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Oh, welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host John DeLin. We are now in part three of this epic story of Nancy Stokeater and Omar Cater talking about all sorts of cool things from Omar growing up as a Palestinian in Provo Utah to Omar and Nancy polluting BYU in the 60s and 70s with all sorts of cool things.

In the 70s with all their liberal corrupt ideologies and politics at the consternation of Ernie Wilkinson and the shadow apostle Ezra Tuff Benson.

And we got Omar through graduate school at the University of Utah and through USC back to BYU for a tenure career there with lots of intrigue in the political science department at BYU, some fun stuff discussed off camera.

And now even though Lamontolis makes a valiant effort to help Omar Cater achieve continuing status as a professor against all odds against all the racism against all the problems and trouble and all his liberalness was causing including trying to get him to go to BYU Idaho which I don't think we finished that story.

I'm trying to get him to go there to kind of alleviate his menace until Ezra Benz could pass away. We now have Omar deciding to leave BYU.

So let's talk about what happened there. I'm super interested in how you may have played a part in helping Elder Holland with the Jerusalem Center and the interesting information there.

But I'm also super interested to learn how you got to know Yossir Erfad or the King of Jordan or whoever else you've known there, how you got involved in Middle Eastern politics as some rural farm boy from Utah.

So talk about your career after you left BYU.

There are a couple of things that came up. One night I was teaching a night class and as I was walking across campus this elderly gentleman that everybody knew he was a British poet who was he anyway.

I'll be with you. Well, that was the other one. I took him to very distinguished scholars and I got to know them and as I got to halfway through campus Arthur King walks by and I say hi Arthur, how come you're here so late.

So what are you doing here? And I said I teach a night class really and we were going on and on and I said something. I can't remember how it came up but he said if you're ever planning to leave here, don't waste your youth.

If you keep putting it off, you'll be sorry because you're still young enough to start another career. If you're not planning to stay here for the duration, you'll be doing what I'm doing, walking across campus over the age of 70.

I was like he had regretted that decision. Well, it wasn't so much that I think he made the decision and lived it out but was I ready to do that because he seemed like a happy fellow and everything about him.

This has more to do with the impact of what he said on me than about anything else. As I walked off, I thought goosebumps all down my backs thinking, did that guy just give me some sage advice? Is that something I should be listening to or is that more of my faking an intellectual thought or something?

I realized I really had to make a decision whether I was staying or going because you could always get a job at the gym or whatever.

That's when we started circulating the resumes and I picked three cities I was willing to move to San Francisco, Boston or Washington, D.C.

I got this job offer running a Palestinian charity that was interested only in healthcare and education. It was called the United Palestinian Appeal.

They had not had an executive director, they had office managers and things like that and they were ready to start it up again and that they had known somebody in Saudi Arabia that could help them get a donation.

But when you're fundraising for the Palestinian cause, you're competing with other Palestinian causes. They said we think it'd be a good idea if you went to Tunisia and met with our FOT and say here's what we're doing, you're going to hear about us but I want you to hear about us first.

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