643: Missionaries Pt. 1 - Joshua Tesch and Facebook

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2016

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Joshua Tesch served in the California Roseville Mission from 2013 to 2015. When the LDS church introduced the use of Facebook and iPads to missionaries, Elder Tesch was asked by his mission president to become one of the "Tech Missionaries" to help the mission adopt the new technology. Through this new program Elder Tesch was exposed to credible information critical of the LDS church, including the http://cesletter.org. Over time Elder Tesch developed a faith crisis and turned to the Mormon Stories Podcast Community on Facebook for support. Ultimately his involvement in the MSPC was reported to his mission president and his iPad was taken away. He continued as a missionary until his final month, when his mission president sent him home dishonorably for openly sharing his doubts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories Foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners.
0:07.0	To help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community, please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org
0:15.0	and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under Support.
0:19.0	All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you.
0:29.0	Thanks for your support.
0:31.0	We kindly light a myth in circling glue.
0:43.0	Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home.
0:52.0	Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host John D'Alene. It's August 3rd, 2016.
0:59.0	And I am so super excited to launch a new podcast series on Mormon Stories.
1:05.0	This series is going to be focusing on the missionary experience in the modern LDS church.
1:13.0	I am sort of at first at least targeting the first, let's just say the past three to five years.
1:18.0	So kind of mission in the 2010s in the LDS church.
1:23.0	I'm really interested to know how the church's release of the essays, how the church's open discussion of controversial issues has been affecting missionaries or not.
1:36.0	I'm interested in understanding the church's use of technology on missions and social media.
1:42.0	And I'm also interested in what missionaries are experiencing when they have a faith crisis on their mission, but also for missionaries who have faith crises or who gets sick, what it's like to come home early from a mission and how the church deals with that.
1:58.0	If possible, I also want to extend this series to be about people who get sick on their missions or depressed or mental illness and how that affects missionaries services well.
2:10.0	But for starters, we're going to be really targeting faith crisis and early mission return. So having said all that, I think it's super fitting to begin this series with a missionary that a return missionary that many in the Mormon stories community will know.
2:27.0	His name is Josh or Joshua, Tess, is that high pronounced it? That is yes.
2:34.0	And I don't know the date. So we're going to have to you're going to have to remind me, but a few years ago, Tess and his friend or companion, who was it?
2:45.0	Is a companion. Are we saying his name?
2:49.0	Probably not.
2:51.0	Okay. They showed up on the Mormon stories podcast community and started discussing CES letter and their doubts and their experiences with their mission president.
	...

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