Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 1477

Carah Burrell [00:00:00] Hi. Welcome to Mormon Stories podcast. If you're watching this or listening, you will notice that I am not Johndalin. I am Carah Burrell and I am your host today. John Dehlin is right over at the desk, riding sidecar in my normal position. Hi, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:14] Good to see you, Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:00:16] Good to see you, John. So today you guys are in for a fabulous and interesting and introspective interview. Today our guest is Camille Jones. And Camille. Hi, Camille, by the way.

Camille Jones [00:00:28] Hi, Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:00:29] Just do a cutaway for that for a second. So a quick overview of some of the things we're gonna be talking about today. Camille was an administrative assistant. Is that. Oh, no. Yes. Administrative assistant to the Quorum of the Seventy.

Camille Jones [00:00:39] In the missionary department.

Carah Burrell [00:00:40] In the missionary department. All right, I need to get this right.

Camille Jones [00:00:43] Administrative assistant secretary to the Quorum of the Seventy.

Carah Burrell [00:00:45] Secretary to the Quorum of the Seventy. I am not looking down at notes. I am so just like going off memory. So we had Linda Clyde and her daughter Savannah on a couple weeks ago, and that was a really fabulously interesting interview where she talk about being a copywriter for the church and a lot of the inner workings of how the LDS Church works. And that was a really popular episode and really fascinating episode. So along that same line, we're going one step further, and Camille's here to talk about her experience working with a lot of the brethren of a lot of the top leaders, and among a lot of the other things that we're going to be talking about is just the dynamic between men and women in the workplace and how the LDS Church handles women in the workplace. So welcome, Camille, to Mormon Stories. Is there anything else that you want to add or take away about this intro that I just did?

Camille Jones [00:01:36] I think it's a great intro.

Carah Burrell [00:01:38] Okay, great. I'm not nervous at all. Okay, John, what else would you like to add?

John Dehlin [00:01:43] No, I. I'm really excited. Carah, thank you. Thank you so much for being willing to lead this interview. Camille. When we talked and met early on, I, you know, there are a couple major themes here. One is again, working for general authority and in church office building, being a woman in the workplace, like Carah said, but also depression, like experiencing mental health issues in the. In the workplace. And as I talked to you about your story, I thought, man, wouldn't it be cool if Carah could lead this kind of a woman to woman thing? Because that's just such an important element. And so I'm. I'm really glad you're willing to do this, Carah, and you know it. I don't know if we're ever again going to have someone who works directly with the general authorities sort of on the show. So for all those reasons, I'm sure this is a bit of a sensitive thing for you. I'm sure it might be a little bit scary. So thanks so much for being willing to come on and tell your story.

Camille Jones [00:02:39] Thanks. I'm a little nervous, but it'll be okay. It'll be good.

Carah Burrell [00:02:43] You're in good hands to tell the story. Yeah. And especially that's a good thing to start with is the. Yeah. Thank you for being brave enough to come out and talk about the things that have affected you and that you're passionate about and that people can kind of get a window into how the church works from your perspective and from a woman's perspective. So I think this is going to be really good and really important. So should we get started?

Camille's Early Life and Mormon Upbringing

Camille Jones [00:03:08] Sure.

Carah Burrell [00:03:09] Where does your Mormon story begin? And tell me about your. Your upbringing.

Camille Jones [00:03:14] I am one of five girls, so I've got four sisters. And it was a very Mormon family. My dad was bishop for a number of years. My parents have had callings all the time. And it was, you know, pretty typical Mormon childhood. Seminary, girls, camp, all of the normal things.

Carah Burrell [00:03:40] And you said you just. You grew up just 10 minutes away, like right around here in Salt Lake City.

Camille Jones [00:03:45] Yep. Local here in Salt Lake. I don't know. What do you want to know about my. My childhood?

Carah Burrell [00:03:55] Tell me about it. Says that you were bullied a bit. Was that part of kind of your development is.

Camille Jones [00:04:07] Oh, yeah, I forgot I put that in there. So it was actually. Our ward was an unusual boundary line. We've got a condo complex within the ward that I grew up in. And most of those people were like retirees. So we had a very small youth program. And I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. And at school, I had similar problems where I was kind of the odd person out. So I didn't get a lot of socializing with people my own age as I was growing up. Got bullied while I was in elementary school and just kind of learned to be on my own. And that played a part into something that happened while I was a teenager, young teenager. I learned to be good friends with adults rather than with kids. So I would go hang out at these senior couples houses and I'd call him Grandpa or, or Grandma. And there's a nice guy around the corner who taught me how to do some woodworking. And we made boats and would play cards with this lady who lived in the condos. And when I was about 13, I started spending some time over at another neighbor's house, and she would do baking with me and taught me how to crochet. And she was a grandma age, and I called her grandma. And then she had her son who moved in with her, and he was in his 50s, and

Carah Burrell [00:05:41] he taught me

Camille Jones [00:05:41] how to play chess. And it just seemed like another one of those normal adult child interactions. And I started to call him uncle. And then there was one night that he gave me a hug, and he wouldn't let go. And I didn't understand what was happening, but I knew I was scared. And I ran home, and I didn't ever want to go back, but I didn't know what to say about it because I didn't understand why I was afraid. And then he sent a letter to my parents and saying that he would be willing to wait until I was 16 before he married me.

Carah Burrell [00:06:23] And he was in his 50s.

Camille Jones [00:06:24] He was 52.

Carah Burrell [00:06:26] Oh, my gosh.

Camille Jones [00:06:27] And I was 14. So that's why I included that in my outline.

Carah Burrell [00:06:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:33] Was he in your ward?

Camille Jones [00:06:34] He was in the ward, and he was a member.

John Dehlin [00:06:36] And he was married.

Camille Jones [00:06:38] He was divorced.

Carah Burrell [00:06:41] Okay. And so did he. He asked you or he asked your parents?

Camille Jones [00:06:45] He asked my parents, but of course, my parents called me in and asked, what is going on? And I said I didn't know. I don't actually remember much of what happened in that conversation because it was just. I had no idea what was going on. And I was so shocked that I hadn't even thought about boys. I didn't have friends my age, really, so it was out of the blue and unusual, and I had no idea what to do with it.

Carah Burrell [00:07:18] Yeah. So you said you were 14 at the time. Had your parents had any discussions with you about, like, sexuality or anything along those lines?

Camille Jones [00:07:28] No.

Carah Burrell [00:07:30] What sex was or.

Camille Jones [00:07:32] Nope, we didn't. Inappropriate boundaries or normal elementary school maturation program. And it was the summer before I started eighth grade year, which is when we do, you know, the sex ed class. So I hadn't even done sex ed yet. Yeah, I had. I had no. I had no idea. I. I didn't understand any of that. And then, of course, I was traumatized when I went into the sex ed, and I was like, this is what that means.

Carah Burrell [00:07:57] Wow. Oh, wow.

Camille Jones [00:08:00] But we never talked about it again.

Carah Burrell [00:08:02] You never talked about it with your parents again? You never saw the man again or.

Camille Jones [00:08:05] Well, I saw because he was in the neighborhood.

Carah Burrell [00:08:07] Okay. But you never, like, went over to his House again. Probably freaked out.

Camille Jones [00:08:11] Yeah. Yeah. I never. I never went back, which was sad because I really liked his mom because he'd moved in with his mom there.

Carah Burrell [00:08:20] So did you continue on having relations, like, not relationships, I mean, just like friendships with. With adults after that, or did that scare you off or.

Camille Jones [00:08:30] I still had friendships with adults. I was a little more cautious who I had friendships with. They ended up being mostly like young women's leaders. And again, we had a really small young women's, and I just. I didn't ever feel like I fit in. I was kind of in that. In between. So we had people who were older and we had people who are younger. There are a couple my age, but it just never seemed to. To mix well with them.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] To what extent did you have kind of a typical Mormon upbringing in terms of, like, family meeting, scripture study, orthodox belief? Was it a pretty normal home or not a normal home in the Mormon regard in Salt Lake City? What decade. What decade are we talking about?

Camille Jones [00:09:12] We're talking about, well, childhood. 90s.

John Dehlin [00:09:15] Okay.

Camille Jones [00:09:17] It was in the 90s. We did kind of family home. Evening was on again, off again. We weren't terribly good at that. And I'm sure my parents were always trying, but it just. It just, you know, it was a busy household, so it worked sometimes. And most of the time not. We were expected to do scripture study on our own. We did do family prayer every morning. My mom's thing when we were leaving the house in the morning was to ask us, you brush your teeth, you say your prayers, and then she would send us out the door. So those were the two requirements in the day. You know, brush your teeth, say your prayers.

Carah Burrell [00:09:54] Right. Good priorities. Yeah. Yeah. So do you feel like you had, like, a developing testimony throughout your childhood or any spiritual experiences that you felt like, tied you to the church and, like your own independent testimony kind of way?

Growing Up in an LDS Family in Salt Lake City

Camille Jones [00:10:07] Well, yeah. I mean, growing up, that was all the thing I knew. You know, you go to church on Sundays and dad has callings and mom has callings, and you're supposed to always accept your callings and read your scriptures. And we had our little child scripture with, you know, do you remember the ones that have the photos on them? And it had, like, not quite the scripture, but kind of the paraphrase underneath it. So you were kind of doing a picture version of the scriptures. We started off with those. I can't even remember when. Just, you know, little. And.

Carah Burrell [00:10:39] And you mentioned your dad was bishop for most of your childhood as well, so you probably had some expectations to live up to.

Camille Jones [00:10:46] He was bishop my entire time. I was in Young Women's.

Carah Burrell [00:10:49] Oh, really? Okay.

Camille Jones [00:10:52] So I was the bishop's daughter. We all were.

Carah Burrell [00:10:54] The five of you?

Camille Jones [00:10:55] The five of us, yeah. Kind of like Pride and Prejudice.

Carah Burrell [00:10:58] Did you have any, like, other particular struggles throughout your teen years?

Camille Jones [00:11:05] I think I dealt with depression while I was a teenager too, but, you know, we didn't do mental health.

Carah Burrell [00:11:12] What do you mean? It wasn't.

Camille Jones [00:11:15] It was just. No, it wasn't discussed. It wasn't. You know, I mean, you get the regular questions of, how are you doing? But if you were struggling, it's okay, we'll just go pray, you know, or do you need a blessing?

John Dehlin [00:11:30] Or.

Camille Jones [00:11:30] And it was like church was supposed to be the answer to all of the normal growing up mental health problems.

Carah Burrell [00:11:41] Yeah. I think a lot of people kind of grow up with that paradigm that if you are feeling depressed there and there's some other box you're not ticking, there's another prayer you just need to hold closer to Christ. Did you. Did you feel like, relief and did you feel like God loved you and you felt good when you prayed and that, like, alleviated your depression? Or sometimes it can go the other way where you just feel like you're never feeling any better and you're not doing things right.

Camille Jones [00:12:09] I never felt like I was doing enough. There was always something more that I was missing. And so I don't think I ever felt like praying more was helping me, but of course I didn't. That's looking back, looking back at it while I was there, it was like, okay, I just. I just need to do more. I just need to pray more. I just need to read more often. I just need to be more. I just need to do more service. I just need to do. You know, there was always more that I had to do.

Carah Burrell [00:12:44] And how did that, like, translate into your, I guess, self image or what you thought about yourself?

Camille Jones [00:12:50] It was about the same summer, I think, that this neighbor issue happened. I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, I don't like what I see.

Carah Burrell [00:13:03] Did that stick with you for the majority of your teen years then?

Camille Jones [00:13:08] Yeah. What.

John Dehlin [00:13:10] What do you think was going on with this? Like, so for. I think for some of us that were raised Mormon, we might have a sense for what was going on in the mind of this grown man who was hugging you for way too long and wanting to marry you when you were a child. But for those who weren't raised Mormon, who wouldn't even understand what might have been going through his mind. What would you guess was kind of happening with this guy and you as a 14 year old? I mean, 14 is a special age. Those of us who know about Joseph Smith and church history, that's a special age.

Carah Burrell [00:13:44] So were you a few months shy of 15?

John Dehlin [00:13:48] Yeah, exactly.

Camille Jones [00:13:49] If you count six is a few

Carah Burrell [00:13:50] months shy, maybe round up.

Camille Jones [00:13:56] I know now I didn't know before the issues with Joseph Smith and, and young girls. I honestly can't speak to what was in his mind because I never saw him again. And the only way that I knew him before was as kind of, you know, this avuncular sort of figure in my life because I called him uncle, I called his mom, grandma, and so in my mind I was treating them like family.

John Dehlin [00:14:29] Yeah, just recently I was, I was interviewed for a documentary about sexual abuse in the church. And so I, I wanted to be prepared. And so I put out a call to my listeners on Facebook and everywhere else, just, hey, if anybody experienced sexual abuse in the church, and in particularly if the church like covered it up or protected the abuser at the defense of, you know, at the expense of the victim, I'd love to hear about it. And I just, it was so depressing. I got like over a hundred personal narratives of people's experiences with abuse, mostly women. And I got really angry at the end because I just, I realized time and time again the church, number one, it just seemed like the church was this culture of abuse where men were abusing women and young women. But secondly, that the church somehow was just set up to, to protect male abusers at the expense of victims, even where victims would not only be pressured to forgive, but even punished for not being willing to sort of believe in the atonement and immediately forgive the abusers when oftentimes the abusers weren't even punished. And the reason why I'm bringing all this up is I concluded, and this is for the listeners who don't know about Joseph Smith and the founding of the church because we have a lot of never Mormons who listen. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church, married several 14 year olds and 15, 16 year olds. Mother, daughter, pairs, sister pairs. He married over 30 women and you know, was sexually active with, with many to most of them probably. And so we have baked into the origins of our church proclivity to defend. I hate to say this, but sexual predators, because our founder kind of could easily be viewed as one. And so when I think about this man, I don't know how much he knew about our church history, but I'M assuming that maybe he knew that Joseph Smith tended to like young girls. And so how could he not feel. I'm just speculating, but how could he not feel permission or license to do what his beloved founding prophet did? Does that make. I don't, I don't want to just project that on, but, but I just, I just wonder about that. I wonder if you wonder about that.

A Troubling Experience with a Church Adult

Camille Jones [00:16:51] I have wondered about that a little bit, especially recently. I did ask several years later what happened. You know, my dad was bishop, so the only thing that they told me was that they would take care of it. And the only thing I saw from my perspective was he stopped going to church. And so as a youth, and especially growing up with the, you know, into young women's, where they start teaching you about, okay, morality and sexual purity. And I started worrying about, was it my fault? Did I do something without realizing I was doing something and he would stop going to church? And so I asked my dad at one point if, if I had done something and turned out he had had a disciplinary counsel.

John Dehlin [00:17:41] And he was for that.

Camille Jones [00:17:42] For that.

John Dehlin [00:17:43] For hugging you? For

Camille Jones [00:17:46] proposing to marry me, I think is what it was. And he had expressed somehow in this council, and I was never told that this happened, so I had no idea that anything had actually even been done until I was 18, 19, something like that. But he'd expressed in this council that he believed in polygamy. So I wouldn't be surprised.

Carah Burrell [00:18:12] Yeah.

Camille Jones [00:18:13] If he had known about Joseph Smith and his child Brights, I guess.

Carah Burrell [00:18:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:20] And what was the punishment?

Camille Jones [00:18:22] He was disfellowshipped.

John Dehlin [00:18:24] Okay, so he was not excommunicated.

Camille Jones [00:18:26] He was not excommunicated. He was disfellowshipped and then he went inactive.

John Dehlin [00:18:30] What, like, how do you interpret that? I mean, the church excommunicates, for example, Sam Young, because he basically told the church what you're doing allowing 12 year old girls to be alone with bishops is, is harmful and maybe even grooming behavior. And so he leads a march to say, hey, church, protect children better. He's excommunicated. This neighbor who hugs you forever, proposes to marry you as a 14 year old and tells the church he believes in polygamy. He's kind of let go with four, a slap on his wrist, four months disfellowshipped, and then he's back in full, full membership. Like, what does that tell you about the church and its priorities?

Camille Jones [00:19:11] I don't know if he ever made it back to full membership because he did go inactive. He stopped going to church.

John Dehlin [00:19:15] Okay.

Camille Jones [00:19:17] Which was.

John Dehlin [00:19:17] But he wasn't excommunicated.

Camille Jones [00:19:19] No, he was not excommunicated. I don't know if I've ever thought about that. That comparison that you just drew is pretty stark in my mind, and I don't like it.

Carah Burrell [00:19:35] And he mentioned in your outline that that wasn't the only time that that happened. Is that right?

Camille Jones [00:19:40] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:19:41] In. In terms of him or just.

Camille Jones [00:19:44] Oh, no, somebody else did that to you?

John Dehlin [00:19:46] And we don't want to jump too far ahead in the timeline, but is

Carah Burrell [00:19:49] that it's like along the chronology that after the disciplinary council that you said you mentioned when you were 18.

Camille Jones [00:19:58] Yeah. So I found out. Well, I found out that he'd had a disciplinary council when I was 18. Again, nobody told me anything. It was just, we'll take care of it. And then my viewpoint was he just stopped coming to church. So I was worried that I was a cause of his losing his faith, which is pretty heavy to bear as

John Dehlin [00:20:16] a young woman and as a victim who's already.

Camille Jones [00:20:21] Yep, yep. I guess that too. Yeah. Because I was also worried that I was the reason that he had done what he had done. Whatever it was. I didn't under. I still didn't understand what had happened and why I was afraid. I didn't understand how people could look at me that way as a 14 year old. So it wasn't until four years later when I asked what had happened to him, because he had just died of a stroke, so he was still inactive when he died. And so I was dealing with all these feelings of, was it my fault? And so I'd asked, and it was about six months later or something like that, that a boss, he was an employer, invited me into, like a supply room.

John Dehlin [00:21:14] Mormon guy.

Camille Jones [00:21:15] Mormon guy. Married, had children. He was still married, I think he still is.

Carah Burrell [00:21:22] He.

Camille Jones [00:21:22] He invited me into this room at work and asked him, you know why? Because I thought, you know, we were collecting supplies for the day and I thought, did we forget something? And he came over and he put his arm around my waist and he says, you just feel so soft today. And I immediately, you know, went around this. We were outside and I went around to the other side of the car and I was like, no, I think we have everything we need. And he apologized. But that was. That was freaky. It's. That was another one of those. That scared me.

Carah Burrell [00:22:11] Yeah, that's really. That's really frightening. And you said it was your boss as well.

Camille Jones [00:22:16] It was my boss.

Carah Burrell [00:22:17] So did you. Were you able to Tell anyone or what what happened from there.

Camille Jones [00:22:21] Again, I told my parents he was a friend of the family and I don't know if anything happened. I don't know if he's ever had any kind of church discipline. And later I started to worry that I was not his only one or his first person that he'd tried that with. I was working with. There was a group of us co workers working on an area and she made a joke about how, how gross it would be if somebody who was, you know, that old, you know, wanted to make out with somebody. And I started to wonder if maybe I wasn't the only one. Wow.

Carah Burrell [00:23:14] Yeah. Usually people who are kind of like that, like the Harvey Weinstein's of the world, like it would be rare. I would, I think if there's just oh like somebody has a one off proposition of a young lady, it's probably more their personality to subjugate women or harass women in the workplace like that.

Camille Jones [00:23:36] Well, I hope for her sake and for him and for his family that I was the only one.

Carah Burrell [00:23:41] Right.

Camille Jones [00:23:42] I don't want there to have been anyone else.

John Dehlin [00:23:47] What was it like to have that happen twice? Because you know, within a four year period you're, you're barely an adult and you've already had two men, Mormon men, adult, way older than you, Mormon men sexually proposition you.

Camille Jones [00:24:02] Basically.

John Dehlin [00:24:03] What does that do to, in your mind again? You, you said you wondered the first time whether there was something you were doing wrong or whether it was your fault. What went through your mind when it, when it happens a second time?

Camille Jones [00:24:14] Well, as a, as a 19 year old I'd learned a little bit about flirting and I was wondering really at that point, did I do something wrong? Was I dressing wrong? Did I say something? Was I too friendly? Was I. Because I'd never thought of him in that way. So I knew I wasn't purposely flirting with him. But did I do something where he could have construed it that way? I really, I really wondered if it was my fault.

John Dehlin [00:24:43] And I wonder where you would have ever gotten the idea that. Yeah, how you, how you dressed or how you behaved influenced or influences someone else's behavior?

Camille Jones [00:24:53] Oh, you wonder, do you spell that out?

Carah Burrell [00:24:56] If you don't mind, I was about to ask, do you remember any particular lessons, whether like implicitly or explicitly throughout your time, whether in church or fan home, evening lessons or anything that would just form your conditioning to feel like it was your fault that somebody was harassing you like that?

Camille Jones [00:25:14] I don't know if I remember Anything in particular? We've got the Strength of Youth book that we're supposed to read all the time. I went to byu, Idaho, and we had something where we had to. Whatever religion course I was in had to read through that and write things out on each one of them. If I was wearing anything at home that was like, borderline, I'd get a

Carah Burrell [00:25:39] comment, what's borderline in your.

Camille Jones [00:25:42] Really should put a camisole underneath that, you know, like, the top was a little too low or for.

John Dehlin [00:25:49] And why would the justification be that? If you didn't, then what

Camille Jones [00:25:55] the implication was that it was. I don't know, it was immodest and therefore was a problem.

John Dehlin [00:26:02] If a woman dresses immodestly, it's our responsibility.

Camille Jones [00:26:06] I guess our modest dress makes it our responsibility to keep things pure and holy and.

John Dehlin [00:26:14] And. And tie it to young men. Just. I really want to spell this out for those who have no idea what we're really talking about here.

Camille Jones [00:26:22] Tie it to the young men.

John Dehlin [00:26:24] Am I. Am I making that up or no?

Carah Burrell [00:26:27] I think it just depends on whatever conditioning you get, whatever messages you get, what you pay attention to throughout your adolescent period. Um, so some people get it heavier than others about their responsibility to not turn on boys around, and they need to cover their shoulders and make sure their shorts reach a certain length. So when you were mentioning, like, you were wondering, you know, is this my fault? What's my responsibility in this? Were you, like, thinking to what you were wearing or what you could have possibly done that would tell your married employer that you'd be interested in something? Like, were you just scanning your brain for what you were wearing and what you could have done differently?

Camille Jones [00:27:09] I was wondering if, you know, should have worn a camisole underneath my shirt because if I bent over then, you know, you'd see my back or. Stupid, stupid little things. That shouldn't be a problem anyway.

Carah Burrell [00:27:22] Yeah. There's not a reason in the world where anyone should have skin showing or no skin showing that an employer thinks it's their place to proposition one of their employees like that. Like, outrageously.

Camille Jones [00:27:36] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:27:37] Inappropriate.

John Dehlin [00:27:38] But also that somehow your instinct was that it must have been your fault. I just have to feel like that's conditioned in some way based on our Mormon upbringing.

Camille Jones [00:27:47] Yeah, yeah. And I'd agree with that.

John Dehlin [00:27:50] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:27:51] Is there anything else that you want to say about that period in your teenage years?

John Dehlin [00:27:58] I'm totally curious about, like, what it's like. Explain for our non Mormon listeners what the role of a bishop is maybe a tiny bit and then why that would be hard to be a teenage girl and have your dad be the bishop. Or maybe it wasn't hard. Maybe it was amazing and awesome.

Camille Jones [00:28:12] I don't think it was necessarily hard. Well, it wasn't hard on me. I think it was harder on maybe my mom. So the bishop is over the wartime, over the congregation, and the congregation will have several hundred people in it. His job is to make sure that everybody's taken care of, that they're all spiritually progressing, that all the lessons on Sunday are accurate to, you know, what church headquarters wants the lessons to be. You know, they're following the manuals. My dad did a lot with the youth. He really felt that the youth was important, and that was probably because he had five daughters, three of which were in young women's. So he was at all of our girls camps. I know he went to some of the young men's camps, but there was some pressure to live up to the standard. Live up to the idea that this is what a Mormon family ought to be. Our house looks clean. We're all at church on time, sort of, because, you know, five girls trying to get all of us out of the house on. At. On the same time schedule.

Carah Burrell [00:29:20] We had, like, a couple bathrooms. More than one curling iron.

Camille Jones [00:29:24] Oh, yeah, definitely. Um, but, yeah, and then we did evening firesides occasionally. And every once in a while, dad would announce one from the pulpit, and it would be for that evening at our house. And I remember watching my mom's face go, you know. You know, firesides, you have to have refreshments, right?

Carah Burrell [00:29:47] Yeah.

Camille Jones [00:29:48] And you have to have a space to set up in. So, you know, we'd get home from church and it was okay. Bake brownies and make more brownies. And then we got to get enough chairs set out, and all the youth are coming over and they're leaders. And yeah, it was. There's definitely some responsibility and some expectation and a bit of a limelight on the family.

Carah Burrell [00:30:08] Right. So if your dad was bishop, how did you navigate bishop's interviews or temple recommend interviews? Was it fine? Was it just like talking to your dad, or did he kind of, like, switch into bishop role when he would interview you?

Bishop's Interviews and Teenage Years in the Church

Camille Jones [00:30:22] It was more talking to my dad. They were very comfortable, and I was used to talking to my dad. I like to talk to my dad.

Carah Burrell [00:30:31] So you really having. So while you talked about a lot of the limelight on that, you just totally skipped all of the, like, common, uncomfortable bishop's interview problems that a lot of teens have.

John Dehlin [00:30:44] Worthiness.

Carah Burrell [00:30:46] Yeah. The worthiness interviews.

Camille Jones [00:30:47] Yeah, it was. It was very much talking to my dad, and he'd go through the questions, but it wasn't uncomfortable conversation. I really do enjoy sitting down and just having a good chat with my dad. And, yeah, it was normal. And he didn't go into any detail on the sexual questions that I know some people have had trouble with, that they had uncomfortable interviews with priesthood leaders on.

Carah Burrell [00:31:16] Yeah, yeah. So there's nothing throughout your teen years, you felt like you had to go to your dad, the bishop, to repent for.

Camille Jones [00:31:24] Nothing in particular. It was just talking to my dad. It was nice.

Carah Burrell [00:31:31] So overall, good bishops interviews, nothing scarring there?

Camille Jones [00:31:35] No, nothing scarring.

Carah Burrell [00:31:37] Yeah. The older men in the ward, not so much on. Not so positive on that. On that front. Um, and then you went to college, you went to.

John Dehlin [00:31:48] Did you do seminary?

Camille Jones [00:31:50] I did do seminary.

John Dehlin [00:31:51] Was that important or not important or significant?

Camille Jones [00:31:54] It was important. My older sister was on seminary council, and we were close enough in age that we overlapped a little bit. So she was part of seminary council while I was in high school. And seminary graduation was important for us to. You know, we had to get to graduation. It was up there with high school graduation. You know, you had to get to. You had to get both of them.

Carah Burrell [00:32:20] And did you do any dating, like group dates? What was the atmosphere for dating that you partook in?

Camille Jones [00:32:27] I didn't do a lot of dating. I. I went on a handful of dates, mostly with just two or three guys. My social life in high school was choirs, and it was just. I don't know, it was awkward. I didn't do very good at the dating thing.

Carah Burrell [00:32:47] Didn't do very good at the dating thing?

Camille Jones [00:32:49] No.

Carah Burrell [00:32:49] Did that depress you or were you.

Camille Jones [00:32:54] I definitely knew that there was a difference. Watching friends go out on dates and I was not. And when I got to college, there's a couple of us, and we created a group called the Dateless Wonders.

Carah Burrell [00:33:07] So you made lemonade out of lemon. Okay.

Camille Jones [00:33:10] We tried. We'd watch movies on Friday nights because we didn't have dates.

Carah Burrell [00:33:14] Yeah, that's better. Anyway. Oh. It was teenage boys. Like, who needs them, really?

Camille Jones [00:33:18] The first year, it was great. Then you get into, you know, your second year, third, your fourth year, and you're still not doing much on the dating scene in college. And it's like, maybe the Dateless Wonders aren't that great anymore.

Carah Burrell [00:33:31] Did you have. I was going to ask. Did you have any. I totally forgot my question. I hate when I do this. Oh, yeah. I remember it now. So with everything that you just mentioned, with these men proposing marriage to you and all of these uncomfortable interactions, did that scare you away from boys? Did you see? Did that influence your perception of men at all? And the way that you viewed dating or sexuality, how did that work out?

Camille Jones [00:34:02] I've definitely been much more self conscious and I always viewed dating less as getting to know someone or having fun with someone, as this is for marriage. And since we never talked about it as a family and we never talked about sex or, you know, dating was just a thing that was supposed to happen at some point and never talked about the problems that I had with adult men, I was just kind of left on my own to try and figure out, well, I'm supposed to be dating, but I'm not.

John Dehlin [00:34:43] Did it make you feel like there's something wrong with you or.

Camille Jones [00:34:45] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:46] What'd you think?

Camille Jones [00:34:47] Why? First of all, I couldn't figure out why nobody was dating me. And I'm sure I was giving off some sort of vibes of, you know, being really uptight or uncomfortable or. And I was a bit of a nerd. So I'll just be straight up and say I, I looked like a nerd and I sat around with my books and it wasn't terribly sociable anyways, but, you know, a lot of nerd.

John Dehlin [00:35:13] What are your nerd credentials?

Camille Jones [00:35:15] Oh, I don't know. What are nerd credentials?

John Dehlin [00:35:18] Harry Potter, you know.

Camille Jones [00:35:20] Oh, yeah, I read Harry Potter. I was there for the midnight releases of the books. Not just the movies, but I was out for the books I was reading. I. There was a summer I read a novel. Well, I definitely read. I, I think I read 30 novels in a month.

Carah Burrell [00:35:34] Whoa. A novel a day.

Camille Jones [00:35:38] A novel a day.

Carah Burrell [00:35:40] This summer, though, students have, like, schoolwork.

Camille Jones [00:35:42] Yeah. During. During the school week or school year. It was more like a novel a week.

John Dehlin [00:35:48] It's a lot of reading. It's awesome. I love nerds. I think nerds are awesome.

Camille Jones [00:35:54] Oh, I read Shakespeare when I was 10.

John Dehlin [00:35:56] What?

Camille Jones [00:35:57] Yeah, I picked up the Shakespeare sonnets and read all. I didn't understand him completely, of course, but I could read Shakespeare when I was 10.

John Dehlin [00:36:06] I mean, I'm speaking for guys. Like, one of the things I hate about what I know about teenage guys is that if a girl's super smart, they're going to probably be less interested, potentially because they're intimidated. I, I don't like saying that, but I think that might be true. It's probably not just teenage boys. I think probably adult men, too, are probably not always Wanting a. A partner that might be more intelligent. I hate that.

Carah Burrell [00:36:32] But who cares what men want? Yeah, they want so many different things. I'm not here to try to find a window into what teenage men or six year old men want. Who knows? They sound kind of messed up.

John Dehlin [00:36:45] Absolutely.

Carah Burrell [00:36:46] We were just doing our sound check and before this started, and Camille's over here reciting Shakespeare and I have to do my sound check. And I was just describing the egg McMuffin I had for breakfast in great detail. So we're basically like Shakespeare McDonald's menu. We're kind of like. We have the same exact. We're basically like, what's the difference? Basically.

