home and I didn't know him, was a great, great baptizer. And that's why he was recommended to be the next assistant.

Ted Lyon [00:07:42] But as I went down to the branch where he had served in near Puntarenas, right on the southern tip of the continent, I found out that most of the people he baptized weren't people. They were made up people.

Ted Lyon [00:07:59] What did he learn and what did the other missionaries learn from that experience? That by being deceptive, by being dishonest, you could advance in the mission. That's not usually the case, but it has happened in more than one occasion.

Ted Lyon [00:08:16] My job was to slow down baptisms. We went from 450 something down to 130, 140amonth, which is still pretty good. Most of the missionaries were able to baptize someone every two or three months. But we went way, way down from the previous period of time. We were supported by the church in that the church was not trying to get, simply trying to get baptisms.

Ted Lyon [00:08:42] I report that because the similar thing is true in Brazil. Elder Holland came in the year 2002 precisely to try to change that situation. Elder Oaks was assigned to the Philippines at the very same period of time. Argentina has not quite had as much of a problem as Chile has, but many of the countries in Central America as well have baptizing a lot of people, but not growing the church before Elder Holland came in 2001. The churches started a period in Chile of consolidation.

Ted Lyon [00:09:24] They'd grown to 118 stakes in Chile. Amazing number. But they were such weak steaks and such weak wards. There were about 1,200 units, wards and branches and 118 stakes starting in 2001 and ending when Elder Holland left in 2004. There are now 74 stakes in Chile and they're down to about 700 units from 1200.

Ted Lyon [00:09:56] Consolidating things, trying to make it stronger. The church had baptized people but had not retained. It was not uncommon to find 25 or 30 people at a maximum in a large war building. Recognizing this fact, before Elder Holland came, I suggested to the then area president, I said, when he comes, take him out to someplace without being announced. If you tell him that an apostle is coming, you're going to get a terrific attendance. Don't announce it.

Ted Lyon [00:10:28] He indeed went out to. There's a chair over here. He indeed was taken out the second Sunday he was there to a sacrament meeting in a town called Talagante. And when he got there at about five to nine, no one was there. The sacrament meeting was supposed to start at 9 o'. Clock. At 9 o', clock, he said the two sister missionaries had arrived, the branch president had arrived, and that was it.

Ted Lyon [00:11:00] And he said there were five of us there. Sister Holland was with him. He said by 9:20 when the meeting started, he said we had 13 people there. When the sacrament was passed, there were 20 people there. And he said after the sacrament there were 26 was there. He saw a branch that was simply not functioning as a branch and hence realized we've got to make some changes. So the church went, as I said, from 118 stakes down to 74.

Ted Lyon [00:11:37] I don't want to go into too many more negative details because that sounds like we're being negative, but we got numbers, but we didn't get converts. Some of you may have experienced some of that same type of thing, I don't know. But anyway, it's sad for me to go back to Chile and find out so many people who are not active in the church who we thought were active, they were active for a period of time. Once I got into a taxi and as I did, I was just asking the driver in Santiago, asking about how much he made a day, how long he was driving and so on, and how much time he had passengers as opposed to the time he was running empty.

Ted Lyon [00:12:19] And. And then he finally said to me, he said, uste so Mormones verda And I said, yes. And he said, you're Mormons, aren't you? And he said, yes. He said, so am I. I said, really? And he was smoking when he got in. He put out a cigarette when he got in, but he was smoking. And I just said, I wouldn't have guessed it. And he said, yes, I've been a bishop. And I said, then you're endowed in the temple. He picked us up right by the temple.

Ted Lyon [00:12:47] He said, yes. And I said, what happened? He said, I got tired. I served as bishop. And he said, I moved from the ward because I didn't want to be bishop any longer. And I moved into another ward and they immediately gave me a church calling. And I decided if I'd have a church calling, I was going to go inactive.

Ted Lyon [00:13:04] That was sad. And I said, don't you ever get a tug or a pull when you pass this temple? And he said, yes, I realize I've got to come back sometimes. But at that point he had simply made the decision. It was too much of a commitment for him. And that's my concern throughout Chile and other Latin American, the idea of commitment as a tough type of thing. People commit for a short period of time, they don't commit for a long period of time. Visited a man who was a banker in a town of Villarica, a beautiful town on the lake in Chile, and he'd been branch president also.

Ted Lyon [00:13:41] And I talked to him and he said, what more do you want? He said, I've been to the temple, I've read the Book of Mormon, I've been a branch president. He said, that's enough. I'm saved. I don't have to do any more than that type of thing.

Ted Lyon [00:13:58] So we face a dilemma throughout the world. We calculate that now we have nearly 13 million members of the church. Only a little over 4 million of those would be considered active participating members in the case of Chile. There's only one temple in Chile for a half million people. Mexico has 12 temples for a little over a million people.

Ted Lyon [00:14:22] Mexico is a little bit bigger. I mean, a bit bigger country, but not. Well, it's a bigger country, but why so many temples? Because in Mexico, this church has been established there longer. There is a commitment throughout the early part of the church. It seems to take longer to establish a commitment. Okay, let me just give some final points here, although they could go on for half an hour, but I won't. And then we'll see if you can ask some questions and talk about your experience.

Harmonizing Doubt and Faith

Ted Lyon [00:14:51] John has asked me to briefly say a Word about harmonizing thought and faith. I never went into the gospel thinking that I was going to decide it's either true or it's not true, and I've got to somehow harmonize problems that come up. I went into the gospel because it was a satisfying experience for me and also because as a young man I really sought and wanted to find out if what my parents had been teaching me were true.

Ted Lyon [00:15:23] At age 16, I had a beautiful privilege of going down on the desert in southern Utah. I was good friends with a fellow named Clark Tanner and his uncle, O.C. tanner, and his father, Norm Tanner decided that they wanted to get Clark out of town because he started drinking a bit and wanted him to go off with a good Mormon, I guess. And so they bought us a Jeep. We took a prospecting class at the University of Utah and find out the day is the uranium boom. Salt Lake was the penny capital stock of the world in the 1950s. Uranium was big. It was as big as the Gold rush.

Ted Lyon [00:15:58] And you had possibilities of getting richer much faster as well. Charlie Steen did, as you may have heard the name. I hope you've heard of Charlie Steen. If you've heard of Ed Abbey, you should know Charlie Steen. Anyway, we took our prospecting class. The day school was out. We took off in this terrible old Jeep down to the desert, drove down to St. George, picked up a geologist friend of O.C. tanner, and then drove out onto the desert by Panguitch, went through Panguitch, Escalante, and then down the Kaparowitz Plateau, turned off to the right, went over and down on Last Chance Creek. And we were really isolated.

Ted Lyon [00:16:35] There were no roads in there. We just did where the Jeep could go. We just followed the stream bed bottoms. And Last Chance Creek wasn't a creek. It was just a dry river bed or stream bed and it was unpacked. After that second day on the road, I realized I hadn't brought anything to read. And I was really enjoying reading. I'd read Wallace Stegner and a whole bunch of other things dealing with the west, and I just enjoyed reading. I didn't bring anything, but I got to the bottom of my duffel bag and there was a book there.

