Introducing Debora and Her Brazilian Mormon Upbringing

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's February 12, 2026, and today we are interviewing Debora Meireles Ling. Hey, Debora, how's it going?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:00:12] Good. Thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [00:00:14] It's so great to have you.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:00:16] Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:17] Yeah, we're excited to have you. I'm here with Margi. Hey, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:20] Hello.

John Dehlin [00:00:22] And Debora's story is just so interesting for us on so many levels. What we try and do at Mormon Stories is have great storytellers telling great stories stories. We think you're really going to enjoy Debora as a storyteller. She was born and raised to a super devout Mormon family in Brazil, served a mission for the church and then ended up coming to the United States and marrying someone from her mission and then raising her family here in Utah. And it's a fantastic story of a devout Mormon upbringing and then along the way, having the faith be challenged a little bit. But, Debora, welcome to Mormon Stories Podcast.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:01:07] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:01:08] Anything you want to say by way of introduction? Maybe what part of Brazil you're from or an intention or anything like that?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:01:18] Well, I'm from. I'm from a little city in Sao Paulo called Hib. That's where I was raised. And I think my intention in coming, I think a lot happens when you're deconstructing and it can be quite a lonely feeling. And when people speak out about their experiences and they talk about it openly, it was something that when I needed it, it really helped me. So I hope that I can do the same for somebody. And I also, you know, just maybe a little selfish of me, but I think it can be also very therapeutic for me to talk to somebody about my story from beginning to end.

John Dehlin [00:02:05] Yeah. Margi and I were lucky enough to have dinner with you and your husband this week, and it was just clear to me how much of a student of Mormon Stories podcast you've been. You've really gotten into the stories and that always helps us know that our interviewee has a sense for what our audience has listened to and heard and what they might find valuable. So where does your Mormon story begin, Debora?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:02:31] Well, my Mormon story begins before I was born. My parents are both converts to the church. They converted when they were, I guess, like mid to late teen years. And they met, got married, and I'm the third of fourth kids, four kids. And we were just very, very. We were raised in a very, very orthodox family, like you said. My dad was called a bishop for the first time when he was 22. 22 or 20.

John Dehlin [00:03:05] Did he serve a mission?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:03:07] He did. He served a mission.

John Dehlin [00:03:08] So he would have gotten called bishop like an hour a year. An hour or a year after he got home from his mission.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:03:13] When he went on his mission, they were still doing, like, I think they went at 18. So. But he did get married quite quickly, like, after he got home, at least that's my understanding. So that just, to me, it just signals, like, the level of commitment that he had to the church and my mom as well. So they raised us as, you know, like, very, very orthodox in that way. We went to church every Sunday. We tried family home evening every single Monday, which is interesting because when we had something going on on Mondays, which we always try to keep our Mondays open for, you know, family home evenings. But if something came up, we would have our family home evening on Sunday so that we wouldn't miss the week. We did scripture studies every morning, which was. It was hard as a kid because you don't really know why you have to wake up even earlier than you would have to when you're going to school. But, you know, I think it was also a time to bond as a family. We. I remember that when I didn't know how to read, I. We were all. We would switch off who would read. And sometimes we would read one verse each person or two verses. And when I didn't know how to read yet, I remember that my mom would read like, a sentence and I would repeat the sentence. And I always had. We each had our Book of Mormons out or Books of Mormon out, or the Bible, whatever it is that we were studying at the time. And she would read a sentence I would repeat until I learned how to read myself.

John Dehlin [00:04:58] So you kind of learn to read from the Book of Mormon?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:05:01] Maybe, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:02] At least in part. Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:05:05] And even, like days where I was really, really tired and I started to fall asleep, I remember my parents would say, hey, you need to stand up because you need to stay awake for this. Wow. And we would talk about what we read after. And I don't know if they could sense that we weren't really paying attention to what we were reading. They would always say, hey, so what did you understand from that verse? And it was. So it wasn't just reading. It was. We would read and talk about what we had read to kind of prepare us for the day ahead. So very. Yeah, it was interesting that way.

Lamanite Identity and Race in Brazilian Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:05:44] Let me ask, while we were talking about Book of Mormon, obviously, you know, at least decades ago, for sure. Still, Mormons in Latin America would frequently consider themselves to be descendants of the Lamanites from the Book of Mormon. Can you tell us what you read in the Book of Mormon about Lamanites and the curse and dark skin and then to what extent your family or your ward or stake did or did not self identify as Lamanites or descendants of the dark skinned, cursed people? Basically, according to the Book of Mormon,

Debora Meireles Ling [00:06:28] it's been a while. So let me try to, let me think about that. I think I do know that in my family, we, we did talk about how we were descendants of the Lamanites. And I, I don't remember anybody getting up in church and talking about it, but I'm not saying that didn't happen. I just don't really remember. But it was kind of, it was kind of like a prideful, like it was not a prideful. Excuse me. It was like something to be proud of. As a child. It didn't click in my head that there was a dark skin because they were cursed. It was like, oh, okay. It just kind of went over my head. It wasn't something that I thought about too much. It was mostly like they ended up being the righteous ones. And so that was why we were proud to say, oh, yeah, we're descendants of those people.

John Dehlin [00:07:20] So Lamanites end up being wicked, but then they're righteous. And if you're the descendants, you did consider yourself descendants and you were proud of that because they ended up being righteous in the Book of Mormon. Is that right? Okay. Also, I just, I have to ask, like, my understanding is, you know, the, the priesthood ban. Priesthood and temple ban for black Mormons. One of the main motivations for it being lifted was that Spencer B. Kimball, the prophet at the time, loved the Brazilian people and kept finding out that so many Brazilians had African ancestors and so they wanted to open a temple in Brazil. They get Sao Paulo and they, and they wanted the church to grow, but so many Brazilians had African blood that it was becoming a problem. Were you aware of any of that history or complexity in your upbringing in Brazil?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:08:17] I was not. I have heard since that, you know, it was talked about in my family, but I was not aware of any of that until recently.

John Dehlin [00:08:32] Okay, okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:34] How would you describe yourself as like a girl during those years and growing

Debora Meireles Ling [00:08:42] up,

Margi Dehlin [00:08:44] you know, in your family system? How would you describe you?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:08:50] I think I was a very happy child. I think that I had a. I think my childhood was really, really good. I. We were in the church, like the church Building often we would go. My parents always had some calling in the church, so we would go. My dad served as a bishop multiple times. So on Sundays, church ended at noon, but we sometimes wouldn't get home till 2pm because we were just hanging out and talking. And I mean, Brazilians like to hang out and talk after sacrament meeting anyway. But we would stay and wait until everybody was done doing everything they needed to do. And Sundays specifically, we would go home and we would have lunch, we would rest a little bit, and then we would always go back to church because there was always a fireside or choir practice or choir practice and a fireside or an activity. There was always something happening. And because I grew up in that environment, I thought that, you know, this is great. Like, I have community, I have friends, I have, you know, I have things to do on the weekends. But very much was centered around church. And I loved it. I loved going to Primary, and I sometimes joke that my mom kind of followed me around because when I was in primary, she was primary president, most of it. And then when I went to Young Women's, she was called into the Young Women's. And when I went to Relief Society, she was called into Relief Society. So it was fun to, like, be a part of a community and having my whole family there and feeling their support and love. So I think it was. It was great. It was really great.

Family Culture, Community, and Mormon Life in Brazil

Margi Dehlin [00:10:40] Would you describe your. In thinking about kind of the culture of your family, do you feel like you had a family culture that included things outside Mormonism was like. Was Mormonism in the church kind of the main felt part of your family culture? Would you say you talked about the

John Dehlin [00:11:03] salt versus the meal?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:11:05] Yes. It was not just the salt of the meal. It was everything. Appetizers, main course, desserts, everything. The church was everything. And my parents would teach us from the Book of Mormon often for, like, real life problems. They would teach us often about it or from it.

John Dehlin [00:11:31] Talk about the. How the Brazilians might have dressed normally and how as a Mormon, you. You might have dressed differently as an example of your devotion.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:11:43] Yeah, where. Where I'm from is it's really hot, is really, really hot. And in the winter, we maybe have like one week where it's cold and it's not even that cold. But yeah, my friends would always wear tank tops and short shorts, and I was not allowed to do that. I had to always cover up because even though I hadn't gone through the temple, I had to dress modestly because first off, that's a sign of respect. For your body, because your body is a temple. And also because I needed to already be prepared for when I did go to the temple. I heard many times from my parents, like, you don't want to have to change your entire wardrobe once you do go through the temple. So you need to be wearing things that you can already wear when you do go through the temple.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:36] To be clear, is this. This is true. When you're a girl, like you're seven years old, you're wearing garment like level shorts and T shirts.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:12:47] Yes. Wow.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:48] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:12:51] And how were Mormons viewed in Brazil at the time by your peers? By non Mormons? Was it. Was. Was the Mormon church viewed as a cult? Was it viewed as a respected religion? You're dressing so differently. That would set you apart almost immediately. How were you viewed by non Mormons in Brazil?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:13:12] Brazil is a very Catholic country, so Catholicism is the biggest religion. There are a lot of evangelical religions there as well. And honestly, not many people knew, at least in my circle, like, not many people knew what Mormonism was. And when we talked about it, it was almost like we were an evangelical church as well. So because we would wear dresses to church on end on Sundays, I do remember sometimes we would walk to church because church was close to our house, like the church building. And I just felt. I just felt kind of embarrassed because they sometimes would think that we were evangelical because we were wearing the dresses and skirts and shirt and tie for the men, and we would be walking on the streets, and some people would kind of look, like, a little funny sometimes, but it was. That's kind of how it was viewed. I don't think that people had an understanding of, like, what Mormonism really is. Not that I was aware of anyway.

John Dehlin [00:14:28] But you didn't get the feeling, sounds like you didn't get the feeling, feeling that others thought of you as, like, a strange, bad, dangerous cult or anything like that?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:14:36] No, not at all.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:38] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:43] How about. How would you describe your Was it a branch award? How would you describe your church experience? Like, was it a ward? Was it a branch? Was it close by? Did you have a drive?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:15:57] We. It was a ward. It was. We had. I don't really know, maybe like a hundred people in attendance, but it was a ward. And we. It's not anything compared to Utah. But I mean, it. For us, it felt like a pretty large ward. And the church building was close to my house, but I knew a lot of people in our same ward whose houses were not that close to the church building. So they would have to get on a bus to go to church sometimes, or they would walk a lot to get to church. We would. If we walked, we would maybe walk 10 minutes. Not even that. Maybe. And. But we would also drive to church. So.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:16:48] But.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:49] And were your parents, you describe them as being, like, very involved. And I noticed when you were talking about your mom, your mom, did you mention primary president, young women's president, then Relief Society president. Was that true for both of your parents? Were they kind of in high callings during your childhood?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:17:08] Would you say? So my mom in for the Relief Society and young women. I think she was in the presidency, but she wasn't the president. But they. But yes, that was most of my childhood. They were both in. In high callings that were very demanding, which is one of the reasons why we were at the church building so often. I remember as a child going to church dances because my parents were supposed to be there and my older two siblings at that point, I think they were in young men and young women. So they were supposed to be at the church dances, but I was not because I was in primary. And I remember being told by a family friend, like, you shouldn't be here because you're not 12. And so why are you here? And I was like, well, my parents are here. There's nobody at my house. I don't know. They told me to come, so I came with them.

Margi Dehlin [00:18:03] And by the way, I'm a child.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:18:04] Yeah. I don't get to make those decisions for myself.

Margi Dehlin [00:18:08] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:18:08] But for me, it was fun because I got to experience those things that I was excited to be a part of, because at this point, I was. I don't even know, really. I I don't remember how old I was, maybe seven, eight. And I just thought that it was the coolest thing because I'm like, well, I'm hanging out with people that are, like, older and cooler than me. So. Yeah.

Baptism and the Rise of Perfectionism

John Dehlin [00:18:34] You mentioned in your outline your baptism being, I don't know, complicated or emotional. Do you want to talk about your baptism?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:18:42] With my baptism, I was baptized on my birthday, on my eighth birthday, like, the day of. And I was also confirmed the same day. And I do remember that we had a big party afterwards, but in the moment when I. Even though we were going to have a party, I remember being told like, this is the most important part of your day. Your baptism is going to be the most important part of your day. And I. At one point, I had this feeling in me and I just started crying. And I didn't know why I was crying. I didn't understand what was happening inside of me. And I was told, that's the spirit confirming to you that, you know, you're doing the right thing. And so I took it as that. But I. I couldn't explain why I was crying.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] Looking back, do you think that's why you were crying or. I mean, I. It's weird now, thinking back that someone's going to tell you what your feelings mean when it's you who's experiencing them. But it's also normal, I guess.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:19:51] I. I really don't know. I don't know how to explain, like, what happened, why I felt so overwhelmed. I don't know if it was the attention of, like, everybody is telling me that this is so good and I need to be excited about this. I don't really remember if that was it or. I don't really know. It's. It's interesting to look back and think about that experience.

John Dehlin [00:20:20] You mentioned your outline some perfectionism emerging after your baptism. Do you want to talk about that?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:20:25] Yes. After, you know, after you're baptized, you're told that your sins are washed away. And I then started to think, okay, so I can't sin anymore. I have to be as perfect as I can be, and I can't make any mistakes. And so if. If I did make a mistake, like, if I got. I don't know, if I got mad at one of my siblings, if I said something I shouldn't have said, I immediately thought to myself, oh, now I have to repent. And I, you know, it was just, I need to be perfect because that's what the baptism is for. But then I would have to repent to Be able to take the sacrament because, you know, I was then taught, hey, you know, you can renew your covenants of your baptism when you take the sacrament on Sundays. So then I would try to be perfect after Sunday. Every time I took the sacrament, it was again, like it was a reset for me, and I would try to be perfect again. But it was. It was really hard internally trying to make peace with the fact that

Debora Meireles Ling [00:21:43] I

Debora Meireles Ling [00:21:43] was going to make mistakes, even though I was trying so hard not to make them, and trying to be perfect all the time and having that just weigh on me all the time. It was just very difficult to understand as a child.

Teen Years, Church Expectations, and Social Life

John Dehlin [00:22:02] And then you mentioned in your teen years, it kind of got worse because of all the expectations put on teens, but because your parents were such leaders in the church, sounds like that got compounded. Do you want to talk about that? The pressures once you're a teenager.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:22:21] Yeah, I think we grew up in the same ward. We did move away from Ribeon Preto a couple of times, but every time we moved back, we were always in the same ward. So we knew all of the people from the ward and we. And they knew us. And because we had been there so long, it was like, oh, hey, it's their family. Like, they know who we are. So I did feel some pressure to be the good girl that I needed to be, because I knew that there would be eyes on me, even if I didn't want there to be eyes on me. So I was obviously encouraged to talk about my beliefs with my friends. My friends at school were always referred to as my colleagues, my acquaintances. Like, they are not supposed to be your best friends.

John Dehlin [00:23:21] What are the Brazilian words for colleague versus friend or best friend?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:23:25] Yeah, kolega.