Camille Jones [00:37:06] So anyway, okay, just for clarification, I pulled out Shakespeare because I was reading it last night, somebody had said something and it reminded me of the speech from Henry V at Agincourt. So I had to.

Carah Burrell [00:37:17] Anyway, that was just on your mind.

Camille Jones [00:37:19] It was there. It was already there.

John Dehlin [00:37:20] Radio Free Mormon would be proud because he's a huge Shakespeare fan.

Camille Jones [00:37:24] Oh, great.

Carah Burrell [00:37:25] So, yeah, sorry, you'll have to go to his podcast next. This is not the Shakespeare podcast of cara. This is McDonald's menu.

Camille Jones [00:37:33] I like Shakespeare. I am not a Shakespeare scholar. Don't put me in that category. Not that much of a nerd, but I think.

John Dehlin [00:37:39] But I think we were actually just talking about like boy attention of boys when you were a teen. And you were, you were theorizing that it might have been because you were more bookish.

Camille Jones [00:37:49] I'm sure that that was part of it. Because you can't go on dates if you're not socializing. And I was doing a lot of reading, but I was also wondering why other people who did a lot of reading were going on dates and I wasn't. And you know, in college you try and do a little more socializing. You're not with family and, you know, you live with a bunch of other girls, so you're seeing guys who come over to see the other girls and, you know, you've got classes and whatever. And I was still not dating.

Carah Burrell [00:38:19] And this was at byu. Idaho.

Camille Jones [00:38:21] Byu. Idaho. Which byu. I do.

Carah Burrell [00:38:24] Right. There's no shortage of ring by spring. Yeah, there's no shortage of men looking for dates with women there. So you said that your roommates were going on dates while you weren't.

Camille Jones [00:38:36] Oh, no.

Carah Burrell [00:38:36] How'd that make you feel?

Camille Jones [00:38:37] Just lonely. I mean, that was a lonely way to spend evenings if they were all doing stuff and I was by myself. Which is why we made our little dateless wonders group.

Carah Burrell [00:38:47] Yes, yes. Gotta, like I said, make lemonade out of something. My high school friends had the Virgin lips club for all the girls who hadn't been kissed yet. And then they slowly would, one after the other be kissed and then they got a certificate to leave the club. So I was kissing boys too young. So I was not involved in this club. But I get it. I get the solidarity that ladies need to have with each other when they're not being asked out, especially in Mormon culture. And there's just, yeah, like a really strong need to have everything revolve around getting married, you know, young.

Camille Jones [00:39:25] I could throw in one more uncomfortable interaction with men from college days in between semesters. I was working at a bookstore. It was a Segal book for those who are Utah people and know that that's a church sort of focused bookstore. We had a customer come in and I was helping him find something in the doctrine section and he let me know that if they ever did reinstitute polygamy, that he'd like to have me as his second wife. What the hell?

John Dehlin [00:39:59] What is up with these Mormon men in Utah, Idaho?

Camille Jones [00:40:05] Don't ask me. I'm not, I'm not a Mormon man. I can't answer that question.

Carah Burrell [00:40:10] I, that's what I told, that's what I was saying. I was like, who knows what's going on in their heads? But John was onto something. When you have a church that's founded by somebody who was just, hey lady, hey lady, you want to be my wife? Joseph was just offering and propositioning women to, you know, he probably had what, up to 40 wives. So it's not that far of a stretch. If somebody's in the doctrine section at Siegel Book, they're like, while I'm looking up the founding of our church, let me live up to our founders ideals about polygamous marriages here.

Camille Jones [00:40:40] That one didn't affect me as much because he was a complete stranger and it was like, okay, well that's weird. But it still happened and it's still part of that, you know, mental makeup of who I am as a woman in, in a Mormon culture.

John Dehlin [00:40:54] All joking aside, one of the really cool interviews we've done is with Carolyn Pearson, who wrote a book called the Ghost of Eternal Polygamy. And she is so beloved within progressive and post Mormon circles. But she just wrote this book about how polygamy is still on the books as Mormon doctrine. It's in Doctrine and covenants section 132and, and it basically, you know, we all grow up as Mormon men learning about it believing that God's a polygamist. We know that Russell Nelson is a polygamist. Alan H. Oaks is a polygamist. These are the two top leaders in the Mormon Church right now. And when I say polygamists, they are sealed to multiple women in the afterlife. And like, you know what the Mormon Church leaders, I think want to convey to the world is that, oh, polygamy is something we stopped 100 years ago. We don't believe it anymore. But the, the whole point of the book, the Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, is that it's still very much with us today and it colors how men look at women and how at how women look at themselves. Tell me if I'm wrong there.

Carah Burrell [00:41:56] Have you read that book?

Camille Jones [00:41:57] I've not read that book.

Carah Burrell [00:41:58] I've read so many books. We haven't got to that one. You could write that book.

Camille Jones [00:42:03] Probably fiction.

John Dehlin [00:42:04] Have you heard about it?

Camille Jones [00:42:05] I have heard about it, but only through listening to this podcast.

John Dehlin [00:42:09] Okay. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:42:10] She's like, I know where you're going with this, John. Yeah, that's exactly right. So that you said it kind of colored just the way that you viewed your role as a woman in the church, that that's how people are going to look at you.

Camille Jones [00:42:22] Yeah. I mean, all of these things combined and the upbringing that the greatest thing that you could be as a mother in Zion, you know, you were meant to get married, you're meant to have children. My patriarchal blessing told me I was going to marry a righteous priesthood holder and bring choice spirits into the world. That was, that was my role. That was my, you know, fulfilling the measure of your creation.

Carah Burrell [00:42:49] What age did you get your patriarchal blessing?

Camille Jones [00:42:52] 14.

Carah Burrell [00:42:53] Oh, interesting. Interesting.

Camille Jones [00:42:56] Yeah. All those things.

Carah Burrell [00:42:57] So all of those things kind of intertwine.

Camille Jones [00:42:59] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:42:59] Into your perception of your role as a woman in the church. So this Siegel book was in Rexburg?

Camille Jones [00:43:08] No, that was here.

Carah Burrell [00:43:09] Oh, it was here. Okay.

Camille Jones [00:43:10] I was in between semesters.

Carah Burrell [00:43:11] Okay.

Camille Jones [00:43:11] So on my, my off semester.

Attending BYU Idaho: Culture and Doctrine

Carah Burrell [00:43:14] So do you want to get into anything else about just the culture of BYU Idaho and your experiences there? And to our, especially our non urban listeners, what it's like going to BYU Idaho?

Camille Jones [00:43:26] Oh, well, church schools are like the indoctrination centers. I'm sure the church is happy to have so many students who, you know, they, they have to go to religion classes. And if you don't take your religion classes, you're not going to graduate. So you really get church from all perspectives. You go on Sundays. Teachers or professors are encouraged to bring it up in classes to talk about morality that way. I studied English. So, you know, we're talking about, okay, well, this is the morality of that time frame. This is why it fits or it doesn't fit. Remember, I had one kind of. I considered her a bit of an edgy professor because she taught Nietzsche a little bit. We were doing the more modern British literature, and it was. To me, it felt edgy. You know, God is dead and we have killed him.

Carah Burrell [00:44:21] Holland would like to have some words with her, maybe.

Camille Jones [00:44:25] And I didn't. I didn't really care for her at the time because I was definitely true blue. I was into the whole church thing. And the idea that this kind of opposite world view could exist didn't sit very well with me at the time.

Carah Burrell [00:44:40] What do you mean by opposite worldview?

Camille Jones [00:44:42] God is dead and we have killed him.

Carah Burrell [00:44:45] Did they teach it like in a. That this is what some people believe and, like, it's just be smart to be open to these ideas?

Camille Jones [00:44:51] No, it was just while we were analyzing literature from the modern British time frame. Okay, so James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, those kind of authors. And this loss of faith, the. So it was. How do I say it? My last assignment in that class was this great big paper. And we're supposed to pick a modern British author and do some sort of an analysis on their life or their work. And it was supposed to be more of a broad look. So not pick a book or a story and analyze it and write about it. It was all of it. And I picked C.S. lewis, Modern British author. Right. And we're supposed to put together this outline and turn it in. And I was taking a really heavy credit load because I was really trying to graduate that semester, and I just did not have time. And she wrote back and said, C.S. lewis is not a modern British author. He lived in the modern time period, but his mentality and his viewpoints on the world were Victorian. Pick somebody else and I'm going, I don't have time to pick anybody else. So I still wrote on CS Lewis, but I wrote about why he was a Victorian in the modern time period. What, you know, how he was different from everybody else despite having gone through the world wars, despite having seen what he'd seen and experienced, all of the modern sort of stuff that changed the way people viewed the world. I got a good grade on it. So it. It worked. It was a bit of a gamble after she told me to change, but it worked. But what it told me was that he was. He was a Victorian because he had faith in God. And that was kind of what the premise ended up having to be in order to make that paper work the way she wanted to compare modern versus Victorian. And she was the one who was also teaching God is dead and we have killed him. So it was anyway, a bit of an edgy class. Unusual for BYU Idaho. Put faith in a different light. Instead of faith is what we want. It was okay. People lived without faith.

Carah Burrell [00:47:22] Yeah. So how did your time then at BYU Idaho, between that class and generally, how did that affect your testimony? Was it overall a positive experience?

Camille Jones [00:47:30] Overall, a positive experience. A little hard for it to not be with all of the. I mean, you're getting doctrine from everywhere, right?

Carah Burrell [00:47:40] You called it an indoctrination camp.

Camille Jones [00:47:43] It really is pretty much that kind of a thing. You're getting all of your normal education. So you learn how to do all the. The things. I learned how to edit. I learned how to do rhetoric. I learned how to do all of the things that I was supposed to do. But the professors are encouraged to bring up doctrine and include those, if appropriate.

Carah Burrell [00:48:03] Right.

Camille Jones [00:48:04] And then you have to take your. Your gospel, doctrine and church history and certain religion classes. And then you go to church. You have to go to church on Sunday. If you're not active, then you don't qualify for. What's it called again? I forget what it's called. Byu.

John Dehlin [00:48:22] You have to have your ecclesiastical endorsement.

Camille Jones [00:48:24] Yes, that thing. Endorsement, yep.

Carah Burrell [00:48:27] So you were pretty faithful throughout your time there at BYU Idaho? Were you praying every day and.

Camille Jones [00:48:32] Praying every day. Reading my scriptures every day. A little hard to go to the temple because we didn't have the Rexburg Temple at that point.

Carah Burrell [00:48:38] Oh, really?

Camille Jones [00:48:39] Yeah, they broke ground while I was there.

Carah Burrell [00:48:41] Oh, I didn't realize. How could they have BYU Idaho without a temple there? This is like, completely blowing my mind. I didn't realize that.

Camille Jones [00:48:47] Yeah, yeah. It's a. Still a pretty new. Still a pretty new temple. Hasn't been there for terribly long.

Carah Burrell [00:48:57] So. Okay, so the temple was there later. So overall, good experience at BYU Idaho. And then did you end up, I guess, putting in your mission papers then?

Serving a Mission in Palmyra

Camille Jones [00:49:04] I went on a mission.

Carah Burrell [00:49:05] And where did you get called?

Camille Jones [00:49:07] I got called to Rochester, New York.

Carah Burrell [00:49:10] Rochester, New York. Was it English speaking?

Camille Jones [00:49:12] English speaking. It also included the Hill Cumorah Visitor center and the historic sites at Palmyra.

Carah Burrell [00:49:19] Oh, my gosh. That's actually really cool. That's where my dad got baptized.

Camille Jones [00:49:23] Oh, really?

Carah Burrell [00:49:23] Was through. Yeah. That mission was what baptized my dad into the church.

Camille Jones [00:49:27] Oh, where did he live?

Carah Burrell [00:49:28] He was a traveling hippie. He Was with a ponytail who was traveling through and went to like the pageant there and met with the missionaries there. Yeah. So that's a special place in my heart a little bit.

Camille Jones [00:49:39] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:49:39] See, I'm not, I'm not mad that my dad joined the church there. It was good for him, you know, so.

Camille Jones [00:49:44] Oh, good.

Carah Burrell [00:49:45] So you opened your mission papers. Were you excited?

Camille Jones [00:49:48] I was excited. It was a busy weekend when I got my, when I got my call. So some mixed feelings. We were tired. Okay. Going back to the. Having family members that weren't actually family members. We had a couple that I grew up calling Grandma and Grandpa and we all called him Grandma. This one wasn't just me, it was all of us. And he passed away the same week that my call arrived. And I was up at school. My call arrived on a Wednesday, drove home on a Friday. We went to the funeral Saturday morning and I opened my call Saturday night. So super tired. Emotions were really raw because, you know, we loved him. He was a wonderful man and he really was like grandpa to us. And I open my call and I see the New York Rochester Mission and Palmyra historic sites or something like that. And I remember feeling kind of disappointed because I wanted to go foreign. I wanted to learn a language. And here I was going to go sit in a visitor center and I wasn't thrilled. And I really had to work to be okay with serving at a historic site. Later it was great. Later I was like, yeah, this is, this is wonderful. I get to bear my testimony every day, all day long people come to me, which is really nice. As a missionary, instead of having to go knock on all the doors and find people who wanted to hear something gospel related.

Carah Burrell [00:51:30] And you're probably like in an air conditioned building.

Camille Jones [00:51:33] Yes. During this.

Carah Burrell [00:51:33] Can't be understated really.

Camille Jones [00:51:35] Except when you went out on the tours.

Carah Burrell [00:51:38] Oh, you did go out on the tours.

John Dehlin [00:51:39] Oh yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:51:39] That actually sounds kind of fun.

Camille Jones [00:51:41] Yeah, it was. It was. Except when nobody would show up and then you just sat there and did nothing but, well, you read your scriptures, church history, Peter Whitmer farm. I'd go in and play the piano.

Carah Burrell [00:51:53] And you're only allowed to read and do church approved things during that time. Did you have a hard time just staying restricted within the mission rules?

Camille Jones [00:52:01] I read the entire mission library within the first.

John Dehlin [00:52:06] Which. Which consisted of.

Camille Jones [00:52:08] Oh well, you had your scriptures. And I guess I didn't read through the entire Bible while I was on my mission, but I'd read it before I read the whole Bible before I went on my Mission.

Carah Burrell [00:52:19] Really? I would. Okay, finish what you're gonna say because I wanna ask you something. I love to talk to people who have read the entire Bible, but go on.

Camille Jones [00:52:27] Okay, so you had your scriptures, and I read all the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, multiple times. There's Jesus, the Christ, True to the faith. There was something else. I can't remember.

John Dehlin [00:52:40] Miracle Forgiveness.

Camille Jones [00:52:42] No, that was not part of the. The mission library.

John Dehlin [00:52:45] Yeah. Okay.

Camille Jones [00:52:47] I would have read it if it had been. We were allowed to ask permission from my second mission president if we wanted to read something else. And so I read the institute manual for church history.

John Dehlin [00:53:04] The big green one?

Camille Jones [00:53:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:05] Dark green one?

Camille Jones [00:53:05] Yeah. The big. The fat green one.

John Dehlin [00:53:07] That was actually one of the beginnings of the end of my. My testimony.

Camille Jones [00:53:11] Was it?

John Dehlin [00:53:12] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:53:13] What manual?

John Dehlin [00:53:15] It's called Church History in the Fullness of Times. It's a. It's a dark green institute manual, super thick. And it. It. It doesn't. It doesn't go into detail, but it mentions a few of the more controversial things where it's just like, whoa, I didn't know that. You know, kind of like Mountain Meadows or the Kirtland bank stuff, or a little bit about polygamy, just enough to kind of think, huh, maybe I'll dig a little bit deeper.

Camille Jones [00:53:39] Yeah. And I don't remember catching any of the question marks there. I did have a question mark while I was at the mtc, though. They have the resource trait, the. What do they call that? Where you go in and you can do practice discussions with volunteers. So you're not teaching another missionary. You're teaching somebody you've never met before, and they're supposed to play the role of an investigator. And I was teaching the first discussion there, and this person asked, so what happened to the plates? And I immediately said, well, the angel took them back, and I remember going, that sounds absolutely crazy. And I had to just kind of swallow a little bit and go, okay, well, yeah, the angel took him back, so we don't have him anymore and we have no proof. And to somebody outside the church, that is going to sound absolutely crazy. And I'll just have to be okay with that.

Carah Burrell [00:54:37] Yeah, you're already in deep. You're in the mtc. Swallow that one. Is that the only thing that he said between reading the entire Bible all the way through and all these different manuals and things? Was anything else that stood out as bizarre to you or difficult to swallow?

Camille Jones [00:54:56] I mean, I was never particularly comfortable with polygamy for some reason.

Carah Burrell [00:55:00] Had you known a lot about it from your reading. Like you understood that Joseph was a polygamist and the coercion that happened with his wives. Were you like, I knew that he

Camille Jones [00:55:10] had taken other wives, but I was under the impression that it was in name only. You know, it was the have to obey the, the law of the Lord because the angel of the flaming sword told me I had to. But I am still faithful completely to my wife Emma sort of view of the prophet Joseph Smith.

Carah Burrell [00:55:29] Yeah, I'm sure that's a pretty common view that people need to have to continue their testimony and make sense of why Joseph would do that. So.

Camille Jones [00:55:37] Which is funny because we're all okay with Brigham Young having as many wives

John Dehlin [00:55:41] and children having sex with them. Not just. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's this weird, there's this weird apologetic move in Mormonism where we, we acknowledge, apologists acknowledge that Brigham Young on had sex with all their polygamous wives, but we don't want Joseph to have had sex with any of his polygamous wives. So we say there's no evidence, there's no evidence of Joseph Smith having sex with any of his, you know, I don't know if they want like VHS VHS tapes or like, you know, video or, or like, you know, descriptions and journals of, of the sexual act. Like I don't know what people want. But that's a, a typical apologetic move to just say, well, there's no evidence of Joseph Smith. It makes no sense to me.

Camille Jones [00:56:25] I think they can't really own up to it because there's comments about how he was commanded to by the angel of the flaming sword and he really didn't want to. And all the times that he had said that he didn't have other wives besides Emma, but he already did. So it's a pretty hairy spot for apologetics to get into. Anyways,

Carah Burrell [00:56:47] avoid at all costs.

Camille Jones [00:56:48] Yeah. There was one other question I had on my mission and this is kind of funny. Living near Palmyra with all the sisters that were needed at the sites, we sometimes had more than one companionship living in an apartment. And there was this one sister who managed to get a hold of chai tea and I thought it was just an herbal tea and she had this great big thing of it in the cupboard and she made us all a cup of tea one night and I, you know, again thinking it was just an herbal sort of Indian spice based something tea. And I thought, oh, this is wonderful. This tastes so fantastic. And then I went and I read the ingredients label and the first ingredient is black tea. And I felt so terrible that I was drinking tea and that I liked it and I didn't turn her in. It was one of those, like, I just, you know, it's her choice. If she thinks she's okay to drink this, then that's her choice. Maybe she doesn't know and ignorance is bliss. So I'm not going to say anything. And I didn't. But I also never forgot how good chai tea was.

Carah Burrell [00:58:03] Uh huh. Because what is the implication if missionaries are breaking the word of wisdom?

Camille Jones [00:58:08] Oh, word of wisdom, you lose your temple recommendations. Right?

Carah Burrell [00:58:12] Yeah.

Camille Jones [00:58:12] You can't drink tea, you can't drink coffee. No alcohol. No. Well, the other thing with the word of wisdom is we don't actually really teach all of it. You know, eat meat sparingly, every fruit in its season. We don't do that.

Carah Burrell [00:58:28] That won't keep you out of the temple. But a cup of chai tea could.

Camille Jones [00:58:31] Oh yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:58:32] And depending on maybe the discretion of the person interviewing you, but I think that's a pretty strict line, is black tea, green tea, that's a big no. No herbal tea, you're fine.

Camille Jones [00:58:42] Which is funny anyways.

Carah Burrell [00:58:44] Yeah, it really is confusing and I'm especially sure, like, if you had investigators, you have to ask the baptismal interview questions and they would probably be able to get baptized if they were drinking chai tea, right?

Camille Jones [00:58:58] I don't know. Depends on who's interviewing, doesn't it?

Carah Burrell [00:59:00] Yeah, it does. So do you want to explain for a second why Palmyra and just why Palmyra is important to the church and kind of what as a missionary that you did there?

Guiding Tours of LDS Historic Sites

Camille Jones [00:59:11] So Palmyra is the location that Joseph and his family lived in when the first vision happened. So there were four historic sites in my mission. One was the Hill Cumorah, which is where the Book of Mormon, the plates, the golden plates were buried. And then there was the Joseph Smith farm, which of course is where Joseph Smith lived and had the sacred grove where the first vision occurred. The Book of Mormon publication site, which is fondly called the Bomps.

John Dehlin [00:59:39] What? What does that mean?

Camille Jones [00:59:40] Book of Mormon publication site.

John Dehlin [00:59:42] Okay, bumps, okay, bumps, got it.

Carah Burrell [00:59:45] Yeah. Book of Mormon publication site.

Camille Jones [00:59:47] Uhhuh. Yeah. Also called the Grandin Building.

Carah Burrell [00:59:51] Okay.

Camille Jones [00:59:51] Because Grandin was the publisher. The editor. Publisher, publisher. And then further south, near Waterloo is the Peter Whitmer farm, which is where the church was organized on April 6, 1830.

Carah Burrell [01:00:09] And is this part of like you'd have a tour guide type speech that you'd give to.

Camille Jones [01:00:14] Oh yeah, we had site manuals. So we had things that we could study, so we knew the history. We knew what we should be telling. People who came to the sites had. It was basically stories that were attached to those locations as well. So you had the basic history, you had other stories that you could tell, and you just pulled them out as to what you thought or felt impressed or were inspired to share with those visitors to the sites.

Carah Burrell [01:00:48] So when you're doing this tour guide, you're obviously a missionary and you're trying to build faith, whether it's just people who want to go on a mission, like a Mormon tour around, or like, youth trips.

John Dehlin [01:00:59] Right.

Carah Burrell [01:00:59] Youth trips are something that my parents are probably booking right now because they love that kind of stuff. So, like, active Mormon couples, I'm sure. And family trips, like, all different types of people.

John Dehlin [01:01:10] Because, like, Mormons travel to Palmyra. Like. Like Muslims go to, like, Saudi Arabia or the Hajj or whatever.

Carah Burrell [01:01:16] It's like Nauvoo and Palmyra are probably the big two, right?

John Dehlin [01:01:19] Nauvoo and Palmyra, exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, I remember when I went to Palmyra. I don't know if you ever did it.

Carah Burrell [01:01:26] I have not.

John Dehlin [01:01:27] Yeah. So, like, I remember I'm in college. I think it was after my mission, and I'm just like, ah, I've never been. So you go to the sacred grove, and you want to have this moment where you kneel down and maybe pray, and you can maybe see God in Jesus or at least get a witness from the Holy Ghost, like Joseph Smith did, and you want to go see his home as a child, the Log Cabin or whatever. I don't even. He would have been born in Vermont, but. But at some point, you know, the house anyway, it's. It's almost like a pilgrimage, like a. A Mormon, orthodox Mormon pilgrimage to one of our most sacred sites to learn about the church, but also to have some sort of spiritual experience.

Carah Burrell [01:02:09] Do you work for the marketing for this place? I want to go now. I am sold, John. I'm buying the next plane ticket to Palmyra for that reason.

John Dehlin [01:02:17] No, but I love your question, Carrie, because I think I would love you to convey, like, what your role was, what. What people were coming to you for, and then what. What your role was. And I would love you to even share kind of like the most important stories that you would tell as missionaries to build up faith in these four sites that you mentioned to build up faith in the members or in investigators that were curious about the church. You would also want to make them curious. Maybe you're A missionary. The whole point is possibly to get people to show interest in the church and maybe even get baptized. So I would love you to take some time just talking about the way you guys told stories about the history in the sacred. I say in air quotes in the sacred site to help build faith with Mormons and non Mormons.

Camille Jones [01:03:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:06] Or do I have it wrong?

Camille Jones [01:03:07] No, no, you're right. And about 90% of the people who came were members.

Carah Burrell [01:03:12] Maybe.

Camille Jones [01:03:12] Maybe a little more.

John Dehlin [01:03:14] So it was for us, not the rest of the world. Even though you're missionaries, Mostly for us.

Camille Jones [01:03:19] We did have investigators, of course, being mission missionaries in the area. It was like, okay, we have the sites. We are going to, you know, we're going to teach you about the first vision, and then we're going to go to the sacred grove and you can go in and you can feel it yourself and you can find out and we'll even give you a moment in the sacred grove and you can pray and know for yourself. So we took full advantage of the sites while we were there to help teach our investigators anything and everything we could about, you know, the doctrine, the normal dialogue. So probably the first site people think of is the Sacred Grove. And that's part of the Joseph Smith

John Dehlin [01:03:59] farm

Carah Burrell [01:04:01] on the Sacred Grove story where the first vision happened. What was the narrative that you were telling the people on the tour? Were you ever aware of the other first vision stories?

Camille Jones [01:04:13] I think I'd heard about them, but I didn't really look into them until after my mission.

Carah Burrell [01:04:17] So you had one narrative? I had one narrative put forward by

Camille Jones [01:04:20] the church, the official church narrative. We had it memorized.

John Dehlin [01:04:24] You weren't trained that there had been like up to eight different versions told and that it changed over time?

Camille Jones [01:04:30] No.

John Dehlin [01:04:30] You were just taught the 1838 version.

Camille Jones [01:04:32] Yep. Okay, we knew the 1838 version, and that was the only one that was in the site manual as well. So the Joseph Smith farm has two different houses and the sacred grove. You start off in a. In kind of a visitor center. Sometimes you would do a little kind of introductory spiel of some sort, and then you would take them out the side door and down this little dirt lane to the log home. And you talk about what life was like for the Smith family, all the, you know, the number of children in this one small little house. And then you take him upstairs and you talk about Moroni and the story of Moroni appearing to Joseph Smith while he was there and how he had a vision and it lasted all night and Moroni told him all these things he was supposed to do when he was 17, about the plates and how it mentioned things about temple work and family history and, you know, all the. All you. And you just bear your testimony, and you're always bearing your testimony. You bury your testimony in the visitor center basement of the. Of the log home, the upstairs of the log home.

John Dehlin [01:05:43] And then were you told? And this is just me geeking out to the extent that I can. Like, there's confusion that Joseph had different accounts. That. Was it Nephi that appeared to him or Moroni, that Joseph changed, you know, over time, who the original angel was? Were you ever. Were you ever informed about that?

Camille Jones [01:06:02] No. Okay. Nope. I had no idea that there was a story that it was Nephi, not Moroni.

John Dehlin [01:06:06] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:06:08] And that's what's funny, is, like, you just mentioned that you were bearing your testimony of these things over and over and over again about a narrative that had kind of been handed to you, but you didn't know that there were different narratives, that there were different changes. So. So to the extent that missionaries sometimes are bearing their testimony, it sounds like you're saying they're kind of regurgitating a testimony, sort of.

Camille Jones [01:06:30] Except, I mean, we really did believe it.

John Dehlin [01:06:32] Yeah, of course.

Carah Burrell [01:06:33] Yeah. Like, the spirit can wash over you and like, you can feel like you're doing the right thing that the Lord wants you to do.

Camille Jones [01:06:39] Yeah. There was one day I took a tour, and it was the. I can't remember which year anniversary of Moroni appearing to Joseph. So September 23rd, I think, is what it was. And I was taking a tour, and we had. There was somebody on the tour who was a questioning Mormon. So faith was starting to waver.

Carah Burrell [01:07:02] Did they announce that

Camille Jones [01:07:06] every once in a while, if there was somebody who was with them, it was usually them with somebody, you know, like their parents, and they've got a struggling teenager. And so anyway, the other person would usually say something about, this person needs a little more take you to the

Carah Burrell [01:07:22] side and be like, I need you to really bring the testimony.

Camille Jones [01:07:27] Something like that. Actually, it actually happened that way.

Carah Burrell [01:07:30] Oh, okay. I will ramp it up.

Camille Jones [01:07:32] This person's struggling, you know, they just really need a strong testimony. And you're like, okay, I think I can do that. And I remember on that anniversary day of Moroni appearing to Joseph Smith, that it was a really powerful day. You know, the idea that that had happened in not that room because the house has been rebuilt, but in that same airspace as we used to say, because Moroni didn't touch the ground anyways.

Carah Burrell [01:08:00] So of course it was like an airplane in an airplane hangar. The airspace. Go on.

Camille Jones [01:08:06] But it was, it was a powerful day, I'm sure.

Carah Burrell [01:08:08] Yeah.

Camille Jones [01:08:08] You know, by the time we left the upstairs of the log home, pretty much everybody was crying, including me. So, you know, we really did believe what we were saying. I really did believe what I was saying.

Carah Burrell [01:08:21] Yeah, yeah, no doubt on that.

Camille Jones [01:08:23] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:08:24] But.

John Dehlin [01:08:24] But there's this interesting. And we can come back to this informed consent problem because you're. It's, it's not just like an average member that that is believing or not believing something. You're now in the official role of a spokesperson for the church and you haven't been given all the information. To me, that's kind of a next level seriousness because if the church knows that you're representing the church officially, I think they have even an extra responsibility to make sure you know the full story so that you're not, I guess, emotionally manipulating people with a narrative that is incomplete or in some cases just totally dishonest.

Camille Jones [01:09:07] Yeah. And I had no idea. We were told that as missionaries in the Palmyra area, that our entire mission we were meant to be gatekeepers of the restoration. That was a title we were, we were given by mission presidents. We were meant to protect and defend the story of the Restoration. And not just while on our mission, but that because we were called to that mission, we were supposed to be gatekeepers of the Restoration for our entire lives.

Carah Burrell [01:09:39] Wow, that is quite the title. Quite the mantle, kind of intense.

Camille Jones [01:09:45] It was intense and I think it was meant to be intense. To try and get us to be as involved and as passionate and to build that fire in the bones sort of experience as much as possible so that when we left, we would be strong forever.

Carah Burrell [01:10:04] Because to somebody who's investigating the Church, what is the perception that you're supposed to be giving them about Joseph Smith and about the Restoration?

Camille Jones [01:10:13] That it's all true. Absolutely and completely. It's all true.

John Dehlin [01:10:17] Meaning what?

Camille Jones [01:10:18] Meaning of all. All the stories, all the stories that are miraculous. That Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ in the sacred grove. That Moroni appeared to him in his bedroom as a 17 year old and told him about the gold plates. That he found the gold plates in the hill Cumorah, and then had to go back every year on the same night for four years before he was able to receive them. And he received divine instruction during those four years. That he translated it by the gift and power of God. Yeah. That the Book of Mormon is the most correct book. Of any book on the earth.

John Dehlin [01:11:01] All the things. Why are you smiling? We'll come back to that.

Camille Jones [01:11:09] Are we jumping narrative now?

