Introduction and Welcome to Radio Free Mormon

John Dehlin [00:00:06] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and and building communities and programs of support for Mormon like you. Thanks for your support. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John de Lynn. It's November 8, 2019 and we're continuing our two day series in the Pacific Northwest. We're in Seattle, Washington. Actually, we're we're in Kirkland, Washington. Yesterday we did several hours with Mike Brown dealing with his amazing work around Mormon truth claims and the Mormon Stories podcast Billboard Project and just interviewing a thoughtful human, thoughtful, courageous human. We continue our little two day series today, interviewing someone that I know, many of you, many of my listeners, very, very excited to hear from. Today we're interviewing Radio Free Mormon. Okay, that's not his real name, but Radio Free Mormon is a podcast that many of you are familiar with. It's a Mormon themed podcast that emerged out of Bill Real's family or library of podcasts. And Radio Free Mormon is a podcast dedicated to talking about important issues within Mormon history, Mormon culture, Mormon leadership and the like. And the host of Radio Free Mormon, for reasons that we'll probably discuss, chooses not to use his his real name commonly on the podcast. And we'll talk about why that is his name is out there. So it's not like we're pretending that it's not, but we're just not you using it based on his request and out of respect for that, because this is a messy business that we're all in. But we're really excited to sit down for several good hours with Radio Free Mormon today to talk about his podcast. So before we actually dive in as normal, just a couple quick announcements. We do have the Thrive Beyond Mormonism event coming up November 17th. We're bringing Amber Skora from New York. She's an ex Jehovah's Witness. We're going to do a book signing with her Saturday night, November 16th, and we hope you guys will all come to that. It's the Community of Christ building 7pm and just support an amazing author who is doing the good work that we all should appreciate, which is helping awaken people to organizations that are unhealthy. And helping them transition in a healthy way. And that's what the Open Stories foundation about is about. That's what Mormon Stories is about, and that's what Amber's about. So come support us there. But then November 17th is the thrive Beyond Mormonism Conference, which is a conference for post Mormon. We're not going to be attacking the church or criticizing the church. We are going to be talking about healing, growth, and community beyond Mormonism. And we have a ton of amazing speakers lined up, including Wayne Sermon, the lead guitarist for Imagine Dragons, Natasha Alford Parker, Lacy Green, Stephanie Sorensen Larsen, and just an amazing list. So go to thrivebeyondmormonism.com this event is guaranteed to make a loss. We already know that the expenses exceed what we expect the revenue from ticket sales to be. But we're doing this. We're pricing at 15 bucks a person. We're doing this just because we want as many people as possible to benefit from it. So that's what we're doing. And join us if you can. It's going to be great and I'm really excited about it. So thrivebeyondmormism.com check it out. And I don't think I have any more announcements. So without any further ado, Radio Free Mormon, it is super fun to have you on Mormon Stories.

Radio Free Mormon [00:04:21] Thank you so much, John. I've been waiting forever for you to ask me.

John Dehlin [00:04:25] Forever?

Radio Free Mormon [00:04:26] Well, a few years.

John Dehlin [00:04:27] Forever's a long time.

Radio Free Mormon [00:04:28] It's a very long time. Especially when I'm waiting on you.

John Dehlin [00:04:32] Well, here we are. And this is your kind of neck of the woods, right?

Radio Free Mormon [00:04:35] It is. I live up here in Washington.

John Dehlin [00:04:37] Yeah. Near. Kind of more north. North of Seattle. Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:04:40] Hey, now you're already giving away too much, John. Ixnay on the directions.

John Dehlin [00:04:44] I've got friends up there and it's fun. Okay. So, yeah, so your podcast, and I love it when Mormon themed podcasts do well. You know, Bill Real has done an amazing job with Mormon discussions, podcasts. He spun off or supported Marriage on a Tightrope, which is an amazing podcast by Alan and Katie Mount. That's. That's a podcast supporting mixed faith marriages. We're a huge fan of Alan and Katie. We've had them on Mormon Stories. Big shout out to them.

Radio Free Mormon [00:05:15] We.

John Dehlin [00:05:15] We feel like we partially are responsible for discovering Bill Real in the sense that we interviewed him way back in the day on Mormon Stories when he was a still a presiding bishop or sitting bishop. And we've interviewed him several times as well. He's a great thought, thoughtful Guy, he's done great work and one of the great things Bill Real has helped do is help nurture and discover you. And over the past year or so, more and more and more people have reached out to me just saying they love Radio Free Mormon and really appreciate what rfm, which he's belovedly known as, love the work that RFM does. So today we're gonna be learning a little bit more about the man behind the podcast. His history, his story, why he does what he does, what led to him doing a podcast. We've got a bunch of questions from listeners that I put together that I'll be asking. We do have people joining us live on Facebook and we really do welcome questions and comments from our listenership. That always makes things more interesting. We do invite our listeners to please share this episode on your walls, Instagram, Twitter, you know, whatever social media feeds you have. Yesterday we had over 200 people joining us live contiguously over the sustained period of the interview. It'd be fun to have as much or more for rfm. So please do your part to spread the word and let's, let's have as many people learn from a thoughtful, effective communicator as is possible. And of course, we'll be talking about the modern Mormon Church and the church leadership and the strategy and direction of the church as well towards the end of the interview. So that's what we have in store for Dave. It'll likely be a multi hour interview. And of course tonight a bunch of us are getting together in Seattle just to get to know RFM and to spend some time together. So if you happen to live in the Seattle area, reach out and we'll get you an invite to the event because we like to build community wherever we go, when we travel, and that's why we do it. All right. Rfm. So I know that you're a convert.

Radio Free Mormon [00:07:25] Yes, I am.

John Dehlin [00:07:26] So I normally begin by, by asking my listeners to give their Mormon bona fides. Bona fides or how do you pronounce that?

Radio Free Mormon [00:07:33] As a lawyer, you can pronounce it differently. I hear bonafides sometimes. I'm not sure that's correct.

John Dehlin [00:07:38] You're not. You're not going to be able to give us your Mormon bona fides.

Radio Free Mormon [00:07:42] Why not?

John Dehlin [00:07:42] Because you don't have any.

Radio Free Mormon [00:07:44] I don't have any.

John Dehlin [00:07:45] Do you?

Radio Free Mormon [00:07:45] I've got a few. I've got a lot of Mormon street cred. Was it Bob? Yes, yes. Mormon scale. I went on a mission, for crying out loud.

John Dehlin [00:07:55] Well, let's start so go back. Were your parents. Your parents weren't Mormon, right?

Radio Free Mormon [00:07:59] No, no, because I was a convert to the church. Right.

John Dehlin [00:08:01] So tell us about your parents.

Radio Free Mormon [00:08:02] My dad.

John Dehlin [00:08:03] How you were raised.

Radio Free Mormon [00:08:04] Oh, very well. I was raised extremely. My mom tried her best with me is all I can say. So she tried to teach me manners. She tried to make me couth. Most of that I rejected. I said, no, that's not for me. Youngest of three boys. That's me. I'm the baby. Gotta love me. And my dad was a. An aeronautical engineer and an avowed atheist. He did not believe in God. He wasn't militant about it or anything, but he simply did not believe in God. My mom was a. Oh, I'm sure she was a Protestant of some sort. Never went to church or anything, or took us boys to church, so just a sort of nominal belief. I remember once when I was a kid asking her what religion we are, and she thought about it and said, well, I guess we're Protestant. So that was about that.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] What are you comfortable saying? What kind of city or region you grew up in?