Ted Lyon [00:17:04] My mom put it in. It was a Book of Mormon. I tried to read the Book of Mormon a couple of other times when I was a youth and made it through 1 Nephi. And then the second time I got into 2 Nephi 9 and couldn't go much beyond that because I got involved with Isaiah and.

Ted Lyon [00:17:19] But out on the desert, I didn't have anything else to read for those first months. I had a companion who slept a lot, especially in the morning when it was cool. And I always woke up as soon as it got light.

Ted Lyon [00:17:32] So I read the Book of Mormon pretty fast, about two and a half weeks. Read the whole thing through. I hopped out of my bed and started to pray, and nothing happened. I'd read it and I said, come on, what's going on? I've had the experience here of reading the Book of Mormon, and it says right here, if I read these things and ask about it, I'll know something. Well, nothing came, but I didn't have much else to do in the mornings when my companion was sleeping. And so I started reading the Book of Mormon again.

Ted Lyon [00:18:00] Didn't get all the way through that second time, but somewhere in this, I recall in Alma chapter 40, reading about resurrection and so on, without praying about it, all of a sudden, I really knew something. I got that warmth. And I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable, but many of you have had that as well. All of a sudden, an incredible feeling came over me. This is true. This is right. I know this. And my mind started racing. At the time, I didn't recognize it, but I do now as a manifestation of the Holy Ghost. And I said, my parents have been telling me the truth.

Ted Lyon [00:18:37] This is right. David O. McKay indeed is a prophet of God, just like I heard him say one time when he was visiting our ward, telling about his experiences of hearing God. All of these things just flowed through my mind very, very rapidly, saying, yes, the Book of Mormon is true. The Book of Mormon is an ancient record. It's not written by Joseph Smith, and so on and so on. It kept going on very long.

Ted Lyon [00:19:02] When I've doubted and I have doubted even at this stage in my life. I even have sometimes doubted the existence of God. I don't anymore. But I used to. I come back to that experience and say, that was something that came to me from something much beyond me. That wasn't me that created that, that came to me. And I've had enough other experiences, a good many of them similar enough to say that's really true. I can't say, as some do, that the Spirit tells me everything to do. I have a hard time with that. Being guided by the Spirit. It doesn't seem to happen very often.

Ted Lyon [00:19:42] If I teach a decent lesson to missionaries at the MDC or in classes or whatever, I say, yeah, I prepared, and the Spirit guided me in my preparation. But I'm not told what to say at the minute I'm teaching. We tell our missionaries that that will happen to you, but I've had that experience way too infrequently.

Ted Lyon [00:20:06] My spiritual help comes at the time that I'm preparing the lesson. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but it's something to me that even bothers me when I see some people in the church who say, oh, yes, everything I do is guided by the Spirit. It doesn't work for me that way.

Ted Lyon [00:20:23] But if it's working for some, I'm glad that it does. And I'll have to accept that experience. So I can just say that when I have doubted, I come back to this experience on the desert and many others that say this makes sense. If I had a pencil, I'd get up to the blackboard, or if I had a pen, I'd get up to the blackboard and draw on some type of a continuum and saying, here is the line of my life and there's only a little bit here on one side or the middle.

Ted Lyon [00:20:54] Maybe I'll say the left side. That is doubt or concern. But the rest of it is surety, faith and understanding and knowledge that this is true. Now, I can't rationally explain why I know that the Book of Mormon was written by ancient prophets and not by Joseph Smith, but that's part of the sure thing right now. And if that's true, then other things are true around the edge of it.

Ted Lyon [00:21:22] That's the way that my faith functions that I can say there's room for doubt and I don't have to have final answers to everything. And I've learned to say there's enough surety, there's enough truth, that if there's doubt or concerns in some area, I can live with that because there's enough other surety that makes it work. Now, I'm not sure that's enough of telling you the experience, but I wanted to let you know the idea. In Latin America in the last few years, because of these church calls, we've had quite a bit of contact with the First Presidency. Just two weeks ago, we had a three day session in the Temple with the First Presidency and many of the members of the quorum of the 12, good experience, confirming experience that this is right, this is true, but most of you haven't had that experience.

Ted Lyon [00:22:10] And so I'm not hearing you say, ha, ha, look what we've had. No, but I'm just simply saying those are confirming things that say I can still fight and study through difficult problems. But there's enough truth and enough reality that it makes it true. And that's where I'll stop and say thank you, and we'll let you ask questions or comment if you want to make any comments. What do you think has caused the change in the culture from when you were younger? And you talk about the way things

Guest 2 [00:22:37] were and sort of the openness of

Ted Lyon [00:22:39] that to how it is. Very good question. The growth of the church and the necessity to be unified to do things the same way. When I was young, we could talk about six or seven temples in the church. Right now we have 124.

Ted Lyon [00:22:58] In our temple ceremony, they talked about what they called temple drift and how things drift away from the norm. The church said, we can't have temple drift. We want it to be quite boxed. Because if you're going to attend the temple here or in Washington, D.C. or in Buenos Aires, we want you to get the same experience.

Ted Lyon [00:23:18] There's been that thing. The other thing is the church has become much more worldwide, not just by numbers, but we've moved out. We've ceased to be that Wasatch front church. And we're much more open to the press. We don't want to know about the conflicts that may exist in the quorum of the 12.

Ted Lyon [00:23:42] I'm really glad that there are ones. But my experience with Elder Holland lets me know that there are still things. And it's a good many of you speak Spanish, I suspect, who's learned Spanish in Argentina, Chile or Peru, been in those countries. I just have to tell you a brief little story.

Ted Lyon [00:24:02] Elder Holland told this to us, my wife and me. He was working with a group of stake presidents one time trying to talk about the inactivity in Chile. Was asking why they were speaking in Spanish, and he was using whatever Spanish he could pick up. And they said, porch tanti inactividad. Why so much inactivity? And then as he was saying, as they would say something, and the best he could, he'd write their answer on the board. Usually they were one word answers, like no home teachers or no commitment or something.

Ted Lyon [00:24:39] One man said to him, one stake president said, falta de apoyo. You know what the word means? Falta de apoyo. Lack of support. And Elder Holland went to the board and wrote down palta y pollo, which means avocado and chicken.

Ted Lyon [00:24:59] And he'd seen avocado and chicken sandwiches. You had one tonight, didn't you? Precisely. You had one tonight in a little Chilean restaurant up near our house. And anyway, he wrote Palta de Apoyo and he can tell that story now, but he wouldn't want that to be public for some reason. I don't know why. But you see that shows one, he didn't learn Spanish as well as he should have. And maybe a little more humor than should be. But anyway, something you may remember. Let's go.

