Introduction and Episode Context

Nemo [00:00:00] This video was recorded in the summer of 2022. My beard was longer, my skills far less refined. However, it remains an excellent interview because of the quality of our two guests. And that is why, almost two years after recording this interview, is finally going out into the world. Because ultimately, their story is worth telling, even if I did bodge it up a bit. Please enjoy. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, Nemo the Mormon. I. Why is that? Where's John? Well, we're in Britain, that's why. Our first live interview. And I'm really excited to be joined by Richard and Julian Heath. Richard and Julian, hello.

Richard Heath [00:00:37] Hello.

Nemo [00:00:37] Welcome to your home. Richard. Thank you very much for hosting this.

Richard Heath [00:00:42] You're very welcome. It's lovely having you here.

Nemo [00:00:44] Thanks. Yeah. He's saying that we have rearranged his entire house to make this work. So there's been a lot of effort put in this morning to getting everything right, but this should all go very well. So you guys are brothers? I think the audience.

Meet the Heath Brothers

Julian Heath [00:00:58] Can you tell?

Nemo [00:00:59] Yeah. Guys, tell us a little bit about yourselves.

Julian Heath [00:01:03] So. Well, do you want to go first, Rich?

Richard Heath [00:01:06] Okay. Well, just introduce myself. My name's Richard Heath. I am Julian's brother. There's ten years between us. I've known Julian all of his life. He hasn't known me all of my life. But other than that, we've got a lot in common. We're from a big Mormon family. We've had lots of similar experiences and some experiences that. That have taken us in different directions as well.

Julian Heath [00:01:32] Yeah. So you're. Where are you on the.

Richard Heath [00:01:34] I'm the middle child number four. Yeah. How many of nine? So there's. There's four older and four younger than me.

Julian Heath [00:01:43] I'm the youngest.

Nemo [00:01:44] Yeah.

Julian Heath [00:01:44] So I think I like to consider all the others as prototypes until they got to the finished product.

Nemo [00:01:50] Yeah.

Richard Heath [00:01:51] I think you'll find Julie's more like the swarf or the slag of the process.

Julian Heath [00:01:56] Can we say slag?

Nemo [00:01:58] Yeah. In a technical term. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. So nine of you in a family.

Richard Heath [00:02:02] Yes.

Nemo [00:02:03] Pretty big family.

Richard Heath [00:02:04] So I was born in the church. I know that's a term we use. I wasn't born in a church. My parents joined the church, I think, about four years before I was born. I've got a brother that's two years older than me, so he was the first of my family to be born under the covenant as a member of the church. So I was born into a member family, and it was all I knew growing up, obviously, I did the same as every other UK member of the church. I did primary and youth and young adults. And so that's what I knew all my life up until about a year ago when we decided that actually the Mormon gospel wasn't the one for us anymore.

Nemo [00:02:49] Okay, that's a really nice overview, Julian.

Julian Heath [00:02:52] Yeah, and my story is very similar. I think being the youngest, I think the family was probably a little bit more established in the church by that time. Would you agree with that? Yes, you know, we, you know, we'd been Mormons for a little bit longer, and so, yeah, I think my upbringing was very much the normal kind of upbringing for someone born in the Covenant. And so Laura, my wife, and I, we kind of left the church about six years ago, something like that.

Richard Heath [00:03:31] Yeah.

Nemo [00:03:32] Okay, so we know your church history now. We know kind of a rough outline of your life, but tell me more about you as an individual, Richard. So what do for work now? What's your family like now? That sort of thing.

Richard Heath [00:03:43] Okay, so obviously I live in Leicester. We've lived here for best part of 30 years now. I've been married for 30 years this year to Ruth, who I met through the young adult program. I have four children ranging from 18 to 28, two boys and two girls. Nicely balanced.

Richard Heath [00:04:05] I am a teacher, although I don't teach anymore. I've been. I've been in the teaching profession for 25 years now, and I'm an assistant head teacher at a special school. And so most of what I do is outside of the classroom, supporting families, supporting children, looking at their special needs and making sure that they get the provision they're entitled to. And I really love doing that. It's really rewarding.

Richard Heath [00:04:28] It's a privileged position to be in, to be able to be part of a young person's life. Especially when a lot of our young people, because of their additional needs, don't really want us as part of their life. They don't want to socialise with us, and yet we build those relationships. So that's fab. I really enjoy doing that.

Nemo [00:04:45] What about you, Julian? Tell me this is the way it's gonna go. It's always gonna be Richard first. Yeah.

Richard Heath [00:04:50] So it should be.

Julian Heath [00:04:51] But the thing is, I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm like, you're copying everything. I'm like a doppelganger of Richard. So, okay, so I've got four kids as well. No, I haven't.

Richard Heath [00:05:00] I haven't got fucking. I've just an extra child. He's just admitted to his extramarital child. First time.

Julian Heath [00:05:07] That's how much I like Richard. No, I've got. So I've got three kids, three boys, and they're a bit younger. So My eldest is 12, and my youngest is just about to turn 8. I am also a teacher, but I don't teach at the moment. So I work in kind of in a school, but work in pastoral care. So, yeah, I have kind of copied Richard most of my life, except he copied me because I left the church before him. So there you go.

Nemo [00:05:41] Right. And we will get into that relationship and how that all went. I do want to start at the beginning of your Mormon story now, though, which obviously starts with Richard first being the oldest. We will let you go first at some point, Julian, if Richard allows it. So, Richard, I'm gonna get you guys confused.

Richard's Mormon Upbringing and Family Life

Richard Heath [00:05:57] That's fine.

Julian Heath [00:05:59] We get ourselves confused. Sometimes I think I'm Richard.

Richard Heath [00:06:02] If I answer the phone and it's

Julian Heath [00:06:04] Richard, I don't know if it's me on the other end.

Nemo [00:06:07] Richard, tell me about your childhood. Tell me about the first kind of up until you were baptized. Tell me a little about that.

Richard Heath [00:06:14] So I was born in 1968. I was born into a family then that had been members for about four years. I'd got four older siblings, three brothers and a sister. My dad, and my dad was branch president of the local ward that we went to and attended at the time, or had been, I think, just prior to me being born. I don't remember a lot of that, to be honest with you. But we were born. I was born into Banbury branch at the time that became a ward while we were there. And that was very exciting. It was an interesting experience growing up as a Mormon in Banbury because they have an American Air Force base there.

Richard Heath [00:07:02] And so we had lots of Americans in our ward. My dad's counsellors and friends of the family were often American, which meant that we were invited into American homes and had a very American experience. What I didn't realize at the time was that as friends of members that were Americans that lived on the base, we were able to get access to their shops and stuff. And so we grew up with lots of things that we take for granted now, such as Oreos and Dr. Pepper and Kool Aid and M&MS. And. And Reese's and those kinds of things that that time you couldn't get in this country.

Richard Heath [00:07:34] But we. We had all of that and really enjoyed it. And it was a really exciting time to be a Mormon. Actually, I have often looked at my parents as pioneers. Now, I know that Americans might think, well, you're about 100 years too late. But my parents were the generation who joined the church as converts who were expecting to go to America at the time that the prophet first said, actually, stop going, stop coming.

Nemo [00:07:58] Right.

Richard Heath [00:07:58] I remember my parents having. Talking about having passport, or should they get passports with the intention of moving to Utah. But then the church announced, actually, we don't want any more people coming over. You need to stay where you are, strengthen the stakes where you live, and that kind of thing. So it felt like we were a pioneer family.

Nemo [00:08:19] This could have been different. And this could have been an interview we're doing in Utah.

Richard Heath [00:08:22] Absolutely.

Nemo [00:08:23] They could have gone.

Richard Heath [00:08:24] And I think there was some serious talk at one point about it. I think the main reason they didn't. My oldest brother Larry, who's 10 years older than me, I think had said he really didn't want to. I guess he'd have been at the age where he was a teenager at the time.

Richard Heath [00:08:37] I know he and his wife met a very young age, and they eventually married. And so he probably wouldn't have wanted to leave because he'd got friends and he was invested in the area. And so I think that was the main reason they didn't go. I might have got all that wrong. I'm often told by my siblings that I make stuff up, but these are the things as I remember them. Yeah, but we spent a lot of time in the. In the chapel or whichever building we were using as a chapel when we were a branch, which I think was a local community center. And I've got fond memories of firesides, when they really probably felt like firesides, you know, in people's homes and of.

Richard Heath [00:09:15] I got lots of memories of refreshments for some reason, which is obviously an important thing to me at the time. When I was 5, nearly 6, we moved to Birmingham. Now, I'd never lived in Birmingham before, although we kind of talk about it as moving back to Birmingham, because my mum and dad are from Birmingham. My grandparents all lived in Birmingham. They were of an age where I think my parents felt they needed to move back to spend time with their parents before they got too old, and also to give additional support and care and all those kinds of things.

Richard Heath [00:09:44] So we moved back to Birmingham. At that point, it didn't feel very different other than we realized, oh, my goodness, there is no Dr. Pepper. All those other lovely things that we enjoyed. I loved being part of a bigger family. As we moved Back to Birmingham. My mum, I've got a sister that's two years younger than me, so she was born while we were down in Banbury. And then when we came back to Birmingham, Mum had more children as well. I loved having little brothers and sisters. I've always enjoyed having babies and toddlers around. That was exciting. It kind of, when I look back on it now, it sounds a little bit sad because we were a big family.

Richard Heath [00:10:25] Perhaps I didn't have access to a lot of the things that my friends had that cost money and clubs and those kinds of things. I didn't do scouts, I didn't go to join a football club, I didn't go to swimming lessons or any of those things. And I don't say that in a woe is me type way, but what was really exciting was not only telling people that I was a Mormon, that was always a novel thing to be able to share with people and to be able to then explain to people what that meant, but also that I was from this big family, this family of so many kids.

Richard Heath [00:10:54] It didn't always go in my favor. And I was teased a little bit about that at school because it meant that we were not as well off and that we weren't poor by any stretch of the imagination. And my parents looked after us very well. We had a lovely home, we were always full, we were always clothed. But I think, you know, kids can be quite cruel at school and so they look for any reason to tease you. And so I was teased a little bit about that.

Nemo [00:11:17] And coming from a big Mormon family and things like that, that also sets you apart, makes you a bit different. Just for the listeners in America, this is a Birmingham accent that we're hearing right now from Richard. And Julian has a similar accent.

Richard Heath [00:11:28] I didn't think I had an accent. He surprises me.

Julian Heath [00:11:30] I thought yours was more of a Leicester accent. Mine's a solely whole accent.

Richard Heath [00:11:34] It's a long way from Leicester that mine is. But yeah, and it was exciting and, and I enjoyed being a member of the church. I enjoyed growing up at church. I enjoyed the, the facilities that, that enabled us to, to enjoy and the things it allowed us to be a part of. I've got some very fond memories of lovely parents who tried very, very hard to do the things that they had been asked to do by their, their leaders. You know, I've got memories of scripture study together and like most people, I would imagine, like most families, it came and went. Sometimes we'd be having family home evening and we do that for Six months at a time.

Richard Heath [00:12:11] Then we might have a year without it. Same with scripture study, same with family prayer. Although we often pray together, it might not have been as formal as beginning and end of the day. Yeah, obviously we pray together to bless our food and those kinds of things. But I've got lovely memories. One particular one, I remember dad wanting us to read our scriptures together. And the only time that could happen was fairly early in the morning.

Richard Heath [00:12:32] And so we decided that as a family we would go for a run first around the block, which is probably, you know, half a mile to a mile or so in. Probably about half a mile. And we were. It was probably about 6 o' clock in the morning. The neighbors must have thought we were crazy. We weren't dressed for running. We didn't have trainers and tracksuits. We'd have probably got our school uniforms on, maybe in our pajamas, I can't remember. But we ran around the block just to make sure we were fully awake. Got back to the house. Mum didn't run with us, but dad did.

Richard Heath [00:13:02] And then we would have our scripture study together. That probably lasted about two days. I can't remember. It felt like it lasted for, you know, 10 years or so. But that kind of thing, family home evening could be fun sometimes. And Mum and Dad were quite creative about that. Obviously there were the family home evening manuals that we had.

Richard Heath [00:13:23] When we use those occasionally. Dad was very good at encouraging us to take part and to be responsible for various elements of it, whether it was the conducting or choosing the hymns or saying the prayers or preparing a little activity or a game. And they were fun to do. And so I've got some really fond memories of growing up in the church.

Nemo [00:13:43] Okay, so we're almost, almost essentially at the end of the Julian free years. You know, the years before Julian, the BJ years.

Richard Heath [00:13:52] We like to call them the wonder years.

Nemo [00:13:54] The wonder years, yeah, the years before Julian. So just before Julian was born, a couple years before Julian was born, you were baptized. Do you have any particular memories of your. Of your baptism?

Richard Heath [00:14:02] I do. I think my bishop at the time, I think it was a chap called Mike Williams, who was a significant character. Actually, we might mention him a bit later on. He was a lovely man. If it wasn't him, it was Bruce Robertson, but I think it was Mike Williams. And I don't remember my bishop's interview. I'm sure I had one. I genuinely can't remember anything that we did, any covenants that I promised to keep at that point or things I committed To. I don't remember. I do remember that I was, I think at that point in the class was called the Targeteers.

Nemo [00:14:42] Right.

Richard Heath [00:14:43] In primary at that point there were certain things that you could get. You know, nowadays kids are used to having their CTR rings but there were other things. So if you were a blazer boy you'd have the blazer boy banner and as you learned your articles of faith you'd get the thing that stuck on it. I loved that.

Richard Heath [00:14:57] And I think as a targeteer there were things that you had to work towards as well in preparation for baptism. So I remember that very well. And I think Mike Williams had been my primary teacher at that point. I think he was called as bishop just as I reached the point to be baptized. So he was quite a special person. I felt like he was my bishop because he'd been my, my primary teacher as well. I was baptized in the Handsworth Chapel which of course is an interesting building. It doesn't, it's not there anymore but it was the first purpose built Mormon chapel in the uk I believe it had an interesting font that had been purpose made.

Richard Heath [00:15:34] It was, I think it was made from a brass or copper and it was verdigried and very old and nice looking or polished up and what have you. My most endearing memory was obviously it was lovely. And again, I don't mean this in. In way of a moon. You don't get a lot of attention when you're one of six, seven, eight or nine. As, as our family grew and I think everyone thrives on attention. I think Julian would probably say the same thing. I spent the rest of my life then trying to get attention from my parents. Not because they didn't give me attention, they're lovely.

Richard Heath [00:16:07] But just wanted to hear my parents say, well done Richard, you've done a great thing there. Fantastic. You've got your qualifications or you've got your degree or you've got a nice job or you've written a nice story. Always looking for that. In my baptism the focus was on me and I loved that I got a new set of scriptures which was lovely. The biggest memory was we forgot to take towels with us.

Nemo [00:16:28] This is before they had a nice stocked linen cupboard full of towels and jumpsuits and stuff.

Richard Heath [00:16:33] And I remember we got baptized. I couldn't swim at the time when I was baptized I hadn't had a lot of experience of water and I was quite frightened about the idea of going underwater, which I know sounds ridiculous now but I was. I remember it being. I remember Feeling very safe, that my dad was baptizing me. And I remember being baptized and lifted back out of the water and hugged by my dad, which was lovely. And then we went into the changing rooms and it was cold. It was very, very cold. We had no towels. I can't remember how we dried ourselves because dad nor I had anything to dry ourselves on. We probably put our clothes on, were very wet when I went back out to be confirmed. And that's about all I can remember. I know lots of people said lovely things about me, which was really pleasant.

Nemo [00:17:19] Yes, they do, because they want you to feel like you're entering the fold. They want you to feel like you're entering this. This community. This is your rite of passage, is your entrance. So they're all going to reinforce this idea that you've done a very good thing and how lovely that is and all that sort of stuff.

Richard Heath [00:17:32] And I'm sure there was lots of that. Again, I don't have a lot of memory of it and it didn't. Other than it was a bit of an event. I can't say it was an epiphany for me. I didn't feel like my spiritual life started at that point. In fact, I felt like I was a Mormon beforehand. I was born into a Mormon family. I'd always gone to church, so it didn't feel like anything had started. It was just a something that happens.

Nemo [00:17:54] It's a natural continuation of the process, isn't it?

