The following presentation was given at the 2011 Washington DC Mormon Stories Conference

on October 15, 2011. To join or start a Mormon Stories Support Community in your area,

click on the Support Communities button at MormonStories.org. To begin

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Enjoy the show. Thank you. Welcome back. I hope you had a great

time conversing with each other and nibbling on more of the food. Thank you. We are not going to

go to the portion of our conference where we're going to do the Ted-style talks. Our three speakers

today, we've asked to speak, are on the program. So they are John Delan. Yeah. Steve and I'm sorry

Steve, I'm going to ask you how to pronounce your last name. Go length go. Go. All right. And

Chelsea, she'll stray her and thanks for thanks to our speakers for saying yes to those

assignments. So we will begin now with John Delan. If you don't know who he is, you probably are in

their own house.

Well, I'm used to asking questions, not talking, mostly because I tend to ramble. So to try and keep

myself from rambling, I actually wrote out my talk. So forgive me for reading. I'll try and

still make it interesting. Thank you for coming. It had to have been fifth or sixth grade.

Something bad had happened between my parents and they were clearly just on the precipice

of splitting up. When afternoon, my mother was in tears. She had been fighting with my dad,

which as I remember, was somewhat rare. And in a very uncharacteristic moment for my very

practical, clear thinking pioneer stock mother, she ran out of the house, in tears, jumped in the

car, and raised down the street away from my home. It seems almost crazy to me now, but in my

pre-adolescent mind, somehow the idea came to me in a fit of almost panic. My mother is leaving.

What if she doesn't come back? So I do have probably any kid would do in that situation.

...