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:00] Yeah, as a kid, I grew up in Waco.

John Dehlin [00:09:03] Waco.

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:03] Waco. I'm the Waco kid.

John Dehlin [00:09:05] So when. When the Branch Davidian stuff happened with David Koresh, was he there?

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:10] No, this was in the 1960s that I was a kid in Waco.

John Dehlin [00:09:14] Okay, okay. And that happened in.

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:15] When, the 90s, the mid-90s.

John Dehlin [00:09:17] Okay. But I. I grew up. I grew up in Houston and I knew Waco to be this super Baptist town.

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:24] Baylor that.

John Dehlin [00:09:25] Yeah, Baylor. Baylor University's there. But, you know, because the God Makers was a thing when I was growing up in high school, all that kind of anti Mormon stuff and, And Baptists tended to hate Mormon. Did you. Did. Did you have any exposure to those Baptists growing up in Waco and.

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:43] No, but I wasn't a.

John Dehlin [00:09:44] Have you ever heard of Mormon?

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:45] But I wasn't a Mormon then, anyway, so.

John Dehlin [00:09:47] Right. No, I know that.

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:48] No, no, I didn't hear. No, no. Who hears of Mormon in Waco?

John Dehlin [00:09:52] Okay, but. But what about Baptist? Were you Baptist? Were you. Did you. I mean, did you have friends that were Baptist?

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:57] Not that I knew. Not that I knew.

John Dehlin [00:10:00] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:00] Yeah. Religion wasn't something it was talked about among the kids.

John Dehlin [00:10:03] You. What?

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:05] Religion wasn't in your high school.

John Dehlin [00:10:07] Kids didn't talk about religion.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:08] Now, if we'll go back here, 1960s, I'm born in 1960. Right.

John Dehlin [00:10:12] Okay.

Growing Up Outside the Church

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:12] So I'm just a kid. We're trying grades.

John Dehlin [00:10:14] You're four. When The Beatles come to America.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:10:17] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:18] Right. So you got it figured out. 1969. We moved from Texas up to Washington, though. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] So, yeah, up to Washington state. Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:29] So, you know, junior high school, high school years. I'm up here in Washington, not down there.

John Dehlin [00:10:33] Okay. In the Seattle kind of region.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:36] Yes. For people who are not from around here, that's the easiest way to think of it.

John Dehlin [00:10:40] Okay. Okay. And so your. Your parents were not religious.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:44] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:10:45] Okay. And anything interesting, noteworthy about your upbringing as. As a child or. Or youth that you want to say that helps would help people understand your story and who you are a little bit. It's happy. Were your siblings happy? Did you guys get along? Was it a Leave it to Beaver kind of family? Was it a dysfunctional family? What?

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:05] It was a very odd family in retrospect, but I didn't know it was odd at the time. I mean, give you one example, we had a couple of horses that were kept out on somebody else's property. And so my dad had to get a horse trailer to drive the horses around. Well, instead of getting a pickup truck, he got a hearse. Now that's odd, isn't it?

John Dehlin [00:11:27] Yeah, yeah. What was he thinking?

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:28] I have no idea, but it was his.

John Dehlin [00:11:29] Like he was a quirky guy. What was your dad.

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:30] No, he didn't seem quirky, although it sounds strange in that context, doesn't it? But he got a hearse and so it was like a station wagon. He could stick us three boys in the back where the caskets used to go. And then he had a trailer hitch on the back and he would put the trailer on it and drag it around.

John Dehlin [00:11:50] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:51] It was all normal to me at the time.

John Dehlin [00:11:52] What was his profession? His.

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:54] He was an aeronautical engineer. He worked a lot with wind tunnels at the time.

John Dehlin [00:11:57] Was it Boeing kind of stuff then? Because that's up here in Seattle when

Radio Free Mormon [00:12:01] he took his job in 1969. Yes, that was a job at Boeing.

John Dehlin [00:12:07] Okay. How did you. Did you get along well with your parents and siblings?

Radio Free Mormon [00:12:13] I think as well as normal. Certainly not Leave it to Beaver, which I think itself is probably unrealistic in the first place. I came along late in life for my parents. They were old enough to be my grandparents, so they actually grew up in the Depression. My dad was born in 1919, so actually in December will be. Would have been his 100th birthday. So that's how old my dad is. He was 40 when I was born. So a much it's an older generation. Children are to be seen and not heard at Least as far as he was concerned.

John Dehlin [00:12:43] My dad literally said that all the time.

Radio Free Mormon [00:12:45] Really?

John Dehlin [00:12:45] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:12:46] My mom was much more the nurturer. My dad was the aloof punisher when it was necessary, he was the sheriff in town.

John Dehlin [00:12:54] Okay, what did you do? How did you grapple with. You know, when you're raised Mormon, it's like you're part of the chosen people. You know who you are, you have an identity, your church hands you your morality, your spirituality. You've got a set community, you've got all these friends. Like being Mormon, there's just this template. And because we're conditioned to think that sometimes there's no health or happiness or joy outside of Mormonism, our Mormon brains go, how in the world could you ever have a happy, healthy childhood or upbringing without religion? So, like, how. How did you piece together if. If it was even a problem? Morality, spirituality, community, sense of meaning and purpose and identity? Did you feel lost? Did you feel like a super happy as a kid and a teen? Talk about being raised in a. In a secular world in the 70s, you know, late 60s, early 70s, and what that was like for you as a kid?

Radio Free Mormon [00:13:54] It was fine. It was great. I had a great time. It was a wonderful time to be alive, had fun friends, we did great things together. But this whole idea. I know what you're talking about. About how some people who are within a certain system. Excuse me, who are within a certain system, like Mormonism, cannot conceive of a fulfilling life outside of Mormonism. By the way, that's generally while they're ignoring the fact that their life is not fulfilling inside Mormonism, they're just following the template and the script that they're supposed to say, pardon me if there's any of you out there that I am misjudging. I'm just speaking for myself. And I think that I'm probably not the only one who felt that way when I was doing the same thing. So you're talking about, how do you be out there? That reminds me of this joke. Somebody just told me this the other day. I don't know if it was you. There's two fish swimming along in the ocean, and this big fish comes swimming by, and the big fish, as he goes by them, says, how do you like the water? And in the big fish goes by, two fish look at each other and say, what's water? Yeah, it's just the water I swam in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not like I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I'm missing out on something over Here. That's so wonderful.

John Dehlin [00:15:01] So what were your hobbies or interests as a kid and as a teen?

Radio Free Mormon [00:15:04] Okay. Mainly magic. I got into magic when I was 10 years old through a Scholastics book that dealt with some magic tricks. So I started learning magic, and by that I mean, you know, magic tricks. Right. Did that for a number of years. Continue to be somewhat of an amateur. I don't put on shows. I will do a trick now and then if I'm forced to.

