Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 4 · Ep. 1245

John Dehlin [00:00:06] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's January 16, 2020 and we could not be more excited for the new year and to be recording a new season. We can even say of Mormon Stories Podcast interviews. We are broadcasting to you today live from the new Mormon Stories podcast, Thrive Studios here in Holiday, Utah. And if you look at the wide shot, you can actually see for those who are watching via Facebook or YouTube kind of this new setup. We have partnered with my dear friend Clinton Martin and his wife Jenny to co locate a new facility of the Mormon Stories Podcast Studios with what we're calling the Thrive center, which is just a community center for progressive and post Mormons who are looking to learn and grow and find community and build together. So we've got this slick new podcast studio that I've teamed with Cody Layton and Tyler Alden to build out. It's got a bit of a Joe Rogan esque feel to it and we're going to be doing lots of cool things here in the studio. We've got brand new mics, lighting, it's super exciting. So we're excited about that. One thing about that is that I'm really excited. I follow a couple podcasts. One is called Armchair Expert, another one is the Conan o' Brien podcast. But in a lot of podcasts going on these days, what they do is they have their producer with his own microphone. And so the person who's producing the podcast episode can monitor comments, chime in if there's an error, or if there's a need for some sort of correction or if I forgot to ask a really important question. The producer can jump in and say or do anything they need to, and they've got their own mic. So we're really fortunate to have with us helping out with the Open Stories Foundation, Tyler Alden. Tyler, you can wave to everybody if you want. Glad to be here with you today, Jen. And Tyler's our producer, Tyler. It's nice to have you with us. Well, thanks for having Me? Yeah. Do you want to say anything to. Do you want to introduce yourself to our listeners just for a second? I'm Tyler Alden, and I'm helping out here today with the cameras and really just excited about our guest. And Tyler. Well, it's good to have you, Tyler. Thanks for all you've done to make this studio possible, along with Cody and Clint. And one of the things we want to do, we want to try to live stream these when we can, but if I'm paying attention to viewer comments, it kind of takes me out of the interview, and I don't want that to happen. So Tyler will monitor your comments and questions. He'll jump in at graceful periods and either make the comments or ask the questions. And so we're looking forward to that. And I'll be able to focus more on my guest. Does that sound all right, Tyler? Sounds great to me. All right. Be as graceful as I can. I know you will. Just really quickly, just a tiny bit more about the studio. So the Thrive center here in Holiday, Utah, is exciting for a couple reasons. We've been holding these Thrive support groups all around the country. There's more than 50 of them. And once a month, there's been this faith crisis support group that is being held in local areas, and that's been really successful because people in a faith crisis really need support and friends and community. And then we've added to that this idea once a month of sort of a secular Sunday school where on one Sunday each month, people in the area get together and they have a potluck and they talk about an interesting topic that's more focused on growth than on healing and faith crisis stuff. And so we've picked a book for our first few months. It's called the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. And in Thrive support groups all around the country, they'll be having their first, what we call growth meeting this Sunday. It's going to be usually the third Sunday of every month, and people just show up around 10am or whatever time the group decides, bring a potluck, talk about this book, talk about a given topic, whether it's honesty or parenting or healthy relationships or healthy marriage, and then eat and build community. So that's going to be happening this Sunday here in Holiday. We're going to be doing that the following Sunday. So it's basically two Sundays from now. But the reason why I'm mentioning all that is because we really want this center in Holiday, along with the center that's already in Springville, to be a gathering place for post Mormons and progressive Mormons and liberal Mormons. We want to be able to have book signings here. We want to be able to have live podcasts, we want to be able to have workshops and retreats. And incidentally, we're so excited that Natasha Over Parker, marriage and family therapist, sex therapist, has been relocated to Utah. And now her private practice, along with Symmetry Solutions, is co located here at this Thrive center in Holiday. So you can come visit her if you need any counseling or therapy. But also for the next two months, she's holding a weekly workshop on various issues related to faith crisis, whether it's communicating with believing family or friends or navigating your marriage or raising kids or whatever it is. So, so if you want to come here each Wednesday night at 7pm you can take part of that. It's free. And we plan to be doing retreats and other events here too. And I'll just say that we plan to have our new First Sign of Mormon Stories retreat. We're going to start doing those again. It's kind of a faith crisis retreat and we're going to hope to do that the last weekend in February. So stay tuned for for more about that. But we're just super excited for all the new changes. We're grateful for all the donors and volunteers who've helped make this possible. And we hope to do lots of good things for post Mormons and progressive Mormons in the weeks, months and years ahead. Tyler, did I forget anything? I think you hit it all. Okay. All right, so without any further ado, let's go ahead and introduce our guest today. Our guest today is Lila Tueller. Lila may be a name. Her name may be familiar to a few of you because she was interviewed recently on Radio Free Mormon Podcast. That's not where I learned about Lila. In one of the free workshops that we held last year at the Community of Christ, I met Lila for the first time. I was really excited to meet her or hear about her story. I've been contacted either by or about her brother, you know, in the past few years as well. And so I've known about Lila and her family for a while and, and again, I'm, I'm super happy that Radio for Mormon was able to interview Lila along with Bill Real, I think. But I've been wanting to interview Lila for some time and I'm really excited to be able to interview her today. For those of you who don't know, Lila Tueller is the child of the late Mormon General Authority Hartman Rector Jr. And you know, his wife, her mother. So those of you who were, you know, teen or adult Mormons in the 70s or 80s or even 90s, will have heard the name Hartman Rector Jr. He didn't reach the level of apostle, but he certainly was among the most prominent non apostle general authorities in the church. I'm pretty sure he served in the quorum of the 70, but also in the presidency of the 70 for many years. And so we're going to be talking about a lot today. We're going to be talking about a little bit about Lila's parents story. Something that's interesting is that her dad was a convert to Mormonism. And so, you know, back then there weren't many converts that became general authorities. So we're going to talk about her parents story. We're going to talk about what it was like for her growing up in the home of a Mormon general authority. You know, which apostles did she meet, how strict were her parents, what's it like on the inside? What insight can she provide into whether Mormon general authorities really believe or don't? Which is one of the big questions people ask. Was he a special witness? Did he get a second anointing? Was he loving? Did he have special powers to heal? Like all these things that you would wonder about what it's like to be the child of a general authority. Was he gone all the time? Did the family secretly fight? Like all these sort of things? Were there dirty little secrets and we're not seeking for smut, but I mean, like, were there secrets in the family that Was there a lot of pressure? Was it super intense? Like we'll kind of dive into that kind of stuff and just kind of about what it's like to be a general authority from the child's perspective and the child of general authority from the child's perspective. And then we'll talk about Lila's own faith journey. She has had a crisis of faith at some point. And so we'll talk about that. She's had her own, you know, family and marriage and children. And we'll just talk about all that. And then in the end we'll end with sort of like how Lila has kind of healed and grown in her journey, especially after her faith crisis. And we'll start, we'll follow some of these questions that I've been putting out about kind of with the thrive theme about questions focused on healing and growth after Mormonism. So that's what it's going to be, a longer Mormon stories interview, probably three, four, five hours. So buckle in but we're going to cover a lot of great territory. In the same tradition of the Christine Jepsen Clark interview on Mormon Stories where we interviewed her, the daughter of Malcolm Jepsen, who was Boyd K. Packer's best friend and doctor, and also the general authority who's responsible for excommunicating many of the people in September 6th. That's actually one of, if not the most downloaded Mormon Stories episodes of all time. We've also interviewed, I think, M. Russell Ballard's granddaughter. And so whenever we can get family members of general authorities, we like to do that. So thanks for tuning in, Lila. You were very patient in that very lengthy introduction. Is there anything you want to correct or add or take away from?

Introducing Lila Tueller and Her Family Background

Lila Tueller [00:11:52] Oh, no. You did great.

John Dehlin [00:11:53] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:11:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:55] All right. Well, thanks for joining us today.

Lila Tueller [00:11:56] My pleasure.

John Dehlin [00:11:57] Yeah. It's nice to meet you.

Lila Tueller [00:11:58] Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:12:00] Yeah. Okay, so let's begin. I guess the place to begin would be with your parents story. Unless there's some opening statement you want to make about your intentions or, you know, anything like that.

Parents' Story and Father's Conversion to Mormonism

Lila Tueller [00:12:13] No, I'm. I think you did great. We can start wherever you want to start. With my parents story. So just real briefly, I don't want to belabor anything, but my parents were not members of the church. They both grew up in Missouri and they met each other in Missouri. My mother was 14, my dad was 18 when they first met. And the story he tells or always told was that he saw her walking down the sidewalk, this beautiful black haired girl, and went up to her and said, my name is Hartman Rector Jr. I'm going to marry you in four years. I'm going away to the Navy. When I come back, I'm going to marry you. And she looked at him and said, okay. That's kind of the way they tell the story. It was love at first sight. And he did go away for four years in the Navy and came back and they did get married and they were part of kind of society in Missouri at the time. You know, they did the parties and they drank and they smoked and my mom had a cute little gold cigarette box that she kept her cigarettes in. And you know, they, they were just typical normal people of the time. And fast forward to getting. They got married. They had, they were, had. She was pregnant with her third child.

John Dehlin [00:13:42] Let me just, let me just ask really quickly. So he was a pilot, right?

Lila Tueller [00:13:46] Right.

John Dehlin [00:13:46] For the Navy.

Lila Tueller [00:13:47] Right.

John Dehlin [00:13:47] That's kind of a big deal. A Navy pilot.

Lila Tueller [00:13:49] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:50] Did he serve in World War II? Did he serve in Vietnam. Do you even know?

Lila Tueller [00:13:53] It was the Korean War.

John Dehlin [00:13:54] Korean War. So between World War II.

Lila Tueller [00:13:56] Right.

John Dehlin [00:13:57] And did he, like, fly overseas? Yeah, bomber. Was he a jet fight Jet. A pilot. Fighter pilot.

Lila Tueller [00:14:03] Yeah, you know, he was a bomber. So he, you know, he was on the. The aircraft carriers out in the ocean and would take off. Off the aircraft carrier and land on the aircraft carrier. And he was. He was bombing over in Korea that he talked about dropping bombs. You know, they'd give him a point on the map and tell him to wipe it out, and so he would do that. Usually they were not places where there were civilians. He was just bombing, you know, the trains and, you know, different military outposts. But he wasn't really trying to kill anyone. This is what he said. And he. Yeah, it was a. It was a. He was a captain. So he, you know, he was. He was up there. He was proud of his naval service.

John Dehlin [00:14:53] Did you get a sense for. Was he raised lds? I mean, it's not. How was he raised lds? Was he raised religious at all? And did he ever tell you, like, how he got converted?

Lila Tueller [00:15:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:07] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:15:08] He was.

John Dehlin [00:15:09] We haven't gotten there yet.

Lila Tueller [00:15:10] Right, so.

John Dehlin [00:15:11] So all the stuff with your mom happened before he converted?

Lila Tueller [00:15:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:14] Okay, good. Okay, we'll get to there. We'll get to that. Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:15:16] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:15:17] So. So. Okay. So let's keep going. So he. But what. Was he raised religious?

Lila Tueller [00:15:24] No, he was not a member of any church. There was a big family Bible that his grandmother would read out of to him, but that was the extent of his religious training. There really was no religion. My mom was a member of the Methodist faith, but they never went to church. You know, it was just. She just wasn't active.

John Dehlin [00:15:49] Okay, so not super religious. So he serves in the war, then they get married.

Lila Tueller [00:15:54] Right.

John Dehlin [00:15:56] How does it go from there?

Lila Tueller [00:15:57] Well, they got married, and while he was out on a boat in Japan doing some accelerated, accelerated training, my mom was home and she was pregnant with the third child. And the missionaries tracked him, tracked it into her, knocked on her door. She invited them in. Oh, and I have to kind of preface. Preface this with my dad had a sort of theme that he lived his life by. And it was never cease to grow. That was one of them. That was one theme. And then the other theme was his nightly prayer. And that my mom would say, he did it. It wasn't just nightly. It was every time he prayed. He would say, dear God, please show me the truth. Please bring me the truth. And that was his, you know, he was searching. He was A searching for truth soul. And so my mom was aware of that. So when the missionaries tracked her out, she invited them in and said, you know, sit down and tell me what. What have you got? What are you. What are you teaching? And they left her with some material. And then my dad came home from his trip abroad and she handed him the Book of Mormon, which she had already started to read. And then he. He looked at it and said something like, ah, yeah, probably written by a man. I'll shoot it down in 15 minutes. So that was his. His idea. He had. He had looked into a lot of different religions. He had been searching for a while for the truth. So when he started, the story goes that when he started reading the Book of Mormon, he wasn't. He said he hadn't finished First Nephi before. He prayed that it was true. And then when he finished Second Nephi, which is the hardest part, he said he knew it was true and it was just an overwhelming feeling. And from then on, I mean, they just stopped drinking, smoking, party, partying. Everything just came to a screeching halt. They changed everything. They just. And were very. You know, he got baptized on the boat. On the ship, actually. They had to dock. And he got baptized in a really cold ocean. I remember him saying he was freezing. And my mom got baptized in San Diego. And then, you know, when he came home, they started going to church in earnest.

John Dehlin [00:18:22] And so they were baptized separately.

Lila Tueller [00:18:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:26] And do you know around what year?

Lila Tueller [00:18:27] Oh, gosh, I think it was 51. Okay, right around then.

John Dehlin [00:18:32] That's around the time of the Korean War for sure. Right, so this is Eisenhower time. This is like.

Lila Tueller [00:18:37] Right, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:18:38] Post World war, Cold War McCarthy hearing. Eisenhower, Nixon, Vice President. That kind of.

Lila Tueller [00:18:44] Yeah, you know your history.

John Dehlin [00:18:45] No, no, no, I like that little part of it. So.

Lila Tueller [00:18:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:49] Okay. And it was the Book of Mormon that converted him.

Lila Tueller [00:18:53] Right.

John Dehlin [00:18:54] Okay. So they stop their partying lifestyles and they both get baptized. How does it. How does it progress? How many kids were born when they were.

Lila Tueller [00:19:05] When they were born, she was pregnant with her third.

John Dehlin [00:19:07] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:19:07] And so I'm number six.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] You're six.

Lila Tueller [00:19:10] So it was a ways before me. Yeah, they just, you know, they started. My dad, they moved to Virginia after the war was over. My dad got a job at the Pentagon in the Department of Agriculture, and he worked with Ezra Tab Benson.

John Dehlin [00:19:27] Benson, who's my cousin.

Lila Tueller [00:19:28] Really?

John Dehlin [00:19:29] Oh, so Yazertop Benson was Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower.

Lila Tueller [00:19:34] Under Eisenhower.

John Dehlin [00:19:35] And so your dad got a hookup.

Lila Tueller [00:19:36] He did.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] Got a Mormon hookup.

Lila Tueller [00:19:38] He got A Mormon hookup with the

John Dehlin [00:19:40] apostle, future prophet to be.

Lila Tueller [00:19:42] Right, okay. Right. So I think my dad, the personality that my dad had is very. He was very charismatic, outgoing, fun loving, people person and just loved entertaining people and loved a crowd, loved more people around him, the better. Very much an extrovert. And he, I think he just had an impression on Ezra Taft Benson. And his best friend was Reed Benson, who was son. The son of.

John Dehlin [00:20:15] Son of Ezra.

Lila Tueller [00:20:16] Right. So they were buddies. And so. And my. At the time, my dad was a seminary teacher, you know, and.

John Dehlin [00:20:23] But not ces. Was he church employment?

Lila Tueller [00:20:26] You know, I don't. I don't know, to be honest.

John Dehlin [00:20:28] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:20:30] I just know he was seminary teacher and so that. So before, I mean, I was little at the time when he got called, I was seven years old. So my experience with it is kind of vague. I just remember in retrospect, kind of, oh, that's what was going on. Okay, now I understand. So he got the call and. Which was. Nobody expected that. It was a total. The call to be a general authority.

John Dehlin [00:20:59] Okay, so had he been bishop or stake president?

Lila Tueller [00:21:02] No, really. No, none of that.

John Dehlin [00:21:04] How many years had he been a member before he gets called?

Lila Tueller [00:21:06] I think I did the math and I think it was like 16 years or something.

John Dehlin [00:21:10] I wonder why he was never a bishop or stake president or any of that.

Lila Tueller [00:21:13] He was a stake mission leader.

John Dehlin [00:21:16] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:21:17] No, and he had been a.

John Dehlin [00:21:19] And he'd never been a mission president before?

Lila Tueller [00:21:21] No. No.

John Dehlin [00:21:22] I mean, maybe that's how they did it back then.

Lila Tueller [00:21:24] Well, I just think he, you know, he didn't have the pedigree at all. It was just somebody said, hey, this guy's on fire. He'd be a great missionary advocate, you know, and so they, I don't know, he got the call and, you know, pretty quick. He got sent on to be a mission president right away to Tallahassee, Florida. So when I was in fifth grade, that's where I lived for just for a year, he went to Tallahassee.

John Dehlin [00:21:53] Okay, so he gets called as a general authority first.

Lila Tueller [00:21:55] Right.

John Dehlin [00:21:55] Then as a mission president.

Lila Tueller [00:21:57] Yeah. So we moved to Salt Lake and. And then almost. Well, I spent one year, two years in Salt Lake and then he gets called to be a mission president.

John Dehlin [00:22:06] And it must have been as to have Benson. I mean, just guessing, I'm speculating, but it's like, hey, this guy's sharp. Let's get him in the leadership ranks and we need to give him some leadership experience. So let's make him a mission president, I guess.

Lila Tueller [00:22:18] Yeah. Cause he was. I mean, he was a missionary entrepreneur. Like, he was converting everybody. Everybody, Our neighbors, everybody he could. He was just had the missionary spirit. So I think they saw that and they're like, yeah, get him going. Let's get him in there. So went to Tallahassee. He was on fire down there. Loved it. And I mean, just a little side note, my sister, one of my sisters, who I won't mention, got pregnant at 17 while we were in Florida.

John Dehlin [00:22:49] Oh, no.

Lila Tueller [00:22:50] Yeah. So with. By a LDS kid in the ward. So that was a real upsetting thing for my dad. I remember watching him. I didn't know what was going on. All I knew is that my dad was crying, walking around the house, sobbing, yelling. Just furious. Furious at the position he was in, you know, as the mission president and his daughters knocked up. So. And like I said, I was nine years old. I really, like, I didn't know what was. I just knew my dad was really upset, so. And then the next thing I knew, my sister, I saw her, like, and we shared a bathroom, and I noticed she was pregnant. And then. And she said, yes, I'm pregnant. And the next thing I knew, she was shipped off to Georgia to have the baby.

John Dehlin [00:23:42] What does that mean?

Lila Tueller [00:23:43] They found a place for her to live, so she wasn't there. Being pregnant isn't that interesting? It's like, yeah, get her out of here.

Family Secrets, Shame, and Early Home Life

John Dehlin [00:23:52] Was it a family secret?

Lila Tueller [00:23:53] Oh, yeah, it was totally a family secret. Like, I was. I was sworn to secrecy. I wasn't supposed to talk about it.

John Dehlin [00:23:58] So the ward. So in theory, the ward didn't know.

Lila Tueller [00:24:01] In theory? Yeah. She was, like, probably five months along when they sent her out. So she was starting to show, but they got her out of there. And then my dad insisted that they get married. There was no ifs, ands, or buts. They were getting married. I mean, and they had no choice.

John Dehlin [00:24:15] And again, do you have a sense for what year this is?

Lila Tueller [00:24:19] Okay, let's see. This would have been around 71.

John Dehlin [00:24:23] Okay. So this is like the year, kind of the year the Beatles are breaking up. This is Woodstock. This kind of Woodstock, you know, is emerging. The hippie culture.

Lila Tueller [00:24:31] Very hippie culture.

John Dehlin [00:24:32] Your sister was how old?

Lila Tueller [00:24:33] She was 17.

John Dehlin [00:24:35] And you were how old?

Lila Tueller [00:24:36] I was 10.

John Dehlin [00:24:37] Okay, you were young.

Lila Tueller [00:24:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:38] You were young. And what an embarrassment. And this is after he'd been called as a general authority.

Lila Tueller [00:24:43] Right. After he was called as general authority,

John Dehlin [00:24:44] mission president and mission president.

Lila Tueller [00:24:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:47] So she. Okay. And that's just that culture of, like, shipping them off.

Lila Tueller [00:24:51] Right.

John Dehlin [00:24:51] Like, when Does a kid shame when. Does a kid need more help than when they're pregnant or sick or whatever? And not only are they not getting the help they need from their parents, but they're. Like you said, they're shipped off as if it's some shameful, awful thing. And it's all hidden.

Lila Tueller [00:25:09] Right. And not talked about.

John Dehlin [00:25:12] Instead of being open and honest, it's kind of hidden. And that must have been terribly embarrassing for your parents to have to go tell whoever their upline general authorities were.

Lila Tueller [00:25:21] Oh, my gosh. I don't know that they did tell. I don't know. They may have.

John Dehlin [00:25:24] Maybe they kept it secret. We don't know.

Lila Tueller [00:25:26] I don't know. But I just know that the next thing I knew, she was married, and then she had the baby. And then, you know, later, a year later, they got sealed in the temple. I mean, with my dad just breathing down their neck. So she got pulled out of high school, didn't finish because she was pregnant, you know, and so it was all kind of wild. But.

John Dehlin [00:25:50] So we can talk about your sister later. But did that. Was that traumatic for her? Very. She had scars about that.

Lila Tueller [00:25:57] Oh, yeah. It was an abusive relationship to him, and she ended up having six kids with that. With him, and then they ended up

John Dehlin [00:26:03] divorcing, so he wasn't good for her. But since it was a shotgun wedding.

Lila Tueller [00:26:08] Right.

John Dehlin [00:26:09] Your dad. Your parents insisted on it.

Lila Tueller [00:26:11] Absolutely. Yeah. That was the only way out for them. They didn't. You know, you're gonna make this right. Okay, so then let me think. Then.

John Dehlin [00:26:20] Lila, fight me interject. Someone asked, was the baby put up for adoption?

Lila Tueller [00:26:24] No. Nope. They kept the baby. And he is currently still living in Florida. Most of the kids do that they had.

John Dehlin [00:26:33] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:26:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:34] Thank you. Thanks, Tyler.

Lila Tueller [00:26:36] Oh, one other. Well.

John Dehlin [00:26:38] And thanks, listener.

Lila Tueller [00:26:39] Yeah, there's other details. I think there's certain things I should probably not say because they're family things, but. Yeah, you could write a. Probably do a movie and a book about the intrigue of my family back in the day.

John Dehlin [00:26:55] Well, that's why we're doing a podcast.

Lila Tueller [00:26:57] I guess so.

John Dehlin [00:26:59] Well, my heart's breaking for your sister.

Lila Tueller [00:27:01] Yeah. Because it was rough for her.

John Dehlin [00:27:03] Who wants to be shamed about their mistake? And then who wants to be Daddy? Mommy's little secret? Who wants to be forced into a marriage that may not be right.

Lila Tueller [00:27:11] Right.

John Dehlin [00:27:11] And then what about just the generational ripple effects of being in an abusive marriage that's harmful and painful and how that affects all the children?

Lila Tueller [00:27:21] All of them.

John Dehlin [00:27:22] What, a domino of potential Catastrophes.

Lila Tueller [00:27:25] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:27:25] All in a family that's probably highlighted as this ideal elite Mormon family.

Lila Tueller [00:27:30] Aren't they perfect?

John Dehlin [00:27:31] And you always wonder that. And we'll get into this, obviously, just, are these perfect Mormon families really perfect? And you kind of know they're not,

Lila Tueller [00:27:38] but for some reason we kind of like to idolize them. And even though we know they can't possibly be perfect.

John Dehlin [00:27:46] Living up to it all.

Lila Tueller [00:27:46] Yeah. Yeah. So she ended up staying in Florida. My family went back to Salt Lake, and we didn't see her for years and years. She just was stuck out there in Florida. My dad continued onward and upward, but we didn't go back to Florida and she didn't come out. So I didn't see her for a long time.

John Dehlin [00:28:08] I wonder if they just wanted the kids to get old enough so that no one would ask questions like, why would she be estranged, effectively estranged from the family for years.

Lila Tueller [00:28:17] I think it was such an embarrassment from my dad. I just think he was absolutely mortified by it. And, you know, here he is new. You know, he's the new guy on the block, and immediately this happens. Yeah, I think it was just so embarrassing for him. They stayed in touch, but, you know, there was a lot of abuse going on that she never mentioned because she just thought, I can't complain. I can't. I have no right to complain because.

John Dehlin [00:28:45] Because I screwed up.

Lila Tueller [00:28:46] I screwed up. Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:28:48] We talked about this with Sean from. From Wales yesterday. She had a teenage pregnancy. We had another interview on Mama Stories just yesterday, and just the shame.

Lila Tueller [00:28:57] Was it on. Was it live yesterday?

John Dehlin [00:28:58] Yeah, it was live streamed. Yeah, it's. It's good. Listeners, if you haven't checked that out yet, check out the one about Sean from. From Wales. It's. It's fascinating, but. Yeah, so much shame and then so many ripple effects. But anyway, so you guys moved to Salt Lake, right?

Lila Tueller [00:29:14] What, what area we lived after we came back? Well, before Florida, we lived over on the East Bench, near Skyline High School. East Mill Creek.

John Dehlin [00:29:27] That's where. That's where Christine Jepsen Clark's family lived. Malcolm Jepsen. Oh, yeah. Okay. Like up in that area with streets named, like Moroni and he. All these streets named after Book of Mormon characters. I don't know if it's the same area, but similar.

Lila Tueller [00:29:40] I know where those are. We're close. It's the same general area.

John Dehlin [00:29:43] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:29:44] And then when we came back from Florida, we moved to the Avenues. Oh, the upper avenues, 18th Avenue and up into a. My. A house that my dad found on Foreclosure. There had been satanic rituals taking place in that house. They had their signs painted on the walls. There was burnt crosses in the backyard. It was this. It was filthy. It was this big, beautiful home. But it had been completely ransacked by a satanic group that would meet there. So we moved in and my dad, the first thing he did was dedicate the house and he had to rededicate it several times because we had experiences with what we thought were evil spirits in the house.

John Dehlin [00:30:32] Okay, so this is mid-70s now, right?

Lila Tueller [00:30:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:34] So Bruce R. McConkie's book would have been out which would have talked about Ouija boards and evil spirits. And this would have been around the time that the movie the Omen was coming out in the 70s. Damien. All those.

Lila Tueller [00:30:47] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:30:47] So there's the 70s started to rage and all this rock. Ozzy Osbourne and like Led Zeppelin and all these. This hype and hysteria around Satan. Satanism.

Lila Tueller [00:30:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:59] And so. So that stuff would have been happening, but that shows if your dad would have taken the time. Like, the biggest question I get, bar none, is, do general authorities really believe? And I guess it's different in the 70s than now, but even back then there was stuff going on with like, Leonard Arrington or church history and stuff, but they always want to ask, do the general authorities really believe? And I just can't imagine your dad performing an exorcism to clean out the evil spirits if he didn't really believe.

Lila Tueller [00:31:32] My dad was a believer, Absolutely. Because think about it. If he was a new convert, the missionaries did not tell him the deep, dark secrets of anything. They just gave him the discussions. Right. So it was he. My dad joined the church believing that it was, you know, this wonderful, glorious, amazing, happy thing that, that, you know, was, why wouldn't. Why would anyone not want to join the church? That was his philosophy. It was like, hey, you're crazy if you don't join this church. It's amazing. Like, it's. It answers all my questions. It's the. It's so neatly tied up in a boat. To him, it was perfect. So he didn't know. I don't think he knew any of this stuff, the history.

John Dehlin [00:32:16] So I didn't ask you that. Like, Joseph is a polygamist or like Book of Abraham or not yet he did get. Okay, okay. But at the time, he was a general authority and didn't know. That's another question. Do the general authorities know at least? We can say in the 70s, there at least was a time where general authorities didn't know many that didn't know. Didn't know any of that stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:32:37] I think they kind of found out, you know, when things started breaking, I don't know, during the Hoffman years, You know, some.

John Dehlin [00:32:45] We'll get to that. Right?

Growing Up with an Absent General Authority Father

Lila Tueller [00:32:46] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:32:46] Was your dad involved with the Hoffman stuff?

Lila Tueller [00:32:47] A little bit.

John Dehlin [00:32:48] Okay, we'll get, we'll get to that. Let's not forget, okay. To talk about that. Okay. So he, he performs an exorcism on your house, casts out the evil spirits.

Lila Tueller [00:32:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:57] And you move into the avenues. Is that like East High School back in the day?

Lila Tueller [00:33:01] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:33:02] So what was that like moving to the, you know, Oz? Basically?

Lila Tueller [00:33:06] It was great. It was hard because I moved in in junior high. I was sixth grade, I think. So, you know, you have to kind of make friends and try to fit in to group. That's already established. Right. But it was, I loved it. I loved East High. I loved my years there. My brother Dan, who was five years older than me, was the big man on campus. He was so. He was popular. Everybody knew him. So as his little sister, I kind of had an in. You know, I'm Dan's little sister. So everybody's like, oh, yeah, you're cool then, you know, Dan was this big skier and he was, he just had all the girls, he had the guys. He was just, you know, a really popular kid. And so, yeah, we kind of moved into this rich neighborhood. My parents were not wealthy at all. We came from kind of, you know, I would just say blue collar, not very. We didn't have a lot middle class into an upper class neighborhood. And everybody was, you know, had boats and cabins and, you know, all kinds of toys. And I didn't, I never had any of that growing, growing up.

