Welcome and Guest Introduction

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your two co hosts for today. I am John Dehlin and I am super excited for today's episode. I'm going to be joined by Nemo the Mormon, my colleague in the British Isles. And we are also super excited today to be teaming up Nemo and I to interview someone who many of you know and love, and that is the YouTuber, also out of the UK, part of the Brit vengers, beloved and known as Priesthood Dispatches, or PD for short. And if, you know, if we were to kind of say what today's interview is about, I'll let Nemo kind of tee it up. So, Nemo, welcome back from Germany. Do you want to tell us just a tiny bit about your experiences at Thrive Germany?

Nemo [00:01:02] Yeah, we had an amazing time Thrive Berlin. We got together in Mauer park, which is the old no Man's land between the Berlin Wall and. Yeah, we got together. We shared stories, we shared experience. There was translators there, so, you know, there was a couple of people that didn't speak German, so we were translating and things were going really well. And there's another one coming up in Poland in August. So if you're in that neck of the woods, make sure you sign up at Thrive Beyond Religion and come and join us. And again, there'll be translators and it's gonna be great.

John Dehlin [00:01:39] And those just happened basically because you organized them right?

Nemo [00:01:43] Yeah, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:01:44] Awesome.

Nemo [00:01:45] Thrives not just for the Americans. I thought we need it in Europe too, so it's gonna go well.

John Dehlin [00:01:51] I love it. Well, I'm also, my. My heartstrings are being pulled because I just spent a good four days in the UK and was able to party with both of you. You lads or blokes, I don't know which. I should say both are appropriate.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:02:07] Lads, Lads, Lads.

John Dehlin [00:02:09] Yeah, well, Nemo, you know, of course Nemo has been interviewed on Mormon Stories podcast and is co hosted now a few times. But Nemo, since you and PD are our close friends and you kind of brought this episode to Mormon Stories, so to speak, I'm going to go ahead and let you tee this one up. Is that all right?

Nemo [00:02:29] Cool. That's absolutely fine.

John Dehlin [00:02:31] All right, go for it.

Nemo [00:02:32] All right, well, welcome everyone. Welcome to the interview of Priesthood Dispatches. So Priesthood Dispatches, or PD for short, he tells people stories. Then you realize when you start to speak to him that he has some stories of his own. And it's that. That we kind of want to dive into today. So really all that's left to do is pull PD up onto the screen and ask him, pd, how did your Mormon story start?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:02:59] Well, Nemo John, thank you for having me. We discussed just briefly before this, a couple of warnings or caveats. If anyone's watched Priesthood Dispatches before, you'll know that we're very relaxed and we like to say things how they are in a very British way. There may be some lovely British slang used, but we'll try and keep the language to a very calm PG13.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:03:27] Also, as we go through this story, I just want to say that I love my parents. It may come across differently because life has been very difficult at times, but if any family or anyone are watching, I love you all and just be happy you got a mention basically.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:03:48] But yeah, my story began in 1983, I guess when my parents visited Salt Lake City. And then in 1984, I was born in Nottingham, England and yeah, was born in the Covenant and became a Mormons to a family. I was fifth of six children and my parents were climbing the slippery Mormon pole of church leadership.

John Dehlin [00:04:17] Pd, were you, I'm sorry, were your parents converts or were they multi generational?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:04:22] So my dad converted when he was 17 as the only convert in his family and my mum, she was second generation. So I figure here in the uk, if you get anything past the generation, then you're talking to royalty. Because all the older people went to Utah.

Nemo [00:04:43] Yeah, but you were made in the usa, right?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:04:47] I was, yeah. I always joked that like on squeaky toys and stuff where you get them made in China around the little hole underneath that I should have made in the USA around my belly button, you know, something like that. But that was, that was, that was as good as it got for my claim to be from Utah. It really wasn't.

Growing Up in the Nottingham Stake

Nemo [00:05:09] Okay, so you were in Nottingham Steak growing up and what was that like? What's, what's Nottingham Stake like for kind of foreign listeners?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:05:19] Nottingham Steak, massive stake geographically. And one problem, my dad was a stake president, so that meant that a lot of the time in a big family, my mum would be like, oh, I'm going to take the older ones to the local ward, dad, take the younger ones to wherever you're going. And sometimes it was like a two hour drive across the stake to go visit wherever he was. And there was a small branch on the seaside called Skegness.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:05:48] Now for people from Nottingham, Skegness is like the seaside town, the English Riviera. And that's where you always went for your summer holiday. But when you go On a Sunday, it's kind of like you take the kids there and you're like, we're going to Skegness. Amazing. But you're not, because you're going on a Sunday on church business.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:06:06] So you're going to a small kind of hut with a branch in it. But there was no rock, no ice cream, no playing on the beach. So that kind of sucked. But, yeah, it was. It was a lot of travel. My childhood was amazing, guys. We're putting a real. Putting a real downer on it, but.

Nemo [00:06:26] And rock, for those who don't know, is like a hard stick of sort of candy with letters written all the way through. If you ever go to the seaside in Britain, get yourself some. It'll break your teeth. Your dentist will thank you because he'll get paid plenty to do the dental work afterwards. But it's superb. It's worth it.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:06:43] It's colored sugar.

Nemo [00:06:45] It is. Which, you know, that's. That's 90 of candy. So.

John Dehlin [00:06:50] PD, real quick. One thing I forgot to mention that's in the title is that one of the. One of the most fascinating things about PD story is that you eventually become. And I don't mean to give the story away, but this is a. It's a bit of a hook, but it's also a description. You. You were ordained a Mormon bishop at what age?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:07:10] 23.

John Dehlin [00:07:11] 23. So that's. That's going to be an important theme for today. When you say that your dad was a stake president, was that early in your life or did that come later on? I don't want to. I don't want to jump the timeline, but I'm just curious.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:07:25] Well, no, there's a story, John. Okay, this. The story is that my parents, neither of them could drive and we lived in rural Nottinghamshire, so it was difficult to get around. My dad got a new job up in a city called Manchester, which is about an hour and a half, two hours away.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:07:42] So my parents moved with us. Five children, as we were at the time. My youngest brother wasn't born, so I was just a baby at the time. We moved to a ward called Oldham, and the house that my parents owned down in Nottingham was up for sale. And lots of people came to see it, but no one bought it.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:08:03] And maybe six months in Oldham, we, yeah, couldn't sell the house. So my dad's work said to him, you can move back to the Nottingham office if you want to. And we moved back. So no one knew we were back in the stake. And two weeks later he got called as the stake president. So everyone thought we'd left. And then they announced the new stake president who couldn't drive, which was strange at the time because how's he going to get around?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:08:31] And, yeah, it was. It was my dad. He was 38, so I was still a wee lad. And all of my, I guess, formative years, up to about age 11, he was the stake president.

Nemo [00:08:48] Right.

John Dehlin [00:08:48] Wow.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:08:49] Yeah. That made it to the Ensign, that story.

John Dehlin [00:08:53] Yeah.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:08:53] Just want to say. Yeah, I was. I didn't know it had made it to the end Enzyme until I was on my mission and an elder gave that story as a spiritual thought after a meal. And we left the. We left the room, we left the building, and I said to him, you know what? Something like that happened to me once because everyone thought it was the Lord's doing, that the house wouldn't sell because they needed my dad there to be the state president. And no, he. He then handed me the excerpt from the Enzyme and said, it is your story. I just thought I'd wait until you told me it was your story.

Nemo [00:09:27] So what we've learned is John actually missed the exclusive scoop on pd and actually the church got to him years ago. Yeah, sorry, it's been in the end zone already. That's it. He's famous.

John Dehlin [00:09:38] Is that article still available online?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:09:41] It was in the uk. Pull out. I've got it somewhere. But it's. It's. Yeah, it's the story of when he was called, because they do. Like when the new state president's called or etc. They put the picture of the presidency in there and things, so they put the story in there. And as. As it goes, apparently there was a member in the stake who was about to offer on the house, but she just didn't quite feel right about it. She wanted it, but she was just unsure. And obviously the Holy Spirit made all that happen, apparently.

Nemo [00:10:16] And do you have any other memories of your dad being state president as a child? Any other things?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:10:23] Yeah. So when they were running out of. When they were running short of speakers at state conference or if someone had finished early, dad used to do this thing where he'd call the whole family out of the congregation. So I was at the younger end of the children. My oldest sister's 10 years older than me. So imagine older ones are 17, 18. I'm nine or 10. He'd call us all out up to the front of the chapel, in front of the whole stake, introduce us all and tell everyone how, you know, righteously proud he was and that he loved us. And for me, I didn't have any street credit at the time, so it wasn't too embarrassing, you know, I was. Was too young to that damaged by it. But for my older siblings, that must mean torture.

John Dehlin [00:11:15] Why, why, why torture?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:11:18] Well, you know what? I remember one, one of them, my dad was literally stood there, everyone had come apart from my older brother, and he literally stood there at the pulpit in front of four or five hundred people in this chapel and he said, right, someone point to him now. And he was hiding way at the back behind some chairs, but he stopped the whole meeting and made my brother march all the way down past everyone to stand at the front. Like the Sound of Music style, you

Nemo [00:11:48] know, all in Trap family.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:11:51] Yeah, yeah. And my mum got it worse because if that didn't fill the time, then she had to stand up and fill.

Nemo [00:11:57] I suppose that makes it. Makes it feel like everyone's eyes are on you and everyone knows who you are. There's no hiding, there's no room for introverts. As the child of a state president like that, I wouldn't imagine.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:12:07] No. And that was, that was a time when state presidents, it was very different for state presidents then because they had a lot more connection with the brethren because there weren't as many, you know, we're talking 1980s, early 90s. And they used to fly. So the church would pay for the stake presidents to go out to conference every year for training. So now they just do that with the area 70s. But back then it was all the way down to the state presidents. So if you had any problems then you could speak to, you know, actual people who could. Sold them out and so yeah, they, he. Yeah, it was. Was what it was.

Nemo [00:12:52] And did you say you, you used to go out there with him, he would take kids with you?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:12:57] He'd take a different child every time, so. And add us to his luggage because they wanted to indoctrinate us sufficiently in Salt Lake being the center of the world.

Nemo [00:13:08] So what was your trip to Salt Lake City like? Do you remember much of it?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:13:13] No, actually what happened was he took us a couple of years after he got released because we were too young to go. So me and my little brother, he's three years younger than me, we were too young to go just with him. So it was mainly the older ones that he took on the trips and then he took us a couple of years later to show us all at the same time.

Pressure and Expectations as a Stake President's Son

John Dehlin [00:13:36] Pd, I have a question. I imagine that parading your family around like the Von Trapp family would add a lot of pressure in terms of perceived expectations of ward members and of family righteousness. I say that in quotes. I'm curious about that, whether that meant you all felt a lot of pressure growing up. And I'm also curious to know how comfortable you are sharing whether or not your dad or your parents were kind of strict and stern versus more laid back and kind of calm and. And relaxed

Priesthood Dispatches [00:14:14] with regard to the pressure. Definitely. Whenever we used to leave the house for an evening, we'd each be stopped at the door by dad, and he'd, you know, look straight at us and remind us to remember who we are.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:14:34] So that was kind of the outset for every evening especially. It was especially difficult if you were lying about where you were going, maybe, and you say, remember who you are, and you're like, I'm gonna go do something bad, but don't worry, I won't tell anyone who I am. And that's kind of why I'm pd, because I know that it's still a thing for my family, that the family name is important to them.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:15:04] And they were actually not upset, but they got the same names as an anti Mormon couple in Utah who appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune. And when they read it, and they read the names of the people who had written the article, and the exact same names as my parents, surname, first names, everything. And they were. They were kind of worried that the brethren might not like that and they might get them confused. So always interesting.

Nemo [00:15:33] Reputation was very important to them, or still is.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:15:36] Yeah. And even within the family kind of. I screwed up a lot, and my siblings at times let me know that that's not fair on kind of the family name and different things, you know, that I would be out there doing those things and dragging the name through the mud. So. But I wasn't doing anything that wrong. I was doing wrong things according to Mormonism, but according to the actual world, I was just like a normal person. So.

Nemo [00:16:06] But there's. There's always that heightened expectation, that heightened pressure that comes with being a member of the church, that you have to be above those behaviors and above that sort of.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:16:16] Yeah.

Nemo [00:16:16] Way of being.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:16:17] It's. Obviously, it's unrealistic, isn't it, for many people, and that's why we all struggle with our mental health and everything later in life. But I think back to John's point about my parents, where they were super strict, he would remind us about that, you know, remember who you are.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:16:34] But they weren't overly strict. They made sure we went and went through the motions of seminary and everything. And we had to do everything to appear good. We tried to do lots of things like family home evening, but a lot of the time it ended up in just a family kind of argument because the older ones either didn't want to sit down with the younger ones and read scriptures.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:17:01] So they were constantly trying. But I think we were always kind of a little bit behind. I think as well. My dad worked away during the week, so he was. From Sunday, late Sunday night to Friday evening, he'd be elsewhere in the country working.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:17:19] And then when he got back on a Friday evening to the Sunday afternoon, it was all stake president stuff. So I think that's probably why it was a little more hands off, because he wasn't physically around that much.

John Dehlin [00:17:39] And Petey, just. Just because I've heard this theme before. I remember when I was in high school, just in Texas, and one of the young women did something that was kind of unheard of. Her dad was a. Either a bishop or a stake president, and she expressed frustration at how much the church took her dad away from her. In kind of very formative years, if your dad's working away and then on the weekends he's trying to fulfill his church duties. I just. I wonder how that felt to you and your siblings as kids. Did you even remember?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:18:20] Yeah, I don't think you don't notice do. Because if it's. If you. That's all you ever knew, you know, it's. It's just what it is. And I think maybe our relationship struggled a lot because of that. And mum works as well on and off, depending on finances, so she'd be out sometimes. And when there's six kids as well, like, you look at these, I don't know. We just watched. Keep Sweet. You see these massive families and you think, how does one mum look after all those children? But obviously, there's obviously multiple mums. But I think a lot of Mormon kids get raised by the church in those situations.

Nemo [00:19:08] So, I mean, I can certainly say, you know, that my older sisters ended up taking on mothering roles as well. And so I think you might find there's a lot of pressure put on other children in the family when the parents are made absent by the church.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:19:25] Yeah, sorry, but I'm not slamming on them. Like, I'm saying they were doing the best with their paradigm, with what they had. And their paradigm was the church is true. The brethren are constantly blowing smoke, making you feel like the more you work, the higher you're gonna go. And that's what we're gonna do. So. And. And that's for the good of everyone, because it. You know, we'll. We'll all be exalted and. And have eternity together. So I'm not. I'm not saying, you know, they were bad people. I'm just saying that was the paradigm we were all locked in.

Nemo [00:20:05] Yeah, well, of course they're looking for the best blessings for their family, and the way to receive those is to serve the Lord, Right?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:20:12] Yeah, absolutely.

Nemo [00:20:13] No one would blame them for that. So you once said to me when we were discussing what you were talking about, that you felt essentially the church kind of orphaned you a bit.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:20:23] Yeah.

Nemo [00:20:24] Kind of covered by this.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:20:28] Yeah. I think orphaned. It does sound like I'm slamming on my parents, but I'm really not. What I'm saying is that the church. The church sucks up so much time, so much money, you know, and so much effort. Everyone's got a finite amount of mental strength, time and acuity. Okay. And the church is just a whale that just sucks everything in whole. You know, it doesn't care what. It just opens its mouth and goes for it. So there's a lot of collateral damage from that, I think. And. And that's what I feel. Yeah. That I maybe didn't have the relationship that some people would have with a parent because there wasn't just. Just the time or the space for it.

Nemo [00:21:26] That makes sense. I know that your dad was obviously around to baptize you, and that's the kind of point of the story at age 8. Is there anything before the age of 8 that you'd like to mention before we go to your baptism?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:21:40] No. No, I. Move on.

Nemo [00:21:43] So tell us about your baptism.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:21:46] All I remember about my baptism is wet socks. Coming.

Nemo [00:21:50] Okay.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:21:51] Coming out of the. The font and trying to take off wet socks. Maybe for the first time. Probably not, but that's my. That's my memory. Like, nothing special. Just literally wet socks on. On the tiled floor. That's. That's it. Yeah. Dad did it. He was the state president. I'm sure there were a lot of people there to see, you know, him and different people. Not me, but. Yeah, I think Nemo is playing a really good game of musical statues right now.

John Dehlin [00:22:27] That's. All right.

Nemo [00:22:29] Well, there we go.

John Dehlin [00:22:30] There you go. Sorry.

Nemo [00:22:31] Don't know what happened there. Spoiler alert for everyone. We do have some pictures of PD through the years, which is quite exciting. So is there anything else around. Around the baptism? Sorry. I don't know how much I missed There.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:22:46] No, no. I think. I think probably the next milestone is becoming a young man.

Nemo [00:22:53] Okay.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:22:55] Kind of.

Nemo [00:22:57] That we do have.

John Dehlin [00:22:58] Let me ask you guys one quick question. What is the average age, would you say? I know this is impossible to kind of get a firm number on, but what would you say the average age is for a bishop president in the uk it feels like, at least in the United States, you know, being a stake president. And what age was your dad? PD38.38.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:23:24] So, yeah, he was, for the time he was seen as one of the youngest stake presidents, and I think that kind of. That fed into his story of being the youngest state president. Then where do you go? You know, you're very young and you're. You're climbing that ladder. And that fed into my story as well.

John Dehlin [00:23:44] So what would you say the average age for a bishop might be if you were even just to take a

Priesthood Dispatches [00:23:48] wild guess, I think now. Now in your 30s, mid-30s, maybe even a little bit younger, you know, late 20s. And a stake president, they're probably looking

John Dehlin [00:24:00] at around 40 back and back then, too, or.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:24:04] No, back then you had old stake presidents and old bishops. Yeah, my dad was bishop after he was stake president, I'd say in the

John Dehlin [00:24:16] United States, it's 40 or above for bishops on average.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:24:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:20] And probably 50 or above for stake presidents on average. So that. That's super young.

Nemo [00:24:27] Well, so. So we've. I think we've seen the age come down in part because the selection pools got smaller.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:24:32] Yeah, for sure. Definitely for sure.

John Dehlin [00:24:35] I just wanted to give people a benchmark, kind of.

Nemo [00:24:38] No, no, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:24:38] And also for those who aren't LDS, bishops traditionally serve for five years and stake presidents for 10. And so how many years did your dad serve?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:24:48] PD 10.

John Dehlin [00:24:50] Okay. Yeah. So that's a long time. I think in the United States, they tend to delay it because they. They realize it's such a demanding calling, that it's really hard to have an emerging career and to be raising a lot of young children and to be serving at such a high level of responsibility. So it's a huge sacrifice. I know I'm putting a fine point on it, but I'm gonna put a fine point on it. What your family went through was a significant sacrifice to your family.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:25:21] Yeah. I think the church, like, in my opinion, now we should have a paid, trained clergy. And you'll probably see why that's my opinion over the next hour. A couple of hours. But yeah, I. I definitely think that people should be able to choose if they want to make that sacrifice. Like, I'm all for. You get blessings from, you know, serving in different things, but there's, there's different levels of serving.

John Dehlin [00:25:49] So, yeah, there's a, there's a comment here that I think is important. Cherish writes, thomas Monson was a young bishop. Tell us, pd, I'm sure you knew that. And, and tell us why that plays into kind of ambition levels within the church, if you, if you have a thought on it.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:26:06] Okay. Yeah. So Thomas Monston was famous for his single sisters. Okay. And Nemo, can we pull up the bishop certificate, please?

Nemo [00:26:15] Yes, we can.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:26:17] So Thomas S. Monson was called as bishop when he was 22. And so you can see my real name on there. I'm not particularly bothered. But this is my bishop certificate that my wonderful wife, all these years later, when I asked her half an hour ago, was able to pick it out.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:26:38] Congratulations. She has, she's amazing. But we can see here 2008, that was March 2008. But Thomas S. Monson, or Gordon B. Hinckley, died in January 2008. So this will have been, by the time it got signed and got to me several weeks later, this would have been one of the first ones that Thomas S. Monson signed as president of the church. And when everyone kind of draws the parallels, they're kind of like, oh, Bishop pd, You know, Thomas S. Monson was a bishop when he was 22, and he had lots of sisters that, because he'd talk about these sisters in general conference that he'd go and see and look after.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:27:22] And the ward I was in had an abundance of single sisters who needed, you know, the loving bishop to look after them. So the parallels there, it's, it's kind of that confirmation bias that everyone picks out. Like, it could have been anything, but that was what they picked out, the age, the sisters. And I was going to be president of the church next week.

Nemo [00:27:50] But before that came this. Oh, yeah, check the curtains. Check that hairdo out.

John Dehlin [00:28:00] And for our listener and for our listeners, this is a photo of PD with kind of a skinny tie and long, a long sleeve shirt, right?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:28:08] Yeah. So that's at the chapel.

John Dehlin [00:28:11] With hair.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:28:12] Yeah, man, I wasn't born bald.

Nemo [00:28:16] We can confirm he did once have hair.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:28:18] I used to have longer hair than that. Like, I loved my hair. I keep telling my son, my son's that age now. And I keep telling him, you got five more years. And it's, it's going, you know, so I started losing my hair when I was like 17.

John Dehlin [00:28:32] I don't think you deliver the hair genes to your sons. I think that's your wife, actually.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:28:36] I know, but I still like to tease him.

Childhood Trauma and Early Church Experiences

Nemo [00:28:41] So this was you around the age 11. Do you want to tell us about anything significant that happened at that age?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:28:47] Yeah. So I just want to say before we get to this bit in the show notes, there are links for help in the UK and the United States for anyone who might be triggered by what I'm about to say or have had issues in the past. But, and this is a difficult one, at age 11, I was sexually assaulted by a member of the church.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:29:15] And all of you know now not many people know. I don't even think my parents know, but I think that that was the time maybe that I started to separate myself kind of. You become very insular. And I didn't feel I could talk to anyone about what happened.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:29:44] So I haven't, you know, and I. That's probably the beginning of my journey as I look back, the beginning of my journey out of the church. And it took another 20 years, but that was. Yeah, it made me more closed to connecting with people and close to connecting with priesthood leaders and parents. So I didn't feel like I could go to anyone about that. So I didn't. I just tried to, yeah. Deal with it myself.

John Dehlin [00:30:25] So. Sorry.

Nemo [00:30:25] Pd, why do you, what, why, what do you think led to the. This feeling that you couldn't reach out to anyone? If you know, or if you understand that yourself.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:30:37] You know what it was, it was because I didn't think anyone would care. I didn't, didn't think that anyone would believe me. And I just kind of put it in a bottle and threw it into a mental ocean, you know, and kind of hoped it had never come back. So. Yeah, and it did come back and it's still coming back. So it's something that, you know, already leading up to that, that point, as we said, you know, the church is kind of raising you and parents are off doing important things. But yeah, I just, yeah, bottled it up.

John Dehlin [00:31:30] PD I'm not sure in the uk, but in the United States it's well known that sexual abuse has been rampant in the Mormon Church. The Mormon Church settled with the Boy Scouts of America for something like $250 million of like a one billion dollar settlement. And I just, I can't count the thousands and thousands of people that have reached out to me over the years saying they were sexually abused as children or teenagers with, you know, without coming down too hard, unless you want to come down hard. Do you feel like There were ways the church was neglectful in how they structured leadership and organizations such that it would have left a kid your age vulnerable.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:32:16] Yes and no. Yes. I know it's an issue. For me, that wasn't the issue. It wasn't a priesthood leader or anyone like that. It was a situation that the church wouldn't have had any. Any control over. Just happened to be another church member. So it wasn't that they put me in a situation. And there. There were many situations. I remember young men's camp. You know, you'd sleep four to a tent, and the young men's leader would be one of those four, you know, who sleep in the middle of the tent and to keep you all quiet. So there are a lot of situations where I'm sure it does and could have happened, but this particular one wasn't one of those.

Nemo [00:32:59] Right. Okay, cool. I know you mentioned that you didn't want to dwell on that too long, so. But I think it's really important, and I'm grateful that you shared that because I think it does set a really good foundation for your story and for. It explains a lot of kind of what goes on later. So if you don't mind, should we continue on into your young men's experience? You can tell us about your first young men's camp or, you know, what the quorum structures were like growing up, how big the quorums were. Something like that.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:33:30] Yeah. Well, I just want to say this as well. Okay. So through my life, I've had these recurring nightmares. Any. Any mental health professionals out there right now will be kind of like, man, this guy is classic. But I've had these recurring nightmares. And the one as a child, and this probably explains so much, was that two random guys come into the house and kidnap me. And I'm screaming and screaming and screaming, and no one can hear me screaming. So they carry me through the house, past everyone just going about their business, but no one can hear me, and no one is listening to me.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:34:09] And then they take me off and the nightmare ends. And that was over and over and over again. So that was probably, now that I look at it, probably, you know, went quite well with the way that I had that I felt no one would hear me.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:34:29] And that was where my kind of headspace was in that time with the young men's. There was three of us. And because I was the stake president's son or the bishop's son, I was always deacons, quorum president, teachers, quorum president, you know, assistant priests.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:34:51] What do they Call it now. Assistant president to the priest for him. Because the bishop's the. The president. Yeah. So that was just kind of the way it was. One of the young men didn't have a dad, and I think he was looked down on because of that, because he was from kind of apartment family, just with him and his mum. And one of the other young men just didn't come quite that often. So. Yeah, very small ward. Young men's wife.

Youth Activities and Young Men's Camp

Nemo [00:35:26] Okay. And anything interesting happened to you on young men's camps? Because I know they. They always. They always.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:35:34] Let's tell a story, right? This is what PD is about, stories. Okay. Let's cheer up.