John Dehlin [00:15:30] Do you want to do a trick now?

Radio Free Mormon [00:15:31] This would really be a bad place in a bad position to do a trick, I think. But. And also then When I was 16, I started studying dance, and dance was very much a love of my life. I just loved dance. And what got you theater and musical theater? Probably Gene Kelly.

John Dehlin [00:15:51] Wow. Like. Like Singing in the Rain or.

Radio Free Mormon [00:15:53] Yeah, Gene Kelly. Paris, whatever those movies were that were on tv, you know, back when we had three channels, plus PBS and commercials. During all the movies. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. He was just very masculine in the way he danced, and I was just very drawn to that art form. So I started taking tap class at a local studio when I was 16. Then I ended up watching the other kids who had been there longer and watching them, and they were good. And then I started realizing that in order to be good, you had to not just take tap, you had to take ballet, and you needed to take jazz. And so I started doing that, and I took that for a number of years, actually, three years. And by then. And in the course of that, I ended up joining the church and going on my mission to Japan in 79.

John Dehlin [00:16:38] Okay, so you're going to high school. Where?

Radio Free Mormon [00:16:40] Sumner High School.

John Dehlin [00:16:41] Okay. And how in the world did you. Did you have any favorite Broadway musicals? Because I love Broadway, so.

Radio Free Mormon [00:16:48] Oh, yeah, sure. Music Man.

John Dehlin [00:16:51] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:16:51] That is almost a perfect musical as far as I'm concerned. I was fortunate enough to get to play the lead role in a church production.

John Dehlin [00:17:00] A Mormon church production?

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:01] Of the Music Man.

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:02] Yeah. Back in 94.

John Dehlin [00:17:03] Back when Mormon did musicals. In 94?

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:07] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:17:08] Oh, what? In Washington?

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:10] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:17:11] That's cool. Okay. But not as a teen.

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:13] No, no.

John Dehlin [00:17:13] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:14] No. You see, the deal with me is when I'm doing productions that have, if I can just say it, people who are generally talented as opposed to a church production. Okay. Not trying to offend anybody here. There are talented people in church productions, but if. If I'm in a basic production. Right. And I've been in a number of them, I am chorus material. Okay. That's where I am. I'm in the chorus. I am the guy in the sailor suit with all the other sailors tap dancing on stage, and anything goes. But if you go to a church production, I can be the star.

John Dehlin [00:17:42] Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, I get it. I get it. I think of myself similarly.

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:48] So Music man was one of your favorite inspiring musicals. Any others?

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:52] Oh, Guys and Dolls, Oklahoma.

John Dehlin [00:17:54] South Pacific, that kind of stuff.

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:55] Yeah, I really don't like South Pacific. We don't need to get into that.

What Led to Joining Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:17:59] But okay, so, all right, so you were kind of a musical theater guy. And what in the world led you to want to join Mormonism?

Radio Free Mormon [00:18:11] What led me to it was my best friend, Bruce. Bruce Hawks. I'll go ahead and give his last name now. But when we moved, we moved around a lot, because my dad and his job and everything, and even when we were up here in Washington, we moved around a lot. And finally we moved to Sumner in ninth grade, and I met up with Bruce, and I fell into his group. Bruce was a Mormon. He was very energetic, very charismatic Mormon, Kind of a leader, kind of Mormon. And people. He was sort of the center of a group of people, and I fell into that group. And Bruce was very energetic in trying to expose people to Mormonism and get him to be baptized. And he tried on me for four years, and I resisted it at every turn. And then finally, right when the senior year was just about to end, all of a sudden that changed. And I guess if you were to use missionary language, I was prepared by that time.

John Dehlin [00:19:09] And so what happened?

Radio Free Mormon [00:19:11] What happened? You know, I just told this story. By the way, radiofreemormon.org has all my podcasts on it. I'm up to, I think, 94 now, if you can believe that.

John Dehlin [00:19:19] That's amazing.

Radio Free Mormon [00:19:20] Very recently, I did a Halloween special on which I told a lot of creepy, crawly stories about experiences I have had with the darker, negative sides of the spirit world. Because even though I am no longer a believer, an orthodox Mormon, and I certainly have my questions about God, questions about Jesus, through my experiences that I've had, it's hard for me to deny that there are things beyond what we see and things that we can experience from time to time, I certainly have. Not everybody has. A lot of people have experienced things, too. Some more than me. But where were we? Oh, yeah. I told the story. I told the story. So let me try and give it a different spin for your viewers here today, which is that I go over to Bruce's house to hang out. There's Two friends of ours that I know. There's Barbara Freeman and there's Jay Simmons, and they are sitting on a couch, and it is nighttime, and all I want to do is hang out with Bruce, but there's nighttime. And sitting across from them on two chairs are two Mormon missionaries. And they've got their flip charts out, and they're teaching them a discussion. And of course, now I'm using all this lingo now that I know they're teaching them a discussion. They have flip charts out. They're Mormon missionaries. But I've got to hang out now because Bruce is sitting right next to Barb and Jay, and these are two friends that he's having over to his house to have the missionary discussions, just like we were all taught we were supposed to do, right? Optimal for conversions. And indeed, Jay ended up getting baptized. Barb did not. But I have to sit down. I have to kill time while I'm waiting for this missionary discussion to be over so I can hang out with Bruce. So I actually. I think I. I know I lie down on the floor, and if I'm correct, I may have actually lied down on the floor between the missionaries and the couch where Barb and Jay are sitting. And I'm just sitting there, killing time. Killing time. But I'm also having to listen to what they're talking about. And I was really interested in what the missionaries were saying. What they were saying was really speaking to me. I can't tell you which discussion it was at this point, but they were saying things. And I'm thinking, that's interesting. And I'm feeling this tugging within me, you know, this warmth. And. And they're asking the questions. They're asking the Mr. Brown questions, right? Which are just like the dumbest questions ever in the world back in the rainbow discussion days and leading questions, you know, and they're asking them to Jay and to Barbara, and they're not asking him to me, because I'm not part of this. I'm just hanging out. And I kept thinking, man, I wish they'd asked me that question.

John Dehlin [00:21:49] What are the Mr. Brown questions? I don't think people know what those are.

Radio Free Mormon [00:21:52] Oh, I'm sorry. Back with the rainbow discussions, back 40 years ago, they were called the rainbow missionary discussions because there were six or seven missionary discussions, and they were. Each had different colored paper so that when you looked at it from the side, you know, you'd have it in the binder. And then they looked like rainbow. So the rainbow discussions, and they were memorized. The missionary had to actually memorize them word for word, all six discussions. And in the. In the context of each discussion, there were certain questions that you were supposed to ask the person that you were teaching. And while you're memorizing the discussions because you don't know the name of the person you're going to be talking to, you just memorize the name. Mr. Brown. So, Mr. Brown, why do you think God would want to have prophets on the earth today? Right. They're very, very simple, simplified questions, and they're basically designed to have people regurgitate what you just told them. So that's the Mr. Brown question. Sorry.

John Dehlin [00:22:43] No, that's good. And so you wanted them to ask you those.

Radio Free Mormon [00:22:46] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:22:46] But they weren't.

