Welcome Back and Episode Introduction

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's September 10, 2026. What would make the ideal, perfect appearingly Mormon couple? Ever have questions or even doubts about the church? Welcome to part two of our interview with Michele and Mike or Michael Siemens. We just completed part one where they talked about their idyllic Mormon upbringings. Michele Salt Lake Valley here in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Michael in Southern California, literally in the same area as Disneyland. He had a Disney Mormon upbringing. Is that fair to say?

Mike Seamons [00:00:46] Yes, very Disney.

John Dehlin [00:00:47] Disney and Dodgers Mormon upbringing both. And yeah, it was such a thrill to enjoy part one where we basically, we could just wrap up part one

Michele Seamons [00:00:58] and say everyone would feel happy.

John Dehlin [00:01:01] Yeah, it's like all elements. I think we grew up in the golden age of Mormonism, kind of the 80s.

Michele Seamons [00:01:08] It's true.

John Dehlin [00:01:09] Yeah. I'm sure some would say the 60s and 70s were pretty. Pretty stellar as well. But if you haven't watched part one, if you're joining us now for the first time, we highly recommend you pause this episode, go back and watch part one of our interview with Michael and Michele Siemens, and then you'll be able to enjoy part two a lot more. But in part two, we're picking up, we have, we've covered Michele's story up until the point where she gets off her LDS mission in the Washington, D.C. area, where she had met Mike in the MTC.

John Dehlin [00:01:46] And then we heard Mike's story up through the part, you know, where he's still in high school, so we still have his mission to go. And then we're going to learn about their courtship and marriage. And they're raising six kids in the church, serving in all the callings, including for her Young Women's and Relief Society presidencies, and for him bishoprics and even stake presidencies. He ends up working at Microsoft. So we'll have that Microsoft tie and then we'll talk about how the Mormon dream can go sideways or can take a different turn.

John Dehlin [00:02:21] And that's what the remaining parts of their story is going to be. So we of course have Margi here as co host. Hey, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:29] Hi.

John Dehlin [00:02:30] And without any further ado, Michael, where should we continue? Your Mormon story, last we left off, was just a phenomenal high school experience as a Mormon.

Mike Seamons [00:02:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:43] So anything else you want to say about high school before we go to mission or. You probably did a year of college.

Mike Seamons [00:02:48] Yeah, I did a year of byu, so that's probably a good segue.

John Dehlin [00:02:51] BYU Provo.

Mike Seamons [00:02:52] I Went to Provo, byu. And it was. I had one other school that I even thought of applying to, UC Santa Barbara. And I ended up. I don't even think I ever even applied to it. I was just like, BYU's went where my parents went, my grandparents went, my aunts and uncles went. Like it's a legacy choice. And it was an amazing choice that I got in. I wasn't the smartest. Kind of like I was the fifth best at everything. And that's kind of. It landed here too. But I got in and I went in with a intention. This will kind of bring back as thinking I was going to be a healer. I interpreted that as I need to be a doctor. And so I went into BYU as a pre med student. My roommate was my best friend from high school.

John Dehlin [00:03:36] 89.

Mike Seamons [00:03:37] This was 89. Yeah. So I graduated in 89 and then went to fall of 89 and then spring of 90.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:44] We were there at the same time. Same.

Mike Seamons [00:03:47] Oh yeah. Did you live in Helman halls or. Really?

Margi Dehlin [00:03:50] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:03:50] Which hall were you in?

Margi Dehlin [00:03:51] May. May Hall.

Mike Seamons [00:03:53] I'm. I met. I knew many people in May, but.

Michele Seamons [00:03:56] Oh, how about that?

Mike Seamons [00:03:58] I was in Taylor Hall.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:59] How about that?

Mike Seamons [00:04:00] Yeah, yeah, I was in Taylor for those, those two we could have. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:05] You aid in the cannon soda.

Mike Seamons [00:04:06] You ate in the cannon soda. Walk the hill. Like all of it. Wow.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:11] Anyway, continue on.

Mike Seamons [00:04:12] Wow, that's cool.

John Dehlin [00:04:13] And you would have been one of those California boys for us who didn't grow up in.

Michele Seamons [00:04:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:04:18] You know, who didn't grow up in California. There were those California boys that be.

Mike Seamons [00:04:22] I had the hair and the sweater tied around my waist and the pegged pants and I tried to pull it off. I didn't pull it off well, but I. But I did try, but no, I got to BYU and I felt like it was my rite of passage time. Here's all the stories that I'd heard all my life. My grandparents lived five minutes from byu. My dad's parents. I had an aunt and uncle who lived five minutes from BYU with their cousins or with their kids. So BYU is also like home. It's the place that I vacationed more often than anywhere else. Was going to Provo. We'd make the drive from LA to Provo and back and it was. That was. That was the vacation destination of my life.

College Days and How Michele and Mike Met

John Dehlin [00:05:03] So did you have the Frank Fox American Heritage experience?

Mike Seamons [00:05:06] Oh, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:07] And the Bill Bradshaw biology parts of Bradshaw Biology 100 experience? All those first 100 ones, yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:05:14] I was in the 101 group.

John Dehlin [00:05:15] Yeah. Was Ty Detmer, the quarterback?

Mike Seamons [00:05:18] Yeah, that was the years that he. And I mean, the football team was. It was like, this is amazing. Like, I am.

John Dehlin [00:05:23] I'm in a. Sean Bradley was the basketball team.

Mike Seamons [00:05:27] I think he would come while I was on my mission, I think is when Sean was there. But yeah, Detmer was there.

John Dehlin [00:05:31] Those are great years.

Mike Seamons [00:05:32] Yeah, it was. And I got there and I was like, you know, it was one of those kind of stories, like when she left for nanny job, it was like, I am going to be the version of me that I've always wanted to be and try to leave behind. You know, the version that thinks you're not good enough. You can't do any of the things that you feel like you can.

Mike Seamons [00:05:56] And so I had this, like, I am going to be this person that I think of when I pray, that I orient myself to, when I have that feeling that has constantly been a part of my life. And so when I got to byu, you know, they have the whole. The freshman experience, where you meet your ward for the first time and then the kind of auditions for what callings begin the year start. And you know, it's another one of these things where it's like I. I get called into the bishop's office the second week and he asked me to be the elders quorum president of the ward.

Mike Seamons [00:06:31] And it was just another one of these validations of. Of here it goes like I'm going to be trusted with responsibility and to. To be a leader. I still carried all the same baggage that I carried before, but I. I felt very seen that now. This was going to be a big step in my. How do I continue to grow into this version of myself that my patriarchal blessing told me about my grandparents, you know, encouraged me to be. And. And I loved it. I made such amazing friends there. You know, I was responsible for two floors of the boys dorm and you know, they.

Mike Seamons [00:07:07] I was the one that they called when they needed a priesthood blessing. You know, somebody was sick. One of my best friends was on the football team. He was the center and he was really sick one day and. And he called, you know, or his roommate came down and said, hey, can you come give him a blessing? Because, you know, he trusts you. And I mean, I just had such a faith because of where I was coming from that I came down, I literally laid my hands on his head and sealed a blessing. I did the second part and told him that he would be healed and that his body would gain its strength and he'd be able to play in the game the next day and I did go back to my room and was like, got on my knees and said, okay, God, now's when you need to make good on that healer thing.

Mike Seamons [00:07:52] Because like, I'm, I'm putting myself out there. But I, I still had like total confidence that whatever I said was God. As long as I was worthy, God would meet me at. And he came down the next morning and was like, it's a miracle. Like I am. I feel completely, you know, all of it's gone. I'm ready for the game. I mean, these are, these were just all reaffirming feelings that I just kept, I kept encountering and I, and I loved because I was trusted by my peers. I was trusted by the adults. I had an uncle who, he had a horse farm. And this was a big part of, you know, because remember, I was a guy who was always in search of a feeling.

Mike Seamons [00:08:32] And then I built a system, you know, around the feeling that is, if I do these things, the feeling will come. And, you know, my uncle gave me access to his horses and it was life changing for me. You know, while I was doing school, doing church, my getaway was once a week I would take three guys from the floor and we would go saddle up horses and we would ride up into Squaw Peak, down the Provo Canyon and we were like just horsemen who saddled up and rode. We rode in the rain, we rode in the snow, and we would spend an entire afternoon on horseback in the mountains.

Mike Seamons [00:09:16] Went for. Throughout my freshman year, my. The whole both semesters. And it became such a big part of. Because it's where I again reunited with that feeling that was the beginning of my relationship with God. It was on horseback. And from that day forward always said, you know, you're close to God when you're on foot, but you're closer when you're on a horse. And it's like, it's just. I've always felt that, you know, this is one of the peak ways to feel the feeling that I, that I called the Holy Ghost. And, and so byu, like it was one of those just really reaffirming lots of great friends, you know.

Mike Seamons [00:09:54] Really felt like I was in my element. I had, you know, things that I tried to, tried to manage through it. I wasn't a great student. I still was trying to figure out if I. What I wanted to be when I grew up.

Mike Seamons [00:10:07] And I knew that a mission was next. So it really didn't matter. I didn't make need to make any decisions at that Point. So. So because I was a young freshman, I was also then the last in my group to go on a mission. And so I would have to wait. I would do both semesters and then a full summer and go in the fall of. Of the next year.

John Dehlin [00:10:27] Okay.

Mike Seamons [00:10:28] Yeah. So I. I put my papers in, similar to Michele. I was like, well, because I am this person who has had all this validation. I'm going to go to Russia. Like, that's where I knew, because that's Cold War.

John Dehlin [00:10:41] The Berlin Wall had come down.

Mike Seamons [00:10:42] This was like, the most noble and great ones are going to Russia, and I'm going to Russia. And I went to Chicago. And. And, you know, it was funny. It took me very little time to go, well, then I'll just have a legendary experience in Chicago. Like, it didn't. It really didn't phase me. It was more, you know, that would have been awesome if I would have gone to Russia. But, you know, this is where God wants me. I'm going to go, like, change the world in Chicago. And I was English speaking. I was just a. You know, I had a stateside mission, but I got in the mission field and that's where Michele and I met.

Mike Seamons [00:11:19] So she kind of glossed onto the story. Like, we. It wasn't the. The picture wasn't the first time we met. The picture was like the third time we met. And we had both come into the mtc. She had a relationship that she had just broken up and said, I'm going on a miss to kind of get away from boys. And I had a girl that I really cared for that I was leaving and saying, I hope that you're there when I get back. And so neither of us were there shopping.

Mike Seamons [00:11:48] We were there with, we are going to be the best missionaries the world has ever seen, and we're going to go change the world. And then it was a conversation. I think I'm guilty of the first crack in that conversation with a couple of the elders in my district, where we all said, who do you think's the most beautiful sister in the npc? And I pointed to her and I'm like, of course. You can just see it. Like, she's not only beautiful, but she carries this aura. And they said, okay, go talk to her. And I'm like, no, I'm not gonna go talk to her.

Mike Seamons [00:12:20] We're missionaries. Lock your heart. There's no romance going on here. And so that kind of laid that down for a few days. And then there was a day where she was sitting. We were in the line for the cafeteria. And she was sitting at a table that I could talk to from the line. And my companion said, okay, now's your chance. You need to just say something. And so as we walk by her, I say. I say, okay, tiebreaker. We need a tiebreaker. Do you like Postum or hot chocolate?

John Dehlin [00:12:50] Postum.

Mike Seamons [00:12:50] That was my line.

John Dehlin [00:12:52] What was the answer?

Michele Seamons [00:12:53] Hot chocolate.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:54] Oh.

Michele Seamons [00:12:56] I grew up in Salt Lake City.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:57] They're very different.

Michele Seamons [00:12:59] Yeah, they're very different. I grew up on sweets. Like, anything that remotely was like, coffee was like, not okay. I didn't grow up in that kind of family.

John Dehlin [00:13:08] I see.

Michele Seamons [00:13:09] Yeah. We had to, like, wait.

John Dehlin [00:13:10] Postum was edgy for you?

Michele Seamons [00:13:11] Oh, edgy. Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:13:14] Like adjacent to coffee.

Michele Seamons [00:13:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's coffee.

John Dehlin [00:13:17] Oh, that's intense.

Michele Seamons [00:13:18] Don't do anything adjacent.

John Dehlin [00:13:20] Postum is edgy.

Michele Seamons [00:13:21] Could look.

John Dehlin [00:13:22] Postum was a cereal beverage. It was basically like a coffee.

Michele Seamons [00:13:25] I mean, it's like barley, wasn't it? It's made of grain. It's really probably very good.

John Dehlin [00:13:30] I love this.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:31] No, it's not sweet. You have to usually add. I get why it's coffee adjacent. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:37] Anyway, postum was Mormon coffee back in the day.

Michele Seamons [00:13:40] It was.

Mike Seamons [00:13:40] It was.

John Dehlin [00:13:41] But you. You were hot chocolate.

Michele Seamons [00:13:42] Hot chocolate.

John Dehlin [00:13:43] Okay. Okay.

Michele Seamons [00:13:44] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:13:44] And that was my amazing, you know, first line.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:47] Wow.

Mike Seamons [00:13:48] And we giggled. She giggled. We walked by, you know, and then it was maybe a few days later, because this stateside MTC was like two weeks, so it was a short.

Michele Seamons [00:13:57] Three.

Mike Seamons [00:13:58] Short thing. Three weeks. And so then it was a few days later that I saw her again in the cafeteria. And this time, the sister in my district was like, let's just go talk to her. We'll sit and talk and have a conversation. And we sat at a table and had a very awkward conversation of just like, where you going? Where you're going. We'd meet again in the laundry room, where I had a terrible pickup line of. I just feel like I've seen you before.

John Dehlin [00:14:25] I've seen that smile Somewhere.

Mike Seamons [00:14:28] The song is played like a joke.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:31] Because you had seen her?

Mike Seamons [00:14:32] No, because I was like. I'm like, I. We bumped into each other a couple of times. But you. You seem really familiar. It wasn't like, I've never seen you. It was. I bumped into you a couple times. You seem more familiar than this person.

Michele Seamons [00:14:44] We both had that feeling. We were working on this, and it's very. It's like, on point.

Mike Seamons [00:14:52] I impress you.

Michele Seamons [00:14:53] Stars of the first recorded movie versions of Saturday's Warrior. I grew up with her. She Played what is the main. Julie. She played Julie.