Nemo [00:35:39] Let's do it. So let's tell a story.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:35:40] Your men's camp. So we're in a field in a tent, obviously, that's the whole point of your men's camp. And in this tent, it was one of the occasions where there was a leader in the tent with us, and there was three young men and one leader. And this guy was amazing. And he decided it was bedtime and he'd tell a story, a ghost story, which didn't go well.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:36:01] So this. This leader, he told us that there was a caretaker of the campgrounds and that this caretaker was an alcoholic. So straight away, warning about the word of wisdom, you know, guys, don't drink because you'll become an alcoholic caretaker of a campground.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:36:16] So this guy, he'd run out of. Of, like, spirits. So he went to the caretaker's hut and he found some ethanol that you use in the kind of campfire, you know, things you. You cook with. And he drank that. And then he came into the field that we're in, and he was sat around the campfire and he burped.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:36:41] And he. After he burped, a large kind of flame came out. He sucked it back in, and his head blew off. And to this day, he has been walking around the field at night trying to find his head.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:36:56] We're all. We're all wrapped in this story. And at that very moment, I was laid at the edge so I could feel the side of the tent. And at that very moment, a spherical object hit me clean in the back really hard. And we jumped up, broke the tent running out. And to find that there were about five young men from another ward who just happened to have been sneaking out and heard the story. They happened to have a football with them. And they decided at that very moment they kick the football against the tent and. Yeah.

Nemo [00:37:35] Oh, dear.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:37:36] Put. Put me into the stratosphere.

Nemo [00:37:41] Oh, everyone's got a story like that from camp of someone pulling a prank on them.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:37:47] Yeah, well, the, the other thing from camp was from my first camp and I felt the guilt for this forever. They introduced what was called an iron man competition. And this competition, it went over physical prowess. And I was 12 year old Deacon, you just saw the photo. I wasn't a physical specimen. But also your spiritual power. And it just so happened that someone was coming around, they were checking. You got points for reading your scriptures every morning.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:38:16] And they came around, they were checking. I don't think I quite heard what they were saying, but they said, you know, did you read your scriptures every morning? And I was like, yeah, yeah, go. Yeah, I did. And it came to the end of camp and they were reading out the scoreboard and my old, one of my older brothers, he was like second. And then he was, he was coming down to who was going to win. And I won.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:38:44] He was so angry. And I got this little trophy. And the only reason I won is because I read my scriptures every morning. But I didn't, I just kind of said, yeah, because it wouldn't matter, would it really? I'm not going to have scored well against all these other people. But I got, I got full points for that that no one else got. And I got extra points because on one of the activities, another one of my friends, it was a mountain biking activity, his bike had broken. So I left the activity and walked him back to the campsite. So I got extra points for being like a good Samaritan.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:39:22] And I think afterwards, a little while later, the state young men's president kind of made it clear to me that he knew that I'd lied eventually. So I felt guilty about that for a long time.

Nemo [00:39:36] I want to point something out for someone in the comments. They're saying, do young men still go to camp? I know they discounted Boy Scouts in the church. In the uk, camp is not related to Boy Scouts at all. The church doesn't have a heavy tie with scouts or scouting, particularly here in the uk. So the young men's camps that we go on are purely organized by the church and your local priesthood leaders.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:40:00] Yeah. And the idea was that they have a young men's camp and a young women's camp a few miles apart. And then at the end of the week, the camps join together for a day of activities. But the game used to be, can we get the address of the young women's camp? And hike during the night to get to their camp and meet some of them? And I know in the 70s they had real problems with it and, and some pregnancies and different things that came back from camp, but. Yeah, now I think they're very far apart.

Nemo [00:40:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:36] May I ask you both a difficult question?

Nemo [00:40:39] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:40:41] This is probably impossible. What's that?

Nemo [00:40:44] Well, I said sure, but PD didn't respond, so you cool with that?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:40:48] Pd, Go for it.

Nemo [00:40:49] Yeah, cool.

John Dehlin [00:40:50] John, you don't have to answer. Is there any way to measure whether the average Mormon youth raised in the church in the UK is, on average, happier or healthier than the average kid in the UK not raised in the Mormon Church? In other words, is there. Is there enough kind of like community, identity, meaning purpose, spirituality, where just on average, you can say that LDS families tend to kind of be, on average, a little bit healthier and happier than the general population. In other words, there's going to be problems with an LDS upbringing.

John Dehlin [00:41:32] But is there an argument to be made that putting the truth claims aside that the community and all the other things that come with it actually can. Can. Can lead to a healthier, happier, on average experience? Pd, you go first, and then. Nemo, I'm curious if you want to weigh in. And I know I'm asking you an impossible question to answer, but I want you to just try for it anyway.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:41:54] I. I don't think there's any actual metric we could go by, but the first thing that comes to mind is from a Utah point of view, if you try to think of a religion in Utah, in the Valley, that is poorly represented. So Jehovah's Witnesses, possibly. And it's kind of like that you're the only Mormon in a sea of infidels or the only Jehovah's Witness in a sea of Mormons. It's. How many. How many other moms did you go to school with, Nemo?

Nemo [00:42:30] One.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:42:31] One. Okay. That was. That was one more than me, other than brothers and sisters who might have been in it. But yeah, no, the youth program, you're lucky if you've got a good group of five or ten kids. So I don't think the benefits of the youth program outweigh the bullying and kind of the negative side at school. So I was bullied a lot for being a Mormon because I was the fifth. So everyone knew the family in the community as well and that we were Mormons, you know, so all the kids knew that we were godfatherers. And, yeah, there were fights at times, and it was another kind of rod for them to beat you with.

John Dehlin [00:43:23] What does the term God bother mean?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:43:26] Like people who bother God. God bother is like, like Christians or just religious people.

Nemo [00:43:34] I never heard God bothers. Yeah, it's a common one here. Yeah.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:43:38] If, if, if the Mormons or if someone sees people on the street like Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, you'd be like, the God botherers are here. They have to bother me about God.

Nemo [00:43:48] Yeah. From my perspective, shameless plug for my interview, but I do think I spoke about it in my interview with you, John, that I felt a sort of sense of superiority being the Mormon amongst the heathens that probably came out and probably didn't win me any favors with my classmates particularly.

Nemo [00:44:08] And then the other thing I would point out is the demographic within the LDS church here in the UK is very middle class, generally very. That, you know, we have our class system in the uk, whatever. But generally people, those sorts of people are going to have a reasonable upbringing anyway. So I'm not sure how much that you could lay at the feet of the church because a lot of my friends at school had a nuclear family that actually I didn't have because my parents divorced. But a lot of them had married parents still because, you know, I was in that sort of neighborhood.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:44:42] No, Nemo, this is a geographical thing. Okay. So Nemo, Nemo sounds very posh. Okay.

Nemo [00:44:48] All right, here we go.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:44:49] That's his natural accent. He can't do anything about that. It's just his problem. Okay. But I grew up in coal mining country, okay. Where I, I taught posh for where I grew up. So everyone was lower class. Nemo, I apologize. But we were all lower class coal miners.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:45:11] So there could have been a benefit there having the church system around. But everyone was so kind of matter of fact and coarse about things that anything out of the ordinary was just like destroyed. It was, it was just a target.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:45:31] So yeah, interesting. I maybe said to my mom once, why can't you just be normal and go to the pub at night? You know, why can't you just go sit with the other kids parents at night in the pub?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:45:44] And she, she wrote a book called Only a Coal Miner's Daughter. And I think she put that in the book like that. Her son had asked her one time, why can't she just go sit in the pub and be normal versus be

John Dehlin [00:45:56] a, versus be a Mormon?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:45:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nemo [00:46:00] I will point out the town where I grew up, there was a lot of, there's a lot of poverty, right. But a lot of the members of the church were from that middle class group of people, I guess. Was my point. It certainly in where I grew up, it seemed to attract those kind of people. But you make a very good point pd, about the geographic divide here in the uk.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:46:19] Yeah, north, south.

Nemo [00:46:21] Mm, north, south indeed. Okay, sorry. Where are we going with that? So, um, let's take it to 1999. Let's take it there. So you started dating a non member girl? Apparently, according to my crib sheet, yes. Tell me about that.

Dating, Courtship, and Meeting His Wife

Priesthood Dispatches [00:46:41] Okay, so we have another picture.

Nemo [00:46:46] Don't you worry.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:46:47] Non member girls, right? I got myself in trouble with. That's not my non member.

Nemo [00:46:51] Oh, is that not it?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:46:52] That's my wife. Oh, oh, okay, Go, go back, go back. Okay, so we'll get there. I got myself in trouble with a non member girl doing what teenagers do. Okay, so. And I think so this is where scrupulosity really started to kick my ass. Because I'd had my experience earlier in life that had kind of set me apart and felt like I couldn't talk to anyone. So then when I started having these normal feelings, normal kind of young man urges and a girl is there who also has feelings and things happen, there was no one I could talk to about that. So I just let the guilt and the shame kind of just weigh me down to the point that I probably needed professional help, okay.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:47:45] That I would, it. It would literally wreck my soul at night. The, the sins I'd committed with this non member girl. And as I said before at the beginning, these are just normal things. Okay? There was no, we weren't out. We weren't Bonnie and Clyde robbing banks. It's just normal things. But the frame of reference the gospel gives you is that you're the worst person in the world.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:48:14] And there was. So I'd broken up with this girl, but I was still carrying this baggage. And I went to young men's. My brother in law was your man's president. He was teaching about how his brother years ago had also got himself in trouble with a girl. And that was his kind of warning to us.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:48:37] And yeah, I couldn't take it anymore. So that afternoon, that Sunday afternoon, my brother in law was in the home. And I finally said to someone, I said to him, you know, I've got myself in trouble like your brother did. It gave me the opportunity to try and repent.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:48:56] So then he called the bishop, who lived a couple of miles up the road. We walked up to the bishop's house, sat down with the bishop, who was also a cop. So you imagine the kind of attitude of a cop, you know, he Was stereotypical cop, nice guy, but just soft skills weren't there.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:49:17] And he sat down and I told him that, you know, this had happened and I felt a great weight release. But then he wanted to know details. And like, when I was bishop, I never asked anyone details about anything. And I don't know if it was because I'd had such a hard time with this experience, but I don't know any handbook or anything or where these guys get it from that they need details of what happened. Okay.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:49:45] But he started asking for details and I, I just closed up. Like, that was probably the first time I'd opened up in years to anyone. And as soon as he did that, like, I just closed the gates again and that guilt just went, went straight in. I just kind of said to him, look, oh, happened one time. And, and yeah, it just happened.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:50:07] And he, he said, you know, he put me on probation and it was maybe like a 20 minute walk home. I was 16, 20 minute walk home. So here in the UK there was no laws broken. It was because ages of accountability and different things in the uk, different to the us. Okay.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:50:31] But before I got home, the bishop had called my parents and relayed everything I'd said to them. So my mum was waiting for me, my dad had gone out to be out of the way. And yeah, it didn't go well for me. It didn't end well. So that, that was my experience of trying to open up to a priesthood leader to, to gain some kind of refuge or, you know, relief. But it didn't go well at all.

Nemo [00:51:04] How do you feel about that? Massive breach of trust by the bishop?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:51:12] I think, yeah, he was the bishop that married me in the end. So you can, you can tell how good my other bishops were for the fact that I called him and said, can you perform the wedding? Because he was the best one. So the other bishops, I were crap as well. But yeah, he, he shouldn't have done it. But I was so kind of in church and upset about what had happened that I couldn't be upset with anyone else because I was like, well, at least you're allowing me to sleep in the house.

Nemo [00:51:48] And, you know, I suppose there's an assumption there that you assume that he as bishop knows what he ought to do. So therefore if he goes and tells your parents, there's an assumption there that that is what he's meant to do. In that case, you go to the bishop thinking, oh, well, what I say to him is between me and him, but then perhaps if he escalates it, it's almost like, oh, well, in those instances, he has to tell my parents. And so you kind of just let it happen.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:52:14] Yeah, I think.

Nemo [00:52:15] Is that reasonable or.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:52:16] Yeah, I think I was suffering whiplash from the whole thing as well, because I'd gone from super guilty to finally the dam breaks and you're like, okay, I can talk to someone about it. I can tell someone. So you tell someone. And you had to walk two miles to the bishop's house. So it's like a two mile walk to the bishop's office knowing what you're going for. Right. So you're already kind of going through things over and over again in your mind. You get to the bishop's house, you finally release it, and you just say this happened. And then he gets all weird about it.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:52:51] And so all of a sudden you've, you've, you know, life was good again for the two mile walk. And then it's bad again because you couldn't tell him everything. Because who wants to know that? No one. No one wants to know that. I didn't even want to, you know, recount everything. So imagine a teacher sitting you down and asking that, like, that's not okay. No, it's not anywhere near okay. Sorry.

John Dehlin [00:53:20] Yeah. To a theme. To a theme. You referenced earlier. Sometimes the LDS Church likes to brag that it has unpaid clergy. But what it, what it really has oftentimes is untrained clergy. And whether people are just left leaders or bishops are just left to just figure it out or to just do whatever was done to them, it wreaks havoc in a lot of people's lives. Not to mention a realization we've had in the past 10 years, which is no adult should ever be behind closed doors with a teenage boy or girl asking them details about their sex lives. That's just, that's grooming behavior. But for some reason we're just now figuring that out in the past 10, 15 years or so, in part thanks to Sam Young and his work.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:54:05] Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

Nemo [00:54:08] Okay. There's some other stories I've got on my notes here from that time.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:54:12] Okay. Yeah, I got these backwards. Right.

Nemo [00:54:15] Okay.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:54:17] So we've repented, but before that happened. So this, this really like kicked my ass with scrupulosity. So at 15, I visited Salt Lake City for the first time we mentioned earlier. Parents taking my other siblings over. So my parents took me and my younger brother when I was 15. So I had this no member girlfriend at the time. So this is just before I came back and repented. But they took us to Salt Lake to General Conference, which was weird because there was like protesters and people that didn't like Mormons and stuff on the street. So that was pretty strange. But with my dad, who's quite well connected. So he took us to the building that's got the big statue of Joseph Smith in the foyer. Which one's that?

John Dehlin [00:55:12] I think that's called the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, which is the old hotel, Hotel Utah.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:55:18] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:55:19] That's been converted.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:55:20] So I think, I think it was in the, that one. So this is 20 years ago. So forgive me, but he went over to the reception and he told the receptionist the name and asked if he could speak to that name. And it happened to be at the time the general young men's president of the church, who he knew from some of his other dealings.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:55:40] So he put him on the phone and the, the guy he spoke to just said, okay, take the elevator down to the basement and follow the yellow line and security will know you're coming. So we went down to the basement and it's, it's all of downtown Salt Lake or Temple square area. It's all connected by a big kind of underground tunnel system and car park and they shuttle everyone around on these golf carts.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:56:12] But we went down and we followed the yellow line, which obviously took us underneath whatever street is in between these buildings to the, I want to say the church office building, but it was the office building that the church used, that they still use today. So I know there's a few buildings there.

John Dehlin [00:56:34] So there's the, the, there's the, the main tall church office building. And then I think it's called the administration. There's, there's a, there's a building where the quorum of the 12 basically have offices.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:56:48] It's that one we went to and

John Dehlin [00:56:50] it's kind of right next to it. It's a shorter building. Yeah, it's where the First Presidency, the Quorum of the twelve all have corner offices basically.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:56:57] Yeah, so it was, it was that one we went to and. Yeah. So we were down in the car park and my dad's friend came out to meet us and the first place he took us actually was to the prophets kind of tunnel. So down there there's a security shutter and there's a little kind of security box just big enough for one security guard who sat and waited and he lifted the shutter for us. Behind this shutter there was a white oval shaped top tunnel which was, it had loads of lights in the floor to make it look really bright. And we walked down there.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:57:40] It was maybe 50 yards long. And you get to kind of a concrete box where there's an elevator, and that goes up to the prophet's apartment. So we got all the way down there. But I. I bet being present at church is a bit of an ego trip if every time you want to go home, you get to walk through this wonderful, like, bright tunnel, you know, just for you.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:58:02] But after that, it took us across to security, and so I'm a sinner. I'm pretty bad now. Apostles of the Lord are just hanging out. I think Jeffrey R. Holland and someone else came past and they stopped, were introduced to us, and I was like, man, these guys are going to know everything. You know, they're going to shake my hand, they're going to look in my eyes, and they'll know everything. So he shook my hand.

John Dehlin [00:58:28] Can you explain really quickly, pd can you explain why you thought that they would know everything?

Priesthood Dispatches [00:58:33] So I call it the spiritual stop and frisk. Okay. So I told it on some stories on the show because I've had this a few times in life with apostles, that the windows are the eye to the soul, and that. Sorry, the eyes are the windows to the soul. And that when an apostle or any priesthood leader who has kind of jurisdiction over you looks. Looks you dead in the eye, they can see everything. The spirit of revelation or discernment.

John Dehlin [00:59:05] Right, yeah.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:59:06] Bear witness to them. So these guys, I'm. I'm a bit shifty, kind of trying not to look at them direct in the eye, but they. They had me. And he looked and, yeah, nothing happened. I didn't. I didn't. Jeffrey R. Holland.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:59:23] And there was one more as well, but I. I distinctly remember Jeffrey R. Holland. So. But after that, you know, I got through that stop and frisk. We were past security, so there are a bunch of return missionaries down there with guns.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:59:38] And they took us up the floors. We went up to sit in a massive room full of alabaster vases and all sorts of things. Big, long mahogany desk, which is where the 12 meet and the first presidency. President Hinckley's office was just off of that room. We went and sat in his chair.

Priesthood Dispatches [00:59:57] He was preparing for a temple dedication in the Philippines at the time, I think. And, yeah, it was. It was pretty good. It was, I think, as well, somewhere near there. We looked at where the prophet lies in rest when they die.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:00:14] So, yeah, in one of those buildings. But, yeah, we went through all the offices. We went to the room upstairs, the big horseshoe one, if you Go on. Mormon leaks. You can see it where the 12 will sit and people will give them presentations, and they have, like, a set of scriptures all set out so they don't have to carry them with them. There's a set of scriptures wherever they go. And, yeah, it was. It was a fun visit, but

John Dehlin [01:00:43] I

Priesthood Dispatches [01:00:43] don't know,

John Dehlin [01:00:46] that's kind of a big deal when you're. When you're young or any. Any age, really, within Mormonism. That's like visiting Oz, right? It's like where the wonderful wizard lives.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:00:57] Yeah, same. Same behind the curtain.

John Dehlin [01:01:00] Right, But.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:01:02] But I. I just felt bad because I was a bad, bad man and I was getting to see all these things now. I was just so worried that around the next corner someone was gonna, like, just. Just pull me up and be like, he shouldn't be here. Who let him in?

Nemo [01:01:20] No, I can. I can relate to that. I had those feelings as a youth where you carry that guilt around you and you. You're convinced that other people know what you've done. And, um, because you're taught, you know, that the spirit of discernment is a real thing. We've since discovered that it can't discern forgeries, frauds, or other problematic substances for the church. But, you know, I think we went.

John Dehlin [01:01:41] Or abuse. Right?

Nemo [01:01:42] Or abuse. Yeah.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:01:44] That room, though, with the picture of Mark Hoffman and Gornby, Inkley, etc. I think that is the room that we were in with the big, long table, and they were stood at the head of that big, big, long table looking at the documents. And the photographer was just stood a little bit back taking that photo. So if that was the one, just off to the left of screen is a door leading into the president of the church's, like, personal office.

Nemo [01:02:15] So, you know, the spirit of discernment doesn't work in that room.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:02:17] At least it doesn't. It doesn't. But I. I had some funny experiences with it as a bishop. So we'll.

Nemo [01:02:26] I will get there.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:02:26] We'll see how I made it work.

Nemo [01:02:30] Okay. Right, do you want to jump back to that picture that I tried to share prematurely? Go on then, and tell us all who this lovely lady is.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:02:39] This is my darling wife. So after I had confessed all and, you know, cleaned my soul of the sins of this generation, I was at a church dance in Sheffield in the uk, so that's kind of an hour north of Nottingham. And me and a friend, we saw these girls over in the corner that we wanted to talk to.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:03:03] Thought they were pretty girls, but there were Some other boys with them. So we were kind of scared to go over and talk to them. So I said to my mate, all right, let me show you how it's done. So I thought, I'll just do a warm up before we go and see the girls. We want to about talk. Talk to. I'll do a warm up. And I just turned around, I was going to talk to the first girl I saw, and I walked over to this girl and I was like, hey, how you doing? I'm PD from Nottingham.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:03:29] And she just kind of said, okay, and ignored me and went on with her dance with her friend. And that turned out to be my wife. I never got to talk to the other girls because she put me down so hard. I had no confidence left.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:03:46] So wonderful sister PD. We were 16 there. And yeah, this is one of. This is our first photo together. So. And we. We've been together ever since, 21, 22 years now. And she has been my rock and my salvation.

Nemo [01:04:06] There we go.

John Dehlin [01:04:07] Congratulations. That's a real accomplishment.

Nemo [01:04:10] I just want to say, for people in the audience outside of the uk, traveling an hour for a church dance is nothing, particularly once you get to. Yeah, once you get to ysa, we will travel four, five hours through the night to and from a church dance in one evening. So people leave straight from work, they'll go to a dance. They'll get there by like nine or whatever, and then they'll stay for the dance until about 11, 10 or 11, then they'll all go to McDonald's. Usually a local McDonald's will sit there until the wee hours of the morning, and then people will drive home the next day.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:04:48] Yeah.

Nemo [01:04:49] And like, yeah, people will come from Wales in through to Reading. So people will come from north to south. They'll go hundreds of miles for these dances.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:04:58] Yeah. And. And this is the byproduct of this. This is inbreeding. Okay. And the fact that wherever you go in the uk, it's like seven steps of Kevin Bacon. Okay. And I didn't even realize this right, until a few months ago when me and Nemo were talking and we realized there's only three steps between us now. We never knew each other until this whole podcasting thing. We grew up in totally different areas of the country and we never met, but, yeah, we realized that through three marriages, we were actually related. And that's the way it is in the church here in the uk And I'm

Priesthood Dispatches [01:05:37] sure in other places where the church is small because you travel afar, you then marry that person and Then their siblings marry someone equally as far away in the other direction, and then you visit somewhere later in life, as with my mission that we'll come to, and you find people you're related to or that know you, that you never even knew. So.

Nemo [01:06:01] Yeah. So how. How did you go from, hey, I'm pd, how's it going? And she's like, all right, how did you go from that to actually dating?

Priesthood Dispatches [01:06:13] She wanted to make another boy jealous. Okay. More fool her, let me tell you. Okay, so church dancers over here. And I'm. I don't know about you guys, but they were pretty standard. Second Friday of every month, you travel to that city. Third Friday you'd go to that city, and there was at least two or three every month.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:06:33] So I'd see her at the dancers. And I think we first met in October, and it took until Valentine's Day in February the next year for her to kind of give in to my boyish charm. But as she explained later, I was trying to convince her to go for a lover's stroll where we could be alone and just stroll around the car park in the dark.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:06:59] Nothing sinister, but that's. That's what you do. So you find a girl, you want to have a kiss, or as we'd say in the uk, a snog, and you go for a stroll. There are parents out there in the cars, but you just. If not your parent, you're not too bothered. So I was trying to say to her, do you want to go for a walk? And eventually she said yes. And I was like, boom, Gotcha.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:07:24] But she said yes. She told me later, because the boy she actually wanted to date was walking past, and she thought that if she went for a stroll with me, it would make him jealous. Best laid plans came to bite.

John Dehlin [01:07:41] She used you.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:07:42] She did. And now she's paying the price.

Nemo [01:07:45] They said jokes on her.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:07:46] Yeah. Poor love.

John Dehlin [01:07:49] Really quickly, fellas, I. I want to reinforce this idea that in the uk these dances really are critical. There's a reason why you would drive four or five hours to a dance and that they would hold them so frequently, because obviously, if eternal marriage, you know, is a requirement for the celestial kingdom and becoming a God within Mormonism, then you gotta marry a Mormon. And if you don't date Mormons and if you don't meet Mormons, you're not going to end up marrying them. And so I. I hear that that people would travel from, like, Scandinavia to the UK and vice versa.

Nemo [01:08:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:25] It was just so critical to try and aggregate a Critical mass of singles to be able to help people have a pool enough. A pool large enough to be able to find a worthy marriage.

Nemo [01:08:39] Festa Nord was a big thing. Yeah, Festa Nord up in Scandinavia, people would fly out there for this big weekend event. I've just looked at statistics. 0.28% of the UK population are members of the church. And that is if you take them at face value. Every member they have on record is still an active member of the church. Right. So if you start to divide that up by eligible YSA age people, then halve that roughly for people of the opposite sex. Right. You're getting into really small numbers very quickly. So

Priesthood Dispatches [01:09:10] can I say, guys, right, that the church knows this and they know that that's the reason that these activities happen. It's not just to reinforce the testimony. It's not just to keep you out of the clubs. Because I wouldn't market with friends. It is a meat market. My parents, bless their hearts in their response. One of their responsibilities later in life was to run YSA conventions and they started what were the national conventions here in the UK that some people from Europe would also come to.

Nemo [01:09:44] Like Bristol.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:09:46] Yeah. And they were massive meat markets and they would know every couple that they put together. So that was seen as like a. Not an actual key performance indicator, but a success. How many engagements did we get out of that, that convention?

Nemo [01:10:03] Well, me and my wife met at Bristol convention, so. Oh, boom, you're right, that's a double edged sword church.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:10:11] Because they made you.

Nemo [01:10:12] Well, essentially, yeah. They, they allowed me to meet a wife who would empower me to go on and do this sort of nonsense. So, yeah, you know, big shout out to my wife there. Okay, so tell me then, so you started dating Sister pd? Yeah, it's all going well. Where does that take us to?

Patriarchal Blessing and Temple Marriage

Priesthood Dispatches [01:10:30] Okay, so Sister PD held me in church. I think if it hadn't been for Sister pd, my experience with the picture bishop would have taken me out of church. But Sister PD wanted to marry a return missionary in the temple.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:10:47] So that meant that I needed to go on a mission. But before that, what comes to every young person is the patriarchal blessing. And just before that, I think just to preface that, another recurring nightmare. Because this is important in the patriarchal blessing in my kind of teacher priest age. I had this dream that I was at church on a normal Sunday and the bishop stood up and said they'd had an announcement and that a young man has had his patriarchal blessing and he's come back to be of the tribe of Levi. And that because he was from the tribe of Levi, he is now the Bishop.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:11:30] Okay. And that young man is me, 13 years old. And I then walked up to the stand not knowing what was going on and everyone was just booing me and hissing and throwing things and just being awful. So it came time to get my own patriarchal blessing and I was a little bit reticent to find out my lineage because I didn't want this nightmare to become a real thing. But Nemo, do you have the blessing there for us?

