Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Co-host: Gerardo Sumano
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introduction and Episode Overview
John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is February 23, 2023, and we are one day after what I think was a really epic Mormon Stories podcast interview on the United States Sec or Security and Exchange Commission releasing a order or a statement in conjunction with the LDS Church or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, where the Mormon Church settled to pay $5 million in conjunction with Ensign Peak Advisors, which is one of the Mormon Church's investment arms, where they basically admit to fraud and deception for several decades led by the LDS Church First Presidency. It was not planned, but I guess in some ways it's not a surprise that the episode that we bumped from yesterday to today to make room for yesterday's episode also has to do with deception within the Mormon Church. This episode could have lots of names, but it's something to do with a current active Mormon bishop in Mexico speaking out about the Mormon Church using misleading statistics for the church, specifically within the area of Mexico. But we're also going to be talking a little bit more about South America and at least Brazil. And I know Chile had minimum and probably the Philippines all apply here. But the point is, we've talked about the church and its deception with child abuse, hiding child abuse. We've talked about it with the Boy Scouts of America yesterday, we talked about it with its investments in Ensign Peak. Right now we're going to talk about deception regarding again, it's reporting of membership statistics across the world and in this case also ministering or visiting teaching. And I won't give this away. I will say that this is a special Mormon Stories episode in that there's only a few times in the history of Mormon Stories that we have a currently sitting bishop actually interviewing on the podcast. And Bill Real is the first. And I can't remember if he's the only currently sitting Mormon Bishop that we've ever had. But today we're going to make a new record in the sense that we have again, a currently serving Mormon bishop in Mexico who I guess listens to Mormon Stories podcast and cares enough about honesty and truth and integrity that he's willing to risk being identified to come on the Mormon Stories podcast and talk about his experiences here. Before we introduce our bishop, or Obispo, as I'll call him, I will welcome my co host for today, Gerardo Sumano. Hey, Gerardo.
Meet the Anonymous Mexican Bishop
Gerardo Sumano [00:02:54] Hi, John. Hi, everyone.
John Dehlin [00:02:55] Gerardo, you helped set this up and produce it, right?
Gerardo Sumano [00:02:59] Yeah. So the bishop contacted me as he contacted you, and when some of the stuff we're going to talk about was taking place. You know, he was asked to change some numbers and stuff like that. And so we've been in contact and we decided to prepare a presentation about some interesting stuff on church statistics.
John Dehlin [00:03:20] Yeah, well, thanks for. Thanks for helping to make this happen.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:03:23] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:03:23] And this is particularly personal to you why?
Gerardo Sumano [00:03:26] I'm from Mexico.
John Dehlin [00:03:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this. And by the way, it's not like we're going, hey, world, share us, you know, share us stories about dishonesty within the Mormon Church. That's. That's not what I do. Is that what you do? Like, we are literally so jam packed between LDS discussions and, and just breaking news stories and then our weekly long form faith journey interviews, we're slammed. So, like, when a story like this comes to us, it's literally not because we're fishing for it. It's literally not because we're trying to make the church look bad. It's literally because a Mormon bishop in Mexico reaches out and says something dishonest and shady is going on and I think we should speak up about it. Right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:04:09] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:04:10] Is that true?
Gerardo Sumano [00:04:10] That's true.
John Dehlin [00:04:11] Yeah. Yeah. So without any further ado, let's introduce the currently serving active Mormon bishop from Mexico, who I may lovingly call Obispo, which is bishop in Spanish. Welcome, Obispo, to Mormon Stories podcast.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:04:32] Hi, Jen. Thank you. It is a great honor to be here with you. And as I mentioned before, this is like a surreal experience to be here with you, to be connected with Gerardo, with you and the rest of the team. So thanks for the invitation and for. For accepting to hear my story and what I had to say. And as you just mentioned, it is not like you are looking for dishonesty. It just, I think it comes to you as well. Sadly, I think it is something more common that we would like to think within the church.
John Dehlin [00:05:01] Well, thank you for coming on. I guess we should mention that you're not showing your face and you're not using your real name. It may be obvious to many, but why don't you just go and tell us why in a situation like yours, you might be afraid to use your real name or your image.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:05:18] Yeah, absolutely. So there are some obvious reasons why. The first one, as you mentioned, is that I am still currently serving as a bishop in Mexico. So I would like to get some privacy on that. And also because there are going to be. I mean, people is going to find out that I eventually. I mean, this is not a secret podcast. Right? That's the reason why it is a podcast, so eventually people is gonna find out that someone participated or whatever. So I just want to have that kind of privacy for my family, for my extended family, for my parents who are truly Mormons. Sometimes, you know, people is harsh when they. Members talking about church members. They are. They can be a little bit harsh or way too harsh sometimes with people who are like activists or whatever, or they are just pointing at something that they think is not correct. So that is one of the reasons. And the other reason is that, well, the reason why I have decided to remain a bishop is because I feel like there's still some good that I can do to the people in my ward, in my community by being a bishop. So there are still some people that I still feel like I need to close some of those cycles of helping and getting some help to them. So I wouldn't like to have that chance affected because I am participating in the podcast. So that's pretty much the reason why I'm not currently showing my face and my name. And also because, you know, sometimes participating in podcasts like Mom Stories, can take your Stake presidency or any other top leaders in the church to like, open a case against you and probably, like, I don't know, having a membership council or something like that. So that. That would pretty much summarize why I'm not showing my face right now.
John Dehlin [00:07:09] Okay. So, I mean, I guess there's a paradox there because on the one hand, you're wanting to maintain some privacy and some confidentiality, you're wanting to avoid punishment or excommunication, but you're also saying if I heard you right, you realize there's a. There's a chance that your voice is going to be recognized and that you're going to be called out about this. Is that right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:07:35] Yeah, I know there's a risk on that, and I am fully aware of that, and I am willing to take that risk because there are some things that I think are more important to be spoken out than whatever risk you can face. So I am just trying to, like, measure that risk not being too risky. But of course I know that there's a risk, and I am. I am completely, like, open to that. I mean.
John Dehlin [00:08:01] Right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:08:02] I know there's a possibility. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:08:03] Right. Okay, let me just really quickly ask you, without sharing stuff that will identify you or do you want to tell us anything about your. Your upbringing or, you know, I'm. I'm specifically interested in how. How would an active Mormon bishop, and especially an active Mormon bishop in Mexico Become a Mormon Stories podcast listener without revealing things that might get you into trouble. Is there anything you want to share about your story that just would give us an idea of how that happens? Because I'm just honestly curious.
Background: An Active Bishop Discovers Mormon Stories
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:08:44] Absolutely, John. So I just want to tell you that I hope that sometime in the future, someday in the future, when I feel ready, I can share my, my full story with you in one Mormon podcast episode. So we can further discuss that later. But yes, just to give a quick summary. Well, one of the reasons is that as you can hear, I am fluent in English, so I have access to many, many information that is not available in Spanish. So when you are interested in church history, when you're interested in learning more about the church where you were like raised, then I have to say that I was born in the Covenant. My parents are converts to the church. They both converted when they were single. They met each other in the church, in institute activities and all that. They ended up getting married. And a few months later, or almost a year later, I was born. So I have been a church active member since the beginning. I attended seminary, I attended institute, I served a full time mission in Mexico. I have served as an elder school president, I have served as a high councilor, I have served now as a bishop, and I have had many other callings, ward clerk and some other callings. And I am not that old, right? I am in my early 30s. And I think for me the church was like my whole life, my whole way of seeing my existence. And the reason why I ended up like finding Mormon Stories podcast was because I had some close people, like mission friends and other relatives that were like starting to having some questions regarding church history. So, you know, as a really faithful, true believing Mormon with strong testimony, you feel like nothing can change that. So I started like, yeah, I'm gonna be like investigating, I'm gonna be researching whatever topic they bring to me and I'm gonna prove them wrong and I'm gonna prove that is true and all that. And well, to make the long story short, in 2018, I ended up like I had already read the gospel topic essays in English because in Spanish are shorter than in English. So you have less information in Spanish than what you have in English.
John Dehlin [00:11:04] I didn't know about that.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:11:05] That's something that you have to note. It is not the same information available for you in the US or the UK or any English speaking country than what we have in Mexico or in any Latin American country or whatever country which is not an English speaking country. So that's something really interesting to point at. So in 2018, I started having my own questions and doubts. And as a true believing Mormon, I started fasting and praying and reading my scriptures more and trying to find more answers. And I was in that process of trying to find those answers when one day my stake president called. I was at that time a high Councilor, and he extended me the calling to serve as a bishop. And from my perspective at the time, I felt like that was my answer from God. Right. I was having doubts and questions regarding many, many different issues and topics. And then your leader calls and says that he has been approved by the First Presidency, by the prophet seers and revelators to extend you that calling as a bishop. And. And for me, as a true believing Mormon or someone who was trying to continue believing in the church, that was my answer. Right? That was like, well, God has been calling me to serve as a bishop, so I'm going to leave my net, which would be, I don't know, the CES letter and the Gospel topic essays and Mormon Stories podcast, and I will serve as a bishop. And it was in this process, in 2020, after a couple of years serving as a bishop, that I was talking to my brother about the second anointing. And I have to tell you, being completely honest, I was skeptical about second anointment. So I was researching about second anointment one day at night in my cell phone, and I ended up finding the. The episode that you have where you interviewed Tom Phillips.
John Dehlin [00:13:00] Phillips, yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:13:01] Yeah. So I ended up, like, listening to that episode. And in that moment, I realized, okay, second annoyment. Second annoyment is true. And at that moment, let's say that I became a fan of Mormon Stories podcast. So that was the moment that I started, like, listening to more of your podcasts and all that, getting more information. And at that time, I also found RFM and Build Real. And a few months later, they started Mormonism Live. And I started, like, following Mormonism Live. And all of a sudden I was immersed in this, like, community, which has been quite interesting for me.
John Dehlin [00:13:40] So did I. Did I understand it right, Obispo, that you listened to the Mormon Stories Tom Phillips episode while you were serving as bishop?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:13:51] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:13:51] And you became Mormonism Live and a Radio Free Mormon fan while you're serving as a Mormon bishop in Mexico?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:14:01] Yes, that's correct.
John Dehlin [00:14:02] Wow, that's. I mean, that's super cool and interesting. And I'm sure it's not totally rare, right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:14:09] I don't think it is rare. Actually. I have been approached by Mexican friends and even by members of my ward who has the same questions that I used to have and who are struggling with the same issues regarding church history regarding. Well, all of the information that you're full aware of and the leadership and many other issues that, that we already know. Right. So it is something common. It's more common that we think of
John Dehlin [00:14:36] because Bishop or Obispo like Gerardo and I have talked a lot about this. We're always stunned that in 2023, 90%, 95% of an active Mormon ward in, in Utah will never have heard of Radio Free Mormon or the CES letter or Mormon stories or any of this stuff because the church has such a powerful control on information. And it's just always been my assumption. And Gerardo, I'm pretty sure you share it, but you can speak for yourself. It's always been my understanding or assumption, I guess, that in Latin American countries and Filipino countries, almost nobody knows about problems with the Church's truth claims, anything about the gospel topics, essays, anything. And certainly not anything about English speaking, you know, progressive or post Mormon podcasts. And so that's something that I'm just curious to learn about is just the penetration rate within either Latin American countries or Mexico specifically around historical problems about the church.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:15:45] Well, I think it has risen since they launched the Saints books.
John Dehlin [00:15:50] Interesting Saints, yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:15:53] Because you know, there are many topics that they address in Saints like polygamy or the Book of Abraham or some other historical facts that are mostly hidden from the correlated church history. So when people start reading that, they start questioning some things. And I think that most of the access that people here in Mexico has to church history and when they start like questioning many things is through the gospel topic essays, which as I have mentioned are condensed, are like summarized from what you have in English. And also with Saints, I have heard many people and many, well, quite a few friends who have started reading Saints and they just stop because they start being like confused. And you know how in the church you are taught that whenever you have that sense of confusion or when you are not feeling like what we call the Holy Ghost, then you should stop doing that. So many people stop and they. I actually have one member recently telling me that he stopped like researching, reading the essays and reading Saints because he didn't want his relationship with God to be like to be affected by this information. So that's the way TVM people looks at that. Right? Like if they are not well with the church, then that means that they are not well with God, which I can disagree on that, but that's how people looks. But answering your question, it is definitely the essays which are available in Spanish and saints, which all the books of saints are now available in Spanish too.
Gerardo Sumano [00:17:32] Bishop, would you say that, I mean, on some of our slides we're going to mention that you currently reside on the northern part of Mexico. It is my believe that the northern you are in Mexico. I mean, you have the more access you have to English, so you understand more people understand and speak English, but the more south you go of Mexico, you know, Oaxaca, even Yucatan, the, like people know less and less English. So then the access of information is a lot lower. So would you say that, would you say that that's true and because of the access you have to the language, then you have access to more information in the areas where you, where you live in?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:18:18] Absolutely. Yeah, that's completely true. And even here in northern Mexico, people who are like, who doesn't speak English or who didn't have the same educational opportunities is less, it is less likely for them to find this information, Right? Absolutely.
Gerardo Sumano [00:18:36] Or even accept it because, you know, you can present it to them and translated, but they don't have access to understand what are sources, how to identify good sources, or even believe that they're coming right from the church, that kind of stuff. So they're more likely to believe conspiracies and stuff like that too.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:19:00] Yeah. And for example, yesterday I was speaking to some friends from my mission and we were discussing about the accident situation that you, you are fully aware of. And, and then I mentioned that they were using shell companies. And then one of them was saying like, hey, we were not talking about shell companies. I was like, of course that what, that's what this is about. I mean, it's not about how much money the church has. It's more about how they made those efforts to hide that money and to hide those funds and, and not being transparent. Right. And then it was a WhatsApp conversation. So it was many of us writing in that chat, and after like five to 10 minutes, the same person just replied like, oh, well, that happens in the best families and enterprises. So that doesn't change my testimony and the opinion that I have on church leaders and all that.
Gerardo Sumano [00:19:56] So
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:19:59] you're completely true on that.
John Dehlin [00:20:01] So basically, one can do apologetics in, in English or Spanish, apparently.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:20:06] Absolutely, absolutely. But I mean, I can tell you doing apologetics is just exhausting. I mean, the more you find information and the more you have to do those mental gymnastics to, to make sense of that the more exhausting it becomes.
John Dehlin [00:20:22] Well, part that makes sense. And, you know, I would sit here in the United States, in Utah, and even just wonder. I think I would just assume, assume that something is technical or as specific as the securities Exchange Commission in the United States, its finances, its investments, that that would just in and of itself be too much of a barrier for any Spanish speaking person in Latin America to learn about or care about. And I know that that's probably insulting on some level or certainly not giving enough credit. So it's really interesting and kind of encouraging for me to hear that there would be WhatsApp conversations in Mexico amongst leaders in the Mormon Church in Mexico about the SEC ruling yesterday. That's. That's cool. I like that.
Gerardo Sumano [00:21:13] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:21:13] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:21:15] And also many important newspapers and media companies here in Mexico publish those news. So it has been covered. I can assure you that it has been covered here in Mexico.
John Dehlin [00:21:25] Like which, which newspapers or, or TV stations would cover the SEC ruling? With the Mormon Church, for example, I
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:21:35] remember one published from El Financiero, which is like the Financial Times in Mexico. So they are specialized in finance and they publish that, like the Mormon Church, what was fined by the SEC $5 million for hiding money and stuff like that. So what I mentioned, my friends, is that those notes were summarized. I mean, it was just like one paragraph, but they mentioned that and it was on the media.
John Dehlin [00:22:02] Yeah, well, I, I'm constant. Every month someone says, hey, why, why is it Mormon stories translated into Spanish or Portuguese or whatever? And it's. It's something that I really wish we could figure out how to do, but we only have so much of a budget, you know, and time. But anyway, this is super interesting. Obispo, thank you so much. All right, so maybe let's go next, if you, if you're okay with talking about why an actively serving Mormon bishop would want to be a whistleblower, you know, and a lot of people are going to, you know, if you do this, whistleblowers are often accused of hating the organization, of trying to destroy the organization, of trying to tear it down, of being mean or evil or bad. So if you want, just take a minute to just explicitly explain specifically to the Saints in Mexico why you would want to be a whistleblower, even as an active, actively serving Mormon bishop.
Why the Bishop Decided to Speak Out
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:23:09] Yes, John. So I think this is one of the most repeated lines in your podcast. But I'd like the church to do better. That's mostly the reason why. It's not because I hate the organization. I love the organization. My experience with the church overall has been good, so I just like them to do better. Right. And that's pretty much the reason why. And the other reason why, because I had already discussed with my wife many times in the past, like, hey, I would like to be in Mormon Stories podcast once I'm released as a bishop, like, probably in the future, later. And the reason why I decided to contact you while serving as a sitting bishop is because this situation became more personal than general. So when you are asked to do something which you don't feel like it is correct, then that's when something changes inside you. And in my case, that made me take that next step to contact you.
John Dehlin [00:24:09] So I relate to that. It was on my mission in Guatemala, ironically, where I was asked to do things that. That really violated my conscience, and that's led to where we are now. So I relate to it even in Spanish. So. Okay, Obispo. So why don't you tell us a bit of the background about, you know, some of us who haven't been to church in a while. Remember the home teaching program or the visiting teaching program. But obviously one of the big changes now was that Monson or Nelson. Who?
The Q4 Ministering Report Pressure
Gerardo Sumano [00:24:43] Nelson.
John Dehlin [00:24:44] So Nelson made the changes to. To ministering. But why don't you back up, tell us about, you know, ministering in your ward, and then give us the background for the. The story that you want to tell.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:24:59] Absolutely, John. So to give you some background, before 2018, we used to have the home teaching program and all that. And, well, church members or ward members were assigned as companionships and they should visit some families in the ward and what you were. And just to give context to the people who is probably never Mormons or some people who hasn't been to church or has never been into leadership positions in the church, everything is reported, right? So every three months, every quarter, you have to fill in a quarterly report of your word with your statistics, and you send that to the general offices of the church. Actually, right now we have a system, right? So we have an app, and you just update numbers in that app in your cell phone, and that gets completed, that gets filled into the quarterly report, and that gets shared to the general office of the church.
John Dehlin [00:25:51] That's so cool. It's on a cell phone. That's.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:25:54] It is on your cell phone.
John Dehlin [00:25:55] Yeah. Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:25:57] It is super easy to use. I mean, I have to recognize that the way that you can keep track of that information is great. Every Monday, once you have ended your sacrament meeting, you have to report attendance in that same app.
Gerardo Sumano [00:26:12] Wow.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:26:12] And you have to report attendance of each member by class, and then you mark on the list if that person by name, attended or not church each Sunday. So that's there, right? They have the resources. I mean, the church has the resources to do that. So with that context, on having to report those results every three months, and on that context, that before 2018, we used to have what we call the home teaching program. Then what you used to report on those quarterly reports were, how many visits is each companionship doing to the people or the families that they are assigned to? So each quarter, you have to say, okay, Brother Delaine and Brother Sumano, they visited three families. And then you write that down into your report. That was before 2018. Then in 2018, when they transitioned from home teaching to ministering, there were a few changes. The biggest one that was you were not assigned to visit people in their homes. You could text them, you could call them, you could go to the park with them, go jogging with them, go to the gym with them, go play soccer with them, and that would count as ministering. Right?
John Dehlin [00:27:27] Did you say that? Was that. Did you say I was pre Covid
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:27:29] or during COVID That was in 2018.
