A.J. shares his heartfelt journey with us about his struggles with mental health and returning to his faith and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Come Back Podcast

Ashly Stone

Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2022

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"When I got into prison the first thing I asked my family was to send me a triple combination. I had never read the Book of Mormon cover to cover. Prior to that it was piece by piece. It is hard to put into words the amount of darkness you feel while in prison that is surrounding you. You are always reminded of how horrible your decisions are, you are beaten down left and right. I religiously started reading the Book of Mormon everyday, really studying it and trying to understand it and grow my own testimony. I started to notice it brought me so much comfort no matter what was going on around me. My scriptures became a guide and a light to me in such a dark place."

Come Back Team: Director, Founder & Host: Ashly Stone Producer and Senior Editor: Lauren Rose Outreach Manager: Jenna Carlson Editor: Michelle Berger Art Director: Jeremy Garcia

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Ashley Stone and you're listening to the comeback podcast. My name is Lauren Rose. You might
0:19.2	recognize me from episode six, but Ashley isn't able to be here today so I am hosting and we have a
0:26.9	guest here named A.J. Weple I'm really excited to share his story. A.J.
0:33.7	Why don't you go ahead and tell us a little about yourself
0:36.1	and your childhood?
0:38.0	Yeah, thank you.
0:39.8	I was born and raised in St. George, Utah. My dad was a Boy Scout leader and so we were always doing outside activities.
0:50.0	Raised, you know, I was a Deacons, teachers, president.
0:55.0	It finally hit me in high school was, I was in about, I was a sophomore,
0:59.0	leading up to that, a lot of the reasons why was was I'd put so much pressure on me on myself, not really from my family, but being perfection.
1:10.0	I'd seen like, hey, if you put all this effort in it if you're doing more than the next person then you
1:16.6	get something back from it I was like okay cool fine a theory of like okay you can do this
1:21.2	you get a result you get this you do that and so that's the way
1:24.9	approaches like okay you know 4.0 student all the way and then finally hit where I got an A-minus in a class.
1:34.0	And so it came to a halt where it was like,
1:38.0	what is it's not worth it anymore?
1:41.0	I mean, I literally like mapped out my rest of my life thinking that the
1:46.7	world is over. I can't go to this school I can't go to this college if I didn't have a
1:50.3	4.0 and being a huge honor student and stuff like that, it wasn't possible,
1:56.2	it was not in the book, so why keep going?
1:58.6	And it went with, and I got tired of it.
2:00.8	It's like, all right, that's the same thing with with the church.
	...

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