Nemo [01:11:59] Oh, you bet your bottom I do.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:12:01] Okay, so this is a page and a half of the most tripe in the world that I let have a real impact on me. So I've just blanked out my parents names there and maybe for the non

John Dehlin [01:12:19] members who are watching, give like a 30 second overview of what a patriarchal blessing is.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:12:25] Patriarchal blessing is a super sized horoscope. So that's, you know, Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:12:32] A Mormon superstar.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:12:33] Yeah, yeah. So there's, there's one old man in every stake that is set apart to tickle the hair follicles of all the young people. Okay. So you come along, you have a wordness interview and then he sets up a little recorder and then he puts his hand on your head and he gives a blessing. Now they, they stem from a time when Joseph Smith or Father Joseph Smith senior was the patriarch and he'd give blessings and tell people that they would be able to travel by the speed of thought or preach on the moon and crazy things like this. And even though they don't say that, I think this is equally as crazy.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:13:18] Okay, so imagine I am the state president and bishop's son. And you know, you've, you've got all this potential. So it starts with, you're a choice son of our Heavenly Father. Yeah, Standard. He's going to give me the gift of a testimony and that I will bear that testimony and be a witness to the world of my knowledge and assurity through the Holy Ghost that Heavenly Father and Jesus live. So already I'm a witness to the world. Not just the local area, but the world. Okay.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:13:55] It would be this wonderful knowledge that you will enable you to bear your testimony worldwide. Okay. So we're already on a pedestal, says I'm going to serve a mission. And then the patriarch just doubles down with his like crap.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:14:15] He goes on and he says, you will understand the same worldly wisdom in the ways to apply it to the gospel, that I'll have the gift of discernment. Then he says, that I will serve in ways of leadership. He says that I will be a judge in Israel. And when I. When I left, my dad put his arm around me and said, you're going to be the bishop. Because he predicted that I'd be a judge in Israel and that the Lord was going to use me in tasks to the benefit of the Saints and that through. And that I would guide and lead my fellow men, that I would be known in this world as a man of integrity and honesty and integrity and so forth.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:15:02] And then I didn't know what I needed to do in my life. So it says, when I get back from my mission, I will know what I need to do in this life. I was with the tribe of Ephraim, so there were no problems there. I'd get married and have children. But basically this whole thing set me up to be a priesthood leader on kind of a world scale, which my dad was really excited about.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:15:29] But I wasn't sure if I even believed in the church, never mind in what the patriarch was saying, in this. What is a short patriarchal blessing, but no less punchy. And I think the two takeaways that will probably again feed into the disaster that is to come, were he's going to be bishop and serve in leadership callings to lead men worldwide. Okay, so there's that massive pedestal there. But also he's going to know exactly how to do that when he gets back off his mission. So bear those two things in mind as we go forward, because it doesn't end well.

Nemo [01:16:14] Does not end well at all.

John Dehlin [01:16:16] No, it's always. It's always worth noting that these patriarchal blessings, they. They always promise you things that are to the benefit of the church. You're gonna. You're gonna serve a mission, you're gonna stay faithful, you're gonna get married in the temple, you're gonna have lots of kids. And they almost never say, you're gonna, you're gonna marry someone who isn't a member and you're gonna leave the church and you're gonna go on and live a happy, healthy life. As an ex Mormon, you know, no patriarchal blessing ever says that, right?

Priesthood Dispatches [01:16:48] No.

Nemo [01:16:49] Not even in a phrase like, you will find a ministry amongst children outside of our Father's flock. You know, they could dress it up some somewhat right by saying, you know, your life may take you outside the church and that will be fine. They could dress it up, but they don't.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:17:05] Well, I think my. I think my dad still, like, feels it. He says to me, you know, the church has lost a good man in you, which is a nice thing for him to say, but I think. I think he as well maybe saw that as a big thing, if you know what I mean, that I'd been promised all these big things and I kind of turned my back on it. So.

John Dehlin [01:17:31] Yeah, and that's the. The blame reversal thing that we'll get to. We don't want to give that away, but basically it's just. And the. The sign or the technique of a high demand religion or a cult, depending on what you're dealing with, is blame reversal. Prophecies are made. If the prophecy comes true, then the leaders are inspired and God is directing the church or the organization. If the prophecies don't come true, then it's always turned back and blamed on the member. And that way the house kind of always wins. And the. The shame cycle and the fear cycle is reinforced because you become the sad cautionary tale, you know? And your dad's sad about that, Right. Which might make him even more devout, right?

Priesthood Dispatches [01:18:19] Yeah, yeah.

Nemo [01:18:20] Possibly because he's then got to be on extra high alert. So you've got your patriarchal blessing, and then in. In terms of Mormon milestones, it tends to go patriarchal blessing, then your endowment, then mission. Right, yeah. Because you've got to be endowed before you go on a mission. So what was your temple prep like? How were you prepared for the temple?

Priesthood Dispatches [01:18:41] Okay, so bear in mind, again, the only reason I'm doing this is because I know Sister PD wants a return missionary to marry in the temple. Okay. So I don't particularly not have a testimony of the church, but I don't have a testimony at the church, if you know what I mean. Like, I'm kind of in that place where you're living off everyone else's, and they're okay with it. So I guess I'm okay with it.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:19:06] But the. Yeah, the place I was, I'd put my papers in to go on a mission. Earlier, I told my bishop I wasn't going on a mission, but obviously Sister PD changed all of that, bless her heart. So the papers are in, I'm getting ready for the temple, and the Internet has arrived.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:19:30] And I decided, you know what, I might just do a quick Internet search. This is pre Google, so it was a little bit more difficult, but Mormon into whatever search engine I was using. And I read some pretty interesting stuff.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:19:48] So I read about secret handshakes to get into heaven, and I was like, that's rubbish. I read about Heavenly Father literally having intercourse with Mary in order to conceive Jesus. Brigham Young apparently believed that. And I was like, yeah, right, I've been to primary, I know that's not true.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:20:11] And I read about something about a white salamander and I'm like, what? You know, I'm like, this Internet thing doesn't even know what's going on. So I'm sat there at a meal but just my mum's there and I'm like, oh, you never guess what I read today.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:20:30] So I just put it all out there and like, her face ashen. Well, well, just don't worry about the temple stuff. You'll learn about all of that in time and don't worry about the other stuff either. And then the next Sunday the bishop, who obviously I wasn't on good terms with anyway cornered me and he, he gave me the hard word about using the Internet and about. Yeah, he just basically told me it was all rubbish and to forget it and to stay on. Not the covenant path, it would be the covenant path now, but to stay on course for my mission and everything.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:21:09] So yeah, I kind of went. You feel bad for having looked. It's like you told off for just stumbling upon information that they like to keep secret. It's like, come on guys, we'd all believe it if it wasn't totally ridiculous.

Nemo [01:21:28] You're like a naughty child that's just put their hands where they shouldn't, you know, just taken something they shouldn't. Yeah, no, no, no, those weren't the rules. You're not allowed to go there. And it's.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:21:38] And this carried on, on to my mission because we had pass along cards that had mormon.org on them. I wouldn't give them out. I would only give out ones that didn't have the website on it because I didn't want an investigator to put the word Mormon into Google.

Nemo [01:21:54] Right.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:21:55] So straight away I would only give them the ones that had the phone number on to like order a DVD of whatever they were slinging at the time. But I would not give them Internet ones because I knew what was there and I felt bad for looking at it.

Nemo [01:22:14] So yeah, so you, you kind of brush that off then or, or put it on your shelf, as some may say.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:22:19] Yeah, so, yeah, so it's 2003, time for the temple. I remember my dad stopped me outside the temple Preston Temple went to and he said to me, everything up until now has been your salvation. This is now your exaltation. So, you know, he's up the ante. So you go in and they gave me a poncho and said, get undressed. I'm like, you guys don't want to see that. But, yeah, it gave me the poncho. And you go in, you get naked and put the poncho on. And then you do that little penguin shuffle whilst you're holding the side shut through the changing room to the initiatory area. And at that point, you are touched by an old man you'd never met in your life in places that you wouldn't let anyone touch. So, yeah, that was. That was just triggering.

John Dehlin [01:23:21] And for those who don't know what PD is talking about, you're talking about the washings and anointings.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:23:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:26] Which is a preparatory. Preparatory ordinance for the endowment, where usually an older person, while you're naked, anoints you with oil on various parts of your body, including your groin, which is something that's been removed, let's just say, in the past 10 to 15 years. But it was certainly part of my temple experience.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:23:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:46] Yeah. And it sounds like it was certainly part of yours.

Nemo [01:23:48] So when I went through the endowment, that Gone. Some people still chose to wear the shield, but they'd wear their garments underneath. And the oil is just placed on the forehead. The oil's placed on top of the head and the water's just placed on the forehead now.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:24:01] Oh, wow. No. So it's. It's changed. And Mindless Plug Tomorrow, over on PD's channel, we're going to be talking about the temple and all the changes, and we'll be going through all of those things. So that'll be fun. But, yeah, at the time it was. You sit there naked with just like, a towel on and the sides are open so that they have access to the body to touch those areas.

John Dehlin [01:24:27] Do you remember how that made you

Priesthood Dispatches [01:24:28] feel, pd, that shut me off for the rest of the day because I'd had experiences before and it kind of put me back in that place.

John Dehlin [01:24:38] It reminded you of the abuse?

Priesthood Dispatches [01:24:40] Yeah. So it triggered me. Massive. So I. I shut off. You know, I just kind of stumbled through the rest of the day getting on with what I was supposed to be doing. So I think for every. For everyone else, it was a joyous day. When pd, you know, made these covenants for me, it was a nightmare.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:25:02] And. Yeah, okay. I do remember one bit, actually, that was. That I've shared before. That was. I think a lot of people might have this issue, but bear in mind, by this time, I'm a sexually repressed pre. Missionary. Okay. And you go and sit in this dark, warm room.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:25:23] And then Naked Eve comes on. And I was so surprised. No one had prepared me for Naked Eve. Okay, Like, I've had experiences, but when Naked Eve comes on and your young man kind of takes over and you're just like, I shouldn't be feeling. It's like wanting to laugh in a funeral. You're like, for feeling awkward because you're lusting after Naked Eve at the same time as, like, going through this really spiritual experience. But why'd they put naked people up there?

John Dehlin [01:25:55] Now, to be fair, it's not showing full frontal nudity, right?

Priesthood Dispatches [01:26:00] Oh, pawn shoulders.

Nemo [01:26:01] Porn. Shoulders are shown.

John Dehlin [01:26:04] But it had, you know, she's naked and it has the rest of her body off.

Nemo [01:26:09] Offshot, strategic foliage.

John Dehlin [01:26:12] It leaves you to fill in the blanks in your own imagination. Right?

Priesthood Dispatches [01:26:17] Yeah, but that. That threw me as well. Like, you. You've gone through this whole thing. I was in a bad state. And then this. She was beautiful. You know, this. This person that. They chosen this model to be there, and you're just like, man, they tell me not to look at these things. Things. And now you brought me to the most sacred place on the planet or one of the most sacred places on the planet, and you're. You're playing me a movie that you wouldn't play at home. So.

Nemo [01:26:49] Yeah, it's a great point. I. I remember feeling the same thing when you go through the temple. Like, what is this? Why is this here?

Priesthood Dispatches [01:26:55] Yeah, you.

Nemo [01:26:56] You know, it's not great. It's not great. So, okay, so nothing else from the. The temple ceremony. Do you remember kind of how your family treated you afterwards? Do you remember what it was like? I assume they did the thing where they all went through and waited for you in the celestial room. Right. And then you. Yeah, to them. Yeah.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:27:15] Yeah. So. Because. Because me and Heather were together at the time. Sorry, me and sister PD She. Her family went through as well. So the endowed members of her family were there, who are now my in laws. And my brother in law took me to one side in the celestial room, and he said to me, whispered to me, I know your name. And I was just like, what? So you get a new name in the temple and you're only supposed to share it in the temple at a specific time that you'll be shown during the ceremony.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:27:52] And I'd got this new name, which I was like, I kind of know that name, but that's my name. And then he told me after. After that he knew. And I was thinking, how does he know it how did he overhear me, like, at the veil? Was he in the next kind of.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:28:10] On the other side? And he opened the scriptures and he pointed to the name in the scriptures and winked at me. And I was like, how did it. I didn't know for years that he would have been given the same name on that day for the. Oh, yeah, dead person that he was representing.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:28:27] So I was. I thought it was something really special to me. I was like, that is the name that I've been given to keep safe and sacred. And everyone knew it. And I was like, well, that was rubbish.

John Dehlin [01:28:40] And. And there's a. There's a website called Fuller Consideration.com where people can look, you know, they basically, we all think that that name is something. That that new name is something that God gives us, that it's very personal and that it's almost like revelation. But it turns out the church has, like, a chart. I could even show the chart. And basically that chart just assigns a name depending on what. What date I'll show here.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:29:11] My state president, during my interview, my wordness interview, he said to me,

John Dehlin [01:29:17] he

Priesthood Dispatches [01:29:17] said that I'd get a new name, but that he'd forgotten his. And I think he was trying to, like, be on my level and say, you don't need to remember everything about the day. It's okay. He said he'd forgotten his, but he knows that, you know, the morning of the first resurrection, when he needs it, he'll remember it. And now I just say to him, well, if you tell me what day you went through, I can tell you what your name is.

Nemo [01:29:41] Well, so I was. I was the Nemesis coordinator when I worked at the temple. So I've spoken about this before. But essentially when the briefing happens at the beginning of the day, just some background information for those who may not know. When the briefing of the temple workers happens at the beginning of the day, the sisters and the brethren are in together.

Nemo [01:30:00] Then what happens is the sister's name is shared. It's shown on a card at the front. And then the sisters are invited to leave the room. And then a brother gets up and shows the name for the brethren for that day. So the men know both names, but the women only know the one. And some people have asked me, oh, oh, yeah, I'll get to that.

Nemo [01:30:26] But some people have asked me why or what happens if someone turns up who's got the same name as the name for the day. So say the name for the day was Noah, which is one of them, I believe.

Nemo [01:30:40] Say that was the name and someone who turned up whose name was Noah, they just use Adam and Eve. Those are the backup names. Yeah.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:30:47] Would you. Adam and Eve it.

Nemo [01:30:49] Hey. Very good. Yeah. But, yeah, pd, tell us why. Tell us why the Brethren aren't allowed to know the sister's name.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:30:56] Well, no, the sisters aren't allowed to know the brother's name.

Nemo [01:30:59] Yes, correct.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:31:00] Because when you get married in the temple and you go through, you have to do the dance at the veil again with the brother receiving his wife through the veil. Because you're only allowed to reveal your name at the veil, doing the veil dance. Okay? So in that way, the brother learns the sister's name and. And that's the way of things. Because on the morning of the first resurrection, it is up to the brother to call forth his wives. Okay. So the wife doesn't need to know his name because she doesn't need to call him. The brother will be resurrected and then he will decide which of his wives he wants to call forth and he will use their temple names to call them forwards. So there is no need for any of the sisters to know any of the brothers names because if they're righteous enough, a brother will call them forwards.

Nemo [01:31:59] Yeah. Now tell me, tell me Mormonism isn't patriarchal.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:32:02] Yeah. Imagine. Imagine if you've. If you've upset your husband. And then imagine if you just turn around and said, do you want me to call you forward?

John Dehlin [01:32:12] Yeah.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:32:13] You know?

Nemo [01:32:13] Yeah, he turns around. Guess somebody's not getting called forward now.

John Dehlin [01:32:17] Yeah,

Priesthood Dispatches [01:32:20] that meal was not good enough.

Nemo [01:32:24] I'm gonna call wives two to three, but not you.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:32:26] Yeah, yeah. Wife number six, you got left out, but it's. It's crap in it.

Nemo [01:32:32] Let's be honest, it's not great.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:32:34] Oh, great. Okay. So, following the temple, it was time for a mission. Bear in mind patriarchal blessing. I was going to be called to preach worldwide. Okay. Nemo.

Mission Call and MTC Experience

Nemo [01:32:47] Yeah.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:32:47] Do we have a map?

Nemo [01:32:48] We do have a map. Indeed we do. Here we go.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:32:52] So on the map, the star to the south is the city of Nottingham, where I grew up. The red line represents the current England Leeds Mission. But at the time, that red line extended just north of my star by 1.8 miles. So I lived right on the border between the England Birmingham Mission and the England Leeds Mission. The star in the north is Sister PD at this time. She is my girlfriend of three years and she lives a couple of miles outside of the city of Leeds.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:33:25] So it was time for the mission call to go in. It went in. My bishop decided he needed to Put a note on, as did my stake president, that geographically we are very close to the England Leeds Mission. You can't get called to your home mission, which was the Birmingham one, but that because of the geography, because of my family ties in the mission and because of my girlfriend in the mission, that I should not be called to the England Leeds Mission. Fast forward six weeks. Sat there in my boxes with the mission call. Opened it, Mum and dad are there. You have been hereby called to labor in the England Leeds Mission. Silence. Okay.

Nemo [01:34:09] I think they're all silent because you were sat in your boxes, not your garments, you heathen.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:34:12] Yeah, it must. No. Because you can't go through until like right before you go on your mission, can you?

Nemo [01:34:19] Okay, fair enough.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:34:20] So it's a bit gray in the timeline there, but yeah, so I was going to the England's mission and I was like, wow, I'm supposed to be going like to the Philippines or somewhere where my patriarchal blessing says that I'm, I'm going to preach worldwide and I'm going 1.8 miles up the road. I even worked inside of the mission, so I'd have been able to be a missionary and go to my old job for the day and not break mission rules.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:34:50] So I, yeah, my parents weren't happy and they decided they were going to put a stop to that. So this, this call got bounced back back up the line and it was the mission president of the Leeds Mission that actually bounced it back in the end.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:35:09] So everyone was concerned. Sister PD lived in the mission quite close to the center of the mission. And there were a lot of rules about not writing to anyone inside your mission, not communicating with anyone inside your mission.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:35:23] And basically the, the call went through the area presidency back to the missionary department. The missionary department called the mission president and explained the situation and said, okay, yeah, change the call. Which is weird anyway because I was always told that an apostle has done that call and he has looked and he has seen. You stood on the corner of that mission and he has told you, you know, he, he knows exactly where you're supposed to be laboring. But they were like, no, change the call. That's fine, we screwed up.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:35:58] So then they told the mission president, but you'll have an odd number of missionaries for a couple of months before we can get someone else out to you. At which point the mission president changed his mind. He doesn't like odd numbers of missionaries and having any threesomes. So he said, no, it's okay, send him. We'll sort it so they got back to my parents and told them, get back in your box.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:36:25] And. Yeah, my. My dad actually said to me, I told him maybe six months ago, because I'd been going through submission stuff for my YouTube. And I told him the story, and he didn't know that that's what happened. He just knows that they got told no and that it'd be okay.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:36:41] So. And he said that if he. If he'd have known that it was just because the mission president didn't want an odd number of missionaries, that he'd have made it happen, that they'd have changed that calls.

Nemo [01:36:56] Just want to mention something that you brought up this idea that missionaries, there's strict rules about them being able to call people within their mission. I find this really interesting. It's just come to me because you're a missionary, right. And you're away from home and you're within geographical area that you're not allowed to live leave, which already, you know, we've talked about missionaries having their passports taken away, all this sort of stuff that's already pretty dodgy. But then this rules about not who you can and can't write to outside of the mission, which you think would make sense. They want to keep you focused on the mission area, but within your geographical bubble that you exist within for two years, you're not allowed to communicate with people.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:37:34] Mm.

Nemo [01:37:36] What is that to do other than to isolate you?

Priesthood Dispatches [01:37:40] No, it's. It's.

Nemo [01:37:41] What does that. What does that achieve?

Priesthood Dispatches [01:37:43] It's not Nemo. We had a problem with this. So a lot of my stories are mission stories. And whilst I was on my mission, there were elders who got into relationships in previous areas and then were moved on, but they will continue communicating with their girlfriends in previous areas. And we had at least three or four elders who fell foul of that. So I think it's to keep you focused on the work in the area that you're in rather than continuing to communicate with people back where you've been to keep you in your box, you know?

Nemo [01:38:21] Right. And I mean, so it does isolate you, but just on a smaller.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:38:25] Yeah. Area communication was ridiculous at the time anyway. It's only recently they've realized that for the mental health of these, you know, children that you're. You're. You know, that they let them call home at the time. Sister PD really struggles with this, and it angers her because we were under the. I guess the. The rules of you can write home or email home on a Monday, on P Day, and then the rest of the time you can only call home on

Nemo [01:38:59] Christmas Day, Christmas Day, Christmas Day.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:39:02] So she'd sometimes. So sorry. So she'd have to drive past me an hour to get to my house in order to talk to me on Christmas Day. And I remember it was possibly Mother's Day. The chapel that I was serving at Wakefield is right next to the motorway and from the motorway you can see the chapel. And I was stood out the front of the chapel and I knew that in the afternoon it was Mother's Day calls. And she said to me, were you at the chapel today? And she'd driven past and seen me, but she obviously had to keep driving to get to the telephone that she could use in Nottingham.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:39:48] So it's just stupid. Like, why, why do they just. Okay, so here's the thing. For me, my trainer was an absolute dingleberry, right? Yeah, he. He was a jock and he abused me. Like he took me back to that place again because he, he was a wrestler, a basketballer, you know, kind of all American, did all sports. And he was of the lineage in the mission. So you think about a mission like a family. Your trainer is your father, his trainer is your grandfather, your trainees are your sons. And they talk, they talked about a royal lineage.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:40:36] And my trainer was of this royal lineage and then I was going to be of this royal lineage. So he wanted to beat me into, into shape and have me be, you know, the one to. To carry on his legacy.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:40:53] But what he'd do is he would, when, whenever we're in the flat, he just kind of tackle me to the ground and put me into wrestling. Submission moves that were less than nice. One he called the honeymoon, which would simulate sex and he'd do it naked and he thought that was all good fun. But as a. A good Englishman, we don't touch one another. We're very proper in the fact that we do like to have permission if we're going to touch someone else. Just getting tackled to the ground all the time, it just, yeah, it put me just down. I think he thought he needed to break me down to build me, me up, but it just made me hate him.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:41:40] But he was a big guy on the mission as well in the fact that he ended up being assistant to the President a couple of months after he served with me and was for about 18 months. So the majority of his mission, he even called himself, he got himself a little badge name that said President and his surname rather than elder because he'd been AP for that long that he'd actually progressed to be. Everyone said that he was running the mission, not the mission president.

Nemo [01:42:10] So yeah, we've, we've jumped ahead a little bit in the timeline here. I do want to ask you about the MTC and about just before you actually go out on a, on a mission, I want to know what the MTC experience was like for you.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:42:24] Okay. The MTC sucked because it didn't want to be there and it was only 45 minutes away from Sister PD and an hour or so from home. So I went to the MTC and all leading up to the MTC and going on a mission. My parents again were doing their church calling and they were organizing these YSA conventions and I went into the mission on the Wednesday and their convention stopped, started on the Thursday to like the Monday. It was like a big national week long one and they, they were working with the area presidency so they were really busy. So Sister PD was the one really that prepared me for my mission.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:43:06] You know, we went out together and bought suits and shirts and different things like that and kind of my parents were just there to wave me off. So go on a mission, get to MTC and super homesick and all of the problems with all the things kind of that I tried to resolve earlier in life with the bishop came back, the scrupulosity hit because you get the NTC and you have to be super righteous. You're dealing with these other missionaries from Utah, from you know, Calgary in Canada where there's loads of Mormons, different things like this. So these guys are squeaky clean Eagle Scouts in my opinion.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:43:52] And I'm not good enough because I've got all this unresolved sin that I wasn't able to give to the bishop all those years ago. So I started to really feel horrible about myself. And the second Thursday, so I was in AMTC for three weeks. This is awful.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:44:14] The second Thursday it happened to be a ward temple trip from my home ward to the Preston Temple. So all of my family and friends would be coming on a bus to the MTC where I had been holed up for a week and a half in order to. Yeah, just kind of stand in the car park and wave at me.

John Dehlin [01:44:34] Yeah.

Nemo [01:44:34] Because the Preston, the Preston MTC is at the grounds of the temple just for those that don't know.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:44:40] So I would be. I was writing Sister PD saying I am going home on that coach. I don't care what people say, you know, I'm not meant to be here. I'm not good enough. I'm going home on that Coach.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:44:53] And I didn't go home on the coach because I didn't have the balls to do it, because I knew that culturally that would be suicide in the church because I knew other young men who had either not gone on a mission or had come back just after a few weeks, and they were, you know, pariahs. They weren't going to get married in the temple. They weren't going to marry one of the choice daughters, you know, in the church. And I certainly wasn't going to be able to marry Sister PD because I knew what she wanted. And she. I wrote to her and I told her, and she wrote back, and bless her heart, she wrote two names of people that she knew I didn't like.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:45:31] And she's like, you don't be like them. You know, don't give up. Like, they've given up because they didn't go on a mission. That was the culture that we lived in, you know, and she's a wonderful person, but that was the kind of cultural malaise that was being pounded into us of, you've got to serve a mission.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:45:54] So. Yeah, yeah, but they. The other thing in the mtc. Sorry, I know, I know. Which one. So the whole convention thing with my parents and them being busy came back because I was sat at lunch one day and an elder who I didn't know from one of the other districts came over, and he said to me, are you Elder pd? Yes.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:46:14] And he said he'd received a letter from his sister who was writing to him, and that sister had attended the convention that my parents had put together, and my dad had been closing the Sunday meeting, bearing his testimony and trying to g everyone up, you know, to be Mormons. And he had told them how proud he was of me and how he had not been able to tell me that because he had been busy putting the convention together, and he had been, you know, too busy to send me off on a mission properly.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:46:53] And great that he said that. And, you know, I love you, dad, but you didn't tell me that. That came through a letter to a missionary who happened to be in the MTC at the time that I was there. So it seems like that whole church taking up all of that time and, yeah, it didn't go well. Sorry.