Guest 2 [00:25:27] I think that in some ways that correlation has a lot to do with keeping things the way that it is. Because I have a friend that worked for BYU Hawaii and his experience was after the tsunamis came, after the tsunamis happened in Southeast Asia. Elder Bednar and someone else came and spoke at by and they spoke very, in a very down to earth, very personable way. And they posted it up on the website. And then within a couple hours of them putting it up on the website they got a phone call, you know, saying that that's no, you need to take that down. That's just not appropriate. That's not how we want apostles to be seen. Why do you think that there's this fear of seeing like our leaders as, as just, worthy, committed, really intelligent people and not as these near celestial people that a lot of people think they do.

Ted Lyon [00:26:28] Let me just give you other examples as well. Elder Holland came into my office one day for his Spanish lesson in Chile and he saw that I was writing in my diary while I was waiting for him. He said, oh Ted, you keep a diary? And I said yeah.

Ted Lyon [00:26:44] He says I don't. I know I should, but I don't. And I said, why don't you? And he said because I saw what happened to Ernest Wilkinson. He said Wilkinson kept diaries in such detail of all of his doings with the brother. And he says they of course filtered through his very candid but biased eye.

Ted Lyon [00:27:09] And he said then they were published. And he said he's embarrassed so many people. He said I'm afraid whatever I say might be misconstrued years down the line. He said, as it is, he said I write an email, send an email to my kids and he says an hour later it's on somebody's blog or somebody's webpage.

Ted Lyon [00:27:29] And I thought it was just to my kids, but he said somehow someone mentioned this to that person that's there and it's part of that communication. So anyway, I'm just giving you the example. There is that fear because I think they're concerned that we're not as strong as we ought to be. They're concerned that something's going to be Said that's going to weaken our faith and it's going to hurt us.

Ted Lyon [00:27:50] That's my observation. We've got some super intelligent people that have been selected for general authorities recently. We've got four university presidents now in the quorum of the 12. I think there are four ex university presidents, Elder Oaks, Elder Eyring, Elder Holland and Elder Bednar.

Ted Lyon [00:28:12] And that's, you know, they're not choosing dumb people, they're choosing various intelligent people, people who also have their doubts and their concerns. Anyway, that's the best I can do with that answer.

Guest 2 [00:28:29] I think for me, like I've read, I'm reading Rough Stone Rolling for the second time through. And I've read the two books that Ed Kimball wrote about his dad. And for me, reading both those books and reading about them in very human terms was actually very faith affirming because it said, you know, to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, you don't have to be perfect, you just, you have to be committed more than anything else. And so I think that, you know, if we could talk about these things and I guess would you say inoculate, like inoculation is the big word on the Web. On the Web. If we could talk about it in that way, I think it would help people's faith.

Ted Lyon [00:29:12] I do too. This was my father's big push all of his life. He'd gone back to the University of Chicago and gotten a master's degree and worked on his Ph.D. but the war came along and he didn't get the PhD there, got to another university. But his big push from the University of Chicago, the Divinity school there, had really big people. Someone like Edgar Goodspeed, if you know some of the best names in the 1920s and 1930s in Christian history.

Ted Lyon [00:29:40] And my father said, find out what really took place and tell it like it was and not gloss over this. And he was probably the first person in the church that started publishing articles about that idea because he said, I don't want people to find out at age 30 something about church history that they should have been taught when they were 15. And it's going to cause them to get upset and leave the church at that time because there's enough truth that it'll still be there even if there were some problems at that time. And we find that with Joseph Smith or whatever. I haven't read the second book of Ed Kimball's, but I've read the first book, the first biography, as well as, of course, Rough Stone Rolling it might be.

John Dehlin [00:30:21] You know, first of all, it's true. Your dad was sort of the expert on Joseph Smith in the Nauvoo period, sort of in his day.

Ted Lyon [00:30:27] Correct.

Church Education, Culture, and Intellectual Openness

John Dehlin [00:30:28] But it's probably worth having you talk a tiny bit about how the Leonard Ehren, how the Lull Bennion sort of Tia Gurlain experience ended, because I think that probably there were people who didn't agree with your dad's philosophy and maybe that caused him a little bit of pain. And I'm not trying to put salt in old wounds, but, I mean, there is a real dilemma in attention and probably not consensus on whether your father's approach is the healthiest one. Maybe you can talk a little bit about any part of that you want

Ted Lyon [00:30:57] to teach you too much about church history more than you want to know. But Ernest L. Wilkinson became president of the BYU here in 1951, almost simultaneous with the time that President McKay became president of the church. Shortly after, he made himself not only president of byu, but head of the church education system, which meant he controlled all seminary and institute teachers.

Ted Lyon [00:31:25] He desired power, and he was a very energetic, hard working and fine man. There's maybe a grandchild here. I'd better be careful. So I don't want to offend the grandchild, Lowell Bennion, who was the director of the institute in Salt Lake City where the majority of the children of the general authorities attended.

Ted Lyon [00:31:48] In fact, my father taught. Both President Faust and President Monson were students in my father's class. They went to the university. You didn't go to byu. The general Authorities, kid, just find it as a good enough university in those days, anyway. Dad and Brother Bennion had had some conflicts with Joseph Fielding Smith, specifically over the book Man Is Origin and Destiny. It was a book that had been agreed not to be published back in the 1930s when Talmadge and Joseph Fielding had a conflict over the whole concept. Talmadge was accepting evolution and Joseph Fielding was not.

Ted Lyon [00:32:28] In 1961, I'll just be very honest with you. Wilkinson planted a faculty member at the University of Utah who was a spy to teach in the institute there and to report to him on a regular basis things that were said by T. Edgar Lyon and Lowell Bennion. That was part of the boy. I'm biasing you this from my standpoint. I'm sure Wilkinson would tell you another way. But the fact is true. At the end of that academic year, 1961, 62, Ed Barrett, who was Wilkinson's hatchet man and his vice president, came up to the University of Utah and simply said, we'd like to offer to you the chance to come down to teach at byu.

Ted Lyon [00:33:14] And that was the offer he made Wilkins. Bennion said, if I don't, what will happen? He said, you will not have a job any longer in the church education system. Wilkinson had fought with Bennion over the position on the blacks having the priesthood. Bennion was trying to push the blacks to get to priesthood. Wilkinson wanted to have grades in the institute system, which in those days, institutes didn't give grades for classes and so on. Wilkinson wanted them to have grades so they could transfer to BYU and get credit here and so on.

Ted Lyon [00:33:46] Wilkinson was essentially fired because he didn't want to come to byu. I mean, Bennion was essentially fired because he didn't want to come to BYU and be that close to Wilkinson. My father resigned at that time because he supported Bennion. Bennion was the director and the more vocal man.

Ted Lyon [00:34:04] Am I telling you we're going the right direction here, John? Anyway, that ended the Bennion Lyon era. Bennion immediately was given a job across the street at the University of Utah as the associate dean of students and became very well known for his activities. And even the University of Utah now has the Bennion center there named for him for all of his social involvement.

Ted Lyon [00:34:31] My father came back at the request of the church, came back and taught at the institute. After a couple of years being away, he also taught. He just went across the street and into the history department at the University of Utah and was accepted there. It seems like I'm supposed to tell more of that, but what that conflict indicated was that that's a time when we were starting to say, let's be careful of dissent among our faculty. Bennion was dissenting with the head of the seminary and institute system, Ernest Wilkins, and as a result, got in trouble and he got fired for it. He probably went on and did better things outside the institute than he had done at the institute.

