Hello and welcome to the scriptures are real podcast. This is the podcast where we talk about elements in the scriptures that have made them become real to us because we believe there's a great deal of power in the scriptures and the more real they are, the more we can apply them to our lives and draw that power out and we need it. I'm your host, Kerry Mulestein, and I have with me, I'm so excited about our guest today, Dustin Simmons. I can tell you a little bit about Dustin. I first got to know him when I think he was working on

his master's. He'll have to correct me if I'm wrong, but he was a research assistant for Eric Huntsman

and our offices were close to each other. And I just saw this guy who was always busy and who was

obviously so good. And Eric bragged about him to know and both his abilities to research and his Greek and Latin

abilities. And then the next thing I knew, Dustin, was a teacher at the school that my my children

go to. And soon he was the dean of students. He was teaching many of them Latin. He's also the soccer

coach. And I have a daughter who was playing soccer who in her

time of need, he was there for her in a way that goes beyond what is expected of a teacher,

a dean, or a soccer coach. I also saw that when some soccer players in our ward,

their father died. And I think the first one at their

house was coach Simmons. And so I can say, and all the students love him. He has a way of,

even though he had this grading system that you start out with an F and then as you get better,

you work your way to not failing. I think that was the Latin system. It took him a little while to get used to that, but it actually works great. But everyone loves him because he is smart. He is fun. I think he played professional soccer for a while as well. You'll have to tell me if that's right. But anyway, he's smart, fun, and a good kind person who knows this stuff. So welcome, Dustin. I appreciate that.

That's a, that's quite the introduction. Well, tell us what, what I said wrong or what else we

should know about you or anything else. Sure. Well, um, I know you have kids at that school,

so you must have a family. I've got a lot. Yeah. So I've been married for 18 years.

I've got seven kids. Our youngest just turned one. Congratulations. Yeah, I've got three kids here at Mazur with me actually this coming year. We'll have a junior, a ninth grader and a seventh grader. And that's it's been a lot of fun. I've been at Mazur here as a teacher or a dean. I'll be going into my 13th year. And it's been fun to teach other people's kids and experiment on other people's kids before mine get there.

And your kids were some of those experiments and it turned out okay.

Not because of me, probably in spite of me. but it's been awesome. So yeah, seven children,

lovely wife, went to BYU, got my undergrad in classics. That's actually where I met Dr. Huntsman

in a religion class. He was a book of Mormon professor. And I asked him if I could TA first

class and kind of got working with him. And then we ended up crossing a little bit. I can't

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