John Dehlin [00:27:32] So that was before COVID Okay, cool.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:27:35] That was two years before COVID Okay. That's the first change. So when you gave that assignment to church members, you didn't tell them, like, you have to visit these people, like, once a month. You tell them, like, this is your assignment. You have to find out, and you have to pray, and you have to decide how you're going to get in touch with them and generate a relationship with these members that you're assigned to minister. What you would report in that quarterly report would not be visits. What you would report in that quarterly report are the interviews that each elders quorum president and councilors do, that each Relief Society president and counselors do to those assigned companionships. So it changed a lot, because now you're not reporting visits, you're reporting how many interviews they do. And that gives some sort of, like, more control to church leaders, because it is easier to push your Relief Society president, who is fully engaged with the church and fully committed to the calling, or the elders quorum president, who is committed to the calling to do those interviews, to work with leaders, and then you report on those interviews. Right. So those were the biggest changes that you have. So now, each quarter, whenever they have. Whenever they do an interview, they get into that same app, and they have all the ministering assignments, and they see Brother Sumano and Brother Delin. Okay. I have interviewed them. Then I mark them a check mark. Right. And then the other couple marked. And then at the end of the quarter, you have, I don't know, let's say, 30 ministering companionships in your ward, and you interviewed the 30 of them. So you would have 100% compliance. But if you only.
Gerardo Sumano [00:29:18] So you're reporting people, basically, not reporting visits, you're reporting people. How many.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:29:24] How many people is being interviewed?
Gerardo Sumano [00:29:26] Yes. Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:29:27] And I hope that's clear enough.
John Dehlin [00:29:29] And there's, There's. And this is going to probably be a little bit repetitive. So are. Are individuals or companionships still assigned to multiple families?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:29:43] Yes, yes, that's correct.
John Dehlin [00:29:45] And. And you know, when I was growing up, you maybe had two. You had two families that you visited. I think that's how it was when I was growing up. But I know that activity rates across the world are much lower. But I also know that in Latin America, activity rates are sometimes 10 to 20% of the memberships on the records. And so how does that work in terms of how many families companionships might be assigned? Well, and forgive me if I'm making you repeat yourself or, you know, if I'm not understanding, but I'm just doing my best.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:30:24] No, no, no. It's just like, let's think of ward members as, I don't know, fruits of a tree. Right? So when the, when the fruit is completely, like, grown, it falls from the tree. So the way that it has been explained to me is that you have to minister the active membership, and then you have to go reach those who are closer to the tree, because there are going to be some. Some members that haven't been active for, I don't know, 15 years or 10 years or more. So maybe you're not going. You're not going to be ministering those who have left the church, like, 15 years ago, but you're gonna go visit or minister that person or that family who left six months ago and hasn't been back, or that person who was just about going on a mission and decided to leave. So you focus on the active ones. That 10, 20%, whatever percent that is. You try for all of them to have ministering brothers assigned, and then you select those that you feel like are closer to the tree, sort of speaking.
Gerardo Sumano [00:31:26] So when you report, report a percentage of visits or ministering interviews done, you're reporting it on the total number that you decided that you were. Let's say that you have 500 members, in a word, but only 100 are active, so. But then you're going to decide. But 120 are going to receive visits. You know, 20 are not active. 100 are active. 120 members are going to receive visits. And then when you report, the report reflects on percentage. Right. So it's like 100% of those 120 members, or, you know, 50% of those 120 members, which would be 60. Only 60 members got interviewed. Is that right? Did I get that right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:32:15] No, that's not right. Because that's the biggest change that we have from the previous program to ministering. We are not counting how many families we visit or how many families we reach. What we are counting is how many companionships are interviewed by the Relief Society presidency or the Elders Quorum presidency.
Gerardo Sumano [00:32:35] I see.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:32:36] So you end up. If you have 20 companionship in your ward, you're going to report over those 20. Right. And you have to reach them at least once a quarter.
John Dehlin [00:32:45] Wow. So we're not tracking how many visits are made or even how many families get visited. We're tracking how many companionships get interviewed by a leader to discuss their ministry. Is that right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:33:01] Exactly. That is correct. Yes.
John Dehlin [00:33:03] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:33:04] Visits anymore, John.
John Dehlin [00:33:06] So what. So what's reported is interviews of ministers.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:33:12] Exactly.
John Dehlin [00:33:13] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:33:13] Exactly.
John Dehlin [00:33:14] And let's just say. Okay. Wow, that's a. That's mind blowing.
Gerardo Sumano [00:33:20] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:33:21] That's totally huge change, Right? Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, we always hated feeling like we didn't do a hundred percent. And there are all these weird gimmicks that were always done to try and get everyone to do 100 home teaching. And it was always stupid.
Gerardo Sumano [00:33:36] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:33:36] And nobody liked feeling like they were failing, and nobody liked feeling like they were assigned people to be their friend as part of a bureaucratic system. So part of me is really glad that they've made these sorts of changes because it always sucked.
Gerardo Sumano [00:33:53] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:33:53] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [00:33:54] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:33:54] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [00:33:55] Gerardo seems a lot healthier.
John Dehlin [00:33:57] Yeah. But on the other hand, it's weird. Like, what does that tell them?
Gerardo Sumano [00:34:03] Exactly.
John Dehlin [00:34:04] Yeah. What. What were you thinking, Herodo?
Gerardo Sumano [00:34:07] Yeah. Like, if. If the number church headquarters is getting is just the number of people that were supposed to be interviewed about their ministry, you know, that that number doesn't tell you much about, really, activity rates or, you know, how many people you're bringing back doesn't really tell you much.
John Dehlin [00:34:28] It seems like that. What do you. What do you think Obispo does? Is that number even? Can you imagine how that might be useful or not?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:34:37] I think that it tells more about the leadership than the ministering Brothers. Right. Because that way you can track how committed the Elder Elders Quorum president is. So let's say that you're looking for a new bishop for your ward, and then you look at the numbers. Okay. This Elder Scorm president has been really active at ministering interviews and all that, and he could be a good candidate. So that's an extra filter, right, when you're looking for those leadership positions. So I. I think that, as I mentioned, it tells more on the leader than on the actual efforts on ministering.
Gerardo Sumano [00:35:12] That makes sense.
John Dehlin [00:35:13] And. And may. Maybe I misunderstood or maybe I didn't get the answer or maybe I missed it. Like, are fam. A certain companion. There's still companionships, right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:35:24] Yes, yes.
John Dehlin [00:35:25] And each companionship will be assigned a certain number of families, right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:35:30] Yes, that's correct.
John Dehlin [00:35:31] So in your ward, how many, on average, how many families are assigned to a companionship?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:35:39] I would say that. Let's say that we have 60 active families. So, like, 55 or close to 60 of those 60 families are assigned to a companionship.
Gerardo Sumano [00:35:53] So, like, one family per member?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:35:58] No, no, not really. No. No, no. Because you end up, like, for example, in ministering, Broad Square Elder Quorums members. So let's say that you have. I don't know, I'm gonna make up a number, 25 companionships, and then you assign them to probably, like, two families each.
Gerardo Sumano [00:36:14] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:36:14] And there you have your 50. Right. So it's two to three families on average.
Gerardo Sumano [00:36:19] Okay. Two to three families is the answer.
John Dehlin [00:36:21] Okay. Yeah, yeah. Because I know that in some. Some branches and wards in Latin America, there might be a thousand or more members of record, but only, like, a hundred people actually attending. Is that right, or not exactly.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:36:35] That's completely correct.
Gerardo Sumano [00:36:36] We're going to talk about that. Don't get ahead.
John Dehlin [00:36:38] Oh, okay. Okay. Well, are we going to talk about his ward in particular?
Gerardo Sumano [00:36:42] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:36:43] Later.
Gerardo Sumano [00:36:44] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:36:44] Okay. We won't. We won't get ahead. All right, so that's super interesting. Okay, so now that we understand the reporting, is it time to tell the. Tell this. The scandal, the story?
Stake Clerk Demands Falsified Quarterly Reports
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:36:56] Absolutely, yes.
John Dehlin [00:36:57] Okay. Take it away, Obispo.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:37:00] Well, are we showing the slides or should I just.
John Dehlin [00:37:04] Yeah, let's. Well, go ahead and get. Go ahead and set it up, and then we'll show the slide.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:37:08] Okay, perfect. So I'm just going to tell you what happened. So, a few weeks ago, it was still January 2023. By that time, you have to keep in mind that you have to send a quarterly report at the end of each quarter. So by the first week of January, I sent the quarterly report for my word. I signed it electronically and sent it to the Stake Presidency and to the General Offices. So that was closed at the beginning of January 2023.
John Dehlin [00:37:36] So you reported on fourth quarter, 2022 in January. Exactly. And that was. Those books were closed.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:37:43] Those books were closed.
John Dehlin [00:37:44] And you would have told. You would have told them what percentage of companionships were interviewed in fourth quarter of 2022 about their ministry.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:37:55] Right, exactly.
John Dehlin [00:37:56] Yes. Yeah. Okay, keep going.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:37:58] So I send that, and I thought, well, that's done.
John Dehlin [00:38:01] And what was the number? What was the number?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:38:04] It was for the Relief Society. It was almost 100%. It was 97%.
John Dehlin [00:38:10] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:38:10] And for the Elder Scorum, it was lower than 50%.
John Dehlin [00:38:13] Okay, bienho armanos no tanto para los hombres. Right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:38:18] Like, exactly. Yes.
John Dehlin [00:38:20] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:38:20] And that's common, right? I mean, that's what happens in Mexico. Like, the ones that minister or home teach or whatever are the sisters, and the brothers are not that good at it.
John Dehlin [00:38:30] I think in Guatemala. Decimals. Flojos.
Gerardo Sumano [00:38:35] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:38:36] What's the Mexican equivalent of the same word? Oh, yeah. Which means like soft or lazy. Lazy. Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:38:43] The lazy learners.
Gerardo Sumano [00:38:46] Okay.
John Dehlin [00:38:46] Lazy learners. Okay. Okay. So. So the. So the men were around 50%.
Gerardo Sumano [00:38:52] Less than 50.
John Dehlin [00:38:53] Less than 50. Women were. Were around 100. Okay, keep going. Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:38:57] So two weeks after sending that report, I am contacted by our estate clerk and he starts mentioning like, hey, Bishop, blah, blah, blah.
John Dehlin [00:39:09] Is this where we should show the slide? Should we show the now?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:39:12] Yeah, I think that would be okay.
John Dehlin [00:39:14] Okay, we'll show. We'll show the slide.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:39:17] Yeah, we have the screenshot of that conversation. So what the state clerk is saying is like, hi, Bishop. And he's not using any commas or periods or whatever I have to add in on this translation. But pretty much what he's saying is like, hey, can you take a look at your numbers? Because the Elder Scorum is before be below 80%. And can you make whatever changes are needed? Can you contact during the week the families that were missed in the previous quarter so that the number can be higher than 80%? Because the area Presidency is asking us that each ward has administering interview percentage higher than 80%. And I was like, probably he has misunderstood something. Probably something is not correct there. So let me.
John Dehlin [00:40:03] In fact. Hey, obese bell, let me read it. Is that okay?
Gerardo Sumano [00:40:05] Yep.
John Dehlin [00:40:06] Okay. You. You play.
Gerardo Sumano [00:40:07] You.
John Dehlin [00:40:08] I'll play the state clerk. Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:40:10] Okay. Absolutely.
John Dehlin [00:40:11] All right. So. Good morning. How are you here? I'm sending you the data for you to help with Elders Quorum and Relief Society, the area is asking to perform ministering interviews and record them in the quarterly report. Due date is next Sunday. Remember that interviews can be made by Internet, telephone, WhatsApp and also in person. Thanks for your support. So that's the request from the state clerk. Obispo, go ahead and read your answer.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:40:42] Hi, brother. Just to confirm. Just to confirm what I am understanding, do you want us to perform 100% interviews and record that data in Q4 2022 report?
John Dehlin [00:40:54] Okay. And so what you're basically saying there is, do you want us in January to complete all the uncompleted interviews? Do you want us to complete all the un. Unreported, uncommitted interviews in. In 2023 for what should have been done in 2022? You know, is that what you want us to do? Is that what you were asking?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:41:23] That's what I was asking, yes.
John Dehlin [00:41:25] Yeah, that's correct. And then go back into the system and change the fourth quarter reports for. For interviews that happened in 2023.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:41:38] Right, exactly.
John Dehlin [00:41:40] Okay. And then I'll read. I'll go ahead.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:41:43] It was like backfiling whatever happened, right?
John Dehlin [00:41:46] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:41:48] Backdating the interviews.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:41:50] Yeah, back then. That's the correct word. Yes.
John Dehlin [00:41:52] And then I'll read what the state clerk wrote. He wrote 80% is enough. And yes, please record those on Q4 2022. So that's pretty explicit. That's the state clerk saying, fudge, you know, perform. Perform the interviews in the current calendar year. But go back and fudge the records in Q4 and update them to look like those interviews happened last year for some arbitrary goal of 80% that the area president was. Was wanting to share up. The line is. Am I getting that right, Obispo?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:42:31] That's correct. Yes.
John Dehlin [00:42:32] Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [00:42:33] And just to explain, just really quick, area presidency in Mexico, they are seen as a represent. Representative of the first presidency. Like bishops stick presidents. They all have to go through this. There's no like calling to Salt Lake, you know, complaining. Yeah, you have to go through the area presidency usually and you know, area presidency there who represent the first presidency. In Mexico, there's three of them. They're all from the first quorum of the 70.
John Dehlin [00:43:04] There's three area representatives or three presidencies, three area presidents. Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:43:12] It is like any church presidency where you have a president and two counselors. So it is the same. Right. So you would have your area president who is in charge of like presiding of the area and then he has two people who helps to councillors. So and those three guys are part of the first or second quarter of the 70s and obese.
John Dehlin [00:43:29] I'm just curious, are these people kind of like celebrities within Mexico? Would you as. As Obispo as a bishop, would you know the name of your area president? Would you actually know him personally or have seen him in other contexts? Or would they just be random suits, just names of people you'd never heard of before?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:43:52] Well, for fully committed church members, of course, you know your area president name. If you have had any, like, leadership calling, it is the fact that you have seen him probably not shaking his hand, but you have seen him like preach or at any training or any other meeting, you have seen the area president. So they are somewhat close to people. In my case, I have with our current area president. I met him personally before he was called as an air presidency area president. Sorry. He was a counselor to the former area president, and I had the chance to know him, greet him. We had a conversation. I can tell you that time. My perspective of him is that he is not a bad person. I mean, he's not like the kind of people that you would say that is mean or whatever. He was loving. He was kind. At the moment, I just want to make that clear. Right. It's not like you're seeing an evil, egotistical person there. Right.
John Dehlin [00:44:48] Yeah. And we always like to say on Mormon stories, it's systems, not people. We are never trying to really target people individually. Almost in every case, my brother, I have. I have people close to me that have met with apostles and say they're all great guys, like even Packer and Bednar. I have friends that would. Or loved ones that would say they're amazing, kind, loving people. So. Yeah, we're not targeting leaders here.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:45:15] Yeah, exactly.
John Dehlin [00:45:16] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:45:17] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:45:18] Okay. And so when you receive this text from the state clerk, I'm guessing. Well, why don't you tell us what were you thinking when the. When the state clerk asks this of you as a bishop, I have to
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:45:33] tell you some context on what is happening right now in Mexico.
John Dehlin [00:45:36] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:45:37] Right now, as we are speaking, Elder Gary Gong of the Coronal of the twelve Apostles is here in Mexico. He's actually visiting some cities in northern Mexico during the weekend. And he has been to Mexico City. We actually had devotional for bishops last Sunday. So he's here. What I know, because of the information that has been shared with me from my stake presidency, is that he's gonna be checking on some numbers, deciding on some boundaries for words and stakes, and he's gonna be Here too, pretty much give, you know, the apostolic approval to that, to those changes. So what I felt at that moment is like, okay, then the area presidency wants these numbers to be higher or wants to be more than 80%, because they know that a member of the quorum of the 12 is going to come to Mexico and he's going to be directly asking them about these results. So that's the reason why they are pushing all the leadership, stake presidents, area 70s, whatever, to get these numbers up. Right. And I even contacted a friend who is right now serving as a state councilor, and he mentioned, like, well, it doesn't surprise me that they are asking that considering that Elder Gong is coming in a few weeks to Mexico.
John Dehlin [00:46:58] Yeah, yeah. And this, this hits me on a personal level. Like, I remember these arbitrary goals that my mission president would set. Like, every companionship needs to have a baptism every month. You know what I mean?
Gerardo Sumano [00:47:13] Or like, for my mission was every week.
John Dehlin [00:47:16] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:47:16] Are you sure it was every month for your mission?
John Dehlin [00:47:19] Well, there are occasion. Yeah, there would be, there would be companionships in a month that wouldn't get a baptism in my mission. And so for us, the mission president had a goal that, that for a specific month, every companionship would have a baptism. We were already getting 750amonth.
Gerardo Sumano [00:47:34] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:47:35] But he, he wanted to just try something arbitrary, which was let's make it where there isn't a companionship in the entire mission who doesn't have a baptism. And again, it's just kind of this corporate, statistical, arbitrary goals that frankly cause people to do unnatural and unhealthy things, in my opinion.
Gerardo Sumano [00:47:56] Totally.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:47:56] Exactly. And that's the point, Right. When you start putting pressure into some indicator, then people is going to be looking for ways to get to that indicator. And that's when they can lose that sense of honesty or they can probably lie to themselves and say, it's not like I'm lying. These people were actually interviewed in January, so there's no issue if I report that in December. But going back to a mission example, it would be as if it was asked to a couple of missionaries. Okay, you baptized these three people in January, but we're going to report that as if you baptized them in December.
John Dehlin [00:48:32] Right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:48:33] Because we need those numbers and they already baptized, so that's not an issue. Who's going to remember if they baptized? I don't know, January 15th or December 15th. It doesn't matter. Right. Yeah, but, but it matters.
John Dehlin [00:48:44] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:48:45] Especially because one of the questions on for the temple recommend is if you're honest in all of your dealings, right?
John Dehlin [00:48:54] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I guess when you receive this text from a state clerk, I would imagine your first thought would be, well, maybe the state clerk is. Is making a mistake, or maybe it's the clerk. Certainly it's not the stake president. Or may. You know, or maybe you might at least wonder that is. Is. Is this just a clerk thing, or does it actually go to the stake president, Right. Or not.
Stake Presidency Escalates Reporting Demands
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:49:21] Right, that's correct. And that takes us to the next slide.
John Dehlin [00:49:25] Or. Or just if there's some mistake. All right, so let's go to the next slide, and you play the bishop, and then I'll play the stake president. Or Gerardo. You want to be stick president, Gerardo?
Gerardo Sumano [00:49:37] All right.
John Dehlin [00:49:38] Okay. Go ahead.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:49:39] Go ahead, Obispo, for a minute.
John Dehlin [00:49:41] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:49:41] All right.
John Dehlin [00:49:42] It's the closest you'll ever get to stick president.
Gerardo Sumano [00:49:46] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:49:47] Okay. Go. Go for it, Obispo.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:49:50] Okay, so this is the conversation started before this message, right?
John Dehlin [00:49:54] And this is what I'm here. This is a text conversation, right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:49:57] Yeah, this is a text conversation. A WhatsApp conversation.
John Dehlin [00:49:59] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:49:59] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:50:00] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:50:00] So what I'm telling him is, like the words. Elder Corum did 43% of ministering interviews last quarter. I was told to ask them to do at least 80% and report that on the system, but we should. But we should report for January 2023. Correct.
John Dehlin [00:50:16] And so you're basically saying, hey, stake president, there must be some mistake. Surely you don't want me to lie. Sure. You don't want me to lie, Right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:50:26] Yeah, exactly. I was asking that. But that's not correct. Right? That's January. Right? Because we're interviewing in January.
John Dehlin [00:50:35] Okay, so, Gerardo, you.
Gerardo Sumano [00:50:37] You're still giving him an Owen?
John Dehlin [00:50:39] The state president responded, yeah, so he
Gerardo Sumano [00:50:41] said, the thing is that the area presidency wants them to be at 80% or above. Ask them to do the interviews this week, and we can see in the system to report them during the fourth trimester in 2022. If they did the interviews but didn't report them, it's not necessary for them to interview them. Just confirm that they were done.