Radio Free Mormon [00:22:47] No, no, because I'm not part of it. But I really had things that I felt like I wanted to say to it and. But finally they left. And I'm not going to go over what happened up on the roof. Okay, that's back in the Halloween special. You can go there and listen to that. But what ended up happening is that over the next two weeks, let me back up there and say, I have been going to church dances, like, every week with Bruce and friends. So I've got all these friends now who are in the church. Right. Some of them go to the high school, some don't, but I got all these friends in the church. And so one night, shortly after that, Bruce is giving me a ride home. And I say to him, out of the blue, bruce, what does it take to get baptized into your church? Can you imagine?

John Dehlin [00:23:33] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:23:34] I have been giving him crap for four years about this church.

John Dehlin [00:23:36] You're golden.

Radio Free Mormon [00:23:37] At this point, I'm golden. And so he tries to, you know, not veer off the road, I'm sure. And he talks about the missionary discussions and explains that there's like six of them and you got to take those and, you know, you can get baptized. I said, okay, set me up. And there was a deadline also, because my family was moving, they were planning on moving that didn't end up actually happening. We don't need to go into the details, but from my mind, there's also this perceived deadline of about two weeks that we've got to work in between the time I'm graduating from high school and the time I'm going to be moving out of state back to Texas.

John Dehlin [00:24:10] Why?

Radio Free Mormon [00:24:12] That is a long and messy tale involving my parents.

John Dehlin [00:24:15] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:24:16] Okay. So it may come up from time to time, but yeah, okay, so. But we ended up moving back after a month, but, yeah, we're going to be gone. So I have Bruce get the missionaries out to his house and I take all missionary discussions and I get baptized within about 10 days.

John Dehlin [00:24:36] Wow.

Radio Free Mormon [00:24:37] I've got them out there on their P day and they didn't even want to be out there on their P day. I could tell. There's Elder Timothy Shanson and Elder Leland Christensen or Christianson. I remember their names. And Leland had. He had one leg. He had a wooden leg. And he'd had some kind of terrible accident, a vehicle accident, not long before he went on his mission, but he wanted to be on his mission. So he's out there with a wooden leg and God bless him. But no, let me ask you this.

John Dehlin [00:25:02] So I. I have this theory that most people that get baptized in the Mormon Church in the modern era either are from third world countries, which means often they have lower than average education, lower than average socioeconomic status.

Radio Free Mormon [00:25:17] I lived in Waco.

John Dehlin [00:25:18] Yeah, right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:25:20] That's a joke.

John Dehlin [00:25:21] Yeah, no, I get it, but. Or they are raised by secular parents and they aren't raised with the clear sense of identity and have a sense of meaning and purpose. Or they were raised in a very dysfunctional family where their parents were mean or they had bad marriages, or they were financially destitute in some way, and they're just really, really seeking for some sort of structure, some sort of theology, some sort of doctrine to make life worth living, to make sense, and basically just to bring. Upgrade their happiness. Because oftentimes they're sad and isolated and depressed and when they see that perfect Mormon family or they see, you know, they visit that Mormon ward and everybody's smiling, happy, it's like, man, I want some of that. And boom, they join. Did any of that apply to you or not?

Radio Free Mormon [00:26:15] I think some of that applied to you.

John Dehlin [00:26:17] What applied. What part of that applied?

Radio Free Mormon [00:26:18] Oh, probably structure. And, you know, I'm certainly very, very happy dancing, going to high school. But there's. There's no real structure, there's no real path that I have. There's no real meaning or purpose that I have. So, yeah, I could see that as possibly. And you know, my parents had a rocky relationship. That's why we, you know, were either. There were times when my parents were separated. They never divorced, but they were separated when I was a kid. And worst summer of my life, bar one, which we won't get into, but worst summer of my life was the summer of 19, and that's was spent at Rockport, Texas. And that's me, my mom and my. The middle Brother Cam. Right. And my dad, he's got his job. This is during the summer. Right. So what would end up happening is we'd all go as a family. Every summer. We would drive down the coast down to Texas. We'd visit people in California who were family, go down to Texas. And then when it was time to leave, my mom would make her last stand, is what my dad would call it. It's like, I'm staying here. She really hated the clouds in Washington. I don't know if it really actually depressed her. I don't think she went to a doctor for it. But, yeah, she hated the weather up here. And she was a Texas girl. She was born and raised outside Abilene, and. But she'd go down there and then she'd make her stand, and then the boys had to decide who they were gonna go with.

John Dehlin [00:27:42] That's awful.

Radio Free Mormon [00:27:43] Yeah. So I decided I was gonna stay with mom. I was 12 years old at the time.

John Dehlin [00:27:47] It was awful.

Radio Free Mormon [00:27:48] Yeah. Especially because I don't want to be in Rockport, Texas. I don't know anybody in Rockport, Texas. It was a miserable summer. And the big. The big brother, Mark, he went with my dad back to Washington. That's where I wanted to go. But I stayed with my mom. And that wasn't the only time it happened. But there was one time when I was in 10th grade where it happened, and I just said, mom, I want to go to Washington. You know, I'd stayed with her on two occasions for multiple months. Obviously, this happens repeatedly. So they get back together, she comes back to Washington, they patch things up. She tries to stay up here as long as she can, but there's going to be something else that's going to break later on.

John Dehlin [00:28:26] So.

Radio Free Mormon [00:28:27] So, yes. So am I fitting your theory?

John Dehlin [00:28:29] Well, I mean, it. First of all, this touches a place in my heart because my parents got divorced and both have been married several times. My dad doesn't like it when I. When I talk about that in too much detail, so I won't. But it's very hard for a kid to see your parents split up or to get back together to. To ever feel like you have to choose between parents. Like, whoever wants to feel that way. But. But it just sounds like you had such a tumultuous family that. A family preaching eternal family. That a family teaching. That a church. Sorry. A church teaching eternal family. A church teaching families can be happy. Our Heavenly Father's happy plan. Families are the most important thing. That's got to be an appealing message to an 18ish year old boy whose family had been so tumultuous. So rfm, tell us about. I'm more curious about your conversion. Was it an intellectual conversion? Was it an emotional conversion? It sounds like it was both. Can you tell us about what intellectually converted you to Mormonism and what emotionally converted you to Mormonism?