John Dehlin [01:11:11] Yeah, right, yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:11:13] We'll keep with the chronology because the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith's own words that he said, that it's the keystone of their religion. So it's foundational to a testimony in the Mormon Church. And everything else that comes with it is testimony that Joseph Smith did what he said he did, receive the revelations that he said he did. The Book of Mormon came in the way that he said that it did.

Camille Jones [01:11:34] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:11:35] And all of those things need to work together to create a strong testimony

Camille Jones [01:11:39] or at least the top half of the building of the church will fall down. Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:11:46] So you mentioned three other sites.

Camille Jones [01:11:48] Right, right, right. So that after the log home, so still Joseph Smith Farm, after the log home, you actually walk him further down the lane to the frame house, which is mostly original. Some of it has been kind of restored back into that proper time period because they've made changes to the house. And there's a nice little viewpoint in between the two houses where you can look up the hill at the temple. The. The Palm Irish Temple is right there. So it's. It looks you've got the temple on one side and you've got the sacred grove on the other. So you've got this nice little spot where you can stop and tell stories and look both directions at these holy places.

John Dehlin [01:12:28] Is it kind of choreographed?

Camille Jones [01:12:29] Oh, it's definitely choreographed.

John Dehlin [01:12:31] For with what purpose?

Camille Jones [01:12:35] So the story goes that when the temple was built that they wanted to be able to look out the windows of the Palmyra Temple and see the sacred grove. But there were trees in the way and they weren't supposed to trim the trees because it wasn't part of their land. I don't remember exactly why they weren't supposed to trim the trees, but they weren't supposed to trim these trees back to create this viewpoint between the two building or between the building and the sacred grove. And the story goes, was there, there was a wind. And the joke is that the wind is actually. Well, I don't want to say his name because I haven't asked any permission, but there's a caretaker who takes care of the grounds there in the grove and that the wind was named, this man's name. And he would just very slowly, he trimmed a couple of branches here and there until you had this nice little V shape where they could see out from the Palmyre Temple towards the grove. But it also let us see from the Lane, the grove and the temple at the same time.

Carah Burrell [01:13:42] Like this Holy Bermuda Triangle. That's what it sounds like. And then there's another site that you mentioned as well, that you had.

John Dehlin [01:13:50] Oh, wait, is there anything more about that?

Camille Jones [01:13:52] Yeah, so you'd walk them down the road, stop, look at the temple, look at the sacred grove, go to the frame home, and you tell stories about how difficult it was to keep the plates safe. All the stories about all the people who were trying to get a hold of the plates and how they hit them. And more information about the Smith family, about when they moved. Stories about Alvin Smith and how he died and the, you know, the celestial kingdom and the sealing power. You tell all those stories and then you take them back out the front door and you'd say, or the back door, depending on how busy things were. And then you would send him off into the grove on their own. And that was the Joseph Smith farm.

John Dehlin [01:14:33] Anything about Joseph Smith's treasure digging, stone in the hat, Sally Chase, and just all of the folk magic, treasure digging stuff that happened in those first.

Carah Burrell [01:14:42] Yeah. And I wanted to ask, did you know about the stone in the hat translation process as you're describing this?

Camille Jones [01:14:49] I knew.

John Dehlin [01:14:49] Those are separate questions.

Camille Jones [01:14:50] Yeah, I knew he had a seer stone. I did not know about the stone in the hat. So, no. Never taught anything about that. I'm not even sure I know what Sally Chase means.

Carah Burrell [01:15:01] Well, he got the rock from.

Camille Jones [01:15:03] Oh, is that the well that he found the rock in? Okay. And I did hear about treasure digging, but the way we were taught it and the way that if somebody brought it up, we would reply was that it was a job. He was a hard worker. He was, you know, a farm laborer. It was a labor job. He would go dig, somebody would pay him to dig a hole.

John Dehlin [01:15:24] Oh, my gosh.

Carah Burrell [01:15:25] Okay. Interesting, interesting. So somebody could come to the missionaries at Palmyra and they could potentially give you a real, like, narrative about the way that Joseph. 18 different treasure digs, I believe he had, that he went on, you know, purporting that he could see underground that there was buried treasure on farmer's land and kind of get away with. What's the word? I don't want to be too mean, but fraud. Yeah, I guess, you know, defraud farmers. Somebody could come to you with that and your reply would just have been, no, he was just digging holes because he was a good hole digging guy.

Camille Jones [01:16:07] He was a hired hand. He was a laborer.

Carah Burrell [01:16:10] And he wouldn't have thought a second thing about his father.

Camille Jones [01:16:12] And maybe there were other missionaries who had a different narrative, but as far as I knew, that was what was the truth.

John Dehlin [01:16:18] And for listeners that don't really know this history, what we're talking about, the way it really happened according to actual history, is that there were neighbors in the Smith family in Palmyra who believed that there was buried treasure hidden all throughout the New England coast because of Spanish conquistadors and pirates and all this folklore. And so Joseph heard about his neighbor using a seer stone, Sally Chase, to dig for buried treasure. That's where he got the idea. And he ended up getting a quote, magic stone, both from her, but also from others, and started this multi year career as someone who had the reputation of being able to find buried treasure underground. So, so I think what's really important about Palmyra is, you know, if you're going to be talking about the history is to say, hey, this is how it all started. And then slowly over time, when Joseph ended up getting arrested and getting busted for this treasure digging, which was illegal, then he turned and sort of converted that practice into the Book of Mormon. And in fact, the Book of Mormon maps directly onto the treasure digging narrative. There's a treasure buried in a hill, which is the Golden Plates. There's an angel protecting the treasure, which is Angel Moroni. And then there's Joseph Smith with his stone in the hat being able to find the buried treasure, you know, and so, and so it's again, it's just kind of weird that, that the church is known forever, that that's kind of how it all began. It was in Palmyra. It was with his family. Everyone knew about it, all the neighbors knew about it. And yet what I, what I hear you saying is that was all completely not told to you, kept from you, both in terms of your learning, but also in your advocacy for relating the church's faithful narrative to members and investigators. True.

Camille Jones [01:18:13] Yeah. That was not something I knew. And we weren't supposed to teach anything. That was not in the site manuals. And it was definitely not part of the site manuals.

Carah Burrell [01:18:25] What I know.

Camille Jones [01:18:27] Who'd have thought.

Carah Burrell [01:18:28] Yeah, and I'm sure, I mean, I guess you could. It's hard to know what the missionaries are teaching now that enough time has gone by and enough of these things

John Dehlin [01:18:37] are enough podcasts, enough podcasts have been

Carah Burrell [01:18:40] aired and it's starting to make its way into the speculation of members, the gospel topics essays. I'm just wondering maybe if your script would have has changed since then, if the sister missionaries, I would assume Sites have changed.

Camille Jones [01:18:51] I would assume it's changed, but I would also assume that's still going to be pretty whitewashed because it is meant to strengthen the testimony of members, to teach the gospel to investigators, and to ultimately help indoctrinate and strengthen the testimony of the missionary.

Carah Burrell [01:19:09] Right.

John Dehlin [01:19:09] I mean, I have to say that if you were told that Joseph's role was as a manual laborer, treasure digging, that's outright dishonest. And the church has known at least since the 60s and 70s that Joseph was leading the treasure digs as the one who claimed to have the special power to find the buried treasure. Even though there's no account of like in the 16 or 18 digs of him ever actually finding buried treasure. The church has known all this. So for them to communicate to you as a missionary, knowing the, the truth, but then telling you that he was just the, the, the shovel digger is, is really, is really deceptive. And it has to be intentionally deceptive because it's embarrassing for them to say he was into folk magic and was claiming to see underground with the stone in the hat that happens to be the stone in the hat that he also claimed to have translated the Book of Mormon when the plates actually weren't in the room. Like, the fact that they didn't tell you any of that, but then told you a false narrative is kind of troubling to me.

Camille Jones [01:20:11] Well, all the stuff that I didn't know is still troubling to me.

Carah Burrell [01:20:14] So, yeah, going out and serving for 18 months without having a lot of, like John likes to say, informed consent about different conflicting narratives and what actually really happened in Palmyra, because you were there at the ground zero of the foundations of all of these stories and everything that happened. I'm sure those treasure digs were right around the places there in Palmyra. You're just like completely oblivious to it.

Camille Jones [01:20:38] I have no idea. I still don't know.

Carah Burrell [01:20:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Camille Jones [01:20:42] So the next site would be the Hill Cumorah.

John Dehlin [01:20:45] Okay.

Camille Jones [01:20:45] And the Hill Cumorah is a formal visitor center. So you walk in, it's got a, you know, a meeting area. You've got a desk where you've got a missionary who sits. You've got a Christus statue in a Christus room. There are a couple of little theaters where you can show movies, like the church's movie on the restoration, which is, I think it was a 20 minute movie. And then there was an hour long movie, more about Joseph Smith. And then you just kind of, you know, let them walk out the side door. And up the hill, Cumorah, where there's a monument at the top. It's very. It's a much shorter tour. The longest part is the Christus room. And I did that often enough that for a while I had the Christus narration memorized.

Carah Burrell [01:21:30] I can imagine. I. Was it boring, or did you like it, or do you feel the spirit when you're repeating the same kind of tour guide?

Camille Jones [01:21:37] A little bit of everything, I think. I mean, there were times it was like, okay, I'm gonna listen to it one more time. And then there were times when it was like, you know, there's some interesting stuff in here, and I wonder where they found all the scriptures. And then you go through and you find all the scriptures and you can piece the narration together off of whatever, 20 different scriptures they used to create the narration. And then you start to study those. And so sometimes it's interesting, sometimes it's like, okay, I've heard it 5 million times, and I'll just listen for the keyword at the very end that lets me know it's just about done and pull my thoughts together quickly so I can bear my testimony at the end and find out where they want to go from there.

Carah Burrell [01:22:16] Did you have that thing where I feel like a lot of times in the church, when you're struggling in an area, you're like, what does God want me to learn out of this? And so you seem like a very smart, very capable person that wasn't being utilized very much on your mission. Having to repeat the same kind of testimonies, just kind of play tour guide for the church. Did you feel like, okay, God is trying to have me learn something and your thoughts are kind of turning towards, what does he want me to get out of this mission continually?

Camille Jones [01:22:45] Well, I always wondered what he wanted me to get out of the mission. I never really understood why that was my mission. At one point, I thought I was there for my companions, which sounds very egotistical to me now. You know, I am there to help my companions, but I don't know if I ever came to a good conclusion as to. I am called to this mission because I just did the thing. You just do the thing. You just stand up and you. You take the tours and it's your turn to take the tour, or it's your turn to take the tour and you just get up and you do it. So I took the tours and I really. I liked working with people, so having a crowd to interact with, I enjoyed that. I enjoyed having conversation with them, and I Didn't mind that part of it. It's a lot harder to go knock doors than it is to take a tour.

John Dehlin [01:23:45] I was gonna say that, Carah. Like, yeah, it may be boring or lame to be just reciting these rote history tours, but it is really lame to be knocking doors, having people, like, make fun of you, slam doors in your face. Like, that's actually.

Carah Burrell [01:24:00] But at least you feel like you served a real mission. Like, you really got, like, blisters in your shoes. You have, like, a story to tell.

Camille Jones [01:24:06] I wore holes in my shoes.

Carah Burrell [01:24:08] Really?

Camille Jones [01:24:08] Yeah, I did. I had a pair of shoes that I wore almost every day. I went to the sites because they were comfortable and looked nice, and I had to throw them away about a month before I came home because they started getting rocks stuck in the soles of them because there were holes through them.

Carah Burrell [01:24:25] And they assign you some really bad clothing and shoes, just in general. They probably weren't very good shoes anyway.

Camille Jones [01:24:31] I felt super frumpy at times. We tried really hard to not look frumpy, especially since we were at the sites. And, you know, you wanted to present a really nice image because you didn't know who was going to come through that door.

Carah Burrell [01:24:41] Right.

Camille Jones [01:24:42] You did not want to be terribly. Or I did not want to be terribly frumpy.

Carah Burrell [01:24:47] And their conversion could completely be dependent on your lack of frump or frump.

Camille Jones [01:24:53] Centric conversion could be dependent upon impressions.

Carah Burrell [01:24:56] Yeah.

Camille Jones [01:24:57] And having a good impression was very important. And they actually taught us that in the mtc that we were supposed to look at the part. We. We were supposed to wear makeup, we were supposed to dress nicely. We were supposed to fill this specific model of this is what a sister missionary ought to look like. And it's. It's. You look good.

John Dehlin [01:25:23] And they tend to call. I don't know how else to say this, but, like, attractive sister missionaries to Temple Square in Salt Lake City, to some of these sites. And sometimes there's even a real concentration of eating disordered sister missionaries, I've been told, at these church history sites, including Temple Square, because you're. You want to look thin. You want to. You know, you want to look attractive because it's where foreign dignitaries come. It's where VIPs both inside and outside of the church come. And so just speaking to your kind of conversions based on impressions, you. You want the most attractive. And it's mostly sister missionaries. Right. There's not even for. I don't even know. Do you. Did they even explain to you why it was sister missionaries at Temple Square or the church history sites, and not men.

Camille Jones [01:26:18] I don't know why they don't call elders. We did occasionally have elders help with translations. So if we knew we were going to have a group that needed ASL or Spanish or Chinese or something, we would have an elder from one of the nearby areas, a proselytic missionary come in and translate for us, which was weird. I was never very comfortable with translation, but it works, I guess. But we were told that it was the younger sister missionaries who were supposed to take the tours and not the senior couples because we always had a senior couple at the site too. It wasn't just the sister missionaries. And the younger missionaries were supposed to take it if at all possible. And one of the reasons was because the older missionaries tend to ramble on and they took much longer.

Carah Burrell [01:27:10] You don't say. Are you saying that the younger sister missionaries are more into rule following and then the older senior couples have lived an entire life and had some stories that they like to interject within the script?

Camille Jones [01:27:25] Yes, they would get off topic or they would just tell more stories, some of them from the manuals and some of them not from the manuals.

John Dehlin [01:27:34] So Sister. Mr. Young Sister missionaries stay on script. But also I, I have to think they're also more attractive.

Carah Burrell [01:27:41] I've never. Don't write me letters. I've never seen an unattractive sister missionary. Don't send me letters. Don't send me pictures.

John Dehlin [01:27:47] Proselyting or. Yeah, church history sites.

Carah Burrell [01:27:50] And I also, I mean, all the sister missionaries I know are, when I was Mormon anyway. And I just saw glow emanate from them anyway. So I think there's something about sister missionaries that are, they're smiley, they're cheerful, they do like have nice dress and grooming and they, they have a bubbly personality. I think sister missionaries, like in and out are just like beautiful people.

John Dehlin [01:28:11] I think I'm, I think I'm invoking an interview I did with Juliana Viegas Haas, who's a woman of color, post Mormon woman of color from Belgium who served on Temple Square. And so these thoughts I'm having about thin sister missionaries, attractive sister missionaries, eating disordered sister missionaries at church history sites in Temple Square comes from that interview with Juliana Viegas Haas. So I'm going to share a link to that because I don't think, I'm not making this up. That's all. That's all I'm saying.

Camille Jones [01:28:40] I don't know if we had any eating disorder type problems with our sister missionaries. I don't think it was as much of a push or, you know, a pressure to look a certain way because we weren't Temple Square. We were Palmyra.

John Dehlin [01:28:57] Ah, okay.

Camille Jones [01:28:59] And there was a difference.

John Dehlin [01:29:01] Yeah, okay, okay. She was Temple Square.

Carah Burrell [01:29:03] Maybe it could be made that the budget that missionaries get for food is kind of like an eating disorder budget. They don't give you a lot of money for food. That argument could be made.

Camille Jones [01:29:13] We had very good members in our area. They fed us regularly.

Carah Burrell [01:29:17] Oh, good.

Camille Jones [01:29:17] So the members helped out a lot. Lovely, lovely people there

John Dehlin [01:29:23] really quickly. And I'm. I feel a tiny bit like an attorney asking you some of these historical questions. But one of the problems with the Church's historical narrative of Camorra is that the Church, because of DNA, because now, you know, Native Americans in North and South America and Central. Their DNA ties to Asia, not the Middle east, because there's no geography. I mean. I mean, the, the heartland theory. Orthodox Mormons are going to yell at me here, but basically. I'm sorry, yeah, there's no. There's no geography that maps the Book of Mormon to actual US or. Or North Central South American geography other than Central America. And the idea that Moroni could be dying and carry the plates from Central America all the way up to Palmyra, New York, carrying them to then bury them, and the Laban walking on foot and. Yeah, and all that stuff. Like it makes. It's made. Past Mormon apologists teach that there's actually two hill cumorahs that in Central America, Joseph Smith, I mean. I mean, Morona actually buried the plates in Central American hill cumorah and that somehow through teleportation, God moved those plates to the Palmyra hill cumorah for Joseph Smith to uncover. And so I guess I'm asking a question that I probably know the answer to, but did the Church ever train you guys about the two hill cumorah theory and the. The small geography theory, which all the current Mormon apologists sort of use, which is that everything happened in a super small area in Mesoamerica which would make it impossible for the plates to end up in Upper state New York. Was any of that kind of made known to you as a missionary so that you could have kind of the full, real story?

Camille Jones [01:31:14] No,

John Dehlin [01:31:16] it was kept super simple.

Camille Jones [01:31:17] Yeah, we had. I had a series of conversations with a senior elder. He and his wife were serving at the sites, so, you know, they'd be assigned, and when we were there, we would talk church history and we had conversations about, you know, where was the land of the Book of Mormon, you know, Is Niagara the narrow neck of land or. Yeah, we had some good debates, but it was all based on faith. And, you know, I had a very limited library at the time, so it was. I will take whatever I'm told, because that's. Or I'll take whatever I can get. And he did occasionally bring in other stuff that we could read, you know, printed off some contraband material.

Carah Burrell [01:32:04] The contraband material. Heartland period church history.

Camille Jones [01:32:07] Yeah, contraband church history.

Carah Burrell [01:32:09] Because the basis of a Mormon testimony is always like, faith is the first. What's. What's the spiel?

John Dehlin [01:32:16] First principle.

Carah Burrell [01:32:17] First principle of the gospel is faith. And so you lead with faith, and then, you know, sometimes you fill in your faith with other supporting evidence and you cherry pick things and you find motivated reasoning to support the faith that you already have. And then anything else that doesn't make sense, you just kind of go garbage can that. So on your mission, I feel like there's already so much motivating reasoning for the things you're saying, the reasons that you're there, the stories that you're telling to investigators and members who want to learn about these things. You don't have, like, any space in your brain to, like, deviate that there's any other narrative besides the church's official narrative, right?

Camille Jones [01:32:56] No. And I had heard at some point somewhere before my mission, issues with the

John Dehlin [01:33:03] genetics of the DNA of the Native Americans.

Camille Jones [01:33:06] Yeah, the DNA for Native Americans and the issue about there were no horses before the conquistadors arrived. But I think I. I don't know if I just kind of dismissed it or threw it out. I. It never crossed my mind. And then after, later, when I was like, oh, well, yeah, well, I knew that. I knew there were issues. I had just never bothered to really think about it.

Carah Burrell [01:33:32] You had a motivated reasoning to kind of shelf things. Yes, at the time.

John Dehlin [01:33:36] I mean, what you just explained is inoculation theory, which is that if the church can. And this is what they're doing now, now that they. And we're getting off your story a little bit, but this is important now that the church, through the Internet, has been forced to come clean about the history that it hid from its members for over 100 years, it has to find a way to save the younger generations and not have them feel like they were deceived like the older, older generations, like me do. And so they're just dropping stone in a hat. DNA, polygamy, you know, they're dropping those things to the kids when they're teenagers, in seminary and in Sunday school. So that they just know a tiny bit about them. And. And that kind of almost like a. Like a vaccine, ironically, helps inoculate them for questions that come up later. Because in their mind, they're like, oh, I'm not surprised. By a stone in the hat that was mentioned to me while I was in seminary. And you're kind of saying that that's how it was for you.

Camille Jones [01:34:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:34] With DNA.

Camille Jones [01:34:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:35] Is that right?

Camille Jones [01:34:36] Yeah. Well, I didn't even think about it. It was just. And it didn't come up on the mission because our. Our mission was mostly, you know, the church history. So it wasn't apologetics. It wasn't. And you just teach the basic. The basic. All of it's just bottom level and bear your testimony. And it's. And it's enough.

Carah Burrell [01:34:59] And is there anything else about the Hill Cumorah narrative? Because I'm always so interested in that. Like John was saying about the apologetics is they have to come up with a two Hill Cumorah theory, which, if the Hill Cumorah had, you know, brass or whatever, swords, and if it had breastplates and if it had skeletons, if it had all of the things that were left over from that final battle.

John Dehlin [01:35:26] Oh, right, right.

Carah Burrell [01:35:26] That's what I'm trying to say isn't

John Dehlin [01:35:27] helmets and shields and swords and.

Carah Burrell [01:35:29] Yeah. From that.

John Dehlin [01:35:29] Horse bones and mountains of bodies.

Carah Burrell [01:35:32] Mountains of bodies and stuff. I don't know why, when I was Mormon, I never put two and two together that there should be concrete evidence at the Hill Cumorah. Right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:35:41] Like.

Carah Burrell [01:35:41] Right. So, like, it just. The narrative that I'm sure that you're telling is that there was this giant battle right at the Hill Cumorah. Is that what you told?

Camille Jones [01:35:50] So one theory that we came up with was that there were actually the two Hill Cumorahs. So this. This senior elder who talked about it, said, gave me a little bit of idea that there could have been two, so that the battle could have taken place at one. And the Moroni, in however many years he wandered by himself in the wilderness, could have wandered as far as New York and buried it and also called it Hill Cumorah because it was a place of meaning for him.

Carah Burrell [01:36:15] I'm sold. No, just kidding. Malcolm's razor. No, I was just gonna ask. Cause, like, so. Yeah, like, that would make sense. Only because you kind of need something else when you realize. And when Joseph Smith's time, when he's creating these stories, he's not really thinking long term that one day we're gonna go Digging around at the hill Cumorah and find that there's no evidence for the things.

Camille Jones [01:36:40] Right. Archaeology was kind of a. At the time.

Carah Burrell [01:36:43] Yeah. Like, had they even discovered dinosaur bones? Like by that year, like, like even a lot of that stuff was still. Like, we hadn't even known what was underneath the ground. And so I'm sure in Jessel Smith's mind, he's like, yeah. And I'll add this story and they'll be like wooden submarines and like, who cares? He'll just throw any kind of fun things that he wants into his kind of like, fun Bible fanfiction type of narrative and make it like super duper interesting. But then when we actually develop techniques around like archeological digs and the evidence doesn't make sense, they're still sending missionaries out to teach Joseph Smith's narrative from like the 1800s. And they don't, they don't care that like these things actually, they don't fit together anymore. Like, we have, we have modern technology and we know that this, like Occam's razor, it has way too many. What's the word I'm looking for? Allowances. What's the word I'm looking for, John? You know that word.

John Dehlin [01:37:38] I mean, just, just it's, it's too, the, the explanations, the back bends and the back flips and the somersaults you have to do to make it all make sense. I mean, I was struck by, you know when, when you were told that the plates were conveniently taken back up by Moroni. How you. In your brain, you're like. And I'm also struck by how much you read and how intelligent you were and are. And so what I'm, I'm enjoying as you talk about this is knowing how smart you are and knowing how you're being exposed to things that should.

Carah Burrell [01:38:07] Right.

John Dehlin [01:38:08] And would cause a normal super intelligent person to go, wait, that is fishy. Like the fact that somebody's trying to explain to you, well, maybe when he said hill cumorah, there's actually two. There's the one where the battle happened. But then he walks from Central America, you know, to upstate New York carrying 80 pound plates, which are super heavy to carry, and then he actually buries them in a second hill Cumorah. But of course, the Book of Mormon doesn't mention two cumorahs. But, but in your mind you're just like, yeah, whatever, like something happened because I have faith and the church is true. And so, you know, it's all good.

Camille Jones [01:38:47] Yeah. And I never actually thought about it that way. The one that got me was horses, because you can't get away from the fact that horses are in the Book of Mormon. They're called horses. Joseph Smith knew what a horse was. I mean, you can't call it anything else. And for those people who are like, maybe they were tapers, and you're like, no, you can't call them tapers. But we have no evidence of horses.

Carah Burrell [01:39:09] Not around that time period. No, not a chance. Yeah. And just a lot of the. The metallurgy and the things that shape societies. If you've ever read Guns, Germs and Steel is a great book about how if those things really existed, whether in Palmyra or Mesoamerica, that would have completely radically changed the people and the environment and everything that goes into building a civilization at those times. And like I was saying, like, when you just start with faith. Yeah. You'll fill in and then just, like, wait till later when God will explain it to you. So.

John Dehlin [01:39:46] And you're willing to overlook a lot.

Carah Burrell [01:39:47] You're willing to overlook a lot even

John Dehlin [01:39:49] if you're super smart. Even if you're super smart and you're asking all the right questions.

Camille Jones [01:39:54] And I was. I was very willing to wait. I was like, okay, there's got to be an answer. And we'll either come up with it at some point. We're still learning things about history, we're still learning things about science. Eventually we'll find the answer, or God will just tell us, you know, on the other side, when we die, we'll. We'll find out the answer eventually.

Carah Burrell [01:40:12] And I just want to, like, point out the irony that in the mtc, they do these, like, actors that come in to, like, you're saying, pretend to be investigators so that you can practice, and then you get on your mission and you're still talking to members. Mostly.

Camille Jones [01:40:30] Mostly.

Carah Burrell [01:40:30] Like the. The irony there is also kind of a little bittersweet. So overall, it sounds like you had a good experience on your mission. Is that a good way to frame it?

Camille Jones [01:40:39] And that, for the most part, I did.

John Dehlin [01:40:41] We're not done. We're not done. Mission.

Camille Jones [01:40:43] I've got two more. I've got two more church history sites to go through.

Carah Burrell [01:40:46] Oh, yeah. If you want. Okay. Sorry.

John Dehlin [01:40:47] Yeah. Yeah.

Camille Jones [01:40:47] Okay.

Carah Burrell [01:40:48] It's only my second interview, John.

John Dehlin [01:40:49] No, it's good. That's good. Yeah. Anything else? Anything else about Hill Cumorah before you go to the last two sites?

Camille Jones [01:40:55] Later in my mission, we were allowed to tell some of the stories of Willard and Rebecca Bean, who were the first sort of mission presidents in the area. Those were fun stories to tell and I would tell some of them at the hill Cumorah.

John Dehlin [01:41:09] What types of stories? Just to give us a sense. Oh.

Camille Jones [01:41:12] So the plates were supposed to have been buried on the northwest side of the hill. And during Sometime in the 19th century, a lot of that hill was deforested with people who were frantically looking for more treasure. Because there's also the story about the side of the hill opening up and a room full of plates. I don't know if you.

John Dehlin [01:41:35] Yeah, absolutely. What, like a vision. Yeah, yeah.

Camille Jones [01:41:39] So it's not just the gold plates. There are.

John Dehlin [01:41:42] Yeah. Sort of laban full of plates. It's like sort of laban. It's treasure. It's the breastplate. Like visions of. Of all sorts of things in caves. Because again, it's the magical worldview where they can see underground and see all the treasure.

Camille Jones [01:41:56] Yeah, right. Yeah. So like the whole side of the hill was deforested and people were digging around trying to find this room full of plates. And did they find it? No. Darn it, no. We'll have to keep looking.

John Dehlin [01:42:10] What, they never found it?

Camille Jones [01:42:12] Nope, never.

Carah Burrell [01:42:13] Don't give up the faith. We'll keep trying.

Camille Jones [01:42:15] So Willard Bean, first sort of mission president in the area, he reforested the hill. He planted a whole bunch of pine trees, which is funny because it's not really the kind of forest you're supposed to have in that area. And then he started the hill Cumorah pageant. So up on the side of the hill, that's where they have the hill Cumorah pageant. And it's a crazy couple of weeks for the missionaries.

John Dehlin [01:42:37] Was he planting seeds so people would stop looking for the caves and the treasure?

Camille Jones [01:42:41] He actually got all the missionaries out there to plant it. And I think they were seedlings. If I remember there was a photo. And I think they were small trees. Seedlings of some sort.

Carah Burrell [01:42:53] But if there's trees, makes it a lot harder to go around Dickin. Looking for stuff.

Camille Jones [01:42:57] Yes. But it was also church property by that point. And a lot of the digging, I think happened before it was church property.

John Dehlin [01:43:04] Yeah, yeah. Well, the, the church wouldn't want people digging around there because people. It's not a super large hill. Right.

Camille Jones [01:43:11] And so it's actually a fairly sizable hill.

John Dehlin [01:43:13] Okay.

Camille Jones [01:43:14] It's. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:43:14] And I guess it depends on.

Carah Burrell [01:43:15] It's kind of like out in the middle of nowhere almost. It's like just like a hill that's just kind of a standalone, weird looking hill. Right.

Camille Jones [01:43:20] Well, there's a lot of hills in the area. That area used to be covered with glaciers. And so as the glaciers.

Carah Burrell [01:43:24] Oh, it's one of those, like, receded,

Camille Jones [01:43:26] then you ended up with these. I can't remember what they're called. Drummonds. Anyway, you'd end up with all these hills, and they were long and narrow. So the hill Cumorah is actually a fairly sizable hill. It's okay. Yeah, it's good sized and a lot of it is still forested. But again, it was supposed to be the northwest side of the hill where the plates were.

Carah Burrell [01:43:48] Did you mention during the tours that the hills were made out of glaciers? No, I just wanted to. I just wanted you to do that because in my mind, I think that's kind of cool that you're able to talk about, like, if you were able to talk about, like, the ice age and things that are technically go back farther than Joseph Smith. John, you're ruining my joke. Yes, that was the punchline. Anyway, continue. Go on.

Camille Jones [01:44:17] Yes, I did believe that the hills were made from glaciers during an ice age age. And I never considered how that would work in with the timeline that I was taught.

John Dehlin [01:44:25] Well, if it's in the Doctrine and Covenants that the earth is 6,000 years

Carah Burrell [01:44:28] old, DNC 73 or something, I don't remember that.

John Dehlin [01:44:31] Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Doctrine and Covenants says that The Earth is 6 or 7,000 years old.

Carah Burrell [01:44:35] 7,700 years old. Don't worry, I looked it up yesterday in a discussion I was having online on Twitter. So I'm like, not that I just know this knowledge. I just happened to look it up yesterday.

Camille Jones [01:44:44] Anyway, I must have missed that scripture. There's something more for me.

Carah Burrell [01:44:48] There's something. Yeah. We have to start this whole entire interview over until you have read more. Camille, obviously you're not, well, read enough for this interview yet.

The Grandin Building and Book of Mormon Translation

Camille Jones [01:44:59] Okay, so, okay, so Hill, Cumorah. Next place, the Grandin Building.

John Dehlin [01:45:04] Okay. Grand. Grand and Press. Right?

