Introduction and Welcome

Ben Jalaff [00:00:00] I almost used cold inside the temple because I just.

John Dehlin [00:00:03] That word cold came to you?

Ben Jalaff [00:00:04] Oh, yeah, 100%. I'm sitting there like, how did I not think this is a cult. We're doing this, we're doing these signals. I walk out and I'm just sitting there like, whoa, that was not on temple prep. That was not on temple prep. That's the first time, the first time that my true self sat there and like, what the hell are you doing here?

Justine Jalaff [00:00:28] I think Mormonism, when you're raised in a really good, loving Mormon home, it is very safe. But then it doesn't prepare you for the real world. And I started seeing the harm when I moved away from home and started going to university and entered the real world and I wasn't able to make friendships or relationships. I think how it harmed me as a young girl is that it made me naive, I would say. I also saw my mission as an erasure of myself because I just wanted to be obedient. Obedient was drilled into us. Exact obedience will get you the blessings. Exact obedience will get you the baptisms. I worked myself to the ground physically, mentally, emotionally, and I came home and I didn't even know who I was anymore.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:22] You both hit up against the rigidity of the system on your missions. Yeah, you both gave, worked very hard. You both gave it your all. You both like, really, really engaged with that process and walked away feeling like, wow, I totally fit. I was not valued.

Ben Jalaff [00:01:42] And there is nothing wrong with seeking

Justine Jalaff [00:01:45] a payoff, wanting the validation when you sacrifice so much.

Ben Jalaff [00:01:51] Am I wrong here to think like, hey, what my cheese? I mean, come on, like, this is a two year mission. Why am I so wrong to seek for this? Because this is what actually started to drive me away from the church. Is that how much can I do for you? You're not doing anything back for me. I'm looking at my parents are clear enemy now. This is no more questioning about them flinty or anything. I saw them as the enemy, which is so sad because they're my own parents. My parents were the only people in my life that will try to bring me value. And I never listen to them because they're not going to church. So I don't value their opinion because they don't have the light.

John Dehlin [00:02:39] This is religion at its worst when it divides families.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:42] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [00:02:42] Oh, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:44] What it gives you, what it offers you in the beginning, the. That is the vehicle that makes us accept the conditioning which can be so problematic, where the cost all of a sudden becomes much higher than Many of us can recognize when we first hop in the vehicle that looks so like it's going to take us there. And I almost feel like, you know, that's how it succeed.

John Dehlin [00:03:12] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast, Canadian and Venezuelan edition. I'm John Dehlin. It's March 28, 2025. I'm here with my partner and co host, Margi. Hey, Margi.

Justine Jalaff [00:03:25] Hello.

John Dehlin [00:03:26] Today we have a super cool long form Mormon stories faith journey. We have with us today Justine Jolliffe. How do you pronounce it? Oh my gosh, I totally butchered it. Halaf. I should have asked you that first. And it's Spanish pronunciation, so I should have known it. Justine. Halaf, right?

Justine Jalaff [00:03:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:03:49] And Ben. Hey, Ben.

Ben Jalaff [00:03:51] How's it going, guys? Thank you for having me here.

John Dehlin [00:03:53] Yeah. And you're wearing, you're representing the Blue Jays.

Ben Jalaff [00:03:57] Toronto Blue Jays, baby. 2025.

John Dehlin [00:04:02] You know, we cover a lot of U.S. united States based Mormon stories, but we have a long traditional Mormon stories podc of covering international Mormon stories as well. And today we're going to be covering a Canadian version of a Mormon story, but also Ben, you know, Ben was born in Venezuela and he and his family migrated to Canada when he was around 11 or 12. Is that right? But then, you know, spent his teenage and adult years as a Mormon in Canada. So we're super excited for today's episode and you guys had quite a journey coming here. This is an interesting time in the time of the United States for Canadians or Latinos to be visiting the United States. It's a non trivial journey for you guys, is that fair to say?

Justine Jalaff [00:04:56] There was a lot of anxiety, so

John Dehlin [00:05:01] we're extra grateful you would come all this way to our studio. So thank you. And I have a special place in my heart for Canada because my sister Gina married a Torontonian and raised, you know, did her endowments, took out her endowments in the Toronto temple and raised her children in Toronto. So it's personal for me as well. Anyway, had to share that. All right, well, we're going to jump in and we're going to tell both of your Mormon stories. How does that sound?

Ben Jalaff [00:05:29] Sounds good.

John Dehlin [00:05:30] All right, Ben, I think. Should we start with yours? Sure. And then. And then have it merged with Justine's? How does that sound? All right. Where does your Mormon story begin?

Ben Jalaff [00:05:42] My Mormon story begins in Venezuela. My parents are originally from Colombia and they migrated to Venezuela seeking a better life. To understand my story, you have to understand my parents a little bit. So it will lead to why they joined the church. When my dad decided to move to Venezuela seeking a better life, my mom was pregnant with their first child.

John Dehlin [00:06:07] Was there stuff going on in. In Colombia?

Ben Jalaff [00:06:10] La guerilla, the guerrilla was very active. But also at the time in the 80s, Venezuela was very prosperous.

John Dehlin [00:06:18] This was pre.

Ben Jalaff [00:06:20] This is pre Chavez. We're talking about 20 years before Chavez. Venezuela was doing great. It was booming. To be honest. Venezuela had the resources to be a first world country. Politics obviously took a toll on the country. But my dad moved to Venezuela seeking a better life. And my mom was pregnant in Colombia. And that's where the first tragedy strikes. My mom delivers the baby and six days later the baby dies. The tragedy of the story is that my dad couldn't go back to see his first child and to also bury his first child. That's the first one.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:59] So they weren't together?

Ben Jalaff [00:07:00] No. Like my dad had come to Venezuela to carve a path for my mom to come later. And then my first brother, Benjamin, he's supposed to be me, Benjamin the first, and he dies the second. It was a miscarriage. My parents were walking in the street after work. And in Venezuela, when they're trying to take your money or try to attack you, one guy will be up front of you and the other guy in the back. Anyway, story short, they attacked my mom and pushed it to the ground and she miscarried. The second baby, that was the second one, the third one, they were. They were working at an institute. I think they were cleaning the institute and they were sleeping over there. And somebody had broken into the place. And my mom panicked and put a blanket on top of her head and failed to see my dad pull out a gun. I guess my dad didn't tell my mom that he had a gun. And he went after the guy and fired a few rounds at the guy. And my mom told that my dad has been shot. And all that distress led to another miscarriage. The fourth one is me. I'm here now. But that is the anxiety driven parenting for just me. I think I told you guys how anxious my parents were for me and Justine to come here. That's their nature. The last was something that I hold dear in my heart. My brother Gabriel is born. And I remember Gabriel being around as a kid. And he dies 24 days after he's born. And the reason why I'm getting emotional is because I remember him. Because when I had my son Max, my dad hold Max, my baby, and he ran to the bathroom because he couldn't hold his tears, because he Reminded him of Gabriel. But that's the last tragedy my parents endure. And during that time, they were working at a market with members of the church that owned that market, that they gave my parents some space to work there. So they knew my parents, and they have sent the missionaries to my parents to talk to them. My parents avoided them because they're naturally Catholic. The whole family is Catholic in Colombia, Venezuela, Catholic is the religion of the country. And my parents avoided the missionaries until one day they couldn't do it anymore. They sat down and the eternal families came up. And my dad was sold. Like, do I get away to see my children again and to protect my only one? Yes, I'll sign up. My mom was skeptical. She was skeptical from the very beginning because she could not comprehend, okay, you're telling me that we get our children back, but there is something off about it. And she always voiced that displeasure to my dad. And my dad was sold, though. He wanted his children back. And that's where Mormonism begins in the Halal family.

John Dehlin [00:10:17] Yeah, I have to just reflect what I went to serve my mission in Guatemala. We used to play a film strip for investigators. And the film strip was Las Familiarness Families Are Forever. And the film, it was back in the days when you. You had a little tape recorder and you would. And it would go, doot. And you would advance the film strip. It was, you know, pre video and. And the story was about this family who lost a child. And the child's name was Jaime, and it was really emotionally impactful or manipulative. But there would be the song, you

Ben Jalaff [00:11:00] know,

John Dehlin [00:11:02] and it's just all about the church addressing the issue of a child's death as a way to bring people into Mormonism. And I would bet thousands of dollars that the missionaries showed your parents.

Growing Up Mormon in Venezuela

Ben Jalaff [00:11:17] I meant to ask you guys that, because when I grew up, the missionaries had a way to structure missionary lessons. From the beginning, I served a mission. I knew that the structure was important. I don't know how the missionary work was in the 80s when my parents listened to the missionaries, but I've always found it odd that the first thing they talked about was, families can be together forever. Where I thought, well, the restoration first. And I talked to my dad about it about a month ago, and my dad really recognized that. Yeah, they went after it right away.

John Dehlin [00:11:45] Yeah, we would go to the door, knock on the door and say, hi, we're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and we're here to share a message with you about how families can Be together forever. I mean, that's literally was our door approach.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:59] I think, too, it's important to recognize like, that's. So my parents are converts, too. They were converted in the 70s, but same thing. The thing that was shown to them, the Washington, D.C. temple was opening. They were invited, they got tickets, and they were shown a film about families being. I wonder if it's not like a hook. And in considering your family, it was kind of like all that loss, all that family lost became a. I would

Ben Jalaff [00:12:29] join a hurry the same way my dad did. I mean, if somebody's telling me I'm going to see my three kids again, why would I say no to that? I'll take that ticket any day. And I will take it again and again. I don't blame my parents for that because I'm asking. You invited us over and I needed to connect the dots with my parents because sadly enough, I was a member of the church and I never once asked them the process of how they got there until I finally sat down and. And he was just, whoa.

Justine Jalaff [00:12:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:59] Yeah. And I think it probably comes by even the church in Joseph Smith, honestly, because I've been doing some research, reading a new biography of Joseph Smith that's coming out, and it turns out that Joseph Smith's grandfather, Esau, was very secular. He did not believe in Christianity. He didn't believe in organized religion. He was an Enlightenment sort of philosopher grandpa. And he brought the Age of Reason by Thomas Paine to Joseph Smith Sr. And Lucy Mack Smith, which is a book that basically said organized religion's bad, Christianity isn't true, it's reason that should guide us, not religion. Revelation's a bad idea, and the Smith family ignored it, like Lucy and Joseph Smith Sr. Ignored it and pursued religion anyway. And I think it's because so many children in the Smith family died. If you read, you know, all the. Whether it's Joseph Smith Sr. Or Joseph Smith Jr. So many deaths in the family. I think Mormonism was born out of dealing with death, trauma, and a desire to keep families together in the afterlife. So, anyway, I didn't mean to go off on that segment, but I think it's important.

Ben Jalaff [00:14:20] No, yeah, obviously it's important because I just wanted to find out because I do know. My mom told me, like, we avoided them. We did not want the missionaries in the home, and that was it. Right. Like I told you, I would say yes any minute. But it also led them to be so anxious about me. Like, they literally. My dad is so protective. Not just me, but my Grandkids as well. Sometimes to a point of like, it's dangerous. Sometimes where my dad is just like somebody threatens a family member. And to me, looking at that now after stepping away, I feel like I get that 100%.

John Dehlin [00:15:02] So it's a combination of providing an important service, helping people deal with death, but it could also be viewed as manipulative, depending on the point of view. Anyway, that's a powerful intro. So you mentioned in your outline being exposed, and this is gonna be a big segue jump, but we've got a lot to cover today. You mentioned being exposed to pornography as a young teen. Do you wanna talk about that? As a Mormon?

Ben Jalaff [00:15:30] As a Mormon, yes, I wanna talk about that. Because there's something important about kids growing up in Venezuela. In the third world country, 10 is young according to society standards. In Venezuela? Oh, no. In Venezuela you have to grow up faster. You have to be part of the solution. Okay. When I was about eight years old, I was walking myself to school in a third world country. 20 minute walk distance. My parents will leave some cash on the table. Gordo, here's some $20. Go downstairs and get some arepas. Straight to school. Here's the key. I will come home, open the fridge and make myself food when I come home. They will come up at 6. But what that sets up is a standard of growing up quicker. Okay. When the talk about sex and pornography comes into my life at the age of 10 or 11, it's a prevalent thing amongst youth already. Okay. In Venezuela we have something called piropo. Piropo is a compliment to a girl. I will see a girl, she looks beautiful. And hey, you look good today. You look good at 10 years old. We did that. Those Piropos everywhere, kids do that. So the talk about sex among children there was prevalent. When I watched that, I felt like I was the first one. But my friends already seen it.

John Dehlin [00:16:53] You're pornography.

Ben Jalaff [00:16:53] Oh, yeah, absolutely. I remember I came home, you know, after being exposed to it and not thinking much of it, when it started to slip in. Okay. Because I had done it before my baptism, before the missionaries even arrived in my home. I didn't know my parents were Mormon. I didn't know that because they went inactive. That's something I should mention. They joined the church and they go inactive right away. Why? Because Venezuela doesn't care about the Sabbath. You don't work on Sunday, you don't eat. And that's what my dad told me. Son, can't go and skip work on Sunday. I got to eat. So they went inactive right away. So I didn't even know they were members of the church until I was 11. When I have Elder Galante and Elder Atkins showed up in my house, I already seemed porn. You know, I had a sex education book bought by my own dad to learn about sex. Already I had that book, White book. They still have it. So when I came across pornography, I was not in tune with the law, chastity teachings. Then the missionaries come, and they teach me those lessons, okay? So when it comes again, now I have it in my subconsciousness about that. And I go and ask my dad, hey, dad. We look at some pornography, and my dad is puzzled because he's like, okay, I'm waiting for a reply of like, hey, you should have done that. What are you doing? No, what he told me was, hey, you got to be careful with that, because that's a movie. It's staged, okay? So what it's going to do to you is that it's creating the wrong perception of what the real act is, and you might hurt the special girl in the end if you watch that a lot. So be careful. It's normal. Yeah, you're going to come across it. It's normal. But don't think that that's the in at all. Okay, the next part is interesting. Well, but the missionaries taught me that. That if I do that, I have to confess because it's a pretty heavy sin. Okay? That's where the puzzle happened. My dad's like, what are you talking about? Well, the missionaries taught me I need to confess to a bishop. No, whoa, hold on. No, no, no, that's. No, no, you already talked to me, and that's normal. What's the big deal? Well, they told me that it's a sexual sin. It's next to murder.

John Dehlin [00:19:19] And.

Ben Jalaff [00:19:19] And my mom is listening, skeptical. I know she's processing. And my dad's like, no, no, Gordo, don't worry about it. That's fine. It's normal. Just move on. Just remember what I said. Don't make it a habit. My parents believe that their walls in the house are thick, so you cannot hear them murmur. And I'm hearing them murmuring in the other room. My mom. Hey, Poopy, what is this that Gordo said that he's look up pornography. He has to talk to a bishop. Oh, I don't know why the missionary said that. Poopy, I'm telling you, since the beginning, something is going on. They're teaching my son these things now. I gotta make it clear. I'm very uncomfortable. And my dad, no moti tranquila. Relax, it's all good. Okay? I already told him he's fine. Yeah, Pupi, please. I don't like this. This is normal. Children watch these things. It's very normalized. And that was my first exposure. My dad just literally scientifically explained it to me. Never once mentioned God's watching me in anger.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:23] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [00:20:24] You know, and obviously that stayed with me because now that I have children, I'm like, how do I teach this as an active member? Right.

John Dehlin [00:20:33] Yeah. So before y' all come to Canada, were you ever like, super active in your rama or barrio?

Ben Jalaff [00:20:41] Mormonism in Venezuela was just a church.

John Dehlin [00:20:44] Okay?

Ben Jalaff [00:20:44] We would go on Sundays. Our close friends will know we will go to the Mormon church. But they didn't make it a big deal about it. I didn't go to activities. All my friends were non members. I played baseball, you know, I had my friends from the neighborhood. Mormonism wasn't a thing. It was just a church. We went just because we felt good. Like any Catholic would go to a church on Sundays. It wasn't enforced. We never kept the Sabbath day holy. We never had fages or family home meetings, never went to activities. So no, it was. I was just a Sunday church guy. That's it.

Immigration and Arriving in Canada

John Dehlin [00:21:21] Okay, so what made your family need to move to Canada?

Ben Jalaff [00:21:25] My dad likes to be two steps ahead. Once Hugo Chavez is running for president and sets around.

John Dehlin [00:21:33] What year is that?

Ben Jalaff [00:21:34] When he started running was 96. When he said the word nationalization, my dad knew, whoa, that's going to screw up my merchandising business. Okay. They start planning, putting things together. Okay, we need to put a plan to flee just in case we need to do that. Then Chavez becomes president. But my parents business was prosperous. They didn't feel the need to do that. In 2001, my parents started to feel that Chavez was heading the country to the wrong direction. Then they start putting the start selling things. Okay, we're moving. I didn't know we were moving. I'm in the dark about this. What had happened in September, right before September 11th, okay, my mom and dad tell me, hey, Gordo, we're making plans to go to Disney World. Okay, so have a bag packed up just in case we need to go at a moment's notice. Okay? September 11th happens. I remember my parents talking about it like, poopy, we can travel now. Everything is shut down. I remember that like, oh, so we're not going to Disney World? And my mom's like, probably not. Just relax during that commotion of the two week shutdown of traveling, the house that we had built was the last thing we needed to sell in order for us to finally move. Somebody calls my dad and thankfully my Uncle Rocco was in the house. Somebody calls my dad at night, hey, Benjamin, we want to look at your house to potentially buy it. My dad hangs up the phone. He's excited. And my Uncle Rocco is like, wait a minute. Who ask to look at a house at 9pm A house that has no electricity. This sounds off. Let's take my car and scout the situation. And then they go, and there they was, a black van, bunch of guys out with weapons, with guns. They were gonna kill my dad. Because my dad had a reputation in Puerto La Cruz, you know, El Turco, meaning he had a lot of money, okay? He had a lot of money in his car. Because merchandising business, they go back home and they call my dad right in there, hey, we know where your wife works, we know who you are, and we know where your kid goes to school. So you better pony up or things are gonna happen. My dad hangs up the phone, looks at my Uncle Rocco, and my Uncle Rocco said, hey, don't worry about it. I'll take care of everything. And my mom's like, we're going to Disney, let's leave. My mom's crying. My cousins are there and they're also crying because they somewhat know that what's happening. And I'm packing my bags and here I go to Disney World. And we leave. When we get to Orlando and we cross the border, we take a taxi to the hotel. And that's when they told me, we're not going to Disney World, we're moving to Canada. And we're going from here to Buffalo, New York, to a refugee home where we're going to stay and then cross the border. We were in that refugee home for two weeks sleeping on the floor with hundreds and hundreds of people trying to cross to Canada. That's when we move. Like it was very traumatic.

John Dehlin [00:24:46] They all sought asylum as refugees.

Ben Jalaff [00:24:48] It was like an abandoned school. And we get there and there is people sleeping on the floors. But here's my dad. He looks at who are the people that makes the list? Oh, those three guys right there. And where do they usually hang out? Oh, they hang out in the, in the basement, in the kitchen area. And how do I get down there to volunteer for cooking? So my dad gets a volunteer cooking thing downstairs. Make friends with the guys that make the list to get us to cross the border quicker because People were there for months. There are people there for six months.

John Dehlin [00:25:20] Yeah, he's smart.

Ben Jalaff [00:25:21] Yeah. So he makes friends with these guys and starts passing them some cash, you know, like make friends. And when they were making the list, that's when he look at, hey, Ricardo, become my family, man. Come on. You know? And then Ricardo wrote us, wrote the family, my family. And he passed that guy more money to get a family that we have met. They'll come, come later in the story of that family. And they cross the border with us and that's when we get to Canada.

John Dehlin [00:25:53] Why Canada and not the United States? Just curious. Not that there's one.

Ben Jalaff [00:25:56] Yeah, we have an uncle that living in Welland at the time, Niagara Falls. He's actually a member. Was a member. He passed away. But we started talking to my dad, started talking to him in 96 about potentially moving. So we already had a contact there that will help us cross. We also found out that citizenship in the United States was very, very tough to get and it cost a lot of money. And we found out that in Canada, if you claim political asylum with good evidence that your lives are in danger, that they will put a case together for you and you can potentially stay in the country. So once we knew that my dad knew it would be easier to move to Canada than the States. So that's what happened once we crossed the border. We're still not secure in the country. We had to put a case together to go in front of a judge and convince him that, hey, you can't send us back. We'll be killed. And because it happened right after 9, 11, everything has halted to. We're supposed to hear from them six months and it took six years for us to get a citizenship.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:02] Wow. Yeah, wow. And I can only imagine during that time and before that time, your parents and you have lived a life of survival.

Ben Jalaff [00:27:13] Oh yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:13] For so long.

Ben Jalaff [00:27:15] But see, Margi, they didn't like my parents work like donkeys in Venezuela.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:21] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [00:27:22] In Venezuela, the education system is not like in Ontario. I'm only speaking experience in Ontario. The that schools in Ontario by area doesn't matter. You have the same curriculum in Venezuela. You have to pay top money to go to the best schools. I went to Colejo, La Senora de La Paz, top school, lot of money. We were enriched. I don't even think we were middle class. But my parents are paying this expensive school to give me the best education. Okay. And that's for me. They always gave me the best. And I perceived that even in like situations were so Dire. Even when we crossed to Viva la Casa, that's the name of the refugee home. My dad still tried his best to, like, find a solution for everything in that regard.

John Dehlin [00:28:13] I love it.

Ben Jalaff [00:28:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:14] Thanks for sharing that.

Ben Jalaff [00:28:15] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:28:16] Yeah, we could do a full day just on that.

Ben Jalaff [00:28:18] Yeah. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:28:19] Really.

Reconnecting with the Church in Welland

John Dehlin [00:28:20] So how did y' all reconnect with the Mormon Church once you got to Canada?

Ben Jalaff [00:28:24] My uncle Ramon, the guy, the contact that we had, we go there and my parents right away connect with my Uncle Ramon. And that's where the members of the church came up. I will tell you this right now. What had happened in Welland when we arrived.

John Dehlin [00:28:40] This is. Welland is a. Welland, Ontario. Okay.

Ben Jalaff [00:28:43] Welland, Ontario, is a very small town, about 40,000 people. The church comes into my life in an incredibly positive way. And when I tell you positive till this day, I will quantify it as the most positive experience I ever had in Mormonism in that little town.

John Dehlin [00:28:59] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [00:29:00] When I arrived there, I have two things going on. My immigrant friends who are offering me a cultural society that makes me feel like I can make it here. They're offering me comfort. I love these friends. Okay. The Casal family. Matias, Juan Carlos, Janila, Valeria, Moises.