John Dehlin [00:34:23] So your dad would have been a general authority. So he would have been on salary.

Lila Tueller [00:34:26] Right.

John Dehlin [00:34:27] But you probably don't know what that.

Lila Tueller [00:34:29] I don't know the amount I want to say at the time.

John Dehlin [00:34:33] And in the 70s, we'd have to adjust for inflation. Adjust back for inflation.

Lila Tueller [00:34:36] Right. So at this, this is what I was told by my parents. They said, you know, we get some money, but it's not a lot. So, you know, we're going to shop thrift stores and we're going to, you know, we're going to try to make do and we're going to write books. That's how we make extra money is by writing books. That's what they were kind of told. Hey, if you want to make some money, write a book.

John Dehlin [00:34:58] Okay?

Lila Tueller [00:35:00] So immediately you know, my mom's like, okay, I'm a writer now. And she would say to the kids, she'd say, okay, you guys, I'm gonna be gone for about four hours. I gotta go write on the book, work on the book. You guys just take care of yourselves. Don't answer the door or the phone. I'll just be in there for a while. My dad was never home. So, you know, we were like, cool. We can do whatever we want for four hours. Mom's gonna be in the room writing a book. And she was always writing a book forever. She wrote. You know, they wrote no More Strangers. But my mom wrote, like, four other books after the no More Strangers volumes, All four of them. Then she started writing her own books.

John Dehlin [00:35:36] And we'll talk about that. Let's. Two things. To what extent was your family doing? You know, morning and evening prayer, scripture study. Daily scripture study, family home, evening. Like, how orthodox was the actual household?

Lila Tueller [00:35:56] Okay. It was. We did. When my dad was in town, which was rare. He always made us wait.

John Dehlin [00:36:04] So he was gone, let's just say four weeks out of. Four weeks out of the year, out of the month. How many days would he be gone?

Lila Tueller [00:36:11] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:36:12] Well, it probably did.

Lila Tueller [00:36:14] There was the traveling. They did these trips, which were a month long, at least a month long, sometimes six weeks. And that was every. So they'd be home for three. Gone for a month, Home for three. Gone for a month. And that was. That was just the regular routine. And my mom would go with my dad.

John Dehlin [00:36:31] Home for three weeks, home for three

Lila Tueller [00:36:34] months, gone for a month.

John Dehlin [00:36:35] Okay, got it, got it.

Lila Tueller [00:36:37] So they were home, you know, they were gone for long periods of time, like for a whole month. So my kid.

John Dehlin [00:36:43] Yeah, imagine your dad not being around for a month.

Lila Tueller [00:36:46] Yeah, well, my mom, too.

John Dehlin [00:36:47] Oh, she would go together. What?

Lila Tueller [00:36:49] Yeah, so we got farmed out. Like, I'd go one. One month, I'd be. Or, you know, one time they'd travel. I'd be over at my girlfriend's house, you know, and I'd stay there for a month. My brother would go to his friend's house. The next time, my mom would send me over here because we don't want to wear out the welcome over here. So she'd send me over there and my brother over here, my little sister over here. So we were farmed out. And then sometimes she kind of got to the point where she started inviting young couples to come in and stay with us, just like young married couples. And they'd pay them. I don't know. What? They pay them. They'd pay them. And, you know, so it was weird. I'd wake up in the morning, and I'd kind of have this pit in my stomach, you know? Cause it was like, my mom and dad aren't here. It's that random couple that I don't even know. And those poor. I felt sorry for them. You know, they're thrown into a house. They're supposed to run it. Like, they know how. They're young couples, and they've got instantly all these kids to take care of and figure out their schedules and how to cook for them and all that. So that was our normal routine. So to answer your question, did that

John Dehlin [00:37:54] make you feel like. I could imagine if I were the child of a general authority, that would be like, yes, Mormons do hard things, and my dad is one of Jesus special representatives, and my parents are serving the church. And so, like, yes, we get to do a hard thing, and we're sacrificing as a family for the Lord's cause. Is that how you and your siblings thought of it, or were there heartfelt or sadness?

Lila Tueller [00:38:20] No. I'm like, wow, John, that's a really positive way to look at it.

John Dehlin [00:38:24] You'd be that way, right, Tyler? Absolutely.

Lila Tueller [00:38:30] Well, I think my older brother saw it as an opportunity to have parties.

John Dehlin [00:38:34] Oh, really?

Lila Tueller [00:38:34] Yeah. But he. I mean, he didn't. He was a good kid. He never did anything bad, but he would just have friends over, you know, more often than normal. I was. I held a little resentment because I felt like, you know, I'm kind of an orphan half the time and I'm farmed out. Like, I felt like the church talks about families. Family, family, family. How important the family is, but we were being neglected.

John Dehlin [00:39:00] You felt that at the time. You're not projecting back.

Lila Tueller [00:39:03] No, I felt it at the time.

John Dehlin [00:39:04] You're like, my family's neglecting me.

Lila Tueller [00:39:06] Yeah, I felt like. I guess I'm chopped liver. They don't. They'll just farm me out so they can go travel, travel, travel, travel. And they'd come home with all these gifts where, you know, toys and stuff that they'd bought in Germany or Japan or wherever they were. And that was supposed to make it okay. You know, I just felt like something was backward back then. I was angry about it. I really was. Like I said, I woke up in the morning with a pit in my stomach. I felt like, you know, where's my mom? You know, I don't. My mom's not here. And when I went to bed at Night I was sad. I would cry because I wanted my parents there. So, I mean, I. I feel. I feel kind of bratty being upset about that because I know there are people with worse experiences. Okay. I know there's always worse. But for me at the time, that was really hard. It was hard for me.

John Dehlin [00:40:02] I'm so sorry.

Lila Tueller [00:40:03] It's okay. I mean, I'm over it.

John Dehlin [00:40:05] But.

Lila Tueller [00:40:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:06] So when. So the. But they would be home with three month stretches, Is that what you said?

Lila Tueller [00:40:12] But, but my dad would be gone,

John Dehlin [00:40:13] my mom would be okay, but he'd be.

Lila Tueller [00:40:16] He was gone, gone, gone. He would be home.

John Dehlin [00:40:18] Church headquarters, like traveling around Utah.

Lila Tueller [00:40:20] Traveling around? Yeah, traveling around Utah or Arizona or California or, you know, the western states. He traveled a lot.

John Dehlin [00:40:28] Okay, so during those three months where your mom was home, he'd still be gone all the time, Right? Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:40:33] So he'd be home usually on a Monday night. If he was in town, he'd be home on Monday night. That was our sacred family home evening, night. And so we would have it.

John Dehlin [00:40:43] Would you teach? Did your mom teach?

Lila Tueller [00:40:45] No, my dad taught. He always taught. He loved it.

John Dehlin [00:40:48] Was it very patriarchal? And so what's it like to have this church celebrity guy who's charismatic and probably well informed giving these dazzling family meetings? Did you love it? Did you hate it? Was it

Lila Tueller [00:41:04] we all put up with was kind of like, here we go, you know, and we'd be fighting and stuff and it would frustrate my mom and dad and they'd be like, can't we just have quiet for one hour? And you know, I just gotta, you know. So he'd try to. And he'd have, he'd have the visual aids ready and everything. I mean, he went with the handbook, there was a family home evening handbook. And he would go through those lessons and teach them. And then, you know, we'd have the song and then my mom would have a treat afterwards. And so, I mean, there were perks to it. And he would do the Morning Scripture at 6, if he was ever in town. We had to get up and do the scripture study. My mom would try. She tried to do it. She wasn't as good at it as my dad. She wasn't as motivated. He just really wanted to do everything right. He really did.

John Dehlin [00:41:54] And like Sunday Sabbath observance.

Lila Tueller [00:41:56] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:41:58] Was it that strict where you can't change out of your church clothes all day? Wasn't that strict.

Lila Tueller [00:42:02] No, because we didn't have the cultural background because my parents were not members, you know, they were converts. So they didn't know all those cultural rules at all. They only knew, you know, you're not supposed to go out and buy things. You're not supposed to go swimming. There were certain things that we would never do. But once in a while, we'd go out to eat until. I think it was President Kimball really locked down on that later. But at first, we would go out to eat. Sometimes on Sunday, we. We could watch tv. My dad watched sports. But we were in our comfy clothes. Yeah,

John Dehlin [00:42:40] like, face cards. Were they prohibited?

Lila Tueller [00:42:42] Yeah, we didn't play face cards.

John Dehlin [00:42:44] What about popular music? Were you allowed to play rock music?

Lila Tueller [00:42:46] Yeah, my dad was pretty open about that. If it was blatantly satanic or something. No, but, you know, he was too busy to notice. He really didn't notice what we were playing. And he had his own music that he would blast up in his room, like Andy Williams and Glen Campbell and just the old crooners, you know, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra. Yeah, he sang, too. He had a really nice singing voice. So he would sing in the top of his lungs all around the house. In his garments. Yeah, I just got a visual that was funny.

John Dehlin [00:43:21] Of him walking around in his garments singing. What song?

Lila Tueller [00:43:26] Lots of Glenn Campbell. Like, by the time I get to Phoenix. And I don't know, Moon river was

John Dehlin [00:43:33] another favorite in his garments.

Lila Tueller [00:43:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:36] I'm trying to imagine Harmon Rector Jr. Seeing Moon river in his garments.

Lila Tueller [00:43:41] Yeah. Oh, and another thing about my dad that might be kind of interesting is he played racquetball. And he was really good. Really good. He could whoop anybody. And so he would have a regular. Like, he played every morning at the Deseret Gym, racquetball. And so he would put on these really short shorts with his temple coat over the top. His white temple coat.

John Dehlin [00:44:06] What's a temple coat?

Lila Tueller [00:44:07] Well, like, temple suit. Like, when you're in the. When you're officiating in the temple, those guys wear a white suit coat.

John Dehlin [00:44:14] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:44:15] So. Because he would go directly from the gym to the temple. So he would wear. It was so weird. He would wear that out the door. Gym shorts with the temple. And I'd see him sometimes, I'd be at the store, and he'd show up at the grocery store dressed like that. And I'd be like, dad, put some pants on. But he just. He didn't care about that kind of stuff. He would. Just. Because he didn't know the rules, and he didn't care about the rules.

John Dehlin [00:44:42] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:44:42] So.

John Dehlin [00:44:43] Well, he cared about some rules.

Lila Tueller [00:44:44] Some rules. But he didn't care about the cultural rules.

John Dehlin [00:44:48] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:44:48] So like if somebody said this, you know, here are the, here are the rules, these are the commandments, he would follow those to the T. But if it was something subjective, like people, you know, they don't change out of their church clothes or something like that, he wouldn't have known that.

John Dehlin [00:45:02] Okay. Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:45:03] So we didn't have caffeine in the house.

John Dehlin [00:45:06] No Coke, No. No caffeinated beverages.

Lila Tueller [00:45:08] Nothing. Not even chocolate. He didn't believe in chocolate. My mom believed in chocolate, but not my dad. So.

John Dehlin [00:45:19] Believe in chocolate? No.

Lila Tueller [00:45:21] I don't know. He would eat Snicker bars. That was kind of his secret though. It was in the freezer, kept them in the freezer. And a little bag of Snickers and he would pull those out and eat those frozen. But that he would never like chocolate, he felt like, was kind of, I don't know, kind of bad because it had caffeine.

John Dehlin [00:45:40] Yeah, everyone has their dirty little secret, right?

Lila Tueller [00:45:42] The Snickers bars were his, so that's as bad as it got. But he, you know, he did have. So I was gonna say about the, about the Deseret Gym and the, and the racquetball, he got really good. So he would challenge people everywhere he traveled.

John Dehlin [00:45:57] He would kinda like Joseph Smith challenging people to leg wrestle.

Lila Tueller [00:46:00] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:46:01] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:46:01] He would have racquetball, like matches everywhere he was. And like the best of the best athletes in the area would, would be there all dressed up, ready to play because they. My dad was legendary. Nobody could beat him. He would give him a 20 point lead and still beat him.

John Dehlin [00:46:19] 21. Right?

Lila Tueller [00:46:20] Yeah. So it was his serve, you know, it was, the serve was right in the corner and it would just drop dead and you couldn't return it.

Father's Personality and Strict Household Culture

John Dehlin [00:46:27] So like, is he an alpha? He's kind of an alpha male, it sounds like.

Lila Tueller [00:46:30] Oh, definitely. And a competitor. There's no worse fan. I mean, worse because he's right in your face. He's. Yeah, he loved BYU sports. I mean, he was very aggressive sports fan. So. Yeah, there, I mean.

John Dehlin [00:46:46] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:46:47] So many good things about my dad. They were great.

John Dehlin [00:46:49] Okay, so any other things about family culture in your middle and high school years that you want to mention? Just to paint that picture, we got scripture study, prayer, no caffeine.

Lila Tueller [00:47:00] Right.

John Dehlin [00:47:01] You know, that kind of stuff. Parents, dad gone, mom gone. Anything else strict? Like, was the gospel about love? Was it about appearance? Was it about discipline? Was it harsh? You know, was he.

Lila Tueller [00:47:14] Yeah, he was a disciplinarian and very, I mean, a Loving guy, too. But he had this sort of. He was a patriarch of the home. And like I told this story on the other podcast, but it bears repeating. He would sit down at the table and my mom would serve him and she would. She would just kind of stand aside. She wouldn't sit down at the table and eat. When he was sitting there, she would be serving him. So he'd say, I need a little bit of jam. And she'd run and get it. Water's empty. She'd refill that. I need a little salt. I mean, she was just like a waitress. And then when he was finally starting to slow down, she would sit down and finally start to eat. That was just the way it was.

John Dehlin [00:47:57] And that's probably as much of an American thing as a Mormon thing.

Lila Tueller [00:48:02] The patriarchal.

John Dehlin [00:48:03] I mean, America's patriarchal and 70s were probably way more chauvinistic than we are now.

Lila Tueller [00:48:08] Yeah. So in a lot of ways he was chauvinistic. Like he would tell me little girls are meant to be seen and not heard because he didn't like my mouth. I was a little bit. He told me a bunch of times that I was the biggest challenge he had had. Even though Linda had got, oops, one of my sisters had gotten pregnant, I was the challenge. Because I would back talk. I would. I would challenge him on things. Not sassy, but like, I don't think that's right. I don't agree with that. You know, whatever. And that's bold. Oh, he did not like that. I was told I was impudent probably a thousand times. And he would tell me, you know, you're not supposed to talk back. And we didn't say it like that. It was angry. We had a lot of fights, my dad and I. Head to head fights. I remember one time I went and saw. I was probably. I was in junior high and I went and saw Jesus Christ Superstar while he was on the road.

John Dehlin [00:49:05] So there's probably a musical where Jesus and all his apostles are hippies.

Lila Tueller [00:49:10] Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:49:11] And are they riding? Are they on roller skates? No, but it's just like something like that.

Lila Tueller [00:49:17] I don't even remember the movie.

John Dehlin [00:49:18] It's basically Woodstock crashes into the Last Supper and all of Jesus Christ was super hippies. Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:49:26] Yeah. So my dad's out. I didn't know he was campaigning against this movie all over the United States. I had no idea.

John Dehlin [00:49:33] He didn't bother to mention that.

Lila Tueller [00:49:34] He didn't tell me. Yeah, just the other kids. Not his own kids. Right. So I had no idea So I go with my friends. They're all, hey, let's go to the movie. So I went, come home. And my mom's like, what movie did you see? And I told her, and then she looked at me like, oh, you better. And then. So my dad. Oh, I think Tyler. So mic a little closer.

John Dehlin [00:49:58] The mic. Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:50:00] Yeah. So then my dad comes home, walks through the door, and my mom grabs him and says, do you know what your daughter just went. Just did. She went and saw Jesus Christ Superstar. And he came in the kitchen. I was sitting on the bench. There was, like, a bench on one side of the table and chairs on the other. I sitting on the bench. And he came over and jerked me off the bench onto the floor and proceeded to kick me off all over the kitchen, which I had seen him do to my brother.

John Dehlin [00:50:26] Literally. Kicking, Kicking. Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:50:28] Screaming at me, his nostrils flared, his teeth bared, yelling at me and saying, do you have any idea what I've just been doing? I've been all over this country telling people not to go see that movie. And I said, well, you didn't tell me, you know, and that made him more angry. So we would have. I mean, that was one of probably the most memorable experiences of what I consider to be abusive. He was very verbally abusive, but that was one of the worst times. I remember him being physical with me. He was physical with my brothers a lot. But then I look back, and those were part of the times, because he grew up on a farm in the Midwest, and his dad beat him. So it was kind of. It was just part of the culture in his mind, so he didn't see anything wrong with that. I got spanked a lot. I got swatted with a fly swatter on bare legs, bare butt, you know, a lot of that kind of thing. And that was just the norm for my family. I never thought anything of it, really, until later when I was raising my own kids. And there was a lot of talk about abuse, you know, child abuse. And I was. I was like, wow, I guess I was kind of abused in my home, so.

John Dehlin [00:51:55] And I. I just want to kind of speak about intent here. First of all, I. I didn't know anything about your story going into this interview.

Lila Tueller [00:52:04] Right.

John Dehlin [00:52:05] And I. It's just not my style to, like, want to get dirt. I want truth. I want good and bad. And so, you know, so you're just telling your real story. And I'm noticing that there's a lot of painful stuff.

Lila Tueller [00:52:18] Yeah. But it is just the truth. Like, I'm not. I'M not angry at my dad for that, because that was for him. That was how you raised kids. He was raised in a completely different culture. His dad beat him with a belt. You know, I knew that because he told me stories about it. So for me to get kicked around the kitchen floor was kind of in my mind. It was like, well, I probably deserved it, and I didn't. Like I said, I'd been spanked my whole life. I didn't think it was awful, and I didn't hate my dad for that. I loved my dad. I admired my dad. I later in life realized that I had some issues that I needed to deal with about him. And I dealt with him. I mean, dealt with them face to face with my dad as he. When he got older. But at the time, I didn't feel like I was being abused. It was just normal for me.

John Dehlin [00:53:18] And some of that's cultural.

Lila Tueller [00:53:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:20] I mean, I. It's common for those of us growing up in the 70s or 80s to be spanked or grabbed or jerked, not kicked. I was never kicked. Yeah, so I'm. Yeah, that's hard. So I don't want to. I want to have you just share any other. So was there ever, like, parents sit children down and say, listen, we're general. You know, I'm a general authority. We're leaders in the church. This family needs to behave. This family needs to be examples.

Lila Tueller [00:53:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:53:52] Was it ever that explicit? Or was it more just whenever someone made a mistake that came up, you know, was it just unsaid? Like, how do you. How do you. How does that get communicated?

Lila Tueller [00:54:01] I think there were times he would talk about the name, his name, and that we needed to respect that name and be examples. And so he would say, you know, when you're out in public, everybody's watching you. The things that you do, things you say. That reflects on our name, and you need to respect our name. Our name is, you know, it's all you've got. And so. And he would say, so behave the way that you want people to remember you as. You know, I remember the pressure feeling like I can't do or act like my friends were doing, you know, what they were doing, because people were watching me. My mom would remind me that, you know, she'd say, you know, remember, you know, people are watching you, careful what you. Careful what you say and do. So I felt like people were, you know, kind of watching my behavior because it reflected on them.

John Dehlin [00:55:00] And what's that like? As a teen in Salt Lake city in the 70s, to feel like everybody's watching you and, like, there's this extra expectation and pressure.

Lila Tueller [00:55:09] There's some pressure there. And I think I did feel like maybe it wasn't fair. Like, I wanted to be just me. I didn't want to have to live up to someone else's expectations. And I found that that's kind of a theme in my life. Expectations are. They. Like, there's something deep down inside that just makes me crazy about the idea that someone expects something of me. And I think it must have started back then. And then when my dad got called. He got called to be a mission president again in San Diego when I was just finishing my sophomore year of high school, okay? So I had to go to San Diego and go to finish my junior and my senior year, which was really hard because on one hand, I was excited to go to California because, you know, the beach and the sun and you think, wow, surfer boys. You know, everybody was like, wow, you get to go live in San Diego. Wow. But on the other hand, it was, you know, you're going in cold, you don't know anybody, you're going into a high school, nobody knows you. It was just. It was scary, but it was also exciting. So I went. And once again, my dad was mission president. So it's like, hey, you know, you need to make sure that you set an example for everybody that you come across. You're a missionary. You're an extension of your family, your parents, so you need to be a missionary. And so that means you have to behave really, you know, as best as you can. And so I really took that on. I took that on as a, you know, I'm gonna try to, you know, spread the gospel in my life just by how I act. And I remember in school, you know, I never went to. I never drank. I never. I didn't do anything, you know, like that at all. But I had some negative experiences with some people. One of the church girls, during the summer when we moved into San Diego, this girl said, hey, do you want to go to the beach with us? We go three times a week. You can come. And I was like, yeah, I'll go to the beach. Absolutely. So I started going to the beach with them, and she would tell me stories about the guys at school, School and who was popular and all this stuff. So when school started, there was a guy that she had had a crush on, and he started asking me out, which made her angry. And this is a Mormon girl, right? Made her really angry. So she started to spread rumors around the school because nobody knew me. And one of the rumors she spread was that I was a lesbian. So back then, this was 1977, it wasn't cool yet to be a lesbian.

John Dehlin [00:57:58] So if it is.

Lila Tueller [00:57:59] Right. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't then at all. And it was very kind of taboo. And so all the girls thought I was weird. All the guys, I don't know what the guys thought. They didn't seem to mind as much, but the girls would not talk to me. So. Except for the lesbian girls. And then I got invited to do stuff with them. I didn't know. I had no idea that this rumor was being spread. So I get these girls calling me to come over to their house and hang out and they're asking me to come roll around on the cushions with them on the floor. And then suddenly I realize, this is what's happening, you know? And I said, hey, I like boys. I'm sorry, I'm not going to do this, you know. And then someone in the school told me what she was doing. So there was. And also that I dealt drugs. So that was a really hard experience for me. In San Diego when my dad was mission president, I had a really rough two years. That was really hard.

John Dehlin [00:58:58] Did any. Did you or any of your siblings ever party or break the rules or drink or have sex or mess around with girls and boys?

Lila Tueller [00:59:07] Well, my one sister.

John Dehlin [00:59:08] Okay, right, right.

Lila Tueller [00:59:09] She got pregnant and she was into.

John Dehlin [00:59:10] But that wasn't just a one time fluke. I mean, she was like disobedient.

Lila Tueller [00:59:13] Yeah. She was smoking hot. She was drinking.

John Dehlin [00:59:16] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:59:16] She was doing a lot of things.

John Dehlin [00:59:17] Okay. And that was older. What about this brother, the popular brother Dan was having parties.

Lila Tueller [00:59:23] Yeah. I don't know. He may have. He may have done some alcohol back in the day. I never really knew about it.

John Dehlin [00:59:29] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:59:30] He wasn't like. I never heard my parents yelling at him about that.

John Dehlin [00:59:33] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:59:35] Later. I mean, a bunch of my family has left the church, so now, you know, people do a lot of things that we didn't do back then when we were all home under the roof or, you know, close by. I didn't really have. My parents adopted a son from Samoa and he was heavily into partying and alcohol and still is. And that's another story.

John Dehlin [00:59:58] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:59:59] Yeah. Most of us were not.

John Dehlin [01:00:07] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org.

Life Inside the General Authority Social World

Part 2 of 4 · Ep. 1246

John Dehlin [00:00:06] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and, and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Tell me if there are any good, positive, happy, loving memories or, you know, ways that you interacted with your dad or mom.

Lila Tueller [00:00:47] Okay? Yeah, my parents were. They were awesome people. We had a lot of fun. We went on trips together a lot. We would travel like family trips like Disneyland or when my dad was available, which was rare, we would try to go on a trip and sometimes. And he would also take each one of us, he took each one of us kids with him on one of his month long trips. So we all got to do that and spend time with him. My dad was a riot. He was a lot of fun. We laughed. We sat around and told stories and laughed until wee hours of the morning all the time. He had people coming over to the house all the time visiting, and he would let us kids kind of hang out and listen in and partake of that whole, you know, interaction. And, you know, I got to know so many cool people that way. Paul Toscano was a regular visitor at our house.

John Dehlin [00:01:43] What? And his wife was your dad, his mission president?

Lila Tueller [00:01:47] No, I don't believe so.

John Dehlin [00:01:48] How did he know Paul Toscano?

Lila Tueller [00:01:49] My brother Dan.

John Dehlin [00:01:50] Oh, that comes later.

Lila Tueller [00:01:51] Yeah. So he was there all the time. We would listen to his crazy stories and he was a riot. And there was just.

John Dehlin [00:01:59] Your dad and Paul got along?

Lila Tueller [00:02:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:00] Oh, okay.

Lila Tueller [00:02:01] Yeah, they did.

John Dehlin [00:02:01] That's interesting.

Lila Tueller [00:02:02] Yeah, my dad was open minded. He wanted. He wanted to learn, you know, he was. And he was a lot of fun. He loved movies. He loved comedy. We would watch movies, you know, on the big TV downstairs and watch funny movies. He would laugh. He loved.

John Dehlin [00:02:18] Our movies are just pg.

Lila Tueller [00:02:20] My dad didn't care about the rated R thing.

John Dehlin [00:02:22] Interesting.

Lila Tueller [00:02:23] Yeah. He would just watch anything good, anything that he thought was good and laugh his guts out. And the more foul the language, the harder he would laugh. I think he swear himself in the Navy.

John Dehlin [00:02:33] No, never swore. No, but he would watch movies.

Lila Tueller [00:02:37] I think he swore when he was in the Navy, before he was a member. And so it was funny to him. And he got it, like it didn't it just rolled right off his shoulders. And he enjoyed that. And so we kind of learned that. I don't know, he didn't swear, so we knew we shouldn't swear. But he had an open mind to a lot of things. He was just a fun loving guy. My mom was. My mom was sharp, smart, savvy, not a pushover, really intelligent, quick witted. She picked up on nothing, got by her. She was really. And my dad adored my mom. There was a love connection there. It was palpable. Every time they were together, they were smooching, they were hugging, kissing, lots of baby talk between them. They would skip off to the bedroom and lock the door. And that was a nightly thing. They did that. And we would go. I would go sit by the door and try to listen in on what was happening in there because they were so cute. They just wanted to go, right? And they were in love with each other. It was really clear. So I saw a lot of that which was positive. I think it might have set me up for some unrealistic expectations maybe, but they were so adoring of each other, it was hard not to appreciate.

John Dehlin [00:04:04] That's nice. That's nice.

Lila Tueller [00:04:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:07] I'm not trying to turn it negative, but just because we're on the topic. Did they fight in front of you and if so, what was that like?

Lila Tueller [00:04:12] Sometimes. But my mom would not. She had a lot of respect for my dad. So if they were opposing, she would back down and she would cry. She cried a lot. And he would. That would immediately just stopped it right there. He could not stand seeing her cry. So he would say, oh, I'm sorry, you know, and that it'd be over really quick. They did not have any long standing arguments that I ever saw. They were over quickly. My mom just had to cry and then it was over. They fought. Like my dad would say kind of mean things sometimes that would hurt her feelings and then he would apologize. He had a temper, you know, he just did it was. He's alpha male, you know, and so he just kind of. He ruled the roost in every way. Very patriarchal in my house.

John Dehlin [00:05:09] So did you, did you get a sense for whether or not your mom liked being the wife of a general authority mission president, you know, during this time? Was she digging it? Was she hating it? Was she resenting it? Was she eating it up?

Lila Tueller [00:05:23] That's a really good question. I think my mom enjoyed most of it. She wasn't one of the in crowd because she didn't have the pedigree. So she didn't know all the little rules, all the little cultural rules. And so I think she felt like a fish out of water a lot.

John Dehlin [00:05:40] What does that mean to be in the in crowd? Who is the in crowd? And what.

Lila Tueller [00:05:44] Okay, what were those rules? Okay, the women who had been in there for a while, whose husbands were kind of mainstream LDs. Like, they had the names and the, you know, like the tanners and the McConkeys and the just, you know, the Kimballs, the Monsons, all those names that are LDS names, and everybody knows them and their wives. A lot of them were kind of. They were well to do. My parents were not. My mom didn't really know what the. What the rule was on how to dress, how to speak. She had a Southern accent. She was kind of backwoodsy. You know, she wasn't. She was educated, but she wasn't. She didn't present like they did. The good thing was my mom was really pretty, so she could pull it off. She could sit there and, you know, be prettier than the rest of them, but. But she didn't know, you know, the rules. Really?

John Dehlin [00:06:47] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:06:47] How to play the game.

John Dehlin [00:06:48] The sixth generation pioneer stock, kind of Utah.

Lila Tueller [00:06:52] Yes. Rules, all that. She did not know that.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] So those families you just mentioned, does that mean you were, like, hanging out with the. With those general authorities and their parents and their kids? Like, would all those families see each other regularly and talk.

Lila Tueller [00:07:07] The women, the wives got together, like monthly wives of general authorities. Right. They had a little group book club, lunch club. You know, they'd get together. But the kids, I would meet them at. There were two places I met them and other general authorities. And one of them was Aspen Grove. We did that every summer. And they would go. Like, we'd see other. The Dunn's, Lauren C. Dunn, Pinniger's. Who else? There was a group of them that would go.

John Dehlin [00:07:38] Hanks, Brandy Hanks, Rex Pinniger, Lauren Dunn.