Camille Jones [01:45:06] Yep. And that one. That one's a little more technical because you're actually talking about how a book is made. Yeah, you tell the stories and how much it would have cost for somebody to buy the book, why it was a sacrifice, why it had to be that much money, because, you know, even though it's a book of scripture, it costs this much to make. And so you kind of justifying the cost of the Book of Mormon from like 100 and something years ago, which is funny. Anyways, and then you take him through the building and you show them, you know, here's the bookstore. Take them up the stairs and you show them here's where they bound and here's where they print, and here's how it works. And you're supposed to sprinkle in little stories about, you know, how it was translated. And they actually, they've got a little display area that's set up to look like a kitchen in one of these logs or frame houses from the time period. And on it, they have a replica of the plates covered with a cloth. And so on quiet days as missionaries, we'd go up there and we'd look at these, this replica. We'd uncover it and take a look at the replica of the plates.

John Dehlin [01:46:22] You peaked. You peaked.

Camille Jones [01:46:23] Oh, we peaked. We didn't just peek.

John Dehlin [01:46:25] We, unlike Emma, you peaked.

Camille Jones [01:46:27] Yeah, and they had, it even had like, engravings on it, so you could kind of see what it was supposed to look like, this replica. And parts of it were bound with this big old, you know, sheet of metal so you couldn't flip through all of it.

John Dehlin [01:46:41] But yeah, the bound portions, the bound book.

Camille Jones [01:46:43] Yeah, yeah, we, we peaked. We looked. So going back to the whole stone and the hat thing, the implication of having this on the table is there was no stone in the hat. You had the plates on the table for the translation.

John Dehlin [01:46:57] But it's, but it's worse because, yes, you would, you would want the stone in the hat to be there. But now we know that the plates, when Joseph allegedly translated the Book of Mormon, the plates weren't in the room, they were in the forest.

Camille Jones [01:47:10] That's exactly what I mean.

John Dehlin [01:47:11] Looking into the stone in the hat, supposedly channeling the plates in the forest, so they even have the plates in the room is, is deceptive. Am I right?

Camille Jones [01:47:21] That's what, that's exactly what I mean.

John Dehlin [01:47:23] Yeah.

Camille Jones [01:47:24] Yep. That's why I brought that up.

Carah Burrell [01:47:26] Right.

John Dehlin [01:47:27] Sorry.

Camille Jones [01:47:27] And then you've got a facsimile of the manuscript, so you can see, you know, the kind of spidery handwriting. I think it was Oliver Cowdery's. And a couple of small corrections made on that page, which was supposed to be an indication of what kind of editing went on and why they went back and edited to put punctuation in. And that was, that was supposed to be. This is what has been changed and why.

Carah Burrell [01:47:59] And what's your opinion on how much has actually been changed versus maybe what you perceived had only just been changed?

Camille Jones [01:48:05] I, I, it's not something I've really looked into.

John Dehlin [01:48:09] Oh, the changes in the Book of Mormon.

Camille Jones [01:48:11] Yeah. Honestly, I've not actually looked into what kind of changes were made in the Book of Mormon?

Carah Burrell [01:48:15] Yeah, there's some. There's some pretty big ones through the years. But I think a foundation of a lot of people's testimony is the idea that it's just minor changes and that the copy that we have in front of us in church is literally Joseph Smith's one that was scribed out back in that room.

Camille Jones [01:48:33] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:48:34] And only minor grammatical changes and moving them into chapters and headings when that's not really the case at all. And that was. That's again, going back to informed consent. Like a lot of people, I think, base their testimony on these small changes, not understanding the wide ramifications the printers copies and how many edits, major doctrinal edits have happened over the years.

John Dehlin [01:48:55] Yeah, yeah. We recently interviewed John Larsen who Talked about the 1832 version of the first vision. And at the time Joseph Smith recounted his first account of the first vision. He believed that God and Jesus were the same being. And so in that version of the first vision, it's the Lord who appeared to him. And coincidentally, not coincidentally, in the original version of the Book of Mormon in 1830, it was always God and Jesus were one. Mary was the mother of God, not the mother of the Son of God. And the original Book of Mormon would have said, you know, Jesus, Mary was the mother of God. And then later Joseph Smith would have changed subsequent versions of the Book of Mormon to say mother of the Son of God because his own views of the Godhead had changed. And so I'm. I guess that's a long way of asking you the question. When they taught you about the Book and the Book of Mormon, they taught. They taught you to probably teach people. It was the most. What the most correct was the most

Camille Jones [01:49:53] correct book on the earth as far as it is translated correctly, it is the most correct.

John Dehlin [01:49:58] That's the Bible.

Camille Jones [01:49:59] Yeah, I know, but the Book of Mormon is supposed to be the most correct book because it's been translated correctly, right?

John Dehlin [01:50:05] Yeah, yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:50:07] So these little gigantic changes that I think members should be more aware of, that they should have the right to know.

Camille Jones [01:50:17] Little gigantic changes. I like it.

Carah Burrell [01:50:19] You know, just trying to like, use some finessing, nuanced language there. Thanks for catching it. So the members, I think, based their testimony on, like I was saying that it's just this one manuscript that, that didn't have all of these major doctrinal changes. Joseph Smith never had an evolving theology. If it was, you know, revealed to him and translated one time, why would God need to update it? And translate it again.

John Dehlin [01:50:45] Yeah. If he's reading off a stone. Yeah. What if he's literally reading the words as they appear on the stone? Or the Urum and Thummim. Why would the Book of Mormon's text need to be changed across multiple.

Camille Jones [01:50:58] Right.

John Dehlin [01:50:59] For additions.

Camille Jones [01:51:00] Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:51:00] Yeah.

Camille Jones [01:51:01] So take him through the printing room. Take them downstairs. You take them through the binding room. And again, it's quite technical because you're talking about the process of it all. And then you finish off in this little picture gallery. And the picture gallery was my favorite part because they had a number of the Arnold Freeberg paintings on the wall. And I happened to be sort of a distant relative of Arnold Freeberg, so I always felt this kind of kinship to the artwork. And, you know, you'd tell a story or something about the Book of Mormon and bear your testimony, and that was the end of the tour.

John Dehlin [01:51:37] Beautiful.

Carah Burrell [01:51:38] And were you bearing your testimony at each site, too? Like.

Camille Jones [01:51:41] Oh, yeah. Multiple times at each site, but definitely at the end of each tour.

Carah Burrell [01:51:45] Okay. So people would come to these sites and just kind of sign up for a day's worth of missionaries, taking them around these different sites and hopefully have some miraculous, beautiful spiritual experiences. Because this is kind of, like John was saying, like. Like a Mecca and like this holy gathering place for Mormons, and they're putting a lot of their faith that their family's traveling there, and that you're gonna, like, bring a powerhouse testimony. It's gonna make the whole thing worth it.

Camille Jones [01:52:14] And we had some people who would do all four sites in one day. We had people who would space it out over a week, and they do a site every day, or they do a site and take a couple of days off and go see, you know, Niagara Falls and come back and finish or, you know. But yeah, basically it was. They were coming to hear the history of the church and the testimony of the missionaries.

Carah Burrell [01:52:40] I'm kind of sold. I know I do this for a living, but my husband, like, wants to go to maybe, I don't know, Hawaii for our next vacation. I actually want to go to Palmyra. I'm quite sold. It's sounds fascinating.

Camille Jones [01:52:51] It's beautiful. Yeah, it's a beautiful place. And if you want to go, I can definitely give you some pointers on where to stop, besides the church history

Carah Burrell [01:52:58] sites they're going to say and where to stop the sister missionaries in their spiel and where to ask questions. I would not do that. I am very nice to missionaries, I promise. Okay, so is there any other sites that we didn't get to one more.

Peter Whitmer Farm and Mission Experiences

Camille Jones [01:53:11] Okay. It's the Peter Whitmer farm and it's about a 40 minute drive from Palmyra. It's in Waterloo or just outside of it. And that's the place where the church was organized officially as a Church on April 6, 1830. It's, it's a church house. So you have an actual chapel there. Visitor center is in one of the wings of the church building and there's also a log home. So they've changed it recently. So nothing that I know about that visitor center is going to be accurate anymore. But I can still tell stories about it if you want me to explain what it used to be.

John Dehlin [01:53:53] Whatever you think would be interesting to the audience.

Camille Jones [01:53:56] Well, it used to be mostly just like a picture gallery. So you'd walk in and you'd show them these pictures and here's the, here's the testimony of the three and the eight witnesses. And you talk a little bit about that. And you had some of the photos on the wall or the portraits of them on the wall. And then you had this series of artwork all by the same artist that went around a gallery of the wall or a wall of the gallery. Excuse me. And each one was something about the process of the church becoming the church. So you had Joseph Smith Sr. You had Lucy Mack, you had baptisms, you had the translation, I don't remember everything that there was. And you would just tell stories as you went around and then you'd take them out to the log home and show them this building which we now believe is very inaccurate to the building that was there. It's been rebuilt. And talk about how the church became the church and the number of members that were there. There were 30, but there was actually more people there. But only 30 were the official, you know, beginning of the church. Six. Oh, six.

John Dehlin [01:55:03] Six, right. Weren't there six members at first?

Camille Jones [01:55:06] Was there, I forget.

John Dehlin [01:55:07] Six.

Camille Jones [01:55:08] There were six members, but they, they.

John Dehlin [01:55:10] People watching. But, but yeah, there was like a

Camille Jones [01:55:12] room full of people.

John Dehlin [01:55:13] Probably only from.

Camille Jones [01:55:16] I gotta go back and read my site manuals.

John Dehlin [01:55:18] No, that's good. I think, I think there were six original members.

Camille Jones [01:55:21] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:55:22] Yeah. People observing apparently. Yeah.

Camille Jones [01:55:25] Then we tell the stories about the translation of the Book of Mormon and the Mary Whitmer story was a very favorite for the missionaries.

John Dehlin [01:55:34] What way?

Camille Jones [01:55:36] Well, the story of Mary Whitmer is she had a lot of responsibility as far as keeping things going. And you've got Joseph Smith and you've got Oliver Cowdery. You've got all These people who are coming to visit the Prophet, and he's trying to translate, and she's playing host, and she's tired and she's getting worn out, and she has no witness that these things are true. And Moroni shows her the plates. And the reason it's supposed to be a really powerful experience is she's a woman. And Moroni chose to show her the plates. And it's not that he came.

John Dehlin [01:56:13] That's really magnanimous of Moroni.

Camille Jones [01:56:15] Oh, yeah. And it's not that he came in, like, glory or anything. He came as a man or looking as a man and showed her the plate so that she would have something to keep her going because things were hard for her.

John Dehlin [01:56:35] What do you think? What are you guys thinking as women? Is that cool? Is that interesting?

Camille Jones [01:56:43] I always wondered why it was Mary Whitmer and not Emma Smith.

John Dehlin [01:56:48] Right.

Camille Jones [01:56:49] Because I think Emma Smith had a really hard time, too. And how come she didn't get to see the plates?

Carah Burrell [01:56:54] She was complaining too much. She had.

John Dehlin [01:56:57] She murmured.

Carah Burrell [01:56:57] She murmured. Yeah, yeah. God had a lot to say to Emma as we read. Dnc. We know.

Camille Jones [01:57:05] Yeah. One whole section dedicated just to her.

Carah Burrell [01:57:08] Yeah. She was not up for the task of looking at the plates, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:57:15] All right, well, go, Mary. I'm happy for Mary, sad for Emma. Happy for Mary.

Camille Jones [01:57:19] Yeah. Good for her. She got to see the place.

John Dehlin [01:57:20] And by the way, it's nice of Maron and I to show the plates to a woman like it was mostly men, but he's. He stooped. Maybe he stooped a little bit in his magnanimity.

Camille Jones [01:57:31] I have.

John Dehlin [01:57:32] I'm being a little bit sarcastic.

Camille Jones [01:57:34] Yeah, I. I can tell.

Carah Burrell [01:57:35] Leave that to me, John. Hey, this is stepping on my punchlines and my sarcasm. No, John, yours at home.

Camille Jones [01:57:44] Well, you did switch chairs. I'm in the chair.

John Dehlin [01:57:46] I'm in the sar. I'm in the sarcasm chair right now.

Carah Burrell [01:57:48] That's true. I'm. I have taken the reins of this interview, and I'm taking them back. So, anyway. Okay. So, Camille, we went through the historic sites for the founding of the Book of Mormon. Is there anything else you wanted to mention about your mission? And I guess you must have been given some type of leadership roles throughout your mission. And I was reading your outline about how the Internet was used in various ways that were kind of new and. Like a new frontier. Yep.

Camille Jones [01:58:20] Yep. So my first mission president was. He was only there for my first. About six months. And when he left, he became the director of Internet proselyting for the church. And they gave him this assignment, and he says, I don't know anything about it. And they said, well, I guess you better try it out before you come home. So we became the test mission for Internet missionary work. Right at the very beginning, there was, I think it was two companionships of elders, myself and my companion, and two or three companionships of senior couples. And we were the first missionaries online. And we were told to start a Facebook page and to start a blog, and we were supposed to do it at least once a week.

John Dehlin [01:59:15] What year was this?

Camille Jones [01:59:17] That was 2010. So 2010, first online missionaries. And it was basically blogging and sending messages via Facebook

Carah Burrell [01:59:31] to, like, random people. Like, hey, are you in the area or is it international? Just trying to look for. To drum up some interest in your local mission.

Camille Jones [01:59:40] It was to see what we could get. So if we. If we found people outside of the mission, that was fine. We could teach them and then pass them off as referral to their actual mission.

Carah Burrell [01:59:48] Okay.

Camille Jones [01:59:49] We were supposed to befriend as many of the members in our wards as possible and use it as a tool. So if they thought they had a friend, we could contact them via Facebook. Or if they could talk their friend into, you know, befriending us on Facebook, we could start a conversation. And then we would create blog posts and create links onto our Facebook pages for those blog posts.

Carah Burrell [02:00:11] Nice. And so since you didn't have a lot of proselytizing, was that exciting, like, a good task that you were, like, willing to take upon you?

Camille Jones [02:00:19] It was exciting. It felt like a good step forward for the church because the world is online, and until then, missionaries were not.

Carah Burrell [02:00:27] Yeah. 2010 is kind of late, actually, to get the Facebook pages going. If anyone's on, like, Instagram or Facebook now, missionaries are all over. They're doing TikTok dances. Missionaries are like. They are in the lane.

John Dehlin [02:00:39] Yeah, for sure.

Carah Burrell [02:00:40] To. To proselytize through, like, literally TikTok dances. I don't know if that's dancing. It's mostly dancing with Book of Mormons

John Dehlin [02:00:48] in their hands or singing in the car.

Carah Burrell [02:00:50] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:00:51] Rapping. Always rapping.

Carah Burrell [02:00:52] Yeah. They've got all kinds of creative ways, and I don't know it. Tell me if this sounds familiar. It kind of makes me a little bit sad or more worried or that you kind of have these ideals in your head of what a mission is going to be. And if you're just, like, wrapping in a car because nobody wants to listen to your message, everyone's slamming their door, or, like, it is so difficult to get people to listen to your message that you're going into a Facebook group and you're messaging random people, and it just feels like it's pulling teeth almost just to, like, beg somebody to listen to your message. Was that kind of how it was or did you.

Camille Jones [02:01:25] Missions are pretty much begging somebody to listen to your message.

Carah Burrell [02:01:28] That's true. That's true.

Camille Jones [02:01:30] I'm not surprised that they're coming up with these. One of my companions and I, we made a board game and we would go to members homes for family, home, evening, and we would play this board game that we created. And it was, we call it Mormon Life. And so, you know, you had missions and you had marriage, and you had all the things that you're supposed to do as a. As a member. So you would take callings and you would have a change of callings and you'd have, you know, I mean, it was based off the game of Life. It was a total ripoff.

Carah Burrell [02:01:57] Did it have a covenant path?

Camille Jones [02:01:59] No, no. The whole thing was. The whole thing is the Covenant Path. Yeah, the whole thing is the covenant path. Of course it is.

Carah Burrell [02:02:05] Yeah. I did not win that game. Even if I didn't win it in real life.

Camille Jones [02:02:09] I lost. I guess I lost interest or something. I'm not playing it anymore.

John Dehlin [02:02:13] So a lot of symbolism here.

Camille Jones [02:02:18] Getting ahead, I guess, huh?

Carah Burrell [02:02:19] Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are getting ahead. Okay. So. Yeah. You're trying to find as many ways to just teach.

Camille Jones [02:02:25] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:02:26] In any creative way possible that you can.

Camille Jones [02:02:28] Pretty much. And I think that's the same today with, you know, the Instagram and the TikTok and whatever else they're doing.

John Dehlin [02:02:33] But. But I remember maybe when we talked to breakfast that one time, you saying that you felt maybe like a bit special, like you were giving. You were given kind of an opportunity to. To use your brain, to use your writing talents, to even show some leadership that. That later you kind of wished you had had at the church. And we're kind of foreshadowing a little bit, but do you want to talk about any of.

Carah Burrell [02:02:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:02:57] How that made you feel to have these types of responsibilities?

Camille Jones [02:03:00] Sure, I can talk about that. We were the only companionship of sisters, myself and my companion. And we were one of just a handful of companionships in total that were put online at the very beginning. And it did feel kind of special that the two of us had been singled out. And I thought maybe it was because I had a degree in English, maybe it was because, you know, this was. Maybe it was foreshadowing what I was supposed to do with my life, you know, become a writer for the church or, you know, work for the Ensign or something along those lines. And I was very happy to have that experience, and I did feel like it was. I'd been singled out for some reason, and I didn't know why. And then later in my mission, towards the end, I actually got to help teach some zone conferences on how to create a good blog, you know, how to agree, you know, and I was the same age as a. Well, I was a little older because I had a degree but, you know, appearance to help them understand what went into writing a good message online.

Carah Burrell [02:04:12] So that probably boosted your confidence in a spiritual way. And then just like that, you're intelligent and capable, and it made me feel good. Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:04:21] Any converts come from any of your blogging or Facebooking or any of your missionary work online?

Camille Jones [02:04:28] Nope. Nope. All of my converts were in the area.

Carah Burrell [02:04:32] But you did have comforts? I did. Okay.

Camille Jones [02:04:34] I did. I had one. One sister, one single brother and a family, which was good for that area.

Carah Burrell [02:04:44] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm actually surprised, but. Yeah, I'm surprised. Like, you seem obviously very intelligent and that you could bring a powerhouse testimony that would make people convert. But, yeah, it's difficult. I. I know people who go an entire mission in the US in that area, two years, that don't have a single convert. So that's actually. That's really interesting to hear. Is there anything else that you want to add that would be influential about your mission that would come into play later?

Women's Leadership and Mission Reflections

Camille Jones [02:05:11] Maybe I could say a little bit about some leadership issues with women in the church from one of my wards. Okay. The last ward I served in had some really interesting dynamics in the leadership. There's a ward council. So in the ward council, you're supposed to have all the leaders of the ward. It's headed by the bishop. You're supposed to have your Relief Society president, your elders quorum president, your high priest, group leaders, ward mission leaders, all these people and the missionaries assigned to that ward, and they're all supposed to get together on Sunday morning and discuss the needs of the members and how best to help them. And this particular wardrobe the Relief Society president attended for her section, where she shared her thoughts and her concerns about the sisters in the ward, and then she was dismissed. And there was a lot of problems. A lot of the sisters in the ward were saying that they felt like they didn't fit in. They didn't feel connected to the ward. They felt sort of isolated within the ward. And, you know, when we get five or six sisters within a transfer telling me the same thing, I thought, okay, the bishop needs to hear this. But the sister missionaries weren't part of the ward council. We were not invited. The elders in the ward, they were. So we had to get permission from the bishop to attend ward council, which we should have already been attending anyways. And we went in and presented this problem. The bishop looked at me and he says, who are the sisters? I said, they wanted to remain anonymous because they didn't want to be singled out. This is a problem for the ward. We've got this many people who are feeling this way. Some of them are in leadership roles, and they still feel isolated, singled out and not connected to the ward. So this is. This is a wardwide problem. And he says, well, if you don't have names, then we can't do anything about it. And we were dismissed the same time the Relief Society president was. So all the women in the room left together, and they went on and finished their council meeting. It was just. It just didn't fit well. And you had a lot of women in that ward who did not feel included in the ward.

Carah Burrell [02:07:43] Were you able to voice these concerns, like, with the Relief Society president, with your companion, say, like, well, what the heck was that?

Camille Jones [02:07:50] The Relief Society president and I did

Carah Burrell [02:07:51] have conversations so that it's. You're being vocal about feeling kind of ostracized and not being able to express,

Camille Jones [02:07:59] oh, I wasn't the one who felt ostracized. I mean, I was a missionary. But yeah, members of the ward felt ostracized, including the Relief Society president.

Carah Burrell [02:08:08] And just that old adage of what is it that Ruth Bader Ginsburg quote, like women deserve to be in the room where decisions are being made. Is that the quote, that there's things that are going to influence the dynamics of the ward, and you have a very dismissive, like, male council who. I don't. What was your perception that they just. That these people were being. To the women. If they don't want a name name. If they don't want their name to be put out there, that it's, I guess, not that big of a problem, or. What do you think the bishop was trying to do?

Camille Jones [02:08:44] Well, he was obviously dismissing the problem. I think he wanted to believe that it was an individual issue, that these individual women, half dozen or so of them, had a problem. And if we can address those six women, then we take. We've taken care of the problem. You know, we'll. We'll just send. We'll just send the Relief Society president out and they can meet with these women and everything will be fixed. Not realizing that the Relief Society president also did not feel like she was included, partially because she was always dismissed from ward council.

Carah Burrell [02:09:20] So that sounds like it's going to come into play a lot like this male, female dynamic within leadership roles. Once we get into the second part

Camille Jones [02:09:29] of your story, I don't know if it's going to play hugely, but it definitely does touch into it.

John Dehlin [02:09:35] As you had studied English at byu, Idaho, had you been introduced to the concept of feminism or patriarchy, would that have even been on your mind at the time as a missionary?

Camille Jones [02:09:46] I'd definitely been introduced to feminism because it's a theme in literature, especially as you get into later literature. And I definitely considered myself growing up in a mostly female household pretty strongly in favor of female rights. I didn't look too hard into problems. I didn't want to know, I guess, in some respect how deep the problems went. So I wanted to keep it all just, you know, the surface level is okay, we're improving, the world is improving. You know, women's wages are finally starting to reach the same level as men's wages. I wanted to believe the best. And so I just, you know, I looked at that one ward as a hangers on to the old way.

Carah Burrell [02:10:42] Right.

Camille Jones [02:10:43] That they hadn't yet caught up to this idea that women and men, we're equal, even though we never have really been equal in the church because we can't hold the same kind of leadership roles.

Carah Burrell [02:10:55] Yeah, that's really, that's a perfect way to put it.

John Dehlin [02:10:59] And I'm observing just this continuing pattern of you seeing evidence or breadcrumbs of problems in the church, but just like wanting to believe, wanting to be good. And so just, I don't want to know. I don't know if, like, putting things on the shelf is the right metaphor for you, but it seems like you are kind of, as you're slowly confronting problems here and there, you're saying, well, okay, it's not a big deal. Okay, I want to be good. Oh, I want to do what's right. And so you're kind of pushing those aside as, as they present themselves to you.

Camille Jones [02:11:32] I. I didn't know what putting something on the shelf meant, but I think in some respect, mentally, I really was doing exactly that. I was just pushing it back. I was pushing it away. I was pretending it didn't exist, which is what it means to put something on the shelf.

Carah Burrell [02:11:50] Yeah. Well, if it's okay with you, I think we're going to group this into part one and then maybe just kind of wrap up if you have any other final thoughts about this part one through your mission or anything else that you didn't get to mention. And this will be kind of the section about your teenage years and your mission. And then we will start and come right back to a part two right now and get into everything about you working for the church. So is there anything else for this section that you'd like to say?

Camille Jones [02:12:22] Nope. This sounds good.

Carah Burrell [02:12:24] Okay. Well, this concludes part one. Stick around. We're going to come right back for part two where we will be discussing Camille Jones and her administrative assistant role in the missionary department. And, and again, going over a few of the other themes about the imbalance of power between men and women in the LDS Church employment, and her work as a secretary to the quorum of the 70. So are you pumped? I'm pumped. This has already been really fun. Thank you so much, Camille. This has been very fascinating. Lovely. Talking about all of the church history stuff. Me and John felt like we were nerding out. So this is, this has been a really spectacular interview and discussion so far. So thank you so much. And viewers, don't go anywhere. We're coming right back for part two.

Landing a Job at Church Headquarters

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 1478

Carah Burrell [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, Carah Burrell. For the day, John is riding sidecar again on this amazing, wonderful, fascinating interview with Camille Jones. Camille, welcome back to part two.

Camille Jones [00:00:18] Thank you.

Carah Burrell [00:00:18] So we just wrapped up part one. We talked about Camille's mission and her time in Palmyra and going through the church history sites there. And we discussed kind of the creepy and just the different disordered dynamics between men and women in the church, I think, was another interesting highlight of the part one for Camille's story there. So in this part two, we're going to start getting into Camille's employment with the church, with the LDS Church, and again, I think highlighting a lot of the inner workings of the church, just like we did kind of in part one from a missionary standpoint, this time talking more about what it's actually like to be an employee for the church. So Today's date is September 8, 2021. And.

John Dehlin [00:01:08] And what I think is super cool about Camille's story is she didn't just work for the church. She worked for general authorities for the Mormon Church, like the top leaders of the church, members of the quorum of the 70. And few people, I think, will ever be able to come on Mormon Stories and talk about what it's like to work directly for general authorities. And that's kind of cool.

Carah Burrell [00:01:27] Yeah. Yeah. So she wasn't just, like, serving in the cafeteria. She, she. So your job titles were.

Camille Jones [00:01:35] So I started off as an administrative assistant in the missionary department.

Carah Burrell [00:01:38] Okay.

Camille Jones [00:01:39] And then about three years later, I was hired by the quorum of the 70, and I was an executive secretary to members of the 70.

Carah Burrell [00:01:47] So that is like as close to the top leadership of the LDS Church that you can get. So this is going to be fascinating. Everyone buckle up for another epic, incredible Mormon Stories interview. So, Camille, let's jump into. You came back from your mission, and you said you didn't have a lot of time in between your mission and then kind of straight getting into employment with the church. How did that all come out, come about?

Camille Jones [00:02:11] So I got home from my mission early July of 2011, and then I was kind of fumbling around because I already had my degree. And a lot of missionaries, when they come home, they go straight into, you know, school. You know, they finish their schooling, they do something like that. And I had no idea where I was going. And my first mission president was the director of Internet proselyting for the missionary department. And he let me know that they were hiring for an administrative assistant for the proselytic division, which he was part of. So they had two managers with different focuses.

John Dehlin [00:02:47] Foci.

Camille Jones [00:02:48] Yeah, Foci, folks, something. And he encouraged me to apply for the job, so I did. And I interviewed not with him. I think he was probably considered to be slightly biased because he was my mission president. But I interviewed with the other manager, Tracy, and then I interviewed with the director, the managing director of the department, and they both gave me the green light, and they offered me the job, and I took it. So I started working in August. So I got home in July, started working in August, and it was a little anticlimactic. I thought that I was going to be super busy all the time, that they had a lot of work for me to do, that I was going to be part of the work. And I spent the first couple of months just figuring out the nuts and bolts because there was no training. It was just, okay, you're here, we're going to have you do all of this stuff. So expense reports and setting up travel and helping create PowerPoints for presentations. And I had nobody assigned to me as a trainer. I had no training at all. And I just had to jump in and do it and ask questions as I went. And once I got that all figured out, it was like, well, now what? Because it didn't take long to do any of those tasks once you knew what you were doing.

Carah Burrell [00:04:20] So when you just said that, it was anticlimactic for that reason. So what were your expectations then, when you were interviewing that, like, what were your hopes and dreams of what the job would be like? Versus. It sounds like it was just kind of dull and not quite what you were expecting. What were your expectations?

Camille Jones [00:04:38] I guess. I guess I kind of thought that I would be part of the meetings, even just in a supportive role. Like, I'd have all the documents, I'd be in the know, I would be taking minutes and participating and occasionally throwing out ideas if, you know, I had a different mindset or. I mean, I knew my mission president as the manager, so I thought that if I had ideas, at the very least I could walk into his office and say, well, what do you think about this? I thought that. I guess I had more of a 1950s ideal that I was going to be in there with my little notebook taking notes on everything that was going on in the church. And I was just. I was stuck at my desk the whole time.

John Dehlin [00:05:21] And the. The position was what, Administrative assistant to

Inside the Church Office Building Structure

Camille Jones [00:05:24] the proselyting division in the missionary department.

John Dehlin [00:05:26] Okay, do you. Would it make sense to talk about how the church is kind of organized departmentally, business units, just to give people an overall sense.

Carah Burrell [00:05:35] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:05:35] For whatever you remember about it.

Camille Jones [00:05:36] Sure. So the church is organized under the first presidency. The first presidency is. It's called the Corporation of the President. And then the. They are the leaders. So the very top, you have the president and then you have his counselors,

John Dehlin [00:05:52] which is the prophet. Right, right.

Camille Jones [00:05:53] Which is the prophet and then his counselors. Quorum of the twelve Apostles. Quorum of the Seventy. The members of the quorum of the 70 who are assigned at headquarters because they get assignment changes and they don't have any say really about where their changes are going either.

John Dehlin [00:06:07] There's multiple quorums, right? Of the 70.

Camille Jones [00:06:10] Yes. But I think only the first and second will serve at headquarters. The rest of them are more like out in the field sort of stuff.

John Dehlin [00:06:18] Tell me if I'm right about this. Okay, so there's the first presidency, the three, and then the quorum of the 12. And then there's multiple quorums of 70. I think there's supposed to be seven quorums of 70 because of some weird scripture in the Bible or the Doctrine and covenants. The first quorum of the 70. Now they're kind of their pension. Their. They're salaried and they're called until they turn 70, sort of as like permanent general authorities.

Camille Jones [00:06:45] They are permanent general authorities until they reach emeritus status at the age of 70.

John Dehlin [00:06:50] But they're like, they're like the, you know, the, the up and comers that are candidates for apostle. And then if you go to second quorum, I think the second quorum only serves for five year terms. And they don't.

Camille Jones [00:07:04] I don't remember.

John Dehlin [00:07:05] They're less. They're less kind of in officially.

Camille Jones [00:07:08] Yeah, I don't remember. I know that the area 70s, which I think is what you're talking about.

John Dehlin [00:07:14] Third, fourth and fifth quorums.

Camille Jones [00:07:15] Yeah. They definitely serve for a shorter period of time. And their only area of leadership is within that area that they're called in and that they live in.

John Dehlin [00:07:28] Yeah, yeah. I'll just say kind of to help fill in whatever is helpful. Like, we interviewed Hans Mattson, who was an Area Authority 70 in Sweden or in Europe. He would have been an area authority, which is the third through the fifth or sixth or seventh quorums of 70. Sort of operating like a general authority, but just on a regional basis wherever he lives. Then he would have probably been partnered up with members of the second or first Quorum that were more kind of like Salt Lake, Idaho or Utah boys married into deep Mormon aristocracy, royal families. And again, my understanding is the second quorum is a bit of a lower tier than the first quorum. They're sort of like the second quorum becomes a proving ground for people that really make it into the first quorum. And there again, you're salaried, you're pensioned, you're set until you time out at emeritus status. And you're always kind of hoping for being called up to the major leagues, which is becoming an apostle. That. Tell me if any of that's right or wrong or if you have no idea.