Ted Lyon [00:35:15] But he made contributions to many, many people. To this day, whenever I go and speak to a new group, I'll still run into people who are much older than you, my age or older, who will say, oh, your father kept me in the church. Your father made such a difference in my life. Or he and Lowell Bennion were the ones that are responsible for me to stay. Even when I talked to President Monson when I was doing this book and I quoted in here, he said I'd never learned how to study. I didn't go on a mission that he didn't go on a mission because he'd served in the Second World War, and the church told them to not get their education after they came back.

Ted Lyon [00:35:59] And most of the didn't go on missions. He said, as I was doubting. He said, I didn't know how to study the Gospel. He said, your father taught me how to study the Doctrine and Covenants. I'd never cracked the scriptures really before that time. He said, I learned how to study the Doctrine and Covenants through your father's classes. So they filled that function. But that era ended in 1962 when Lowell Bennion was fired.

John Dehlin [00:36:24] It feels like the church has gone through a bit of a pendulum where it wants to be candid and. And honest, and it tries and it makes a good effort, and then there's some discomfort. And so it feels like it has to sort of pull back.

Ted Lyon [00:36:36] I believe that's right.

John Dehlin [00:36:37] And you can see that in the. In the 70s happen, and then in the 90s, and now we're having sort of a swing back to openness again.

Ted Lyon [00:36:45] Yeah, I think so. I think so. Under President Hinckley. Sure. Anything else? Don't want to keep you too late.

Guest 3 [00:36:52] Tammy, I have a question. I served in mission in Venezuela, and about the same time that you were mission president in Chile and had a similar experience that John did, where there was an immense pressure to baptize, a lot of dishonesty with baptism. And I came home and had a lot of anger about it that I eventually just kind of, like, let go. But I'm just curious, as a mission president, where does this pressure. I mean, I've heard that, you know, like, it comes up the food chain or whatever, you know, that there's. There's pressure from the general that is put upon the mission president. But I'm just curious if you'd comment about what it's like being a mission president.

Guest [00:37:27] Thank you.

Ted Lyon [00:37:29] I've contemplated the same thing. Why did the previous mission president, to me, put this type of pressure on his missionaries? He was a former military man from Uruguay. And I'll give you my own feelings, because I think there are a couple of. There are multiple things. A mission president. Many mission presidents want to make a name for themselves. I believe that most of the pressure comes from the mission president himself, but he also receives a report from the area to which he's involved. You were probably South America, north area at that time. Probably headquarters in Colombia, I think.

Guest 3 [00:38:08] Yeah, I think so. Or Ecuador, maybe.

Ted Lyon [00:38:11] Ecuador. It's now in Columbia, though. Curious places that they run it there. But Anyway, Elder Vignez may have. David Vinas may have been your area president at that time, wasn't he? The area publishes a comparative list of baptisms in each country or in each mission, I should say. And so you look at, as a mission president, you look at that and say, oh, my gosh, our baptisms were 130 or 40 this month, but in Santiago west, they baptized a thousand. And I'm not exaggerating. They did that. What's the matter with us?

Ted Lyon [00:38:47] So you start putting pressure on your missionaries to baptize. The pressure comes mainly from the mission president and for two things. One, his comparative, as I'm saying, comparative analysis of him and other missions in his area. You never see a comparative analysis of the whole church. They don't.

Ted Lyon [00:39:07] I kept each of these sheets and the church's wishes. I didn't keep them all now because I'm giving them, as I'm retiring, to the BYU library and they'll be available for other people to see. But I wouldn't donate them to the church because the church wouldn't make them available. The church wants to keep that anyway. So it's a pressure the mission president creates for himself, and then the fact that he's probably trying to make somewhat of a name for himself. Not all that would be very incorrect to say that, but many of them want to say, I want to do the best we can. There's another factor, too, and that is that as a mission president, we know that missionaries want to baptize, and they get great pleasure out of baptizing.

Ted Lyon [00:39:48] If you do, then we're going to try to put pressure on you enough that you'll do that. If a missionary goes six months in Chile without a baptism, he's. He starts to get pretty discouraged. The idea is, okay, we'll get somebody in the water, baptize someone. John tells the story of having to drag an older lady down a mountain. As I recall the story, it was the end of the month and he had to have his baptism for the month. And this lady was kind of kicking and screaming, but you got her in the water. It wasn't me. It wasn't you.

John Dehlin [00:40:20] It was the AP's in my AP

Ted Lyon [00:40:22] who came in and made the. Yeah, right. Okay. Thank you.

Guest [00:40:39] Come, thou fount of every blessing to my heart to sing the grace Streams of mercy never ceasing Call for songs of loudest praise Teach me some melodious sonnet Sung by flaming tongues above

Guest 3 [00:41:16] Praise

Guest [00:41:16] the mount I'm fixed upon it Mount of thy redeeming love. O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be Let thy goodness as a fetter Bind my wandering heart to thee Prone to to wonder Lord, I feel it Prone to leave the God I love here's my heart O, take and seal it Seal it for thy courts above Seal it it for thy court.

Mission President Experiences and Baptism Practices

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 103

Guest [00:00:13] Come thou fount of every blessing to my heart to sing thy grace Stream of mercy never ceasing Call for songs of loudest praise Teach me some.

John Dehlin [00:00:40] I'm curious what your experience is with how the church affects the various Chilean cultures. And because it seems like tonight a couple issues that we're talking about is the church trying to have some consistency in a very diverse world. And I think that when you observe, you know, declining diversity, you also have yet to expend more effort to keep the community up because there's less resiliency in the community. And I'm just wondering how you see the church affecting Chilean cultures.

Ted Lyon [00:01:23] The church affecting Chilean culture.

Guest 2 [00:01:25] Is this kind of a cultural imperialism question?

Ted Lyon [00:01:28] A little bit, yeah.

Guest 2 [00:01:29] And how much we tell them.

Ted Lyon [00:01:36] I was hoping that was where you're going. But you talk about Chilean culture. The church doesn't make much of a splash in Chilean culture. We're baptizing basically in church, lower middle class. Sometimes they're baptizing the lower class, but it's mainly the lower middle class. The lower classes are tending to the evangelical churches and they're doing much better than we are. They're much healthier and they maintain their members. They retain a much higher percentage in Chile and throughout Latin America than we do. You've been in Guatemala, have seen that as well. A good high retention. But it's mainly among the poor and the lower classes. Mormons are shooting for a little bit of a slightly higher class if we're doing well.

Ted Lyon [00:02:20] And so we could make a broader effect on the Chilean culture. I'll come back to the other part in a minute. But the church is doing quite a bit in PR right now in Chile. President Holland visited the president of the country twice while he was there. The first lady of Chile at that time, Mrs. Lagos, came here to Utah when she was in Washington D.C. she made a special trip to come here to Utah to see President Holland. There's some affairs we're doing quite a bit with welfare services in Chile and throughout the world, sending blankets. We've opened bishop storehouses in Chile recently and so on.