Mike Seamons [00:15:06] Yeah. On the movie.

Michele Seamons [00:15:07] Right? On the movie. So, yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:15:09] So, yeah, the music was rolling through her.

Michele Seamons [00:15:11] Is already there.

Mike Seamons [00:15:12] And it was in the approved music list for me, too. So, yeah. We're affectionate to your Will I wait for you.

Michele Seamons [00:15:18] Oh, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:19] Why Wally Kessler you want to be ashamed of?

Michele Seamons [00:15:23] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:24] So the laundry room.

Mike Seamons [00:15:25] Yes, laundry room was kind of that, like, that was meeting number three, and then meeting number four was me slipping a note underneath her arm saying, here's my address. I'd love to write. Can we take a picture? After she sends her copy of the picture that she gets from her camera home and says, president and Sister Siemens, as this announcement to her parents, I send mine home and said, I think I found my future wife.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:50] Really?

Mike Seamons [00:15:51] And that was a picture. And both of us were so not fully attached to it. We were just like, yeah, you're somebody that I've never met. And we're going to write and see how this works. And we didn't talk once. We broke zero rules in our. We wrote. We sent each other tapes, we sent each other gifts, and we basically became each other's kind of therapists through letters and kind of advocates, I would say.

Michele Seamons [00:16:21] I mean, she was the letter your family began writing? Me.

Mike Seamons [00:16:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:25] My family.

Mike Seamons [00:16:26] I was the second oldest in my family. She was the first, like, maybe girlfriend. And my family just were like, oh, we're gonna go with this girl. They didn't know her, but they meddled, you know, while I was.

John Dehlin [00:16:39] They turned on the seaman's charm.

Mike Seamons [00:16:40] Yeah, yeah. They were recruiting, trying to get close to her. And after. I mean, in the beginning, we only wrote a little. It took us a few months to get a rhythm going. And then we wrote every week. And her letters would come. She wrote the comics to her mission president, but my letters were always covered in art. Like, she's an amazing artist. And so I knew the letter no matter. Like, it could be in when they brought the pouch. And, you know, you'd say, elder Siemens, here's your letters. I knew if I had one from her because it was so obvious.

Mike Seamons [00:17:10] And we. She was the person I looked forward to reading every week. And that was like a whole year of that where we just kept writing. And we. It's funny, we have all of these letters. We wanted to go back and reread them all before this. We didn't, but. But someday we're going to go back and reread them and they're going to tell us probably some facts that we've forgotten. But. But they were, they were innocent. Like, it was two people, like, flirting through letters, but mostly just, you know, reinforcing the amazing gospel that we're both out there, you know, preaching and how fortunate we are to be carrying it to the world.

Mike Seamons [00:17:45] I mean, it was so full of faith and, and full of, like, belief that I. But we got to know each other and we got to know each other so well that, that at the end, you know, we really took it as, okay, we're going to push this. We're going to put the pedal on the gas for this.

Mission Experiences and Early Courtship

Michele Seamons [00:18:03] So you forgot to mention that you were like a Wilford Woodruff in your mission.

Mike Seamons [00:18:09] Oh, you obviously.

John Dehlin [00:18:10] Which means what?

Michele Seamons [00:18:11] I mean, because I was also serving stateside and we had, at that time our peers were serving in South America. And you know, the stories, I mean, it's like they're baptizing by the hundreds and I'm in a metropolitan, you know, I had a successful, lovely mission. I met and saw change in a lot of amazing people, but nothing in that. I mean, I can count the people and I know them. You, on the other hand, had kind of a South American number wise. It seemed pretty epic.

Mike Seamons [00:18:49] That's excessive.

Michele Seamons [00:18:50] But it seemed epic.

Mike Seamons [00:18:51] I had an idyllic mission.

Michele Seamons [00:18:52] You did.

Mike Seamons [00:18:53] I got into the mission field and had an amazing trainer. We had some experiences that scared the heck out of me. I had this one where we were in a Moody Baptist church and we got invited to come share our side of the story. And I'm one month into my mission and my companion gets up and teaches a congregation of Moody Baptists the first discussion. And in that, Hartman rector was our general authority who said, you ask people to be baptized on the first discussion. Do not wait till the second discussion. And my companion invites a congregation of Moody Baptists to be baptized Mormon. And the pastor and like, went berserk, went up, grabbed him by the.

Mike Seamons [00:19:33] By his suit jacket and was like, the devil is in you, son. Get out of this place. I, you know, I'm trying to get this guy off of my companion. I think he's going to beat, beat him up. And he pushes us out the back of the church. And my companion stands at the front door of the church with his arm to the square and dusts his feet to the guy. Like, like, this was my first month where it's like, the stakes are so high. Like, the stakes are so high.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] And for those who don't know, the dusting of the feet is a cursing ritual that's in the doctrine and covenants.

Mike Seamons [00:20:05] Yeah. It says, I will see you at the Judgment Bar and I will be the one sending, you know, pointing the way for you to go.

John Dehlin [00:20:12] And it's not to the Good place.

Michele Seamons [00:20:14] Yeah. And I'm having a front row seat to these experiences that he's having, which are pretty amazing. You were having tremendous success, but you were doing it in your own way and it inspired me.

Mike Seamons [00:20:30] Yeah. We helped each other.

Michele Seamons [00:20:32] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:20:32] Really try to reach a potential. I mean, I was again, I was validated with all. I was made an AP six months into my mission, and then I was put back in the mission field. And then I was made an AP a second time. And I spent.

John Dehlin [00:20:47] Six months is really fast.

Mike Seamons [00:20:49] I was a. We had two kinds of aps. We had. We had training aps. They would just travel the mission and train still fast. And then at a year in. I was a. I was an office AP for the. And so I was in the office for like a year, half of my mission. And it was. I mean, I felt like I was living out the destiny that was written in paper for me. Like, I'm like, well, this is just how my life's going to be. Like, I'll be asked to do things, and if I. If I do it with all of my intention and with all of my faith, then magic will happen. And it. It happened, you know, there, like, it happened everywhere else. I just kept seeing it and feeling it and. And, you know, it was. It was a. I had a great experience.

Michele Seamons [00:21:32] Yes, you did.

Mike Seamons [00:21:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:34] I have to ask. My sister Gina lived in Lake Zurich and in Cary, kind of Schaumburg area. Were you ever. Did you ever serve?

Mike Seamons [00:21:44] I wasn't in Schomburg. I spent most of my mission in Downers Grove, which was where the mission home was, Naperville. And then I was up in Dekal Brock on the northern border. And I was trained in North Chicago in the city, like on the L train and stuff.

John Dehlin [00:21:58] So we lived in. We lived in Naperville. Our first child was born in Naperville.

Mike Seamons [00:22:03] Oh, really?

John Dehlin [00:22:04] In 94. 94, 95.

Mike Seamons [00:22:06] Yeah. So I was there 1992. That's. Yeah, I love it.

John Dehlin [00:22:11] Yeah, it's a great Chicago. Chicago's a great town.

Mike Seamons [00:22:14] It really is.

John Dehlin [00:22:16] So. Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:22:17] So, I mean, we have these missions that just lit us up and. And somehow we. Because we're just these crazy. We call it volcano jumping. We're like, let's just jump and see. And I talked her into meeting me at the airport, like, met her three times at the MTC Wrote two years. I talked her into coming to the airport when I was here. No, to la. La.

John Dehlin [00:22:43] Oh, okay.

Mike Seamons [00:22:43] Okay. So I was going to be flying home from my mission. My parents came out to pick me up, and she was gonna be there to greet me with my family with the sign that says, welcome home, Elder Siemens.

Michele Seamons [00:22:53] But let's preface this. Your family was at my homecoming.

John Dehlin [00:22:56] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:22:56] Oh, whoa.

John Dehlin [00:22:57] That's next level.

Michele Seamons [00:22:59] I'm in the Garden Park Ward in Salt Lake City ready to give my homecoming. And there is his family sitting.

John Dehlin [00:23:05] There's no way this marriage isn't happening.

Michele Seamons [00:23:09] And I went to education week with his mother. I went. I mean, I did family gatherings with them, so I was very comfortable.

John Dehlin [00:23:16] And y' all had spent like 10 minutes together.

Michele Seamons [00:23:17] Exactly, Exactly.

Mike Seamons [00:23:19] Way ahead of ourselves.

Michele Seamons [00:23:20] Way, way.

Mike Seamons [00:23:24] But we. I came home, I got off the airplane. We have this hilarious picture that is Michele and I shaking hands with my dad, you know, on the background, like, in this position of utter joy, like, my son has found, you know, an ultimate woman, a righteous woman.

Michele Seamons [00:23:42] Shaking hands.

Mike Seamons [00:23:42] Shaking hands coming off the airplane. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:45] I want to see that photo.

Margi Dehlin [00:23:47] Most chosen.

Mike Seamons [00:23:48] Most ch.

Margi Dehlin [00:23:49] The most beautiful in the mtc.

Mike Seamons [00:23:52] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [00:23:52] Well, I'm glad one person thought that.

John Dehlin [00:23:56] I want to see that photo.

Michele Seamons [00:23:58] That would be fun. And we both doctored it up, which is actually. Makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:24:02] Send it to us. I'll have Julia put it in the thumbnail.

Mike Seamons [00:24:04] It's pretty fun.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:05] It could be fun.

Michele Seamons [00:24:06] It's hilarious.

Mike Seamons [00:24:07] I mean, so that was like a handshake. And then I went and I was released. And we sat in the backseat together while we drove to the. Me being released by my stake president.

John Dehlin [00:24:18] Wow.

Mike Seamons [00:24:19] And we drove back from the stake president's office holding hands.

John Dehlin [00:24:23] Yeah, you couldn't hold hands. Couldn't hold hands until you were released.

Michele Seamons [00:24:25] Exactly. Couldn't even hug. You know, it's like, let's wait.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:30] Really? Wait.

Mike Seamons [00:24:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:31] That's the rules, Marty.

Michele Seamons [00:24:33] That's the rules.

Mike Seamons [00:24:33] Oh, boy.

Michele Seamons [00:24:34] He had it to name tag. I couldn't do it.

Mike Seamons [00:24:37] Couldn't break the barrier.

John Dehlin [00:24:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michele Seamons [00:24:39] I couldn't break the barrier.

Engagement, Marriage, and Early Married Life

John Dehlin [00:24:40] That's the rules.

Mike Seamons [00:24:41] Yeah. And then we spent a week. She just stayed at my house. She slept on a trundle bed next to my sister, and I was in the bedroom next to her. And for a week, we got up at 6am and read scriptures together and talked about how much we love the scriptures and, you know, and we would then pray together. It was like. I don't know what we thought we were doing, but we did photo Albums. And I had planned five dates that were like kind of the week of my homecoming. It was like let's. We went to Disneyland. We went to see Phantom of the Opera. We went to a really special restaurant and Victoria's Square.

Michele Seamons [00:25:18] Victoria something station. Anyway, he had really won my heart because it was like all the romantic side now is part of it. The story. And it was like, oh, this fits. It just fits. And his mother so kindly had us take engagement photos that we're J.C. penney.

John Dehlin [00:25:40] Engagement photos.

Michele Seamons [00:25:42] Matching sweaters.

John Dehlin [00:25:45] You had engagement photos with matching sweaters? A week off of his machine.

Michele Seamons [00:25:49] We're not officially engaged yet. And they come. Our official engagement pictures. But we do have pictures from that week from JCPenney's in matching sweaters.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:00] That is something.

Michele Seamons [00:26:01] So cute. It's pretty cute.

Mike Seamons [00:26:04] Yeah. I mean, it was like. I don't know what. Like we have lived a life where it feels like we have been running to the next thing as fast as we can. And I. And we got home and we both had this mindset of, well, the only way we're going to progress is if we get married. And so like that's the next step. Like the longer we wait, the less we progress. And. And so we just had this like, well, let's. We know we want to be married.

Michele Seamons [00:26:30] So.

Mike Seamons [00:26:30] So we were engaged. We were formal, technically engaged a month later. We. We had talked about marriage before the week was up. And we were engaged with a ring one month after I got home. Married two months after that.

John Dehlin [00:26:47] So married three months off your mission.

Mike Seamons [00:26:48] Married three months off my mission.

Michele Seamons [00:26:49] I got home when he came up to byu. So I went down at month two of you being home about that. Down to California again. And we went to every temple from Los Angeles to Salt Lake to St. George and Vegas. Privileged because we were asked to be the witness couple several temples. And we thought that was for sure a sign. For sure. But that's like. That was our orientation. It was like, build this on the right things and the right things will happen.

Mike Seamons [00:27:26] Magical happen.

Michele Seamons [00:27:27] Yeah. Magical thinking. Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:27:31] So, yeah, we got married.

John Dehlin [00:27:32] You've been married 30 years, right?

Mike Seamons [00:27:34] Yeah. This was 93 February.

John Dehlin [00:27:35] So 33 years.

Mike Seamons [00:27:37] February 13th, 1993, we got married.

Michele Seamons [00:27:39] Yep.

Mike Seamons [00:27:41] And three months later we were pregnant with our first child.

John Dehlin [00:27:44] So it was married before me and Margi were. Even though we're older. Because you got married sooner.

Mike Seamons [00:27:50] When did you.

John Dehlin [00:27:50] What we were December of 93.

Mike Seamons [00:27:52] Oh, yeah.

Michele Seamons [00:27:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:53] Like at the end of my senior year.

Michele Seamons [00:27:55] We work pretty fast.

John Dehlin [00:27:58] You leapfrogged us.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:59] Yes, we did.

Mike Seamons [00:28:00] And we were in it to win.

John Dehlin [00:28:02] We thought we were ready to win. Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:28:03] We saw people that took your kind of time and said, really not.

Margi Dehlin [00:28:06] They were like, why?

John Dehlin [00:28:09] You're like scrubs.

Michele Seamons [00:28:11] We got a lot to do. We had a lot to do. Wow.

Mike Seamons [00:28:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:14] So you probably, your. Your oldest is probably older than our oldest because our oldest was born in 95.

Mike Seamons [00:28:19] He was born in 94.

Michele Seamons [00:28:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:23] It's awesome. Yeah, this is awesome.