Julian Heath [00:17:57] Yeah.

Nemo [00:17:57] Yeah. So then you got a couple of. Couple more Julian free years.

Richard Heath [00:18:00] Yeah.

Nemo [00:18:01] Anything significant happened before he came out? Kicking the scream into the world, fully bearded, really?

Richard Heath [00:18:05] Not really.

Julian Heath [00:18:06] Was that. There was that comet, wasn't there, that marked my birth.

Richard Heath [00:18:11] Do you remember that?

Nemo [00:18:13] Yeah.

Richard Heath [00:18:14] So I. I went to Young Men's, obviously, when I was 12. Now, I know Julian had come at that point, but just a significant thing. When I was about 11, we moved from where we had first moved to. When we moved back to Birmingham, to a bigger house in an area called Chelmsley Wood, which was a relatively new estate at the time.

Richard Heath [00:18:37] And I got a friend who lived. Their house was at the back of our house. And I was the kind of person. I spent a lot of time out of doors. I was an outdoor kind of person. Back in those days, you could play outdoors and be relatively safe, and I enjoyed that. So my friend's father ran the local scout group. I always wanted to be a scout and they took me along. I didn't have uniform, but they had spare, so they gave me some Spare shirt and a spare beret, which must have looked absolutely ridiculous, and a neckerchief and a toggle. And I was so excited to be a Scout.

Richard Heath [00:19:14] However, I was reaching the age where I was supposed to start Young Men's and it happened to be on the same night that Scouts was on. And I remember my dad saying, you won't be able to go to Scouts. I think it was put to me as a bit of a decision, but it was clear that there was no decision to be made. I was going to Young Men's and that was the right thing to do. However, I was given this carrot of the church in this country are going to start Scouting. They're going to, you know that they do that in America already. They're in talks with the British Scouting movement and we're going to start running Scouts from the chapels. And I was so excited and it never happened.

Nemo [00:19:53] Do you know why that didn't materialize?

Richard Heath [00:19:55] I don't, I don't know how closely associated with the American Boy Scout movement is the British one is. So I suspect from what, how it was presented to me, it was almost like it's a given it's going to happen because the church pretty much runs the Scouting program in the States. So I'm not sure why it didn't. There was, there was a hazardous guess

Julian Heath [00:20:18] because the church isn't very aware of the church outside of the US it could have been that, you know, there is a program that's very much in place in the US that's affiliated with the Boy Scouts and it's just not that inclined to look outside of its borders.

Richard Heath [00:20:36] I think it could have been that. It could have been that.

Nemo [00:20:39] Right.

Richard Heath [00:20:39] But I was, I, I wasn't, I was disappointed to not go. I did enjoy Young Men's and I kind of threw myself into that. But, yeah, that was significant to me because it was the first time really I'd had to make a choice that was something to do with my religion. Previous to that, you just did what your. Your parents, just as it went, had you do. So. Yeah.

Nemo [00:21:00] Okay, so Julian's born just a couple years before this. Julian was born with a full head of hair and a beard, as we know. These are how the tales, the tales are told. Julian, I want you to tell us a little bit about your early childhood. And then I want to talk to you, Richard, about what it was like for you when Julian was born. So, Julian, please.

Julian Heath [00:21:18] I think, I think that probably the areas where my childhood differs maybe somewhat from Rich is that being the youngest of so many. I think I'll probably, you know, my older siblings played a very important role in my life, you know, so my oldest, my oldest brother, when I was born, he had his own son, you know, and so, you know, he would. There were times where both my oldest brother and my oldest sister would play almost, you know, parental roles, you know, where during the six weeks holidays and just going out and doing stuff with their kids, you know, my, my older siblings probably had a stronger influence on me, I think, than my, than my parents, probably be fair to say.

Julian Heath [00:22:10] Fantastic childhood, fantastic childhood in the, the church, you know, and I think I was, I was, as Richard was talking, I was thinking about the fact that I think certainly in the uk the church now looks very different to the church that I grew up in. And probably the same with you in that there was much more going on. There were regular far sides and activities. You know, it felt like there was some kind of church activity. You know, every, certainly every month, you know, we've the Stake five side football and stake athletics and road shows and, you know, all different kind of parties that we would have.

Julian Heath [00:22:49] And I don't think we really, I don't think you see that so much now, but that was a really important part of our lives and, you know, we would get involved in all of those things.

Nemo [00:22:59] The social aspect of the church has definitely declined in recent years. Certainly during my youth, roadshows died off. During my youth here in the uk, stake athletics stopped being a thing. Multi stake athletics stopped being a thing. A lot of these things that I think were keeping a lot of people in the church, to be honest, started to disappear.

Richard Heath [00:23:16] Yeah.

Julian Heath [00:23:16] Which I think is a real shame. And you know, we. So as I got older, you know, we would get involved in lots of that stuff. I remember doing Stake five aside, and the football team would pretty much be me and my brothers and my, my nephews that were kind of same age as me and, and my oldest brother would kind of run the team and stuff like that.

Nemo [00:23:45] Yes.

Julian Heath [00:23:45] So it was really good. Something that I think was important for me growing up in the church was Richard's already touched on this a little bit. I think being the youngest of nine kids, you really gotta, you've gotta make yourself known. You've got to make your presence known.

Julian Heath [00:24:12] And to some extent the church allowed me to do that. I think I was a very confident reader at very young age and that was quite possibly down to me reading through all of Richard's asterisks and Tintin comics and stuff. Like that.

Julian Heath [00:24:35] And. And that allowed me to kind of get involved in church at a very young age. So. So even at primary age, allowed me to go on and get up and give talks. And, you know, I even remember when dad was on the.

Julian Heath [00:24:52] Was on the Stake High Council, I would go around with him and I would. There was this talk that I would give. There was a book. There's a book that my dad had called. I think it was like, if Jesus came to my house and he'd. And it was all. It was just this story about if Jesus came to my house, I'll do all of these. These wonderful things for him. And he'd kind of. He'd edited it in places to kind of Mormon. Mormonize it.

Richard Heath [00:25:18] So. Not cup of tea.

Julian Heath [00:25:19] Yes. And stuff like this. And. And so I would, you know, that would be my performance when I go and give his talks. I would get up and I would read this. This.

Nemo [00:25:32] How old were you?

Julian Heath [00:25:34] I don't know exactly, but I was. I was, you know, definitely primary age at the time.

Richard Heath [00:25:38] My parents had a small mobile home. Wasn't it a Roma home? Very little mobile home. But dad used to drive that as his main vehicle. Right. So when he was on the High Council, he used to go around doing visiting talk assignments. That's what he would go in. And he had. We, as a family, we had set up a branch of the, say, the Children Fund in the local area. So he had a Save the Children Fund, dick all on the front with the words Heathlander.

Nemo [00:26:04] Yeah.

Julian Heath [00:26:05] Underneath. And didn't it. I'm sure they were cutting vinyl. Certainly on one of them it said families, families are forever, or something like that.

Life with Nine Children in a Mormon Family

Nemo [00:26:13] All right. Wow. So I suppose because you guys had. There was nine children in the era before MPVs, right. So what was it like carting nine children around?

Julian Heath [00:26:24] Well, it never happened, really. Did you? Because there was so much of a gap.

Richard Heath [00:26:27] Yes.

Julian Heath [00:26:27] So we never all lived at home.

Richard Heath [00:26:29] So.

Julian Heath [00:26:30] So when. When I was. And also. So I'm. I'm a tween as well, so I've got twin sister. So before we were born, my oldest brother had moved out. He. He was married. He had his own family.

Nemo [00:26:43] Right.

Julian Heath [00:26:43] So we. We never all lived together at the same time, did we?

Richard Heath [00:26:46] Having said that, it's still a pertinent question because it still wasn't easy. And my dad didn't learn to drive until quite late either. But I think he probably got about five or six children at the time. And he got a Hillman imp.

Nemo [00:26:59] Right.

Richard Heath [00:27:00] And I remember at times traveling all the way to North Wales for holiday in the Footwell at the back because there wasn't enough seat space. Now, actually, that might not have been my dad's car. We'd got some friends who we were very close with that we grew up with in our. In Chelsea Woodward. They also had nine children. Right. And we would often, you know, there were times we went on holiday together to North Wales. It might have been in the back of their car because we often travel.

Nemo [00:27:23] And which family was that?

Richard Heath [00:27:24] It was the Wilkins family.

Nemo [00:27:26] So that's why if you go to Chelmsy Wood Ward, it's the Heath and the Wilkins. And that's the Ward.

Richard Heath [00:27:31] Yes.

Julian Heath [00:27:31] Yeah.

Richard Heath [00:27:32] There are one or two other lovely people as well that go there,

Julian Heath [00:27:37] the

Richard Heath [00:27:37] Wilkins and the Heath love very much. But that's. That's lovely. There were a lot of us and certainly when we were all active and when they were all active, there were a lot of us all together. So you say it was before MPVs. It was also before lots of laws, so there's no law about seat belts for startups. So we could cram as many people on the back seats and a couple in the front if we wanted to. And I remember one memorable Sunday morning. Dad often would go for priesthood meeting first or a priesthood ward correlation type meeting first thing in the morning before we were up.

Richard Heath [00:28:15] And he'd gone down to the chapel one morning when it had snowed in the night and we weren't aware of it. And I think he had a white Ford Cortina estate at the time. And he'd come home again and said, you know, everyone, get up, get ready for church, as we did. But he said, it's going to be a bit difficult because the car's spinning around a little bit. I think it was a rear wheel drive and it wasn't handling the road conditions very well. And I remember traveling all the way to church with the boot, the hatchback boot up with my brother. Eden and myself sat on the back with our legs dangling, so we've got a little bit more weight in the back and a bit more purchase and we drove to church like that. So.

Julian Heath [00:28:51] Right.

Richard Heath [00:28:51] While we didn't have big vehicles, we didn't have as many constraints, but perhaps.

Nemo [00:28:55] Right, that makes sense. And I'm sure the. The Wilkins family were doing something similar. I'm sure.

Richard Heath [00:29:00] I'm sure they were.

Nemo [00:29:01] So just. I want to make clear for the audience then, how this age gap or how the age distribution works. So you were born in 68, did you say?

Richard Heath [00:29:09] Yes.

Nemo [00:29:09] So your oldest brother was born in 58.

Richard Heath [00:29:11] Yes.

Nemo [00:29:11] So there's already a 10 year age gap there to the middle and then 10 years. There's a 20 year, 20 year age span between. So when you were born, your oldest brother was 20.

Julian Heath [00:29:22] 21 years. 21 years.

Nemo [00:29:24] 21 years. Okay, so that's how big the age of it. Is there a reason for the, the large age span? Because I know, so I'm one of six, but my mum had all her children every two years and three months pretty much to the letter.

Richard Heath [00:29:36] That's not a conversation I've ever had with my mum. My mum loved having babies. I think she liked being pregnant and I'm not saying it was easy for her because I know it wasn't. Certainly when she was old, when you think having twins. I think she was 42 when she had Julian and Serena. So it must have been hard work for her. And I know for the, for her pregnancy with the twins and with my brother that came before Jonathan, she spent quite a lot of the time in the hospital.

Richard Heath [00:30:03] However, I think she enjoyed being pregnant and she enjoyed having babies. And I remember, I remember being quite hurt at one point when she would say to us, oh, why'd you ever grow up? Because she loved having a baby. Now that I've got children on my own, I love having grown up kids and they're lovely, they're nice to each other, they're lovely to us. But I do miss having a baby and so I guess I understand what mum's thoughts and feelings were there.

Julian Heath [00:30:28] We sort of, we're kind of like three different families almost, aren't we?

Richard Heath [00:30:32] Yeah.

Julian Heath [00:30:33] So there's three, lots of three. And each lot of three has two boys and a girl.

Richard Heath [00:30:38] In fact, there are some interesting symmetries and patterns about our family, aren't they, with regard to how many children each of us went on to have and the distribution of boys and girls. And the best one being that if you, the last two born, Julian and Serena, both have three children, whereas many of us have even numbered children. And Julian's had all boys and Serena's had all girls, which is quite interesting.

Nemo [00:31:03] That's very interesting.

Julian Heath [00:31:05] That just makes me smile because that's before my mom died. So my mom had had Alzheimer's and whenever I would visit her, that is the thing that she would just, she would just repeat. It was just, you know, her kind of loop was how amazing it is that a twin girl had three girls and a twin boy had three boys. And you just repeat that over and Over.

Nemo [00:31:26] Okay. So to your childhood, Julian. Do you remember anything particularly significant about your baptism?

Julian's Baptism and Childhood in the Church

Julian Heath [00:31:36] Yeah, sort of. I. I remember. I remember the fact. So I didn't have that. You know, that thing that you mentioned, Rich, this idea that, well, this is my day. Because I didn't have that because I got baptized on the same day as Serena. I made her go first. And I can't remember what excuse I gave. Probably I probably said that the water was too hot or something like that. It wasn't. It was because I was scared of water as well. We're not big swimmers.

Nemo [00:32:03] You grew up in the Midlands, right? You grew up in the middle of the country.

Julian Heath [00:32:06] Yeah. My mom, I don't think could ever swim.

Richard Heath [00:32:09] No. And dad.

Julian Heath [00:32:11] Well, yeah, if you speak to dad, he'll say that he could swim for a couple of years, but he doesn't know if he'd be able to do it now. Yeah, not. Not big swimmers.

Richard Heath [00:32:19] So I remember that we did have swimming pools.

Nemo [00:32:22] Yeah, of course. So it's not about more canals than Venice in Birmingham.

Richard Heath [00:32:26] Exactly. I just think there was no impetus there to learn to swim. Really.

Nemo [00:32:30] Yeah.

Julian Heath [00:32:31] So, yeah, I do remember that. I remember feeling a little bit nervous about doing it. I'm trying to think now, was it Eden that baptized me and you baptized Serena, or was it the other way around?

Richard Heath [00:32:41] I can't remember. I was gonna say, can you remember who baptized you?

Nemo [00:32:44] So that's interesting, the idea that your dad didn't baptize all of the kids, that essentially older siblings stepped in. Was there a reason for that?

Richard Heath [00:32:52] I think just because dad wanted us to be able to exercise an element of our priesthood that we hadn't been able to before, I think it made the experience a little nicer. I don't know whether Julian and Serena were asked and given a choice whether they had any feelings about it either way, but I think it meant that not only were two of the Heath being baptized, but two of the Heath who are young priesthood holders are doing the baptizing as well. And it was kind of a. A step for all of us then.

Julian Heath [00:33:24] Yeah. I can only. The only other thing I can remember

Nemo [00:33:29] is.

Julian Heath [00:33:31] But this is probably very, very true of most 8 year olds that get baptized. I can remember really hoping that I'd get a present off Richard and he'd have something to do with martial arts. That's what I remember distinctly. Remember that he didn't.

Nemo [00:33:48] Why was that hope there? What have you done to fuel that hope, Richard?

Richard Heath [00:33:52] Well, like most teenage boys, probably as a teenager, I love Martial arts. And I love Bruce Lee, and I like the idea of learning martial arts. And I've. I've tried various ones at various times. I was never any good at them, and. And actually, not only does being punched hurt, but punching people hurts as well. I learned that quite early on. I didn't buy my martial arts toy, but I did roundhouse kick. You. You probably don't.

Julian Heath [00:34:17] No, he. I would. Often Richard would. Would come. But this is. Again, this is how I remember. Richard would come back from work and he'd go upstairs and go upstairs and he'd show me some nunchuck chuckers or some Tom or some knife.

Richard Heath [00:34:32] Butterfly knives. Excellent. And I have to say, I got that from my big brother, so.

Nemo [00:34:39] Right.

Richard Heath [00:34:40] My brother Adrian, who. Who sadly died when he was 18. And that was a big thing to my family, obviously, and a big part of being a member of the church helped us get past that. He was my big brother, and he had very similar tastes to those that I had and grew up with, and then that Julian and Jonathan had as well. And I remember vividly coming home from school and Adrian going, richard, come upstairs and see what I've got. And he would show me either because he was very into biology and medicine, he'd have some medical thing that he wanted to show us, or he'd got a new pocket knife or a bowie knife or whatever he'd got.

Nemo [00:35:16] And how old are you when Adrian died?