Lila Tueller [00:07:43] Lauren Dunn. So they would be there. So I knew their kids. Some of them went to east, some went to Highland, some went to Skyline. So I knew those kids because I'd met them there. But we had the lunches, so Conference lunches.

John Dehlin [00:07:57] So talk about that. General conference comes up. What's the routine for the family of a general authority during general conference?

Lila Tueller [00:08:04] So if you have tickets, which they got free tickets, right? So sometimes I would go and sometimes I wouldn't. But if I went, then I would get to go to the luncheon, which was between the morning and the afternoon session. So we would. And that's Saturday and Sunday. Right. So we still went on Sunday. We would go to. I believe it was the. At first it was the Hotel Utah. Later it was the Joseph Smith Building, and they would have this giant ballroom, and we would be served these elaborate lunches. They were amazing. They were incredible. And, you know, you'd have servers and. And hostesses and, you know, people at the back slaving away, cooking and presenting everything. And this was all done. It was just the normal pie and

John Dehlin [00:08:53] prime rib and, yes, you know, everything

Lila Tueller [00:08:56] you can think of.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] Horseradish sauce.

Lila Tueller [00:08:58] They had these giant tables with 500 different desserts on it, you know, and. And just. I mean, they were really, really nicely done. Good food. Shrimp, lobster.

John Dehlin [00:09:09] Did you look forward to it?

Lila Tueller [00:09:10] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it was great.

John Dehlin [00:09:12] And would you sit with your family or with other kids your age?

Lila Tueller [00:09:15] We'd usually sit with our family because we'd have a table with our name on it. So we'd sit there, but then we'd get up and walk around and say hi to people and rub shoulders and talk, and there was a lot of laughter, a lot of loud laughter going on in there.

John Dehlin [00:09:27] Were there, like, kids of certain general authorities that you thought were cute or that were really popular? Like who? Yeah, like.

Lila Tueller [00:09:34] Yeah. Well, I was really good friends with Marion's. Hank's son. Oh, he's gonna kill me. I can't think. Richard Hanks.

John Dehlin [00:09:42] I forget names all the time anyway.

Lila Tueller [00:09:44] Yeah. Especially when I. Under these circumstances. But I went to high school with him, so we were good friends. And then, you know, there were some that I'd look around, say, he's cute. That guy's kind of cute. The Clarks. Richard, dear.

John Dehlin [00:09:58] Richard Clark.

Lila Tueller [00:09:59] Richard Clark, dear. Richard Clark was the presiding bishop, and his family had kids my age, and we had actually gone and stayed with them one time in Idaho, and then my husband's sister married one of them, so now we're actually family. Their kids are cousins with mine, but, yeah, so we did. We hobnobbed with all of them. I met all the prophets that there were. As long as I was alive, you know, I got to meet them.

John Dehlin [00:10:28] And what about, like, the packers kid? Boyd kid. Packers kids. Or Bruce R. McConkey's kids or, you know, some of them weren't Jimble's kids or Benson's kids or.

Lila Tueller [00:10:38] Right. Most of them were. Were a little older than me, so they might be already married when I was, like, in my teens. So I wasn't, like, super chummy with them. But anybody that was younger, I knew

John Dehlin [00:10:50] them Any of the kids of current apostles that. Or would they be too old still?

Lila Tueller [00:10:55] I think. Oh, the Nelsons. Nelson's went to my school. They went to East.

John Dehlin [00:11:02] You knew his kids?

Lila Tueller [00:11:03] Daughters. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:04] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:11:05] The one that died, that had like five kids or something. She was like, the dance. She was in dance club with me. Rosalie was a year younger than me. Laurie was a year older than me. So I knew that their family.

John Dehlin [00:11:20] Okay. All right. So that sounds kind of like Camelot years, which is a reference to like just golden years of.

Lila Tueller [00:11:28] It was. It was. It was idyllic. It was. There was a lot of perks to being in that group.

John Dehlin [00:11:35] Okay, so other than general conference in the food, what were some of the perks?

Lila Tueller [00:11:39] We got free tuition to byu. We got. My parents got cars. They just gave them really nice cars.

John Dehlin [00:11:47] They.

Lila Tueller [00:11:47] We didn't have to pay for any of our pharmaceuticals or our sundries. All that was just. You just. They bought it at the church warehouse. There were just. I don't know. We got free into a lot of free Deseret gym pass, free movie passes. We could go. There were just lots of restaurants. You know, they just let us. There were certain restaurants in town that catered to the GA's, so they could just come and order anything free.

John Dehlin [00:12:18] Really?

Lila Tueller [00:12:18] Yeah. Yeah. We had. There were just a lot of little perks like that. I also felt like, in a way, almost like a child of a celebrity. In a way. It's different, you know, it's not Hollywood, but it's in Utah. Yeah. Having the last name Rector. I was a child of celebrity, so I didn't really have my own identity. I was. That. I was Hartman Rector Jr's daughter. And all of a sudden I was in. I was. Yeah, I was great because. And they. And they liked me immediately because of who my dad was.

John Dehlin [00:12:53] And that sounds great.

Lila Tueller [00:12:54] It sounds great. It can be. You can feel kind of lost, like you don't even know me, you know? You never asked me any question. You don't know. You don't know a thing. Thing about me. And yet you just adore me and think I'm great, you know? And they'd say, I love your dad. Your dad married us. Or your dad gave me a blessing. And what am I supposed to say? Yeah, cool. Like, I didn't know what to say. That's nice. I never knew what to say when people would give my dad compliments through me because I didn't teach him anything. I didn't, you know, I didn't train him.

John Dehlin [00:13:31] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:13:31] It just was A weird.

John Dehlin [00:13:32] My kids don't like that compliment at all.

Lila Tueller [00:13:34] Yeah. Oh, you're John de Linds.

John Dehlin [00:13:36] I don't think they like that at all. They just want to be. They want to succeed on their own merits.

Lila Tueller [00:13:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:41] They want to be known as individuals. They don't want to have my stuff brought up in their lives. They don't want to carry all that baggage.

Lila Tueller [00:13:49] Right.

John Dehlin [00:13:50] They just want to live in the world as them.

Lila Tueller [00:13:52] Totally get it. Yeah, I get it.

John Dehlin [00:13:54] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:13:54] And yet it probably opens some doors.

John Dehlin [00:13:57] Yeah. Yeah. Occasionally. And sometimes it shuts doors.

Lila Tueller [00:14:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:00] Who knows how many more it shuts that open?

Lila Tueller [00:14:02] Yeah. That could be the case.

John Dehlin [00:14:04] But I can just say for them, it's even amongst post Mormon people. I think it's a hard thing.

Lila Tueller [00:14:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:11] Plus always being stopped. So when you guys would go out as a family.

Lila Tueller [00:14:15] Oh, my gosh. Yeah. We could never leave anywhere without having a line of people, you know, just wait, wait, wait. I gotta talk to my poor dad. And I think he loved it. I don't think he ever. I don't think that bothered him, ever. He loved it.

John Dehlin [00:14:30] Did it bother you guys to be stopped and continually.

Lila Tueller [00:14:33] Yeah, we'd be like, here we go again. You know? Or we'd be anywhere. Just sitting at a restaurant and someone come over and sit down and just talk to my dad the whole time. And we all just be like. And yeah. So I mean, there were things like that, but on the other hand, you're kind of proud of them. You know, it was a real mixed bag.

John Dehlin [00:14:51] Yeah. Your brother just popped up in the feed and says, hi, John.

Lila Tueller [00:14:56] Oh, hi, John.

John Dehlin [00:14:57] And I think we need some restaurants in the Valley that cater to apostates. Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:15:02] There you go. Why not?

John Dehlin [00:15:04] I'm trying to think. There probably are a couple.

Lila Tueller [00:15:06] There are, sure. There's got to be somebody that's an apostate that has a restaurant.

John Dehlin [00:15:10] You know what? Once I was at the Broadway Cinema with my daughter. I think Clara and I bought like a hot dog and a. And a soda, and they just said, it's okay, you don't have to pay. What?

Lila Tueller [00:15:23] John de Lynn.

John Dehlin [00:15:23] So there's at least one friend at the Broadway Cinema.

Lila Tueller [00:15:26] There you go.

John Dehlin [00:15:27] You know what it's like to be a general authority now. I know it's like to be, you know.

Lila Tueller [00:15:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:30] To be Harbor Rector.

Lila Tueller [00:15:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:34] Yeah. I want to shout out to any restaurants that I know that are good to us anyway.

Lila Tueller [00:15:38] Well. And people brought over gifts all the time, just unsolicited. They'd stop in, they'd bring their best Produce, you know, or their. Whatever it was that they, you know, their business was. My dad was getting free stuff all the time. Bling. All the time. What do you call that? It's got a name. When you get free stuff.

Perks, Travel, and the Second Anointing

John Dehlin [00:15:57] Gifts.

Lila Tueller [00:15:59] Anyway, there's a name for it. I'll think of it in a minute.

John Dehlin [00:16:02] So, yeah, so one of the issues, you know, when you. When you look at, you know, the estate of like Woodcape Packer, Thomas S. Monson, when they die, they've got millions.

Lila Tueller [00:16:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:13] And they have multiple houses. And so I'm just wondering, that sounds like that was never your reality or did it become your reality at some point?

Lila Tueller [00:16:25] No, my dad was not good with money. He invested with crooks. He lost all his money. So when he died, literally, I think I got a couple thousand dollars. And because all of us kids, you know, there weren't very many of us. I mean there were a lot of us and there wasn't much to go around. So, yeah, we. He didn't own anything at that point. He had lost. He sold his house up on the avenues and invested that with Rick Kerber, who was a crook and lost all of it.

John Dehlin [00:16:58] Yeah. Was that he had a radio show.

Lila Tueller [00:17:03] You know, I honestly don't know enough

John Dehlin [00:17:05] about capitalist or something. But it was a. It was a real estate Ponzi scheme where he was getting. Getting all these people to invest and promising. And I had friends who were built by this guy.

Lila Tueller [00:17:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:15] Millions and millions of dollars. Ponzi scheme. And I read somewhere that your dad hid some time.

Lila Tueller [00:17:20] At some point he used my dad's name.

John Dehlin [00:17:22] He used your dad's name to get

Lila Tueller [00:17:23] people to invest all the time. Church members.

John Dehlin [00:17:25] But he didn't give your dad a cut or whatever. And your dad lost money in him. Lost all his money and a bunch of other people did as well. And that was the thing in the 70s and 80s and maybe 90s is general authorities names would be used for. For various commercial ventures and a lot of times it was by crooks and people would lose money. And at some point the church came out with like a memo saying, yeah,

Lila Tueller [00:17:45] don't do it anymore.

John Dehlin [00:17:45] Don't ever, you know, as a general authority. Never give your name to anything. As a person.

Lila Tueller [00:17:50] Don't invest. Don't invest in these. Whatever they are.

John Dehlin [00:17:53] Don't ever invest in anything. Even if a general authority's name is. So the church members got warned. But there was this culture in the 70s and 80s and maybe 90s.

Lila Tueller [00:18:00] Oh yeah, it was out of hand.

John Dehlin [00:18:02] Okay. So even though some apostles Are prophets or first presidency members. Might have gotten super wealthy. That wasn't your dad's example.

Lila Tueller [00:18:10] Not my case, not his case, but I would say that it was. We were comfortable. We had. I mean, when they say there's no paid clergy, not on the lower level, but up there, yes, they're paid and they're paid well. They're not getting filthy rich, but they usually. They already had money and then they just get more money and there's so much they don't have to pay for that's taken care of.

John Dehlin [00:18:35] So your family lives like an upper class family, even though maybe there wasn't the right bank account at the end to show for it.

Lila Tueller [00:18:43] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:18:43] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:18:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:44] Okay. All right. So did you have any interactions with general authorities personally, you know, during your early years or mid years or whatever? Did you ever get to like actually personally interact with any of the people that we'd know? Friendships or relationships or staying in your home or any stories about other.

Lila Tueller [00:19:09] I traveled with a group of them to South America with my parents when I was 13. We went to. We went on a trip and we went to Venezuela, Haiti, Brazil, Chile, Argentina.

John Dehlin [00:19:30] And so the church is paying for your entire family to travel to all these countries.

Lila Tueller [00:19:33] And my parents.

John Dehlin [00:19:34] Okay, okay.

Lila Tueller [00:19:35] So they took, they. They would take one kid along as often as they could.

John Dehlin [00:19:39] I mean, part of me might be grouchy about that. Part of me thinks, oh my gosh, they're abandoning you. It's nice that they would let you join them. So I'm feeling ambivalent about that.

Lila Tueller [00:19:47] Yeah, well, I was really glad to be able to go because usually I was left, you know, that was always how it was. And So I was 13, I got to go. And on that trip were several of the general authorities. And one of them, the prophet at the time, who was Spencer W. Kimball, was there with us. So I got to kind of be there, you know, and just listen to them talk. Thomas Monson, I think Hanks was with us and it was just nice because you get to be more personable and see them on a real. On the real, you know, the real side of them. And I already knew my dad was just a normal guy. He wasn't anything, you know, I mean, he was a great guy, he was a wonderful guy, but he was just a person with faults and flaws. And I got to see they were too, you know.

John Dehlin [00:20:36] So anything you remember sticking out just about their, you know, personalities or behaviors?

Lila Tueller [00:20:43] Not nothing that I would say is really noteworthy, just that they were people, you know, they drank soda they drank caffeinated soda or, you know, they. They snored. I don't know. They were just normal guys, you know, with normal lives. They were normal people.

John Dehlin [00:21:05] But no, you know, you hear like, oh, Thomas S. Monson was mean to the staff.

Lila Tueller [00:21:09] You know, I heard that, but I never saw that.

John Dehlin [00:21:11] You didn't see anything? Any of that sort of thing?

Lila Tueller [00:21:13] I never saw anything negative.

John Dehlin [00:21:17] Paul Dunn. Did you ever run into Paul Dunn?

Lila Tueller [00:21:19] We met. I don't remember. He didn't really know me from Adam. I mean, I was just, you know, Harmon Rutger Junior's daughter.

John Dehlin [00:21:26] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:21:26] So we didn't really have an intimate relationship at all.

John Dehlin [00:21:29] Okay. Any idea if your dad received the second anointing?

Lila Tueller [00:21:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:36] Guess what.

Lila Tueller [00:21:37] He did. And he told us about it.

John Dehlin [00:21:40] Okay, so tell us all about that.

Lila Tueller [00:21:41] Well, see, he. I think he wasn't supposed to talk about it, but like I said, some rules he kept, some rules he didn't and he taught. He talked about that.

John Dehlin [00:21:48] What did he tell you? Tell us, because there are listeners who don't know what that is. Right, so tell the whole story.

Lila Tueller [00:21:52] Okay, so I didn't know what it was until he told us about it one time. And I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:21:58] Are you a teen at this time? An adult?

Lila Tueller [00:22:00] I would have been a teenager. Okay, so he said that, you know, there is this other thing. It's called the second Anointing, and it's also called the More Sure Witness of the Sin Spirit. And he said that. And it's got another name that I'm not thinking of right now, but he

John Dehlin [00:22:18] said that second comforter, maybe?

Lila Tueller [00:22:20] Yeah, something like that. Second anointing. Calling and calling.

John Dehlin [00:22:24] Electromatry.

Lila Tueller [00:22:25] That's it.

John Dehlin [00:22:25] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:22:25] So he said. He said that when they were called, that they had this extra, you know, it's like part of the things that they do at the temple. And in addition to the endowment, there's this other thing that they do up in the Holy of Holies. All only certain people. And he said it's not just the Brethren. He said all the Brethren have had it, but other people who are faithful members who have proven themselves over time. Usually they're older, they've shown dedication over years to the Gospel and that they could be trusted, that they will have, you know, be called to do this. And he said, probably your father in law. So, you know, I was thinking about. My father in law had served many mission presidencies and that he probably had been. So he said what they do is they bring you into the, you know, the upper chamber. And they. It's a. It's a ceremony, kind of like the endowment, only it's between the husband and the wife and the prophet.

John Dehlin [00:23:28] One of the apostles or the prophet, in his case, it was the prophet.

Lila Tueller [00:23:31] I don't remember for sure. I better not say.

John Dehlin [00:23:34] No, that's fine. This is kind of vague, but you remembered the prophet.

Lila Tueller [00:23:37] I remembered the problem.

John Dehlin [00:23:37] That would make sense if it's Salt Lake. Right.

Lila Tueller [00:23:39] But I don't. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:40] And if it's Ga. Maybe it's the

Lila Tueller [00:23:42] problem if he's in town.

John Dehlin [00:23:43] Right.

Lila Tueller [00:23:44] So. And it was this. And he didn't say much about it, except that one of the parts of it was my mother washed his feet and then they. He would wash the other apostles feet or something like that. So there was washing of the feet involved.

John Dehlin [00:24:00] If I'm remembering what both Tom Phillips and Hans Matzon and Brigitte Mattson said, the officiator, which is one of the apostles or the first presidency, washes the feet of the.

Lila Tueller [00:24:14] The new person.

John Dehlin [00:24:15] The couple.

Lila Tueller [00:24:17] Okay, okay. The couple.

John Dehlin [00:24:19] I don't know actually. I don't know if the apostle would have the wife. I don't know. But I know that if I understand it right, it's the apostle or prophet washing them. Right. And then they go into a room.

Lila Tueller [00:24:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:34] And I think

Lila Tueller [00:24:37] she washes his feet. She washed his feet, but not the other way around.

John Dehlin [00:24:40] Not the other way around.

Lila Tueller [00:24:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:42] Did she give him. Lay her hands on his head and give him a blessing or something?

Lila Tueller [00:24:46] I didn't hear that part.

John Dehlin [00:24:47] You didn't hear that part. Okay. I don't mean to be your story. I'm not trying to implant memory.

Lila Tueller [00:24:52] No, no, no, no, it's okay. Cause I won't go there if it's something I don't remember. That's all I remember. But I do remember also him saying the important part of it was that once you've had it, you can't commit any sin. I mean, you can commit all kinds of sins, but you're not held accountable. Like you. You kind of get a free pass unless you.

John Dehlin [00:25:15] To the celestial kingdom.

Lila Tueller [00:25:16] Right. You are.

John Dehlin [00:25:17] To exaltation.

Lila Tueller [00:25:18] To exaltation it is. Sure.

John Dehlin [00:25:20] You're a God.

Lila Tueller [00:25:21] You are there.

John Dehlin [00:25:22] You're a God.

Lila Tueller [00:25:22] You can do all kinds of stuff. You can cheat on your taxes, you can cheat on your wife, you can lie, you can. It doesn't matter what you do. Aside from murder. And I thought he said denying the Holy Spirit. I thought there were two of them.

John Dehlin [00:25:39] That would make sense.

Lila Tueller [00:25:40] Murder, innocent blood, and then denying the Holy Spirit.

John Dehlin [00:25:43] Murder's okay, just not right.

Lila Tueller [00:25:45] So murder's okay because he, you know, I'm sure during the war he might have, you know, dropped a couple of bombs on a couple people. But, you know, there are certain aspects of murder, like if you're in war or self defense or something like that, that would be okay. So that was what we were told. So basically what he was saying is, I can do no wrong.

John Dehlin [00:26:06] No matter what I do, that will affect his salvation and his exaltation.

Lila Tueller [00:26:13] But he took it. He took it further. He didn't just say, that will affect his. He said he can do no wrong and that he was always right. Always right. So he would never apologize for anything he ever did. Never. I never heard him say he was sorry to my mom. He did, but not us kids. So he could act horribly. And many times he did. And there were things that he did that I would think, you know, I'd say that's wrong. And I would call him out and he would say, no, I've had my second anointing.

John Dehlin [00:26:48] Like what types of things?

Lila Tueller [00:26:51] I called him out on his views on certain things. Like he had back in the. I don't know if you know about the conference talk that he gave, which was about.

John Dehlin [00:27:02] Talk about that.

Lila Tueller [00:27:02] Homosexuals.

John Dehlin [00:27:03] Yeah, that is. He's kind of famous for that.

Lila Tueller [00:27:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:05] Talk about that.

Lila Tueller [00:27:06] Okay, so. And RFM wasn't aware of this, but back in. Now, I don't remember the date. I want to say 79.

John Dehlin [00:27:14] Yeah, 79 is the date that I remember, but I'll look it up while you're talking.

Lila Tueller [00:27:18] Yeah, he did a conference talk, and he was quoting other people. He's quoting Kimball from Miracle of Forgiveness. He wasn't really saying anything that was rogue, but he said that, in essence, homosexuality was a sin. It was a choice.

John Dehlin [00:27:36] Let's see. Let me read this. I'm sorry. In his 1981 General Conference address, Rector taught, quote, if children have a happy family experience, they. They will not want to be homosexuals, which I am sure is an acquired addiction, just as drugs, alcohol and pornography are.

Lila Tueller [00:27:55] Whoa.

John Dehlin [00:27:55] Yeah, but, I mean, that's Kimball and Miracle Forgiveness.

Lila Tueller [00:27:59] That's what was being said.

John Dehlin [00:27:59] Like, he would have just learned that. And it probably would have been what prominent conservative psychologists would say that right now.

Lila Tueller [00:28:06] Oh, yeah. Well, and that, too.

John Dehlin [00:28:08] So, I mean, he wasn't just some homophobic monster that was amongst conservative crowds. The types of things people thought and believed in and out of the church. So.

Lila Tueller [00:28:17] Right.

John Dehlin [00:28:17] So he gave that talk.

Lila Tueller [00:28:19] Yeah. And, you know, I was young. What did you say 81? Yeah, that's the year I got married, So I was 18.

John Dehlin [00:28:27] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:28:27] Young girl. And I, you know, I didn't agree.

John Dehlin [00:28:31] You didn't like that?

Lila Tueller [00:28:32] No.

John Dehlin [00:28:33] Why weren't you on board with that?

Lila Tueller [00:28:34] I just didn't agree. I didn't think it was right.

John Dehlin [00:28:36] Weren't you Mormon?

Lila Tueller [00:28:37] I was Mormon. I must have been.

John Dehlin [00:28:40] And this is pre Magic Johnson, so, I mean, it's not like, right the. You know, this is like way before aids, you know, I just felt like

Lila Tueller [00:28:48] he was being unfair and harsh.

John Dehlin [00:28:50] Had you known gay kids or gay lesbians? I mean, I guess the lesbians you in high school?

Lila Tueller [00:28:56] I knew some, and I thought they were nice. They were nice people. I didn't. I don't want to say. I never thought that it was a choice. I thought they were probably born like that because I would hear them, they'd say, hey, I've been like this as long as I can remember. Like, since I was a kid. I knew I was different. And so I think, well, why would anyone choose it anyway? Number one, they're just going to get shunned and treated like crap. Why would anyone choose that? So it must have been something that they were born with. And also, I felt like, you know, it's something that I just couldn't. I couldn't equate it. It felt to me like it was something they couldn't help, like skin color. I didn't think it was something that they could help. It was just in them. So for my dad to come out and say that was. I felt like it was harsh. And, you know, back then, we didn't have transcripts you could just go read. I heard it. I was sitting there, I heard it, and I was like, whoa, what did he just say? You know, and then we waited for the, you know, the ensign to come out with it in it, and it had been redacted, so it wasn't there. And I'm like, where to go?

John Dehlin [00:30:16] Where to go? Why would they have redacted that back then? Back then. This is before the.

Lila Tueller [00:30:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:21] You know, modern politically correct stuff or Post Ellen or whatever. You know, back then, I would imagine everybody would have been on board.

Lila Tueller [00:30:29] Right. Well, it turns out that the New York Times ran a piece on it, like, right after, like the next day and said, mormon, prominent Mormon, you know, whatever they called him, says, you know, this. And they quoted it. And it was. It was, you know, bad press for the church. So that's what I think. I think they went in and just took it right out right then.

John Dehlin [00:30:53] And people don't know that. The church has done that several times.

Lila Tueller [00:30:56] Right.

John Dehlin [00:30:56] Including with the. Richard. Richard.

Lila Tueller [00:30:58] Richard Pullman. Ronald Pullman.

John Dehlin [00:31:00] Ronald. Ronald Pullman.

Lila Tueller [00:31:02] Where he gave, like, he had to do the whole thing.

John Dehlin [00:31:03] A really progressive speech.

Lila Tueller [00:31:05] Yeah. About the church. Not necessarily like, not the church, but the gospel is what we need to put our faith in, not the church. And they were like.

John Dehlin [00:31:12] And they had him rewrite it. They had to re record it as if it were the actual talk given

Lila Tueller [00:31:20] because a laugh track behind.

John Dehlin [00:31:22] Or they had a cough track behind it because they would create these VHS tapes. Hey, hey, Millennials. This is stuff. You'll have no idea what I'm talking.

Lila Tueller [00:31:30] Right.

John Dehlin [00:31:31] They would assemble all the general conference talks for a given general conference onto a VHS tape and send them out. So the people in the wardhouses all around the world or in foreign languages would be able to watch their own conference if they missed it. So they needed the talk, but they couldn't use the one he gave. And so they had him rerecord it afterwards. And again, they included, like cough tracks to make it sound authentic because they didn't want this talk going out to the public. And nowadays the church does stuff like that all the time. But it was a big deal when I learned about that at byu. Yeah. So your dad's was changed. Did he get in trouble? Did you get the backstory on that? I didn't.

Father's Views on Homosexuality, Race, and the Priesthood Ban

Lila Tueller [00:32:10] He didn't ever. He didn't seem to care. The feeling I got from him when I, you know, mentioned it to him, I said, hey, you said some stuff in conference. I heard you say it. And then they took it out. What's up with that? You know, what happened? And he was like, oh, yeah, they do that kind of thing. You know, he just kind of rolled it off like it was nothing. And I said, is that how you really feel? Do you really feel like that? And he said. He said, I absolutely. That's exactly what I feel. I said. I said what I felt. I said what the spirit told me to say. And I didn't say anything wrong. I think that I was absolutely right. They had to take it out. He said, they just do that. So he didn't. I don't if he felt bad about it. I never got that from him.

John Dehlin [00:32:59] And you were telling the story on the tail end of talking about the second anointing and how he could never be wrong.

Lila Tueller [00:33:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:04] So would this have been an instance where he would have acted in that way?

Lila Tueller [00:33:07] He used that. In fact, he would say, if there was an argument. He would pull that out of the bag and say, hey, I've had my second anointing. Really? Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:16] Not joking.

Lila Tueller [00:33:17] Not joking. He would use that. So that ended the discussion. There was no further discussion. I've had my second anointing. So you're like. And I mean, you can't pull that

John Dehlin [00:33:28] on your mom because she had a two.

Lila Tueller [00:33:30] Right, Right. She'd be like, as kids, we just roll our eyes and be like, are you kidding me? You're not supposed to talk about this. You're not.

John Dehlin [00:33:38] Oh, you knew. They weren't supposed to.

Lila Tueller [00:33:39] We knew. Yeah. He told us. He said we're not, we don't, we don't talk about this. I don't want you to repeat this. You know, this is all, you know, this is secret, sacred stuff. And. But so I knew he wasn't supposed to be using it like that. And that just would infuriate me. You know, it was like pulling the priesthood trump card, only it's worse.

John Dehlin [00:33:58] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:33:59] Now it's. I can't do anything wrong, which just isn't. That's not even the way that it was meant.

John Dehlin [00:34:04] Yeah, right. I've heard some rumors that some people have interpreted the second anointing to mean that like the first, second or third generation of the children are also saved with the couple. Have you ever heard anything like that? Okay, that was not.

Lila Tueller [00:34:20] Okay, so that doesn't mean it's not true.

John Dehlin [00:34:21] I could be making that up or it could have been false rumor. But you never heard anything like that.

Lila Tueller [00:34:26] Okay, no, but that sounds good.

John Dehlin [00:34:29] You're good now. Because occasionally children or grandchildren are found to be doing really horrible things and they don't get excommunicated. And so people theorize. Maybe it's because of that. It's because of that they can't excommunicate them because they're parents got the second running. I don't know.

Lila Tueller [00:34:46] I don't know. I tend to think it's more about reputation than anything.

John Dehlin [00:34:50] Okay, okay, okay. So I imagine that there were some important events in Mormon history that your dad was either involved in or was around to see happen. One is obviously the blacks receiving the priesthood in 78. Let's talk about that. There's Mark Hoffman, there's the sunstone stuff, and I don't know what else, but let's just go through each one in chronological order. Is there anything before 78, kind of a big thing happening in the church that.

Lila Tueller [00:35:23] Nothing that really.

John Dehlin [00:35:24] That sticks out for you?

Lila Tueller [00:35:25] Yeah, not that I can think of.

John Dehlin [00:35:27] I mean, like the ERA I guess would have happened.

Lila Tueller [00:35:29] Oh yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:30] Was your dad involved in the ERA at all or fighting against it? Did he have an opinion about it? We should mention that like yesterday the IRA in the United States was finally received. I don't know if it's 2/3 or 3/4. Virginia ratified it and now is that right? But that doesn't mean the ERA is because, you know, the, the statute of limitations or whatever expired like back in 82. But symbolically, we just want to celebrate the fact that at least symbolically speaking, the sufficient number of states have now ratified the ERA such that if the statute of limitations hadn't expired, the ERA would have been ratified. And congratulations to Virginia for being the state that made that happen. But obviously the church fought the ERA back in the day and was a major force in killing it. Do you remember his view on the era?

