Hello everyone and welcome to our third bonus episode this season featuring Your Voices.

We asked the question, what triggered your faith journey?

And we've been so pleased at how many of you have sent in quick messages on what started

this whole complicated faith journey for you.

So let's jump in to this week's bonus.

My faith journey began in 2020 during the COVID pandemic.

I was in the Relief Society presidency of my singles ward at the time.

I went to a member of my bishopric and told him I hadn't had the sacrament in months due to the shutdowns,

and I was sure there were other women in a ward who hadn't as well due to having no man in their

house. Rather than thanking me for bringing this to his attention to my shock, he reprimanded me for

not prioritizing the sacrament in my life. He said to me, promise me you will never go this long without

taking the sacrament again. I was flabbergasted. Here I was telling him I didn't

have access to the sacrament due to my gender, and he had the nerve to blame me. I realized that all the

things I had been told my whole life about having equal access to the priesthood were simply and true.

Because I was a single woman, I did not have the same level of access to priesthood ordinances.

When I moved into a family ward, the new bishop asked to meet with me to get to know me. I started telling him about myself, and he abruptly cut me off and said, I'm going to cut to the chase. Are you married? Do you have children? What are you doing here? I told them I was not, and he quickly tried to steer the conversation into a temple recommend interview, implying that he needed to get me married off and through the temple as quickly as possible. To his shock, I stood up and ended the interview right there and walked out of his office. It had become very clear to me that there wasn't a place for single women in the church. They don't know what to do with us or how to support our needs. They either want to marry us off so that they don't have to worry about us or if they can't do that, work us to the point of physical and spiritual exhaustion. The only thing of value we seem to provide for the church is our labor. And if you don't go through the labor of bringing a child into the world,

well, then you're going to be able to... work us to the point of physical and spiritual exhaustion. The only thing of value we seem to provide for the church is our labor.

And if you don't go through the labor of bringing a child into the world,

well, then you better do something else useful. We're not seen as real adults or as real people. When our lives don't fit the covenant path of marriage and children, we're told to hurry up and get with the program or get out. I think the beginning of my faith transition occurred when my eldest son went on his mission.

I mistakenly sent him. get out. I think the beginning of my faith transition occurred when my eldest son went on his mission.

I mistakenly sent him far from home, assuming those in charge of his mission would have his best interest in mind because, of course, these people should be the most righteous if they've

been called to mission presidencies, right? Well, terrible things were happening on his mission. The mission

...