Ted Lyon [00:02:56] So there is some effect on Chilean culture. But the other aspect is that we build North American looking chapels in Chile as we do throughout most of the world. We really want to start meetings on time like we try to do here.

Ted Lyon [00:03:16] The church tries to avoid the Wasatch Front culture in exporting that to Chile, but we can't avoid it. Our missionaries really look out of place in Chile in small towns when they're wearing a suit and so on. They don't in Santiago. People dress very well in Santiago. In fact, working women in Santiago dress better than North American sister missionaries in Santiago. But we stand out in the smaller towns. Did some of you find that in other areas of the world? We used to get Argentine sisters coming into Chile to serve in our mission. And they were dressed, just dressed at a hilt beautiful. We'd get North American sisters.

Ted Lyon [00:03:57] It was like they were wearing a shift or a house dress when they got off the plane. I was embarrassed by the North American sisters, but anyway. But our elders really stand out too much. So we haven't been able to conform the church to Chilean culture at all. We're trying to get Chilean Mormon culture to be largely North American culture.

Ted Lyon [00:04:24] I've wondered why I was called as temple president there. The man I'm replacing is a Chilean. Why not call a Chilean? There are certainly worthy people there. But then I found out a couple of reasons, since one of them is most people who are active in the church in Chile are also working. And you have to work. There isn't a very good retirement program. People continue working in Chile for as long as they possibly can. And that's true throughout most of Latin America and probably throughout much of the world as well. And so there aren't a lot of retired people to choose from because when you're temple president, you have to pay quite a few of your own expenses.

Ted Lyon [00:05:02] The second is that the first presidency. All temples come under the first presidency. They don't come under area presidency. That may be something that's interesting for you to know. You don't go through your area presidency. You work right with the first presidency. The first presidency wants to communicate with. Temple presidency is in English. And so the temple president has to speak English. And there probably aren't enough retired men who are making enough money to pay their expenses and who speak English.

Ted Lyon [00:05:31] But that's just another. So here I'm the cultural imperialism going down to Chile. And so I admit it. I would really rather see there. I'd rather stay and continue teaching at byu. But anyway, the church calls and you go.

Guest 3 [00:05:48] I just have a question. I served my mission in Uruguay about a year and a half ago.

Ted Lyon [00:05:53] Great.

Guest 3 [00:05:53] And I found the same thing that we were really pressured to baptize. And it was interesting to me. My mission president was from Chile, actually.

Ted Lyon [00:06:04] Who wasn't?

Guest 3 [00:06:05] President Herrera. Herrera.

Ted Lyon [00:06:08] Herrera. Oh, yes, sure, sure. Yeah, I know.

Guest 3 [00:06:13] But I just wonder, is there something that the church leaders suggest that we shift to rather than that Persian baptism? Because I know, like for example, in one of my areas, he finally just said the branch was such a mess. He said, don't cross the light. Don't bring anyone else into this mess. Work with the branch. And I feel like that was probably the most productive time of my mission. And I felt where the most progress came. But we also didn't baptize anyone for six months. We didn't even come close. And so the church wasn't growing. But I'm just wondering, is there a ship that's coming down from, like, the first presidency? He should focus on his missionaries and his members and go to those places.

Ted Lyon [00:06:55] President Hinckley keeps talking about. Elder Haaland said to me, he said, as I go back to Salt Lake for each general conference, he said, if there's one theme of President Hinckley, it's not what you as members hear. He says, you hear about temples and stand tall and other things. He said, what I hear is retain, retain, retain.

Ted Lyon [00:07:14] Keep the members we got. He keeps talking about it. It doesn't make much sense to bring someone in the front door and let them go out the back door. That's what he's telling us as general authorities, the 12 and the 70s and so on.

Ted Lyon [00:07:28] But there's something lost in the translation as it gets down to mission presidents. The church continues preaching, but there's no movement to do that right now. It's left up to the individual mission presidents and area presidents. When we first went to Chile, our area was Buenos Aires. When we first got there, Chile hadn't become its separate area as it is now. The area present was a long ways away over in Buenos Aires. And he never got down to Osorno. And all he was saying, keep baptizing. Yay, 460amonth. That's terrific.

Ted Lyon [00:08:03] Often get started without the area presidency and then the broader general authorities knowing the whole detail. But President Hinckley at least is preaching that to his workers. Retain, retain, retain. Ash, do you want to say something?

Church Fallibility, Institutional Change, and Individual Faith

Guest 3 [00:08:21] Well, I have. I mean, you talked about two things that seem separate, but to me they're linked. About how the church was different when you were younger, and then about the church in Latin America. And to me, I haven't been on a mission, but I feel like if we could do a better job at saying that the ideas we hear aren't just a certain way, you know, that faith isn't just this certain thing, this, like, just add water experience, where you're like, oh, angels singing and everything's fine after that, you know, and that the prophet is not A sacrosanct person who makes no mistakes. And you know, that the church doesn't have have to just mean this thing that we've PR'd it into meaning, basically.

Guest 3 [00:09:06] And then if you went down and you also said, well, obviously then people would be having the mindset, well, the church isn't just about baptizing people because what does that do for them if the point is progress and process?

Guest 3 [00:09:19] And then they wouldn't baptize in a rush. And then you have people who join the church knowing the implications, being familiar with some of the paradoxes and battles within it, and then they'd be willing to stay not because even they had great home teachers, but because they were prepared in the process of deciding whether to be church to see if they wanted to be actually be a part of the church or part of the gospel anyway, I guess.

Guest 3 [00:09:48] So my question is, I talk about that with people a lot and they treat it like it's kind of a side hobby. Like, yeah, if you're interested in what. When, what faith really is and things like that, you know, or you're interested in ambiguities or subtleties of things, that's great. But that's not what. That's not for church or that's not for missions, or that's not for sacrament meeting, or that's not for General conference. It seems like it's not for anywhere. It's just private sessions where you're like, you know, so I'm just wondering why you feel like, if you feel like it's a virtue that we've shifted away from more eclectic, more honest, fallible kind of church, and why we can't go back and why more people aren't like, go back, John.

Guest 2 [00:10:27] And before you answer, I'll just pile on a bit and that's that, you know, there is a way for the brethren to stop these types of baptisms. And I'm passionate about this because I was a victim or experienced it personally. But it started in the early 60s with the baseball baptisms.

Ted Lyon [00:10:41] Late 50s.

Guest 2 [00:10:42] Yeah, there's a way for them to stop it. They get up in General Conference and instead of telling whatever stories they normally tell, which we all enjoy, they would say, we're going to spend the next 20 minutes and talk to you about some things that happen in Chile.

Guest 2 [00:10:56] And we're going to say, we love baptisms, we love bringing people to the church, but sometimes maybe we get a little bit too excited and sometimes maybe we bring people in that we shouldn't. And here's what happens here's how it dilutes the wards. Here's how it dilutes the leadership. And we've had to close 35 stakes as a result of this overzealous stuff. And it really weakens the structural underpinnings of the units. And we need to stop it one time. That happens in General Conference.