Lila Tueller [00:36:16] I don't remember that. All I remember is being in the conference center or the tabernacle when conference was in the session where the women stood up and said, and they wouldn't. What do you do when you're sustain? Sustained. They wouldn't sustain the first presidency because of the era. And they shouted that out, you know, they said women's rights for era. And they had little signs. And then these little men ran around and escorted them out. I was there when that happened.

John Dehlin [00:36:45] You were there?

Lila Tueller [00:36:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:46] And what would your dad or your family, what did they think about it? What did you think about it?

Lila Tueller [00:36:51] My dad, I don't remember. He's the type that would have just rolled his eyes, you know, he just would have said, why do they, what do they want the priesthood for? What do they think they're going to get? How's that going to make their lives any better? Let me tell you, it's not that easy. You don't want to have the priesthood. That was kind of his. Why can't you be happy with what the Lord gave you? In my opinion, you know, back then I had, I had kind of. I felt like a second class citizen as a woman because I'd been through the temple before they made the changes.

John Dehlin [00:37:27] So the death oath, the slitting of the throat, the disemboweling, cutting out of

Lila Tueller [00:37:31] the tongue, the talking, the vowing to

John Dehlin [00:37:34] obey, where the woman had to obey the husband.

Lila Tueller [00:37:37] Right? All of that.

John Dehlin [00:37:38] Was it obey before hearken first?

Lila Tueller [00:37:40] It was obey.

John Dehlin [00:37:40] Okay. It was obey before.

Lila Tueller [00:37:41] Obey him as he rules in righteousness. So I would think, well, I get to decide if it's righteous or, you know, that's the One thing I could take.

John Dehlin [00:37:49] There's a caveat.

Lila Tueller [00:37:50] Yeah. Interpreted. But yeah, you had to say those words or bow your head and say yes. Right. And so I was angry about that. I did not like that really, at all. I would bow my head and say no.

John Dehlin [00:38:00] Really? That's so rebellious.

Lila Tueller [00:38:03] I know. Isn't that awful? I thought that lightning would strike. It never did. I would just be like, no, I did not like that part. So I had issues with it. I didn't like the fact that my dad was always escorted up to the. Behind the podium whenever we went to a church outside of our own ward. Well, even if we were in our own ward, if my dad was in attendance, he got up on the podium. My mom, no, she sat down on the lowly benches with the kids, but my dad was up on the podium, behind the podium. And the same on the stand and the same whenever we traveled anywhere, same thing. And I used to think that's so unfair. Why is my mom, why isn't she getting, you know, she, she does just as much, if not more work than he does. And it just didn't seem fair. All these men sitting up there and all the wives were off to the side. We're talking about conference, you know, all these men and then the wives were over here in the shadows. Just, I don't know, it bothered me. And yet we're supposed to be, you know, partners and we need each other to get in the celestial kingdom. And man is not without the woman and woman. But the men were getting all the limelight. So I did have issues with it. I wasn't quite to the point where I was ready to jump on the ERA bandwagon. I was too busy being married and raising kids to really get involved.

John Dehlin [00:39:30] Okay, okay.

Lila Tueller [00:39:31] But I had my thoughts.

John Dehlin [00:39:32] Sure.

Lila Tueller [00:39:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:34] And were you. And we'll go get to your beliefs, but were you a believer the whole time? Like you were a little bit, I want to say, mouthy from your dad's perspective. Rebellious.

Lila Tueller [00:39:43] Or like rebellious.

John Dehlin [00:39:44] What was the word he said? You said it earlier.

Lila Tueller [00:39:46] Impudent.

John Dehlin [00:39:46] Impudent. But in your mind, were you just being independent but also an orthodox believer?

Lila Tueller [00:39:52] I thought that I was an open minded. Orthodox. I didn't ever use the word orthodox.

John Dehlin [00:39:58] Yeah, that's a Jewish thing.

Lila Tueller [00:39:59] But yeah, I thought that I was a mainstream Mormon with a very open mind.

John Dehlin [00:40:05] Okay, you're an open minded mainstream Mormon.

Lila Tueller [00:40:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:09] Okay. Talk about your dad's role in the blacks in the priesthood thing. Did he believe in it? Did he, did he write about it? You Know, was he involved in that?

Lila Tueller [00:40:19] Okay, so I don't know that he had anything to. I don't know what part he played behind the scenes. I do know that he. Okay, so we had a friend who was a black guy that came from. I mean, he lived back east with us, and then he moved to Utah, went to byu. And he was a friend of our families, and he was at our house quite often, and an intelligent, you know, cool guy. So he came over one day and I wasn't there. But I remember my mom told the story later that he came over to the house and he was upset and he was crying and he was saying, you know, I keep all the commandments. I really try, you know, I do everything I can to try to be an honest, faithful member. Why can't I have the priesthood? You know, I want. I'm getting married. I can't get married in the temple. Why? What have I done wrong? Why? I didn't, you know, I don't know anything about what Cain did. Why am I being punished? And so my mom says, he came in, my dad said, okay, let's talk about this. Let's find out what the Lord wants to tell you about this. Takes him into his office and gives him a blessing. And my mom came in, she wanted to listen.

John Dehlin [00:41:29] So. As if your dad channeled the mind and will of God.

Lila Tueller [00:41:32] Oh, yeah, because he could do that just like that. So. And he was doing it all the time. I mean, people were coming to our house all the time, and he would give them blessings on the spot and just, you know, tell them what the Lord wanted to tell him. So he gives the guy a blessing and he says, I promise you that within a year's time, you will have the priesthood. My mom said her jaw dropped and she was like, what? You know, so when the guy leaves, she was like, hartman, what did you just do? You know, you don't know that's going to happen. How can you promise him that? And my dad said something like, well, that's what the Spirit told me. You know, that's. I just said what the Spirit told me. And lo and behold, the revelation, you know, came. And the blacks got the priesthood, and he got the priesthood. And it was well before the year was out. And so he was all, you know, Hartman, Rector Jr. Told me this, you know, and promised me this. And he wrote a book and about it, it's called, I forget now, Black and Me, or anyway, he wrote some kind of book and talked about it. And so my dad was like, all proud but then, you know, I thought he knew. He knew what was going on.

John Dehlin [00:42:50] Like he knew that that was coming down the road.

Lila Tueller [00:42:52] They were talking. Yeah, they'd been talking about it. They had Thursday meetings every Thursday up in the upper chamber with all the Brethren, and they would fast every Thursday. That was just a ritual. And they would talk about these things. And I know that, you know, he knew. He knew or he would never have said that. So.

John Dehlin [00:43:11] So he gave the impression that he was receiving prophecy and revelation, as, you

Lila Tueller [00:43:18] know, inside of our insider garb, like RFM said, insider blessing, like insider training, trading.

John Dehlin [00:43:24] So that some would say that's really fraudulent, deceptive and dishonest.

Lila Tueller [00:43:29] Right.

John Dehlin [00:43:30] Do you think of your dad that way?

Lila Tueller [00:43:32] I think he was. He'd take an opportunity. He was a opportunist. Like, if there was a. If it. If it was a way to increase the faith of somebody, it didn't necessarily have to be true. He could elaborate, he could add flourishes if it was going to help somebody's faith. I think that that's the way he saw it. Just like Paul Dunn, you know.

John Dehlin [00:43:58] So that was a cultural thing. That wasn't just Paul Dunn?

Lila Tueller [00:44:02] I think it was. Yeah. I think it was being done.

John Dehlin [00:44:04] If it promotes regular. Really?

Lila Tueller [00:44:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:06] What do you mean?

Lila Tueller [00:44:07] I don't think those two are the only ones that did it. I think Thomas Monson did it, too. I think this is my opinion, but take it for what it's worth. I think that a lot of the stories, the faith promoting, stories that were being told at the time, they didn't feel bad about adding flourishes or embellishing if it was going to increase the faith of the listener. I don't think they were very dedicated to the actual truth because my dad elaborated on things that I already knew were not true. I mean, I would be like, I didn't remember that part, dad. You know what I mean? So he would kind of add things in here and there and. And not. I don't think he did it maliciously at all. It was just, you know, maybe we all do that to, you know, an extent sometimes to plead our case a little bit or whatever. So, yeah. But I think it was acceptable within the Brethren.

John Dehlin [00:45:00] And yet your dad was a sincere believer.

Lila Tueller [00:45:03] Definitely.

John Dehlin [00:45:03] So there must have been some weird way for them to either be they justified it. Either justified or memory can be weird. I mean, if you study Elizabeth Lofton's research, people end up remembering all sorts of things they never did, but they remember themselves doing it, even though they may not have been in the room or there. So memory can just be weird and

Lila Tueller [00:45:24] flawed and you can, you can talk yourself into things to say it so many times if you finally end up believing it. But it was actually, actually factual, right? Yeah. So it could be a mix of that.

John Dehlin [00:45:37] Okay. But yeah. Did he ever like wink and say, hey, if it, if it saves a soul, it's okay. Did he ever like actually try and explain to you the justification of it?

Lila Tueller [00:45:47] No, but he did say this. He said, he quoted and it must be. I don't know where it is. Somewhere it says that if you save a soul, it hideth a multitude of sins. I think it was Joseph Smith that said that and I'm not sure where it is, but if you. Yeah, that it hides a multitude of sins. And so I think my dad had this ongoing idea in his head that being a missionary and getting people to be baptized was going to cover a lot of sins. So yeah, I think he, he played that little game.

John Dehlin [00:46:22] Okay, so when the blacks. So did he believe in the racist teachings that blacks had been less valiant than the pre existence and that's why they were black?

Lila Tueller [00:46:31] And I think, I don't remember him ever denying that he loved black people. He was not a racist in the classic term sense of the.

John Dehlin [00:46:40] In terms of being mean to them.

Lila Tueller [00:46:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:43] Speaking badly about them or generalizing.

Lila Tueller [00:46:46] Right.

John Dehlin [00:46:47] In that sense, marginalizing.

Lila Tueller [00:46:48] No, he was very kind. He loved. He had lots of friends that were colors, you know, different colors than he was, different races. He wasn't a racist man. He taught us to love everyone. You know, in his mind everyone was a child of God. But I do think that he might have subscribed to the, the common philosophy at the time, you know, because that's what we were told. Hey, you know, this isn't our doing. We didn't decide this. It's God. God said, you know, they have the mark of Cain and they're descendants of Cain. And it's because they came through that bloodline because of something they did or didn't do in the pre existence. They were fence sitters. They were not less valiant. And I think that's what he believed. I think he, I mean, and there was that school of thought. There was also the school of thought that they. No, that. I mean that all kind of ties together. I was going to say they had the dark skin as a curse, but that's all part of the same idea.

John Dehlin [00:47:55] There's always this idea that America, you know, that the members weren't, weren't ready, that it was our Problem. It was a cultural thing.

Lila Tueller [00:48:02] They weren't spiritually ready or. Yeah, we weren't.

John Dehlin [00:48:05] We were racist. And so the Lord couldn't do it because we're. We're bad.

Lila Tueller [00:48:08] We weren't ready.

John Dehlin [00:48:09] Yeah. Anyway, so when they got it, was he happy? He was great.

Lila Tueller [00:48:14] He was happy.

John Dehlin [00:48:14] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:48:15] Yeah. I mean, his prophecy came true, right? So, yeah, he felt vindicated and he

John Dehlin [00:48:22] said he loved everyone, so.

Lila Tueller [00:48:24] Yeah, he really did. He had friends all different races. Like, he didn't seem to care about that.

John Dehlin [00:48:32] Any other stories around blacks in the priesthood related to your dad worth mentioning?

Lila Tueller [00:48:36] I mean, that was probably the main one. I had my own issues with it because when we lived in Florida, there were a lot of black people in my school. I lived in Tallahassee. It was very. We had an integrated school. And so I was. I had friends that were black and white. I had both. And then when we moved back to Salt Lake, it's all predominantly Caucasian. Right. At the time, there weren't. We didn't have as many Latin Latinos here. When I was young, it was mostly white people here. But I did have some friends in school. There was a family that were. That were black. And I became friends with them, with some of them, and they were not members of the church. And I remember, you know, later wanting to share the Book of Mormon with them. And then I thought, you know, I remembered there's stuff in there that's racist. And it never. Well, I mean, it occurred to me, but not ever that poignantly until I was ready to share it with someone who was black. And then I was like, what are they going to say when they read that part about, you know, black skin being a curse or dark skin being a curse, or white and delightsome? White and delightsome, Dark and loathsome? You know, I mean, those are pretty harsh. That's very racist. You can't. If the Book of Mormon was published right now, you know, it would be. It would be branded a racist book, I think. I mean, there's just some. And I've always thought, you know, anyway, I always. It bothered me, but not. Not as near as much until I got ready to do that and share it. And then I realized, now I can't share that book with them. I'd have to tear that page out or, like, black it out or white it out or something. Get rid of those words. And then I realized that that's part of our culture. It's part of our Mormon culture. It's in us. It is. Even if you are not Considered a race, you don't consider yourself racist. You're going to look at a person with dark skin and what are you going to think? You're either going to think they were cursed, they're less righteous. Somehow in the pre existence, they're not quite up to par. They weren't, you know, on the good side, so they came down as black. That's. That's racist.

John Dehlin [00:51:04] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:51:05] You know, so I mean, we. I had to look at that. I had to really look at myself and say, do I think that? Have I ever really believed that? And if I have, why did I buy that? I knew better. You know, I knew that wasn't right to think that way. And if I ever thought it, you know, I wanted to get rid of. I want to root that out of myself because I know that's not fair and it's not right. I knew God loves all his children. Why would he do that? So. And then I also found dark skin to be more attractive anyway. I just always have, I've always thought it was more attractive. I've got lily white German skin and I'm always trying to get a tan. Right. So I don't know, it was just kind of this weird paradox in my head and I thought, you know, they're beautiful people and they have a beautiful culture and there's no reason why they should be denied anything that we get, you know, based on their skin color, which they can't change. It's not their fault. And they're brilliant. I mean, they're just, if they're educated, they're just as smart as any white person. They're, you know, they have talents, they have gifts, they're just like we do. So, yeah, I realized all of that and I think when they got the priesthood, it became, it felt better to be a Mormon. For me, it was like, okay, phew, got rid of that ugly stain. But it's still in our scriptures.

John Dehlin [00:52:34] Yeah, it's still in the Book of Mormon.

Lila Tueller [00:52:36] So why haven't they taken that out? You know, why can't they just take those words out and, you know, because it's really racist. So I don't know. I don't know what to do about that. There's, I mean, I can't share the book and I don't now I don't even believe it. So.

John Dehlin [00:52:49] Right. We'll get there.

Lila Tueller [00:52:50] Yeah.

Polygamy, the Mark Hofmann Forgeries, and Faith Healing

John Dehlin [00:52:50] Your brother commented that dad was also a. Okay with polygamy.

Lila Tueller [00:52:55] Oh, yeah, he did say that, huh? He was okay with it. And he had my mom convinced too. Like she I complained about polygamy once, and I said it was a mistake, and my mom corrected me. She said, it was not a mistake. It was. How do you think. You know, 90% of the church members got here. They came through polygamous families, and this is how the church was built up, and we needed that. Even though it was difficult, we needed it. And she said, you know, look at men. They are built. They are polygamous. They are not satisfied with one woman. They are polygamous humans. And she said, and females, you know, we're. We're built to receive. Look at us. How our bodies, our anatomy. We're built to receive. The men are built to give it. This is my mom speaking. And she said, so they have this need to give it. And I'm like, what? Whoa. And I said, so why aren't we doing it now then? You know? And she said, well, it's not necessary now. We don't need it now. But, you know, eventually we will live the law of polygamy. And, I mean, now we, you know, our leaders, our top leaders are polygamists.

John Dehlin [00:54:07] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:54:08] Eternal polygamists.

John Dehlin [00:54:08] Russell Nelson's a polygamist. Donnelly, she's a polygamist. In that they're sealed eternally to multiple spouses, multiple women.

Lila Tueller [00:54:16] Yeah. And we're all fine with that, somehow. Or we were. Some of us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my dad. Yeah, my dad thought that that was great.

John Dehlin [00:54:24] Thank you, John Rector, for chiming in. You feel free to add anything that you want to share. Okay. So is the next historical thing to talk about, the Mark Hoffman. The Mark Hoffman thing?

Lila Tueller [00:54:44] Yeah, probably.

John Dehlin [00:54:45] So talk about what you remember about Mark Hoffman, would you? Were you living in Salt Lake when the.

Lila Tueller [00:54:50] I think I was married down in Provo.

John Dehlin [00:54:52] Okay, so you're living in. Yeah, in. Along the Wasatch front when the bombs go off.

Lila Tueller [00:54:57] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:58] And people die.

Lila Tueller [00:55:00] I remember the story. I remember what was going on. My oldest brother, Kirk, was kind of involved with Christensen. I forget his name. Steve. I want to say.

John Dehlin [00:55:11] Steve Christensen. That sounds right.

Lila Tueller [00:55:14] They work together. Mark Hoffman, at first was, like, kind of this really cool character that was coming up with all these amazing documents and where to get them, and. Wow. I mean, there was a lot of intrigue. There was a lot of gossip going on because the church didn't have these documents, and they're buying them, and they're, like, not afraid to, like, pay a lot of money for them and with

John Dehlin [00:55:39] the intent of hiding them.

Lila Tueller [00:55:40] To hide them.

John Dehlin [00:55:41] Right, right.

Lila Tueller [00:55:42] They wanted to squirrel them away before

John Dehlin [00:55:44] these things Went public because Hoffman was producing these documents that were embarrassing, that

Lila Tueller [00:55:48] would claim very embarrassing.

John Dehlin [00:55:50] Elsa Smith talked to a white salamander.

Lila Tueller [00:55:51] Salamander.

John Dehlin [00:55:52] All sorts of weird things. Some were normal, to throw them off the trail. And then some were super embarrassed.

Lila Tueller [00:55:58] Weird stuff.

John Dehlin [00:55:58] Yeah. And some not so weird, considering the context. True.

Lila Tueller [00:56:03] Because there had been other stories about a. Didn't Joseph Smith or somebody said. Maybe it was Whitmer. Somebody said that a spirit appeared as a frog or a toad.

John Dehlin [00:56:15] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:56:16] And then became a man.

John Dehlin [00:56:17] Yeah, there was some. It was based on something.

Lila Tueller [00:56:20] Yeah. So there was a precedent there that he was kind of elaborating on.

John Dehlin [00:56:23] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:56:24] I mean, he was a smart guy.

John Dehlin [00:56:25] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:56:26] Not quite smart enough because he was pretty brilliant.

John Dehlin [00:56:28] Yeah. Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:56:29] Getting blown up by his own bomb. Right. But yeah, there was all that going on. And my brothers, my two older brothers, John and Daniel or Kirk and Daniel, were very involved in all of that. And they were talking about it at my parents house. So we would go up on Sunday for dinner every week and we'd get together. And Kirk was living here in the valley and Dan. Dan was mixed in with sunstone at the time. So this stuff was really hot, really exciting. They were talking about it and they talk for hours, all night long. And I'd be loitering, loitering about, trying to listen in, you know, and trying to hear whatever I could. And next thing you know, people are being blown up by these bombs that, you know, some mysterious person is sending to their houses. And turns out one of them is this guy that my brother worked with and then didn't. His wife or somebody's wife died.

John Dehlin [00:57:25] Carries. Yeah. Shirts, I think, but. Yeah, I'm rusty on sheets, Gary Sheets. I'm rusty on names.

Lila Tueller [00:57:32] Yeah. Somebody died. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:33] It was meant for. It was meant for him, but she got it and so two people died.

Lila Tueller [00:57:37] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was awful. I don't. I think these were people who were onto him. Kind of knew something was up and he had to get rid of them. So this guy eventually ends up being put in prison, even though, I mean, he was injured by his own bob, but he wasn't killed. So he gets put in prison. And at the time, I think it was Kimball who paid, who bought. Was it Kimball or Hinckley?

John Dehlin [00:58:05] Hinckley was involved.

Lila Tueller [00:58:06] I want to say Hinckley.

John Dehlin [00:58:08] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:58:08] He's. He was one of them that, you know, put out a lot of money from the church to buy these forgeries.

John Dehlin [00:58:13] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:58:14] Well, what money was it? Let's think. What was it? Probably tithing money or fast offering money or some kind of donation money. So that was disturbing, that they're buying these documents that are forgeries, you know, end up being forgeries with our money, you know, our tithing money, and my dad.

John Dehlin [00:58:33] And if they didn't have the spirit of discernment.

Lila Tueller [00:58:35] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:58:36] To know that they were fake.

Lila Tueller [00:58:37] Right.

John Dehlin [00:58:37] And to know that they were dealing with a future murderer.

Lila Tueller [00:58:40] Right.

John Dehlin [00:58:40] Like, if there was ever a time for divine revelation and discernment, it would have been when they're dealing with a forger and a murderer. And, you know, and the Lord could have told them ahead of time, saved a couple lives and saved the church some money and a huge international scandal.

Lila Tueller [00:58:58] Scandal.

John Dehlin [00:58:59] And there are these pictures of, you know, Mark Hoffman showing the documents to all these general authorities or whatever, and they're all standing there, standing around. Totally.

Lila Tueller [00:59:09] Yeah. So, yeah, that kind of blew the. The whole theory of, you know, the discernment and the spirit having the spirit to tell them what was right or wrong and guiding them. I mean, there was none of that present, clearly. So then you start, you know, these are. These are the kind of things that I like to say. Well, for me, they were things that I would look at and go, hmm, and put them up on the shelf. Because it wasn't enough for me to say this whole thing's baloney and walk away. But it was something. And I would look at that and go, you know, why? How did that happen? That doesn't make sense. That doesn't fit the puzzle. So I'm gonna put that up here and I'm gonna deal with that later. Am I covering the camera when I do that? And I'm gonna come back to that someday. Or I'm going to ask God, you know, when I have my interview with God, I'm going to say, what about that? And so I would kind of put those things aside. And I think a lot of people. I know a lot of people have done that. You know, they have their proverbial shelf that they're loading up with over time. So that was one also. The blacks in the priesthood was another.

John Dehlin [01:00:19] Did you ask your dad about the Mark Hoffman thing? Did he talk about it?

Lila Tueller [01:00:22] Yeah, he talked about it.

John Dehlin [01:00:23] What was his. What was his role in it and what were.

Lila Tueller [01:00:27] He was a. As far as I know, he was a bystander. He was an onlooker watching this thing go down. I think he was probably because at first there was a lot of intrigue and excitement about it. And my dad and my brother Dan and Kirk were all like, wow, this is cool. You know, these documents, oh my gosh, this is great. Anything that they could get their hands on that was. Knew sunstone was all over it. Right. And so it was kind of exciting. And so my dad, I think he was more along the lines of, yeah, let's get these. Let's, let's get them, you know, in our possession. So this guy who. He doesn't go spread this stuff around.

John Dehlin [01:01:09] So your dad was taken in too?

Lila Tueller [01:01:10] Yeah, I would say he was taken in. I don't remember him being a part of the decision making process or coming up with the funds, but he was definitely on board.

John Dehlin [01:01:21] His spidey sense didn't go off.

Lila Tueller [01:01:22] No, no, he wasn't saying something like

John Dehlin [01:01:24] it did with blacks in the priesthood.

Lila Tueller [01:01:25] Right, right, right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:01:27] By the way, did he tell you he knew ahead of time or are you just assuming that?

Lila Tueller [01:01:32] No, he never said that.

John Dehlin [01:01:33] Okay, so that's your, that's your assume.

Lila Tueller [01:01:34] That's my assumption.

John Dehlin [01:01:35] Okay.

Lila Tueller [01:01:36] Because I know they talked about it.

John Dehlin [01:01:37] Okay.

Lila Tueller [01:01:38] I do know that he did tell. Like I knew that that was a topic of conversation and had been.

John Dehlin [01:01:44] Yeah. Okay, so you knew there were topics

Lila Tueller [01:01:46] you just added up. Yeah, it was going to make sense.

John Dehlin [01:01:48] Yeah. Okay, so back to the Mark Hoffman thing. He, he was bought in. But what anything other, his observations, his comments, his reactions, you know, I wish

Lila Tueller [01:01:56] that I had a really great story for you about.

John Dehlin [01:02:00] No, I don't want one, but if there's one, I don't want one.

Lila Tueller [01:02:02] That's about it.

John Dehlin [01:02:03] But did you ever ask him, why didn't you guys have discernment? Why didn't you guys.

Lila Tueller [01:02:06] Oh yeah, I remember. I mean, this was part of the conversation on Sunday, you know, when we'd get together when. So when the whole thing went down, I was like, you know, aren't they prophets? And you know, why? How did they not see if they're seers, how do they not see that coming? How did they not see it?

John Dehlin [01:02:23] He's like, ippy did. Shut up.

Lila Tueller [01:02:24] Yeah, you're supposed to be seen and not heard. Go over there. But yeah, I never, I never got a straight answer. Like not anything that ever satisfied me. It was all just, you know, they're just humans. They make mistakes. People make mistakes. They are just human. Which I knew, you know, because my dad was human. So I knew that. But don't call yourself a prophet, seer and revelator and ask people to sustain you as such if you know darn well that you're not. That you're just like everyone else. That's what I have an issue with.

John Dehlin [01:02:54] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [01:02:54] Don't ask us to sustain you for that and talk and call yourself that when you know you're not.

John Dehlin [01:03:01] Yeah. I guess in their mind, they could be both. It could be when the Lord wants to give us inspiration. We can be prophets, seers, and revelators. Because there's that thing in that.

Lila Tueller [01:03:12] Would that ever happen?

John Dehlin [01:03:13] Well, there's that thing of Brigham Young where I think he says, I speak as a prophet when I'm speaking as a prophet, and when I'm not speaking as a prophet, I'm not. Like. It's just this idea that, you know,

Lila Tueller [01:03:22] it comes and goes.

John Dehlin [01:03:23] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [01:03:24] Sometimes I'm a prophet, sometimes I'm a man. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:28] I mean, they need that out because they're gonna get it wrong sometimes. Right.

Lila Tueller [01:03:31] And they're gonna have to.

John Dehlin [01:03:31] But it's also possible. But it's also possible that they can believe that they can make mistakes and be inspired. Both. They can both be true.

Lila Tueller [01:03:41] Yeah. They can be delusional a little bit and think that this blessing that they're giving this person that they're going to be healed is from God.

John Dehlin [01:03:50] Did your dad ever heal people?

Lila Tueller [01:03:52] Well, he gave blessings that they'd be healed, and then they were. He also gave blessings that they'd be healed and then they didn't.

John Dehlin [01:03:59] Right. Are you sure that happened, too?

Lila Tueller [01:04:00] Yeah, I've seen both.

John Dehlin [01:04:02] He blessed people who died or stayed sick or.

Lila Tueller [01:04:05] Yeah, here's. Here's two. One on each side. One of them was a little. A friend of ours had a baby, really premature. She was under two pounds, could fit right here in my dad's palm. And he said. He got some oil and put it on her head, and they basically said, she's not going to make it through the night. Put oil on her head and blessed her that she would grow to become an adult, have children, be married in the temple. La dee da, you know, and she made it through the night, and then she grew to be 5, and then she was 10. And then she got married in the temple and had children. So that's one of the ones that he likes to tell the story, you know how. You know it's miraculous? Because they said she's a goner. You know, she was too small, didn't have lungs develop, didn't have everything developed. So there was that. And there's more, because I've had people come up to me and say, your dad gave me a blessing when I was in the mission field and I was healed. You know, so there were those. But then I had a friend, and you might remember this story, he was a close friend of mine, lived right in my neighborhood. Their family was up the canyon having a birthday party for the grandma and the granddaughter who had the same birthday. They both named Molly. They were having a huge family party, 11 kids and a tree just fell right on. Their group took the grandma out, killed her, smashed, you know, beyond recognition. And then the granddaughter also was killed. One child wasn't killed, but her spinal cord was severed. And so this is my friend, you know, my friend and his wife and their kids. So I was. Knew all about what had happened and I called my dad and I said, you need to get down here and give this little girl a blessing. She was like 5 years old and she was paralyzed. And I said, you got to give her a blessing. You got to heal her. She's got to be healed. He came right down there, didn't bat an eye, went into the hospital, like in his ball cap and jeans, didn't care, Came in, anointed her with oil, told her she was going to be up running, playing with her friends, back out like a normal child, that she was going to have a normal childhood, completely healed, that her spinal column would heal. I mean, he gave her the full nine yard blessing and she's still in a wheelchair and paralyzed from like here down. So didn't work. There's been, I mean, there's been many like that. So it's not just sometimes people die, sometimes people are healed. And he, you know, blessings don't always work. Like most of the time they don't.

John Dehlin [01:06:59] I just want to give a referral. Thank you for sharing that story. I want to give a referral. There's this amazing book I'm reading called the Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan, and he has like a whole chapter on this and faith healings. And he makes the point that, number one, there are all sorts of things people get sick for where they get better. And so, you know, if you're gonna give these blessings, you give a lot of them and a lot of the time you're gonna be right. And when you're right, just like we talked about before, if it helps people believe and stay committed, what a great chance you have to solidify someone in the gospel, Build their faith, build their faith. And also they think you're pretty amazing and they attribute it all to you. Yeah, so you get kind of attributed to you. There are instances where it doesn't happen.

Lila Tueller [01:07:44] It's always God's will.

John Dehlin [01:07:45] It's always God's will or the person wasn't righteous enough or didn't have enough

Lila Tueller [01:07:48] faith, not enough faith.