Nemo [01:47:22] That's all right. It's difficult when that line of communication isn't the way it should be, when we don't hear those things from where we should. And unfortunately, it seems like communication is something that is hindered or good communication is something that can be hindered by kind of growing up in the church. I don't know what your thoughts on that are, John.

John Dehlin [01:47:48] How much of that is British culture versus Mormon culture or British Mormon culture? I'm just curious if you can even tease that out, John.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:47:55] You only have good communication with your appropriate priesthood leader.

Nemo [01:48:01] Yeah, yeah, go on.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:48:05] I was just gonna say, I think it's just purely Mormon for me at least. I think had we not been Mormons, I'd have had a much better relationship with Mum and Dad and that. I think, you know, some people might see some dads as being, you know, rough and aloof, but my dad wasn't that. He's got soft skills up the wazoo, you know, really nice guy, really well respected in the church. And I was saying to Nima earlier, I think I have the best relationship with my dad now than I've ever had. And that's without the church and without everything. Because I think we've. We've come to a place where he knows what he believes for his reasons. And, yeah, we'll. We'll get there, but we're in a good place now. But at the time, I think church just. It's that wedge, isn't it, that comes in between everything.

John Dehlin [01:49:01] Thanks for sharing something hard.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:49:05] Yeah, yeah.

Serving as a Missionary in England

Nemo [01:49:06] So your mission.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:49:10] Yeah, I've got.

Nemo [01:49:10] I've got a list of things that happened on your mission, and feel free to share some of those.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:49:16] Can I just say, it comes back again to this whole seven. Seven steps of Kevin Bacon, because. So I was put into this mission and the way that they dealt with the whole proximity to Sister PD and home was to ban me from serving in one half of the mission. So I don't know if the apostle that saw me serving in the England Leads Mission actually saw me serving there because I wasn't allowed to serve in the city of Leeds. So he can't have seen me on the corner of the city of Leeds.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:49:46] But they banished me to the north of the mission, to a part of the country I've never been to before. And in the. In the. The first ward, I walked in on the Sunday and everyone's like, oh, Elder pd. And they were telling me how they know me.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:50:03] There were times when I'd walk in and my friends would be there from dances, and I never knew where they actually lived. So you'd be walking into places, they'd be like, oh, what are you doing here? I'm like, well, I'm obviously here as a missionary. And. And then they'd be like, I'm like, What are you doing? They're like, oh, went to the dance last night and we're all a bit tired and then I'm off to go give a lesson or whatever. So it was really weird just being away from home, but not being away from home.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:50:31] And so the first area, the bishop used to be engaged to my sister. Didn't know he lived there, didn't know he was a bishop. I just rocked up. Someone said, oh, this is bishop such and such. I'm like, oh, you're right, Joe.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:50:44] So that was weird. Another area bishop's wife see me in my underwear because she used to date my brother and was at home, was, were at home one time and I walked out in my boxes and she was stood there and I'm like, I said to my companion because he's like, why is it a bit weird in here? I said, I'll tell you after.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:51:02] I'm like, yeah, I, I know the bishop's wife and yeah, she's seen me in a state of undress. So really weird things like that kept happening which were naff. But my trainer, about six weeks in, he's broken me down to, you know, just someone who doesn't feel he's got any worth at all. And then we get a phone call from the mission president. Now we were right in the north of the mission because I'd been absolutely cast out. So we were a good two and a half hours drive away from Leeds where the mission office was. And the mission president called and said, can you please be at home for 4pm Me and the mission president's wife are coming to see you.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:51:48] So he teased me all day about that my call was being changed, that they'd had enough, that they decided after six weeks I wasn't good enough for their mission, that I'm off elsewhere. So we went home and this was heartbreaking.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:52:06] The mission president took my trainer in one room, mission president's wife took me in the other. And they informed us at the same time that my companion's dad had passed away back in Salt Lake. And yeah, it was, it was really difficult for, for him obviously.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:52:25] So he got on the phone with his family and different things and they, I think his family got upset with him because they were saying, you know, what, what flight are you on? Coming home? And he refused to go home for his dad's funeral.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:52:45] And I think that fed into the whole him being this amazing missionary in the mission because he had shown such resilience in not going home, not giving up and continuing on and that was that was a strange thing to deal with because I really didn't like the guy.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:53:08] But at the same time, no one wants to have to go through that, you know, so it was kind of like trying to comfort him when I was scared of him, you know, And. And a few months later, my grandmother died. A grandmother that I was really close with. And I never got to say goodbye to her because I got the phone call, didn't get a visit.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:53:38] I was probably only 20 minutes from the mission office, and I got a phone call from the mission president saying you'll receive a letter tomorrow informing you that your grandmother's passed away and that the funeral is going to be on this day.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:53:51] From the area that I was in the chapel that the funeral was at was maybe 45 minutes away. And I begged the mission president to let me go. And he kind of held up my trainer as the example of, you know, he didn't need to fly back to Salt Lake to see his dad off. What makes you think you need to go 45 minutes to see your grandmother off?

Priesthood Dispatches [01:54:17] And that. He gave me the guilt trip that if you went to it, yeah, it might be okay for you, but your family's got to say goodbye to your grandma and then they've got to say goodbye to you all over again.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:54:30] And I wish I just told him to stick it and got on a bus because I love my grandma and I just never got to say goodbye to her. Yeah, proper novens.

John Dehlin [01:54:41] She's terrible. I'm really sorry. PD and I just have to say it reminds me of my own mission experience. Experience. When I would. I. I had two living grandparents by the time I was serving a mission and I was serving in kind of a remote area. So at some point I came into the city and I met with my mission president, probably for a zone, you know, for a zone conference kind of thing. And I was doing my monthly interview with the mission president, and he. And he said something to the effect of Elder delin. You know, I'm. I'm. I regret to inform you that you're, you know, grandmother passed away. I'm so sorry. You know, were you close to her? And I was trying to answer. And almost as soon as he answered that, he. He said, oh, my gosh, I forgot to tell you. Your grandpa passed away, too.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:55:36] Oh, my gosh.

John Dehlin [01:55:38] And. And so, yeah, yeah. And. But, but these are my. These were not all my last two grandparents. But, you know, you don't go home for, for funerals. You don't. You. You often don't even go home for your parents funerals. And it's this weird kind of spiritual machismo thing where if the church can make you sacrifice more, then you feel more, more allegiance to the church, oddly psychologically, because the more you sacrifice for something, the more you love it and the more you care about it. And it's kind of a toxic culture.

Nemo [01:56:15] But then why, why not view it the other way and say that you are a missionary. You're as a spiritual giant, right? You're meant to be feeding the spirit all the time. We are going to make sure you go to this funeral so that your spirit can uplift and strengthen and help your family in this very difficult time. Because, you know, we're a church that loves families, we're a church that supports families. So you could be a big uplift and support to your family right now. So we are going to sacrifice you for a day or two so you can go there or however long it would be.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:56:48] But it's, it's a logistical nightmare. Nemo and I had similar problems with General Conference as a missionary because General conference is obviously a big thing. And because the same thing's being shown at each stake center, people will travel around to different stakes to watch it with friends and different things.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:57:09] So I happen to be in an area at the mission where I will be attending the Huddersfield Stake center to watch conference. But that's where I should have been. But sister PD's family are from Huddersfield. She doesn't live there, but they're from there. And the mission president heard that Sister PD would be visiting family that week because people travel around for family events. So then it was a case of the mission president calling Sister PD to find out where she was going to be, then calling me to find out where I was going to be, and then making sure that never the twain shall meet.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:57:46] So he was pick me up and drive me across the mission to go to general conference elsewhere. And I think it's, there's just such. I don't know if they think that if we see each other, the world's gonna implode or, you know, if you, you see someone from home, you're automatically gonna become this super evil person and break all the mission rules. But there, yeah, we're just super trunky

Nemo [01:58:14] and not focused on the work anymore.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:58:16] Yeah, super chunky. I was living at home, you know what I mean? Yeah. I couldn't be any more at home in the mission that I was in. You know, there were times I, I drove past Sister pd, you know, on the road and stuff. And we'd be waving and beeping the horn. Elders would be like, who's that? I'm like, it's my girlfriend. And then elders that didn't know the situation. Situation be really freaked out.

Nemo [01:58:43] Yeah.

Priesthood Dispatches [01:58:44] And they'd be like, what's going on? Why are you dating a girl in the mission? And then you'd have to explain the whole, the whole thing.

John Dehlin [01:58:51] But the weird thing that the church just doesn't understand psychologically is the more you make something weird and forbid it, the more alluring and appealing it is so, so often like it is with pornography and masturbation. The more you prohibit something, the, the more of an epidemic you create. You know, like sexualizing young girls shoulders. Like a lot of times no one would ever think to associate a little girl's shoulders with anything other than a little girl's shoulders. But if you sexualize everything, yeah. You might have an increase in misbehavior just because you made everything sexual.

Nemo [01:59:29] Which is back to PD's point about the Endowment videos, right? The nudity in the Endowment videos is, is perfectly socially acceptable. Right. It's perfectly acceptable within Western culture as a level of bare skin to be shown. But within Mormon culture, Eve is immodest. And it has been demonized and made such a big deal of in youth that of course young men then going into the downt ceremony can be like, woo. Because that's, you know, that's, that's something that's been made such a big deal of. If it had just been normalized, you wouldn't bat an eyelid.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:00:03] It's nothing more than you'd see in like a shampoo advert with a woman in the shower washing her hair. But when you're not allowed to watch shampoo adverts, and that's why I'm bald, you know, I'm never allowed to watch shampoo adverts and my hair just decided I wasn't worthy of it.

Nemo [02:00:21] Okay, so what positions did you hold as a missionary?

Priesthood Dispatches [02:00:24] Pd all of them. All of them apart from ap. Because I couldn't serve, I couldn't visit half of the mission, so, But I, I, after my companion, after my trainer had treated me like crap, I told myself, I will be a good enough missionary to be the AP and make them make a decision, you know, make it hard for them.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:00:51] So I was, I was very diligent. I, I, I had three trainees, two of which I sent home. And that kind of comes to, that kind of comes to the culture of why are These guys on missions, because both of those greenies that I had, that I sent home, both of them shouldn't have been on a mission because neither of them really wanted to be on a mission.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:01:21] One of them, he was suffering from undiagnosed mental health issues. He was staying up all night after I'd gone to sleep. And then in the morning, when I'm really trying to kick him out of bed and get him going, it just wasn't happening. And, yeah, he had to go home because he'd come because it was expected of him, but he'd got issues that needed to be dealt with by. By professionals at home.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:01:49] And I feel so, so bad for him that he had three months of me not understanding what was going on and him not speaking about it because he'd not been given the tools to do so. And another greenie was from the uk.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:02:08] Now, I've written this story on my website and in my blog and I've apologized. If. If this person, I know, he's not in the church anymore, but if he's listening, if he ever reads it, I am so sorry for what I did to you in the name of the church, because that's what they told me I was supposed to be doing to keep the rules. This young man, he as well, wasn't from far away here in the uk, was from down there, Nemo.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:02:39] And he'd come on a mission. He'd clearly not got a testimony of the church, you know, when we're out teaching and different things. It was clear that he didn't really know what was going on. But he was the oldest son in his family and it was expected of him that he would set the examples for his younger brothers and he would serve a mission.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:02:58] So he came out and we'd got mobile phones, cell phones by this point. And sometimes at night we'd get random phone calls and there'd be someone on the other end just kind of breathing heavy or sounded like crying whenever I answered. I was a senior companion, so I looked after the phone and, yeah, didn't think anything of it. And he got a picture of his girlfriend up on his desk. And she was very young, this young lady. She's maybe about 15, maybe 14.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:03:36] And he told me that she wasn't a member and that she didn't know he was going on a mission. He just went because he didn't know how to tell her. And she'd write to him, she'd send really thick letters.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:03:52] And I was trying to keep him going to teach him to get him going in the mission. And one morning I'm sat eating breakfast, I could just smell cigarette smoke. And I'd said to the zone leaders, I'm like, just stinks of cigarettes.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:04:11] And he came down and he was eating his breakfast and stunk of cigarettes. I thought, what's going on? And it turned out these thick letters his girlfriend was sending him. She was flattening down cigarettes for him because he'd got a habit that he couldn't get out of before he went on his mission that he didn't feel he could tell anyone about.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:04:32] But it was still a physical craving. So she was sending him cigarettes in the post. And I didn't say anything to him about it because the zone leaders has told me it's just your neighbors smoking. And here in the UK sometimes live very close with your neighbors.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:04:52] So then he went on exchanges with the zone leaders and the zone leaders asked me if they thought he could be calling his girlfriend whilst I was in the shower and deleting the phone record. And I said, I don't even know how to do that. So I. I don't know.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:05:12] So he always carried his journal really close. So when he got in the shower one day, I did the unbelievable. And I read his journal and he confessed in his journal that his girlfriend was pregnant and that he'd got this smoking habit that he was going to get sent home for smoking so that he could be at home. And I ended up one night in the middle of the night with his girlfriend's mother on the phone and his girlfriend was in a real state mentally and the church had just messed both of them up. You know, her, her in inadvertently because he just disappeared one day him.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:05:53] Because he didn't want to be there, but he was there because the culture expected him to be there and he'd got things to deal with. And anyway, long, long story short, it turned out he'd got a plan that whilst I was in the shower one morning, his son was going to pull up outside and beep three times and he would leave and go home.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:06:17] And it. What actually happened because I found out about the plan from his journal and told the mission president because I was going to be. I told myself I was going to be the best missionary I could be. And that meant 100% obedience.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:06:33] And there's only. This came in the middle of the night before this plan was supposed to happen and they banged on the door and they kidnapped him. You know, they, they told him to pack his bag and that was the last I saw of Him. They took him away, left one zone leader behind to be with me, and they sent him home.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:06:56] But the. The stupid thing was I didn't even need to write home and tell anyone about it. Before the day was out, I got a phone call from a local missionary who didn't know anything about it, asking me how my companion was, you know, kind of sneakily.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:07:20] And I said, how do you know about my companion? And it turned out seven steps of Kevin Bacon, that the guy, my companion, his homeward had been called and a member of the bishopric was picking him up from the train station. That member of the bishopric was the father to my brother in law, who then called Sister PD to see if she knew what was going on. So then she called her local missionaries to see if they knew what was going on. And then it kind of went around the mission. So before this kid even got home, the mission knew that something was wrong and something was going on.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:08:00] But I just think it's so awful that they feel that you've got to do it. You have to. It's what's expected. And you don't get a choice. I mean, the church, you'd say, of course you get a choice. You know, you sign the papers, of course it's your choice.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:08:19] I don't think it's your choice. I think a lot of the time for me, it wasn't my choice. I just knew I had to go if I wanted. If I wanted the blessings afterwards.

John Dehlin [02:08:31] And what's the what. What's the culture there in the UK around returning home early from a mission before the two years are served and. Or without honor, meaning because of some sin or disgraceful act, you can go

Priesthood Dispatches [02:08:50] sit in the corner with cousin Kane.

John Dehlin [02:08:52] Mm.

Nemo [02:08:53] Yeah. It holds the same level of stigma that you get in Utah because, I mean, outside the church, no one cares. Your employer doesn't care. But inside the church, within your church community, it means the same thing.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:09:06] Yeah, it's a honor.

Nemo [02:09:08] It's a dishonorable discharge, essentially.

John Dehlin [02:09:11] And how can that affect you in the UK later in your life developmentally?

Nemo [02:09:16] Well, spouse opportunities.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:09:20] It's already thin on the ground, John. Yeah, you don't, you don't want to put something else in the way.

Nemo [02:09:27] Women are looking for RMs who have served an honorable mission. So you get quizzed when you're, when you're talking to people, when you're meeting people, they ask if you served a mission, and you get quizzed about your mission. It's this. It's just the same as how girls will Come up to you and run their hand on your arm to check if you're wearing garments. It's this whole thing, right. We're constantly weighing each other up and measuring each other up because. Particularly because there's so few of us. You're constantly looking for essentially the best possible future spouse.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:09:55] Yeah. And I think if you ever wanted to serve in leadership, you. You kind of.

John Dehlin [02:10:00] You.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:10:00] You put that to bed. If you don't, if. If you come back dishonorably, then it's goodbye to any serious leadership callings. So, you know, my patriarchal blessing. I got to do it. But there was a high time. Say a high time. Okay. Have you got a photo, Nemo?

Nemo [02:10:24] I do.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:10:25] Okay, ready? So this was an evening. So this is the end of the story I'm about to tell. And this was a wonderful family from Malawi. And the mother, you can see they're holding the baby. She was actually a government official in Malawi, but there was civil unrest and she had to flee the country.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:10:46] So she was a member back in Malawi, but she'd got three children who. You can see the two young girls at the front and the boy, just his head sticking up over her left shoulder. They was. Were her children. And they came through one night as a member referral.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:11:07] But leading up to this, we. The work in the area was dead. Okay. And my companion is on the far right there. Big fella. Okay. From London, very deep voice. He was a bodybuilder. So, yeah, there was. Physically, he was my superior.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:11:27] And in the flat, it was an upstairs flat in a terraced house. It was very long and thin, and for some reason, there was no doors on any doorway. So a lot of drafts and things would travel through this old house.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:11:43] And, you know, you'd be like, oh, the lampshade's moving. It's because of a draft. But my companion, he was a greenie, and he was certain that it was something else because he was too tall for the bed that he had. So he'd complain at night of cold feet. And I'm like, well, you just put an extra blanket on. But he was certain that there was something wrong in the flat, that he could feel something going on.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:12:11] So we were working away, and one evening we. So we sat down to pray. Okay. It's dark. You're in the middle of the room. It's quite a big room. Single bed on either side. I'd got the phone because I was the senior companion, and I chucked it on my bed. And then we're. We're praying and during the prayer, I can hear. I can hear a voice.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:12:34] Elder pd, ld pd. And the voice got more and more insistent. Elder pd. And. And I stopped the prayer. And I turn around, I'm like, can you hear that? And the voice came again. Elder PD is like, yeah, it's coming from your side. So I go over to. To my bed towards this voice, thinking, you know, this is a moment the spirits come. It was a female voice, interestingly enough, whatever that says about who the Holy Ghost is.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:13:03] But I get onto the bed and I'm following this voice down into the corner, and I realized the phone has dropped down the side of the bed. And the phone, for some reason, has called the local sisters. And they think we're taking the mitt because all they can hear is there's mumbling prayers through their site. And they're screaming down the phone to. To try and get our attention.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:13:26] And it turned out that our phone was calling random people in the night. The mission president said that he was getting phone calls from us just at random times. So, anyway, go to bed. And I'm having a dream of being at home. I'm at a friend's house and I'm chased. Something's chasing me through the. Through the apartment.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:13:49] And as it catches me, it flings me kind of horizontal, and then I fly towards the ceiling. And then I wake up and fall back onto the bed. So in my missionary mind, I had been levitating several feet above the bed and then fell back onto the bed.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:14:11] And then I hear my companion kind of shuffle back onto his bed. And I'm like, what's going on? Now I'm scared to death because he lets out this. This laugh. And I'm thinking he's possessed. Okay? Something's going on. He's been moaning about something coming at him. I'm thinking he's possessed. He's massive. So he's about to tear me a new one.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:14:35] So I'm then, like, shuffled up in the corner just hoping that he doesn't come out of the darkness and get me. And time passed, like. But I was on edge. And then he farted, and I was like, better out than in.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:14:54] And then he laughed again. He's like, yeah, you know it. And I'm like, he's back. Thank goodness. So Joseph Smith's old, you know, you need to offer the spirit a handshake. No, just wait for the flatulence. Anyway, so.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:15:12] So I was scared. I was scared. So we called the zone leaders, and it was like three in the morning. We Were like, come pick us up. I can't sleep in this place. Come on, pick us up. This has just happened. We've just been attacked by evil spirits. Come pick us up. They come pick us up. They drive us across Newcastle to. To their apartment. We sleep. The next morning, I get the mission present on the phone and he's just ridiculing me. And he says, elder PD go back to your apartment. Don't be so silly.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:15:39] And if you. If you need to, I'll buy you a nightlight. And the nightlight story got around the mission like wildfire. You know, Elder PD needs a nightlight, and the mission president's gonna buy him one. And then a couple of days after this happened, we got that media referral for the member, referral for that family. And then the whole idea of what happened that night changed. I was Heba C. Fetching Kimball in that upstairs room in Preston with the legions of Satan attacking him right before the. The work took off in the uk, the mission president.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:16:17] There was six people baptized that night. It was the most anyone had baptized in the mission in years. Okay. And he came and he started recounting the story of these demons attacking the missionaries. And then because the missionaries stood up to them, they got six baptisms in one night. He was pressing the flesh like he was Donald Trump, you know, I'm surprised he didn't start kissing babies.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:16:44] Zone conference. Let me tell you about Elder PD and his companion and what happened to them. One night, you know, it was all over the place. I'm surprised that didn't make the enzyme. He was just sucking it up. And I'm like, man, you're. You're a flipping idiot. You know, I. I remember in interviews afterwards, I said, you're going to buy me that nightlight that then. Sorry. So, yeah, that was a fun one.

Nemo [02:17:11] It's a great story of how, like, they'll. He'll ridicule you up until he can then use it to promote faith. Use it to push out this idea that, oh, yeah, you know, you just need to be a bit more righteous. You need to be a bit more righteous because look what happens to these missionaries. But he was all ready to ridicule you up until that point.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:17:28] Yeah, he was. He was. He was. Was my second mission president. The first mission president was like your grandpa who's always got an arm to put around you and a word that's original to. To hand over, you know, really nice guy, salt of the earth. And the next guy was like a. I don't know Cowboy and really patriarchal. You know, he didn't just shake your hand, he'd shake your hand and then he'd grab you by the elbow at the same time and shake your whole body.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:17:58] So I started grabbing his elbow as well and it just became like a little wrestle between us every time we met. And, you know, I got to the point where I told him I was disappointed in him. Right.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:18:12] I was a zone leader and we'd got a sister in the zone who was a senior sister. She was, I say senior. She was probably in her late 30s, but she was serving in an area and she was, they've got an odd number of sisters, so there was a threesome covering two areas, but really she was covering one and the other two were covering the other and she was really struggling and I was just being nice to her. You know, me and my companion would tell her, look, we love you and we want to help you. You know, we want to make. I knew that she hadn't felt included in the, you know, in, in other zones, so I wanted to make her feel included.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:18:54] And we had a really, you know, good relationship from zone leader to sister. Anyway, one of the other missionaries didn't like that. So they called the mission president and said that Elder PD was having a romantic relationship with their sister. So the mission president called me one morning and this is like, I've been on the mission 23, maybe 22, 23 months. I'm almost finished. I was serving in an area where Sister PD was 10 miles away. I got a car, he drove all the way out to see us and, and he, he said he'd be made aware of this.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:19:31] And I just said to him, president, I am disappointed that you have taken the time to drive out here and accuse me of this because you know that my long term girlfriend is in the next town over and I have a car and if I was really that minded to break the rules, then I would break the rules in that direction, you know, And I just hated him, like, and I don't think he liked that either.

Nemo [02:19:58] That's fair.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:20:00] He came to me, he came to my wedding after my mission and other elders asked him how was the wedding? Because obviously here in the UK we, we get married civilly at the chapel and then go to the temple. So he came out and I got word back later from friends in the mission that when they asked him how was the wedding, he said, well, didn't really like it. It was a bit like a boring baptism.

Nemo [02:20:22] Oh, so it's a bit harsh. I'M thinking, oh, go ahead, Nemo. Go on, John. First, because I was gonna move it.

John Dehlin [02:20:31] Oh, I was just gonna say quickly, a shout out to Jacob Berg. Thank you so much for the super chat, the donation that helps us make this possible. And then I also just wanted to highlight a comment from Elizabeth Grogan. She makes a really good point that I think most non Mormons have no idea about. It's that she, she writes, it's shocking to think that missionaries pay for their own torture. And whether we're talking about not being able to call home, not being able, which is a traditional prohibition, they. They've changed that just in the past few years, or not going home for funerals or getting hazed or getting mistreated by a mission president, which was the case in my mission.

John Dehlin [02:21:12] You're paying all the way along. So Mormon missionaries pay to be the church's, in effect, salespeople. And they, in, in, in many cases they pay for the abuse that they receive, which is, it's, it's kind of mind twisting.

Nemo [02:21:28] And the cost has just gone up as well. Like during the year of COVID it went up by 25 from 400amonth to 500amonth. So everyone's struggling financially and all these families are now paying more for this to happen to their sons and daughters.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:21:42] You know, John, I just interviewed JT and Lady C, who you had on last year.

John Dehlin [02:21:49] Yeah.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:21:50] Ex Jehovah's Witnesses. And they were awesome. But what we did is we had like backwards and forwards on who was crazy. We played, played a little game where we, we gave anecdotes, we got to missionary work, and it was pretty close, but they didn't know that we paid for it. So they were like, if the, if the Watchtower sends someone out, the Watchtower pays for it. You're making the effort with your time. But they were saying, like, you know, you got to think if a brother gives up so many years of his life to go and work for the Watchtower, he's giving up however many wages he could have earned in those years.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:22:26] So maybe he's giving up 50,000 a year. And I said, no, in the Mormon Church, we give up 50,000 a year and pay to do it. So. But they were just gobsmacked that we actually have to pay with all the money in the bank. Yeah, Yeah.

Nemo [02:22:44] I want to ask you PD about if there is any incidents you can think of as to why you wouldn't have come home early beyond Sister PD not wanting, wanting to marry an rm.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:23:03] Why? Why I Might have come home early.

Nemo [02:23:05] Oh, no.

John Dehlin [02:23:06] Why?

Nemo [02:23:06] You would avoid coming home early?

Priesthood Dispatches [02:23:08] Oh, okay. Well, not just Sister PD, but. Okay. So when I was 17, I told my mum I was moving out, okay. Because I wanted to go live near Sister PD because driving an hour and a half or whatever at the weekends was annoying me. And I wasn't really doing anything with my life.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:23:30] I wasn't in school. I was just working at a local McDonald's. So I'm like, I'll go work in McDonald's up there. And my mum told me, she said, when you're 19, you will move out. You will either go on a mission or you will get out.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:23:44] Okay? So I was under the impression that if I didn't finish my mission, I couldn't go home because I wouldn't be accepted at home. And that was kind of reinforced by something earlier in life where my sister had come home early because of issues around Ireland and war and different things.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:24:13] But she came home early and out of the blue. And I remember being very young and hearing the phone call, I think my mum answered, and it was my sister calling from the local train station because she'd run away from a mission. And I remember how angry dad was and my mum telling him to calm down.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:24:36] And that kind of stuck with me. So I knew going home, even without Sister PD wasn't for me, at least. I'm sure if I spoke to my parents now, they'd have a different opinion. But for me, my impression was I couldn't go home because it's. Yeah, home's not there for me. So.