Guest 2 [00:11:26] It can become transformative for the church because people pay attention to what's said in General Conference. Now, I don't mean to put you on the spot. I'm not asking you why they don't do that, but I think that that might be a solution. And maybe if they trusted us with that story and that knowledge more broadly, we'd learn from the mistakes and not keep repeating them. And maybe we'd grow because we'd learned some things that maybe at a higher level we'd realize that we're all in this church struggle together instead of just sort of doing what we're told or sort of putting our heads down, et cetera. Sorry, I hope I didn't detract from your question.

Guest 3 [00:11:58] And that is part of my question is just that when I talk about it, it does seem like people like, it's a side issue. Be a better missionary on your own. For me, it's like it's not divorced from what the church is about. And without it, the church becomes this lifestyle. Like, I mean, I haven't spent tons of time in Latin America, but a lot of the Latin American converts I see convert for the lifestyle. It's like I want my kids to not drink beer. I want them to not have sex before they're married. Therefore, I'm Mormon. That's not what Mormonism is. So I think the danger is we make it a side issue and then we have have a lifestyle church instead of a church where you really explore the tenets of the gospel.

Ted Lyon [00:12:38] I'm just going to address both of these briefly. John's issue. Nobody is going to tell the general authorities what to say in General Conference. But the hesitation is because there is concern that our faith is fragile. John, you know that, and that's why we don't say it. We're talking to members who we need to buck up and encourage. And if I get too candid, your faith might be hurt. I'm sorry for that because I think most of us have strong enough faith that we could handle it presented in a good way. I have wonderful confidence that Elder Holland could do that, but I'm not sure he would feel ugly.

Ted Lyon [00:13:13] He feels that's the president of the church that should be doing that continuing. I think in the main, we baptize people much too soon. In most missions. The Jehovah's Witnesses require two years of study before you become a full fledged Jehovah's Witness.

Ted Lyon [00:13:32] That may be a little long for us. That means if you go on a mission, you don't see your baptisms until no chance to even see your people being baptized. You might see somebody else's person be baptized, but you don't get a chance to see your own.

Ted Lyon [00:13:49] I. I think what you will see and are seeing. We've leveled off in baptisms a bit. We dropped down. We were baptizing about 310,000 people a year during the 1990s and 1995 to about 2003. At that time, baptisms have gone down into 2602-500002-40000 a year.

Ted Lyon [00:14:18] At the MTC, they just reported that for the first time this year, 2007, we're seeing baptism starting to come back up. The MTC and the general authorities that have spoken to us attribute that to missionaries who are better converted themselves and use teaching more with the Spirit and can make it work better.

Ted Lyon [00:14:42] They're not going to get up to the 300,000 level for a while, I believe. Let me just give you the example though, of Brad Wilcox. I probably shouldn't be dishonest, but some of you know Brad Wilcox. You've all heard him, especially for youth or something else.

Ted Lyon [00:15:02] Wonderful mission president in Santiago East Mission, just came back a year and a half ago, I thought was a wildly successful mission president, but he did a heck of a lot of things to convert his missionaries and he didn't go after the number of baptisms.

Ted Lyon [00:15:21] He ran a little bit afoul and his reputation with the then area president, and I won't even tell you who it is, is pretty negative. The then area president has given him, gave him quite a bit of negative feedback and made some dramatic changes in his mission. The area president told a new mission president how to behave, which was quite rare. They usually don't tell mission presidents that.

Ted Lyon [00:15:44] They let them make their own decisions and own mistakes. That's sad to me because he was really trying to convert his missionaries and grow the church, but his baptisms went way down and the area president was upset about that. We're dealing with humans and I guess that really ought to be my final thing. We're dealing with humans. The area president wants his area to do well. He wants it to look good. He wants to be able to baptize and go back to general Conference and say this is how many baptisms we've had and this is how much the church is growing. We tend to measure baptisms when we're first new mission presidents.

Ted Lyon [00:16:24] Soon all mission presidents get a list. You don't get it when you're being trained, but you get it later on of the 12 key indicators. And these are the things that the brethren look at. The quorum of the 12 looks at. They do look at baptism. That's one of the indicators. But another is tithing payment. How many adults have temple recommends, how many endowed adults have current temple recommends, and a whole bunch of other things like that. Those are better indicators. But we don't ever talk about those in a general Conference. We only talk about the number of baptisms.

John Dehlin [00:16:58] I guess I had a continuation. Which is how individual do you feel? Like the church. Like is this the big box church?

Ted Lyon [00:17:09] It certainly gives that mode. I have an article that just came out in the Virginia Quarterly from the University of Virginia on Mormonism in Chile. And that's precisely the attack that it's a big box church.

John Dehlin [00:17:23] There's the formula, do this and then you run it.

Ted Lyon [00:17:26] I don't think she uses that term, but that's the, that's the tenor of what she's saying in the article.

John Dehlin [00:17:33] As opposed to.

Ted Lyon [00:17:35] I think there's a lot more room for individual participation. Chile right now they experimented with just a two hour block meeting instead of a three because three hours was too long for most people to come and stay, especially if they had kids and so on. And Chilean kids are woefully unbehaved in church. I hate to say that, but. And maybe other areas they run up on the stand and do also want

John Dehlin [00:18:00] to take it back to sort of maybe a sun stony kind of question, which is then if in our personal. Like you started by mentioning people that are thoughtful sometimes have doubts and questions and things, you feel that it's okay and proper that if a person does have such questions and different takes on things, it's proper and right for them to interpret the religion as they will and as works for them. Or. Or do you feel it's more important to put trust in the leadership?

Ted Lyon [00:18:30] I think you've got to do both and you can be your own personal thing. But let me just come back to what I think where the church could go. Why not have drums in sacrament meeting if you're in Africa and that's part of your religious tradition?

Ted Lyon [00:18:44] I think we're allowing that in some places. I think I hope so. It doesn't make a lot of sense to have an organ in a chapel if nobody plays the organ. It's a dumb thing. Fortunately, we've gone to keyboard, electronic keyboards, and so that's a lot cheaper than the thing.

Ted Lyon [00:19:04] I think we could do much better with local music, with local hymn books and incorporate things. Fortunately, hymn books don't have God Bless America in them in foreign countries. But. But why don't we have the Chilean national anthem or something like that? Have pan flutes? Sure, sure.

Ted Lyon [00:19:27] So we can do more on that. Yeah, we can and we should. But there's a worry that it's going to. It's the drift that you've got to protect against. I have a question.

BYU Culture, Civic Engagement, and Why People Leave

John Dehlin [00:19:38] I apologize if this doesn't relate entirely, but it's actually more a question about bringing on universities, because we were talking about Wilkinson and so this question is. It's more of like a comment question, just sort of. During the time, during Wilkinson's era, we saw a lot of changes within the university, especially in the culture of the university. And a lot of those changes continue to exist. And I think that the culture. I'd like to see the culture change at Birmingham University significantly, and I hope it does in the next 10 or 15 years and hope it's a more open culture.