John Dehlin [01:07:50] And so there's always that out. But the other point they make is that, you know, rarely. And it's ironic to choose the case of a severed spinal cord when you hear about these success stories that do happen. It's never a decapitation, it's never a limb being gone. It's never a severing of a spinal cord. It's always the types of things, even cancer, there's like a 10% remission rate or whatever recovery rate. And so if it ever is successful, it's always on something that can't have its own spontaneous recovery rate anyway.

Lila Tueller [01:08:26] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:08:29] It's so hard when you look back on your faith and you realize that some of the things built into your religion that was once your dearly held belief, like the ability to heal, like patriarchal blessings, like prophecy, sort of are remnants of kind of charlatan like behavior that just got incorporated into. Because faith healings is what charlatans do now, of course, it goes back to Jesus. And there's reports of Jesus healing people. And I'm not trying to say what happened back 2000 years ago. I do know that today anyone who's faith healing is a charlatan.

Lila Tueller [01:09:04] Right. We have documentation now, we have history that you can actually document back in, you know, Christ's time. We can't go back and look at the medical records of Lazarus or, you know, whoever. So we don't know. And it's all about the story.

John Dehlin [01:09:19] And you know, there's always this argument that says if you're a general authority, if you have the power to heal, you should be living at hospitals, healing everyone there. Because all these families are suffering and people's livelihoods are at stake and will I see mommy again? Like, if you've got that power, use it. But they don't, right?

Lila Tueller [01:09:36] Oh yeah. And like my ex husband who contracted colon cancer, he received a blessing from his father, my father, stake president, home teacher, everybody bishop, that he was going to be healed. And my kids, my kids believed it. They believed it and they fasted. I had my children fasted for five days with no food for their dad. Absolutely sure. Five days. I mean, they were so committed to this, they drank water and that's it. And then he died. So what does that do to their sweet little faith, you know? And I was still going to church, you know, when that happened. And I was like, how do you reconcile this when they promise him. He's going to be fine.

John Dehlin [01:10:25] A general authority, right?

Lila Tueller [01:10:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:28] That's so hard. Yeah.

Lila Tueller [01:10:31] So it's, you know, it's harmful what they do. It's harmful because you, you place faith in this like you've been taught, and it doesn't work. So then you're told you don't have enough faith, like what they needed, what, fast? Six days, you know, oh, did somebody cheat? Is that what happened? Is that why dad died? You know, and we start to turn it on ourselves, and that's just so unfair. It has nothing to do with us.

John Dehlin [01:11:03] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [01:11:03] You know, so.

John Dehlin [01:11:05] Oh, that's hard.

Lila Tueller [01:11:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:13] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org.

Part 3 of 4 · Ep. 1247

John Dehlin [00:00:06] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and. And building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Let's talk about Sunstone for a bit. Okay, so as my understanding is, Sunstone was started in the mid-70s by Scott Kinney and Peggy Fletcher Stack and a couple other people. Started out as a magazine, and then it started doing the symposium, and it started really growing in the 80s. So where does your brother come into that?

Brother Kirk, Sunstone, and Family Members Leaving the Church

Lila Tueller [00:00:59] He came in. He started with Sunstone in 78.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] And I should tell people who don't know Sunstone is, I'm sorry, not 70.

Lila Tueller [00:01:09] That's wrong. Go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:01:10] Sunstone's a forum of, like, Mormon history, of Mormon art, of Mormon culture, of intellectual, Mormon, Mormon intellectual thought. And so it was a place for us to be thoughtful and progressive and intellectual and figure out true church history. And it kind of came all on the, you know, along with the Leonard Arrington Camelot years of the church history, you know, renaissance in the church, trying to be more open and honest with its history before it shut all that back down again. So a lot of the research being done by the Arringtons and Michael Quinn and all those people would make it into Sunstone as well as Dialogue magazine. So for those who don't know, that's the brief history. So your brother gets involved with Sunstone.

Lila Tueller [00:01:50] Yeah, it's 1986-91.

John Dehlin [00:01:52] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:01:52] That's when he was actually mid-80s on the board. He was a publisher, editor.

John Dehlin [00:01:59] Okay. So Albert Peck would have been the editor at that time. He followed Peggy Fletcher Stack, Albert Peck,

Lila Tueller [00:02:06] and Linda Jean Stevenson was there.

John Dehlin [00:02:10] And there was a time in Sunstone. So imagine like this conference that everybody would go attend once a year in Salt Lake City at some hotel or University of Utah. I don't know where they would have held it back then, but before Sunstone got announced, BYU professors would have gone there, church education system, CES Institute, and seminary directors would have gone. It would have been everybody that was going just trying to celebrate Mormon culture and talk about intellectual issues and just really apply intellectual rigor and cultural spirit towards their Mormon experiences.

Lila Tueller [00:02:47] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:02:48] So, okay, so. So maybe when your brother would have originally got Involved. Later, there were denouncements where Mormons were. Where Stone was kind of denounced, and people were warned not to attend, and they were told to avoid symposia. But my guess is your brother would have joined before those denouncements, but while your dad was alive and a general authority. So did your dad originally read Sunstone? Did he like it? Would your brother have had any indication that it was okay to do that? Was it an act of rebellion? Do you remember, as your brother's getting into how your dad felt about it and whether your dad knew and all that?

Lila Tueller [00:03:24] Yeah, well, my dad knew. And when Dan was getting involved with it, like you said, at first it was. It was pretty benign. I don't think my dad thought anything bad about it, and he was already. There was an intellectual movement going on, and Dan would bring that stuff home and talk to my dad about it, and my older brother Kirk, they'd really get into it. And John got into it later, too. But they would have these conversations, and Dan's wife Lisa was there, and he'd bring people over. Like I said, the Toscanos were coming over, and my dad loved it. I mean, he loved Paul Toscano. And they'd laugh and laugh and have a great time. And then we had Andy Ehat was there a lot. There were other people. Eugene, England. And so my dad was involved in the beginnings of it and enjoying it. It was all very interesting to him. And he had this thing about wanting to find trut. Truth was important to him. So if it was true, he wanted to know. But this was stuff that wasn't really. The Brethren weren't talking about it. It wasn't being talked about over the pulpit. It was sort of this side group that was doing this. And so then when the Brethren got wind of what was happening, that there was a movement going on and people were going to the Sunstone Symposium. And then when they started checking out what was printed in the magazine, that some of it was controversial and didn't necessarily shine a really great light on the church. And I think the Tanners were bringing stuff into it, too, like they were leaking.

John Dehlin [00:05:05] They're always in the mix. They're always in the mix. Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:05:07] So, you know, then there was like, a red flag that the Brethren were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on over here? What are you talking about? What are you saying? And when that started happening, Boyd K. Packer started really pressuring my dad. Get your son out of it. Get the name. Because my dad, his name was Daniel Hartman. Rector. So they're like, we don't want your son having anything to do with that. That gives us a bat, you know, the people will connect that and we don't want to be connected with it.

John Dehlin [00:05:38] And there's this very Mormon thing which is like, well, if Hartman Rector's son's involved, it must be okay, because in Mormonism. Read it. Yeah. Authority trumps all, right, Exactly.

Lila Tueller [00:05:48] So, yeah, so they're trying to shut it down and. And Dan was like, no, no, no, no, no. You know, the church needs this. We need this forum for people to express their feelings because we can't do it in Sunday school. We can't do it in sacrament meeting. We can't. When can we do that? When can we talk about these things? We need a place. So he was, you know, sticking up for it, you know, quite with my dad. And they were going back and forth. My dad was saying, I know, I know you feel this way, but this is really putting me in a bad. A really bad situation and I just really need you to just back out. And he wanted to shut it down. Dan's like, I'm not going to shut it down. I don't have the power to shut it down and I'm not going to leave.

John Dehlin [00:06:34] Do you know what the role. What does the publisher do? Do you even know? Do you remember?

Lila Tueller [00:06:37] I don't know. I wouldn't be able to tell you. These were his jobs.

John Dehlin [00:06:41] That's fine.

Lila Tueller [00:06:41] But he was there. I mean, he was so involved. He was always there at all, you know, symposium. He went there every day. You know, that was his job.

John Dehlin [00:06:50] And it's this house that's on the same road the Vivid Center's on, right?

Lila Tueller [00:06:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] And kind of North Salt Lake, where the Sunstone offices still are. They had and have a house there.

Lila Tueller [00:07:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:02] And they would be all these photos, all these photos on the wall and couches.

Lila Tueller [00:07:06] Oh, yeah, it was. He loved it.

John Dehlin [00:07:08] It was like the center of intellectual life.

Lila Tueller [00:07:10] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:07:10] For Mormonism.

Lila Tueller [00:07:11] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:07:12] It's kind of secret ground to me a little bit.

Lila Tueller [00:07:13] Yeah, yeah. And there was all these, you know, people were coming out of the woodwork. These, these. There were. There were BYU people like you said, that were professors that knew things and, you know, they'd done their homework and they were like, hey, you know, Joseph Smith actually did this, you know, and I don't know if you know this, but this was happening. And check out this about the Book of Abraham, you know, and so all that stuff was coming to light and I would hear my brother and My dad talking about it at the house. I started to tell you that they would have these conversations all the time, and I would listen in. And, I mean, I heard all the stories about Emma and Joseph and the wives. And, you know, Emma pushed somebody down the stairs.

John Dehlin [00:07:56] Eliza Arseno.

Lila Tueller [00:07:57] Eliza, yeah. Who was her best friend, who was now, I heard, allegedly pregnant.

John Dehlin [00:08:03] Right.

Lila Tueller [00:08:04] With Joseph's child. And, you know, all these stuff that I'd never heard before. And I didn't even know Joseph Smith practiced polygamy, let alone, you know, with many times behind Emma's back. I did not know this. And with other men's wives, when I heard that, my mind was blown. I was, whoa, I've heard polygamy. This is something different. Now we're doing. These women had more than one husband.

John Dehlin [00:08:32] You heard this in the 80s?

Lila Tueller [00:08:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:08:34] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:08:34] Oh, yeah. And so I read my dad. I asked him about it. He said, go read section 132. You know, that's what he told me to do.

John Dehlin [00:08:42] Which doesn't help at all.

Lila Tueller [00:08:43] No. And I read it, and I was furious. You know, I'm like, what? You know, So I said, so you're telling me that Emma got, like, threatened that if she didn't go along with it, she was going to be destroyed? Why? You know, this is wrong. This is so wrong. You know, And I was. And he was like, you know, don't worry about this stuff. We don't live polygamy anymore. You just go home and read your Book of Mormon and say your prayers and, you know, be a mom. And I'd be like, yeah, but. But this is our founder, like, our prophet, Joseph Smith. He was supposed to be righteous, and he's doing this stuff, you know, and my dad really just said, well, we don't even know if this is all true. This is, you know, this is hearsay. It's anti Mormon propaganda. You know, don't stress out about it. Just go live your, you know, gospel. So that kind of. It kind of satisfied me for a while, and I.

John Dehlin [00:09:43] So he thought it was anti Mormon propaganda, not. Not factual history?

Lila Tueller [00:09:46] Well, that's what he told me.

John Dehlin [00:09:47] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:09:47] I don't know if that's what he thought. I just know that's what he told me when I was getting all up in arms about it. He was like, oh, no, you know, don't worry about this. But I could still hear him talking with my brothers, and he sounded like he knew it, that it was actually true, the way they would argue about it. He never said, that's not true. He would be like, well, you know, back in the day, those things, times were different, you know, they had different rules. And Joseph Smith was a product of his environment. And we don't know what that was like because we. None of us ever lived that. You know, I'd hear them talking about this and, you know, they talked about the stone, and they talked about the Seer stone, they talked about the treasure digging. You know, how he would make money off of people, treasure digging, but never really find treasure, and that he would make up these stories about how the treasure disappeared. Right. So then. And I'm reading the Book of Mormon all the time, and so I'm seeing stuff in the Book of Mormon and like the part about the slippery treasures in the Book of Mormon where they would. He'd say, if you buried your treasure, it would slip away. It becomes slippery.

John Dehlin [00:10:59] A lot of that folk magic, treasure digging stuff that Joseph believed and practiced made it in. Made it into the book, coincidentally made it into the Book of Mormon. Dan Vogel talks a lot about this.

Lila Tueller [00:11:09] Yes. So I've listened to all of Dan Vogel, like all of his stuff. I think I've listened to every podcast he's ever done or YouTube video. But at the time, this is way back in the 80s, right. So I'm hearing this stuff for the first time and I'm being told, oh, no, no, no, but from my dad, don't worry about it, it's anti Mormon. But then I'm seeing the correlations in the actual Book of Mormon and I'm thinking, you know, that's really interesting. Because if polygamy, if they were practicing polygamy, why does it say in Jacob that it's wrong, that it's that. What do you call it? I can't. Abomination. Yeah. And so that didn't quite line up for me. And I was like, how do you reconcile DNC132 with James in the Book of Mormons?

John Dehlin [00:12:01] Jacob.

Lila Tueller [00:12:02] Yeah, Jacob. So there's all these little things, you know, and like I just put them on the shelf. Put them on the shelf. I'll think about that later. I got to go cook dinner. I gotta do wash. I gotta take care of my kids. I don't have time for this. But they bothered me. They just ate away at my little brain. And so flash forward, you know, I don't know where you want to go next, but.

John Dehlin [00:12:24] But they didn't bother your dad?

Lila Tueller [00:12:26] No, he seemed to be able to. I mean, you would never have known it if it bothered him. I never saw him. Look, one Bit perplexed. He just carried on with the program, right. You know, doing his thing. They had him flying all over the world. He was busy. He was go, go, go, go. And he never seemed to be, you know, one bit bothered by. Other than he wanted my brother to quit. He wanted sudden. He wanted him to stop being associated.

John Dehlin [00:12:55] So did your brother quit?

Lila Tueller [00:12:57] He finally did, but it was af. Let's see, 91. It was in 91.

John Dehlin [00:13:02] Did I read he was disfellowshipped or how did church so talk about why was there a disciplinary council and how did that happen and who did he talk to and who did it and. Okay, how was your dad involved and all that?

Lila Tueller [00:13:13] I don't know about who did the disciplinary council. I believe it was his stake president.

John Dehlin [00:13:17] Yeah, it would have been, but so.

Lila Tueller [00:13:19] And I don't even know who that was, but he. He was a Sunday school teacher also. And so some of his sunstone stuff found its way into his Sunday school class teaching. So when he would talk like that, people in the class would be bothered and they would go talk to the bishop. Hey, you know, why is he talking about that? And this is this, you know, what's going on? So he got in trouble for that. They kicked him out of his calling, and then they knew he was involved with sunstone. So when they started interviewing everybody that was involved with sunstone, he got called in. Oh, and he also had stopped paying tithing because he didn't believe that it was what we've been taught. He didn't think we should. So when he stopped paying tithing and they kicked him out of his calling, then they took his temple recommend away. And that may have been part of his disciplinary action, but I believe that he was not excommunicated with the rest of the September 6th because he. Because of my dad. That's my belief. I don't know that, but that's my belief. That's why he didn't get thrown out with the rest of them.

John Dehlin [00:14:35] So was he disfellowshipped before or after

Lila Tueller [00:14:37] the September 6th at the same time? I think it happened right along with.

John Dehlin [00:14:42] But not excommunicated. But not excommunicated because your dad covered for him or whatever.

Lila Tueller [00:14:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:47] Okay. Okay. And how did that affect your dad's relationship with your brother? Was that hard? Was it fine?

Lila Tueller [00:14:55] Yeah. I mean, he loved Dan. It was hard not to love Dan. He was just a good guy, I think.

John Dehlin [00:15:00] Is Dan alive?

Lila Tueller [00:15:01] No.

John Dehlin [00:15:01] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:15:01] You mentioned he passed away in 2003 in a hiking accident. So, yeah, my dad And Dan were very close, and he didn't. He was not angry with him. I think he felt bad. But I really think that he pulled the strings to keep him from being excommunicated. I think that was part of the deal because it was. I mean, Packer called my brother on the phone and threatened him.

John Dehlin [00:15:30] Said what?

Lila Tueller [00:15:30] Said, you need to shut this down or else you need to leave Sunstone or, you know, try to close the whole thing down. And Dan said, I can't. I won't. And he. And he issued an apostolic curse on him.

John Dehlin [00:15:45] What?

Lila Tueller [00:15:46] He said that he would reap. He would reap, John, help me. He would reap adversity all the days of his life because he did not follow Packer's request and admonition. Because you will not follow my apostolic admonition, I am going to give you, leave you with an apostolic curse. And that's what he did.

John Dehlin [00:16:15] Did you have a sense for whether your brother stopped believing and thought the church was a fraud or whether he still believed or whether he was a liberal Mormon or, like, what was his belief state by the time he disfellowshipped?

Lila Tueller [00:16:28] I think worst case. Well, it depends on how you look at it. I think there were times when he did not believe. I think that he learned enough stuff that he realized that it wasn't true. But in order to save face with his family, my dad, not so much his family. Siblings maybe, but not his wife. His wife was already not believing. She didn't. She was out. He. I think he wanted to stay in. And so when he died, he was an active member. He had a temple recommend back. He was teaching gospel doctrine.

John Dehlin [00:17:05] Oh, he came back. He came back into full fellowship.

Lila Tueller [00:17:07] Yeah. So, you know, you could argue, well, was he a nuanced believer? Like, where was he really in his head? And, you know, all I know is that he was back going to church, but he knew everything. So I kind of wonder how he reconciled that.

John Dehlin [00:17:27] So you never had the conversation with him where he says, I don't believe anymore. The church is a fraud.

Lila Tueller [00:17:32] Not with me, but he may have with John and he may have with other people. I never heard him say that to me. He would never have done that because it would have hurt my faith. And he was not. He wouldn't have done that with me.

John Dehlin [00:17:44] Did it affect how you viewed him to know that he was disfellowshipped and was doing something scary and edgy?

Lila Tueller [00:17:50] No, no, no. I loved him. I admired him for it. I thought he was brave. I really did. I Thought he was gutsy. And, I mean, even though my dad told me not to worry about it, like I said, deep down inside in your. The pit of your stomach, when you know something's not right, you can feel it. I knew. I knew there was something to it. I knew Daniel knew something. There was something to it. And I admired him for his courage to persevere right on through. I mean, he did end up leaving Sunstone, but I know why he did it. He did it for my dad. He did it for my dad.

John Dehlin [00:18:29] John. John chimes in and says that the term, it was reap adversity all the days of his life.

Lila Tueller [00:18:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:37] Does that sound right?

Lila Tueller [00:18:38] Yeah. Reap adversity.

John Dehlin [00:18:39] Thank you, Boyd.

Lila Tueller [00:18:40] Thanks a lot. Yeah. And then he died young, so, you know, you're left going. But he didn't have adversity all the days of his life. He had. He had a great marriage. He had a great life. He enjoyed life to the fullest. That guy was outside loving the world. I don't think he reaped adversity at all. He died young. And, you know, that leaves you wondering.

John Dehlin [00:19:07] Just. Apostles don't be issuing apostolic curses like, that's just awful.

Lila Tueller [00:19:13] Stop bad behavior.

John Dehlin [00:19:15] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:19:16] My dad always said that Boyd K. Packer was not nice. He said that about him. He said, some of them are nice and some of them are not, and he is not nice.

John Dehlin [00:19:26] I wonder if your dad struggled with the church disfellowshipping his son. I wonder how he personally felt about that. If he felt like, my son deserves it because he won't obey me or, wow, I wish the church would leave him alone.

Lila Tueller [00:19:39] Yeah. I would say more the latter. I think he, you know, he just really adored Dan. He did. And I think he was hurt by. Wasn't enough for him to leave. It wasn't enough for him to say, you know, the church is not true anymore, or anything like that. I think he was just, you know, just sad about it.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] That's so hard.

Lila Tueller [00:20:02] Yeah. Yeah. I'm always kind of amazed at how people. And I was thinking about this today, and it came up on the Facebook page, Podcast Mormon stories Facebook page. Somebody commented something about how some people are able to stay in the church, even if it's a nuanced version of staying in and believing they somehow are able to change the words and the meanings of words, to allow them to sit in those buildings and stay. And they were being critical of that, you know, And I thought about my dad. I thought about my brother. My oldest brother left. He bailed he left the country. He's gone. He's in. Lives in Moscow half the year, and he lives in Thailand the other half of the year. And he left the church. He left his family, just completely left. He went kind of off the rails a little bit. But, you know, he clearly didn't believe the church was true. And I think he lost his testimony during the whole Hoffman era and the Sunstone era, you know, when they were in their heyday. But some people stay, you know, and I stayed. I stayed for a long time. This just barely happened a year ago. Like, I stopped going to church in January of 2019.

Church Intellectual Culture and Sibling Faith Transitions

John Dehlin [00:21:23] Yeah, can't wait to get to that.

Lila Tueller [00:21:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:25] But people stay. I just have to say, just personally that, you know, some of the nicest compliments I've ever received are like, when Jeremy Runnels says there'd be no CES letter without Mormon stories, or Stephanie Larsen says there'd be no encircle without Mormon stories. There would be no Mormon stories without Sunstone. Like when I, you know, when I was at byu, that's when I first started reading Sunstone. So this is back in 93, the September 6th happens while I'm at BYU. So that seeds my mind. And I even have professors that would assign sun center dialogue, like articles to us. And they had been influenced by Sunstone. So that was sort of the early intellectual awakening for me. But then when I had my faith crisis at Microsoft, let's just say 2000, 2001, and the Internet exists at this point, the first thing I do is Google Sunstone because I remembered Sunstone. I'm like, I wonder if Sunstone's on the Internet because there's no support. And just weirdly, they had, at some point, I'm going to guess, 2003, the September 6th would have given some talks at Sunstone. About 10 years later. What's it like to be on September 6th? So it had been Lavina and Michael Quinn and Paul Toscano and Maxine Hanks and those people. And I would have seen those on the Internet and I would have just been like, oh my gosh, those people. Like, now that I'm losing my faith. That's why they all got excommunicated back then. There was a good reason. And so all like in the 2000s and 2010s, you know, there are a bunch of us who are trying to do this work. I can't imagine what it would be like trying to do this work in the 80s and early 90s. Like, on the one hand, it was weirdly more accepted in culture to be doing this edgy Mormon historical stuff. But it soon got to be not just controversial, but intensely unacceptable to the top leaders of the church.

Lila Tueller [00:23:35] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:23:36] So I just can't imagine the heat that your brother and others, like they're kind of heroes.

Lila Tueller [00:23:40] They added that into the temple recommend interview. Like, are you. Yeah, like they put that right in there.

John Dehlin [00:23:47] And the church issued those statements. Stay away from symposia, Stay away from.

Lila Tueller [00:23:51] And the intellectual movement, you know, they wanted to.

John Dehlin [00:23:54] So called intellectuals.

Lila Tueller [00:23:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:55] Boyd K. Packer says the three great enemies to the church are the gays, the feminists and the intellectuals. Like, that's a whole period of our history that's really troublesome and dark.

Lila Tueller [00:24:06] Unbelievable that he said that. I mean, wow.

John Dehlin [00:24:10] But it's also super courageous of your brother to have been right there in the middle of it and carrying that torch back at a time where it must have been really hard.

Lila Tueller [00:24:19] Yeah. They didn't really have any else to go to. Like, you had them, I had you. They didn't have anybody to go to and lean on and to kind of pave the way for them. And they were leaning on each other, you know, and the people that were coming out of BYU that were, you know, there was controversy going on at byu. And I remember this as Gail Huston,

John Dehlin [00:24:40] Cecilia Farr, David Knowlton.

Lila Tueller [00:24:43] Right.

John Dehlin [00:24:43] All these professors are getting fired for talking about feminism, talking about pro choice, talking about praying to a mother in heaven, talking about phallic symbols in the church, or publishing articles in Sunstone and talking about earth age of the earth science missionaries getting blown up in Peru and terrorists. And the church just got uncomfortable, real uncomfortable real fast.

Lila Tueller [00:25:07] And they're firing people. And so like that's kind of when I was at byu that was going on. So I mean, all these things, there's all these movements that. And you know, I'm just being the dutiful mom, raising a family. I mean, that's really what I was doing. Going to church every week, paying my tithing, reading my scriptures every night. I read the Book of Mormon probably more than anyone else on the planet. I have read that book so many times, it's embarrassing. There's a lot of good things in the book, but there's also, you know, just a lot of stuff that doesn't need to be there, that wasn't necessary. You know, wars and money and you know, what they're called, their money, just all kinds of weird things. But anyway, I guess my point is just that I was not focusing on what was Going on around me with my brother. I mean, I knew what was happening, but I wasn't like really focusing on it. I was focusing on just doing my duty as a mother and as a wife. And I mean, I had a really hard marriage. I had way more kids than I knew what to do with and callings, you know, and I was busy. And I wish that I had been just a little more involved in reading what was out there, what people were talking about, because now I'm playing catch up. You've read all these books and I'm like writing them down. Okay, I gotta read that, I gotta read that, I gotta read that. And I've read a lot, but I'm scratching the surface. Barely.

John Dehlin [00:26:42] Yeah. And you were there at the center of it. That must be hard that you not only were at the center of it and didn't really fully absorb it, but then you went on to live a couple more decades in the church and now you're just kind of realizing what your family was kind of at the center of. And there's just another element to that, which is now, you know, whether it's feminism or Mormon stories or, you know, church history or LGBT stuff or, you know, we're winning. Like, the church is hearing us now. People are leaving. We're all vindicated. The church is changing. And there's this massive defection of people leaving the church.

Lila Tueller [00:27:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:24] The difference is back then they were doing the same types of things without the Internet and they lost. They kind of got gobsmacked, put back in their place, and had to run away with their tails between their legs. And there was like this 10 year period of just total silence and fear and they got smacked back into their holes.

Lila Tueller [00:27:46] They really did.

John Dehlin [00:27:48] And marginalized and shamed and so much, so much.

Lila Tueller [00:27:53] They were the evil. They were the antichrist. They were the, you know, stay away from anything anti Mormon or intellectual. So, yeah, I mean, it was rough for them and I think with the advent of the Internet, they came out of their holes a little bit. I can actually have a voice without. And I can stay anonymous somewhat. You know, nobody can really. You still got it, though? They still found you?

John Dehlin [00:28:20] Oh, no, no, no. A lot of us like John Larsen and me and Lindsay and others, yeah. We. We've never really been anonymous.

Lila Tueller [00:28:27] Right. No, I didn't mean anonymous meaning not seen and your name's not being. I just mean you could hide a little bit more behind your computer.

John Dehlin [00:28:36] Oh, right, right.

Lila Tueller [00:28:37] You know, it's a little more safe somehow.

John Dehlin [00:28:40] Right. And you can do more Too. You can affect more people and there's

Lila Tueller [00:28:44] way more information that you can grab.

John Dehlin [00:28:46] Okay, so I want to get to your story. Is there anything else that we want to talk about with your dad and your mom just in terms of their lives or your family's lives before we just go right to you and your marriage and your kids?

Lila Tueller [00:29:01] Yeah. Well, okay, first of all, I was from a large family. There's nine kids, one's adopted, eight natural kids. And my mom had us really spread out. So, like, my oldest brother is 15 years older than me. My youngest sister is 12 years younger than me. So there's a big span.

John Dehlin [00:29:21] Wow.

Lila Tueller [00:29:22] My mom had two kids after the age. After she had. No, she had one kid after she had four grandkids. So Lucy was like on the tail end, you know, when my mom was 46. So big family.

John Dehlin [00:29:35] So their grandkids, their. Their kids older than their uncles.

Lila Tueller [00:29:38] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:39] Or aunts.

Lila Tueller [00:29:39] Aunt. Yeah, exactly. So that's kind of weird.

John Dehlin [00:29:42] Good LDS family.

Lila Tueller [00:29:43] Yeah. Right. And so, I mean, that was all part of my, my world was, you know, having a big family and we were close knit. Everybody loves everybody, but very diverse. But, you know, everybody loved everybody. So when my brother Kirk left, that was a shock to my family, shock to my dad. My dad was furious. Furious. I've heard my dad yell and scream like many times, but never quite to that volume as he did when my brother left. And he got on the phone and just chewed him out for what he did because he left his kids, left the church, left his wife, left his wife left the country.

John Dehlin [00:30:26] What year? Around what year? And do you remember? I know it's putting you on the spot.

Lila Tueller [00:30:33] Okay, I was married, so it's got to be 82, 83.

John Dehlin [00:30:38] Okay, so this is before your brothers disfellowshipped.

Lila Tueller [00:30:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:41] Okay, so one, one, one domino falls.

Lila Tueller [00:30:43] Right. Okay, so he's gone and he does not believe the church at all. He's completely just over it. And, and so.

John Dehlin [00:30:51] And he disappears from the family.

Lila Tueller [00:30:53] What kind of.

John Dehlin [00:30:54] Does he still come to. Does he still come to dinners? Does he still come to reunions? Does he.

Lila Tueller [00:30:57] He came to one or two family reunions, but now he can't come into the country at all because he owes taxes in the United States. Okay, so he's in Russia.

John Dehlin [00:31:06] But I mean, was he ostracized from your parents? Did they want him around? Did they not want him around?

Lila Tueller [00:31:11] They wanted him around.

John Dehlin [00:31:12] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:31:12] My parents have never ostracized. They don't believe in that. But my dad will give Him. Hell.

John Dehlin [00:31:18] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:31:19] You know, if he's around, he's gonna chew him out, probably for hours on end, but he's not going to ostracize.

John Dehlin [00:31:26] Okay. Okay. So did that make your brother not want to come around, or did he come around anyway?

Lila Tueller [00:31:30] I probably kept him from coming quite a bit.

