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Welcome. This is exciting. This may be the biggest crowd we've ever had.

Officially, welcome to Mormon Stories Live. My name is John DeLin and it's super exciting to have you all here. Yes. Thank you for coming.

This is just super exciting. Mama Dragons apparently draws a crowd. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. A hot. Right. Mama Dragons are hot. It's true. Totally true.

So welcome to this wonderful event. I'm really excited to have you all here. There are seats in the back over here. If anybody's looking for seats, there are still some seats left, but there aren't many, which is a great thing.

To begin, we want to express gratitude to Club and Cafe at 50 West. You want to thank Jake Jensen for being a gracious host. Thank Alicia for her help as well. Let's give Club Cafe at 50 West a hand.

For those of you who don't know, Mormon Stories is a podcast that seeks to explore the Mormon experience. We celebrate and challenge Mormon culture and history and doctrine and it's a podcast you can find us at MormonStories.org.

We are one of the several podcasts supported by the Open Stories Foundation, which is a 501C3 nonprofit that many of you have supported. If any of you have supported Mormon Stories before, raise your hand. All right. I'll give you guys a hand. Thank you very much.

Your donations to Mormon Stories make this possible because that's my full-time job. So I'm able to feed my family and provide them with insurance because of your support. So sincere thanks to all of you. The Open Stories Foundation provides podcasts and Facebook groups and websites to help Mormons who are of all different types.

Basically, if you're not an Orthodox Mormon, if you're anywhere from a liberal Mormon, progressive Mormon, transitioning Mormon, questioning Mormon, post Mormon, the Open Stories Foundation tries to provide support for you. Whether it's through Mormon Matters Podcasts, a thoughtful Faith Podcasts, Mormon Transitions Podcasts, Mormon Stories, gay Mormon Stories. A lot of great projects out there that have helped a lot of people.

In addition to podcasts, we do hold events like workshops and retreats. The retreats that we've been holding have been amazing. These are retreats where if you're struggling with a faith transition, if you're in a marriage where there's difficulty because of a religious transition, if you are out of the church or in the church but trying to find your way, we hold retreats and workshops to help you with that transition. There's a workshop coming out June 10th.

All day workshop on Friday June 10th, if any of you are interested, you can email me at johndelinagemo.com to learn about that workshop, all about healing and growth during a Mormon transition. We have an amazing retreat in Park City, July 15th, weekend of July 15th, again, where we bring people together to meet with mental health professionals and inspirational people to heal and grow in their transition.

People of all different faith types are welcome, of course, but just wanted to make a quick plug for that. Feel free to email me if you're interested.

So we are here to celebrate Mama Dragons, and I'll just give a really brief introduction. Yes, you can applaud as many times as you want for Mama Dragons.

So I became familiar with Mama Dragons probably three years ago. Does that sound possible? You guys about three years old. Is that right? Around 2013, depending on who story you hear, six or 10 or 12 or 15 women came together with the desire to support their LGBT children.

So depending on how you want to define Mama Dragons, it's anything from, you know, faithful LDS women who are who are trying to offer love and support to their LGBT children to another description that I heard at dinner, which is badass Mormon women who are fighting for their kids.

That was Wendy. That was Wendy.

But that's what it's all about. And so there's Mama Dragons, which is its own organization, but then within Mama Dragons is the Mormon, this is the Mama Dragons story project.

So this will be discussed later, but I'm just going to plug it. Kimberly Anderson is the leader of the Mama Dragons story project. And this is a wonderful book with little short narratives of several Mama Dragons telling their stories. It's a beautiful book. It's on sale here tonight. Is that right?

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