John Dehlin [00:23:26] That's. That's Portuguese.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:23:28] Okay, amigo, where did that idea come

Margi Dehlin [00:23:31] from that people at school are colleagues, not close friends?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:23:38] It was mostly, at least the way that I understood it, was that because they didn't have the gospel, they didn't know the full truth. They were going to probably do things in their teenage years that would not align with our beliefs and our values. And so I had to. I had to invest in friendships that did have my same values and who shared my same beliefs, because then we would be able to lift each other up and. And just keep. Keep everybody in the straight and narrow. Right? Not try to deviate and do something, go to parties or things that other teenagers would want to do. So my friends needed to be friends inside the church that shared my same values.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:34] And how did you feel about that? Like did that feel natural to you? Did you naturally have, you know, things in common more with people at church than at school? How hard was that?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:24:49] I was very fortunate because I have. I have a best friend who. I don't know. I get emotional, but we grew up together, and she was also a member of the church, and her parents were really good friends with my parents, and she was. She still is my best friend. And so we. We were always with each other. But I also felt the pressures of. You need to include the other girls in the church in your friendship circle. And a lot of them didn't come as naturally to me as my friend Leticia did. And it was interesting because as we were growing up, Leticia kind of started to. She went off to. To music school right after she graduated high school, and when she would come back, she was wearing the tank tops. And I was like, what are you doing? And I just viewed her as a completely different person. I'm like, what do you mean? Why are you wearing that? And I would judge her in my head and sometimes say things to her because I was like, hey, you know, we were preparing to be moms. Like, I. I understand that you're very passionate about your musical career, but why are you wearing a tank top? You know, that became. That became something that I. And she would talk about, like how sometimes, you know, on certain Sundays, she wouldn't go to church. And I was just so sad because I was like, you are the friend that I invested in. You know, like, we. We were going to do this together, you know, And I was just really sad because I. I was hoping that she would stay in the church with me. And I. And because she was wearing a tank top and missing church, like, maybe once a month, I was like, oh, my gosh, she is. She's not going to make it. And the other, you know. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:06] Okay, so a quick question with regard again, to this idea of cultivating friendships within the ward, young women's versus at school, was your experience that you actually did share values with the young women at church? Because that oftentimes is not the case for people, you know. Was it the case for you, though, that generally speaking, the young women in your ward, the young men in your ward, were all living, you know, the values that, you know, were taught on Sunday.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:27:49] I feel like. I feel like some of my friends, they did actually also grow up in very orthodox homes, and so they did, like, live the same values. We didn't really talk about who wasn't, who was. We did have people who didn't have their parents in the church, but they had a grandma or an aunt that would take them to church. But we wouldn't talk about the things that they would do during the week or at school. The thing that was interesting for me was looking at my friends at school and understanding that they also had a lot of love and respect for me. I remember something very minor, but every time that somebody would say a bad word, I would be like, I don't like this. This is not okay. You should not be using that language. And we had a pretty big group, maybe like eight of us, that would just hang out together. And in my class, everybody knew everybody. Like, it was a. It was a small class, but everybody knew everybody. This is in high school. And whenever somebody would come and talk to us and they would start swearing, some of my guy friends would stand up and be like, hey, Debora doesn't like that. You can't be using that language around her. So they started to stand up for me and protect me in that way. And in my mind I'm like, they have so much respect and love for me, and yet they don't know the truth. If they only knew the truth, then they would be baptized immediately. You know, I. I remember having those thoughts and feelings, for sure.

Dating, Young Women's Messages, and Church Identity

John Dehlin [00:29:36] So speaking of guys, what was dating like as a Mormon girl in Brazil and. And how did your parents feel about that?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:29:45] My dating experience wasn't great, if I'm being honest. I. I couldn't date till I was 16 and then. But I also don't feel like I was given a lot of tools on what healthy relationships look like, what in young women. We did the whole list of what are we looking for in a husband. We did that many times, actually. And I had it all written down. Like, he has to have the priesthood. He has to have a temple recommend. He has to take me to the temple. He needs to be a returned missionary. And then at the very bottom, it was like, he needs to be funny and attractive. Those were not the top of my list. And. But I wasn't given tools outside of that of, like, what does a healthy relationship look like? What does healthy communication look like? What are some other important traits that you need to look for in a partner? So when I turned 16, there was a boy in our ward who, I think. I'm trying to remember, I think his family had been inactive in the church for a while, and they. And then they went back to church and I started. We started dating. But I mean, it was. It was not anything special. Like, we went to the movies together. And he would come to my house, and I would go to his house, but it didn't last very long. And I remember that once we broke up, he stopped going to church. And I have this vivid memory of. I was sitting in. In seminary, in seminary class, and our bishop at the time came in, and he was, like, looking to see who was there, and he asked, oh, is so and so here. And we're like, no, he's not. And then he looks at me and he goes, oh, yeah, you guys broke up, right? And I was like, yeah. And he's like, oh, that's probably why he's not coming. And I. I thought to myself, am I supposed to feel responsible for that or. Because it wasn't anything serious. It was maybe like, three weeks of us, like, trying to figure out what dating would be. But, yeah, he. He never came back to church.

John Dehlin [00:32:17] I guess you could feel like it's your fault he lost his eternal salvation because you guys weren't dating anymore.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:32:24] Yeah, I. I just thought it was interesting because I didn't. In my head, I'm like, well, he's a member, so he knows what he needs to know. I don't know. Need to convert him? I don't know. Yeah, it was just a weird comment, and I just didn't understand if I was supposed to feel responsible or if I was supposed to then reach out to him and say, hey, you need to come back to church. But that was my first experience with having a boyfriend.

John Dehlin [00:33:55] Priceline. It sounds like you didn't have a super active dating life because of the Mormon factor in your Teenage years. Right.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:34:04] We had, we had some young men in our ward and in our stake, but I, I had a hard time wanting to connect because the dating pool is very, very small in Brazil. Very, very small. And because of the, because of the things that I wanted in a husband, I wasn't going to be able to just date anybody because you're not going to marry somebody who you didn't date, is what I heard. So I needed to invest in somebody who I could potentially see a future with. And that future meant that he needed to be a returned missionary and be an active member and have the priesthood and be, and be involved in the church and have a testimony. So it was, it was, I had, I had a couple of relationships, but it wasn't anything super significant.

John Dehlin [00:35:06] Really quickly, I, I was thinking about the fact that you said your ward had like a hundred people and then it was really hard to find people to date. Yeah, I was having a hard time in my mind making sense of that because my understanding was, is that outside of the United States, either Mexico or Brazil has the most Mormons in the world. Is that. And I, and I went ahead and googled it. Apparently the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints reports 1.5 million Mormons in Brazil. You're already smiling.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:35:40] I don't know if that number is accurate.

John Dehlin [00:35:43] Not sure if that's accurate, but what it also says, and I've heard this part, is that the number of Brazilians who claim to be Mormon is a fraction of the number that the church claims. And so apparently only about 226,000 Brazilians self identify as Mormon. And so I guess that means that about a sixth of all the Brazilians ever baptized into the church remain active and self identifying as Mormon. And so I'm torn between thinking you should have a ton of people to date in Brazil, but also Brazil is a huge country. How many total people in Brazil do you know?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:36:26] I have no idea.

John Dehlin [00:36:27] Okay.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:36:28] Okay, I can Google that.

John Dehlin [00:36:30] No, I can too. Yeah, so there's about a 15 to 20% activity rate, which is, you know, did you realize that there were six times as many people on your ward rolls as we're actually attending? Did you ever get a sense for that?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:36:44] I don't think I ever did.

John Dehlin [00:36:46] Okay.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:36:46] I do remember that in our, in our, like, in my main ward, the one that I spent the majority of my childhood and teenage years, we had like, how would I describe this? Like a nuclear family. We had, like, we had the members that had been there forever. So the members that I grew up with. And I wouldn't say that they were very, very many families. We had barbecues at our house often on weekends, and the entire, like, those people in the ward would come. So, like, it was enough that they would fit in our house.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:25] Right.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:37:27] And then we did have, obviously, people that would join and we would see, like, oh, hey, here's a baptism. We would always sing in baptisms, like, me, my mom, and my sister. We would always sing for people in baptisms if they didn't have their family there. But. So we would have baptisms, like, a lot of baptisms. But I don't remember seeing those people for a long time coming to church. Usually when the missionaries would then rotate, then those people would kind of be gone, but we would always have that group of people that had been there from the beginning. Does that make sense?

Margi Dehlin [00:38:08] That totally makes sense. Yeah. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:38:10] Yeah. So it looks like 0.1% of the Brazil population identify as Mormon. So that's a very small percentage, it turns out, even though the church claims 1.5 million. Were you gonna say something, Margi?

Margi Dehlin [00:38:25] I was gonna ask about young women's for a minute. Like, how if we were. Oh, let me think. So the messages that you received during your time in young women's, what did you. What messages did you receive? What did you want for yourself during that time? Yeah, for your life at that time in young women.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:38:52] I feel like young women was a really good experience for me because it aligned with what I wanted. I have always wanted to be a mom. I've always wanted to have a family. I. I remember we. We had, like, toddlers that would, like, friends of ours, and I would be holding them everywhere. I would always want to hold the babies. Like, that was something that I really wanted. And so all of the messaging with, you know, the young women that you have to prepare to be a wife and a mom, you have to learn how to put makeup on, and you have to learn how to do your hair. Like, we would have activities, like mutual activities, where we would do each other's hairs or we would learn how to do our nails. And for me, that was super fun. It was fantastic. And I was all over that. It was great. I do know some of my friends in church didn't enjoy it as much because that wasn't what they viewed for their future. But making lists for what my future husband's going to be like, I loved doing that because it aligned with what I wanted to do for my life.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:04] Okay, so I'm hearing good fit.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:40:06] A really good fit.

John Dehlin [00:40:07] For that time, the proclamation on the family was a good fit for what you wanted out of your life.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:13] And then my follow up to that is just during your time in high school, you know, how merged were you with kind of this church identity as opposed to like, did you have interests? Did you have things that you really cared about that were outside? Maybe, let's just say the church parameters for you being a wife, being a mother, you know, the theme of all the things, divine nature, individual worth, you know. Yeah,

Debora Meireles Ling [00:40:46] I'm trying to think. I do. I went to a high school that was very. So in Brazil, when you're done with high school, for you to be able to go to college, you have to take this very stressful test. It's called Vista Bulad. And so in high school, the high school that I went to, they focused a lot on that test and they wanted us to obviously ace it or at least pass it, because we wanted to get into the good and good universities. And I remember having a very hard time trying to figure out what it is that I wanted to do, what I wanted to like, what education I wanted to go into. Because I was so focused on being a mom and being a wife. And I'm like, that's not my responsibility. It's my husband's responsibility to take care of that. I just need to learn how to home, like do the home thing, the house thing. And so I remember that one of my teachers one time asked, he said he was, you know, teaching, and all of a sudden he goes, yeah, everybody wants to get good grades, good scores on their vishy bular so they can go to school. Because who here wants to be a stay at home mom? And I raised my hand and I was the only one who raised my hand.

John Dehlin [00:42:04] Wow.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:42:05] I again, that for me was like a proud moment because I'm like, I know what I want and I'm not afraid to talk about it. I'm not afraid to speak out about it, because it's the truth. Like, I live the gospel. I live, I'm in the one true church. Like, this is. This is it. And I would, you know, so for me, it was hard to find. I had interests like dance. I really love to dance. And so I would dance.

Margi Dehlin [00:42:36] What kind of dance?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:42:38] Ballet, jazz? Yeah, contemporary. I really liked doing those things. But I personally remember more being around church activities like we were in high school. Specifically, I went to church, like to the church building every single day. But Monday.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:01] Wow.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:43:02] Because we had seminary and sometimes I would teach seminary. I became the class president and There were a couple times where our teachers couldn't teach, and so they would ask me to do it. So then I would have to get the manual out. And then I devoted my time to that because I needed to learn the lesson very well to be able to explain it. And like, oh, what if they ask questions about this? I need to make sure that I know the scriptures well enough to be able to teach my Pierce. So I remember doing that. And then we also had mutual. Sometimes mutuals were on Wednesdays, sometimes they were on Saturdays. And we also had friends who started a. Like a dancing group in the church. So then the girls at church would do that, and they kind of said, hey, you guys can invite your friends to come and join the group. But that just meant more time at church with our people from church. You know, that makes so much sense

Margi Dehlin [00:44:00] to me, honestly, the way. Thank you for explaining it, because it makes sense that it feels like where for some growing up, you know, the church is something that happens on certain days of the week. And I think, you know, can be more involved than, say, your average, you know, church experience. Religious and other religious. Church experiences. Right. More involved. But for you, it feels like part of your family culture was being in the church, like, every day, nearly every day. And it seems like it was offering so much at that time as well, that it wasn't particularly necessary for you to look elsewhere or, you know, the school part. Whereas for, I think other people, myself included, the school that I went to offered all the activities. And then the church was the side thing for you. It sounds like church was the mainstay, occasional school things. And I'm also hearing, like, that there was a key part of your identity that really was informed by and really fit with being a wife and a mom, particularly at this time. I don't know if that's changed since then, but at this time, that it was something that you claimed you were proud of and it was a key part of your identity.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:45:35] It really was. It was we. So this friend of mine, Leticia, I remember one time we went to the mall with her mom, and we were at a bookstore, and they had, like, all these magazines, and she picked up a magazine about music, and she was studying it, and I picked up a magazine with wedding dresses, and her mom started laughing, and I was so confused. I was like, what's happening? And so she's like, of course you would reach for that instead of anything else. Because for me, that was. That was my. That was my world. That was my life. That was everything that I was aspiring to be and do.

Deciding to Serve a Mission

John Dehlin [00:46:16] What year did you graduate from high school?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:46:18] 2010.

John Dehlin [00:46:19] Okay, so was, were you taught that a mission should be in your future as a Brazilian Mormon young woman?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:46:29] So what I was taught was that for men, it was a commandment, they needed to go. My brother served a mission. And so. But women were supposed to get married. And then if you didn't get married, then at that point it would be interesting for you to go serve a mission, but your main focus should be getting married as a woman.

John Dehlin [00:46:56] So you were or weren't planning on going on a mission?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:47:00] I was not planning on going on a mission, so I was planning on getting married.

John Dehlin [00:47:03] Okay, so what happened?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:47:05] So we moved from Jiberon Preto. We moved to a city called Salvador, which is in the northeast of Brazil. And I remember that I. I wasn't dating anybody. And I. I just remember thinking to myself often, like, I am doing everything right. Everything that I can do, I'm doing, and I'm still not getting there. So what am I missing? And I was watching General Conference when they announced the age change. And when they announced it, I just felt like, is this a calling for me to go? Because I haven't gotten married yet and I don't even have a boyfriend, so am I supposed to go, is this for me? But then I was wrestling with, I still need to be a mom. And I talked to my brother in law about it, I was talking to my sister and my brother in law about it, and he said to me, well, you know, if you go on a mission, you will still learn important things that you will use in motherhood if you go. So if you decide to do that, I understand that this is like a really big deal for you and you're having a hard time, but I really do think that if you decide that you want to go, then you will still learn things that could be beneficial to you when you do enter motherhood. And that was kind of what made me be like, okay, because he had also served a mission. So I'm like, oh, he knows what he's talking about. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna go then.

John Dehlin [00:48:46] So this would have been 2012, when the age got lowered for women. So where'd you get called?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:48:55] Sao Paulo? Sao Paulo South.