John Dehlin [00:31:33] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:31:33] But he would come, you know, on occasion, and he'd join right in with us when we were having church, you know, in Aspen Grove or at our family reunion. He'd be there, you know, saying the prayer, and even though he didn't believe in any of it, singing the hymns, you know, so.

John Dehlin [00:31:49] And was there, like, in the family, like, he's a bad guy or he's doing bad things, or he's lost her. Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:31:54] Yeah, kind of lost.

John Dehlin [00:31:55] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:31:55] Because he. He kind of went out badly. You don't just abandon your family. That's not cool. Right, right. So that was really hurtful to his kids, to his wife. It was awful.

John Dehlin [00:32:06] To your parents.

Lila Tueller [00:32:06] To my parents, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:07] Your brother suggested that this may be a 1990.

Lila Tueller [00:32:10] 1990. Really? John, maybe he could be right. He could be right.

John Dehlin [00:32:18] And that would have been after. That would have been after the disfellowship.

Lila Tueller [00:32:20] That would have been after. Okay, no, 90.

John Dehlin [00:32:22] No, no, no, still before. It was still three years before.

Lila Tueller [00:32:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a big family reunion in 1990. There's a picture, and he's there.

John Dehlin [00:32:29] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:32:30] But I thought that he might have come back. But anyway, it doesn't matter. So there's Kirk goes away, and then, you know, Daniel passes away in 2003. That was really tough. My dad. I mean, that really was hard on him. It was just. He was 46. He was young, had a family of four kids and a wife. And, you know, when he died, it was just really heartbreaking. And then I think the next person to leave the nest, as far as the gospel goes, might have been John or Lucy. No, I think it was John. I think he went first and Lucy maybe at the same time a younger sister.

John Dehlin [00:33:11] So these dominoes are falling.

Lila Tueller [00:33:13] Yeah, yeah. And part of it is because, you know, it's that time of the world. I think people are waking up. So not everybody wants to stay anesthetized, if I can say that word. Sorry. I hit that by religion. And I think it's kind of happening on a global scale. Would you not agree?

John Dehlin [00:33:37] Yeah, it's happening.

Lila Tueller [00:33:38] Yeah. So, you know, part of it's that part of it's our upbringing, you know, very, very orthodox. And so you want to rebel at some point. You're like, hey, what? Do I even believe this? And then when you read stuff, you're like, wow, I never was taught that. And this is not healthy. This is bad. You know, I. Yeah. So John was gone before me, maybe five years before me. Lucy also, she moved away, married a guy, and they just. They went to the temple, got married, and never went back to the temple, and they were sparsely active, and she just sort of fell off.

John Dehlin [00:34:12] And as your other siblings are leaving, what are your parents saying or how are they reacting to it? Are they. Is your dad emeritus by this point?

Lila Tueller [00:34:19] Yeah. Dad was kind of unaware. Like, I don't. I don't think anyone ever came to him, announced, well, maybe Kirk did, but not Dan or John or Lucy. They didn't come and say, hey, dad, we've left the church, and he's getting older now. And so it's like, what he doesn't know won't hurt him. We'll just kind of do our own thing, live our own lifestyle. We're not going to announce anything to dad. Like, I got a divorce and I didn't tell him for two years.

John Dehlin [00:34:44] What.

Lila Tueller [00:34:45] And he was at my house every Sunday. Holy.

John Dehlin [00:34:47] We played Happy Family. We gotta go back to that.

Lila Tueller [00:34:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:50] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:34:51] Okay, so there's that.

John Dehlin [00:34:52] Okay, so you didn't totally know your siblings are falling away.

Lila Tueller [00:34:55] Right. He knew about Kirk, but not anyone else. And he knew about the thing with Dan.

John Dehlin [00:35:00] And that's weird. When your dad's a leader, the church is the most important thing in your family. Kids are leaving, but they're not comfortable telling their own parents. Like, you know, something's wrong in the organization. Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:35:11] When you can't.

John Dehlin [00:35:12] Whenever kids can't talk to their parents about important things, there's something desperately wrong.

Lila Tueller [00:35:18] Yeah. And he was such a Republican, too. He was so. I mean, politically, he was very, very outspoken and very dogmatic. And so when John, you know, voted for Obama and told my dad that, that was this huge argument. And so John just learned, hey, you know what? I don't need to tell dad everything.

John Dehlin [00:35:37] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:35:39] If we want to have a nice relationship. So I'm going to lay low. And I don't know if my dad ever. Maybe he knew John. You'll have to tell us.

John Dehlin [00:35:47] John described as the quiet fade out.

Lila Tueller [00:35:49] Yeah. So.

Entering and Enduring an Abusive Marriage

John Dehlin [00:35:52] So let's go back and talk about your marriage.

Lila Tueller [00:35:54] So you.

John Dehlin [00:35:54] You met a cute guy, right? How. It's just.

Lila Tueller [00:35:57] Okay, I'll brief that for you really briefly. I was 18. My parent. We just finished up in San Diego. My older sister lived in upstate California. So we drove up California and went to visit her. Before we headed back to Salt Lake, she had arranged me to meet someone in her neighborhood in her ward. So I get there and she's lined me up with this guy and I meet him and, you know, I'm there for nine days. I stay with her, My parents go on back. I stay with my sister, and I date this guy. The whole time I was there every day. We did something, and I was still really young. He was 22, home from his mission and very much a Hartman Rector Jr. Fan. Big time. Had all my dad's talks on tape. Had listened to him all through his mission. He was like a total fan of my dad. So because I was the daughter, I was already like prime real estate for him. I mean, he wanted. I really think that's why he married me. Yes, he. We had, you know, a relationship, and. And I do think he loved me, but I think my dad was the big draw, so. And I was just, you know, all enamored with him. He was. I thought I was, you know, crazy about him. And I was 18, so I was very young.

John Dehlin [00:37:20] So you did feel like you were in love. Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:37:22] So we got married. And that was right out of high school for me. You know, I was.

John Dehlin [00:37:28] Wow.

Lila Tueller [00:37:28] I had started byu, but I was only. We got married in April and I had started in, what, September. So, you know, I was not even done with my first semester at byu. And we got married in the temple. My dad married us. It was all very storybook in that way. We started having kids right away. I dropped out of college to raise kids. We had a rocky marriage right from the start. And I would say probably my fault a lot of it, because I was not.

John Dehlin [00:38:11] You were impudent.

Lila Tueller [00:38:12] I was impudent.

John Dehlin [00:38:12] I'm sorry.

Lila Tueller [00:38:13] Seriously, you were dead on. Oh, he was kind of a. He was very much orthodox. And I was a little bit edgy. Just, you know, I just was like, I told you I was open minded. I wasn't a by the book girl. And he thought I was going to be like my dad, who he thought my dad was. And I really wasn't. I was more just a little bit. I was outspoken. I would challenge him. I didn't agree with everything he said. I'd stand my ground. He didn't like that. So we would fight a lot. And, you know, I'm not gonna. I don't want to say anything to disparage my husband, my ex husband, because he was a really good man, a great man. My Kids loved their dad. He's a good man. We did not get along. And that was, you know, some of it was immaturity on both of our parts. You know, as we grew up and kind of became more aware of our own weaknesses and ownership problems, we kind of had to come to Jesus. Like, we had a separation for a while. I moved home. You know, it was abusive, the relationship. I'll just say that that's enough. It was abusive. And when I, you know, I went home, my dad gave me a blessing. He said, let's find out what the Lord thinks about your marriage, you know, and he said that's how he would preface it, you know, he gave me a blessing, and he said, you're going to go back. You're going to stay married for the sake of your children. We had two children at the time. He said, you're going to stay married for the sake of your children. You're going to stand by him. You're going to be a great wife. You're going to, you know, do this, do that. Everything's going to be great. And he said, and then one day, when the Lord sees fit, you'll be given another companion.

John Dehlin [00:40:05] Whoa.

Lila Tueller [00:40:06] Yeah. So I'm thinking, okay, I'll go back, put in a couple years, you know, I had no idea what he meant,

John Dehlin [00:40:14] but you're being sent back into a relationship that, for you is abusive. Yes, sent back, and so many. There's thousands of stories that I've heard of church leaders sending spouses back into abusive relationships.

Lila Tueller [00:40:26] That's what he did.

John Dehlin [00:40:27] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:40:28] And this was his admonition. Live together in love. That's all he had to say. He just said, live together in love.

John Dehlin [00:40:34] He's like, hey, I did it with my wife. You can do it with yours.

Lila Tueller [00:40:36] Exactly. He had no idea how deep the harm was, how sad I really was. I had already attempted suicide once. He knew that. But he wanted to wash over that and make that me being a little spoiled brat, wanting my way. And he whitewashed over all of the abuse, which I had seen two of my other sisters be physically abused and in marriages. In marriages. And my dad, you know, he was angry about it, but he never, like, really did anything. Like, I. He tried to rescue one of my sisters, I have to say. But, you know, he just basically said, go back and be happy and stop being sad.

John Dehlin [00:41:20] And so is part of that like he had been abusive himself or is part of that it's just like, oh, this is the way the world is, or is part of that like. Like the Pregnancy, it's just like we don't need this stuff in our lives. I'd rather just go figure it out, but I don't want to go figure it out.

Lila Tueller [00:41:35] Yeah. I don't want to look at this and, you know, just go. Yeah. I just don't think he wanted to deal with it. He didn't want to see another divorce. You know, he'd already. There had been my brother, my oldest sister, my, my. Well, there'd been four divorces already in our family by the time it came to me.

John Dehlin [00:41:55] Oh, okay.

Lila Tueller [00:41:56] So he was like, you know, please, not another. So I got sent back home and I divorces.

John Dehlin [00:42:05] Especially since he and his wife were pretty happy.

Lila Tueller [00:42:07] I know. And that's why I asked John. John's a psychologist. I think he says that we had an unrealistic, idealistic view of marriage. We didn't see conflict between them really. We saw two giddy, lovey dovey people who were crazy about each other and we didn't really get it.

John Dehlin [00:42:29] When you didn't experience that, you're like, something's wrong.

Lila Tueller [00:42:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:33] Our marriages are broken.

Lila Tueller [00:42:34] Right.

John Dehlin [00:42:34] They're not like our parents.

Lila Tueller [00:42:36] Yeah. So he thinks we were unprepared for it.

John Dehlin [00:42:39] So you go back after two kids because the Lord tells you to through your dad.

Lila Tueller [00:42:43] Right. And I was angry about it. I was not happy. Not at all. I went back miserable. I stayed, I stayed, I stayed. I had more children. I went into bishops. I told them that I was miserable. What do I do? And they basically just said, well, ask your dad. Your dad's a ga. You know, they. They didn't know what to say to me.

John Dehlin [00:43:05] So what was your ex husband's profession?

Lila Tueller [00:43:07] He was a computer software, a CEO. He had several different ones, but that was the main one that he did. And software company.

John Dehlin [00:43:17] And where were you live, what state?

Lila Tueller [00:43:18] Living in Provo most of the time.

John Dehlin [00:43:20] Most of them. You're in Provo?

Lila Tueller [00:43:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:21] Oh, that's. He drove up to Salt Lake. That's rich. Utah County.

Lila Tueller [00:43:24] Yeah, Utah County, Silicon Valley. He drove up to Salt Lake almost every day for work too. So, yeah, I wasn't happy at all. I was very. I was miserable and I was not, you know, I just wasn't flourishing there at all. Continued to have kids. Kind of threw myself into. I was, I had art background and I was kind of craftsy and I made things and sold them, painted and sold, you know, I did a lot of sewing for people. I tried to keep myself occupied and busy so that I would be, you know, happy as happy as I could be in a marriage that was really difficult for me. For me. And I don't want to. I don't. Like I said, I want to make it about him because I know that our personalities just did not mesh well. He would have been really happy with my sister Laura. They would have been perfect together. They loved each other until he died. You know, I mean, they adored each other. They were more better suited. I'm just a little more fiery. And he could not handle that. It just infuriated him. So we did have a hard time. And so I don't know where you want to meet now. Do you want me to go?

John Dehlin [00:44:37] So you were married how many years?

Lila Tueller [00:44:38] 33.

John Dehlin [00:44:39] 33 years in a relationship that was either abusive or toxic.

Lila Tueller [00:44:45] Hard.

John Dehlin [00:44:46] And was he serving in bishoprics? Was he? Was he.

Lila Tueller [00:44:49] Oh, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:50] Were you serving Relief Society, whatever and all the calling?

Lila Tueller [00:44:54] I was gospel doctrine teacher for a long time. I was released as society teacher for a long time. Young women. He was always in either a bishopric or young men's. He's always very active.

John Dehlin [00:45:06] And you had how many kids?

Lila Tueller [00:45:08] Seven.

John Dehlin [00:45:09] Seven kids. And then what's it like in those last 10 years when. What's it like being in a marriage that's just not good for either of you?

Lila Tueller [00:45:18] Oh, man, it was hard. Yeah. I got to a point. I mean, I got to a point where I refused to go to a romantic comedy. I wouldn't listen to romantic music. If anything was spoken about marriage or love, I wouldn't listen. I had to. I'd turn it off because I would end up bawling. And I cried. I cried every day for like, 10 years straight, for like an hour or two. I used to get colored contacts, and the acid in my tears would go right through them. I'd have to throw them away because I could not stop crying. And my kids knew it. They could hear, you know, they knew we were fighting all the time. It was hard. And, you know, both of us were good people. We just were a bad combination, you

John Dehlin [00:46:11] know, you must be intensely lonely. There's that Robin Williams quote that some people think the worst thing possible is to be alone. But he says the worst thing possible is to feel alone while you're with someone.

A Health Crisis and Near-Death Experience

Lila Tueller [00:46:23] While you're with someone.

John Dehlin [00:46:24] Is that right?

Lila Tueller [00:46:25] I would agree with that because I've had both now, you know, that was hard. You mind if I get a drink?

John Dehlin [00:46:32] No.

Lila Tueller [00:46:34] So I. You know, the whole time I kept saying to him, don't you think we should just go separate ways? Don't you think you know, you're not happy, I'm not happy. Don't you think we should just move on? And, you know, his answer was no. We're supposed to work. You know, we were married in the temple. We took this covenant. My patriarchal blessing says that I'm supposed to honor, support and keep my wife. He said, so I'm not letting you end this. And then if I pushed on it, he would threaten me. I'll get the kids. I'll make your life miserable.

John Dehlin [00:47:08] You'll wish, because he had money, a

Lila Tueller [00:47:10] little, yeah, we had enough. We didn't have a lot of money, but we had. We had enough where he could make me feel like I'd be out on my own. I'd be a waitress for the rest of my life.

John Dehlin [00:47:18] And because you've never gotten your education, developed your career, any of that.

Lila Tueller [00:47:23] Exactly. So I believed him. I didn't have the guts to do anything about it. I didn't have a job. You know, I took on little jobs. I was a waitress for a while. I sewed, I painted, I did things like that, but I wasn't making enough money.

John Dehlin [00:47:40] Did you ever feel bad that your dad didn't help you? And like, sometimes a child wants their dad to protect them and help them and save them.

Lila Tueller [00:47:49] He and my husband were best friends. That wasn't going to happen. They were buds. And. No, he just wasn't. That wasn't going to happen for me, and I knew it. And my mom wasn't going to do anything either. So I didn't. I didn't talk to my parents anymore. I stopped talking to them. I stopped going to my bishop. I stopped all of that. And the next, the last probably 15 years of my marriage, I just buckled down and decided, this is my life. I'm just gonna. You know, some people don't have. Some people never get married. Some people are born without limbs. I need to just be grateful that I have what I have and be happy, you know? And then I had a near death experience. And that is kind of a turning point for me. One of the turning points, and I don't talk about this very much, but once in a while. And this happened shortly after my brother Dan passed away. So it was around 2003. I was sick and I overdosed by accident on too much pseudoephedrine. And I died, basically. So I was at home and laying in bed and I just nursed my baby and put him down. And my husband said, I told him, I said, my heart's going crazy. It's going Crazy. It's going to bounce right out of my chest because I had all this pseudoephedrine in me, and I didn't know anything about pseudoephedrine. I didn't know what it did. All I knew was I was miserable. I had a really bad cold, and I took this stuff and. And I. The next thing I knew, I was outside of my body, up on the ceiling, looking down at myself in the bed. And I realized I'm. I died. Like, I just knew it. And I sat up there for a minute, and my husband came in the room and tried to revive me. And I saw that. And then I had this experience. And it's something that I. I don't talk about in detail because it's really mine. You know, it's just like, I'm not supposed to go out and write a book. I'm not supposed to get. Talk about it, you know, and write about it, or it's kind of my personal experience. But Daniel, my brother, who had passed away only a few months before, was there, and he came and took my hand and we left and we did this. We went on this journey. And one thing that was very clear to me was there was no mention whatsoever of the church. Nothing. Not even in passing, like, hey, you know that church you were a member of, that's not true, or, hey, you know, here's Nephi. Or, you know, nothing was mentioned. So I came back. I was given the choice to come back or not. And when I did choose to, because I had a baby, I knew I needed to go back, even though I had been praying to die for years, like, it was a nightly prayer. So, I mean, sorry, I don't want to get emotional, but when that happened to me, I felt like God said, okay, you want to die? You can die, and we'll give you that. You get to do that if that's what you want. This is how I thought at the time. And I did. And I came back home because I needed to be there for my son. So it was a choice that I made to come back. And when I came back, I had this euphoric, and it was really painful coming back, but that's a whole other experience. But when I was back in, and I was back awake and the paramedics were there and they were running tests on me, and they whisked me to the hospital, and I was in the hospital for two weeks, and they did a. Put a defibrillator, pacemaker in my chest, which is still here. And my heart was enlarged and you know, I was really in trouble for a while, and I had this euphoric feeling that there was a purpose to my life and that I needed to be here. And there were things that I needed to do still. And I had a happy feeling about it. For the first time in years and years, I felt positive. And I told, you know, I told my family, I said, you know, I just went through something, and it was really transformative. And the things that we think are important here, none of them are important. What you drive, what you. What house you live in, what, you know, money, none of it matters. None of it matters. All that matters is how do we love people, how do we treat people? Do we care for people, do we sacrifice for people? It's all about that. And it's not just me, me, me, you know, and. And I had nothing to tell them about the gospel other than that. That, to me, was the pure gospel. And I realized that it didn't matter whether you went to the temple, it didn't matter whether you were baptized or not. It didn't matter any of that. If you kept the word of wisdom, it didn't matter. None of that mattered. All that mattered was how you treat people. And that was the end of it. It was love, basically. And so that was like the beginning of a transition that took place inside of me. And it was subtle at first because I didn't really know how that. What to do with my religion, what to do with all that.

John Dehlin [00:53:43] What year was this?

Lila Tueller [00:53:44] This is 2003.

John Dehlin [00:53:46] So this is seven years ago. Six or seven years ago. You were in your.

Lila Tueller [00:53:51] No, this is more than that. 2003, it's seven. It's 17 years ago.

John Dehlin [00:53:56] 17 years ago. Sorry.

Lila Tueller [00:53:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:57] My math. I. I missed a decade.

Lila Tueller [00:53:59] No, it's okay.

John Dehlin [00:54:00] So 17 years ago.

Lila Tueller [00:54:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:02] You were around how old I was. I'm not trying to.

Lila Tueller [00:54:06] 40.

John Dehlin [00:54:07] Just trying.

Lila Tueller [00:54:07] Two.

John Dehlin [00:54:08] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:54:08] 42.

John Dehlin [00:54:09] 40s.

Lila Tueller [00:54:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:10] And when that. When that happened. Thank you for sharing something so personal. When that happened, were you sure that that. I mean, that tells you a couple things. That tells you that if you take it literally versus just some dream or.

Lila Tueller [00:54:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:26] You know.

Lila Tueller [00:54:26] Well, I know there's scientific excuses about

John Dehlin [00:54:28] it, and I'm not trying to mess

Lila Tueller [00:54:30] with that brain activity or.

John Dehlin [00:54:31] I'm just saying when you awoke.

Lila Tueller [00:54:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:33] That would have confirmed to you that you have a spirit.

Lila Tueller [00:54:36] Right.

John Dehlin [00:54:36] That the spirit can leave the body.

Lila Tueller [00:54:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:39] That your brother is alive as a spirit.

Lila Tueller [00:54:43] Right.

John Dehlin [00:54:43] That there's a whole heaven like you would.

Lila Tueller [00:54:46] You.

John Dehlin [00:54:46] You believed that before, but that would have I imagine you would have then experienced that as legitimizing some of the things that you had already believed.

Lila Tueller [00:54:57] Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:54:59] Heaven, spirits.

Lila Tueller [00:55:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:01] You know, but that's it. But then none of the Mormon stuff. Yeah, okay.

Lila Tueller [00:55:05] None of the Mormon stuff.

John Dehlin [00:55:06] Okay, right, okay. But that's. And of course, there's people questioning whether NDEs are real or just all in your brain.

Lila Tueller [00:55:12] I know. And that's, you know, the jury's out on that. I might have just had a fantastic dream.

John Dehlin [00:55:17] Oh, so you're open to that?

Lila Tueller [00:55:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:19] Okay. Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:55:19] I am, because I, you know, all. I know. I know what I felt. I know what I experienced, but that could have been my brain doing stuff to me. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:55:27] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:55:28] But it seemed very real to me. I mean, I saw myself on the bed from that vantage point. You know, you don't get that vantage point. Well, maybe I guess you could dream that.

John Dehlin [00:55:38] I'm just going to say that I passed out once in high school on the bathroom floor. And my memory is that I saw my. My body from, like, the corner. Top corner of really? The bathroom.

Lila Tueller [00:55:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:51] My memory is that that's what you remember. My spirit was hovering in the corner and could see my body. Right. I don't know what that means, but I. I do have that memory.

Lila Tueller [00:55:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:00] I could have made it up, but I have that memory.

Lila Tueller [00:56:02] Right. And same for me, like, maybe manufacturing it, but that is what I remember. And I. I have other memories that are tied to this. That. And it felt like a lot of time passed. And they said it was six minutes.

John Dehlin [00:56:13] Yeah. Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:56:14] You know, so.

John Dehlin [00:56:21] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. Sa.

Part 4 of 4 · Ep. 1248

John Dehlin [00:00:06] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and. And building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. One of the most requested topics on Mormon Stories is to cover near death experiences. And I haven't yet, but we are now.

Lila Tueller [00:00:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:00:47] So you're welcome to all the new fans out there. So 17 years ago, this happens, and obviously it's a big deal because none of the Mormon stuff's in it.

Lila Tueller [00:00:59] Right.

John Dehlin [00:01:00] So where did you go from there?

Lila Tueller [00:01:02] So from there, I.

John Dehlin [00:01:02] How did that change your life? Did you tell everybody?

Lila Tueller [00:01:05] I told some people. I didn't tell everybody. I told close friends and family.

John Dehlin [00:01:10] Oh, by the way, what a tender thing to interact with your brother who had passed away.

Lila Tueller [00:01:14] Yeah, I mean, it was. And he. He showed up too, in the hospital. I had an experience with him in the hospital. When I was not, anyway, is another thing where he was helping me. He woke me up a couple of times when I was having like a heart episode. But anyway, so I felt like Dan was there and I felt like there was more, you know, our bodies, our spirits continue. Yeah, all those things that you said. So that was all really comforting. It wasn't scary. It was. The part that was scary was coming back. It wasn't leaving. That was wonderful. No pain, you know, so for me, of course, it wasn't a violent death, you know, so I don't know what it'd be like to be burned or, you know, something like that. So I had that experience and I kind of just morphed it into my life. I figured, I'm not going to worry about all the extraneous stuff. I'm going to focus my life on that and I'm going to try to live that rule. And so for me, I immediately, you know, it affected the way I raised my kids. It affected the way I treated my husband. You know, it was more like, no, I just need to be kind, just be kind. I don't need to bring out all the problems. I don't need to focus on his faults. I need to be. Try to be more loving and kind and generous and, you know, be a better person. So I carried on and continued going to church and Then do I want to segue into that? Okay. So I got. So when I turned 52, it was my birthday.

Children, Divorce, and Keeping Secrets from Her Father

John Dehlin [00:02:58] So like, are all your kids, like going to BYU and going on missions and married in the temple?

Lila Tueller [00:03:03] Right.

John Dehlin [00:03:04] So you're living the Mormon dream, just kind of. And would you have said your marriage improved at that point when you got the impression to be dying?

Lila Tueller [00:03:12] I think so.

John Dehlin [00:03:12] And then that kind of puts it on you that all your marriage conflicts was. I mean, is that what you think? No, I think you were just unpleasant.

Lila Tueller [00:03:20] I think no is when I stopped engaging and when I stopped being part of the problem. Like engaging, that's the best word I can think of. When I stopped doing that. And I just figured I'm just going to do the best that I can to make life as good as it can be. Then he, he sensed that too, and so he would back down. Like he, he wasn't as aggressive. We came to, to where we could just sort of coexist more comfortably. Doesn't mean we never fought again because, you know, there were occasional times, but it wasn't like it was for all those years. It was a lot more peaceful.

John Dehlin [00:04:03] So it was a de escalation.

Lila Tueller [00:04:04] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:05] But again, does that mean it was all your fault? Like all the conflict was pretty much your fault?

Lila Tueller [00:04:10] Well, I don't, I don't want to say. I. Obviously I don't want to say that. I don't think it was. I just think that when I changed, he changed.

John Dehlin [00:04:16] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:04:17] And.

John Dehlin [00:04:17] Well, that's great. So that sounds really good. And does that mean your marriage then became healthy?

Lila Tueller [00:04:22] I wouldn't say healthy.

John Dehlin [00:04:23] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:04:23] I would say better.

John Dehlin [00:04:25] Better.

Lila Tueller [00:04:25] Better. Not as contentious.

John Dehlin [00:04:28] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:04:29] We were never really best friends. We didn't have a close relationship. I didn't tell him all my deepest, darkest secrets. He didn't tell me his. We kind of just coexisted.

John Dehlin [00:04:39] Not a lot of emotional intimacy.

Lila Tueller [00:04:40] None.

John Dehlin [00:04:41] Okay. No emotional intimacy.

Lila Tueller [00:04:43] Very little. Very little. That wasn't our pro. Our. No. We were good co. Parenters, but we were not good best close friends.

John Dehlin [00:04:53] Even after this event.

Lila Tueller [00:04:54] No.

John Dehlin [00:04:54] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:04:55] No. Because I didn't feel like he was safe for me. He didn't want to know me. I mean, I could tell give you examples, but I don't want to do that. It was more like there had been damage done in the beginning that was really hard to come back from. So I couldn't manufacture the romance. It was just like a dead duck. It was gone. So I could be friends, I could try to be friends, but that wasn't like an intimate friendship.

John Dehlin [00:05:29] Okay. So hard.

Lila Tueller [00:05:31] Yeah. So I was still needing, wanting more than that, but. But kind of accepting that this wasn't the right time, it wasn't gonna happen right now. And when it was the right time, I would know or something would happen.

John Dehlin [00:05:43] You had that promise from your dad that you would marry someone at some point.

Lila Tueller [00:05:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:46] That's weird. That's weird because you then live like, well, is he gonna die?

Lila Tueller [00:05:51] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:05:51] Or am I gonna meet a lover? And when's the time I had all those thoughts, like, that would mess with your mind a little bit.

Lila Tueller [00:05:56] It did. I was like, is this the year that something weird's gonna go down and I'm gonna be. Yeah. I never knew. And yet I kind of thought, well, you know, that's all in God's hands, and maybe it won because, you know, I didn't know if everything was going to happen the way my dad said it was going to happen.

John Dehlin [00:06:12] Right. Because there had been blessings that didn't come true.

Lila Tueller [00:06:15] Right. And patriarchal blessings that didn't always come true. So I didn't know. So we tried and we continued on. And when I was. My kids, you know, I had two sons go on missions. I had kids get married in the temple, and we lived in this sort of large house in Orem in a really great neighborhood, very predominantly lds. He was holding callings. I was holding callings. We were just doing it. I turned 52, and I kind of had a little mini crisis breakdown. I woke up that morning, and I realized I could live another 30 years. My mom's 84. I could be 30 more years. I'm 52, easily. And I thought, I. I can't do it like this. I cannot do it like this. Something has to change, you know? And I was. I started crying. I cried for, like, two weeks straight. Couldn't function. I just was, like, crying all the time. And he was like, what is wrong with you? What is going on with you? And I was like, I don't know. I'm just.

John Dehlin [00:07:24] So.

Lila Tueller [00:07:25] This isn't going to work. I can't do this. I can't do it. And I said, you know what? I'm going to start sleeping in the other room. And his eyes got big, and he said, what do you mean? What are you saying? And I said, I'm saying I'm not going to be sleeping in this bed anymore, and I don't want to have intimacy with you anymore. Because that was a point of contention. It would cause me to cry, and then he'd feel Bad. And so it was just not working. So. So he got worried and he ran off to the bishop. And I don't know what he said. I can guess. But, you know, they had their talk. And then he came back and like a month went by. And then the bishop called me and said, hey, I want to talk to you. Will you come in? So I went in very reluctantly because I was afraid it was going to be the old, you know, buck up, hold hands, go on dates, you know, talk about the reasons why you fell in love, all the old, you know, things that bishop would say. You know, you made covenants, do this, do that. So I'm expecting that. And I went in there kind of half expecting that, and that's not what happened at all. And the bishop said to me, he goes, I've been praying and fasting for you often, you know, during the last month, and I have a message to you from God for you from God. And, you know, I was expecting that's when he was going to say, you know, you're going to be really happy if you stick it out. It's going to be great and everything's going to turn out. And he didn't say that. He said, you know, you've been unhappy for a really long time. And of course, I started to cry. And then he said, the Lord knows what you've been through, and he accepts of your offering, and he wants you to know that you're free. You're free to go.

