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I hope you'll be wasn't.

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host,

John Dillin. I'm recording this introduction August 30th, 2018. But it's an introduction to a

podcast that I recorded in Portland, Oregon on August 17th, 2018. I cannot be more excited to introduce

this interview. It is an interview of two very, very special people, Jill Surrell and Katie Surrell.

And the title of this episode is Responding to Tragedy with Grace and Resilience. I don't want to

give away too much about this interview, but what I will say is that Jill Surrell was an amazing, beautiful

Mormon woman raised in the Mormon church in the 60s. And she also identified internally as

lesbian. She had many close female friends who she was very attracted to, but because she was a

good Mormon girl, she married a Mormon boy, served a mission and married a Mormon boy. So entered into a

fixed orientation marriage in the 70s and early 80s as a devout Mormon woman. She had several children

with this husband and at some point realized that she was lesbian and needed to end the marriage.

She ended her marriage amicably and then found the love of her life, which was another lesbian Mormon

missionary because of laws that did not support marriage equality. She actually had to marry her

...