Richard Heath [00:35:19] I was 11. Turned 12.

Nemo [00:35:21] Yeah. Okay, so it is around this sort of time.

Richard Heath [00:35:24] Yeah, yeah.

Nemo [00:35:24] And how did that affect the family? I'll get both your perspectives on that.

Richard Heath [00:35:30] Do you want to go first, or.

Julian Heath [00:35:32] It didn't affect me directly at all because I was one. So I've got no memory of him at all. I've got no memory of Adrian.

Nemo [00:35:42] And then you essentially grew up with a ghost almost. You grew up with this, with your brother being talked about, someone that you never met.

Julian Heath [00:35:48] Yeah. And that. And that's. That is something that is really important and something that became important to me kind of later on when I. When I left the church. But even though I have no personal memory of him, he was still very much a part of our family. Obviously, one of the great things about Mormonism is this idea that families are forever and that we'd all be together again. So that was a really strong part of our.

The Loss of Their Brother Adrian

Julian Heath [00:36:16] Of our family narrative. And, you know, we don't. I think this is typical of probably most religions, even though it's so. It's so focused on. On the next life, you know, that's the big thing about religion or certainly a major element of religion, isn't it? That it promises this next life after this life. And we don't know really what that meant. But the one thing that it absolutely meant was that I would get to meet Adrian and so I would fantasize about that and think about what it would be like meeting him. And you know, and obviously we would pray for him every day in our prayers.

Julian Heath [00:36:55] We would remember Adrian. And I even remember having dreams about him and about. I remember my twin sister one day waking up and saying that he'd appeared to her and sat on her bed. I think if I'm remembering this correctly, that it appeared to inside her bed. And I remember thinking, I wish I'd had that kind of experience.

Julian Heath [00:37:23] So, so definitely there was that. It was very, you know, he was very much tied up into our family narrative, our family mythology or whatever. There was that. But I think kind of as an adult now I'm starting to understand that it also had a massive impact on, on about our family, as I'm sure you can imagine. You know, for me, you know, if not, I mean my mum and dad are great people and I know I'm pious, but I think they're wonderful people and one of the things that just makes them absolute heroes in, in my eyes is the fact that that didn't just destroy them.

Julian Heath [00:38:04] You know, to lose a child, you know, a 17 year old child, somebody that they knew really, I mean losing a child anyways is just awful. But someone that was, you know, an integral part of their family, to lose that and to just not implode, I think he's just absolutely heroic.

Nemo [00:38:22] And so Richard, you were 10, 11 at the time, 11, 12. And so if you don't mind, first of all, just to kind of get the story, if you don't mind sharing, how did Adrian die?

Richard Heath [00:38:35] So Adrian lived away from home at the age of 17 and he, he worked at the Good Hope Hospital in St. Colfield and lived in the digs that they have for the medical staff there. And he would be away during the week, he'd come home every weekend and he did come home every weekend. He would often go out of a night time with friends to go dancing and socializing. He was usually always back come Saturday night and he would come to church with us on the Sunday and this one particular weekend he hadn't come home. And so obviously mum was worried about that and was they were making phone calls to try and locate him.

Nemo [00:39:17] Right.

Richard Heath [00:39:17] So Adrian's death certificate says that he took his own life.

Nemo [00:39:21] Right.

Richard Heath [00:39:22] And I don't really need to argue one way or another as to whether that was the case or not. Obviously, as a family, we didn't want to believe that, and not necessarily because of the stigma that was attached to suicide at that time, certainly in the Mormon church, but because we knew Adrian and we thought we knew Adrian better than that. Adrian was a force of nature. He was. And people that knew Adrian, and I don't think they were just saying this because we'd lost him and they were trying to be kind to us, would say that he was one of a kind. They've never met a person like Adrian.

Richard Heath [00:39:55] He had a thirst for knowledge and a lust for life. And I don't think any of us had ever seen him a stage where we would have thought he would have done that. He, to our knowledge, didn't suffer with any form of depression. He wasn't unhappy about stuff at the time.

Richard Heath [00:40:14] And so growing up, I grew up both being persuaded by my family, who felt it very strongly, and also by myself that he didn't kill himself. It was an accident, and it was an accidental overdose. Now, it just so happens that the particular medication that was the cause of his death that he was taking at the time for some injury that he'd sustained, was removed from the market and came to be known as teenage suicide pill.

Nemo [00:40:39] Right.

Richard Heath [00:40:40] Because lots of people had died from it by accidental overdose. And so that kind of shored up that belief of mine. As I say, I don't think it matters either way. What matters to me is that if Adrian did take his own life, that he was an intelligent enough young man to know that he had reached the end of wherever journey he was on, and that life held less for him than death.

Richard Heath [00:41:04] And I certainly have never, ever would never, ever judge anybody in that situation. Obviously, as a result of that, I spent many, many years pondering suicide and what it might mean, what it might mean to God, how God might feel about that.

Richard Heath [00:41:21] And I wrote lots of. Of thoughts down and poems and all kinds of things as a teenager, trying to make sense of that. But I came to the point where I realized, actually, when someone takes their own life, the only thing that is left for us to do, that are left behind, is to ask, is there anything that we could have done? What could we do different in the future for somebody in that situation and to remember them and to love them, it was a huge thing for me at the time. And I kind of, for the. The rest of my life, brushed over It.

Richard Heath [00:41:53] I was. I did have dreams about Adrian for a long time afterwards. And my dream would always be walking down the road in Castle Bromwich, back from school to find that Adrian was home and everyone was having a party and.

Richard Heath [00:42:07] And to wake up from that was probably as painful as hearing in the first place that Adrian had died. And I think perhaps I underestimate sometimes the person that I am as a result of going through that experience. Because he was an important person to me. I held him in high esteem. He was someone that I was very proud of, was proud for people to know that he was my big brother because everyone loved him. He was such a lovely young man. Having said that, and my siblings would all agree with me on this, he could be a booger at times. He really knew how to wind people up and how to tease and get a rise out of people.

Richard Heath [00:42:45] But he also knew how to love you. And he showed that to us. And so that was a big deal. And Julian said exactly what I was going to say. What my greatest memory of that time was thinking how on earth can my parents continue to live having had this experience? And now that I'm a parent myself, and of course I have those fears for my own children. Every time they leave the house, that's something terrible might happen to them. I just don't know how they did it. And they are amazing people, as were a lot of the people that were in our ward at the time who gathered around.

Richard Heath [00:43:19] Certainly I felt loved and cared for. I spent best part of at least that what that first week when Adrian died at the Wilkins home with them keeping us busy and occupied and looking after us. And that was really, really lovely of them.

Nemo [00:43:34] And

Richard Heath [00:43:37] it certainly helped me. I couldn't go to the funeral. I didn't go to go to my brother's funeral. I stayed with the neighbor. And interestingly, we listened to the Madness Baggage Houses album. Adrian was a big fan of Madness. I think it was the last gig he went to before he died.

Richard Heath [00:43:55] But I just couldn't go. And it's given me actually a really difficult and unhealthy relationship with funerals. I don't think anybody would go, oh, I love a good funeral. So to hear me say I really don't enjoy funerals isn't surprising, but I don't know how to act at a funeral. I was cross with people who were sad about Adrian's death, who weren't his family. And I felt, how dare you? This is my loss. This is my sadness. This was my brother, and I should be the One crying. You don't need to cry. Of course, that was the response of an 11 year old who knew no different, who probably didn't know how to process his own emotions anyway.

Richard Heath [00:44:31] And looking back on that, of course those people that cried loved him, and if they hadn't have cried as an adult, I'd be really surprised. But I found that very difficult. When I go to funerals now, I find it really difficult to be part of it. I feel like I'm encroaching on other people's sadness, and I do really struggle with that, which is difficult, you know, in my work because I work with some youngsters that have some very severe and complex medical needs. We lose students, you know, every year or so. And I go to the funerals. I find them very, very difficult for that reason, because I don't really know how to act.

Nemo [00:45:08] And how do you go on, Julie?

Julian Heath [00:45:10] No, I was just gonna say, you know, going back to Adrian. So obviously all of my knowledge and my kind of everything that I know about comes through other people. It's come through to me through the. The stories that are told about him and a lot of the things that Richard has talked about there. But there were also several really important stories of a somewhat miraculous nature that, again, were kind of a very important part of, for me, of the Heath narrative. And they involved Adrian appearing to different

Richard Heath [00:45:51] people or people hearing Adrian's voice.

Julian Heath [00:45:54] Yeah, yeah.

Nemo [00:45:55] So it's Adrian, Adrian. Adrian held up as this almost Alvin figure in your family. If you're framing it from a Mormon worldview, could you see some of that?

Richard Heath [00:46:06] I don't think so. I don't think so. You know, Adrian wasn't in his lifetime, although he was an interesting character. And I think looking back on it, we can see that he wasn't treated any differently, I don't think, from the rest of us. He was a little bit of a golden child in that he was. He had a lot of knowledge that he. He had found out for himself about certain things. And he had lots of interests and lots of hobbies, and he had his finger in lots of different pies, and he liked to do all kinds of things that we growing up then enjoyed doing as well.

Richard Heath [00:46:38] But what it did do was helped us to really lean into our Mormon belief because we had to, to survive, really. And how people without a belief cope with that, perhaps it's easier, I don't know. But it did help us to think, you know what, we can cope with this because we know there is something after this life. And I have to say adding on from. From Julian. And I won't go into the details of the different people that say they had experiences where Adrian either visited them or they heard Adrian's voice saying that he hadn't killed himself, that it was an accident. I've got to say that of all the things that I've been able to let go of now that I don't go to church, I still have a belief in the afterlife.

Richard Heath [00:47:14] Now, what it is, I don't know. And it certainly isn't what the Mormon Church taught the afterlife is. And I think I don't really know what the Mormon Church teaches specifically, because I think it's quite nebulous. I had an idea of a 50s American household where the men wore white shirts and ties and the ladies wore cocktail dresses and everyone was happy. You know, a bit like the Jetsons type celestial kingdom vision. And I don't think it is that. I don't necessarily believe that we are all families together afterwards or any of that stuff. However, there have been experiences that people have shared that I believe, including one recently when my mother died that my wife had.

Richard Heath [00:47:54] And again, I won't go into that. That's her story. But it does mean that I do have a little bit of a life, that there is some belief, right? There is something after this life.

Nemo [00:48:04] And Julian, what are your thoughts on that?

Julian Heath [00:48:07] You're just different. Okay. Well, I was gonna ask you, actually, Rich, am I allowed to ask Richard questions?

Nemo [00:48:13] Yeah, thanks.

Julian Heath [00:48:14] But I don't take over now. So all those stories about Adrian. So did you believe all those stories growing up?

Richard Heath [00:48:22] I had no reason not to believe them because I was a believing Mormon. So of course I believed in life after death. And I believed that the spirit world was all around us and there's just a thin veil and that sometimes the veil is separated or is a bit thinner. And so I believed all that anyway. Of course, I wanted to believe that Adrian still existed somewhere. For heaven's sake. He was 17. He had a whole life ahead of him. And I was haunted from then on with thoughts of my goodness. He would have had a wife who would. His wife. He'd have had children.

Richard Heath [00:48:51] There's nephews and nieces I haven't got. And it was really comforting and medicinal to say, but that will all happen in the eternity. That will all happen in the millennium. So, of course, I believed all that. And so it wasn't a huge jump to believe. Those are the things. Now, I know that there are some people who have said, well, of course I Said that I was young, that's what I wanted to happen. And they know what did or didn't happen. The things that Mum said. I have no reason to not believe. I trust my mum implicitly. I don't know her to have lied about anything, let alone anything that's important to that.

Richard Heath [00:49:23] And she shared experiences with us when we were younger that I believe. And as I say, there was an experience that Ruth had when Mum died, when we were still active members. That is hard to explain if there's not something going on there.

Julian Heath [00:49:41] So I believed all of those stories growing up. I believed all the stories that I heard. I think I feel differently now. You know, I think that. I think that these things can be explained in other ways. But what I was going to say is that I think that.

Julian Heath [00:49:58] That I. I think there is. There is a. It's very hard sometimes to separate your kind of your Mormon identity and your Mormon faith from family identity and family loyalty and all of those things. And I think that Adrian's death and those stories of.

Julian Heath [00:50:17] Of him appearing to people and stuff like that really, I think, kind of galvanized that made. Made that very, very real for me growing up. You know, that was. If I kind of, if I had to think about spiritual experiences growing up and, and those kind of things, those key points that kind of support and, and form the scaffolding for our testimony. I can't really kind of pinpoint personal experiences and that might just be poor memory on my part, but. But definitely those. That narrative and that idea for me really kind of strengthened that again, this idea, well, that the church must be true because, you know, Adrian died and he's appeared to people and they've had those experiences. So I think that was a. That was kind of like a. A binding thing for me.

Youth Experiences in the Church

Nemo [00:51:13] So I think we're at the point now where you're both youth. I mean, not at the same time. Obviously there's this 10 year age gap and that is gonna make this incredibly difficult moving forward until we kind of get on some sort of similar timeline. But I want to start, I guess, with. With Richard and your youth and what those years were like for you.

Richard Heath [00:51:32] They were really quite simple and straightforward. To be honest, I'm not a particularly complicated person. I certainly wasn't when I was 12 to 18 years of age. In fact, when I think back to those years, I feel like I'm looking at life through a fog. And that's kind of how it felt that age growing up as well. And what I've learned is Actually we all grow up and we develop and we mature at different rates. And I don't feel like I kind of woke up till I was about 17, 18, right. However, obviously I've got memories of those things. I loved being a youth. I didn't love always having to walk to the chapel on a Tuesday night for mutual or for Young Men's because we lived in an area that was a little bit rough.

Richard Heath [00:52:16] Actually wasn't so bad walking there, walking back wasn't so great sometimes and especially if I was doing that on my own and I would always sing have firmer foundation all the way home. The fear not I am with the bit especially I used to find quite comforting.

Richard Heath [00:52:33] Young Men's was great because it was usually my big brother that was the young Men's leader or one of the Wilkins family, big brothers or people that we knew very well. And so I enjoyed the youth program. It wasn't always brilliantly organized as I'm sure all the youth programs in the country when I was that age weren't. Sometimes it would be weeks and weeks of football. Other times you'd have someone that would organise stuff and you'd be doing different things. But I got a great. I got great memories of it.

Richard Heath [00:53:01] We had a really interesting young Men's certainly for a period that I was there because there was myself and there was a couple of other big families in the ward, the Robertsons and the Wilkins and so. And they had youth there and that was lovely. We weren't particularly friends with each other outside of church other than my friend Dean, who was a Wilkins. And of course we were very close but we all liked each other, we got on with each other. But then there was another young man that used to come, Dean Williams. And he was a lovely lad. He was a little bit more street wise than I was.

Richard Heath [00:53:34] And he used to bring some friends with him to Young Men's one of whom was a Jehovah's Witness. And we used to have a lot of fun with him and he with us. You know, we would see him out on a Saturday with his long trench coat on doing their bit. And then he would come to Young Men's with us. And if we were doing outreach, I'm sure he would come with us and knock on doors to see if people wanted to come back to church and what have you. So that was interesting.

Richard Heath [00:53:58] What I learned at that stage was that I'm a Mormon and I didn't know it then, but as I got older I used to describe myself as a stick of rock Mormon. If you cut me, I say Mormon all the way through. And I will always be Mormon. And I said that right up until I stopped going to church. I will always be Mormon. I'll be the last man standing.

Richard Heath [00:54:20] Because I had reason to think I could do that at the time. I was a good kid. I. I did live out on the streets and I did get up to some nonsense as a. As a teenager around the streets of Chelsea Wood, as all the youths in Chelsea would did. And I stole things that I probably shouldn't, and I helped myself to things that I didn't. And we got involved in all kinds of fun ruses. I don't think I ever did anything that hurt anybody else because I'm a very empathetic person. And I don't say that to blow my own trumpet. That's just what I am.

Richard Heath [00:54:51] I hate the thought of hurting anybody else. Hence why I was no good at martial arts. And I always knew that whatever I did, whether it was shoplifting a penny chew when I was 10, or relationship and chastity mistakes that I made when I was older, I knew I would have to put that right. I always believed that the church was true, despite these things that I might be doing that teenagers do that I shouldn't have been doing. And I will put that right at some point.