John Dehlin [00:09:25] What?

Lila Tueller [00:09:26] Yeah, the bishop. And I was floored. I was absolutely floored. And then all these things came rushing back to me. You know, my dad's blessing. The scripture that I hung onto all my life was the one where, you know, the Lamanites had. The Nephites under. They were being slaves, being held as slaves, and they were not allowed to pray. And then they were told they were going to be set free and the Lord was going to deliver them. And that was kind of my pet scripture. So I was like, well, I'm waiting for the Lord to deliver me. So when the bishop said that, I was like, this is it. This is it. It's happening. So I went home and I didn't say anything to my husband. I just kept my mouth shut. And he said, what'd the bishop say? And I said, you know, we just had a good talk, and I just sort of. I just kind of started putting some money away, and little by little, and I told him, you know, I wanted. I didn't want to sleep with him anymore. And so over Time. We kind of would talk, and I would say, you know what? I just. Can't we just be friends? Can't we just part as friends? We don't have to fight. We don't have to make it a big scene. We don't have to make it hard. Can't we just agree to go our separate ways? And he was. He. For the very first time, he was actually open to it. And he said, you know, you're right. Neither of us are really happy, are we? And he said, okay. Okay. He said, I'm not gonna stop you if that's what you want to do. He says, I don't want to do that, but if that's what you feel like we should do, I'm not gonna fight you. So we did. We divorced amicably. I literally moved down the street next door to my mom and dad in a basement apartment, and we went to church together. I was at the house every night, helping the kids with homework, doing the wash. It was the most bizarre divorce because we never would argue after that. It was just a decision we made. And we didn't have any lawyers. There was no. Like. We just did it online. And it was super easy. If a divorce can be. It was as easy as it could be, you know, and like I said, there was no scandal. Nobody cheated on anybody. So it was very. You know, it was a peaceful agreement that we made. And the kids, you know, we tried to talk them through it as best we could, and they were sad, but they understood because they had seen our interaction. They knew it wasn't a happy marriage. So, you know, they talked to us when we talked to them, and more individually than as a group. And that's how it happened. So we ended up divorcing in 2014. It was final. And then. And I moved away a little further away later.

John Dehlin [00:12:40] And you say you didn't tell your dad? For two years, I didn't tell my dad.

Lila Tueller [00:12:43] We still had dinners every Sunday at my house, my husband's house. It was his now, because I walked away from it. And my dad would be there, my mom, they'd come for dinner every Sunday. I'd be there. It would look like one big happy family. They had no idea we were divorced. I asked my ex not to say anything about it because I said, it's just gonna hurt him. It's just gonna hurt him. He doesn't need to know. So we kept that going for a couple of years.

John Dehlin [00:13:10] And the kids also were in on it.

Lila Tueller [00:13:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:13] So it wasn't just you and Your husband keeping something from your dad.

Lila Tueller [00:13:16] We all were in it.

John Dehlin [00:13:17] Was the whole family keeping something from your parents?

Lila Tueller [00:13:19] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:13:20] Wow.

Lila Tueller [00:13:20] Yeah. As bad as that sounds.

John Dehlin [00:13:23] No, no, no. I'm not judging that at all. This is the reality you were living in. Why would you want to break your dad's heart? Why would you want to add extra drama? Why would you want to subject yourself to the condemnation?

Lila Tueller [00:13:34] And he was in his 80s, early. Let's see. Yeah, he would have been early. Late 80s, early 90s. And he was failing in his health. And we were just like. I thought, he doesn't need this. He doesn't need the pain. He doesn't need to. It would have broken his heart. Right. So we didn't. And finally my husband said, if you don't tell him, this is two years into it. He said, if you don't tell him, I'm going to tell him. And I said, no, no, no. This is my dad. I'll tell him. So one day he was over for dinner. I went over to him. I got down on my knees in front of him, looked him right in the eye, and I said, dad, just so you know, you might have wondered, things are kind of different, you know. He says, well, sometimes I don't see you at church. And I said, yes, because I go to a different ward. And I said, dad, we've been divorced for two years. And he got a big. Like, his eyes.

John Dehlin [00:14:27] It's not just, I'm divorced, it's like, I've been divorced and I didn't tell you.

Lila Tueller [00:14:31] Yeah. And he was shocked. He was absolutely shocked. He goes, well, that explains a lot. And I said, sorry. I said, I just didn't want to hurt your feelings. He goes, I understand. He goes, I get it. He says, well, it looks like you still like each other. And I said, yeah, we actually are better friends now than we ever were. So he was like, well, then maybe it was okay. Maybe it was okay that you got a divorce. He was so different than I thought he would be.

John Dehlin [00:14:55] But he was emeritus by that point.

Lila Tueller [00:14:56] Right.

John Dehlin [00:14:57] So he wasn't still gunning for.

Lila Tueller [00:14:59] No, didn't care about that anymore.

John Dehlin [00:15:01] He had moved on by that point.

Lila Tueller [00:15:02] Yeah.

Guest [00:15:03] And he had told you at one point that you'd find another spouse, right?

Lila Tueller [00:15:07] He did say that.

John Dehlin [00:15:08] And that's what I'm wondering. Like, did he tell you, Bishop?

Lila Tueller [00:15:10] I don't know if he remembered.

John Dehlin [00:15:11] Oh, he may not have remembered.

Lila Tueller [00:15:12] I don't know that he remembered, because

John Dehlin [00:15:13] I'm wondering, like, did your dad. Like, in my mind, I'm Thinking, like, did your dad, you know, like, you know, notice that you were miserable for too long? And so then he went to your

Lila Tueller [00:15:25] bishop, said something to my bishop.

John Dehlin [00:15:26] Hey. Or if your husband knew that prophecy and did your husband know the prophecy? Okay. You kept that from your husband as well. See, this is part of. What's interesting is just this culture of secrecy and hiding things from everybody. You're hiding things from your husband. You know, your husband and you are hiding things from your parents.

Lila Tueller [00:15:44] Right.

John Dehlin [00:15:45] Your kids are involved. Like, this has got to be every general authority's family that exists. And so many Mormon families, for sure, you know.

Lila Tueller [00:15:52] Yeah. Because you're not free to really be a human being and be full of flaws. If you are, you need to repent and you need to get this taken care of. Right. Because this is the life we're supposed to be becoming perfect. So all these flaws are really. They look bad. They look. Especially if you're a ga, it looks like you're not a good parent. It looks like you're failing your mission in life, and you're supposed to be this great example. So, yeah, there was a lot of. I played right into it. I did not want to tell my dad. I didn't want to hear it. I didn't want to hear him yell at me. I didn't want to hear him say, you're being selfish. Like, you know, he had done that before to me.

John Dehlin [00:16:37] So, yeah, it makes total sense.

Lila Tueller [00:16:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:39] No one's going to judge you.

Lila Tueller [00:16:41] Well, that's what I did. So he did, you know, I did tell him. And my mom had already died. She had Alzheimer's, so she ended up passing away, having no idea that, you know, anything had happened with our marriage. Not knowing much about anything at that point. So, yeah, so the next thing that happened is two years. You know, after two years, we told my dad. And now Hal, my ex, goes in and gets diagnosed, and he has colon cancer, stage four. So he was already. It metastasized already into his lungs and his lips.

John Dehlin [00:17:22] This happened to my sister, did it? Two months. She was 15. She was 60. Two months. She was gone from diagnosis to death. It was two months.

Lila Tueller [00:17:30] Oh, wow.

John Dehlin [00:17:32] Three years ago.

Lila Tueller [00:17:32] Did she do any chemo? Didn't have time.

John Dehlin [00:17:35] Didn't do a thing.

Lila Tueller [00:17:37] Well, sometimes I wonder if that's what he should have done. But he did have more time because he did the chemo thing, you know.

John Dehlin [00:17:44] How much time did I give him?

Lila Tueller [00:17:46] He had another 18 months. Yeah. So he. You know, that was hard. It was hard on everybody. Nobody believed he was gonna die. My kids were sure he was gonna be healed. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:17:59] You know, refused, because, as you told. Told us previously, he got the blessings

Lila Tueller [00:18:03] from your dad and his dad and steak. Everybody.

John Dehlin [00:18:06] Everybody blessed him to be healed.

Lila Tueller [00:18:07] Blessed him to be healed. There wasn't one negative blessing that said, you know, they're sealing him up to, you know, or anything like that. So he died. And when that happened, well, prior to him dying, when it got really bad, I realized that it was really hard on my kids because they were having to care for him. And he had been dating a lot, but he didn't have a, you know, anybody that he was going to marry or anything like that. And I didn't either. So I realized I need to move back because somebody's got to take care of him. So I left my condo in Lehigh and I quit my day job, and I moved in with him, back into the house. And in very short time, within a couple of days, he was. He was taken to a facility because it was too much. He couldn't toilet. I mean, it had gotten to a really bad stage. So then we just took turns visiting him at the facility and took care of him until he passed away. And that was in fall of 2017.

John Dehlin [00:19:18] So two or three years ago?

Lila Tueller [00:19:21] Well, yeah, a little over two years. So that happened before my faith transition happened. And that was a hard. A hard thing. He had all his money was basically eaten up paying for his medical care.

John Dehlin [00:19:42] He didn't have great health insurance or just.

Lila Tueller [00:19:44] Well, the health insurance covered the chemo, but not the alternative medicine that he tried and that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

John Dehlin [00:19:51] Was that charlatans basically bilking him with pseudoscience?

Lila Tueller [00:19:55] Pretty much.

John Dehlin [00:19:55] Oh, I'm so sorry.

Lila Tueller [00:19:57] Yeah, well, he was just desperate. He wanted to try anything.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] He would spend everything to save himself.

Lila Tueller [00:20:02] And we were trying to. And his family helped. We, you know, third mortgage on the house. I mean, we tried everything for him. So when he died, there wasn't much there. We sold the house, the cars, the furniture, everything. And none of it was mine because we'd already divorced. So, you know, I was already pretty much on my own. The kids got, you know, have a trust. But anyway, so there was, you know, it was just a lot of upheaval. We had to move from their home, and they loved their home. And I moved directly in with my sister and my dad, my mom. My dad was ailing, so I moved right in with him with my son and started taking care of my dad. And then he died the following year, almost exactly well, same month. So, yeah, a year later, he died. And we. My sister and I took care of him pretty much till he died. So it was a couple of rough years.

John Dehlin [00:21:05] Wait, another person died?

Lila Tueller [00:21:07] My dad.

John Dehlin [00:21:08] Your dad okay.

Lila Tueller [00:21:08] Yeah, I took care of him.

John Dehlin [00:21:10] Okay.

Guest [00:21:10] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:21:11] So, yeah. Anyway, so that, you know, it's just been kind of a lot of things happening that were hard and. And then, you know, after my dad died, I moved into a little house with my son, and then my daughter moved in with us. There's three of us living together here in Orem, not far. And, you know, I've been dating, been looking, trying to. It's hard. It's hard at my age. Dating is not for the faint of heart. It's a lot easier when you're young and you don't have all the baggage and the experience to caution you and say, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a red flag. This isn't good. This is. You've been down that road, you know, so that's been a hard thing. And hard on my kids, too. You know, they don't want their mom to marry some guy. They have their dad on a pedestal, which is where he should be for them. I don't disagree with that at all. But now I'm the kind of the flawed one left behind that isn't on a pedestal. And I don't know.

Siblings' Divorces and the Legacy of a General Authority Family

John Dehlin [00:22:23] So then I think John wrote in that eight of nine of your siblings got divorced.

Lila Tueller [00:22:29] Yeah. The only one that didn't was Dan. And he died.

John Dehlin [00:22:32] He died. Oh, my gosh. Like, I'm just having this, you know, like, we talked about the Camelot years and your parents are celebrities and you're eating at the general authority table and lunches and the general conferences and, like, touring the world. What a kind of, like, unceremonious. Very end to their life to all their kids.

Lila Tueller [00:22:56] Very like, you would not what we thought. It's not what. It hasn't turned out the way any of us thought it would. I'm sure mine definitely not my parents, how they thought.

John Dehlin [00:23:07] And there's a degree to which that's life. Like in Buddhism. Like, you know, acceptance and attachment is suffering because you. If you expect things right, on the one hand, yeah, welcome to the club. We all have bad lives. On the other hand, eight of nine kids and then the other one dies. And, like, you know, I'm just struck by, like, how miserable you were and probably your husband was for so long. Like, heavy, heavy prices were paid for your entire family, for the relationship that your parents had with the church. And for the church in your lives, although many of you wouldn't even be alive if your parents hadn't joined the church because they probably had so many kids because the church told them to have a lot of kids. So how do you make sense of all the suffering and the way that it ended and what it's all meant in your life?

Lila Tueller [00:24:06] That's a hard one because like you said, if you look at it from the Buddhist, secular Buddhism perspective, this is kind of what we all, you know, this is what it's about is suffering. Right. But. And so I do.

John Dehlin [00:24:21] John writes, that's not the way the ensign portrays it, is it?

Lila Tueller [00:24:26] No, not at all. Yeah, the happy family story, you know,

John Dehlin [00:24:30] and you would think the general. I mean, it's wrong, but you would assume the general authorities got it extra good because they're living the gospel and they have second anointing and all the blessings, like, then the family would be charmed.

Lila Tueller [00:24:40] Yeah, not so. Not ours. Maybe some. Ours wasn't. But, I mean, I'm not. I don't want to paint some really bleak picture either because I think, you know, like John, for instance, you know, he left the church and he remarried and found the love of his life. And he's been an inspiration to me because I say, okay, there's hope. He can do it, so can I. But it's. It was wrong. You know, we got. When I say we were farmed out, John got the brunt of that because he was little and he was like two, three, four years, you know, young and, and being sent to these homes that, you know, they weren't his parents. And it was traumatizing for him, very traumatizing for him. And one of them was a pedophile that he got sent to. So he doesn't even know. Maybe he was abused. He doesn't know. These kind of. It was just. The church exacted a very large sacrifice on the families of the general authorities. That's my viewpoint, and I don't want to sound all negative. Yes, there were positives, yes, there were perks, but there was also a toll, you know, that it took on us. And, you know, I used to think, my dad's never been to a daddy daughter date with me. I've never, you know, my dad doesn't know me. He didn't know who I was. He didn't know one thing about my personality, about my nothing. He didn't know what I was interested in. He didn't have time. You know, all he did was get mad at me. I got Mad. He got mad at me a lot because he'd come home and my mom would say, well, Lila did this, Lila did that. And then I'd get yelled at for three hours straight. And that's how he did it. He would chew you out for hours every time he saw you. You know, it was. And I felt like, you know, I loved my dad prior to the calling. He was my favorite. I was a daddy's girl. I loved my dad. And then all of a sudden, he was just gone all the time and didn't have time for me. Didn't have time for any of my brothers or sisters. It wasn't just me. It was all of us. You know, we just didn't have a normal childhood. I know we're not unique. I know there's people all over the world that have horrible child. I don't want to pretend like I'm this martyr. Oh, poor me. Poor little Lila, you know, first world problem. First world problem, exactly. I'm not.

John Dehlin [00:27:03] Suffering is suffering. Right.

Lila Tueller [00:27:04] But yeah, it was it, you know, I think it had its effect for sure on me. And I try now to move forward with positivity, looking at life through the Oprah lens, you know, gratitude. I try to listen to uplifting podcasts and read books that are uplifting, that help me see things positively and find joy in life. That's kind of my mantra right now, is trying to find joy. Not that my whole life was horrible. I have great kids. I've had a lot of good things. You know, it's just.

John Dehlin [00:27:42] But living for years sobbing and living for years praying to die. Yeah, that's a level of severity that I don't think.

Lila Tueller [00:27:50] Yeah. Oh, I was clinically depressed. I was, you know, and I got put on depression medicine, you know, after I attempted suicide one time. That's all it took. You know, my husband was like, no, you're getting on something. And I did. I don't even need it now because it was circumstantial, I think, in a lot of ways for me. And now I'm much more. I'm much more freer, happier.

John Dehlin [00:28:19] I'm so sorry. I mean, we all who feel, you know, okay, I'll put my believing brain back on. Right? Yeah. We're all so grateful for the sacrifices you all made for the church and to make the church what it could be for the rest of us. Right? But then I'm thinking, like, from a non believer perspective and let's get into your faith crisis because, like, if that sacrifice wasn't, you know, for the church being true. And for all of us needing those sacrifices because those sacrifices have to be made because the church is true.

Lila Tueller [00:28:51] Right.

John Dehlin [00:28:52] That's one thing.

Lila Tueller [00:28:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:53] But if it's still awful, right, and it's still inexcusable, but at least it's for a cause that's true.

Lila Tueller [00:29:01] Right?

John Dehlin [00:29:01] So let's, so when it's not true, then what was it all for? So how did you lose your faith?

Lila Tueller [00:29:08] Okay, so I'll try to be, you know, brief about this. So I'm now, you know, living in this little house. I have my son and my daughter living with me. And a friend of mine from work sends me a podcast and she says to me, now, mind you, I've been divorced for at this point, like four years. And when you're divorced in the church, as any single person can tell you, you don't feel like you're really a part of the group. So I had already sort of gotten to the point where I was going to church for maybe an hour sacrament meeting, and then ducking out. It was just too painful to go to Relief Society. It was too painful.

John Dehlin [00:29:55] It's this constant reminder that you're a failure and also this constant reminder that you don't, you don't have the, you're

Lila Tueller [00:30:00] not unplanned, you're not, you're not the ideal. You are, you know, one of those people that they have to make an auxiliary for because you don't fit. So I, I, I was already sort of, you know, kind of pulling away in a sense. I still believed it, but I didn't feel like I fit in. So I wouldn't, I didn't bust my behind to stay. So, okay, so she sends me this podcast and I don't, I think it was Carolyn Pearson talking about polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:30:29] So my interview with Carolyn Pearson or someone else's, I don't know, maybe you're polygamy. Lindsay Anson Parker.

Lila Tueller [00:30:36] I don't know if it was a podcast or. It must have been, it might have been yours.

John Dehlin [00:30:42] Okay. Because I did a video with her. With her, a multi hour interview.

Lila Tueller [00:30:45] It must have been that.

John Dehlin [00:30:46] All right.

Lila Tueller [00:30:47] At the time, I don't, I didn't remember it as John de Lynn. I remembered it as Carolyn Pearson.

John Dehlin [00:30:51] Sure, of course. And because who's John de Lin?

Lila Tueller [00:30:54] Right? In my mind, I was like, who knows? So I'm listening to her because I knew who she was. And she's talking about polygamy and she's saying, you know, all this stuff and how she didn't agree with it. And she felt like Joseph Smith was a charlatan. And she said, what do you think about this? And I wrote her back. And I said, whoa, hold on. This is reminding me of stuff that I heard back when my brother was with Sunstone. And I said, so is this really true? If it's true, I'm out of here. It was like, that fast. I listened to a few more, and then a few more. Then I started listening to all the Mormon stories. Like, I went way back, way back as far as I could go, and started binging them all your interviews. And then I started listening to some. Somebody said, listen to rfm. So I started listening to all his. And then I read. I did the year in polygamy, and then I started listening to Dan Vogel and just everything I could get my hands on all day long.

John Dehlin [00:31:55] And this is like 2019 or last year?

Lila Tueller [00:31:58] Last year, last year. And you've been doing it for, you know, like, 14, 15 years. And I'm just now going, wait a minute. So you're telling me I was right? All. Or Dan. Dan was right.

John Dehlin [00:32:11] Dan was right.

Lila Tueller [00:32:13] Right.

John Dehlin [00:32:13] Your brother.

Lila Tueller [00:32:13] My brother, yeah. And, you know, he had been shushed. He had been silent. He had been apostolically cursed.

John Dehlin [00:32:20] He, you know, disfellowship.

Lila Tueller [00:32:22] Disfellowship. My dad and him got, you know, he was right. So when all of that started to settle into my little brain, it literally took, I would say, about a week of listening and reading and listening for me to go, okay, that's it. I'm never going back. I'm done. They have taken so much from me. I am never going back. They have taken my money. You know, I paid. I paid double. Fast offerings. I paid tithing. I was always like, I need all the blessings I can get. I gotta really step it up, you know, and all my. The time, the energy, the focus, the Book of Mormon reading, just all of that, plus staying in a whole childhood,

John Dehlin [00:33:08] staying in an abusive, loveless marriage for

Lila Tueller [00:33:10] decades, thinking that I needed to, because I was sealed. And it would break up a, you know, eternal family and. And ruin it. Ruin it for everyone else who was wanting us all to be at that seat, you know, at the table. And just all of that pressure. And I started thinking, I can't. I am not doing this anymore. I am done. I'm out. It didn't take very long. And then my friend, the one that sent me the podcast, said, hey, John de Lind speaking at Community of Christ, let's go. And I'm like, I'm in let's go. So I went, and that night, I think I rose my hand and said a few things. And then I met you afterwards, and I said, hey, you know, my dad was Hartman Rector. And, you know. And you remembered my brother John at that point.

John Dehlin [00:33:53] Yeah. So a couple years prior, someone had messaged me secretly and just said, hey, John Rector, Herman Rector's son, is like, a counselor at byu, Idaho. And then later, it's like, I think he's losing his faith. I think he's left the church. So a year or two maybe prior, at least I had known that. Whoa. One of Robert Rector Junior's children is leaving. So then I heard through the grapevine that you people reach out to me. Like, people reach out to me. So I knew when you were going through your faith crisis before we had ever met.

Lila Tueller [00:34:28] Wow. I didn't know that.

John Dehlin [00:34:29] Yeah. So then when you came. I don't mean to.

Lila Tueller [00:34:31] No, that's fine.

John Dehlin [00:34:32] I hope I'm not getting anyone in trouble.

Lila Tueller [00:34:33] It's okay.

John Dehlin [00:34:34] But then when you had reached out to me and came to that Community of Christ building, I'm like, oh, okay.

Lila Tueller [00:34:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:38] It's you. You're here.

Lila Tueller [00:34:40] Yeah.

Guest [00:34:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:41] And that was so nice to meet you. And John told me, but I could see the pain. You were just like.

Lila Tueller [00:34:45] Yeah. At that time, I was angry.

John Dehlin [00:34:47] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:34:47] I was furious. I thought, felt lied to, duped, you know, just deceived.

John Dehlin [00:34:54] You're also, like, in shock, though.

Lila Tueller [00:34:55] Yeah. Still. Yeah. Just like, wow, I can't believe this. My brother, I think he went down to St. George and spoke at one of your group things. At least that's what he told me. He said it was a Mormon stories thing. So anyway. Or maybe it was Sunstone, but I thought it was you. Anyway, so then after that, you know, I stopped going to church. And then my kids started to wonder, you know, why aren't you guys going to church? And I just said, you know, I've just been reading stuff. I've been listening to stuff. Oh, you've been on the Internet? Oh, you know, they were a little bit, like, worried about me, but they've been so great. My kids are one thing I can say about my kids, and, you know, I can't take all the credit because my husband helped raise them. They're very. They're very old souls. They're intelligent, emotionally intelligent people. And they have been nothing but kind.

John Dehlin [00:35:57] All seven.

Lila Tueller [00:35:58] Yeah. So my youngest son, who's 16, just stopped going to church with me because he had had some interactions with the bishop that he wasn't happy about interviews, asking him questions that he didn't want to answer.

John Dehlin [00:36:11] And oftentimes pre mission, you don't get quite the brainwashing. And so if your parents leave pre mission, oftentimes it's like, I never believed this anyway. Woo hoo.

Lila Tueller [00:36:21] Right?

John Dehlin [00:36:21] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:36:22] And then I had a 20. My daughter, who's 21, who lives with me, she was out at 15, you know, while we were still married. Well, yeah, right around the time we got a divorce, she stopped going to church and her dad was furious about it, but she just said, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. And I don't want to keep these rules. And it's stupid.

John Dehlin [00:36:40] The wisdom of babes.

Lila Tueller [00:36:41] I know, right? So. And I didn't give her a hard time about it. I just, you know, I was like, okay, you know, you can live your life the way you want to live it. And there's, you know, she's definitely a free spirit, which I think is great. But my son, you know, he was like, we don't have to go to church. Cool, I'm not going. That was the end of that. Stopped.

John Dehlin [00:36:58] The youngest two dominoes fell early.

Lila Tueller [00:37:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:01] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:37:01] The other ones, they're all still.

John Dehlin [00:37:03] All five are still in.

Lila Tueller [00:37:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:05] All temple married.

Lila Tueller [00:37:06] Well, one of them not temple married. She married a guy who is a returned missionary who has been out for,

John Dehlin [00:37:13] okay, a while, but a believer.

Lila Tueller [00:37:15] He was a believer. Not him. She is.

John Dehlin [00:37:17] So five are still believers.

Lila Tueller [00:37:19] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:37:20] One is married in a mixed faith marriage, but not temple married.

Lila Tueller [00:37:24] Right.

John Dehlin [00:37:24] And do you have a single believing child?

Lila Tueller [00:37:26] I have a single believing child. Cade, who's 31, he's single.

John Dehlin [00:37:32] So three temple marriages.

Lila Tueller [00:37:33] Let's see. Brittany, Trent and Natalie. Three.

John Dehlin [00:37:37] Okay. Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:37:39] And they're all, you know, strong. Strong TBM as far as I can tell.

John Dehlin [00:37:44] Will they know all this that we talked about today? Will they know?

Lila Tueller [00:37:47] They'll know. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:48] Do you think they'll watch and listen

Lila Tueller [00:37:50] or do you think they might? I don't. They've never said a word about my other podcast that I did. Not a word. Not a word. So I don't know. They'll probably hear about this one though, because you're, you know, you're pretty well known and they may listen to it. And I hope that they're not upset at me for doing this and going public if they are, you know, I have to be true to me. I don't want to hurt anybody. I certainly don't want to hurt my children. I love them and I want them to know that they are free to believe forever as long as they. I never will try to talk them out of it. I don't want to cause problems in their life. Their life is their choice. They're adults. And if they want to believe, even if I think it's harmful, I'm going to let them make that call.

Faith Transition and Leaving the Church

John Dehlin [00:38:40] And I'm going to ask you this question not to mess with anyone's faith, but just so that it's part of your story. The things that you learned that caused you to lose your faith. Name five. Just so people will know what it was.

Lila Tueller [00:38:54] Okay, first of all, it would be, I think polygamy was the big one.

John Dehlin [00:39:00] What's wrong with that?

Lila Tueller [00:39:01] All, all the messy parts of the polygamy that I didn't know about, like marrying, you know, young girls. Polyandry, which is marrying women that are already married to other women.

John Dehlin [00:39:13] Joseph Smith marrying 14 year old Joseph Smith marrying other men's wives while they were married to the.

Lila Tueller [00:39:17] While they were married to the other men. To the other men.

John Dehlin [00:39:20] Yeah, yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:39:21] Like setting them off, marrying their. Or whatever. However he did it, sometimes I think he just did it behind their back and doing this behind Emma's.

John Dehlin [00:39:29] Lying to Emma.

Lila Tueller [00:39:30] Lying to Emma.

John Dehlin [00:39:31] Emma was like the 17th wife sealed to Joseph.

Lila Tueller [00:39:34] Incredible.

John Dehlin [00:39:35] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:39:36] And then threatening Emma through God, that was hideous. That was so manipulative. And I know he did the same thing to other people. He manipulated people. Now someone would say, well, how do you know that? You don't know that. You weren't there. You don't know what happened. That may be true, but all I can tell you is in my gut, this is a gut thing for me. I know our emotions are not good instruments for measuring truth. Right. So I know that this isn't a good measurement, but when I heard these things, something in my gut said, this is true. What he did was wrong and it's ugly. And that's why the church has hidden it. It is.

John Dehlin [00:40:25] And punished people for talking about it.

Lila Tueller [00:40:27] And punished and excommunicated people for talking about it.

John Dehlin [00:40:31] The truth.

Lila Tueller [00:40:32] The truth.

John Dehlin [00:40:33] And by the way, everything is documented historically. The church admits it. They own up to it now. Now because of the Internet and because of podcasts and CES letter.

Lila Tueller [00:40:42] But those gospel topic is.

John Dehlin [00:40:44] So don't act like it's not historically substantiated.

Lila Tueller [00:40:46] Right. Of course it's factual and they've admitted to it kind of vaguely. They didn't. I still think they need to own up to a lot more.

John Dehlin [00:40:55] They haven't apologized. They haven't there's no accountability.

Lila Tueller [00:40:58] Right.

John Dehlin [00:40:58] But they've admitted the facts, and they've

Lila Tueller [00:41:00] admitted that some things have. They have hidden facts.

John Dehlin [00:41:03] Yeah, for sure.

Lila Tueller [00:41:04] So when you find all this out and you feel it in your gut, like this was wrong, wrong, bad, and he was a prophet and he inflicted his beliefs on innocent people, including young girls and his own wife, that was just beyond. It was reprehensible. And I just can't follow whatever he. Whatever church came from, that even if the church now is so much better, if the well is poison, I don't want to drink from it. So then there was that polygamy. The second thing was the Book of Abraham. That just blew my mind.

John Dehlin [00:41:45] I was like, really quickly, what about it? What about it?