Nemo [02:24:57] Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, makes sense. Okay. But you did eventually come home. You returned from honor. You returned with honor from your mission, right?

Priesthood Dispatches [02:25:06] Oh, I did, yeah. You know what? That was such a flipping. So. So I finished the mission and they drove us to the Preston Temple for our parents to pick us up, because the Preston Temple is also near the Manchester airport. So all the missionaries went to the temple, and then some were taken off to the airport to fly home, and others had to wait at the temple for parents to arrive to pick them up. My parents arrived with my younger brother to pick me up, and then they drove me home, but we went via the stake president's house. And because Sister PD was waiting at my home address, so they wanted me to be released before I was able to see her. So I went to see the state president at like, 11pm that night. Good guy. Good guy. And he. He released me. And that was bloody awful.

Nemo [02:26:04] He.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:26:08] All he said is that he released Me as a missionary. Right. But I stood behind this for two years. Okay. It's stupid that I've still even got these to hand 20 years later. Stood behind this for two years. And I'd made that decision at the beginning of my mission that I was going to be such a good missionary. They couldn't look over me for, you know, mission, for leadership opportunities and things. And I was going to fulfill everything that my patriarchal blessing said. And when he said to me, and I release you as a missionary, my whole.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:26:45] I'd never felt anything like it. It was like someone just tore it out my chest. I'd lived it to the detriment of others so wholeheartedly for those two years that I just broke down crying and he handed me my call and gave me a pat on the back and sent me on my way.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:27:07] But a mission is a head wreck in the fact that you go on your mission and it's so hard to want to stay there that you, you deal with trying to stay there for so long that then when you can leave, it's almost like that Stockholm syndrome, you know, you've come to love the, the abuser or whatever. And then when people say, well, you can get away from that now, you, you want to go running back to it because you convinced yourself so much that that's where you have to be, that it was, it was a visceral experience. Them kind of. I said it was like the tearing the mantle of being a missionary away. Yeah, it was horrible.

Nemo [02:27:52] I think it's, I think it's a pretty potent mix of a very strict routine with a high stress environment. So you become dependent on that routine to get yourself through a high stress situation, the stress created by the organization. But this high stress then makes you dependent on that routine. So when that routine or your involvement, that routine gets taken away, that's all you want because that was your coping mechanism essentially, for two years.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:28:20] Yeah. Well, yeah, I went home for a few hours. I didn't unpack my bags. I put them in the back the of Sister PD's car and we drove back to the mission, basically because home wasn't a place. It wasn't home before my mission, so it wasn't home after my mission, if you know what I mean. I was always transient, between the house that my parents provided and Sister PD's house, which was inside the mission. So they drove me out of the mission to release me, and then we drove straight back up north and got married. Eight weeks later.

Nemo [02:28:59] Sorry. Eight weeks later.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:29:01] Yeah. Yeah.

Nemo [02:29:02] Okay. So it's not just Mormons in Utah to get married that quickly.

John Dehlin [02:29:05] Oh.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:29:06] But we'd been together like four years by this point. You know, we knew each other.

Nemo [02:29:13] It's.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:29:14] It was, it was, it was a necessity. Nemo, you know.

Nemo [02:29:17] Yes.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:29:17] You can't. You can't knock boots before you. So you've got it. You got to get it done.

Returning Home and Getting Married

Nemo [02:29:26] So. Yeah. Eight weeks later.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:29:29] Yeah.

Nemo [02:29:30] And sealed on the same day. You had your. So you had your civil. Then you're sealing on the same day.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:29:35] Yes. Yeah, we did. And then. Yeah, and then that was that. You know, we. We went into life in the ward, the Bradford Ward, which was in the lead stake in the leads mission. So straight back to the center of the mission. Funny thing was I'd have companions then come for tea appointments with me as the member, and I'd be like, ah, yeah, you're still on your mission and I'm got a wife, got a house, got a car, come and chill at mine, you know. So, yeah, it was all. All very.

Nemo [02:30:10] I bet you were their favorite da.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:30:12] You know what? I always made really horrible food on purpose because I had some really horrible food appointments with. So for anyone who wants to read all of these, you can go to my blog@mormonpd.org and you can read all these mission stories. Okay, but this one, the dog was clearly not well. Was lots of dog hair in the food. And then the sister who was serving the food, kind of served the food, licked the spoon and carried on serving food. And I'm like. But you just eat it. You just get on with it because you're there for a reason. So I was, I was always, oh, my gosh, sister PD just corrected me in the comments. I was always, yeah, feed them rubbish.

Nemo [02:31:05] Been told to tell him that it was actually 10 weeks after he got home from his mission, not eight. So you have been officially corrected PD by your wife.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:31:13] Well, it was. It was on bonfire night. And I did it on purpose because here in the UK on bonfire night, there are quite a lot of fireworks that go off. It's like fourth of July for you guys. So every anniversary now, the whole country puts fireworks on for my wonderful wife and just have to go outside and watch him. It's very cheap, but an impressive display nonetheless.

Nemo [02:31:40] Okay, so you guys got married and you started to enter kind of normal life. Okay, you beat. But first you were telling us the story about the food.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:31:49] Oh, no, it's okay.

Nemo [02:31:50] Yeah, okay, we'll leave that. Everyone go on his website, have a listen to that story. Leave them wanting more. More, as they say. So you started to enter normal life, but you kind of entered two lives, didn't you, at that point?

Priesthood Dispatches [02:32:04] Yeah, we're back to the horoscope, guys. So I said, you've got the leadership side of things, which the patriarchal blessing told me I need to do. But the patriarchal blessing also told me that I would know what I needed to do upon return from my mission. What. What I needed to do in life.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:32:21] And I. An experience, sorry, on my mission with. It was one of the most spiritual experiences I had, and it was with my first mission president. And he was telling everyone that the church needed another Donny Osmond or a David Beckham to be a Mormon. You know, it needed another celebrity person out there in order to, you know, convert a bunch of people.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:32:53] Because especially here in the uk, there were a lot. There were a lot of Osmond converts. Now, when he was saying that, I felt what I called a time, the spirit so strong. And I thought, he's talking about me, okay? He's talking about my patriarchal blessing.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:33:11] So upon returning from my mission, I eventually embarked upon a career in radio. I don't know if any. You can tell I like to talk a lot. So to get along in media here in the UK at least, is probably the same. Wherever you go there, there are a lot of.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:33:34] Yeah, just. There's a lot of dodgy stuff you have to do, like to. To climb that greasy pole and to be the one sat at the mic talking. And so I. I went to a radio station and I kept going back until they gave me a job, you know, just kept going to the front door and saying, I've come about this, I've come about that. And eventually they let me in and they said, yeah, okay, come on in, we'll give you this job.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:34:02] And my job, as it happens, was to organize all of the radio events. So you imagine a person buys sponsorship from that radio station for their event. Often things like, I don't know, ski slopes in town centers with snowboarders doing stunts. And on the bottom of their boards, you've got the company's name and you've got one of your radio DJs there playing music and telling everyone to go by that company's chocolate bar that week.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:34:36] So my job was to organize the. The, the slope, organize the skiers and. And different things. But I worked for a radio station as well, that their main music was dance and R B. So a lot of their.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:34:54] Of their events were club nights. So two or three Nights a week I would be in the club taking photos, organizing DJs, smuggling drugs for DJs and yeah, just generally making sure that everyone came, had a good time and were furnished with as much free alcohol as possible in order to make the event special for everyone.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:35:26] The DJs though horrible sometimes because they knew that the night couldn't go ahead without them and they, there was a lot of drug use. So what they do is they'd get their bags together that had the illicit drugs in and they'd leave them for me to carry into the club so that if anyone was going to get caught with the drugs, it would be me.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:35:45] But it also happened that during the daytime I was bishop and I can see the headlines now. Mormon Bishop caught smuggling cocaine into local club. So this is me. Okay. If you go back one Nemo. So that's, that's actually my wedding day because I'm a very effervescent person. I couldn't find a decent photo of me as bishop where I wasn't making a funny face, so I thought I needed one that looked kind of smart. So that was a year previous to being called as bishops. I'm still a child, be honest.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:36:22] And on the right, that's me as well, holding up one of my colleagues. You can see the name of the radio station there called Galaxy. And that was at Creamfields Festival. And I'm surrounded, yeah, by lots of drunk people.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:36:39] But my job was to make sure all those drunk people got very drunk and had a good time. And it got to a point where that double life, I compared it to Adam and Eve. They were given two commands in the garden, but God knew they couldn't do both.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:36:55] And I felt like my patriarchal blessing gave me two commands. One was to be a priesthood leader, but one was to be well known in the world so that I could be seen as that priesthood leader by people who weren't in the church.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:37:09] So whilst I was working on the priesthood leader side, I was also working on being well known in the world so that, you know, would fulfill the patriarchal blessing. But it was a total mind.

Being Called as a Young Bishop

Nemo [02:37:26] And can we, can we talk about how you became bishop? Because I think this is where the, the badly, the key to your story really starts. You know, you're 23.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:37:37] Okay. Yeah, yeah. So I was elders quorum present first really quickly.

John Dehlin [02:37:45] Pd, were you feeling guilty doing that nightclub drug running stuff as a return missionary?

Priesthood Dispatches [02:37:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:52] So aspiring to be a bishop, like, what were you feeling?

Priesthood Dispatches [02:37:56] Well, I didn't fit with the crowd at work because none of them were Mormons, and none of them knew what I was going through, you know, so I didn't feel like I could be fully on board with everything, you know, the life they were living. They were all single, ready to mingle and giving it all to their work.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:38:17] And I'd be. I'd work all night in the club, and then I'd come and sit at church. I'd put my suit on and go to church, you know, and, yeah, I felt really guilty. And eventually I gave it up, John. And I wish I'd. Not now, you know, 15 years later. I wish I'd carried on and stuck with it because that was what I wanted to do with my life. And. And I gave it up because I. I got to a point where I was stood in the center of the town where I was bishop. I got a megaphone. I was stood on a traffic island, the Pre bar, as we called it, where we sent everyone.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:38:55] That bar paid the. The radio station to send people there for a few drinks to start with. That was on one side of the road. The club where the actual event was, was on the other side of the road.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:39:07] And my job at this point was to get drunk people from one side of the road to the other to the. The event I was organizing. I just found myself stood there with a megaphone, free drinks, vouchers, shouting things at people, you know, because I was. I was a performer, you know, I didn't just say cross the road. I. I was given a show in the middle of the road, and everyone was having a good time.

John Dehlin [02:39:32] Time.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:39:33] And then I thought, what if the high priest group leader drives past now? You know what I mean? I'd been caught once by the missionaries who were like, oh, Bishop, what are you doing? And I'm like, oh, I'm working.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:39:46] You know, and they thought it was weird because it was weird. So, yeah, I. I felt like. But that was what my patriarchal lesson told me. So I was just trying to push through the first few years so that I could get to the point where I'd earned my stripes in the industry, and then I could choose what I wanted to do. You know, it was. I was still in that. Right. I need to get a foot in the door now and do whatever I need to do to get that foot in the door for a couple of years, and then I can choose where I want to go.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:40:18] So, yeah, I felt bad. And the amount of times I fell asleep on the stand, you know, because I'd been up all night. And when you Come in as well. You stink of stale beer and cigarettes. People must have just thought, what's going on?

Nemo [02:40:35] But they still made you bishop.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:40:37] I was bishop at the time. You couldn't unmake me.

Nemo [02:40:40] But were you doing it as. Just as you became bishop?

Priesthood Dispatches [02:40:43] No, I'd been doing it for about a year.

Nemo [02:40:45] Yeah, when you then became bishop.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:40:47] But they, they didn't know about that. They, they knew that I worked in media and they like that, you know, because every, the youth loved it because, so they'd hear me on the, the air sometimes, you know, when things were going on because I, I did the events, but I also worked as an assistant producer covering sickness and holidays, things like that. I go from show to show. So they'd hear me on the air and then they'd see me at Youth that night and be like, oh, hey, Bishop of. I heard you this morning. Yeah, they loved it. So actually doing.

Nemo [02:41:24] So tell me about, tell me about your call to become bishop.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:41:28] Okay, so I told you about the recurring nightmare earlier where I was 13, got called as bishop because of my Levi lineage and everyone was booing me coming up to the stage. Well, that kind of happened. That came true.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:41:45] What happened was the old bishop just decided to move back to Scotland and we found out he was moving because he just put his house up for sale and left. So for a while there was maybe for three or four months there wasn't really a bishop in the ward, but I was the elders quorum presentation, so I was the only key holder left in the ward. There was two counselors to the bishop, obviously still left there working away. And one of them really didn't like me. The other one was my brother in law.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:42:19] And I remember one of them, he sat me down and he was, he was telling me how he needs the keys, he needs the keys to get things done, the priesthood keys and stuff. And yeah, it was, it was weird. So everyone's wondering who's the next bishop going to be.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:42:35] And I get a phone call one night from the state executive secretary and he asked if the state president could see me and Sister PD now. I don't know. The state president really not had anything to do with him. Never. I don't think I'd met him before.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:42:53] We went to the meeting and he sat us down and he said, well, I'm sure you know what this is about. At which point I played koi. No, come on. And he said, well, we'd like to call you as the bishop.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:43:09] So in the meeting, what they do is they send Sister PD out of the room. I then had a rather intense temple recommend interview with the stake president. Then they bring Sister PD back and I go out, she has an interview with the state president where she can put forward any complaints etc. And then the state president brings me back in and you know, tells, told us it's a team effort, you know, I can consult my wife with things when things get rough etc. And yeah, he told me he'd struggled with the call because he knew it was supposed to be me. But the brethren had not call back twice.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:43:55] So he, that's why it had taken so long for it all to get done. He sent the call off to Salt Lake and twice they'd said no because I was too young. And then the third time, classic Joseph Smith. The third time they relented because the state president said I can't tell you who else it will be then because the spirit just tells me it's supposed to be him. Now I kind of wish they'd rejected it a third time because it was awful.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:44:28] I was 23, didn't have any kids. By this time I think Sister PD was pregnant, but we didn't have any kids. So my life experience pretty much was just being a missionary and yeah, no idea what I was doing when it came to the actual day for the call in none of the outgoing bishopric.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:44:53] Well no, my brother in law was there but the, the other bishopric member found out it was going to me be me and refused to attend because he was that outraged. I was sat towards the front of the chapel and when they did the calling I was stood up and I'd never seen it before but someone opposed.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:45:14] So all my nightmares were coming true. I was like, oh my gosh, I've been given this, this like poison chalice and people are opposing.

John Dehlin [02:45:21] Why would someone be outraged? And then why would people be opposing?

Priesthood Dispatches [02:45:25] Okay, the brother who was on the bishop before, who was begging for the keys was outraged because obviously it was supposed to be him and not me. I was too young. So yeah, he refused to come for a few weeks.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:45:41] And yeah, he really didn't like me. He, he actually, oh my gosh, later on he, he physically dragged me into the office when I was bishop and, and gave me a dressing down like a naughty schoolboy. Yeah, he really didn't like me. So the outgoing bishop had run off to Scotland so he wasn't there to give any kind of goodbye or anything. So, so there was only me and my two new counselors because one of them was already on the bishopric. Who were there to give our testimonies, et cetera.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:46:16] The people who opposed. There were some people who were classic for just not voting at all. They would abstain, and that's how they would voice their discontent. But one brother opposed, unbeknownst to me, because he was behind me.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:46:33] After the meeting, a member of the state presidency took me into a side room and said, if. Oh, sorry, I was just reading a comment. He said, the state president is now meeting with a brother that opposed your call.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:46:50] Can you tell me now if there is anything that. That brother knows that we should know before, you know, the state president finds out? And I'm like, no, I don't know. I don't know what his problem is. You know, I've not got any particular problem. I'd not even considered my work, which was a problem, clearly.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:47:16] But this brother didn't know about that. Like, someone could have genuinely just stood up and been like, oh, I saw him in the club last night. Come on, this is not on. But he. He opposed because I was elders quorum president at the time, and this guy was called as an assistant to one of my counselors, and the counselor hadn't used him, and he was upset that he'd not been used, and he didn't know how to voice his concern at that. And then when the. When that corner had come up, he thought, oh, hey, I'll put my arm up, and then someone will talk to me about it.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:47:50] So, yeah, that's. That's why he did. But genuinely, John, someone could have had very good reason to oppose, and I wish they had, because it saved me a lot of heartache.

John Dehlin [02:48:05] Can I ask. Can I ask. You know, we're taught as. As Mormons to believe that God's in control, that God's making the decisions, that it's all inspired, and that if someone gets called in, any calling, primary, young men's, young women's, elders, quorum, and especially in a bishopric, God's at the helm. Do you have a sense, maybe from a more practical perspective, either from constraint of available priesthood holders or worthy priesthood holders to politics, or, again, this myth or this promise that you had, had this patriarchal blessing or your dad's influence. Do you have a theory for why. Why your stake president would persist three times to make this call?

Priesthood Dispatches [02:48:52] Yeah, for me, there were other people in front of me, older brethren, more experienced brethren, who could have been the bishop and should have been the bishop, in my opinion. So it wasn't that I was the only one there.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:49:06] I'd not had any dealings with him. But he, he will have had dealings. He will have known my dad at least by name and by, you know, what was, I guess, happening in the church in the UK at the time.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:49:23] I don't think my parents had anything to do with it because when I spoke, when I told my mum that I was being called as bishop, I think she shed a tear and kind of said, too young, you know, to take on that responsibility.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:49:39] So I don't think they would have. They, they were happy, but I don't think they were all there, if you know what I mean. They, they had their reservations, quite rightly so. So I think it was the stake president.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:49:56] I genuinely think he prayed about it and got the impression it should be me. And it almost felt like once I told him about my patriarchal blessing after he called me as bishop, it almost felt like he had decided I was going to be the next stake president as well, because he had only been in for a couple of years. I was going to serve as bishop and then take his place because he worked with me so closely. And then even after I was bishop, just kept trying to push me into state leadership call ins that were bad for my mental health over and over and over again.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:50:40] Like he had to make it work, if you know what I mean. Like, I don't know if he felt bad about calling me his bishop and the way it all shook out or whether he felt like he'd lost some faith. Faith, because he'd really gone to bat in calling me as bishop so he had to make sure it worked. I don't know.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:50:58] But he. Yeah, I saw him not so long ago and he didn't even talk to me. So I don't know if I've upset him with where I am in life, but it is what it is. But I was, I was bishop and elders quorum president for about six months. That was fun.

John Dehlin [02:51:19] Oh, you served both callings at the same time?

Priesthood Dispatches [02:51:22] Yeah. So his elders quorum present before I was bishop. But I didn't get released when I was called as bishop.

John Dehlin [02:51:27] Holy moly.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:51:28] Yeah, because we got, I said earlier we've got a lot of single sisters. So you imagine a lot of the wards here in the UK are 4 or 500 strong. Okay. On the rolls, those are people that have been baptized over the last hundred years.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:51:45] You get maybe 60 or 70 in a good ward on a Sunday. That was where we lived. Okay. 400 people on the rolls and maybe a hundred people who came, but not all at the same time. Okay. So you've got a lot of brothers there that are hit and miss and come every couple of weeks with their families.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:52:07] And then you've got the core bunch of us who are there every week ride or die. So there was, there were brethren who we could have called to be elders. Qu President but that's a state calling so it's not up to me to do that. So I had to wait for them to. Yeah. Get on with that. And they took their time.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:52:33] So. But we, we were that short of brethren in the end after some move outs that I had to release one of my counselors and send him to look after young men's and call or beg the stake to call the high councilor who was responsible for our ward into the ward to be the high councillor and a counselor on the bishopric at the same time. So I don't know if people just left because they didn't like me or now I think about it.

Nemo [02:53:07] But this is a situation we're seeing a lot in the UK and it's ever increasing. Like there are branches in the state where I grew up where members are sent there to be the branch president from other units within the stake. Right. Yeah. There is a lot of this swapping and changing that goes on here in the UK because we just don't have the numbers of people to run the units. Yeah, the people aren't there.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:53:32] It sucks.

John Dehlin [02:53:35] And it's going to be happening more and more. Right?

Nemo [02:53:38] Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if we're not seeing this is what I was saying right near the beginning about the age range coming down. I wouldn't be surprised we're not seeing more 23 year old bishops.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:53:48] Yeah, well you know what, this happens

John Dehlin [02:53:52] in Latin America and basically anywhere in the world where, where there's just a dearth of mature priesthood leadership, you know.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:54:00] Yeah. And I think you just rely on the brethren to make the right decision. But then when you're in a position where you're making callings, you kind of start to realize how those decisions are made. So yeah, the spirit of discernment, you really have to work hard to get that thing working.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:54:23] So it's, I, A lot of the time it is kind of suck it and see like call that person because you, you convince yourself that you prayed about it. But I once later in life the same state president asked me to call some people to a calling and I didn't know everyone in the state so I got the, the steak diary out, put it in front of me and got on my knees and I got an answer, got three names, took them back to the state president. He rejected them all. And I said, don't worry about it. I'll sort it out later. And I was like, why did I pray that?

Priesthood Dispatches [02:54:59] Why did I even bother, you know? So he. He just laughed at me. He's like, no, those people don't come to church. Like, isn't this a general conference story where we go to their house and tell them the Lord has called you to this calling, come to church, and then they're years later, they're an apostle, and they tell the story about how this young man came to their home and told them they needed to be the Sunday school president.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:55:27] Yeah, the spirit of discernments. I like to. I like to think some people, you know, they just had a curry the night before, and they get a bit of a burning in the book. Muslim, and it's a curry calling. It's like, what?

Challenges and Struggles of Serving as Bishop

Nemo [02:55:45] Yeah, well, because didn't you used to do something as bishop when you were trying to discern in interviews?

Priesthood Dispatches [02:55:52] I got some stick for this. When I put it on TikTok, I want everyone to realize I was 23, right? Maybe 24 at the time. And there was no instruction on how to, like, do temple recommend interviews apart from, well, there is instruction. They give you the list of questions, and you. You ask the questions.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:56:15] But I was like, how. How do I discern when they're lying to me? How do I tell? So I would have the tempo recommend questions out in front of me and then have the other person pray. And I think I got stick because I called it recommend roulette. Okay, because we talk about bishop roulette depending on, you know, how your church experiences. Depends on what bishop you get. Because sometimes you get good bishops, sometimes you get shonk bishops.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:56:43] So I called it recommend roulette because I would let the other person pray, and then I'd look up at the questions. And depending which question I kind of felt to look at during the interview, no matter what the other person said, I would pause and I just look down at.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:57:04] Look at them and not. Not give any answer, not move on. I just let them give their answer and then sit in silence for a count of 20. It's really awkward. And a lot of people would break down and either confess or just start with the scrupulosity. Like, oh, oh, well, I don't know. You know, maybe. Maybe there's that one time I didn't quite pay enough tithing. Or maybe there was that one time I had a Coke and I thought, that was a spirit of discernment. I thought they said a prayer. The spirit had led me to whatever their problem was and the way that I wheedled that out was to just sit in silence and, and let the spirit work on them. And now that's just bloody horrible. Like, and I was a child,

John Dehlin [02:57:58] you

Priesthood Dispatches [02:57:58] know, you've got 50, 60 year old guys sat across the, the desk from me, probably looking, thinking, who are you? You know. And it was, yeah, so, but I thought that was it. So I went with it and it seemed to get results.

Nemo [02:58:17] So your mileage may vary viewers.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:58:20] I did have, I did have one experience where at a vision, okay. I was sat on the stand as a bishop, clearly blurry eyed from being in the club the night before. And like the, the, the routine on a Sunday morning was 7:30 till 8:30, Bishopric 8:30 till 9:30 PC 9:30. You've got just enough time to go home, pick up Sister PD and then come back and get to the stand, sit down, you've chosen the hymns and yeah, everything carries on for sacrament meeting.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:58:56] So I got to the stand, I've sat down and then sister came in at the back of the room. She was a YSA sister and she'd not been for a little while. She walked across the back of the room and as I first looked from her side profile I was sure she looked heavily pregnant.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:59:16] And then I gave a double take and she just looked normal, not pregnant. So I thought that was the spirit telling me that there were chastity issues there. Now this Sister was living with her boyfriend who was from a neighboring ward.