Julian Heath [00:55:24] I did.

Richard Heath [00:55:25] There were times that I went to see the bishop. I remember I got caught shoplifting once when I was a youngster. Now, bearing in mind, and again, I don't say this for pity or anything. I didn't have a lot as a kid. My parents gave us everything they could and I had a great life, but we didn't have a lot. And there was often things that came out in the shops that I wanted and that I couldn't have.

Richard Heath [00:55:46] I wasn't a big shoplifter. In fact, this was a big supermarket. It was a Carrefour just outside of Sutton Coalfield. And we'd gone as a family on a Saturday morning. And I think if I remember right, they used to have pallets of food and when that run out, they'd take the next pallet off and there was pallets of sweets and a few of the sweet packets had burst open and there's some sweets on the floor. And I picked up a couple of sweets and ate them off the floor. You dirty Trump, Richard.

Richard Heath [00:56:09] And some overzealous store detective had seen this and on leaving the store, took me by the arm, arm up my back and took me back into the store. Now I was probably about 9 years of age at this point.

Nemo [00:56:21] Right.

Richard Heath [00:56:22] I was a strip of nothing. Obviously. I went to see my bishop to confess as such it wasn't a difficult experience, as I say, but it was painful in that my bishop was the same bishop that had been bishop when I was baptized still, because only a year or so later, not much more than that, if any, that had also been my special primary teacher. And so to go to him and explain that I had stolen something, however small it was. And I probably didn't even feel like it was stealing, I felt like it was recycling or something, but that was quite guilt ridden.

Richard Heath [00:57:00] So as far as my youth was concerned, as I say, I enjoyed being a Mormon. I was quite proud. I like to tell people I was a Mormon. I really didn't mind telling my friends and I was always keen to get my friends to church. I have a very vivid memory of mum and dad being away one weekend and we'd had some friends around, some of the local boys and local girls, some of the local girls that probably myself and my brother Eden liked. And they came in to help tidy our house which was always cluttered, not necessarily dirty, but full of stuff.

Richard Heath [00:57:32] And then we'd invited them to come to church with us on the Sunday. So they all came to sacrament meeting. There's probably about five or six of them. I also had a best friend who was attracted by the missionaries and I was asked to fellowship him. I really didn't want to at the time. He was not someone that I liked. He lived local. But we became best friends and he said inseparable and, and his name was Wayne and I loved Wayne and a lot of my life from then on up until when we fell out in my mid-20s were done together and he, he features in them and Yeah, I, I had a testimony. I believe the church was true and.

Nemo [00:58:16] Yeah, okay, and what was your experience of youth like, Julian? Do you still stuff too or.

Julian Heath [00:58:21] No, not so much. I was, I was more into assault.

Nemo [00:58:24] Right, okay.

Julian Heath [00:58:26] No.

Nemo [00:58:26] All right.

Julian Heath [00:58:27] So my experience probably very, again very similar to Rich in that my youth group was my brothers and my sister and my nephews that were similar, similar age to me with my brothers as youth leaders and also the equivalent Wilkins, you know, very, very, very similar. I, I took it very seriously. I, I think, you know, again go. I think this is all related to this idea of being in such a big family. You know, you want to get noticed and I think for me approval has always been really, really important. I've needed to have approval and so Whatever I've been interested in, you know, I've wanted to do it really, really well.

Nemo [00:59:15] You're doing really well at this podcast, Julian, so don't worry. You're doing really well.

Julian Heath [00:59:18] Thank you. Thank you. But am I. Am I the best?

Nemo [00:59:21] Oh, I'm not sure. Rich is doing pretty well, too, so.

Richard Heath [00:59:27] Yeah.

Julian Heath [00:59:28] And so that I think that really, really kind of crosses over into my woman experience. You know, as soon as I was in. As soon as I had the. The priesthood, I was deacons quorum president and then teachers quorum president and then assistant to the priests quorum president. And that was really important to me because it meant that I was on the right track. That was God's approval, you know, because we all know that we called of God. And so if God wants me to be deacons quorum president, then I must be doing okay. That's pretty good for me. And so that was really important to me.

Julian Heath [01:00:02] And I can't think of any really significant, like. Well, I can't think of a couple of spiritual experiences, but I don't know that they were really. They were kind of defining moments for me. So there was one particular really important event that was. We had this. We had a young men's president that was a Wilkins.

Julian Heath [01:00:32] Rich, you were his counselor, wasn't there. And. And he was, you know, really, really kind of fired up. And he had this idea of what we're gonna do. We're gonna read the Book of Mormon in a weekend.

Richard Heath [01:00:45] Everyone's gonna do it.

Julian Heath [01:00:46] And he worked out this schedule where it was absolutely brilliant. It was brilliant. And it was off repeated. And even until, you know, I. When I was a young men's president, it's something that I would do with. With my youth. And, you know, even up to fairly

Nemo [01:01:03] recently, we did that as a stake, and I was involved with it.

Julian Heath [01:01:06] Yeah, well, that probably came out from this. From Chelsea Wood. Yeah. And I might have even provided the. The template for it, because it did. It had to be organized, you know, very, very rigidly. You know, we would start at this time. We would have half an hour period where we could eat.

Julian Heath [01:01:23] He'd organized for people to, like, the state president to come in and have a quick word with us. But, you know, it was like, no, you've got 10 minutes and then you're out of here. We've got to get back on schedule.

Julian Heath [01:01:35] And that was a really, really good experience. I actually remember leading up. So we'd fasted for 24 hours leading up to that. And it may have been. I Think we'd always fasted or we always. But we would fast regularly growing up. But it may have been the first time that I'd really taken it seriously. I'm doing this for 24 hours and about. And the idea is that we'd all fast for 24 hours and then we'd meet together at 6 o', clock, we'd break our fast together and then we'd start, right? And I think about five o' clock or half five, whatever. I was on my way to the house where we were going to do it and I started to stop the car and I threw up.

Julian Heath [01:02:16] I just felt so sick. And so when we got there, everyone still got stuff in their faces and I couldn't, I couldn't really bring myself to eat much at all. And so when we began, we're all kind of sat in this room and we kind of taken it in turns to read through. And I was just kind of almost laying down on the sofa feeling really rough. And, and before, so before we, before we, we started, the young men's present said, look, let's give you a blessing, you know, and so gave me a blessing that'd be able to do the, be able to participate and have this great experience, you know.

Julian Heath [01:02:56] And he. And kind of finished and it's like, well, how you feeling? I feel awful. I felt, I think I felt worse. And so I just kind of, of lay down on this sofa and for the first, first few chapters I think I was just good for nothing. And then suddenly I just kind of had all this energy and I just kind of sat up and that was it, I was healed. You know, it was like this miraculous thing that, you know, to start off this, this Book of Mormon experience because I just kind of, you know, it's like being raised from the dead, you know, I'm snapped out of it.

Julian Heath [01:03:34] That's it, right? I'm in now and we're in it. And it was this, just this really good experience. And I remember at the end of it, once we finished and we had very little sleep, lots of food, very little sleep.

Julian Heath [01:03:48] I'm surprised, considering the amount of sleep that we had, I'm surprised that there weren't more kind of spiritual visitations and visions and things like that, because we were all, you know, sleep deprived. But the, the idea was that at the end of it we would all, each one of us would go off to a separate room and we would have a prayer. And, and, and, and it was planned

Richard Heath [01:04:14] to finish on a Sunday morning and it was a fast Sunday.

Julian Heath [01:04:16] Yeah. We didn't fast, though, did we?

Richard Heath [01:04:20] No, but we.

Julian Heath [01:04:20] Because we'd done that.

Richard Heath [01:04:21] But we had committed you all to bear in your testimony of the experience you'd had that day.

Julian Heath [01:04:25] Yeah, and so. And so, yeah, so that was important that we were then gonna. Gonna pray and ask whether the Book of Mormon was true. You know, we're gonna do.

Richard Heath [01:04:33] We walked to the chapel, take some

Julian Heath [01:04:35] hymns as we went, take, you know, Moroni's promise kind of at its word, and we were going to pray and we're gonna have this. This confirmation. And I remember doing that and really kind of feeling like, yeah, well, I knew it was true anyway, so I didn't really feel anything, but it wasn't important, you know, and. And I think probably when I bore my testimony again, I was very, always very confident to get up there. And. And, you know, again, I think this probably comes from being in such a big family, and that's not fair. I shouldn't. Probably shouldn't say that because I've got siblings that aren't this way inclined at all.

Testimony, Seminary, and Religious Devotion

Julian Heath [01:05:12] And so they would kind of disagree with that. But I wanted to have an audience. You know, I liked to be up there on stage and speak. And so I probably my testimony kind of spun into this. This story of, wow, you know, I didn't. My confirmation was that you already know. You know, you didn't need this big experience because you already knew that it was true. And that. And that what. That's just as valid, that's just as important.

Richard Heath [01:05:37] That's really interesting. I don't want to break your flow, but it always bothered me growing up in the church, that I never had an experience. I never saw an angel. God never appeared to me. Those things that we'd grown up knowing could happen because it happened to various people. I didn't hear a voice, nothing of that nature. And it always bothered me that although I'd done what the Book of Mormon said and what my priesthood leaders had told me to do, and that is pray about it and wait to get an answer and a confirmation, never had it. And so I convinced myself. And I remember saying to Ruth one time, I've worked out what my gift of the Spirit is.

Richard Heath [01:06:09] You know, we, as Mormons, we talk about gifts of the Spirit and that we're all born with these different gifts. Well, my gift of the Spirit was testimony. I was born with a testimony. I didn't need confirmation because I already knew the church was true. And so I kind of did a similar kind of thing.

Julian Heath [01:06:22] I can't remember what. I can't remember why I did this, but I've also got a very distinct memory of another time. This was when we were living in Timberley Lane. I remember going into the garage and doing a similar thing and praying to know whether it was true. And, you know, again, in my head I had a stronger feeling there. Stronger sense of, yes, it's true. That might have just been the petrol fumes from all the scooters that were in there, but I did have this kind of. This strong feeling of, yeah, it's true.

Nemo [01:06:57] True.

Julian Heath [01:06:58] So. So, yeah, that was a. That was an important experience growing up. I kind of feel like.

Richard Heath [01:07:07] So.

Julian Heath [01:07:07] So all my friends, really. So I had. My family were my. My friends. I had, you know, the youngest. The youngest Wilkins that we'd spend a lot of time with. And then I had like, the younger siblings of Richard's friends as well that were members over in Solihull Ward. But I definitely felt that there was. I had a sense of. And I feel a little bit bad saying this because it's kind of a reflection on other people, but I had a sense of, I'm taking this a bit more seriously than. Than everybody else.

Nemo [01:07:45] No, I relate to that. I get that.

Julian Heath [01:07:46] And, you know, and no, being a bit older now and knowing. Having these conversations with people and knowing a little bit more about their story, you know, that was the case. And so to some extent I was. There was a barrier between our friendship in that I wasn't prepared to do some of the things that they were doing because I took it really, really seriously, you know, and I didn't feel like it was difficult. I was never. I never felt tempted to have a drink or any of those things because I knew that this was right.

Nemo [01:08:21] I'm often shocked by the amount of people around me as a youth that I discovered actually weren't keeping the standards. And I just thought that is. I was drinking the Kool Aid so hard. I thought that is what everyone did. Everyone did keep these standards. And it turns out that actually not everyone did.

Richard Heath [01:08:36] I wasn't shocked by it and I knew some of my friends that were willing to

Nemo [01:08:41] bend the rules a little

Richard Heath [01:08:42] bit, especially if it meant that they were a bit more accepted by their friends who were not members. But I had made a conscious decision I wasn't going to do that. Now, I spoke earlier about indiscretions and what have you. I never had a drink. In fact, until last year, I'd never, ever had a drink of alcohol in 54 years.

Richard Heath [01:08:59] Yes, I had smoked the odd cigarette. That was because I liked the rolling machines. And I think I smoked more shoelaces than anything else than actual tobacco. So I wasn't. I didn't really want to do any of those things. I've never taken a drug.

Richard Heath [01:09:16] And so those things weren't a temptation to me either. And just like Julian, and I meant to say this, I took it seriously. Now I was a clown, same as anybody else. And at a church activity, I would mess around when it was appropriate to, but when it came to praying, you shut your eyes and you listened. And I remember vividly being that young adult Sunday night fireside sat with my friends and the prayers we said. There'll be someone at the back trying to make people giggle, making raspberries. And I would give them the daggers, you know, that wasn't on. And my, my growing up in Chelmsy Wood experience meant, you know, you do that I'm a thumpier because you, you, you'd been disrespectful at an important time now.

Richard Heath [01:09:53] And we sang, you know, we were the kinds of people who, in church we sang all the hymns and we sang loud and. And we did. I used to thrive on. I used to love it when I was asked to give a talk. I don't know about you stand up in front of people, have people listen to you, copy what I saw my dad doing when he prepared stuff, you know, get out the McConkey's doctrine and, and the other Mormon books that we got to. To get a good source base and yeah. Took it seriously. Yeah. Yeah.

Julian Heath [01:10:19] And you know, I, I think after doing that, that Book of Mormon read, I'd kind of made a commitment to myself. I'm going to read from the Book of Mormon every single day. And I think I probably kept that up until, you know, for a good 20 years.

Nemo [01:10:36] Right.

Julian Heath [01:10:37] I would read every day. I couldn't go to bed without at least, you know, reading, you know, became more superstitious.

Richard Heath [01:10:45] Yeah.

Julian Heath [01:10:45] But. But I stuck to that. So. Yeah, I did. I took it very, very seriously.

Nemo [01:10:49] So how did you both do in seminary respectively?

Julian Heath [01:10:53] I didn't do it. Not really. Not. And again, this is you chip in here. But I don't think. I don't really feel like mom and dad. Mom and dad never pushed us into doing anything, you know, I don't feel like. And that's probably more true to. For me than to. For you because. You don't think so?

Richard Heath [01:11:16] No.

Julian Heath [01:11:16] Well, yeah, you know, so. So it wasn't a case of, oh, you're all Going to do seminary.

Richard Heath [01:11:23] It was a given. You go to church on Sunday.

Julian Heath [01:11:25] Oh, yeah, that was a given. Absolutely.

Nemo [01:11:26] Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Heath [01:11:27] And free agency didn't extend to going to church on Sunday.

Julian Heath [01:11:30] That.

Richard Heath [01:11:30] That's happening. Yeah. But anything else?

Julian Heath [01:11:34] No, yeah, we. I was never, never pushed to do seminary. And so I did bits and pieces. It was. I did it in a kind of. In the same kind of faddish way that people do family home evening.

Nemo [01:11:47] Right.

Julian Heath [01:11:48] In reality, I think most people do family home evening.

Nemo [01:11:52] This is interesting that you're really devout, really taking it seriously, but then seminary is kind of one of those things you're like, just did what it is.

Julian Heath [01:12:00] It wasn't part of our narrative, was he. I don't really know what.

Richard Heath [01:12:03] I did seminary. So my seminary experience was a little different. In fact, I can't help thinking that Eden, my brother, who's two years older than me, and I started at the same time. And I think seminary, or the particular type of seminary we were doing, which was home study, was just being introduced, whether to the UK or to our area. I don't know. We lived very close to Dave Cook, who was the. I think he was the head CES man at the time who ran it for Europe and Africa or something like that. And not only did we do home study and I think Eden and I did it very well for the. On the whole, he had asked me. Oh, that's why we started at the same time. Eden started at 14, like everyone does. I started when I was 12. They were running a. Like a trial.

Julian Heath [01:12:51] Saw some beginning, didn't he?

Richard Heath [01:12:54] They were the one.

Nemo [01:12:55] Mighty and strong, aren't you, Richard?

Richard Heath [01:12:56] They were running a little trial thing to see if they should start it with 12 year olds, which I think they've done again recently, I'd heard. Anyway, so myself and about two or three other people in the stake started at 12. So I did six years of seminary. Six years of seminary, which not a lot of people can say they did. I did six years of seminary and didn't graduate at the end of it, which I was really miffed about.

Nemo [01:13:17] Why not?

Richard Heath [01:13:17] Because I didn't complete my final year, despite the fact that I'd already done. That was a repeat year and I'd done it once before because I'd kind of lost interest because I'd done it for so long. I didn't complete the final year. Didn't.