Ted Lyon [00:20:17] Not likely. No, no. Since I've been here, came in 1972. Your naming corps members from the 70 have been the last two presidents. And I think that's probably the direction that it's going to go. And that's not going to create a more open culture. We as faculty have had much more trouble relating to the last two presidents than the previous three who weren't general authorities.

John Dehlin [00:20:44] Because I guess part of the crux of my question is just the idea that even I don't mind the honor code as long as it's an honor code, like something you do on your honor. What bothers me is this culture. I mean, even in the honor code, you have this portion of the honor code that encourages you. Not only encourages, but to rat other people out, but to actually says that you need to report each other if you're doing things in the existence of the honor code office. I just was wondering.

Ted Lyon [00:21:15] Yeah, but you know what my advice is? Just ignore that. I really don't think that. I don't think you're going to get in trouble if you don't. And I don't mind seeing the long hair that I see around here on some of you. I wish I had some.

Ted Lyon [00:21:33] It would be helpful I've learned to live with a lot of things and university rules that are bothersome to me, and somehow I can say I'll ignore it or I'll follow along, as long as it doesn't contradict my own feelings of integrity.

Ted Lyon [00:21:55] I wanted to say that one time in an institute class at the University of Utah, we asked Lowell Bennion, this very thoughtful man, why do you stay in the church? He made the observation, because I can do a lot more good from within than from without. I can have more effect on the church from within than without, and I really believe that it can.

Ted Lyon [00:22:21] My father counseled me against coming to BYU when I was teaching at the University of Wisconsin. I said, why? He said, because occasionally, not always, but occasionally, when the institution from which you get your paycheck is the same one that you put your faith in. He said, occasionally you'll see things that make faith difficult. That has been true, but not impossible. Difficult, but not impossible in my case,

Guest [00:22:49] any question, which is in some ways a restatement of Chris Foster's second question he was asking. As we've talked a little bit about in the past, I've had some dilemmas on kind of the struggle between deferring to authority and kind of publicly expressing and kind of publicly championing kind of private and personal conscience on things. And luckily, those two things don't usually conflict. And this may be a question about how you do it, maybe a question regarding advice for me, but it might be a question regarding your father and some of his friends and how they dealt with it is what. How can you choose between those things? And not strategically, although certainly it's a strategic question for me. How does it actually affect any good change to make people angry? It's something I'm constantly asking myself. But what's the ethical thing to do in that situation for you?

Ted Lyon [00:24:08] Yeah, you're asking about how much. You're asking the Henry David Thoreau question. The Public Getting out and Fighting, or what's the title of the essay on Not Remembering Civil Disobedience? John? Civil Disobedience. I'll just tell you a little story of mine.

Ted Lyon [00:24:32] When I was serving as chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, I hired a very, very sharp young man who had just gotten his Ph.D. from Cornell. His name was John Rosenberg. Very intelligent. He was unmarried. And when I hired him, the academic vice president of the university told me that now you know that he will not be able to get tenure if he's not married. And I said, well, I hope he'll get married here.

Ted Lyon [00:24:59] After three or four years, he did find a woman. He was engaged to her. Very fine professor, amazing professor. But just when he came up for tenure, he got disengaged and broke up with her. I took his case for his five year review.

Ted Lyon [00:25:16] It's now six, but then it was 50 year review to the academic vice president. And he said, I'm sorry, there's no chance of him getting tenure here. And I said, take it to the first presidency. Take it in your next board meeting. He says, we can't. He says, we've got other more important things to fight about. He knows the thing. I said, this is reverse discrimination. I've got two single women in my department and they can get tenure, and this single man can't get tenure.

Ted Lyon [00:25:44] And they wouldn't take it to Salt Lake. And I said, jay. Jay Balla, the vice president. I said, jay, I'm going to organize a picket out in front of the school unless you take this to Salt Lake. I said, I'm going to march around the thing and I'm going to have my students just march around here. And I said, john Rosenberg's got plenty of good professors that are willing to do that. I'd seen that done at Wisconsin because it was quite frequent there.

Ted Lyon [00:26:15] He said, that's a thread, isn't it? And I said, yes, it is. He said, give me some time to work on it. Unfortunately, or fortunately, President Holland, who was the president of university then, got called to general authority.

Ted Lyon [00:26:30] And I said, okay, let's see what happens. The academic vice president was changed, and Rex Lee came in. And I went to Rex Lee the second day he was there and said, I've got a case. Will you take it? He said, if you're telling me the truth about what I told him about the man. He said, I'll take this. I've been fighting case before the Supreme Court. He said, I can win this one.

Ted Lyon [00:26:52] And he did. And he called me a few days later after they'd taken it to the quorum of the 12. And I said, what happened? He said, president Hinckley, who wasn't the president of the church, it was President Benson. But President Hinckley was kind of running things in those days as counselor. President Hinckley just said, oh, he's not married. He said, well, there are a lot of single women there. I'm sure he can find a wife. And just signed it without any problem.

Ted Lyon [00:27:18] But I really would have organized that thing. And that's what we're not doing enough on campus to organize A picket. You know, it's going to get some press stuff. You do the alternative commencement and it gets quite a bit of press for it because people want to see some dissent at byu and I think you can do it within. I wouldn't have gotten in trouble. I could have done it. It wouldn't have hurt me.

Guest 2 [00:27:42] Because you have tenure.

Ted Lyon [00:27:44] Because I have tenure. That's right. But anyway, so John Rosenberg got tenure without being married. He's the dean of the college right now, in case you don't know that. And he's incredible. He and I are teaching a class together this semester. Is he married now and he's married. Adopted two children.

Guest 2 [00:28:04] So you've been very kind. I don't want to cut things off,

Ted Lyon [00:28:07] but I'm ready to go home.

Guest 2 [00:28:08] I have a final question, and this is is very specific. I interact with hundreds of people who sort of fit into this very specific category. They were raised in the church. Most are pioneer stock, go on missions, married in the temple, live a happy 10 or 20 lives. 10 or 20 years and lives too.

Guest 2 [00:28:34] Then they learn about polyandry and Joseph Smith, or they learned about DNA in the Book of Mormon, or they learned about, you know, post manifesto polygamy, whatever the case may be. And it's such a shock between what they grew up hearing as the official story and what the actual historical record bears to the point where not only do they feel cheated and, you know, deceived, but they often feel like they have a moral and an ethical obligation to leave the church.

Guest 2 [00:29:13] What I feel like you represent and what these people simply don't have role models for because other, you know, leaders in the church generally don't talk about what they know and don't know and definitely don't talk about these hard issues. But knowing who your dad is and knowing that you're a thoughtful man and that you sort of started me down the road of Sunstone, you know, watchers of this presentation are seeing a man who knows all that stuff and yet is a believer in the restoration. And so I'm going to, I'll just ask you a two part question for those people who think they have to leave and they probably had spiritual experiences just like you, or they felt like they were inspired that they the church was true.