Intellectual and Spiritual Conversion Experience

Radio Free Mormon [00:29:43] Sure thing. Well, intellectually, honestly it was probably more spiritual. But during the missionary discussions it seemed like these two missionaries who even though they're missionaries, they're really only maybe a year or two older than I am and, and yet they seem so much older, they're so wise, they have all this knowledge, right. And I don't realize they're just parroting a script to me, but they're very, very smart and I would ask them some questions and one of the things I remember the most had to do with the Trinity, right? Because I sort of have a knowledge of the Trinity only because I grew up in a Christian country and most Christians believe in the Trinity. So they're talking about the nature of God and how God isn't the Trinity, it's, you know, three separate beings. And I asked him about that and I said, well, doesn't the Bible teach the Trinity? Of course, I've never read the Bible in my life. I've hardly ever touched the Bible before then. And they explained to me, no, they go to the baptism of Jesus, of course, in Matthew chapter three, I believe it is, and talk about how the three different beings in the Godhead are manifested at his baptism. And I just went wow, that makes so much sense. That makes so much sense. And I remember being impressed by that. So there were a number of other things. I will tell you though, there was one moment in the missionary discussions where I kind of went whoop. And that's where they're telling me about the apostles and the prophet and the prophet who leads the church today. And they've got their flip charts out and they flip over to a picture to show me. And there of course there's President Kimball and his two counselors which would have been in Eldon Tanner and Marion Romney I believe at the time. And then the 12 apostles, there's these old guys with white shirts and ties in business suits and I cannot tell you what it was I was expecting, but it wasn't that. That really brought me up short. And I think I corporate like what? You know, I wouldn't have even known what the heck corporate was at the time, but it certainly wasn't what I was expecting. When they're telling Me about a prophet who walks and talks with God. And I remember talking, I think, to Bruce after that. Or maybe I just thought about it myself and chided myself thinking, well, what did you really expect? Did you expect that they were going to be wearing, you know, look like something out of the Old Testament?

John Dehlin [00:31:56] Robes with.

Radio Free Mormon [00:31:57] With.

John Dehlin [00:31:59] Yes, like she cats or something or whatever that is. Sandals.

Radio Free Mormon [00:32:03] What's a she cat?

John Dehlin [00:32:04] I don't know, like imagining like. Yeah, Bedouins from Saudi Arabia.

Radio Free Mormon [00:32:09] Yes, I know. So I'm thinking, okay, now, is that what you were thinking? Because I think somewhere in the back of your head that's what you're thinking. And if they had really shown that these are the guys who lead your. And you know, Spencer Kimball dressed in. In Arabic clothing, no, that would have been even worse. So. But I do remember being jarred by that a little bit. But we went on. I got baptized emotionally.

John Dehlin [00:32:31] What do you think? Emotionally pulled you in?

Radio Free Mormon [00:32:34] Emotionally is hard to say at that time. But I do want to tell you about my testimony that I gained of the Book of Mormon. That wasn't at that time. All right.

John Dehlin [00:32:42] No, but. Okay. So I just. I also have this theory that like, so the elders thought they were cool. You had some friends. Was it a social thing? Was it a family thing? Was it a community thing? Was there something emotionally that converted you? Just. Just around a social or emotional conversion?

Radio Free Mormon [00:33:01] Well, I had friends who were in the church. I had been going to church dances for a number of years, pretty much every weekend. And Bruce had been asking me out to little social activities at the church. He was always trying to do what he could. Oh, by the way, Bruce had at his house a gathering of friends every Friday night where we would play this game called pounce, which is a card game, but it is not a face card game, John, because face card games. No, the devil likes face cards.

John Dehlin [00:33:29] This is Bruce, Armor Conkey, Mormonism.

Radio Free Mormon [00:33:31] Absolutely Mormonism. Yeah, absolutely. God does not like face cards. But God does approve of rook cards.

John Dehlin [00:33:39] Yes, I love rook.

Radio Free Mormon [00:33:40] Yes. So rook cards, if anybody doesn't know what rook cards are, kind of like uno cards except different. In other words, there's no faces on them. They're just numbers in different. Four different colors. Right. So it's just a team game. It's kind of like spoons. It's very fast paced and you play it.

John Dehlin [00:33:54] And spades, right? It's kind of like spades or hearts. Well, without the vase cards.

Radio Free Mormon [00:34:00] Oh, rookie is. But this is a separate game, right? It was called Pounce, but rook cards were Used instead of face cards.

John Dehlin [00:34:06] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:34:06] So it's a very fast pace, and you do all the stuff and you have championships and everything. It would take a couple hours every Friday night, and then we'd all hang out together. I found out only later that this was not only a good idea and that Bruce's mom approved of it because she knew where her son was on Friday nights. And also there was a safe place and a wholesome place. And that's not a bad thing.

John Dehlin [00:34:26] No, it's great.

Radio Free Mormon [00:34:27] Have teenage kids go to on a Friday night, and they could be out doing other things. But also, that was very much a missionary opportunity.

John Dehlin [00:34:38] Sure.

Radio Free Mormon [00:34:39] And Bruce used it like that.

John Dehlin [00:34:43] And so. And so, in some sense, you. There was a social conversion. You had friends, you had models of families that seemed happier. And you're like, my family was kind of rough. These are nice friends. They seem to have happy families. I want me some of that Mormonism, I think.

Radio Free Mormon [00:35:02] So there seemed to be a stability now, frankly. Bruce's dad had left his mom before I think I joined. Came to 9th grade before I knew him.

John Dehlin [00:35:10] Oh, wow.

Radio Free Mormon [00:35:11] Yeah. He actually was, I believe, in the bishopric or the bishop, who literally ran off with the primary president. One of those stories that you hear about, and they actually happen. So that was one thing that happened there. And she had. She was just by herself.

John Dehlin [00:35:24] Oh, so it was a single mom.

Radio Free Mormon [00:35:26] Single mom, yes.

John Dehlin [00:35:26] That's cool. That's still cool. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Okay. So you convert at again, what age?

Radio Free Mormon [00:35:33] 18.

John Dehlin [00:35:33] At 18. And where did you go from there?

Radio Free Mormon [00:35:37] Well, I hung around because now I've just graduated from high school. I really had not been making a whole lot of plans for college. It was just sort of the strange idea in the back of my head that maybe I should go to college. But it seemed like school counselors were not necessarily, at least not in my school, doing everything they do today to help kids out and give them that plan. So I'm just sort of hanging out there. But now that I am a Mormon, now I have plans, I have goals, I have a path, and it is the path that the church gives me. And you know what the next thing is I got to do.

John Dehlin [00:36:10] Yeah. Serve a mission.

Radio Free Mormon [00:36:11] Got to go on a mission. Absolutely. I'm a guy. I got to get the priesthood. I've got to go on a mission. So that was my goal, and I've got to work to earn money for my mission.

John Dehlin [00:36:20] Would you have. Would you have said at that time that you had had a conversion, that you'd had the Holy Ghost Bear witness to you. The church was true. That you knew the church was true. Kind of like Saul on the road to Damascus or whatever. Alma the younger. Or was it more like. I'm going with this. I'm not sure if it's true, but it feels good. So I'm going with it.

Radio Free Mormon [00:36:42] Sorry. Can I tell you this? I have gone back and back and back, and I've tried to analyze my progress in the church, through the church, and finally basically out of the church, and tried to figure out where are these key moments along the way that led me. And I've been able to identify a number of them, except for the fact that for everyone that I find. I can also find a counter example occurring, like, at the same time. And I don't know if it's because I'm a Pisces. My birthday is March 10th. Presents are appreciated. March 10th, Pisces. You got the fish going this way and the fish going this way. That's the sign, right? Because there's things that are going opposite directions all the time in a Pisces. I don't know if there's any truth in astrology like that, but it does seem to be that way. I cannot plot a direct course in my life in the church because every time there's something going this way, there's something going this way.

Conversion, Baptism, and Early Faith

John Dehlin [00:37:38] So you're saying you weren't sure you were totally converted?