Lila Tueller [00:41:48] So it's been proven that, you know, Joseph Smith translating the papyri and the facsimiles and. And the Book of Abraham from it. None of that is factual. None of that is. It's not scientifically proven by the Egyptologists that even the BYU Egyptologists, they've all been nothing. It has nothing to do with Abraham,

John Dehlin [00:42:13] that Abraham's name doesn't even appear, not even there on the papyrus that Joseph translated from.

Lila Tueller [00:42:18] Right.

John Dehlin [00:42:18] So he just had to have made it up.

Lila Tueller [00:42:20] He made it up, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:21] And that's, again, the church has admitted that.

Lila Tueller [00:42:23] Right. But they want to say, you know, there's all these theories, categories.

John Dehlin [00:42:26] It's revelation.

Lila Tueller [00:42:27] It's still revelation.

John Dehlin [00:42:28] It's not a translation.

Lila Tueller [00:42:30] But that's not what they told us, is it?

John Dehlin [00:42:32] No, that's not what Joseph told people.

Lila Tueller [00:42:33] That's not what Joseph said. And that is. And so I find that very hard to believe. And it all goes back to. If you trace it back to its origin. Joseph Smith was a treasure digger. He cheated people out of their money to find buried treasure. What was the Book of Mormon? Buried treasure. What did he use to find the buried treasure which he never found? A stone, a common stone. How did he translate the buried treasures that he found? Yeah, so translate.

John Dehlin [00:43:08] Yeah. Right.

Lila Tueller [00:43:09] So when you start looking at all this and all this is never told,

John Dehlin [00:43:12] it's the same stone used for the Book of Mormon, same golden plates. But the plates were the plates of Abraham. Right, but the plates were in the room.

Lila Tueller [00:43:19] Right.

John Dehlin [00:43:19] And so the Book of Mormon, he's making that up, just like he made up the Book of Abraham.

Lila Tueller [00:43:22] Right. And people say, well, we heard that, you know, the tinkling of the tins when the pages were thumbed through. You know what I mean? I don't know exactly what he did. He May have had somebody make something, I don't know. But. But the fact is that nobody ever actually saw them. Even the eight witnesses, even the three witnesses. All this stuff, when you start looking

John Dehlin [00:43:42] into all of them spiritual eyes, they

Lila Tueller [00:43:44] saw it in vision, like a city through a hill.

John Dehlin [00:43:47] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:43:48] So, I mean, right there, it kind of tells you, okay, they didn't really see it, they imagined it. And then, you know, okay, so then. So if the Book of Mormon was translated the same way as the Book of Abraham, which we know wasn't actually translated and isn't actually factual, then what does that tell you about the Book of Mormon? You just. It doesn't take a rocket scientist, right? And so you start looking. And this is the book that I loved. This is the book that I taught from, that I read over and over every single night like clockwork, before I went to bed. And I believed it was true. There are beautiful things in the Book of Mormon. And then you're like, well, how could a young boy who didn't graduate from high school translate this book? That's so brilliant. Right? We've all heard this. And I, you know, you guys in a room have all heard this, so I feel like I'm belaboring the point. But, you know, there's so many excuses. There's so many ways that he could have done it and that he was a. He was a brilliant mind. He was a storyteller. He was good at it. He had a lot of time to come up with the story. And between the time he allegedly found the plates and got the plates. How many years was that? Five years? Yeah, something like that. He had some time.

John Dehlin [00:45:05] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:45:05] To build a story line.

John Dehlin [00:45:07] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:45:08] So when I figure all this out, so the. Okay, so what do we say? Polygamy, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, Book of Mormon. And then, you know, plus the lack

John Dehlin [00:45:18] of archaeological or scientific evidence substantiate the civilizations any of it claims to have. The horses, the steel, the wheels, all the anachromen helmets. There's none of. None of it ever shows up anywhere.

Lila Tueller [00:45:31] Right.

John Dehlin [00:45:32] The geography doesn't match up. The populations don't match up.

Lila Tueller [00:45:35] And my dad was always going down to South America on digs all the time. And then he changed his theory to North America. He was in South America for a long time. Then it came up to North America. Oh, they took the river, whatever, to, oh, my gosh, the barges. And anyway, so they, you know, when you have to. When you have to jump through 40 hoops to get to, you know, something, then you know that you're trying too hard and you're stretching it and it's probably not factual.

John Dehlin [00:46:03] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:46:04] So, you know, there's so many things. Those were probably the breaking points for me.

John Dehlin [00:46:09] All right, that's enough. Just so people get a sense.

Lila Tueller [00:46:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:12] So what does that. What does that do to you? Is it great? Was it euphoric? Were you happy? Were you devastated? Were you excited?

Lila Tueller [00:46:19] Oh, wow. It was a mix of all of that. Interesting. I don't know, I. Interestingly enough, I felt sadness, I felt grief. I went through the anger stage. I wanted to blame somebody. Then I came out of that thinking, I don't want to feel like this. I don't want to always be on a downer. I'm going to be happy that I don't have to go to church and I don't have to pay tithing and I don't have to go to the temple, which I couldn't stand. I did not like the temple. I never did. People would go, I love the temple. It's so beautiful and peaceful. I would go there and be like, this is freaking weird. Look at what we're wearing. This is cultish. I don't want to stand in that circle. I don't want to do that weird thing. I just, you know, I just never really felt good there. Call me, you know, of the devil or whatever. I just didn't feel good there. So it was nice to see. Say, you know, there's some perks here. I don't have to do all this stuff. I don't have to hold a calling that I don't like. I don't have to go to girls camp. You know, I don't. Just so many things that I had done, you know, because I. It was my calling. It was expected. It felt freeing. Yeah. Even though I felt duped. You know, there's both sides to it. But once you realize it and you accept it and you go, okay, I'm going to put that behind me. Just like I put behind me other childish things that I did as a kid that I don't no longer want to be associated with. I'm moving ahead, onward and upward. Become a better person. Grow up, move on. Progress. That's kind of where I'm at now. It's all about progression and becoming more awake and more a better, you know, just a more whole person and letting go.

John Dehlin [00:48:11] And how do you like. For me, it's one thing if your life was pretty good and pretty joyful and you had a decent marriage and whatever.

Lila Tueller [00:48:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:23] When you've Been through so much adversity at the hands of the church, then to find out what, in your 50s, that it isn't true. It seems like that's a different realization.

Lila Tueller [00:48:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:37] And I'm not trying to make your life pitiful.

Lila Tueller [00:48:38] No, no, no.

John Dehlin [00:48:39] I know your resilience is very admirable. But I'm just imagining for you the. The realization has to be much harder than it was for me when I learned in my early 30s with a salvageable marriage, one that I'm very happy I have now.

Lila Tueller [00:48:55] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:57] You know, that's a, you know, very different thing. And I had a happy childhood.

Lila Tueller [00:49:01] Yeah, well, mine was happy, too. It was. It was fraught. You know, there were times when it was hard. Like most childhoods, I think. I don't want to paint it out to be awful. I think I was, you know, I was moved around a lot. I had to start over a lot, get new friends a lot. I had to deal with pressure, you know, of being that person, you know, and so that was hard. I think I felt a lot of pressure, and I internalized a lot of that and didn't always handle it the most helpful way. I think. Sometimes I look back and I think, kind of a waste, you know, I wasted a lot of time under this paradigm that I wish I. I just wish I had woken up a long time ago. I would have had a lot more time to enjoy my life free of it.

John Dehlin [00:49:57] How do you keep from collapsing into anger and resentment?

Lila Tueller [00:50:01] Mmm. I think that's a daily exercise for me. I get out and I walk. I get out in the air, the fresh air. I listen to, you know, music that I love. I listen to music, podcasts that I love, read books that I love, my kids, my dog. You know, I surround myself. And friends. Friends are huge for me. And I need people that I can talk to and share with and who bounce ideas off of me. So we have. I have a little group of, like, six women, and we meet probably twice a month in my neighborhood. They're just people that I come across that are in my ward, that were in my ward before my divorce and all of that, and they are transitioning, and it's like, wow, we can talk about this.

John Dehlin [00:50:51] They're all out of the church in Utah County.

Lila Tueller [00:50:53] Yeah, yeah. And we've all kind of. So we get together, and some of them are married. One of them's mixed. No, two of them are mixed. Faith one's. They're both out. And then me, I'm single. And so we're different. But it's really nice to have people that understand. And then when you have a crisis, you can text and say, oh my gosh, this just happened to me and I don't know what to do. And they're right there for you. It's been great.

John Dehlin [00:51:22] How did you find him?

Lila Tueller [00:51:24] It was all very fortuitous. One of them was an old friend of mine and before my divorce she had already started not going to church very much. I noticed that and I was like, what's up with her? What's up with Karen? She was an old ski buddy of mine. So I was like, why? Why is she not going as much? Her husband was always there. So when I started going through my transition, I called her and I said, where are you with the church? You know? And she said, oh, I haven't been for two years. And I said, let's talk, let's get together. So we got together, we talked about it. She said, you know what, I know another girl, it's my daughter in law and she's going through the same thing and her friend is going through it and I had a friend, Becky. So we all got together and we invite new people once in a while to come in and visit and they can stay if they want. But it's been really helpful. It's not one of your Thrive groups, but I mean we could be, we

John Dehlin [00:52:19] could incorporate and it doesn't need to be just whatever, whatever, however people find health. But I think you just answered one of my questions. How have you kept from spinning out into anger and bitter and resentment? You found close friends and community support that can support you.

Lila Tueller [00:52:36] Definitely.

John Dehlin [00:52:36] So find that everybody, if Thrive can help, if Mormon Spectrum can help, if Reddit can help, find your peeps who can support you.

Lila Tueller [00:52:45] Absolutely. Go on the Facebook podcast because. Or not the website, what is it,

John Dehlin [00:52:50] the Mormon Stories podcast page or group.

Lila Tueller [00:52:53] Yeah, because I commented on there just on someone else's thing. And one of my friends from my ward who I had no idea was struggling, saw my comment and was like Lila and called me and she said, oh my gosh, you're kidding. I had no idea you were out. And she came into our little group so you know, being a little bit vocal, you don't have to get yourself excommunicated, but you know, enough to find. Yeah, find some people. Yeah, for sure. And go to Thrive. You know, go to your. Any of those meetups are great.

John Dehlin [00:53:25] The retreats and the workshops can help.

Lila Tueller [00:53:27] Yeah, because I've made good friends there too.

John Dehlin [00:53:31] That's great.

Lila Tueller [00:53:32] Yeah, it's been helpful. I think some people are really extroverted and they find they feed on. On support and people. I'm introverted. I'm kind of like Margi. I don't. It kind of takes my energy away when I'm surrounded by a lot of people. So I do it in small doses. Like I think when I went to your one in St. George, I didn't go to the karaoke thing. I was spent enough togetherness. No, I need to go veg out in my room. And it wasn't anything against any you guys.

John Dehlin [00:54:07] I thought you miss Tyler and you miss Tyler and Carolee.

Lila Tueller [00:54:11] Oh, dang.

John Dehlin [00:54:12] They were epic. Were you personal?

Lila Tueller [00:54:16] Don't. Don't. I'm just not. I mean, I can karaoke as well as anybody. Trust me, I have a thing. I'll do it in the future for you.

John Dehlin [00:54:29] Just for Tyler. That's not fair.

Lila Tueller [00:54:30] Well, for you.

John Dehlin [00:54:31] Okay, sweet.

Lila Tueller [00:54:32] If you'll kick something back, you know, if I get a perk from. No, I was just. It had been a long day and that just. Yeah, I have to go. I have to go vet and be alone. That's kind of me. But some people really need that community more than others.

Guest [00:54:46] So it was an emotional day.

John Dehlin [00:54:48] Yeah. Weekend. An emotional weekend.

Lila Tueller [00:54:51] It was a lot. I don't know how you guys did it really. You were the ones presenting and running it and that had to be really hard. I remember you came home and you took a picture of yourself and just in bed.

John Dehlin [00:55:01] I was so wasted.

Lila Tueller [00:55:02] Done.

John Dehlin [00:55:04] I'm sure you were too. Tyler, I want to ask you a bunch of these thrive questions, but I'm not gonna do it today. Okay, But I would love to have you back and just go through these questions about basically healing and growth. Okay, but we've gone four hours and I need to go to the bathroom and you've been really patient. But I do want to ask you a question and I. Well, let me ask you a pre question.

Life After Mormonism, New Relationships, and Moving Forward

Lila Tueller [00:55:29] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:55:29] Do you want to find someone? Do you want to have a relationship again and maybe even have a committed relationship or do you not want that now?

Lila Tueller [00:55:36] I do.

John Dehlin [00:55:37] Okay. I want you to look at the camera and I want you to tell the world what type of guy you're looking for. Assuming it's a guy. I don't want him.

Lila Tueller [00:55:44] Yeah, it is a guy. Okay. Wow, this is really weird. Okay, I'm looking for a non Mormon, please.

John Dehlin [00:55:55] Meaning never been Mormon. No.

Lila Tueller [00:55:57] It doesn't matter. They could be.

John Dehlin [00:55:58] No longer believing.

Lila Tueller [00:55:59] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:56:00] No longer believe.

Lila Tueller [00:56:01] I don't want to mix Faith marriage.

John Dehlin [00:56:02] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:56:03] Because I already did the Mormon thing with a man. With patriarch. I don't want to do that again.

John Dehlin [00:56:09] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:56:10] So I would like one that's a little more equally yoked. Someone who's like me or has never been Mormon. That's okay, too.

John Dehlin [00:56:17] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:56:18] Or they can be another faith.

John Dehlin [00:56:20] That's okay too, if it's not a weird one.

Lila Tueller [00:56:22] Yeah. Not too weird.

John Dehlin [00:56:23] Not an extreme one.

Lila Tueller [00:56:24] Yeah. No Scientologists or Jehovah's Witness. Jehovah's Witness.

John Dehlin [00:56:28] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:56:29] And that's not against you people that are those. I just personally don't think I would match up well with.

John Dehlin [00:56:35] With a conservative religious person.

Lila Tueller [00:56:36] Right.

John Dehlin [00:56:37] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:56:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:38] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:56:41] I prefer someone a little bit older who. Not necessarily my age. I'm 58. But in that range. Because I like the experience. I like somebody who's been through some life experiences and who has passed no longer like trying to forge their way financially or trying to, you know.

John Dehlin [00:57:05] So preferably older than.

Lila Tueller [00:57:08] It could be a little younger than me. I'd say from 50.

John Dehlin [00:57:11] 50 up.

Lila Tueller [00:57:12] Yeah. But not up. Not too high.

John Dehlin [00:57:14] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:57:16] You still have to be young at heart and you have to be like to have fun.

John Dehlin [00:57:21] Okay. Young at heart. Like to have fun. What about character stuff? Like think about the dating that you've done that hasn't worked out. What are the things that disqualify you?

Lila Tueller [00:57:29] No alpha males.

John Dehlin [00:57:29] What? No alpha males. What else disqualifies you

Lila Tueller [00:57:35] if you smoke?

John Dehlin [00:57:36] No smoking. Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:57:40] I like a man who is in touch with his emotional side. Emotionally intelligent.

John Dehlin [00:57:45] Okay.

Lila Tueller [00:57:46] Love that. I love a vulnerable person. Somebody who's willing to say, I suck at this. I. I'm afraid of this. I get sad. Or I. Or someone who cries, who will cry, that likes to go to movies that are, you know, maybe they'll cry. Chick flicks. But not only. I like all kinds of movies, but I just don't want someone who's like macho.

John Dehlin [00:58:09] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:58:10] Because that just turns me off. I don't like that.

John Dehlin [00:58:12] Okay,

Lila Tueller [00:58:14] let's see.

John Dehlin [00:58:15] Honest.

Lila Tueller [00:58:17] Definitely honest.

John Dehlin [00:58:18] How about not married kind?

Lila Tueller [00:58:19] Not married, please. No married men.

John Dehlin [00:58:25] Honest and kind. I don't mean to brush over that. Honest and kind.

Lila Tueller [00:58:28] Honest kind who under. Maybe have. Have had children. They need to have had children. Because the guys who have never had children, I noticed, they just don't get my dedication to my kids.

John Dehlin [00:58:43] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:58:44] And they think that you can just drop everything and go on a trip for a week and not worry about your 16 year old home, you know?

John Dehlin [00:58:52] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:58:52] That kind of thing. I like. I like a Sense of humor. I like somebody who, you know, enjoys life, not a super negative or too serious. I mean, serious is important. You got to be able to be serious, but not always be serious and have fun. You know, a happy person. Yeah, those are the main things. Hygiene is important. You know, really. Like, you gotta brush your teeth and those kind of things. Because you'd be surprised.

John Dehlin [00:59:32] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [00:59:33] What I've. Yeah. What I've dealt with, sometimes it's like, mm, Mm.

John Dehlin [00:59:38] Are those the main things, then? Did we cover the main things?

Lila Tueller [00:59:42] If I'm missing something really basic, I'll feel really stupid. But honest, kind, caring. Yeah, those are the main things.

John Dehlin [00:59:54] Okay. All right, Mormon Stories listeners. There are a lot of single people out there and a lot of people out there who know single men. So our job.

Lila Tueller [01:00:02] Trying to get me hooked up.

John Dehlin [01:00:03] No, it's just a dating service. It may or may not happen. We told it loosely, but let's see what we can do. Let's see if we can have a Mormons Stories marriage. Is that all right?

Lila Tueller [01:00:11] Oh, my goodness.

John Dehlin [01:00:12] Is that okay?

Lila Tueller [01:00:14] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:00:14] And we'll get tired to officiate if it works out.

Lila Tueller [01:00:20] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:00:21] All right. We'll see if, you know, your dad had his hand at prophecy. I'll see if I can work my. Work some Mormon Stories magic.

Lila Tueller [01:00:31] I will say this. If you're married and you know that you're not in a good marriage, get yourself out and then give me a call.

John Dehlin [01:00:38] Not. Not before.

Lila Tueller [01:00:39] No, no. Not when you're out and you're free and everything's good, call John and he'll hook you up with me. I'm not giving you my phone number right now.

John Dehlin [01:00:51] All right.

Lila Tueller [01:00:51] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:00:52] Well, this has been for me. Tyler, do you want to add anything or ask any questions or is there anything you want to. It's so fun to have you along. You've been a great. You've been a great addition.

Guest [01:01:04] Could I just say one thing? Because you do. Your father featured in a little piece of our family lore. Really? Really. Really. So my grandpa. My mom reminded me of this as this was going on.

John Dehlin [01:01:16] Cool.

Guest [01:01:16] My mom, Holly, reminded me that my grandpa Kendall, who was not a member at the time, but his whole family was active, and she has eight siblings, so they were a big family.

Lila Tueller [01:01:26] Wow.

Guest [01:01:27] And they were the. The investigator family that was always trying to baptize him, and he was always on the fence, but he loved your dad, and he. Your dad came and spoke at a state conference, and my grandpa requested if he could have a conversation with him.

Lila Tueller [01:01:42] Really?

Guest [01:01:42] And your dad agreed. And went and had a conversation, and he walked in and he said, kendall, you have a beautiful family. I hope you know they are not yours.

John Dehlin [01:01:51] Oh, wasn't sealed to them yet.

Lila Tueller [01:01:54] Oh, that sounds like him. It totally does.

Guest [01:01:57] He gets sealed.

Lila Tueller [01:01:58] Did he?

John Dehlin [01:01:59] He did show the wide view. Keep going, but just a little bit.

Lila Tueller [01:02:03] That's amazing.

Guest [01:02:03] Eventually get sealed. And I don't know if that played a role in it, but your dad's name has always kind of floated around our family.

John Dehlin [01:02:13] Interesting piece of lore.

Lila Tueller [01:02:15] And so he was the catalyst to getting your dad or grandpa, I would

John Dehlin [01:02:20] say, or a part of a part.

Guest [01:02:24] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [01:02:24] That's cool. Thank you. I've heard so many stories like that my whole life. You know, I mean, not. I'm not trying to diminish your story. It was a beautiful story. But, yeah, I mean, that's kind of been my experience. Is so many people that my dad influenced, he really did have a huge effect on a lot of people. For the good.

Guest [01:02:45] He's putting you in that spot where, like, what do you say to them?

Lila Tueller [01:02:49] Yeah, what do you say? Like, thank you. And I'll tell him next time I see him that. That. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:56] Is your mic on? Okay. Okay. Someone asked. Thanks for sharing that, Tyler.

Guest [01:03:01] Oh, no.

John Dehlin [01:03:02] Any. Any other questions or. No, that's it. That was beautiful. And Tad Tholstrom chimes in. True story, exclamation point. So shout out to Tad and Holly and any of the Tholstroms who are paying attention.

Lila Tueller [01:03:15] Awesome. Thank you for that. That makes me happy.

John Dehlin [01:03:19] Well, thank you for being here. All right, so we're going to have you back, if you'll come. But how do you want to end today? Because we've shared so much, and it's heavy, but it's also. I'm sure you're happy where you are now versus where you could be. So how do you want to end today? What do you want to say? You can share what you want to share with our listeners to close today.

Lila Tueller [01:03:44] I would say that I think when I went to your last retreat, there was a group of people that called themselves the Angry Ones, and they wanted to get together and really, like, vent and talk about what they were mad about. And there is. You know, there are things to be mad about. I think the important thing really is to not stay mad, because that's not healthy for you. For anybody who has to listen to you, you know, it's better to find something positive and to move through. Of course you're going to be angry. Just move through it. Don't sit there I think that's the key, is to just allow yourself to feel it and then let it go and move on and find positivity. Because the church isn't all bad. It did some things that were good. You know, we all were in it because there were things that were good about it. And I'm grateful for a lot of things that I got from the church. I think it saved me from making a lot of mistakes that I would have made easily if I didn't feel the guilt, you know, I'm not saying that was positive. I'm just saying it did keep me out of some trouble. I didn't get pregnant, you know, when I was young. I didn't. My sister did, but I didn't. And I didn't get involved in drugs. And, you know, there were things that I feel like it helped me with. So find the positive, focus on that and let it go. And then, you know, for me, it's all about moving forward in life and finding joy in what's left, what you have now. There's a lot to be happy about in the world. You know, there's things you can be afraid of, but. Or be angry about, but there's so much positive, even just, you know, I don't know, the beauty of the sunset, the beauty of the clouds. So much to be grateful for in life. Why focus on all the negative? So I think that's really kind of where I'm at today with this whole thing. And I want to move. I want to take what I learned from my past and the positive things and move that into my future.

John Dehlin [01:06:06] I love it. Someone wants to know what you do professionally. Someone just asked.

Current Life, Work, and Closing Reflections

Lila Tueller [01:06:11] I design fabric, which is a weird job, but I do the digital artwork that goes on print, gets printed on fabric, and it's mostly for the quilting industry.

John Dehlin [01:06:24] I think I heard you say it was your dream job.

Lila Tueller [01:06:26] It was.

John Dehlin [01:06:27] So you love it?

Lila Tueller [01:06:28] I love it. I do. It's not making me rich, so I have. I have to bring in other money elsewhere. But it is what I love to do more than anything, and it is making you fabric. It's making me a lot of fabric.

John Dehlin [01:06:44] Making other people fabric.

Lila Tueller [01:06:45] A lot of fabric. Yeah. There's so much fabric. My garage is, like. It's a giant fabric cave. So if you ever need fabric for anything, I'm your girl. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:57] Okay.

Lila Tueller [01:06:59] But, yeah, that's my job, and I do love it. I also work at Williams Sonoma, so. So if you need furniture, it's more like housewares.

John Dehlin [01:07:09] Housewares. Cooking Come to Lila.

Lila Tueller [01:07:11] Yeah, come to me. I'll get you a deal. Maybe better not say that.

John Dehlin [01:07:17] Well, I am so thrilled with this interview. I'm so happy that I got to know you.

Lila Tueller [01:07:22] Thank you. Me, too.

John Dehlin [01:07:23] And. And I'm inspired by your story. You are a sharp cookie, and I'm sorry for all the hard stuff, but I'm inspired by all the resilience and your grace and your intelligence. And.

Lila Tueller [01:07:34] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [01:07:35] I'm inspired.

Lila Tueller [01:07:36] Well, you've actually been a lifeline for me for, well, for a year. Like, daily. Every time you pod, every time there's a podcast, I'm right there because it's like. It's like water when you're in the desert. You know, you really have helped me, and I know thousands and thousands of people. You've got to feel good about that. As hard as I know it must be to do what you do and to be the target, you know, and have so much hate and so much judgment, man, you've done a lot of good for a lot of people.

John Dehlin [01:08:12] So thank you.

Lila Tueller [01:08:13] There's that.

John Dehlin [01:08:14] I'm kind of like the opposite of your dad. I'm kind of like Superman had this. This foil called Solomon Grundy that was like the opposite of Superman. I'm kind of like the Solomon Grundy of your dad, basically. Right? I'm, like, undoing all the stuff your dad tried to do. Is that bad? That's not my intent, but.

Lila Tueller [01:08:34] No. But it needed to happen. Someone had to do it, John. Someone had to. And I'm just grateful that you are the guy that stepped up because you've. You've done it beautifully.

John Dehlin [01:08:44] Well. And I'm grateful for all the other people who have helped out, and I'm grateful for the Stolder, you know, I stand on Sunstone shoulders and dialogue shoulders and, you know, the Mormon history. Leonard Arrington, Lil Bennion, just all these people that inspired me. So I'm. I'm happy to play a part in the chain. I'm grateful to your brother.

Lila Tueller [01:09:00] You've done a great job.

John Dehlin [01:09:01] I'm grateful to your brother. Who, Dan? Right. And then John, Want to shout out to John and thank him for his contributions today. John, maybe I'll meet you one of these days. John, as well.

Lila Tueller [01:09:10] He's. He's a great guy.

John Dehlin [01:09:11] Yeah.

Lila Tueller [01:09:12] Yeah, you're right. We all have people to thank. So I'm really grateful for you and all the others that have dedicated so much time and energy to, you know, the post or the transitioning, post Mormon community. Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:09:29] And thanks to Tyler for producing today. Tyler, you're awesome.

Guest [01:09:32] You're very welcome.

John Dehlin [01:09:33] It's fun.

Lila Tueller [01:09:34] Couldn't happen without you. Thanks. Thanks for coming.

John Dehlin [01:09:37] And Tyler, thanks for working with Cody and Clint to give us such a beautiful studio. This is.

Lila Tueller [01:09:42] Yeah, it's awesome.

John Dehlin [01:09:43] Listeners, let us know if you like, you know what, you see the changes. We're hoping to just make this a really nice experience for you. So we'd love your feedback if you want to share it. But Tyler, thanks for your part making this happen. Thanks to Cody who does the editing on thanks Cody, to Clint and Jenny and the Thrive people and then the OSF board and all the donors. Just real quick, thank you to everyone who donates to the Open Stories foundation and makes this all possible. If you're a donor, thank you. If you value this programming and you're not yet a supporter, we invite you to consider going to mormorestories.org becoming a monthly donor. It really keeps us alive. And we'll only do this for as long as there's support. So please support us if you aren't and if you can because it makes a huge difference. So thank you.

Lila Tueller [01:10:31] Bet. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:10:32] And again, we'll be doing there's Thrive February 1st and Thrive Chicago, Thrive Phoenix February 1st, Thrive Chicago in April. Go to thrivebeyondmormonism.com to learn about those events. We are going to have a Mormon Stories podcast retreat at the end of February here in Salt Lake. Look for that information soon. And Natasha is meeting every week here in the Thrive office in Holiday, Utah, 7pm on Wednesdays to do workshop related content at least for the next couple months. Here in the Holiday office, we'll also be doing a Thrive Healing, you know, a Thrive support group for people in faith crisis once a month. That'll be usually the first Wednesday of every month. There's a Facebook group called Thrive Holiday. It's Holiday with the Holla. You can join that and stay abreast of what's going on. We're also going to be having a potluck. Not this Sunday, but the next Sunday, 10 o', clock, we'll be having like a secular Sunday school, talking about the four agreements and then we'll have a potluck. So we hope you can join us there. But also Springville's doing their own events if you're in Utah county and there's like 48 plus other thrive groups all around the world. If you want to start or join another Thrive group, you can find all these groups at thrivebeyondmormonism.com, you can go to a map, type in your zip code or your city, find or start a local group and find community. Find it at Mormon Spectrum. There's a map on Mormon Spectrum. Wherever you have to find it, get support. Go to the Mormon Stories the Gift to the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast Margi, Natasha and I have like over 70 hours of custom, free, specialized content for you people in Faith Crisis. Check that out. If you haven't, it's@mormonfaithcrisis.com it's again free. And if you need a coach or a therapist to help you, you know, go to natashahelver parker@natashaparker.org, go to symmetry solutions. Go to my wife margieautyinthenow.org go to the Mormon Mental Health Association. Get support. Because sometimes support can really make a difference. So those are all my pleas and plugs. I hope I remembered everything and stay in touch. Reach out email us@mormonstoriesmail.com like us on Facebook. Give us a positive review on Facebook or on itunes. All those things make a huge difference. And please share this episode. If you love this episode, share it with friends and family. Everyone should be curious about what it's like to be a child of a general authority. And the history here has just been so, so wonderful. So please, please spread the word. That's one way you can help out if you don't in other ways. So thanks to everyone who commented. Thanks to everyone who's supporting us. We'll have more great content in the weeks and months ahead and years ahead on Mormon Stories Podcast. So take care and we'll see you again very soon on Mormon Stories. And again, thanks Lila. You're amazing.

Lila Tueller [01:13:25] Thank you. Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [01:13:27] It was. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.