John Dehlin [00:51:01] Okay. I mean, like, that's. Someone could say that those words are a little bit nebulous. Gerardo, what do you. And you can read it in the original Spanish. Gerardo, what are you interpreting the stake president to be saying?
Gerardo Sumano [00:51:14] Well, he's still saying, we want that number to be 80%. No matter. Do whatever you have to do to make it 80%. If doing the interviews will make you feel better, do the interviews, but still change the number for 2022 to make be 80%.
John Dehlin [00:51:27] Now, I'm sure you love your stake president, Bishop, and I'm sure he's a good guy, right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:51:33] I do, I do. I have had a closer relationship with him than many other bishops because when I was younger we used to be from the same ward and we used to be close and all that. So yes, I love him. I can say that I love him.
John Dehlin [00:51:48] And I'm guessing he's a. I have to believe he's generally an honest guy. Like we're not saying he's a dishonest guy, Right?
Gerardo Sumano [00:51:55] Right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:51:56] I would say that, yes.
John Dehlin [00:51:57] Yes, he's a good guy. And this reminds me, this reminds me of the episode yesterday with Ensign Peak and the Church. It sometimes takes religion to make good people do bad things. Have you ever heard that quote?
Gerardo Sumano [00:52:11] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:52:12] Like good, bad people always do bad things, but it takes religion to get good people to do bad things sometimes. And the example I'm thinking of is when the church creates all these shell companies, but they need a person to lead each of them. Then they choose church employees with like generic undetectable names, ask them to for permission to use their name as the heads of these fake llc. And then literally ask them to sign each quarter or year as a proving that they oversee the financials when they don't.
Gerardo Sumano [00:52:50] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:52:51] And sometimes the reports get submitted before they've even signed.
Gerardo Sumano [00:52:56] When. When there's not even any money in the company. All the money was unsigned peaks. That's another big issue.
John Dehlin [00:53:03] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:53:03] With that. Because. Because they were signing. Yeah. We have all these stocks, but in reality none of those stocks were in the name of the company.
John Dehlin [00:53:11] Yeah. And in that sense this reminds me of a high level leader making a mid level leader do something dishonest.
Gerardo Sumano [00:53:21] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:53:21] Because I'm sure your stake president doesn't want to deceive anyone. But I'm guessing, and we'll see in the next slide, I'm guessing he's feeling pressure from above. And so it's the church headquarters or the church leadership making an otherwise honest and good man do something dishonest. So it's not just the church being dishonest, it's the church making other people be dishonest to cover their dishonesty. And that for me that's triply bad. It's one thing if you're going to lie. It's another thing if you're going to get a whole bunch of other people to lie. Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:53:59] Because it's trickling down is going from area presidency, stake president, and now the state clerk is involved in the.
John Dehlin [00:54:05] All the bishops.
Gerardo Sumano [00:54:06] All the bishops, all the world leaders. You know, the elders quorum president is now involved because he has to do the interviews and report them.
John Dehlin [00:54:12] Yeah, let's get everybody to lie. Like. Yeah. I mean. I mean, I wish the stake president would have just. I wish the area president would have just changed the numbers.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:54:21] Right, right, right.
John Dehlin [00:54:23] I mean, if the area presidency wants to misrepresent things, freaking go in the system and change the numbers.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:54:29] Right, yes.
John Dehlin [00:54:30] Okay. I'm sorry, we're getting a little ranty here, but I'm a little salty about it.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:54:34] No, no problem at all.
John Dehlin [00:54:36] Anything you want to. Anything you want to add. Obispo. Like when the state. When the state president, who you love, responds in this way, what were you thinking and feeling?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:54:47] I. I do have to add something. Had I been a true believing member or fully believing Mormon, I would. I would have done it. I wouldn't have even questioned that. It comes from my leader. He's asking me to do this. There should be a reason. And even when you're at church and when someone is training you, I remember when I was a young man, a young adult, I had a bishop who used to say, like, don't question your leader. He's gonna respond to God on whatever decisions they make. You have to, like, obey. Obey the leader. And you have to, like, remember that you raised your hand and you said that you're gonna be like, sustain. Forgot the word in English, but sustaining that leader. So in order to sustain him, you do not question whatever he tells you to do. You just do it. If it is wrong, it's going to be up to him. And he's going to be like the one giving accountants to God, accountability to God, being accountable to God.
John Dehlin [00:55:45] So you're saying you were taught blind obedience and absolute obedience to church leadership as an orthodox member and the way you internalized your belief in Mormonism. If you're asked to do something wrong, you do it. And if anyone's going to be punished, it won't be you. It'll be the leader that asked you to do something wrong. Is that right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:56:08] Exactly. That's correct.
John Dehlin [00:56:10] And I'm going to say that's exactly what was the finding of the Stanley Milgram experiment, which was this psychological experiment in. Out of Yale University in the, I don't know, 50s and 60s, where they were trying to figure out how the Holocaust happened. And so they set up this system where people thought they were electrocuting Learners if they got answers wrong. And it turned out that if a dude with a lab coat was standing over the participant in the study and. And the person was afraid to administer what they thought was a lethal charge of electrocution for the respondent getting the answer wrong, if a dude in a lab coat said, you must do what you're told. You must continue the experiment, if that authority was telling the person to administer a lethal charge to the participant, 66% of the respondents, basically 70% of the respondents, 2/3 of the respondents, were willing to administer what they believed was a deadly electrocution charge to the participant. In other words, we as humans, more often than not will obey authority to the very end if it exerts itself upon us.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:57:33] Exactly. That's correct.
John Dehlin [00:57:34] It's kind of dark, right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:57:36] It is. It is.
Gerardo Sumano [00:57:38] Yeah, it is.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:57:38] Because that's when you turn something that could be good and well intentioned into something that is dishonest and dark.
John Dehlin [00:57:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so. So knowing that you knew this stake president, what did you feel when you. When you read this text?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:58:00] Well, I felt like, this is not coming from him. This should come from above. And I started my research. I have a few friends who are currently serving in state presidencies. So I asked them, like, hey, have you been asked this or that? One of them told me, like, well, luckily my stake ended up with more than 80% in all words. So we didn't receive any message. But then I contacted another friend from a different stake and that's what next slide is showing.
John Dehlin [00:58:28] Okay, all right, so we'll go ahead and go to the next slide that you received from a member of a, what, stake presidency or.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:58:38] Yeah, from a member of a stake presidency. He's forwarding me a WhatsApp message. What I know is that it was received from an area 70 who is supervising that stake. So to give context, remember, we have the area presidency, which are the three people in charge who are general authorities of the church. And then you have another body of people who are area 70s. They are called the 70s from the 5th to 7th quorum or 3rd quorum or whatever. And. But they are not general authorities. They are local leaders who are assigned to supervise over what they call coordinating councils, which are missions, and all the stakes that take part of that mission geographically. So. Yeah, gone.
John Dehlin [00:59:21] Okay. Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:59:23] So he received that message from that leader, that area 70, who is a 70, who is Mexican, usually are Mexicans, and who just has that assignment. Right. They report directly to the area presidency.
John Dehlin [00:59:38] All right. All right, well, Is it okay if I. If I read this?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [00:59:41] Absolutely. No problem.
Area Presidency Orders Wards to Revise Reports
John Dehlin [00:59:43] Okay. So presidents. Super urgent. Urgent. Urgent is twice. Okay. The area presidency has asked to revise each of your wards on the following. Now, the word in Spanish was revision. And I asked Gerardo ahead of time, does revison mean review or does revision mean revise? And I got. I got Gerardo's consent or blessing for us to translate that as revise. What's your take on that, Obispo?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:00:21] Well, I wouldn't need more context on what's the difference between review and revise.
Gerardo Sumano [01:00:25] So revise can mean reviewing and then changing or, you know, and reviewing is just looking over, checking. Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:00:36] Yeah, Yeah, I would go with revise.
John Dehlin [01:00:38] Okay. Okay. All right. Well, that's. I think that's pretty important. So the area presidency has asked to revise each of your wards on the following. Number one, that each brother and sister with ministering assignments is recorded in the quarterly report. Two, that ministering interviews are being done and recorded in the quarterly report. Three, and here's a big one. That we have at least 80% of ministering interviews completed. And again, they're saying this in January after the. When it's impossible that the interviews could have happened. Yeah, right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:01:17] Nonsense. Right. That's a nonsense. I mean.
John Dehlin [01:01:19] Yeah. And then for. If there's anything to correct, please do so by adjusting it on Q4 quarterly report, which was completed at the beginning of January. And then it says, I'll ask for a report on Monday to report to the area presidency. Gerardo, what do you think?
Gerardo Sumano [01:01:44] Again, it's the same. So we have a match on the 80%. You know that number. We have a match on. You know, do whatever you need to do to get that. That percentage on the on 22 report. And to me, this is a confirmation that it was definitely coming from the area presidency and not from. From the state. Originally, when. When the bishop called me, he hadn't gotten this text, and we were thinking that he was coming from the stake president. But then to me, this is a confirmation that. Yeah, it was coming from the area presidency.
John Dehlin [01:02:23] Yeah. Yep. All right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:02:25] So I should say I called my dad when the bishop called me.
John Dehlin [01:02:29] Who's a bishop?
Gerardo Sumano [01:02:30] Who's a bishop.
John Dehlin [01:02:30] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:02:31] And I told him what was happening, and he said, yeah, I don't think the area presidency would ask that. That would be impossible. So, I mean, here it is.
John Dehlin [01:02:39] He did. He totally did. Yeah. All right, Obispo, so what are your reactions to that area authority request?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:02:48] Yeah, I have to say that hearing that in English and In your voice gives a complete different emotion to that text message.
John Dehlin [01:02:58] But am I misrepresenting it? Because I honestly don't want to misrepresent it.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:03:02] No, not at all. Not at all. No. It's just that I have read it. I think it is the first time that someone reads that out loud.
John Dehlin [01:03:08] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:03:08] And I mean, yes, you're right. It was already January. The quarter was already closed. So why are you asking? I mean, I know that some words and some elders Quorum presidents might forget they do the interviews and they do not report that in the system. And then you go. Can go back to the system and you can as saying, backdate those interviews. But that would be at some point.
John Dehlin [01:03:36] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:03:37] To correct if those interviews were done in. During that period of time.
John Dehlin [01:03:42] Right, right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:03:43] But I was. I was so naive at that time that I. That I thought that the system didn't allow you to report on previous quarters, you know?
John Dehlin [01:03:51] Yeah, yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:03:53] And then that's later when I found out that there's actually. It is actually possible to do those changes.
Gerardo Sumano [01:03:59] To. To me, it really. What tells the story of what's really happening is that 80% number. Because if it's really about reporting people that might have forgotten, they don't need to give you a percentage. You know, they should tell you just go and check that everything that was done is reported. Why do they have to give you. Oh, but we want them to look at 80%. You know, that's. That's what it really tells to me, that what they wanted was for you to either just change the number or do the interviews in a different month and report them back, date them, just
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:04:36] so that you wouldn't feel guilty. Right. About lying because you are doing those interviews in January and you report that earlier. So. Yeah, I agree on that. And that 80%. Because otherwise what you say. And actually, one of my friends said, well, it happened one time when most of our words forgot to record those interviews. And what we were told is just take a look at it and if anything needs to be changed, then just change it. If that was the same situation here, they would have said that. Right. Just take a look at the numbers, make sure that numbers are correct, and if there's anything to adjust, adjust it. But you don't give a quota, right? Because you're giving a quota. You're telling them like 80% more than 80. I mean, that's a problem.
John Dehlin [01:05:21] Yeah, it's a problem. All right. It sure is. Yeah. Yeah, that's. That's not good. So, okay, so you didn't you didn't stop there, Obispo. Tell us what you did next.
Calling Church Headquarters for Guidance
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:05:37] Well, I called the Global Service center just to make sure that this was in compliance with church policy with headquarters, and that there was a way to find out if there was a way in the report to actually change those numbers once the report was sent to the general offices.
John Dehlin [01:05:56] So you're talking. Is this Salt Lake City Church headquarters you're calling?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:05:59] Yes, I called church headquarters.
John Dehlin [01:06:02] This is so awesome. This is amazing. All right, so now we're gonna play. And you recorded. You recorded the audio, which is so awesome.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:06:11] I recorded the audio? Yes, I did.
John Dehlin [01:06:13] That's so, so epic. Okay, so now we're going to play the audio from your conversation with church headquarters. All right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:06:25] All right.
John Dehlin [01:06:26] Okay, here we go.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:06:28] To complete. Right. So yesterday I received a message from our state clerk mentioning that the area presidency was interested in our number being higher than 80%. So they were requesting for us to, like, complete the. The interviews that were missing so that we could reach that 80% and then we could report that in Q4, 2022 quarterly report. But I mean, I have checked and I cannot do that. Right. Because right now in the system, I can report interviews for January, February and March 2023, and not 2022.
John Dehlin [01:07:03] Right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:07:04] And as soon as we get to the next quarter, then typically we can no longer record those.
John Dehlin [01:07:14] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:07:14] If you go into. If you were to tell the yellow presidency and the Relief Society presidency, they can go to ministering and current assignments.
John Dehlin [01:07:26] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:07:27] And then there will be a drop down that says current quarter.
John Dehlin [01:07:32] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:07:33] Click that and choose previous quarter. They'll see last quarter.
John Dehlin [01:07:37] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:07:38] Looks like it actually still allows you to record the administering interviews for last quarter as well.
Gerardo Sumano [01:07:46] Okay.
John Dehlin [01:07:47] And.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:07:47] And then would that be okay to report January interviews in last quarter? If they did the interview in January, then you would record that for January and not for last quarter.
John Dehlin [01:08:00] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:08:00] Yeah, yeah, because that's, that was one of the questions.
John Dehlin [01:08:03] Right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:08:03] Because if we interview anyone, like, in. During the week, because they were asking to do this before the Sunday, then. Well, logically, I would report that in January. Right? Yeah, sorry, I didn't quite get that question. If you're meaning if, if they do that interview sometime this week. Yeah, yeah. Because they were asking if we could, like, contact the ministering brothers this week, but report that in the previous quarter, that wouldn't be correct, right? No, you would record that in January.
John Dehlin [01:08:40] He's like, no, that would be January.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:08:47] I felt like he was thinking, like, this guy is an idiot.
John Dehlin [01:08:50] Right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:08:50] Like, not Understanding how it works.
John Dehlin [01:08:56] Oh, my gosh. That's so awesome. Nice job, Obispo. Now, was that. Was that phone call in February or was it in January?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:09:05] No, it was January. It was January 27th. To be like.
John Dehlin [01:09:08] Okay, like at the end of the. At the end of the month.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:09:11] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:09:12] Okay. That's so great. We just made history here on Mormon stories, you know, and so, you know, I. I guess. I guess we're about to do some statistical analysis, but before we do, like, there's always the question of who's at fault. So, I mean, we. So we've already mentioned Gilbert Gong. Garrett Gong. Right. So he's an apostle. I'm gonna assume that Garrett Gong isn't running around telling, you know, he's got tenure. Right. He's. He's an apostle for life. He probably. He's probably an honest guy. He probably wants to understand the real situation. I'm guessing he's not running around telling the general authorities in the area authorities to lie, statistically. So can we. Can we safely rule out Garrett Gong as being to blame here in terms of who's actually issuing the order? Gerardo, what do you think?
Systemic Culture of Misleading Statistics
Gerardo Sumano [01:10:06] Yes, 100%.
John Dehlin [01:10:08] So it's not Garrett Gong. Right, right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:10:13] I. I would. I would blame more on this. Well, yes, of course. The people, the means, and the system. Right. Because Gary Gong is in charge of supervising Mexico area. So he has recurrent meetings with the area presidency, and they.
Gerardo Sumano [01:10:27] So I guess we can already discussed
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:10:29] about this goal of like. Like getting higher ministering interviews. So I would say the system, because then they discuss about this goal, and they agree that, okay, we're gonna do the best that we can to get 80% of higher or higher. And then at the end of the quarter, you end up with some words or many words, I don't know how many, which interviewed less than 80%.
Gerardo Sumano [01:10:53] That's a good point. That's a good point. Because if the apostle is gonna report to the other apostles how Mexico is doing, because that's his stewardship, he doesn't want to look bad.
John Dehlin [01:11:03] So he's going to be pressuring the area presidencies to get. To get ministering. You know, percentages up, possibly. Right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:11:14] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:11:16] So. So he wouldn't say lie. He would be putting on the pressure to do better.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:11:22] Exactly.
John Dehlin [01:11:23] Right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:11:23] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:11:24] Okay, so then that. That. That goes down one level to whatever general authority or general authorities are over Mexico. And then below them would be the area authorities. And we know. We know because of that screenshot that at least it's the area Authority that's. That's pressuring for the. The fraud. For the. The. The changing of the statistics. Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:11:49] The area presidency.
John Dehlin [01:11:50] The area presidency, for sure. So does that include the. The first or second Quorum of the Seventy?
Gerardo Sumano [01:11:56] Yes, first quorum.
John Dehlin [01:11:59] Okay, so. So, so it must be him, right? Whoever those people are. I don't know if it's all over Mexico or just this one area president.
Gerardo Sumano [01:12:07] It's just in Mexico, they're just in charge of Mexico, the area president.
John Dehlin [01:12:11] So there's one area presidency of three dudes over the whole.
Gerardo Sumano [01:12:16] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:12:16] Country.
Gerardo Sumano [01:12:17] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:12:17] Is that right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:12:18] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:12:19] Okay, so it's so. Well, let's not name him because we're not trying to shame him unless you want to. But. But it's the area president that's saying lie, right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:12:31] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:12:32] Is that. Is that your.
Gerardo Sumano [01:12:33] That's my conclusion. Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:12:34] That's Gerardo's conclusion. And Obispo. I'm not pressuring you to answer that if you'd rather not, but I. I have to.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:12:42] I want to say something.
John Dehlin [01:12:43] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:12:44] The whole problem here is dishonesty. I mean, once you start, like, reviewing and researching on church history and once you learn about Ensign Peak, and now with the ACC ruling and this situation that is more personal to me, the common denominator on those situations is dishonesty. I mean, Joseph Smith being married to more than 30 women and publicly saying that he could only find one wife, that's dishonest. And that's the whole problem. I mean, the big problem here is dishonesty. And it doesn't matter how big or how small the dishonesty is or the lie is. It is the same remaining issue, Right, that you're asked to be dishonest. And that's what got me. Because then, now I am not only, like, serving as a bishop, giving my time, I am also asked to lie to mimic numbers or to. To do whatever thing which is not correct. I work with data. My job is on data. If I do this in my work, I would probably get fired. I would surely get fired. If I start, like, making up numbers on different periods. I mean, I could get fired from my job.
John Dehlin [01:14:02] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I was going to ask, where in the world would this general authority get the idea that it was okay to lie? Right. You know that. And you, and you. You went right there, Obispo. It starts with Joseph Smith lying to Emma. It starts with Joseph Smith lying about treasure digging and the stone in the hat and the peep stones and his ability to find treasure. It goes on to the Kirtland bank and you know, the fraudulent bank all the way to, you know, the Nauvoo Expositor and, you know, excommunicating Oliver Cowdery when he called Joseph on his adultery and, and you know, going after William Law and destroying the Nauvoo Expositor printing press when, when Joseph was called out for the polygamy that he was hiding and lying about all the way there through, you know, the Church continuing after Joseph's death to claim that Joseph was innocent, that polygamy wasn't being practiced until it was changing the Doctrine and Covenants. You know, John Taylor getting a revelation to tell, you know, certain Mormons in southern Utah and Mexico, right in Canada to keep practicing polygamy after they promised the federal government that they were no longer going to be practicing polygamy in the first manifesto, which would lead to the need for a second manifesto because, you know, they got called on the fact that they were lying about that all the way through. All the ways in which the Church has hid and misled its members about the first vision, about, you know, the stone in the hat, the Book of Abraham. Emma, Emma was a, you know, a bad faithless person instead of like a wife who was lied to and, you know, cheated on the Kinderhook blades. Yeah, Kinderhook plates. Like, like we have a 200 plus year history of leadership lying. You could even put it in the Book of Mormon where Laban is told by an angel to chop off Nephi. Sorry, Nephi is told by an angel to chop off Laban's head and then dress like he's Laban and God gives him Laban's countenance or voice so that God can deceive everybody about Nephi being Laban. Like, I don't like to say this, but there's a degree to which it's a church built on lies. And that sounds so harsh. And my Mormon self doesn't want to hear me say that. But there's, there's some truth to it, I think. All the way to Ensign Peak. Yeah, right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:16:48] Exactly.