John Dehlin [00:48:57] What's that like? Like in, in the United States, you want to get sent preferably to a foreign country, but if not a foreign country, definitely to another state and preferably a state where you didn't live. So what was that like for you to get Called back to the city you grew up in.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:49:19] It was. I was very disappointed when I opened my mission call. I remember that when I was putting in my papers, I. At. At this point, I knew English fluently. So I wrote on there that I knew English fluently and I knew a little bit of German. So then I wrote that down too, and I said, well, maybe if they see this, they'll call me somewhere. Because I also wanted to be like, oh, this is exciting. I think that one of the things that I thought, um, in Brazil specifically, I just did not want to be called to an area that was different from, like, the part where I grew up in because of the food that is so. That's so like. But the food was something that really. That I was like, I can't go to the Northeast because I. I don't love the food there. I can't go to Southwest. You're like, minimally.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:11] Let there be good food.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:50:12] Yes. At least good food. And so then I was also scared, like, if I get called to a country that I am not familiar with, like, am I going to be able to eat? Like, for some reason that was in my mind.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:50:24] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:50:25] But when I opened my mission call, I was very disappointed because I was hoping that at least. That I would have made it at least out of Sao Paulo. I mean, I had family on, like, in my mission area. I saw uncles, I saw cousins. One time I was in the grocery store and I just heard Sister Mirales and I. I had just gotten there. I turned back, it was my cousin. And so.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:48] So the isolated. Sometimes that mission, the experience of feeling isolated on one's mission. Not for you?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:50:56] Well, I still had some of that.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:57] Did you?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:50:58] A little bit, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:59] Okay. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:51:03] Sure. When I. When I went on my mission, I. The only thing that I was excited about, I mean, it wasn't the only thing, but one of the things that I was excited about was to meet my mission president and his wife. And I was like, oh, this is because his wife had been a young women general president. And I was very excited because I was like, well, I'm gonna. Do I say their name? Sure.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:31] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:51:32] It was president and Sister Tanner. So I was very excited to meet them. And I'm like, well, they. They know the gospel. Like, they'll be able to, like, really direct me in what I'm supposed to do and how to be a good missionary. And the MTC was. The MTC was fun because it's like, everybody's here, even though for Me, it was. I think it was just two weeks that I was in the mtc.

John Dehlin [00:51:58] So it's a Brazilian MTC in Sao Paulo?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:52:00] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:00] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:52:01] It's a missionary training center for those who don't know.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:52:04] Oh, yeah, sorry. Missionary training center. And it was fun because I wasn't there for a very long time, and everybody was. We were all on the same boat, so we. None of us knew exactly what the mission was going to be, but everybody was excited because, oh, my gosh, we're going to get to spread the gospel and we're not home. So, like, this is so fun.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:26] And.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:52:29] But once I left, the mtc, reality kind of hit, and I realized that I wasn't going to go home for a year and a half. And I didn't know my companion. I didn't know I couldn't be by myself, which sometimes I need to be by myself, and I couldn't be by myself anymore. And I didn't know the people in my area because my mission president knew that I had family in. In that area of Sao Paulo. So he asked me what cities or what neighborhoods they were in, what wards they were in. So he kind of made sure that I wasn't anywhere close to where they were going to be. Got it. In the beginning,

Pre-Mission Anxiety and MTC Struggles

John Dehlin [00:53:13] you were given some advice about your mission right before you left to serve, about the adversary. Do you want to talk about that and what that did to you? You mentioned in your outline.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:53:26] Oh, yes. I was told that when you are preparing to serve a mission, the adversary is going to try really hard to make you not go. So then everything and anything that, like, any mistakes that I had ever made all came back to me and hit me like a ton of bricks. Like, I am not worthy to be going on a mission. I am not worthy to. To do any of this. Like, I'm not well equipped to do any of this, and God knows that I'm not worthy to do this or other things that I was also taught. For me, that was my experience, but I was also taught, like, you're gonna incredible job offer or you're going to get into the school that you wanted to go to, and that's the adversary trying to keep you from going because he knows how important it is for you to go on a mission.

John Dehlin [00:54:22] So, yeah, when you have a tendency towards scrupulosity or perfectionism, you know, obviously sometimes a Mormon missionary will get sent home for, like, having had sex but not confessing it. And there are, you know, there are Mormon missionaries who have worthiness problems. It's very common. But you didn't. It sounds like you didn't have anything even near that. And yet your scrupulosity or perfectionism made that teaching that the adversary and Satan and his spirits are all trying to tear you down. If you have anxiety and rumination, then you're going to constantly be interpreting that anxiety, perfectionism, and rumination as self doubt and as unworthiness. And it, I don't know, can lead to panic attacks and severe anxiety, I think. Is that how it was for you, or.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:55:17] Yeah, I actually, my. My dad was my bishop at the time, and so I didn't really talk to him about a lot of these things. I talked to my stake president a lot. I met with my stake president I don't even know how many times before I left, trying to make sure that I was forgiven of every single sin ever. And I was a good girl. I. I was a good kid. I, you know, I followed all the commandments as best as I could. I didn't go too far with boys. I didn't drink, I didn't party. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed to talk to him about everything. And he even got to a point where he's like, I understand that this is a very difficult feeling for you to have, but I really need you to know that you're okay. And I couldn't take that as. As an answer until I finally left. But the night before I left on my mission, I do remember that I had my first ever panic attack, and I didn't know what that was. I just woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn't breathe, and I started crying, and it felt like I don't even know. And I just went to my mom and I was like, mom, I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't go. I can't go. And she just hugged me and said, you're gonna be fine. But that was. That was the first time that I had a panic attack, and I didn't know what that was. I just thought that I was just, I don't know, very anxious about going.

John Dehlin [00:56:54] But now follow that story up with the legging story in the mtc, because that would have been soon thereafter, Right?

Debora Meireles Ling [00:57:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:02] And this is all around the theme of guilt and perfectionism and fear and anxiety.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:57:07] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:57:08] And worthiness. Right.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:57:09] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:10] And I think how specific oftentimes the expectations are around you, which then, of course, compound your anxiety. I feel like the leggings story is just so specific.

Debora Meireles Ling [00:57:23] That was Very specific. I mean, going on a mission, you have to buy a lot of new things. Like, I had to buy a lot of skirts and dresses. And I. I remember going through the list with my dad because he had served a mission. So I'm like, he knows what I actually need. And so we were going through it. He was telling me, yeah, you need this, you need this, you may not need that. I don't think you need that. Because he made sure I understood, hey, when you are going to a different area, when you have trans, you're the one responsible to take your bags. You're not going to have a car, you're not going to have. Most of the time, members aren't going to be able to help you move. So then you're responsible for that suitcase. So you can't take three different suitcases because you're not going to be able to haul that in the bus. And I was like, okay. So I tried to do it as minimally as I could, but still, obviously, it's a year and a half. So we got some shoes and clothes. And I remember that on the paper it said that we weren't. We weren't allowed to wear leggings in the mtc, but that's all I had. And I said, we already spent so much money having to buy everything else. I'll just bring a huge shirt. Because I did. I had a shirt that went like halfway down my thigh. So I was like, okay, I'll just take a really baggy shirt because then I'll still be covered up and it'll be okay because then they'll only see my legs and that's fine. But when I got to the mtc, it was the very first time that we were going to do exercises. And I. Fun fact, I. That's where I met my husband. It was in the mtc. And I remember maybe he liked the leggings, maybe because he saw. I remember talking to. To him and his companion, one of his companions was actually going to the city where my parents lived in. So we talked a little bit about that. And. And I was wearing my leggings, and I got called to meet with. It was the MTC president's wife. She wanted to talk to me, and she's like, hey, sister, you can't be wearing leggings. And I said, well, I don't have anything else. So we get pulled out of, you know, the exercise activity that we were doing, me and my companion, and we go with her to a store next door to the mtc, and she's like, okay, you gotta look for some pants that aren't leggings. But I'm a very petite person and, like, I'm very short and just petite frame. So finding clothes is incredibly difficult. And the only pair of pants that I found that were somewhat. They didn't fit, but were somewhat like they weren't gonna fall off. My body were huge still, like, my legs looked three times their size because the pants were really big is what I'm trying to say. Very, very baggy and extremely unflattering. And I. I'm pretty sure I had to. To roll up the. The part of the waist for it to fit me. And on top of that, that huge shirt that I had to wear. So for me, that was very humiliating because when I went back, like, everybody could see me, and that just. I just felt so ugly. I felt so ugly, and I just felt so embarrassed because everybody knew that I had done something I wasn't supposed to. Even though I tried my best to make it okay because nobody could, say, see anything, it was still very modest when I was wearing my leggings, because that's. That's the thing, right? You need to be modest. It wasn't showing curves or anything. And even though I tried my best to do that, I still got called out in front of everybody, and that was quite a humiliating experience for me.

Margi Dehlin [01:01:22] It's such a perfect example, I feel, of, like, the letter of the law. No spirit of the law here. No, it is the letter of the law. It was always the letter of the law.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:01:33] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:02:36] Priceline. You mentioned teaching an atheist on Your mission. Do you want to talk about that?

Challenging Encounters in the Mission Field

Debora Meireles Ling [01:02:41] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:02:42] How that impacted you.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:02:44] So going back to the MTC really fast, there are a couple of things that I wanted to mention.

John Dehlin [01:02:50] Oh, please.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:02:51] One of the things, Excuse me. One of the things that we were taught in the. That we were told in the MTC is for women. We were, we were told if you don't get a period for a few months at a time, that's normal because you are going to experience some stress. And it's normal if that doesn't happen. And they gave us a packet, like, explaining. I don't remember what the packet said, but they did tell us that, so.

Margi Dehlin [01:03:22] Interesting.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:03:23] Yeah, I don't really. It is true, though. It did happen. And the other thing that they told us was you are going to hear that you're a part of a cult. And that was the first time that I can remember, actually that I can remember being told that you're going to be told that you're in a cult or even hearing that word. And they framed it like, what is a cult? A cult is a group of people who share the same beliefs. So, yes, we're a cult. Like, they made it, they simplified it, like, very simple, which I understand it's not that simple now, but at the time it was like, oh, okay, so then that's not a bad word. Like, that's not something bad for us to be associated with.

John Dehlin [01:04:13] The root of cult is culture. And you're just part of a culture. I mean, I forget.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:04:16] You're just part of a culture. Yeah, I didn't hear that one, but yeah. And. And they did tell us, like, if you. You're not going to Bible bash anybody because if they start saying you're in a cult or if they start trying to tell you things that just drive the spirit away, just bear your testimony and walk away. That's what we were told. So I was like, okay, When I got to the mission, my companion, my trainer, I. That was her last transfer on the mission. So I was with her for just six weeks. And she was. She was great. She. She tried to, you know, teach me how to handle those things. But by the time she went home, I got a new companion. And I only had that companion for a day and a half because she was emergency transferred because my second companion was coming into Brazil and she. Because she had just gotten her visa, but she didn't speak Portuguese because she had been serving stateside waiting for her visa. So they wanted me to be with her because they knew that I spoke English. So they're like, you're kind of gonna help her ease into it. But I didn't really know how to do all of the things because I had just been on a mission for six weeks. And that's when we met this, this man who was an atheist. So I felt, I felt even more pressure because she was still learning the language. She was great. Like, she was, she was really working hard to learn the language and to understand and to participate and to not make it feel like it was all on me to figure out. But I remember talking to him and that was the first time that I was questioned on. So why did Nephi kill Laban? And I said, well, because sometimes God needs to, you know, destroy the wicked so that not the rest of, not all of us ends up in wickedness, you know, to save the people. I don't know. I gave him an answer kind of like that. But then he also asked about the curse of, you know, the black skin. And I did not know what to say. I really didn't. We met with him maybe three times because the first time we were just introducing him to the Book of Mormon and talking to him about Joseph Smith and that. Then we asked him to read it and he did. He read it. And then the other two times that we visited him, he had very difficult questions for me. And that was the very first time in my life that I was like, wait a second, I don't know what this means, but I just kind of shoved it away because I was like, well, we were told that we were gonna face these challenges with people that are just going to try to destroy our faith. So we just did what we were told in the mtc. We bore our testimonies and we left and we never saw him again.

John Dehlin [01:07:26] You mentioned that he also asked you about the dark skinned Lamanite curse in the Book of Mormon. Do you remember him asking about that and what you thought and felt when he asked you about that?

Debora Meireles Ling [01:07:36] I didn't know what to say because I actually don't remember even what I did say, but it was. I had never been faced with that question. I had never been. I didn't even think about it because it just was so normal to me at that point. Because how old am I at this point? I think I'm 20, 20 or 21. And for all these years, like, that was so normal to me. We would just read it in the Book of Mormon over and over again and I didn't think twice about it. I was like, yeah, that's, that's the Book of Mormon, that's what it teaches. And so when he posed that as like, this is a problem, I was like, I don't understand how that's a problem. But this feels icky. So I'm just gonna put that away because I, I'm not gonna go there. You're trying to destroy my faith. And that's why we bore testimonies and left.

John Dehlin [01:08:38] Yeah, I guess that's partly why I asked some of those early questions. Because the church could better prepare its youth for missions both here in the United States and abroad. Because those are some pretty basic questions, especially if you're self identifying as a Lamanite, if you're reading the Book of Mormon all the time about Nephi and Laban and the curse and the chopping off of Laban's head and all that, you spent plenty of time at church. You could have talked about things with more depth, you could have learned about some of the problems. But for whatever reason, the church hasn't and doesn't really choose to prepare its youth and young adults for those types of very common engagements. Right?

Debora Meireles Ling [01:09:25] Yeah. And I think that at the time it was, at least for me, it just felt like people were starting to catch on to these things. So I, yeah, I did not feel prepared at all. I remember, I really like to study about the second coming, but every time that I would try to go deeper and some things just started to not make sense to me and I would ask, I was always told, hey, are you doing everything else that you need to do? Are you reading your scriptures perfectly? Are you praying perfectly? Like, are you following all of these steps that you need to follow? Because you need to drink milk before you eat meat. So once you're doing all of these things perfectly, then you can gain more knowledge that way. Like, then, I don't know, the heavens will open up to you and you'll gain that knowledge. Or there are some things that we're just never going to really understand here on Earth because those are the mysteries of God. So when you're on the other side, if you are worthy, which is what you should be striving to be here on Earth, you can sit with him and ask him all of these questions. So that's kind of how it was handled. So for me, if I ever had any deeper questions about anything, I'm like, well, I guess I'll know in the next life. Or I'm not, I don't need to visit this because I'm not perfect in my scripture study. I'm not perfect in my prayers. I'm not perfect in the basics of the gospel to be able to be asking these questions.

John Dehlin [01:10:57] Now, I think that might be sometimes referred to as thought stopping. When you're taught to stop your thoughts if they go in places that aren't favorable to the church, then, or an organization, the organization is going to teach you to stop those thoughts because they might lead you to have doubts about the organization, which the organization doesn't want.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:11:21] Yeah, for sure.

Depression, Physical Symptoms, and Mission Breakdown

John Dehlin [01:11:22] So how did your mission go?

Debora Meireles Ling [01:11:25] Well, my mission went well. Once I got the hang of it, it was, it was nice. Like, once I understood, like, hey, these are the rules. This is what you need to do. This is how you need to prepare in the morning. I remember that I had a very hard time like falling asleep right at 10:30 and then being out of bed at 6:30. And I had a district leader who was awesome. He was fantastic. He told me, hey, you need to talk to the, to the president about this when he comes to interview you because he'll, you need to be 100% honest with him so that he can help you. And I was like, okay. And I told my mission president and I, you know, he gave me some advice of like, okay, so go to bed at 10 and so that you can be asleep by 10:30. Like try to do that. And then in the morning maybe put your alarm for 6:15 so you have that extra time before you have to be up, you know.

John Dehlin [01:12:29] Why are you laughing, Margi?

