A Croatia & Slovenia Mormon Excommunication Story w/ Sara and Mitja Lakner Bevc | Ep. 2042
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2025
⏱️ 313 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What happens when faith, culture, and conscience collide?
In this gripping full-length interview, Sara (Croatian-American) and Mitja (Slovenian) share their deeply personal Mormon journeys—from conversion, missions, marriage, and cultural clashes to faith crises, public dissent in Utah church meetings, and ultimately, excommunication.
With raw honesty, they open up about the emotional toll of leaving the LDS Church, the pressure to conform, navigating belief in a mixed-faith marriage, and the high cost of asking difficult questions. Featuring moments of courage, heartbreak, and awakening, this episode explores what it means to choose integrity over silence.
Key Moments Include:
-Serving a missions in Croatia
-Struggles with identity, marriage, and belief
-Mitja’s public opposition in sacrament meeting
-Facing church discipline and excommunication
-Sara’s emotional departure from the LDS Church
A powerful story of love, loss, disruption—and starting over.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What happens when a Mormon who's a return missionary who served her mission in Croatia |
| 0:05.7 | goes back to visit her mission and falls in love with a convert to the church who's a man |
| 0:13.0 | from Slovenia? What happens when they get married and then move to Utah and then within a |
| 0:18.8 | couple years of moving to Utah, start learning things |
| 0:21.7 | about the church that's problematic, try to talk to people about it, and then are threatened |
| 0:26.7 | with excommunication. Welcome to Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John DeLinn. It is June 10th, |
| 0:33.5 | 2025. I'm here with my co-host, Margie. Hey, Margie. Hello. And today we are going to be sharing an |
| 0:41.5 | Eastern European, a Croatian-slash-Slovenian-excommunication Mormon story. And joining us for all |
| 0:50.3 | of that are Mitya. Hey, Mitya. Hi. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for inviting us. |
| 0:57.4 | I guess I'm assuming you're the one that's from Slovenia. Is that right in the story? |
| 1:01.0 | Don't I look like this? And also we have with us Sarah. Hey, Sarah. Hi, guys. I'm assuming you're |
| 1:08.3 | the return missionary who served in Croatia. I am. Well, we are so |
| 1:13.9 | excited. We've known of you all for a couple years. I believe that y'all told your story at some |
| 1:19.8 | point with RFM and Bill Real, but we wanted to have you here to do it Mormon Storystyle. So |
| 1:25.9 | welcome to Mormon Stories podcast. Thank you, John. Thank you, |
| 1:29.2 | Margie. It's a pleasure. Anything you want to correct about the intro? Do we get it right? |
| 1:33.8 | I mean, I feel like Hollywood was the best. Thank you. And I don't know, I, you know, I know we've done |
| 1:42.4 | at least a couple people from Ukraine on Mormon Stories podcast. |
| 1:46.7 | I don't know that we've ever done, you know, anyone from the former Yugoslavia and or Czechoslovakia. |
| 1:54.2 | I'll have to go back in Czech. |
| 1:55.6 | But I mean, are you aware of any? |
| 1:57.5 | No, I'm not. |
... |
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