646: Missionaries Pt. 4: Tormented over "Self Abuse", Disillusioned by Uninspired Mission Leadership

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2016

⏱️ 89 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tre was raised in Oakland, CA as a bi-racial Mormon (Filipino mother and New Zealander/Maori father). While he was very committed doctrinally to Mormonism, he was not crazy about Mormon culture, and was taught the fundamentals of critical thinking from a young age. Prior to and during his mission, Tre was tormented by doubts, along with teachings and rules regarding "self abuse." For over a year on his mission Tre was taught that lack of success on his mission was due to these practices/weaknesses. After becoming zone leader, Tre became aware of a sex scandal that reached the highest levels of missionary leadership. This is Tre’s story.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Music
0:22.0	Hello and welcome to another edition of Warmest Stories podcast. I'm your host John DeLin.
0:27.0	It's August 9, 2016, 12.08 pm. And I'm super excited to be continuing our series on Mormon missionaries in the 2010s with an emphasis at least beginning early in the series on Faith crises and early mission return.
0:48.0	I'm really happy with the ones we've done so far and today to continue the series, this is our fourth in the series. We're interviewing Trey Shortland to give you guys a little bit of a preview.
1:00.0	Trey served in the Brazil.
1:03.0	He's still going, yeah, how do you pronounce that?
1:06.0	Exactly, no, go on.
1:08.0	Go on. From 2012 to 2014, Trey is, Trey identifies his Polynesian, his dad is from New Zealand, his mom is from the Philippines.
1:21.0	And maybe maybe a couple of things that were interesting about his faith crisis. He he'll talk about how he was introduced to critical thinking and logic prior to his mission.
1:31.0	And how those skills kind of brought came with him into the mission and towards the end of his mission as a zone leader, as he began to witness sort of some troubling, let's just say practices or situations as a zone leader, his exposure to the mission president, combined with his critical thinking skills.
1:50.0	Led to him, maybe losing his faith on his mission. In this case, I don't think there's an early mission return, right, Trey?
2:02.0	I didn't get interviewed by my president.
2:05.0	I'm saying president.
2:07.0	Okay, okay.
2:08.0	My mission president.
2:09.0	Okay.
2:10.0	But I can't, but honorably.
2:12.0	He came home honorably.
2:13.0	Okay.
2:14.0	Yeah, they give me one.
2:15.0	And then we'll talk about what happened to Trey, what happened to Trey's faith after he left his mission and just another interesting thing is that Trey is a musician.
2:25.0	He's part of a band called CVU, which is a reggae rock band.
	...

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