922: Roger Hendrix - Stories from a CES Director, Mission President, and Trustee for Deseret Trust Company Pt. 4
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2018
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this edition of Mormon Stories we visit with Roger Hendrix - possibly the highest ranking and most well-connected LDS church leader interviewed on Mormon Stories Podcast to date. In these 5 episodes we cover his experience growing up in the LDS Church in Southern California in the 1950s and 60s, his ascent through church leadership including time as a CES Director, Bishop, Stake Presidency Member, Mission President, and serving for 18 years as a Trustee on the board of the Deseret Trust Company(called to the position by President Gordon B. Hinckley). Throughout this series Roger provides fascinating commentary on top church leadership, the changes he's seen in Mormon culture and policy during his lifetime, and rare insight into the financial workings of the LDS Church. Included throughout the interview are interactions Roger had with church leaders such as Paul H. Dunn, Ezra Taft Benson, Boyd K. Packer, Jeffrey R. Holland, Henry B. Eyring, Dallin H. Oaks, Gordon B. Hinckley, and more.
We will be interviewing Roger Hendrix for a few more hours in the coming week. If you have any final questions for Roger, please post them below.
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- Part 1: Roger discusses his early life as a Mormon including his bout with polio as a child, how he compensated for his illness as a teenager, straying from the church for a time, returning to the church after being inspired by an LDS Institute class, and his decision to serve an LDS mission.
- Part 2: Roger joins the Church Education System (CES), ultimately becoming director of the LDS Institute at the University of Southern California. He also shares his interactions with numerous general authorities including Paul H. Dunn, Boyd K. Packer, Ezra Taft Benson, Henry Eyring, and Jeffrey R. Holland, among others.
- Part 3: Roger ascends through high-level LDS church leadership callings including Bishop and Stake Presidency Member, culminating in a call to serve as mission president in Chile. Roger discusses in detail what it was like to serve as a mission president in Chile in the 1990s.
- Parts 4-5: Roger begins this segment discussing the vetting process he went through after returning from his mission presidency as he was offered a position as an area authority (which he ultimately turned down). We then discuss Roger's call to serve on the Deseret Trust Company Board of Trustees by LDS church president Gordon B. Hinckley. We discuss in detail the purpose and inner workings of the Deseret Trust Company, and its interactions with Ensign Peak Advisors Inc., the Deseret Management Corporation, and the LDS church. In these two parts Roger provides important insight into the financial workings of the LDS Church
Transcript
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| 0:59.1 | Hello everyone and welcome back to Part 4 of my interview with Dr. Roger Hendrix. |
| 1:20.7 | It's been so fun to hear about him growing up in Southern California. |
| 1:24.3 | He is a senior mission becoming a CES employee and institute director for University of Southern |
| 1:32.6 | California to hear about his ascent into his bishop and then into the state of the presidency. |
| 1:38.8 | And then into becoming a mission president. And of course we spent a good hour and |
| 1:45.8 | 10, hour and 20 minutes digging into what it's like to be a mission president and how much time he |
| 1:51.6 | had even though he was a elected mission president and didn't want to go but by the time he gets home |
| 1:57.3 | he's saying it's one of the best experiences he and his family have had in their lives. So |
| 2:01.8 | lots of really interesting stuff if you haven't checked out those first three episodes. They're |
| 2:06.3 | really interesting. It's a deep dive into Mormonism and kind of an important chronicle of Mormon history. |
| 2:13.0 | But now we're going to get to kind of 1995ish your home from your mission in Chile. You would put your |
| 2:21.8 | career in Southern California and hold as a management consultant driving around. I don't know if you |
| 2:27.5 | were in a convertible but listening to Don Henley and the Eagles and living life in the fast lane |
| 2:33.8 | as an orthodox Mormon but now you're home but you loved your mission as a mission president. |
| 2:39.5 | So what was it like to come home and talk about kind of church leadership from then |
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