Camille Jones [00:08:38] I have no idea. I can't really speak to how the differences in the divisions of the quorums meet.

John Dehlin [00:08:44] Okay. That's just my understanding.

Camille Jones [00:08:46] Yeah. Okay. Anyway, so first, first presidency, quorum of the 12, quorum of the 70, and then the 70s assigned at church headquarters will be assigned to departments.

John Dehlin [00:09:00] What are some of the departments?

Camille Jones [00:09:02] Temple department, Priesthood and Family department, welfare, missionary SNIs, seminaries and institutes, communications. So you've got all the different departments, and they are the executive directors of those departments. And that's kind of the ecclesiastical side. And then you have the employee side. And the heads of the departments on the employee side are called managing directors. And so the managing directors are always reporting to the executive directors who are general authorities. And then you have the managers who sit underneath that. And that's how the church is structured as an organization on the business side of things.

John Dehlin [00:09:49] And isn't there always an apostle or two assigned to each?

Camille Jones [00:09:54] Yes. So apostles are also assigned, and they are part of the executive committee. So for, like, the missionary department, once a week, they would have a meeting called the Missionary Executive Committee. And you would have all of the general authorities assigned to the floor. So the executive directors, the managing directors, and the general authority apostles, the twelve who are assigned to that department. And so it's just. It's this hierarchical. You're always reporting up to somebody until you get to, you know, President Nelson, who's at the top.

John Dehlin [00:10:32] So, like, Ballard has traditionally been missionary department. That's one of his sort of, like, notable assignments. Is that right?

Camille Jones [00:10:39] So when I was there, because President Nelson was not yet President Nelson, he was actually the head of MEC or the Missionary Executive Committee.

John Dehlin [00:10:47] Nelson was. Okay, yeah.

Camille Jones [00:10:50] And I did sort of meet him once. That way. It was. I had to interrupt a meeting because I had President Uchtdorf on the phone for my boss. And because President Nelson was just Elder Nelson at the time, President Uchtdorf trumped

John Dehlin [00:11:03] him because first presidency trumps quorum of the 12.

Camille Jones [00:11:06] Yes. So I had to go pull my boss out of a meeting with Elder Nelson so he could talk to President Uchtdorf on the phone. It's a very awkward position to be in as an admin. Okay, so is that clear enough?

Working Near General Authorities and President Monson

John Dehlin [00:11:22] So Monson was prophet while you were working at the church?

Camille Jones [00:11:25] Yes, when I first started.

John Dehlin [00:11:27] Was he. You know, there are always rumors that he was kind of in full dementia, that he didn't have full capacities mentally.

Camille Jones [00:11:35] So I only met him. I think I met him twice when I was working for the 70s. We would have these Christmas gatherings. It was our Christmas social, and all of the general authorities would be there, and all of the general authority secretaries would be there. And I got to shake his hand, like, once, and that's so I can't speak to his mental health.

John Dehlin [00:12:02] Were there rumors or discussions about that?

Camille Jones [00:12:04] Not that I heard of.

John Dehlin [00:12:06] So that's just so fascinating to me. I. You know, outside, we all knew that. That President Monson had dementia for years and that he really wasn't running the church. And it's just fascinating to me that you were working there and had no idea.

Camille Jones [00:12:18] Yeah, we weren't supposed to talk about issues within the offices ever.

Carah Burrell [00:12:24] Really?

John Dehlin [00:12:25] What?

Camille Jones [00:12:30] Like, okay, I never knew which general authorities were dealing with cancer. You could kind of guess there have been some, because they would be assigned to go out into an area presidency in the world where they would be over the work in that area, like Europe or Asia or Africa west or, you know, the world is divided into segments by the church. So they'd be assigned to go out, and then they wouldn't go out. And so you kind of assume that either he or his wife were dealing with some severe medical issues and therefore couldn't serve internationally. But you really had no clear, distinct way to figure things out. Unless you're like, it's your brother. Can you tell me, is there a health problem going on? And, you know, just in between secretaries,

John Dehlin [00:13:21] you were told not to talk about it.

Camille Jones [00:13:23] I don't know if we were told not to talk about it or if it's just kind of that implied culture that we weren't supposed to share things about the brethren that weren't, you know, perfect even. I guess their health is supposed to appear to be as well as humanly possible.

Carah Burrell [00:13:37] There's, like, an implication that if God isn't blessing his top servants.

Camille Jones [00:13:43] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:13:43] With keeping them free of cancer, free of dementia, that could start some gears moving in the minds of the members, maybe.

Camille Jones [00:13:51] I think the only Thing I heard specifically said was in the way that we created PowerPoint presentations, they had to be a certain font size and certain colors on colors because some of the general authorities. And this was with the missionary department. So specifically, Elder Nilsen had eyesight problems and couldn't see very well. So you had to prepare these PowerPoint presentations perfectly so that they could be read.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] Big fonts.

Camille Jones [00:14:20] Big fonts across the room.

John Dehlin [00:14:21] Lots of contrast. Color contrast, yeah.

Camille Jones [00:14:24] Blue and white. Because the church's colors are blue and white. So everything was blue and white.

John Dehlin [00:14:30] That's fun.

Camille Jones [00:14:32] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:14:33] Like, because for anybody who's not, like, intimately familiar with the ages of these men, like, they will. Will reach up into the 90s, like President Nelson. Today is what, 95?

Camille Jones [00:14:45] More than that now?

Carah Burrell [00:14:46] 96.

Camille Jones [00:14:47] Something.

Carah Burrell [00:14:48] Yeah. Like, these are old men who probably just want to go take a nap and eat their oatmeal. And they're sitting through these meetings. I'd feel sad a little bit. I'd get them some warm socks. That's what I would do if I was an assistant.

John Dehlin [00:14:59] Anyway, several departments. Ex managing directors are the civilians.

Camille Jones [00:15:05] Are the civilians.

John Dehlin [00:15:06] The executive directors are the general authorities.

Camille Jones [00:15:08] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:15:08] Then one or two assigned apostles to each department. That's kind of how it's organized.

Camille Jones [00:15:12] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:15:13] Okay. Okay.

Camille Jones [00:15:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:15:14] Okay. And you were in for to begin with?

Camille Jones [00:15:17] I started in missionary and I started with proselyting.

John Dehlin [00:15:20] And who's your managing director and who are your 70?

Camille Jones [00:15:22] So the managing director was Steve Allen.

John Dehlin [00:15:24] Okay.

Camille Jones [00:15:25] And. Oh, the. The executive directors we had. I'd hate to get them all wrong. David Evans. See, Elders Wick, Elder Gavaret. There was somebody else, and Elder Clark. So we had five.

John Dehlin [00:15:45] Okay.

Camille Jones [00:15:46] It's missionary. It's a big deal. You have to have five, right? Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:49] Yeah. Missionary work's a big deal.

Camille Jones [00:15:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:51] Okay.

Camille Jones [00:15:52] But they rotate through. So every July, the general authority assignments can change. And you have people going out to area presidencies, and you have people coming in from area presidencies, and so their assignments change.

John Dehlin [00:16:05] Got it.

Camille Jones [00:16:05] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:16:07] And so back what we were talking about originally, I wanted to hear more about how you felt kind of like underutilized and you felt like there was kind of a letdown. Yeah.

Camille Jones [00:16:18] So it was. It was just these really easy tasks. They needed travel. I call travel department. They set it up. They keep their receipts. I just fill in the little form. They sign the thing, I send it in, and expense report is done. It was. Once I figured it out, it required no real mental processing. It was just plug in the item, do the work, you get Your resolution. There's nothing to it. You don't have to think. And then they created these mission tour booklets. So all the mission president or mission. All the missions get visits from general authorities on a regular basis, and the general authorities get a packet of information, and we put it together and condense it into a booklet. And in the very beginning, they didn't have it automated. So my job was to take a handful of different reports and information items, bios, whatever, about the mission, and turn it into one PDF and number all the pages and then email it off to the general authority. And I did that for months. And that was a lot of what I did. It was boring. It was so boring. I listened to a lot of audiobooks.

Carah Burrell [00:17:37] Yeah. As you should.

Camille Jones [00:17:39] Well, and I felt guilty about doing that, too. Yeah. Because I was never told it's okay to not be, like, 100% focused on what you're doing. Listening to something felt taboo. And it got worse when I started listening to, like, YouTube videos.

Carah Burrell [00:17:56] Like, what kinds? Just kidding. We'll ask that later.

John Dehlin [00:17:59] I'll never forget when I first started Mormon Stories, and I could look at the logs of downloads, noticing that member, you know, employees of the church were downloading and listening to Mormon Stories podcast episodes. But it sounds like there are a lot of rote, tedious, boring jobs that would lend themselves well to podcast listening.

Camille Jones [00:18:20] Yes. And that was definitely one of them. So I. I eventually moved up. I moved over to the administrative side. So I didn't work with the. The managing director. I worked with his assistants. And again, it was. I got to do a little bit more. So I got to sit in a couple of meetings and take some notes and know a little bit more about what was going on. But the most interesting thing I got to do was take a report on missionary mental health and analyze it into groups. So, you know, anxiety. This number of missionaries had anxiety, and this number had depression, and this number had whatever and put it into these groups and create a report. And that was the most interesting thing I got to do.

Carah Burrell [00:19:02] And do you want to share anything else about. Was anything shocking about that report? That. No.

Camille Jones [00:19:08] Because one of the other tasks I did was prepare the documents for a committee that was special clearances. So missionaries who had had past issues and needed general authority approval before their mission papers were processed. So I had already seen and read a good deal, and all of that was confidential. We were very careful about what went where because we didn't want people to know information about these particular missionaries or what their issues were. And they Went into the meeting. I don't know if I. I don't remember if I ever even saw who got passed on and who. Excuse me. Who had to not go on a mission. Who got to not go on a mission because of what they'd done or problems they'd had in the past.

Carah Burrell [00:19:58] Did you have like any perception on the things that they cared the most about that would disqualify somebody or just anything else you want to share about the general perception of missionaries?

Camille Jones [00:20:08] A lot of what I saw had to do with sexual problems. I know that there was a particular problem if a missionary had had a

John Dehlin [00:20:17] child, whether it was male or female, before they served.

Camille Jones [00:20:21] Before they served.

John Dehlin [00:20:23] Okay.

Camille Jones [00:20:24] Yeah. Or if they'd been married and divorced. I don't remember if they could even go on a mission if they'd been married and divorced already.

Carah Burrell [00:20:31] Mm. Yeah, these are. That's a young age to have a child. If there's a 19 year old boy.

Camille Jones [00:20:37] Oh, it happens. Yeah, it definitely happens.

Carah Burrell [00:20:39] And they still apply. So you're saying like the papers that every missionary puts in, when they say they're putting in their mission papers, that's kind of comes through your office and reviewed and categorized and.

Camille Jones [00:20:49] Yeah, yeah. So all. Well, I didn't see any of that. I wasn't part of that. Part's called pre field. And they would take all the mission papers and make sure that everything was turned in properly and then process it and take it to the assignment meetings with the general authorities. But it was a process. I mean, you had to pass medical, you had to pass the screening, you had to have. They had a wall that they called the wall of shame. And it was the most ridiculous photos that missionaries tried to put in with their mission papers. Cause you have to include a photo of yourself with your mission papers.

Carah Burrell [00:21:21] Just people who are not taking good photos and not self aware to know what a good photo is.

Camille Jones [00:21:25] And some of them ridiculous, like a guy who was using Oreos in front of his eyes like they were glasses. I mean, absolutely ridiculous.

Carah Burrell [00:21:33] It's like, mom, I put in my mission papers. I don't know why they didn't select me to go on a mission.

Camille Jones [00:21:38] No. They contact him again and say, we need a new photo. So I mean there's a full screen before it makes it to the general authorities.

Carah Burrell [00:21:44] I remember watching a video a while ago that has like the. What's the word that you used about the selection process? It goes to a certain type of selection process for how they select which missionaries are sent where the assignment meeting. Yeah, Is that, is that what you meant like the assignment meeting is that's where. I don't know. Can you describe that process a little bit? Because I think people will be fascinated to hear.

Camille Jones [00:22:05] I was never actually part of that process, but I know it was. A member of the 12 in a room with a manager from the missionary department. They have several screens and on one screen they pull up the information about the missionary and on the other screen they have a list of all the missions that are going to need missionaries in the coming months within the, the leave date that the missionary has indicated that they're available to leave by.

Carah Burrell [00:22:38] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:22:41] Yeah. And it's kind of, it's kind of weird because all missionaries want to think that they're called from God to a specific mission and that it comes from the prophet, but the prophet can't do all this. So they have apostles do it. But then it's basically just this computer system that's feeding names and geographies and an apostle is kind of rubber stamping it because there's so many that have to get processed each week. And I guess the, the apostles are allowed the latitude of like changing an assignment if the Holy Ghost or some random thought kind of moves them to, to make a change. But you didn't get access.

Camille Jones [00:23:18] No, I didn't get access to that. I do know because one of my jobs on when I worked for the administrative side of the missionary department was to make sure that we had all the supplies we needed. And so I would order giant boxes of this special paper and that was what they printed the calls on. And they had a machine that would print the signature of the prophet. So it's not like he's sitting there.

John Dehlin [00:23:43] And so it's not the prophet's signature.

Camille Jones [00:23:45] It is the prophet's signature, but he's not penning it individually every time ever.

Carah Burrell [00:23:51] His 90 year old hand machine.

John Dehlin [00:23:54] It's a machine. What are you talking about?

Carah Burrell [00:23:56] The church is a machine. Just kidding.

Camille Jones [00:23:58] He created the originals. It's his signature. It just doesn't. He's just not sitting there with a pen.

John Dehlin [00:24:02] A robot writes it?

Camille Jones [00:24:04] Yeah, something like that. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:24:05] Are you afraid to mention it to.

Camille Jones [00:24:07] No, no, I'm just, I'm just pushing back a little bit.

Carah Burrell [00:24:10] I would literally be very concerned if they forced like a 90 year old man to do.

John Dehlin [00:24:14] Well, that was a, that was a crack in my testimony, a tiny one. When I learned that Ezra Benson didn't actually sign my missionary call. Because when you get your call back, at least back in the 80s, it was like, oh, my gosh, it's the signature of the prophet, you know? Well. But then you find he doesn't even

Carah Burrell [00:24:28] know who you are. John. Yeah.

Camille Jones [00:24:30] I hate to break it to you, but every general authority has a signature that has been formatted by a graphic designer so that it is a vector. And the secretaries have them, and they can just apply their general authority signature to whatever document they need to. So I never technically needed my GA to ever sign it.

Carah Burrell [00:24:52] Just like, drag, drop, post it, resize it a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:24:57] I'm leaving the church. That's it.

Carah Burrell [00:25:00] You hear it here first. John was about to go back, but he's been bamboozled by a vectored signature.

John Dehlin [00:25:06] I'm not going back. Just kidding. Sorry.

Camille Jones [00:25:09] Yeah, yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:25:10] Because there is like. Yeah. This perception that missionaries, you want to feel special, and it's a lot calling God. Yeah. It's a lot more calculated than people want to think about.

Camille Jones [00:25:19] It has to be streamlined. There were so many.

Carah Burrell [00:25:21] So many.

Camille Jones [00:25:22] I guess so many missionaries.

John Dehlin [00:25:23] 25 to 30, 40,000 a year. Right.

Camille Jones [00:25:26] I don't. Something like that. So I was there when they did the age change.

Carah Burrell [00:25:31] I bet that was fun.

Camille Jones [00:25:31] And they had lowered it. Yeah. When they lowered the age change. And they had this little thing up in the front window where they had a list of all the missions and, you know, a little picture of the country or whatever, and the mission president assigned to it. So, you know, this was a board out in the entryway of the missionary department, and down below, they had a little piece of paper which it was my responsibility to update once a week. I just had to go and find out the new number of missionaries for the week and update it. So we knew how many total missionaries were serving and how many total missions and just cut this little piece of paper out and stick it in the window. And I did that once a week.

John Dehlin [00:26:10] That's awesome. Okay, sorry.

Carah Burrell [00:26:12] And so the way that you described the dynamics of how this system is set up, were you ever told that you would be able to rise in leadership from this position if you worked hard enough through these kind of, like, monotonous jobs that, like, one day, Camille, you can make it to da, da, da, da, da, or those certain positions, like, you're kind of like, you know, hitting the glass ceiling or whatever?

Camille Jones [00:26:33] I always thought that working through things that I would be able to eventually move on, that I was getting my ground work laid my feet on the ground, I would know how it worked. I figured I was moderately intelligent and I had some experience and had Done some leadership stuff in my past. I had a degree. I would eventually get into probably another department because missionary department is very male run. Most of the employees there are, especially in leadership, are returned mission presidents. So they have all the, you know, the infield mission experience. But I thought, I'll move to a different department. I'll be able to get out of admin work and, you know, make a real difference somewhere somehow. And so when, not long after that, I had the HR person, the rep, come and say, well, we've got an opening in the quorum of the 70 support. Would you be interested? And I thought, sure, why not? So I. I applied for it and got the job. And, you know, super nervous for those interviews. Because you interview first with the Secretary to the quorum of the 70. I should have probably explained that.

Carah Burrell [00:27:56] Yeah, go for it.

Camille Jones [00:27:58] So each of the Quorums, First Presidency, Quorum of the 12, Quorum of the Seventy, they have staff that supports them. And the head of each of those offices is called the secretary to the Quorum. So you've got the secretary to the First Presidency. You've got the secretary to the quorum of the 12, you've got the secretary to the 70. And that person is always male. And he usually has one to two people that support him as assistant secretaries to the Quorum. And they'll have staff that supports them. And then there's us. It's all really confusing because it's all the same word. We're all secretaries, but he's. He is the secretary. So my secretary to the Quorum of the Seventy, when I applied was Greg Brown. And I interviewed with Greg, and then I interviewed with a member of the Presidency of the Seventy and got the job.

John Dehlin [00:28:55] I just have to say Greg Brown's been there a long time. Because when I worked, believe it or not, I worked at LDS Church headquarters back in about 1996, 97. And I knew Greg Brown because I worked with the Office of the Quorum of the Seventy and the Presidency. And I worked on a general authority candidate tracking system. And I worked with Greg on that. So he would have been there 20, 25 years by the time you were working with him.

Camille Jones [00:29:20] Yeah. And the.

John Dehlin [00:29:22] And he's called a secretary.

Camille Jones [00:29:23] He is called the Secretary to the Quorum of the Seventy.

John Dehlin [00:29:25] Yeah.

Camille Jones [00:29:26] And what I heard was that he was planning to stay until he was 70. So he still had several years to go. And then they gave him an assignment to write the history of the Quorum and eventually got somebody different to be the Quorum secretary. And that's his name is John Monson.

John Dehlin [00:29:43] In other words, he did something wrong or they wanted to put someone else in the position so they reassigned him to write a history.

Camille Jones [00:29:49] That's kind of the implication I got. Yeah, you can interpret it how you wish, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:29:54] Yeah, yeah, we know how those things work.

Camille Jones [00:29:57] Yeah. So I started with the quorum of the 12 or quorum of the 12 karma the 70. And I worked with them for about five years and I worked for a whole bunch of them because their assignments change in July, which means all of the secretary assignments can change in July and often did. And we had no say over who got moved where or when.

John Dehlin [00:30:20] That's kind of a promotion, right, to work with the quorum of the 70.

Camille Jones [00:30:22] It was definitely a promotion from priesthood

John Dehlin [00:30:25] to quorum of the 70. That's.

Carah Burrell [00:30:26] Yeah.

Camille Jones [00:30:27] So the. If I was going to stay in a support admin support sort of role, I could have gone to the presidency of the 70, then the quorum of the 12 and then the First Presidency's office. But you know, that was, that would have been the end of the ladder as a support person.

Women's Roles and Underutilization at Church Headquarters

Carah Burrell [00:30:45] And I was going to ask a lot of these positions you mentioned earlier that you're working with mostly men. So if you had to like give an average percentage wise of your day to day interactions and co workers and obviously a lot of these meetings are going to be for priesthood holders. But generally like what is the atmosphere in the church office building and the dynamic of men versus women, percentage wise, men versus women?

Camille Jones [00:31:11] Well, like I said before, the missionary department was definitely skewed towards men because of, you know, they wanted them to be returned mission presidents because it gave them that extra understanding of what the missionaries are doing and what the mission presidents are needing. So pretty much almost exclusively the women in the missionary department were support. We were all secretaries because there's no

Carah Burrell [00:31:39] position for women that you. Because you need to hold the priesthood to really be advanced into anything else where you're being utilized.

Camille Jones [00:31:45] There are a couple female managers in the missionary department from at least, you know, to my knowledge, my last knowledge, but everything else was women or was men. The women were all secretaries or administrative assistants.

Carah Burrell [00:32:05] And I don't know if you want to answer this now or you can speak to it later, but what was your perception of your role as a woman? We talked about that kind of in part one a little bit. In this patriarchal system that the church is very straightforward, that men are to lead, women are to be more submissive. Do you have any other just implicit or Explicit ways that you were told what your role was.

Camille Jones [00:32:32] I don't think I taught. I thought about it very much.

Carah Burrell [00:32:34] You didn't think about it very much?

Camille Jones [00:32:36] Yeah. It was just a continuation of the same pattern I'd been living anyways.

Carah Burrell [00:32:40] Status quo. Yeah. This is what it's like to be

Camille Jones [00:32:42] a woman in the church. The bishops are in charge and the women report to the bishop, you know, if they're in leadership roles. So it made sense to me that, well, the managers are in charge. And as a secretary or an administrative assistant, I had no power anyways. And I was always reporting up. And because it was men, it was just the same. It was just, you know, this is just the same pattern that I've seen. So it didn't phase me. It wasn't until later when I was like, really? You have to have priesthood leadership experience in order to apply for this position. Why do you have to have priesthood leadership experience and not just leadership experience. Why not open this up for some of the remarkable women in the church?

Carah Burrell [00:33:28] Right. And since the church is technically structured, it's called like the. What'd you say, the corporation of the first, the president.

Camille Jones [00:33:35] Corporation of the president.

Carah Burrell [00:33:36] That it's structured like pretty much any other corporation, but it goes hand in hand with needing to have these ecclesiastical leaders that you need to have this special power from God, the priesthood on earth. And that's the kind of thing that we would never put up with from a regular corporation.

Camille Jones [00:33:53] Right.

Carah Burrell [00:33:53] But when it's a church structure, women are allowed to just hit a certain plateau in their career in the church.

Camille Jones [00:34:01] They throw out the token of having the General Relief Society, Young women's and Primary presidencies. There are nine women who are part of some of the committees. So priesthood and family, they'll be part of that. I don't think we had any in missionary. We didn't have any in missionary. But you think you, you know, got a lot of sister missionaries out there. You might even have one even.

Carah Burrell [00:34:31] What about, like, wives to the mission presidents? They don't. They do just as much work basically as the mission president as well. Like, it just seems like there's a lot of excuses made for why they can't put women in more of these positions.

Camille Jones [00:34:44] But. And there was a movement to change how they termed the wife of a mission president. So instead of calling her the wife, she was companion to, you know, trying to. Trying to raise her a little bit from the back.

Carah Burrell [00:34:57] Yes. Needs a better title.

Camille Jones [00:34:58] Give her a little more of this, you know, equal in the work sort Of. Because if you're a companion, you've got to work together, whereas the wife can just stay at home.

Carah Burrell [00:35:07] Yeah. It doesn't do justice to how much work these women actually do. Right. Serving the missionaries in the areas that they're assigned to.

Camille Jones [00:35:15] Right.

Carah Burrell [00:35:15] Yeah. Definitely some hard work. Like some really, really tough women in all of these positions that deserve a little bit more credit that they're getting.

Camille Jones [00:35:23] Brilliant women. I watched women start. Okay, so there was one who had worked for the church for, like, 20 years before she made it out of an admin role.

Carah Burrell [00:35:33] 20 years?

Camille Jones [00:35:36] Yeah. So she'd worked for the church, she took a break, she came back, and finally, after about 20 years of working for the church, she made it out of an assistant role. That's a long time to be able to move up one rung.

Carah Burrell [00:35:52] Right. And it sounds like what you're saying is the church would have advanced a man after 20 years of serving in that type of role. There'd be no excuse.

Camille Jones [00:36:00] Yeah, that.

Carah Burrell [00:36:01] But for a woman, it's okay.

Camille Jones [00:36:02] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:36:03] In the church's mind, there were a

Camille Jones [00:36:04] bunch of others, too. There was a woman who worked for seven years, and this was her second job. So she'd had leadership in the business world. She came in as a secretary thinking similarly, that, you know, she just needed a groundwork. She had all of her experience. She'd get. She took. It took her seven years of constantly trying. There were some who took jobs as managers and then went back to being administrative assistants because of the way that they were treated as women in a manager role. It just. It was not a healthy place for a woman to try and get into the manager position. From my perspective.

Carah Burrell [00:36:40] Yeah. And I'm curious, were you aware of, like, the Ordain Women movement while you were working there? And did you have any opinions, strong opinions, one way or the other, about what Kate Kelly was doing to push for Mormon women to be able to get the priesthood?

Camille Jones [00:36:56] It was kind of background, so I wasn't focused on it. I think I. I heard about it. Definitely, I heard about it, but it was not. I mean, it was ordained women. We weren't supposed to talk about things like that inside the church office building. And, you know, growing up in a very orthodox Mormon household, we didn't talk about it at home. So where was. Where was I supposed to get it from? And I wasn't going. Looking for information that was going to help, you know, ruin a testimony.

Carah Burrell [00:37:25] Yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking back to when I perceived what ordained women were doing. I thought it were A bunch of progressive Mormons, bunch of feminists that don't fit in the church one way or another. So they're going to try and change it from something that it's fundamentally not going to be. Not ever going to be. Um, and didn't see the blatant inequality or, like, lack of need for leadership or a lack of women's voices being able to speak out. And I think it just comes down to if you're raised, like you said, like, in an orthodox type of Mormon household, and you're just kind of unaware of the blatant sexism that exists within the church. Yeah. You can compartmentalize and you can say, this is a woman's role, this is a man's role. This is the body I was born into. This is the spirit that I was given. This is, I'm going to do all the best work that I can do without the priesthood. Um, but the question I wanted to ask was, like, it sounds like when you're literally, your livelihood is working for the church and you have completely plateaued and you've hit a ceiling because you don't have the priesthood anymore, that's a really good reason to push to ordain women to push for the priesthood. So while you were working in this position whatsoever, did you just kind of accept that I might. I might never get, you know, any higher advancements because I don't have the priesthood and that's just the way that it is, or did you have any, like, wheels turning that you were hoping that the priesthood would change and would be given to women?

Camille Jones [00:38:54] I did try occasionally to get out of my admin role. So after I was a GA secretary, I applied for a writing position with the church history department. They were going to rewrite the site manuals for the church history missions. And I thought, I have experience.

Carah Burrell [00:39:11] Right.

Camille Jones [00:39:11] I was there and I've got a degree in English and I love history. I think I would do a good job in that role. So I applied. They never even responded to me. A lot of places you'll at least get a thank you for applying. You know, we've moved on to the next process, but whatever, they never responded to me. And that was my experience for pretty much every job I applied for in the church that I didn't get, they just ignored the fact that I had applied at all.

John Dehlin [00:39:38] Why do you think that is?

Camille Jones [00:39:41] I don't know. I can't answer that. I mean, I don't know if they did it. Everybody. I don't know if it was just women. I don't know if it was just me. I don't. So I can't make any supposition on why they didn't respond. It was. It was hard for sure to sit there and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and just assume finally that I guess they didn't want me.

Carah Burrell [00:40:13] And I'm kind of remembering. Did you happen to see Linda Clyde's interview that we did a couple weeks ago? A couple months ago.

Camille Jones [00:40:20] She the copywriter?

Carah Burrell [00:40:21] Copywriter for the church?

Camille Jones [00:40:22] Yeah. In fact, she was the reason why I was like, oh, I should. Maybe I should tell my story.

Carah Burrell [00:40:26] Oh, really?

Camille Jones [00:40:26] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:40:27] Great. And then hopefully somebody will listen to this story and be like, camille's the reason why I'm going to write into Mormon stories. And I got something else from working in the church administration or whatever.

Camille Jones [00:40:36] It felt good to know that I wasn't the only one. And that's why I.

John Dehlin [00:40:39] The only one what?

Camille Jones [00:40:40] The only employee who went from full believing to something's wrong here to I can't do this anymore. So. And I wanted from my position to let other people know that they're not alone and they're not going to be alone with the whole. There's mental health issues in the workplace and there's inequities in the gender roles in the workplace with the church and all of that. I wanted. That's why I decided to do this

Carah Burrell [00:41:11] good shout out to Linda Savannah for coming on. Because I was just kind of remembering the way that she told stories about how she was literally writing speeches. That. Or prayers, you know?

Camille Jones [00:41:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:23] Dedicatory prayers.

Carah Burrell [00:41:24] Dedicatory prayers.

John Dehlin [00:41:25] Priesthood dedicatory prayers.

Carah Burrell [00:41:27] As a woman that somebody else was gonna go out and recite with their priesthood power. And I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:41:31] Yeah. A general authority would read her dedicatory priesthood prayers at temple dedications.

Carah Burrell [00:41:37] And I'm sure they do not want that. That kind of fact out there, that there are writers within the church that

John Dehlin [00:41:43] are writing women that are writing women

Carah Burrell [00:41:45] that are writing those things. So at the same. Like, why didn't they, you know, give you another. Give you an interview or be more interested in your ability to write these different documents and historical things for the church when you are obviously capable. By the same token, they will. If they have a woman that's in, like a copywriting position, they don't care if they have her. Right. Dedicatory prayers. Like. Like it's this really funny kind of double standard and weird role that they can just kind of apply willy nilly.

John Dehlin [00:42:15] But I mean, I was just. I keep teasing this out, but I do think it's a tad bit ironic that you're working at church headquarters being kind of grossly underutilized, and you're almost kind of aware of it. And then Kate Kelly's leading a movement right outside church headquarters, trying to empower women and give them a higher status within a very rigid, patriarchal organization. And you're kind of like, oh, there's that woman agitating, but that has nothing to do with me. And you're just kind of. Again, I don't want to know. I don't know if, like, putting something on the. On the shelf is the right metaphor, but you keep seeing. You keep sort of seeing issues along the way, but it's. It. They don't really ever really register or hit you because you're. Again, you're in the bubble. You're in the mental bubble. You're under the influence, and you don't want to ruffle feathers, and you don't want to ever do anything that would cause you to doubt. But I. I keep seeing this pattern kind of repeat a little bit.

Camille Jones [00:43:16] Yeah. And I was definitely. It was definitely a bubble. It was definitely a bubble, but even

John Dehlin [00:43:20] a psychological bubble for you.

Camille Jones [00:43:22] Yeah, it was. And I was also dealing with some. I think that's about the same time I started dealing with some depression issues. And so I had even a bigger bubble going on because it. It was. Everything was too much and not enough at the same time.