Nemo [01:13:27] So your first two years essentially didn't count?

Richard Heath [01:13:29] I didn't get a certificate, people. Yeah, the first two years they didn't count. Why not because it was a trial. The pilot. No, it was a pilot. They didn't take it up. They decided, no, we won't do it for 12 year olds. Therefore your first two years don't count. They were just a pilot.

Nemo [01:13:43] Even now, Richard, I'd be writing a letter to Salt Lake. I want my graduation certificate.

Richard Heath [01:13:47] Not only do I want my seminary graduation, I want my duty to God pin. Yeah, I did that as well and didn't get.

Nemo [01:13:53] Was that. Was that the little medal with a little buffalo? I've got one of those. I've got one of those. You can have.

Richard Heath [01:13:59] I will wear it forever.

Julian Heath [01:14:00] Yeah, I had one, but I didn't earn it. I stole it from the church distribution

Richard Heath [01:14:04] center when I worked there. So I just shoplifted.

Nemo [01:14:10] Yeah.

Richard Heath [01:14:10] Heaven's sake. You stole penny chews.

Nemo [01:14:12] He's stealing from God.

Richard Heath [01:14:13] I know, right?

Nemo [01:14:14] I will have less of that, Jerry.

Richard Heath [01:14:16] So I did seminary and I quite enjoyed it. We'd have a weekly meeting and it just so. And. And they were good. We had various people that were our seminary teachers over the six years I did it. Used to enjoy that. Interestingly, one of my seminary teachers, who was very good, ended up marrying my older brother. And she was great. So I've got fond memories of seminary. I wanted to go back to something that we were talking about. How serious we were as young men and how seriously we took it. I remember hearing, when I was a young man, hearing that the deacons in Solihull Ward had. It might not be solely Hallwood at the time. It might have been one of the Birmingham wars, Sheridan, something like that. It would have been Sheldon.

Nemo [01:14:56] Sheldon. That's the one. Yeah.

Richard Heath [01:14:57] The deacons had put washing up liquid in the sacrament. And I could not understand how that could happen. And then not the earth not open up and swallow them, because that's how. Seriously, I would never have done anything like that. You do not mess around with things like prayer, with things like the temple, with things like sacraments and priesthood, responsibility.

Nemo [01:15:17] So you can mess around with church activity. You can't mess around with church ritual.

Richard Heath [01:15:19] You can mess around with your support. Supposed to mess around and. And be a bit silly. And Julian was probably the same. I like to be the center of attention. So I would be silly. I would try to make people laugh, but only when it's appropriate, not when it's not appropriate.

Nemo [01:15:33] Julian.

Julian Heath [01:15:34] Yeah, so I. I do remember doing, like I say, seminary sporadically. I remember when I went on my mission feeling that was a real. Kind of a real deficit.

Nemo [01:15:48] Right. A bit Of a disadvantage.

Julian Heath [01:15:50] Yeah, yeah. And. And in many. So I wasn't. I mean we'll come on to missions later. But you know, in many ways I kind of felt like because I was a bit older, that I knew a lot more than some of my fellow missionaries, but I didn't have that, that kind of memorization of the scriptures and stuff like that. So yeah, I remember kind of feeling like I missed out there.

The Heath Rebellion and the Band Years

Nemo [01:16:15] Speaking of you guys wanting to be the center of attention, I do want to address something that you gave me some information about before, which is the band and the. What's termed the Heath Rebellion. Heath uprising. Should we talk about that?

Julian Heath [01:16:30] So I just remembered something actually. It was really interesting. So I mean we've always, we've always been.

Nemo [01:16:38] Been.

Julian Heath [01:16:38] We've always loved music as a, as a family. And I, I think one of the things that. That's great about being the youngest in a big family is that you inherit all of your siblings music. You know, you, you have all of that kind of musical influence. And so we, when I was probably about 17, we started a band and there was myself and Richard and

Richard Heath [01:17:08] one

Julian Heath [01:17:09] of my nephews and one of the Wilkins in this band. And what I remembered was that the first name of the band. Can you remember what it was?

Richard Heath [01:17:20] The Targeteers.

Julian Heath [01:17:21] The Targeteers. I didn't realize, I didn't until you mentioned it. I didn't know it was because there was a church class called the Targets, but that was the first name.

Richard Heath [01:17:29] And again, bearing in mind that I was 10 years older than everyone else in the band and so was probably too old to be in the band, I. I am a musical person and I'm one of those people that think that music is more important to me than anyone else. I relate to music. It affects me more than it does anybody else. I know there are lots of people that have that, but music is an important thing to me and I. And I have a soundtrack to everything that I do and I give meaning to everything that I listen to. So I was really keen for Julian and these lads to be in a band.

Richard Heath [01:17:58] I got myself involved one because I liked Julian and Darren and those are the boys. And to be a bit of a role model to him because I was a little bit older and I wanted it to amount to something I didn't think it would. And so I ended up kind of like the band's bez. I would stand there with a tambourine or maracas dancing around, doing a little bit of backing, singing. I couldn't play guitar or Anything. I didn't have any musical skills beyond that, but I still enjoyed it and we made a go of it. I was very keen. There were two lads in the band that were not members of the church.

Richard Heath [01:18:30] I'd still got young sibling nephews, Wilkins siblings in the band who were active and I needed them to have a good influence. And so I insisted from the outset that we prayed at the beginning of every practice and at the beginning of every gig. And our non member members would pray with us as well, wouldn't they? And that was an important part of that.

Julian Heath [01:18:50] We rehearsed at the. The chapel, of course. Yeah.

Nemo [01:18:53] Free rehearsal space.

Julian Heath [01:18:53] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we rehearsed at the chapel and

Richard Heath [01:18:56] I remember one of our first gigs. Sorry, we needed to pray. We'd been. Someone had contacted us and phoned us to say there was a charity gig being run in Birmingham, would we play. They'd heard that we were okay. We'd only done one or two gigs. Most of what we were doing was covers at the time. But we considered ourselves to be a mod band with both 80s mod and 60s mod influences. We'd got French crop haircuts, we wore polo shirts buttoned up or buttoned down shirts or roll necks. We. We used to go on stage with a Union Jack behind us and we'd do covers of the.

Richard Heath [01:19:31] The Kinks, the Small Faces, the who and that kind of stuff. Anyway, we turned up at this venue, it was being run by Hell's Angels and there were Hell's Angels on the gates. Sat on a keg of beer with snooka cues to make sure there was no trouble. And they were all leather clad Harley driving Howl's Angels in the gig. The band that was on before us, I don't remember the words of the song. We went something like.

Richard Heath [01:19:58] And they were enjoying it. And then we went on and there was this deathly silence and I genuinely thought it was an old hall that we were playing in high stage. And I asked them to remove the steps because I thought they're going to kill us. As soon as we start going they're going to think these guys are taking the pee. Coming to our heavy metal Howl's angel gig, playing all their mod stuff and of course I'd grown up with the mods and rockers theme and boy did I pray. I genuinely prayed that day that we would be okay. And I remember we. We started off with my generation, I think, and we did.

Richard Heath [01:20:33] We used to do quite a good version of it. And they were stood absolutely still looking at Us. And we did My generation. And then a few smiles cracked and they started dancing. And afterwards it was a good.

Julian Heath [01:20:45] Oh, you loved it.

Richard Heath [01:20:46] I thought we were gonna have bottles thrown at us and everything. It's a good gig. And afterwards they'd go, well done, lads. You've got some bottle. You have kind of thing. They did ask us to do it again. I think we declined, didn't we? I think we thought we survived one. We won't do that.

Nemo [01:20:59] Yeah, we'll push our luck.

Julian Heath [01:21:00] Yeah.

Richard Heath [01:21:00] So.

Julian Heath [01:21:00] So there was. I think the story is not that story, but the whole band story is a little bit different to the way that you told it.

Richard Heath [01:21:07] That's why I'm here, to correct all my mistakes.

Julian Heath [01:21:11] So it start. When it started off, we had three. Three vocalists.

Richard Heath [01:21:16] Oh, yeah. Dave was singing as well.

Julian Heath [01:21:18] So we have three vocalists. And so Dave is a. Is a Wilkins. And we're playing covers. So it kind of works. Works all right. Because we, you know, we'll just kind of divide it, But I'll. I want to do this song. I want to do this song. So we just kind of divide it up. But very early on, we started writing our own songs, didn't we? So you were the first person actually to write a song. And if you write the song, then you sing. You get to sing it. And. And so you wrote the first couple of songs that we did, I think. And I remember my brother Jo, who's the kind of closest to me in age, having a go at me, kind of saying, what's your problem? Why aren't you writing anything?

Nemo [01:21:58] Songs?

Julian Heath [01:21:58] So kind of quickly went up to my room and wrote a song, and. And I remember Dave kind of coming to me and saying, I need you to help me to write some songs. Because he was. You know, it's kind of the amount of songs that you're singing started to change depending on who was the most prolific songwriter. And. And that became me, didn't it? You know, I started to write more of the songs, and so I think that that kind of changed.

Richard Heath [01:22:22] And then Lee started writing quite a few as well, didn't he?

Julian Heath [01:22:24] Yeah, but he wasn't allowed to sing. I'd sing all of his songs. We wrote together, mainly wrote together, but there isn't. So. So one of the things that was interesting about this. Sorry, because it's not a band podcast.

Richard Heath [01:22:38] So.

Julian Heath [01:22:38] So Dave went away to America for a time, and I haven't really spoken to him about this, but. So he went. But I know he went to Utah, and I know when he came Back he decided that he wanted to. To go on a mission. So I think that had been. That trip had been a bit of a kind of back to his Mormon roots kind of trip. And. And it had. I think it did have an important impact on him. And so he left. When he came back, he said that he was going to leave the band. I think about two weeks after that we got a phone call from a guy in America that wanted to sign us and offered us a record deal.

Richard Heath [01:23:18] Not just any old guy. Nosbourne's father in law.

Julian Heath [01:23:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don Arden, who's a big, big guy in the music industry. And so I remember having a phone call with Dave afterwards, kind of saying, look, you sure about this? Because.

Richard Heath [01:23:32] Because we're gonna be huge.

Julian Heath [01:23:35] And. And he kind of said, oh, you know, no, I'm like, that's it. And not long after that he did. He put in his papers and he went on his mission. So for me, one of the things about being the band was that that was gonna rescue me from going on a mission. I didn't really want to serve a mission, but I thought that. I know this is ridiculous now, but I really genuinely thought if I make it with the band, if we become big and famous, then it'll almost be like the Osmonds, you know. My mission would be bringing rock and roll and Mormonism to the world.

Nemo [01:24:08] I don't know. I heard you singing at three Thrive karaoke, so I reckon you could have done it. So that's my two cents.

Richard Heath [01:24:15] I have to say I. I was really sad when Dave left the band because he was the best looking out of all of us. He was. He was such a good front man. Yeah, he'd got. He got these. He's got a really young face. At one point he got blonde hair and he got a bit of a pixie cut and. And he was a good looking lad, wasn't he?

Julian Heath [01:24:31] Yeah.

Richard Heath [01:24:32] He looked like a bit of a

Julian Heath [01:24:33] young James Dean, didn't he?

Richard Heath [01:24:34] He did, yeah. He knew how to stand in front of a mon mic.

Julian Heath [01:24:36] Yeah.

Richard Heath [01:24:36] There we go.

Julian Heath [01:24:38] However, right, that you asked about the, the Heath rebellion theme.

Nemo [01:24:43] I did, yeah.

Julian Heath [01:24:43] That relates to something that came before the band really. So I don't. I'm guessing that this, this probably started when I was about 14, I'm guessing. And we decided to put on dances, didn't we? Like church dances. I. I imagine I was at the age when we were starting to go to dances and we probably thought, well, there aren't any good ones, so we're gonna do them ourselves.

Richard Heath [01:25:06] There was a bit more to it than that. I'm gonna dial us back a little bit. We talked previously about the amounts of things that used to happen when we were youth, and it got to a point where they started to stop that. Now, when I was a youth, dances was an important thing, an important way to catch up with friends in the stake, an important way to meet girls. Let's face it, if you're gonna marry a Mormon girl, you need to meet Mormon girls. And you're not going to marry the ones that you go to church with because they're more like sisters.

Nemo [01:25:32] And in the case of Chelsea, would literally your sisters. And often. Yes.

Richard Heath [01:25:37] And so that was really important thing to us. Just.

Julian Heath [01:25:41] Just to. To kind of clarify that as well, you know, for people living in the uk, Because I know, you know, if you live in Utah. Yeah, that's really not difficult because everyone is a Mormon. If you live in the UK Then, you know, it's hard to find people.

Nemo [01:25:55] You know, you're traveling for hours for these dances.

Julian Heath [01:25:57] Absolutely.

Richard Heath [01:25:58] And we did. And we grew up with dances. We grew up with conventions. We grew up with youth camps. And they'd started to dial back on that to say it wasn't important. We don't need those things. Well, it's all very well old mission priesthood leaders saying that. And I've got to be honest, I suspect it was because they didn't really want to travel to take their youth there, however. So Eden and I, for a long time had tried to do dances, and we'd managed to do a couple when we were older youth, but come up against a brick wall, really. They didn't want us to do it.

Richard Heath [01:26:26] And we used to get really cross because they'd rather pay a non member to do it sometimes than us to do it for free. And we would do a good job of it. Of course, we wanted to play our music, which is an important part. So then when Julian and Serena and our nephews were of an age that they wanted dances, Eden and I said, right, we're going to put on dances. We approached our stake president, who was reticent, but then said, yep, okay, talk to us about what we could and couldn't play. Well, we weren't going to play anything that was inappropriate. In fact, one of the biggest problems we had was a young lad who was probably a really lovely lad who wanted us to play Cypress Hill whenever he came to one of our dances, which we weren't going to play one because we didn't like it at the time.

Richard Heath [01:27:02] But two, because he had got bad language on it. And it represented a lifestyle that we didn't think we were trying to encourage the youth to do. We did it for free and we had to really fight to do it for free. And we found that a real slap in the face as adults. Both of us at that point were returned missionaries that they didn't trust us enough to do this for our youth.

Nemo [01:27:23] But you and Eden first returned missionaries,

Richard Heath [01:27:25] but he did allow us to do it and. And we did one a month for a while and we called ourselves Dolby for Beauty, which was a name that I had stolen from a club night in Birmingham. I don't know what club it was, but there was a club night in Birmingham city centre that used to play Bowie and 70s music.

Richard Heath [01:27:49] And I remember there being a poster, a really cool poster with a picture of Jimmy Cliff from the film. I think it's the Hard They Fall. Is that the name of the film? Don't know. Anyway, really cool in his stance where he's got a gun. And it's called Dolby for Beauty. I thought, I'm robbing that. So we called ourselves Dolby for Beauty. Eden was a neon glassblower and he made us this Dolby for Beauty neon sign that we would take with us everywhere. And we were going to educate the youth as to what was good music.

Julian Heath [01:28:17] This is so funny because it's so kind of tied into the Heath, isn't it? And how mental we are.

Richard Heath [01:28:24] Mythology of ourselves and something that, you

Julian Heath [01:28:26] know, that like, is a big part of who we are and something that, if I'm honest, I'm not very proud of now is that we had a very. We always had a very, very strong sense of we're cool. Yeah. By implication means the other people aren't, you know, And I think that's part

Richard Heath [01:28:42] of what we like is cool and what they like isn't.

Julian Heath [01:28:45] Yeah. And. And, and part of that I think is because that's what you do when you've got a big family. And. And so, yeah, we were going to educate people with these dances, but we. But another thing about them that I think is very kind of typically Heath is that if we were going to do. And we were going to do them on steroids, you know, so we were gonna take it really seriously. And so we had T shirts made with Dolby for Beauty on them. And me and Serena would go to. To youth, other dances wearing our Dobby for Beauty T shirts, giving out flyers, trying to promote them.

Nemo [01:29:19] Do you still have These T shirts.

Richard Heath [01:29:20] Yes, we do. Yeah. I made some papier mache sandwich boards, right? And then I picked some lyrics that I thought were really uplifting from songs that we liked. And I had little flyers made. And these sandwich boards had a papier mache pocket on the front that we put the flies in. And I'd go around to all the dances, giving them out to people. People must have thought I was a head case. I loved it. And we'd try and do gimmicky things. I remember one time, this was at the time that there was some big dances. The North v South Dances were happening at the Granada Studios.