John Dehlin [01:16:49] Well, harder. What's your reaction? Am I.
Gerardo Sumano [01:16:52] No, I agree, I agree. I think this idea, I think we've talked about it a lot. This idea of lying for the Lord is ingrained in people's minds. If it's, you know, if they'll, if it's telling a lie, it's for a better purpose, then it's fine to lie. And like, and like the bishop said about this idea of obeying your leaders, you know, if the Leaders ask us to do lie or do something wrong, then we should do it because then we're going to be justified because our responsibility is to obey the leader. So it's all a mixture.
John Dehlin [01:17:33] And I'm also going to add. That's all. That's all true. Gerardo. I'm also going to add how we're taught from age 12 to lie because we masturbate and we look at sometimes and we. I didn't in particular, but most, most Mormons as teenagers do masturbate or, and, or they look at porn, but they don't want to be, you know, prohibited from their mission service. Or a Mormon couple who's engaged, makes out and even does some heavy petting or sex before their marriage. But they don't, you know, they, they, they don't want to be embarrassed by having their wedding canceled or postponed. So what do we all do? We lie. And the church teaches us to lie and encourages us to lie. And it's like they actually literally say, you should lie. Yeah, but they create a culture that encourages lying. Now, Obispo, you respond because again, I want to know your perspective and I want to know if you think we're being too harsh.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:18:31] No, I mean, you have a point there. And, and we could just continue like going with more church history issues like Joseph smith, like hiding the 19. Sorry, 1832 prohibition account and then saying that it didn' exist and having in. In a safe deposit box. Right. And hidden. And then it was found by the Tanner somehow. And then, you know, all those things that are crazy. Right. And as you mentioned up to, to the ensign peak. And I agree on that. As a, as a leader in the church, I have had many contact with people who have lied about many of the issues you have mentioned. Right. Probably they got married in the temple and after a few years they just feel remorse or they feel shame because they did some things that were not correct according to what the church teaches. And so they are not feeling okay. And they have to go to the bishop or go to Stake Presidency and tell them like, hey, this happened and we didn't repent the way that we were supposed to do it. And that's something very common. And the sad thing here is that that creates a lot of shame and guilt on people.
Gerardo Sumano [01:19:37] Yeah, yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:19:39] Shame and guilt on things that you shouldn't be be carrying on. Right. I mean, I don't know what else to say. You, you do have a point there.
John Dehlin [01:19:48] And I'm. And I'll just say I've lied. Like I. There were times where I wasn't honest in my life, even with. With Margi and my kids. And what I can tell you is when you live a prolonged life of dishonesty, it wears on you psychologically. It harms you. It creates anxiety, it creates depression. And so I'm not pretending that I've never been dishonest. I have been dishonest. And so I'm not. It's like I'm pointing fingers at everybody. But again, systems, not people. When a system is systematically creating a culture of lying, that's when I think it deserves to be called out. Yeah, I think.
Gerardo Sumano [01:20:37] Yeah, it's true.
John Dehlin [01:20:39] Yeah, totally. Okay, so I think that takes us to another example of dishonesty in terms of how the church reports its membership statistics in Mexico and in Latin America. Is that right?
Church Membership Numbers in Mexico
Gerardo Sumano [01:20:54] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:20:55] Do you. Who's gonna. Are you gonna lead us through this, Gerardo? Yeah. Okay, let's go ahead. And. Should we go into the El Bispo? Anything else you want to say before we go on to the next section?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:21:04] I think it's all been said. I mean, that's the reason why I decided to speak out. Right. Because I value honesty. And I can say the same thing that you just said. I have been dishonest myself. Sometimes I am not, like, completely true. I don't even have that expectation, because I would think that is impossible. But I try to be as true and honest as I can. And whenever I find that I was dishonest or that probably by omission or whatever, something was not correct, I tried to make up on those things. So, yeah, that with that, we can end this section.
John Dehlin [01:21:39] Okay. Thank you, Obispo. Okay, Gerardo, what do you got for us?
Gerardo Sumano [01:21:44] So one of the things that Obispo mentioned to me when we were talking about this issue or back in January, was that the census in Mexico had been conclude. Had. Had been concluded. And the report was out. It was pretty enlightening what the census showed. But to start with, maybe we should go to the first slide. This slide shows that according to the church membership statistics, Mexico holds the second largest amount of members of. So there's.
John Dehlin [01:22:24] In the world.
Gerardo Sumano [01:22:24] In the world.
John Dehlin [01:22:25] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:22:25] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:22:26] Mexico's numero dos.
Gerardo Sumano [01:22:27] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:22:28] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:22:28] And also that's correct.
Gerardo Sumano [01:22:31] And the amount of temples as well. Mexico holds the second place of more Mormon temples in a country.
John Dehlin [01:22:38] Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [01:22:40] And these are the numbers according to the church. So if you put them on screen, you know, we have. In the United states, we have 6 million in Mexico, according to 6 million, 5, 600,000.
John Dehlin [01:22:50] Let's just say, yes, six and a
Gerardo Sumano [01:22:51] half million million, Mexico one and a half million and Brazil 1,300,000. And the next one is the Philippines, considerably lower with 700, 745,000. So the biggest countries again are United States, Mexico and Brazil. And something important to remember statistically, right?
John Dehlin [01:23:17] Statistically.
Gerardo Sumano [01:23:18] Well, but what I was going to mention is something important is temples. Or at least the church has told us that temples reflect how strong the church is in certain countries. So the fact that Mexico is the second country with the most temples, it tells us something about how the church views Mexico as how strong the country is as far as active membership or type bearers.
John Dehlin [01:23:45] You know, I believe that Mexico has the second largest number of active typing members in the world.
Gerardo Sumano [01:23:50] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:23:51] It's certainly not the U.K. you know what I mean? It's, it's right, right. I mean, I would have thought Philippines or Brazil or Chile would be the only closest, even competitors, but Mexico makes sense.
Gerardo Sumano [01:24:04] And so it's a good, it's a good way. It's not totally far fetched to grab to use Mexico as an example of what the church might look like statistically in other countries.
John Dehlin [01:24:15] Absolutely. That's a proxy. Yeah, it's a proxy.
Census Data Exposes Inflated Member Counts
Gerardo Sumano [01:24:19] So if we go to the next slide, the census in Mexico and Brazil. Bishop, do you want to explain kind of how the census is done in Mexico and Brazil and how it differs as far as like the religion question in census in Mexico?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:24:37] Absolutely. So the way that it is, because I didn't know this, I learned because of Gerardo that in the US you are not asked about your religion background when you are like getting that questionnaire for the census. So what happens in Mexico is that you have a general census, like whether they ask your age and your income and stuff like that. And then they have additional questions that should be applied to each household in Mexico because, you know, the institution in charge of the census here in Mexico does a great effort to get people to every corner of the country to get that census. So each household in Mexico gets asked these same questions and one of them is, what is your religion, what religion you're practicing? And then they have ways to code that religion because, you know, it is challenging to actually code the people's answers because for example, Geraldo could say, oh, I'm Mormon. And then John, you could say, I'm Latter Day Saints. And then I could say I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So it would probably be difficult to code all that. So with as years have gone by. The methodology has been improved so that whenever. And the people who's in charge of making this questionnaire feel people. They are trained. Like, okay, whenever people says Mormon, it means the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And they have an equivalency table. Equivalency table. Where they can check that. Right. Like, Mormon is the number. They have to put a number there. Church of. Yes. Grass. Latter Day Saints or Latter Day Saints or whatever. And then you can check. And that is publicly announced, that is published and available to all people. What is the coding of those religions? So you have the whole list of religions that were included in the census.
Gerardo Sumano [01:26:32] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:26:32] Okay, so I hope this answered your question.
Gerardo Sumano [01:26:36] Yep. Yeah, that's exactly right. And the next slide is just a screenshot from a Catholic news agency, basically reaffirming what Obispo just told us, that the census, at least since 2010, the reporting of religion is pretty accurate in Mexico because of these computing methodologies that they've implemented to get people's answers correct. And just exactly how Obispo said, in Mexico, you're required to answer the question about religion is not optional. Optional.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:27:21] It is not optional. It's required.
John Dehlin [01:27:23] Okay, so that's since 2010. The stats that we're about to show
Gerardo Sumano [01:27:28] are 2010 and 2020.
John Dehlin [01:27:30] Okay. Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:27:31] And. And I mean, there's people who decide not to declare their religion. And that's also there in the census, in the report. It is like, not defined or not declared undeclared. That's actually.
John Dehlin [01:27:42] Yeah, that's like the nuns, maybe in the Pew foundation study.
Gerardo Sumano [01:27:48] Right.
John Dehlin [01:27:49] Okay, so should we go to the next slide?
Gerardo Sumano [01:27:51] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:27:52] All right. And this is pretty. Pretty significant, I think. What does it say, Gerardo?
Gerardo Sumano [01:27:58] So this is the country of Mexico. This is the numbers that the church claims of the number of members that there are in Mexico in 2010 and 2021.
John Dehlin [01:28:13] For the listeners reading.
Gerardo Sumano [01:28:14] Yes. And I just want to note first, we included sources for those numbers. They're directly from the church's website. And so I'm gonna. We're gonna put those on the show notes. But in 2010, the church said that there was 1,234,545 members. And in 2021, the church says that there were in Mexico 1,000,498. 296 members of the church.
John Dehlin [01:28:45] So basically, 150, 000. By. By a couple years ago. One hundred and fifty, 000 members.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:28:49] Right.
John Dehlin [01:28:50] Of the Mormon Church in Mexico.
Gerardo Sumano [01:28:52] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:28:52] Okay, Drum roll, please.
Gerardo Sumano [01:28:55] Now, what the census shows if we go to the. Oh, there we go. Is that
John Dehlin [01:29:06] there?
Gerardo Sumano [01:29:06] In 2010, 314,932 people reported to be Mormon or members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or Latter Day Saints or whatever. And in 2020, 337,000 people reported, 998 reported to be members of the church. So there's a disparity of more than 900,000 members each year of the census. And what's significant to me is that these are people when asked that they're identifying themselves as Mormon. You know, it's not like they're not asking are you active in your congregation? It's like what's your religion? Right. How do you identify as Cause there's a lot of Catholics that report respond Catholic, but they don't go to church right on the census. So that's important to note. I don't know if there's anything else that you want to know. Obi spoke.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:30:12] That's correct. That's correct. And maybe I'm just going to go ahead and maybe that's in another slide. But remember that in 2010 the church released a press note regarding the census results and they said like, oh well, the methodology is not accurate. That's probably the reason why we are misrepresented. And there might be another possibility that because of our activity rates are lower than 50% that's the reason why we're missing much people there. But they were de estimating or not giving relevance to church activity rates, which they know because as I have mentioned, you report that on a weekly basis on the system. So you know how many active members you actually have. And they are saying like oh, the methodology is not accurate, it's not good and that's the reason why we're misrepresented.
Gerardo Sumano [01:31:00] Yeah, that's what they said in 2010. Now they haven't released a press release for, for this year for 2020. But you know, the numbers are pretty, are pretty similar and the methodology has
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:31:14] changed and has improved.
Gerardo Sumano [01:31:16] Right, right. In that slide that you showed John, according to the Mormon church, in that 10 year period from 2010 to 2021, there was a 17% growth in membership in Mexico. Well, in reality the census show only a 7% growth of membership. But then it gets even worse when we go to the next slide and then it shows how many new members really are, you know, in the Mormon Church reports that there were 263,000 new members in that 10 year period. But the census shows that only 13,000 of those really identify today as Mormon. So that's a huge, huge number difference. And I don't know if you want to comment on that, Obispo.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:32:15] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, 263,000 is just like, what, 80, 75% of the census results for 2020. So that's huge. I mean, that difference is huge. Huge. And I want to go to the next slide because I think it also has an interesting point, but I'll let you go ahead. Gerardo.
Gerardo Sumano [01:32:37] Yeah. Do you want to explain this one? Go ahead.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:32:40] Yes. Yeah. Thank you. So, as you can see here, if we compare the total numbers according to the church records, that matches to 26%. So out of the 1.2 million that we. That the members we had on record in 2020, 2010, only 26% was reflected in the census. And out of the 1.
John Dehlin [01:33:02] So just to restate that. Just to restate that, 26% of the people that the church claim are members actually identify as Mormon. 26.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:33:13] Exactly. 26.
John Dehlin [01:33:15] A quarter.
Gerardo Sumano [01:33:16] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:33:17] Right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:33:17] Yeah, that's a quarter.
John Dehlin [01:33:18] Yeah. And then for 2021, you were going
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:33:21] to say, and for 2021 is 23%, because, as Gerardo showed in the previous slide, according to church records, we had more members, 17% growth, but according to the census, only 7% growth. So that's the reason why you see a decrease from 26% to 23%.
Gerardo Sumano [01:33:43] So this was big to me, John, because we Mormon stories have talked about 30%, 20% activity rates, but this confirms it. You know, it's not a number that we're.
John Dehlin [01:33:52] Well, it. Actually, it doesn't. It's identity is different than activity.
Gerardo Sumano [01:33:57] Exactly.
John Dehlin [01:33:58] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:33:58] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:33:58] And so it's going to be what, half that? Like, Yeah. I don't know, 50. 50, 60 at best.
Gerardo Sumano [01:34:07] I mean, once you average all the words in Mexico, you know. Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:34:12] A lot lower than I estimated. Somewhere between 10 and 20% activity rates in Latin America, probably. Yeah. Now, I mean, we're going to talk about your Ward Obispo, but the other thing we ought to say about this slide is that percentage is shrinking, right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:34:27] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:34:28] So it goes from 26% a decade ago to. To 23. So. So the. The decline is accelerating, Right, Right. It's not just bad, it's getting worse.
Gerardo Sumano [01:34:41] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:34:42] Yeah. Yeah. Right, Obispo.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:34:45] Right. You're baptizing more people, but you're retaining less people, even less, year after year.
John Dehlin [01:34:51] Yeah, yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:34:51] Even less. Yes.
John Dehlin [01:34:53] And then. And then I guess the next slide shows that this isn't just a Mexico problem, right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:34:59] Yeah. So the Brazil 2020, 2022 census hasn't been released yet, but I found that the 20. The. The 2010 Brazil census showed a very similar disparity between the numbers that the church reported versus what the census actually showed. And here's a Salt Lake Tribune article written by Peggy Fletcher stack in 2012. And. And the title of. Of that article is Brazil Mystery Case of the missing Mormons. 913,000 of them, to be exact.
John Dehlin [01:35:35] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:35:35] And basically it just explains what we just said in Brazil.
John Dehlin [01:35:39] In Brazil, not Mexico. Right, right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:35:41] So we have the two, the second and third countries with the most Mormons having the same issue of people not identifying themselves as Mormon and the number not being as near close to what the church claims.
John Dehlin [01:35:57] Yeah. And this also shows that the church has known about this for at least 10 years, if not more. Of course they know about this. They know about every statistic. They track statistics unlike anybody's business. And, and so, you know, when you, when the church claims 16 or 17 million members, what are they. What are they trying to do when they claim that number?
Gerardo Sumano [01:36:21] They're just trying to say, you know, oh, we're. We're power. We're a powerful church. But in the back of their minds, they know that that's not true at all in members.
John Dehlin [01:36:31] You know, they want to create the impression of success and largeness and growth, when in reality, they know that that 16, 17 million number is totally, totally misleading. Probably by. By a margin of 60 to 70%.
Gerardo Sumano [01:36:52] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:36:53] Right. I don't know. Obispo, what are you thinking about that?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:36:59] One more issue is that they are not transparent about activity rates. Right. Because I know the activity rates of my ward. I sometimes get information about activity rates from my stake. Every five years, I get some information. When I was a high counselor, at one meeting, I had some information about activity rates at an area level, but it's not something that you discuss that much. So you don't have that transparency with church members on what the actual numbers are, how many actual people coming to church. We have. And that's another thing there. That's again, this deception. Like, I tell you what is the total number of baptized people on record, but I do not tell you how many of them have passed away and we haven't found out how many of them are more than 100 years old, how many of them are like whatever other situation. Right. We just tell you the big numbers. We tell you that the church is growing, but we don't tell you how those percentages are shrinking. Shrinking year after year.
John Dehlin [01:38:00] And there's a reason they do that because. I don't know, there's this saying that I learned once success breeds success, people want to. There's a bandwagon effect, which is kind of a logical fallacy. People want to join things that they perceive as being successful. So, so if the church projects success, then people want to join a successful thing.
Gerardo Sumano [01:38:21] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:38:21] But if they're to project, we're a dying, hemorrhaging, failing organization. Well, who wants to join that?
Gerardo Sumano [01:38:30] Right?
John Dehlin [01:38:30] I mean, there's the metaphor of like rats fleeing a sinking ship, right? Yeah, like who wants to join a ship that's sinking? So that's why they, I mean, that's why they do it. Yeah, right. Yes, that's the motive.
Gerardo Sumano [01:38:44] But again, we go to the same issue of lying. You know, lying for the Lord or lying to, to make things appear better than they are.
John Dehlin [01:38:55] Yeah, yeah. So let's go to the next slide where you compare the Mormon Church to other high demand religions.
Comparing Mormon and Other Church Retention Rates
Gerardo Sumano [01:39:04] Yes. So we have three religions here, more Mormons, Yehovah Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists.
John Dehlin [01:39:09] Surely those guys do worse than us, right? I mean, surely everything that Jehovah's Witnesses in Seventh Day Adventists do is less honest and more deceptive. Right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:39:18] You would think that's what I was hoping to find. Okay, but then, so I get. And for these numbers also, we will include links. But this is what the numbers that the. So we have a, this is a table. We have the three religions. Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists. We have the numbers that the church claims, you know, the organizations themselves claim. And then we have the numbers that the 2020 census shows. And then we have a percentage of how truthful the number of the, of the organization is. So we have Mormons claiming that there are 1.5 million members in Mexico and the census showing only 337,000 members. So that's a 23% truthfulness.
John Dehlin [01:40:12] Okay. Not even a quarter percent truthful.
Gerardo Sumano [01:40:17] Yeah, they get less than enough Jehovah Witnesses. The church organization claims that there's 864,000 members in Mexico. Well, the census actually shows 1.5 million people identify as Jehovah Witnesses. So that's 177% truthful. And my guess on that number disparity is because Jehovah Witnesses take a lot longer to baptize people. It can take at least a year by the time the member should be, or the person that wants to get baptized should be already be preaching and going to the meetings. And do all these kinds of stuff to get baptized. So that's why there's a lot more people identifying as Jehovah Witnesses than what the church is putting out as how many baptized members they have. But it's crazy how much larger that number is compared to Mormons.
John Dehlin [01:41:19] I mean, that's like seven times more truthful if I'm multiplying, right? Yes, well, the Jehovah's witnesses are seven times more truthful and over 100% truthful.
Gerardo Sumano [01:41:31] Yeah, well, there's that, but there's also the fact that. How? Like I'm surprised that there's a lot more Jehovah Witness, a lot more people identifying as Jehovah Witnesses in Mexico than Mormons because Mormons have more money, more resources, have been in the country for longer and just the number disparities just kind of. And the Jehovah Witnesses are way more, they demand way more out of people.