John Dehlin [00:29:21] These are Latinos.

Ben Jalaff [00:29:22] Latinos from Argentina. My friend Mauricio from Colombia. Andres. I will mention one more, but I don't think he wants to be mentioned. But this is a great community. Brenda, Pamela. This community offered me a home. I miss Venezuela, but they are protecting me and I love it. I'm proud to be Latino, you know, it made me feel that way. Then you have the well in people. The well and war, the young men's program in the Welland war. Let me tell you something. Mormonism will thrive even with true claims if people behave like people behaving well. And that young man's program came into my home. Three guys, my friend Andrew and Dan and Dave came up. I didn't speak English. They came up in my doorstep and spent a whole day with me just to get to know me. And I felt love from them. It wasn't a trick. It wasn't them trying to get me to church. It's just generally them wanting to bring somebody in, into their group. They will do that with anyone active, less active, black, white, gay, lesbian. The well and war did not have any boundaries for who they brought in that group. So that's where things get messy.

John Dehlin [00:30:57] Let me just ask if it's okay. Justine, you're. I could tell you're getting a little bit emotional. Do you mind sharing what you're feeling or giving words to it.

Justine Jalaff [00:31:07] I just know these people because they were my youth group growing up as well. I was in the Niagara Falls ward, which is 20, about, what, 15, 20 minutes away from Welland. So in our youth, we had the St David's ward, which was the Niagara Falls. So we were the St. David's girls, and then we had the Welland boys. So. And we are still friends with these people today. And when I married Ben, Ben's always been an only child, and we called these guys his brothers. They were in his wedding party. They were. One of them was his mc. One of them was his best Ben, and the rest were in this wedding party, and they were Ben's. Like, we called them, like they're your brothers.

Ben Jalaff [00:31:59] They replaced my brothers, for sure.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:02] Yeah. They were really special.

Justine Jalaff [00:32:03] They were his brothers in the church.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:06] This is where Mormonism shines. I mean, we just. No matter how we feel about the

Ben Jalaff [00:32:09] church, the community, the people, you know how difficult it is to just sit and look at that experience. Because the problem, and this is something I wanted to mention, is that I was given the meal when I shouldn't be giving the entree of Mormonism. The entree should not be better than the meal. The, well in experience was practically the whole entire meal of Mormonism for me. And once I ate that juicy steak, ooh, can't wait to go to the next restaurant. And that's when things just become so complicated, because once I leave that, it's just.

Justine Jalaff [00:32:51] Yeah, yeah. And you should talk about the bishop of that ward.

Ben Jalaff [00:32:54] Oh, yeah. I had a conversation with a friend about a month ago, and I was explaining to him, how do I quantify my Mormon journey without maybe using the word tragedy along those lines? I don't want to. And then we had a long conversation.

John Dehlin [00:33:10] We don't want to give the ending

Ben Jalaff [00:33:11] away, by the way. No, no, I'm not. But I talked to him and I said, man, your dad should have never been a bishop. And he asked me, why are you saying that? He was like the nicest guy on planet Earth. He literally led with his heart. Till this day, I can sit with him with that same bishop and had a conversation with him like, he is like a parent to me. And to me, when I see other bishops later, for him, it's just he set the bar so incredibly high that I told him, like, he was just such an incredible human to be put in a position of bishopric where you have to just sometimes make tough decisions. And I never once saw it. And it resonated with my parents when they were active. They will always look at that bishop with the eyes of kindness, like he was an excellent man.

Justine Jalaff [00:34:08] And the welfare program at that time, like this bishop and his wife just took these because at the time this area had a lot of immigrants, a lot of Latin immigrants coming in. Even my ward did. But they took Ben's family and they just took them to the grocery store and they said, get whatever you need. They treated us like just no limit, go get what you need. And just there was no expectation of them needing to clean the chapel like there is now, or needing to do family history because you're getting help from the church. No, it was just like this recognition of needs. We're here to help you.

Ben Jalaff [00:34:58] I remember when we went to the bishop and said, hey, we don't need any more welfare help. We got a job. He thought that somebody offended you, like, what's going on? Like, we could still help. No, no, no. We're finally. We can work now and all that. It's just everything that happened in Wellen and I don't want to get too much away because we're going to discuss this because this is crucial to the story. What happens here is I don't have works to explain what happens in Wellen because there's the two groups, but then one singular group that I feel like the theology slips in like a snake and you don't even see it. And that's what happened, that I feel like, how do I communicate this journey of what theology?

John Dehlin [00:35:45] Just, let's go there.

Ben Jalaff [00:35:46] Well, when I was in Wellandfirst, okay, My English is very poor. Okay. So I'm going to church, but I'm not able to grasp much of it. I'm hanging out with these guys because now I like them. I go to activities now. This is when Mormonism got pushed hard. I pushed the gas hardier. And I'm actively hanging out with them as my English gets better because all of them are Canadian. So now I'm exposed to more English speaking people. My ears are starting to get better and I'm starting to speak the language now. I'm starting to understand certain things. Wait a second. They look like they're happy, they got big families, they seem secure, they're welcoming everybody. I feel like I'm lacking that. My parents are working all the time now and also stressed out because they had to put a case together to stay in Canada. So now I'm not seeing my parents very often because they're working a lot.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:52] Yes.

Ben Jalaff [00:36:52] And the Welling guys and their families again, these are people being good, take me as one of their own. But then the theology comes in and start telling me that we are of this. Of this world, but not of this world. We are peculiar people. The people on the outside don't have the same values as us. The people on the outside are dangerous to your testimony. And when things start happening and my brain is quantifying that must be true, because they got the big families and the success. And now I'm looking at the other group, the immigrant group, and I'm looking at them. Wait a minute, You've seen this place too. Your families are also working. And you guys don't feel like you have a future either, because we're all displaced. So I'm feeling like the Canadian dream can happen now versus trying to hold onto my culture instead of having both balance. Well, I'm like starting to go the other way.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:53] I see.

John Dehlin [00:37:54] So kind of assimilating in the Canadian culture.

Ben Jalaff [00:37:57] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:37:58] And judging your native culture as being inferior.

Ben Jalaff [00:38:01] But that. Hold on, John. That's my brain.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:03] Yeah, that's right.

Ben Jalaff [00:38:04] Because nobody, not a single one of my friends from Welland came to me and said, ben, don't hang out with them.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:09] Right?

Ben Jalaff [00:38:10] No, as a matter of fact, the more the better. Because sometimes the. Well, and guess we even include my friends from the other countries to do stuff.

John Dehlin [00:38:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben Jalaff [00:38:18] But my brain is telling me that maybe if I want to survive in Canada, I have to be Canadian and this is the way. So the more my brain start to understand more, the more I look at the other group as a weakness. And this hurts now because I'm starting to create someone. Ben from Venezuela, the survival kid that walked himself to school, that look at pornography at 10, but wasn't a big deal. That was part of the solution. Confidence. Remember the Pirobo thing? I will look at a girl like, hey, I had confidence to talk to girls. Then I go in Mormonism in Wellen. And I started to feel like my culture is declining. And now, because I want to be more Canadian, something is happening when I'm losing my superpower abilities of my culture where I'm starting to feel like, yeah, I want to be Canadian, but my English still not good enough. All these guys are from here. They seem settled. And I just feel like, yeah, I'm incorporating myself here, but I'm incorporating myself in a very handicapped way.

Justine Jalaff [00:39:34] You didn't just want to be Canadian. You wanted to be Mormon.

Ben Jalaff [00:39:37] And I wanted to be Mormon because now I'm starting to feel Like Mormonism gives all those family things that I'm lacking.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:43] Right.

Becoming More Mormon Than Your Parents

Ben Jalaff [00:39:44] I left my home, my pride, me familia, John. Okay? Me familia is important to me. And I started to become more of a Mormon, and I started to look at my parents differently because now my mom is the enemy.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:05] Right.

John Dehlin [00:40:07] Because she's skeptical.

Ben Jalaff [00:40:08] You're always skeptical, Mom. You're not letting my dad progress.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:13] You're holding him back.

Ben Jalaff [00:40:14] Yeah. You're holding my dad back. Mom. I'm starting to create that relationship with my mom that does not work. I'm starting to see my dad being influenced by my mom. My dad's membership starts to be stagnant, and now I'm getting stronger.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:29] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [00:40:30] And as I get stronger, my culture gets weakened by my friends. In your mind, my immigrants. I started to make decisions to push them away.

Justine Jalaff [00:40:40] And your new culture is. I'm a Welland guy.

Ben Jalaff [00:40:43] I'm a Welland guy.

Justine Jalaff [00:40:44] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:44] Right. New identity.

Ben Jalaff [00:40:46] My new identity becomes I'm part of the Welland guys, which, again, it worked wonders for me. But I want to separate that from theology, because the theology is what is coming in very slowly.

Margi Dehlin [00:41:02] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [00:41:02] And, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:41:03] I was gonna say one thing that's really interesting about this dynamic, once you kind of reach Welland, is how for your parents, there's this lack of privilege where they're having to work all the time and they have the case six years. How long did you say?

Ben Jalaff [00:41:20] Yeah, we didn't know.

Margi Dehlin [00:41:21] So they're, like, fighting for safety, for kind of basic needs. Safety. Let us belong here in Canada. Let us please be safe. Right.

Ben Jalaff [00:41:28] Meeting with the legal agents constantly and telling us back and forth, well, your case might get rejected, your case might get taken. It was a constant ladder of feelings.

Margi Dehlin [00:41:38] Yes. So it creates this space, though, in your. As a young boy, where your culture used to be in Venezuela, where your family life used to be in Venezuela, there's, like, this space because they're working all the time for the church to come in and fill that space and fill your values and fill this. What an ideal. What ideal would look like for you. So it totally makes sense. And it's such a flip from your life in Venezuela, where it's just interesting to me that it makes total sense where you end up where you are with an identity of like, I'm a Welland guy.

Ben Jalaff [00:42:15] And this is where the. I don't know if the word malice is appropriate, but that's where I feel like sometimes you have to realize you take such a good group of people and the church weaponizes it in a way where they're not even doing anything wrong. They're just being human. They're being great friends. They being absolutely lovely people. But when somebody as displaced as I was in Welland, trying to quantify the message of success that the church is giving me, they're giving me a roadmap to be like them. You know, again, it comes back to my dad pressing the button. Like, press this button to get your kids back present. And that's Mormonism for me. Now Mormonism is turning my dad's story into my own. I'm losing my family because they're also this place. But Mormonism is offering me a new one.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:07] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [00:43:07] And that's where things just become a little difficult.

John Dehlin [00:43:10] You keep mentioning theology. Do you want to tell us what theology? Or did you already tell us?

Ben Jalaff [00:43:14] Yeah, no, I can mention some law. Chastity comes up again.

John Dehlin [00:43:17] Okay.

Ben Jalaff [00:43:18] But now it comes up again with church theology. Talking about, now I feel like I had commit a sin next to murder. Because now, because of the Welling guys, we're all piled up with these things with the law of chastity, and we hear it's next to murder. You need to confess. The teachings that my dad gave me all of a sudden disappear. And now I feel like, holy crap. I've been doing this for so long now. Masturbation, yeah, it's been normalized. I.

Justine Jalaff [00:43:52] That's a sin.

Ben Jalaff [00:43:52] Yeah. Like, the only time my dad got upset at me because of pornography was, hey, man, can you just buy magazines? Cause you're destroying the laptop. Like, you need to stop downloading these things.

Justine Jalaff [00:44:04] Later when you were an older teacher.

Ben Jalaff [00:44:05] Yeah, like, please just do something about this. This is the only time.

Justine Jalaff [00:44:08] Can I answer that question for you? I think, like, so, like, when Ben comes and he enters this Mormon sphere and he enters the youth group, like, what are you taught? You're taught you're the rising generation. You're taught that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and we need to study the Book of Mormon. You're taught that you were a valiant spirit before you came to earth, and that's why you're here in this church today. You're taught that you have standards that you need to stand by, and you need to be a Christ like example to those outside of your faith. You need to be that light to those around you. And so it's that doctrine, that theology, that for Ben, what he's internalizing is basically, okay, I have all this and I have the light. I have the Christ like light. I have the truth. And all these people that I crossed the border with or that I was forming a community with, they don't have it. And that's what that is.

John Dehlin [00:45:05] So it's kind of a theology of superiority.

Justine Jalaff [00:45:09] Yeah, it's that superiority complex.

Ben Jalaff [00:45:12] Yeah. Because back when I learned in English, I'm not quantifying Joseph Smith yet. I mean, I was baptized, but I didn't know Joseph Smith was a prophet. Come on, who am I kidding? I'm just taking my parents at their value of giving me a good community. I'm just joining because, well, my parents think it's good. So I'm joining. I still don't know about Joseph Smith that much. I haven't read the Book of Mormon. I'm just looking at face value. It looks like a good product. You know, this doesn't come until much later when I started learning more, but now I'm feeling guilty because now I'm learning that everything that my dad taught me that was normalized is now becoming a sin to me in front of me. So what happens is, like, I'm around the well and guys, and I feel like I'm the only one doing this, the only one staying, and the only one that is not being truthful to even the group. Like, yeah, I'm doing this and how do I go about it?

Margi Dehlin [00:46:05] So it's like that false sense of self emerges, that outer self that you show to them of, like, I'm just like you. Yeah, I'm. I'm just like you. But inside you're having this different experience of knowing. And I do this thing that probably that you said.

Ben Jalaff [00:46:21] Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:22] And if you knew it about me,

Ben Jalaff [00:46:23] it becomes heavy, too, because, I mean, these are years and years of normalizing something, and all of a sudden it becomes a sin. Right. Like, this just happened so quickly. Yeah. Like, it just. I didn't know I was doing wrong. You know, I got caught off guard, like.

John Dehlin [00:46:41] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [00:46:41] Whoa. Now, do I have to confess?

Justine Jalaff [00:46:43] Now, like, I would say Welland is where you got those friendships, and that's when you started internalizing Mormon doctrine, because that's when you were fully active in the church.

Ben Jalaff [00:46:52] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:52] And the conditioning could really, I think, be strong because your parents were working all the time because they actually, you know, were fighting for your life and their life. It really did allow the perfect situation for that optimal conditioning to kind of happen for you.

Ben Jalaff [00:47:12] Well, absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:14] Yeah.

A Formative Friendship and Early Doubts

John Dehlin [00:47:14] Does it make sense to talk about Nicholas?

Ben Jalaff [00:47:17] Yeah. Nick, man, Nicholas became my best friend.

John Dehlin [00:47:29] Was he lds?

Ben Jalaff [00:47:30] Not yet.

John Dehlin [00:47:31] Okay.

Ben Jalaff [00:47:31] Not yet.

John Dehlin [00:47:32] So he was a non Mormon.

Ben Jalaff [00:47:33] He was a non Mormon. He's the kid that crossed the border with me and my dad, with my family, him and his mom. Okay, okay. And we became. He's. I would say this, he saved me at the refugee home because as a kid I looked at him and become great friends in this really bad situation. So when he comes into my life from that struggle and comes dwelling with me, he becomes like a brother to me.

John Dehlin [00:47:57] Which country was he from?

Ben Jalaff [00:47:58] Colombia. Okay, Colombia. I would hang out with Nick on the daily. I love him till this day. If I can get a chance to see him again and tell him, I'm so sorry, brother, but I love him. He got me through some tough times, but, you know, the more and more I started to progress with Mormonism, you know, the more I started distancing myself from my immigrant friends. But Nicolas was always strict to my friendship, to the point where I don't remember how this happened. But now the missionaries are teaching him the lessons along with his mom. And they trusted my parents, you know, Nicolas and Magdalena trusted my parents and they were taking the lessons and they end up being baptized in the church, which I find that confusing because they're very studious people, Bo. Magdalena and Nicolas, they are studious people. But what had happened is that they joined the church and I think it was a span of two, three weeks. When something happens where they did it backwards, they should have studied these things and then join or not join. But what happened is they join and then they start finding things.

John Dehlin [00:49:13] Do you have any idea what types of things they learned after their baptism?

Ben Jalaff [00:49:16] Yeah. Magdalena went to my parents house. I remember I came home from school, there was this big fight, and I found Magdalena walking away from the apartment, you know, saying like, you know, they lied to us, they lied to us. And then I go into the house and my dad's like, you know, they found some things about the church about polygamy, and I don't know what they're talking about. Here's my poor dad doesn't even have a clue what polygamy is. Again, this is what happens when you don't learn. My dad doesn't know. He's defending the church, you know, thinking that, no, there's no such thing as polygamy in the church. And I hear about it from Nick and we stop talking and he leaves the church within two weeks. And the Welland guys know Nick because he's the one guy that once was there and then disappears. But once I found out what happened, I didn't quantify it either. I didn't know what polygamy was. No one is teaching me anything. That's the very first time I actually heard what that was. And obviously seeing the Wellen guys and seeing the product like, no, Nick is crazy. There's no way we do this here. Look at. Look at my friends, look at their families. But that hurt a lot when I lost his friendship, which will come back to haunt me later because it's one of those things where it sits heavy when you start realizing some things.

John Dehlin [00:50:39] Would you say you gave him up as a friend or he gave you up as a friend, or was it.

Ben Jalaff [00:50:43] It was both. It was both.

Justine Jalaff [00:50:45] I. I think you said his mom told him that they couldn't be with your family.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:51] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [00:50:51] I think it was Magdalena that said that, you know, Nicolas shouldn't hang out with us anymore.

John Dehlin [00:50:57] And from her perspective, you were. You both had joined a cult.

Ben Jalaff [00:51:01] Yeah. Yeah. And knowing Magdalena, how studious she was, she probably found a lot more than polygamy because this is a woman that studied well, again, when I told you she did it backwards, she should have just done this before. But knowing her and knowing the information now, I guarantee you she probably came with some heavy things and saw my family as probably were culty and.

John Dehlin [00:51:26] Yeah, go ahead, Marie.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:27] I was going to just ask you. It feels like you're having these two really opposing experiences. In one way, you're having this kind of love festival, high conditioning, belonging, group of friends with the Welland kids. Right. And then in the course of that emerging and growing, you're having a real loss of, you know, your history, your culture, people who actually, you know, know something about what it is like to be you in Canada and a close friend as well. So you're having like the loss of. Were you cognizant of. Of that at the, at this point in the story? Like, as a young, young kid, are you aware of loss? Are you feeling the loss of this group of people? Or was the emerging Mormon kind of self really driving hard where you almost didn't even register or you weren't even really conscious of what you were losing?

Ben Jalaff [00:52:35] That's a. That's a good question. Yeah. The lost of Nick weigh heavy on me. The lust of the Casab, Brenda and Pamela. And it was more of validation from the church that, well, you know, they don't have the same values. Okay. For me, when. When I started distancing from them, I saw it as a valiant thing I was doing. I was making the best decision I could make to obtain what I want, which is security. And the Mormon experience, which is the reason why I'm mentioning these people by name, because it's a way of me manning up and realize I hurt them. And they know this. I talked to them about it. You know, they took me back. But this is something that, to answer your question, the person making those decisions wasn't me. It was the Mormon Ben I had created. At this point, Benjamin from Venezuela took a back seat and Mormon Ben came up and he started driving the car.

Margi Dehlin [00:53:46] That's right.

Ben Jalaff [00:53:46] And when he started driving the car, he just became a very good driver. And I let him. He took off.

Margi Dehlin [00:53:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:56] What's so hard, and this is just a reflection, is it's not like I look around today in 2025 and see a bunch of, you know, atheists and agnostics volunteering to, like, help immigrant families assimilate in the United States and befriending them and supporting them and helping them succeed like it was. It was Mormon families that were doing that in your case. So on the one hand, it takes a high demand religion like Mormonism, apparently, to get people to be as loving and as kind and as supportive as those, well, in Mormons were to you and your family. That's the good news. The bad news is the cost of that is a loss of identity for you. Toxic feelings of superiority, a loss of community. And you have to assimilate into what some would say is kind of a cult mindset. Occult theology, occult ideology, even occult identity. That's the cost to you. So it's helping you while it's, I think you would say, harming you. And it's such a paradox.

Ben Jalaff [00:55:09] Yeah, That's a good way to put it, because to me, it's hard to understand, how can this be bad when he's being so good? At the same time, my part of my brain is telling me this is phenomenal.

Margi Dehlin [00:55:22] You want it to be one thing. Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [00:55:24] Are you kidding me? I'm alone in the country and all these friends are coming at me with goodwill.

Justine Jalaff [00:55:32] And you'll see this further on in his story. He holds on to this when he moves to different cities, different wards, when we go to a different province. He holds onto this well end experience so hard.

John Dehlin [00:55:46] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [00:55:47] Cause that's for him. That's Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:55:50] And I'll just have to say, just because we're making connections here. And Ben, I don't know if this will even connect with you, but Margi's parents were well educated. Her dad went to Yale University to get his medical doctor degree. Her mom was a Nurse. They were at the Mayo Clinic. And they were as attracted to Mormonism for exactly the same reasons. They weren't immigrants speaking a different language from a developing country. They were relatively highly educated people that felt attracted to the church for the exact same reasons in the 70s. So it's not just the developing world, you know, that feels the Mormon appeal sometimes. You know what I mean?

Justine Jalaff [00:56:36] I would say on the surface, Mormonism is very attractive sometimes.

John Dehlin [00:56:39] Yeah, yeah.

Justine Jalaff [00:56:39] No, clearly you want to have those family values and that community, and.

John Dehlin [00:56:44] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [00:56:44] That's why.

Justine Jalaff [00:56:45] Clean cut.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:46] Yes. And look, it is. It's so much about what it looks like.

Ben Jalaff [00:56:51] Look. Phenomenal.

John Dehlin [00:56:52] But also what it is. It's not just what it looks like in your life. It was what it did for your family.

Ben Jalaff [00:56:58] Yeah. Like. And again, that's the thing that I was trying to explain to my friend a month ago. It's just like, it's hard to not look positively to that because it was generally a positive thing that they were helping us that way, and the French and all of that. And it's something that will drive. The point is that Mormonism, even with everything that is going on, could just be this beautiful thing like it was once for me, if it wasn't because of what was coming into my brain at the time, giving me a roadmap that shouldn't have never existed. Because these guys are taking Tiara the same way I am. But they're not making these decisions. They're behaving normally just like normal human beings.

Justine Jalaff [00:57:44] Well, this is their community since birth. And you're just joining it.

Ben Jalaff [00:57:47] Yeah, There you go.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:48] Yeah. And I think sometimes that, you know, what it gives you, what it offers you in the beginning, that sense of community, the relationships you have, the values that you have, that is the vehicle that makes us accept the conditioning which can be so problematic, where the cost all of a sudden becomes much higher than many of us can recognize when we first hop in the vehicle that looks so like it's going to take us there, and it's going to take us there in a way that we really appreciate. And I almost feel like, you know, that's how it succeeds.