John Dehlin [00:43:39] I mean, have you thought about the depression? And, like, could it be that your depression was tied to just being grossly underutilized in the super rigid white male patriarchy?

Camille Jones [00:43:51] I think it was definitely boring things.

John Dehlin [00:43:53] Right.

Camille Jones [00:43:53] It was definitely a factor. I kept, and still do keep, pretty consistent journaling. It's one of my mental health techniques. And it was not long after I became a GA secretary that I started having to do it at work, where it was like, okay, I just. I can't take it. So I would sit down. Well, I was already sitting. I was always at a desk, and I would just pull out a notepad and I would just write. Just free write. And sometimes it was just one side of a page, sometimes it was multiple pages, and I just drop it into a folder in my desk. And literally that folder is like that thick.

Carah Burrell [00:44:35] Right.

Camille Jones [00:44:36] After five years.

John Dehlin [00:44:37] And it's a collection of what?

Camille Jones [00:44:39] It's a collection of how I thought and felt. And yeah, I've been reviewing some of them. It's not good. I was definitely dealing with depression issues. I mean, it was bad, and it only got worse as time went on.

John Dehlin [00:44:56] Do you think that was tied to being underutilized?

Camille Jones [00:44:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:45:00] Because I don't want to lead you there.

Camille Jones [00:45:01] Yeah, no, I do. I do think it was partly because I was being underutilized, because I felt like I didn't have purpose, I didn't have any place to go and nothing that I was trying to get out of there. No efforts were paying off. And no matter what I was applying for, I wasn't hearing back and nobody would listen to me. When I got to the gas, I kept thinking, it's going to be better here because they're going to have more for me to do. They are so busy. These men are so busy, they're going to have something for me to do. And I was stuck doing state conference after state conference after state conference and travel and the same reports over and over and over and over again. And it was literally by the time I left as a GA secretary, I could put together an entire state conference. The packets, the names, the reports, all of it in 45 minutes. And if you consider that they only do three state conferences a month each general authority, even if I had two general authorities, which I usually did, that's six, I could easily get all of an entire month's worth of state conferences done in one day.

John Dehlin [00:46:19] So your job was just to put the agendas together?

Camille Jones [00:46:21] Pretty much. That was 90% of what I did. And some secretaries I know did far more because of who they worked for. It was kind of a, I don't know, lottery of sorts to see who you got to work with. You never knew. You never had any say.

Carah Burrell [00:46:43] So John always likes to say. Not that John made this up. I'm not giving John the credit for this, that he always likes to say that patriarchy harms men and women. And I'm not going to assume John made that up, because that would be way too. It's giving the patriarchy a lot of credit. So anyway, but under that banner of patriarchy harming men and women, I'm just kind of hearing you say how underutilized you were because you had to hit a ceiling within just the structure of the church. So if you could just summarize how this patriarchal system that the church is set up, how it sounds like it harmed you already in a few different ways, and we'll continue to get into those different ways about the depression that it caused. But if the church wants to maximize growth and the benefit for its members, if it's not utilizing its women, can you like articulate how maybe the patriarchal system also just harms the membership at large and harms the very gas that you're working for.

Camille Jones [00:47:48] Well, you're missing half of the world. If you're only using men to make the decisions, you're still going to miss half the world and the world. Half a world viewpoint. And it's the same idea. It's using mostly white people as opposed to pulling. And it's supposed to be a worldwide organization. Where is the equality in pulling enough people from Europe and pulling enough people from Africa and Asia and South America and to create an organization that serves everyone? You're losing those cultural differences. You're losing those. It's not complete and working. Ignorance is not bliss, and ignorance doesn't bless people. Sometimes knowing things can be hurtful, but you can't make informed decisions without having the information.

Carah Burrell [00:48:54] Are you saying just like having the information of a variety of people's opinions around the world? Because the. The gas are pretty much, I mean, 99% white, and for the most part, they're white. Like, taken from the good old stock of, like, Idaho and Utah.

Camille Jones [00:49:10] Most of them are, you know, Americans.

Carah Burrell [00:49:13] And so I was just kind of thinking that if the church is its own worst enemy, it's stepping on its own foot in the way that if it wants to expand, the best thing they could do is to involve more of these voices.

Camille Jones [00:49:26] More. More people from around the world. More women. Because half the church is women. Right. I don't know. We don't even know what the statistics are anymore. We assume half the church is women. But, yeah, the church has a long way to go with the women issue to get the women equal to the men. And they can't just say, oh, but they've got Relief Society. Relief Society is nice. It's a social group. Mm.

Carah Burrell [00:49:57] And we can also have babies. I'm not saying having babies isn't great, but not quite the same power structure. It's actually kind of the opposite. Kind of takes you out of the workforce. Kind of takes you out from actually advancing within the church, I guess. But.

Camille Jones [00:50:11] So what do you do with all the single women? I'm still single.

Carah Burrell [00:50:14] Right.

Camille Jones [00:50:14] I was supposed to be a mother in Zion.

Carah Burrell [00:50:16] Right.

Camille Jones [00:50:17] And I'm still single. So that. That's another thing that they should address is what they do with the single women in the church, because there's a

Carah Burrell [00:50:25] lot of us, right, single women, LGBTQ people that just. They don't fit into this one prescribed box.

Camille Jones [00:50:32] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:50:32] Like, if we were back in frontier times, you probably would have just been given as a polygamous wife. And that's your place. Like they have a prescribed box for you to fit in here. But while the church moves into the 21st century and a lot of people are speaking up and needing their voices to be heard and saying, like, what about me? What about how do I fit into God plan of happiness? Because I'm not feeling very happy in this box. Is there anything else that you want to add to that period? I just was kind of curious about more things about general authorities and what it's like working with them. But do you have anything else?

The Daily Life and Privileges of General Authorities

John Dehlin [00:51:06] I'm kind of curious about the life, like for a Mormon, a woman can't. A Mormon girl or woman can't really aspire to this. But for like every young, let's just say worthy, orthodox Mormon boy or man, it's like the coolest thing you could ever be isn't president United States, it's a Mormon general authority and then of course, an apostle from there. So they're so revered, they're so looked up to. What can you tell us about their lives day to day? Is it fun? Is it interesting? Is it boring? Is it tedious? Is it controversial? What, what, what? Just spend some time talking about the life of a Mormon general authority.

Camille Jones [00:51:46] You know, they don't talk to us a lot personally about things like that. They are spending a number of their weekends away from home. So it's going to impact family. I think it's, you know, got to be a pretty cushy job because, you know, you've got it till you're 70 unless you really screw up royally. But it happens rarely. But it does happen. So, you know, you've got a good, stable income. Church provides a car. If they're not from this area, the church will provide an apartment or a house. If they occasionally work or if they work from home often enough. The church will also help provide for like Internet because they're using it for business purposes, work purposes, what, however you want to call that. So it's got to be, it's got to be nice. That way they get to do some travel. So if you like to travel, that's great. If you don't like to travel, too bad. But they spend most of their days in meetings and most of their weekends in meetings. So I guess it depends on whether they like to sit in meetings or not. How many people like to sit in meetings?

John Dehlin [00:53:02] I'm sure some of it's, it's, it's state conferences on the weekends, state Conferences

Camille Jones [00:53:07] or priesthood leadership conferences, which they change to just leadership conferences because they're trying to include more women.

John Dehlin [00:53:14] And that's. That's on the weekend. And then while they're at church headquarters, their committee assignments kind of thing, they've got committee assignments.

Camille Jones [00:53:21] They might be given assignments by general authorities who are higher up than they are. So they'd have to pull together certain amounts of information or things that they have to take back to these committee meetings that they're attending. So they'll be in their offices working, which is one of the reasons why it's so dull for the secretaries.

Carah Burrell [00:53:41] Yeah. To John's question too. Like, obviously, these men are quite glorified in the church. And do you have anything you want to speak to about, like, the difference? Like, in one way it seems like, yes, they're glorified, but is that worth it to be, you know, you don't get to retire the way you want to. You do have to sit in meetings a lot. Do you feel like these men actually enjoy their lives and they're happy to be doing this work, or is it just kind of monotonous for them? Do you have any, like, ideas around how you think they're feeling? I know it's hard to think inside their head, but I. I don't know

Camille Jones [00:54:11] if I can think inside their head. I wonder if it is monotonous for some of them. I'm sure some of them enjoy it. Some of them came from really big companies where they had large amounts of responsibility and, you know, now they're not, I don't know, top dog anymore. And they have to take. Make deference to opinions because they're from people who are higher up than them, whether they agree with those opinions or not. Sometimes, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:42] So what about time off?

Camille Jones [00:54:46] I accrue to time off?

John Dehlin [00:54:47] No, for them.

Camille Jones [00:54:47] Oh, time off for them. Oh, yeah, time off for them. They get July, the whole month of July off, and they get the last three weeks of December off every year. Some of them come in and work anyways, which their secretaries love them for, sometimes quite literally, because July and December can be very long and boring if you don't have a general authority in the office. And some of them are like, but that's our time off too. Yeah. And then the fourth. So they. They do state conferences or assignments three weekends, and then they get the fourth weekend off. They also get Mondays off because they're usually traveling or something on the weekends.

John Dehlin [00:55:32] Do you know what expenses are covered versus not?

Camille Jones [00:55:36] Oh, well, anything that they travel for is covered.

John Dehlin [00:55:40] So Gas, food.

Camille Jones [00:55:43] Yep, gas, rental cars, the hotels. They often tried to stay with members, except for stake reorganizations, because they usually would stay with the stake president. But if the stake president's being released and they're calling a new one, that can put extra pressure on that house. Anyway, for those ones, they would usually stay in hotels. Mission tours. They stay with the mission president and the mission home. If there's a rare instances where that wouldn't work. Yeah, it's mostly travel.

John Dehlin [00:56:18] Any idea how they decide who travels, where to? What? Is it carved up by geography? Is it political?

Carah Burrell [00:56:27] So the seniority.

Camille Jones [00:56:28] Yeah, the area presidency would mostly do his travel in the area. So you're not going to have a bunch of general authorities from Salt Lake doing. Yeah, from. From Salt Lake traveling to, like, Europe on a regular basis? They might, if they're assigned to a department where they were doing something with that area, like welfare. I know that the welfare general authorities would travel there once or twice or three times a year or something like that to make sure that the welfare program was working properly in these areas that they were assigned, but they would. There's an assignment committee, and if you had any requests, like, not this weekend because he's doing something with his family, you had to make sure that that made it to the support group for the assignment committee. And then it's general authority approved. And that's about all I know about that.

John Dehlin [00:57:20] Makes sense.

Carah Burrell [00:57:22] So generally speaking, it's just kind of these men being assigned to kind of like all different corners of the world. Technically, that there's these. I just. I don't know. Maybe my heart goes out. Traveling isn't as glamorous, honestly, if you're doing it all of the time.

Camille Jones [00:57:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:41] Business travel.

Carah Burrell [00:57:42] Yeah, not business travel. And they're taking their wives with them,

Camille Jones [00:57:45] I'm assuming only for mission tours or temple reviews. I think they went for temple reviews or if they're going for. I think it was. There was a certain number of days, if they were going to be gone something like 10 days or something, 14 days. They could take their wives on the long trips.

Carah Burrell [00:58:06] I would kind of like to be a GA's wife. That actually does sound kind of nice.

John Dehlin [00:58:10] Any idea how much they get paid? Did you ever get any indication of that?

Camille Jones [00:58:15] I heard when the leak went out, but I didn't look.

Carah Burrell [00:58:20] Oh, what a good little employee. Yeah. Yeah.

Camille Jones [00:58:23] I kind of didn't want to know. It was about the same time I was trying to find an apartment downtown, and I was already a little frustrated about finances because I couldn't find anything within, you know, downtown. I was, I was down there every day and I worked in the temple on Saturdays. So I was down there six days a week and I thought, I'll just move downtown. And I couldn't find anything within a budget that would fit. I looked at a place that was almost 100 year old building, had no air conditioning.

Carah Burrell [00:58:53] No.

Camille Jones [00:58:54] And without, without the utilities, it was like almost two thirds of my paycheck.

Carah Burrell [00:59:04] Did you feel like you were not being compensated?

Camille Jones [00:59:07] That was the first time I thought, I wonder, I wonder what other executive secretaries or executive assistants make in the world.

John Dehlin [00:59:15] What'd you find out?

Camille Jones [00:59:16] I didn't look then.

John Dehlin [00:59:17] Oh, what have you found out since?

Camille Jones [00:59:20] Salt Lake, Utah in general pays significantly less than the rest of the country. And the church as an NPO of course, pays even less.

John Dehlin [00:59:29] Tell us the numbers if you can.

Camille Jones [00:59:30] I don't remember.

John Dehlin [00:59:31] Okay. What were you being paid? Do you remember? No. Okay.

Camille Jones [00:59:36] Not off the top of my head.

Carah Burrell [00:59:38] Because there's this perception within the church. So you're talking about the leak that came out because there's the perception that none of these men are paid. I think the general membership of the church don't know that these men are paid. Besides just like kind of. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:49] There's the no paid clergy perception.

Carah Burrell [00:59:51] Perception that, that's all priest crafts.

Camille Jones [00:59:53] Yeah. They refer to it as a stipend, a living stipend. And it's supposed to be, you know, this impression of. It's getting them by, it's giving them enough to live on because we took them away from their occupations, their jobs, so.

Carah Burrell [01:00:04] Mm.

John Dehlin [01:00:05] But if you had, if you had been told that they, their starting salary is like 120 grand plus all their expenses and benefits, would that have made you feel. I mean, I guess they, if they were executives or attorneys or successful accountants or whatever it is. I mean, I guess it's okay that they get paid decently, but. Are you saying that would have frustrated you to know they were making six figures?

Camille Jones [01:00:26] Yeah, it would have. Because if I can't find an apartment within a walking distance of where I work downtown in 100 year old building with no air conditioning in 90 degree weather, 100 degree weather, that kind of, that bugs just a little bit. Actually, I'm thinking a little bit more on what I was paid. I think when I was hired I was in the 30,000 something range, 35, 36 and got a bit of an increase. So I was somewhere in the 40s.

John Dehlin [01:01:00] Eventually.

Camille Jones [01:01:01] Eventually when I left after nine years.

Carah Burrell [01:01:03] After nine years that would straight up depression from that. Yeah, that would be incredibly demeaning. Like, sounds like you're working incredibly hard and you're incredibly capable.

Camille Jones [01:01:17] And then you remember you have to give 10% back. No. Yeah, yeah. We still paid tithing on our.

Carah Burrell [01:01:22] Just ruined my day. You have to give 10% back. Do you think the general authorities, do they pay 10% on their, you know, 120?

Camille Jones [01:01:30] I have no idea. That's. I. That's not something I ever thought to ask.

John Dehlin [01:01:35] Good question.

Carah Burrell [01:01:37] Yeah. Because if they're expecting the secretaries, but they know exactly where the money goes and it goes back to them and they give it back to the Lord, it would make sense. So did you ever have any. Were you ever looking for jobs outside of the church's employment? And like I said, sounds like you're highly qualified and capable and being underutilized, underpaid.

Camille Jones [01:01:57] I never felt highly qualified or capable because I was sitting there and feeling like a waste of space. Because if you're not doing anything and you're not being used, you wonder, can you be used? What are you good for? Because you have no evidence that you are good. So I did try and find a couple of other jobs, but I stuck mostly within the church because at least I had an inn and I thought most of my contacts are right here in the building. If, you know, I can put the right names on something, maybe I'll get a job. And I tried. I did try a couple of times.

Carah Burrell [01:02:45] The way you said, like, you don't know if you can be used, because that's so difficult to hear. I'm so sorry to hear that. Because from everything that you've said from your childhood and the number of books that you've read and your English major, it sounds like you went into the world having a very competent, capable brain able to handle difficult tasks, to be an incredible employee, and that you didn't have that the church was underutilizing you so much with such monotonous work, which I'm sure is very common in a lot of jobs where you feel that way, obviously, but that you felt that while working for the one true church, the one place that you served a mission for, that the spirit or whatever good feeling should come from knowing that you are furthering the work of the gospel, that that message was not getting to, like, your heart. It wasn't actually giving you, like, that divine worth and that divine nature that the. That the church kind of preaches.

Camille Jones [01:03:40] No, it wasn't.

Carah Burrell [01:03:41] Like, you were in, like, a pretty dark place. Did that. Did Those depressive episodes and thoughts, did that lead just continually continuing down a spiral or. Where did. Where did you go from there?

Camille Jones [01:03:52] Yeah, I mean, I didn't see it as a depression. I grew up in a family where it was like, you know, you can just work through it. Say your prayers, brush your teeth, say your prayers. You'll be okay. You know, get a good night's sleep. You'll be okay. Um, I'm a night owl too, so getting a good night's sleep was always a bit of a challenge. I wanted to stay up till 2 and had to get up in time to be to work by 8. So, Yeah, it just. It. It didn't get any better. The best I was was right after I was hired because I thought I got a job. You know, this is. This is great. They like me. They. They thought I'm. I'm worthwhile to them, and I got a job and then they didn't use me. So you start to wonder, am I really worthwhile to them? Yeah, I don't know where I was going with that.

Carah Burrell [01:04:46] So a lot of people struggle with depression in the workplace, right? So there's, you know, HR departments, there's resources to reach out to. Did you then eventually.

John Dehlin [01:04:57] What if. What if you take us through the chronology of the different general authorities you worked for and how, you know, talk a tiny bit about the difference between the church office building and the administration building.

Camille Jones [01:05:08] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:05:08] Talk about the corner offices if you want to. In the bathroom situation, I had a friend tell me to make sure and ask you about that. But. But. But then talk about the different assignments you had and how that that affected your mental health over time.

Camille Jones [01:05:25] Okay. So, yeah, I did work in both the buildings. So there's the cob, which is the church office building, and the cab, which is the church admin. And the CAB has most of the general authorities. You've got the quorum of the 12. You have the presidency of the 70, the first presidency, and then a select number of the Quorum of the seventies. So the big general authorities, the first presidency, is on the first floor. They all have coroner offices. The Secretary to the First Presidency is in the other corner office. So that takes care of all four of those. And then the other corner offices up the next three floors are all members of the Quorum of the twelve. And since you asked, every member of the quorum of the 12 has a private bathroom so that they never have to use the public bathroom in their office. Yeah. Yeah. It's tucked away in one of the corners of their Office.

John Dehlin [01:06:28] So you'd never, you'd never find yourself in the, in the bathroom, in the urinal, standing next to an apostle?

Camille Jones [01:06:34] I never would be. But.

John Dehlin [01:06:36] Okay, so the. So yeah, the bathrooms. Of course you wouldn't find yourself in a urinal. But. But a regular general authority, a low level member of the first or second quorum of the 70 would also never find themselves standing at the urinal with an apostle or member of the first presidency. They give them their own private bathrooms.

Camille Jones [01:06:57] Yeah, they have private baths.

John Dehlin [01:06:58] Okay.

Camille Jones [01:06:59] They also. In the, in the cab. They also have a private cafeteria and a private gym for the general authorities. And I've. I saw the cafeteria a couple of times when I went to pick up food for, you know, the gas I was working for. I have no idea where the gym is. I just know it exists. Yeah, there are corners I never saw.

Carah Burrell [01:07:23] You never like played like three on three basketball or something with the general authorities? Darn it.

Camille Jones [01:07:30] No, that might have been cool, actually.

Carah Burrell [01:07:32] Yeah. Again, things that would have really bolstered my faith if they were part of my workplace. So. Anything else? John, since John was. John, was geeking out on different general authority questions.

John Dehlin [01:07:46] Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's it. I mean, I guess there is kind of this idea of a pecking order where, you know, first presidency, then quorum of the 12 and then 70s. And definitely how I know there's a big issue about like never going over the head of the person who's directly in your upline. And there's a lot of political games that get played because there's senior apostles and more junior apostles and they're always trying to kind of have their agendas get met, but they have to defer to the lower ones, have to defer to the senior ones. And there's a lot of intrigue. And for example, you would never. It's rare to go to the first presidency. If anything, you would meet, meet with the apostles. But going to the first presidency is really special. I. I just, I'm wondering if you have any, any at all access into those types of politics. And then once we, we can get off and just talk about your story. But.

Camille Jones [01:08:40] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:08:40] People usually like to hear that kind of stuff. So.

Camille Jones [01:08:43] Yeah, so I was told early when I hired with the church that if a member of the first presidency called, you dropped everything. Whatever you were working on, you dropped everything and did whatever they wanted you to. And it kind of worked down from there. So if it was a member of the quorum of the 12, you had till end of day, unless they specified otherwise. Quorum of the or Presidency of the Seventy, you might have, you know, 48 hours and you just, you gave them deference over anything else you were working on and that stuck. So even as a GA secretary there was kind of a ranking. So definitely Presidency of the Seventy ranked above any member of the 70. And so if it's a member of the presidency of the 70 asking for something, you're going to do everything you can to get it to them as soon as possible. But if it's a member of the First Presidency asking, you're going to do everything you can to get it to them within the next five minutes if possible. It was just the faster you could

Carah Burrell [01:09:41] turn it around, the better because the higher they are up on the ladder of superiority, the more important the Lord's work is.

Camille Jones [01:09:51] I guess. So that makes sense.

Carah Burrell [01:09:53] Yeah. And like what a way to work your way up the ladder. Like you jump and people say how high? Immediately.

Camille Jones [01:10:00] Yeah. And it stuck with the secretaries too. So if you had a secretary from the First Presidency's office asking for something, you kind of assumed that the general authority asked for it. And so unless they said we need it by, you know, the end of three days from now or whatever, you tried to get it to them as quickly as possible and you just kind of, they, they trumped me. So I, I did what they asked. There was one meeting with a member of the Quorum of the twelve Apostles and I'm not going to say who, and my general authority at the time, and there was a lot of some background work that needed to go into it. We had binders prepared. This particular general authority wanted his spiral bound while everybody else was in a three hole punch binder. So there was a couple of extra steps involved. And he wasn't supposed to be there until late in the afternoon. And we held off getting it bound in case there were any changes. Because with a three hole punch binder you can make changes really easily. But if you get it spiral bound, you have to reprint the whole thing and get it respiral bound. And then he showed up early and I got a call from his secretary saying he needs his binder now. I'm going, he wasn't supposed to be there till four and it's only one o' clock in the afternoon or noon or whatever it was. And he, I mean he showed up before lunch and he wasn't supposed to be there till after lunch is what it was, sometimes late afternoon. And so I ran it down to the document center, got it spiral bound While I waited. So they bumped everybody else's jobs to spiral, bound this one book for this quorum of the 12 member. And then I took it to her office, and she says, oh, I'm busy. Can you take it to him? So she made me go into this meeting with this book with her general authorities sitting up in the front of the room waiting for the book. And part of me wonders if she did it because she didn't want to be the one to walk up to the front of the room with this book and make it look like she hadn't provided her general authority with the information on time and make it look like it was more my fault. Luckily, they were taking a break, and so there was, you know, there was no awkwardness about me getting the book to him, but it was awkward walking into the room because I wasn't supposed to be there.

A Predatory Workplace Experience and Its Aftermath

Carah Burrell [01:12:26] What I'm hearing is, like, just, you know, they talk about, like, toxic work environments or culture. It just sounds like an environment that is ripe for manipulation and people's rights and feelings and. Yeah, just the rights that you have in the workplace to be able to speak your mind are always going to be silence. But I don't want to put words in your mouth. What was it sounds like a very manipulative environment that these men are allowed to get away with different things. Do you have any?

Camille Jones [01:12:58] I think it was. I think it was also really hard to tell when you were being manipulated and when you weren't. She may have legitimately been so busy with whatever she was working on that she felt she could just ask me to go and turn it in. She knew I was not comfortable doing that because she could read it all over my face, but she insisted that I be the one to hand it to her brother.

Carah Burrell [01:13:22] Her brother.

Camille Jones [01:13:23] Well, well, capital B.

Carah Burrell [01:13:26] Her brother. Her brother in Christ.

Camille Jones [01:13:29] Yeah. Okay, so the Brethren is what they're. They're referred to as collectively. So her.

Carah Burrell [01:13:35] Her GA Were there during your time? Any particular scandals or, like, excommunication? Because every once in a while, that'll come up. I don't know, maybe every few years, there'll be some kind of scandal that'll come up between, like, the different quorums of the 70. Were there any scandals that. That you now remember during your time

John Dehlin [01:13:52] there, like James Hamilla did?

Camille Jones [01:13:54] Yeah, I was there for James Hamila.

John Dehlin [01:13:56] Can you talk?

Camille Jones [01:13:57] I knew.

John Dehlin [01:13:58] Tell us who that is and what happened.

Carah Burrell [01:13:59] Okay.

Camille Jones [01:14:00] He was a member of the quorum of the 70, and he did something I never found out while I was working there. What was going on? I was working for Elder Keech at the time, who was the head. He was the executive director over the Public affairs department. And they knew this was going to be a public affairs issue because you can't ever excommunicate a general authority and not have it become a public affairs issue. And because I was working for him, I saw an email or something come across his desk or through his inbox about four or five days before the news broke. So I knew, but I couldn't say anything. I wasn't. I didn't know if I was supposed to know. I didn't know if. I mean, I had access to Elder Keech's inbox, but he managed his emails himself. And so I would only get in there occasionally if I needed specific information. And I wasn't sure if that was information that he would have wanted me to know. So I could. I didn't talk to him. I couldn't talk to any of my fellow secretaries. I couldn't. I just held it for five days until the news broke.

John Dehlin [01:15:20] And you still don't know why he was excommunicated?

Camille Jones [01:15:22] No. Nobody's ever explained anything to me.

Carah Burrell [01:15:25] Is there anything else around that time period you mentioned in your outline about a much less straightforward, more predatory experience?

Camille Jones [01:15:35] Oh, yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:15:37] What a weird theme. What a weird, weird, reoccurring theme in your life.

Camille Jones [01:15:41] I've had enough experience with that. He was a senior missionary serving at church headquarters, and I knew what it felt like to sit and stare at a computer with nothing to do. And that's pretty much what his calling was while serving there. He was a security missionary. So he sat there and he watched the security cameras.

Carah Burrell [01:16:04] Security missionary.

Camille Jones [01:16:05] Church security missionary. Okay.

Carah Burrell [01:16:07] I did not know that was a thing.

Camille Jones [01:16:08] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:16:09] So much by every minute, they have

Camille Jones [01:16:10] paid security on campus there for, you know, the quorum and all the general authorities in the buildings. And then they also have missionaries, typically who have had military or police experience in their history, and they come in as senior missionaries, and they help fill some of that security need. And he was one of them. And one of my jobs in college was library security. So I knew how boring it was to sit and just stare at security cameras all day long. And so I would walk by their desks and I would just say hello, and occasionally I would chat with them. And we found we had some common interests. He liked art. I was getting into art. He was doing some painting stuff. I helped him briefly with a painting he was doing. He just needed some background, like research. And I just. I like Little sewing. So I brought him in a fabric swatch or something like that. Something really simple. Took me all of five minutes to do. And we started doing lunches together occasionally just chat about art and whatever. And then something about the conversation started to throw red flags at me, and I decided to back off. And I planned on a day that we would typically end up doing lunch at about the same time, to do lunch with a friend instead. And I let him know, and he sent me an email where the subject line was, how I feel when I can't be without you. And, you know, I freaked out. It was probably the first time I had a legitimate panic attack. And I was lucky. I had a good friend with me at the time, and she, you know, helped me through it. And some of the people that I talked to about it, they're like, I don't see a problem what he sent you. And I'm like, really? You don't see a problem what he sent me? This is like. This is. This is bad. I don't like this at all. And so I told him via email that if. If that's really how he feels about me, then I didn't think we should, you know, continue a friendship. Because he was in his 70s and I was in my 20s, and it just was, like, replaying what I'd already gone through, and he didn't get it. And he kept sending me emails and kept sending me emails and kept sending

John Dehlin [01:18:44] me emails, saying things like.

Camille Jones [01:18:46] Saying things like, well, from this perspective, they look very gaslighty at this point. Like, oh, I thought you were interested in me because you said this one thing at lunch one day, and we were talking earlier before the interviews that I would throw out movie quotes. I had watched an old comedy romance movie, and he said something that reminded me about it. So I threw it out because I'd seen it the night before. And he threw that back at me, as in, you're flirting with me. After I said I didn't want to see him again.

John Dehlin [01:19:22] And he was single or married.

Carah Burrell [01:19:23] Married.

John Dehlin [01:19:24] He was married, yeah.

Camille Jones [01:19:26] In his 70s. And I eventually told him if he kept emailing me, I would get HR involved. And he backed off at that point. But I felt so unsafe that I changed where I parked my car. I changed how I walked into the building. He would use the security cameras. I know. He actually had it in an email where he told me what I was wearing that day because he had used the security cameras to follow me into the building. Whoa.

Carah Burrell [01:19:58] That's not okay. My gosh.

Camille Jones [01:20:00] So I Was extremely happy to move from the office building to the administration building because he didn't have access to that building.

Carah Burrell [01:20:11] So you mentioned that you were thinking of going to hr. Did you go to hr? Anything done about him?

Camille Jones [01:20:16] I mean, gaslighting is hard to see when you're in the middle of it. From my perspective now, looking back, I'm going, oh, geez, this is. This is. That was gaslighting. I can see it now, but I couldn't see it then. So I'm back to wondering, is it me? Did I. Did I do something? Did I say something? Did I. You know, what did I. What did I do? And you don't want to go to HR if you're going, did I do something wrong? Why. Why would I go to HR for this senior missionary. I mean, he's a missionary. He's a good guy, you know, he's got to be a good guy. He's a missionary and, you know, also wondering, is it just my past coming back to haunt me? And so I'm worried about nothing. So I was gaslighting myself, I guess, at that point. So I threatened hr, and he backed off. And then it must have been. It was a year later, he was finishing his mission at church headquarters, and he sent a letter, a physical letter, to my house. Oh, he also painted my portrait. He took a picture of me off of Facebook and painted my portrait. Anyway, he's. I like the looks going between you and John right now. It's great. Anyway, he sent a letter to my house, and that was the first time that my parents are like, yeah, there's something wrong here. I'm like, this was a year ago. I've been dealing with this for more than a year. It was a year since I'd moved into the administration building. And when he sent. He said in the letter, he sent it by mail because he didn't want to get in trouble with the church. So he didn't want to use church communication as if doing it by letter made it all right, but doing it by church email made it wrong. And I didn't respond to him. I immediately took it to hr. And all I know from what they said is that they sent him a letter from the legal department.

Carah Burrell [01:22:26] Like a cease and desist, kind of like, knock it off.

Camille Jones [01:22:28] Probably. Probably. I never saw the letter, but that's. That's all I know. He's left me alone since, for which I'm very grateful.

Severe Depression and a Mental Health Crisis

Carah Burrell [01:22:36] Right. I'm sure that you're already dealing with depression quite a bit at this time.

Camille Jones [01:22:40] I Was.

Carah Burrell [01:22:40] And that just must have induced new levels of depression and anxiety. So how did those two things go together as you were going through this episode?