Nemo [01:29:55] Manchester.

Richard Heath [01:29:55] Manchester. So I'd go to there. And each time we try and do something different, sometimes we'd. I remember buying water pistols. Everyone that was giving out flies would have little water pistols. We just spray people from a distance. And we were probably so annoying. But we wanted people to enjoy the Dial B for beauty dances as much as we did. We weren't charging anyone for entry. Anyone could come. And we were playing good music. It was. It was the acid jazz era. We loved our acid jazz. And we were playing some bossa nova. We were playing.

Julian Heath [01:30:20] We played soul bossa nova before Austin

Richard Heath [01:30:23] Powers, I think we played it before Quincy Jones wrote it, probably, but he wrote. And there were lots of kids that he must have thought, what is this crap they're playing? I quite like Cypress Hill now. But the Cypress Hill lad who used to go out the back and smoke joints then we used to have to try and police that as well. He must have thought we were idiots. But most people liked it. It wasn't what they were expecting and they. We would get requests. There was one song by Kitty Winter called New Morning, I think it's called. And in it they sing and they clap and kids used to go, you play the Clap Clap song, you play the Clap Clap song.

Richard Heath [01:30:57] We used to love that. We played Jackson 5. There was lots of disco that we were playing. It was the Carlito's Way era. So it was all a mix of all that. What we thought was good, soulful, tuneful music. And we enjoyed it. But we did,

Julian Heath [01:31:13] you know, sometimes we get a lot of. Like our bishop at the time was really, really supportive, you know. But it's not always easy to put on these events. You don't always get support. And there was one particular time that was interesting. You kind of mentioned that, the Heath rebellion thing.

Richard Heath [01:31:31] So it was.

Julian Heath [01:31:32] So New Year's Eve was a Sunday, and we really wanted to have a dance and Part of our thinking was probably, look, if we don't do it then they're gonna go somewhere else. The young people in the church will go to a nightclub or something. They're not gonna do nothing on New Year's Eve.

Julian Heath [01:31:53] And so we'd had this idea that what we would do is we would have a fireside on the Sunday that would start at 11 o' clock and that we would then. So would. We'd have this fireside and it would then go on to, to a dance that would start at like, well, probably like 10 past midnight or something like that, just to be sure, because, you know, the Sabbath doesn't. Might not finish dead on 12. You know, we'll put in a little buffer zone just to make sure that we don't break the Sabbath. And, and so I remember kind of setting up on, on the, the Sunday afternoon, setting everything up together and the bishop coming to see us and saying, look, really sorry to kind of bring you this news, but, but there's a lot of rumors going on at the moment.

Julian Heath [01:32:43] I think it was largely, largely fueled by the bishop over in Sutton Caulfield saying that the Heath have been told they're not allowed to do this dance, but they've rebelled and they're doing it anyway. And the bishop has told, told them that they're not allowed to do. The stake president has told them they're not allowed to do it. So you mustn't go to this, this, this dance because it's run by Satanists or something ridiculous like that.

Julian Heath [01:33:13] And, and he wanted to kind of let us know because, because they've been, they'd all been told that he hadn't sanctioned it and we were going against his will and he wanted to let us know that he had, we had his, his full support, it and everything. And, and if anything that probably meant that more people came because, you know, that's what happens when you're told not to do.

Nemo [01:33:33] Exactly.

Richard Heath [01:33:33] At the risk of being serious as well, I just do want to dwell on the fact that we were good kids and we didn't want to do anything bad. What we wanted to do was provide church appropriate entertainment for the youth. That's all we wanted to do. And honestly, it was so hard sometimes we spent our own money. We bought all the equipment ourselves, ourselves, the pa, the music, the speakers, the lights. We spend it all ourselves. And they didn't pay us back for any of that stuff and we had to fight to do it. And I have to say now that I am a dad Some mum and dads are miserable perishers about not wanting to take their kids to things that will be good for them to have those experiences, because it might be a little bit inconvenient to travel to Huddersfield or to Hyde park or to wherever it is that that thing's happening.

Richard Heath [01:34:17] And one of the things I decided when I became a parent was that if I was going to do something for my kids, I would do it willingly and happily, not begrudgingly, and that I would try to facilitate the things that they wanted to do, certainly to get them to church dances. And I have taken them to dances all over the country.

Julian Heath [01:34:36] I think it might be fair to say as well that we kind of. Certainly for me, and I think I probably feel it the most being the youngest, because I've got all of this kind of influence from my older siblings, that we had our own brand of Mormonism and that Mormonism was cool. You know, it was cool to be a Mormon. You know, we were, you know, we. We're not. We're not square. We're not, you know, we. We kind of. Yeah, we weren't interested in any of the cheesiness of it, you know, but we were going to put on dances and we were going to be, you know, we were in bands and we would go to nightclub clubs and stuff like that.

Richard Heath [01:35:11] We're going to be ashamed of saying prayers before these events.

Julian Heath [01:35:14] Yeah. And, you know, we're not going to drink or do drugs or any of those things because they're lines that we're not prepared to cross, you know, but you can still have this kind of Mormon lifestyle and it still be very cool.

Nemo [01:35:24] So you created this brand of Mormonism that you felt was, you know, cool and that was how you almost squared it essentially with.

Julian Heath [01:35:30] Yeah. And it was probably only in our heads, you know, I can't imagine that everybody else was coming to the. These dances and going, wow, the Heath are so cool.

Richard Heath [01:35:38] I'm sure they were, but I thought that they thought they were cool, that they were subscribing to the same Mormonism that I was. I do have to say at this point that the. The things that Julian and I got involved in was not by any stretch, and I know we haven't said that, but was not by any stretch, Julian and I, my brother Eden. Without him, nothing would happen. The band wouldn't have happened. He. He was our manager and he got us all of our gigs and he was amazing and the dances wouldn't have happened because he was the money behind it all. And, and he loves his music as much as anybody else and was very keen for us to have a positive way of enjoying that without going to the nightclubs and what have you.

Richard Heath [01:36:17] Jonathan, little brother Serena, Rachel, my sister Ruth, my lovely wife who sat with a new babies at all of our rehearsals. My 28 year old Elliot.

Julian Heath [01:36:30] You haven't won an award by the way.

Richard Heath [01:36:32] No, I need to say it because I think it's important because I think I've got a lovely, amazing family and part of the image that we built for ourselves was part of that. My Assan Elliot, who's 28 now, was born during the band and lots of gigs have been spent with him asleep on a pile of clothes or in a, a drum case or whatever and one of the first things he ever wanted as a child was his own microphone and he used to walk around trying to sing the songs that we were singing and what have you. And it was a really exciting time but, but it really was a family effort and those of my siblings and brothers and sisters in law that I haven't mentioned and I know I'm not getting awards, I'm not going to go through them all.

Richard Heath [01:37:18] They used to come to the gigs and see us and nephews and nieces that would come, it was really was an exception, exciting family affair.

Nemo [01:37:25] And so Julian thought all this was going to stop him having to go on a mission. But you did. And so did you, Richard.

Richard Heath [01:37:33] Right, I, I went on a mission, yes.

Preparing for and Entering the Mission Field

Nemo [01:37:35] Yeah.

Richard Heath [01:37:35] So I never intended to go on a mission and as a young man I was quite proud of the fact or if not proud, very happy to say I'm not going on a mission. When we used to go from ward ward to ward with my dad and you'd go into a different youth lesson or young men's lesson and you'd have a youth leader talking about, well, what are your plans for your mission? I would say I'm not going on a mission. And I was quite happy to do that and I quite like the shock element of saying to people, I'm not going on a mission.

Richard Heath [01:38:04] My mum never wanted us to go on a mission. Mum was, even before we lost Adrian, Mum was a very defensive parent and wanted her children around all the time. She would always say, don't ever get married, don't ever get married. Having said that, she was always welcoming of boyfriends and girlfriends that came, but don't ever get married, don't ever leave home, be with me forever kind of thing.

Richard Heath [01:38:24] So there was never any pressure. Certainly to me I Don't know about Julian to go on a mission. I probably put more pressure on Julian than anybody else because I've been on a mission and I wanted him to have that same experience.

Richard Heath [01:38:35] So I was 20 years of age in my 21st year. I was dating a young lady who was a member. I was part of a young adult group that I loved. We had lots of friends and I really loved it. It was, I had a really good young adult experience as a young man growing up as a Mormon. I thought I needed to get married, I wanted to get married. Plus, as I said, I've always loved kids. I like little kiddies and I look forward to having children of my own.

Richard Heath [01:39:04] And this young lady, as far as I was concerned, was the person I was going to marry. We went to church one Sunday, having split up and she was there because she was still part of our younger adult group. She wasn't from our ward and I didn't want to be there if she was going to be there because it was still a bit raw. So I said to my mum, I'm going to walk home, mum.

Richard Heath [01:39:23] And so I missed, I think we probably did, sacrament meeting and I missed the lesson times that came after and I walked home. It was about a five mile walk home and as I walked home I probably had a little bit of a cry because I'm a big sentimental baby. It doesn't take a lot to make the heath boys cry. It doesn't take a lot for us to fall in love either. We fall in love and we fall hard. And so, you know, I was feeling very sorry for myself and I walked home and I was thinking through lots of things and I thought, I'm gonna teach them, I'll go on a mission.

Richard Heath [01:39:53] Which is probably not the right reason to go on a mission to say to my ex girlfriend, I don't need you, I'm going off somewhere else. But I did decide and like a lot of things in my life, once I've decided I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it and not necessarily well, but I'm going to do it.

Richard Heath [01:40:09] So I got home as everyone else was arriving home from church and I thought, right, I'm going to get a little bit of attention here. And so I said to my mum, this is something I need to tell you. I'm going to go on a mission and literally like turning on a dime. My brother Eden, and at the time he and I were, he was my closest sibling, really said, well, if you're going, I'm going now, bearing in mind that he was two years older than me, so. So in church terms, he was past mission age.

Nemo [01:40:34] Yeah, it's like 23, bless him. He did.

Richard Heath [01:40:37] And so we put in our papers together. The prophet himself prayed about it and knew me and Eden and so said, well, these brothers are going on together, so we're going to send them out at the same time and we're going to send them to the MTC together. Which was lovely because Eden was much more intelligent, clued in and everything than I was. I just kind of went with the flow. For me, going on a mission meant I get to spend some money on new clothes, get a bit of attention, I'm gonna have a farewell party and all those kinds of things. I think Eden took things a lot more seriously than me and probably prepared himself spiritually.

Richard Heath [01:41:12] I got my call to Adelaide, Australia. Eden got his call to Anaheim, California. And we were so thrilled to not be going to London south, where lots of our friends were going at the time. Best, Manchester. My very good friend Alan Phillips, who was part of our young adult group at the time, he'd gone to Manchester about six months before me. I wasn't planning to go when he had gone, so he was very surprised to hear I was going. So I went off to the MTC with Eden. We had an interesting MTC experience.

Richard Heath [01:41:47] I kind of arrived at the mtc. I was a bit overwhelmed. If you've been to the mtc, certainly in Provo, it is very overwhelming. You arrive in, like, this arrivals lounge type area where there's lots of missionary couples welcoming you, hugging you, we love you. Well, you know, I'm like, whoa, you don't know me, let alone love me. And not because I didn't like them. That's just not the kind of person I am.

Richard Heath [01:42:09] And I found it a little bit overwhelming. The thing I really hated was when someone came up to me to give me a ticket to go and get my hair cut, right? So obviously they stand you in a line and they go down the line, they go, yeah, you'll do. You'll do your. No haircut, you'll do your haircut, right? Kind of thing. Now, I'd had my haircut and I like my hair. I like the way I was. I'd not look in this country. We'd kind of just come out of a new romantic era. So you can imagine what my hair was like at one point. I had a bit of a filoky long on one side, side short on the other.

Nemo [01:42:39] Yeah.

Richard Heath [01:42:40] Then it was A bit of a comb over, you know, a bit of a haircut 100 type thing. And I had had it cut. It was not over. It didn't touch my ears, it did not touch my collar. I had a little bit on top. The Heath boys have got very thick hair anyway, so it was probably a little bit bouffant. However, I remember being really cross about this.

Nemo [01:42:57] I mean, you're already having to shave your lovely beard off constantly, right?

Richard Heath [01:43:01] So I had had a goatee at that point, at that point as well. And so, you know, I'm quite happy to be clean shaven. I was thrilled to find a Coca Cola vending machine at the mtc. That was a lovely thing to find. But I hit a bit of a wall at that point and I hit a wall hard at the mtc. Now, bearing in mind I wasn't going to foreign speaking country and they'd sent me early. I didn't realize, but they sent me early so I could go with Eden. Eden's intake left after two weeks. I was there for another two weeks after that.

Richard Heath [01:43:29] So I was there for four weeks and it was a bit overwhelming, to be honest with you, to be there all that time. So the first wall I hit was, I'm not getting my hair cut. I've said I'll go, that should be enough.

Richard Heath [01:43:40] I'm not getting my hair cut as well. I've had it cut once and when I heard how they do it, they've got clippers with like a vacuum cleaner attached and they just go. And it cuts and sucks your hair away in one go. And I thought, there's no way anyone is doing that to my hair. I used to pay about 20 quid to go and get my hair cut a hair by Michael in the bull ring.

Nemo [01:44:00] Right.

Richard Heath [01:44:01] Anyway, I remember I didn't see as much of Eden. We were in different districts. We. We'd eat together, sometimes bump into each other. Didn't see so much of him but that those first couple of days were difficult because I knew they were expecting me to go and get my haircut. They'd given me the ticket and I didn't. And someone had mentioned, Eden, that I was refusing to get my haircut. And I remember us sitting down, he said, who you do I. Sorry, to paraphrase you, you probably don't remember the exact conversation more than I do. But what I remember was he pretty much said to me, who are you doing this for, Richard?

Richard Heath [01:44:33] You're doing it for you or for the savior? Because if you're doing it for you hold your ground because you've done enough. If you're doing it for the Savior, what difference it make having your hair cut? And that humbled me hugely. And I thought, you're an idiot, Richard. I went and got my hair cut, and I decided I was going to be the most missionary missionary in that empty.

Richard Heath [01:44:52] And I loved it. Our district, when we're moving around the mtc, I said, we've got to sing hymns as we go around. So we would march around the MTC singing hymns together.

Nemo [01:45:01] This goes back to your youth, right? Singing hymns everywhere you go.

Richard Heath [01:45:04] Possibly, possibly. And we would pray together before and we'd do our scriptures. Anyway, that was great. The next wall that I hit, which is a little bit harder, it was a little bit doctrinal. So it was a hard one for me.

Richard Heath [01:45:18] I was feeling homesick. It was about my third or fourth week in the MTC anyway. We hadn't heard from home at all, and we were there over Easter. Now, over Easter, all the Provo missionaries were getting baskets of goodies coming in. Their family were turning up on P day to drop stuff if they were seeing them. They were getting all stuff sent in from. From all the. The ward members and everything. We got nothing. And not only did was it a stark reality because it was Easter and we hadn't had any Easter gifts or anything. What we hadn't allowed for was the fact of how long it takes the mail to get there.

Richard Heath [01:45:52] My family were writing like mad from the day that I left, and it didn't come until about three weeks later. And then I got a constant for the next two years of letters and stuff, which was lovely, but I was feeling sorry for myself. And I went into one of my lessons with my district, and the guy that was teaching it, his surname was Skousen, which I understand is a. They're a significant Mormon family. He was a returned missionary. He was probably in his mid-20s, and he was teaching us this lesson. And he taught me this principle, which interestingly, has come up recently on podcasts, and that is that firstly, we use the term free agency, and that's a misnomer, because it's not.

Richard Heath [01:46:30] You've got freedom and you've got agency. Freedom is what everyone is born with, and you get to choose. Agency is what God gives you. And as a member of the church, your agency is to use your freedom appropriately. And therefore, as a member of the church, you give up your freedom because of your agency. And your agency is that you will keep the commandments at all times. You will do everything that is expected of you. We all know what the temple covenants are, that you will keep those to the nth degree. And I had a breakdown during that, and I was like, whoa, no, no,

Julian Heath [01:46:59] no, no, no, no.