Mormonism Offers Certainty in an Uncertain Life

Justine Jalaff [00:58:24] Well, I'm sorry, I say life is very uncertain and life can be very scary. And Mormonism gives you certainty.

John Dehlin [00:58:31] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [00:58:31] And it gives you that.

John Dehlin [00:58:32] And I'll just say, we'll talk about this at the end. But I'm challenging the idea that if only Mormonism could have all the good without the toxic theology and doctrine. I think it's a toxic quote. Toxic doctrine. And Theology that makes people as committed as they are to then want to do all the good things. And that's. That's you. I don't think you can have one without the other. You can't have people who give their full lives dedicated to the church, to serve in every way they're told without believing that it's all about the celestial kingdom and becoming God someday. And you're better than everybody else. I think that all comes hand in hand. But we'll get there. Should we talk about moving to Toronto?

Moving to London and Deepening Commitment

Ben Jalaff [00:59:14] Is that to London?

John Dehlin [00:59:15] To London. Okay. Yeah. So London, not London, England, London?

Ben Jalaff [00:59:19] No, London, Ontario.

John Dehlin [00:59:20] Okay.

Ben Jalaff [00:59:20] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:21] How old are you here when you moved to London?

Ben Jalaff [00:59:24] I was about 17. Yeah, 17. So I'm.

John Dehlin [00:59:27] So you were strong in the Welland youth program.

Ben Jalaff [00:59:29] So the Welland experience was more of a social thing with me learning English. Okay. That's where my. My English was. Got better. And that's when I started to learn Mormonism a little bit. When I go to London, I'm going with the vision of social like it was in Welling. So when I go to London.

John Dehlin [00:59:52] Your family moved, right?

Ben Jalaff [00:59:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:53] Why'd they move?

Ben Jalaff [00:59:54] My dad got a job. A much better job there. So what happened was I feel like I finally built something in. Well, and here we are moving.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:02] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [01:00:02] But then for me, it's just like, well, if I made something good here, I could make good in London.

John Dehlin [01:00:08] Is it a bigger city?

Ben Jalaff [01:00:10] It's a bigger city. Yeah. We're talking about 200,000 now.

John Dehlin [01:00:13] So it's five times bigger.

Ben Jalaff [01:00:14] Bigger, Yeah. A lot bigger than Welland. Yeah. So we go to London and we go to church, and there it is, you know, a much bigger group of young men's and young women's program. And within that group, there are cliques. When I came to Welland, these people received me with such happiness, like. And when I went to London, I just showed up in there, and it wasn't special at all. They just introduced me. I sat there. None of the kids couldn't give a crap who I was. They didn't even ask me afterwards, like, hey, where you come from? Nothing. It just felt so odd and weird. And then we kept going and going. And after a month, again, my friend's bishop setting the bar very high with bishopric as well, because my parents also disconnected because now the bishopric in London is not the same as the bishopric in Welland. And when my parents decided to stop going, I just felt like, yeah, not finding anything there that could keep me in that right there is when Ben returns The other one, he comes back briefly. I had it. Don and Margi.

John Dehlin [01:01:32] I had it meaning non Mormon identified, same Kit again.

Ben Jalaff [01:01:37] Comes back because my Mormon me couldn't find himself in London anymore. And then my other one returns, and he returns because, hey, let me drive now. So when you go to high school, I can get you some friends. And I go to high school, a Catholic High School, St. Thomas Aquinas. And I start meeting up all these Colombian guys. And then two friends from Argentina, Brenda and Pamela, they end up moving to London. So now I had discomfort from this group. I push away and they're receiving me again. And we create this beautiful community in London. Okay, My friend that I met, Ivan, like, hey, let's join the football team, Ivan, we don't play football, man. Like, I don't understand the sport.

John Dehlin [01:02:15] So you're talking American football.

Ben Jalaff [01:02:17] American football, not the soccer one. No, and I'm telling you no. But let's do it so we can become popular and make more friends. Not go in, I don't know what football is. I play six seconds. And the coach pulled me out because I didn't understand what was going on. But from that experience, the whole school got to know who I was. Oh, Ben from the football team. I became part of the high school experience. Started to become different than it was in Niagara Falls. Now I feel like the high school knows who I am. Okay, the vice principal knows who I am either. Like it was just such a great thing. However, let's go back to my parents anxiety because now I'm hanging out with kids that are drinking and then they're doing the bad things and my parents anxiety. I forgot to mention that my parents also taught me that drinking was bad because if you do it irresponsibly, it could lead to irresponsible decisions. Never once told me about the word Wisdom told me, hey, don't smoke because that's lead to a lot of cancer, so don't do that. And so I had that perception of the teachings of my parents that now in London they are seeing that I'm hanging out with all these guys and they're doing that. And their anxiety now kicks in that, oh, they want to protect me. So maybe we should go back to church so that he could start hanging out with these guys again that don't drink and don't smoke so that we can save him during the teenage years. And then maybe later, who cares, he can figure out on his own. So we end up going back to church. Didn't work out. Again, the same Thing he failed again. They didn't give me any validation. And literally a month after that, the same friend from Welland that knock on my door to welcome into the Welland group comes to London randomly and knocks on my door and just wanted to say hi and see me. And that's where my brain again flips.

Justine Jalaff [01:04:09] Boop.

Ben Jalaff [01:04:10] Oh, real friendships with the Welling guys straight back to Mormonism. Like, my brain literally just made that decision right there that, oh, these are the friends.

Justine Jalaff [01:04:21] And God sent them to me.

Ben Jalaff [01:04:22] And God sent them to me. What a blessing. But London still is not working for me. So what I end up doing is I go back to Mormonism.

Justine Jalaff [01:04:31] Yeah, the ward, the war.

Ben Jalaff [01:04:33] So now my Mormon brain is starting to make stupid decisions again to push all my Haskell connections out. I'm doing this again and now not going to be active in London. I'll be active in well. And now I'm going to Welling a lot. I'm traveling a lot to Welland. I'm in Welland maybe twice a month. And I don't go to church. So I'm inactive in London and I'm in Welland. My membership is so displaced, you wouldn't know where to put me. But as I go back to Welland, my English is better and now theology is becoming more serious because as I'm approaching 18, what comes after that?

John Dehlin [01:05:11] Mission.

Ben Jalaff [01:05:12] Mission.

John Dehlin [01:05:12] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [01:05:14] And there it is. That's a fastball.

John Dehlin [01:05:18] And also the porn, masturbation stuff resurfaces

Ben Jalaff [01:05:22] that it hasn't stopped. Okay, I gotta be honest.

John Dehlin [01:05:27] I mean, the guilt and shame around it is what I mean.

Ben Jalaff [01:05:29] It stopped in London 100%. I didn't care. It's just when I started going back to the Mormon me. Then again, I'm starting to feel guilty again with those things. And it gets worse and worse because now they're drilling into my age category that we need to prepare for a mission. The miracle of forgiveness comes up.

John Dehlin [01:05:49] Spencer B. Kimball's book.

Ben Jalaff [01:05:50] Oh, yeah, yeah. In Spanish. You know, that was. I don't remember how it got to my house. My dad had it. And I remember I just picked it up and started reading it because somebody had told me that if you have issues with masturbation and pornography. Oh, it was a talk. If you have issues with forgiveness of pornography, that book helps. And here I am thinking, trying to save myself without telling anybody. Well, I'm not going to confess, but I'm going to help myself. And I read that book. Like, how do I quantify that? Like, the stuff I read, like Am I going to total homosexual? I mean, I masturbated a lot.

Justine Jalaff [01:06:27] You know, like just normal teenage amounts.

Ben Jalaff [01:06:29] Normal teenage amounts. And that book is telling me that I have a serious problem. And that book didn't help. It just sent me to anxiety land where it put me at a point where now I went from trying to help myself to hiding because I wouldn't say anything and.

Justine Jalaff [01:06:49] Sorry, you thought you were the only one.

Ben Jalaff [01:06:51] Oh, yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:06:51] You thought all your. Well and friends weren't doing it.

Ben Jalaff [01:06:54] Yeah, they were all righteous.

Justine Jalaff [01:06:55] Yeah, they were all.

Ben Jalaff [01:06:56] Yeah, well, it comes up later, but, yeah, I thought I was alone in this struggle. And I knew that my parents, at this point, they were so disconnected from the church, I couldn't really talk to them because now they are inactive. Okay. And I'm going to welling a lot. And again, my mom becomes a problem because my mom now is coming up. Gordo, I'm having concerns. You keep going back to Welland. You don't want to hang out with us. You don't want to hang out with our friends. You don't want to hang out with your Latino friends. That's the first time my mom said, it's like you're losing your culture. And I remember as a teenager, I'm always right. No, mom, you're. Because they're the righteous friends. Mom, this is what you wanted. You wanted me to be among righteous people. Why are you now rejecting this? You know, it's because, again, my mom's being always being skeptical, and that's when my relationship with my mom started to get really bad, because now I truly feel she's against me, and my choice is still truly embracing Mormonism, because now I'm starting to think like, I have the truth and you guys are rejecting it. Because now I'm reading the Book of Mormon because I'm getting ready for a mission, you know, and Alma 34 comes up, or I think around Alma 30 to 34, when they talk about if you know the truth, you know, you have to. You know, if you know the truth, you're good, but if you reject it, that's terrible. That's worse.

John Dehlin [01:08:20] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [01:08:20] And I remember thinking about that, like, I wish I was on the other side when I didn't know anything, so I can just be on the safe side and then make this decision later. But at this point, I felt like I know the truth, cannot reject it. And my parents are rejecting this, and I'm looking at them as like, you're not part of my. My. My solution anymore.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:38] Wow, that's really something.

Ben Jalaff [01:08:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:40] This is religion at its worst, when it divides families.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:43] Oh, yeah, right.

Ben Jalaff [01:08:44] Yeah. It caused this. And again, the beauty of my parents. Even though I'm doing all of this, they're still welcoming my friends with open arms.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:55] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [01:08:56] They're still receiving them. My friends love my parents. They're so lovely to them. They're still supporting me and all. They're driving me to Welland. It's a two and a half hour drive. And whenever I ask and whatever, I threw a tantrum. They will drive me. They will drive me to dances, youth conferences. Even when they knew this is turning weird for our own son, they're still doing that for me. And I can still hear the murmur in the room. Hey, Pupi, we need to talk to Gordo. What's happening here? It's like we're losing him. I can hear my mom talking to my dad about that. And here I am in my room, like, they're just rejecting the truth. Like, wow. Yeah, it's heavy.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:37] It is heavy.

Ben Jalaff [01:09:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:40] Well, this is really fascinating. I'm loving this, so thank you so much for sharing. Justine, let's switch to your story a little bit. Let's hear about your Mormon Canadian upbringing is very different than Ben's, right? Yes.

Justine's Mormon Childhood in Canada

Justine Jalaff [01:09:53] Very different.

John Dehlin [01:09:53] Yeah. Let's hear some of your story.

Justine Jalaff [01:09:58] I actually was born in London.

John Dehlin [01:10:02] How far is London from Toronto?

Justine Jalaff [01:10:04] Two and a half hours.

John Dehlin [01:10:04] Which direction?

Margi Dehlin [01:10:06] Oh, man.

Ben Jalaff [01:10:07] Cardinal points, I think north.

John Dehlin [01:10:08] I don't know. Okay.

Ben Jalaff [01:10:10] We're terrible with Cardinal Points.

John Dehlin [01:10:11] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:10:12] Yeah, sorry about that.

John Dehlin [01:10:13] A couple hours from Toronto.

Justine Jalaff [01:10:15] I know Ben always drives because. Yeah, I'm really curious. Google it.

Ben Jalaff [01:10:20] East. East. I remember now. East.

Justine Jalaff [01:10:23] Let's see. So I'm the youngest of seven. My dad is a convert to the church. His best friend is my mom's brother. And so through my uncle, my dad converted to the church in his early 20s and ended up serving a mission in France. My mom always had a crush on my dad, but she's a lifelong member and they end up getting married, settling in Ontario, and having seven children.

John Dehlin [01:10:56] Do you know if your mom's ancestors go way back in the States?

Justine Jalaff [01:11:00] Yeah, go back to the States.

John Dehlin [01:11:01] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:11:01] To the Pioneers.

John Dehlin [01:11:02] Okay.

Ben Jalaff [01:11:02] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:11:02] Yeah. So, yeah, my mom's family goes way back, and my dad is a convert, and my dad's mom is from England. She came over to Canada as a war bride. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:15] So

Justine Jalaff [01:11:17] I guess how I would paint my childhood in Mormonism is incredibly positive because I grew up in a very loving, stable home, and I was the baby of the family. So I was the baby that passed around in sacrament meeting because everyone wanted to hold me. My parents were always in leadership callings. My dad was a branch president at one point. My mom was Relief Society president, young women's president, primary president, pretty much rotated. The place that she settled in and was most happy in was being young women's president. And the place my dad settled in and was most happy was being scoutmaster and this. So they settled in London when they had teenagers, and then I was their baby. And I would say London was their golden years in Mormonism, because London at that time, before Ben's time in London, had a beautiful community as well. Ontario does Mormon community so well, I think. And, like, they had amazing young women's camps. My mom was a young women's leader. She was like a second mom to a lot of these girls. She would throw them their surprise 16 birthday parties, and just was really involved that way with my older teenagers and their social lives. And my mom and the good friends that she had in London served very well. They were always serving people. And when we eventually moved away from London and my mom came back, when Ben and I were living there and married, she had, like, a line of people wanting to say hi to her. Because my family was very loved in London. I would say that was their prime Mormon time and financially as well. Like, my dad had a good job. My mom and dad bought their dream house, and they were gonna raise their. Sorry. They were going to raise their family there.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:18] So

Justine Jalaff [01:13:20] then we moved to Niagara Falls when I was 10 because my dad lost his job in London and got a job in Niagara Falls. So we moved to London. And that was incredibly hard for my family, my two older brothers. So the two brothers that are closest to me in age were teenagers at the time. When we moved to Niagara Falls, it was very, very hard on them. But it was great for me, and it was great for my sister. And me and my sister assimilated very well into Niagara Falls and into the ward. But for everyone else in my family, it was like a culture shock, because I think it's very interesting. Ontario. I personally have this opinion that every stake has its own culture, and then every ward has its own culture. And definitely the culture of the London stake versus the Hamilton stake was very different. And the culture of the London ward versus the St. David's ward was, like, black and white. And so my family had a really hard time living in this ward at the beginning.

John Dehlin [01:14:34] Did you know Ben while you were living in Niagara Falls? Because that's near.

Justine Jalaff [01:14:38] Well, I moved to London when I was 10, so I didn't get to know Ben til I was 14. Okay. For the youth group.

John Dehlin [01:14:43] And he was living where he was in Welland. Okay, so you did finally. Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:14:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:47] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:14:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:49] And I just. I just googled it. So it looks like. And this doesn't totally matter, but I think it's helpful. It looks like London is about two and a half hours southwest of Toronto. So it's like Toronto, this is going to be backwards for people, but it's like Toronto, Niagara Falls is down southeast of Toronto and then London is kind of a couple hours west. And then Detroit's. It looks like Toronto's like right in the middle between Detroit and Toronto. So it's kind of almost like a Y falling on its side to the right.

Margi Dehlin [01:15:22] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:15:22] We lived in the Canada Toronto Mission.

John Dehlin [01:15:25] Yeah. Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:15:26] Which president? Monson was mission president over.

John Dehlin [01:15:28] Nice.

Justine Jalaff [01:15:28] That was a big deal. I would paint my childhood as very Mormon, but in the loving, most loving way possible. Family home evenings, Sunday dinners with roast beef, mashed potatoes, Caesar salad. That was my favorite. So I would literally come home from church starving. What is it with parents? Something about cheese makes you hungry. My dad would put on the apron, he'd peel the potatoes, my mom would get the roast out of the oven and then I would just be in heaven because that meal was so good.

John Dehlin [01:16:03] Yeah, that's very Mormon.

Justine Jalaff [01:16:04] Yeah, but definitely Sabbath day holy was. You don't shop, you don't watch tv. Yeah. At that time in my childhood, you don't drink caffeine. Okay, that changed later. Definitely no coffee. Like word of wisdom. Very strict. Yeah, just basic Mormon, like very common.

Saturday's Warrior Theology in the Family

John Dehlin [01:16:35] You mentioned in your outline sort of a Saturday's Warrior theology that permeated your family. Do you want to explain what you mean by that?

Justine Jalaff [01:16:43] Yeah. My older sister does not like that movie because I think over time, even though she's still active, she's like deconstructed it.

John Dehlin [01:16:51] And for never Mormons, she'll have to

Justine Jalaff [01:16:53] explain what we're talking about.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:55] So.

Justine Jalaff [01:16:57] So it's very interesting how Utah culture still came into our home because of being Mormon, but we lived all the way in Canada. And one of the things that came in was the media. And Saturday Night warriors was a play, I'm assuming in Utah in the 70s. Right. And an album and then it got turned into a movie. And then that movie came into my home and because we didn't really watch TV on Sunday, but we would watch like good feel movies. But we also had our collection of our church Movies. That was part of my regular rotation. I'm the youngest of seven, so I was that girl. I'm sorry, do you want me explain the movie first?

John Dehlin [01:17:38] So you were Emily in the Flinder family?

Justine Jalaff [01:17:40] Basically, I was Emily. Like, I so connected with her. I was the one. Because how do I get into this?

John Dehlin [01:17:48] It's basically, you know, in Sutter's Warrior Mormon theology, all these family members live up in heaven as spirits before they come to earth, and they all agree to be in a family before they come to earth as spirits. And so the Flinder family is the main family in Saturday's Warrior. Emily's the youngest. And Emily, you know, there's a point in Saturday's Warrior, and ironically, Margi's dad was in a production of Saturday's Warrior, you know, back after they joined the church in the 70s. But there's this point where the Flinders family is trying to decide whether or not to have that final kid. And I think it's Emily. Right. And because the world is saying zero population, don't have too many kids, but Emily's up there in heaven saying, don't forget your promise, Jimmy. You know, and.

Ben Jalaff [01:18:35] Oh, my God.

Justine Jalaff [01:18:37] I would say the reason I internalize that movie so much is I have to share. Okay. This is where I'm going to struggle emotionally and also to share my story, but also respect my family. So my older sister, she's two years older than me, she was born very premature. She was born £1 and only had a 10% chance to live. My family believes that it was through priesthood blessings and constant miracles that she lived. I later learned the medical terminology that she was a fighter. I think she was a fighter. But I grew up learning that it was constant priesthood blessings. And my mom shared this spiritual experience with me that when she was looking at my sister in the NICU fighting for her life and my mom was sitting in a wheelchair, she felt strongly that she would still have another child. And the reason that my sister was born premature is that she was a twin and my mom miscarried that twin. And the spiritual narrative around that was that I was that twin and then that passed away. That passed away.

John Dehlin [01:20:02] Your spirit. My spirit was destined to be your sister's twin.

Justine Jalaff [01:20:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:06] But the twin died.

Justine Jalaff [01:20:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:09] So then the spirit had to come to a subsequent body.

Justine Jalaff [01:20:12] So my spirit went back, just like in that movie they got sent. But then something happened so that the spirit came back. And so. But I was always meant to come and I came two years later and

John Dehlin [01:20:27] there is a disabled sister Named Pam Flinders in the musical as well.

Justine Jalaff [01:20:32] Yes. And they also connected to that. She was physically disabled, my sister, because of at the time, in order to keep her alive, she got a lot of oxygen to her brain, which killed a lot of her brain cells, which further down the line caused her to be mentally disabled. I do want to just say that she is an amazing person though, and is living her own life. But. Yeah, so I very much internalized that. And I felt then I was supposed to be there for her. Right, Sorry. I was supposed to. You existed almost like. Well, first of all, that I was supposed to be in this family, but I was also supposed to be there for her.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:22] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:21:22] To help her through this life.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:26] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:21:26] And that there are things about that that I want to share more in my teenage years that was really a struggle for me.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:34] How old were you? Would you say that you kind of were made aware of or you felt that sense of. I guess it's a, you know, it's a role, a responsibility. Do you remember when you kind of learned that about yourself, that kind of story or framing? Were you very young?

Justine Jalaff [01:21:54] Very young? I just think since I can remember because when we were young, we were best playmates and we played so well together and we were always together and we were like twins. We were like twins because she was behind me physically and mentally, even though I was younger. So we kind of did everything at the same time until when I became a teenager. And then that changed for me.

Margi Dehlin [01:22:25] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:22:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:22:27] Okay. So your family strongly identified with Saturday's Warrior. Saturday's Warrior also has this notion of exceptionalism of Mormon families are the best families. And just the idea of Saturday's Warrior is Jesus is coming soon. And those who live in the modern age were saved by God for the last days to usher in the second coming of Jesus. And so the same exceptionalism I think that you addressed, Ben, also would have existed in your family.

Justine Jalaff [01:23:01] Oh, yeah. I thought I was a valiant spirit. I thought that I was predestined. I thought I was in this church because I was valiant. I mean, it was ingrained in us in youth that we were the rising generation, that we were here in the last days, that we were so strong and so spiritual. Like we heard that constantly. We heard that over and over and over in our stake as youth. And so, yeah, I definitely, I think, grew like this self righteous superiority complex. For sure, it didn't affect my friendships as a child, but it affected how I did friendships as a teenager.

Margi Dehlin [01:23:45] Yeah. I think another thing in Saturday's Warrior that Was so effective. And it's a musical and we should just say like the songs are.

Justine Jalaff [01:23:52] Oh, those songs made me cry.

Margi Dehlin [01:23:54] Right. Yeah. Is also this idea of Jimmy. It's Jimmy, right. Who kind of gets lured away.

John Dehlin [01:24:02] The brother, the son, the brother.

Justine Jalaff [01:24:04] And I also had a brother like that.

Margi Dehlin [01:24:05] Yeah. Kind of falls away and has friends outside the faith. It's dealt with in very much a way of like they're a threat.

John Dehlin [01:24:15] Jimmy. Oh, Jimmy, don't listen to the. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:24:19] This. And it's a family fighting and it's. It's really framed as like trying to save a family member because they're out in the world and have friends with and are questions.

Justine Jalaff [01:24:30] Internalize that as well. Cuz I. That was one of my favorite scenes was when they're like rocking out around the car.

John Dehlin [01:24:37] Hey Flinders. No Flinders. Come on.

Justine Jalaff [01:24:39] You got to go, Jimmy.

John Dehlin [01:24:43] And so we're laughing, but this is.