Mike Seamons [00:28:25] It was just a rocket ship and. And now we were a team, but we were still kids, you know, I mean, her 21. I'm 21. She's 23. And we were like, had no future. Like, I didn't even know what I was. I'd gone on my mission thinking I was going to be pre med. A month after we got married in February, this was now March, I had a motorcycle was how I got around. And I was hit on my motorcycle. And I again, this was another life experience where God saved me because I was going 50 miles an hour up Provo Canyon Road, passing the BYU Stadium, hit a guy who made a left hand turn in front of me, flew over his car, and 30ft beyond where the crash happened, I land on my feet. I'm in shorts and tennis shoes and no helmet. I should have just been splayed out on the pavement.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:19] You landed on your feet?

Mike Seamons [00:29:21] Landed on my feet. Had no scratches. The only thing is my. The break of the motorcycle shattered my right hand, like, broke all of these, all the middle bones, the carpal and metacarpal bones. And I went to a hand surgeon. So this was another big, affirming thing. I felt invincible.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:43] I can't die.

Mike Seamons [00:29:44] But I didn't. I will, but I didn't die.

John Dehlin [00:29:47] Two times.

Mike Seamons [00:29:48] I was like this.

John Dehlin [00:29:49] Why?

Mike Seamons [00:29:50] How is it this happening? I am destined for something because I keep being saved. But it would then turn a massive kind of curveball because the doctor who worked on my hand and rebuilt it said, you're never going to use that hand again.

Mike Seamons [00:30:07] So going into medicine is not. At 21 years old, I was told, you should probably think of a different career. I don't know if I just wanted to hear it because I had met an amazing church education teacher on my mission that I ended up just like I wanted to be him.

Mike Seamons [00:30:31] He's just an amazing thinker and taught the most electrifying lessons. His name's Tom Valletta. He taught up at Weber. And I just loved listening to him. And. And he really took me under his wing. And so I came home from my mission.

Mike Seamons [00:30:48] This was My priority, second priority was what do I do to make a living? And then I get in a motorcycle accident. And I think when all of that kind of passed over, I said, you know what? I'm going to teach church education. That's what I'm going to do. Because I'm really good at it. It's actually a great way for me to kind of grow in the church. I think I could be a huge instrument in God's hands in this. And so I basically created my own kind of history degree with a church history emphasis because they didn't exist. You couldn't graduate with church history. But I took 34 religion classes from every religion teacher that was at BYU. I just kept taking classes.

John Dehlin [00:31:29] 34 credit hours.

Mike Seamons [00:31:31] 34 credit hours of the time that

Michele Seamons [00:31:33] BYU is going through some pretty significant changes.

Mike Seamons [00:31:36] It was 1995.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:39] Well, Michael Quinn had just been excommunicated in 93. He was in the history department.

Mike Seamons [00:31:46] When you. You guys have.

Michele Seamons [00:31:47] Oh, yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:31:48] I was there taking classes from all those teachers when that was all happening, and I had no idea.

Michele Seamons [00:31:54] You were completely unaware.

Mike Seamons [00:31:55] I had no idea. I wasn't tuned into any of that. And I was a student in those classes. I don't understand. I don't know how I missed it.

Michele Seamons [00:32:03] I don't either.

John Dehlin [00:32:05] The bubble's real.

Michele Seamons [00:32:08] If you're reading the right material, you won't see it.

John Dehlin [00:32:10] Yeah, yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:32:11] I just didn't see any of it.

John Dehlin [00:32:12] Yeah, of course.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:13] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:14] Most didn't.

Mike Seamons [00:32:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:15] You had to be, like, reading the student review.

Michele Seamons [00:32:17] It makes me physically sick.

John Dehlin [00:32:18] Oh, really?

Michele Seamons [00:32:19] It really does. That that was happening and it was so close. I had two. An aunt and an uncle that taught at BYU in one of those departments that was heavily affected. And I think.

John Dehlin [00:32:32] Can you say who or can you not say who?

Michele Seamons [00:32:33] Louise Plummer.

John Dehlin [00:32:34] Oh, what department?

Michele Seamons [00:32:36] She was in the English department. But how did I not know?

John Dehlin [00:32:40] So Eugene England would have been there

Michele Seamons [00:32:41] while you were there? Exactly.

Mike Seamons [00:32:43] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:43] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:32:44] So, I mean, this was all happening while we were there, and we were so focused on all things church, and it just never even got on our radar.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:55] So you wish you could have been aware of the liberal, controversial stuff.

Michele Seamons [00:33:01] Is very sad that I could have been in a place where people were hurting and not being affirmed and seen for their feelings. I was definitely on rails. I was on a track that I was incapable of having compassion or seeing a different perspective.

John Dehlin [00:33:25] And as someone who was aware and paying attention to all that, it put a dark cloud, a little bit of a dark ring on the cloud. And I could, you know, you would have been so happy, positive, glowingly Mormon. Why would you want us to darken that cloud? You would just have no reason to want to plug into sadness and to suffering. I can see why you would want. Now, looking back, but in my Mormon mind, I'm like, no, no, no, let's not pollute this pure, beautiful, happy, positive Mormon story.

Michele Seamons [00:34:02] No.

John Dehlin [00:34:04] You know, young Michele Siemens, just don't pay any attention to that sad, dark scene.

Michele Seamons [00:34:09] It does sound like he now is teaching at the mtc.

John Dehlin [00:34:13] Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:34:17] So anyway, I taught at the mtc. We taught together.

Michele Seamons [00:34:20] We taught the.

John Dehlin [00:34:21] We both taught at the mtc.

Michele Seamons [00:34:22] We taught the Sunday school class, the large group. And it was crazy because we started in just a little room. Cause they test you. It's a proving ground. And so we'd maybe have 60. We ended up our final class in an auditorium and we're like, they hear us, they see what we have the power to do with the gospel.

John Dehlin [00:34:51] Who were you teaching?

Michele Seamons [00:34:53] All the missionaries.

Mike Seamons [00:34:53] It was Sunday school.

Michele Seamons [00:34:54] It was their Sunday school. Sunday evening class.

Mike Seamons [00:34:56] Yeah, it's the large group meeting, Sunday school that they did. They used to do it back then.

John Dehlin [00:34:59] And this was as MTC instructors.

Mike Seamons [00:35:02] I was an instructor. I taught the 48 year old. She came in as a kind of my. As our team teacher.

John Dehlin [00:35:10] Okay, okay.

Michele Seamons [00:35:11] A lot of trust.

John Dehlin [00:35:12] But you weren't on the CES trek yet.

Mike Seamons [00:35:15] No, that's when I taught at the mtc. I had already kind of moved to church history. I'd started that path and I would spend. I basically would graduate with a history degree. I took the intro to teaching seminary class and then I did an internship as a teacher at that time when I was still at byu. And it was then that I was the first told how much money a CES teacher would make. Literally, I'd gone through pretty far before hearing that their starting salary was like $24,000.

Michele Seamons [00:35:50] And I'm like, you didn't believe it.

Mike Seamons [00:35:52] We had already had one child. We had our first child the day after our one year anniversary. So we were married on the 13th of February, at our first son on the 14th of February the next year. And so like I was. I could not drop the ball on I need to be a provider. You know, we had. We were obviously still dual income because we had a baby and she was working at the bakery. I got a job. BYU Bakery at the Provo. I got a job there to as. As really therapy to start my hand, you know, because I had broken my hand in so Many places that the doctor said you should go knead bread. So the two of us are working at the bakery. She's like, the star of the bakery. Every. You know, she runs the whole place.

Michele Seamons [00:36:36] Not really.

Mike Seamons [00:36:36] And we were.

Michele Seamons [00:36:37] I was adored, and.

Mike Seamons [00:36:39] And we had a baby. And so, like, I'd get up at 4 in the morning, and I'd go bake bread, and then I would come home and watch Cameron watch our son. She would then go to the bakery and work the 12 to 4 shift. Then I would go to school from, like, 4 to 8. I mean, it was just like. Like we were stacking everything, and she was trying to finish her, you know, educations. Like, we were just trying to make it all fit.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:01] That's right.

Mike Seamons [00:37:02] And running as fast as we could, you know.

John Dehlin [00:37:04] And back to the income thing. Your patriarchal blessing had said you'd have a large family. It's hard to raise six kids on 25,000 a year.

Michele Seamons [00:37:13] Both of our blessings said we would have all of our needs and we

Mike Seamons [00:37:17] have all the luxuries and the luxuries in it.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:21] This is.

Mike Seamons [00:37:23] But remember, it's all for the building up of the kingdom of God.

Michele Seamons [00:37:28] I had been working at Great Harvest, and the owner was a mentor to me. I loved their family. Their family enveloped me, enveloped Mike. And I said, look, we might have an opportunity here to own a bakery and look at their life. And if we're running a bakery like this, you're gonna have plenty of opportunities to teach, because look at all the free time they have. So you could do both.

Mike Seamons [00:37:56] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [00:37:56] So like a bowl thing, you could do this. And I see that. I'm like. And then we're set.

Building a Business and Starting a Family

Mike Seamons [00:38:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:04] So, okay.

Mike Seamons [00:38:05] And this. The owner of the bakery, he had been in, he'd been helping other couples like us to open their own bakeries as kind of a 50, 50 partnership. And so he kind of extended that offer to us, and we. We. I was four classes shy from graduating from BYU in. In April of 95, and we just

Michele Seamons [00:38:26] left and said, yeah, because the opportunity struck, and we had to.

Mike Seamons [00:38:29] We were like, we're gonna go start this bakery. The lowest performing bakery in the franchise was in Reno. And there was a guy who was just, like, fire selling it, you know, And. And our partner put up the money. We had nothing. We moved there on credit cards, lived across the street from the bakery, did a full, like, gut, and we were the remodel of it all by ourselves and turned it into. The first year we opened the bakery, we tripled the revenues that it had Done before. Like, it was. We did really well. Like, we opened this thing up. We had this massive community support. I mean, we just saw again, with God, everything is possible. Like the universe is behind us in some way.

Michele Seamons [00:39:17] Well, and that Reno Ward supported us wholeheartedly. And the steak and it really supported our business. And they saw us as this young couple with a baby. Like, let's lean in, let's help. This is a good product. And we rose a lot of cinnamon drop bread.

Mike Seamons [00:39:36] Yeah. We baked and baked, you know.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:40] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:39:40] And it was pumpkin. We were really young, though. We know. This was 95. I was 24. 24 when we opened the store. And she was 26.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:51] And you're working together.

Mike Seamons [00:39:53] She. She ran the afternoon, I ran the morning.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:55] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:39:55] And we lived in an apartment across the street where we would put our baby down for a nap and turn the nursery monitor on and take the nursery monitor.

Michele Seamons [00:40:03] We did things like that in those days.

John Dehlin [00:40:05] Yeah, it gets arrested today.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:07] Exactly.

Michele Seamons [00:40:08] Things have changed.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:09] No go time change.

Michele Seamons [00:40:12] Wow.

Mike Seamons [00:40:12] It was magical. Like, we.

Michele Seamons [00:40:13] It was.

Mike Seamons [00:40:14] I mean, we were living the dream.

Michele Seamons [00:40:15] And we loved Reno.

Mike Seamons [00:40:17] 25 years old, we bought our first house. And we were like.

Michele Seamons [00:40:20] And a boat.

Mike Seamons [00:40:21] And a boat. I. I was. I found a junk boat. Like, it cost me a thousand dollars. And I. It was. It was at the bottom of Lake Tahoe. And. And I was like, we are going to be a family who. Boats. Like, it just was. My last name is Siemens.

Michele Seamons [00:40:36] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:40:36] I've had. I will find a way to get back to the ocean.

Michele Seamons [00:40:40] And our families were not raised with boats. And we both loved it. So we always tried to keep ourselves adjacent to families that had boats because it was like, I need this access. So for us to get a boat in our first year was huge.

John Dehlin [00:40:56] Living the dream.

Michele Seamons [00:40:57] Yeah, we were living the dream.

Mike Seamons [00:40:59] But we got greedy. No, we just built that up. We had our second child in Reno. So now we had two boys who were now two years apart. We were living in this bedroom community up in Sparks, Nevada, north northeast corner and super engaged in the church. I was the young men's president of the ward. And you know, within the first couple months, I was the young men's president. And I was. One of my favorite stories is this group of boys. When I was 25 years old, 26 years old, I wanted to take this. All of the. All of the teachers and priests, the 14 to 18 year olds, I wanted to take them on a 50 mile high adventure because I had done multiple of them as a child when I was a scout and I Loved high adventures.

Mike Seamons [00:41:47] I thought that these were amazing. And so I'd set up a whole how do we take this group? So we had 16, 16, you know, 14 to 18 year olds coming and I couldn't get another adult leader to join me because it was, they, they just timing wise and other things. I could get people to drive us out there, but I ended up taking, I got my 18 year old brother and my 18 year old brother and I. When I was 26, we took this group of 16 boys up into the Ruby Mountains in Elko, Nevada and we did a 50 mile hike together. And it was there that I, that I returned to this.

Mike Seamons [00:42:22] The reason I'm doing all of this is because I love the feeling of intersecting with the power that I felt when I was doing those kind of things. And I just wanted to give it to these boys. It's like I know how to go find this feeling. And I always knew that I could create the feeling more in these immersive experiences outdoors than I could in the building. And so I was like, we need to get out and get out into the middle of the mountains where we sit around campfires and we talk as we'd hike. And I was 26 years old and this is where that kind of mentor thing flipped on me, where it's like, I love that I get to now spend however, the next decades of my life just helping young people become the best versions of themselves.

Mike Seamons [00:43:09] I just loved it. It felt so gratifying. And I gave those boys everything, I gave those young men everything I had. And at the time Michele was also leaning in like we, I was in

Michele Seamons [00:43:20] the primary presidency but our leader saw us. And then we were asked and called to be the leaders of a 3 Stake youth conference in Reno. 26 and 28 years old in Reno, Nevada. Who asks someone that are parents to a 1 and 3 year old to lead a 3 Stake youth conference where we had to actually rent out a high school to facilitate how many kids this involved. They actually sent the general young women's president to speak at this conference.

Michele Seamons [00:43:53] And many times during the process we just kept looking at ourselves like, is this real? I mean we're sitting in the room with stake presidents and young women's, Stake young women's presidents and us and young men's presidents. Should we question why we were the ones or should we lean in?