Radio Free Mormon [00:37:40] There were, yes. And you see, I would say that I absolutely was sure. Not at that time. It felt right. It felt right. Okay. But I hadn't had any giant experience. I'd had a few weird things happen, but. But really, when I read the Book of Mormon, and that was not before I joined the church.

John Dehlin [00:37:57] After.

Radio Free Mormon [00:37:58] Yes, it was after I joined the church. So I am wanting to get my patriarchal blessing because Bruce has mentioned he's going to get his patriarchal blessing. I say, what's a patriarchal blessing? He tells me what a patriarchal blessing is. I said, wow, that sounds cool. I want to get me one of those. So I go to my bishop, Bishop Murphy, and I say, hey, I'd like to get a patriarchal blessing. He says, okay, well, let's. He wants to do a little test on my gospel knowledge at the time. He says, okay, so can you tell me what the four standard works are? And I say, well, there's the Old Testament, there's the New Testament, there's the Book of Mormon, there's the. See, I've already. I'd already goofed it up. I split the Bible up, which is one into two, the Old Testament and the New Testament. And I'm starting to come up with five, right? So I start slowing down and it's like, oh. And he looks at me and he kind of smiles and he says, have you read the Book of Mormon? No. No, I haven't. Well, here's the deal. You read the Book of Mormon and then come back and we'll talk about you getting your patriarchal blessing. That's what I needed. I needed that carrot at the end. So I'm working at the time and trying to save up money for my mission, still living at home. And I would come back from work and then I would get ready for bed. I must have gone to dance class a number of times, but I'd come back from that and I get ready for bed very quickly, no tv, and just get in bed. And I would read the Book of Mormon. But I remembered what the missionary told me. That would be Timothy Shanson. When you read your way through the Book of Mormon, he says, you always pray before you read. And he suggested to me that I ask God to know if it's true. Just like Moroni's promise, right? But he also said, keep in the back of your mind while you're reading it. The question, could any man have written this book? And I did that. So this must have taken at least a month and probably more than a month, reading every night for an hour or so. John, I had the most amazing experience doing that as I prayed my way through the Book of Mormon at the age of 18. Every time I was reading, I would pray. And every time I was reading, it was as if, you know how it is that you walk around and you've got. You've got the eyes in the front of your head. You've got obviously cranium here, cranium back here. You can only see to the front with a little bit of peripheral vision, right? It was as if the walls of my mind fell down and I could see to eternity in all sides. 360 degrees at once. It was absolutely incredible. And this happened every single time. Every single time I'm reading the Book of Mormon, I had this experience, kept wondering, well, is it going to happen again? It happens again. I've never had anything like this happen again. By the time I'm done with the Book of Mormon, my thought was this. I cannot really remember a whole lot of the names or a whole lot of the stories that happened in the Book of Mormon. I've only read it once through, but the one thing I know is that every word in it is the word of God, because the Spirit has borne testimony to me that that is the truth. So I would say that would be my Damascus conversion, is reading and praying my way through the Book of Mormon when I was 18.

John Dehlin [00:41:12] Yeah, that's a pretty dramatic experience.

Radio Free Mormon [00:41:14] Yeah, it was amazing.

John Dehlin [00:41:17] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:41:17] But, you know, I also thought, this is Moroni's promise. This is what everybody experiences. This is a common thing. And it was only as I sort of got older in the church and talked with other people that I started realizing that it really wasn't that common. So I kind of kept it to myself, if you know what I mean.

John Dehlin [00:41:37] And I want to come back and ask how you make sense of that now, but I don't want to do that now, so.

Radio Free Mormon [00:41:44] Right, okay. But here's the other fish. The other fish, right?

Serving a Mission and Its Impact

John Dehlin [00:41:47] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:41:47] I'm getting ready to go on my mission. It's now November or October of 2000 of 1979. And I've had this experience. I've had other experiences. The heavens were open around me during this year and a half or so between my baptism and going on a mission. And even after going on a mission, there were some amazing things that happened. But I remember that my friend, by the way, Bruce Hawks, he had already gone to the mtc. He went in there, like three weeks before I did, and he went to was Austria. But there was another friend of ours who was converted through Bruce, and his name was Don Capel. And he was going to go up to, I think it was Norway someplace. Yeah. Really cold. Or Finland, regardless. But I remember talking with him. Bruce was already in the mtc, and I was talking with him at Bruce's house. It was just me and Don. I wasn't really close with Don like I was with Bruce, but I remember talking to Don, we're going on a mission, and looking at him and say, it's true, isn't it? And Don looked at me like, yeah, of course it's true. So this is what I mean. If I'm going to be honest with myself and really open about everything that happened, there's massive experiences that would tend to convince anybody that the church is true. And yet there are doubts and concerns and worries that I had even then, of course.

John Dehlin [00:43:15] Yeah. So you got your patriarchal blessing.

Radio Free Mormon [00:43:19] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:43:19] And you went on a mission.

Radio Free Mormon [00:43:21] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:43:21] Where'd you go?

Radio Free Mormon [00:43:22] Japan.

John Dehlin [00:43:23] How was that?

Radio Free Mormon [00:43:24] Oh, it was great. It was great.

John Dehlin [00:43:26] Was it two years? One and a half years.

Radio Free Mormon [00:43:28] Did I answer that like a Mormon or what? It Wasn't great. It was not great. There were. There were good things about it. It was a very good growing experience. Let me tell you how I found out about my call. Okay, here's how I found out about my call. I went to the Kobe Japan mission. We would probably say Kobe here in the States as Kobe and say Kobe in. In Japanese. But I'm down in California. So it's the summer of 1979, and we're visiting family. You know, there's always this. The stress and everything, but I had been out. Where was it? It was. Was it Malibu or someplace on the beach all day trying to do. To ride these waves. Not surfing, but just body surfing, you know, And I had. I'd been out in the sun all day, and I was. I was kind of sick. I was not feeling too good. And I'd gotten pounded into the sand a number of times by some big waves. So I am in a dark bedroom at my cousin's house. My dad's not with us, of course. He's up in Washington. Okay. And my mom comes into the darkened bedroom. I'm still feeling bleh. And she says to me, do you know where Kobe Japan is? And I said, no. And she says, oh, well, that's where you're going. Slam.

John Dehlin [00:44:46] She had written, open your letter.

Radio Free Mormon [00:44:47] My dad. This is the great announcement of my mission by my mother, who was not happy at all about me going on a mission and her baby going overseas. Yeah, my dad was much more supportive of the. Of that idea, but no. So it comes to the address up there in Washington. Obviously, what had happened, I had to piece it together. Later. My dad gets it. He opens it up, he calls my mom, he says, here's the mission. Call Kobe, Japan. And so my mom then comes into the room where I am in Southern California and says, do you know where Kobe Japan is?

John Dehlin [00:45:21] Not the way every Mormon kid wants to find out about their mission.

Radio Free Mormon [00:45:24] No, for crying out loud. I leave from Washington, I go to Japan for two years, and I come back to Austin, Texas, because my family had moved.

John Dehlin [00:45:35] Now, Japan has a reputation of not having a lot of baptisms.

Radio Free Mormon [00:45:39] Japan, at least at the time, was kind of in the middle, you know, at the time, South America, Latin America is going great guns. Of course, we found out later that maybe that was more form than substance.