Priesthood Dispatches [02:59:38] She, in a nice way, she was constantly dying of something or another and she always came with very big claims. I think at the time it was a brain tumor. There was always something and she would take up a lot of time because we believed, you know, always gave her the benefit of the doubt and believed her and tried to minister to her as much as we possibly could.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:00:06] So at the time, even though she was less active, she got us on the thing that she was dying in three months and that she'd moved in with this boyfriend because he was going to be her full time carer in her last days.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:00:22] So called them into the office afterwards and I said hello and then I told them I knew about the current living situation and just asked, you know, are you sleeping together? And she immediately answered no. And I just went back to my discernment and sat in silence and just let the question sit for a while.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:00:48] And after 10 or 15 seconds he cracked And I could see her looking at him, you know, and the poor guy must have just felt like stuck between a rock and a hard place. I was looking at him, she was looking at him. I was looking at him. And he cracked. And he just said, yes, we are.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:01:07] So at that point, again, this is one of the first times I caught him run out with anything. I've been bishop, like, three months. So I sent him on his way. I said, well, I'm not your bishop, so I don't have jurisdiction over you, but you go see your bishop.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:01:25] And I think I even said, I'll check that you do, or something like that. And then she sat there and I said to her, I said, right, well, it's your choice. Do you want to go through the repentance process now because you've only got three months to live, or, you know, is that not something you want to do as you die? Because like I said, we all believed or tried to believe that she was telling the truth about her health situation.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:02:00] So she said she wants to go through the repentance process. So I said, okay, thank you for, you know, coming. Please be on your way, and I will pray on it. Go through the handbook, find out what to do.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:02:15] So I sat down, I prayed about it, and I felt that this sister needed to have a disciplinary council, as they were called at the time. So. And which. So I've got Handbook 1, which is the Bishops and State presence handbook at the time. It's not Handbook 1 anymore. They've all been put together, but Handbook 1. I've got it out at the radio station on the desk, you know, so whilst I'm organizing other illicit activities, I'm also typing out the wording to the letter that you have to give to invite someone to a disciplinary council. So talk about two worlds collide.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:02:53] And so I wrote it, I put a date and time on, and I read in the manual, fortunately, that it said that the letter needed to be delivered by two Melchizedek priesthood holders and one being the bishop. So I invited one of my counselors to come with me just to deliver the letter in person. And I felt like the words in the letter were horrible, but it was what had come from the manual. Okay? It was so like, just unsympathetic to the whole situation because I was thinking back to my situation, going to my bishop, and I was like, this is just how would I feel being on that side of this letter?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:03:35] So I went to her, and I got another brother with me. We knocked on the door and the door opened into the kitchen. There was a kitchen table. And we sat at the kitchen table. She was fine with us there, handed her the letter. But I said to her, you don't even have to open it if you don't want. I explained to her what it said, explained the dates, the times, etcetera, and just said, totally up to you. If that date doesn't work, let me know.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:04:04] We can. We can sort it out. So we left, everyone was happy, went to work the next day, came home, and Sister PD said, how was your day? Wasn't particularly good. And she said, oh, well, don't listen to the answer phone then. So there were messages on the answer phone and was two or three messages from a lady who I didn't know from the other side of the uk.

A False Accusation and Its Aftermath

Priesthood Dispatches [03:04:31] And she was just screaming down the phone at me about how I was a disgusting individual, I was sick. She was calling the police. This one's going all the way to Salt Lake. This one's going to be in the papers. You're absolutely disgusting.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:04:47] And there was several messages just saying that over and over again. And then there was one final message from the state president asking, bishop pd, please call me as soon as you get this message. Okay? So I called the state president and he just said to me, can you tell me about your whereabouts last night? So I said, well, I went with, oh, I took this letter to this sister's house and dropped it off and then came home, and me and Sister PD had a nice evening in. And he said, okay, can anyone vouch for your whereabouts? I'm like, this police investigation, you know, can anyone, anyone else confirm that story?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:05:29] And I said, yeah, brother such and such was with me. As it says in the manual, two people to go. And I think two people to go more for the fact that then the other person can't deny that they got the letter about the disciplinary council. I think. I don't think it was, you know, a case of, you know, two people for any other reason.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:05:54] But he said, okay, not to worry, then I'll talk to other brother, thanks very much. And I said, just so I know, can you tell me what's going on? And this sister, the YSA sister who I had given the letter to, was apparently that incensed about it, that she'd called her mother, who and told her mother that I had taken her into a side room and forced her to take a pregnancy test in front of me to prove that she wasn't pregnant and to prove that it was her that peed on the Stick. So her mother then was obviously accusing me of sexually abusing her daughter and was calling the police, etc.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:06:34] Fortunately they never showed up. And fortunately I took someone else with me because otherwise it would have been he said, she said. And yeah, that, that just. I felt like the more I tried to be the bishop, the more people tried to stop me being the bishop.

Nemo [03:06:57] Yeah, that makes sense. I get what you're saying. It's quite a scary thing that you're 23 years old. You know, you're 23 years old and all this is going on and I mean, the idea that you get accused of these sorts of things and you've got another priesthood holder there with you and that's all that you've got as backup. Like you're not prepared. No one sits you down and does bishop training and says, oh, by the way, people are gonna throw accusations at you. You're going to become people's scapegoat. When there's issues in their lives they are struggling with, for whatever reason, they're going to blame their bishop. What, what, did you get any preparation as a bishop?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:07:39] No. You get called literally. Literally. It's like they call you on the Sunday and then they kind of pat you on the back and say, good luck. Then they leave. You get like. I think there's a bishop's possibly training thing every. Basically, there's a bishop's meeting every month or so where you go and they'll, they'll give talks or presentations, but it's more like the church is doing this, or we're not doing this good enough or, you know, they'll have the auditors in who will tell you, well, you need, you need to do better with your record keeping and stuff like that. So. But there's never, for me, at least there was never any. This is what to do if someone comes and confesses this, because it's not a trained thing. It's a spirit of discernment because who the Lord calls the Lord qualifies.

Nemo [03:08:33] Right.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:08:34] So why would they train you to do it?

John Dehlin [03:08:36] And what Mormons don't understand is that in other religious traditions, the clergy is a profession. You, you spend years in training. Maybe it's not identical training to a mental health professional, a psychologist or psychiatrist, but you get years in training of counseling and ethics and sensitivity and administration.

John Dehlin [03:08:57] And it really is this kind of pernicious belief, almost hubris of God's mantle, God's authority of the gift of discernment that led you pd to, to, to get, you know, feel like, confuse your Thoughts or instincts with truth or with God's divine instruction.

John Dehlin [03:09:21] And it probably gave you a level of confidence or aggressiveness that you wouldn't have had if you just thought, well, that might be God, or that might just be my thoughts. But certainly you don't just do whatever your thoughts say, because that's crazy.

John Dehlin [03:09:36] But if you're taught to think that your feelings and thoughts are the Holy Ghost, if those associations get made, and if you have the arrogance of believing that God is leading your thoughts and feelings, it can lead you to do violence. Right? Plus you're not trained. So it's a bad, It's a bad system that makes otherwise good people do sometimes very harmful things.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:09:59] It's the same system that the gods are. Auschwitz would have used. You know, they, that's what they're told to do, and they're doing the right thing because their seniors told them to do it. You know, but it's. I know that's an extreme example, but it's, it's the same thing. And I, I look back at times.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:10:20] I had a sister, an elderly sister. She's, she's passed on now, bless her. She came and sat in of front of me and she said that she had just remembered or just had kind of suppressed memories come back of how her dad used to abuse her as a child and her mom knew.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:10:43] And I didn't know what to do. I didn't know whether or not there was a phone number she could call, whether or not to call the police. And I asked her if her dad was still around, but she said that he'd passed away.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:10:59] So I figured, well, there's no, you know, there's no, nothing police can do because he's dead. But I had no idea what to do for that sister. So all, all I could do is give her a blessing and send her on away. You know, she seemed okay with it, but now I look back and I think I failed her.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:11:20] And I know it's not my fault because that's the system I was put in, in that respect. But because I didn't know what to do, she got up the courage to come and see her bishop, and her bishop only had the courage to give her a blessing and send her away after five minutes. You know, I didn't know where to go with that. So I didn't go anywhere with it.

Nemo [03:11:42] But you weren't given the training to know where to go with it either.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:11:45] No. And that's what annoys me so much about, like the whole Mormon system that they rely upon Milkman, accountants, you know, all. All different things. We've all got different skills. Yeah, that's great. And it makes us great at whatever we do, but they just rely on

Nemo [03:12:07] us to conduct, you know, weddings, funerals, people's major life events, mate.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:12:14] Screwed them up so bad.

Nemo [03:12:16] Tell me about that.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:12:17] Okay, one wedding, I'm up there. So there's nothing in the handbook with instructions on how to conduct a wedding because weddings are different all over the world, okay? So I'm like, what do I do? So I managed to call someone who I knew had done them before, the high counselor. And he gave me like a crib sheet of what, what to say for the legal parts. I was rubbish with names. So I'm up there, repeat after me, doing the whole vows thing with the bride, reading them off. And then I got the groom's name wrong and the bride corrected me as she said her vows.

Nemo [03:13:02] Okay, Right.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:13:04] Funeral. Never, never been to a proper funeral in my life. Okay? When I say, When I say proper. I'd been to a funeral, but I'd kind of sat outside, so I'd never actually been in properly, like knowing what's going on in a funeral.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:13:24] So I'd not been to my grandmother's because the mission stuff so bad. So I got a phone call one night from a local funeral home and a sister had died who I'd never met, but she'd put our church where she wanted her funeral.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:13:43] So I looked her up on the Rolls and she, she was a member, but she'd apparently not been to church for about 20 years or so. And the, the funeral home said, you know, she wants. She wants it being done there. Here's the phone number of her next event. Kint was her daughter. So take a day off work. And I called the daughter, made an appointment to go see her, went around, and I'm like, you know what, what do you want for this funeral? What do you want to do? Do you want to give eulogies? Do you want to pick the hymns? And she just said, bless her.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:14:20] She was devastated by her mother's death. And she just said they didn't want to do anything, they just wanted to come along. So I was like, okay, that's fine. We'll. We'll get on with that. We chose the date and the time, and they were arranging with the funeral home for all the flowers, etc, and they said she wants us to.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:14:44] She wants us to have a cremate. Cremated. Sorry. So I didn't know how to do that either so bad. So I try calling around all the members to find out about her and to find out about, you know, just some anecdotes about the sister. And to see if there's anyone who's gonna have the day off work and can come and talk about her, give a eulogy. No one. It's like flipping tumbleweed.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:15:18] So, trying to set up this service, easy pick hymns. Yeah. Get a couple of missionaries there to say prayers. Yeah. I've got a pianist that can play the organ. Okay. So then I've got a sister called Carol who has come in to read a poem for me.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:15:39] And I think I've got everything in order and I can wing it enough with one story someone gave me, and that was that the dead sister used to come to church, but she was too short to see over the steering wheel when she drove. So she put a cushion on the steering wheel, but one day the cushion slipped and she crashed into a car in the church parking lot. So. And that seemed to go down well. When I spoke about her being a bad driver, the family giggled and laughed.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:16:07] But the. So I didn't realize that at a funeral, they bring the body in and they put it right at the front. I don't know why I thought it'd go anywhere else. But they bring the body in. It's got loads of lilies on top. And I stand up and I stood, like, up to the mic. And then all of a sudden, this just heady smell of the lilies just hit me.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:16:36] And everything just went out of my mind because that smells. That. That reminds me of death now. But, yeah, I forgot the sister's name, so I got the name wrong. When welcoming everyone to the funeral, I welcomed them to the wrong person's funeral.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:16:55] The family seemed to let me. Let me off with that one. Later on, a sister who got up, the Carol sister, she sat back down. I thanked the dead lady for reading the poem and then said something about Carol being dead. I just got all the names mixed up and out of order.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:17:13] And then we. We got through it, right? And then they said, right now to the crematorium. And I'm like, what? I thought they'd just take her away and that was it, you know? But they said, no, we have to go to the crematorium now, so I'll go down there. I went in the back, and the guys were like, oh, are you. Are you the priest? So I'm like, yeah, okay. And then they were like, oh, the chapel's through there. Like, what do you mean, the chapel? So aren't you just Gonna, you know, do whatever and they'll say goodbye.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:17:44] No, there was a whole of the service, right? So I walked through, into this chapel, and the guy says to me, he said, when you finish, press the red button. And, you know, we're good. He said, do you need. Do you need the organ? I was like, what do I need to need the organ for? Don't need the organ.

Conducting Funerals and Pastoral Burdens

Priesthood Dispatches [03:18:02] So go in. All of the family come filing in, and now they're expecting something else. So there's curtains behind me, right? These curtains open, and there's the coffin again, right? Lily's about. Everyone sat down. So I'm like, let's sing a song. Turn to it. Turn to a hymn. This point, I wish I'd asked for the organ because no one knew the tune because none of them ever come to church. So we were singing Mormon. Like, I can't remember what it was, but it was properly out.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:18:35] Then I gave another short kind of spiritual thought. And then I'm like, right, well, I'm done. Press the red button. Press the red button. The. The daughter who was on the front row jumps forwards to towards the coffin.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:18:54] It just screams, no, Mom. I'm like, what on earth is going on? Try to press the red button again. It's not doing anything. The red button has started closing the curtains on the coffin. Okay. But unbeknown. Unbeknownst to me, the family did not want the curtains closing because they felt that was too final. They just wanted to file out past the coffin.

Nemo [03:19:17] Right?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:19:18] I didn't know what the red button did. The guy just said, when you finished, press the red button.

Nemo [03:19:23] Red button.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:19:24] So this daughter's absolutely just apoplectic in front of me. And then the family just turned daggers on me. They're like, you couldn't even get her name right. And now you've pressed the bloody red button. Do not press the red button.

Nemo [03:19:40] PD that is tragic. I.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:19:48] You see why I started Priests of dispatchers. Now, you could not make this up.

Nemo [03:19:51] No. So with all that going on, I want to talk about the inevitable, which is this started to get difficult for you. It's. You know, this is taking a toll on you, I'm sure. Tell me about that.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:20:06] Yeah, so I. I got to the point where I would hide under the bishop's desk. You know, I shut the bishop's door. I'd lock it from the inside, and I would hide under the desk so that I just couldn't hear the word bishop anymore. Bishop, Bishop, bishop. You know, I'd go to ward events, and I Just felt like I was carrying a bloody ship on my back.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:20:36] So, yeah, so I'd, I'd hide from people or I'd make excuses. World Council, World Council. People even bore their testimony over this one. Get this World Council I rocked up. I could not take another hour of people talking at me. So I gave a spiritual thought and I said to everyone, we sit in so many meetings, this is your opportunity. I'm giving you an hour. Now whoever, whoever's name you, you know, felt to think of whilst I was giving that spiritual thought, go visit them now. And I sent everyone away just because I couldn't sit in another meeting. And then people got up on Fast Sunday and they were saying how inspired it was because they went and visited that person and it was the best visit they'd ever had or whatever, or they were coming back to church.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:21:26] Bishop was inspired. It wasn't. I just couldn't take anymore, you know. So, yeah, this was about two years in and I was, I was a broken child, not man child. I'd had, we'd had our first child and he was still a baby.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:21:48] And then we were driving home from a family event and someone, someone didn't look when they were changing lane and they, they crashed into us and ran us off the road. And this was like late on a Saturday night and they were in like a large Luton style van. So a large, a large van.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:22:13] And they drove off. Now I was pissed off. I was like, Sister PD's in the back, my three month old baby's in the back. I was absolutely steaming. So I started the car up, pulled back onto the road, put my foot down, and thus ensued a 20 minute chase through the town center.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:22:39] Sister PD got the police on the phone and they were saying, please don't break any laws whilst this guy's going through red lights and I'm following him, you know, so I'm like, no, I'm, I'm getting this guy. And he, he pulled over and the police are on the phone and the police, the, the operator said to Sister pd, she got her on speakerphone, she said, if you can ask your husband to calmly get out of the car and just check, you know, that the gentleman's okay and, and just let him know that he hit you.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:23:13] And I just screamed back at her, you know, if I get out of this car, I'm gonna flipping, well throttle the guy. And a few minutes later the police caught up with us, kept us apart. But the police just kind of said, well, he said he didn't feel, yeah, And I'm like, several thousand pounds worth of damage to my vehicle.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:23:38] And he's like, yeah, I can see this, this blue paint down the side of his van where he's hit you. But he said he didn't feel it. And I was like, why was he running? Well, he said he didn't see you chasing him and the police just let him go. Swapped our insurance details for the damage and I went home and in calming down, broke down and suffered my first pseudo seizure, which comes from an over, I don't know, overstressed. And you go into what appears to be an epileptic seizure, but it's not caused by epilepsy. It was caused by stress.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:24:22] And that. Yeah, that was 2010 or end of 9, 10. And up to now, you know, I've been in a cycle of trying to deal with that mental injury and it carried on with church, you know. So are you.

John Dehlin [03:24:51] Are you kind of saying you. You kind of had what some refer to as a nervous breakdown?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:24:56] Yeah, 100%, yeah. I ended up in, in hospital because no one knew what was happening. You know, they were like, did he hit his head? Did he. You know, is it. Is it a brain thing? So we did all the scans, you know, spinal taps, all sorts of things, and there was physically nothing wrong apart from I was a little bit chubby, festively plump.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:25:24] But, yeah, it was. It was just a mental, I think, from. And this, this is why I say from 11 until then, it was all backed up. And that. That was a straw that broke the camel's back. And it. It just went from me.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:25:45] I woke up the next morning, I couldn't even think about church without descending into one of these fits. So I became the less active bishop, according to some people, because the church was really. Because of the stigma around mental illness and the word mental breakdown.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:26:08] The church did not want to speak about that. And I don't think we wanted to talk about. Because we didn't know what was happening at the time. So the church just said nothing. Radio silence. And radio silence means that Mormons can speculate as to what's going on. And later in life, I was sitting at a meal in a different ward miles away. We'd moved and the brother was saying how he served a mission near where. Where I was. It's like, oh, yeah, that was the ward with the less active bishop. Wasn't it crazy? And I had to just let him know I was that bishop and I wasn't this active. I was in hospital. You know, the church chose not to Talk about it. So they chose not to release me.

Nemo [03:26:56] And why do you think that is? Why do you think they chose not to talk about it and, and not to release you? And why did they feel the need to keep you in post?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:27:05] I genuinely thought the state president was hoping that I'd be back in a few weeks and right back on track for him. And the other thing was they, I think they'd already got in the pipeline closing some of the wards and moving boundaries around, but they weren't ready to do it yet.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:27:29] So they didn't want to call another bishop for six months when they were just going to move the boundary. So what they did is they left the ward without a bishop and let me know that I was still the bishop. It's still there for me for when I want to come back, you know. And I think the first time I came back was on the day that they were bringing the wards back together because I didn't want people. Because I knew that people were speculating, so I didn't want people to be like, yeah, he's not good enough, but whatever. So I kind of came back and sat on the stand and kind of just grin and bore it because it was hard to even go in the chapel, you know, it was, it was awfully.

Nemo [03:28:13] And I think not releasing you just creates this pressure. You know, they're saying, oh, it's still there for you when you come back. No, I don't want to come back. Like, it's just this idea then that's ticking up in the back of your head that all I need to be back doing my calling. I need to be back doing this, doing that.

Mental Health Struggles During Church Service

Priesthood Dispatches [03:28:29] They released me. And then after a little bit, they, once I was back at church, few months later, they called me to the Stake High Council, right? So nice and low profile to take me away from my family again. And they gave me the, the responsibility of mental health in the stake, right? Because obviously I know a lot about it because I just spent time in hospital for it. So they, they thought, you know what,

Nemo [03:29:01] how terribly sensitive of them.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:29:03] He'll. He'll. He'll do. So then, and, and then we just got onto this merry go round of serving on the state High Council, trying really hard. And then something else happened.

John Dehlin [03:29:20] Ah,

Priesthood Dispatches [03:29:22] so on the Stake High Council and there are counselors in the stake, right? So members who are mental health counselors. And one was in my ward and she called me for a blessing. So I called my mate and said, can you come and help me give this blessing?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:29:41] And we Rocked up to her house, suited and booted. Read it, go. And unbeknownst to us, she had solicited this blessing for her clients who weren't members of the church because those said clients had been given a terminal.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:30:00] They'd been given a terminal diagnosis for their unborn child and they were attending her as a counselor because they needed help dealing with that diagnosis. And somehow, some way, she'd got on to someone can come and give you a blessing.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:30:20] So then I'm, I'm sat down with this couple who I'd never met, trying to explain to them how blessings work, about faith, about, you know, just, it was just horrible. I could see the hope in their eyes and I could, I just, I was like, it's not going to work. You know, I can't, I can't do it.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:30:44] And I gave him a blessing and. And then had a relapse, went, went home and ended up back in hospital, you know, and it was just that I got, I got out of hospital, I went back, I was called as assistant stake executive secretary so I could be closer to the stake president and work under him that way so he could keep me under his wing. You work for so long and then something happens. There was just no let up and you have a relapse and you end up losing another job, doing another six months recovery.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:31:21] And yeah, it's just been. If I'd not have left the church, I wouldn't be alive. That's, that's how bad it was because I, I would have followed through with something silly. But leaving the church saved my life in that respect. Sorry.

Nemo [03:31:46] That's okay. So do you feel it's just the constant pressure?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:31:53] It just, it just didn't let up. Like we moved. So this, this will obviously be important later. I, after coming out of hospital the second time, I decided that my way to kind of re. Enter the world and to rehabilitate myself was to go to university, to find an interest and to pursue it. So I decided, right, I'm going to be a civil engineer. I didn't have any qualifications.

John Dehlin [03:32:25] Hey, pd, do you mind if I pause you just for a second? Just because I don't want to jump over. I think just some really quick reflection. Like the. One of the hard things about just this whole setup, it seems number one is the pressure you were under.

John Dehlin [03:32:45] But the pressure multiplies by the fact that the stakes are so high, that bishops speak for God, that this is the one true church, that you're supposed to be receiving inspiration from God to know what to do. Plus this cultural idea that, and this is a term that I was taught as a Mormon, whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies.

John Dehlin [03:33:07] So it's just this idea. Oh, or the Lord will never give you a challenge that you're unable to, to, to meet. And so all of these cultural things just connected. Add so much pressure and, and raise the stakes. Is, is that did, did those factors kind of impact you a little bit or a lot?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:33:30] Yeah. Yeah. Because I, I, like you said being called a God, I got a certificate, you know, a big thing. No, it, it was God had called me. I had had the spiritual confirmation that God had called me, you know, because I felt the warm and the buzzes. I'd had the grooming, you know, the spiritual grooming for that position. I'd got the patriarchal blessing. I'd come through a difficult mission. I, you know, I'd stood up to trials that other people will never have to experience. You know, so this was the right thing and I was going to do like with everything. I will give it 100 and however much percent I can until drop dead trying.

Doubts, Faith Crisis, and Leaving the Church

Nemo [03:34:28] How did you feel about the fact that you were giving it 110% and you were killing yourself in the process? And there's this idea that we, after all we can do because we don't believe in grace in the traditional sense, after all we can do, then Christ makes up the difference. And I think it's viewed that way in terms of callings as well. So how did you feel about the fact that you were giving everything and this help didn't seem to be coming because you kept ending up back in hospital. Who did you blame for that, if anyone? How did you feel?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:35:02] Yeah, I, I just, I blamed. You know what I found out about that, I think Spencer W. Kimball quote where he talks about the disobedient people in the pre earth life and that's why you have disabilities or people, you know, people are born black because they were disobedient and different things like that. And that, that, that chapped my chops because I was, I was like what? Why, why have I been given that? But like John said, you'll never be given anything you can't overcome. You know, the, the, the blessings were there. I'd got a church counselor, church were paying for the counselor.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:35:47] Always going back to the counselor who was always saying that Jesus will heal me. You know, it was, it was always, it was talking therapies. He was always telling me not to go with the NHS because they will give Me, a label that I can't live with, you know, a diagnosis. And once you get that label, you'll never shake it. So stick with me, kid, and Jesus is going to sort you out.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:36:11] I went back to my scriptures. So I decided, right, not like in church at the minute, so I need to double down. So I, Every night I would read like I couldn't even think to do this now. I would read a chapter from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament, one from the Book of Mormon and one from the Doctrine Covenants, okay? And just work my way through, never finish the Old Testament, got through the New Testament, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine Covenants pillar, great price. And I got to the end of the Book of Mormon and I, I said to myself, right, Moroni's promise, I'm going to make this work.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:36:49] Now this is, this has got to be it because I am giving up so much for this place. And, and it worked. You know, funnily enough, I, I read and read and as soon as I read the words of Moroni, I broke down in tears in my, in my bed where I was reading and had a spiritual experience.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:37:13] No crap Sherlock. You know, I built myself up with, with the pressure, pressure, pressure of finding out that the church was true. And then I created this emotional breakdown again of Moroni's promise. And it literally, as soon as I read the last word of it, I just. Tears came streaming down my face.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:37:38] And for me, it's those experiences now that tell me the church isn't true because of, because I can see how experiences could be manipulated. You know, I've had, I've had hallucinations, okay, Genuine, seen things, heard things, because of either what drugs the doctors were giving me or because of the mental state that I was in.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:38:09] And when people say to me, I feel it, I'm like, mate, in the right circumstances, you can feel anything, right? It's, it's not. And I think I just went through those experiences over and over again of kind of self affirming this is the right thing to be doing. And I'm giving all that up, you know, and going through all of this, but it's the right path to be on

John Dehlin [03:38:37] pd. I, I also want to ask. So one of the most common questions asked about Mormon general authorities, in particular apostles, you know, is, you know, do they, do they really believe or, or are they like perpetuating a kind of a conscious fraud on the membership?

John Dehlin [03:38:59] And I'm curious, I'm curious how you were processing both your time as a bishop and then in a Stake High Council and even this Moroni's promise that, that where you were seeking a confirmation because you had to have known on some level as a bishop that you weren't truly receiving revelation from God. You, you had to have known on some level that you were.

John Dehlin [03:39:27] You probably didn't believe in the way that everyone who were, was looking up to you. You probably didn't believe in the way that they probably thought you were believing. And at some level, you probably knew that God wasn't guiding and supporting you as you kind of thought he would. And so I'm, you know, I'm. I'm guessing that that's what a lot of Mormon general authorities are experiencing. And so I'm curious, I'm curious if you have any reflections on how you processed all of that.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:40:00] I, I'd say that they believe and that the only difference between a general authority and someone who. Between a general authority's spiritual experiences and my spiritual experiences are being in the right time at the right place. Okay, so I was in the wrong, wrong place at the wrong time and shit happened. Sorry.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:40:30] But those general authorities may have had the same spiritual experiences and it's reaffirmed everything because nothing went wrong. You know, they, they didn't have to deal with just crap in life, right? So they, they've carried on. I'm sure if I'd not had to deal with maybe some of the stuff earlier in life and then being called so young and, you know, just dealing with it, I'm sure I could have carried on and, and I could have been a state president and, and done those things. And, you know, when the next state president was called in the lead stake, that killed me because I felt like it should have been me.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:41:12] Not because I wanted it to be, but because that was the trajectory that I'd been put on. And they were constantly trying to put me back on it, you know, that I just felt like I'd failed. You know, I'd been given a chance at greatness and failed. But I think a lot of general authorities, their spiritual experiences are no more valid than anyone else's. It's just that they've not been, you know, maybe beaten down.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:41:44] I mean, they'll have anecdotes about difficult times in life, but it's like any, you know, sports star. There's one that stands on the podium, but there's 10,000 others behind him that didn't make it. They might have had the same talent, they might have had the same training, but it's just the way that it falls for that one that they're lucky enough to get to the top. And I think that's what it's like for brethren all over the church because they're shown the podium every year. You know, there's, there's the, you know, for my dad, he's, he's seen it, he's been there, he's been to Salt Lake, he sat with the brethren, he's done everything, you know, but he's one of the 10,000 that gets left behind with the promise that you'll get there eventually.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:42:32] But yeah, I just think it's wrong time, wrong place. Or as I look at it now, right time, right place, because I couldn't imagine, I couldn't imagine on a Sunday still having to go through all that crap. It is so nice just being able to chill.