Ben Jalaff [01:24:45] Yeah. I remember when Justine showed me that.

Margi Dehlin [01:24:48] Heavy.

Justine Jalaff [01:24:48] It was real.

Ben Jalaff [01:24:50] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:24:51] I'm just like a 7, 8, 9, 10 year old girl thinking this is

Margi Dehlin [01:24:55] real and it's heavy. It's heavy for.

Justine Jalaff [01:24:57] Yeah. And so I had that complex about people who weren't members of the church. And I'm not living in Utah. I'm living in Ontario, Canada. Alberta has a big Mormon population, but Ontario does not. I was like one of two members in my high school.

Margi Dehlin [01:25:14] So that's like most of the people.

Justine Jalaff [01:25:17] Most of the people would fall in the category in my life were not members.

John Dehlin [01:25:21] Yes.

Justine Jalaff [01:25:22] Yeah. So I think something I do. Okay. So we moved to Niagara Falls and I met my never Mormon best friend Shannon and she plays a huge part in my Mormon story. She became my best friend the first day I went to school. She lived around the corner from me. She also became best friends with my sister and she loved my sister and she accepted my sister. And also she found happiness in my home. She found stability and peace in my home. So often more times than not she was in my home after school almost sometimes three days a week. She would often stay for dinner. And my mom became like a parental. A big figure in her life.

Margi Dehlin [01:26:22] How old were you by the way,

Justine Jalaff [01:26:23] when you met her? I was 10 in grade five.

Margi Dehlin [01:26:25] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:26:26] Yeah. Okay. So. So. So she. So she was like my really good friend. But at the same time I was in. In the ward where there was also a large group of young women. We had like 30 young women and we were the St. David's girls. And so we had a very large youth group and I became good friends with girls in this ward. As well.

John Dehlin [01:26:53] Is that a school?

Justine Jalaff [01:26:54] St. David's it's the ward. It's like a little town outside of Niagara Falls, and that's where our building was. So we were called to the St. David's ward. And I really. I really struggled throughout my youth years feeling completely like it was fine when I was a child, but when I became a teenager, navigating my sister, who was also part of that Mormon community. And it's such a small community, so all ages is coming, are coming together and socializing. And because we're all each other has, we're always with each other. But me feeling like I couldn't always completely embrace it because I had social anxiety, always bringing my sister along with me. And I had. And I. I always had her there with me. Needless to say, my sister is very outgoing and also could make friendships on her own, but she just leaned very heavily on me in her social life. And because our social life was all pretty much Mormonism, I was never without her there. And I never felt like I could truly be myself. And then at the same time, I wasn't investing in my high school friends because they didn't have the same standards, and I didn't feel safe around them, and I didn't understand their lives. And alcohol scared me, and drugs scared me, and sex scared me. So I just didn't invest in them. But then I had to invest in this very limited group of people that I didn't always feel like I connected with. And so I always fell back on Shannon.

John Dehlin [01:28:47] Your friend?

Justine Jalaff [01:28:48] My friend.

John Dehlin [01:28:48] Now, was Shannon lds?

Justine Jalaff [01:28:50] No, she's a Never Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:28:51] Okay. Okay.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:52] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:28:52] But I would take her with me to the youth conferences. Sometimes she came to church. Sometimes she would come and hang out with our youth group. And I kind of just like. She was like my comfort zone as between the two worlds, right?

Margi Dehlin [01:29:10] Yeah. Like a bridge or almost between. Did she feel like a sister? Did she feel like a friend?

Justine Jalaff [01:29:16] She felt like family. She felt like family, yeah. She was more than a friend. She was family. She is family.

Margi Dehlin [01:29:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:21] Did you try to convert her to the church?

Margi Dehlin [01:29:24] She's like, you betcha.

Justine Jalaff [01:29:25] Oh, yeah. We took her to the Palmyra pageant and we went and saw the historical sites. And she was, I think, almost 14 and felt something there and said she wanted to be baptized, went back. She's very close to her grandma, who has since passed away. Her grandma always grew up taking her to church. This cute little chapel in this little town. We lived outside of Niagara Falls.

John Dehlin [01:29:54] Not a Mormon church?

Justine Jalaff [01:29:55] No, it was. Yeah. Just this and. And like a great pastor, great community. And her. Her grandma and her grandpa were very committed to that church and would take Shannon with them as a little girl. And her grandma got very upset that she was thinking about joining this church and told her, no, you need to stay away there. There are a lot. And so she decided to not join.

John Dehlin [01:30:22] What is a lot? That sounds like a. I don't.

Justine Jalaff [01:30:24] I don't know. I probably just that we follow a lot of rules.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:28] I mean, that's fair.

John Dehlin [01:30:30] I like it. I love it. It's basically like, those Mormons are a lot. It's like a Canadian kind way of

Ben Jalaff [01:30:37] saying it's crazy how much people actually know about Mormonism. Like, it's crazy when it. Once you're on the other side, like, oh, you knew this. I didn't know this either.

Justine Jalaff [01:30:45] And I know what was very, at the time nice was the youth group, because we did have an amazing youth group, but her grandma's like, you can find that at high school.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:55] Yeah, right.

Justine Jalaff [01:30:56] You don't need to join this.

John Dehlin [01:30:58] So were you disappointed that Shannon didn't join?

Justine Jalaff [01:31:00] I think I was disappointed, yes.

John Dehlin [01:31:02] But it didn't affect your friendship?

Justine Jalaff [01:31:03] Not at all.

John Dehlin [01:31:04] Okay. Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:31:05] No, she just was my buffer.

Modesty, Chastity, and High School Years

John Dehlin [01:31:09] So you mentioned. And this is in your outline, you mentioned a lot of sort of modesty, law of chastity stuff in those high school years. Is that something you want to talk about? Yeah, because that's important. Your story.

Justine Jalaff [01:31:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:20] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:31:21] The ward that we moved into was very hyper vigilant about modesty.

John Dehlin [01:31:28] Meaning.

Margi Dehlin [01:31:29] Yeah. What did that look like?

Justine Jalaff [01:31:31] Meaning you don't wear tank tops. You show up to activities in a T shirt, or you're gonna get sent home. Or someone's gonna give you a sweater.

John Dehlin [01:31:37] Sleeves. All with sleeves.

Justine Jalaff [01:31:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:39] Right. Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:31:40] You go to. You. And our steak was too. Our steak had the box with the sweaters.

John Dehlin [01:31:44] What does that mean?

Justine Jalaff [01:31:45] So when you show up to a dance, if you're not modestly dressed or you even have something inappropriately graphic on your T shirt, like a graphic tee, that's not appropriate, they'll get, like, a piece of clothing from the box and give it to you to wear at the dance.

John Dehlin [01:31:59] And that's if any chest cleavage is showing or shoulders. Right.

Justine Jalaff [01:32:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:32:03] Which is bizarre because just like last week or the week before, the Mormon Church has announced new garments that allow women to show their shoulders.

Justine Jalaff [01:32:12] Yeah. And I think a lot of millennials, such as myself, are having a really hard time with that because we grew up in the modestest, hottest era. So that was Utah culture coming to my. To me as well. And like, that merch that, like, you could get, it was so exciting. We could go to the Palmyra Pageant and you could go to the bookstore and you could buy a T shirt that said Mormon girl or Modest is hottest. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:32:35] Did you ever have to wear anything from the modesty box or whatever it was called?

Justine Jalaff [01:32:38] No, because I knew how to be modest.

John Dehlin [01:32:40] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:32:40] I was very good at it, but

John Dehlin [01:32:42] that was very shaming if you had to wear something from the modesty box.

Justine Jalaff [01:32:45] Yeah. I remember one time my sister, who I was obviously very protective of, it was like a glow in the dark dance or something. And she was wearing a white long skirt, and someone came up to her telling her it was see through, and she had to go get changed. And I got very upset.

John Dehlin [01:32:59] She had to wear something from the modesty box or go home.

Justine Jalaff [01:33:02] It was at a conference, so she would have to go and get changed. And I told them, no, she's not getting changed. It's modest. I think that. And I could tell that leader was very uncomfortable. But yeah. So there is one story, like, I was so modest that I specifically picked out a bathing suit that was a tankini. So it was a two piece, but it was more modest than a one piece. So it was like a tank top tankini with a cute skirt. And I wore it to young women's camp. And my mom was young women's president at the time. And although my mom definitely encouraged the modesty, like her, one counselor was very vocal about that. I was wearing a two piece, and my mom had to take her on a two hour conversation to kind of bring her down and tell her, no, you can't approach her and tell her to go get dressed.

John Dehlin [01:33:56] I'm guessing the amount of belly that it showed would be so minimal.

Justine Jalaff [01:33:59] I didn't show any. I was gonna say, but there are a lot of.

Margi Dehlin [01:34:02] There are a lot of tankinis where you died.

Justine Jalaff [01:34:05] It was just a two piece.

Margi Dehlin [01:34:06] Literally, it's in two pieces as the

John Dehlin [01:34:08] bellies are bad anyway. But it would have been. Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:34:10] And I felt like, yes, that amount

Margi Dehlin [01:34:13] of attention and focus, very vigilant.

John Dehlin [01:34:16] So if somebody were to just play devil's advocate and say, hey, what's wrong with teaching, you know, women? Marty's already laughing at me. But I want to explain it to the Never Mormons. If somebody were to say, what's wrong with teaching you to respect your bodies and to not be too revealing and the bodies are sacred, whatever the justification was, explain why that there's a Dark side to it.

Justine Jalaff [01:34:41] The difference is that I was taught that I was dressing modestly to help keep priesthood holders worthy.

John Dehlin [01:34:45] Men, Mormon boys, basically.

Margi Dehlin [01:34:48] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:34:48] So that they didn't look at me and want to masturbate.

John Dehlin [01:34:51] And I know this is weird, but why is that harmful to you? Or was it harmful to you or to women?

Justine Jalaff [01:34:56] Well, it's the whole purity culture thing. First of all, I didn't even know what masturbation was. Like, I was so sexually naive. Like, I didn't know what that meant. All I knew was how it worked. Like, you know, what happened. That was my conversation given to me. But other than that, I. I just stayed so far away from it that I didn't know anything about it. But I was also taught at the same time, you need to be modest because you need to help these, these priesthood holders stay worthy. And that's as far as it went for me. I never questioned further past that. I was just taught. Okay. And also the other thing for me, and this is why millennials are having a hard time with the garment, is I was taught we need to keep our closet garment friendly for when eventually we do go to the temple. Which meant wearing sleeves and clothes past the knee.

John Dehlin [01:35:49] And how did that harm you? What if somebody says, what's wrong with that? You dress, you had, you wore sleeves.

Justine Jalaff [01:35:55] I honestly, as a teenager, I'm not sure it harmed me too much because you could still find really cute clothes that were modest. It did harm me. And that I didn't want to go to my prom because a lot of people in Utah, you have stores where you can buy modest prom dresses, but in Ontario, you have to order it from the States. It was like 300 to $400. And then I'd be showing up to my prom in like a princess dress when everyone else is wearing, like, strapless. So I just chose not to go to my prom and I went to my seminary grad instead that night.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:38] Yeah, I mean, I want to just say a couple things. We could do a whole thing about this, about how it can be damaging. But I'll say, I think it's an introduction into this psychological area where women are responsible for men, for what men feel or other people's experiences. And that can bleed over into a lot of just unhealthy behaviors. It can turn to abuse. It can turn. But it's this introduction of, like, I'm responsible in some way for what you feeling, and you. Someone else gets the pass, and I will always be responsible for it. I think it's an introduction to that. I also think it's sort of an introduction to assessment that your body actually is free to discuss by people around you, people in authority. And it creates this dissociative experience of what it feels like to feel good in your body, to feel good and clothes, to actually have this inside out relationship at a time that I think is already very vulnerable. Because your body is changing. A lot of times you don't have control over how big your body breasts are, what they. Sometimes you're slow to even recognize when you need a bra. Like it's just So I think those are a couple things I would just start with that I've noticed for women who are adults now and have left the church, they are still. It is something that still comes up for them. Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:38:12] I feel the harm more as an adult now.

Ben Jalaff [01:38:15] Oh wow.

Justine Jalaff [01:38:16] Then I just deconstructing it in learning what purity culture actually is. And when I had to wear the garment, it took me a really long time to not enjoy the garment. But at that point I was starting to be like, but why can't I wear this cute summer outfit? But I think how it harmed me as a young girl is that it made me naive. And I have to say I was just lucky in Mormonism that I was surrounded by good people, that I didn't have anyone that tried to take advantage of me being naive. I just had good people who were trying to do their best. I had good men and good men leaders. So I got lucky in Mormonism, I think because if something would have happened to me, I would not have known what was happening.

John Dehlin [01:39:07] You would have been vulnerable to an abuser, basically.

Justine Jalaff [01:39:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:10] And there are plenty of abusers everywhere, but in Mormonism too. So you just kind of lucked out in the Mormonism.

Justine Jalaff [01:39:15] I lucked out in Mormonism, yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:17] I would also, you know, going back to Ben's discussion about being racked with guilt that he had committed the sin next to murder many, many times. I would imagine it might be a lot as a young Mormon woman to carry around the idea that you could be the cause of. Of young men committing the sin next to murder.

Justine Jalaff [01:39:41] I don't know if I even carried around guilt. I was just hyper focused on the checklist. So like I liked to go to my room and I would take my journal and I would take my Strength for Youth pamphlet and I would play church music and this was like my downtime in my room and I would reread the Strength for Youth pamphlet and go, check, check, check, check, check. I'm good.

Margi Dehlin [01:40:04] Right. It's like almost. And I think you said this, like earlier, feeling afraid of alcohol, afraid of sex, afraid of. And I hear in that kind of stay safe, it was here. It keeps me safe and valued. I'm more valuable with the checklist.

Justine Jalaff [01:40:20] And I got a lot of value being a checklist girl. I got a lot of validation. I was told, constantly praised by my leaders, constantly compared to even their own daughters, that, why can't you be more like just. I was told I was the perfect ending to my family. I was told I was so Christlike because of how I was like with my sister. Completely validated. But at the same time, I was just doing everything I was told I needed to do to be good. Never questioning it and never trying to understand why I needed to do that.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:03] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:05] I'm just, just like we talked about with you, Ben, about the good things that Mormonism brought your family as immigrants to Canada, but the harmful things. Right. I could see somebody saying, well, maybe Mormonism helped keep you out of trouble in some ways, Justine. And the dark side is, is what you brought with you in terms of body shame.

Justine Jalaff [01:41:26] And I think Mormonism made me feel very safe. My family was very safe. But here's the thing. I think, I think Mormonism, when you're raised in a really good, loving Mormon home, it is very safe. But as I talked to my friend Shannon about this, but then it doesn't prepare you for the real world. And I started seeing the harm when I moved away from home and started going to university.

Ben Jalaff [01:41:53] Right.

Justine Jalaff [01:41:54] And entered the real world. And I wasn't able to make friendships or relationships like I chose. I chose to move away to go to a school just an hour and a half away from my home and live in residence because my older sister had lived there and she, she did the residence thing and she made good non member friends and she roomed with non member friends that she's still really good friends with today. And she was able to do that. And I thought, I can do that too. And then I went and I couldn't do it. I was the weird religious girl on the floor. I had someone reach out to me to try and invite me to a kegger and I immediately clamped up in fear and told her, oh, that's not for me. And then we didn't become friends. I tried to meet with a group of girls in one of our dorm rooms to try and be outgoing and get to know people. And the minute they found out I was Mormon, because it had come out somehow before in front of a whole group of strangers. I was asked what the garment was because they had known someone who was Mormon and they knew about the garments. And so I had to explain in front of a whole room of people what the garment was basically about.

John Dehlin [01:43:12] Your underwear.

Justine Jalaff [01:43:13] Yeah. But I wasn't even endowed.

Margi Dehlin [01:43:15] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:43:16] And then because I didn't drink, I just couldn't build friendships because I just. You can choose not to drink, but you, but you maybe aren't afraid of those social settings as a never Mormon. Like you can be a nevermoron who chooses not to drink, but you're not afraid of the social settings. It's just your choice. I was like, no, I can't go. This is not good for me. I'm, I'm, I, I was very much carried forth with fear.

Margi Dehlin [01:43:43] And I think that's reinforced in Mormonism too, when they talk about, like if you're at a party and you're holding a cup, even if you're not drinking, but you're with drinking people. The appearance of evil.

Justine Jalaff [01:43:54] Yeah. And you can be tempted to the

Margi Dehlin [01:43:56] evil itself or staying away. We always had those lessons of like, are you going to go? How come close to the edge do you go to evil? Like really valiant people stay far, far away from that gray area of. So you're really reinforced as being more valiant, more spiritual, I think, and it separates you.

Justine Jalaff [01:44:18] But the thing is that it was the same thing with high school. I didn't invest in my high school friends, but I didn't feel like I fit in with the Mormon group quite so much. And so I sat in the middle with my safe, non Mormon friend who understood me and my family and my sister. But then I go to university and she's not there anymore. And I don't fit in with the YSA branch there because I don't have a car and I can't drive to all the activities and the branch is like 30 minutes away. A mission couple has to come and pick me up every Sunday so I can go to church. And so I'm not like really feeling it with the branch. But then I'm not investing in the group at school. And so I'm just constantly never feeling like I fit in anywhere socially.

John Dehlin [01:45:08] Why didn't you go to byu? I'm just curious.

Justine Jalaff [01:45:10] No. Okay. So I grew up.

John Dehlin [01:45:14] Don't just say no. What are you talking about? That's what every Mormon kid does.

Justine Jalaff [01:45:18] Utah did not have a good reference reputation in my upbringing for education or for anything.

John Dehlin [01:45:25] Oh, why? What's wrong with Utah and your upbringing?

Justine Jalaff [01:45:29] It's like Utah's weird. Everyone there is blonde.

John Dehlin [01:45:35] You're blonde.

Justine Jalaff [01:45:36] This is died. I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:45:43] I'm just easy.

Justine Jalaff [01:45:44] It's more cultural and. And we're more spiritual here because we have to be type thing more spiritual.

Margi Dehlin [01:45:50] Because you're more of a minority.

Justine Jalaff [01:45:51] Yeah, we're more of a minority, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:45:52] Did they use the term the mission field where you were?

Justine Jalaff [01:45:55] I never heard that term until I went on my mission.

John Dehlin [01:45:57] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:45:57] But we had stronger, more deeper testimonies because we had to have these testimonies in order to stand strong.

John Dehlin [01:46:08] So Utah was the place where the Mormons were weaker.

Justine Jalaff [01:46:10] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:46:11] Where you grew up?

Justine Jalaff [01:46:12] Yeah, in Canada, definitely. And had a weird culture. That changed for me when I went on my mission, by the way, I don't.

John Dehlin [01:46:22] Well, you stopped looking at Utah as weird.

Justine Jalaff [01:46:24] I just had really nice Utah companions. And then I was like, oh, they're not all blonde. Because none of them were blonde. Anyway, I did not want to go to byu, but Alberta is the Canadian BYU for Ontarians.

John Dehlin [01:46:38] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:46:39] So many Ontario people go to Alberta for school.

John Dehlin [01:46:42] That's where you went? Southern Alberta.

Justine Jalaff [01:46:44] So after this year at university, where I didn't do well socially and I was very alone and I dated a non member and that was a very lonely experience for me. I decided and I originally did want to go to Alberta because my brothers were already there, but I withheld going because of my sister and I wanted to stay close to her. But I did have a. I did eventually end up crying on the phone to my mom and she told me just, you need to go and live your life and do what you need to do. So I did move out to Alberta. I didn't know my roommates and I had this glorious vision in my mind that I would make these amazing friends and I would finally live this Mormon dream, Alberta. And it didn't really. That didn't really work out that way.

John Dehlin [01:47:34] Was this Lethbridge or.

Justine Jalaff [01:47:35] I went to Edmonton because my brothers were in Edmonton at the time and one of my good friends growing up was in Edmonton as well. Yeah.

Guilt, Shame, and Physical Boundaries

John Dehlin [01:47:43] You mentioned in your outline an experience, and I'm only mentioning this because you mentioned it. An experience you had making out that led you to some guilt. Did you want to tell us?

Justine Jalaff [01:47:53] Yes, I do. Yes. I think with me you'll have to use the outline a lot. So when I was at school for the first time, I got my first boyfriend. So I never dated before that. I had never kissed a boy either. Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:11] So you reached college as a Mormon Girl having never kissed a boy.

Justine Jalaff [01:48:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:14] Okay. And you're still in Ontario at this point? Yes, in college.

Justine Jalaff [01:48:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:19] Are you near Niagara Falls? Is that college?

Justine Jalaff [01:48:22] It's in Kitchener.

John Dehlin [01:48:23] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [01:48:24] And it's an hour and a half away from Niagara Falls and an hour away from London and an hour and a half from Toronto. So the thing is, it's like, maybe I'll gonna back up a little bit into my teenage years. I never felt super attractive in Mormonism because none of the boys ever liked me. I had boys in my high school like me, but the minute they found out I was Mormon through my friends, they stopped liking me. So I never really got that in high school, I guess because I carried that Mormon label really well. So everyone knew I was Mormon. And then in our youth group, none of the boys that I liked liked me, except for this one over here. He really liked me, but I didn't like him at the time. And we might back up into that, but. So I didn't feel attractive in Mormonism, and I couldn't understand why. And then with my friend Shannon, when I was like, 17 and we were in grade 12, I started hanging out with more of her and her school friends, and a bunch of them had a crush on me, which was so new to me. But they knew through Shannon that I was Mormon, so they never tried anything. But if, according to Shannon, if I had not had been Mormon, they for sure would have gone and done something about that. So that never really happened for me. For some reason, in the Mormon bubble, I was not that girl. And I had friends who were that girl. All the guys liked those particular friends over and over.

Margi Dehlin [01:50:13] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:50:15] So I go to university, and I've never had a boyfriend. I've never kissed anyone. And I just want a boyfriend. Like, I just want that experience. And somehow I end up connecting with this guy who, looking back, I don't know why, and we end up dating, and I end up having my first kiss with him. And we. And he was Catholic, and so he kind of understood that. He knew he himself did not want to have sex before marriage. He had made that goal for himself, or at least that's what he told me. And so we had that in common. And I. I talked to him about the church, and I shared with him the Strength for Youth pamphlet. But, you know, you just. You're by yourself in a dorm room watching a movie on your laptop in your bed, and you start making out. And that was the first time that I had ever made out with a

Ben Jalaff [01:51:07] boy

Justine Jalaff [01:51:09] that I had, like, Ever done anything like take off my shirt while making up with a boy. And it never really got further than that except for, like things over the clothes. And then I remember not necessarily feeling bad about it, but then at the same time saying like, oh, I guess I can make mistakes. Because I had that superiority complex. Even among my Mormon friends, I thought I was more righteous than them.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:38] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:51:38] Because they were out kissing boys and making out with boys and meeting with bishops and doing all that stuff and trying to push the boundaries and dress immodestly. And I never did that. And so I thought I was just a better Mormon than them. And then I go and do this with this non member boy and I'm like, oh, I guess I can make mistakes. And then that led me to the first time when we finally broke up, feeling like I needed to repent and meet with a bishop. And so since I wasn't connected to the YSA branch at the time, I went to my home ward and met with the bishop there. And like I said, I was very lucky to be surrounded by very good people because the way he handled it, I was like so nervous. I was like sitting on my fingers shaking, not wanting to tell him I hadn't even done anything that bad.