Margi Dehlin [01:12:30] Just enjoying amazing advice.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:12:37] But it was, yeah, I was trying to be the best missionary I could be. Especially because I did feel the pressure of people didn't think that I would be here like, that I would serve a mission. Like I was supposed to get married. So I need to be the best missionary I can be to show, hey, I can actually do hard things, you know. And so it was, it was good. We, we proselytized a lot. I really wanted, I truly wanted to love the people. And that was a goal of mine. I said I had this goal of I just want to look at somebody and feel God's love for that person.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:23] I love that that was your goal. That just says so much for you.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:13:29] Because I felt if I can connect with this person, then it's more of a human interaction. It's more of a human thing. Like I know what's good for you and I really want to be able to feel God's love for you so I can understand you so we can come to Christ together, you know? And I remember that I felt that one Time in, at a bus stop, I talked to a lady and I just looked at her and I could just feel so much love for her. And I didn't know this person and it was, it was a really good experience. But she didn't live in our area unfortunately. So we gave her a little pass along card and hoped that she would call to get a Book of Mormon. We try to get her to talk with missionaries in her area, but she wasn't interested in that. So. But we about, you know, we had a few baptisms, not many but at one point I now can't remember how, how long I'd been out, maybe five months. I started to. My body started to shut down. Not that sounds a little dramatic, but I started to feel symptoms that I didn't understand what they were. So I was dizzy all the time or I felt nauseous all the time. I couldn't walk because we just walked. We didn't have cars or bikes and we walked all day long. And some days I was like, I would turn to my companion and I would say, hey, I cannot, I don't know what's going on with me, but I cannot do this today. And it just got progressively worse as time went on. Lots of headaches and I just didn't understand what was happening. I thought that it was because of the stress. Maybe one of the areas that I was in, I. We had. It was. How do I describe this? It was as if there was this big house and in. Within this big house there were small houses, like apartments almost that would make. But they were all connected in the shape of a house. So like if you looked at it from the outside it looked like just a regular like rambler house. But inside it was like a lot of little apartments that were all connected. And we had a front door that was not like anything special. And then the door to our house was one of those really heavy curtains that they had in like old church buildings. I don't know if you guys know what I'm talking about, but they were like very heavy curtains. And I remember one night we came home and we just heard screaming coming from the apartment right next door to ours. And we could tell that it was a woman and a man fighting and things were breaking and she was screaming like, don't touch her or don't do this, don't. So we could tell that something very heavy was happening. And I immediately got scared because I'm like, I don't know who is at, who is at this woman's house. I don't know if this guy's gonna try to come to our house. Our door is not anything spectacular. Like, he could easily, like, kick it down. And it's just the two of us. I. You know, so I remember calling our zone leaders, and our zone leaders told us to call the president, or, excuse me, I think they told us to call the assistance about it. So we did. We called the assistants, we talked to them about it. And I said, hey, I don't think that we're safe here. Like, I don't feel safe. And the sisters that had been in. In that area previous to me and my companion, they called me and they said, sister, you cannot tell the president about this. Because that house is really, like, it's in such a good area. Like, it's so central to our area. They won't be able to find a better place. Like, you cannot tell the president about this. They can't move you guys. You have to just deal with it. She's like, it's fine. We. We had that happen before. It's not going to happen to you. You're totally fine.

John Dehlin [01:17:53] Dang.

Margi Dehlin [01:17:55] We had that happen before.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:17:58] So I had to take her word for it. So I was like, okay.

John Dehlin [01:18:01] I mean, Margi's brother served a mission in Brazil, and he had stories of having guns pulled on him, knives pulled on, you know.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:18:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:18:08] My sense is Brazil isn't always safe, a safe place for Mormon missionaries to begin with. Right. Is that true?

Debora Meireles Ling [01:18:15] I think, I think that's true, especially because they know that missionaries usually are American. And so if the missionaries are American, then American equals money. So they always think that. And in the mtc, we were told, like, you guys need to keep at least 5.5 hey, ice in your bag. Because if you. If somebody stops you, then you have something to give them. Fortunately, that was the scariest experience from. One of the scariest experiences for me. Like, we were never put in harm's way. But my husband was like, he was. He has some stories about his areas, for sure.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:58] I think what's interesting about that is it acknowledges, you said that happened in the mtc where they told you. So it acknowledges they know.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:19:07] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:19:07] That missionaries are being held up.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:19:10] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:19:11] If they're giving them actual money to give.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:19:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:16] So how did the dizziness and headaches continue on your mission?

Debora Meireles Ling [01:19:21] So that happened for a few weeks. I was transferred. Actually, before I was transferred, I was told to go talk to a psychologist. So I did. And she talked to me for maybe. I don't know, it was such a quick visit. And she just said, oh, it seems like you're depressed. Do you want meds for that? Like, do you want medication for that? And I said, no, I'm not depressed. I'm fine. It's just my. Something's going on with my body, and I don't know what's going on, but I'm not depressed. Like, I'm not crying. She asked me, how. How often do you cry? And I said, I don't. I don't cry. Like, if I think about my family, maybe I'll cry because I miss home. I'm homesick, but who wouldn't be? So I just ignored what she said. And then I was transferred to an area where we shared the ward with our. With the senior couple that was on the mission. And I was in a group of three. That was the first time that I was put in a group of three sisters. And I probably lasted a couple of weeks in that transfer. And. And then I. No, I think. I'm not trying to remember. Yeah, it was probably a couple of weeks in the. Into the transfer. We had a day where we went to get lunch at a member's house, because in Brazil we have lunches. We don't have dinners with members because lunch is the main meal. So we went. And I remember being in that house, like, it. I had never been there. I was brand new to the area. But something told me, hey, don't. Don't eat that meat. And I was like, okay. So I didn't eat the meat. I just felt like I shouldn't. So I didn't. My companions did. And by the time that we got home, they were both super sick. So we couldn't go out for the rest of the. The afternoon. And my mission president called, and he's like, hey, are you guys home? And I said, yeah, my companions, they can't go out. Like, they. They're pretty sick. So he's like, okay, well, we. We want to come by. And I. And when he said that, I felt like something was off. And he came over and he said, we have been thinking about it, and because these episodes have gotten so bad, like, they. They were so bad, I sometimes had to stay with our senior couple while my. While my companions went out and proselytized because. And then I would join them at the end of the night because they had gotten so bad. So he said, we're going to send you home. And that was hard. Because I had. I had just barely made it to six months at that point. And it was really hard because for me I just felt I was very homesick the whole time, but it. I just felt like I can't be homesick. I have to want to be here. But because I felt homesick, I felt like God wasn't accepting the work that I was putting in because my whole heart wasn't in it. And I knew that my heart was in it. And I wanted to stay because I wanted to prove to God that I was. That I was there for the right reasons. I was there to spread the gospel because that was my life. The gospel was my life. So that was really hard to be sent home. And they said, you know, you can go home, and if you get better, you can come back. But we just. We just think that you'll be. That it'll be easier for you to get medical help at home to figure out what's going on with you. And I felt like that was a punishment from God because. Because I wasn't giving it my all, even though I was giving it my all, if that makes sense at all.

Margi Dehlin [01:23:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:37] As someone raised in the church, you know, the people that come home early from their missions have sex on their missions, or they have sex before their missions, and then they get. They don't. But they don't confess it, so then they feel guilty. And then while they're on their mission, they confess it and they get sent home, or they get hit by a car or they get super sick like some disease. Those are. That's. Those are the things I associate, but I don't associate as someone raised Mormon, someone getting sent home early who was super devout, super obedient, super desirous to work hard and serve, who is orthodox in every. Almost every possible way or, you know, or lazy. Right. You fit none of the criteria for someone that is stereotypically sent home from. From a Mormon mission. So I imagine that might have been hard. Really hard for you.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:24:35] Yeah, it was hard because I was actually grateful to go back. When I went home, I was grateful to be going home to the wards that I was in in Salvador, because the people there, I felt, were a lot less judgmental than the people from my home ward in Sao Paulo. In Sao Paulo, yeah. And because we had experiences of missionaries coming home early in my. In my ward back in Sao Paulo. And they. And it was like everybody was talking about it, and they wanted to understand what had happened, and it became gossip. And I didn't want that to happen because I knew that I hadn't done anything wrong, per se. I was just homesick and my body was sick And I couldn't understand what it was. So the people actually in the ward were fantastic. When I went back, at least I didn't hear any gossip. Nobody asked me any questions. They were just, you're back. And they came and hugged me, and it was. It was good in that way. But the. The shame that I felt being there didn't go away. They were very graceful. Excuse me, they were very graceful with me. But the shame that I was feeling of God didn't accept my work was crushing. Regardless.

Margi Dehlin [01:26:06] I'm feeling that so hard. And it reminds me of, like, it is why perfectionism exists. It is like the root of where it comes, isn't it? And this is on your mission. It's this amplification, it feels like, of this pattern a little bit through your life of. On the inside, you're so dedicated and devoted and determined, and you have this extenuating circumstance of a body that won't let you do what you want to do, what you desire to do. And so in that circumstance, you're doing everything you can working with a body that you don't understand, you've sought help for. And in the end, the determining is sort of like, it's not cutting it. Like your best isn't good enough. So we want the perfect outcome. We want the body that's optimized, and we want the spirit that's optimized, and you're not that. So you get sent home. And I just think it is why so often, I feel like in Mormon stories, we see so much perfectionism, you know, and it's because the optimization is the point. Anything less and you failed.

John Dehlin [01:30:18] And you, looking back now, again, I'm reminded of that time when you were baptized where you were having all these feelings, and people needed to tell you what your feelings meant. So on your mission, you were having kind of a breakdown, right?

Debora Meireles Ling [01:30:32] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:30:33] One option is you had an anxiety disorder, and that's what was going on. Just like a diabetic has struggles with insulin or whatever, you were having a physical anxiety disorder symptoms, and that's why you broke down in your mission. A second option is on your mission, there were things that weren't right. You didn't want to be there. You didn't like teaching the gospel. You were having doubts, you were missing your family, whatever. Things that weren't a good fit for your values or your personality, and that's why you were having a breakdown or a combination of the two. How do you look back now on your mission in terms of what was actually happening?

Debora Meireles Ling [01:31:18] I see. I think that on my mission, it was a little bit of a combination of the two. I did have anxiety, and I've been, you know, diagnosed with it. I didn't understand what it was, though. And so the pressure of, I need to talk to everybody, everybody on the street, everybody at the bus stop, and being told no and having people not be nice to you, be very mean to you at times, telling, you know, and then having to teach somebody the language, the culture, and not being able to be alone ever, and having all of the rules that you have to follow. I remember that we. At one point, we had. We had a church building that we shared with two wards, and one of them had elder, like elders, and the other one was me and my companion. And when the elders left after my second transfer, they closed that area for elders and they gave that area to us. So then it was just the two of us, just me and my companion with two areas, and those were big areas. And I just felt that pressure of, okay, I need to. I need to be the leader here, and I need to figure this out, and I need to be giving the. Like, setting the example, right, talking to everybody. And sometimes, you know, it. It just became a lot. It did become a lot. And the bishop of that new ward, he wasn't happy that he had gotten sister missionaries, and he told us that. And in the beginning, it was very difficult because we did not feel accepted by the ward because they wanted the elders back. And I remember writing home about it because you're not supposed to write about bad things that happened to you. But I thought, I'm having issues with, like, the bishop. I'm trying to show the bishop that we're here to help and work, and he is not accepting of us. So I'm going to ask for counsel. And so I wrote home about it, and the response that I got was, you should. You should never judge a bishop because you don't understand how heavy the mantle is that he carries. And that didn't really help me in understanding, like, how can I just. We need to have a little breakthrough moment of, hey, I'm here to help the work. I'm not here to. I don't even know why he. I mean, I know he wanted elders, but I'm like, we're here to do the same work as they would be doing here. And we are dividing our time because we have two separate wards. But we are here to do our best, and we want to work with the members because we realize that we need help. And that just didn't happen. So there were instances like that where I felt like I needed to be taken care of, everybody and everything around me. And I felt a little out of control because I didn't know what to do, and I wasn't getting a lot of good advice on how to proceed. I had times where we had to walk to district meeting because we had a district meeting every week and we had to walk like half an hour to get to the church building sometimes. And sometimes we were late. And I remember there were elders who would be like, oh, to my companion who was also new to the mission, and they'd be like, oh, why are, why are you late? Late again. And I felt like I had to protect her because I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, you have to talk to me about this because she is doing her best. So am I. But if you have an issue, you have to talk to me about that. Don't, don't go talking to my companion that way. Like, I, I felt like I had to stand up for them. I didn't. I feel like in my mind I have to take care of everybody, even though we're all there, we're all adults there, but I still felt that it was my responsibility to take care of my companion and my area. And I felt, and I think that. So, yeah, it ended up being a culmination of everything and I missed home. And I don't feel like I was given a lot of tools to navigate difficult situations that were very real. It's not like I could just open the Book of Mormon and feel the spirit and be like, okay, this is now how the Bishop is going to help us with the work. You know, I mean, we tried, we prayed about it, obviously, we fasted and yeah, that was very long. Sorry. But I think it was a combination of the two.

Unrealistic Expectations and Being Sent Home Early

Margi Dehlin [01:36:31] I feel like to me, what feels very clear as you're talking about your experience and then of course, what we, what we kind of know about missions is that missions in general have a really inhumane quality about them. They exist for a certain outcome, but they're not for the well being, let's say, of the missionaries themselves. And so I think that's really important to acknowledge here, that the expectations, what was wanted from you, what was spelled out for you, it was inhumane. They were too high. The expectations are too high. Honestly, when you, when it's so structured, you and you can't be alone and everything is so controlled and it's all about output, output, output, Right? And then I also hear, just as you're describing, a resource deficit for what is expected of you. You have very little resources to pull on when things get hard or, you know, when you're human and you get sick or walking all day actually becomes tiring because back to the human being kind of part of it. So a lack of resources and then it feels like to me that you also had expectations of yourself that compounded all of this and that was to take care of and protect and help those around you that exacerbated, you know, this already, this swirl of inhumanity and really a perfect storm for what happened to you. Like, of course, of course, on some level, you broke down as a human in this inhumane circumstances, unable to be optimized in all the ways, 24 hours a day, day after day. Of course you did. You're a human, you know, so to me, it's so understandable. Don't you feel, as you were describing, that you're. You were so earnest and so hardworking and really desiring to do all the things and to optimize yourself and to protect those around you. To do it, even protecting those around you and speaking up for them and taking care of them. Anyway, I just felt like that was.

John Dehlin [01:39:06] Yeah, it's almost like. Well said, Margi. And it's almost like you didn't end up getting sent home because you didn't want it badly enough or you didn't obey the rules enough or work hard enough. It's almost like with your temperament, your commitment, your desire to serve the Lord and to do your best, it's almost as if you wanted it too hard and then the circumstances in the environment maybe just started to fry your brain in terms of amplifying the anxiety. I don't know. I don't mean to project that onto you, but.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:39:48] No, I can. I can relate to that. I. I was. I mean, I think that this is a pretty common teaching in the church. From the time that you are in primary, you need to stand up for what's true. You need to defend truth and right, and you need to dare to stand alone. And so with all of that, even with bearing testimony on Sundays, I was always told, hey, you need to go and bear your testimony. And if I said I didn't want to, sometimes I would get the answer of, well, other people can benefit from hearing you, and that's what God expects you to do, so why are you not doing it? And I even made goals, like to every single. Every single first Sunday, fast Sunday, to always bear my testimony. Even if I. Even if I was, you know, feeling the anxiety of, okay, I need to. I need to say this very well, because people are listening and what I say can actually touch them, you know, so it was. And that carried on into my mission of, you need to perform because people are watching you. People are going to look at how you dress and how you carry yourself and how you speak to them and all of that. You need to have that image. Like, the white handbook talks about, like, how you need to be as a missionary physically, and also, like, you need to then, with a lot of conviction, talk about your beliefs to help bring people to Christ. And if you're not doing that, you're failing. That's how I received the message and so I put that on me of, you need to do this well. And when it wasn't good enough, that's when I got sent home.