John Dehlin [03:42:48] But there's a bit of a pyramid scheme dynamic, right, where you're always trying to get to the next level.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:42:55] It's, it's. This is why Mormons like multi level marketing schemes, because we live in one. And it's not so much money that changes hands, it's praise. Okay. It's the same on a mission, it's the same at church. As a bishop you have key performance indicators. Okay. Those key performance indicators are fed back to the stake. Stake has key performance indicators. So theirs rely on the bishops and then the stakes ones for their area 70, you know, their area 70 will have numbers. He has to give in and he gets them from the stake. And if good numbers go up, praise comes down to the leaders that created them. You know, it's the same as mlm. They, they make money off the work of the minions at the bottom, but they make the money at the top.

Nemo [03:43:48] Yeah. So it's true. I think there are some really good kind of reflections to be made there about the then propensity of members of the church to get pulled into those sorts of systems. I want to ask you about scrupulosity, which is something we brought up right near the beginning, but I think it's at this point you said that scrupulosity really started to hit you.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:44:10] Yeah. So not just as a bishop, but bear in mind, I've still got in the back of my mind unresolved sin that I've been carrying around from when I first met with the, the bishop when I was 16.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:44:28] Okay. And that's in the back of my mind for years, you know, And I think I've been thinking to myself, if I work hard enough, I can work it off you know, so I go to, I get to a point where I'm sat in sacrament meeting, I'm not the bishop, I'm on the high council at the time, sat in sacrament meeting, just crying, just breaking down because I know that it's still there, this unresolved sin.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:45:02] And I know I'm on high council, well known in the stake. How's it gonna look a member of the high council comes out and confesses all these sins? So I took Sister PD into a side room, into the clerk's office, locked door, and I just said, how much do you believe?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:45:25] Okay? Because I could be about to blow it all up. And obviously she didn't know what I was talking about, but I said, you know, do you believe enough that you want to kind of hold on for this ride or should I just not say anything? You know? And at the time we were both tbm, we were like, yeah, this is it.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:45:49] So I went in and sat down with the bishop of the ward and told him about my original meeting years ago and why I'd not confessed all and laid myself bare, ready for whatever stripes were coming. Because I was just in this emotional tumble dryer over and over again and I just had to get these things out.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:46:21] So I gave it to him and he basically said he did, in my opinion, the right thing and just said, don't worry about it. You've clearly dealt with it and punished yourself enough over it that there's no need for the church to know, take any disciplinary action or anything.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:46:41] But yeah, that was, that was a moment that the scrupulosity kind of. Scrupulosity is weird because it's like you, it's like you're constantly running from something. You know, you're constantly, or running, trying to catch something and be like, I'm not good enough, so I need to keep going, going, trying to catch being good enough or I've done this, I need to stay ahead of it. And eventually you get to a point where you've got to turn around and face it because otherwise you're going to go crazy.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:47:18] And so I faced it on that occasion eventually. But the damage was already done clearly, otherwise wouldn't be here today, you know. But yeah, scrupulosity

Nemo [03:47:38] lost your audio there

John Dehlin [03:47:39] for a second and it's, and it's kind of interesting that like if you were a 16 year old boy or a 14 year old boy or even a missionary, the church very well may have treated you very severely, kept you from going on a mission, kept you from completing your mission. Kept you out of the temple, delayed your, you know, wedding, just depending on your temple marriage, totally depending on when, you know, when you, where you were in your development and, and who your bishop was. But the church would have had a vested interest in telling you much later that your unresolved sins were, were okay.

John Dehlin [03:48:23] Because how embarrassing would it have been for the church to admit that it had called you and allowed you to serve in all those callings when you were unworthy? And that, that's also something I was going to mention before.

John Dehlin [03:48:36] When the church is keeping you in those callings and you were a inactive bishop, one of the pressures that the church would have felt in its own self interest would be we can't release him before the five years because it'll look like we weren't inspired when we called him to the first place. And so, and so oftentimes, intentionally or unintentionally, the, the church will put people in unhealthy situations to protect their own or, or hide or hide behaviors that they otherwise would punish in their own self interest.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:49:14] Yeah, yeah, they, I mean, they had to release me anyway. But I think they were just fortunate that they were changing the ward boundaries. So one bishop needed to be released because two wards became one. Funny thing, John, funny thing. After I was, after I had my interview to be called as bishop, the state president called me and he said, oh, I just need to check. You've not had any church discipline in the past, have you? Like any disciplinary councils or whatever? And I automatically just said no. You know, felt really bad afterwards because I'd been on probation, but the horse had bolted. There was no point closing the gate, so I just got on with it. But I'd assume that the church would have known if I'd have had disciplinary action. So my previous bishop mustn't have put anything on file, which I guess was nice of him in one way.

Nemo [03:50:21] I think that's what they call an informal membership restriction, I think. So it didn't go on your file or anything. It's just they make you look bad in front of the ward because you can't take the sacrament.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:50:32] Yeah, yeah. The assistant priestborn president can't bless the sacrament anymore or take it. Yeah.

Nemo [03:50:41] Okay, so the birth of your second child took place at this time as well. And we've gone through all these relapses and, and then you said you became the stake execration to get closest to state president.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:50:59] Well, yeah, he, he, he called me to stick exec and then release me when that all went Tits up. So, and then I worked through. So I decided to go to university in order to re. Enter the world because work wise I was just a mess. Like I, I couldn't deal with the slightest bit of stress. So I decided university, you know, go and make some new friends and just try and be a useful member of society again.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:51:37] So I decided to be a civil engineer. I'd never studied that or anything before, so it was difficult. I went to one university, they told me I'd never be a civil engineer because my maths wasn't good enough, but in typical PD fashion told them to stick it and went to another university and managed to claw my way onto a course and then four years later came out with my master's degree in engineering geology.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:52:10] That didn't go well for Jesus. Sorry. So, yeah, so, but I, I have my masters and I, I was still in this peaks and troughs, right when I was in a peak I was superman. Okay. And this comes down to my, the mental diagnosis I eventually got.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:52:37] But yeah, peaks were superman, troughs were bad. So still in this post process that the church had put me in of just going round and round in circles. So I applied for a bunch of jobs and got a very good job with a multinational engineering firm who were taking on 300 graduates across the world from around 20,000 applicants.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:53:08] So I was, you know, giving it everything. Took all. Yeah, to take exams to get the job and, and all sorts, jump through all sorts of hoops to get through all the different rounds. But the job was in Birmingham, two hours south of where we lived.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:53:25] So I moved to Birmingham and was commuting at weekends in order to come back and see the family. That didn't go well. So after about nine months we just hit this same down, down phase and ended up with issues with work, went back, did another year, hit another down phase and the family eventually moved to Birmingham. So we were out of the state, away from the state leadership that I guess I was used to be a part of and in a new ward where they welcomed us as the miracle because they'd heard of PDs being a bishop and being on the Stake High Council. And this new ward only had about 30 or 40 active members and were dying for someone to come along and be the next bishop.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:54:22] Yeah, that didn't go well. I, I didn't get called as bishop because I made it very clear what issues I'd had in the past and that I would not be stepping up again to do anything like that. And then just pre covered to Kind of put the cherry on the top. And this is kind of the last time, a bit before pre covered, but the last time I was in church, church, I was serving on the Young Men's Presidency and we'd organized a joint youth activity with a neighboring ward and I didn't know any. Anyone from the neighboring ward. And then one of the adults that showed up to the chapel was the father of the person who sexually abused me when I was 11.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:55:18] And that just sent me into just, you know, and that was the end of church. I went to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist prescribed me six months of no religion. She said. She said she was Muslim, you know, and she had a belief in her God, etc. But she said, you need to not be thinking about what you need to do for God, not be thinking about, you know, am I doing this? This right? Am I doing that right? You just need six months to, you know, be you and not feel any guilt, any shame about anything. And. And that was, you know, advice that I think saved me.

Nemo [03:56:14] I think she correctly identified the cause of what was causing you all this distress and what was causing you all these problems.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:56:21] Yeah.

Nemo [03:56:22] And a massive juxtaposition there is. What were your parents doing during this time?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:56:30] I don't think they knew what to do. They. My mum had grown up in a household where my grandmother had postnatal stress and never really recovered from it. So my mum had grown up in a house where I think my granddad had always said to them, don't upset your mum because I'll choose your mum over you. My granddad was from Latvia and he grew up in an orphanage in a very harsh environment, poor guy.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:57:07] And came over as a prisoner of war during World War II. So he was very harsh with them. So I think my mother, from a young age was taught, just don't talk about it, just do not talk about it because you don't want to set the person off.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:57:23] And there were a couple of times we had difficult interactions over things where she did set me off about church stuff because it became very. A very sensitive topic. So they stopped talking to me about that. They'd come to. If I was in hospital, they'd come and visit.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:57:46] But other than that, it was just kind of Sister PD looked after everything and, like, seriously, she is a rock. Because, yeah, even today, just organizing things, I. I'd be lost without her holding me up.

Nemo [03:58:10] Big love to Sister pd. So you're. Because you're saying your parents are or were very active in the church, you know, they Were they were organizing YSA conventions, all this sort of stuff. At what point in their sort of church careers were your, your parents during all this?

Priesthood Dispatches [03:58:30] So they were working. Yeah, during the earlier days it was area presidency stuff, working on, did four or five years doing the YSA conferences. And then the church wanted to bring EFY to Europe, so they were tasked with bringing, starting EFY in Europe.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:58:54] So they started it here in the UK and then it became FSY for copyright reasons. And yeah, so they, they, they'd been all on with that. And then in the, I guess the last few years they moved, they retired and moved to the Preston Temple. So they lived there for a couple of years and then became temple president and matron up there at the temple.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:59:24] And that was always fun because. Well, it wasn't, let's be honest. But all the family events were then at the temple because as temple president and matron, you get a really nice big house and there was, there is a really nice big house behind the Preston Temple that belongs to the temple. And the temple president has to stay on site.

Priesthood Dispatches [03:59:46] Well, pretty much. They have to live on site. So they get this house and it's got a great hall, it's got apartments at the back. So all of the, yeah, all family events moved from Nottingham to Preston. So whenever it was, whenever it was like Christmas, I'd go toast Moroni with a rum and Coke. Yeah, I was a bit bad.

John Dehlin [04:00:17] But pd, if it's okay, let me ask, you know, you're clearly, as you're telling us these years, post mission, you're clearly dealing with a lot of mental health issues and rightly so. I'm wondering without, without blaming your parents or even piling on, I. There are two dynamics that are just screaming out for me to ask about. One is, you know, what, what level of support, you know, if your parents are so busy serving the church, how attuned are they to your condition and what, you know, how able are they to kind of be there for you in your time of need, but then also to what extent is their potential either ambitions for you or need to project to the world the perfect Mormon family, you know, not allowing them to be a support to you as you might have needed?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:01:27] Yeah, I think my parents have always been an hour away, you know, and that is where we've come to kind of keep them because there have been times where we've tried to kind put it without sounding like a idiot.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:01:52] So sister PD has me like she knows me more than anyone ever will. She's been with me through literally tearing me back from the edge. Okay. And she stayed with me. And. And that was. That was always a difficulty when leaving the church because she'd always said in. In kind of counseling interviews that if it wasn't for the church, she'd have left.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:02:22] And I'd assumed that meant that if I left the church, she'd would leave. So that that became a whole thing later. But it wasn't what she meant. She meant the support system from the church because she needed someone supporting her as well.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:02:36] But my parents, because they were always. Because we never lived like next door, It was easier not to have them around, if you know what I mean, because I was kind of dealing with how they felt as well, you know, how are they feeling watching me go through this?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:03:01] I'm a very loving person. So I, you know, sorry, you've got to make light of these things or they will destroy you. But I'd always want to make them happy and do what was going to make them happy.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:03:21] So when, you know, when leaving the church and different things, I just kind of had to say, screw it. I can't please everyone, you know, And I think for them, when it comes to the. The perfect moment family, yeah, it's difficult for him. And I think my mom, especially, because I think her patriarchal blessing says that all of her children be faithful and good people.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:03:47] And when I left the church, that kind of blew that out of the water for her. So I think she really struggled with that. But sister PD kind of told her he is still a good person, you know, he's just not at church. And my dad, I think they fall back a lot on the promises that the church has made them about the next life, if. If we put it that way, you know, they were temple president, so we all know the stages in the temple. You, you go do your washing, anointing, you go do your endowment. You're sealed. And then you work hard enough, you get invited back, and you get a little foot tickle from an apostle and your call and elections made sure.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:04:34] So a temple president will go through all of that because they run those sessions. Okay. And I asked them about it straight to their face. I said, you know, I know this happens. Tell me about what happened to you.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:04:48] And, you know, it's like trying to pin jelly to the wall. They just Jin can move and change, change the subject. So. But that having happened in the eternal perspective of things, I will, for their happiness, I will be with them in the next life as an eternal family.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:05:10] So whether that's their, their line sealed up to exaltation or whatever? But I think we've, we've got to the point, gospel wise, where that's what they believe and they're happy to believe that. And that they know that if they come at me kind of with it, then they.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:05:35] Yeah, they. I might, I might not talk to them again for a while because I, I am at the point now where I am very guarded over kind of just being like, right, no, that's too far, too far. I'm just gonna shut it down for a bit. I'll talk to you in three months, you know, And I felt bad about that at first because I'm like, am I holding, talking to be hostage over them so they can't talk about church or try and convince me to go back to church? And I'm like, no, I'm being selfish in saying, let's not talk about that, because I don't need you to bring scrupulosity back at me and tell me I'm doing the wrong thing.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:06:16] Because for anyone who struggles with any mental health illness, every day could be the day when it goes off. Do you know what I mean? Like, people say it's, it's a struggle every day, and I think it's a struggle you get used to. But you do have to think sometimes, is this too much? Have I gone too far? You know, so call me in the morning, make sure I'm still here.

Mental Health Diagnosis and Recovery

Nemo [04:06:47] Did you get a formal diagnosis or are you now in a place where you know exactly where you're at with your mental health?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:06:56] I did, yes. It's bipolar type 2, which is on the more depressive side. So I have hypomania, which isn't running around the street naked with my danglers out. It is just. Just being very productive and very focused and able to do a lot of work for a few months before a break.

Nemo [04:07:23] Yeah.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:07:24] So you have to be aware of that, but that, that just comes from childhood trauma and. Yeah, things that happen in life, but it's something I deal with. And it's. You know what? Everyone's got mental health. We've all just got different levels of it.

Nemo [04:07:44] So I'd wanna. I'd want to ask you about this diagnosis. Did you get it before or after your shelf broke, as it were? And then we'll get into the details of your child breaking after. Okay.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:08:01] Yes. Yeah, it's fuzzy. It's fuzzy. But I think it was from the psychiatrist that prescribed me six months off. God.

Nemo [04:08:11] Right.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:08:12] So she, she was one of the Best ones I've ever met. NHS in England is fantastic. Everyone wait times are crap. But you do find some good people every now and then. Nemo. Yeah, so. But yeah, church. Church had lost its luster.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:08:36] The one thing about being a priesthood leader is you get really used to not paying attention in meetings or going to any lessons because you're that busy doing other things, you know, you've. You've got to. If you're the bishop, then during Sunday school and priesthood, you need to be in the office dealing with people because otherwise there's. You're there all afternoon because there's a line of people wanting to get things off the chest.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:09:05] So I would spend a lot of time scrolling on my phone and sat in church one Sunday. I'm now a qualified, I guess, geologist and Facebook knows that. So Facebook decided to show me a certain article. Yes. With footprints. So I always like to say to people, footprints took me out of the church, because this is like really awful poem about footprints in the sand.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:09:35] But these are not Jesus's footprints. Anyway, this article came up and. And by this time I'm a bit of a science head and love reading scientific papers and just getting into what's. What's going on. And I always told myself that science was simply man discovering the ways that God works. Okay. And we just find a little bit all the time, but we'll never actually know all of it. Yeah. Talking about that cognitive dissonance of the wazoo.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:10:04] So I. So yes, footprints. So these footprints are from around 3 million years ago off the coast of Crete in Greece, in the Mediterranean. And there are footprints that were made on a muddy seashore and then infilled with sediment and that were dated using microorganisms from the marine environment.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:10:32] So they've been dated. And I'm looking at them and I'm thinking, whoa, they're not human footprints. But obviously, according to the article, they're hominoid footprints. So I thought, right, but the church thinks that Adam and Eve was 6,000 years ago and these are 3 million years ago, so that can't be right. So then I thought, are there any other footprints or are these just kind of a few that were found?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:11:02] So I started looking in the UK at the oldest footprints that we found. 800,000 years. Fantastic. Started looking in Africa again. Footprints millions of years old. So then I thought they dated them wrong. So I read the paper and I looked at how they. How they dated them. Radiocarbon dating for these organics that were found in the same layer. So I decided Right. I've heard of this radiocarbon dating and I've heard people at church say it's utter tosh.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:11:33] So I decided I need to find out what radiocarbon dating is. So I pulled up a few papers on radiocarbon dating, figured out how they do it. It funnily enough, it's quite solid science in the way that they, they date the carbon 14 and the way it degrades and, and how they figured out, you know. Yes, they can't tell you to the date that it's there, but they can give a pretty good ballpark to how, how old that organic material is is depending on how far the carbon 14 is degraded. Sorry. Not getting too far into it. So radiocarbon dating is true, footprints are true.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:12:15] How does that fit into my Mormon paradigm that I am hanging on with by my nails? So I sat down and I'd always either deferred to or authority by saying I don't know the scriptures as well as he knows it and he's okay with it. So I'm okay with it.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:12:36] I wasn't a scriptorian, I was a primary graduate type person, like many people. So I started looking at it and I thought I need to know what the Church actually believes because we have the. Well, we don't know the age of the Earth exactly. A day could be 24 hours, or it could be the day of the dinosaurs, or it could be a thousand years. We just don't know. Contraire, Monfre, the Church does know.

Nemo [04:13:05] Yes, they do. They absolutely do.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:13:07] The Doctrine and Covenants, the age of the Earth, the celestial. Oh no, the terrestrial age of the earth, is it 7,000 years? So the Church does know, but because science has proven that wrong, you know, the, the Church has kind of, of just muddied the waters there. So if you go back to January 1998, enzyme is fantastic. Jeffrey R. Holland really puts his heart on the, on the line there because he talks about the Creation and the Adam and the Flood, or Noah in the flood and the Tower of Abel and all sorts of things. And that didn't help my situation because I've got a situation where I have proof here of pretty solid science.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:14:02] You know, I've studied that using the methods I've just learned at university. And I'm really struggling to fit that into a 6,000 year old earth where they now claim that, okay, so this is how the Garden of Eden was in Missouri. Okay, because I'm jumping in the Bible. The Garden of Eden is between two rivers, one being the Euphrates And I can't remember the other one, but yes. And they are in the Middle East. So how is the Garden of Eden in Missouri? It's because at the time of the Garden of Eden, the world was in a state of Pana. And that's at one point the world was in that state.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:14:55] It was one big supercontinent where all the tectonic plates were kind of together and all the land mass was together. And that's when Adam and Eve were there and those rivers extended across that part, part of this super continent. And then God decided that Adam and Eve and their children have been really bad. So he was going to send them for a long bar and he chose his favorite playmate, Noah, to have a boat.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:15:25] And then he flooded the earth. And whilst the earth was flooded, all of the continents rearranged. Okay. To what, what we have today. And that's why Noah landed in Turkey on Mount Ararat. Yeah. And just reading that, I was like going through my kind of new analytical way of looking at science, at reading the world around me, the physical world, and the way that, you know, I was looking at these footprints. And even though I don't fully understand the species those footprints came from, I know they didn't come from Adam and Eve, you know, So I decided that the way that this happened, I figured it out, okay.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:16:18] And that was that God created the earth and evolution was right, but that he didn't put spirits into the bodies of the humans until that evolved to a point where they were, the bodies were prepared for those spirits. That's why we have different races. This is, this is cognitive.

Nemo [04:16:43] I went through the same thought process. Okay, did you not?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:16:48] So, so then I went to,

John Dehlin [04:16:52] went

Priesthood Dispatches [04:16:52] to my, one of my brother in laws, we were on holiday. I went to him, he was a bishop. And I said to him, what do you think about this? You know, like pre Adamites not having spirits and then, then God putting spirits into them. And he was like, yeah, maybe. And I was like, okay, okay. Then I went to my other brother in law and he's a scriptorian, this guy, he's bishop now.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:17:14] And I asked him and he laughed at me. And then he pulled out the book of Abraham where it speaks about Eve being the mother of all living. He's like, don't you remember the last time he went to the temple and Eve is a mother of all living? That was when my shelf broke.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:17:29] Because I was like, yeah, you're right, the temple does say that. So if the temple says that, then it's All, Yeah, it all went on, on the back of those footprints. And then don't even get me started on death before the fall. Bloody hell.

Nemo [04:17:49] Oh, yeah, we could have some great fun on that. But, okay, your shelf broke. But what about Sister pd?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:17:57] Oh, yeah, that was tough because I couldn't tell her because, okay, you know, she made comments before about church and the comment that I misunderstood about her saying she would have left if it wasn't for the church because I then thought if I left the church, she would leave me.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:18:24] And I tried to live that kind of double life again. And being a member of the church and in or the pimo, the physically and mentally out, I tried to do that and I couldn't do it. And eventually it all came to a head and we had a big argument and both misunderstood one another because, you know, I was tearing her salvation or exaltation away and breaking up the family and she'd given so much.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:18:57] And then from the other side of it, I was saying, you know, I can't. I think I even said, I can't help you, but I can help my kids. You know, you. You can do what you want to do, but I'm not going to let my kids go through what I went through.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:19:14] I'm not going to let them kind of the drip, drip, drip of the gospel to make them feel bad about themselves or to, yeah, make me feel not good enough. So, but we, we eventually we got through it. And she explained that wasn't what she meant about leaving me, that she meant that the only reason she was still there is because she might have gone crazy if she's not had a support system from church, which was good, you know, and the church does that as a community. There's a great support system there. It just comes with a bag load of crap.

Nemo [04:20:01] So, yeah, I often say the church has the potential to do a lot of good. It has the potential to do a lot of good in communities. And certainly with the amount of wealth they've amassed, they have the potential to do a lot of good around the world. But it all comes with the caveats and the conditions of obedience to a theology and to a lifestyle that is based on dishonesty. And so you're looking at a tree, a bad tree can't really bring forth good fruit to use their own argument against them.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:20:39] Oh, don't do that, Nemo. That's too clever.

John Dehlin [04:20:42] But it's not. But it's not just that, Nemo. Like, we can joke about, about the weird rules on the mission or or even unreasonable expectations or harmful doctrines like the gift of discernment or patriarchal blessings and the weirdness of the mysticism. But, but there should be no religion on earth where any member of a family should ever feel that they're going to lose the love and companionship of another family member if they lose their faith in that religion. Yeah, that's a bridge too far. And that is the hallmark of high demand religions, including Mormonism. That, that PD feared that if he told his wife the truth about his loss of Mormon faith that she would leave him. And that's, that's unconscionable. No religion should leave a member fearing that.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:21:47] Yeah, you know, you know what? I've done it, John. I'd been listening to this guy's podcast, right? And that was where I first learned about people actually getting divorced when they leave the church.

Nemo [04:21:59] Whose podcast?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:22:00] But John's.

Nemo [04:22:02] All right.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:22:04] No, it was very helpful, but I'd never heard that that actually happened. And you had guests on who that had happened to. And it broke my heart, you know, Tom Phillips and, and the way that he's estranged from his family now. And it just broke my heart. And I couldn't imagine that happening because we've been together for so long as well, that I think that's what saved us in the end. Because the way I have, the way I look at it now, is that our marriage is based on our relationship with each other, not our relationship with Jesus.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:22:43] So when, you know, the church will say that there's three people in a marriage is you, your, your spouse, and Jesus, you know, but the minute that you kick one out, it's all falls apart. But that's not, not true, you know, and, and people who possibly get married really young, really fast to take a magical mystery ride together to the celestial kingdom, and then you find five years later, when one of them maybe wants to get off that ride, you have a broken family and the church holds it up as like, oh, look what's happened here. Because he's left the church or because she's decided this, this family's fallen apart.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:23:22] And that's the problem. No, the problem was you have put these two people in a system where they feel pressured to, you know, get together and to be together. Matthew, that's fantastic. But it's. The system's broken, you know, and people say, well, if you're married in the church and know it's less divorce and different things. I don't think so. I'm sure if someone did a study, there's as much divorce inside the church than there is outside of it. So human relationships, they're strange things. And I'm just happy that Sister P.D. yeah. Has stayed with me and kept me going.

John Dehlin [04:24:13] How did you guys get on the same page

Priesthood Dispatches [04:24:17] little by little? Yeah, I. I took a leaf out of Satan's book, and I just gently, at night, put Mormon stories on to go to sleep to and allowed her to listen to. No, I did that a few times, but oftentimes things would incense me, and I'd have to. To just voice it. And she would listen to me get angry in my angry phase. She'd listen to me and humor me because I tried to go to church with her, but it didn't work. You know, I just couldn't do it. So we were living maybe for six months to a year where the family were praying and fasting for me to come back to church.