Richard Heath [01:47:01] I intend to do all those things, but I still have the freedom to choose. And he kind of put it in the sense of, no, you. You have no freedom to choose now. And I got very cross. I can be quite loud at times. And I got quite loud to the extent that he had to end the lesson and tell the rest of the missionaries to go. And we spent about two hours walking around the grounds together while he kind of tried to put me back in my box and patch up the thing that he had broken inside of me. Because free agency or freedom to choose was a big thing to me.

Richard Heath [01:47:32] Every young person growing up in the church knows it's the one thing we can throw back in the faces of our parents when they tell us we got to do something we don't want to do. And I'd probably done that all my life. I remember very well when my dad said, richard, you are not going to church in that denim jacket saying, free agency, dad.

Richard Heath [01:47:47] And, you know, I pulled that card along. But more seriously, as an adult, I thought that was one of the reasons we came to the Earth, to have this gift that God had given us. And so to be told in the mtc, you don't have freedom to choose because you need to exercise your agency and do the right thing always.

Richard Heath [01:48:07] Yeah, I cried, I shouted, I stormed. And that was a hard one to get past. But I took it on board eventually, after my two hours of being spoken to, and I went off on my mission. I've talked a lot about the mtc.

Nemo [01:48:20] That's fine. I was going to get Julian because Julian had agency as well, and he was hoping that that choice would be made for him. He wouldn't be allowed to go on a mission because he'd be an Osmond. Essentially. What got you to eventually go on and mission Julian?

Julian Heath [01:48:32] I think it's probably a combination of things. Odd. I was 21 at the time, and I think that, you know, we'd had this. This record. Music was everything to me at this point. And we'd had this record deal. We decided not to sign it because we had.

Julian Heath [01:48:51] We had, like, solicitors that looked over the contract and kind of said, well, you know, it's good. You know, it's is a. It's a proper record contract. But this guy is known for being a little bit of a, a cowboy in the, in the music industry. Not, not in that. He wasn't, you know, he was. This is the guy that, that signed and managed Black Sabbath and, and he been involved in ELO and he'd done Small Faces. Well, yeah, he's most famous I think, for this, for, for managing the Small Faces and ripping off the Small Faces, who. They were like heroes to us. So we decided, right, okay, we're not going to go with him.

Julian Heath [01:49:27] What we're going to do is we're going to take it really seriously and we're going to, we're going to become really famous. And we were really, really famous in Castle Bromwich and you know, we would play regularly and the.

Julian Heath [01:49:44] No, this is such a 90s reference, isn't it? But you know, the people from Ocean Color Scene, who were a big band at that time, but during like the whole Brit pop era, but also happened to be from, from Birmingham, they would come and watch us play. And you know, I remember Steve Craddock coming up to me once in a night club and talking to me about the gig and all stuff like that. So, you know, we really thought we were gonna kind of go places with this. And if I'm being completely honest, I think the band was just like most things that, that these boys do.

Julian Heath [01:50:18] We dream really big. But we don't deliver. And, and I don't massively biased. I don't think that we, we don't deliver because we're not good enough. I think we don't deliver because we're not risk takers. No, we're not. And we, and then, you know, we'll kind of move on to something else or whatever it is, you know, but we, we've got big, big ambitions.

Richard Heath [01:50:42] And I am just going to interject. I did have the experience, Ruth and I, walking through Birmingham City center where two young guys said, you're. You're in the glory, aren't you? Will you sign my, my seat? He's got one of our CDs that we sold and he got it with him and I got to sign it. That's pretty time that anyone asked me for myself.

Nemo [01:50:57] That's pretty cool.

Julian Heath [01:50:58] But, but I kind of, you know, by 21, I was at a point where I was thinking, wow, this probably isn't going as, as well as I would like. I. When I got that when, when, that as soon as, as soon as this guy, this Donald and guy from America had called up and said, I've heard your demo, want to come talk to you, want to sign You. I use that as an excuse to drop out my A levels because I didn't, you know, it was getting closer to exam time and I didn't want to revise and stuff like that. So I thought, well, that's fine, I'm just going to use that as an excuse.

Julian Heath [01:51:34] I'm going to become a famous rock star. I don't need to worry about eye levels. And so when that, obviously that didn't materialize, I ended up just doing several different kind of just jobs, what. Whatever kind of came my way.

Julian Heath [01:51:50] And then I got a job working in a music shop. And it was a massive music shop. I think it's the biggest music shop. Music instruments. This is not like records or anything. And I worked in, like the vintage department as well. So all this wonderful equipment that, you know, from the 60s and stuff, it was brilliant. Anyway, I. I lost that job. That just didn't kind of. They didn't.

Julian Heath [01:52:17] They didn't continue my contract because I was rubbish. Because I didn't really want to sell guitars, I just wanted to play them. So I lost my dream job. And. And so, you know, the band thing wasn't really going where I wanted it to go and I was just. I just didn't really know what to do. And I remember one. I'd always known that I was supposed to go on a mission. I didn't want to go on a mission. Never really had a desire, but I knew that I was supposed to. That. That was. When I say supposed to. That was expected of me. It was expected that I would go on a mission. Not of. From my parents. They didn't expect that, but God expected me to.

Richard Heath [01:52:52] And.

Julian Heath [01:52:54] And so, you know, I just remember having a conversation with my mom one Sunday and kind of saying that I felt a little bit like Jonah, you know, that things weren't kind of working out for me the way that I would like them to, because maybe I was putting off this thing that I was supposed to do. And my mom just said, well, why don't you go on a mission then? And that really shocked me.

Richard Heath [01:53:12] Because Mum said that.

Julian Heath [01:53:13] Exactly. So that was just not like Mum at all, you know, to actually encourage me.

Nemo [01:53:19] You. Right?

Richard Heath [01:53:21] It explains a lot of those I'm

Nemo [01:53:23] loving Richard shock here.

Julian Heath [01:53:24] I knew he was going to say something here.

Richard Heath [01:53:26] A lot about Mum feels about you compared to me. Don't go, Richard. Don't go. Don't ever grow up, Julian John. Go on a mission.

Julian Heath [01:53:33] It's so funny, though, because I remember. I distinctly remember once around this kind of time I remember mom saying to me once saying, you're more trouble than all the others put together, which is

Richard Heath [01:53:46] such a load of rubbish.

Julian Heath [01:53:48] I remember at the time thinking, that's absolute nonsense. You know, I didn't shoplift or steal penny cheese. Yeah. Or any. Any of those things. I know that. I didn't cause Mum problems. I probably did now as a parent, actually. Now knowing how annoying it is to have children that think they're always right, I realized probably what she meant by that. But anyway, so she. She said to me, well, why don't you go? And it gets really interesting hearing you talk about some of this stuff, Rich, because even though we haven't really talked this way, you say some things that I think. Well, that was me as well.

Julian Heath [01:54:21] That was it then. As soon as the thought. Thought was in my head, I'm going. And actually pretty much straight away called up the bishop and said, look, I want to go on a mission. I want to arrange to. To meet with you to discuss it.

Julian Heath [01:54:35] Because I knew that was. That was a commitment then. Once I'd made that commitment with him, I wasn't going to back away from that. And so made that decision to go then.

Nemo [01:54:43] And what year was this?

Julian Heath [01:54:45] So this would have been 99.

Nemo [01:54:47] I made the decision.

Julian Heath [01:54:48] So I went in April 2000.

Nemo [01:54:51] Okay, and what year did you go on your mission?

Richard Heath [01:54:53] 89.

Nemo [01:54:53] 89.

Richard Heath [01:54:54] 89 to 91.

Nemo [01:54:55] All right. Okay, so Australia, Adelaide mission. 89 to 91. Well, we'll get to that. That's what you were called. Okay, and then where were you called to?

Julian Heath [01:55:04] So where was it you said you didn't want to go?

Richard Heath [01:55:06] London south. Or Loser south, as we like to call it.

Nemo [01:55:08] No, no, no, no. You mean the best mission on Earth, right?

Julian Heath [01:55:11] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I went to London South. Yeah. So my. My mission call was delivered, hand delivered to me. By the prophet. No, by a member of the ward that was the secretary for the area presence in Solihull at that time. So she delivered it to me, Janet Morley.

Richard Heath [01:55:33] Okay, yeah. Which was the area president?

Julian Heath [01:55:35] Oh, I don't know. I don't know.

Nemo [01:55:36] But that's because, just for context, the church officers were there at that time, right? Yeah, yeah.

Julian Heath [01:55:42] And, yeah, so. So it was hand delivered to me on Valentine's Day.

Nemo [01:55:47] Beautiful.

Julian Heath [01:55:48] I remember. I remember thinking, it's got to be somewhere amazing. You know, brother that went to Adelaide, brother that went to California. It's going to be fantastic. And so when I opened it and said London South, I was.

Nemo [01:56:00] Do you feel gypped?

Julian Heath [01:56:01] I was a Little bit gutted, Yeah, a little bit.

Richard's Mission Experiences

Nemo [01:56:04] Okay, so back to Richard on your mission.

Richard Heath [01:56:09] So I set off for Adelaide. I had a really lovely companion, Alder, how. Who I didn't keep in contact with, I've noticed, stayed in touch with. I'd love to know where he's at. I have tried since to track him down. He was a lovely, lovely man. He was from LA and we had a flat, obviously in one of the suburbs just outside of Adelaide.

Richard Heath [01:56:38] And he was just so humble, obviously. He'd been out six months before me. He knew the ropes. I still was sure of myself and thought I knew everything and. And everything that was in the world that was good, I knew about. And he just embraced that. He was really interesting to know about England, about my culture. He used to wear my p. Day clothes. He used to. He used. He made a list of all the music that I thought was good. Anyway, he was a lovely guy, but I didn't know at the time, although my mum did or could have guessed that. I have a congenital or order disorder, really, called duplex kidney.

Nemo [01:57:17] Right.

Richard Heath [01:57:17] Which doesn't cause any problems. It's something to do with you having two arteries to your kidney and being in Adelaide in the heat, in the humidity, must have set it off. I'm not a good drinker. I don't drink enough really, to keep me well hydrated. And the doctor seems to think that that had caused an irritation, caused a problem. And I got a lot of. I was in a lot of pain, so I've been there for about a month, and I started getting pains in my kidneys. It felt very heavy, almost like I got this concrete rubber ring on that was weighing down on my kidneys all the time.

Richard Heath [01:57:47] And I was passing blood and it was. It was not nice. Alder Howe called the mission president, Alder Gray, who seemed like a nice guy, he was due to go home the next month, wasn't terribly interested in it. Was convinced from the outset that I was homesick and wanted to go home. Wanted a reason to go. Go home.

Nemo [01:58:05] Right.

Richard Heath [01:58:07] So he arranged for me to see a doctor. They did some external examinations. They tested my urine. They told me I've got blood and sugar in my water, but they don't know what that would be. But they couldn't find anything. And I don't blame President Gray because he was told, we can't find anything. So he assumed there's nothing wrong with this boy Alder Howe, who's a lovely man. I remember him being on listening to one phone and saying, president, I can see the pain that he's. And I'm with him all the time. I'm there while he's passing blood. I know that this is real. And the mission president thought that perhaps Alder Howe was encouraging me to be homesick and so separated us.

Richard Heath [01:58:45] I was put in with the APs. I don't know where Elder Howe went. He went to be with the. I think the district leader to be in a threesome with them. So I was a week or two with the APs. My mum must have been having absolute fits about this because obviously she's very protective. Anyway, she's a long way away. She hears that I'm in pain, I'm struggling. Elder how, bless him, phoned my mum to say he really is having problems here. We're not making this up. So my mum, I remember saying, I will get on plane, I'll bring you back. As it happened, she didn't have to.

Richard Heath [01:59:19] And President Gray decided we'll just send you home then. Not send you home to be mended or to. To get the medical care necessarily. I think he was convinced I was going home, which was interesting because I received an invite at home for his welcome home party that he was having when he went back to America. He obviously thought I wasn't going back out on a mission. I did have some keyhole surgery. They sorted out my duplex kidney and then I was sent to Manchester where I served for 22 months.

Nemo [01:59:50] So just before we get to that, I want to say out of how if you're watching, reach out, get in touch.

Richard Heath [01:59:53] I'd love to hear from Rich, would

Nemo [01:59:55] love to hear from you. It could be he's watching this.

Richard Heath [01:59:57] I think his first name is David.

Nemo [01:59:58] Okay, David Howe, you're up. Cool. So tell us about Manchester.

Richard Heath [02:00:02] So Manchester was lovely. So my friend Alan had gone out on his mission six months before. Alan Phillips, he'd gone to Manchester. He was my trainer when I got put into. Into Manchester, which was lovely. We lived in a member's home in Eccles and. And we worked on hard. And Alan is a hard worker. He's also a little bit belligerent with me sometimes. And so I remember saying to him once, I'll work as hard as you want. Bear in mind that I was older than him, but he was my senior companion. I'll work as hard as you want. There's only two things I won't do.

Richard Heath [02:00:34] I will not tract on a Sunday because I think it's. I think you causing problems by knocking on people's door. On a Sunday when they're resting and what have you. And I don't want to do high rise flats. I'd grown up in Birmingham, ran lots of high, high rise flats and I'd seen all kinds of shenanigans going on in, around high rise flats. So our first Sunday we tracked it. The high rise flats around Salford. Right. Which was lovely. And, and so I had an interest around Salford.

Nemo [02:00:58] Yes, that's all around Salford, shopping city and all that sort of thing. Right?

Julian Heath [02:01:01] Yeah. Okay.

Nemo [02:01:01] Yeah,

Richard Heath [02:01:04] that was interesting. I enjoyed my mission. I could have come home several times. I didn't because I, I was too stubborn. I'd said I was going to do it so I would do it to the end. There were times I wasn't doing any work and that's awful and I wasn't proud of that. But I was a child still and, and I learned a lot about missionaries and, and, and, and what the reality of mission life is. Tracting is the most mind destroying thing to do day in and day out. There were times that I did that every day for hours and hours and hours. It's soul destroying to, to get no acceptance from people.

Nemo [02:01:41] It trains you to expect rejection from the outside world. And I reckon that's probably a lot of why they do it is you're training these young men to see the outside world as somewhere that will reject them, that will turn them away and isn't ready for us. So we have to just get more insular as a church.

Richard Heath [02:01:55] So not jumping forward 30 years to leaving the church. One of the things that was a shelf breaker for me was missionary work. And for a long time I've been saying we kind of doing this out of habit as a church. Now this isn't productive missionary work having young boys and girls go out, knock on people's doors. And the basis of that notion started on my mission. And I remember as everybody else did, learning the field is white already to harvest scripture. And I remember thinking the field is not white already to harvest. A hundred years ago it might have been, it's now been harvested and we're just going along gleaning the odd grain that's been dropped.

Richard Heath [02:02:33] And that's very much how it felt. I baptized a couple of people on my mission or was party to the teaching of a couple of people that got baptized. Otherwise I suspect it's a waste of time me being there. I did have some good experiences where I helped people who were non members with no expectation that they would be interested in a message about the church at all in fact, I kind of stopped even trying to share a message. I just wanted to help people in the area where I was living. I did have an interesting experience in that.

Richard Heath [02:03:00] In. In my 22 months, I think I had about. About 18 areas and 24 companions. I had a really lovely mission president in Manchester, a guy called Alda Davies, who. His name was Paul Davies. He told us his middle name was no Fear and he had some lovely stories when we did.

Julian Heath [02:03:18] Was it.

Richard Heath [02:03:18] Well, it really was. I don't know know, but he wouldn't surprise me. He was a lovely man. His wife, absolutely lovely. She used to stick up for me. Every time his wife said, alder Heath, you need to get a haircut, she'd say, no, it looks fine as it is. Which worked well for me since I didn't like getting my hair cut.

Richard Heath [02:03:32] But he. I remember going in from. I was his own leader and I remember going in for a president's interview that we had every month or so, and him saying, alder Heath, you've had some interesting companions so far and you're going to have more interesting companions because most of the missionaries that are problem in this mission are British and they're yours, and so I'm going to give them to you. And so I did have some interesting and quirky English, Welsh companions, all of whom I was probably horrible too. And I'm really. I. If they were here now, I would apologize to them, but I was doing what I thought was expected of me, to whip them into shape and what have you.