Michele Seamons [00:44:16] Because this seems right on brand and we just, we went with it and it was amazing. It was a very affirming experience for us that we're like, oh hey, here we go this is where it's going.

Mike Seamons [00:44:35] Yeah. So yeah, we kept, things kept falling in place. And then I was saying it would build up to obviously life is never this trajectory. It's not all rise, rise, rise. And it was at about the same time I came home one day.

Mike Seamons [00:44:56] How could of that like two kids at that point. We had two bakeries. The bakeries were doing well enough in Reno, one in Sparks, one in Reno. We bought a, we had our first house, we had a boat.

Mike Seamons [00:45:09] And I saw an ad when I was getting my haircut for a 10 acre piece of land with a little kind of cabin on it in the middle of the Tahoe National Forest. And I came home, I brought the flyer home to Michele and I was like this is where we need to go. Like this I, I, I was being called to the mountains and I'm like this I'm gonna go, let's go live in the mountains off the grid, no power, no sewage, no, no water.

John Dehlin [00:45:35] And I said you weren't prepper.

Mike Seamons [00:45:37] I well no, not really.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:40] He went nature. You went like to your odds experiences of like nature.

Mike Seamons [00:45:45] And we would drive a three mile dirt road up into the middle of the mountains through a forestry gate. And in this little valley called the Logan Meadow up in Thomas Creek Canyon we had a little, a frame two bedroom, two bathroom home that was totally off grid and and we would, we, we bought it, we lease optioned it at the time and thought we've arrived like we, this is our 10 acres of total like wonder and we are just gonna, we're gonna become settlers up here. There were like 10 other homes in the valley but they were all summer homes. You know we were, we were, there were two of us that lived there in full time and we a three year old and a one year old living in the middle of the, of the mountains.

Michele Seamons [00:46:31] We moved in with four feet of snow.

John Dehlin [00:46:34] Can I say y' all are beaming as you talk about this time.

Mike Seamons [00:46:36] We loved was we.

Michele Seamons [00:46:39] We loved it.

Mike Seamons [00:46:40] We I built a energy system. I learned, I went to the library and learned how to wire batteries in series and how an inverter works and how to create power. I had a generator that we had a propane tank that I would, we could get propane delivered and so I could make power like we I, I learned how to put up a microwave antenna where I could beam you know a communication line to a mountain, you know a mountain ranger way. And I could get faxes from the bakeries so that I could then use my dial up modem you know, across this microwave connection, you know, we learned how to, how to take a spring that was gravity feeding and to pipe ourselves into a spring and, and to provide water, you know, from the mountain.

Mike Seamons [00:47:25] You know, we had a septic system that would. That was pretty basic. But we had a six wheel ATV that we would strap our two boys in car seats in the back of the bed and we would drive to the top of the mountains and watch sunrises and sunsets.

Michele Seamons [00:47:41] Amazing.

Mike Seamons [00:47:41] And we were like 26, 28 years old.

John Dehlin [00:47:43] Eating homemade bread.

Mike Seamons [00:47:45] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:47:45] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:47:46] Everything was all.

Michele Seamons [00:47:47] And if we weren't there, we were on a lake somewhere.

Mike Seamons [00:47:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:50] Oh, wow. Yeah. Why would you ever leave?

Michele Seamons [00:47:52] Right? Why would we ever leave?

John Dehlin [00:47:55] Oops.

Mike Seamons [00:47:55] There were two. Two things that tried to push us out. One, this was, this should have been the one that we should have left. But we stayed for another hot minute. But one night, the power system had failed. You know, my, all of my systems are 90% good, 10%, they, you know, require intervention. This is one of the 10% times we got home from a late night. So we have no power. It's only flashlights. And we're putting the kids to bed. Michele and I get in our, you know, get in bed. And a couple hours later, Michele wakes up and goes, do you hear that?

Mike Seamons [00:48:26] And I said, do I hear what? And she said, there's something trying to get into our house. This is a bear. We get flashlights on the side of her bed and we go to this kind of. We have a shop behind the house that's connected to the house. And she shines a flashlight through it and There is a 500 pound black

Michele Seamons [00:48:43] bear coming through a window.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:45] Oh my.

Mike Seamons [00:48:47] Once it's in the window, it's in our house. And now it's like the only way to let it out is through a door. Like. And so this bear is coming through the window. There was some trash that we had left because we have to take our trash down the mountain. And he wanted that food. And Michele grabs pots and pans. I'm the flashlight guy. Because it was a little further away from the bear than the pot and pan person. She took the pot and pan job. But trying to get this bear to back out, out the window. He finally backs out and then we're like, wait, where, where is he now? Like, he's just not there.

Off-Grid Living and Mountain Adventures

Michele Seamons [00:49:23] Tom is surrounded by a chain link fence. So he's in the chain link fence. So he has to go through one gate and one gate only to get off our property. That would be really smart. Bear.

Mike Seamons [00:49:35] So we. Michele sweeps the flashlight and right at our kind of the main windows, the big sliding glass doors, this bear is on his hind legs trying to get in through another access point that we are now, like staring at him on, you know, in full standing. And it, I mean, we. Yeah, this was like how rugged it was like how, how far in the mountains we were with a 3 and a 1 year old and we got the bear out and that was okay. And you know, we have a story to tell that's now like our hearts still beat when we think about the bear being in our house. And, and. But it was like.

John Dehlin [00:50:10] But the Lord protected you.

Mike Seamons [00:50:11] Yeah, yeah, fully protected.

Michele Seamons [00:50:13] Yeah, fully.

Mike Seamons [00:50:14] In all of our terrible decisions, we still had protection.

Michele Seamons [00:50:17] But we always say we're either a good example or a terrible warning.

Mike Seamons [00:50:21] Yeah, yeah, both. But it was a few months later, though, that we had humans break in while we were away for a weekend. And they spent a lot of time in our house and took everything that we owned. Cause it was so. We hadn't thought about this part, like the human part, the bear part. We were like, we can deal with the animals and the mountain lions and that, but the humans came and took everything from us. And it was like we lost everything. And we had committed ourselves so completely to this was going to be our life that the loss was like. And it happened at the same time as the partnership that we had gone there to build this bakery had come crashing down.

Mike Seamons [00:51:09] Things that were because of things that I was doing. I was a 27 year old trying to figure out how to run a business and pay taxes and everything. And I had done things that I should have given a draw that both of us received, but I gave myself a draw and then said, I'll give my partner a draw later. So, I mean, I definitely was.

Mike Seamons [00:51:30] I could have been more clear in my communication in this, but because of some things that I did and the way that the partner reacted, who was somebody who had been a mentor this entire friendship went from mentorship to antagonistic family. And he then made it his primary objective to not just shut us out of a bakery that we owned 49% of, but also chase us out of this city.

John Dehlin [00:51:57] Two bakeries, right?

Mike Seamons [00:51:58] Two bakeries at that point.

Michele Seamons [00:52:00] And shut us down in our future endeavors.

Mike Seamons [00:52:03] Yeah. Was really like, I've never felt malevolence before. And this was malevolent. Like, it was just like. And. And I, I have to give him some like, grace of. Yeah, he. He was dealing with somebody, was trying to figure out how to Run businesses. And. And I. And I had heard him talk about the way that he ran his. And I was like, oh, that's how you do it. And. And so I'm accountable for a part of it. But. But like the. The way that he chased us, you know, with this little tiny.

Mike Seamons [00:52:33] Out of something that was the only thing that we had, and then chased us, he would re emerge again twice. He would inject himself somehow into the insurance claim we had on trying to get anything back from our robbery and said he thought that we staged the robbery. And he then would, a few months later, get involved in me trying to get back into church education as a teacher and would call the church education department while I was teaching at Hillcrest and say, he's not worth. You should not have this guy. He's a terrible person. You shouldn't have him. In church education.

Mike Seamons [00:53:09] He chased us to make sure that we were dead. And it was really. It was such a formative, hurtful time because, I mean, of course I was having this. I deserve some of it, but I was also having this. But there's nothing. How can this be? You know, what I've deserved. Like, this is so punitive.

Michele Seamons [00:53:32] Yeah. And we. Other than hello, hi, and how are you? We haven't spoken to this person since who helped me be a father figure for me, because my father ends up not participating in my life at all. And he was aware of that. And we spent a lot of time with his family. So, yeah, it was a big change.

Mike Seamons [00:53:54] And then we would watch him change. We would watch that person rise, you know, in a system that we believed was perfect and only rose people that

John Dehlin [00:54:03] rise in the church to higher levels

Mike Seamons [00:54:05] of leadership as a stake president and as a mission president, and then as a work in the temple, a temple president, and then as the general young men's president, and then as like, I mean, he just rose, rose, rose.

John Dehlin [00:54:17] And it's like googling the founder of Great Harvest.

Mike Seamons [00:54:23] It just was hard because we had such a frame framework of the people that are in those callings are godlike people are people that. It's everything about how they treat other people. And we just felt like we felt a very different energy from that experience.

Michele Seamons [00:54:41] It didn't compute because again, going back to even my high school, where it's like, no, this is not what we've been taught. And where does the forgiveness, healing, moving forward, where does that happen? This is not what I expected from you. I had a very poor understanding of obviously how our human relations work because

John Dehlin [00:55:10] I was young and I don't know how Mormon this is, but definitely Mormon business owners are an issue for those who live in Utah, especially.

Michele Seamons [00:55:20] Thank you. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:55:21] There's just. There's fraud, there's deception, there's abuse. Mormon going into business with the Mormon in Utah is a risky endeavor.

Michele Seamons [00:55:31] Yes. And so if the Mormon judgment is true, I get to be a part of that one. And I look forward to that day when I can have that conversation.

John Dehlin [00:55:43] But I have to note that, like, up until your late 20s, you're kind of having the perfect Mormon experience.

Michele Seamons [00:55:50] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:55:51] So this must have been. You were kind of golden.

Michele Seamons [00:55:55] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:55:56] Kind of invincible and golden up until then. So this must have been interesting to have your first kind of Achilles moment.

Michele Seamons [00:56:03] No, it's a trial, John. It's a trial. And we are gonna come up like the phoenix rising.

John Dehlin [00:56:08] Okay.

Michele Seamons [00:56:09] We are. Cause we know this is what we're made for.

Mike Seamons [00:56:13] Michele, at the time, is pregnant with our third child.

Michele Seamons [00:56:16] Yes.

Mike Seamons [00:56:16] While we were now driving. She's driving a U Haul and. Or one of our cars, towing a U Haul trailer with the last of our remaining things. I'm driving.

John Dehlin [00:56:26] You literally lost everything.

Mike Seamons [00:56:28] Another car with the boat.

John Dehlin [00:56:29] You lost your businesses, everything. You lost your home, lost all the

Mike Seamons [00:56:33] videos of our children, like. And we drove, and we would move into the basement of her mom's house in Salt Lake. In Salt Lake? Yeah, By Liberty Park.

Michele Seamons [00:56:46] Whoa.

John Dehlin [00:56:47] And because you were business owners, owning

Mike Seamons [00:56:49] your house in a boat, living in the basement of her mom's house.

John Dehlin [00:56:54] Oh, gosh.

Mike Seamons [00:56:55] While I was, like, trying to reset with three kids.

John Dehlin [00:56:57] Two. Two or two. Three kids. Two.

Michele Seamons [00:56:59] And one on the way. And I'm now a waitress at the Roof Restaurant in the Joseph Smith I worked at.

Mike Seamons [00:57:07] And I'm a finished carpenter just trying to make money while I'm trying to figure out how do I now. How do I now put food on the table for our little family?

Margi Dehlin [00:57:18] This does feel. This feels big. This is enormous. This is a turn in your reality of how things work.

Michele Seamons [00:57:26] Yeah. Humbling. And also kind of a reckoning of the Lord's going to test his elect.

John Dehlin [00:57:33] Yeah. I was going to ask how that played out in your relationships with your Heavenly Father, respectively, in terms of what your understanding was with Heavenly Father, what you expected from him, what you expected from life and being faithful. Was that a trial of your faith or not?

Faith Challenges and Community Support

Michele Seamons [00:57:53] For me, no. Because all the people that knew us and loved us kept giving us the affirmation and the support and the love. So we were like, nope, we're on track. Okay.

Mike Seamons [00:58:03] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [00:58:03] We're on track.

Mike Seamons [00:58:04] I mean there was, we cried and were broken and you know, we had both of the cars that we owned repossessed or that we had loans on. Yeah, we had our home repossessed.

John Dehlin [00:58:14] Dang.

Mike Seamons [00:58:15] We went through a seven year, like black hole of, you know, of credit

John Dehlin [00:58:21] and so bankruptcy basically.

Mike Seamons [00:58:23] We didn't, we didn't, we didn't declare bankruptcy. We, we would have, probably could have, should have, but we held on and we lived in her mom's basement. And then I was like, well, because that's when I thought, well, I'm going to go now. Here's my chance to go teach church education.

John Dehlin [00:58:40] Now that you're poor, you may as well be poor.

Mike Seamons [00:58:42] I engaged with the Utah Institute, got to know the director there. He was like, he loved me. He's like, let's get you in teaching at Hillcrest High School. I taught there for a couple months until this person emerged back into the scene and somehow had heard that I was teaching and said, you shouldn't have him teach. And so they, they said, hey, you know, we don't know, we don't know who, which one of you is right. But just, let's just like, you know, part ways just amicably. And I'm like, this is like the only thing that I know how to do. And, and, and I, and I wanted to do.

Mike Seamons [00:59:17] And, and so I was like, well, if not that, then what? And at Thanksgiving that same year, this is, it all happened in like literally a two year period that we went through this massive crisis. I was like, well then I should go back into medicine. Like that's because I'm a healer. And so we actually moved from her mom's basement to a bedroom in my parents house in Whittier, California. And, and I was now going to try to go and get my EMT and my ER tech and work in a hospital to kind of prep me to go to medical school or physician's assistant school.

Michele Seamons [00:59:56] Yes.

Mike Seamons [00:59:56] And Michele was going to, you know, take on another set of things to try, just to try to pay the bills. And, and we just were like in survival mode, like trust. How do we pay the bills? How do we not let the kids die? And it was heavy, like, but we were still optimistic.

Michele Seamons [01:00:13] Our parents saved the day, literally. And we can't thank them enough. There was no shame or, you know, you got it wrong attached to that. It was like, no, you've got this.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:28] I love that.