Life After the Mission and Finding a Partner

John Dehlin [01:41:53] So you mentioned your ward, your newer home ward, being gracious about your early mission return. Tell us about your life, where things went after your mission, you know, because you were still on the Mormon plan, right? And you still needed to find that husband according to your values at the time.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:42:14] Correct? So on my. A few days before I went home, we had a meeting. We had a zone conference. And I remember Elder Ling at the time, he came by and he sat next to me and he was like, hey, Sister, how's it going? And I was like, good. He. He had avoided me the whole mission. Like, we were. We were in the same zone right at first, like, right as we came out of the mtc. And after that, I didn't see him again. And if I saw him in zone conferences, like, he would walk away from me. He wouldn't talk to me. And so when he sat down next to me and asked me like, hey, what's up? I was like, I'm. I'm going home. How are you? I was, you know, I was having a really hard time. And I was like, yeah, I'm going home. And he said, oh, that's really hard. I'm sorry. What happened? And I just said, well, I'm just sick and they can't figure out what's wrong. And he said, okay, well, my birthday's coming up next week. Do you think you can send me a letter on my birthday? And I was like, or next week? Sorry, no, next month. He said, my birthday's coming up next month. Can you write me? And I said, sure, I'll write you. You didn't talk to me the whole time I was here, but sure, I'll write you a happy birthday. In my mind, I'm thinking, I don't know, does he have a family that's going to write him or, you know. So I did. The next month, I wrote him a letter and I said, hey, happy birthday, Elder Ling. I hope that you're doing good on the mission and.

John Dehlin [01:43:56] And

Debora Meireles Ling [01:43:59] still trying to figure things out here. To see if I'll be able to go back, but I'm still not sure how it's going to go, so I need to get this anxiety under control. And he wrote me back. We were just, at the time, we couldn't write emails to friends. We could only write letters to friends. Only family members could get emails. That changed shortly after, but in this time, like, we couldn't do that. So then he wrote me a letter. I got the letter maybe a couple weeks after. And he told me that he had feelings for me, which is why he had avoided me throughout the mission. Like the our time, like, every time that we would see each other, which was more many times. And I was confused. I was like, oh, I did not expect that. So then I. I did. Of course I did. I called my mission president and I said, hey, I'm still trying to figure out if I should go back or not. I'm still trying to, you know, see this. But Elder Ling sent me a letter, and this is what he said. And my mission president, he was. He was incredible. He said, well, I think that this is. I think that your time on the mission was very significant. If you decide that you want to come back, of course we will be here. We will be happy to have you back, and we will keep you an elderling apart. Because up until then, it was the message that we. The little printout that we got in the MTC was the lock your hearts talk. So he said, we will keep you and elderling apart, but if you. If you decide that it's not best for you to come back, then I think that this is a decision between you and the Lord. And I think that your mission, your time here on the mission was very valuable. And I still had that shame of coming home. I. That didn't make me feel any better, him saying that. And that's not on him by any means. That's just my internal turmoil of. I just feel this shame that I can't let go of, like God is not happy with me. So I ended up not going back to my mission because Jaden and I, my husband now, we wrote each other for a year and a half, and he would keep me up to date on what was happening on the mission. And the new mission president that came in after President Tanner had finished his time on the mission and how things were different, he got called to be, I think it was an executive assistant to the mission president. And at that point, we could email each other. The rules had changed, so you could email friends and family. So Then we would write emails to each other, and because he had. He was on the computer all day, like, we would. On P days, we would chat back and forth a little bit, which was nice. And then he would disappear, and I would just be crushed.

John Dehlin [01:47:14] That's so wild. Like, when I was on my mission, you could only call home twice a year. Once on Mother's Day and once on Christmas. And you could write letters by hand once a week. But the idea of chatting with a girl I liked weekly over the Internet, that was not how missions worked.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:47:36] I'm glad that's how my mission worked, because it was. It was really great. We. Yeah, so we wrote for a year and a half. And it's interesting because we. We. We weren't physically together, but we bonded over our missions and the gospel and all of these things to the point that we decided that we were going to get married while he was still out on the mission.

John Dehlin [01:48:07] What?

Debora Meireles Ling [01:48:08] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:48:08] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:48:09] Wait, no. You weren't going to get married while he was on his mission, but you decided while he was on his mission?

Debora Meireles Ling [01:48:14] Yeah, no, we decided. We decided that we were going to get married while he was out.

Margi Dehlin [01:48:18] That still is a. Wow.

John Dehlin [01:48:20] It's still a.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:48:21] Well, it is, because, I mean, there's so many things that we had to think about that at the time we didn't think about. For example, I lived in Brazil. He lived here. And I was like, okay, so how are we going to make that work? Are you going to move here? Am I going to move there? Like, what are we going to do? And we're talking about these things on P days over email.

John Dehlin [01:48:41] That's crazy.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:48:42] But it's. We. We both just said, you know, we prayed about it and we feel good about it, and. And we made that decision, and I bought a wedding dress. I bought a wedding dress. I think the month he was supposed to come home or the month before

John Dehlin [01:48:59] he came home, so all those wedding dress magazines came in handy.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:49:05] It was finally my turn.

Margi Dehlin [01:49:08] That was your prep work?

Debora Meireles Ling [01:49:09] It was my Prep work, yes. 100%. It was finally my time. And so I. So I bought the wedding dress, and I. I talked to his family a little bit over Skype. That's how I started to get to know them a little bit. Which, you know, looking back, if that were my kid, I don't know how I would have handled it, because it was just. I don't. You don't send your kid on a mission to think, oh, yeah, you're going to bring home a spouse. But, yeah, so I bought a Wedding dress. He came home in February, and then we could actually Skype. Before he came home, though, his exit interview, he had the new. Oh, I actually forgot to mention this. I visited Sao Paulo because I thought if I get, you know, a job here in the city of Sao Paulo, then he can move here and we can get married. So I was in Sao Paulo. I was living with my aunt and one of the girls that served her mission with us, she was from New Zealand, and she came to visit the mission as well. And we went to the mission office together. And while we were there, I was able to meet the new mission president that I had never met before. But he knew who I was because when Jaden and I were talking and he was the executive assistant, they were together, him and the new mission president. So the mission president called me into his office and he starts questioning, like, how do you know that you love him? How do you know that. That you're supposed to get married to him? And I said, well, we've prayed about it and we both got our answers and, and we just know. And fast forward Jaden's exit interview. When he was leaving the mission, his mission president told him, I think you need to go home and date. You can't pull. You can't put all of your eggs in one basket. I know that, you know, you had a really time, had a good time writing this girl. But, like, I do really think that you need to explore other opportunities when you get home. And I understand that what we were doing now, I understand that what we were doing was a little crazy. But at the time, it just felt. It just felt so icky to me because I was like, wait a minute, you're telling me that my answer to my prayer is not important? Like, my answer to my prayer? That Jaden also got his answer to his prayer? Like those things don't matter. I'm not sure what you're trying to

John Dehlin [01:52:15] do is the new Mr. President from the US or from Brazil. There is the historical teaching that, and I'm going to use the church's language, that races shouldn't mix, that you shouldn't be involved in interracial marriages, that you also shouldn't be engaged in marriages to people of different socioeconomic status, that you should sort of marry your kind. And that was taught by the Mormon Church for 100 plus years and was still being taught in, I don't know, 2014, 2015 for sure. Do you think that might have been where your second mission president was coming from?

Margi Dehlin [01:52:55] He was trying to slow it all down, trying to avoid it, maybe create

John Dehlin [01:52:58] a barrier, an interracial, basically trying to avoid an interracial marriage or.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:53:02] I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:53:03] You don't know? Okay.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:53:04] I kind of, I did not know about this teaching yet at the time. So for me, it just felt like you're not taking my confirmation, my revelation, if you will, as being correct.

John Dehlin [01:53:21] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:53:23] And at that point, again, I'm thinking, I'm doing everything right. I'm praying, I'm reading my scriptures, I'm serving in the church. I, you know, I'm seeking everything that's good. I'm trying to follow the path that's outlined in my patriarchal blessing. I'm writing, I'm writing this missionary, like, hyping him up to serve the Lord, especially because I know where he is. Like, I know, I know the mission. I know the missionaries. Like, I'm, I'm trying to be supportive of him, to stay there. So why am I not good enough? What, what about me is not, is not good enough? I'm, I'm loyal to the church. Like, I have a testimony.

John Dehlin [01:54:08] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:54:09] I'm also a returned missionary. Like, so I guess those were the thoughts in my head more so than anything else because I did not know about that teaching yet.

John Dehlin [01:54:20] So we're just speculating, but that certainly is a thing. So people need to know that could have been a thing, might not have been a thing. For the sake of time, really quickly, what, so what year were you married and in what temple?

Marriage, the 2015 Policy, and Growing Doubts

Debora Meireles Ling [01:54:32] 2015. And we got married in the Mount Timpanogos Temple.

John Dehlin [01:54:36] Okay. So you got married here and so you moved here and set up your home here in Utah. Okay. We're going to jump forward to the kind of the crisis point stories of 2020 just for the sake of time.

Debora Meireles Ling [01:54:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:54:53] So anything really critical to what becomes, you know, the challenges to your faith, any really important things to mention between your marriage and that 2020 time period before we just dive right into kind of how things started to unravel for your Mormon faith?

Debora Meireles Ling [01:55:13] Yes. I do want to mention very quickly, when we first got married, I wasn't able to work. I was still waiting for my work permit to come in. So Jaden had to, he was the sole breadwinner. And you put that on a 22 year old. It's, it's, it's hard. So he was able to get a job, but I mean, he always had a job. He, he's really good like that. But he had to work some Sundays with the job that he had. And I remember that he would. There were times where it was every other Sunday, and sometimes it was just a couple of Sundays in the month, like back to back. So he started to miss some church. And then the Sundays that he was home because he worked retail. So then he was working Saturdays as well, a lot of the time. Excuse me. And so on Sundays, the Sundays that he wasn't working, he was like, can we just stay home today? And I was like, no. What do you mean? Like, absolutely not. And I did not have any empathy for the fact that he was like, I did not get any time off this week. I just want to be able to sleep in today. And I was like, no, no, get up and let's go to church. And he also mentioned this is not all happening at the same time. Sometime after that, he started talking to me about how he had some questions about Joseph Smith. And I shut that down really quick. I was like, no, we. We are not going there. But all of that, instead of me trying to have a healthy conversation, because he was coming to me with questions, he was coming to me saying, hey, I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling in trying to understand

Margi Dehlin [01:57:14] how,

Debora Meireles Ling [01:57:15] like, these things about Joseph Smith or how the prophet actually gets revelation because revelations are given and then taken away. And I didn't understand it as that. I just started to think, oh, my gosh, did I make a mistake? Was he. He was so faithful on his mission. He bore his testimony to me multiple times. We. We got married in the temple. Like, that was our goal. It wasn't my goal. It was our goal. And so why is this happening right now? Did I make a mistake? Why. Why is he struggling with this? Why is he trying to tear down my faith, too? And I started to feel that way towards him. I wouldn't talk to him about it because obviously I didn't want to get into the subject at all. I wanted to stay as far away from that as I possibly could. And when the 2015 policy came out about children of gay parents not being able to be baptized, that was a big moment for him that I was not there to support him on either. He was like, I don't like this. I feel like this is not something that God would have wanted. And I said to him, well, you know, the church is trying to keep families together, and they can't. Like, kids can't be getting baptized when their parents are not living the commandments. That's how. I at least told myself that that was okay because of that. And so Jayden stopped talking about it. He never brought it back up. And so President Nelson, I started to. A few years later, I started to get a sense that President Nelson was kind of downplaying what church teachings and commandments actually were. It's like, no, we accept everyone. You can. Do you like? At least this is how I was taking it. We accept everyone. Everybody. And I. And I was thinking to myself, yes, but we do, but you have to keep the commandments. And I remember one time talking to my parents, I described it as, I feel like he is trying to be this cool, hip grandpa. And that's not really what the church teaches. And my parents did not like that. I said, cool, hip grandpa. That was. That was not a good choice of words for me, but that's how I felt. I was like, this is the best way I can describe it, because your

Margi Dehlin [01:59:56] experience of the church, it feels like, has been letter of the law throughout your entire life. Not a lot of softness, not a lot of. Especially for anything. That's not really, again, that optimized version. So that lives in you. You're like, this is what it is. This is what I've lived. This is what I've experienced in my family, in my.

John Dehlin [02:02:10] Do you remember when the church backtracked and canceled the 2015 revelation. So around 2019, the church got so much blowback, so many people left the church. It was so damaging to its reputation that it reversed the 2015 policy, even though Nelson had claimed the 2015 policy was revelation from God. Then they claimed that getting rid of it was also revelation from God in 2019. And did you even hear about that?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:02:42] No.

John Dehlin [02:02:43] That'd be interesting. And you were in Utah. It's like you're in Brazil.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:02:47] I was in Utah, and I remember that when the 2015 policy came out, they read it over the pulpit.

John Dehlin [02:02:52] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:02:53] And I only found out that it had been taken away, like, maybe four years ago. So I had no idea that. That it wasn't a thing anymore. I still thought that that was the revelation. And that was.

John Dehlin [02:03:08] Isn't that sneaky that they would tell everyone that it was in play over the pulpit, and then when they take it away, they don't tell everyone? That's not super honest, I don't think.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:03:20] No. To me, it doesn't feel honest either. Especially because I wonder how many people were still living that policy when it was taken away and had no idea that they didn't have to do that

John Dehlin [02:03:31] or still, you know.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:03:31] Or still.

John Dehlin [02:03:32] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:03:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:03:34] Okay. So 2020 was the. Was when the cracks started really coming. What happened in 2020?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:03:40] So in 2020, the. Obviously Covid happened. And when the vaccines came out, the first time that President Nelson talked about it, he said, hey, council with your doctors to see if the vaccine is something that you should take. And I was like, okay, I will. I will look into it. And then it became very. The vaccine, like, worldwide. It became very political. And I was taught growing up that the church did not take political stances, like, in any way, shape or form. Like, the church was not political, but it became very political. The vaccine did. And the church came out again, speaking out again about it and saying that they were, like, telling people to get vaccinated. And I was. And I thought, wait, is this supposed to be a political stance because it has become so political, or. It just didn't sit well with me, how the church worded it of. It wasn't. It wasn't. You have to talk to your doctor about it. It was, we want everybody to have it. That's how I took it. At least we want everybody to have it because we don't want temples to shut down or we don't want. We want to be able to go back to church. And so, like, everybody needs to. To get it and then a guy that had served his mission with us, he posted online that the church had stock with Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson. And Johnson. And I had no idea that the church had stocks. I had no idea that the church had money. Like in, in my mind what happened was we paid our tithing and all of our tithing money was pulled together so that we could make temples and so that we could pay for people's missions when they weren't able to afford it themselves. So we could.

John Dehlin [02:05:42] When they couldn't afford to. When they couldn't afford to buy replacements for leggings.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:05:46] Yes, the church would pay exactly like it was used for that. It was like a little fund, but

Margi Dehlin [02:05:53] just a little fun.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:05:55] Just a little fun. And I had no idea. I had no idea. So when I saw that and he had like, he posted documents that you could look at. And when I saw that and I was like, wait a minute, the church has money invested in these companies that are making the vaccines. And that did not sit well with me.

John Dehlin [02:06:18] So it sounds like that was a couple things. One is that the church had over $100 billion in stocks and bonds and real estate sitting there as investments that they were just making money off of, but not using to help the poor or to help church members directly. That bothered you?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:06:37] That bothered me because I had no idea the extent of it. And at this point I still did not know how much money the church has. No idea.

John Dehlin [02:06:45] But then you associated the vaccines with politics and so you felt like the church was getting political and you felt like the church was giving self interested advice to the members to get the vaccines because they stood to profit from their investments. That's how you felt?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:07:05] That's exactly how I felt.