Guest 2 [00:29:55] So if you're comfortable talk about why someone shouldn't feel like that's their only option because clearly you could have taken that option and you haven't. And then if you're comfortable ending with whatever type of testimony you're comfortable bearing within this context. I'd love to end on that note.

Staying in the Church Despite Doubt and History

Ted Lyon [00:30:16] There is too much truth to chuck it before doubts and for strange behavior in history. Unfortunately, it's our history that keeps plaguing us. Mitt Romney is facing that dilemma right now of things that don't appear right to the people who are living today. I just heard KSL and a man was railing on Romney. It was a minister from an evangelical church was railing on Romney for Did any of you hear this? This morning on Doug Wright show was railing on Romney that he wasn't Christian and so on. And for his polygamous ancestry and so on. Romney can't do much about his polygamous ancestry. Let's leave it so My first response, John, is there is too much truth to chuck the whole church.

Ted Lyon [00:31:09] We maybe overstate some of our cases. We've talked about the fact that we feel that many of our general authorities are fearful of our faith and so they don't want to bring up controversy. But here's where the individuals better bring up controversy. I can handle evolution very well because I've looked at it, I've thought of it, read it, and I can live with it very easily. I can handle the fact that there were people practicing plural marriage after the thing because they were human beings and they got carried away and they went way too far with it. They didn't stop and didn't follow their leaders like their leaders wanted them to follow.

Ted Lyon [00:31:45] I can live with the fact that Joseph Smith had some flaws. We've read the books and know of those things. But in the same time I can still say there is enough truth and there is too much truth to deny the whole thing for one little or two or three or big things. I think we tend to overblow those things.

Ted Lyon [00:32:12] I was upset in my lifetime with a certain president of the church who was obviously a member of the John Birch Society earlier, when he was a president of the church. He wasn't. He was wonderful. Gave some of the best speeches we've ever had.

Ted Lyon [00:32:28] So that bothered me. That bothered me. I was extremely bothered as a young man in the 60s when I was at UCLA and Wisconsin, that blacks did not hold the priesthood. But it wasn't enough to chuck the whole church.

Ted Lyon [00:32:44] I'm still bothered by a book that was published in the 1950s called man is Origin and Destiny. It really bothers me. It's not a good book. It pretends to have science in it and it's not science yet. I knew Joseph Fielding quite well. I took his wife shopping one day and drove him around Argentina for several days as a missionary and know the man, A good man, a wonderful man. He even got on my case for his wife, spending too much money when we took her shopping.

Ted Lyon [00:33:17] But he was a good human being, a good man. But I'm not going to let my testimony disappear because of that book that he published, even though it upset me at the period of time. So there are all kinds of things in my own experience, my own life, that make that.

Ted Lyon [00:33:37] While in Chile, I had the opportunity to translate for President Hinckley on a few occasions. I didn't want to do it because I was translating from English to Spanish. I said when the area presidency asked me to do it, a native speaker ought to do this, translating into his own language.

Ted Lyon [00:33:57] They said, no, but President Hinckley uses a lot of big words and concepts, and a native speaker might not pick it up. I disagree with that. I think there were native speakers who could have done it. But anyway, I was asked to translate for President Hinckley before a large stadium, about 40,000 people present. I was scared to death. I translate for the prophet. Gosh, Into a language that is not my native language, that this didn't seem right.

Ted Lyon [00:34:25] But my wife and I did a lot of preparation for it. She read his talks in English, and then as we were driving, I would drive in and she would read, and then I would translate them into Spanish, and then we would compare them against the official church translation of those talks and see where I had gone astray.

Ted Lyon [00:34:42] We made a list of words that he was using in talks that I didn't know. So we really did our homework to try to. The day of the event came, and I guess I just have to tell you this as well. We met in the airport in Santiago. Just by chance, we got there on Sunday night, and he came in and they told us he was coming into the VIP lounge. So they let us go into the VIP lounge. And as he came through the door, Sister Hinckley saw my wife, and she said, oh, Cheryl Larsen Lyon said, I almost raised you. My wife spent a lot of time in their home because they lived just across the the street and had a good chance to talk with him, with President Hinckley.

Ted Lyon [00:35:18] And I said, president Hinckley, I'm really nervous. We stood and just talked for about 20 minutes, and I said, I've got to try and say, do you have a copy of your talk that I could read tonight so I know what to say tomorrow? And he said. He just laughed. He said, I don't have my talk Prepared. He said, I'm just going to speak from these notes, and these are some of the scriptures I'm using. And he just showed me the scriptures and put them back in his pocket.

Ted Lyon [00:35:42] The next day, in the afternoon, in this large stadium, we sat, and as they presented their talk, some in Spanish and some in English, that had to be translated, then President Hinckley got up and I stood next to him.

Ted Lyon [00:35:56] He was at the mic, and I was just off to the side at another microphone. Things went fairly well. I was able to get most of the words and feel like you get them out fast, you got to do it quickly. You translate English comes in here. Spanish has got to come out there right fast so that you don't become the focus, so that his talk is what is heard and his words in Spanish. So it's in here and out here. Very quickly he talked about his visits to Chile and trips to Chile a little bit, encouraged people, very normal things of paying tithing and standard stuff.

Ted Lyon [00:36:32] Then he paused for just a minute. At the end, there was just a short little pause, and he said, my dear Chilean saints, I want you to know that this day, the 11th of November, you've heard Gordon Hinckley say that he knows God lives.

Ted Lyon [00:36:54] I heard those words, and there was nothing that I didn't know. I started opening them out. It didn't go in here and come out here. It probably dropped down here someplace or whatever metaphor we want to use. And I started to say me, and I just teared up instead. The same thing that often happens to us in those moments.

Ted Lyon [00:37:19] And I said, mees me. And I just couldn't go anymore. And I got and I cried, and he punched me and said, go ahead. I said, I wish I could. And with that, that was enough of a little relief that I was saying, mis queridos hermanos chilenos de sei en quesada sepan que sidilla onse re noviembre escuchado and escuchado agord en hincla de sir que el sabe que dios vive.

Ted Lyon [00:37:47] But just saying those words and hearing them from him. And then with that terribly strong testimony behind those words, I had to say, I know God lives. This is just one more of those many confirmations that say God is indeed in charge of things.

Ted Lyon [00:38:04] Then he went on to say, and I want you to know that Jesus Christ lived on this earth, died, and was resurrected here. Jesus Christ and God the Father appeared to Joseph Smith. I know that is true. They restored the priesthood, and the priesthood is true. And royal. And then he ended. In the name of Jesus Christ. I felt that testimony. I've felt it many times before, but never stronger than that. And that's my testimony as well. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Guest [00:38:57] Come, thou fount of every blessing? Tune my heart to sing thy grace? Streams of mercy never ceasing? Call for songs of loudest praise? Teach me some melodious sonnet Sung by flaming tongues above? Praise the mount, I'm fixed upon it. Mount of iridium. O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to to be? Let thy goodness as a fetter Bind my wandering heart to thee? Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it Prone to le. Here's my heart. O, take and seal it? Seal it for thy courts above? Seal it for thy courts above?

Guest 2 [00:41:00] Sa.

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