Hello and welcome to the Special Edition of Mormon Stories podcast.

I'm John DeLin, your host, and I've created this special podcast for two main reasons.

First, I needed to talk to you about the financial status of Mormon Stories,

giving an update.

And then I wanted to talk to you about many of the exciting things that we have on tap for you

for 2011 and beyond.

So first, the financial update.

Several months ago this summer, I kind of made a deal with many of you my listeners.

And the deal was if a bunch of you would sign up on the Mormon Stories.org webpage

to either give one-time donations or better yet to subscribe for monthly donations

to help support Mormon Stories financially, I would decline an assistantship in my PhD program

and instead use Mormon Stories to help partially fund my graduate school

and pay for things like groceries and health insurance and stuff.

So we made that bargain.

A bunch of you came through and so for the last, oh, I don't know, six or seven or eight months,

I've been doing my best to make good on that promise.

We've delivered to you hopefully a lot of impressive and interesting and valuable podcasts

We started this year in 2010 with 112 episodes.

We're now up to 231 episodes on Mormon Stories podcast.

Most of those delivered just last year.

And we've been able to bring to you all sorts of interesting and hopefully valuable interviews

for people like Joanna Brooks, the Danzig's, Sean McCraney, Richard Packham, Damon Smith, Bruce Bastion, Mr. Deity, Theresa Edmonds

...