John Dehlin [02:07:06] Okay.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:07:07] It felt very icky to me. And I, I started to wrestle with that because that was a huge, huge crack for me. I. And after that, it's kind of, it kind of felt like something inside me started to change the way that I viewed the church started to change a little bit because I'm like, wait a minute, if they're not talking about this publicly. Because every single general conference, they go up there and they say, hey, like this is how funds were used or like they used to do that. They used to talk about like transparency

John Dehlin [02:07:46] and finance to publish their budget prior to 1960.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:07:50] Yeah. So I was like, I thought that that was it. And they were telling us everything and turns out that why aren't they talking about this? What, what is happening? And also in 2020 was the time where I Saw a lot of people that I knew posting online that they had left the church. But because I was still very believing, I just thought to myself, oh, of course, another one. Oh, everybody's going to talk about it online. It's a new trend now. It's, you know, they had like these anonymous questions and a lot of people would answer anonymous questions like, yes, I've left the church. And I was like, oh, it's a new trend. Of course everybody's going to leave the church. And then I saw the documents and then I was like, wait a second. That's when I took a step back. I was like, wait. And when general conference would come on, I, I started looking at, I started listening to the talks and a lot of them were just. And I'm so, I don't mean this to be offensive, but it just felt like it was a lot of like self help books, if you will.

John Dehlin [02:09:00] So just like glib popular advice, not real deep wisdom. Is that what you mean?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:09:09] Well, sort of, but also like there is always a sob story and there's a sob story and people are crying and that's when they talk about something like, oh, this is how we can be better and more faithful. Or this is how God blessed us in a time of trial.

John Dehlin [02:09:28] Or are you saying manipulative, kind of emotionally manipulative. Is that what you mean?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:09:35] Now I can say that that's how I felt, but at the time it just felt icky. So I didn't, okay, I didn't associate it yet with manipulation, but I just felt like there's nothing. Why, why are we, why are we crying? Why are we crying? And why do we need to have a sob story all the time? Like I, it was the first time that it hit for me and the talks, I mean, everything is always the same. And I had asked my parents, you know, years ago, I said, why, why is it that we hear about the same things over and over or we talk about the same things over and over? And they said, well, it's because we're not perfect at it. And it, once we are perfect in that, then God will give us more wisdom. And I felt like, okay, general conference is just the same thing. And I started to just kind of turn off during general conference. Like I was not able to absorb anything that actually meant something that was actually going to help me in my life, that was actually going to help me be a better wife or a better moment. Because at this point I have two kids. So I'm like, I don't really understand what's going on here. It just started to feel off. That's the best way I can describe it.

Beginning of Faith Crisis and Reaching Out for Help

Margi Dehlin [02:10:58] Can I ask you a quick question about that? So in your mind, do you feel like the, you know, like as a child and teen growing up and through your mission that you experienced the leaders of the church as being one way, as being different than this moment? I guess, like I'm, what I'm kind of curious about is if, if really what's happened here is that you had an experience growing up that was quite harsh. I mean it's quite letter of the law. Not a lot of softness, not a lot of, in your experience too has been like, you've had a lot of harsh responses to you in times when you were anything less than just the most perfect form of, you know, things. And so I guess what I'm curious is the offness being like now you can hear really directly from, in Utah, like the leaders speak and you're like, wait a second. This is not the church that I remember experiencing in my family system, in my ward, you know, even in my experience through my mission. This is not familiar, whatever this is, this is not familiar to. Is, Is that what's happening? What's happening for you?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:12:25] Yeah, I, I, yeah, that's, that was definitely the case because like I said, everything was so black and white and, and all of a sudden it wasn't anymore. Everything was very letter of the law. And now I was starting to see that, I don't know, it was, wait a minute, does God really want me to hear this? Is God really talking to these people? Like, what, what is happening? Why do I feel off? I had never felt off. I was always on the straight and narrow and that was the goal and that's where I should have been. And then, yeah, it was just, it just felt like a very different church, very different approach. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:08] And it's a little bit ironic. I mean, the metaphor, I always invoke the metaphor of like the wizard of Oz and Dorothy or Elphaba coming to Oz. You know, I grew up in Texas, so coming to Utah, it was like, I'm coming to the place, I'm coming to Zion, where the prophets and apostles and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir are and, and byu and I'm going to get the pure gospel and it's going to make me even more faithful. There's an irony there of you growing up in Brazil as a super orthodox Mormon and then kind of coming to Utah to experience your faith starting to erode. Was that weird for you?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:13:47] 100%.

John Dehlin [02:13:49] Because you're living in Utah County, Right. Is this happening or.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:13:52] No, I'm living in Salt Lake County.

John Dehlin [02:13:53] Salt Lake County. That's still. I mean, that's where the temple is. Like, that's where the brethren are. So anyway, you were saying.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:13:59] Yeah, so that's perfect. When I watched. I had never seen Wicked until the movie came out. And then when I watched it, the first part. When the first part ended, I just sobbed forever because it just. It's that you come to Oz and then you are like, wait a minute, who is the wizard? It was very different, for sure.

John Dehlin [02:14:28] But it sounds like you have a hard time putting your finger on it because the atheist talks to you on your mission, you shut him or her down. Your husband comes to you by Joseph Smith, you shut him or her down. But all of a sudden you were open to doubts and questions when you weren't before. And I guess the COVID thing was a big deal, but was it just a bunch of things adding up, like on the shelf as well? They say a bunch of things piled up on your shelf, or did it happen all at once? And, you know. And then what did you do once it started crumbling?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:14:59] I think this was the beginning of my shelf.

John Dehlin [02:15:01] Okay.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:15:01] Because before that, I don't. Everything was just. This is. This is religious persecution. So I'm just going to. They're going. They're trying to talk, like, tear down my faith. So I'm just going to completely ignore that that's happening. So I think that Covid was the beginning of my shelf. And I. Yeah, I can't. I can't put my finger on exactly, like, why that started to turn in my head. I. It just felt off. That's. That's the only. What is it that. I just watched the interview with Zeke. Yeah. And he said, it's confusing. That's the word that I. I was like, yes, it's confusing. I can't. It just felt very off.

Margi Dehlin [02:15:46] Well, it's making sense to me, this idea of black and white, how you were raised with being just so. This is what it is, this is what it isn't. And that moment that you are able to kind of see and it feels like the vaccine was the content that did this for you. Of, like, wait, they're. They're saying this. And now I know. At least. At the very least, there's a conflict of interest.

John Dehlin [02:16:13] It.

Margi Dehlin [02:16:14] It makes it so you realize that little trust component. You're like, wait a second, wait a minute. Just a little sliver of things were not exactly what I thought. I think it can be a game changer. Just that little, you know, sliver of light of, like, wait a second. That was not 100%. That was not all right. And that's from the top, by the way.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:16:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:16:43] But it's also complicated because there's plenty of Mormons, when they hear that the church has $500 billion, they're like, that's great. That strengthens my testimony, because that means that we're prospering because the Lord is blessing us. Or they hear about the vaccines or whatever, and they're like, oh, well, the church is smart that it invests in the pharmaceuticals because. Or even, you know, when the 2015 policy gets rolled back, there are faithful members that are like, that's the unfolding, continuing revelation. Like, that just means that the brethren are continually listening to God and that each year we're getting better and better. You know what I mean? It is ironic that just people can see the same facts and just totally have different reactions to them.

Margi Dehlin [02:17:36] It's the beauty of brains.

John Dehlin [02:17:38] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:17:38] Yeah. But that's exactly how I reacted to anything growing up. You know, it was. That's how. That's how I functioned in life. It's like, oh, this doesn't make sense. Oh, yeah. But it's the mental gymnastics that would always happen, and that's how I would. That's how I would excuse behaviors or be like, oh, no, this doesn't make sense now. But if it doesn't make sense now, it will in the next life. We will. God will tell us all of his secrets at some point. So I just kept holding onto that. But this time. This time it felt different. For sure. Being in Oz felt different.

John Dehlin [02:18:15] So you mentioned reaching out. After a couple years of struggling and talking to your bishop, you mentioned reaching out to a friend who had left the church.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:18:24] Yes. So in 2020, one of the people that this. So we had. We have friends, Kim and Rob. They. We were neighbors for a while, and we knew that they were very devout members. We saw them teaching, bearing testimony, blessing their babies. Like, we knew that they were all in. Right. Just like we were. And then they announced that they had left the church. And that was the first time, like, that that rocked my world. It was the first time that I thought to myself, they know something I don't. Because up until this point, it was all like, yeah, of course. Just another one following trends. But when they announced it, that was the first time that I thought they know something I don't, and I need to know what they know. But I couldn't bring myself to do it because, you know, my first response to them was, hey, I saw your announcement. I just wanted to let you guys know we love you and we're here for you. Which, you know, was the only thing I could think of to write them at that time. And then for the next couple of years I continued, we continued to attend and things. I remember a friend of mine asked, like I shared with her that I was not sure why I was feeling off. And she said, well, why do you still go? And I started crying and I said, because I know it's true. I know, I know the church is true. And I can't take my kids away from that. It's not their problem, it's mine. Like, if I'm having doubts, it's not my kids problem. So I can't do that to them. So for two years it just continued that way. And that's, that's how I coped and tried to go to church, continuing to teach Relief Society. And sometimes, like when I had callings to teach Relief Society or when I was in the primary or wherever I was, I was still dedicated to my calling. I was still going to church. I was teaching my kids at home. And. And then we moved to a new house, we moved to Utah county and I was called into the Relief Society presidency. And I, at that point I was like, I don't know if I can accept this calling. I went to church to the interview thinking that they were going to call me into the, into nursery because that was the last couple of callings that I had were nursery. So when the bishop said, hey, we want you to be the second counselor in the Relief Society presidency, I started laughing. I busted out laughing. I was like, you want what now? And he was so surprised that that was my response. And I was like, I, I don't know if I can do this right now. And he said, I want you to go home and just think about it. And I was like, okay.

John Dehlin [02:21:40] Was this after you'd read the CES letter?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:21:42] No.

John Dehlin [02:21:42] Okay. Before.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:21:43] It was before.

John Dehlin [02:21:44] Okay.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:21:45] So at that point I reached out to Kim and I said, kim, I need your help. I need to know what you know, because I. Something is happening and I don't understand it.

John Dehlin [02:22:01] It's interesting the CS Letter of Mormon stories get blamed for people losing their faith, but I think over 90% say their faith was cracking before. Watching Mormon stories or reading the CES letter and Mormon stories or the CES letter just helped them make sense of it all. Get their bearings.

Margi Dehlin [02:22:23] It was the surprise to figure stuff

John Dehlin [02:22:25] out, but it wasn't the cause. And it just sounds like in your case, you were crumbling, your testimony was crumbling. You just didn't know how to put language or information to it. Is that right?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:22:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:36] Okay.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:22:37] Yeah. And I. And so I reached out because I was like, I. I. You know something I don't. And I know that you know something I don't because you would not make this decision lightly. Like, you don't take this lightly. And she was like, okay, are you sure? Like, what do you want to know? And I just started asking her questions, and she asked me, have you ever heard of the CES letter? And I said, no. So she sent me a link to that. She sent me a link to a video where it shows different people from different religions, all bearing their testimony, and all of them sounded exactly like what you would hear in a fast and testimony meeting at the church. They were all so convinced that their church was the right church and that their beliefs were the right beliefs and they knew the full truth of everything. And she also sent me a link to the bite model.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:23:40] Oh.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:23:41] And, yeah, at first, I didn't think too much of it. I was like, I don't know. I don't know if I want to go there quite yet. I'm not ready for that.

John Dehlin [02:23:49] But had you heard about the sea Sutter before?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:23:52] No.

John Dehlin [02:23:52] Okay.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:23:53] Not at all.

John Dehlin [02:23:54] So you get introduced to it, and you start looking at it.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:23:58] So at this point, like, Jaden and I have been communicating, which I am so, so grateful it was. Oh, I. I don't know how I would have gone through this if I had to go through it by myself, because I just think the level of commitment that I had to. To what I thought was the truth, it just hit me so hard when it all started to fall apart in front of me that I do not know how I would have been able to do that without Jaden. So we. We started talking about it, and I told him, I said, hey. I reached out to Kim and I asked her, and he's like, you did what? Because it had been two years since I mentioned to him. I said, she knows something I don't, or they know something we don't. And I. I need to figure it out. And he had told me. He's like, you. You can ask her. And I hadn't given myself that same permission. I was like, I'm not gonna go there. We are. I'm not ready for that. So when I did, I reached out, and then I told him about it, and he's like, oh, what did she say? So then we started looking at the CES letter together, and we started looking at footnotes, because CS letter has footnotes of where they're getting the information from. So we started to look at that, and we started to look at the Scriptures, and it all just started falling apart for the. For both of us. And we probably read the CES letter and maybe like, four days. It was. It was the span of a few days. We would read a little bit every night together, and we would kind of talk about it and research it. So that's when it kind of started. So I went back to talk to the bishop.

Confronting Church History and Losing Faith

John Dehlin [02:25:51] Wait, can. Can you mention, like, let's just say the three issues from the CES letter that were most concerning to you, if you even remember, or a couple of them.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:26:02] I think the anachronisms of the Book of Mormon were something that. I had no idea.

John Dehlin [02:26:08] Tell us what you mean by that. Just for those who don't know even what that word means.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:26:13] So the. The inaccuracies in the Book of Mormon. I was told that the Book of Mormon is the most correct book on earth. I did not know that the Book of Mormon had been edited multiple times, not just for grammatical errors. I didn't know that the church has no. Like, they had excavated multiple places. They never found any bodies from all of the wars. There were no horses in the time of the Book of Mormon, and they talk about horses in the Book of Mormon. So all of these inaccuracies and things that just don't add up that I didn't know about, that kind of started to get to me. Polygamy was the biggest thing for me.

John Dehlin [02:26:57] And what bothered you about. Had you been taught growing up in Brazil that Joseph Smith was a polygamist? You had, yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:27:05] Which is interesting because Jaden grew up in Idaho, and he was taught that Brigham Young was a polygamist, but not Joseph Smith. But I was taught that Joseph Smith was a polygamist, but the answer to that was they had a lot of men die, and so the women couldn't take care of themselves, and so they had to get married so that they would be able to have some sort of support, especially in that time period. That was the answer to polygamy for me. The translation of the Book of Mormon was also a big thing. The rock and the hat was a huge thing for me. I was like, wait, what?

John Dehlin [02:27:45] You had not been taught that Joseph used a rock and a hat to translate the golden Plates or to translate the Book of Mormon?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:27:52] No.

John Dehlin [02:27:52] Okay.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:27:53] We had pictures in our scriptures. The. I don't know how they do it now, but in the Book of Mormon, where it was just the Book of Mormon.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:28:02] The blue.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:28:03] The blue one, yes.

John Dehlin [02:28:04] The blue Book of Mormon. Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:28:05] The one that they had pictures. Yeah. Of, you know, Joseph Smith, and it was always with a cloth in between him and the scribe. And he had the Urim and Thummim, and he was translating that. And it was the plates.

John Dehlin [02:28:19] They were on the table.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:28:20] Yeah, the plates were on the table. And he had, like a breastplate. Like a breastplate. And that's how he was translating it. And the scribe was on the other side of the cloth that they were using.

John Dehlin [02:28:32] And you learned. What about how it actually happened?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:28:35] Well, that he used the rock that he used to scam people out of money for. To put. He put a rock inside of a hat, a seer stone, and he looked inside of the hat and the rock would tell him what words to. That his scribe needed to write down.

John Dehlin [02:28:53] And where were the plates?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:28:55] Nowhere to be found. Nowhere to be seen, actually, by anybody.

John Dehlin [02:28:58] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:29:00] Which is another thing. I'm like, why did we need plates if he wasn't even going to use them? Because you think of golden plates, they

John Dehlin [02:29:08] are heavy things and expensive and hard to make.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:29:11] Exactly. And I'm like, why did people need to go through all that trouble if the plates aren't going to be used in translation? That also didn't make sense. Wow.

John Dehlin [02:29:24] So what's that like, you're raised, born and raised into the church in Brazil, super orthodox, serve a mission, move to the States, move to Utah, and then you start learning all these things about Mormonism that you didn't know that are really troubling and that are just really disturbing to you. What's that like? I mean, you're in Utah, you're a Brazilian in Utah, married to a Mormon, and then you. Do you have kids by this point?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:29:52] Yeah, I had. I had two kids at this point.