Margi Dehlin [01:52:32] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:52:32] And he didn't ask questions, he didn't probe. He just said, you're good. You can keep taking the sacrament and you're good. And then he came out of that interview and then went on to praise me to my parents. You have such a wonderful daughter. You have such a good daughter. And so I felt like that was a beautiful repentance process. And then I moved to Alberta and I started dating a priesthood holder returned missionary, which was such a contrast.

John Dehlin [01:53:03] Yeah, you mentioned. And again, I'm only mentioning this because it was in your outline. I just want to make sure you don't miss anything. You mentioned during one of the times, I guess you were making out, feeling some guilt because you had an experience that you had never experienced before. Did you want to talk about that?

Justine Jalaff [01:53:21] I was so naive, like I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't understand that I was like, what I was doing to this guy. And that there was a point where I like, we were just like, they call it dry grinding. Right. Where it's over the clothes. And I can say that because that's the term my bishop used when he was trying to figure out what I did.

John Dehlin [01:53:44] And we call it dry humping. But you called it dry.

Justine Jalaff [01:53:46] It may be the same thing.

John Dehlin [01:53:47] No, it is. Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:53:48] Yeah. Dry humping, dry grinding, where you're just like, you still have your clothes on and. Yeah. And like, he had, like, he came in his clothes, and I didn't know what was happening, and I just. It's like my mind just went into, like, protection. We're just not gonna think about that, and we're just gonna move on. And that happened and the end.

Margi Dehlin [01:54:17] Yeah. Kind of compartmentalize it.

Justine Jalaff [01:54:18] And I never felt that much.

Margi Dehlin [01:54:20] So.

Justine Jalaff [01:54:21] Yeah, we're just gonna keep going here. I don't. It's so naive. I just. Someone, some ex Mormon influencer that I follow talked about her being sexually neglected.

Margi Dehlin [01:54:36] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:54:37] I felt like I had been sexually neglected in my sex education.

Margi Dehlin [01:54:42] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:54:43] Because of, I think, the culture of my ward and how hyper vigilant they were about modesty and keeping the law of chastity and keeping yourselves pure for the temple and for marriage. That was the only focus and the only conversations. And we didn't talk about what would happen if we actually did have sex.

Margi Dehlin [01:55:06] Yes, that's right.

Justine Jalaff [01:55:09] And then I went to Alberta and like I said, because I've heard stories about girls like, you did that panel where all those girls were dating at BYU and how they did not have pleasant experiences sometimes, like I said, I got very lucky in that I dated really respectable guys. And so I dated this rm and we dated for eight months. And it was like night and day compared to my other relationship. And I was like, see, this is what it's like to date a priesthood holder. Someone who knows that the Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight. Someone who knows that we can only kiss while standing up. Like, someone as vigilant as me. Like, this is how you and like, we held hands and we have fun dancing at the dances, and we can do all the social things. And this is awesome.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:05] Yeah, I see.

John Dehlin [01:56:06] Yeah. Why did you just grunt, Ben? I just heard a groan.

Ben Jalaff [01:56:12] You know, this is a part where sometimes I had to sit with myself and just. Which is poisonous to me because I overanalyze things to the point where she's telling that story of safety and stuff. And again, I don't want to say too much because I want her to keep going, but it's just having opportunities placed in front of you and just overanalyzing things that are so simple as, like, courting a girl normally, you know, everything was so demonized.

Justine Jalaff [01:56:46] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:46] There was so much danger.

Justine Jalaff [01:56:47] Like, what I did with that first boyfriend was totally normal, and I should not have felt like I needed to repent.

Ben Jalaff [01:56:53] Everything is so demonized. Like, I Mean, I see friends from my country dating girls and having platonic great experiences. And here I am. The only way I go on a date, if somebody else tags along and you go double dating and you don't even have a chance to really explore personalities or do something to get to know yourself and your confidence level. I mean, coming again, I don't want to.

Justine Jalaff [01:57:19] Well, that's more your story and we'll come to that.

Ben Jalaff [01:57:21] Yeah. No, but it's the thing though, like, anyways. Yeah, I don't. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:25] When you're talking about being so terrified to talk to the bishop that you're sitting on your hands and shaking.

Justine Jalaff [01:57:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:30] That's. That's almost trauma for behavior. That's super benign and normal.

Justine Jalaff [01:57:37] Yeah. And. But it was also behavior I didn't know anything about.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:40] Exactly.

Justine Jalaff [01:57:41] Yeah. But I was just. I knew it was wrong.

John Dehlin [01:57:43] Yeah. Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:57:44] So then I go. Yeah. And I go and I. I date this guy in Alberta. And it was a very positive experience, but I always knew I was going to serve a mission.

Ben Jalaff [01:57:55] So great.

College Years and Visions for the Future

John Dehlin [01:57:56] As you were going really quickly before we maybe jump back to Ben, as you were in college, what was your vision for yourself for why you were going to college, what you were going to college for and what would happen in your life?

Justine Jalaff [01:58:12] There was like this internal desire in me to be like my older siblings. Like I would follow my older siblings successes and then think, I can do that too, or I want to do that too. So I saw my older sister go away and be able to balance both of those worlds. And I was like, I want to do that too. Because I felt, I felt a lot of resentment. Like I would see my friend Shannon and she's an incredible person and no one was telling her what she needed to do to be good. She was just being good. And she made friendships like this and was like building this amazing high school community. She went to a different high school, by the way, and making friends and having all these great social experiences. And here I am like reading a book by myself in the library while I'm eating my lunch because I feel so lonely. It wasn't like that every day, but I sometimes found myself doing that. And I was just like, why is it that I have to do all these things that the church is telling me I need to do? I have to dress modestly. I have to be the Christlike example. I have to follow the Strength for Youth pamphlet. And she can just go and be.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:27] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:59:28] And I wanted that for myself, but at the same time I didn't know how to get it while being Mormon.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:35] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:59:36] And so I tried that first year and I failed.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:41] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [01:59:41] And I was miserable and I was weird. So I went to, I moved. My therapist tells it how I was the big fish in the little pond. I was very comfortable in Mormonism and it validated me in a lot of ways. But then I was trying to go out into the bigger pond where I was a little fish in the bigger pond. And so what did I do? Because I didn't have those life skills to face society, I go to just a bigger Mormon bubble where I can be the fish. Big fish in the little pond again,

John Dehlin [02:00:15] in a bigger pond. Slightly bigger pond.

Justine Jalaff [02:00:17] Slightly bigger. Slightly bigger pond with more options.

John Dehlin [02:00:22] And did you envision yourself, did you go to college so that you could have a thriving career as a working mom?

Justine Jalaff [02:00:28] No.

John Dehlin [02:00:29] No. What was it?

Justine Jalaff [02:00:30] So I always grew up with the mentality that I need to get a degree so that if anything were to happen to my husband, I could go back to school and get a job.

John Dehlin [02:00:45] So what type of degree would that be?

Justine Jalaff [02:00:46] So I ended up English was my best subject and history was one of my favorite subjects. So I went and majored in English and minored in history with the idea that after my kids are grown, I will go to teachers college and become an English and history teacher, which I'm now there. And it's not as easy to do that as I thought.

John Dehlin [02:01:10] But you were gonna get your degree but then just have lots of babies?

Justine Jalaff [02:01:14] Yep. I was gonna find a white Mormon man. I have to emphasize that. Cause I married a person of color who's gonna be like an engineer and would make good money and I would stay home and be a stay at home mom.

John Dehlin [02:01:28] And were you taught the white part by the Mormon Church?

Justine Jalaff [02:01:31] No, that's just who I envisioned in my mind because. And this will play in Ben's story later. So like, I don't, I don't want to get too much into it, but like Ben had a huge crush on me when we were teenagers and I. He just didn't fit that Mormon mold that I was told to want in a Mormon man, which was clean shaven, honestly, white. That's just what I had in my mind. And someone that took life seriously so that they could go and get a really good career. And so I never envisioned myself working because I was told very much so the message, the most noblest thing that you will ever do is to raise your. Be a mother. And the best work you'll ever do is within the walls of your own home. And that you need to be a stay at home mom at whatever cost, because that is the greatest blessing that you can give to your children. And daycare was kind of demonized for me. You don't put your kid in daycare. You stay home. That's the best thing for your babies.

John Dehlin [02:02:49] So we'll come back. I think that theme's going to reemerge. But we never. We never heard about you liking Justine. What's up with that? I mean, so in high school.

Ben Jalaff [02:03:00] No, actually, when I. When I lived in Welland again before I really took off in. Well, and my. I went to a dance. This is my first dance ever. And I don't like flashy girls. I just like girls with natural beauty, you know, that don't try hard because to me, that's what's most important, the natural. Naturality. Is that a word? Naturality?

Justine Jalaff [02:03:25] Natural.

John Dehlin [02:03:25] I like it.

Justine Jalaff [02:03:26] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [02:03:26] Yeah. And for me, when I saw Justine, I just saw her, just her not trying very hard. And that's what it. I was attracted to. Everybody else was going for the same other girls, and I just feel like. But I like. I like this one. She seems nicer. And I also felt like she's harder to get because she has this strong Mormon personality. Something I'd never.

Justine Jalaff [02:03:53] I wasn't a flirt.

Ben Jalaff [02:03:54] She wasn't a flirt. Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:03:56] And I. So going back to this war, these girls who were also the ones who had the boys liking them over and over, they would go before every Mormon dance and get their hair done. Like at a hair salon. Yeah, yeah. And they would go and they would buy a new dress and they would do their makeup and show up like the bee's knees.

Ben Jalaff [02:04:18] That's what I meant.

Margi Dehlin [02:04:19] Like, their lives depended.

Justine Jalaff [02:04:21] Like their lives.

Margi Dehlin [02:04:21] They kind of did.

Justine Jalaff [02:04:23] Yeah. And for me, I came from a family. It was like, no, you just show up in a jean skirt in a ponytail and you go, have fun. And we took a lot. Like, there was a lot of pride in that in my family.

Margi Dehlin [02:04:37] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:04:38] And so that's what I did. But I also didn't know how to do makeup nice either. So. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:04:45] So. So, Ben, did you try and like dance with Justine or even try and get her to like you kind of thing?

Ben Jalaff [02:04:50] No. And it goes back to my level of confidence being dead at this point. This is a point where I'm not myself at all. You know, I'm not very confident at this point in Mormonism. I mean, Justine said that she was going for the white guy. Right. In girls in Mormonism, especially in Ontario, it almost Feels like the Hunger Games, you know, I just felt like the lower tiered. You know, my English is not great. I'm from another country. I don't have a status, and all my friends speak English. They're well versed in the scriptures, well versed in the Gospel. I'm not well versed at all.

Justine Jalaff [02:05:28] You also had a beard at 50.

Ben Jalaff [02:05:29] Yeah. I had bearded weight. I had a facial hair. I looked like a leader. You know, it was one of those things where I just felt so inadequate for me to feel like I could thrive in this. In this social bubble. And also, again, I didn't have that kick that I could just go confidently and ask Justine to dance something simple as just asking her for a dance was a challenge for me, which is something. I don't know why that was happening, because I hear stories from my parents and my friends from Venezuela that would tell me, man, you were confident before and what happened again, you're in a small bubble and you feel like you had no tools to succeed. And for me, I felt it from Justine and I felt it from these other girls. I felt the expectation. You know, I'm a good Mormon boy. I'm not and not material Mormon. It's material.

Justine Jalaff [02:06:25] I fully accept that.

Ben Jalaff [02:06:26] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:06:27] I. I saw Ben and I found out he liked me, and I was weirded out by it. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:06:34] And one of the darkest parts about Mormonism is up until recently, the church taught for 250 years, or 150 years, whatever it is, that people shouldn't date or marry interracially.

Justine Jalaff [02:06:46] Yeah, yeah, that's.

John Dehlin [02:06:47] That was explicitly taught to me. And it was in. It was in church curriculum up until a year or two ago. If it's not still there, that you should only date people in your race.

Justine Jalaff [02:06:57] It was not explicitly taught to me, but it's embedded in the doctrine he's a Lamanite. Like, right.

John Dehlin [02:07:06] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:07:06] Like, as bad as that sounds like I was taught that every person from South America and every indigenous person is a Lamanite.

John Dehlin [02:07:16] And in the Book of Mormon, Lamanites were cursed with dark skin for the wickedness of their ancestors.

Justine Jalaff [02:07:22] Yeah. And I never thought that about him ever. But it's just like. I don't know.

John Dehlin [02:07:26] I think water you swim in, it's

Justine Jalaff [02:07:29] just the internalization of it all. And then. And then just the ex. And then. And then as a girl, you know, you're taught to dream about who you're going to marry. You even make a list as, so, like, how. What's your husband going to be like? And if that person doesn't fit that, then I ain't paying attention to you.

John Dehlin [02:07:49] Yeah,

Ben Jalaff [02:07:52] yeah. I, that, that's the part of my story where I. This is when things get this, when I just become very uneasy about myself. How, how was I the way the, the person I created could not pull anything in, in the realm I put myself in. You know, this is something I'm wrestling with now. It's just what happened, you know, why did I lost so much value within myself when I had it? You know, my friends from the other group brought me up. Same with the Welling guys. They brought me up, but again, it's all of a sudden internalizing Mormonism and seeing the product in front of me thinking I don't meet that criteria. So how do I put myself in there? That's why I decided to go faster with Mormonism. Because if I'm going to scoop a girl like Justine, well, I need to become more Mormon. I need to get more serious about this. I need to shave, I need to start parting my hair and I need to start changing.

Justine Jalaff [02:09:08] He lost a lot of weight.

Ben Jalaff [02:09:09] I lost a lot of weight cuz I was also self conscious about the fact that I'm also a little bit overweight. Like I was just trying so hard for somebody in the bubble to tell me I'm a good looking dude.

Margi Dehlin [02:09:22] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [02:09:23] And for me, as sad as that sounds, until I married Justine, it was very difficult to have a Mormon girl to tell me I was good looking. And that was really painful. Especially in the youth program where you have very limited choices.

Margi Dehlin [02:09:39] Yeah, that's right.

Ben Jalaff [02:09:40] And you have like five, six girls and four of your friends already like them. And you're like, take a step back because they're better looking, they're better in Mormonism. And then you don't even take a shot.

Justine Jalaff [02:09:53] Yeah, right.

Margi Dehlin [02:09:54] And you have that. It sounds like you vary in different ways, like there are differences, but you have that in common. That neither one of you felt particularly chosen or attractive to people in your church kind of group. Is that right? Interesting.

Ben Jalaff [02:10:11] I didn't have.

Justine Jalaff [02:10:13] But we didn't choose each other at that time.

John Dehlin [02:10:15] No.

Ben Jalaff [02:10:16] In fact, Justine wrote me a very nice email turning me down in a very nice way, telling me, no, let's

Justine Jalaff [02:10:22] just be friends, let's just be friends.

Ben Jalaff [02:10:24] I remember, I wish I had that email still.

Justine Jalaff [02:10:26] And I really wanted to, to be Ben's friend because everyone was Ben's friend. He didn't have a lot of like 16, 17, 18. He didn't have a lot of confidence with like Girls and going after girls. But he had so many friends. Everyone loved Ben.

Margi Dehlin [02:10:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:10:41] So he made it known to you that he wanted to date you?

Justine Jalaff [02:10:45] Yeah, he sent me an email letting me know that he liked me. And then I sent him an email back telling him, like, let's be friends. And then from that point, we actually did start becoming friends. Yeah, because before, we wouldn't even talk to each other. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:11:03] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [02:11:04] We were in the same youth group with the same friends, and we would be around each other, not acknowledging each other.

Margi Dehlin [02:11:10] I see.

John Dehlin [02:11:12] So an idea came to me that's gonna sound really shocking to Mormon ears, but I think it's factually true. There is an element of white supremacy in Mormonism because darkness, dark skin is doctrinally equated with evil or wickedness in Mormonism. It's just a fact. It's in every piece of scripture that Joseph Smith produced, the Book of Mormon, Lamanites are cursed with dark skin because of their wickedness. And then in the Doctrine and Covenants, in the book of Moses, in the book of Abraham, and in the Doctrine and, you know, Doctrine and Covenants, all of the scripture that Joseph Smith produced has this idea of the curse of Cain and of Cain getting dark skin as a curse for his evil and the descendants of Cain carrying the curse of Cain. So, you know, your no to Ben had to have been at least partially a result of. Of these white supremacist teachings that maybe you didn't ever receive explicitly, but would you say that that was. That was behind your no at the time, to Bend was a culture. I think it was white supremacy.

Justine Jalaff [02:12:33] It just did not fit that mold, that Utah mold, which is white, which is blonde.

Margi Dehlin [02:12:39] The conditioning or. I like the conditioning. Yeah, they create the idea.

Justine Jalaff [02:12:44] Yeah, he wasn't the ideal. And, like, we always joked that Ben looked like he was 30 when he was 15, because he had, like, that beard when he was 15, and he would do, like, these crazy sideburns and this huge goatee, and sometimes he would

Ben Jalaff [02:13:00] do, like, mustaches, trying to get attention,

Justine Jalaff [02:13:02] but it had the adverse effect. And then I was just, like, completely turned off by it. But then also, like, his confidence level wasn't. And I thought it was weird that he never talked to me. I was like, he likes me, but he's never talked to me. And I was like, that's just weird. He doesn't even know me.

John Dehlin [02:13:22] And, Ben, I'm wondering, how much did you know of the Lamanite dark skin curse narrative? Did you identify as a Lamanite in high school? Did you know about the Book of Mormon teachings of Native Americans having dark skin because of the curse or.

Ben Jalaff [02:13:40] No, not at all. Not before the mission. I did get a book when I was younger in Venezuela with the Book of Mormon stories. I do remember seeing the lemonades depicted as savages, you know, but it never really glued into my mind that they were telling in the stories that mainly people from South America. It never really glued into me that that was what they were trying to do until much later. For me, it was just stories. And. No. And I also thought. And this might come across as weird, but I also thought, oh, they're talking about people in Mexico and Guatemala and El Salvador, not Venezuelans, because Venezuelans are different. In my mind, I will think that too sometimes. Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:14:26] Canada is so diverse. Like, we have so much diversity because we're a country of immigrants and we rely so much on immigration and so. But I wasn't. I wasn't raised in that diverse society. I was raised in a Mormon bubble.

John Dehlin [02:14:45] Yeah, well. Yeah, well, Ben, just going back to your story, like, if the focus for you is assimilation into a white Mormon culture, whether it was explicit or not, I think the message you get there is dark Latino, no. Bueno.

Ben Jalaff [02:15:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:15:03] Blanco Mormon. Muy bueno. Yeah. Is that fair?

Ben Jalaff [02:15:07] It's fair, yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:15:08] Sorry. He told me when we started dating, he didn't like dating girls from his culture. He didn't like dating Latinas.

Ben Jalaff [02:15:15] That's true, Ashley. And that dawns on me now because, again, it's a level of confidence that you lose. Right. To go back to my friend Matias and his wife Danila. I hung out with them last year, and they told me. They told me a story when I was in high school with them. My friend Janila tells me, like, Ben, when you were in high school, you were el pollo. El pollo means you were good looking, dude. But Mormonism did not let me display it because I was. At that time, I was becoming. This is gonna sound like a pun intended, but, like, I'm becoming white. Kind of like the teachings of Dispenser. I feel like I'm becoming white. So I'm looking for the white trophy, you know, like, why would I. If I want to become white, why would I date a Latina? That's a regressing into what I'm trying to achieve.

Justine Jalaff [02:16:08] And you can't get whiter than me. I'm very white.

Ben Jalaff [02:16:10] No. So I never, you know, search for the. For the Latina. I did before, but once I just became a Mormon, that disappeared because I felt like now if I want to attain this, I need to get. I need to get white.

John Dehlin [02:16:25] And that's a form of self hatred.

Ben Jalaff [02:16:27] Oh, yeah, right.

John Dehlin [02:16:28] I don't mean to use extreme language, but I don't know how it's.

Ben Jalaff [02:16:31] No, and it's good that you do that because you bring a different context to things that I'm trying to puzzle in my mind. This is why I love Terry, by the way, people watching this episode seek therapy. Therapy. If you need it, it helps. Because to me, you're throwing those words, and it helps me put a puzzle together in my mind. Like that makes sense. And for me. Yeah, I absolutely agree with you on that.

Justine Jalaff [02:16:51] Yeah. It was also the law of chastity. Chastity aspect for you as well, because all of his friends in high school were sexually active, and all those girls that liked him were sexually active, and he needed to stay away from that. So even though these girls showed interest in him.

John Dehlin [02:17:07] Oh, Latinas were sexually active.

Justine Jalaff [02:17:09] Yeah. He needed to stay away from them because they were.

Ben Jalaff [02:17:12] I knew they were dangerous to some degree.

Justine Jalaff [02:17:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:15] Pellegrosas.

Ben Jalaff [02:17:16] Peligrosa, man.

Ben's Decision to Serve a Mission

John Dehlin [02:17:21] All right, well, I guess the next thing that comes to my mind is Ben's mission. But is there anything else you want to tell about your story up to the sort of college years before we go to Ben's mission?

Justine Jalaff [02:17:34] I think that's. I think we're good.

John Dehlin [02:17:36] Okay. So y' all became friends after you declined his.

Justine Jalaff [02:17:42] Yeah, pre mission.

John Dehlin [02:17:43] Okay. And y' all stayed in touch. Okay. So should we go to your. Is your mission the next.

Ben Jalaff [02:17:50] Absolutely, yeah, let's do that.

John Dehlin [02:17:51] All right.

Ben Jalaff [02:17:53] Obviously, because I'm going to Welling a lot now. The next step was the mission. They start talking about going on missions. That's what I make the decision to go as well. Well, I'm not going to be left alone. I'm going to go. I don't know anything about the gospel at this point. I'm, like, just trying to figure it out. But I got to go because everyone's leaving. When I brought that to my parents, that's when things went south with my parents. Now my dad is no longer in favor. Now my dad has like, okay, stop. Now you're leaving for two years. You're going to miss college. Okay. You are going to do what there? You don't know anything. And number three, and he told me this. I think you had done enough. Now I got to put my foot down here. This is turning into a cult.