John Dehlin [01:41:58] So they're basically kicking our butts. So the Jehovah's Witnesses are kicking our butts? Yes. In Mexico.
Gerardo Sumano [01:42:03] Yeah. It's kind of crazy.
John Dehlin [01:42:05] And like, remember when you're a missionary and you'd meet Jehovah's Witness missionaries? Yeah. You're like, those guys are losers, right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:42:12] Yeah, yeah, exactly. We have the truth. They don't know what they're doing. That's completely true.
John Dehlin [01:42:18] Los testigos de. We call them rightos. Exactly.
Gerardo Sumano [01:42:22] Okay, so, and then we have the Seventh Day Adventist. The church reports that there are 778,000 members in Mexico, while the census shows 791 people identify as Seventh Day Adventist. That's 102% truthful.
John Dehlin [01:42:41] Yeah. So it's not like the church can't do this. Like they'll say, oh well, this is hard and stats are hard and you know, you never know. Sometimes people move and sometimes people die and it's hard to track these things. Well, somehow two other high demand religions are getting it right. And by the way, the Seventh Day Adventists are also kicking our butt because they've got over twice the reported members.
Gerardo Sumano [01:43:07] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:43:08] And they're being four times as honest as we are.
Gerardo Sumano [01:43:11] Yeah, yeah.
John Dehlin [01:43:12] I mean that's just super. I always thought we were better than the other me too. High demand religions in terms of more successful and more honest and moral.
Gerardo Sumano [01:43:23] Me too.
John Dehlin [01:43:24] This, I'm sad. Like this doesn't make me happy.
Gerardo Sumano [01:43:27] What do you think is that the Mormonism hasn't been successful in Mexico as much as these other religions? Bishop.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:43:36] I think it is the system that we have to baptize people we baptize them way too quick. So, you know, because you were a missionary here in Mexico, you get them to church three times, and then you baptize them. You don't quite explain them all the. Well, you know, all the commitments that they are doing, but by baptizing. So on a background of people who. And on a country where most people are Catholics, and as you mentioned, many of those Catholics don't even attend church, then they get baptized quickly, and then they realize that there's much commitment for the church, and then they just leave the church.
Gerardo Sumano [01:44:15] Right, but why are you. But why are Jehovah Witnesses being so much more successful?
John Dehlin [01:44:21] I mean, I think what he said is a part of the problem. Just corrupt missionary practices. Right, but go ahead.
Gerardo Sumano [01:44:30] Yes. If there. If there are more requirements in the Jehovah Witnesses, you know, way more rules. I mean, you have to. Every member, every person that is interested to get baptized have to go out and preach and have a certain amount of time preaching a week and stuff like that. Why are they having so much. If it's about the commitment, why are Jehovah Witnesses being more successful at finding people who are willing to agree to those commitments and Mormons are not?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:44:58] I don't think it's commitment. I think it's transparency. I mean, once you decide to be a Jehovah Witness, once you decide to baptize, you know what you're up to, you know how much time you have to dedicate to your church, you are not being pressured to be baptized. I mean, the way I see this census number, I can see Jehovah Witnesses having lines out of their churches for people to be baptized while we have to be chasing people to get baptized. Right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:45:24] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:45:25] So that's where there's a disconnection. It's again, on my point of view is on transparency, because you tell them, like, oh, you get baptized, and this is a covenant that you do with God and all that, but then you tell them you have to minister and you have to pay tithing and you have to come to church during the week, and then you have to do this and this. You have to attend the temple, and then you have to have an active temple recommend, and then you are not clear about that from the beginning. And Gerardo and John, you and I were missionaries, and you know that we are not clear. And nowhere in the missionary discussions, we have clarity on all the things that are requested from a church member. So that's a huge impact. So Jehovah Witnesses are slower. They take people like, okay, yes, and remember, people here are identifying as that religion. So what would happen here is that if I am a Jehovah Witness, even if I am not complying, if I am not yet baptized, I say that I am a Jehovah Witness because I am going to church every Sunday. Right. But if I was a church member, I got pressured by the missionaries to get baptized after three weeks, and then my experience overall was not good. Then I don't want to declare myself as a church member. Right. Because I didn't have a good experience at church. I think that would explain it.
Gerardo Sumano [01:46:48] So basically the transparency and the corruption of the missionary program is what is not helping.
John Dehlin [01:46:54] Yeah. And that's obviously if anybody listened to episode one of Mormon Stories podcast. What started me down the road of, of questioning Mormonism was a corrupt mission in Guatemala where we were baptizing 750 plus a month, trying to compete with Chile Vinh Del Mar that was baptizing over a thousand a month, but it was totally corrupt. So. And then when I got home, guess what? I wrote Elder down H. Oaks and told him this was happening as if he didn't already know.
Gerardo Sumano [01:47:21] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:47:22] And. And this is back in the 90s, early 90s, and he told me he was going to fix it. And, and we know that Elder Holland went to chile and closed 30 stakes because Chile was just a disaster. And I talked to Elder Holland about this personally. And we also know that Elder Oaks went to the Philippines and did something very similar. So it's not like the church hasn't known about this. They've known about it forever and they haven't fixed it. And so that leads me to another two issues. One is just that I think in Mormonism there's an emphasis on appearance over substance, over creating the appearance of strength, the appearance of success, the appearance of honesty, the appearance of righteousness instead of actual honesty and righteousness and, and conversion and success. I know that sounds harsh, but I do think there's an overemphasis on faking things. And again, where does that come from? It comes from the core church culture. The other thing I'll say is, is that, you know, in the, in the case of the Mormon Church, we got addicted to growth because of the massive growth that happened in the 50s and 60s and 70s. A lot of that was baseball baptisms. And Maven can include his show notes the baseball baptism scandal in the UK in the early 60s. But you know, we were all taught that Daniel 2, 44 and 45, scripture in the Old Testament, that the stone shall be cut out of the mountain without hands and shall consume all nations. And what we were taught is the church is. Is the fastest growing religion in the world. Wrong. But that's what we were taught. And number two is going to keep growing into the millennium. And we all remember those President Kimball videos where it would show over a timeline, temples dotting the globe. And it went from just a couple temples to more temples to. By the end, there's temples dotting the globe. And it just creates this impression that we're just going to become the biggest church in the world, and that's a sign of success. And I think we got addicted to the belief that we were the fastest growing church and we're going to become the biggest church. The test. The Jehovah's Witnesses have the opposite motive. The Bible only allows there to be 144,000 chosen. They don't want. They don't want everybody to become a Jehovah's Witness. I mean, they want to give people a chance. But if, but if they have, you know, 200 million members, well, which ones become the 144,000?
Gerardo Sumano [01:50:01] Well, they believe they're preaching for the other people who are not going to make it to heaven. But. But they do have a little bit of a different approach to how strong the church should become. I agree with that.
John Dehlin [01:50:12] But I remember talking to. To Lloyd Evans on Mormon stories, and there being an issue of all the members realizing, well, who's going to be. Who's going to be chosen? Because we've got all the people who've already died.
Gerardo Sumano [01:50:23] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:50:24] And then there's all these people now. Who makes the 144,000? Is it you? Is it me? Should I claim that I have been? Are you going to claim that you've been? Who do we believe? I mean, that is an issue, right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:50:34] It is an issue.
John Dehlin [01:50:35] So. And go ahead, go ahead.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:50:37] Sorry. Every new member you have as a yoga witness shrinks your possibility. One of those 144,000, right?
John Dehlin [01:50:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just different motives anyway. That's fascinating. But also just that we're losing. We're literally.
Gerardo Sumano [01:50:55] What do you think the formula is that the Mormons are missing in Mexico? Mexico?
John Dehlin [01:50:59] You tell me, bro.
Gerardo Sumano [01:51:00] I don't know. I have no idea. Dude.
John Dehlin [01:51:03] Obispo, why does your church suck? I'm kidding.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:51:07] That was harsh.
John Dehlin [01:51:08] I'm joking. I did that for humor, actually. Somebody wrote me and said, said, I'll try and find the comment. But it basically says, hey, John, my wife is a Catholic and you're making her laugh. So I. I'm just. I'm trying to be a little bit funny. Sorry, Obispo. So I didn't mean to offend you,
Gerardo Sumano [01:51:26] but I do agree with Obispo that this culture of baptizing people quickly and getting commit. And getting them to commit to shady things that we haven't even talked them to about is not helping. And it's causing probably a repelling effect where people don't want to be associated with it.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:51:51] And also that people is harsh. I mean, like, really orthodox church members in Mexico, and I think it's the same in Utah, are really harsh with people who are not complying to a certain degree of commitment. Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:52:02] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:52:03] I remember, for example, I am now remembering something that happened when I was younger. A family got baptized, and after a year, they went to the temple, they received their endowment. And then the next Sunday, after they had received their endowment, the lady was wearing a dress which, where you could see that she was not wearing the top garment. So once this approached her and she tried to be kind or whatever, but she pretty much told her, like, hey, why are you not wearing your garment? You just went to the temple, you made a covenant with God that you were gonna wear that for the rest of your life and that you would not put it out for any activity which you could use it. Right. Then why are you not wearing your garment? That was the last time that lady went to church. She never came back. So members are also harsh with. With new converts and sometimes when they don't fit the mold of. Sorry, a true believing Mormon, then that's difficult for them.
Gerardo Sumano [01:53:02] Yeah, no, I, I think the culture has to do a lot. Has a lot to do with it too. Now I remember as a missionary, I visited the Jehovah Witnesses Church a couple times, and we were always received like, like if we were celebrities, everyone came and, and, you know, wanted to say hi and say that they were so grateful that we were there. That doesn't happen in the Mormon Church. It's very different. Different. Different culture.
John Dehlin [01:53:33] Well, at the end of the day, religion is a product, religion is a business, and the. The church experience is the product. And the Mormon Church has not created a compelling product. Whether it's boring music, boring talks, like too much, too expensive. Yeah, you know, you can't drink coffee. What the heck? Like, they just created a. I think over time, it's a crappy product. And I think for a lot of years, because we were the United States, because the United States was really popular, I think that the church benefited from Being an American church. Yes. But over time, as the United States has maybe become less popular, I think also the churches that maybe, maybe the church has suffered from that in foreign countries. I don't know.
Gerardo Sumano [01:54:27] My husband, who served in Germany strongly agrees with what you just said.
John Dehlin [01:54:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So church, you've got to improve your product. You just, you just got to accept the gays. Yeah, I mean that. Well, I don't know. Would that help or hurt? I mean, would that help or hurt in Latin America?
Gerardo Sumano [01:54:46] I'm interested to hear what Bishop has to say about that.
John Dehlin [01:54:49] Yeah, yeah. Bishop Obispo, if, if the church, Mormon Church, accepted gay people in, in Mexico, would that be good for membership or bad?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:54:59] Well, it's generational. Right. So for all the new generations, the younger generations, it would definitely be beneficial. I have been, as I mentioned, I'm 30 something years old, I'm in my early 30s, and I have been asked by many acquaintances and people from my job, like, hey, do your church accept gay people? And when I give the answer, they are like less encouraged to join the church. So that's generational. Absolutely.
John Dehlin [01:55:28] Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I would expected that. Okay, so I guess the next slide is. I guess the next slide is.
Lost and Inactive Members: The Hidden Reality
Gerardo Sumano [01:55:38] What, what's the, what is the church doing about this? Yeah, you can go to the next one.
John Dehlin [01:55:42] Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [01:55:43] And we can have Bishop explain this one.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:55:48] Absolutely. Just let me enlarge the screen. So this is the Finding Lost Members program. I guess you have heard of this because I know that there was a meeting in Utah, training for church leaders regarding how to use this Finding Lost Member new report. So pretty much what is going on here is that they have enabled in your system, in your bishop system or your ward system, they have enabled a list where you can put people with whom you are not acquainted of. I mean, people who hasn't attended church in many years. For example, in my ward, I have a couple hundred church members of record and there are most of them, I do not know them. Right. They were even baptized before I moved to this ward more than eight years ago. So I do not know that people. I am not certain that they are still living in the address that we have in the records. So for all that people, which we don't know, and we don't know where they moved or we don't know if they are still living or not, then they created this report where you go and select all those people, all those families, and you put those into this Finding Lost Members list. And what happens here is that the moment you add people to that list, then those people stop counting for your reports. I mean, for your activity rates and for all the reporting that. For your statistics, for your Word statistics. So if I put one family there of five people, then I would get rid of those five people as part of my 100% of ward members. Right. Am I being clear enough on this? Do you. Do you have any question? Sorry. You know that English is not my first language, so.
John Dehlin [01:57:34] No, you're doing great. You're doing great.
Gerardo Sumano [01:57:37] Yeah. So I understood. Do you want to just re. Restate? Basically, I can do it, too. Basically, what this program is, as far as I understand, it's letting you as a bishop, to get rid of records of people who you don't know. You don't know if they live in the Word, and basically just send them to church headquarters. So then it would reflect better on your active activity rates.
John Dehlin [01:58:07] Well, yeah. And this is one of the conversations I had with Mormon Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland back when I had a couple lunches with him. What he said that happened in Chile was, imagine you're a bishop, or worse. Imagine you're a branch president and you've got, like, 20 people attending church, or maybe 50. In. In Latin America, there are way more women than men. There's a lack of worthy priesthood holders in Latin America, so you're already down men, and then you've got a bunch of women and kids. If you have anything, imagine how discouraging it would be to be a branch president or a bishop of a ward with like, 40 people. And look at this list of a thousand members that are within your boundaries, like Obispo. What. What would that feel like?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [01:58:55] Oh, it feels. It feels really bad. I mean, it's just like, first you feel, like, stressed because you feel like, oh, I'm the bishop of all these people and I don't even know them. So the load that you have because of that list is huge because you feel responsible for them, even though you don't know them, even though they haven't attended church for a while, even though you don't know their faces just because of them being in that report, you know, of their existence, and you know that they are church members. Right? So, yes, and it is a bit disencouraging because when are you gonna find all of those. When are you gonna find time to visit all of those addresses? Right. And you can get the ward council to work on that. But it is a huge. It is a titanic endeavor. Right? So it's pretty much impossible to contact all of them.
John Dehlin [01:59:49] And I can imagine these young bishops with scrupulosity who are like, we're gonna do it. We're gonna go out and we're gonna find everyone and we're gonna challenge them to come back to church and reactivate them. And. And, yeah, each of you get 10 families. Families. And go find them and try and reconvert them. And what does that do over time to the excitement and the animal and the, you know, the engagement of the leaders in your branch or ward?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:00:19] It makes you feel like you're not getting results. Right. And no matter how much effort you put into that, results are not there. And then. Because before all this faith deconstruction and all this process that I have lived during the most recent years, I used to. Now I know that I used to have scrupulosity, right? Religious scrupulosity. So I used to be like that, John. I used to be like the kind of person like, okay, let's do this, and let's assign all the people to do certain things. And. And then you find out that they don't do those, and that's discouraging. And you assign someone to visit somebody else, and they don't do that, and that's discouraging. But then in your mind, as you are having that scrupulosity, you go on Sunday, and then half of the ward council is not there for the meeting. And then you think like, oh, this is my fault, is maybe because I was mad at my wife this morning, and that's the reason why the Lord is punishing me, and that's the reason why they are not coming to church today. Right. Or let's say that one Sunday you have 40 less people than the past week. And then you think like, oh, this is probably because I had something like an improper thought or whatever. Probably I was having a discussion with my mother, and that's the reason why they are not coming to church today. And being completely honest, you are not accountable for what all ward members do. Even if you're a bishop, even if you're the state president or whatever, you are not accountable and you're not responsible for the decisions of other people, Period.
Gerardo Sumano [02:01:44] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:01:45] Yeah. And so then you go from being exhausted and discouraged to, like, being apathetic. It's like, I can't. How am I going to make a difference? I can't make a difference. You know? And it makes them want to give up. So then I guess it's good that they create this program where you can just remove all these members from your branch or ward and I'm assuming they just all go into the centralized pool at church headquarters in some database, because it's not like other bishops or stake presidents are going to go find Jose Luis Miguel Lopez in some other part of Mexico. And so this even begs the question more as to why the church misleads people about their statistics because now they're sitting at church headquarters with like this huge list of what. What's 70% of 16 million? Right. Of like 10 million. 10 million names that they know. They don't even associate with a branch or ward anymore. Yeah, they're just. They're just meaningless, worthless names that no longer have addresses, don't even have cities or states anymore. And it's. They're just awash in statistics and it's like a Potemkin town. You know, I have to.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:03:06] I have to interrupt you there, John, because those numbers, those names, sorry, are not going to church headquarters. Remaining your ward in a separate list, you can, which you can like check and review every once in a while. They are just not part of the statistic. But they remain in your ward until you find them and you are able to send them to a different ward or until, if you can go back to the slide. Gerardo, please.
Gerardo Sumano [02:03:31] Yes.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:03:32] There are some steps that you have to complete. So let's just. Okay, so it says step number one, seek to communicate using phone, email, social media, etc. Etc. So you have to get any resource that you have to contact that person, contact known family or friends of the member. That's number two. Number three is contact the occupants.
John Dehlin [02:03:53] Why are you laughing? Wait, why Herod is laughing? Why are you laughing?
Gerardo Sumano [02:03:56] I mean, I've seen a lot of inactive members on social media complain about. About this stalking methodology. Yeah. By. By active members, you know, trying to find them.
John Dehlin [02:04:09] Yeah, okay. Okay, keep going. Obispo. Sorry, I just wanted to hear the
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:04:13] next one says, contact the occupant of the members last known address. And number four, obtain the bishop's approval to return records to church headquarters.
John Dehlin [02:04:22] Okay. So you can return the records to
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:04:25] church headquarters after you have completed all these steps. So this takes a burden out of the bishop because the moment you say, I don't know this person and I am not sure if they are still living in the ward, you can get rid of them into that list. You can separate them and put them into that list. And then after you have the chance to complete all those steps, you send those to church headquarters.
John Dehlin [02:04:49] I. I once heard, Obispo, that like one of the biggest problems of the church in Latin America isn't all the, you know, is it the high inactivity rate? It's that a very large percentage of bishopric members and stake presidency members aren't even paying tithing. And I don't say that to criticize, you know, members of the church in Latin America. I'm guessing it's because 10% is such a huge burden financially on people in, in more developing countries. You know, is it, would that be accurate in your mind to, to hear. Would that, would that, that there might be a large percentage of bishopric members and, or stake presidency members that aren't even able to pay tithing?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:05:40] Yes, that would make sense. Yes, absolutely.
Gerardo Sumano [02:05:42] But they're lying.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:05:43] Maybe they do their best and they are like part tithing partial. Right. They are not full tights.
Gerardo Sumano [02:05:49] Yeah. Because if you're not, remember, if you're not a full tight, if you don't report yourself at full tight pair, you lose your temple recommend and then you can't be serving as.
John Dehlin [02:05:57] So they learn to lie and report themselves as full temple recommend, as full tithe payers, even if they're not.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:06:04] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that could happen. Yes, definitely.
John Dehlin [02:06:07] Okay. All right, so where should we go next?
Gerardo Sumano [02:06:13] The next slide.
John Dehlin [02:06:15] Okay. Yeah, this is good.
Gerardo Sumano [02:06:19] This is.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:06:20] And I just, I just had a, I just had another comment on defining lost members. I have heard that in other church areas what they are doing is that they are returning names from church headquarters back to the last word where they would record it, and they are bringing those members to that list so that the leadership of that specific word can make that effort on contacting that people that was previously sent to church headquarters because they.
Gerardo Sumano [02:06:48] Church headquarters don't want the numbers, bro. The, the names probably there for. Yeah, there's too many.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:06:56] Yeah, exactly.
John Dehlin [02:06:58] Yeah. Okay, well, so now we're going to be looking at. Is this the activity rates in your ward, Obispo?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:07:08] Yeah, that's correct.
