1440: A Mexican Mormon Story - Gerardo Pt. 2

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2021

⏱️ 162 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Join us for Part 2 of our interview with Gerardo who is a dear friend of the podcast! Growing up in an orthodox Mormon home, his story gives a unique perspective on the church in Mexico and the “Laminate ancestry” that plays into the testimony of many of the members in Latin America. After realizing his attraction to men in his youth, Gerardo worked to keep up with expectations as the son of a prominent LDS family hoping God would “turn his weakness into strengths.”

Through stories about Evergreen, conversion therapy, Mexican EFY, and serving a faithful mission, we hear how strongly Gerardo tried to pursue the covenant path and deny his gay identity. Gerardo went to BYU-I where he met his husband, a wild story filled with intense highs and lows. Eventually questioning his faith, losing his connection to being a descendant of the Laminates and working through disagreements with LDS family, Gerardo put his whole heart out there in this interview. Listen along for some life-changing insights from Gerardo on this epic episode of a Mexican Mormon Story!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome back to part two of my epic Mormon stories podcast interview with my dear friend Herardo Sumano.
0:07.0	I'm Dr. John D'Alin and we just spent a good four hours with Herardo talking about his epic Mormon Mexican journey.
0:16.0	Herardo was born and raised in Mexico as a Mormon or is a lot of a saint.
0:21.0	His dad was a convert to the church. His mom was also a convert to the church.
0:25.0	Just talking about his upbringing in Mexico, we talked about him growing up in the church, doing all the Mormon things from a Mexican perspective, kind of being in a model.
0:35.0	Mormon Mexican family, his dad in leadership positions, etc.
0:39.0	We talked about him in high school and realizing at some point in a shot that he was gay and how he reconciled that with his Mormon orthodoxy.
0:50.0	We talked about his parents discovering that he was gay and how he dealt with that.
0:56.0	We talked about his Mormon mission in Mexico and that's kind of where we left off when we left off during part one first four hours.
1:05.0	Herardo had just been demoted from zone leader and then magically promoted to assistant to the president.
1:12.0	But prior to becoming AP on his mission, he had started to learn about some of the problems with the church history, started learning about book of Abraham.
1:21.0	Of course, he had questions about his own sexuality.
1:24.0	And throughout this whole point, there's this theme of compartmentalization where Herardo on the one hand is a true believing Mormon, but on the other hand because he knows he's gay.
1:34.0	And to some degree, likes being gay realizes that at some point he's going to have to break free, come to the US if he can, go to BYU and eventually possibly leave the church, but maybe as a believing Mormon, just a lot of interesting compartmentalization going on.
1:51.0	So we'll come now back to the story right where we left off where you've just been made assistant to the president.
1:58.0	How many months into your mission?
2:00.0	I think I had like six months left. So 18 months in your mission, your AP and you say you were doubling or tripling down.
2:09.0	Yes.
2:10.0	And that's when you realized that you were going to, this was a change in plan.
2:14.0	Because once you got made AP, you decided, I need to marry a woman.
2:18.0	I need to make the Mormon Orthodox thing work.
2:21.0	And that's what high leadership callings can do to people.
	...

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