John Dehlin [02:18:43] They weren't active by this point.

Ben Jalaff [02:18:45] They Were sort of. But now their intent with the church was to bring protection to me with the things that they were trying to teach me already when I was younger. Hey, don't drink, don't smoke, because those are harmful. But all of a sudden he was flipping because the Mormonism in Venezuela is so different now. They're experiencing completely different Mormonism in Canada where like, you're going too fast now. You're going faster than us. And that was a huge fight. I remember my mom just got unhinged of anger and I perceived them as they were influenced by the adversary. Satan has them and he wants to stop me from doing this because what is the church teaching me? That when you make that decision, things are going to get tougher. Satan's going to try to stop you because he knows you're going to bring other people into the church. He wants to derail you. I'm looking at my parents are clear enemy now. This is no more questioning about them flindsy or anything. I saw them as the enemy, which is so sad because they're my own parents. Once they.

John Dehlin [02:19:52] And they wanted what was best for you.

Ben Jalaff [02:19:53] Oh yeah, I saw them as the enemy. And then I go to Welland and everybody's so happy that their kids are going on a mission and they're getting validation from their families. And here's my family just, no, you're not going to the point where I made a decision to move to Welland and start working there to come out with money to go serve. And again, my parents being the loving parents they are, I worked, but I didn't come out with $10,000. Not even close. And I go back to my parents, can you help me pay for the rest of my mission? And they, yeah, we'll help you. Like at this point they had given up. I, I look at it now and I. They might, they must have given up at that point. They're like, we're done. I can see them being defeated at that point of trying to get me to just listen to them to the point where like, we'll help you pay for this. And they just open, open up to even. They even threw this great farewell party for me, you know, with all these friends to send me off on a mission. And I remember when my dad drove me to the airport, I can really still sense that they don't want me to go. They're doing the last thing. My dad pulls me aside at the airport and he's talking to me and I'm going to cuss because this is exactly How? He told me in Spanish, he said, gordo baja la mision no te la cagues. Translation, go on a mission, I'll pay for it. But don't fuck off, because now they're looking at it. This is our money now and we're giving it to you. Don't mess up. And that's the last thing my dad sent me, said to me before I took off and to me, I'm going. And at this point now I'm polishing into church the restoration. I got to preach my gospel, study to preach my gospel. And I went at it to the mtc.

John Dehlin [02:21:52] Can I just say one thing really quick? It is blowing my mind that the Mormon church is worth $250 billion. And there's a young immigrant Latino man with parents who are struggling. Immigrants.

Ben Jalaff [02:22:11] Yep.

Margi Dehlin [02:22:13] They fled for asylum.

Ben Jalaff [02:22:14] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:22:16] He decided he's conditioned into wanting to go on a mission by the church. And it's the unwilling parents, along with that young man, that have to pony up 10 grand to be the Mormon Church's salesperson for two years. You're going to give up two years of your life? Your parents are giving up their son to what they fear as a cult. And the church is going to have you pay to be their salesperson for two years.

Justine Jalaff [02:22:47] And you need to tell them where you worked to come up with that money. Oh, yeah, please, please tell them they

Ben Jalaff [02:22:52] were working at a. My dad was working where you worked. Both me. Oh, I was, I work at a quail farm. I was literally working, you know, at this bear farm to ship them into restaurants with my best friend. We would work from 6 in the morning, sometimes 4 in the morning, all the way till 6pm and being a young, immature pre missionary guy, I will spend my money having fun with my friends. I come up with some money, but not even close to the 10 grand. I think I came out with maybe $3,000. My parents came up with the rest, but my dad at the time was working at premium pork, which is another farm, just slaughtering pigs to ship them for restaurants. So he didn't have a good job either.

Margi Dehlin [02:23:34] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [02:23:35] And my mom was trying to open a business as a massage therapist. And you know, esthetician. Esthetician. They were not in a good spot. We lived in an apartment in like a two bedroom apartment. We didn't have money. And so for me to see my parents pony up that money for me to go, even when they were against it, it's a testament of how much they wanted to just be parents in

Justine Jalaff [02:23:58] the end or their well deserved money that should have gone somewhere else. Like your education.

Ben Jalaff [02:24:02] Yeah. And then I go on a mission with that stigma that my parents, even though they're paying for a mission, I'm still feeling like they're under the influence of Satan. But in my. They're supporting you and they're supporting me. And I go, thank you.

Justine Jalaff [02:24:16] Still telling you we don't want you to go.

Ben Jalaff [02:24:19] And to the point where when I got to the mtc, I remember going to bed and looking at the roof and like, what am I doing? What is happening? Like I'm about to do this for two years. I'm not a morning person. I don't study well. I don't read stuff. I read the Book of Mormon. It entered here and it dissipated here. I read the preach my gospel and like, yeah, Joseph Smith saw something and becomes great. It just literally I'm doing all these things thinking that the spirit is going to open my heart to knowledge and I'm going to become a spiritual giant. That never happened. I read things thinking that enlightenment will enter my life and I will become this great Mormon. I just wasn't quantifying because guess what? My internal me was still out there battling things. This is not you, Ben. This is not you. That means sorting information to the point where I felt so inadequate. In the mtc, you have these missionaries come at you because they're trying to learn a language and trying to teach you the first lesson. And then I supposed to go out and do this to practice and I couldn't even get past a few sentences. Like, I don't. What do I do now? I don't know what comes next. Oh yeah. And then I saw a pillar of light in his head. I never even memorized it. It was difficult.

John Dehlin [02:25:36] The Joseph story?

Ben Jalaff [02:25:37] Yeah. I couldn't. It was just difficult.

Justine Jalaff [02:25:40] And you did eventually though?

Ben Jalaff [02:25:41] Oh, I did and I became good at it. But yeah, it's just, I went on a mission unprepared. I was ill prepared. My friends left. I want to be.

Justine Jalaff [02:25:48] Please tell them how you showed up at the mtc. Please. Oh, yes.

Ben Jalaff [02:25:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:25:53] This is the mission training center where you learn to become a mission.

Justine Jalaff [02:25:56] First of all. You flew there by yourself?

Ben Jalaff [02:25:58] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:25:58] No family came to say goodbye?

Ben Jalaff [02:26:00] No. No family came to say goodbye. I went to the airport. Actually, no. Some of the. Well and guys came to the airport to say goodbye to me. I got up on the, on the airplane with a suit and while I'm in the plane, I take my suit off because I was overheating and I put Shorts and a T shirt just because I was sweating.

Justine Jalaff [02:26:19] You also had long hair.

Ben Jalaff [02:26:20] And I also had long hair because I found out that at the NTC you got a haircut. So what would I pay for a haircut if I can just get it done there? Yeah, that's the thing, right? Like at this point no one is telling me anything.

The MTC and Temple Endowment Experience

John Dehlin [02:26:33] So you showed up at the MTC with long hair.

Ben Jalaff [02:26:34] I showed up at the mtc.

Justine Jalaff [02:26:36] They didn't know who he was?

John Dehlin [02:26:37] No.

Ben Jalaff [02:26:37] And again, no one's coaching me to this. I show up at the mtc.

John Dehlin [02:26:41] I've never heard this, by the way,

Ben Jalaff [02:26:42] with shorts and a T shirt. My suit is on my suitcase and I go into the front desk. Hi, I'm Ben, Ben Halaf. I'm here to work as a missionary. And then they're looking at me like, are you an employee? Are you applying for a job? I think I'm applying for a two year job. I remember telling them that it's a two year job and I supposed to be here and you guys are gonna give me an id. Not a name tag. An id.

Justine Jalaff [02:27:05] I love this story.

Ben Jalaff [02:27:06] And the guys like looking at me and they make a few phone calls and then somebody with a suit comes out. Who are you again? Oh, my name is Ben Halif. Here's my id. And then they finally find my name tag. Son, where is your suit? Oh, it's in the backpack. It was hot on the plane in your hair. Are you a missionary? I think so. So they told me I will become a missionary the next day because my reporting date was the next day.

Justine Jalaff [02:27:32] What were you set apart?

Ben Jalaff [02:27:33] Yeah, they set me apart. I went to a party. Right. I didn't know that when you get set apart you're a missionary. No, I had a party. Yeah. I went to watch Transformers on a Sunday after being set apart.

Margi Dehlin [02:27:45] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [02:27:45] I'm telling you, I didn't know what I was doing.

John Dehlin [02:27:47] So you showed up a day early.

Ben Jalaff [02:27:48] I showed up a day early. They gave me the name tag and put me in a room. And I remember the missionaries looking at me like, who are you? Oh, nice to meet you, I'm Ben. I'm not even referring myself as elder yet. I'm Ben. I'm Ben and I sleep on the floor.

Justine Jalaff [02:28:01] Sorry.

Ben Jalaff [02:28:02] Because they put me in a room with no bed and I like I showed up early. I thought they were ill prepared. And again, you bring up the billion dollar church and they didn't even have a bed for me when I showed up.

Justine Jalaff [02:28:11] Well, no, because you weren't supposed to come.

Ben Jalaff [02:28:12] Yeah, but I show up in there,

John Dehlin [02:28:14] they could find a bed.

Justine Jalaff [02:28:15] I think they could find a bed.

Ben Jalaff [02:28:17] I don't know, it just.

Justine Jalaff [02:28:18] He got grouped in with some people and there wasn't a bed.

Ben Jalaff [02:28:22] Yeah, they were all. Because I guess my companion wasn't. I don't know what it was. But the next day they got me and got a haircut and they gave me a lecture. They're like, hey, you're a missionary of the Lord. I remember that talk. You're a missionary of the Lord and what you did yesterday is a little irresponsible. And then they taught me about first impressions because that's what you learn in the mtc. First impressions are important. Well, I certainly screwed the pooch on that one, you know, But I remember going to bed like I don't know anything. What am I going to teach the people in Alberta about this? Like I don't know anything.

John Dehlin [02:28:52] So you got called Alberta even though.

Ben Jalaff [02:28:55] Okay, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:56] Ontario. So still a Canadian mission?

Ben Jalaff [02:28:58] Yeah, it's a Canadian mission, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:29:00] Wow, what a way to start your mtc. But you don't know any different, so.

Ben Jalaff [02:29:03] No, no one taught me anything. Nobody told me when you get set apart.

Justine Jalaff [02:29:07] Sorry.

Ben Jalaff [02:29:08] No, no, go ahead.

Justine Jalaff [02:29:08] He was there with Welland friends. With some of the Welland guys, yeah. MTC with him.

Ben Jalaff [02:29:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:29:14] Okay. So you could, you know, play basketball or eat lunch.

Ben Jalaff [02:29:18] Play basketball?

Justine Jalaff [02:29:19] No, like eat lunch with your.

Ben Jalaff [02:29:21] With my friends.

Justine Jalaff [02:29:22] With your friends from the stake and some from London.

Ben Jalaff [02:29:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:29:24] It must have been nice to have familiar faces.

Ben Jalaff [02:29:26] Oh, it was. As soon as I saw my friend in the mtc, I'm like, okay, get familiar faces.

Justine Jalaff [02:29:31] And you were also serving with one of the well and guys in Calgary, same mission.

Ben Jalaff [02:29:34] My friend Jonathan Medmolin went to Calgary with me, which he'll come out of my story like a flaming sore. But yeah, like I saw him on my mission, but yeah, that's the beginning.

John Dehlin [02:29:48] So how'd you like the mcc?

Ben Jalaff [02:29:50] Oh, I didn't. No, no, you're only three weeks, right, because three weeks, Yeah, I did not like it at all. It just. I didn't see the point. I like, look, whatever I'm learning here is better for me to be out there and do it physically because that's how I learn better. We will have these lessons with teachers. It just didn't click with me at all.

John Dehlin [02:30:11] Did Utah feel weird? Did the United States feel weird?

Ben Jalaff [02:30:13] Yeah, it was the first time I'm in the States. I was a year into my citizenship in Canada. So, you know, it was my first Time in Utah, my first time in the mtc, experiencing all that culture. To be honest, I was so nervous about serving. It didn't really sink into me that I was doing that and experiencing all these things in the United States. No, I just remember just being in this big school college thing and I was with a bunch of people and I supposed to train for three weeks. But no, I didn't. I didn't like it at all.

John Dehlin [02:30:44] How did you like the temple? Taking out your endowments for the first time?

Ben Jalaff [02:30:48] Oh yeah, I ill prepare.

John Dehlin [02:30:51] Why are you laughing, Justine?

Justine Jalaff [02:30:52] I just been so funny to me. But his reaction was, sorry.

Ben Jalaff [02:30:58] We had temple prep classes in London and they didn't prepare me for the temple. Those lessons, they didn't do anything. I go to the temple and all of a sudden I'm doing all these things and in my head I'm like, what am I doing? I got this man giving me a robe and blessing me. They're washing and then I'm washing.

Justine Jalaff [02:31:22] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [02:31:22] And then after that, I'm starting to do all these things in the temple, you know, and I just. That's the first time. The first time that my true self sat there and like, what the hell are you doing here?

Margi Dehlin [02:31:38] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [02:31:38] And again they tell you, you know, you're making promises and stuff. And my true self, what promises am I making? What's going on here? Am I putting myself in this position? And I got friends that came with me. I was just confused, doing all the signals, all the things. I never really memorized anything. And they're telling me what they what to do. And I go into the celestial room. People are crying in this room that looks like a hotel lobby. I'm sorry. People see the Celestial Room to be pretty. I just felt it's a high price.

Justine Jalaff [02:32:07] Hotel lobby. I always thought it was beautiful.

Ben Jalaff [02:32:09] I just thought it was a high price.

Margi Dehlin [02:32:11] A very white.

Justine Jalaff [02:32:11] I love the chandeliers.

Margi Dehlin [02:32:13] Hotel lobby.

Ben Jalaff [02:32:13] I will sit there and my friend comes to me in tears. How was it, man? You know what? I flat out thought, hey, let's not talk about this. Because I don't understand it. And I'm not sure how to grasp in my brain that what I did is not something more than just something else. I almost use cult inside the temple because I just.

John Dehlin [02:32:35] Because that word cold came to me.

Ben Jalaff [02:32:36] Oh yeah, 100%. I'm sitting there like, how did I not think this is a cult. We're doing this. We're doing these signals. I walk out and I'm just sitting there like, yeah, whoa. That. That Was not on double prep. That was not on double prep. And they come at me and they tell me, oh, you just gotta constantly go, are you kidding me? Wait, what?

Justine Jalaff [02:32:57] You also had really good friends with you who were like, oh, yeah, I know it's weird, but, you know, it gets better.

Ben Jalaff [02:33:03] They told me. I told them in the Celestial, I'm a loud guy. And I remember they told me to shoot because he told me, like, oh, you just gotta keep coming. Are you kidding me? I'm not that stupid. I did that at the temple thing. Just because I'm not that stupid. I don't need to go a bunch of times to understand this. Weird.

Justine Jalaff [02:33:16] Yet you did. You did go back.

Ben Jalaff [02:33:19] Yeah, and I went back. Obviously I did, but it's just, to me, no, double wasn't good. I went home, and again, my parents being loving parents, I go home with my endowments and my dad's like, hey, how was it? I don't know. Like, I'm telling you there. Are you sure about this? Like, my parents are using every scenario to, like, please, son, don't go. Yeah, but they didn't breach. I just told them it was weird and they didn't even bother going there. Like, whatever. Yeah, temple wasn't good. And I remember going on my mission again as a missionary and still feel like, this is odd. And I got my name tag. I'm set apart and still felt the same way.

John Dehlin [02:33:59] What year did you start your mission?

Ben Jalaff [02:34:01] 2007.

John Dehlin [02:34:02] Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. So the MTC is over. And what was your mission like overall? Any important stories?

Serving in the Mission Field

Ben Jalaff [02:34:09] Yeah, I'll be brief here so we can move forward. But I went on a mission and my first area was Lethbridge, and.

John Dehlin [02:34:17] Which is super Mormon.

Ben Jalaff [02:34:18] Oh, right.

John Dehlin [02:34:19] It's like Mormon. It's Utah. Canada.

Justine Jalaff [02:34:21] You were Spanish speaking?

Ben Jalaff [02:34:23] No, not in Lethbridge. Not in the beginning. In the beginning, I was English speaking.

John Dehlin [02:34:27] Now tell me if I'm right, but wasn't Lethbridge colonized by Mormon? Utah Mormon polygamists. They wanted to keep practicing polygamy.

Ben Jalaff [02:34:34] Yeah. They went to Carsten and they bled over to Raymond and then over to Lethbridge. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:34:37] So the Mormon prophets sent Utah Mormons to southern Canada in southern Alberta so they could keep practicing polygamy.

Justine Jalaff [02:34:44] And that's why Alberta has such a big Mormon population. And it's the Canadian byu.

John Dehlin [02:34:50] So southern Alberta and northern Mexico, like Hermosilla, Sonora area, Chihuahua. Those are two huge Mormon polygamous colonies that our church started in the late 1800s. Early 1900s.

Margi Dehlin [02:35:05] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [02:35:05] And I went To Lethbridge. That was my first area. I had a great trainer. I respect him. He really took his time with me because I told him when I met him, like, hey, look, man, I don't know anything. I'm just gonna have to go to lessons. You do your thing, and eventually I'll catch up to it. I flat out told him the truth. I don't know anything.

John Dehlin [02:35:21] What percentage of Lethbridge was Mormon, do you think?

Ben Jalaff [02:35:24] I probably will say at least 60% of people. That's a lot. The west side of Lethbridge was all Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:35:31] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:35:32] Kurdston is all Mormon.

Margi Dehlin [02:35:33] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [02:35:33] Carson's all Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:35:34] There's a Mormon temple there. One of the first Mormon temples ever built was in Karsten.

Ben Jalaff [02:35:39] And three weeks into my mission, I went on exchanges with the soul leaders. And that was the first time. We're walking and this dude shows up from nowhere, and he starts telling us, your golden Bible this, your golden Bible that. Your prophet translated using a magic rock and translated the Book of Mormon using that magic rock. And I'm like, okay, that's funny. Sounded funny. My companion at the time, who was a soul kneader, like, because we're on exchanges, he thought it was hilarious. Story short, it became within our zone. It became a funny story of the guy with the crazy rock and the story. And I'm looking at the reactions of those guys, and they certainly looked like they didn't know anything about it, because I remember, like, a rock, a magic rock. I'm picturing Joseph Smith. I got the Flip O Rama with Joseph translating the Book of Mormon with his finger. So I didn't quantify that. That's the first thing, which will come up a lot later.

John Dehlin [02:36:38] So can I just mention the south park episode that accurately depicted Joseph Smith looking at the stone in the hat that came out in 2003. I just googled it. So about four years before your mission

Ben Jalaff [02:36:49] starts, he said South Park. He said he watched it, which make the story even funnier, because I knew what South Park. I watched it as a Mormon.

Justine Jalaff [02:36:55] I had seen that episode as a teenager.

Ben Jalaff [02:36:57] I had no boundaries of what I watched. When I was active Mormon, I watched south park, but I never watched that episode for some reason because it was anti Mormon. But it was one of those things that I laugh hysterically because I thought it was crazy.

John Dehlin [02:37:10] But actually, they got the Book of Mormon translation. South park got the Book of Mormon translation. Right. When the church had inappropriately mistaught that translation for over 100.

Justine Jalaff [02:37:21] I remember I was just switching through the cable Channels and South park was like this cartoon I knew was inappropriate but was also kind of funny. And so I ended up watching this episode that was about the Mormons and it was the Rock and a Hat episode. And I remember distinctly saying out loud in anger, oh, they're just mocking us. They're just mocking, making fun of us. This is just anti Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:37:44] But also making stuff up because none

Justine Jalaff [02:37:46] of us have no, they're just making that up.

John Dehlin [02:37:48] Yeah, yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:37:48] Cuz I had never been taught that. There is something about Ben's mission I do want to touch on. He's making it sound like he went out there and he didn't know anything. There's a point where he did become committed.

Ben Jalaff [02:38:01] Well, that comes in a second here.

Justine Jalaff [02:38:03] Oh, you're going to get there.

Margi Dehlin [02:38:03] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:38:04] Okay. He does become like a really good missionary.

Ben Jalaff [02:38:09] I heard that. That's the first strike.

John Dehlin [02:38:11] So this anti Mormon comes up, makes fun of the stone in the hat and you conclude that he's lying, that he's just crazy.

Ben Jalaff [02:38:18] And then the next thing, this did something and I'm not going to share too much of it because of privacy, but I went to my third area and I met a homosexual person that we were teaching. Again, this is my me being ill prepared about policies. I don't know anything. We're teaching this guy and I don't know where. After we're done the lessons, he has to have a special interview with the district leader and the meeting takes forever. And this has never happened with my investigators. They usually get interview and they're done. About an hour later he comes out and he says, oh, he needs to meet with the mission president.

Justine Jalaff [02:38:59] Why?

Ben Jalaff [02:39:00] Oh yeah, because he's an homosexual.

Margi Dehlin [02:39:03] Okay.

Ben Jalaff [02:39:03] What does that mean? Oh, you know, family proclamation. You know, homosexuality can happen. Where does it say that? And then pull out the proclamation and show it to me again. Quantify like here. And this dissipates in my ear. I'm not understanding this. I thought God opened his door. Come in. The more the better. But now you're telling me he can join because he's gay. Yeah, I'm not processing that.

Margi Dehlin [02:39:29] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [02:39:30] And he goes and has an interview with the mission president. He comes out and I find out, oh yeah, he's going to be baptized. Because he had agreed to not practice homosexuality when he said that. I'm a junior companion, so I got no pull. But my subconsciousness, which the church taught me was Satan is telling me, well, Ben, you need to say something to him. Tell him not to join. I went to bed. Tell him not to join. Ben, tell him not to join. Tell him not to join.

John Dehlin [02:40:06] Because why?

Ben Jalaff [02:40:07] Because I didn't agree. Like, you're telling a person not to love. You're telling a person not to be gay. How do you do this? It's like you're telling me you're not allowed to date. Wait, what? To me, it's just like, no, this doesn't feel right. It feels off. Intuition telling me I'm a junior companion that ended in tragedy later. I'm not going to say what happened, but I went to my father a few months back because I told my dad, like, it's when my anger got really bad. I almost drove to the chapel in London, like, because I had a rock in my hand. Like, I'm going to throw this at it. When I found out, like, my intuition told me no, I didn't say what

Justine Jalaff [02:40:51] happened to that man.

Ben Jalaff [02:40:53] I'm not saying it.