John Dehlin [02:07:10] And that's kind of a big deal. Go ahead, Go ahead, Obispo. What were you saying?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:07:14] So it's my word and I got information from another word. So I have information from those two words. But yes, some of this information is from my word.
John Dehlin [02:07:21] And for people who've never been Mormon, this is a big deal because the Mormon Church as a part of its long standing policies of deception and hiding information, they'll tell you they have 17 million members when they know the only. When they know they only have five. But they won't tell anyone how many of those are active. They know the number, but they won't tell anyone and that's deception. Yeah, but now we've got one bishop and maybe someone else who's willing to actually share actual activity rates in. In a Mormon ward or two in Mexico. So that's why this is a big deal.
Gerardo Sumano [02:08:02] These are actual screenshots from the LDS system.
John Dehlin [02:08:05] So this is literally the church's tracking system of activity rates. So we know they. They have those numbers.
Gerardo Sumano [02:08:11] Yes. Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:08:13] Okay. Yeah. Tell us what these say, Obispo.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:08:16] Well, this is the. The trend of activity rates for my word in 2020, 2021, and 2022. There's a line, a trend, and that's a screenshot, as Gerardo mentioned, from the system. And in 2020, we reported a 20% activity rate. For my word in 2021, we reported 17%. 2022 was 18, and 2023 is 23% considering January and whatever Sundays have passed of February. So these are the actual numbers we're reporting right now. And those come from every week, like typing in how many members or how many people you had a church for sacrament.
John Dehlin [02:08:57] Meaning, okay, now is that. Is that 23% of the people who are considered active members, not counting those who are in that bucket of loss. So is it 23 of all or 23 of the people that are designated as we know who they are and where they live?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:09:23] It's 23 of the people that we know who they are and where they live and are not in the finding lost member list.
John Dehlin [02:09:29] So it's. It's actually way lower than 23%.
Gerardo Sumano [02:09:32] Yeah. If you would include those, I can
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:09:35] tell you that we have cleaned almost 10% of our church of our world records. So you can estimate that number.
John Dehlin [02:09:43] Wait a minute. Are you saying 10% of your records are. We know where they are, and of
Gerardo Sumano [02:09:50] those, 20 don't know?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:09:52] No, I have. I have get rid of 10% because I didn't know where they were. So. Okay, I got rid of those.
John Dehlin [02:09:58] So 10% of your members of record in your ward, you've put or are in that category of we don't know where they are. We don't even consider them.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:10:08] Exactly.
John Dehlin [02:10:08] Okay, so that 23 number is really 18 or something like that?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:10:13] Close to that, yes.
John Dehlin [02:10:14] Okay. Yeah. And that's what we've been estimating for a long time is activity rates in Latin America around 10 to 20%. And I'm guessing that in Chile, it's going to be worse than in Mexico. You know what I mean?
Gerardo Sumano [02:10:27] Yeah. And there's some words that are stronger than others and some words that are way Lower. You know, I served in words that were way lower than this.
John Dehlin [02:10:35] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [02:10:36] Would you say, Bishop, that your word is. Is a. Is a strong word as far as membership, attendance?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:10:44] Yes. Yes, I would say it is a strong, strong one.
Gerardo Sumano [02:10:46] Wow.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:10:47] It is the second largest, largest word in my stake. So that gives you perspective.
John Dehlin [02:10:52] Yes.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:10:53] And many people can say, well, this is effect of the pandemic. Right. Because in 2020, we were, like, on lockdown and whatever. But if you go back to that slide. Gerardo, please. Then we have the numbers of the quarterly report, and that's information for a quarter in 2022, a quarter in 2021, and that same quarter in 2017. So, as you can see, in 2021 was 17%, which matches what we had on the other chart. And on 2017, which is. What is that six years ago? The end was way before pandemic, the activity rate was 17%.
John Dehlin [02:11:32] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [02:11:33] So it's always. It's been that low for a while.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:11:36] Yeah. It's not. Not because of the pandemic. It's not like that.
John Dehlin [02:11:41] Yeah. This is a really valuable slide. Somebody needs to write the guy at Camorra, Matt Marinich or whatever, and show him this slide, because he's always trying to guess what the activity rates are. Well, we've got some actual activity rates.
Gerardo Sumano [02:11:55] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:11:56] Contact Matt Marnich of Camorra. Okay. So that's a really important slide. Thanks for sharing. I'm guessing the church is not loving that we're sharing these numbers.
Gerardo Sumano [02:12:06] Probably not.
John Dehlin [02:12:07] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:12:08] Yeah, probably not.
John Dehlin [02:12:09] Yeah. Okay, what's this next slide? Obispo.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:12:14] This is another word from central Mexico. And the attendance here in 2022, February 2022, is. Was 35%. And in January 2023 was 27%. So this was interesting, because this is the highest number of church attendance rates that I have heard in a while. Not in a while, ever in my life. Because every time since I am a leader in the church, which has been probably the last 12 years, I have heard numbers between 20 and 25%. This is the first time that I see a word with. With more than 30. Activity rate.
Gerardo Sumano [02:12:50] Yeah, it's really rare.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:12:52] So I would say that this is an outlier. This is definitely not the mean of church attendance in Mexico.
Gerardo Sumano [02:12:57] And my dad confirmed that. I asked my dad about his activity rates. I'm not going to say here, but he. He said that 30 is pretty much unheard of.
John Dehlin [02:13:05] Yeah. So at best, the church has a. You know, the best ward in Mexico has around 30% activity rates.
Gerardo Sumano [02:13:13] Yeah. So this one. Go Ahead, go ahead.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:13:17] I asked another friend who is a bishop. He didn't share any information, but he said that his activity rates were from 8 to 10%, that he used to have like 60 to 70 people attending church every Sunday.
Gerardo Sumano [02:13:29] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:13:29] In a ward, right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:13:30] In a ward. Yes.
John Dehlin [02:13:31] Yes. Imagine 60 people in a ward.
Gerardo Sumano [02:13:34] Oh, I was in a ward. Ward, not branch. That were only 12 people attending every week.
John Dehlin [02:13:41] That's just fraud. Like, that really is fraud. To call a ward of something with 12 people attending. That's fraud. It's lying. Right?
Gerardo Sumano [02:13:53] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:13:54] The other thing we need to say about this slide is it's. It's kind of reverse chronology because the earlier dates are on the right. But it starts at 35% in February of 2022, but it ends in. In, you know, January of 2023 at 27%. So that's. That's a full 8 loss of 8 percentage points, not 8%.
Gerardo Sumano [02:14:20] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:14:20] 8 percentage point drop from 30. From 33% activity rates to 27% in a matter of a year. That's a huge drop.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:14:33] Yes, it is.
Gerardo Sumano [02:14:35] And this is one of the strongest words in Mexico.
John Dehlin [02:14:37] Yeah. And that's going to show the impact of COVID Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [02:14:41] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:14:41] Yeah. Wow, that's really. That's really interesting. Obispo. And I'm guessing those numbers aren't going up anytime soon.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:14:50] No, I don't think so.
Gerardo Sumano [02:14:51] Probably not.
John Dehlin [02:14:52] All right, let's go to the next slide.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:14:55] Well, last time I heard about activity race in my stick, and then again, this is declared by myself at a church meeting. It was a few years ago. They. One time they mentioned that it was 19%, and on a different year, they mentioned 21%. As you can guess, 19 was the. The most updated number that I got. 21 was a number that I heard a few years before that.
John Dehlin [02:15:21] Yeah. Okay. So it's just further confirmation, which, if
Gerardo Sumano [02:15:26] you think about it, they match quite. Quite close the. The. The statistics shown on the census.
John Dehlin [02:15:33] Right, yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [02:15:34] Of how many people identify as Mormon.
John Dehlin [02:15:36] Yeah. Yep. Yeah, that's. That's not a good number. And it. And it matches and makes sense. All right, well, what's the. Now we've got percentage tithe payers. Holy moly. This is amazing.
Tithing Payment Rates and Member Shaming
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:15:50] So, yeah, this is tight payers from the world. So for 2022, we got 14. In 2021, we had 11. And you can see the trend there. 20, 20, 20 was 11, 2019 was 13, and 2018 was 18. So those are the numbers that we have of full tithe payers.
John Dehlin [02:16:08] Yeah. So going in reverse they've gone from 18% tithe payers in 2018 to 14% tithe payers in 2022. And I'm assuming that's not counting kids. I'm assuming that it is counting kids.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:16:24] This number is counting kids because you count the family. So you have the meeting with. You can either have the meeting with the parents or with the priesthood holder from the family. And then once the parents or those who actually have an income declare themselves, then you declare the whole family.
John Dehlin [02:16:43] Because the slide says toronumoro de adultos.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:16:47] Oh, yeah, it's just adults. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Then you're right. There's no kids there, only 18 and above. Okay, that's correct.
John Dehlin [02:16:54] I'm not trying to. To prove. Prove you guys wrong. I just.
Gerardo Sumano [02:16:57] No, you're right. Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:16:58] You're right.
Gerardo Sumano [02:16:59] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:16:59] And you're the one who is not.
John Dehlin [02:17:09] Perfect. Okay? So. Yeah. So, so obviously active tithe paying is even lower. So they're getting 10 to 30 activity rates, and of those, you know, 10 to 20% are tithe pairs. That's not good. I mean, the church is operating at a loss in Mexico. I'm.
Gerardo Sumano [02:17:29] Well, you. You would think. Well, we're going to show a number later that you. I was. I found quite surprising.
John Dehlin [02:17:36] Okay. But yeah, so what's this video we're going to show Gerardo?
Gerardo Sumano [02:17:42] So we wanted to show.
John Dehlin [02:17:44] Wait, wait, wait, wait. Sorry, sorry. Gerardo Obispo, when you have tithing settlement with your members of your ward, what's that conversation like? And how do they. Do they feel bad that they're not paying tithing? And how do they explain why they're not paying tithing? I think that's important.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:18:05] Yeah, absolutely. So. Well, the. At least from myself, as a bishop, my objective is not to make them feel bad because I know that pay tithe is a challenge. I know that it means a lot of extra effort that a family has to make to pay that. It means that they have to sacrifice many things to pay that or to separate that 10% of their income. And sometimes people income is really, really low. So it could be probably, I don't know, a hundred, five hundred dollars a month, probably. Some families in Mexico are earning that and they have three kids and they have to figure out how to live with that money. So my objective as a bishop is not like shame them or make them feel bad because they are not paying tithing. But yes, absolutely. Actually, it is a challenge to have.
Gerardo Sumano [02:18:54] But just one second. Are you saying you, as a bishop, as a progressive bishop, or do you think every bishop does this is the same? Like, do you get training saying, like, you shouldn't be shaming people for not paying tithing?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:19:08] Yeah. I am talking about myself. Right. So, yeah, me, myself, as a progressive bishop, I don't do that.
Gerardo Sumano [02:19:15] Okay.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:19:15] Yes.
Gerardo Sumano [02:19:16] Do you know of bishops who do shame people for not paying tithing or their members?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:19:23] I was never in the situation of having a tithing declaration and not just remember I was an unscrupulous orthodox member, so I never paid partial tithing. So it was always full tithe. And my interviews were, like, really, like, soft. So to speaking.
Gerardo Sumano [02:19:40] Okay. So just, I would say, in my experience, I know bishops personally who do shame their members for not paying tithing in Mexico. So anyway, I, I would, I would,
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:19:52] I would say that there are some bishops that are really like, like hard on that.
John Dehlin [02:19:56] Right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:19:56] Yeah. They take away temple recommends. So you go to your tithing declaration thinking, am I going to lose my temple recommend because I haven't paid tithing for last two weeks. So for the last month. So that, that definitely happens. And there are definitely the bishops who are harder on that.
Gerardo Sumano [02:20:15] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:20:16] Which means at best, you're shamed in front of your ward because you can't attend ward temple night or your spouse thinks you're a loser. You know, that's at best. And at worst, you can't attend the wedding of your own daughter or son.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:20:29] Exactly.
John Dehlin [02:20:30] Or niece or nephew. Right. And everybody around you is wondering what porn you look at or when you cheated on your spouse because you're sitting outside the temple while everybody else is in. Right? Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:20:44] Yeah, that could happen. Yeah, definitely.
John Dehlin [02:20:46] Okay, thanks for sharing that. Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:20:50] But, but keep in mind that I am more progressive. I do not try to shame people. But even though I do not try to shame people, it is a challenge to get tithing declaration, tithing declarations, interviews booked. Because people who doesn't pay full tithe, they just don't want to be in front of a bishop declaring that they didn't do that. So you try and you take your ward executive secretary to get those interviews and get that people into church and you get there on time for the interview, and yes, they just do not show up. So that happens a lot. So from my experience, it is a lot on. You have to check on the numbers, and you're gonna find a lot of people who didn't pay even one peso Right. During the year. So you would, though, that those guys that, you know, they didn't pay anything, it's gonna be super challenging to get them to have an interview so you have the chance as a bishop to declare them as non payers. And then you put on another column that the bishop is the one who declared that. And I do that because otherwise it would be impossible to complete tithing declarations on time. So out of those people. Out of those people, there are some of them who are probably more orthodox and they understand that they do have to have this tithing declaration and they come and when they haven't paid full tithe, you can tell because they are shy. They are. I mean, they go there and sometimes they even cry because they haven't paid a full tithe. Right.
Gerardo Sumano [02:22:25] Wow.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:22:25] So. So it is emotional emotionally. It is. It is hard emotionally for those members.
John Dehlin [02:22:35] Yeah, yeah. Okay. And so with that, we're going to share a clip of what a Mormon general authority talking about tithing.
Gerardo Sumano [02:22:43] Yes. And general conference in Latin America.
John Dehlin [02:22:48] And what made you pick this herodo?
Gerardo Sumano [02:22:50] I thought it was important just to, as we were talking about tithing in Latin America to show just a clip of, you know, what the church's tactics of getting people to pay tithing are.
John Dehlin [02:23:01] And who's this dude who's going to be talking?
Gerardo Sumano [02:23:03] He's a general authority in General Conference.
John Dehlin [02:23:05] I'm not sure he looks Latino. Did I get that right or not?
Gerardo Sumano [02:23:10] I think he mentions in the Central America. Central America. I need to look up for his name.
John Dehlin [02:23:16] So. So Mexicanos, Latinos are going to pay extra attention to what we're about to hear?
Gerardo Sumano [02:23:20] Probably, yes.
John Dehlin [02:23:21] All right, let's roll the tape.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:23:26] Some events related to a civil war in Central America. My father's business went bankrupt.
John Dehlin [02:23:34] He went from about 240 full time employees to fewer than five sewing operators
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:23:41] who worked as needed in the garage of our home.
John Dehlin [02:23:46] One day, during those difficult times, I heard my parents discussing whether they should
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:23:54] pay tithing or buy food for the children. On Sunday, I followed my father to
John Dehlin [02:24:02] seek what he was going to do. After our church meetings, I saw him
Gerardo Sumano [02:24:08] take an envelope and put his tithing in it.
John Dehlin [02:24:13] That was only part of the lesson.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:24:16] The question that remained for me was what we were going to eat.
John Dehlin [02:24:22] Early Monday morning, some people knocked on our door.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:24:29] When I opened it, they asked for my father.
John Dehlin [02:24:31] I called for him and when he
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:24:33] arrived, the visitors told him about an
John Dehlin [02:24:37] urgent sewing order they needed as quickly as possible.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:24:42] They told him that the order was
John Dehlin [02:24:44] so urgent that they would pay for it in advance. That day I learned the principle of
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:24:53] pain tithing and the blessings that follow.
Gerardo Sumano [02:24:57] I should have mentioned that this clip I took from Mormonism Live, Radio Free Mormon, Bill Real, who did an episode on tithing a couple weeks ago.
John Dehlin [02:25:06] Yeah, we love Bill Real and Radio Free Mormon and Mormonism Live. Check them out. Subscribe to him. But, but I just have to ask Obispo, you know, in light of this recent news, you know, not only that the Mormon Church has hundreds of billions of dollars in like disposable investment income in cash and real estate, in, in stocks and bonds and municipalities. And that's not millions, that's hundred, at least over a hundred billion. The churches probably has investments over $200 billion that they intentionally were hiding from the membership, which we now learn because they were worried that these members would not pay tithing if they knew that the church had 200 plus billion dollars in investments. Knowing that you've got members of your ward with three children who are making 500amonth and trying to survive. What's it like to hear Obispo, that type of rhetoric about tithing,
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:26:20] from my perspective, is that they should change that message. That message should be softer and you shouldn't be shaming people because they are not paying tithing. And you have to consider, John, consider those full tithe percentages. If we check on the part tithing members, that makes a large amount of members here in Mexico. So it means that there's people who is doing their best to pay some of that tithing, who have missed probably a week or two in the year, who probably missed a month, who probably got sick and had to pay for medicine, and they weren't able to pay for tithing that a specific period. And then because they missed to pay tithing on that specific month of the year, then you are not allowing them to go to the temple even though they paid for 11 months of the year. And then you're taking that money and you're operating the church and then you're taking a surplus and you're investing that surplus on Apple and Tesla and Coke and whatever. So, I mean, something is not all right there. And I think that rhetoric should change and that message to church members should be softer. I mean, you shouldn't shame people because of that.
Gerardo Sumano [02:27:27] By the way, that 70 is Elder Cordon from Guatemala.
John Dehlin [02:27:31] Yeah. That's not my fault. You're blaming me.
Gerardo Sumano [02:27:34] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:27:34] Are you blaming me? I just served a missionary. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, yeah. And, and if you guys want to Google, let's include in the show notes there's a, just, there's a, there's a video I put together of the church's Messages around tithing from general authorities and general conference on the Understanding Mormonism YouTube channel that is just Will make your stomach sick. So the church needs to change that. So thanks for sharing that perspective. Ob spoken. So, Gerardo, what's this next slide about?
Temple Recommends, Fast Offerings, and Welfare Aid
Gerardo Sumano [02:28:13] Yes, so there we go.
John Dehlin [02:28:17] Yeah, go ahead. Just set it up.
Gerardo Sumano [02:28:19] Okay, so this one was. This was some numbers that Obispo put together about how many members declared themselves as Mormon in. In Mexico per state where there's a temple either operating or announced. And we thought some of these numbers were interesting. We're not going to read all of them, but people can go ahead and go to the YouTube and look at the table. But what we found was that it seems like wherever there's going to be a temple announced, it seems kind of random and doesn't correlate with how many people are identifying as Mormon in that state. We also put a column there on the active recommend estimation based on that number of people identifying themselves as Mormon of age 15 and above. Our best estimation of how many of those have temple recommends is on the right. You will have cities like, for example, Queretaro, where there's only 2,000 members, possibly with temple recommends, and you'll have a city like Mexico City with 11,000, you know, so it seems kind of random where temples are being built and announced currently. And it's kind of. It's a little bit insightful just looking at these numbers.
John Dehlin [02:29:53] Yeah, I mean, like, I'm reading it, you know, Cuernavaca, 3,000, you know, Kulikan, you know, 5,000. Guadalajara, 3,700. I'm seeing their Via Hermosa, you know, less than 2,000.
Gerardo Sumano [02:30:14] Yes.
John Dehlin [02:30:15] Like, it's like, what is Nelson doing building temples in places with so few members?
Gerardo Sumano [02:30:22] Yes. Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:30:25] How has that received Obispo in Mexico? You know, I would assume that everybody's just stoked to have more and more temples. Like, more cowbell, let's have more temples. How is it being received there?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:30:40] Well, from my experience, people are super happy to have more temples. It's like, oh, yeah. And as you don't have idea of the numbers and you don't have the idea the regular church member do not have an idea on activity, race, or numbers or how many members are living in that specific area. Then they say, like, oh, people there in Culiacan should be working so hard to get a temple, and that's where they got it. And people in Cuernavaca should be super faithful and they should be baptizing a lot of people. And that's what they are getting a temple. So usually again, as you mentioned, it's about the appearance of growth, right. So probably you're not growing on church members, you're not growing those numbers, but then you appear to grow because there's going to be a temple built somewhere in the world. And then you say, oh, there are many church members in Dubai. I mean, the United Arab Emirates have tons of members because now we have a temple there. So we have changed that temple. Well, the church have changed that temple policy from building temples where they had enough members, where they were active, where the church was growing, to build temples in areas where. It doesn't make much sense, right?