Michele Seamons [01:00:29] It was very supportive and encouraging an environment for us and our kids.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:33] And just a moment for that because I think within Mormonism, there is this. Really. There's a way of thinking, I think, from the beliefs and that it's all transactional.

Michele Seamons [01:00:45] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:46] So on a level, yes, there are trials, but also. Also, you kind of get what you deserve. It's sort of like. But if you prayed and if you were reading your scriptures and if you. You would be protected and this would not have happened.

Michele Seamons [01:00:57] And we were doing all those things.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:58] Right. And so it's tricky. It can come back. And so I. I mean, parents can sort of reflect some of that. Like, well, what'd you do? Kind of. And so to not have to hold that, in addition to all the loss that you're already feeling, that. That's really.

Michele Seamons [01:01:19] Guilt and shame was no part of it, which was phenomenal. They saw the work and the effort and the total commitment we had given to that experience, and they supported us.

Margi Dehlin [01:01:32] Yeah. And what a thing. I mean, that's some fixated energy vindictiveness. I want to say, really, to follow you, that level of effort.

John Dehlin [01:01:44] Like, why not let you rebound after you'd lost everything? Why chase you down to then wreck?

Mike Seamons [01:01:50] I mean, and I had to grapple with that. Cause it's like, maybe I am as bad as he thinks I am, that he needs to pursue me.

John Dehlin [01:01:56] But this is Javert level.

Mike Seamons [01:01:58] Yeah, this is Javert level.

Michele Seamons [01:02:00] Yeah. I'm reading Les Mis and going boiling, I bet. Boiling. Because I am, like I said, I'm an 8 on the 8.

John Dehlin [01:02:08] I had a dream that life would be.

Michele Seamons [01:02:10] I want justice and I want things to be made right. And that didn't feel right. And I didn't have access to any way of making it right. So the only way I could cope with it is to then double down on my religiosity.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:24] Okay. So that's kind of where it went.

Michele Seamons [01:02:27] Yeah. It went from a fire to a bomb.

John Dehlin [01:02:30] You coped with through righteousness. Hyper righteousness.

Michele Seamons [01:02:34] Hyper righteousness.

Mike Seamons [01:02:36] Yeah. Let's get back to being chosen.

Michele Seamons [01:02:39] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:02:39] You know, we. Somehow the chosenness kind of got sideways for a little bit. Now let's kind of resume the chosen path and.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:47] Interesting.

Mike Seamons [01:02:48] And we, you know, we. And it was. It was a mass. It was a year. What. We would have our. While we were in California, we'd have our third child, who's our daughter, or we have five boys and one girl. She'd be born there, and. And we would then kind of get ourselves to a. Okay, now we're ready to move forward. We went through this like, I'm going to go to medical school. Because that's my patriarchal blessing, says I'm a healer. And we went to a pre meeting that said this is what the consequences and all of this will be. And Michele looked at me and she said we're having our third child in a month. How are we possibly going to do this?

Michele Seamons [01:03:27] Yeah. And financially we had. Now we were even negative. Well even at that point and establishing so that we could at least make the next step. Step. I'm like, no, that's a step backwards. We just came from the ashes. We can't.

Mike Seamons [01:03:45] And so I had a friend who was part of a startup here in Utah. There was a tech startup. I had no tech background. I built my own computer at byu. Like I was tech, tech savvy. I was a tech enthusiast but not trained. I was a history guy, teacher. And so I somehow got. It was 2000. It was that I would start with this like 1999. So right before 2000 they were just looking for bodies. And I had a friend who knew them. They brought me in for an interview. They said, yeah, you're smart, like you can do this. And we moved to Utah with a one month old daughter and we rented a house in Cottonwood Heights. And I would work for this. It was a high speed Internet company that was trying to. It was before there was wireless Internet. Now it's called stsn. Now it's called ibon.

John Dehlin [01:04:38] Okay.

Mike Seamons [01:04:39] And it was people that I ended up becoming incredible friends with. And I rose in that. Like I became one of their most dependable leaders that they then gave me a bunch of responsibility.

John Dehlin [01:04:51] And it was an ISP.

Mike Seamons [01:04:53] Well, so this was before ISPs. Like we would take large data lines into hotels,

John Dehlin [01:05:01] ICN lines.

Mike Seamons [01:05:02] As those things came in, you know, DSP else didn't exist. We had used the copper wiring that went up to the rooms to run kind of our own version of dsl. And then in the rooms you'd have a little box you'd plug into. But it was a way to get high speed Internet in a hotel room. And it was super novel at the time. Marriott signed a contract with us to do every Marriott in Ritz Carlton. I ran the Ritz Carlton account and I just, I just started traveling all over the world to Ritz Carlton's to kind of prepare for the installation.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:32] Wow.

Mike Seamons [01:05:33] While she's back with, with three little kids, you know, going what, what kind of a thing do we have going on?

Michele Seamons [01:05:39] It was good. It was good. And you were, it was like the secret of your success, like you were rising and it made. It made sense. It fit.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:48] Right? You're back on track. You're kind of like back on track.

Michele Seamons [01:05:51] It's right, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:52] And are you still living with his family?

Michele Seamons [01:05:55] No, we are now in it.

Mike Seamons [01:05:56] When I started that job, we rented

Michele Seamons [01:05:58] a house in Cottonwood Heights.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:59] Heights.

Michele Seamons [01:06:00] We're in Cottonwood Heights.

Margi Dehlin [01:06:01] Okay. Sorry.

Michele Seamons [01:06:03] Yeah. And then they moved you to California.

Mike Seamons [01:06:07] I was traveling too much and we just couldn't keep that up. And so they said, well, how about you go run the California region and just pick a spot in between La Palm Springs and San Diego and you can just run it from there and just drive. And so we moved to a little town called Canyon Lake, California, which is in the near Lake Elsinore, just north of Temecula.

Michele Seamons [01:06:29] It's a private water ski community. Really important because we remember, we were boating, family, we had a boat.

Margi Dehlin [01:06:36] You are back on track.

Michele Seamons [01:06:38] And the church was exceptionally strong there. I mean, one of the greatest wards in that county. Stakeholder Riverside, Riverside County, Canyon Lake Ward, Riverside.

John Dehlin [01:06:52] Is that Orange County?

Michele Seamons [01:06:53] No.

Mike Seamons [01:06:54] What was it?

John Dehlin [01:06:55] Riverside County.

Mentors, Ward Family, and Growing Influence

Mike Seamons [01:06:56] I think it was called the Menifee State.

Michele Seamons [01:06:57] Menifee State, Yeah. It's just north of Temecula.

Mike Seamons [01:07:00] It's the Inland Empire, they call it.

John Dehlin [01:07:01] Okay, Inland Empire.

Michele Seamons [01:07:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:03] Got it. Okay.

Michele Seamons [01:07:04] And they loved us.

John Dehlin [01:07:06] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:07:06] And we. We were adopted again.

John Dehlin [01:07:10] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:07:11] Quickly.

Michele Seamons [01:07:11] Quickly.

John Dehlin [01:07:12] Mormon words for the win.

Mike Seamons [01:07:14] We went there. Pregnant again.

Michele Seamons [01:07:16] Yeah, pregnant again.

Mike Seamons [01:07:17] She was pregnant with our fourth at this move. Yeah. You can see we were in. We were just in chaos.

John Dehlin [01:07:23] Mormon wards are the crown jewel of Mormonism, right?

Mike Seamons [01:07:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:26] Aren't they?

Michele Seamons [01:07:27] Yes.

Mike Seamons [01:07:27] Well, because we'd move. I mean, we tested them. I mean, we'd move into places and we had nothing. No one. And all of a sudden we had 200 people.

Michele Seamons [01:07:35] It's a formula. If you. I always say if. If you are in Mormonism, you can go anywhere. And if you do it right, you will be adopted in quickly. But you have to do it right. There is a formula.

John Dehlin [01:07:49] Yeah, yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:07:50] We have to show the signals.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:51] Do you think that's still true? Like for me, I'm trying to figure out if it's an era. No, an era.

John Dehlin [01:07:56] It can be true in some places.

Michele Seamons [01:07:58] I think we tested it in 2021.

Mike Seamons [01:08:02] That was our last test.

Michele Seamons [01:08:03] That was our last test. You're researching it worked then? I can't guarantee anything.

John Dehlin [01:08:08] There's plenty of places where Mormon words are still strong.

Michele Seamons [01:08:11] Yeah, well.

Mike Seamons [01:08:12] And you show up and you show them the signals, and the signals then say you're trustworthy, you know, and we knew how to say all the right words to be in that trusted group. And within. Within months, they would just trust us and say, okay, here. You know, I was called first month to be the young men's president there, and she was the. What were you? Primary president there?

Margi Dehlin [01:08:35] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:08:35] I don't remember. Oh, no, I was Emily Society presidency there.

Mike Seamons [01:08:38] I mean, just so quickly, like, we were just brought in as we trust you here.

Michele Seamons [01:08:43] Oh. And then that's not good enough. He was put in the bishopric.

Mike Seamons [01:08:46] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:08:46] You know, I'm with these little tiny babies and the word would just.

John Dehlin [01:08:49] Late 20s, early 30s.

Michele Seamons [01:08:51] Yeah, late 20s.

Mike Seamons [01:08:51] This was in 2000, 2001. I was 29. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:57] You're getting back on track because bishopric in the 20s, that's back, you know, kind of in line with your 18.

Mike Seamons [01:09:04] I have recovered.

Michele Seamons [01:09:05] Maybe we felt that way.

Mike Seamons [01:09:07] Yeah. Canyon, like, felt like recovery.

Michele Seamons [01:09:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:11] Great harvest. Homeboy can't reach his tentacles into something. California.

Michele Seamons [01:09:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:15] We didn't have no power here.

Mike Seamons [01:09:17] That was the last time. We kind of had an intersection there. But. But it was. We had so many. Like, this is where then we. We became so grateful for mentors older than us. Like, because all of the people that we really loved and connected with were. They were a few years older than us, a phase older than us. And. And that helped because we would then use them to help us, like, build the kind of family that we wanted

Michele Seamons [01:09:41] to have and help us get it right.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:43] Yeah. I mean, mentoring is so, so valuable.

Michele Seamons [01:09:49] And I really saw that if I link to someone five to 10 years older than I, I can eliminate some of the mistake making with my children, with my marriage, all of it. Absolutely. Because they can teach me. So I was very. I was a willing mentee.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:11] And you're so. You're during these years, pregnant or postpartum or like. Can I just check in? How's this going for you?

Michele Seamons [01:10:21] And I am thriving.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:23] Okay.

Michele Seamons [01:10:24] I am feeling so good. Like, I am fulfilling the measure of

John Dehlin [01:10:27] my creation and having joy therein.

Michele Seamons [01:10:29] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:30] Okay. So no question, I'm not a working

Michele Seamons [01:10:32] mother for the first time. And I am having a little day, like preschool in my home. And my kids are cute and doing everything on point. And I have every Richard and Linda Iyer book that was published. And I was living it to the law.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:51] Yes.

Michele Seamons [01:10:51] I was living it to the law. I thought they had all the answers.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:55] Joy School.

Michele Seamons [01:10:56] They were doing Joy School. So I thought I was in the good days. I thought it was.

John Dehlin [01:11:02] You and Markie are vibing.

Michele Seamons [01:11:03] Yeah. I mean, joy school was phenomenal. It Was a great program.

John Dehlin [01:11:06] Who doesn't want joy more than joy?

Michele Seamons [01:11:09] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:09] Can I say you can optimize the optimization program. The heirs were like that. Optimize this parenting already.

John Dehlin [01:11:17] I can see the photo of the whole family on that big log long tree. Like the whole family.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:23] That's right.

Michele Seamons [01:11:23] You've seen the book.

John Dehlin [01:11:24] And he went to Harvard.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:25] He went to like Harvard and then.

Michele Seamons [01:11:27] Yeah. And they just. And they had such pivotal things that helped me even just in the day to day operations of my home. Like it was not just emotional and religious. It was practical and my kids to this day would like to burn it down. Yeah. Because I had to adhere so strictly.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:51] Yes. The book.

Michele Seamons [01:11:52] And it wasn't mine.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:54] Yes. The teaching your children responsibilities book.

Michele Seamons [01:11:57] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:58] It's no joke.

John Dehlin [01:12:00] What do you mean?

Michele Seamons [01:12:01] I had a communal closet for my children because they didn't have. They hadn't earned the responsibility to take care of their own clothing in their own closet. So I needed to teach them.

John Dehlin [01:12:12] Is this where timeouts came from?

Margi Dehlin [01:12:14] It was hardcore.

Mike Seamons [01:12:15] Hardcore.

Michele Seamons [01:12:16] And so my kids had to earn to have a closet where they could keep their clothes and take care of them appropriately. Because I was modeling that for them.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:26] I really like teaching your children joy.

Michele Seamons [01:12:30] That was more my bucket. Yeah. I told a responsibility. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:37] But anyway.

Michele Seamons [01:12:37] Yeah, yeah. They seemed happy. So I thought that's the direction. So I was in a good place and he was allowing me through his work to have the freedom to be at home. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:12:52] On the, on the dream. Living the dream. On the Mormon train.

Mike Seamons [01:12:54] Yeah. Canyon Lake was a good chapter. I would. The dot com bubble would hit and it would start sinking this company and they ended up, you know, kind of resurging again. But during the, the sinking time, a lot of people were leaving and I kind of was. I was super nervous. Like I. I had been without a job and been like, how do I get another job? And. And I wasn't super qualified even for the job that I had. I did really well and rose, but I kind of, three years into this company, I had to start looking and had to start going.

Mike Seamons [01:13:30] This isn't gonna keep us going and I've gotta figure something else out. And it was part of this crazy mindset that I had that God's behind me. I started getting really interested in home automation and like making smart homes. And this was in 2001. So it was like there was no Google home that was controlling lights and things. There's no Alexa to, you know, tell it to change your thermostats, like digital media wasn't there. Was TiVo, wasn't there yet. Like, it was all, this is all like early days. And, and so I called a guy who I'd read. I read an article he wrote in one of the magazines that had started, had had a company that he'd had for like 20 years in Temecula that he served kind of the, the LA San Diego, Palm Springs area.

