772: Laurie Lee Hall - Standing in my truth, Walking in my faith Pt. 3

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2017

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In these episodes of Mormon Stories, we interview former LDS Stake President and LDS Chief Architect Laurie Lee Hall. Laurie Lee’s story is fascinating on many levels:

Laurie Lee worked for 20 years as Chief Architect for the LDS Church and as Director of Design and/or Construction for around 40 LDS temples.
She served as Stake President of the Tooele Utah Valley View Stake in Tooele, Utah for 8 years.
While she remembers identifying internally as a woman from a very young age, she began to experience intense pressure to transition to female while serving as an LDS Stake President. This ultimately led to her being released as stake president after 8 years of service.
About two months ago Laurie Lee was excommunicated stemming from her decision to transition gender presentation while living in her home ward/stake.
Laurie Lee and her spouse have been married 32 years this month and are the parents of five children and 11 grandchildren.
Laurie Lee remains a believer in many of the core tenets of Mormonism (e.g., Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, the atonement), and reads the Book of Mormon daily.

Transcript

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0:30.0	Thanks for your support.
0:32.0	We're back for part three.
0:47.0	So I will welcome everyone who's joined us today on July 18th, 2017. We sell well over 200 participants on our livestream with our interview of Laurie Lee Hall.
1:01.0	We've talked about her conversion to the church in Massachusetts and in New York.
1:10.0	Her early experiences knowing that she was a woman, but experiencing gender dysphoria throughout her childhood and adult years, her conversion to the church at RPI in New York and her mission service in Argentina.
1:30.0	And her ultimately getting married in the LDS temple on the Washington DC temple to her best friend and having four children and experiencing an early careers in architect, but then experiencing severe depression to the point of contemplating suicide, how that led to a change where she moved to Utah, begin working as an architect for the LDS church.
1:59.0	And for 20 years worked in the LDS church as an architect on various buildings, but specifically was involved in the construction design construction management of 40 temples during her time at the church, working at the highest levels of the church.
2:20.0	So we've talked now, Laurie Lee, about the fact that you had been called as a bishop, once you moved to a, a, a, a, a, and then immediately after that, you were called to serve as a state president.
2:38.0	So, um, was your suppression of your thoughts around your gender identity in full mode when you were called the stick president.
2:49.0	Absolutely.
2:50.0	Okay. So you're true believing Orthodox former bishop, now stick president and ready to take on the next challenge.
2:58.0	And you said there are 4,000 members of your state.
3:01.0	Yeah, I was the name of the stake.
3:03.0	Uh, you taught value you stake.
3:05.0	Um, like our ward was brand new ward at the time that I was called the stake was also a brand new stake at the time that I was called.
3:13.0	Um, so it was starting the unit from scratch and that required a lot of initial hard work on the part of a lot of people to, uh, to start an organization from scratch and get it up and running successfully.
3:29.0	Yeah, you didn't just have a, a, a state inherent.
3:33.0	No, no, it was, but you're a builder.
3:35.0	I am a builder and a planner and, and those things came natural to me.
	...

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