Camille Jones [01:22:48] Oh, it was a mess. That's what it was. So that was probably the catalyst that really tipped me over the edge. That happened in July and by October of that year.

John Dehlin [01:23:05] What year?

Camille Jones [01:23:07] 2018. So not that long ago.

John Dehlin [01:23:14] So, I mean, it's probably worth mentioning that you, you worked for several different general authorities between 2014 and 2020.

Camille Jones [01:23:22] Yes. And in fact, I wrote it down so I wouldn't miss any of them. Yeah, I worked for Elder Brent Nelson and Elder Per Malm. Elder Malm has since passed away of brain tumor. So kind of a sad story there. Elder Satati and Elder Ringwood, and I worked with them the longest out of anybody I worked for, for church employment ever. I was with them for two years and then I worked for Elder Keech. He died. So I started with him in July and he died in January. So I only got seven months with him.

John Dehlin [01:23:57] And that's a big deal to have your general authority die, right?

Camille Jones [01:23:59] It was. It was. And I think it was poorly managed by the Quorum office, but. But we can get into that afterwards if you want. And then, because he died in January, but we don't get assignments until July or we don't have assignment changes until July. I was kind of this full time temporary where they could just slot me in wherever they needed me. And so I worked with a whole bunch of different people during that time. And that was hard because most of the time, if a secretary knows she's going to be leaving for a week or whatever, she tries to get ahead. So I sat down and I would have nothing to do but phone calls and calendars, which was, yeah, not fun. I don't recommend it. And I worked for Elder Hamilton and Elder Corbridge and I was working for them when this experience with this senior missionary happened. And you called him at the beginning, you called him these creepy men.

Carah Burrell [01:24:56] Did I?

Camille Jones [01:24:57] You did.

Carah Burrell [01:24:58] I would never. Doesn't sound like me.

Camille Jones [01:25:01] I had to laugh a little at that because I did do a little bit of therapy in there. It stopped just before Elder Keech died. But the problems with the senior missionary started before that. And we referred to him occasionally in my therapy sessions as Mr. Creepy because he really, he really did creep me out. So I had to laugh. When you call him these creepy men, I'm like, yeah, that's the right word for what happened. This is good. So, yeah, I was working for Elder Keech. He died Full time permanent temp secretary something position. I'm not sure what to even call that. Don't think the quorum office even knew what to call me at that point. And then I was working with Elder Hamilton and Elder Corbridge that fall in 2018. And so we had this problem with the senior missionary. And then in October, by October I was not in a good place.

Carah Burrell [01:26:07] What about that not good place? Is that what we were kind of before John asked that question when I was kind of talking about the. These two things kind of coinciding with your depression and reaching out to HR and them kind of mishandling you or what. What, what did they prescribe for you and what was the action taken after that?

Camille Jones [01:26:25] So for this senior missionary, because he'd finished his mission, the only thing they did was send him that letter for me. They just told me that they'd take care of it and that was the last I heard from them. And that was the point when I just kind of went downhill pretty quickly. And I had some real soul searching nights and decided that my best reason for living was so that I wouldn't cause pain to somebody else by not living.

Carah Burrell [01:27:05] Oh, so it got. You had some intense like suicidal ideation. That's really, that's really, that's really sad.

Camille Jones [01:27:18] Sorry, I don't want to cry.

Carah Burrell [01:27:20] You can spend as much time on that period of your life that you want to and was. It must be so difficult to be working for the church. And a lot of the places in the church that we find our solace and connect with our worth and our divine is from the very organization that's giving you a lot of turmoil as well in your life. So where did you find yourself? What did you decide to do from there? And to pull you out of your dark space.

John Dehlin [01:27:52] What do you think? What do you think was causing you to want to end your life as a church employee? If you had to summarize,

Camille Jones [01:28:02] I don't know if I can pinpoint anything in particular. I think it was just the combination of probably failed expectations. You know, I thought my life was going to be the happy Mormon success story. And you know, working for the church and working with the general authorities, it really feels like your life should be the happy Mormon success story. And it just wasn't. I found my greatest solace or peace in doing art and I was doing art classes at the time and so I would. I had this crazy drawing that I was working on. I haven't finished it yet, but it's in stipple. I Don't know if you know what stipple is. It's all dots and it's an ink and it's these little teeny, tiny dots. And I would just. I would work on that for hours and hours and hours because I could see. I could see progress with that, and that gave me a sense of accomplishment. But when I say hours, I mean I've got more than 200 hours on that thing and it's still not done. So it's a long, long process. And that's where I was finding any sense of accomplishment.

Carah Burrell [01:29:36] Do you feel like it became quite obvious to your friends, family, the GA's, the co workers, that you were struggling?

Camille Jones [01:29:47] Yes and no. I know that my parents knew that I was having trouble because they have commented since that I seem so much happier now, so they can see a difference. But I'm wondering if the slide into it was so gradual that, you know, it wasn't as obvious because the slide, the climbing out of it has been much faster than the slide into. Must have been obvious to the general authorities I was working with because one of them pulled me aside and recommended I get help. So kudos for him for doing that.

Carah Burrell [01:30:36] Yeah. To anyone who the corporate world as my husband. My husband just barely quit his job, and that's why I work here now. It's very difficult to be in a corporate setting and having somebody who has your back. And it's really heartwarming to hear that there was somebody who, you know, could see that and wanted you to reach out and get help. Not everybody has somebody who's even looking for the signs of severe depression in the workplace.

Camille Jones [01:31:08] I was glad he did it, but he didn't reach out again ever afterwards. So having somebody's back, it felt more like, well, you need help, so go get help. But I don't know if it was necessarily having my back.

Carah Burrell [01:31:20] At least at first.

Camille Jones [01:31:22] At least at first he was the catalyst that got me moving.

Carah Burrell [01:31:26] So then eventually, by what help?

Camille Jones [01:31:32] So I went to my doctors and he gave me a recommendation to go see a counselor and a prescription for antidepressants. I never did make it to a counselor because life got crazy after that. I felt a need to let my bosses, the quorum for the secretary, the secretary for the quorum, know that I was having trouble. And that was Greg Brown. And so they got HR involved. And HR told me, well, of course, you know, you need to get help and don't worry about your job because, you know, there's protections. So you just worry about getting your mental Health back online. And within a week of my. Of this interaction and my doctor's appointment and all of that, they changed my assignment at work. This was in November, and. Which means I was out of the timeline because they don't change assignments except in July. And they sent an email to all of my co workers with the new list and the assignment change. So everybody knew that I'd been moved. And then I had everybody asking me what was going on, and I had a new position and I had a new boss and a brand new hire filled the role that I had been in. So they know something's up because you're not going to replace a seasoned person working with two general authorities with a brand new hire unless something's going on.

John Dehlin [01:33:02] So it was kind of a shaming or embarrassing how they handled it.

Camille Jones [01:33:05] It was terribly embarrassing. And for the most part, I. I just said, I'm fine. I, you know, there's no problems. I just, you know, they're just changing assignments. I brushed it off, because I did. I felt terribly ashamed over what was going on.

John Dehlin [01:33:25] So that kind of made it worse, maybe.

Camille Jones [01:33:28] Oh, yeah. But I had already decided that I didn't see a reason why my relieving my suffering by killing myself should cause my family pain. So I pushed through it. I'm sure the antidepressants helped, but I, you know, that's. You would know more about this, John, than I would. That. That first couple of weeks on antidepressants are actually very dangerous.

John Dehlin [01:34:00] Yeah. Going. My understanding is going on and off antidepressants can lead to heavy suicidal ideation. You want to do that slowly. You want to taper on and taper off.

Camille Jones [01:34:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:11] Because there's a heavy risk of suicidal ideation in both going on and going off.

Camille Jones [01:34:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:18] Yeah.

Camille Jones [01:34:20] So that was about a week after I started.

John Dehlin [01:34:24] Yeah. Yeah.

Camille Jones [01:34:28] So. But then I was working with Elder McKay, and Elder McKay was fabulous. He was very understanding and very kind. So. But yeah, about five months later was the first time they tried to fire me.

Carah Burrell [01:34:53] On what grounds? That you were.

Camille Jones [01:34:55] That I wasn't improving my performance fast enough, Which was interesting because this is the first time they'd talked to me since I let them know I was having trouble with depression. I hadn't talked to HR in that time period. And they. The first meeting was, we recommend you find another position. So I started looking and I figured, okay, I've got time. It was April. And then about a week later, they came back and said, no, I think you misunderstood. We want you to find a new position by July. And I was shocked. It's like, wait, I was told that I wasn't going to lose my job because I was having mental health problems. And I pushed back. And Elder McKay also pushed back because he fully believed that I was capable of what I was doing and that I was doing a good job for him. And so they conceded and gave me another year. And I thought, okay, they're going to use me. And in July, they left me where I was, which was helping new general authorities. And the new general authorities have an even lighter workload than the regular general authorities because they're doing a year's worth of training. And I spent a lot of time just sitting on my hands. For a year.

Carah Burrell [01:36:28] For a year.

Camille Jones [01:36:29] For a year.

Carah Burrell [01:36:30] For a year. So there's a lot of things in your outline about. About all of the breakdown of kind of being pushed out. What. What other parts do you think are the most.

John Dehlin [01:36:49] Yeah. You said there's a first time. They tried to.

Carah Burrell [01:36:51] The first time.

Camille Jones [01:36:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:36:52] That means there must have been a second.

Camille Jones [01:36:54] Yeah. So the second time I kind of knew it was coming because they hadn't used me. And, you know, you don't improve if the conditions that are causing the problems don't improve.

Carah Burrell [01:37:08] Yeah.

Camille Jones [01:37:09] So the church could claim that they did reasonable accommodation as required under law by having moved me. They claimed they moved me over to this position of less responsibility out of compassion to help me recover. But it actually made things worse. And because they didn't reassign me to a place that would need me and had social interaction because it's also a very little isolated corner. You're sitting by yourself basically, in an empty hall with a door between you and the whole rest of the world. There was nothing going on. So I kind of knew it was coming. And it was. It was hard to hear them say, find a job by July 31st. And they had me sign a form or a paper to the effect that I knew that I would not have a job after the month of July. And that was in January of 2020.

Carah Burrell [01:38:13] Okay. So a few months before COVID started to really get heating up there.

Camille Jones [01:38:20] And.

John Dehlin [01:38:21] And they had reassured you that. That your mental health wouldn't be held against you, like you said very early on.

Carah Burrell [01:38:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:38:30] And that you would be safe. And so it must have been weird or devastating to see that they ended up. Their assurances and their promises ended up maybe not being true.

Camille Jones [01:38:41] Yeah. That HR manager told me that they would not and they could not fire me for mental health problems. I did not like where they put Me that assignment to help the new general authorities. Because it is so light, they often fill with just temporary secretaries. So you can basically put somebody in there who knows how to answer a phone and work in a Word document and you're fine. It is the bare, bare minimum. It's a great place to train somebody who doesn't know anything about working with the general authorities. And the ironic thing is, when they did fire me that January, I was unofficially training somebody. The church needs real help with training new employees. Anyways, her trainer was another GA secretary who was on another floor in a different wing of the building working with somebody that she had never worked with before. And I was right next to her. And so instead of having her go through the building and up a flight of stairs to show her trainer something or to call her on the phone and say, I can't figure this out, I just jumped in and did it. And I trained her on how to be a GA secretary and they fired me in the middle of that. I mean, that was just. It's ironic that they would say that I wasn't capable of doing it when I was training somebody else to do it at the same time.

Carah Burrell [01:40:10] Yeah. So is there anything else that you want to say from that period of time until you had your exit interview and were actually like, let go and what that process was like?

Leaving Church Employment and Faith Transition

Camille Jones [01:40:21] Oh, it was Covid. Working from home was probably really good for me. I had some real health problems crop up in the middle of all of that. Ended up in the er, which is great when you know you're not going to have a job after the next month.

Carah Burrell [01:40:35] Just gonna take your time.

Camille Jones [01:40:36] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it was lovely. No, nothing in particular, I guess, unless you've got other questions.

John Dehlin [01:40:43] The way I. The way I've made sense of your story is you're kind of in this super duper turbo patriarchy church organization from the start. You're egregiously underutilized as a woman, never given any chance for advancement, super bored for long, long periods of time. And then even as you advance, it doesn't get any better. You're harassed by a fellow, by a missionary, and then. And then one of your general authorities dies while he, you know, you're assigned to him. And the mounting years of underutilization and frankly, disrespect leads to, along with the death of your general authority and the harassment leads to severe depression where you're then promised you're going to be fine, you won't be fired for depression, but then they assigned you to places where they make it even worse by making you feel humiliated and shamed. And everybody knows that there's something wrong, which just adds bricks to the depression and the underutilization and the shame and the depression. And then to add insult to injury, after promising you that you can't be fired for depression, then after making your depression work, then they just go ahead and fire you.

Camille Jones [01:42:09] Yeah, and they tried to fire me once and then actually did fire me the second time.

John Dehlin [01:42:14] And this is, I mean, and again, it's tricky because somebody who's like not looking at the church with rose colored glasses would say, hey, it's an organization and if you're not performing well, that they have to be able to get rid of people. And so even a church corporation should be able to get rid of underperforming employees. You can't expect them to just let everyone work forever. So on the one hand you think that, but then the more idealistic side, I think, Carrie, you might probably feel this way as well. It's like, hey, this is God's one true church. They should be treating people the best of all possible places. These leaders are supposed to be the most super inspired men. You were lucky enough to have one kind of notice that you were super depressed and suicidal. But just kind of the irony that in God's one true church, with these super inspired leaders, you're wanting to end your life and they're making it worse by trying to fire you and, and even. And making you more depressed versus less. I mean, those are some of the things that are sticking out for me.

Camille Jones [01:43:16] Yeah, that's, that's a really good summary of what happened, I think.

Carah Burrell [01:43:24] So if you can look back at your time, you said in the beginning of your outline that you kind of just wanted to raise a voice of dissent for how things are done within the church. Do you want to speak to what changes that you would hope could be made for women or for people in your position in general who struggle with mental health issues?

Camille Jones [01:43:46] I would love if there was a way for them to make the legal requirement of reasonable accommodation include the person that they're trying to accommodate. I think, yeah, I think that either the person, or at least the person ought to be involved, but if, if not, probably their doctor or a counselor and have it be a conversation instead of, we're doing this out of compassion. Here's our compassionate move. And it's going to help you because you can't know what's going to be compassionate unless you know what the problem really is. And they didn't do that. And they, they never really did that.

Carah Burrell [01:44:37] And on top of that, it sounds like you weren't even compensated very well, but you were. It says on your outline that you looked it up later and you were paid $20,000 less than the national average for the first year new hire for

John Dehlin [01:44:50] executive administrative assistance or whatever.

Camille Jones [01:44:52] Yeah. And that was the national average. So, you know, the national average for first year executive assistant was $20,000 more per year than I was getting by the time I was fired.

Carah Burrell [01:45:06] Like, that's pretty outrageous alone, like a standalone kind of bullet point. Yeah, that's really kind of egregious. Again, what John was talking about, like, I. I don't expect the church to be perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I would expect them to try to be in league with the best standards and practices, you know. So it sounds like between your depression and the being forced out of your employment here, you must have been struggling with how the sausage is being made within the church, how the cogs in the machine are actually kind of being manipulated by the people running the machine. How did your faith and testimony of the general authorities, how did that interplay?

Camille Jones [01:45:52] So when I was in the worst part of the depression, I spent a lot of nights just praying for, you know, give me hope, give me something, send someone. I just wanted to know maybe, maybe I was in a place where I couldn't receive inspiration or revelation. I didn't know. I didn't know why I wasn't. Because I was doing all the things I was reading, I was praying. I was in the temple every Saturday as a temple worker. I was working for the church. My life was church seven days a week, right. And so I just wanted someone. I wanted a message from someone, somewhere, if I couldn't get it myself, to send someone. And it never happened. Nobody came. So it went from, okay, let me know that I'm, you know, somebody's there to let me know that you're there. And there was a really hard, hard night where I spent hours crying. I did not want to cry. Just wanting to know that God even existed. And I didn't get any answer. So I look back at that as the moment that my shelf broke. But I continued to ignore it because, you know, I didn't want to admit the fact that that was what had happened, that I had lost faith. And Covid was probably a very good thing for me because it let me step away and re examine. And I've got one sister who is also not an active member. And we had some really Good conversations, Hard conversations, some of them about faith and sexuality and church and all the things we've talked about here. She knows everything. Yeah. And stepping away and getting out of it and getting away from working for the church probably let me breathe a little bit and come to some conclusions. And I, I held on hard. I did not want to be that one who had, you know, failed the family or whatever by stepping away from the church. And I, I worked my way through to my. I had another sister who got married just recently in the temple. And I thought, okay, well, last chance, I'll be in a temple, you know, and hadn't been in temple for a while because Covid and all of that. Last chance. And it was a nice day. It was a beautiful day. Her wedding was beautiful. But I didn't feel anything special. And I didn't get any of those messages of, you know, this is the right one, you know, this, this will fix all your problems. And I just thought, okay, I'm not going to live the lie. If I don't believe that God exists or that if he does exist, that he cares enough to talk to me, then all these other things. If God is all knowing, all compassionate and all powerful, why didn't he answer me that one night?

Carah Burrell [01:49:29] Yeah. A very devastating kind of shelf breaking night that I can't imagine is like too, too different than a lot of people who are, you know, in the depths of despair, in an oppressive episode, and they're using the only tool that they really know how to use, which is reaching out to their heavenly father and how painful that is to just not hear anything back.

Camille Jones [01:49:53] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:49:54] And I'm assuming a lot of people will be listening to this. And I see somebody sitting in front of me who worked for the church, who served a mission, who did everything that they could to stay faithful, but it sounds like it still was not able to be enough. And you are the best person to speak to your experiences and what was not enough for you. And so in that, in that down and depressive episode, reaching out for your heavenly Father and not feeling anything, where did, where did that take you from there? Just. Were you still active in church? You're still.

Camille Jones [01:50:32] I was still active in church. I still had callings. I still wanted it to be true. So again, I pretended pretty much that it didn't happen. I held on for more than two years.

Carah Burrell [01:50:45] Because that was two years.

Camille Jones [01:50:46] That was about two years. No, it was more than two years before I finally went. I'm done.

Carah Burrell [01:50:52] That's a really hard time. A long time.

Camille Jones [01:50:54] That was fall of 2018, when that

Carah Burrell [01:50:58] happened, until you continued active.

Camille Jones [01:51:02] Active up until. Oh, probably I would have been considered active in the church until like, June

John Dehlin [01:51:12] of this year of 2021.

Camille Jones [01:51:14] Of 2021.

Carah Burrell [01:51:16] We're recording this September, September 8th. So that's quite recent.

Camille Jones [01:51:20] Yeah, but I kind of given up in January. I stopped praying in January. But, you know, that's. That's more than two years of praying to somebody that I don't know if he's even there. Yeah, that's a long time. And if I keep looking.

Carah Burrell [01:51:37] Tie this back to your employment at the church. Do you have any window into, I guess, talking with other people were there? Is it common to have depression or do you feel like there was any of their. The similar feelings and themes of the other women that worked with you in the church office buildings?

Camille Jones [01:51:57] I don't know. I know one of them. One secretary shared with me that she was having anxiety issues. That she had anxiety and, you know, was diagnosed with anxiety, I guess is the best way to say that. And she didn't tell anybody. She told me because she was right there the. The day that I was moved. So, you know, it was kind of a tearful day and we had a conversation. She's pretty much one of the few who knew that I was dealing with depression.

Carah Burrell [01:52:31] Somebody that had your back a little bit.

Camille Jones [01:52:33] Yeah, she did.

Carah Burrell [01:52:34] Oh, good.

Camille Jones [01:52:34] Yeah, she did. And. But I think a lot of mental health issues working for the church were kept kind of undercover because the implication of having a mental health issue means that something is wrong. Something is, you know, something's not enough. Something, you know, you're supposed to be happy. This is the church of, you know, men are. That they might have joy. They lived after the manner of happiness. And those that thought of the church is supposed to make you happy. And so if you're not, it's you and not the church.

Carah Burrell [01:53:07] There's always something you could be doing better, doing more of you're not doing right. Yeah. And we all know that so many of these issues that are surrounded with shame can just. They grow in the dark when you're not able to express yourself and not actually able to speak freely. But just because you work for the organization that also gives you your spirituality kind of the kind of own it. You're not able to actually speak out about what is not working for you spiritually.

Camille Jones [01:53:33] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:53:33] Yeah. Which is. We talk. I was thinking to like, Kelly Trust's interview about, like, the BYU athletic department. Just the way that the church kind of gets involved in so many other areas because I think spirituality is beautiful. Right. And then when it gets, you know, co opted by a religion and now to be able to play sports for the church, you have to live up to the spiritual, you know, religious standard to be able to keep your employment. You have to perform in a certain way. And even though I'm not Mormon anymore, I don't know about you, but like the God that I worshiped in Mormonism hated that kind of performative stuff. Like the God that in Mormonism, the Christ that I worshiped, he wanted as many people to be open and honest and bear one another's burdens. But when you're put in this environment in the church where that's looked down upon, it sounds like, like it's, it's difficult to, it's difficult to make sense of it. I guess that's all I'm trying to say.

Camille Jones [01:54:28] Yeah. That teaching of ministering to the One. We heard a lot about ministering to the One, and the general authorities taught that at state conferences, but I never felt it reach me. So especially at work, there's definitely some things that they could do as a corporation, as a business, to make it a healthier place to be mentally.

Carah Burrell [01:54:51] Yeah, I think that's kind of a great summary of that, that different section. Because they are a corporation at the end of the day, they are. And to, you know, the way capitalism works, you kind of going after the One is not really advantageous to like the bottom line or whatever. So. So your faith kind of fell apart over a two year period.

Camille Jones [01:55:16] My faith fell apart gradually.

Carah Burrell [01:55:18] Gradually, yeah.

Camille Jones [01:55:19] And it started with the idea that maybe God isn't there. And, you know, if Christ is the cornerstone of our religion, if you lose that cornerstone, the whole building is eventually going to come tumbling down. It just is inevitable because if Christ, if you're not sure if God exists, then you're not sure if Joseph Smith is a prophet, which means that you're not sure if the Book of Mormon is true, which means that and everything just, it's just a domino effect. So I held on till January of this year, praying, and then I held on through to my sister's wedding thinking, okay, last last chance. And a couple weeks after that, I found the CES letter. So I hadn't even read anything like that until after I had decided I was done.

Carah Burrell [01:56:09] Okay.

Camille Jones [01:56:10] And I read the CES letter. I'm like, okay, there is no way I am doing anything about this again. And I, that, that was the day I stopped wearing my garments.

Carah Burrell [01:56:20] When you mentioned that if you can't, you know, feel God or believe in Christ, that it all can kind of comes tumbling down. Did you also. Were you trying to hold on to your testimony of Joseph Smith that you preached on your mission and all of the spiritual experiences and testimonies that you bore in Palmyra? Did your. Before the CS letter, did you have, like, a. Anything. Any grasping onto anything of Joseph Smith still, or.

Camille Jones [01:56:46] No, I was just kind of floating. I mean, like I said, if you. If you're not sure if God exists, then nothing, Nothing else really stands. But I wasn't.

John Dehlin [01:56:56] Your mind could have said, well, I had those spiritual experiences on my mission. Well, so I may not be feeling God now, but I know I felt them then.

Camille Jones [01:57:04] That is how I held on through all of my depression.

Carah Burrell [01:57:07] Really?

Camille Jones [01:57:08] Yeah. Because if you can't feel the spirit because you're depressed, then you have to rely on something else that you felt before. So at the moment, all I was feeling was how terrible everything was. So I had to look backward, and I reread things that I'd written because I've always kept a journal. And I worked really hard on relying on spiritual experiences from my childhood and my youth and through my mission. And that was the only thing that kept me going as long as it did. What.

John Dehlin [01:57:44] What led you to ultimately decide those weren't adequate?

Camille Jones [01:57:51] Well, I didn't understand how you could feel things like that and not have it be true. Like, I didn't know the theory of, like, a confirmation bias. So I didn't know. I didn't know what to do with those experiences, but I knew that God wasn't answering me now. So there was something that was off or wrong or needed correction. And then it wasn't until I found the CES letter that I was like, no, there's got to be something different. There's got to be another reason why I would have felt that way and came across the idea of, you know, confirmation bias. And everybody wanted me to feel this way, and I did the thing. And so. And this thing happened, and so it must be related. And it, you know, doesn't necessarily have to be that way.

Carah Burrell [01:58:45] Yeah, And I think that's interesting that you said that you kind of already made peace with it not being true or whatever. Whatever words you would use before you found the CS letter. And I want to ask you about that in a second, but you mentioned in your outline about how you had a problem understanding if that God was real, because if he is not able to speak to you and is hindered by Something as your depression.

Camille Jones [01:59:13] Oh, so somebody. Yeah, somebody told me that if you're dealing with depression that you have trouble feeling or understanding the Holy Ghost. And later, as I was thinking about it, I thought, huh, God is supposed to be all powerful, so why would something as human or mortal as depression be powerful enough to stop God from speaking to me? And it was recognizing the lie behind that method of getting people to hold on through depression that, that, that should have no real force as a, as a reason why God couldn't reach you. Depression should not stop God.

Carah Burrell [02:00:03] Right. If he knows, if he made your brain, if he knows what trials you're going to go through, if a trial that he knows is going to be as big as depression throughout your life.

Camille Jones [02:00:14] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:00:16] And he set up the system in a way that he knows that you're going to completely be unfeeling to the Spirit through a good portion of your life.

Camille Jones [02:00:24] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:00:25] You're trying to say, like, what does that say about God and who I'm worshiping here?

Camille Jones [02:00:28] Yeah. If he made it so that he wouldn't be able to reach that person either. No, God. God should be powerful enough to reach through those feelings and still make you feel like there's a reason to live.

Carah Burrell [02:00:39] Yeah. Yeah. Especially a reason to live. That's, that's as dark and sad as that is. That is the reality that a lot of people deal with on this earth. That life is difficult. And if people can find happiness and joy through their spiritual experiences, whether it's the Mormon God or any other God. Yeah. Life is hard. And it's, it's good to, to reach out and find something that keeps you going. But if that thing just further adds to your confusion and your depression, like you're saying, like, what else do I need to be doing? What else is my fault? Where am I not measuring up?

Camille Jones [02:01:13] Yeah. And that is exactly what I was doing. I wasn't reading enough. I wasn't praying enough. Maybe I needed something different at church. I've even. They kept me on a piano bench for most of my life in church. So I sat alone playing the piano. And I've. I requested from my last bishop to have a teaching calling because I thought, okay, teaching, you know, I'll be back into the whole mindset of finding information and bearing testimony and being more actively participating. And he put me back on a piano bench.

Carah Burrell [02:01:48] Really?

Camille Jones [02:01:49] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:01:50] Oh, that's not being led by the Spirit. So getting into the CES letter, I'm just curious to know what were your biggest, like, OMG moments from that Especially being so involved with church history and Palmyra. And what were the standout things to you that made you say, I can't believe I never knew this?

Encountering the CES Letter and Doctrinal Doubts

Camille Jones [02:02:10] Yeah. I am still coming to terms with changing my viewpoint on Joseph Smith because the viewpoint I had on him as a missionary and through most of my life has been that he is just this wonderful person, loving, caring. He was victim of circumstance. He was, you know, persecuted and humble and you know, lamb to the slaughter. The whole. Right, the whole normal. This is, this is the viewpoint of the normal.

Carah Burrell [02:02:39] All persecution.

Camille Jones [02:02:40] Yeah. And to find out that no, he was a treasure digger. He really was a treasure digger. Not just a shovel.

John Dehlin [02:02:48] He

Camille Jones [02:02:51] had child wives. And I don't care how the church puts it, a 14 year old is still a child. And saying it's a few months shy of 15 is just even a 15 year old is a child. I don't care how they phrase that. That's just wrong changes to the Book of Mormon. But really the thing about Joseph Smith is the one that's like that one, if there was anything left of my shelf, that that one broke my shelf. 14 year old.

Carah Burrell [02:03:21] Oh, sorry. The polygamy.

Camille Jones [02:03:22] The polygamy. That one was the one that was like there is no way.

Carah Burrell [02:03:27] Right. So if anyone is unfamiliar with the CES letter and they don't know what we're talking about. The CES letter is a document, a collection of criticisms of the church that's collected by Jeremy Reynolds. And it's kind of an all encompassing one stop shop for a lot of the problems in the church that most of us were not taught in Sunday school. A lot of mind blowing. Um, it's got some criticisms and critiques of its. That people have levied against the CS letter of its own. That it's not completely perfect. Yes. But there are some really other. When whenever we get people on Mormon stories and, and the CS letter is usually the place where they go, where they have. It's the first time that they're reading a lot of these things for the first time. So is there any other things in the CS letter that. That were shocking that you remember that particularly told you this is. This is not the church? I thought it was.

Camille Jones [02:04:21] Most of it was shocking to me. Most of it changed my viewpoint on what the church was and how it did things.

John Dehlin [02:04:27] I have a couple prompts. So especially tying back to your mission service. So you want to talk about the first vision story and just kind of address that directly. The first vision story.

Camille Jones [02:04:36] Oh, okay. So I had actually run across the different versions of the first vision after my mission sometime. And I did some apologetics, mind bending stuff to make it okay with myself. And I basically took several different versions of it and meshed it into one document. So it was still just one story in my mind.

Carah Burrell [02:04:56] Even though they're like contradictory and it's.

John Dehlin [02:05:00] Yeah. What did you end up concluding? Yeah, what did you, once you were open minded about the first vision, that

Camille Jones [02:05:08] it was all just made up. It's all just. It's a fairy tale. The church is a fairy tale. And the thing about fairy tales is you're not supposed to believe them, you're supposed to learn from them. And that's why fairy tales still have value in today's world. But this fairy tale we were brought up to believe was completely true. And as soon as you realize it's not, you can't go back and go, oh no, there's magic in the world still. You know, unicorns are just hiding in the forest over there. You can't pretend, you know, it just, it was just a fairy tale.

Carah Burrell [02:05:46] And as somebody who read a lot of books, a lot of novels, what'd you say when you were a teenager? 30amonth. Summer.

Camille Jones [02:05:53] Yeah, one summer. 30amonth.

Carah Burrell [02:05:55] You must have had like a shelf cracking moment realizing that, that like, if this is a fairy tale, this is a novel, this is like a man's kind of Bible fan fiction. Did you start to be like, oh, I see what he did here. This is, this is like an author playing around with mythology.

Camille Jones [02:06:11] And I can see a little bit of that. I used to say things like, but he wrote it all in, you know, X number of days, whatever it was. And you could only write a book like that if you were inspired. And then afterwards I realized, oh, he's been telling his family stories about the Nephites, like a dinner time or evening activity. So this is not just. I made the stuff up in a month. He had four years. And I'll tell you what, four years of research and preparation to write a book is plenty of time, right?

John Dehlin [02:06:45] What about, what about just kind of the historicity of the Book of Mormon, the anachronisms, anything you want to. Because there are a bunch of people that don't, haven't read the letter, don't know what we're talking about. Anything you want to say about Book of Mormon historicity and anachronism?