Mike Seamons [01:14:17] And I said to him, I said, hey, I'm really thinking I'm gonna, I wanna get into this business. I think I'm somebody who you would like more as a partner than as a competitor. And I said, so if you're somebody who's interested in having a partner that can bring a lot to the table. Like, I really love to talk. And for some reason this guy called me back and he said, well, let's meet and have lunch. And.

Mike Seamons [01:14:44] And again, I can only attribute it to. I walk through the world thinking that the universe is going to conspire in my favor. And it just kept happening, even though it would tear me down. Sometimes it's such a bizarre story because I would get torn down and then I would come back and go, I'm back, all right, you're ready to go. And then I'd. There's another tear down. That will happen later. But this was one of those moments where it's like, like, okay, let. And, and he op. He gave me half of his company. I became the president of his company. We, we built a really, you know, interesting and profitable business that we put these super smart techy homes in.

Mike Seamons [01:15:25] We did them all over the world. We kind of, it was, the business was consultation design and, you know, some installation. Like we would bring in other contractors to install it, but I loved it. I mean, I was dealing with people on the cliffs of La Jolla and in Rancho Santa Margarita. They were like a Rancho Santa Fe. Like, they were all these beautiful homes. And I was designing technical systems that I had never been trained to do. I was making it up as I went, but I was really, I was really a fast learner. And I just studied and studied and studied and tried to figure it out.

Mike Seamons [01:15:59] And so we ran that together until while we were in Canyon Lake. And it would then kind of, this was still, I was in this, I was still just trying to chase how do I provide for my family? And, and I, I, I felt like the thing that we had started, this partner and I, that we could have turned it into a multimillion dollar company and we could have both benefited from. He was, he didn't want to go that big. He was like, I just don't. I, I, I'd rather stay in the lane that we're in. I don't want to go that big. And because I was this guy who thought I was, you know, the universe was conspiring in my favor, I was looking for something bigger.

Mike Seamons [01:16:36] And, you know, and I found it. One of our client customers, who was a very wealthy guy, he said, I want to start a bigger business with you. And. And that would then kind of be my entree into the next chapter of our life. That got painful again, because it seems

Michele Seamons [01:16:53] like whenever I did giant leaps again. So moving.

Software Ventures and Life in Redmond

John Dehlin [01:16:57] Where'd you go?

Michele Seamons [01:16:58] 36 weeks pregnant. To Columbus, Ohio.

John Dehlin [01:17:02] Oh, to, To Dublin, to.

Michele Seamons [01:17:06] It's very close to Powell, Ohio. It's to Powell, Ohio, but very close to Dublin, where literally, it felt as if we had moved to Utah because the church strength was so strong there. Down the street from us was a street called Deseret with a big beehive on the gate. We found the Mecca real, truly. And it was amazing.

Mike Seamons [01:17:31] Well, it was. Until it wasn't. It was hard. Like, I partnered with a person who was a near billionaire, and his way of deciding how to run things was very much more aggressive than mine. And, I mean, it was. We built something that we thought we were going to make a massive sell to HP or Microsoft. And we were swimming with. With the giant fish in the, in the sea, flying Gulf Stream jets. Like, I was, I was living this altered reality. You know, I'd go home and we'd have, you know, four kids now five. And, and, And I would be home on weekends. And then I would get on a Gulf Stream and fly to some business meeting, you know, for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

Mike Seamons [01:18:14] And then it was just. I was traveling 70% of the time trying to, Trying to break, like, have this massive. What do you call it? This was going to be my moonshot. And so we started a software company that we swam in all the big Cs, and we almost got acquired. Like, we almost made it. And then everything fell apart and, and including almost our family fell apart because it was, it was just leading to another one of these, like, almost the same thing in Reno. Like, push, push, push, push, blow up, you know, and it just happened again. It was like, we're gonna make it, make it, make it, make it.

Mike Seamons [01:18:54] And then it just all imploded of. I was working at such a speed. The church was. I was, I taught seminary for part of it, but I didn't even have time to Even think about, you know, church, because I was so consumed with trying to start this.

Michele Seamons [01:19:09] But me, on the other hand, juggernaut. I'm the young woman's president with six children, one of which is a nursing baby.

Margi Dehlin [01:19:17] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:19:17] While your husband's gone.

Michele Seamons [01:19:18] While my husband is gone.

John Dehlin [01:19:19] Wow.

Margi Dehlin [01:19:20] That is gone huge.

Michele Seamons [01:19:22] So I'm doubling down, and I'm saying, like, he's actually not holding his side of the bargain on our religious side,

Mike Seamons [01:19:31] because, you know, I wasn't watching all five sessions of general conference.

Michele Seamons [01:19:36] Yeah. I'm like, you're not taking notes, like, what you feel like you're failing here,

John Dehlin [01:19:40] like, and you'll do. Although he is trying to provide for a family of eight.

Michele Seamons [01:19:44] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:19:45] But not to defend him.

Michele Seamons [01:19:47] Yeah. But we're in a ward, again, where very successful families are getting it all right, like, on both sides of the coin. And it's like, okay, what can we learn and how can we be like them?

Mike Seamons [01:20:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:03] So keeping up with the Mormon Joneses.

Michele Seamons [01:20:05] So I was unfortunately the one that put my foot down and said, okay, first of all, we have moved too many times. Our oldest child had been to seven different elementary schools in all different states. I said, you need to find something that will provide some stability for what we're doing here. And he did.

Mike Seamons [01:20:27] Yeah. My last customer was the CTO of Microsoft that we put our software in his house.

John Dehlin [01:20:33] Craig Mundy.

Mike Seamons [01:20:34] Right, Craig Mundy. And I. I'd sit and have dinner with he and his wife one night.

John Dehlin [01:20:37] You weren't living in Breadmill?

Mike Seamons [01:20:39] No, I was living in Ohio. I was, like, trying to figure out a way out, and I just didn't know how. Again, I'm a scrappy street fighter. I don't belong at a company like Microsoft that hires MBAs and things. Like, I'm just a street rat. And I had gotten my way into, though, a lot of relationships with Microsoft because we built our software on Windows Media Center. It was all based on their technologies. And Microsoft just loved me.

Michele Seamons [01:21:07] They called him Mr. Microsoft at a CES conference before he was even hired.

Mike Seamons [01:21:13] Yeah. I was a great kind of advocate for their world.

John Dehlin [01:21:18] I remember when I was at Microsoft, there was this thing called the Executive Briefing Center. I think it was called the ebc, where executives would come and we would not just sell them the current software, but we would sell them on the visions for the future. And I remember being with Jeff Raikes or Ballmer or whatever.

Mike Seamons [01:21:36] Jonathan Cloud. He was the guy running that.

John Dehlin [01:21:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jonathan.

Mike Seamons [01:21:40] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:21:43] And we would talk about the home of the Future. So you were building what we were. The vision we were selling.

Mike Seamons [01:21:49] Yeah. When I was there, while I was there in my company working with Microsoft, we would sign a deal with Disney, Microsoft, our company, and hp. And the deal was we were going to make the home of the future at Disneyland. And I was the.

Michele Seamons [01:22:05] Remember the old hall of the Presidents that used to go around. He had the home of the future in that.

Mike Seamons [01:22:09] And I was the lead, like, visionary because we landed the deal, because I brought the Disney executives to our house in Ohio and our kids demoed the home of the future that we lived in. They demoed it to the Disney execs and they were like, you're the guy. We want to do your. You tell us what to do and we'll just build it.

Michele Seamons [01:22:30] And it was really a. I mean, it was amazing. Disney is a really good company to be a part of because they took our whole family and put us in the penthouse at the Grand America, or Grand California. Grand Americans treated our kids like royalty.

Mike Seamons [01:22:48] Just fast passes. That was cool.

Michele Seamons [01:22:50] Toys every night. I'm like, Mike, you got this. Like, we. And this is the crux the of is I believed that that part needed to be in line in order for the church. The prophecies that I felt were coming for them to come to pass.

Mike Seamons [01:23:11] You got to be wealthy to.

Michele Seamons [01:23:12] You have to have this financial freedom. You have to appear to have all the ducks in line to get the callings, to get the trust at higher levels.

John Dehlin [01:23:24] To put it briefly, tell me if this is right. To become a mission president and a mission president's wife, you gotta become wealthy at a young age and be able to retire so that you can then go serve a mission as a young couple so that then you can become, you know, general relief study president or general authority in your 50s or 60s. Right?

Michele Seamons [01:23:45] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:23:46] So there's a prosperity gospel element to it.

Margi Dehlin [01:23:48] Right.

Michele Seamons [01:23:48] It wasn't selfish. It was, we're doing this.

Mike Seamons [01:23:51] We're going to try to make ourselves available.

Michele Seamons [01:23:53] Yeah. And we were. I mean, we were consecrating everything.

John Dehlin [01:23:59] And Michele, you must have been torn. Cause on the one hand, you're impatient and frustrated that it's taken him so long to become wealthy and successful. And you're raising six kids largely alone, while you're serving as young women's president. And he's in the trajectory of potentially becoming that wealthy, successful young provider. So it's got to be hard for you to figure out how much do you put up with and then how much, you know, how much do you suck up and put up with, versus put your foot down. Right.

Michele Seamons [01:24:33] Yeah. And I wanted him to be doing both roles. I wanted perfect perfection.

John Dehlin [01:24:39] This can be where men or women can develop unhealthy addictions or even a breakdown.

Margi Dehlin [01:24:44] I think in the mirror mental health.

Michele Seamons [01:24:48] We were like hanging by a thread.

John Dehlin [01:24:50] Mental health wise or marriage wise?

Michele Seamons [01:24:53] All of the above.

John Dehlin [01:24:54] Living the Mormon dream.

Michele Seamons [01:24:55] And I felt every answer was going to be in a conference talk or in the scriptures. And I dedicated every spare minute, which I had very few, to that because that transactional. It needed to come through. And I became hyper fixated.

Mike Seamons [01:25:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:17] So kind of scrupulosity.

Michele Seamons [01:25:19] Oh, to the max.

John Dehlin [01:25:20] It is if you're perfect.

Mike Seamons [01:25:21] The volume was going to. It would reach its peak in the

Michele Seamons [01:25:24] next chapter because wait, I'm doing the Ayers. I'm the young women's president. I have these beautiful six kids that are falling in line. We read our scriptures every day. We have family, home, evening. And I'm also doing all the work myself. I'm only reading church books. I mean, I couldn't fit another thing I'm looking for. Oh, I was a best friend, a good friend to the mission president's wife that was in our ward. I mean, I was seeking out actively people that are going to influence me for good. It was not healthy. And he could see it, he could see this. This is not sustainable. Not sustainable.

Mike Seamons [01:26:08] None of it was.

Michele Seamons [01:26:09] None of it was.

Mike Seamons [01:26:10] And, but it kind of opened the door. Like I, I would never have expected it, that sitting with the CTO of Microsoft and him saying, why don't you. I, Because I, I was a bit vulnerable with him. I'm like, you know, I have this family that's. We're struggling and we're trying to figure out how to, you know, kind of. I, I feel like I need more stability than what I have in my startup world. And he's like, why don't you come work for Microsoft? And I'm like, because I'm not your. I am not Microsoft material. Like. And he goes, yeah, you are.

John Dehlin [01:26:40] He's like, I'll be the judge.

Mike Seamons [01:26:41] Let me make a phone call. And he. And, and I've met enough people that he was able to get me an interview. And they offered me the job on the spot. Like it was, it was almost too easy in 2008. Like, this is when the market was dying. You know, everybody was panicking. And I started Microsoft on April 1, 2008. And all of a sudden our Ohio chapter is now moving to Seattle.

John Dehlin [01:27:07] So you moved to Redmond.

Mike Seamons [01:27:08] So we moved to Redmond in 2008, in the summer of 2008, and to

Michele Seamons [01:27:15] the Mecca of Mormonism. Knowing that area as well as I do, there was no ward that was as tight as ours. We were a two minus.

John Dehlin [01:27:28] Was this Redmond First Ward or the Redmond First Ward?

Michele Seamons [01:27:30] Redmond First Ward. That was our ward. Ward.

John Dehlin [01:27:32] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:27:33] Two miles square.

Mike Seamons [01:27:34] It was Education Hill. Like Education Hill is shared by two wards, the Redwood first and the Red Ward.

Michele Seamons [01:27:40] It was walkable. Like, I. Like I have a.

John Dehlin [01:27:43] This is like Michael Murray and Richardson kind of territory. I think my brother was in this ward for a long time.

Margi Dehlin [01:27:49] That's what I was gonna ask you.

John Dehlin [01:27:50] Yeah, yeah. My brother lived in Redmond.

Mike Seamons [01:27:53] I mean, such a.

Michele Seamons [01:27:54] It was magical. It had the stake center and in the ward.

John Dehlin [01:27:59] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:27:59] And then. And for me, it had the elementary school, high school, and junior high school and all the recreational facilities all in a 1 mile radius. I'm like, this is where we're gonna shine.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:13] Do you know that was very much like Issaquah?

Michele Seamons [01:28:15] Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:17] Issequa.

John Dehlin [01:28:18] Just right down the road.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:19] Included the elementary school and then the high school. And we're just right.

Michele Seamons [01:28:23] The grocery store was part of our. No. As a mom.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:26] And.

Michele Seamons [01:28:27] And it all makes sense.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:29] Planned community.

Michele Seamons [01:28:31] Yeah. It felt really good.

John Dehlin [01:28:32] And everybody's got stock options at Microsoft. Everyone's super wealthy.

Michele Seamons [01:28:36] Yeah. Well, I remember my 8 year old went to 4th grade at her elementary school there on Education Hill. And she came home. Mom, Mom, There's a girl in my class that's wearing a CTR ring. I said, oh, well, maybe, but maybe not. Because I knew all the kids that were from our ward and there were like four or five in her class. I thought I would know if another child was lds, but for sure. Well, no, there were four or five more in her immediate fourth grade class because they were in the adjoining ward. So here's my fourth grader, has 12 kids that are LDs in her class. I'm like, we're in the Mecca. Here we go. This felt right. Yeah, it felt right.

John Dehlin [01:29:23] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:29:23] And when we knew something was coming,

Mike Seamons [01:29:29] I mean, we. We had this mindset that.

