Hello everyone and welcome to the Girls Camp podcast Patreon, Girls Camp After Dark. It is me,

your host, Haley Rawl. It has been a crazy past couple of weeks since last we spoke as far as

the Mormon news cycle is concerned. President Russell M. Nelson, the former Mormon prophet, died at age 101. The news

broke about this last Sunday morning, and then within hours of finding out about this death,

we then heard in the news that there was a shooting, a mass shooting at a Mormon church in Michigan.

This has left me and I think a lot of us with a lot to unpack. So today we're going to do a deep

dive on the former prophet, Russell M. Nelson, and then we're going to talk about the shooting.

Russell M. Nelson made a lot of changes in his time as prophet of the Mormon church.

He really shook things up in some significant ways.

He also said some pretty crazy things.

And I was feeling a lot of weird emotions when I first found out he died because I'm certainly not a fan.

I think he was at the head of a harmful organization for a long time. But I also spent a significant portion of my life thinking

he was the literal mouthpiece of God, like the closest person to God on planet Earth. He became the prophet when I was

22 years old. And over the course of my faith deconstruction, some of the things he said

are actually really big milestones in me leaving the church. But he's also the last prophet who was prophet while I was actually

active, like whoever the next prophet is, which it's looking to be a man named Dallin H. Oaks.

And there is much to be said about that man. And that might actually be my next Patreon episode

is when the next

prophet is announced, which will probably be, oh, it might be, I'm recording this on Saturday,

which is the first Saturday of General Conference Weekend. Happy General Conference weekend,

for those of you who celebrate. That is the twice yearly church conference where prophets,

apostles, church leaders share messages. I always say it's like glorified TED talks essentially,

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