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Hello and welcome to Mormon Stories. My name is Scott Holly. I am sitting in for John

DeLin as a guest host today and I'm very happy to have this chance to talk to a person

I think a lot of our listeners are going to find has a very interesting perspective on

the world of contemporary Mormonism and his name is Matt Martinick. Matt, welcome to Mormon

Stories. Thank you very much. Well, Matt, I guess you and I have been exchanging emails

and been in conversations for a few months just by way of background. Our listeners will

know that at Mormon Stories, we've been doing a lot of work lately to really try and

understand what's going on in the contemporary church in terms of the growth of the church,

membership retention, baptism and activity rates, and looking at it not just from the

U.S. perspective, but globally. You can't really have a conversation online about the

growth of the church without being referred to one of two sources, which is the Camorra

Foundation and LDSgrowth.blogspot.com, both of which are really led or at least informed

significantly by the work that Matt Martinick has done really over the past decade. Matt,

I'm talking you up a good game here, but I'm sure our listeners are excited to dive

in and hear your story, but just a little bit more a background about Matt. Matt is an

active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He served his mission in

the Korea Soul West mission. Is that right, Matt? That's correct. Back when that mission existed

...