Gerardo Sumano [02:31:47] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:31:48] Except it makes the local members number one. It makes them feel like maybe they're having success. It. You know, I always assumed, and I think I heard about studies, that when there's a temple nearby, it makes members maybe more desirous to be able to attend the temple. And I would have just assumed that the church did a study that whenever they build a temple, either membership or tithe paying goes up. Would you obese. But would you say that that's possible? That if they built the temple, you know, wherever you are, that more members would end up wanting to go to the temple and becoming tithe payers to be able to go?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:32:30] Yes, absolutely. I mean, it's like when you have a new amusement park, right? You want to go and visit that amusement park and you want to pay for those tickets. And sorry for making this comparison. I mean, I'm not mean to be disrespectful. Disrespectful to church members. Sorry for that. But it's like that, right? You want to go to the temple, your family is going to the temple. So you want to go to the temple. And in order to be able to enter the temple, you have to pay your tithing. So that's gonna be, that's gonna happen, right? That's gonna be like the next thing that you're gonna do once you have a temple close to your hometown. Definitely.
John Dehlin [02:33:09] Yeah. And so many people are like, why is the church building so many temples? Well, they can't buy more missionaries, right? I mean, they could pay members to go on missions. Oh, but, but, but they're probably not going to do that.
Gerardo Sumano [02:33:22] Isn't the church, though, encouraging in Mexico, a ton of senior people to go on missions right now? Yes, it's like crazy. They're sending them like crazy.
John Dehlin [02:33:31] Yeah, I'm sure they're encouraging it, but I'm just saying.
Gerardo Sumano [02:33:35] But it's not normal. Like it's just in the past couple of years.
John Dehlin [02:33:39] Well, I'm just saying the church has all this money, money and they're not going to buy missionaries. So they really can't grow the missionary program other than to beg old people to come out of retirement to be missionaries.
Gerardo Sumano [02:33:53] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:33:53] And they can't, they're not going to just open missions without missionaries to run the missions. And they're not going to be able to invest in keeping the members active because other than paying them to be active, they're, they're not able to get people to stay active. So the only place they can invest money really is in building buildings. Scientology does this and I think the Mormon Church does it because they've got the money. What are they going to do with it? Let's just build a bunch of buildings, make it look like we're successful, at least we're spending our money somehow and then hopefully it'll lead to higher activity rates and eventually more tithe payers and more temple recommend holders in the long run.
Gerardo Sumano [02:34:40] Well, if the church loves anything more than stocks, is, is real estate, so.
John Dehlin [02:34:46] Oh, it's also a good investment, right?
Gerardo Sumano [02:34:47] Yeah, exactly.
John Dehlin [02:34:48] Not that they ever sell off temples
Gerardo Sumano [02:34:51] for, you know, but if they ever have to, you know, they owe that land that, that land will keep going up in price.
John Dehlin [02:34:57] Yeah. Because cash is with inflation. Cash loses its value, but real estate increases its value.
Gerardo Sumano [02:35:03] Right.
John Dehlin [02:35:04] Yeah. Obispo, anything you want to add?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:35:07] Yeah, definitely. I, I was also thinking on, Give me a second, I completely forgot we were talking about.
John Dehlin [02:35:13] Oh, go ahead.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:35:14] I, I, I actually think, John, that higher tight paying members is one of, the first, one of the first results of building more temples. Right. Because then you want to go to the temple and you have a reason to go to the temple. And the reason why we have temples is for people to get into those temples. And the main, I can tell you as a bishop, the main reason why members do not get a temple recommend is not because they are not living the law of chastity is not because they are not living the word of wisdom is not because they are not complying with the Sabbath, making the half Sabbath holy or whatever it is, because they do not pay tithing. So that is the main reason why a member doesn't have an active temple recommend. So when you have an incentive for them to get that temple recommend, the first thing that they're going to do is find a way to pay tithing
John Dehlin [02:36:09] or learn to lie that they're paying tithing.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:36:12] But they have, but they have to pay something. Right. Because you cannot say, I am a full tithe and not pay anything. So imagine a person who didn't pay anything last year, and now they start. Start paying a few bucks because they want that temple recommend and they want to be able to attend the temple dedication.
John Dehlin [02:36:28] Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah. So it's smart. Nelson is smart to build a gazillion temples. What else is he gonna do with the money? And it's gonna lead to at least a little more money.
Gerardo Sumano [02:36:44] He could be feeding the hungry.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:36:45] Right.
John Dehlin [02:36:46] Well, that's the problem, is the opportunity cost. Yes, but from his perspective, he'd rather get a little bit of tithing from the Mexican people than no tithing.
Gerardo Sumano [02:36:57] Right? Well, because it's tithing. Tithe paying correlates with commitment to the church. Is that right, Obispo?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:37:07] That's right. Yes.
Gerardo Sumano [02:37:08] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:37:09] If you can get someone to pay tithing, chances are they're gonna be more committed. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:37:15] Exactly.
Elder Bednar Claims the Church Is Growing
John Dehlin [02:37:17] All right, Gerardo, so we've got another one more video. Tell us. Tell us what this video is about.
Gerardo Sumano [02:37:24] This one is Elder Bedner. After we talked about all these statistics, membership tithe paying people, members, and activity rates, I thought it would be interesting to contrast that with what Elder Bedner had to say about membership statistics recently.
John Dehlin [02:37:46] All right, I can't wait. Here's Elder Bednar. Is this at the that Washington, D.C. yes. Press conference that he gave? Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [02:37:55] All right.
John Dehlin [02:37:55] I can't wait.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:37:58] I wanted to talk a little bit about how your membership is changing. The Latter Day Saint Church has said it's one of the fastest growing religions in. In America. But according to the latest reporting by the Salt Lake Tribune, the church outside Utah has only added 8,000 new members. It's reporting in the U.S. during the past two years. And it says Utah's growth of about 34,000 members represents the majority of the church's 42,000 member growth in America over the past two years. And for those of us who follow Pew and Gallup survey data, it's been clear that the church's replacement rate in the US has been negative for over a decade. Back in 2008, Pew ran a survey that said the replacement rate of the church has dropped to 80%. And that means that for every five members who leave the church behind, four new converts join the church. Can you talk about some of those findings and how you can say that the church in America is growing when we're looking at statistics like this? I'd be happy to. And I'll try to be an apostle and not an academic in a state statistician, which is what I used to do. I would just highlight one feature and talk about the very complicated nature of what we're discussing. If you take a look at the church in the aggregate, it is growing, which in the climate that we find today is rather newsworthy in and of itself. Secondly, if you take for example, the western area of the United States, we have had a huge out migration of members from that part of the country. We've also had a huge migration from Mexico and Central America. I have no idea what the real numbers are. So we have numbers and I believe the numbers, but there's some uncertainty in the numbers. So I guess what, what I'm suggesting is at the aggregate, I have confidence in the growth. If you want to break it down state by state, that is a rapidly moving target. And I just am not in a position to comment because I'm not sure what's really happening. Okay, good to know.
John Dehlin [02:40:11] So we did like two multi hour episodes kind of analyzing that press conference. But Gerardo, tell us why you shared that.
Gerardo Sumano [02:40:22] Well, it's just interesting when he says that it's a tar. It's a, a rapidly moving target. And that's why we can't give you answers or we can, we can't even know for sure when, you know, we show statistics from two different words and a whole stake in, in Mexico where they have pretty much the same number year after year. So it's not, you know, there. His huge, huge migrations that he's mentioning are really not affecting the numbers as much as he is thinking in a way that he can't tell us what the numbers are.
John Dehlin [02:40:59] Yeah, they absolutely have the numbers and they can show us the numbers. Yeah, and the numbers show that there's massive, you know, inactivity rates all over the world. Right. But he's trying to like, oh well, we don't know. There's the numbers and the numbers and we're not sure and, and the migrations. Obispo, what do you, what do you think about that comment from Elder Bednar?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:41:22] I think that's the kind of answer that you give when you don't want to answer what they are actually asking you. Right. Because if you're growing, then you say yes and you brag about that. We grow. We grew like 90% or 19% or whatever. But when you know that you're not growing that much and you do have those numbers, those internal numbers, then you try to answer something else and not Answer what they asked you. Because he could have given a direct answer, right? Like, okay, our church membership is this. And then we. Our activity rates, according to our internal reports are these. So we are growing on activity rates, but probably not on the numbers. But we have more active people. But I mean, he didn't answer anything. He just said, like, I don't know, I don't have the numbers. And I trust my internal numbers, but I am not sure those are accurate enough.
Gerardo Sumano [02:42:15] When we did this episode, analyzing this interview from Elder Bedner, we were wondering about how often do bishops report activity rates to church headquarters? Do you happen to know how often you report activity rates to church headquarters?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:42:34] Activity rates are calculated automatically by the system every week.
Gerardo Sumano [02:42:40] So every Monday the church knows what the activity was in every word in the world last Sunday?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:42:52] Yes, I would say that same day, by Sunday night, they should know what the activity rate was on every word. There might. They might be missing a few words because probably the word clerk forgot to report that. But if you get that number zero, then you're going to be reminded that you have a zero there. And at least in the next quarter you would have to correct that. So I would say that by the net, by the same day later, they would know what the activity rate is at a specific board.
Gerardo Sumano [02:43:23] And you were saying even by people like now they're asking you to name them who attended classes and stuff, Is that right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:43:30] Yeah. So for sacrament meeting it is a number, but for classes it is by people by name. So you, Gerardo Sumanova, he attended today. And John de Lane, he attended the next day. So you can know specifically which Sundays they missed.
Gerardo Sumano [02:43:47] Wow.
John Dehlin [02:43:48] Dang.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:43:48] And I'm. I mean, there's. There can be a higher risk there or more human error if you are reporting that by name. Right. And you can miss one person or whatever. But then at the end of the day, you would have the sacrament meeting attendance, which is reported it as a number. So it doesn't matter if Gerardo missed today and he came next week. I mean, you have a number there which is not linked to people.
Gerardo Sumano [02:44:11] Right.
John Dehlin [02:44:13] Really quick, I want to thank everyone who's joining us on our live stream and ask everyone on the live stream if you're not subscribed to us on YouTube or on Facebook, if you're joining us on Facebook, please hit the subscribe button. Please hit the like button for all of you. The more that we subscribe to these channels on Facebook and YouTube and the more that we hit the like button and comment, the more likely YouTube and Facebook are to share this in the algorithm. So thanks to everyone for doing that and also thanks to everyone who has given. You know, the few of you who have given super chat donations or who donate, generally speaking. But. But yeah, just going back. Back to that information, it just. Again, it comes down to honesty. Like, yeah, that's not honest. Bednar is not honest. And it's just more deception on. On every level. And how depressing must it be for them? I guarantee you the Seven Day Adventists or the. Or the Jehovah's Witnesses don't know. Every Monday, every single person who's attending every single ward in every single unit across the entire world. Like, certainly, we have the best computer systems in the world of any major world religion. The Catholics aren't doing that. Can you see your Catholic priest with his little iPhone reporting whether Jose and Hidalgo attended mass on Sunday? No. Like, we have the best in the world systems for tracking activity rates and tithing paying and temple recommend holding and visiting teaching and priesthood holders, and we're getting our rear ends handed to us by the freaking Jehovah's Witnesses. That's gotta be. That's gotta be depressing to these leaders. What do you think, Obispo?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:46:11] I definitely agree with that.
John Dehlin [02:46:12] Yes.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:46:13] I mean, it should be, like, disgusting, as you mentioned, because you're making an investment there on technology and everything, and then you're not seeing any result on the long run.
John Dehlin [02:46:23] The numbers are declining as your. As your computer systems are getting better, your. Your people are fleeing. Yeah, like, that's got to be depressing. I'm not. I don't necessarily think the world is better if the Mormon Church goes away. So honestly, this isn't me being happy about the church being in decline Now, Gerardo, I. I know this probably is more personal to you, but. But anyway, I'm kind of joking and being silly, but I'm not necessarily happy about this. I don't know. You may feel differently, Gerardo.
Gerardo Sumano [02:46:56] I feel neutral. I mean, I.
John Dehlin [02:46:59] It's hard.
Gerardo Sumano [02:47:01] Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's hard.
John Dehlin [02:47:02] Complicated.
Gerardo Sumano [02:47:03] Complicated.
John Dehlin [02:47:04] Yeah. Yeah. How do you feel, Obispo?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:47:08] Well, I have. I have known these numbers, the census number and the statistics and the activity rates for quite a while. So at the beginning, it was, like, shocking. It was a big surprise. Like, well, we say that we are more than a million here in Mexico, but we are not really. So we're freer than we think. And I mean, it is. Well, at the end of the day, the way that I see it is at least I'm not lying to myself, and I know what it is. And then when you accept that truth and when you accept that reality, you can work on that reality. I think that the big problem here is that that many, many church members are not living in that reality. They are living with different numbers and with different expectations. So they don't see the problem here. And that's probably. That's probably the reason why we haven't found a solution. Because we keep looking at different numbers, different statistics, we keep telling ourselves that everything is good, that the church is growing, and then we're not addressing the problem.
John Dehlin [02:48:06] Yeah, that's so brilliant.
Gerardo Sumano [02:48:08] Good point.
John Dehlin [02:48:09] So good. Thanks, Obispo. All right, well, we've got a couple more slides. So we're going to do something about fast offerings really quick, Gerardo.
Gerardo Sumano [02:48:16] Yeah, so that was just some of the questions I asked Obispo when I was talking to him originally about how fast offerings work. Because I knew Mexico. I mean, I think everyone has heard in the ex Mormon space that the way fast offerings are administered, fast offering welfare aid is administered in Mexico is a lot different than in the United States. So we have a slide here that just explains something that we concluded with Obispo here, and that's that between 2000 and 2012, bishops were instructed to not spend more on welfare aid than the world's fast offering income. So basically, the bishop had a pool of money that was made of whatever the members from that ward were contributing on fast offerings, and that's what he could use to help people in the ward. On the next slide, we have a letter. I'm not going to read it. We didn't translate it, but basically is a letter from the area presidency and a letter in November of 2011 basically acknowledging. Acknowledging that there were these restrictions applying that these restrictions were in place in Mexico during those years and saying, well, we're gonna change it now, and now we're gonna follow the church's handbook of instructions, which Obispo is going to explain to us now how it works in Mexico and some of his experiences too, when he was called as a bishop.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:49:52] Absolutely. Thank you, Gerardo. So, yeah, when I was called as a bishop, we or every bishop in Mexico had access to the global fund. Right. So you were not expected to. Expected to spend only what was gathering your ward, because that's what happened years before. I remember in 2008, 2009, I was a ward clerk for a while before leaving for my mission. And the instruction at that time is that you could not spend more fast offerings than what the members of the ward had already given, right. So you had a cap there and it was low because imagine this is Mexico. Imagine people's income, it is less than 10% that income because they're already paying tithing. So it is low. And then that change with that letter, and they said that they were going to be working according to the manual and to the handbook and what I have found. And before being a bishop, I was a high councilor, I was part of the Stake Auditing Committee. So I was aware of all the policies that we have regarding expenses for words and stakes. And the instruction is that for every aid that you give on fast offering, you have to have an interview with the church member. I mean, the Relief Society president can reach them, the elders quorum president can reach them. And then they have to fill in some papers, some forms, what they call Self Reliance Plan. So there the member has to state how much money they are earning, what sources of income they have, what are the needs that they have, what are some costs of living that they could probably lower a little bit? And this is the screen. If you're on the screen, we are showing what that Self Reliance Plan is. So they declare all that. And then they have to declare what is the kind of assistance that they need, what is the problem that they had and how they're going to solve that situation in the long run. Because something that you have to tell them is like this helped or this aid is not forever. I mean, it's not meant to be like something that you receive every month or every two weeks or whatever. It's a one time. And then you have to find out how to solve that situation. And then if you need some extra, we can give that extra. But it's not something that is going to be recurrent. Right, right. So you have to talk to them about that. And then at the end of that, of that form, they have to say what are they willing to do in exchange of that help? They can teach something, they can clean the church, which they already do. But whatever they. I mean, they can commit on giving some service to the ward as an exchange of receiving that help.
Gerardo Sumano [02:52:34] I didn't know. I didn't know that. And I didn't know that was part of. I had missed it, that I was part of the form.
John Dehlin [02:52:40] So why, why are you laughing, Gerardo? Explain. Explain why?
Gerardo Sumano [02:52:43] Well, basically, how are you gonna pay it? With labor, Whatever we're gonna give you basically, as part of this form. I didn't know. I mean, I hear here, I know people Here in the US who receive aid of the church all the time, and they don't have to do any of this, you know, so.
John Dehlin [02:53:01] And, you know, we got a comment from one of our viewers, Joe Aquino. Aquino says that's crazy. The church has over $200 billion, and they're requiring what of their, you know, Mexican saints who are struggling, Gerardo, Basically,
Gerardo Sumano [02:53:20] to pay with labor, or they call it service, you know, whatever help they're gonna get.
John Dehlin [02:53:27] Yeah, yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [02:53:29] I thought it was interesting, Obispo, from this, from this form, when he asked them to do the budget. On the left side, you know, there's a list of alimentos, agua, like water, food, medicine. But the first thing on that list is tithing and offerings. Yes, exactly. Do you want to just talk about that? Why is that there?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:53:58] Yes. What they teach you to say is that you have to encourage each member to pay tithing. Right. So even if they have some situation or a specific need, you have to encourage them to pay tithing. And. And then when they pay tithing, the Lord is going to help them and the church is going to help them. So it's like, okay, you're going to pay your tithing, and if you run out of money for food, then we can provide food from fast offerings. Right. That's kind of like the approach.
Gerardo Sumano [02:54:23] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:54:24] So if I come to you, Obispo, and say, I've lost my job, we're dirt poor, we need your help. The first thing on the list is what?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:54:33] Paying Tithing Center.
John Dehlin [02:54:37] I mean, this can't make this up. $200 billion in the Ensign Peak investment fund, and we're making destitute, jobless, poor people pay. Tithing is their first priority. Yeah, this is a. Like, if I wrote this in a comedy skit, people would say, you're being silly. That's unrealistic. Obese. Well, what's that like, having that conversation with a member?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:55:06] Well, it's uncomfortable, I would say. That's the word.
John Dehlin [02:55:09] Right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:55:09] Because they are having. They're struggling, they're having money problems. And then you tell them to pay tithing, and then you can read a couple of scriptures to encourage them. And again, I'm a progressive bishop, so I tell them, like, consider this. I mean, don't feel pressure about it. It's not like, if you don't pay tithing, we're not going to help, because that's in the manual. The manual says that church aid is not linked to paying tithings and offerings. So you can help someone who is not a full Tithe payer. That's what the handbook says. So according to that rule, then I tell them, like, it's not pressure, don't feel pressure for that, but it is there, right? And the way that you're trained is that you have to tell them to pay it. Right? And it is uncomfortable. That's the word that I would use.