Nemo [04:25:07] And Sister PD and the kids.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:25:11] No, all the extended family. Right. There'd be family fasts on both sides of the family for me to, like, see the light and come back. And then eventually we had a conversation about maybe it was Russell M. Nelson. And he said something, and I basically said to her, why. Why are you listening to him and not to me?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:25:40] What do you mean? I said, do you know Ruslan Nelson? Have you met him? Do you know his character? He doesn't know you. Why. Why are you letting him make this decision for us instead of talking to me about it? And eventually.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:25:59] Well, I think that was maybe the point Sister PD can tell you. But for me, that was the turning point where she kind of thought, yeah, why am I letting them make my decisions for me? Why am I letting them make me feel this way or that way when I've known UPD for 20 years? And. And, you know, so. But, yeah, eventually, little by little, as I vocalized my disgust at the church, she started to agree with me.

Nemo [04:26:39] It's amazing how. How strong that deference to authority can be. The idea that she. She feels the need to defer to this external authority outside of your marriage, in kind of the church and the apostles and apostles, prophets and apostles. And it takes you actually saying, well, hang on a minute. We know each other. We trust each other. So, you know, I would expect to have a bit more weight.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:27:03] She was stuck between our families, sending Ensign articles. Do you think he might read this? You know, whatever those. Yeah. Or I want to send this email. Do you think he might read it? Or can you pass it on to him? And she's trying to, at the Same time, protect me. Because she knows the issues and what might be an issue. And I think she got to the point where they're sending things from prophets and apostles that might help or might. Might take. Tell me this or tell me that. And, yeah, I just had a kind of, let's get real and deal with what's in front of us rather than what someone's writing in some room a thousand miles away.

Nemo [04:27:57] Okay, so we're almost to the present day.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:28:02] Yes.

Nemo [04:28:02] How did you go from faith crisis to. You navigated it with your wife, life, and it's. I've really appreciated hearing how you guys navigated it. How did you then go to. I'm gonna start telling stories. I'm gonna become priest of dispatchers.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:28:21] Oh, he's. Yeah. So Covid happened. Covid. So Covid happened. And we. We lost stacks and stacks of cash, and life got bad because the world's financial system kicked us all in the ass. So we got to the point where we decided, you know what? Life's been tough.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:28:53] And we're constantly driving backwards and forwards to the area we used to live in. Why don't we just move back? And that's what we did. We put the house on the market. It sold in three days. We drove up to where sister PD's family is from because Sister PD wanted to go back to university, but she needed a support system, and it wasn't provided where we were living.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:29:19] Whatever family were close just weren't there. And so we decided we're going to go back to where sister PD's family from back to where I was the bishop, but now that I had jettisoned Mormonism, I just said, yes, we can go back and live there, but the church will not know where we are. So our records are still down south.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:29:47] And we told all of our family very clearly that they're not to pass our new address onto the church because if they come to my door, the problem is having been a priesthood leader who goes to people's doors and puts that fake smile on and feigns interest in order to try and get them back to church, I cannot believe any priesthood leader that ever comes to my door again, whether we were friends once or not, I'd just be like, I can't trust. Trust you, because I know that there's always this kind of ulterior motive.

Nemo [04:30:23] Yeah. You know why they're there.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:30:25] Yeah. So. So when we moved back, it was tough for some people to not hand out our details. You know, people tried to be like, oh, can we Bring cookies around. Can we help with this? And I'm just like, no, just, just leave us alone. If you want to give us cookies, give them to my mother in law and I'll pick them up tomorrow. You know, if you want to, if you want to see us, meet me in a park somewhere. But you don't need to be sending missionaries for me. You don't need me on the records. So we're in the lost sheep file. And then finally when I was able to kind of just breathe and let go of everything, I took stock and thought, what do I have left from all of that heartache?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:31:15] What, what, what have I got? And all I had was some interesting stories. And I, I like to write. So I was driving the kids to school one morning and yeah, I was thinking, oh, I could start a blog. People do that, don't they?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:31:35] So I thought, what could I call it? And originally it was just my stories from the front lines of high demand religion. So like anyone mentioned in dispatches from war, they get their mention in dispatches for heroics or, you know, unusual service.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:31:58] So I started Priesthood Dispatches to give my stories of priesthood service from the front lines of high demand religion. And then obviously I started writing that as a weekly. Got the website mormonpd.org and yeah, started taking other people's stories in to tell other stories because everyone's, everyone has the strange and fiction stories that they tell after dinner. You know, when everyone's sat down and you're chilling out and you say, oh, let me tell you about this time that I met this guy.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:32:38] Okay? That's what Priesthood Dispatches is. It's about the time you met this guy. You got this wrong. You got that wrong and you just ended up laughing about it. So. Yeah, and, and, and the blog became a YouTube channel. And now we're sat here annoying all of these lovely people.

Nemo [04:33:04] Yes. Yeah. And how do you feel? Go on, John P.D.

John Dehlin [04:33:11] i, I was able to spend some time with the revengers. A really lovely evening. And then another day that followed. Peter and lynn Bleakley. Nemo 21st century saints and, and others.

Nemo [04:33:27] Laura Julian Heath.

John Dehlin [04:33:29] Yeah, absolutely. Lauren Julian. Beautiful people. I'm wondering what, what it's meant for you not just to kind of raise your voice, but to have a group of peers to, to kind of not only collaborate with, but to be kind of friends and, and maybe even support. So I'd love to hear you just talk about what that's meant to you.

Nemo [04:33:55] I mean, I hear that Nemo is a bit of a pain in the Ass. So maybe.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:33:58] No, you know, what is it?

Nemo [04:33:59] Arse ass.

John Dehlin [04:34:00] Yeah, yeah, I'm kidding.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:34:03] Just. Just to answer 21st century saints message in the chat. Yes, there are women on the Priesthood dispatchers blog and channel. It is. I do not discriminate against a person based on their sex, unlike the church. So yeah, every story.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:34:23] Sisters. Sisters have some of the best ones as well from Relief Society service with like having to go to people's houses and what they find when they're cleaning. Some of those are really good. But back to the Britvengers. John. It's amazing because I didn't know any of these guys pre Sunstone like last year. Okay. And just having them as. Yeah, a support. But it's. It's not even. Just what. What do you think of this? YouTube or how are you getting more hits on this? Or whatever. You know, it is just literally. I saw this today and it's pissed me off, you know. Or have you seen this from the church?

Post-Church Community and Life After Mormonism

Priesthood Dispatches [04:35:09] What do we think? You know? Or I'm next to this really nice river and it's nice and sunny and I'm loving life, you know, it is. We've become a social group almost that never would have come together had we not been a group of outspoken vagabonds. And it's extended past to our families as well. So when we're having a chat after a show, it won't just be us having a chat. Our studio spaces will fill with children and Sister PD will come in and we'll. We'll all be chatting. So it's. It's almost like a small branch, you know, that we've created and it's become a really good kind of check and balance for the church here in the uk.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:35:54] I think we are getting a little bit more traction and they are starting to watch what we say and not quite like what we say, but yeah, yeah, it's. It's fantastic is what it is. You know, I. Because you lose your community when you lose Mormonism.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:36:17] You know, I don't. I've got one friend left that I had when I was at church. Church. Everyone else has gone and you know, so I'm. I'm not a loner. I've got other friends. Please don't feel sorry for me. But the Brit vengers are a. A good sounding board for everything Mormon. If you just outraged by something and need someone to be able to feel your pain, you can send them a link and they'll all be outraged together.

John Dehlin [04:36:48] And Nemo, I feel bad because I know You've got questions too, but I'm just dying to know, right? Like I, I know the church, the Mormon Church was in decline in the UK prior to the rise of the Brit vengers. I'm wondering, you priesthood ditch dispatches, you know, you PD individually and then maybe PD and Nemo as a group. Do you have any way, have you had any way to get a sense for the individual or collective impact you've had on the Mormon Church in the UK since your rise?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:37:23] Well, without telling tales out of church, we do know that the leadership on a local level, as in UK Europe, are aware of and that people are watching the broadcasts. And we do know that people, I guess, agree with what we're saying, even in church leadership. So it's great to hear that feedback and that church leaders. Yeah. Want to meet with us as the Britvengers. So that'd be nice. But I don't want to say too much. Nemo.

Nemo [04:38:07] Yeah, don't. So I exist.

John Dehlin [04:38:12] You still got to answer that question, Nemo.

Nemo [04:38:14] Yeah, so I exist in this weird space where, you know, I'm Nemo the Mormon.

John Dehlin [04:38:18] Right.

Nemo [04:38:18] I still engage my priesthood leaders, I still go to church, I still try and deal with the system from within. And so I get that feedback from those leaders. I get, you know, sits down with my state president and he's like, right, what's going on here? What's going on there? I had a church leader admit to me that my, you know, viewing audience, whatever is my regular viewing audience is larger than the amount of members they have in the Greater London area.

Nemo [04:38:46] So he was like, oh, you've got this influence, you know, why don't you help us out? Why don't we work together? They know, they know what we're doing. They know we're reaching people. And like, like PD said, they know we've got a point because they see the numbers too. They see the decline as well. They may disagree with us on some of the finer points, but what they can't do is disagree with us on the fact that the church is shrinking, it is disappearing.

Nemo [04:39:16] So it's in their interest to listen to what we have to say. They just can't do it too publicly otherwise, you know, the PR will mess them up.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:39:26] Yeah, I think that's the thing. It's. It's a case of the Brit vengeance. Especially in the last few broadcasts, we've not said anything that's not painfully obvious. You know, they may get upset about a few slights that we say against church leaders or whatever, but when it comes to the numbers and what's happening to the church leaders in the uk, it's Excel spreadsheet says it just as well as the Brit vengers. So. And they're looking at the same numbers we are, so they, they can't disagree. I think they just like to ignore the fact that they've screwed up in the way they've tried to build the church in the UK and just say, no, we're. We're putting these stakes back together because you've all worked so hard, have a temple.

John Dehlin [04:40:17] I mean, collapsing stakes while they add temples. Is that what you're saying?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:40:21] Yeah, in the, in the very area they're building the temple, they just collapsed two stakes into one.

Nemo [04:40:25] And then telling people that this is, this is not a bad thing. This is the culmination of all your hard work and effort in serving the church.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:40:34] Fifty years of hard work, they said, 50 years have led us to get. Get this temple and this stake, the stake that was being closed. They said, you have progressed into the other state. I'm like, talk about a poo rolled in glitter.

John Dehlin [04:40:53] Yes, I received a. I received an insider tip today. It says, I will add that the temple department is waning. This is at the corporate church, but it applies to you all. I was in a meeting last week and the focus was the precipitous drop in temple recommend holders worldwide.

John Dehlin [04:41:12] It's so much of an issue that we cannot even partially staff the current temples we have open. There is serious concern about the announced and under construction facilities yet to operate. The original thought was that COVID protocols were keeping members from renewing their recommends, but now we're coming out of the pandemic. The rates of non renewals are still climbing at an unprecedented rate. So we've got prophet Mormon, prophet Russell M. Nelson, building temples like weeds and, and membership in places like the uk shrinking, dropping, you know, at a very high rate. And how in the world are they gonna ask the temples, let alone get people to attend?

Nemo [04:41:57] That's why Elder Turvey said the one, the area 70s. Elder Turvey, who was there when they closed the Litchfield stake, he said, if you don't have a temple recommend, whatever it is, pornography, drinking, smoking.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:42:11] You started with tithing.

Nemo [04:42:12] Stop tithing. Not paying your tithing. Yeah, stop. Sort it out. Go next week. I'm paraphrasing. That's essentially what he said. It's easy, just get yourself a temper recommendation. He said, wouldn't it be brilliant if everyone had a temple recommend? Well, it'd Be brilliant for your numbers, Elder Turvey. It'd be brilliant for your numbers, but I don't think it would help.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:42:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:42:35] Are you still a member of Record PD or yeah. Or not.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:42:39] Yep. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:42:40] I'm also just. I'm just stunned at how they're not excommunicating members of the Adventures. I mean, I guess, I guess Peter Blickley was.

Nemo [04:42:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:42:51] Pd, how do both of you explain that you have not yet been excommunicated? And let me, let me just add a theory. And, and there are going to be. And I know it's late there, so I apologize that I'm prolonging this podcast, but what. You know, when you talked about the foot tickling, which is the second anointing, which Tom Phillips episode references, and the fact that your parents most likely received it. I'm going to speculate, Nemo, that maybe your parents have as well. I have no idea.

Nemo [04:43:19] No.

John Dehlin [04:43:21] You don't think they have?

Nemo [04:43:21] My parents? No, my parents definitely not.

John Dehlin [04:43:24] Okay, well. Well, at least in your case, PD like the church is in a real bind because they, they teach on the one hand that families are the most important thing and there needs to be no empty chairs. And they teach that if you're righteous, you'll. You'll have generally righteous children. Then on the other hand, you get these parents like yours, pd, that literally give their whole lives to the church. Not, not to mention how, how much money they give to the church. And then they start seeing their children fall away like flies.

John Dehlin [04:43:55] The. The church needs to have some way to make them feel better. And absolutely, one of the functions of the modern second anointing ceremony, where you get a secret, special, special foot washing by a Mormon apostle, is you get the promise that don't worry, don't worry, don't get angry or upset or disillusioned that you've given your whole life and, and infinite money to this church.

John Dehlin [04:44:22] Everything's going to be okay. Even if your children are fleeing like rats from a ship out of the church, they'll still be saved unto, you know, the second or third or fourth generations. That has to be a way to secretly keep those super devoted, tithe paying, committed top leaders from just looking around and saying, what the freak. I don't know what the British equivalent of what the fetch is, but, but, you know, how would it feel for your parents to see, you know, their children hemorrhaging from the church after a lifetime of money and service?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:45:00] It kill him. You know, it's. I always say to Sister PD that I don't want my parents to find out the church isn't true now because they've given so much. I'd just be happy for them to live the rest of their lives with the gospel. They've got a new assignment from the Area Presidency as dealing with the UK Church history. Not the way you think that was a whole thing.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:45:26] But yeah, they've got their assignments. It's a 10 year assignment and surely that'll be the last assignment. You never know. But I just want them to be happy, you know, seeing that out. But I think the church is.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:45:44] It's a bit rude of them to spiritually assassinate people. So I don't believe that they have any power over me. Okay. And they could excommunicate me tomorrow and I wouldn't bat an eyelid. I go to their meeting and I tell them that I do not give the slightest back what they're doing, but I know that for my parents that would destroy them, you know, and so the church isn't doing it to me, they're doing it to them.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:46:20] So I just hope by the time they do catch up with me, maybe, you know, they've. My parents have gone to the celestial kingdom and they're already halfway through creating their world in a nice way. But if they catch up with me sooner than that, I'm. I'm quite happy to flip them the bird and to tell them where to stick it. And my parents will get over it. It's life.

Nemo [04:46:47] As you know. John, the reason they haven't excommunicated me is because I'm incredibly charming.

John Dehlin [04:46:52] Handsome. Charming.

Nemo [04:46:54] That's what it is.

John Dehlin [04:46:55] Intelligent, good hearted.

Nemo [04:46:59] I.

John Dehlin [04:46:59] Is it. Would it be fair to say that Brits might not take to their peers being excommunicated as well as Utahns might? That there might be some nationality.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:47:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:47:11] Dynamic that could be a play. That's different than how it might be perceived in Utah or in the States. Or am I just making that up?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:47:18] No, you guys do religion a whole different way.

Nemo [04:47:21] Yeah.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:47:22] Like for you, like we're looking at what's going on in the States right now and it seems to be very religiously motivated that your religion and your politics are so intertwined. It's unreal. Like we see the memes a few years ago of when Trump was president of Trump, like signing a bill and Jesus above him and all sorts of stuff. If someone put Jesus on a picture of Boris Johnson, we'd all laugh our asses off because we can be religious. But it's not intertwined with Everything we do, I think maybe we're in. In that respect a few years, maybe we've separated church and state in a way that we did it a long time ago.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:48:09] So it's gone through society and we've come out the other end. Whereas you guys, who, you know, I'm not saying you're behind or anything, but what I'm saying is your country's still relatively young in the fact that it's only a couple of hundred years old and that you were based on religious freedom. So that was a big thing. No, I'm not digging a hole. What I'm saying is your religious freedom is still very much tied to your politics, Whereas maybe in 100 years, you know, we lost that when we chopped the King's head off 300 years ago.

John Dehlin [04:48:44] So are you saying we're better? We. Laughs Is that what you're saying?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:48:48] No, I'm saying you all just take life way too seriously.

Nemo [04:48:51] Yeah. You ungrateful colonists.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:48:55] So this is the thing though, isn't it? Yeah. I think the church, a lot of people would look and they'd be like, what was the excommunicated for?

Nemo [04:49:03] Yeah, come on now. Seriously, there'd be a lot of, like this idea as well that some. Essentially the idea that a foreign entity is intervening. Like if a call comes down from Salt Lake and tells my state president to. Threats to communicate me, there's this idea that what are they doing? This is a local matter we're going to be dealing with locally.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:49:22] You know, I, I think that that's exactly why we've not been taken to task, because local leaders look at it and they're just like, do I care? You know, if he wants to have a YouTube channel, let him have a YouTube channel. I don't care. It makes no difference to my daily life what he says on YouTube. So I'm not going to spend. Spend however many, however much time excommunicating the guy. Whereas I think if eventually the call came from elsewhere to find PD and excommunicate him, at that point, they would have to do something. But I just think local, local leaders have got enough to do.

Nemo [04:50:02] Just my final point on that, really, not to put too fine a point on it, but is that I, I guess stake presidents in Utah particularly wield a lot more social power than priesthood leaders here. So if you excommunicate someone as a priesthood leader in Utah, you make them a pariah within the community. You. You affect so much. And there's a real power trip that could come from that. If My state president excommunicates me. My life carries on as normal. Yeah. People in the church care, but like people at my work don't care. People that you, you know, people where I live don't care. This. He doesn't have that ability to affect my life in the same way. It's not as big a punishment in that sense. I wonder whether that might have something to do with it.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:50:45] Yeah, well, I mean, if you're Bob on Friday, you get excommunicated on Saturday, you're still Bob on Sunday, you know.

Nemo [04:50:53] Yeah. Anyway, so on that note, so how. My question I was just going to ask you was. Yeah. How do you feel now that you've started priesthood dispatches? How do you feel now?

Reflections, Wellbeing, and Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [04:51:09] And how has your mental health improved since leaving the church, too?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:51:12] Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, as I said earlier, if I hadn't left the church, I think I'd have. Yeah. Steadily got worse and no longer been with us. So that is great. And I think my parents probably take some comfort in that. And I think a lot of family kind of think, oh, well, just let PD be PD because that's what he needs. It's almost like I'm not accountable anymore, you know, like when people say he doesn't need to be baptized because he's not accountable. It's like, PD doesn't need to carry on because he's no longer accountable because he's crazy.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:51:48] Sorry, I'm not. We've just been here for five hours. So where we're getting to. But the. Yeah, like the family thing, we're getting over it. Like I said, I've got the best relationship now with my dad over football and sporting things and we can talk about church things when it comes to. Oh, did you hear this? Stakes closing or what do you think of that? This priesthood leader, because he knows a lot of people and I do sometimes get insider information from him and repost it without him knowing.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:52:25] Dad, if you're watching, I love you, but. Yeah, it's good. It's. It's a lot better. Like, I think I've been on a level now for over a year and probably on the most kind of stable time of life since leaving church, getting rid of all that baggage and just focusing on me and my family and just saying to myself, I am good enough. I don't need an imaginary friend to tell me I'm good enough or to make up for whatever. I'm good enough. I do my best. And if that's not enough, that's all I can Give and with. With priesthood dispatches.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:53:13] Sometimes, John, I feel like I'm pissing into the wind when it comes to all the work and different things that you do. And then you do a video and everyone's like, yeah, I didn't get it. And then sometimes you do something and it gets thousands of views and you're like, my gosh, I thought that was rubbish. But everyone loved it. So it's a mixed bag and I just. I enjoy it. It gives. It gives me someone to talk to and means Sister P doesn't have to listen to me go on old time.

Nemo [04:53:47] He's starting to discover the secret is that we don't know what we're doing either.

John Dehlin [04:53:54] Join the club.

Nemo [04:53:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:53:56] Brethren ancestry. Join the. The club.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:54:01] Yeah.

Nemo [04:54:02] I think your channel is amazing. Pd.

John Dehlin [04:54:05] Yeah. Petey, you're. You're loved. Sorry, all of you are 21st century saints. All you guys.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:54:10] Yeah, I'm trying to go to more a game show style because we want to keep things light and we want to keep things. Just have a good laugh at ourselves. And. And that's the very English way of doing things and trying to introduce it to your Americans that, that if we just sit down and take the piss out of ourselves for five minutes, we all have a great time. So, yeah, that's.

John Dehlin [04:54:35] I love it. Hey, Petey, do you want to tell us what your tattoo's all about?

Priesthood Dispatches [04:54:40] Oh, this was a big fu. Okay, sorry everyone. So this is the solar system. Not to scale. It was my first and only tattoo and I decided if I was going to get one, I needed to get one that my parents could see.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:54:59] So it's a solar system. And in the middle it has the all seeing eye of Ra, but most often seen on magical underwear. And then around the. The center, around the Kuiper Belt, it has the Neanderthal man because those were the footprints. Footprints that took me out of the church. It has a trilobite fossil because I enjoy looking at the fact that there was death before 6,000 years ago.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:55:29] Has a bipolar symbol because of obvious. And then it has a few key dates of my children's birthdays, the day that Sister PD married me, and. And the word family, because that's what it's all about now. So, yeah, it's everything. No, Pluto's not there because Pluto's not a planet. Sorry, guys.

John Dehlin [04:55:54] And then Jay Crook wants to know if it's. If it's drawn to scale. They're just being pesky at this point.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:55:59] No, it is. Pluto is on my ass. Sorry.

Nemo [04:56:03] Right Next to Uranus.

John Dehlin [04:56:05] Yes. But above.

Nemo [04:56:08] And it's that time of night, ladies

Priesthood Dispatches [04:56:10] and gentlemen, that is how the Britvengers roll.

John Dehlin [04:56:13] Yeah.

Nemo [04:56:17] Excellent tattoo.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:56:18] I remember the, the lady, the tattoo artist doing it, she said to me, so what's this all about? And I did just say it's basically a big fu to Mormonism and had to explain it, at which point we got into temple ceremonies and all sorts.

Nemo [04:56:33] Wow.

John Dehlin [04:56:35] Yes. Everybody's loving the tattoo and Nemo's jokes about the tattoo.

Nemo [04:56:40] Excellent.

John Dehlin [04:56:41] And 21st century saints says, remember who you are, please.

Nemo [04:56:45] Yes. So 21st century saint's job in the Britvengers is just to keep us all in line. Essentially when we get rambunctious, we.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:56:54] We do have a saying that we have repurposed from the creation Christian community. People have them wristbands, don't they say wwjd, what would Jesus do? But we've repurposed that to what would Jane do? So when we start to get a little bit over the top, we think to ourselves, what would Jane, Jane of 21st Century Saints Do? Because she is our mother hen who kind of tells us off when we, when we go too far.

John Dehlin [04:57:22] We'll include a link in the show Notes to Mormon Civil War, 21st century Saints and of course, and priested dispatches.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:57:32] Hey, John, can we just put Sariah Santos's comment up on the screen?

John Dehlin [04:57:39] Absolutely, if I can find it.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:57:42] Is it Sarah M. No, Sariah Santos.

John Dehlin [04:57:45] Oh, oh, okay. Yeah, right here.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:57:47] Okay. The reason I say that, Sarai is because me and Sarai knew each other back when I was the bishop and I think she was in a neighboring ward and we've not reconnected really because all of our lives went in different directions. But we kind of reconnected social media wise on here. And I just want to say, big up to you, Sariah as well, because life's been crap for everyone. So I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you came through everything and that we're all just chatting away

Nemo [04:58:22] and we could, we could chat for hours, I'm sure, but it is unfortunately that time, I think. So, John, I don't know how you like to wrap up, but I'm going to hand over to you to do so.

John Dehlin [04:58:36] Priest dispatches. Pd, thank you so much for not only coming on and telling. You're very vulnerable and moving and uplifting and inspiring, inspiring story. Thank you for that. But also thank you for the work you do to lift your voice and to bring humor and fun and truth to the people of the world. The only way the world's going to get better is if smart, thoughtful, kind, caring people lift their voices. And thank you for being a part of that. It's an honor to have you on the show.

Priesthood Dispatches [04:59:13] Thank you, John. Thank you, Nemo.

John Dehlin [04:59:15] And Nemo, thanks for what you do and thanks for making this episode happen and thanks for joining me every once in a while as a co host on Mormon Stories.

Nemo [04:59:24] We're going to bring the other Britvengers on too. Don't you worry.

John Dehlin [04:59:27] Absolutely. But I've never gotten many bad feedback from Nemo about Nemo. So, Nemo, it's just always a pleasure to have you as a part of our team.

Nemo [04:59:36] So if you have those opinions, put them in the comments and now. So it's a fair ambalance from you. No, my pleasure, John. My pleasure.

John Dehlin [04:59:43] I'm gonna say this. I don't think I've ever had as much fun karaoke as I did in the UK with, with you guys. You guys karaoke like no one. No one I've ever seen. And I hate to tell my. My American friends, ex Mormon friends that. But nobody karaoke is like, like the UK Ex Mormons. Nobody.

Nemo [05:00:05] No one. No one.

John Dehlin [05:00:07] So we can. We can end with that.

Nemo [05:00:09] There we go.

Priesthood Dispatches [05:00:10] All right, awesome.

John Dehlin [05:00:11] You guys take care. Thanks again and thanks to everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories. We had great comments on YouTube. Thanks to everyone. Ple. Please do support all the different Brit vengers by subscribing to their channels, following them, commenting and spreading the word. And of course, thanks to everyone who makes Mormon Stories podcasts and the Open Stories foundation possible. Your super chat donations here on YouTube help pay for this program.

John Dehlin [05:00:42] Whenever you're on the YouTube channels of the Revengers, please throw them some money if you can through the super chat feature as well. And then of course, know that we do our best well. We pay Gerardo and Jen and and Nemo and John Larsen and others here in the Open Stories Foundation. So if you support Mormon Stories in the Open Stories foundation, thank you financially. And if you don't and you value more of the type of content, we always welcome your support@mormonstories.org click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor and we'll keep bringing you this type of content whenever we can. And we'll keep trying to support lifting the voices of others.

John Dehlin [05:01:22] Thanks everyone. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, love each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories. Take care.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.