4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2017
⏱️ 71 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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In this special edition of Mormon Stories, we interview Mel and Stu Brown from Cache Valley, Utah. Many of our listeners will find Mel and Stu’s experience as a mixed-faith couple inspiring and full of wisdom as they share how they navigated differing beliefs—eventually leading to the decision to both leave the LDS Church.
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0:40.0 | So, how'd you proceed? |
0:42.0 | Yeah, so that was kind of the deal we made with it. Look, I don't know where this is going to end up. |
0:48.0 | But I couldn't sit on the fence. I had to know. And if I studied and came to the conclusion and strengthened my testimony that you have the church is true, I was going to be the best freaking Mormon I could be. |
1:03.0 | And if it wasn't, I didn't know what I was going to do, but I just knew I had to find out. And so I dove, head in and you've warned so much about anti-Mormon lies and the anti-Mormons they twist off and they take it out of context. |
1:22.0 | And so if I read a quote, I was going to make sure I read that in context. So I'd get the book and I'd read the entire freaking book. |
1:34.0 | And especially because I promised mail, I wanted to make sure I turned over every rock that I did things the right way. |
1:49.0 | And so that next Sunday I went and I talked to my bishop and said, look, I have these questions and I don't know what to do. And my bishop, he was a nice guy. |
2:01.0 | He was a tire salesman and he didn't have a clue what I talked about. Like, he, I just floored him and he would touch the things that you bring up. |
2:10.0 | I felt like I brought up everything, but the one thing that really stuck in his mind was to a dismiss polygamy. When we were dealing with infertility stuff, we were just all by ourselves, we had a house. |
2:29.0 | And she had met somebody at her work that was involved in proctor care. So it's kind of like foster care, but it's usually teenage kids and it's just for six months to a year sort of thing. |
2:42.0 | And so we had a dozen or so teenagers come live with us for various amounts of time. |
2:48.0 | And they're usually like troubled teens that they just want to get them out of their environment and they're just too much to like. |
2:54.0 | We could be good examples for these kids. And so most of them are boys and I didn't want to have any girls in the house because I didn't want to deal with any. |
3:06.0 | I just didn't want to have any girls in the house, but they call up and said, you know, we've got this girl. We think it'd be really good fit for your house. |
3:18.0 | The program and mail ended up talking to me into, okay, we can try having a girl. And so some of them came out to be the ones that stayed with us the longest. And I think we got closest to one of the things I was nervous about was just, I don't want a teenage girl in the house. |
3:35.0 | It's ever going to accuse me of anything. So I was never in the same room with them alone. I don't think I ever hugged them or shook their head. Like I never touched them at all. |
3:45.0 | Just because that was one thing I was petrified about. But through that experience, you know, I knew what it was like to have a teenage girl in the house that's you feel responsible for. Like one of them ran away ones. |
4:01.0 | And I, like, the police weren't doing a lot and I went and got the security footage from the bus stop to his at saw the guy he was with and started showing it around. |
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