John Dehlin [02:55:53] Yeah, yeah. The other thing I just want to note here, and we've only got two slides left, but like, obviously members in Utah, in Draper and freaking Provo and Park City and Bountiful, right, are super wealthy compared to these saints in like Uruguay and Peru and the Philippines and Africa. Right? And, but. But yet the church hasn't implemented a system, you know, that. That basically says, okay, we've got a bunch of rich people in the United States who are given all these fast offerings that they don't need. So what we'll do is we'll collect all those fast offerings that, that the wards don't use. And what the most logical thing is, we'll send them. We'll send these fast offerings to the countries around the world where it's needed and redistribute the fast offerings to the poor in Africa, in Latin America and the Philippines and wherever else it's needed, or to urban areas in the United States. But no, what they say is, look, Mexico, that's great if you can. We know you're. We know you're not able to get most of your members to even pay tithing, but that's great if you can get them to pay fast offerings on top of tithing. But don't expect any money from us. Whatever you're able to collect, yeah, you can go ahead and use that for your poor and you're hungry and you're jobless, but there's no way we're pulling money out of our N Sign Peak, Tesla, McDonald's and, and Microsoft stock, polio stock, Folio. There's no way we're pulling money out of that, let alone our. Our. Our fasting offerings excesses for each year. There's no way we're sending that to you, Mexico. So either either raise your own fast offerings and pay your people out of that, or you're out of luck because those of us who have more, where much is given, no more is going to be required.
Gerardo Sumano [02:58:10] Luckily, that changed a few years ago.
John Dehlin [02:58:13] Right, but what do you mean?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:58:16] That was a reality from 2000 to 2012. After 2012, we got access to the general fund as any other. As the US or any other country. But that was the rule for many, many years.
John Dehlin [02:58:27] So what I thought you just said that you just, you just only get the fast offerings.
Gerardo Sumano [02:58:33] Your word raises from 2000 to 2012. That was the rule for bishops. In 2012, it started changing. I would say, like a lot of bishops don't know. Right. Are you, would you say that, Obispo, that a lot of bishops still restrain how much they help members even though they have access to the general fund?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:58:53] It is, it was actually when I was called as a bishop, that was one of the guidelines that I received that I should. I mean, what the state presidency said, it's not like you're not going to help people. And it's not like if there's any special need, you're not going to get that money. But try to hold to what your work is, paying offerings.
John Dehlin [02:59:12] Well, we know that if you tell them to try and do that, they will do that.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:59:17] Right.
John Dehlin [02:59:17] I mean, if they're going to lie and make up statistics to try and make their leaders happy.
Gerardo Sumano [02:59:23] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:59:23] They're certainly not going to like continually go to the stake president and go, hey, I need more money, I need more money. They're just going to turn people away if they're going to lie about statistics. Am I wrong, Obispo?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:59:34] No, I think you're right. Yes.
John Dehlin [02:59:36] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [02:59:38] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [02:59:38] And so, and something important that I have to mention is that I have heard that in the US you can pay mortgages, you can pay car loans out of fast offering aids. In Mexico, you cannot do that. I mean, for example, if you have a house, if you rent a house, you can pay that rent. But if the member owns a house and he has to pay a mortgage, you cannot pay that mortgage. With fast offerings, you cannot pay for car loans, you cannot pay for Internet services, you cannot pay for cell phone lines. I mean, you just pay the basics like water, electricity, gas and rent. If they, if they, if they, they pay rent. Right.
John Dehlin [03:00:17] Are you saying that fast offering allotments are more generous in the wealthiest country in the world than they are in the less wealthy countries? Did I hear that right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:00:28] To me, that way. It appears to me that way because, correct me if I'm wrong, because I know in the US they pay mortgages, right? Or am I wrong?
John Dehlin [03:00:35] I. Yeah, I think so.
Gerardo Sumano [03:00:36] Yeah. I believe so, Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:00:38] I have heard of some people who had paid their car loans out of fast offerings.
Gerardo Sumano [03:00:43] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:00:44] Again, that's my point. They don't want to redistribute the wealth. Yeah, that, that's got to be why. That's got to be why they don't, you know, allow mortgages, right? Could be, yeah. All right, well, we're almost done. This is a really important and intense episode, but there's just so much we're trying to cover. So what's this form? Gerardo or Obispo?
Gerardo Sumano [03:01:06] You can explain this form.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:01:08] Yeah. So every time you're gonna buy a grocery for a family, you have to fill in this list, and there you have the approved products that you can buy with fast offerings. So it lists a bunch of vegetable, fruits, meat, and other, you know, general merchandises for that specific aid. So you have to go with the member, you have to sit down with them, and they have to take a look at the list, and they have to fill in how many kilos of apples they need or how many milk they need, etc, etc. And that has to be recorded, that that has to be signed by the bishop, by the relief society president or elder quorums president, and by the member who is receiving that aid.
Gerardo Sumano [03:01:52] Something I noticed was that the list is quite. I mean, it's a little bit restrained. Right. And you mentioned that you cannot deviate from this list. Like, you cannot. Like, there's no strawberries, blueberries, raspberries. A lot of fruits are not in here. I mean, there's a list of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 fruits. But you cannot buy anything that's not on this list. Is that right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:02:16] That's correct. That's the instruction, right. That you shouldn't be buying anything out of that list. And actually, before getting that money, before getting access to that money, you have to upload to the system the other form, the Plando Fix Sufficiencia form, the Self Reliance form, and this merchandise form. And if those two are not in the system, then you either not get the money or you get an exception when you're audited by the auditing members committee of the Stake.
John Dehlin [03:02:44] Well, just trying to imagine Jesus making people, making the poor fill out a form. It's hard to imagine.
Gerardo Sumano [03:02:52] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:02:53] Maven, make sure to include a link to your episode where you talk about what it was like to have to fill out this form, because Maven's got a beautiful story that she tells that's heartbreaking about how much guilt a member feels. It's just kind of a humiliating process. Does that sound true, Obispo, that this is probably a humiliating process for. For the people asking for help?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:03:16] Yes. I mean, like every time you need to ask for help for anything, and mostly related to money, it is. It is hard. Right. And it is humiliating. I mean, it's good that they have that help there. It's good that they have the resources, but, yeah, it is hard for them.
John Dehlin [03:03:33] Yeah. All right. Well, everybody's, you know, hung on. We've had almost 900 people for most of this episode. This is our last slide.
Gerardo Sumano [03:03:42] Yes.
John Dehlin [03:03:43] So, Gerardo, is it you or Obispo that's going to tell us what's on the slide?
Gerardo Sumano [03:03:48] I can. I can explain it, and then Obispo can expand on it. But basically, I asked Obispo to get the numbers of how much his word was spending on welfare aid from fast offerings. And what he mentioned was that, well, these numbers are going to be high because he's a progressive bishop who knows about Ensign Peak and is trying to help people a lot more than a normal bishop probably would. But you'll have these numbers and then. But what was more. So you have 2022, his word, spent $6,200 in welfare aid the whole year in 2021, $1,500 the whole year.
John Dehlin [03:04:37] Are these Mexican pesos or US dollars?
Gerardo Sumano [03:04:39] US dollars.
John Dehlin [03:04:40] Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [03:04:41] And 2020 $2,500 in the entire year. But what struck me was 2022, which is the highest year, $6,200. And you can explain what that amount represents, Obispo?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:05:05] Yeah, absolutely. So we had some special needs during the year in our work. We had some people who needed some medical surgeries and stuff like that. So we helped them with that. We had some other needs that required an out of the ordinary amount of money. But also, what it says on the slide, which is there in parentheses, is that the average amount of money in US Dollars that we get for tithing each month in my ward is up to $3,000. So it would mean that giving fast offerings for $6,000 is what we get of two months worth of tithings and offerings, on average, in my word. So it means that we spent the equivalent of two months out of 12 on tithings and offerings, and then the church has the other 10 to spend. Right, yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [03:06:04] So this kind of tells us what you said, that, you know, Mexico might not be self reliant. I mean, when he said that, you know, what he spent on welfare aid for all the year of 2022, which was really. Which was high, that's worth two months of tithing and fast offerings. You know, that. That kind of struck me.
John Dehlin [03:06:28] Yeah. Yeah. The one thing that came out of the episode with Mark Pugsley yesterday is the church doesn't need your money money. And if the church really doesn't need a group of people's money. It's people in Latin America and the Philippines and Africa. They really don't need your money. Because when you compare as much of a sacrifice as that is for the members in these countries as a percentage of the total tithing that the church is receiving annually, it's got to be a very small percentage. Why not just tell all the people in Latin America and in the Philippines and Africa, Listen, if you want to pay, pay fast Offerings. That counts as tithing. Keep the money and redistribute it to the people that need it there. But we don't need to collect your tithing and bring it to Salt Lake City.
Gerardo Sumano [03:07:17] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:07:18] Is that fair?
Gerardo Sumano [03:07:19] Yeah. Anything would be better than this, especially when, you know his word is bringing in $3,000 a month of income. Income, but only spending. It's usually spending less than a third of that in the whole year in helping people.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:07:36] That's right.
John Dehlin [03:07:37] Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:07:39] I have to tell you, we're not the wealthiest ward in Mexico. We are just average or even. You have. The area where we're distributed is middle class and some lower income areas. So we are definitely not a wealthy ward in Mexico.
Final Reflections and the Bishop's Letter to the Church
John Dehlin [03:07:56] All right, well. Wow. So, Obispo, this has been amazing. Three hours. Gerardo, thank you so much for preparing this. I do have a couple final questions. Obispo, I. I am going to guess, Gerardo, what's your bet? How soon is Obispo going to be hearing from his stake president? Like tomorrow?
Gerardo Sumano [03:08:17] No, probably. Probably a couple weeks, I would think.
John Dehlin [03:08:20] Okay, you're. I'm going to say within the week, possibly by Wednesday. Obispo, do you guess how. How long it might take? Because people tend to underestimate how. How much of a reach Mormon Stories podcast has. That's not a flex, that's just true. I have so many people that are like, my parents won't hear if I do an episode. They don't watch podcasts. You don't understand how small the Mormon community is. Right. But obese bar you. Are you expecting to hear from your stake president? And if so, how soon? And if so, how. How do you feel like it's going to go?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:09:01] Well, I'm open to that possibility. It would be great because I haven't heard of him for more than a month. Well, last time we we connected was on this report issue that we began the episode with. So it would be great to hear from him. And I think that maybe a couple of weeks, probably, he could be you. I'm open to that possibility, definitely.
John Dehlin [03:09:22] And I was asking a herd about this. Did you ever have a conversation with your stake president saying, why are you asking me to lie? Or why. Why is the area authority asking me to lie? Did you ever have that conversation?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:09:35] No. Being completely honest, I didn't. I messaged him. He only replied on those messages, and he didn't reach out for anything else, which is a bit weird, but. Because usually he's more like in contact with. With us, but.
John Dehlin [03:09:48] So he knew you knew that. That he was asking you to do something dishonest?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:09:55] Yes, because at the end, he even said, well, Bishop, even just. If you can just visit those members. And that's it. Right. He didn't push more on let's get that number up. And I didn't make any changes. And he didn't ask back, like, hey, were you able to. Blah, blah, blah. He didn't.
John Dehlin [03:10:15] So I'm guessing he's gonna hear about this soon, and I'm guessing he's gonna be reaching out to you. And are you worried? Are you afraid? Are you excited? How are you feeling about that?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:10:30] Well, I feel like being honest and being clear and open about certain issues is more important than the consequences that you may face. And I feel like I have that on my side, that I knew that something wasn't correct, and I spoke out about it because I had the resources to do that, because I spoke English, because I knew of Mormon stories, because I was able to ping you and Gerardo and get in touch. Right. Because many other members may feel this is not correct, but they just don't know where to go. And so I saw that chance, and I felt like it was the right thing to do, and that's what I did.
John Dehlin [03:11:08] Are you saying. Queste. How does it go? Right.
Gerardo Sumano [03:11:25] Yep.
John Dehlin [03:11:26] Do what is right. Let the consequence follow. Is that what you're saying you're doing, Bishop?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:11:31] Yes, absolutely.
John Dehlin [03:11:33] It's inspiring. Like, the people are commenting how courageous you are and how inspired they are by your courage and your honesty. Yeah.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:11:45] Thank you, John. Thank you, John. And I don't feel like a person out of the ordinary. Right. I just felt like something wasn't right and. And I needed to get it out of my chest.
John Dehlin [03:11:54] Well, that's where I'm going to disagree with you, because this is an extraordinary act for a Mormon bishop to come on a podcast, global podcast, and. And call the church to account. And that's not to throw shade on any of the other leaders, but I do think it's a remarkable display of honesty and courage. Especially because I know it's coming from a place of love.
Gerardo Sumano [03:12:19] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:12:20] You're not trying to tear the church down and you don't hate the church. You just sincerely want the church to be better, like you said.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:12:28] Yep. I wanted to be a transparent organization. I wanted to be an honest organization. The way that I, that I was thought it was because for many, many years I thought that church leaders were like the best of the best and super honest and that I couldn't lie because I wouldn't live up to that standard. So, yeah, I just wanted to make it a better place. And you also ask how I feel. I feel a bit sad because on Sunday, in that bishop's devotional that we had, which was a transmission, the area president mentioned that we should avoid even the appearance of evil. Right. And I think that's what I'm doing right now. I'm following his admonition. Right. So those were words from the same area president who. Well, you know all the situation.
John Dehlin [03:13:19] Well, the church is going to be in a real pickle because if they, if how long you've been Bishop Obispo?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:13:25] For almost four years.
John Dehlin [03:13:27] Okay. So if they release you, they. Oh, so almost four, so not quite four. Normally it should be five. So if they release you, Mexico goes
Gerardo Sumano [03:13:35] all the way up to 10, is that right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:13:38] Yeah, they are avoiding that. But many, many bishops, for example, I know bishops who have served for six years. My dad was a bishop and he served for almost six years. So many bishops stay for more than five years.
John Dehlin [03:13:50] So if they release you earlier than kind of one year from now, we're going to know that it's likely that it's because you spoke the truth and were honest in your dealings with your fellow men. So they're going to, if they release you, they're going to punish you for doing what the temple recommends question says it wants you to do. Is that right?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:14:14] That could be one of the reasons, yes.
John Dehlin [03:14:18] Yeah. But I guess it also says not to speak ill of the Lord's anointed.
Gerardo Sumano [03:14:24] That's not one of the temple recommend questions, though.
John Dehlin [03:14:27] It's not anymore. Oh, it's a covenant. It's a temple covenant.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:14:31] Yeah, it's a covenant.
John Dehlin [03:14:33] But it does talk about affiliating with apostate groups.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:14:36] Yes, that they could say, like where you were with John in Mormon stories and you work with Gerardo and that's like question number six. Right. So, yeah.
John Dehlin [03:14:45] Who's more evil in Mexico, Gerardo or me?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:14:52] I wouldn't know how to answer that question.
John Dehlin [03:14:53] John, what's the word evil in Spanish?
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:15:00] Malo.
John Dehlin [03:15:01] It would be mallous. Malo. Me or her. So yo soyo. Bueno, bueno, bispo. We. We want to send, you know, as someone who's been a whistleblower, in a sense, and whose family and I have. Have paid some prices for that. Gerardo has paid some prices for his, you know, courage and willingness to speak out. We send you our love and our respect and also to your family, and we wish you minimal pain and suffering for your courage and your honesty. And we hope that good things will come from this. And if there are any important updates, of course, we'll invite you to come back and share them with us.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:15:49] Absolutely, Jen. Thank you. And I think this was a historical episode because you have two Mexicans here. I don't know if this is the first time that you have two Mexicans on Mormon stories, and this is one of the few times that you mentioned that you have a sitting bishop, like participating and collaborating. So thank you for having me here. Thank you for the opportunity and for giving this space to people like me to speak out.
John Dehlin [03:16:12] Dos Mexicanos. Yun gringo.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:16:16] That's correct.
Gerardo Sumano [03:16:17] That's right.
John Dehlin [03:16:18] Are all Mexican Mormons as smart as you and Gerardo Obispo? That's what I want to know. Are they all as smart and courageous as you guys? If so, I think I'm moving to Mexico.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:16:33] You are welcome here, John.
John Dehlin [03:16:35] I was just there last week, by the way.
Gerardo Sumano [03:16:39] Awesome.
John Dehlin [03:16:39] All right.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:16:40] I saw some photos. Yes. Actually on social media. I knew that you were here with a bunch of people, so. Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:16:46] All right. Well, Obispo, we really do respect you. Thank you so much. And we hope you'll come back on. On Mormon stories sometime soon.
Anonymous Bishop (Mexico) [03:16:54] Absolutely. Looking forward to that, John. Thanks a lot.
John Dehlin [03:17:01] All right, Gerardo, thanks for. Thanks for organizing this.
Gerardo Sumano [03:17:05] Yeah, no problem.
John Dehlin [03:17:06] Thanks for working. They're working late. And thanks for co hosting.
Gerardo Sumano [03:17:09] Yeah, no problem.
John Dehlin [03:17:10] And thanks for Zach for letting us have you.
Gerardo Sumano [03:17:13] Yes.
Closing Remarks and Call to Action
John Dehlin [03:17:14] All right. All right. Thanks again and thanks to all of you who joined us on the live stream. Please subscribe right now to YouTube. Please follow us on our Facebook page. Please like these episodes and please share them liberally. If you're in Mexico, let's make it so at least one person in every barrio or rama has has this episode. Hopefully it can be translated into Spanish. I don't know. But let's get the word out and let's help the Mormon Church be less dishonest in its reporting and its statistics, in its membership statistics. Let's get the Mormon church to just be honest. Come on, Mormon Church, you taught us to be honest, come clean, repent, and then set the example. Thanks for everyone who donates to Mormon Stories in the Open Stories Foundation. Thanks to everyone who who donates via super chats on YouTube. Those donations help make this possible. And thanks to everyone who reaches out. You can email us, you can direct message us on Instagram or Facebook, or you can email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you are a leader in the Mormon Church or if you're an insider at church headquarters or in the CES department and you've got insider information you want to share on Mormon Stories podcast. If you're a missionary out there and you want to share what's going on, we always welcome people to tell us what's going on on the inside. That's some of our most important episodes or popular episodes. Today's episode got over 900. Gerardo. That's amazing.
Gerardo Sumano [03:18:46] Yeah, it was great.
John Dehlin [03:18:47] Yeah, I mean, so thanks again, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Be kind to each other. Be good to each other. Queen essay. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
Listen to this episode
For the first time ever, a sitting Mormon Bishop joins us to discuss the current situation with the Church’s activity rates and its misleading membership statistics.
He began watching Mormon Stories despite being an active Bishop and noticed questions and doubts arising among Mexican Saints, especially among English-speaking members as they had more access to information, such as through WhatsApp conversations between leaders discussing the SEC filing in Mexico. Obispo faced pressure to fudge numbers in his Ward Quarterly Report but pushed back, even calling Church Headquarters to find out policies.
Obispo also discusses discrepancies between Mexican membership statistics and census data, as well as the pressure to bring people back through programs like “Finding Lost Members.” The interview covers topics such as tithing, welfare, and fast offerings. Obispo wants the Church to do better and believes in doing what is right, even if he may face consequences for sharing.
Update: Obispo comes out and tells his story!
1777: Honest Conversation with Mormon Bishop – Bishop Moroni Ortiz
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Mormon Stories Related Content
- 1732: LDS Church Fined $5 Million for Hiding Money w/ Mark Pugsley
- 535-539: Tom Phillips, the Second Anointing, and Mormon Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland
- 1086-1087: Lloyd Evans – How I Became an Ex-Jehovah’s Witness Activist
- 1596-1597: Maven’s Mormon Story
- 1602: Responding to Mormon Apostle David Bednar’s National Press Club Presentation
- 1605: Responding to Mormon Apostle David Bednar’s National Press Club Conference – Pt 2
- The Mormon “Baseball Baptism” Era
Other Sources
- Tithing and the Mormon Church | Understanding Mormonism
- Tithing – What’s in a Word | Mormonism LIVE
- Brazil mystery: Case of the missing Mormons (913,045 of them, to be exact) | Salt Lake Tribune
Church Sources
Thumbnail Credits: Image of the Salt Lake Temple by Robert Polidori
One Response
Hello John, We have a favor to ask of you. Please ask one of your secret agents situated high up inside of the Mormon Church to leak monthly the actual number of temple recommend holding members there are. We are sure that is a number which is readily available at some level. I would start donating to Mormon Stories monthly for each month that you could post that number. Thanks in advance.