Justine Jalaff [02:40:54] No, I mean. But that's why you were angry.

Ben Jalaff [02:40:56] Yeah, I was angry. I just.

Justine Jalaff [02:40:58] And that man did end up getting baptized and joining the church.

Ben Jalaff [02:41:00] My intuition told me to say no to him and I didn't follow it. And don't fucking tell me that was Satan. That was me. Me telling me, ben, say something, man. And I didn't man up to this day. And Justine tells me I have to heal. But to this day, I just did not follow my intuition. And it cost somebody. This is why Margi and John, sometimes I sit and just like, no, that was a big one on my mission. That was a big one that shook me. What that had done, though, is. Is awoke the other Ben again.

Margi Dehlin [02:41:48] Yeah, yeah.

Ben Jalaff [02:41:50] Now you have Mormon Ben, who's a missionary, but now you have Ben, who is trying to lead me, like, with. With your brain. Then the numbers came up. Oh, you had to focus on the numbers and stuff. And that's where things went south sour with me and the mission.

John Dehlin [02:42:09] Meaning your mission president was number baptism focused.

Ben Jalaff [02:42:12] Yeah, like, he wanted me to extend baptismal dates the first time I met someone.

John Dehlin [02:42:17] Like, to invite people, investigators to get baptized the day you meet them.

Ben Jalaff [02:42:20] How do I do this? Do I like, hey, nice to meet you. My name is Elder Holofs. This is Elder so and so. Hey, we have baptismal fun filled for next week if you want to do this.

John Dehlin [02:42:28] No, that's a real thing.

Ben Jalaff [02:42:30] Like, how do I do this? So I never did it. And I will get in trouble so many times with the phone calls from the soul leaders and Elder Halav. How many lessons do you teach? Well, if you want me to Give you the bullcrap answer. I probably taught 20, but realistically, I would probably say two or three. And they had just given up because I just. I could not stand for this. This sounds false. Quality over quantity was my thing. If I'm baptizing people, I want quality, people that will stay, not quantity. Hey, I'm going to baptize hundreds. How many of those are going to stay active? That's how I thought. And it just became this wrestling thing with me and leadership. And I believe to this day that's the reason why I never became a district leader or a soul leader, because I was a no person.

Justine Jalaff [02:43:17] He would get in fights with his mission president.

Ben Jalaff [02:43:19] I got into fights with him. Arguments over what he was just trying to tell me that this is how I need to do it. I remember one day I told him, hey, man, if I'm paying you ten grand to be here, you can send me home. But I like to think I've been out for, what, 10 months? That's half of what I paid to be here. So do I get that money back just because that's how I'm thinking now, Like, I'm trying to be the best I can be. You're telling me to do something that goes against my nature. I don't want to do this number thing because I feel like it's not right.

Justine Jalaff [02:43:53] Yeah. And what happened as a result of that? You breaking not following the numbers and not extending the baptism and actually getting to know people and becoming people's friends. Like, what happened?

Ben Jalaff [02:44:06] I don't. I don't think I want to brag about this because I look at it differently now, but I had a lot of success as a missionary.

John Dehlin [02:44:13] You had a lot of baptisms, and

Ben Jalaff [02:44:14] I did that on my own. I did that without a sales pitch. I will sit like I'm sitting with you guys, and I'm getting to know you first, like you did. Hey, Ben, you're a Blue Jays fan? Yeah. I will look and look at things I can talk to people about. Oh, you're a Calgary Flames fan. Hey, this player's not performing well. And I'm starting talking to them so I can open a path of friendship, because to me, I'm looking at it. I need you to trust me because I'm going to tell you a fantastical story. I like you to believe me, but some missionaries will do the sales pitch. And to me, it just felt like it's not genuine, and. And I was getting results by just doing my own thing, and I had to bring out to the zone leaders a bunch of times. They will do the numbers thing and I will ask how many baptisms you have. Elder this. Well, I got this many. Tell me which pitch works best. Just because I was so angry that you're telling me something that is failing you already. My method is working. I don't understand this and I just. I love my mission, but I love my mission because I feel like I connected with myself.

Margi Dehlin [02:45:21] Yeah. It kind of awakened you.

Ben Jalaff [02:45:24] Yeah, it really did. Because I felt like I could do this different. It's one of those things that you start thinking I can change things. I can definitely make changes here.

Justine Jalaff [02:45:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:45:34] It does surprise me a little bit that you never made district your zone leader if your baptism numbers were high, because I would think that that would be the number your mission president would care the most about. But the truth is, I know better. The most important thing in Mormonism is obedience to authority.

Ben Jalaff [02:45:49] Yeah. No.

John Dehlin [02:45:50] And you weren't being obedient.

Justine Jalaff [02:45:52] He's not a yes man. He's never been a yes man. And that will play in callings further down the line.

Ben Jalaff [02:45:57] I wasn't disobedient. I followed the rules. I was a hard worker, but I didn't if it didn't feel right. And again, what we're discussing is my true self came out and like, hey, this doesn't make sense. So I'm not going to do it. He led my mission and I am glad that that person led me because I felt like, hey, it's giving me success, it's working, you know, and yeah, but I never made leadership. I was made trainer. That's as far as I went.

John Dehlin [02:46:25] Unbelievable.

Ben Jalaff [02:46:26] I didn't. And to me, I'm a prideful person a little bit. I wanted those things. I want to be a district leader and I want to be a soul leader because I feel like it's validation of my hard work. If you're at a job, you're not going to be working as a lower tier worker until you retire. You want to keep climbing the ladder, otherwise you got no ambition. In Mormonism, I had some level of ambition. Like if I go on a mission, I want to climb that ladder so I can go home and tell people like, oh yeah, I went here and I went here because I'm looking at value. I'm looking at what it might do to me when I come home. But I didn't felt like I was valuing the mission. It just hit a wall. And that was it. Because I wasn't a yes man. It hurt me. It hurt My pride.

Margi Dehlin [02:47:12] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [02:47:13] Really did.

John Dehlin [02:47:14] But it also started waking you up.

Ben Jalaff [02:47:16] It did because.

Justine Jalaff [02:47:18] Well, it indoctrinated him and woke him up at the same time. Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [02:47:23] It created at this balance that will essentially begin my faith crisis during my mission. And we're not talking about me getting into true claims on my mission, but it started something, I think it was

Justine Jalaff [02:47:36] like, this is how I'm going to be me in Mormonism.

Ben Jalaff [02:47:39] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:47:40] And I'm just going to keep being me.

Margi Dehlin [02:47:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:47:44] Which is ultimately dangerous to a Mormon testimony to start listening to yourself over the external direction.

Margi Dehlin [02:47:54] Having an existence of a self that's not fully merged with the Mormon identity that Mormonism creates is a threat.

Ben Jalaff [02:48:03] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:48:04] Long term. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:48:05] Okay. Anything else from your mission you want

Margi Dehlin [02:48:08] to share in the best way?

Ben Jalaff [02:48:11] My exit interview messed me up pretty bad. And it goes back to what my parents said when my parents told me, hey, you're going to miss college and all that stuff. Yeah. I went on a mission and at the end of my mission, I didn't know what I was doing. Like, I'm about to leave, I'm about to go home. Oh. Keep in mind that I have not written my parents. I stopped writing them, which I got in trouble with my mission president about it because again, my parents are not having any value to me. They're inactive. My exit interview goes back to what my parents said of being ill prepared about college and all that. I sit with my mission president, who was a guy that just came into the mission like he was two weeks fresh as a mission president. So I didn't connect with him. And I. And he asked me, elder Halav, what are you going to do when you go home, man? I was honest with him. I don't know, find a job, maybe go to college. I have no idea what I'm doing. I just got to figure myself out. And he stopped me and he said, wait a second, you're missing the whole point, and goes on this rant about eternal marriage. I have to go home and I need to find a wife and I need to get married right away. Mormon wife. Mormon wife. And story short, he sent me home with. I got no tools. You know, two mission is a two year mission and you come home and you're already feeling displaced for a good while. And I'm supposed to find an eternal companion right. When I step off the plane. It just sent me into a. A path that. We'll discuss that when it comes up. But it started my. My Mormonism got really bad after I came home from a mission. It just did not do me any favors.

John Dehlin [02:50:04] Your Mormonism, Gaba.

Ben Jalaff [02:50:05] Yeah. Like, you think you come home after the mission and you'll be this again, this powerful person to share. And I come home to parents that are not active. Most of my friends are still serving for a while, and they're slowly coming home. But then now I'm supposed to again, it brings it to the Hunger Games. My friends are coming home. I'm home. And the next step is marriage in a very small bubble with very limited options.

Margi Dehlin [02:50:30] Right.

John Dehlin [02:50:31] How does that tie to the Hunger Games? I want to make sure I understand the questions.

Ben Jalaff [02:50:33] Well, like, you have all my friends coming home, and they all have the same mentality. They got to find a future wife. Very limited options with the girls that are available in London and in the stake. And I felt like, again, competing. Oh, and now I'm not competing for a girl. I'm competing against my own friend.

Margi Dehlin [02:50:53] That's right.

Justine Jalaff [02:50:54] You're also competing for your eternal life.

Ben Jalaff [02:50:56] And I'm. Yeah, exactly.

Justine Jalaff [02:50:58] So now I got to find the Mormon girl.

Margi Dehlin [02:51:01] And there's. I would imagine there's like, that leftover feeling from, like, feeling not chosen also. So you're like, I have a sense for how hard this could be. He's making it seem like a very simple thing. Go home, get married. But, like, you know, remembering that for you, this is not an easy.

Justine Jalaff [02:51:22] Like, he couldn't even date as a teenager in Mormonism.

Margi Dehlin [02:51:25] That's right.

Justine Jalaff [02:51:25] How's he supposed to come home and get married in Mormonism?

Margi Dehlin [02:51:27] How is that something that you feel like you can control?

Ben Jalaff [02:51:31] It was terrible. I come home and again, this is. I want to say this because I know my friends are watching this. And like I told you in the very beginning, I'm not holding back. But what that did was set me off in a path of any girl that I would see. Oh, I wonder if I could marry her. Every girl. Oh, I want to marry her. Oh, she's good. She's valuable. I was just so.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:00] Yes. Focused.

Ben Jalaff [02:52:02] Focused. My friends sometimes will make fun of

Justine Jalaff [02:52:05] it, and there is a level of, like, desperation.

Ben Jalaff [02:52:07] I look desperate, and my friends will look at that desperation and sometimes make fun of it. Not even in a malicious way. But I'm looking at it now, like, yeah, it was very, very harmful to be that way and to feel like you're acting desperate in the eyes of so many people. It just became this thing where, like, why am I not good enough? I just did this for two years. And you learn as a missionary. The better you are, the more Focused you are, the more results you have. You find these results at home and I'm not seeing any.

Justine Jalaff [02:52:43] And you'll get blessed from your mission by finding an eternal companion.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:46] Yeah, that's the transactional kind of nature of you give this, you get that. You give this, you get that. Oftentimes it fails.

John Dehlin [02:52:55] Yeah, it's a joke. Elders and sisters will tell each other. The better missionary I am, the hotter my future wife or husband will be. Right.

Ben Jalaff [02:53:03] Well, that paid off at the end with her. Awesome. But at that time, it just certainly didn't feel that way. I had not have a girl tell me that I am good looking. I had not a girl just tell me these things that will bring me joy. I'm chasing this girl from my mission that I met, a sister missionary just because in my mind as well, I'm thinking, oh, if I date a girl like her, my eternity is secure. So I'm also have a list now in my mind of what I want because I feel like if I'm going to find an eternal companion, she has to be a good mom, a good wife. She served a mission, so that's plus on my book. But not even thinking, am I even attracted to this girl physically or am I just seeing the eye of the beholder? I think, oh, she's a good member checklist. I'm good. And not even thinking, am I clicking with this girl? It's just some of those things again. When I came home from my mission, I will, I will look at it as like, yeah, things were starting to crumble very, very, very fast then.

John Dehlin [02:54:09] Yeah, okay, it sounds like you had a great mission in terms of baptisms, but you didn't come home feeling like you had a successful mission.

Ben Jalaff [02:54:20] No, because they're promising me that my success will bring me blessings. I'm not, certainly not seeing any. When I came home. My parents are inactive. They still look like the enemy to me. I'm not clicking in with my own parents and I'm not seeing the Mormon success right away. You know, I'm coming home and my friends are coming home and they've started dating right away. They're seeing the success and I'm still not experiencing that.

Justine Jalaff [02:54:43] They're also dating girls that you liked and I'm also.

Ben Jalaff [02:54:46] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:54:46] That you just took a step back because they went and said they like her.

Ben Jalaff [02:54:50] So whenever I like a girl I'm like, I'll stay away because he's a friend of mine and I want to ruffle the feathers. And again, it's just, I just wasn't seeing them like all this hard work, what's going on here? Like, I'm not feeling the blessings coming. I still don't have a career. I don't have a pool for my parents words as prophetic. I came home, I don't know what I'm doing. And my friends from school who were perceived the danger were moving on with careers because they went to college, they got ahead of the game, and here I am. I feel like I'm way behind the ball here.

John Dehlin [02:55:24] Got it.

Margi Dehlin [02:55:25] That totally makes sense.

John Dehlin [02:55:27] Should we do your mission now?

Justine Jalaff [02:55:28] Justine, real quick, do you have time?

John Dehlin [02:55:30] Yeah, just real quick. I mean, just the important points, you know, because you would have gone after he come home or would you have left while he was there?

Ben Jalaff [02:55:38] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [02:55:39] So Ben came home from his mission and I was. I was in school for Alberta, and then I came back to Ontario for about a month waiting for my visa to go to the States for my mission. So we hung out in between that time as friends.

John Dehlin [02:55:52] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [02:55:52] And then I went off on my mission.

John Dehlin [02:55:53] And where were you called to?

Justine Jalaff [02:55:54] Washington. Everett.

John Dehlin [02:55:56] So Washington State?

Justine Jalaff [02:55:58] Yeah. The Everett mission. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:56:00] And how, you know, how would you summarize your MTC mission experience?

Justine Jalaff [02:56:05] So I was so green and I just wanted to be so good. And I always thought I was going to serve a mission. I was told that my baby blessing said I was going to serve a mission. I had spiritual experiences where I felt I was called to serve. Those who have a desire are called to the work. I felt like I had a desire. I felt like I was called to the work. I had an older sister who served in denmark and she's 12 years older than me. And I constantly heard her success stories as a 10 year old. And so I thought I would have that too. And so I just went out ready to change the world and spread the gospel. And that did not happen for me.

Ben Jalaff [02:56:50] No?

Justine Jalaff [02:56:50] No. My mission was very number focused, which put so much pressure on me because I just wanted to do. I've always wanted to do what they asked me to do. That was my definition of being good. And they were asking me to follow these numbers, but I didn't agree with the numbers. And they were making me feel so much stress, stress and pressure. And they were making me feel like shit. Like I felt like I suck because it's. They call it the godless North. Like.

John Dehlin [02:57:27] Call what the godless north?

Justine Jalaff [02:57:28] Washington state. Oh, my mission. They called it the godless north.

John Dehlin [02:57:32] Why?

Justine Jalaff [02:57:33] Because people didn't believe in God and people didn't want to join the Church,

John Dehlin [02:57:38] just secular, more secular.

Justine Jalaff [02:57:41] I don't know. That's just what they said on my mission. And so I just. And also sister missionaries, we always got vehicles. And we were not put in urban communities, we were put in rural communities. So we were literally put in these small, spaced out towns that very low baptizing success. And so I had like my district leaders who were in Everett who were baptizing like crazy because, you know, they're in the city. And then here I am, just slaving away, slaving away, not baptizing, not finding people to teach, putting myself down. And then our mission had this standard that you had to meet every month of numbers. If you didn't meet that, you just felt like a failure. And I remember my one. And then a big thing on my mission was also the send out the baptism invitation. The first time you have a lesson that was like drilled because my trainer and I went to like a training conference for all the people being trained and their trainers and our mission president literally sat everyone down and chastised everyone for not doing it. So that was like my introduction to the mission. But I didn't agree with it. I didn't understand it. I was like, how can I extend the baptismal invitation? They don't even know what that is. I don't understand this. I don't understand the numbers. I don't understand this pressure. I thought I was just going to go love and serve people and spread the gospel. Why is this happening? And why do I feel so unhappy? And just then we got a new mission president. And I remember telling my companion, I think. I think this one's going to be all about love. I just have this feeling he's going to be all about love. And he comes in and of course he does. He gives a talk about charity and love. And then he gets rid of the mission standards. He makes them blank. He gives us like a. Like a plastic paper copy that's blank and you just fill it in on your own. And I was like, oh, my goodness, yes.

John Dehlin [02:59:55] Yes.

Justine Jalaff [02:59:55] Finally. And then an area authority came in like a month later and told him he had to put it back. And I was like, oh, okay.

John Dehlin [03:00:03] He was trying to have missionaries be more self driven.

Margi Dehlin [03:00:06] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [03:00:07] And just like make their own goals that were according to their area. And he understood that the standard didn't work for all the areas.

John Dehlin [03:00:14] When you say standard, do you mean like the numbers?

Justine Jalaff [03:00:17] The numbers, Baptism lessons, invitations.

John Dehlin [03:00:21] So there was like, every area had a quantity.

Justine Jalaff [03:00:24] The whole mission as a whole had a standard which Was. Which was the same numbers.

John Dehlin [03:00:28] What were those numbers?

Justine Jalaff [03:00:29] I can't remember. I think it was like one baptism a month, certain amount of lessons, a certain amount of invitations.

John Dehlin [03:00:36] So, X number of lessons a week. X number of invitations to baptism a week. X number of baptisms a month. And yeah, areas can vary wildly. If you're in an area with, you know, people of lower socioeconomic status, maybe who are immigrants, you could baptize many in a month. Or you could be in a more affluent area with more educated people who just. You could. You'd be lucky to get one.

Justine Jalaff [03:01:04] So the sister missionaries were put in

John Dehlin [03:01:06] the more affluent areas because they'd be, quote, safer.

Justine Jalaff [03:01:08] They'd be safer. And the elders were put in the more non safe areas. And they had the higher baptisms.

John Dehlin [03:01:13] Yeah. Which made you feel bad.

Justine Jalaff [03:01:16] Made me feel bad.

John Dehlin [03:01:17] But they had the same standards.

Justine Jalaff [03:01:19] But we all had the same standards that we had to meet.

John Dehlin [03:01:21] But then when your new mission president tried to allow you to set goals based on your area and according to your heart and your understanding of your local situation and what you personally think you could achieve, then the area authority came in and changed them all back,

Justine Jalaff [03:01:38] said, no, you have to have this.

John Dehlin [03:01:39] Wow, that's crazy.

Justine Jalaff [03:01:41] And I was like, what?

John Dehlin [03:01:42] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [03:01:43] Felt like whiplash. And so I really, really struggled with that. And so eventually I got to the end of my mission, and I told myself, you know what? There's only so much I can control. I can control if I talk to everyone I see. I can control if I smile at people. I can control how I serve and how I talk to people and how I teach the lessons. And so at the end of my mission, I was like, I can't live like this anymore. And I told myself it's between me and God, and he knows how hard I've worked and that he can be proud of me at the end of every single day. And I had to tell myself that over and over and over again so that I wouldn't fall into a state of depression that God is proud of me, he loves me and know I am a really good missionary, even if I don't have the numbers, even if I don't have the baptisms, even if I'm not having the six that I was taught and thought I was destined to have. So. So I would say I also saw my mission as an erasure of myself, because I just wanted to be obedient. Obedient was drilled into us. Obedient. Exact obedience will get you the blessings. Exact obedience will get you the baptisms and I'm like, well, I'm being so obedient to the point where I'm exercising in the morning and I feel like a crippled old lady walking up this hill trying to get exercise because so physically spent. I worked myself to the ground physically, mentally, emotionally. And I came home and I didn't even know who I was anymore. And that brings us to us when we started dating.

Margi Dehlin [03:03:35] I think that's so interesting because in a way then you both hit up against the rigidity of the system on your missions in different ways, but you both did.

Justine Jalaff [03:03:48] You both gave.

Margi Dehlin [03:03:49] Worked very hard. You both gave it your all. You both like, really, really engaged with that process and walked away feeling like, wow, I totally fit. I was not valued.

Ben Jalaff [03:04:01] And there's nothing wrong with seeking a

Justine Jalaff [03:04:05] payoff, wanting the validation when you sacrifice so much.

Ben Jalaff [03:04:11] Am I wrong here to think like, hey, where's my cheese? I mean, come on, like, this is a two year mission. Just give me something.

John Dehlin [03:04:19] 10 grand's a lot.

Ben Jalaff [03:04:20] Exactly.

John Dehlin [03:04:21] In two years. 10 grand in two years.

Ben Jalaff [03:04:23] And then you mentioned like the church with all this money. We're going out there with all money. Well, actually my parents money, you know, and yours. And to me it's just like, where is my payoff here? It's not like I'm going the deep end to be completely a terrible missionary. I work hard. Just give me something, give me value. Give me a district leader calling me just to appease Elder Halo because you know he's doing something. It's just he never gave me that. Am I wrong to think that. Why am I so wrong to seek for this? Because this is what actually started to drive me away from the church. Is that. How much can I do for you? You're not doing anything back for me.

Margi Dehlin [03:05:13] Yeah, that's right.

Ben Jalaff [03:05:14] You're making me feel like shit. So. Oh, man, I'm getting there again.

Justine Jalaff [03:05:20] That's part of our deconstruction. So we'll get there.

Margi Dehlin [03:05:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:05:25] All right. Yeah. Maven just sent us the note that we're promised. The Lord is bound when you do what he says. In other words, we're promised some reciprocal blessing.

Margi Dehlin [03:05:34] That's right. It would be different if from the beginning, they never offered. They didn't promise. So it was like informed consent. You're going to go on a mission, you'll work hard, you're probably not going to get a lot. You're not going to. That's different. But you are promised things. You are promised things that you want, like really badly. And so it's Kind of what happens when the process, I think, breaks down so that there's nothing there for you to connect to that keeps you going. And then even after, when you get home, you're kind of like, yeah, I'm not. I'm not seeing any of those promises you promised coming true.

John Dehlin [03:06:09] Although you both got your eternal companions, so you did get the promise. So how did y' all end up getting married? I want to hear that story.

Coming Home and Ben and Justine's Love Story

Justine Jalaff [03:06:21] So it begins with me coming home from my mission and a bit of a funny story. My sister. So they came and they picked me up in Buffalo Airport to go across to Niagara Falls. And on the way, while we were crossing the border, my sister's like, ben just keeps calling the house, and I keep telling him, you're not home from your mission and you're not even released yet. And I was like, oh, Ben is around.