Michele Seamons [01:29:31] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:29:32] That we would know that we're on the right track. When the Lord said, all right, let's go, let's go to the next step. And it was a crazy thing. Like in September of That same year, 2008, we moved into our house. Our house was under construction still. We'd. We took a three month, like mass, massive gut remodel where we.

Michele Seamons [01:29:51] We didn't even have Stairs to the

Mike Seamons [01:29:52] door, get to our front door. And the stake president called and said, can I come visit with you? It was two months after we'd been to the ward four times, five times.

Michele Seamons [01:30:02] Yeah, maybe.

Mike Seamons [01:30:03] And he came and visited with us and he called me to be the bishop of the ward, of the Redmond First Ward. And here we are, six kids, like, literally arrived here two months previous. And. And you know, for some people, they would question it and go, boy, I don't know if this is a good time. And, you know, for us, we looked at it as confirming. It's like, well, let's go. Like, now, now is the big game now. Now we're playing the big game, the one that's been in the patriarchal blessing. Like, this was super affirming of, okay, you know, we've just come into a place and now we're gonna. We're gonna do something significant there.

John Dehlin [01:30:41] And this would have been after Prop 8, but this is the type of warden stake that the church would have tapped for donations to support Prop 8. A lot of wealthy, super wealthy, high educated Mormons in it to win it long term. Microsoft lifer kind of people. BPs, general managers.

Mike Seamons [01:31:01] Yeah. And lots of super smart people that were lds.

Michele Seamons [01:31:06] Yeah. And our kids are thriving. Our kids are meeting and exceeding and all the things did.

John Dehlin [01:31:12] General Curtin, Hetty Carpenter. No, no. Okay. But you knew the Richardsons knew their kids were.

Michele Seamons [01:31:20] Yeah, their kids were in the world. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:23] Okay.

Mike Seamons [01:31:23] And there's so many amazing families there. I mean, we just. We felt like we. Again, we have this. Here's another place that we've moved in, applied kind of the right signals and gained trust and were pulled in and so deeply, like, we were pulled into the inside, you know, the inner circle. And we felt amazing that this is like the place now that we're going to thrive and flourish.

John Dehlin [01:31:50] And your bishop. So clearly the Lord is anointing your path.

Mike Seamons [01:31:54] Yeah. Now I'm really back on track. Like the Ohio thing, I almost fell again. And then Redmond was like, oh, you are now right on track. And. And it was. We had. I mean, being a bishop was magical, but I was. I want to go back. Like, the things that mattered to me as a bishop were getting people to feel the spirit and mentorship. And so I loved every minute I got with the youth. And I really tried to avoid all the time that a bishop needs to take with adults just because I was like, I don't have the answers. I don't know how to help marital problems.

Mike Seamons [01:32:34] I don't know how to help domestic violence. Like it was, was so scary for me. Like, I remember the first year just being literally like depleted of. I don't have the answers required to be this person. And so I even had to start a ritual that every morning I would get up and I would run and I would listen to general conference and like BYU speeches and anything that I could consume from priesthood authorities and I would listen to them and I would take notes. And I kept this journal that I have kept for 15 years now, that is, I called it my cup filling thoughts journal because it's.

Mike Seamons [01:33:14] How do I have enough in my cup to pour into everybody's cup that keeps coming and asking for me to pour into it? But I figured it out. I figured out how to try to help. I felt so far out of my league in so many things, but. But I think I was really. I had really good motivation. Like, my intention was good, but I started to see a part of the. A part of the church that I had not seen yet. This was the first time I would really dip into the administrative side, which I had to do disciplinary councils and I had to do things that I was like, whoa, this is not what I.

Mike Seamons [01:33:54] This is not what church is for me. And it was while it was this amazing high energy thing that I felt the spirit constantly. And I felt this engagement with young people, it would start to be heavier than it was before because I was now carrying the weight of discipline and being a judge in Israel. And the judge part I did not feel good about. It was really, really hard for me.

Mike Seamons [01:34:21] But I kept doing. I had a. A really awesome stake president who loved me and who like mentored me. And he kept encouraging me, you need to be a judge. Like, you're not just there to heal. You need to be the judge.

Mike Seamons [01:34:35] And I would go, okay, okay. But it was every time I had to fill that part of the role, I felt like I was not doing something good. I don't know. It's hard to explain. I just felt really uncomfortable.

John Dehlin [01:34:55] Yeah. So what happens when your Mormon dreams come true? And.

Michele Seamons [01:34:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:35:00] And Michele, like you were struggling with him, as perfect as the life y' all were living, Mormon wise, him becoming bishop must have been validating for you and validating of all your efforts as effectively a single mom raising six kids, serving in the church, but also rewarding your scrupulosity with sort of validation that that scrupulosity was what helped your family arrive at the place it needed to be.

Michele Seamons [01:35:28] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:35:29] Is that right?

Michele Seamons [01:35:29] Yes. And so the first year of him being bishop, I was like, I am all in. I can do this. I can do this role. I have trained for this. And we had a ward family that supported us. I mean, again, day, our dearest friends. And then something started to break. I couldn't carry it. I couldn't. I saw the weight he was carrying and I started to see things maybe differently. And so I found different coping mechanisms for my scrupulosity. And one was a healing mechanism and that was Christian music. Oh yeah. I let the devil in and I wait.

John Dehlin [01:36:23] Some would say that's A lot of Mormons would say that's very compatible with Mormonism. Mormon's a Christian.

Mike Seamons [01:36:28] It's a modern view.

Michele Seamons [01:36:28] Yeah, yeah. At that time it wasn't really as accepted. I seemed a little edgy, but it was healing me.

John Dehlin [01:36:40] Name some of the bands or singers.

Michele Seamons [01:36:41] Oh, my goodness, cope. So Amy Grant was my.

John Dehlin [01:36:44] Amy Grant. Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:36:45] All time, lifelong Michael W. Smith. Then that led to an opening of Matthew West. Mercy Me, Jeremy Camp, Casting crowns.

John Dehlin [01:36:57] I've never heard of Christian music, popular music being a gateway.

Michele Seamons [01:37:01] Oh, yeah, yeah. I went to. So in the Washington area, which is kind of a funny thing because it. I think it's a pivotal place because it's a very liberal place. And I think when these two. When you have a very liberal place, you also have the opposite.

John Dehlin [01:37:20] Well, this is where Mars Hill. Was that Mark. Mark.

Michele Seamons [01:37:22] What's his name? I can't remember, but I read his autobiography.

John Dehlin [01:37:28] I'm just basing on his name.

Michele Seamons [01:37:29] So it's this funny little intersection that Seattle is having because it's combating the grunge era and this very liberal city. More Driscoll liberal thinking. And then you have these very heavy evangelical Christian thinkers and you've got this heavy Mormon community. But I found a bit of my people in the Christian. And I went to every concert that came to town. Everyone, this is a story. And I didn't just. Yeah, I didn't just listen. I went to the concert and I sat down, sat on the front row. I was. I'm making eye contact, like. And I am being healed and I feel like I'm being seen. And my Jesus started to change.

John Dehlin [01:38:21] Oh, my goodness.

Michele's Spiritual Searching and Healing Journey

Margi Dehlin [01:38:22] Can I ask you, like, when you say you're being healed, what was wounded?

Michele Seamons [01:38:30] That's a good question. I didn't know at the time. I had a birthday and I knew Amy Grant was going to be at a church in Redmond, 10 minutes away from our house on my birthday. I mentioned it to him, thinking, of course he's Going to buy a ticket because it's my birthday, and it's Amy Grant. She is the background music to my life.

Michele Seamons [01:38:54] And he was a bishop that was struggling. It was young men's night and bishopric. I don't know. You had all sorts of things going on. And he failed to get the tickets. And I said. I called him. I said, I just want you to let you know the kids are taken care of. And I'm going to the Amy Grant concert tonight. It's my birthday. Have fun at the church. Good luck with that.

Michele Seamons [01:39:18] And I get to the concert hall, and as we're waiting in line, hoping that there's tickets available that night, a woman comes to me and says, do you guys want to go to this concert? It looks like you don't have tickets. I said, we don't. She said, I've got front row. You want two tickets? Who was.

John Dehlin [01:39:38] Who were you with again?

Mike Seamons [01:39:41] She missed the part where I dropped all the meetings.

Michele Seamons [01:39:45] He was a good husband. He dropped everything. He met me there, and this woman hands us two tickets. And I'm like, oh, this is affirming.

Margi Dehlin [01:39:53] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:39:54] It's just the language I speak. I'm like, this is how God works in mysterious and miraculous ways. Here's your front row tickets. And then she happens to sing a happy birthday song to an adopted woman that had put her child up for adoption. And it broke me. I'm like, so not only am I supposed to be here, I'm now getting a message that I know God knows it's my birthday, and this is where I'm supposed to be. My butt is in the right place.

Margi Dehlin [01:40:28] And it's not a Mormon chapel.

Michele Seamons [01:40:30] And it's not a Mormon chapel. And so my view of Jesus starts changing through music. I'm taught about something that feels bigger, more inclusive, and kinder because I needed that kind healing. Because the Jesus that I had chosen to worship was not. It was very judgmental and needing me to require significant part.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:05] There you go. This is the wounded part. This is the thing that. That's what I'm hearing. And even maybe also a buffer to the voice in your head, too.

Michele Seamons [01:41:16] Exactly.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:17] Yeah. A softer, gentler.

Michele Seamons [01:41:20] And my kids needed it, too. My kids now are entering high school, and they need a softer mother, a more compassionate kindness, you know, they need the kindness.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:32] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:41:33] And he's gone. I mean, he had to be.

John Dehlin [01:41:35] Oh, Microsoft is a job, and he's the bishop.

Michele Seamons [01:41:38] So I know this is my role, and I'm. I've got to figure out. I got to get my act together.

John Dehlin [01:41:46] Couple quick questions. So if I had sat next to you on a plane at this time in your life and had been nosy and said, well, okay, wait a minute, you like Christian gospel music, but also you're Mormon. Is that. Cause something's not working in your Mormonism, what would you have said to that type of question?

Michele Seamons [01:42:09] Oh, I had an answer.

John Dehlin [01:42:10] How conscious was it?

Michele Seamons [01:42:11] I was an evangelist Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:42:12] Okay, so you were just synthesizing.

Michele Seamons [01:42:14] Oh, I just announced myself. I would just announce myself to my friends and to my acquaintances. I'm an evangelical Mormon.

Margi Dehlin [01:42:22] Because there's that flare again.

Mike Seamons [01:42:24] She's not a normal Mormon.

Michele Seamons [01:42:26] All the rest of the Mormons are going, oh, my gosh, this makes me so uncomfortable.

John Dehlin [01:42:30] Would you have framed it as something isn't working in the church or just that you're supplementing with something else at the. The time?

Mike Seamons [01:42:38] I don't think in Redmond, I hadn't quite. It hadn't broken.

Michele Seamons [01:42:41] Yeah, it hadn't quite broken. And then while we were in Redmond at this time, we had the grand idea to apply to be in the

Mike Seamons [01:42:49] Nauvoo pageant in 2012.

Michele Seamons [01:42:53] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:42:53] Back when there were pageants.

Michele Seamons [01:42:54] Yes. Back in the.

Mike Seamons [01:42:55] Well, they still do the Nauvoo Pageant.

Michele Seamons [01:42:57] You have to apply and, you know, the best of the best get chosen. They're looking for people that are fitting the mold and will dress up like pioneers for two weeks. When we explain to our kids, this will cost us what a Disney. The best Disney vacation will cost for two weeks in Nauvoo. What do you want to do? Nauvoo.

John Dehlin [01:43:21] They wanted Nauvoo.

Michele Seamons [01:43:22] Yeah, we trained them really good. Yeah, we trained them really good.

John Dehlin [01:43:26] What year is this?

Mike Seamons [01:43:27] About 2012.

Michele Seamons [01:43:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:43:29] 2012.

Mike Seamons [01:43:29] Yeah. I was four years into being a bishop. It was the first time I. I ever had a beard ever in my life.

John Dehlin [01:43:35] Okay, wait.

Mike Seamons [01:43:36] I had a beard as a bishop because I was in the novel pageant. I had a beard card from the pageant director.

John Dehlin [01:43:43] Did you play someone specific?

Mike Seamons [01:43:44] No, we were in the cast. We were a family cast.

John Dehlin [01:43:47] Okay. Okay.

Mike Seamons [01:43:48] Yeah. We didn't.

Mike Responds to Michele's Evangelical Exploration

John Dehlin [01:43:49] Let me. Let me ask, Bishop Siemens, how did you feel seeing your wife flirt with evangelical Christianity? Were you nervous? Were you excited?

Mike Seamons [01:44:01] You know, were you disturbed? I loved how it lit her up. Because at this point, you know, I mean, poor woman has followed me all over the country trying to, you know, to be. To figure out how to make money. And, you know, here, now we're in Redmond, and, like, I just wanted her to thrive. I wanted her to. I knew that she was holding what you've identified as the wound. She was holding something that at some point was either going to blow up and my whole life would be blown up, or at some point it was going to find a place to start to change.

Mike Seamons [01:44:38] And so when she found Christian music, I was like, she's lit. Like this is really lighting her up. And she comes in from listening to it, feeling a connection. Like the wonder in the awe was flowing again. It didn't flow a lot in Ohio. Our life was just too chaos. And so it was flowing again. And I'm like, bring it on. Like, that was. I saw nothing concerning because it was like bigger Jesus, you know, like beautiful stories. I would actually sit in the. I'd go to the concerts with her because I love music. And I would take notes in the intermissions.

Michele Seamons [01:45:13] Because you also get preaching.

Mike Seamons [01:45:14] Yeah, there's like.

Michele Seamons [01:45:15] There's for sure preaching.

Mike Seamons [01:45:17] And I would take notes on how to pastor in the Mormon Church more kind of. With more openness and a bigger Jesus kind of pastoral character.

Michele Seamons [01:45:26] So we are adopting. We don't maybe realize it, but we're adopting some softer doctrine. And I think that when we were given so much access to the youth in this area, the youth loved it. The youth loved it.

Margi Dehlin [01:45:44] I'm sure.

Michele Seamons [01:45:45] So our home was full of kids,

John Dehlin [01:45:48] by the way we speak. A.B. griffin. If these walls could speak.

Michele Seamons [01:45:52] I met her. I told her that she's the background music to my life. I love her.

John Dehlin [01:45:58] You that. I'm sorry.