John Dehlin [02:29:54] You had two kids with the Mormon man at this point in Utah as an immigrant from Brazil. And now you're learning all these very troubling things about church history. What was that like?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:30:06] It was crushing. It was absolutely crushing. Because I, you know, there was always an answer for, oh, yeah, polygamy happened because of this. But I used to hear, as a child, I remember hearing, oh, they looked into church history stuff. That's why they left. Or they left because they were lazy. But nobody would expand what the church history was. It was always, oh, this is anti Mormon literature. You shouldn't look into it. Which is funny, because a lot of the things that were anti Mormon when I was growing up, now the church has them posted on their website saying, oh, no, by the way. Yeah, it's true. But they're not going to make that public either. So it's. It's the realization that I had dedicated 30 years of my life to living somebody else's lie. And it was absolutely crushing because I based my. My whole worldview, my entire life, all of, you know, everything I was. I was going to teach my kids. They were going to serve missions and marry faithful spouses, and they were like, we were all going to be in heaven forever. And I think that that was the most crushing part was just the realization that it's like, okay, so what does happen after this life? Am I going to be with them? Is there life after this? Like, the realization that everything was crumbling. It wasn't just, oh, the Book of Mormon isn't true. It was everything. So where did we come from? Are we going to be a family forever? Like, that's what I wanted. And that was just really hard to. To grasp that. I don't know. I don't know. And I knew. My whole life, I knew it was. It was always a certainty. It was always black and white. It was like, yes, you will. If you follow these steps, you will be with your family forever. And all of that was gone. It was all gone. And I had no ground to stand on. It was. It was absolutely crushing.

John Dehlin [02:32:31] And I guess. I guess a faithful Mormon would say, but listen, you're crying because you're so sad that you lost those beliefs. Well, you could have just chosen to keep believing. Why didn't you just choose to have faith and to keep believing? Because it made you happier. It was stuff you wanted to believe that made you happy. Now you're sad, crying because you believe stuff that caused you to lose your faith. What would you say to that? Does that make sense?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:32:58] No, that makes sense. And I was actually asked, like, if. Even if you don't believe, why don't you take your kids to primary? It's a good place to be, place

John Dehlin [02:33:07] to raise your kids.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:33:08] A good place to raise your kids. Once you look behind the curtain, you can't unsee it. It's as if I had lived in a house with my curtains closed. And I was taught growing up, hey, the sky is red. And I was like, oh, yeah, the sky is red. Absolutely. I'm gonna pray to God. And he's gonna tell me that the sky is red. And that's. I was like, yeah, I. I got a confirmation. Sky's red. Perfect. And then one day I was like, wait a minute. I can see little cracks through. Through the curtain, and it doesn't look red. What. What does that mean? And then I looked behind the curtains, and I saw that indeed, the sky was blue. And I can't deny that the sky is bl. That the sky is blue. There's a lot. In my opinion, there is a lot more evidence supporting that the church is not true versus that it is because for you to. For you to say, hey, you can choose to believe this now. I really can't. I can't. I can see why it's not. I can't rely on a feeling anymore that I'm going to feel good inside if I continue to go to church, because at this point, I will not feel good inside going to church because I continue to go to church. Going through this. Being in the Relief Society presidency, I, you know, I didn't last very long, obviously, but I was still going, and I could not listen to what people were saying. It's.

John Dehlin [02:34:53] Sky's red. Sky's red. Sky's red. Teaching your kids sky's red.

Margi Dehlin [02:34:57] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:34:57] I can't perpetuate the life of my kids at that point. I was like, it's not fair to them if I perpetuate this teaching, knowing now what I know. I understand that with my parents. They did the best that they could because they still haven't looked into any of this. They are very faithful, and I understand that they taught us because they also believed it was true. But now that I know that it's not, I can't continue to teach my kids, like, oh, yeah, we can go to church on Sundays, and yes, the prophet speaks to God and the Book of Mormon is true. I can't continue to do that.

John Dehlin [02:35:37] You mentioned your outline. Thank you for sharing. That's compelling and vulnerable. So thank you. You mentioned your outline. This is rare. You mentioned the book Wife Number 19 by Ann Eliza Young, who is one of Brigham Young's wives and ex wives. That's not frequently mentioned as a cause of someone's loss of faith in the Mormon Church. What was it about that book, particularly about Brigham Young, that was belief crushing for you? We hear a lot about Joseph Smith, less about Brigham Young on Mormon stories.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:36:18] So actually, the parts that. What really broke my shelf was reading the book because she talks a lot about Joseph Smith, actually, and how it began.

John Dehlin [02:36:28] Oh, really?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:36:29] She Talks about how they like. About the banks that he was starting and telling the members that, you know, God wanted them to do that and they would donate all. I believe her father donated money to the church so that he could open banks and the banks would go under.

John Dehlin [02:36:45] Was this the Kirtland Bank?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:36:48] I don't remember.

John Dehlin [02:36:48] I believe because Joseph started a bank in Kirtland that went under and people lost a ton of money.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:36:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:36:53] Okay.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:36:53] She talks about that. She also talks more in detail about polygamy, things that I also didn't understand. And it's just horrifying to see how women were. Just how polygamy went about how they were coerced into doing all of the things that the prophet wanted them to do and how young they were. Some of them didn't have parents, and

John Dehlin [02:37:24] they were as young as 12. Mormon polygamous wives were as young as 12 years old.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:37:29] Yeah. Finny Algeria. She wasn't one of the 12, right? She was. She was a little bit older.

John Dehlin [02:37:35] No, it was. So, for example, Helen mark Kimball was 14. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:37:43] So just understanding better what polygamy was that. That was actually we. And again, Jaden and I are reading this book together, and I remember one night I turned to him and I said, are we going to church tomorrow? And he said, I don't think we are. And I was like, what do you mean? And he said, I think I'm done. And I think for him, I mean, I don't want to speak on his behalf, but I think that for him, he had been dealing with these feelings for so much longer than I had, that when he found it all out, he was like, yeah, I don't believe that. I've like, that I taught people on my mission that the church was true and that I converted people. I threw away their coffee, I told them to give 10% to the church. And for me, I just. I was so scared to make that decision. But I remember the first time I took off my garments and I thought I was going to die. I thought, God is going to kill us all because he is going to teach me a lesson. I'm not being faithful to my covenants anymore. So it was very difficult. But we could not deny the things that we had learned.

Telling Family, Resigning, and Starting to Rebuild

John Dehlin [02:39:13] Did y' all try and tell your family or his what you had learned and how your feelings had changed and what. And if. So, how did that go?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:39:23] Well, with my family, We. We talked to my parents first, and we just sat down with them and I said, hey, we have decided that we are not we're not going to participate in church anymore. And. And the response was, well, I am going to stay on the boat. If the boat is sinking, I will stay on the boat. And ouch. Yeah. And I was like, I'm not asking you to get off the boat. I, I'm just telling you that we. We've made this decision for ourselves. And they were like, okay. And so Jaden asked. He was like, are you. Do you guys want to understand why? And they're like, oh, okay. Why? At this point, I had talked to my mom about the Rock in the Hat. And the answer was, well, you know, it's kind of like Google Translate. They didn't have cell phones at the time, but maybe. And I asked her, were you taught this? Because this is not what you taught me. And she said, no, but if that's how it happened, you know, maybe he was using something similar to, you know, Google Translate on a phone, but they didn't have phones, so it was a rock. And it's. It's that mental gymnastics, right, of I have to protect my faith. And I don't blame her for that, because that's how you were.

John Dehlin [02:40:58] That's how I was.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:40:59] It's how I was, too. I. I took. Totally understand her side of things because I was there multiple times when people would bring me questions or say something about the church. I. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. There's an answer. We are going to figure this out. There is a faithful answer. We are going to figure this out. And so I. We explained a few of our issues. We're like, hey, we. We came across some information that we didn't know, and I don't think that the church is true. And they were like, okay, but never really talked about it after that. We talked to Jaden's parents as well, and they were a little more receptive of our. Like, they listened to our questions, but it was kind of the same sentiment of, we don't have to talk about this. And we, you know, it's.

Margi Dehlin [02:42:03] It.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:42:03] I could. I could see in our families that it was a very hard thing for them to hear. And one of my sisters just never listened to any questions that I had. I sent her some questions and I asked her, have you read have you heard about the CES letter? And she just replied with a link to Fair Mormon, like, a response to the CES letter. And I said, have you read this? And she said, no, but I know that this is a good website for your questions. But she never did even want to hear what my questions were, and we don't talk about it. And my brother, he has also left the church, but he did not know a lot of the things about church history that we talked about after I left. And it's. It's interesting because I feel like he's the only family member on both sides that we can talk to about this kind of stuff. He's the only one that's open to it. But, yeah, everybody else was very much like, okay, well, you're making this decision for yourself. We are not going to go there with you, so we'll be respectful of that. But I have felt a change in relationships within my family. I'll speak on my family. I have felt a change in relationships with my parents and with my siblings who are still believing, because it's. It's interesting that they grew up with me. They. They have always known me. They know my character. They know who I am to my core. And they don't trust me when I come to them and talk about these things. And it's not that I want them to trust me. I even said to them, I'm like, you don't have to hear anything that I'm talking about. You can go on the church's website. They have the GOSP topics, essays, like, it's the church. So if it's on their website, you can trust that. Right. And there. But there is no conversation. And I. I do feel like there has been a little bit of distancing also, just for the fact of, okay, we. We can't go super deep on topics because even though a lot of them still talk to me about church, often when we talk, but I can't say anything. So that has been very hard, too.

Margi Dehlin [02:44:58] That's very hard. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:45:00] Talk about your decisions to resign from the church. Not everybody chooses to resign. But y' all felt like you wanted to.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:45:07] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:45:07] What led to that?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:45:10] We saw that the church had a lot of information on it. They knew addresses, phone numbers, emails, you know, when my kids were born, when I was born. And that was just a lot of information for them to have. And especially for my kids, I don't want. We had, you know, people reaching out, being like, hey, can your kids come to activity days? Or leaving invites on our door for the kids to come to church activities. And I was like, I. I just don't want that. I don't want people to have my information. I don't want people to have information on my kids. And so we. And I don't want to be counted. I I just want to cut ties because something that also changed within me is that something that I held so sacred my whole life. And I do not mean this to be offensive, but it just became something evil when I. When I dove into polygamy, and not just polygamy, but who Joseph Smith was. I remember receiving my patriarchal blessing, and I was in the tribe of Ephraim, and the. The patriarch turned to me and he's like, yeah, that's what Joseph Smith was, too. And I felt so proud. I was like, this is incredible. And then finding out who he was was just. I do not want connections with this.

John Dehlin [02:46:48] Yeah, makes sense.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:46:49] So we.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:46:50] We resigned.

Margi Dehlin [02:46:51] Yep.

Rebuilding Identity, Parenting, and Relationships Post-Church

John Dehlin [02:46:53] Let's talk about rebuilding for our remaining moments. You talk about how there have been some joys and some bright lights in this transition and in the rebuilding process. One of them is around parenting. Do you want to talk about that?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:47:11] Yeah. It's. I feel like with a church there. There's a. You kind of disconnect from yourself. You don't really trust your gut. Excuse me? You don't really trust your gut. You don't really. There is a disconnection from yourself. You look outwards to see what is it that the prophet is telling me that I need to do. What is it that is what's expected of me according to the scriptures that I'm supposed to do. I need to talk to my husband because he has the priesthood so he will know how to lead our family in this way. And since breaking free from that, it has been. It's obviously very bittersweet. But the good part of that is I have felt a lot more connected to Jaden as a human and a lot more open and respectful of his experiences and his. And his beliefs and his arguments of like. Like how he sees life. Because I understand we are very different people, and I have been a lot more receptive of that.

John Dehlin [02:48:29] It's almost like instead of marrying a returned missionary, you married Jaden.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:48:33] Exactly. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:48:34] Person slot in. In a plan, right?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:48:39] Yeah. And I no longer think, oh, did I make a mistake? Was he worthy? I don't think that about him anymore. And that has been so freeing for me personally, because I can see him for who he is as a person, and that translates into our kids as well. I think that parenting super black and white, and you will be punished if you don't follow the plan that God has for you. And that plan is going to be taught by the prophets, seers, and revelators of the church, and you cannot deviate from it. I think that. That kind of takes away the humanity of the experience of life, you know, and being able to connect with my children, even though they are so young. Oh, I don't know why I get so emotional, but even though they are so young, they have so much wisdom kids feel, and they. They can't put words into things sometimes, but they are so full of light and wisdom and joy, and they are so free. And being able to experience my kids in that light without feeling like, you can't ask me these questions. I don't want to separate myself from them. I don't want to distance myself from them by saying, hey, these questions are not questions that we go to. You have to, like, we can't talk about this. It's inviting them in. Like, yes, let's talk about it. It's. It has been. It has brought us closer together as well. The connection of accepting them for who they are and listening to them and just. Just being a little free with them as well in their own little world.

Margi Dehlin [02:50:28] I really love that part. I feel like, so deeply for what you're saying, especially. And I love actually that they're still so young, you know.

John Dehlin [02:50:41] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:50:42] Because I do think, you know, in my own experience, but also, you know, talking with, corresponding with. I'll just say mothers of older children that go through a transition. There's a grief around this shift you've just talked about, of the experience of mothering from a place where you're looking at your children, like, in a scarcity mindset, that they're depraved of morality, that without the church or without what you're going to give them, Right. They are less than. And that's what drives you to go to church, and that's what drives you to do in mothering. A lot of the hard, disciplined, structured things that the church requires you to do, but it also separates you from them. It makes you so anxious because there's so much control involved and there's so much fear involved in that way of parenting that when you shift. And for me, I shifted later, my kids were older. But if you move and you're in this place of abundance where you're just with them and you're seeing the good that already exists there, you see, like, the love and this sense of morality and ethics that they have naturally, and you just shine light on what already is, it's like you describe. It's just like you can relax into them. You can really see them. They can tell you things that scare them, and you can kind of show up in this commonplace of humanity there. And it's just. Just. It's not this constant bracing.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:52:36] Right.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:36] And this constant, like, where you're working against what is. Like, that was exhausting. And of course, like, you know, so defeating because we can't deny what is. But we were trying to anyway. I just feel so much for this shift you're describing, and not just in mothering, but, like, having it with John as well. It's a different quality of living life. It's a different quality of how you love, where being different isn't a threat anymore. It makes you curious. It makes you so. Anyway, it's so beautiful hearing you talk about it.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:53:18] Yes. I resonate with that a lot. I think that what you said about shining a light on their personalities and who they are and encouraging them to be who they are, I think is something that I. I want to do for them. I don't want them to wake up and think, oh, I didn't read my scriptures or I didn't pray. I failed. I need to do it. Like, I don't want them to. I don't want them to feel that I don't want to. I don't want them to feel like they're ever broken, because they're not. That is one thing that I have seen since leaving is the church teaches you that you are broken and that they have the answer to your. For you, and they will fix you as long as you do what you're told. And I don't want my kids to feel like they're broken because they're not. They're perfect in the way that they

John Dehlin [02:54:15] are and that they don't need the church to be unbroken too. Right. That.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:54:21] Right.

John Dehlin [02:54:22] Dependency.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:54:23] Right. And I also don't believe that the only way that they will grow up to be moral human beings that have values and that can contribute to society in a positive way and that can have good lives. I don't believe that they need to be in organized religion to do that. I really don't. I. I truly believe that they are born good, and I just have to help them explore that.

