Hello, my friends. Welcome to a special episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host. I'm here with my wonderful co-host, John, by the way. Welcome, John.

Thank you, my friend Hank.

We have a special guest today. Probably the most special guest we've ever had on Follow Him. Her name is Shannon Sorenson. It's a name that if you follow our podcast, it's a name you know.

Because at the end of every podcast, we say something to the effect of we'd like to thank our executive producers Steve and Shannon Sorenson. Well, Shannon Sorenson is joining us here today. John, this is an exciting day.

So nice for them to see the person that they need to say thank you to have Shannon here. Shannon, can you just tell us about you and Steve and kind of your story?

Sure. I would like to. Steve and I met at BYU. We were both really young and we got married and we had our hearts full of dreams.

Steve was an entrepreneur and started immediately trying to figure out how to achieve all the goals that he had. I was obsessed with the idea of being a mother.

We never set out to have eight children, but every time we had one, we wanted another one. I have been a stay at home mother and raised the children with Steve about two years ago. Steve passed away unexpectedly.

And that was a really hard time and a really interesting time for me to try and figure out what I was going to do.

I think a lot of people had questions of what was going to happen next. And it was my pleasure and my inspiration that I got to continue with this podcast.

And it has been a blessing to me and blessing to my family. And I have loved working with the team. And I've loved the comments that we get.

And I'd loved seeing all the people who are learning and growing their testimonies from listening to this podcast. And of course, I'm very, very thankful for all of the wonderful scholars who have studied their whole lives.

That was one of Steve's very important ideas to bring the scholarship of the church to the people who are home raising the kids and trying to do come follow me as a family or individually.

I remember those initial conversations with you and me and Steve Shannon, you and I were both thinking, well, I don't know how great of an idea this is. What do we really want to try to do something this big.

And Steve was so going home for it and then to have him unexpectedly pass away. And we were just a month into our recording. And I thought, well, we might be all done. And it was a conversation I got to have with you just a couple of days after we passed away saying, what do you want us to do?

And you said, let's keep going. And you've been our captain ever since. And we love you for it. Well, thank you. It has been a really therapeutic job for me to do as I've tried to step in and take over some of the things that Steve had started.

He left us quite a project. Yeah, he did. This wasn't something small. He had big plans for it. And we hopefully have fulfilled at least in heart some of that vision. Shannon, I think people would be interested in just like with the scholars we bring on kind of their personal journey with the scriptures.

What's been the sorts and personal journey with the scriptures?

Well, that's a great question, Hank. Steve and I had a very busy household with all of the kids. But every Sunday afternoon, I have one example of how it went at our house.

This particular Sunday, I went upstairs and it was taking a rest. And Steve gathered the children together and was teaching them a scripture.

And they couldn't go play until they repeated the scripture to me. So my son Benjamin did not want to come upstairs and give me the scripture. So he was downstairs on the lower level and hollering up the stairs to me so I could hear it while I was resting and he yells behold.

I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people that they might have everlasting life.

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