Welcome listeners to another episode of Listen, Learn, and Love, hosted by Richard Osler.

In my home this afternoon is my friend Marcus Hayden.

Welcome to the podcast, Marcus.

Thank you. It's good to be here.

I'll just give you like a little bio of Marcus.

And before we get started, so you know who you're

listening to and his story and a little bit of things we'll be discussing. Marcus is a gay

Latter-day Saint. He is 19 years old. He's a graduate from Caysville High School. No? From Farmington

High School. Grew up in Kaysville, class of 2020.

Marcus is attending Utah State.

He's a biochem major, and he would love to find a career, do a career teaching and research

in that area, the chemistry area.

So Marcus has academic skills that always scared me in my bio and chem classes in high school back in my day, Marcus.

So well done.

Marcus is planning on going on a mission.

And so we'll talk a little bit about his decision as a gay Latterty Saint to go on a mission.

We visited about that beforehand and I'm really moving to hear some of his feelings of why he wants to serve a mission.

I became aware of Marcus, our mutual friend Raymond, sent me a copy of a talk he gave.

Recently, Marcus, even though he's at Utah State, he worked at BYU during the summer of 2021.

In the chemistry department,

attended a YSA ward in Provo, and gave a talk, a really good talk, about creating Zion in our congregations. And so I think what we'll do is have Marcus just, you know, give that

talk. It's not a long talk. And then we'll just kind of talk about his story as a gay Latter-day Saint when he came out, his reaction, his parents, priested leaders, his decision to serve a mission, why he wants to serve a mission and some of the things that will, you know, I'll ask him, will we talk about being gay to people in his mission where they keep that to himself?

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