John Dehlin [00:45:51] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:45:51] But, yeah, it was going crazy. Thousands of. Of baptisms. And I think that you were involved in that, though, a little bit later than 1979, but still then. And of course, over there in Europe, like Germany or Whatever. It's death. You know, you might have an average of 1/2 baptism per missionary.

John Dehlin [00:46:10] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:46:11] For their entire mission. That's the average. But in Japan, it wasn't that bad. Now, as a good missionary, I did not really keep track of the number of people I baptized. 33. It was 33 people that I was involved in baptizing. So that's certainly much better than Germany.

John Dehlin [00:46:30] That's great.

Radio Free Mormon [00:46:31] Yeah, it was okay. Had a good time.

John Dehlin [00:46:33] Were you AP or zone leader, any of that stuff?

Radio Free Mormon [00:46:35] Oh, heck no. Well, I. I was a zone leader eventually, but I was never an ap. You know how you call those apes? So for whatever reason, they didn't call it AP in my mission. It was an MA Mission assistant.

John Dehlin [00:46:49] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:46:49] I don't know. Maybe they didn't want to be called apes. I didn't even know about an AP until later on. But they were mas. No, I was never. I was never that good. I was a district leader, but a district leader, you know, and you're on my mission, it just means that you're in charge of the apartment bills. That's all you do.

John Dehlin [00:47:07] Did you have to battle, like, all these Utah Mormon that were pioneer stock? Did you have to battle kind of inferiority complex of like, you had just read the Book of Mormon, you didn't go to seminary, you weren't really raised Mormon. And here are all these kids that are pioneer stock and have been lifelong church members and had been studying this stuff since they were young kids. Did you have to battle with any of those insecurities?

Radio Free Mormon [00:47:31] You know, I don't remember that at all. I don't think I did generally when I was. When it came up, the fact that I was a convert, that was like something that was put up in kind of esteem. And I remember there were at least a few people, few missionaries, who would say, wow, that is so cool that you're a convert. I wish I could have gone through that experience, that I had something that they were missing because they were raised in the church.

John Dehlin [00:47:53] That's cool. Yeah. Had you loving musical theater? Had you seen Saturday's Warrior, the musical? Had you listened to the album? Did you love that? And by the way, that Todd, I think, is the hero of Saturday's Warrior. He's the convert, right? He's the guy who sings Paper Dream or what any paints the painting of himself and he ends up getting converted. So in the late 70s, early 80s, the investigators were the heroes of Mormonism?

Radio Free Mormon [00:48:20] Yeah, I think so. And yes, I did know about Saturday's Warrior, and actually we even attended a production of it that Japanese members put on over there.

John Dehlin [00:48:29] In English or in Japanese?

Radio Free Mormon [00:48:30] Japanese.

John Dehlin [00:48:30] Really? That's fun.

Radio Free Mormon [00:48:32] Yeah. So you definitely knew that. So maybe that has something to do with it.

John Dehlin [00:48:36] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:48:37] But yeah. Paper dream what I take, I take

John Dehlin [00:48:40] some paper in my hand and with a pencil, pencil draw a man a dream of what I really, really like to be right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:48:50] Man with courage in his brow who's licked his doubts and fears somehow a warrior of great nobility.

John Dehlin [00:48:58] We go big in Mormonism, but who am I? Just a wandering kid. Cipher on the wall.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:07] Yeah. What is it with Mormon and ciphers?

John Dehlin [00:49:09] I know. Ciphers in the snow.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:10] Yeah. Ciphers on the wall. Ciphers everywhere in Mormonism. You know, I think that might be symbolic. There are ciphers everywhere in Mormonism. And the, The. The difficulty, what they don't want you to do is decipher them. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:27] Okay, so. So you get off your mission and what happens? Is your testimony stronger than when you went in?

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:35] Well, is it? I think so.

John Dehlin [00:49:37] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:37] Yeah, I think so. I want to get back to dancing. By the way, can I go ahead and tell you this story on my mission?

John Dehlin [00:49:42] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:42] I mean, I just heard the voice of God is all. It's not really much.

John Dehlin [00:49:44] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:45] I kid, so, no, I've never had this experience before. I haven't told this on the podcast, by the way, though I think I've alluded to. To it. Strange, strange experience, which is where we're outside, we are street contacting, and there is. There's a bus stop here. It's basically a train station. So I'll try and keep in the screen here. There's a train station here. There's a train line that runs along it. Lots of trains in Japan, of course. Lots of travel by trains. And over the tracks from the train station is this long bridge. So of course, you can go over the tracks and then come down some stairs, then down some more stairs, and then there's a big bus station, an outdoor bus station. So there is a constant flow of Japanese people going up these stairs and across the bridge and coming back across the bridge and down the stairs all the time to catch bus. We are. At least I am positioned. This is the summer of 1980, by the way. The town is Oji, Japan and back. And I'm down at the bottom of the stairs, and I'm just trying to contact people. Okay. And the goal is to find somebody who has like 10, 15 minutes, long enough to hear the Joseph Smith story. And we take them over to a bench that's over here. And then we teach it to him with our little tiny flip charts, right? Because we've got portable flip charts. And then we try and make another appointment. So I'm doing this. I'm feeling pretty good about myself. It's a beautiful day. It's nice and warm out. I've got the short sleeves on and. But there are people just. I'm like kind of a bear in a stream with all these salmon going by. And I'm just trying to contact here. Excuse me, do you have a sec? Excuse me, do you have a minute? Excuse me, do you have a minute? Would you like to talk for a minute? Right. All these things in Japanese, of course, and basically, you know, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So, but you've got to understand, there's just extreme. There's all these Japanese people go by. And at one point, I'm looking over here, and of course, people go by this way. But there's one person who goes by out of the side of my eye, and I turn around, he's already gone. And other people have taken his place. And a voice I hear distinctly as I'm talking to you right now in my head says, get him. And that's all it says. And I know exactly who it's talking about. It's talking about this kid who went by on my left. And I look back and he's heading up the stairs. There's people all around. I stick out like a sore thumb. I mean, I'm a big guy, Gene, right. These other people are much shorter than I am. And I don't want to really go up after this guy. There's plenty of people here. So I decline. And I'm saying, hey, do you want to talk? Do you want to talk? Do you want to talk? The voice comes a second time. Get him. And I turn back and I look, he's halfway up there now. And I'm just going, I'm not going to do this. This be a scene by now. So continue. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Voice comes a third time. Get him. And it seemed like there was a sort of. Or else part of it, too.

John Dehlin [00:52:44] Like an angel with a flaming sword.

