1125: Spencer Nugent: A Jamaican Mormon Story Pt. 2

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2019

⏱️ 95 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Please join us now for our Mormon Stories Podcast interview with Spencer Nugent. Spencer, along with his parents and sibling, were the first Jamaicans baptized on the island into the Mormon church. Later Spencer’s family moved to Orem, Utah. Spencer attended UVSC and BYU, served a mission to San Antonio, Texas, and became an Industrial Designer. Spencer is a renaissance man of sorts. His many talents/interests include karaoke/music, art, travel, design, drawing, landscape architecture, teaching, etc.

After Spencer was married in the Salt Lake City temple and had two sons, he and his ex-wife eventually experienced a Mormon faith crisis and divorced.

Today’s episode will cover numerous topics, including Mormon cultural imperialism/whitewashing, being black in the Mormon church, Spencer’s mission, male eating disorders, parenting, divorce, faith crises, and finding identity, morality, and community as a black ex-Mormon man in Utah.

Transcript

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0:49.6	So what led your family to move to the United States?
0:52.0	That's a great, that's a great question. So there are five children. At the time we relocated which was,
1:01.3	I believe in 2001, yeah 2001, I was the last child at home so I had completed high school.
1:10.6	It's a British educational system so I'd done what's called ordinary levels.
1:15.9	Excuse me. I'd done what's called ordinary levels and was doing my advanced levels,
1:21.6	which was kind of equivalent to like an AP course over two years. And midway through that we decided
1:28.4	to relocate because at some point I was going to go to college, everyone had gone to college in the
1:33.8	United States. Going back to the beginning of the interview, I mentioned that my dad had come to Utah
1:39.9	and went to BYU. One of the things he did when he was on campus is he actually knelt down instead of
1:45.6	prayer to bad. All his children would be able to go to BYU. And so we all did ultimately.
1:51.9	Wow. By way of UVSC at the time that's Utah Valley State College, Utah Valley University now,
2:00.2	that's where I attended college. So being the only one at home, having grandchildren in the United
2:05.0	States, my siblings were getting married and moving on in their lives, they wanted to be closer
2:11.3	to everyone. And so we made the decision to then relocate because I was essentially about to be
2:17.8	gone and they would be empty nesters in Jamaica. Okay, so that move happened what year?
2:23.2	I was in 2001. 2001, that's the same year as 9-11. So this year, yes, that was the same year's 9-11.
	...

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