Margi Dehlin [01:45:59] The thing that's super interesting about it, too, for me is that it seems like it has the ability to change your energy state.

Michele Seamons [01:46:09] Oh, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:46:09] Like where you were really restrictive and kind of evaluative of yourself. And also.

Michele Seamons [01:46:17] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:46:18] You know, your partner.

Michele Seamons [01:46:19] Oh, yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:46:19] That it's like widening you, softening you as you listen. Right. Would you say that?

Michele Seamons [01:46:26] Oh, 100%.

Margi Dehlin [01:46:27] Which kind of reminds me of your story in high school where you made the shrine in your bedroom and you were trying to have experiences that allowed you to feel kind of that awe and that now you have your own form of that.

Michele Seamons [01:46:45] And we were pretty dynamic.

John Dehlin [01:46:47] There's a grace element to evangelical Christianity that Mormonism can lack.

Michele Seamons [01:46:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:46:52] Right. Or not.

Michele Seamons [01:46:53] Oh, a thousand percent. And we became so warm. I think not everyone knew the whole why, but people trusted us. Not only our peers, but people older than us. And so we had a listening ear and they gave us access.

Margi Dehlin [01:47:15] I would imagine that's true.

Michele Seamons [01:47:17] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:47:17] Yeah. They could sense it.

Michele Seamons [01:47:19] Yeah. We were alive.

John Dehlin [01:47:20] And weirdly, the Mormon church in 2026 is totally moving hard in this direction. But you were ahead of the curve for sure.

Mike Seamons [01:47:29] When you say heading in which direction?

John Dehlin [01:47:31] Well, they're putting a statue of Jesus holding. Holding a cross.

Mike Seamons [01:47:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:47:36] And Mormon youth. And Mormon young adults are wearing crosses.

Michele Seamons [01:47:40] Oh, yeah, I was wearing a cross,

John Dehlin [01:47:41] but that was forbidden when I was growing up.

Michele Seamons [01:47:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:47:45] So, I mean, you're a bit ahead of the curve there.

Mike Seamons [01:47:48] Yeah, well, because we had six kids who were starting, you know, so I was released as a bishop in 2013. So I was a bishop for five years, 2008 to 2013.

Michele Seamons [01:47:58] Our oldest son is on a mission

Mike Seamons [01:47:59] in Chile when I was released. Yeah. And we kind of had this moment where we were like, okay, this is one of our. One of our challenges.

Michele Seamons [01:48:11] Welcome to the wild.

Mike Seamons [01:48:12] We just like to do really unusual things. And so this is. Maybe Margi will point to Michele and say, this is another one of her edges. But maybe I inspired it a bit. I was kind of at a place in Microsoft where I was like, I don't know if I can keep doing. Microsoft was not lighting me up. I was feeling it was a. A negative culture, and it was part of this. The CEO brought a lot of negativity, and at least to me.

John Dehlin [01:48:36] What, Steve Ballmer?

Michele Seamons [01:48:37] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:48:37] He was tough. He was tough. And I.

John Dehlin [01:48:40] And he's in the news now, by the way.

Mike Seamons [01:48:41] Oh, yeah, The Clippers just.

John Dehlin [01:48:43] He just got. He just got banned for a year from the Los Angeles Clippers.

Mike Seamons [01:48:47] You can't go to the games.

John Dehlin [01:48:49] He can't. Yeah. I can't do anything for fraud.

Michele Seamons [01:48:51] He's a rough guy.

Mike Seamons [01:48:52] Oh, for fraud. I mean, basically not for being an excessive cheer for fraud. Huh?

John Dehlin [01:48:56] Yeah. And I. I worked with Ballmer. I. I presented with him. So I. I knew him as well. Very intense. That Microsoft culture was as intense and as toxic.

Mike Seamons [01:49:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:49:06] As a culture can be.

Michele Seamons [01:49:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:49:08] And that's partly why we were trying to balance it. Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:49:10] So we had a grand idea.

John Dehlin [01:49:11] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:49:12] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:49:13] Being a bishop, a Mormon bishop, and intense with six kids. That's a lot. Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:49:18] Yeah, it was. And I was like, I have gotten. Got to reset and. And so I had this dream of kind of went back to my living on. In the mountains. I was like, let's be commercial farmers.

John Dehlin [01:49:30] What? What?

Michele Seamons [01:49:32] Because. Why not?

Mike Seamons [01:49:32] I had a cousin who has a very successful farm up in Canada, 5,000 acres. He does cows and he does crops.

Michele Seamons [01:49:40] He does everything.

Mike Seamons [01:49:41] We went up that. That fall and did harvesting with him. I drove combines and harvest. Harvested white northern beans. And it was magical. Like the Feeling was flowing. It was so, like immersive of this is life. And I said to her, I said, let's sell everything and buy a 5,000 acre farm and let's go learn how to raise cattle and crops.

John Dehlin [01:50:07] You made it, so let's mess it up.

Michele Seamons [01:50:09] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:50:10] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:50:10] It's like once you have a full foothold, leave the foothold.

Michele Seamons [01:50:14] And we're obviously not afraid of burning it to the ground and rising it up again.

Mike Seamons [01:50:19] So Michele was the one that dialed it down.

Michele Seamons [01:50:22] I did dial it down.

Mike Seamons [01:50:23] I went like, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do it at 10. And she said, how about if we do it at two?

Michele Seamons [01:50:28] Yeah. So we bought a farm just out on the border of Redmond, Washington, in a place called Duval, Washington, right on the Snoqualmie River. The most picturesque valley I can imagine. It was beautiful. 15 acres. And we were going to live both the lives. Now we're going to manage both farming and Microsoft.

Mike Seamons [01:50:55] But the farming wasn't going to pay the bills. I would still work at Microsoft, but the farm became her kind of. This was her dream of. She wanted to use a farm to grow. She'd always grown all the fruits and vegetables of our life. And this was her saying, I think I can do this commercially. Like, I'll start, you know, contributing to the back end with farm goods. And it was this. We had this amazing. This piece of property was breathtaking. Like, you would just look out our kitchen windows and see the Cascade Mountains and the sun rising over it over a river valley that was our backyard. And, you know, and we just said,

Margi Dehlin [01:51:37] so awe every day.

Mike Seamons [01:51:39] This is constant awe. Like it really, that's all. Like, we bought it on a feeling. We didn't buy it on anything.

Michele Seamons [01:51:46] High schoolers from Redmond High and said, here we go. We're going to the country.

John Dehlin [01:51:50] Different stake?

Mike Seamons [01:51:51] No, same stake, different ward. What was the ward?

Michele Seamons [01:51:54] So the stake was.

Mike Seamons [01:51:55] But I was released as a bishop and now I was moving across the stake to the Duval ward and. And we'd be in the same stake, just a different ward. Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:52:03] And the stake pivoted and called us to stake callings.

John Dehlin [01:52:08] What was yours?

Michele Seamons [01:52:09] So I was actually the young women's president in the Duval Ward, but in our stake callings, we were the high adventure girls leaders. Best calling in the church ever. Best. Because it's like, oh, yeah, all the scout camps and all the things you've missed. We're gonna go do it, girls. We are gonna go on whitewater rafting. We're gonna go in the ape caves. We're gonna go climb mountains.

Margi Dehlin [01:52:35] Can I say I've never heard of that calling.

Michele Seamons [01:52:37] Oh, it's the best.

Margi Dehlin [01:52:39] Is that universal or is that because that area is cool? Or maybe agitated.

Michele Seamons [01:52:46] The juniors going into their senior year, we're having this four day, three day, four days.

Mike Seamons [01:52:52] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:52:53] Amazing experience.

John Dehlin [01:52:54] This is wealthy Mormonism.

Mike Seamons [01:52:56] Yeah. I mean, we still had the same crazy budgets as everybody else for girls we fundraised.

Michele Seamons [01:53:00] Great. Yeah, it was great. And they. We had no supervision. Like, literally, like, whatever you want to do, do it.

Margi Dehlin [01:53:09] So is this young woman age?

Michele Seamons [01:53:11] Yeah. So women, senior, junior, senior to their senior year. So very pivotal time for these girls. And they know who they are, and it was awesome. And then we got called as the missionary.

Mike Seamons [01:53:26] They called it the high school senior fireside, or that's what we called it. It was mission prep.

Michele Seamons [01:53:31] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:53:31] And we were like, look, if we're gonna get everyone, like, we want everyone to go to this. And if we call it mission prep, only people that want to go on missions will go. If we call it the high school senior fireside, we'll get all the high school seniors to go. And so we turned it into this. Like, it was a ritual, you know, that we taught once a monthly or monthly. Monthly. And we would gather all the seniors and we had them for two hours. Nobody ever came to, like, see what we were doing. And we created a place for these kids to come and to just bring all of their questions and all of their excitement for life and for God.

Mike Seamons [01:54:11] And I mean, it was almost like a young life gathering. Like, it was very. It was very different in the middle of it. Like, we'd spend the first half teaching the missionary discussion, helping them see this

Michele Seamons [01:54:21] is what they didn't know what they were being taught, but that's what we were teaching.

Mike Seamons [01:54:25] And in the middle, she did a cooking class and it was like a TV show where she would be. She would bring, you know, the seniors up to help her prepare a meal that they could cook. You know, when they're in college, it's food involved.

Michele Seamons [01:54:38] And they're thinking, oh, this is preparing us for the next step in our life where we actually have to provide for ourselves and cook. And so we made really simple ingredient, you know, things that they would eat and we would. Then the second half was role playing, role play. And we would mix up the boys and the girls.

Mike Seamons [01:54:56] We made them role play with each other. And it was really fun.

Michele Seamons [01:54:59] And they loved it.

Margi Dehlin [01:55:00] It was really creative.

Mike Seamons [01:55:02] They loved it. It was like almost dating.

Michele Seamons [01:55:05] So this steak it was a really fun. And we did that for a couple years.

Mike Seamons [01:55:10] Yeah, we did. We did three years of senior fireside and three years of young women's high adventure, which it was awesome.

Margi Dehlin [01:55:16] Those are original calling.

Michele Seamons [01:55:18] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:55:18] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:55:19] And we're thriving on the farm and our community.

Mike Seamons [01:55:21] And she's becoming more evangelical. Like, she's now gone from music to podcasts.

Michele Seamons [01:55:25] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:55:26] And she's. And she is.

John Dehlin [01:55:28] Rob Bell.

Michele Seamons [01:55:29] I'm getting there.

John Dehlin [01:55:30] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [01:55:33] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:55:33] In this season, I was still pretty certain she had released a lot of her certainty because she's like, look, there's too much of this that is not helping my children. It's not helping me. It was in this timeframe in 2015, that our. So we had our oldest son, went on a mission. He went to Chile and served a mission. Didn't talk much about it. Came home and kind of. He was, okay, I'm ready to keep going. Byu, then Mission, then back to byu, found a girl that he married. You know, so he was kind of doing our. Our path. Trying to do our path.

Cracks Begin to Show in the Ideal Mormon Life

Michele Seamons [01:56:10] Yes.

Mike Seamons [01:56:10] Our second. Well, that's what he should do, too, right? Like, you know, BYU mission. You know, back from mission, marry somebody in the temple. And he. He said he trusted us enough to let us push him onto a mission.

Michele Seamons [01:56:26] Right.

Mike Seamons [01:56:26] Right out of high school and senior

Michele Seamons [01:56:28] in high school with him.

Mike Seamons [01:56:29] But he only lasted, like, three months where he said not even that. This is not.

Michele Seamons [01:56:32] I think, a month, maybe two.

Mike Seamons [01:56:34] He did the MTC plus, like a month in the field.

Michele Seamons [01:56:37] Houston, Texas.

John Dehlin [01:56:38] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:56:38] And he said, I can't do it. And I didn't have a place to process that. Like, what do you mean you can't do it? Like, this is not even an option. Like, you do it. And he came home, and I'll never forget, we sat with him the first evening of him being home. Like, we went and picked him up at the airport. We drove him home in silence. We didn't even. Like, we hugged him and we told him we loved him, but he knew we were not happy with this. Like, this was. This was weakness exposed.

Mike Seamons [01:57:09] And we sat him down and we said, you have 90 days to figure yourself out. 90 days. And we think you should actually, in 90 days, be back in the mission field. But if that's not what you choose, here are the resources that we'll give you. And it was the beginning of a total meltdown of this child.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:27] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:57:28] And he was a really good kid.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:31] Let's. This is. I'm on the edge of my chair. Let's use this as A cliffhanger for part three.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:38] See what he's doing.

John Dehlin [01:57:39] Part two will be, you know, becoming the perfect Mormon family. Part one was the perfect Mormon childhoods. Part two is becoming the perfect Mormon family. You're about to become a man member of a stake presidency, right?

Michele Seamons [01:57:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:57:52] And so part three is going to be the unraveling of the perfect Mormon family. In air quotes or something. Whatever it is. Yeah. Let's have this be the cliffhanger. Is that okay?

Mike Seamons [01:58:01] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:58:03] Well, this has been amazing. I'm just loving. This is like old school Mormon stories where you go six hours and you just let someone tell their full story.

Margi Dehlin [01:58:14] He's going like long, long.

John Dehlin [01:58:16] I'm loving it. So thank you so much, Mike and Michele Siemens for everything you've shared so far and I can't wait to hear the next part. And Margi, it's so lovely to have you. This is the end of part two of our three part series with Mike and Michele Siemens. Hope you've enjoyed it. Thanks to all the donors that make this possible. If you want to support us and you value this type of content, mormonstories.org donate is where you become a monthly donor. Please like and subscribe and share. Please comment. Email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you want to apply to be on the show. MormonStories.org apply is how you apply.

Closing Remarks and Preview of Part Three

John Dehlin [01:58:54] And please don't go away. Come right back for part three, which we will share immediately on the livestream or wherever in the feed because you'll get to hear. How does it happen that the ideal six children, bishop, you know, young women's president, eventually Stake presidency, Microsoft Mormon family experiences some challenges and it sounds like it begins with some Christian Amy Grant music

Michele Seamons [01:59:26] opening the door and a son

John Dehlin [01:59:27] who comes home early from his mission. So don't go away. Come right back. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other and we'll see you again for part three of our series with Mike and Michele Siemens on Mormon Stories podcast. Don't go away.

Michele Seamons [01:59:42] Hi.

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