Radio Free Mormon [00:52:46] Yeah, yeah, now. But seriously, to be accurate, no flaming sword. There was no or else. It just seemed more insistent is probably the best way to put it. And I turn around, and this guy is now at the top of the stairs, and he's actually made the turn, and he's heading across the bridge. So he's gone out of sight, and I just go Crap. Okay, So I turn around and I go bounding up the stairs after this guy. And there's hundreds of people around, but I still know who it is. And so I come around the corner. Now he's halfway down the bridge. I go running after him, and I'm running after this guy, and I come running up to him. I'm going to tap him on the back of the shoulder. And immediately I think, what if he says, no, thanks? What if he says what basically everybody else says, you know? But I didn't have much time to think about that, so I tapped him, I said, hey, do you got some time? You know, we'd like to tell you a special story about Joseph Smith. Oh, okay. So grab him, bring him back down, down the stairs, sit him down. We teach him the Joseph Smith story. And he wants to hear more because that's the next big thing, right? Would you like to hear more? Yeah, sure. Super nice kid. And, of course, base. Most of them are, you know, and we make another appointment, and then he doesn't show up. So, lost track. I would love to be able to tell you. He became a stake president. Now he's a general authority, but we lost track of him.

Life After the Mission and Family Reactions

John Dehlin [00:54:12] Oh, now, that wasn't the ending I was expecting. I was expecting a golden convert. And you feeling really reinforced that you had not only heard the voice of God, but obeyed the voice of God, followed it up and brought this guy to the church.

Radio Free Mormon [00:54:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:27] So was that a bit of. Was there some cognitive dissonance there for you?

Radio Free Mormon [00:54:31] What there was. Well, yeah. I mean, it's like, why did you go to all this effort, which I've never experienced before since, to point this kid out to me and have me go get him if he's not going to follow up and keep the second discussion. And this is back in 1980. It's in Japan. You know, there obviously there's no cell phones. We have a phone, but fell through. I felt bad about it. I felt like it was my fault. I blame myself.

John Dehlin [00:55:00] That's not fun.

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:01] I mean, Mormon easily make sense of that. They just say you planted important seeds and who knows when they're going to sprout later.

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:06] And that's what I did. Yeah, that's what I did. Who knows what he's doing now? He's probably a member of the church, other missionaries, blah, blah, blah.

John Dehlin [00:55:13] Yeah, okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:14] But if I were a leader in the church or a certain kind of leader in the church, that story would have a very different ending because I just make it up the Reason that it has an ending that's different than what you expected is because I'm just telling you the truth.

John Dehlin [00:55:30] Got it.

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:31] You're referring to Paul Dunn, basically.

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:32] Paul Dunn and President Nelson.

John Dehlin [00:55:34] He lies.

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:36] Oh, we'll get to that. We'll get to that later.

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:39] Does the Pope wear a funny hat? Does Spock beam up?

John Dehlin [00:55:44] Wow.

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:45] I did a whole podcast on that. I think it's called the Miracle Making.

John Dehlin [00:55:48] He'll be here all weekend, ladies and gentlemen.

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:50] Absolutely. Try the fish. No, I did. That was until it was called the Miracle Making of President Nelson. And the idea is that he just makes up miracles.

John Dehlin [00:55:59] All right, we'll get to that.

Radio Free Mormon [00:56:00] Three examples. Go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:56:01] Okay, so you. So you get off your mission. Oh. Any. Anything else formative or really important about your mission you want to share?

Radio Free Mormon [00:56:10] Yeah. I learned how to work.

John Dehlin [00:56:12] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:56:12] I learned discipline. I learned how to make a list of things and then accomplish them. I learned how to study. I learned a lot of really important things in my mission. I say that during the last year of my mission, there were a number of months when, looking back on it, I suffered from depression because, honestly, a mission is going out there and just getting rejected over and over and over again. That's what our mission is. And they didn't prepare me for that at the mtc. And after a while, it just began to wear on me. Now, it never affected my ability to get up in the morning, but there were certain times when we would come back for dinner and my companion had to make dinner. You know, you'd switch it off between companions when it was your turn, and I would just go and. I don't know, I just go and lie down. Just wanted to be alone and asleep. So I think there were times. I think there were times that that happened.

John Dehlin [00:57:07] Okay, so. So you get home from your mission. What's next?

Radio Free Mormon [00:57:13] What's next is getting back to dance, because that's what I had to put on hold while I went on my mission, and I didn't want to have an idea.

John Dehlin [00:57:22] Did you want to be a Broadway star? Did you want to be a Broadway dancer? Like, what. What were your ambitions?

Radio Free Mormon [00:57:28] I wanted to be a dancer in musical theater. Yeah, I did.

John Dehlin [00:57:32] You wanted to be Gene Kelly?

Radio Free Mormon [00:57:33] Yeah, sure.

John Dehlin [00:57:34] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:57:35] I don't know if that was that certain, but, yeah, that was the area I wanted to go for. And I had some aptitude, by the way. I. I went ahead and studied dance after I got back from my mission. I remember going to my bishop before my mission because I'd heard somewhere Something about, like, you could do a genealogy mission. Okay. And some people did that. They would just sort of take part time. They'd stay where they lived, and they would, like, look up names. Right. And submit them to the temple. I went to my bishop and I asked him if maybe I could do that, you know, because I wanted to continue. And look, dancing. You only have a very few years. That's a young person's game. And. But he kind of smiled, said, no, you got to go on a mission. So. Okay. Gotta go on a mission.

John Dehlin [00:58:24] Tammy's wondering. Tammy wants to know, and I think you've referenced this a bit, but she wants to know what your parents thought of the church, what your parents thought of you serving a mission. You talked about this a bit when you got your call, but Tammy wants to know, how are your parents feeling about you serving a mission and getting sucked into what for them may have been an organization that doesn't have good intentions?

Radio Free Mormon [00:58:50] Okay. Hi, Tammy. Thanks for the question. There's a number of things I can say about that. First, first off, they already had their toe dipped big time in that water because my brother had become a Jehovah's Witness.

John Dehlin [00:59:00] Ooh.

Radio Free Mormon [00:59:01] So my brother Cam is a Jehovah's Witness, and he had been for maybe a year before I joined the church. I knew I would drive him over to his little study sessions on Saturday morning, and I'd usually wait out in the car. Sometimes I go in with him and listen to what was being said. Because actually, they have to study for a year before they can get baptized, right?

John Dehlin [00:59:21] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:59:22] Yeah. It's quite different for. For Jehovah's Witnesses.

John Dehlin [00:59:24] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:59:25] So they knew that already. They had Cam in there, and then I come along and I become a Mormon. Well, my mom was. They kind of flipped over time. My mom was in favor of my being baptized. She thought religion was a good thing for me. My dad didn't think it was that great a thing. He says it's okay for you to be baptized. Radio Free Mormon on one condition. Don't try to convert me.

John Dehlin [00:59:49] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:59:50] Okay. But of course, I was still going to try because I'm a good Mormon. Right. We'll sneak it in around the edges.

John Dehlin [00:59:56] Well, do they feel like they were losing their son? That their son was getting sucked into a.

Radio Free Mormon [01:00:00] No, not at all.

John Dehlin [01:00:01] Or anything.

Radio Free Mormon [01:00:02] I mean, they knew Bruce, they knew the kids, and they were good kids. Yeah, they're good kids. And so then I go ahead and I join the church and. But then when it came time to go on, my mission. That's when they flew. If they flipped because my mom did not want me to go on a mission. She did not want me to be far away. And my dad, however, is very supportive of that. He thought it was a very good idea for any young person to spend two years, especially overseas between high school and college, just getting some life experience. So he was very supportive of that.

John Dehlin [01:00:40] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org.