John Dehlin [03:06:48] Did you all write?

Ben Jalaff [03:06:50] Yeah, just once. I wrote her. I wrote her once.

Justine Jalaff [03:06:52] He wrote me once when he was in Alberta and I was in Edmonton for school.

John Dehlin [03:06:55] Okay.

Justine Jalaff [03:06:56] And then I wrote him while I was on my mission. I did. Yeah, a couple times.

Ben Jalaff [03:07:01] That was something. I'll tell you in a bit here. I got that letter when I was dating a girl at the time who

Justine Jalaff [03:07:06] was not a member. Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [03:07:07] Who was not a member. And I got so excited about the letter with Justine that I didn't even notice that she had gotten upset and left the house. Because here I am having mail from Justine and like, oh, man.

John Dehlin [03:07:18] Your girl. The girl you were dating, you're reading a letter from Justine.

Ben Jalaff [03:07:22] Yeah. I must have said some consciously to her. This is my first love. Oh. And I wasn't thinking. It's just. I got a letter from her, and it just a. Whoa.

Margi Dehlin [03:07:29] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [03:07:30] There's something in me that wanted to write to Ben. We were friends, so.

John Dehlin [03:07:34] All right.

Justine Jalaff [03:07:35] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:07:35] I actually kind of love that. For your love story, your life story, that it started with friendship. Because what we're learning about how relationships work, longevity wise, is that friendship. The friendship piece oftentimes is the stabilizer for the relationship over the long term.

Justine Jalaff [03:07:56] We had the friendship piece. We had the youth memories together with the same group of friends. We knew each other. We knew each other's families. And so I come home from my mission, and I really struggled because the day I came home from my mission, my grandma passed away. My mom literally came from my grandma's deathbed to come pick me up. After watching her mom die, she came and picked me up at the airport. So I came home to my grandma's funeral. And that did not help me in navigating. Coming back to real life. It kind of put me in this state of. I can't say depression, but a state of dismotivation and feeling unhappy. And I just. Yeah, I didn't really know what was going on with me. And then Ben called, and he was in Utah at the time selling pest control. So he called from Utah to talk to me. And talking to him felt like I was seen for the very first time. Like, this guy sees me somehow through the phone by what he's telling me, he was basically validating me and telling me everything I couldn't. He's very good with words. So he was putting into words everything my heart was feeling and thinking that I could not put into words. And I would just. I was just, like, on this phone call, like, yes, yes, exactly. Yes. That's. Yes. And. And. And that was the first time I felt like I was coming back into myself, was having that phone call with Ben.

John Dehlin [03:09:39] Yeah. Wow.

Margi Dehlin [03:09:40] It's meaningful.

Ben Jalaff [03:09:42] Yeah. I just. That mentality like, oh, she's coming home. I gotta jump this very quickly here.

Justine Jalaff [03:09:51] Even though you were in Utah?

Ben Jalaff [03:09:52] Even though I was in Utah. But, like. But again, the reason why I was in Utah to sell pest control was because I'm also trying to date someone because I kind of given up in Ontario, and I got this opportunity to come to Utah. Like, oh, there are a lot of girls there, you know, so I'm gonna go there and do that. But when she came home and I talked to her on the phone for three hours, it's just something in my brain click. Like, oh, man, I gotta get out of here. You know? And I remember I told my boss at the time, like, hey, you know, there's this girl at home. And he asked me to go to the temple to pray about it.

Margi Dehlin [03:10:24] And your boss did?

Ben Jalaff [03:10:26] Yeah, because he.

Justine Jalaff [03:10:27] It was.

Ben Jalaff [03:10:27] It's called Sage Pest Control. And he was a member of the church and he ran it, and he got a bunch of missionaries in Utah. And those missionaries knew me, and they thought, oh, man, Elder who. I've had a lot of success in the mission. He'll be good at selling this. And I showed up in here to do that. But when I talk to her, it derailed everything. And then I go and tell my boss, oh, yeah, go to the temple and pray about it. I went to the temple, like, hey, can I go home, God? And I just. Right away, yeah, I wasn't thinking. And then I went.

Justine Jalaff [03:11:00] Well, at the time, he framed it as a very Big spiritual experience. But he really just wanted to come home.

Ben Jalaff [03:11:07] I just wanted to come home. I thought that, you know what? This is a great opportunity. She just came home from a mission. I just talked to her on the phone for three hours. And it felt like for the first time me and Justine had talked. And it felt good. It didn't feel odd. I didn't feel awkward. Awkward. I felt great.

John Dehlin [03:11:25] And Justine, what made you open to liking Ben?

Margi Dehlin [03:11:28] So.

Justine Jalaff [03:11:29] I did not like him at that time.

John Dehlin [03:11:30] Okay. Okay.

Justine Jalaff [03:11:30] We were friends.

John Dehlin [03:11:31] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [03:11:32] And then he. We talked again.

Ben Jalaff [03:11:36] Oh.

Justine Jalaff [03:11:36] I called him while he was in Utah crying. And he took that as a sign that I liked him. So he flew back from Utah to date me, to ask me out on a date. And to make a story short, because it's a bit of a long story, we did end up going out on a date. And I actually had my eye on someone in Alberta. So I wasn't planning on living in Ontario. I had one year left in my degree. I was only going to be in Ontario for three weeks. And I was going to move back to Alberta, and I was going to go see what would happen with this guy in Alberta. And then here comes Ben calling me at like midnight, telling me he's home and asking me, please, can we go on a date? And I remember getting off the phone and waking my mom up, my mom up at one in the morning and saying, should I go on a date with him? Like, I'm not even gonna stick around. And she's like, just give him a chance.

Ben Jalaff [03:12:41] Yeah. So.

Justine Jalaff [03:12:42] So I did. We. Ben ended up. I don't know why. This was our date. Driving all the way from London to pick me up in Niagara Falls to drive me to drive us all the way back to London to have our date. I think. Cause you had to work that.

Ben Jalaff [03:12:58] I wasn't thinking. I remember what it was.

Justine Jalaff [03:13:00] And he planned this whole day in London. And what ended up happening was like, I'm fresh from my mission. I don't know what I want, who I am. I think I'm going back to Alberta. I don't want anything to do with Ontario. Like, Alberta is the place to be. And here I have been, like, opening up to me on this day and basically. Can I use the word beg?

Ben Jalaff [03:13:25] Yep.

Justine Jalaff [03:13:26] Basically begging me to give him a chance. And I'm. I'm sorry. I. I'm like, I was a bit of a snob. Let's just admit it. Like, I was like, I thought it was better than Ben. And like, I'm just like, I'M just like, you know what? I'm just gonna tell him that I'll give him a chance so he leaves me alone. So I told him, okay, yeah, like, definitely. Like, if I come back from Alberta and nothing happens, I'll get like, yeah, definitely, we can. He's like, yes, I just need hope. I just needed hope. And then. And. But then what ends up happening on the same date? Like, this is how contradictory I was. Like, I mean, literally rejecting him. And then the next moment, we're watching a movie and I'm cuddling him. Like, I just. It was like my heart wanted one thing and my mind was telling me something else. Like, my heart wanted to be. Something in my heart was growing, gravitating towards Ben, but my brain was telling me, no, you got to go to Alberta. No, you got to go. This guy. Anyways, we ended up. Ben ended up kissing me. A very innocent, sweet kiss, nothing more. And I said it was the best first kiss of my life. And after that moment, I was hooked.

Margi Dehlin [03:14:36] Yeah, really hooked.

John Dehlin [03:14:40] It worked.

Ben Jalaff [03:14:41] I did it finally.

John Dehlin [03:14:43] Louisa.

Ben Jalaff [03:14:44] Yeah. That was a really weird date, now that I think about it. Yeah, it's great. It's funny to me. It's just like, that was a really weird date. It ended well, though.

Justine Jalaff [03:14:55] But let's just get serious for a moment. You never should have had. Too big. Yeah, that never should have happened. And I never should have been in a position where I thought, oh, I'll just give him a chance. That never should have happened. Yeah, it was. It has been a funny story for so long, and since deconstructing, I'm like, no, that never should have happened.

John Dehlin [03:15:16] What do you think that was about?

Justine Jalaff [03:15:18] That was about him not fitting the mold, him not having success dating in the Mormon bubble, him being so desperate that he felt like he had to fly back from Utah, give up money because he was making good money. And so he quit midway to see if he could have a chance with this girl he's liked since he was 15 years old who never gave him a chance. But because of that one phone call, he's gonna fly back and see if he can make this work with the girl who fits everything. Who's the rm. Mormon girl from Ontario. And he never should have had to do that.

Margi Dehlin [03:15:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:15:59] How much of that. I don't want to interject this if it doesn't fit, but how much of that was about race, do you think? Or perceptions of.

Justine Jalaff [03:16:05] I don't think. I don't know if it was a race, but just about, like, perception, like, like, like I, I'm gonna marry an Alberta boy who's obviously white and going to be an engineer. And here I have Ben, who I know full well was a refugee to the country, who still doesn't even know what he's going to do for his education. Like he, he, he, he wasn't going to. Like I needed to marry someone who could provide, who could make good money if I could, if I needed to be a stay at home mom. Right. I don't know if I was actually thinking that, but that's everything I internalized. But what ended up happening is that I ended up being with Ben because he made me feel like me. That's why I got hooked. Ben made me feel like me. He was the only person I felt comfortable around. He made me laugh, he, he made me feel beautiful. And I knew that he would always be loyal. For some reason at the time, his loyalty was very important to me. And so I was looking at him as, he's going, he's my compan, he's going to be a companion. I wasn't looking at him as a provider or a priesthood holder, although he was a priesthood holder and he was an rm. But he also just made me feel like me.

Margi Dehlin [03:17:30] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [03:17:31] When I had come from an experience that had erased me. I don't think Ben and I ever would have dated if I hadn't served a mission. I don't think it ever would have happened.

Margi Dehlin [03:17:44] I think that's so interesting to kind of consider what, how your life sometimes lines up to provide circumstances that either, I don't know, bring certain things to the forefront of your mind as being important. That maybe. And also here, like, I think it's important to acknowledge that you went off script from Mormonism in this way at this time, which would end up not

Justine Jalaff [03:18:10] working out later financially.

Margi Dehlin [03:18:15] Yeah, maybe in some. But also like the things that you did prioritize if we're going to look at relationships, like some of those things that make relationships work that actually are valuable, you chose those things off script where more and more you see when people stay on script and do it because he's a returned missionary and he's a strong priesthood leader and he'll be a strong provider. Like oftentimes they end up in divorce later. Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [03:18:45] And I like never thought he would never be a provider. I just said I just need to help him be a provider because I've been Canadian my whole life and I have an education, so now I can help him do the same.

John Dehlin [03:18:59] And Ben, how does it feel to be Listening to all this.

Justine Jalaff [03:19:03] He's heard it all before.

Ben Jalaff [03:19:05] Well, one important thing now that we're on this topic really quick is honesty. You know, I listened to that story, and back then, it's like, oh, it's a great story. Justine is 100% right. I should have never begged. But the value I'm going to place myself right now is this. I never in my life, and I've been married to Justine for 13 years now, okay? And I'm saying this with as polite as I could be to everybody that knows me. Nobody ever once told me that Justine was lucky she married me. It was all always the other way around. That bothers me.

John Dehlin [03:19:51] Everyone told you you were lucky. Everybody you got to marry Justine.

Ben Jalaff [03:19:54] That I'm the lucky one. That really, right now hurts my pride. And now we're talking about honesty. That story, what Justine said, I should have never begged. No, I shouldn't have. I should have just go, hey, let's go out, yes or no, and move on. But instead, I am with the confidence of no one to just. If this doesn't work. I remember telling that in my head when I came home from Utah. If it doesn't work with Justine, I'm done.

John Dehlin [03:20:23] Done with what?

Ben Jalaff [03:20:24] With the church. I'm like, I'm done. I need a break. I can't do this. I had dated a non member before Justine. This story is crucial because this girl that I dated at the gym, I met her at the gym, remember seeing her. And for the first time in my life, I felt like my other person took over. Hey, Ben, she's good. Look, isn't she go after her.

John Dehlin [03:20:45] Was she Latina?

Ben Jalaff [03:20:46] No, she was just a girl in the gym that I thought was beautiful. And I went home fighting my feelings. Should I talk to her? Should I talk to her? And then all of a sudden, I felt like, oh, yeah, let's talk to her. I went story short, I end up dating her. And this girl was the very first girl that told me for the first time, oh, I just think you're hot, Ben. Wait a minute. You think I'm good looking? Oh, yeah, you're hot. Whoa. This is new territory to me. I haven't heard this before. So now guess what's happening here. Now there's value entering in my life now. Now I know I can get stuff done, you know? So what happens is, in that moment, dating that non member, I fell in power while the whole entire Mormon world is messaging me, telling me to break up with her because she's dangerous or inferior or inferior.

John Dehlin [03:21:38] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [03:21:39] And truth be told, this girl was the very first girl that make me feel like a million bucks and then yet elect to a scenario where my parents were leaving out of town. Again, my mom and dad, I cannot give them enough praise. They're leaving town and they know my girlfriend's coming over to hang out with me. And my dad comes to me and he puts a condom in my pocket. And then I tell my dad, what are you doing? Well, your girlfriend's coming. You want to be prepared, dad, you know law of chastity. Trust me, man, just keep it. And my dad leaves. Later that night, she wanted to have sex. And I panic to the point of hyperventilating. Didn't happen. The next day, she broke up with me.

Justine Jalaff [03:22:32] Why?

Ben Jalaff [03:22:33] Because in the Mormon world, they will tell you that, oh good, that was Satan tempting me. And I saved myself. But what about her? What about her giving that part her vulnerability and just putting herself out there? What about her feelings? How does a woman feel to be rejected that way? Did I ever compute that? No, in more minutes than I saved myself. And I never thought about her, how

John Dehlin [03:23:02] she felt from her perspective. I didn't know to sex was a rejection of her.

Ben Jalaff [03:23:06] She told me that I'm breaking up with you because what I did was I opened myself to you and you said no.

Justine Jalaff [03:23:14] Then you had been dating for a

Ben Jalaff [03:23:15] while and I've been dating for a while. I'm 23, I'm an adult.

John Dehlin [03:23:19] She's probably the similar age. Yeah, yeah.

Ben Jalaff [03:23:22] And that experience, because in my Mormon brain, well, if I do this, I'm not going to get married. And to this day, you know, I always thought that if I tell Justine that I'd done some things with her, Justine wouldn't marry me. And again with the honesty part is that. I gotta give myself some value that I never felt in Mormonism. And to me it just that what hurt me the most is that to lead to eventually my exit later is that not feeling rewarded for anything I'm doing. And now Justine, she uses the word beg. And we talked about this. Can I use this word? And I told Justine, absolutely, because it highlights how I felt after I came home. Yeah, I was in. I was begging the whole time.

Margi Dehlin [03:24:14] You were desperate.

Ben Jalaff [03:24:14] I was begging.

John Dehlin [03:24:18] I'm remembering. Well, whenever Book of Mormon racism comes up with modern Mormons, this idea that the Book of Mormon is racist because Lamanites were cursed with dark skin because of their wickedness, the common modern Mormon apologetic response is the Book of Mormon isn't racist. It says in there that all are alike unto God. Right. Bond and free, black and white, men and women, whatever. And your story is just reminding me that that may be in the Book of Mormon, but that's not how Mormon culture works. Because an immigrant of color in Mormonism is not of equal status.

Ben Jalaff [03:25:03] No.

John Dehlin [03:25:03] To. To multi generational white.

Justine Jalaff [03:25:06] Not in Ontario.

Ben Jalaff [03:25:09] No.

Justine Jalaff [03:25:10] And also when I started deconstructing, it did hit me. I'm like, ben experienced racism.

John Dehlin [03:25:16] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [03:25:17] That was racism and classism, Right? Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:25:21] Right.

Margi Dehlin [03:25:22] And it was rigged. It was rigged against you from the beginning. You know, it's not like. Because I think what happens is we're wired to think it was us. Like, what am I not doing? What am I not? At least for while we're in the conditioned state, you know, once it starts to fall apart.

Ben Jalaff [03:25:40] I feel like when you said that. And for that to happen, certain things had to happen to unlock that part of my brain. I had. What is the name of that bishop? He's the big guy, the man. I liked his episode. Nick.

Margi Dehlin [03:25:55] The guy.

John Dehlin [03:25:55] Nick Jones.

Ben Jalaff [03:25:56] Yeah. The guy that resigned for the pulpit. Yeah. I remember listening to him about how he wasn't able to tell what was dangerous at the time or not. And for me, I look at his story like, oh, my goodness, that's me. I wasn't able to really tell for the longest time whether I could be of value here until I finally sit with my thoughts and realize what is happening. Why do I not feel validated or important in any scenario in this place? Because to me, on the outside, I feel like I could be of value. But whenever. And again, this comes back to that ex girlfriend of mine. The whole Mormon world was decrying me to break up with her when they didn't even know what I was feeling. I finally feel validated. Give me a break here. And then she breaks up with me and straight back to low confidence. But you know what got me to date Justine and called her a bunch of times was that ex girlfriend. Wait a minute, I already done this. I think I could do it again. I think I could do this again.

John Dehlin [03:27:05] So she helped you?

Ben Jalaff [03:27:06] Yeah, she helped immensely.

John Dehlin [03:27:08] That would give you confidence that the church wouldn't give you.

Justine Jalaff [03:27:10] It always amaz annoyed me when Ben would come home and he would hang out with his friends, and he's like, oh, everyone just praises you so much, Justine. And everyone just tells me how lucky I am to be married to you. And I'd be like, that's. It was not luck. You made it happen.

Ben Jalaff [03:27:27] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [03:27:29] You made it happen.

John Dehlin [03:27:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's kind of the irony. The dark irony of your Mormon experience, Ben, is that the church saves you and your family, but then in a way, kind of enslaves you to feeling less than and inferior.

Ben Jalaff [03:27:45] Yeah. And so it comes at a cost.

John Dehlin [03:27:48] They save you, but it comes at

Margi Dehlin [03:27:50] a dark cost and divides your family.

Ben Jalaff [03:27:53] Oh, it did. Since teenage years, my relationship with my parents had been shot. I mean, we're gonna get to this soon. But I had no parents. And I know they're watching this, but that's the whole truth. I had no parents. Because of how I was, my parents truly did try to steer me in the right direction. Damn it. I don't want to get emotional.

John Dehlin [03:28:19] No. Get emotional.

Ben Jalaff [03:28:22] But my parents were the only people in my life that will try to bring me value. And I never listen to them because they're not going to church.

Margi Dehlin [03:28:33] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [03:28:34] So I don't value their opinion because they don't have the light.

Margi Dehlin [03:28:39] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [03:28:40] But they're the only ones. My dad sat me down like, hey, you like Justine, but go get her. No, but what do I say? Stop, man. Go do it. He threw the keys of the car. Go get her now. Get it done. Like, he just literally, desperately like, son, you are more than this. You are more, man.

Margi Dehlin [03:29:02] Yeah.

Ben Jalaff [03:29:02] And they're crying to push me to see this. Remember my dad telling me what happened to that kid that just literally could just be so confident. The kids being dead seems. Well. And you know how much it hurts him as an adult. Seeing their adult kid, their only son, just literally just not pulling his weight. And that comes down to the fact that even my friends would not even see the fact that, Ben, you are of importance. That's why Justine marry you. But instead, it was always reverted, and it always hurts. And I got to say this. People are watching this right now that know me, but it hurts. It hurt me, hurt my confidence.

Justine Jalaff [03:29:53] It put you down.

Ben Jalaff [03:29:54] It put me down.

John Dehlin [03:29:57] Yeah. Well, what a super powerful story so far. And I'm gonna do something that's a little bit old school for Mormon stories. I'm gonna end this as part one of your story. We're gonna take a little break, and then we're gonna come back and do part two for lots of reasons. But I. I don't want this to be a five hour episode just because I know there'll be less people who watch it because it's so long. So what an amazing part one, Justine and Ben Halaf to your amazing Canadian Venezuelan Mormon story. I'm so inspired. I'm so fascinated I've been doing this for 20 years and I've loved every minute of this, these three and a half hours. Thank you for sharing part one of your amazing story. And we're going to come right back. Whether, you know, we're going to come right back for part two. It'll be next in the sequence on the podcast because we're going to talk about they finally get their Mormon dream. They meet each other as eternal companions. They get their Mormon marriage. What happens next? That's going to be part two.

Engagement, Wedding Plans, and Part One Wrap-Up

Margi Dehlin [03:31:06] What could possibly go wrong or right?

Justine Jalaff [03:31:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:31:10] Because you both find each other and you become your eternal companions. But there's more to the story. Is there more to the story?

Margi Dehlin [03:31:17] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [03:31:17] Yeah. So much more.

Ben Jalaff [03:31:18] This is funny.

Justine Jalaff [03:31:19] It's a good thing you're doing a part two, because I was like, I'm pretty sure this is way more than three hours.

Ben Jalaff [03:31:24] I feel bad. I feel bad because, like, oh, man, how do we do this?

Margi Dehlin [03:31:28] You take up space. Your story is something.

John Dehlin [03:31:31] Yeah. Both your stories are really powerful.

Justine Jalaff [03:31:33] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:31:34] Thanks for being vulnerable. Thanks for being honest. And this has been beautiful. And I can't wait for part two.

Ben Jalaff [03:31:41] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:31:42] Yeah.

Justine Jalaff [03:31:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:31:43] Margi, you good?

Margi Dehlin [03:31:46] I'm good.

John Dehlin [03:31:47] All right. All right. Thanks for joining us for part one of this epic Mormon story really quickly. Thanks to all the donors who make this podcast possible. Please like and subscribe. If you're watching on Spotify or YouTube or listening or whatever, wherever you listen to or watch this episode, please like and subscribe. It really helps. Please comment. And then if you're a donor, please know that we're only able to make these episodes because of you. Ad revenue pales in comparison to just the monthly donors. So thanks for your donations. If you're not a donor, we would invite you to become donors if you value this type of content, because that's what makes this possible. Please make sure and check out part two. Email us the mormonstoriesmail.com if you have feedback. We love your comments, you know, on YouTube or on Spotify or wherever. And also just know that just like Ben and Justine are on Mormon stories, what they did is they went to mormonstories.org they clicked on the apply button. They applied to be on the podcast. We fell in love with their video and that's why they're here. And we can't accept every interview, but if you feel like, if you feel inside that you have a Mormon story to tell, the way you get on is if you apply and make that video and often we can make that happen. So thanks for joining us. Thanks again to you both. Thanks to everyone who makes this possible. And come right back for part two of this amazing episode with Ben and Justine Halaf. Thanks, y'. All. Thanks so much.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.