Margi Dehlin [02:54:54] Yeah, you've talked a little bit about the change in relationship that you've experienced, both as a partner and then also a mother. I'm curious with regard to your relationship with yourself, I think I'm curious about that, just from what you shared here, because there was just so much. I don't know if I want to call it, like, aggressiveness in trying to be, like, this optimized person, but how has it changed how you Relate to yourself in your full humanity if you've noticed something, a change that way.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:55:43] It has within myself, it still has been very difficult. A part of me still thinks when I started deconstructing religion, I didn't quite understand that that would lead me to other areas of my life. It would lead me to deconstruct family relationships and my entire life, all of the teachings, everything. And I feel like I am coming to a close on that deconstruction, which has been extremely painful to go through.

John Dehlin [02:56:20] Because if the church is everything, then if it unravels, then you have what? Nothing. I mean, at least it can feel that way. Right?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:56:29] Right. And that brokenness and the shame of, like. I guess I don't feel shame anymore, but I do feel like, am I broken? Because I tried so hard and it still all fell apart, you know, it's. No matter how much I gave, it still all fell apart in the end. So am I broken?

John Dehlin [02:56:53] Is it you?

Debora Meireles Ling [02:56:54] Is it me?

John Dehlin [02:56:55] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [02:56:55] I did everything right, and I. And it's still all crumbled. So. So what does that mean for me? So I. That's kind of the mindset that I have been in the last few years, which has been very difficult. But I think that for me, being the person that I am, I think that that very painful period was extremely necessary in trying to understand myself, trying to understand why I am the way that I am, trying to understand my anxiety, my triggers, in order to be able to work on those to better connect with myself. I feel like this is part of me connecting to myself. It's just breaking that down to then rebuild. And that has been. That has taken longer than I anticipated it to. And it has been a lot more painful than I thought it was going to be. But now I'm in the phase of, okay, who am I outside of motherhood, which I love, by the way. Motherhood is still. It's still who I am. And that is the one thing that, If I could say that the church didn't make me feel any certain way about it, that motherhood, I truly believe was and has always been my calling. I love my kids. They really. They really do help me ground myself, you know, and look at life for what it is. Because if I don't know, if there is an eternity, I have to be in this moment with them. And that has been very helpful in me. Like, okay, now that I've broken down, I can start rebuilding. Who am I outside of motherhood? What. What brings me joy? What are things that I like to do? I like to paint. Do. I like to do. I still like to dance. I still love to dance. I love arts. I love to sing. I feel like music is something that truly connects me. Like it expresses my. My emotions that I sometimes don't have words for. So music has been something that has been very helpful for me. It's very therapeutic. And writing. I loved to write and I stopped writing completely. And I think that that is something that I need to get back on because it's. It's a way of expression as well. It's a way to get something out of me and put it out into the universe and be like, okay, that's not. That's not mine anymore to, to take care of, you know? I hope that makes sense.

Margi Dehlin [02:59:45] Yeah, that's really beautiful. I love all the connecting that you're doing with yourself and how pleasure, like, when you're talking about those things, it's so clear that you feel a lot of pleasure, and I love pleasure. As a way of a guide to kind of yourself and collecting, honestly, data about who you are that for years and years and years, you know, we've been oftentimes just so disconnected from. I also was going to just bring up the point of how deconstruction is so challenging in the aspects because I think on one level we can deconstruct beliefs and that's just so easy to talk about this, you know, this cerebral kind of, I don't know, aspect of like, well, I believed this and now I don't believe this, or I thought this was true, but now this isn't true. And that that's important. But I think the harder part of deconstruction that I'm hearing that you're facing and have even recently faced is less around the beliefs, but it's around these ways of relating to ourself what we believe about our behavior, our value, our worth, how the world works. And I think that's what takes years or takes just a lot of mindful coming, you know, I don't know, to presence. Like when you were talking about wondering about, you know, here you did all the things, here you worked so hard and it all just fell apart.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:01:25] Right?

Margi Dehlin [03:01:27] And I think that's a belief of Mormonism. I think we're to blame. We're always the ones that, like, if we aren't experiencing what we want to experience, experience, it's on us, right? And that just simply has to be deconstructed. And I think we oftentimes do it up here more quickly than here. And what I mean, by that is we can conceptually, in our brains be like, well, that's not the way it works. We can see that all around the world. And, you know, that that's not the way it works. But when it start, we start to feel that in our lives, we can still feel that deeply in a way that's really disorienting, long after we would say we don't believe that's true. It's just so tricky, the deconstructing. But I love hearing you talk about it and give words to that experience because I think it's so common, you know, and it shows that you're still, you know, you're still engaging kind of with that process. Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:02:30] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:02:31] It's beautiful to hear. Thank you.

Closing Reflections and Resources for the Journey

John Dehlin [03:02:35] We like to end with three questions, and the first one that we end with is, what's a book, podcast, or TV show you've enjoyed lately? And you did mention Mormon Stories, but you also mentioned the role of Mormon Stories in helping you heal and rebuild. And so, especially at a time where we're being threatened with a lawsuit from the church, you know, because the Church doesn't like what Mormon Stories does, I think it's worth you sharing why it's been helpful to you specifically, not for us, but more for those who are new to the struggle and maybe even for the Church to understand why they shouldn't be suing this asset, destroying this asset, trying to tear this asset down. That's helping people. Maybe you can give a plea to both people in the struggle, but also the church for why Mormon Stories has been meaningful to you and helpful to you.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:03:35] Yeah. I think something that Kyson. Kyson Dana said in his. In his story was when he talked about how he was so, like, so rigid in his mission and how he tried so hard to just. He went to very extremes on his mission. And people can say, well, the Church didn't ask you to do that. I think that people don't understand that, especially when you are born into it. That is what you are taught, that you are supposed to believe in whatever comes your way and you're supposed. Or whatever the Church teaches, actually. And your brain is wired that way. Kind of like what you were saying. Your brain is. It's wired that way, and you have to be your best, because only after you are perfect yourself can then Christ grace help you. Right. So coming out of that and deconstructing that is so challenging. You feel crazy. You feel like how. Because everything that you were wired to do for, in my case, 30 years, all of a sudden, you're like, wait, if this isn't true, then what is? So turning to Mormon stories, where you can hear people give words to that, like Kyson, how he did it, I saw myself in that explanation of his. I was like, yes, I was born to do this. And then all of a sudden, this isn't true. So hearing people's experiences is very helpful because it grounds you again, right? It's like, okay, I'm not crazy. I. This is validating. I'm not the only one who feels this way. I think that is one of the things that I have found a lot of help with because I know that I'm not alone. And also being able to hear how people came out of it, because it can be very dark. I went through a very, very dark period. Very dark. Since when? Deconstructing when everything started to fall apart, it was very difficult for me. So hearing that people can rebuild, and even though you don't know, like, when we die, what happens? Like that question. I remember listening to some people say, I don't need to know what happens. I am. I am grateful for the life that I have now, and I am grateful for the time that I have now. And that really helped me because I felt like, there's no point in this. Why am I even here? Why continue to be here? I had those thoughts. And hearing that people can come out of that. You only hear those stories if people share, and that is healing. That helps. That grounds you. That brings you back to, wait a minute. No, you matter. And your time here actually does matter. So those were things that Mormon stories really helped me with, because I can't go out with a sign and say, hey, have you left the Mormon Church? Can we talk? Like, I. I don't know where else I would be. Finding people that can help me find new meaning in life and ground me in that way.

John Dehlin [03:07:12] Beautiful. Love it. You mentioned the LDS discussion series specifically as being helpful. Why was that particular. And that's again, a Mormon stories playlist or podcast. Why? Where we talk, try to objectively, with evidence, talk about church history and truth claims. Why was the LDS discussion series specifically helpful to you and your husband?

Debora Meireles Ling [03:07:35] It's been helpful to see everything laid out in one place. I think that when you see with the CES letter, for example, we were looking at parts of history or parts of this and that, but having everything laid out in a timeline where we can see what was happening in the moment. Like, why did Joseph Smith have to come up with the first vision? Why did he have to come up with that. What was happening at the time? Were people leaving? Were people starting to question him, learning his story and how, you know, treasure digging and folk magic are still very present in the Mormon Church and how that is his worldview at the time. You know, having everything laid out in a timeline was extremely helpful because you understand the history so much better that way.

John Dehlin [03:08:29] Yeah. And if you're feeling crazy and all your family or friends are still in.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:08:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:08:34] You'll second guess yourself a lot. And saying, well, how could. What. What do I know that they don't know? What do they know that I don't? Maybe I'm wrong. This is. The stakes are so big.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:08:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:08:45] But that can drive you crazy. Because if you know the sky is blue but everybody's telling you it's red, you need some type of support to continue believing what you know to be true. Or else it can drive you mad. I think.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:09:00] No, I agree with that.

John Dehlin [03:09:01] Yeah. Learning stuff like the history can really help you process that.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:09:05] I totally agree with that. Because we all. I mean, I'll speak for myself, but we still do have people trying to convince us that the sky is red. And when we tell them that the sky is blue, we are wicked. And having. Having something to fall back on, like you said. Wait a minute. I'm not crazy here. Here's the evidence. I'm not just going to rely on. I felt a good feeling. Here is the evidence as to why I'm telling you that the sky is blue.

Margi Dehlin [03:09:39] Oh, I was just gonna say, I think another value is this idea that, you know, what would I say? A faith crisis at the root is also a reality crisis because of the level of betrayal and because of, you know, especially within Mormonism, just how far reaching it is for me, I find that one of the questions and real crisis points for me is like, what is real? And how do I trust myself to know it? Right. Because I actually didn't know what I didn't know last time. So what's really different? And I think that is what is so valuable. You've been told a story and what happens when you're in crisis about a reality? And this comes up in so many different ways. But. But in this narrative of, let's just say, Mormonism, you're like, okay, so this desire grows of just then, what is real? If the story I was told was not real, and now I get that, then I kind of, for some of us, there's this desire to say, now I want to go back, tell me what's Real. Tell me the details. I didn't have. Tell me the context. Tell me what was going on. Tell me what. With some type of, you know, approach of intellectual vigor.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:11:09] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:11:11] That actually allows me to build a scaffolding around reality because that is so huge in wanting to live.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:11:19] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:11:19] Is this sense that, you know it is real, Right.

John Dehlin [03:11:23] Yeah. And the truth is, what the church didn't do is give us the facts. And once you have the facts, then you can figure out what's real. You need the. You need the facts to know what's real. So LDS discussions helps with that within a Mormon history context.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:11:40] Yeah. I. I have. My. My brother actually has a friend who knows these issues with church history, and he still chooses to stay active in the church. And I think that as long as he is aware of what the church is and he chooses to go because he finds purpose or meaning or something about it, still calls him to it. I think that's great. I think that I wasn't given that option. I wasn't given the option to make the decision for myself because I didn't know these things.

John Dehlin [03:12:15] Yeah. We call that informed consent.

Margi Dehlin [03:12:19] The choice is everything.

John Dehlin [03:12:20] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:12:21] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:12:22] Yeah. Who are. Do you have a hero or. Who are your heroes these days, if not Joseph Smith?

Debora Meireles Ling [03:12:31] He's definitely not my hero. I don't know. I feel like I keep going back to my kids and Jaden. I really have relied on my family, like my kids and my husband. Immediate family through this. Yeah. My immediate family through this time, and they have been my heroes. My kids. Kids have been so patient, and it's. It's. It's wonderful how much I learned from them and how patient they are with my shortcomings, you know, that also teaches me so much. And just having Jaden also support me through this, like, being able to go through it together. He's. He has held. He has had to hold on to some real tough times with me, and he. He has never. He has never abandoned me in my time of need. So nice and strong right there.

John Dehlin [03:13:33] And then. This is a Margate question. What's lighting you up lately? What's exciting you? Bringing you joy?

Debora Meireles Ling [03:13:40] Honestly, I. This is gonna sound. So. I am a homebody, so I. I love to. To introduce my kids to, like, shows that I used to watch. And we're on a new show now that I used to watch when I was younger, and my kids are loving it.

John Dehlin [03:13:59] And what's the show?

Debora Meireles Ling [03:14:01] It's so bad. It's Hannah Montana.

John Dehlin [03:14:04] Nice.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:14:04] And my kids love it. And I think, oh, that's, that's great because it's, you know, it's, it's a, it's a little kids show, but it's just fun to be able to.

John Dehlin [03:14:13] So Mighty service.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:14:14] Yes. But it's just fun to be able to experience that with them. It kind of feels like a surreal experience because I used to watch it with my younger sister and my mom, and now I'm watching it with my kids, and they actually enjoy it. And then also reading books with them at night. We're reading the Magic Tree House books.

John Dehlin [03:14:39] We read those to our kids.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:14:41] They love those books. Seeing them, excited to be like, okay, we finished this book. Can we start the next one? That's also great.

John Dehlin [03:14:48] That's where kids go back in time to different periods of time in history, right?

Debora Meireles Ling [03:14:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:14:52] From the Magic Treehouse. That's fun. Memorable.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:14:55] That's cool.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:14:55] Because it's, like, very informative, actually, for children in a very playful way.

Margi Dehlin [03:15:00] That's right.

John Dehlin [03:15:01] That's fun. All right, well, I guess the final question I have is, I think one of the things that stuck out for us in your story was just ultra orthodox, young woman Mormon gets sent home early from her mission, and that's such a painful thing. Looking back now, do you feel like where you are has kind of blossomed from what seemed to be a tragic experience at the time? In other words, are you kind of glad you got sent home early? Now, looking back, has that lemon turned into lemonade?

Debora Meireles Ling [03:15:40] Absolutely. Oh, I, I think that it would have been a lot more difficult for me to be here today if I had finished my mission. When I went home, there were also some things happening with my family that I was able to help them with being there. So that was also a huge blessing. But definitely, I don't, I don't know how life would have turned out differently if I had finished my mission. So I, I, I think I'm okay now to be like, yeah, you know, that worked out for the best.

Margi Dehlin [03:16:16] All right, well, we're so grateful, really, that you would come on and share your story.

John Dehlin [03:16:24] Yeah.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:16:25] Thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [03:16:26] Yeah. Debora Ling, thank you so much. And, you know, your husband by proxy. Thanks to you both for being willing to tell your story because you'll be to so many people what, what other Mormon stories have been to you.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:16:41] And that's, that's my hope, because it's, it can be. It can be very difficult to go through alone. So helping people understand that they don't have to go through it alone, and they're not alone in the experience itself. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and life is worth living.

John Dehlin [03:16:59] Beautiful.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:17:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:17:01] Well, thanks, Debora Ling. Thank you.

Debora Meireles Ling [03:17:03] Thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [03:17:05] And Margi, thanks for being with us.

Margi Dehlin [03:17:06] Yes, of course.

John Dehlin [03:17:08] And thanks to all our donors who make Mormon Stories possible. Thanks to our listeners. Please subscribe to Mormon stories on YouTube. We're just like 2,000 away from hitting 300,000. If you all will subscribe, we'll hit that. So Please subscribe on YouTube and on Spotify. Huge thanks to Brooklyn and Julia for all they do in the post production to make this possible. And if you want to be a donor, you can do that. You can go to mormonstories.org donate, become a monthly donor. Ad revenue and donations are in decline. I think it's just a rough time for lots of people. So if you value this content and you want to see it continue, we'd love your support. We've got lots of cool episodes coming up in the weeks and months ahead, so please come back and join us. We Love your feedback. Mormonstoriesmail.com and we read every comment on YouTube and on Spotify, so please leave comments there as well and like and share this episode. If you want to be a guest on Mormon Stories Podcast, we're looking for great storytellers with great stories that, you know, have a good sense for what our audience would find interesting. So it helps to be an actual listener to the podcast to get accepted. So if you want to apply, that's how we met Debora. Just go to MormonStories.org apply, record a 3 minute video, fill out the form and then we'll reach out to you as soon as we can. So thanks again for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care.