Camille Jones [02:07:00] Well, it's not accurate.

John Dehlin [02:07:03] What about it?

Camille Jones [02:07:05] There were no horses, there was no steel. There's no evidence of communities or cities or anything like that on The North American continent or Central. Or central. That fit the time period of the Book of Mormon. It just. The history, the science, that nothing is supporting it. You just can't. It's still just. It's still part of the fairy tale.

John Dehlin [02:07:31] DNA.

Camille Jones [02:07:31] Yeah. DNA. They're finding remains that are tens of thousands of years old in other parts of the world.

John Dehlin [02:07:44] Human.

Camille Jones [02:07:45] Human remains.

John Dehlin [02:07:45] Yeah.

Camille Jones [02:07:47] And there's no reason why we shouldn't be finding evidence that would go back a couple thousand years to prove that the Book of Mormon was true. There's no arrowheads. There are no swords. There are no. I mean, if you just. It just doesn't hold up. You can't say that.

John Dehlin [02:08:05] Well, there's arrowheads.

Camille Jones [02:08:06] Well, yes, but they're not. They're. They're Native American arrowheads, and they can tie them to specific cultures.

John Dehlin [02:08:12] Yeah. How about Book of Abraham? Did you study that?

Camille Jones [02:08:15] I did see that part, and I think you've done some great podcasts on that, haven't you? To. Yeah. Book of Abraham, just another fairy tale. Not.

John Dehlin [02:08:26] Not a translation of ancient. Not.

Camille Jones [02:08:28] Not a translation. No. Nope. I'm not an expert. So refer him to the. The podcast that you did with the experts.

John Dehlin [02:08:36] And I have to ask about the Book of Mormon translation. Stone in the hat. Did. Did it turn out that Joseph Smith produced the book in the way you had been taught to tell everybody else and to testify to everybody else how it happened? What. What was the difference between the two?

Camille Jones [02:08:52] The difference between the two. Joseph Smith was supposed to have had the plates. He didn't. He had a stone and a hat. I pretty sure that Oliver Cowdery probably put in a lot of good help on getting things moving and getting the story to flow because he had connections with. What was his name? Who did. The other. The other book. That's something.

John Dehlin [02:09:19] Hebrews. Yeah.

Camille Jones [02:09:21] Yeah. It's just. It's too similar. I've looked at a couple of excerpts, and I don't want. I don't want to get too much into it. I don't want this to become my. I appreciate that it's become your guys's lives to help people this way, but I don't think I can handle it, so I don't want to make that my focus in life.

Carah Burrell [02:09:42] Right, Right. So the CS letter was kind of a nail in the coffin experience. And you said you already took off your garments before that?

Camille Jones [02:09:51] Nope, that was. That was the last straw. I tuned into church electronically one more time because they were changing my bishopric, and I was curious, and then I didn't Go ever again. It's the last time I went.

John Dehlin [02:10:04] What was it like taking off your garments?

Camille Jones [02:10:06] A little weird.

John Dehlin [02:10:08] Why? For those who don't understand.

Camille Jones [02:10:10] Oh, well, garments gotta go underwear shopping. Garments go to the knee, Garments go to the shoulder, like a cap sleeve. And. Well, I was raised where you're supposed to wear your bra on top of your garments. Your garments are always touching your skin. It's part of my orthodox Mormon upbringing. Um, so going from all of that to, oh, yeah, this is what regular real underwear feels like. It. It was weird. And I'm still not entirely comfortable with my body after feeling like I had to have it covered that much all the time.

Carah Burrell [02:10:48] Yeah.

Camille Jones [02:10:48] It was nice this summer, though, when we hit 106, to not have to wear a second layer.

Carah Burrell [02:10:52] Yeah, that's incredibly true. Yeah. Because from the time you probably got endowed and through your mission and then you lost your faith in it. Sounds like your early 30s, right. And that's a long time to be conditioned that you need to cover your body with two layers. And I'm telling you, listeners out there, I have two years into my faith, grace, faith, transition, or whatever you want to call it, and I still. I still kind of wish I was wearing garments sometimes. It still feels so weird. Still feels weird and like, you know,

Camille Jones [02:11:25] but it also feels good.

Carah Burrell [02:11:28] I'm. It feels good, especially in the heat. But it's. It's weird. It's like you're conditioned for a decade.

Camille Jones [02:11:33] It is weird.

Carah Burrell [02:11:34] You're, like, kind of checking. You're like, oh, yeah, yeah. Like, oh, wait, I don't need to do that anymore. So it is like. Yeah, it's freeing, but it's very freeing.

Camille Jones [02:11:41] Very comfortable. I found it very comfortable. I know some people probably don't, but I found it very nice to remove some of the confinement or expectation or the. That side of it. It's more mental, I guess, than physical.

Carah Burrell [02:11:55] Mental. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I was trying to get at. Like, it's you stuff to rewire your brain in some ways. Or like you. I'm assuming you brought your coffee in here today and you can start.

Camille Jones [02:12:05] Oh, no. Chai chai.

Carah Burrell [02:12:09] You got a taste of it? Yeah, yeah.

Camille Jones [02:12:11] On my mission. Right, Right.

Carah Burrell [02:12:12] Yeah, you got a taste of it and you're like, this is the Lord's brew, so.

Camille Jones [02:12:16] Oh, it's good stuff.

Carah Burrell [02:12:17] Yeah. You're caffeinated. What else were you able to, like, finally experience or express or do after you left the church that was meaningful to you?

Post-Mormon Life, Family, and Recovery

Camille Jones [02:12:27] Well, it's not been that long. It's only been a couple of months, so I haven't done a whole lot. I am going back to school and I'm sure I'll experience a few things there. I've had some good co workers who have since leaving church employment. I've been working retail and I've got a couple of good co workers there who have been very, very supportive and wonderful.

Carah Burrell [02:12:50] What are you going back to school for?

Camille Jones [02:12:51] Archeology. I'm going to go study the history and the science of stuff.

Carah Burrell [02:12:56] Well, come back in a little bit and tell us all about it. Yeah, we would love to have a post Mormon archaeologist on. So the other question I wanted to ask was speaking of uncovering things like an archaeologist throughout this whole process. If you could just summarize and describe what has your faith unraveling felt like during and and post like what's. What place are you in right now?

Camille Jones [02:13:23] During was really hard because I was always afraid of how my family was going to react. That very orthodox upbringing. I am probably very lucky that some of my aunts and uncles have also had issues with faith. Most of them have left or the most of those that left came back. So I'm sure my parents are hoping that that will be my story too. Yeah, so it was, it was hard because I felt like I was letting people down. Still feel like I'm letting people down. I still have worries that I'm going to be ostracized from people that I care about. That was probably my biggest concern about coming and doing this podcast was who was going to receive it poorly if and when they find out that I did it. Mission presidents, temple presidents. When I worked in the temple, I was an assistant coordinator. So I had a, it was a leadership role. So I had people that I was over. Just how many people will feel hurt that I've left And that's probably been the biggest thing over the last couple of months is coming to terms with I can't do this because I don't want them to feel hurt. Other than that, I feel pretty good about it. I mean I have had two years to start to kind of get used to the idea that it's not right, it's not true. And that's, you know, you said it's been two years for you and you feel pretty comfortable about yours too, right?

Carah Burrell [02:15:06] I am on camera and speaking out about it for a living. Sorry, mom and dad. And not that I ever really cared what my parents thought. Like they're kind of, they're nice but like I never disappointing my Parents was never like a thing I should never do in my life. That wasn't that important to me. So speaking out and having the courage to speak out about the things I'm passionate about in this Mormon space isn't difficult. But it sounds like you have a lot of pressure to stay silent. So what inspired you and gave you the courage to come on today and to not stay silent anymore then?

Camille Jones [02:15:37] I wanted people to know how the church treated mental health as a corporation. I wanted them to know that so that if the church is willing, they can make the changes that they need to make to better help their employees. I also wanted any of my co workers to know why and to know that I'm there for them if they have similar issues. Even if it's a faith crisis, I'm there for them if it's not a faith crisis. I'm there for them if they need help. I haven't talked to hardly anybody, any of them for a year, but I'm still there for them.

Carah Burrell [02:16:20] That's beautiful.

Camille Jones [02:16:20] That's probably my biggest. I want them to know. I want the church to know that they need to make changes, and I can't do that from within anymore. So not that doing it from within made any difference the first time around, but at least this way it's more public and they might have a little more pressure.

Carah Burrell [02:16:36] Yeah, we're always at Mormon stories trying to, like, move the needle because we. I love Mormons. I swear I do. And sounds like the people that you worked with are generally good people. Right. You probably describe them that way. And you don't want people to suffer from mental health issues that are just exacerbated by their workplace. So to move the needle within the system that is Mormonism, to improve the lives of the people that the system serves. Yeah, I think that's like a beautiful reason to put yourself out there and come on today. So thank you for that. And then I wanted to ask. You were obviously in quite the depressive episode at that time. There's, you know, the saying that, you know, wickedness never was happiness. And leaving the church, you might have small amounts of happiness, but it's not true happiness. How has your mental health improved since you've stepped away from the church greatly?

Camille Jones [02:17:28] I started improving as soon as I was no longer working for the church, which is funny because I was unemployed for seven months. So to have my mental health improved while dealing with the stress and. And the stigma that's attached to being unemployed was unexpected.

John Dehlin [02:17:47] And losing your faith? And losing my faith, like you're working for the church, super depressed, then you become unemployed and lose your faith, and all of a sudden your joy increases. That's a weird signal.

Camille Jones [02:17:59] Yeah, it really was. And, you know, I still lived it up until June of this year, but even last year, through the summer, I was improving. And then as soon as I let go of the last of it and decided it was all just a bunch of stories and I didn't need to try and live up to their expectations. And I have a feeling that drinking my teas probably also helped that, because there's some interesting science behind tea drinking and coffee and how that can actually help your mental health, too. For some people. Not for all, but for some. Yeah, I have actually. I haven't had to take my antidepressants in a couple of months. I'm happy. I actually thoroughly enjoy things now instead of feel like I'm pretending I'm enjoying things, which I did a lot of when I was dealing with the depression. You laugh because you're supposed to laugh or you smile because you're supposed to smile. And you fit that role because you're supposed to fit that role. And I don't. I don't do that anymore. If I'm sad, I can say I'm sad. If I'm happy, it's because I am genuinely happy now.

Carah Burrell [02:19:13] Yeah. So when you were saying about how you were kind of in a performative role, trying to fill the role, whether it's for other people or whether it's the only system for spirituality and upliftment that you know of, if there are people listening who are maybe on the fence whether to stay in the church or leave, or maybe they've left or are still completely active members. If you could speak to people who are depressed and they do have to fit into a certain box within the church that they feel like they've outgrown and that you need to move on, kind of speaking to maybe you have two or three years ago. What advice would you give listeners who desperately feel like they've. They. They need the courage, they need the space to move out of that. That Mormon box, or they're just stuck

John Dehlin [02:20:03] in depression, you know?

Camille Jones [02:20:06] Well, my first thing is get the proper help, because it's not something you should have to deal with alone. I am looking forward to going back to school because I will have full medical coverage again. And I thoroughly intend to. To do some counseling because I need it. I've had enough crazy, creepy stuff happen in my life that I need to work through some things and it's healthy. And you wouldn't just. If somebody fell and broke their arm, you wouldn't say, oh, you'll be fine. The pain will go away. Eventually you're gonna go and you're gonna get it taken care of, and it's still gonna take time to heal, and you might have repercussions afterwards, but it's still gonna take time to heal. But we do that sort of stuff with mental health all the time, and we can't. We really shouldn't. So my first thing is go get. Go get proper help. And there should be no shame attached to getting help. The second thing I would say is that faith is an individual choice. And if you're sitting on the fence, you need to figure out why you're sitting on the fence and then make that decision with as much information as you can. I'm not going to try and swing people one direction or another, but look at what you're doing and why and then make a decision.

Carah Burrell [02:21:26] That's incredibly good advice. Yeah. Salient. Right to the point, too. Yeah. Getting help and actually figuring out how to get to work. And again, like this, I love how you said, like, I'm not gonna, you know, tell people where and what they should do. Exactly. And I hope that nothing that I've said or John said during this podcast would tell people one way or the other what they should do. But access to information, things that a lot of Mormons in the church might not recognize that their depression or anxiety or, you know, a myriad of different things could. Could be caused by the very system and the very place that they go to the hospital for the broken, the very place that they go that they're thinking that they're getting healing from could be the very place that they might need to step away from. And I think I've heard enough stories about people taking a step away during COVID and church being shut down for a while for them to recognize that that space was where their mental health improved the most.

Camille Jones [02:22:26] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:22:27] So. And then I wanted to ask, are you. So you're technically still a member? And are you. Are you still a member? You haven't, like, put in your resignation papers from the church, I'm assuming. And are you afraid that you might be called to a disciplinary, like an excommunication council, love. Or that you might have a lawsuit from the church against you, maybe? Is there any fears.

Camille Jones [02:22:51] Think I've said anything here that would warrant a lawsuit. I also don't think that the church would want to have all of this aired so if they did a lawsuit, it would just be giving it more airtime, and I don't think that that would be a move that they would want to make. So, technically, right now, I am still a member. I have put in my resignation because I don't want them to have any of that kind of power over me. I also don't want them to go looking for me in the future. I know this has been a tender issue for my parents, so I don't want them later and to, you know, keep getting phone calls about. We're trying to locate your daughter, and we need to find her records. And so I'm just. It's kind of half and half of. I probably jumped on a little sooner than I was technically ready for that kind of a mood, a move. But if I wasn't. It's like if. If you're a member of anywhere else and you decide you never really want to go back, you wouldn't keep your membership any longer. If it was a gym or a library or anything, you're going to go. I'm not going to keep that and have them continue calling me and bugging me to come back in or whatever. If I decide sometime in the future, for some odd reason that I do want to go back, there's a process and I can go back.

Carah Burrell [02:24:17] Right. Right. And if you don't mind, I'm.

John Dehlin [02:24:21] I have a. I have a way to ask this question because there's a question I want to ask. Let me.

Carah Burrell [02:24:25] I was gonna do it, but. Fine.

John Dehlin [02:24:26] No. Well. Well, I just.

Carah Burrell [02:24:28] I was trying to get creative. I was just trying to show off for my boss, John De Lynn, how I can creatively ask a question that was like 19 bullet points back.

John Dehlin [02:24:37] Well, I. I just thought of a way to ask it because there was a. There was a story you told in your outline that I want to have you tell, but I. But I thought of a way to set it up because there was something. A summary I wanted to make, which was that must have been weird to be working for the church as a woman, knowing that what the church wants you to do is kind of what Carah did, which is like, get married as early as possible, preferably 18 or 19. Start having kids immediately. You know, if you go to byu, great. If you get your degree or not, doesn't matter. Marry your RM and have lots of kids. And that's kind of what Carah did. She did the right way. You're actually. You know, you actually graduated from college, served a mission, and then you're working for Church headquarters. It must have been weird to be working for the organization that wants you to go be Carah. And instead, year after year after year, you're becoming, you're. You're working towards. I don't want to say spinster. Spinster is probably a really offensive, awful term, but there is. I worked at church headquarters. This. There's the stereotype of a lot of these administrative assistants that never get married. And there's something about being in that role that doesn't really lead to you. And maybe it's all the creepy men you meet that are trying to marry you as polygamous wives. But, but, but year after year after year, you're, you're reaching your 30s, never actually living the life that the church you're working for is trying to set you up for. So that must have been weird. But then I want you to tell the story of what your stake president told you. I know it's at the end, but we want to get. Tell this story. Take as much time as you want, because we want. This is like a perfect TikTok story, and we want to hear it, but give it whatever setup you want to.

Camille Jones [02:26:23] Okay? So being single in the church as a working woman is not that unusual. It's kind of like you get married and you start to have kids. And the cultural pressure, I don't want to say that it was a corporate pressure, but the pressure, the cultural pressure is that you're going to now become the stay at home mom. And I've watched that happen to a number of people while I was working there. But the story you're referring to happened with my single stake. And the stake president is a father of all daughters. So I thought, okay, he's going to get this, this feeling of being, you know, alone and not being married and not being this, this Mormon ideal. And so I brought something up and he told me, he told me that maybe the Lord was saving me for some guy's second chance. And I thought, I don't get a first chance. I get a second chance. It was just kind of this, you know, that's nice. The Lord loves me enough that he's saving me, but it's only as some guy's second chance.

Carah Burrell [02:27:43] It's like calling you takeout food that. Like somebody leftovers. Like your leftovers in the fridge. Yeah.

Camille Jones [02:27:49] And it felt a little like that. And I know he didn't mean it that way, but I think the way he said it really revealed the way that people think about single women in the church.

Carah Burrell [02:28:00] Right. So it's it's always in this like patriarchal structure of men get to do the picking in that way that it's, it wasn't phrased in a way where like, you have somebody that's like going to be perfect, that's going to be a great companion for you and that you'll be bonded and work together. Well, it's like if something doesn't work out from some for somebody, you'll have like, you'll be the leftovers for some other guy.

Camille Jones [02:28:28] Yeah. So the Lord happy about it. The Lord is saving me as a single, lonely, celibate woman until sometime in life, in my 30s, in my. In my 40s, in my. Sometime as some guy's second chance. Oh, and by the way, if you don't get married in this life, you'll at least get married in the next life. Right. So, you know, just be happy with your single, lonely, celibate life until you make celestial glory and can get married there, probably in a polygamous relationship. But. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:28:58] But ironically, you now get a second chance for you. You get a first chance at real authentic happiness. But, but it's kind of beautifully ironic that you get a second chance now at happiness and you haven't married some guy you didn't want to marry, made a bunch of promises that now would have fallen apart, had a bunch of kids that would have made it all complicated. You are still young enough to have your kind of real authentic first chance.

Camille Jones [02:29:27] Yeah. And that's really nice to think about. I'm going off and going to school and I get to have this opportunity to live life and I'm really, I'm super excited for it. I can't even believe that it's actually happening. I'm so excited for it.

Carah Burrell [02:29:42] Yeah, everyone wants to go to college and redo it again when they're not Mormon, you know.

John Dehlin [02:29:47] I kind of do.

Camille Jones [02:29:50] You did, didn't you?

John Dehlin [02:29:52] Well, I was married. I don't know that I got the full college experience. Being married.

Carah Burrell [02:29:58] PhD is not quite as fun, but yeah, not quite the same level.

John Dehlin [02:30:04] I'm super happy. I love Margi. Love you, Margi.

Carah Burrell [02:30:07] Love you, Aaron. I. I'm a UVU dropout, so when people talk about college, I'm like, oh yeah, people do those things. I forget sometimes.

Camille Jones [02:30:14] I'm sure it'll be different being a woman in my 30s in the UK. In the UK with a whole bunch of teenagers. It's going to be, it'll be an

Carah Burrell [02:30:22] experience like 18 year olds. Yeah.

Camille Jones [02:30:24] It's college. It's an undergrad yeah, doing a second undergrad.

John Dehlin [02:30:27] I'm not going to make any jokes. I'm not making any jokes.

Carah Burrell [02:30:30] I don't even know what joke you would be making.

Camille Jones [02:30:32] Me neither.

John Dehlin [02:30:33] No, if I told you, I'd be trying to make a bad joke. So I'm not going to make.

Carah Burrell [02:30:39] Starting her own religion in the UK and marrying a bunch of teenagers. Is that the joke you're going for?

John Dehlin [02:30:44] I'm not saying.

Camille Jones [02:30:45] No, absolutely not.

Carah Burrell [02:30:46] That was the only like parallel thought maybe I thought John was restraint.

John Dehlin [02:30:49] It's called restraint and I'm sure something

Carah Burrell [02:30:51] I'll have to learn. So anyway, so you're starting your program. How soon?

Camille Jones [02:30:56] So I will fly out on September 21st this month. That's great. This month.

Carah Burrell [02:31:00] Well, you spent like the whole day with us, so thank you. Sure. You a bunch of things to do to get ready.

Camille Jones [02:31:07] Thank you for giving me an opportunity to share my story.

Carah Burrell [02:31:10] It was our pleasure, obviously.

Camille Jones [02:31:13] And I'm about 90% packed, so don't worry about having enough time to get ready because I'm.

Carah Burrell [02:31:17] How many books are you bringing?

Camille Jones [02:31:18] I don't get to take very many. Just a handful.

Carah Burrell [02:31:21] I'm sure the libraries in England are way cooler anyway.

John Dehlin [02:31:25] What books make the cut?

Camille Jones [02:31:26] Yeah, I have a handbook of British archaeology. I'm taking one novel. It's a Robin McKinley book called the Blue Sword. It's one that I have loved and reread several times. And then I've got some other history books that I think will be good resources to have on hand. There's a bunch of books, history style books that I was going to take that have now been put back on the shelf because, you know, you've got luggage and everything has to fit within the luggage.

John Dehlin [02:31:54] No Harry Potter though.

Camille Jones [02:31:56] No. But I do have, you know, Kindle and Ibooks on my phone.

Carah Burrell [02:32:00] They give away Harry Potter's in England probably as toilet paper by now. Like it's just everywhere.

John Dehlin [02:32:05] And you're an author, right? You're. Do you want to talk about that?

Camille Jones [02:32:08] I am writing a book. I am probably 3, 4 the way done with it. Which some of my friends will be very happy to hear because they've been waiting years for me to finally write this book. And then I've started a second one which is a retelling of the Little Mermaid. So the first one is a kind of a spin off of the Robin Hood stories. And I went back to like original Robin Hood legends before Victorian people got a hold of it and made it all super romantic all the time.

Carah Burrell [02:32:37] That sounds fascinating. So people want to follow you and be able to keep up with your work. Do you have a website or anywhere that they can.

Camille Jones [02:32:43] I'm working on setting those things up now. So I will have an Instagram, which I'm going to use to chronicle some of my adventures over in the uk. I've got Facebook. I'm working on setting up a blog. Not quite off the ground on some of those yet, but I will be

Carah Burrell [02:33:00] maybe by the time this airs in a couple weeks, we can put those in the show notes. Okay, so let's try to work on that. So people connected with your story and just want to keep in touch or, you know, tell you similar experiences they had, maybe working for the church or whatever. Maybe in a couple weeks when this airs, they could reach out to you through Instagram or just keep up with your adventures in the uk? Yep.

Camille Jones [02:33:24] Yeah, sure. That'd be wonderful.

Carah Burrell [02:33:25] Great.

Closing Reflections and Farewell

John Dehlin [02:33:26] My last question, who's more historical, Moroni or Robin Hood?

Camille Jones [02:33:34] Oh, Robin Hood. They've got actual people that could have been a Robin Hood type character. And Little John and Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet. So you've got people behind the legends somewhere, right? On the Robin Hood stories.

John Dehlin [02:33:50] So you heard it first. Robin Hood is more historical than Moroni.

Carah Burrell [02:33:54] Hey, Moroni is a city somewhere in an island in a Camorra. Camorra Islands. Yeah. You can go visit that, right?

Camille Jones [02:34:02] Sure. Maybe. Maybe there is a Moroni behind those. But I don't think that there was a Moroni angel who brought gold plates to a boy in upstate New York.

Carah Burrell [02:34:14] Some people say it's a pretty compelling story, though. And that does not sound like you agree.

Camille Jones [02:34:22] Fairy tales are great.

Carah Burrell [02:34:23] Fairy tales are great.

Camille Jones [02:34:24] They teach you lots of things. And it's okay to learn things from fairy tales as long as you remember that it's a fairy tale.

Carah Burrell [02:34:30] Well said. Well said. Well, Camille, we're coming to the end of probably four and a half hours together today, and obviously I am delighted that you spent the day with us and were able to. Yeah. Go into so many. So many amazing and fascinating details about everything you've been through. And your vulnerability, especially around depression, has been really. Yeah. So I'm just really thankful for that as well. Is there any other final words or parting thoughts that you would like to leave?

Camille Jones [02:35:03] Just glad that I was able to share my story. Thank you very much.

Carah Burrell [02:35:08] Yeah, definitely. Honored. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, John. Anything else you want to say?

John Dehlin [02:35:14] Well, yeah, I want to echo what. What care just said. Thank you so much, Camille, for reaching out to me when I It was right on the heels of Linda's, Linda Clyde's interview, which was really important and epic. And then when you reached out to me, I'm like, wow, this is an important moment. But I also thought, what amazing courage. Because I, how many people have reached out to me as having worked at church headquarters or having, having served as bishop or stake president or in some high level job and they're like, I'm afraid to ever speak up. I can't speak up. The job, the job or the family ramifications or the risk of being sued are all too high. And you just said, I'm doing it. And in some ways you're more courageous than wealthy 50, 60 year olds that I, that reach out to me. So.

Carah Burrell [02:35:59] Right on.

John Dehlin [02:36:00] So your, your level of courage is, is just really inspiring to me. Thank you for the trust of reaching out out and thank you for your courage of speaking out. And just like Linda and Mark Osland and others have inspired people, I know you're going to inspire people to at least get to a happier place. I mean, I'll just say one quick thing. We talk about someone's faith being determined by how much they learn or don't learn, how much of the spirit of the tingly feelings they feel or don't feel. What I learned today is what if you sometimes just follow the joy. If you're super miserable as a Mormon, maybe that should mean something. And maybe that's not the Holy Ghost, maybe that's not something you learned, maybe that's not some memory of a feeling you had once. But like if the church isn't making you happy right now, that should mean something and follow that. And that's really something that I took away from today. But most of all, just thank you for your courage. Please stay in touch. And you're really inspiring and I know it's gonna, it's. This is gonna help a lot of people.

Camille Jones [02:37:06] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:37:06] So thank you so much.

Camille Jones [02:37:07] Thank you very much.

John Dehlin [02:37:08] Yeah. And Carah and well said.

Carah Burrell [02:37:12] I just want to say, well said, John. Well said. I know that I was supposed to be driving this interview and I always get caught like with Kelly trust interview where people are like, ah, John spoke too much. Just so you guys know, I told John to talk, whatever you want to do. I, I'm still just getting used to this chair and this responsibility. So. John is a fabulous interviewer and I am grateful for all of his thoughts and perspectives and interjections and context that he adds and yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:39] So, yeah, and I'll just say people overwhelmingly well first of all, I really love working with you, Carah, So thank you so much for working, helping make this job more fun, more interesting, helping the interviews. I mean, I talked to you a little bit, Camille, just about having a woman in the room and allowing her to be a part of this conversation. I don't know if that meant a lot to you, but it.

Camille Jones [02:38:01] Well, it did. After all of my past experiences, and to have Carah lead this, I think is a brilliant move.

John Dehlin [02:38:09] Oh, well, good job. No, yeah, brilliant.

Carah Burrell [02:38:12] I don't think so. Yeah, yeah, I'll respect my guest and let you say your piece about it. That's like, feel.

John Dehlin [02:38:18] Well, I'm grateful. I'm grateful that you're here, Carah, and the overwhelming majority of listeners and viewers are super glad you've been able to be a part of this so far. And I'll say occasionally there are people that are super rude and super mean, including making comments about our respected participation, but also sometimes insulting you about your appearance. And I just think that's so super mean and vicious. And I just want to call out all my listeners and viewers, stop being jerks. I was going to use a different word, but, but. But mostly, thanks for all the amazing people that. That provide such affirming, positive feedback to Karen, to me, and, yeah, we may be learning a bit on how to tag team on these interviews. How for me to step back, how for her to step forward. This is not an easy role, especially when tens of thousands of people are nitpicking every little thing you do. So I want to thank the people, people that are kind and generous and supportive, first of all. And then secondly, I want to just call out the people that are rude or mean or insult her appearance or my appearance or just our attempts at learning to work together and collaborate. I just want to say, don't be a jerk. We want constructive feedback, but also give us time and patience to kind of learn to work together because everyone should deserve that. And this job is hard. And Carah, I just think you do a great job at stepping in and just running with it, and so I'm grateful for that. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:39:44] Thanks, John. No one will know how hard John Dehlin's job is until you do, like, I don't know, 10 or 20% of it, as I have tried to do. So John has a very hard job. Go easy on him. I have a semi hard job, but I enjoy it. And if you want to make fun of me, do it on my TikTok because that's how I get great content. So, anyway, more views yeah, yeah. No, seriously, I like, I like when people levy criticisms against me on my TikTok, but not, not for Mormon stories. Let's keep this platform pure. Anyway, why don't I go ahead and wrap up, talk about donors, everything.

John Dehlin [02:40:18] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:40:19] All right. Well, obviously this has been a very fantastic and fun and interesting and dynamic interview from all different angles and just want to thank the listeners for tuning in. And we appreciate our donors and we know that not everybody can be a donor to Mormon stories. And if that is not financially feasible for you, just listen and just take the content and implement it into your daily lives. That's a sentence I learned at church, so it's still true. Just listen to it, ponder on it, give it some time to meditate in your heart and mind and then if you feel like donating, that's fabulous. If you can't, no hard feelings. But we do lose donors sometimes every month we are completely donor funded. But hey, if people have moved on or Covid hit them particularly hard or their situation has changed and they can't donate anymore, we totally understand. But we do need to replace those donors. So if it's financially feasible for you, please go to MormonStories.org and at the top, you can become a monthly donor, a one time donor. You can do $10 a month, month, 20, you can do literally, the sky's the limit, I won't tell you, but just do what your heart tells you to do and try to donate to MormonStories.org and we will be continuing, continuing to pump out as much good content as we can. We're trying to do three episodes a week, so we are on a constant, like continuous stream of giving different types of content, different things that appeal to different people. So we hope that you'll find something that you connect with that you like. And if that moves you to donate, we appreciate it. If the least you can do is maybe just follow us on Facebook, follow us on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and like things for the algorithm. Share things with people that you think would benefit from them. And I think that is about everything, John and my missing. Anything else?

John Dehlin [02:42:24] Oh, it was great. Thank you. Thanks, Carah.

Carah Burrell [02:42:27] Yep. All right, so this concludes this fabulous two part episode with Camille Jones. Thank you again, Camille, for spending the day with us. And we look forward to everyone's comments and constructive criticisms and emails. If you have any other suggestions or things that you want to talk about, please email us@mormonstories mormonstoriesmail.com Right. All right. I didn't want to get it wrong. More stories, gmail.com and.

John Dehlin [02:42:56] And if people want to reach out to you, is there a way. Do you want to give out any information or just not email or whatever? Do you.

Camille Jones [02:43:04] No, not.

John Dehlin [02:43:05] Okay. Okay.

Camille Jones [02:43:05] Not at the moment.

John Dehlin [02:43:06] Okay, that's fine. That's fine.

Carah Burrell [02:43:07] Yeah, we'll try to put it in the show notes.

Camille Jones [02:43:09] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:43:09] By the time for, like, her Instagram and things later on.

Camille Jones [02:43:11] Yeah, that'd be great.

John Dehlin [02:43:12] Okay.

Carah Burrell [02:43:13] All right, that's that. That wraps it up. Thanks, everyone.

John Dehlin [02:43:16] All right, thanks, guys. Take care, everybody.

Carah Burrell [02:43:18] Bye.

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.