Richard Heath [02:04:15] And so I got to go lots of places in the north of England, from Stockport, underneath Manchester, right up to Barrow in Furness. And I met some lovely people again. Some people who were absolutely wonderful to me, made being on a mission much easier.

Richard Heath [02:04:34] People who I wish I'd stayed in contact with, people who I should still be friends with, and I didn't. And I regret, regret that hugely. Some people whose feelings I would have hurt because I didn't stay in contact and because of decisions that I made after coming home, but that was my mission.

Richard Heath [02:04:50] Now, one of the things I did want to mention that I did want to perhaps get into at some point is we all understand what missions are. As Mormons, there's not a lot of prep for getting a young man or a young woman on the mission, certainly not for young women. There's not a lot of prep. Now. People would argue me and say, richard, the young men have been getting ready to go on a mission all their lives, all through primary, all through young men's and yes, it's a topic of conversation, but getting them ready for the realities, it's not really there. But the thing that really isn't there either is helping the families that are left behind to know what to expect and also preparation for coming back.

Richard Heath [02:05:30] Young men often, when they come back off their missions, have an awful experience. I didn't have a great experience. I kind of stalled for quite a while. Not necessarily spiritually, but in my life. I didn't know where to go. I've also, you know, obviously I've seen the effect that going on a mission had on my siblings. My sister Rachel and my brother. Eden and I were very close in the young adult program. At the same time, for her to lose both me and Eden, a critical point in her life, must have been awful.

Nemo [02:05:57] So we'll get to that. We'll go through Julian's mission, and then I want to talk to you both about how it affected your families respectively.

Julian's Mission and Becoming an Apologist

Julian Heath [02:06:04] Yeah, so I went to Preston mtc and I loved it. I thought it was great. You know, there were a lot of people that there that were kind of raring to get out and get out into the mission field. I do. I wanted to stay there forever. I thought it was great. The food was great.

Julian Heath [02:06:24] You know, I had a lot of fun with the people that I was. That were in my district. I remember when I. Again, it's so interesting hearing your story, Rich. But when I first turned up. So when I went there, there was my mum and dad and my twin sister and Jonathan, who is the brother that's kind of closest to me in age, two years older than me. And the first thing that the mission president's wife said to me, she didn't hand me a card. The first thing she said to me is, oh, we're gonna have to do something about your hair. And. And that really.

Julian Heath [02:07:02] I mean, it upset me a little bit because before my mission, my hair was down to here. You know, I had really long hair. And so cutting it off was, you know, a real kind. It sounds ridiculous now, but it's real sacrifice to go, okay, well, I'm gonna cut off my hair so I can go on a mission. So for that to be the. The first thing I heard annoyed me, but it really upset my mum as well, because again, she's, you know, she's handing over one of her children. And this. This person, this mission president or MTC president's wife, that's supposed to be my new mum, that's supposed to be the person that's looking after me and, and caring and nurturing me and, you know, that's not what.

Julian Heath [02:07:43] The vibe that she got. And so that. I know that really, really kind of ticked her off. And there was a. I know there's a picture that was taken like straight afterwards. There's a picture taken of me, mum and dad. And I don't know what happened to it, but I'd love to see it now because I'm sure my mom would probably been scowling at the time.

Julian Heath [02:08:04] And so, yeah, then. So we went to the mtc. And another thing I remember that is just before your family all go, because, again, you know, this isn't. Not everyone gets to do this, but when the, The. The. The MTC is just around the corner from you, you know, relatively, then there would be family members that would come and drop you off and they got to be part of like a little service. So would have like a little, A little kind of service where would have a prayer and sing a couple of hymns. I guess the mission president probably said something and then they'd go off, like out of a separate.

Julian Heath [02:08:44] You know, they'd go off at one exit and then we'd go somewhere else. And, you know, we weren't allowed to kind of, as I remember it, we weren't allowed to kind of say goodbye at that point. We'd already said our goodbyes. We're in this meeting and they were just gonna kind of go off. And I remember Jonathan said, sitting next to me and, and kind of whispering in my ear, just, just come with me. Come out this one. You know, we'll just like, I'll sneak you, I'll rescue you from this.

Julian Heath [02:09:12] Which to some extent, you know, obviously there was no danger of me doing that, but it kind of represents how I was feeling at the time. I didn't really want to go. I knew it was something that I was supposed to do. And, you know, again, not because of how I felt about the church. I loved the church. I took it very seriously. I just didn't. I didn't want to do this, didn't want to go on a mission.

Julian Heath [02:09:34] But that quickly changed. Like I said, I really, really enjoyed it. I was. While I was there, there was a guy that was doing a documentary. I can't remember what. What channel it was for. I think it might have been for Channel 4.

Julian Heath [02:09:50] And he was doing. Doing this documentary and he wanted to. I think it was just a documentary on the church, but he wanted to interview two people at the mtc and. And I was picked to be interviewed And I think the reason that I was picked was that on one of the first days that we were there, we had to write out this little kind of form all about you. And the idea behind it was that the, the church PR people would then get it and they would write an article. Call that. When you go into your next, like you go to your area, you could kind of take that to the local newspaper, you know, Mormon missionaries in this area sort of thing.

Julian Heath [02:10:25] I can't imagine anyone ever did that, but that was the idea. And of course, in. In my little thing I've mentioned about the band and so they'd written up this article about how, you know, this Mormon lad gives up a. A his record deal, gives up this recording contract to go and serve a mission which was based.

Nemo [02:10:50] Nominally.

Richard Heath [02:10:51] True.

Julian Heath [02:10:51] Yeah, Loosely based on the truth. But he wasn't.

Richard Heath [02:10:54] There was a boy.

Julian Heath [02:10:55] Yeah, it wasn't quite like that, but I think that, you know, they thought, okay, he'll be a great one to interview. Mission press. Mission president's wife, I don't think, was very happy about it because all that day she kept pulling me into the office and kind of doing my hair, ready for when I was going to be interviewed. And. Yeah, and so we did this interview. I can't remember much about it other than I remember the story. Well, I won't get into that. Anyway, I remember the story from one of the other people that was. That was being interviewed, but the, the documentary never aired because it turned out that this guy was from some other kind of Christian group.

Richard Heath [02:11:37] Right.

Julian Heath [02:11:37] Wanting to kind of put a really negative spin on the whole thing. And so it was like the whole project was shoved.

Nemo [02:11:44] Okay, so you get out into the mission field. I, from the looks of your notes, you essentially became an apologist on your mission. Would that be fair to say?

Julian Heath [02:11:55] Okay, so I'd always, I'd always enjoyed. Always enjoyed reading, Always read my scriptures. I, you know, from, from throughout my youth. I remember going home from church on a Sunday and I would pick up Mormon doctrine and kind of study something that had come up that week in a lesson or whatever and try and kind of get into some of the interesting bits about it. And, and, and obviously now I'm on my mission. I have to study every, Every day. And so I kind of zoomed through the, the mission reference library. My mission president basically said, so. So for the first three months, I had one mission president.

Julian Heath [02:12:40] Then he left, and my new mission president kind of came in and said, right, okay, we're gonna start from scratch now. So all the, all the extra rules, forget about it. It's just the white handbook that, that's all we go. I trust you all at this point.

Julian Heath [02:12:56] That might have to change as time goes on, but I trust you all. And he, he kind of said in, in his like opening mission conference, he said that when he was set apart, he was told that he's. His primary responsibility was, had nothing to do with baptisms, had nothing to do with teaching the gospel to, you know, the, the, you know, non members in the mission. It was his main job was to teach the gospel to his missionaries. And so he took that role very, very seriously.

Nemo [02:13:26] Right.

Julian Heath [02:13:27] And he'd said that you can read whatever you want. Any church books that you want to read, you can read them once you've read the missionary reference lobby, which at that time was a lot long, a lot bigger than it is now, but once you've read that, you can read whatever you want. And so I did and I just read and studied and studied. We had the, the temple in the mission as you know, which meant that there was the, the LDS bookstore, like the, the one place in the UK where you could buy church books.

Nemo [02:13:57] Desiree book and stuff was all there.

Julian Heath [02:13:59] Yeah, yeah. And, and so whenever we went there and there was a time so I served in Epsom at one point. So, so that was in, in the, the mission and in the area. And so I would, I would just buy loads and loads of books and just read and read and read and just kind of completely just threw myself into that. I think that part of that is a bit, again, it's part of my personality. If something interests me, I'm gonna go into it big time. I'm gonna study it as much as I can and obsess over it a little bit.

Nemo [02:14:34] Is this where you discovered your love for nibbly?

Julian Heath [02:14:36] Yeah, Mass. Well, so there was, I think my first nibly book was actually, I'm sure interestingly I think it was Dave Burton that introduced me to, to Hugh Nibley. And it was a book that was actually transcript of a course that he'd done at BYU called Teaching to the Pearl of Great Price. And it was, was just bonkers in true kind of nibbly style when you know, especially when it's not, you know, proper monograph. This is, this is the, the, the lecture that he was delivering and he just goes off on all these different tangents and I just loved it, just absolutely loved it. So I just studied as much as I could and you know, within reason and, and in. So I remember I distinguished Distinctly remember my first kind of experience of cognitive dissonance.

Nemo [02:15:31] Right.

Julian Heath [02:15:32] And it was a book that I bought called Wilford Woodruff's Journal.

Nemo [02:15:37] Okay.

Julian Heath [02:15:38] It was. It probably should have been called Dodgy Thing. Dodgy Excerpts from Wilford Woodruff's Journal. Yes, because it was only about, you know, obviously he's journals would be, you know, multiple volumes and. And it was just this, this very small paperback book. And it was. I remember reading through it and I read something to do with blood atonement. And it was talking about, you know, something along the lines of probably several. Several excerpts that kind of mentioned similar stuff, but something along the lines of, you know, I would rather thrust a javelin through my daughter's heart than, you know, for her to marry a Gentile or some. Something along those lines.

Nemo [02:16:25] That's pretty full on.

Julian Heath [02:16:26] Yeah, it is a little bit. And I reading that, thinking something that doesn't feel quite right about that, you know, and that was the first time really, where I read something about the church. Just had that. That sinking feeling in my stomach where I just thought, this just does not feel good. This doesn't feel right.

Nemo [02:16:42] Right.

Julian Heath [02:16:43] And then of course, I had to go through that process then of trying to work it out. I didn't want to just bury it. I needed to try and work it out. I need to try and understand the context for it. I needed to understand something that would make this statement.

Nemo [02:16:56] Okay, and how did you come to terms with it?

Julian Heath [02:16:58] I can't remember.

Richard Heath [02:17:00] I can't remember.

Julian Heath [02:17:00] I'm sure I probably thought about the fact that this was, you know, these people were product of their time and they were talking about that that way. And maybe I started to look into the idea of, of the blood atonement and that kind of thing. I can't remember. But. But at some point I got to, you know, you made your piece. That's okay, that's okay. I can deal with it. But then it's stuff like that that then starts to have massive appeal, isn't it? All these bits and pieces. Well, I've never come across that before. Isn't that interesting? You know, and there were several missionaries that, you know, we'd get together, Transfers or its own conference or district conference or whatever, and we would share some of these things that we'd come across.

Julian Heath [02:17:41] I remember, you know, going to, you know, borrowing this folder off another missionary and going. Going to the library and photocopying accounts of Hebisi Kimball, 2nd and 19 and all stuff about masonry and things like that. You go into Borders in Bournemouth and ordering a copy of Duncan's Ritual of Freemasonry and all kinds of just disaster. I'm just really immersed myself in it.

Nemo [02:18:06] And that's. From what I know about you, that was a trend that kind of continued on throughout your adult membership in the church. Just immersing yourself in, in this sort of stuff and learning about it.

Julian Heath [02:18:15] Massively, massively. And I actually remember speaking. So you mentioned then, Rich, about the idea of kind of coming back off your mission and not really knowing what to do. I didn't have that experience periods because I remember in my, my kind of exit interview with my mission president who was a hero to me, and again, he, he. He'd written a book about the doctrine of Doctrine and Covenants, learning to love the Doctrine and Covenants, and he was in the process of writing another book about learning to love the Book of Mormon. And he would, he wrote two books on the, on the mission that he'd kind of give out to the missionaries that were all about kind of how to deal with some of the difficult questions and stuff like that.

Julian Heath [02:19:02] And so I just really. He was a real hero. I'd write to him regularly with the most obscure questions that I could, knowing that he wasn't going to write back to me and say, oh, don't worry about that, Alder Heath. He would kind of come up with his thoughts and theories on it and we talk about how reincarnation was a possibility and stuff like that.

Julian Heath [02:19:27] So in, in my exit interview, I remember kind of talking to him and saying, well, look, you know, President, I've. Up until now my life has been very much mapped out. You know, I knew that I'd get baptized at 8 and have the priesthood at 12. You know, and then I'd go on to my. Go on my mission.

Julian Heath [02:19:45] What do I do now? What am I supposed to do now? And he said, well, you need to be a teacher. Said that, you know, you're good, you're a good, you're a good teacher. I, Sorry, I want to go back a little bit. I just, I've got to drop this in. So again, my, you know, this is part of my need for approval, but also, you know, the, how seriously I took the, the, the mission. I really wanted to be. Be ip. Yeah, I was one of those missionaries. I really wanted to be ap and you know, and I've been district leader and I've been zone leader.

Julian Heath [02:20:21] And it was coming up to that point where you think it might be this transfer, I might get that call and the mission President called me up and he said, alder Heath, I'd really like to make you my ap, but I can't because you don't have a driver's license and I need my APs to be able to drive.

Julian Heath [02:20:42] So instead I want you to go whitewash Brixton and train as well at the same time. Which I thought was a little bit of a rough blow.

Nemo [02:20:51] It is a bit, isn't it?

Julian Heath [02:20:53] But in a way, it's always gutted that I didn't get to be his ap, because I just, like I say, he was my hero. I really wanted to be around him and, and learn from him and ask him all of these questions and, and stuff like that, you know. But the fact that he'd said to me, I wanted you to be my ap, that, that, that was, that was a nice kind of consolation for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, yeah, so I said to him, you know, what do I do now? He said, you need to be a teacher. So that was it. I knew what to do. And, and at that point I was thinking, so what really, what I want to do is I want to, I want to work for the church. So I want to work for farms or I want to work, you know, an electric byu.

Nemo [02:21:35] You had to sell your soul to apologize.

Julian Heath [02:21:37] Yeah, but of course, at the time I didn't see it that way. And that would continue for a while, you know what, so that's what led me to do a degree in ancient history. And for some time, you know, that was kind of the way that I was thinking.

Richard Heath [02:21:50] And did they welcome you with open arms?

Nemo [02:21:53] No, we'll get to that before we go there. So we, we've covered both your missions now, but I do want to talk about how it affected your family and it'll be really good to get, obviously get both your perspectives on how you think your own missions affected your family.

Returning Home and Post-Mission Life

Julian Heath [02:22:07] I, I, A couple of weeks ago, I went through all of my omission stuff. I'm just, just trying to have a clear out. Yeah. Nothing to do with me leaving the church or anything like that. Went through loads of stuff. But I got this big box, box that's just full of letters. And, and I went, I read some of them, I threw them all away. And again, that wasn't, you know, that's not me going, you know, I would just want, I want to get rid of all these, you know, because of how I feel is just, I'm never going to read them again.

Julian Heath [02:22:40] But I did keep one letter and it was from it was from my mom and it wasn't to me. It was a letter that she had sent to the mission president when I first went out. And it wasn't even really about me, it was about my twin sister Serena and it was really her, it was my mom saying how worried she is about Serena, you know, and I thought that was, you know, so lovely for my mom. Obviously it wasn't something that was on my mind at all at that time.

Julian Heath [02:23:12] But, you know, very similarly to what Richard had said earlier, we've got these kind of, these sets of three in the family. My set of three was my twin sister Serena and Joffy, my brother, a couple of years older than me. Before I, before I left on my mission, just before I left, my mum and dad moved house and I said to them when they were looking for a new house, I said, look, don't, don't kind of consider me when you looking for a new house because when I go on my mission, when I come back from my mission, I'm moving in with, with Joff because Joff was recently got married. And this is something that we talked

Nemo [02:23:52] about, the one that offered to sneak you out the empty seat. Right?

Julian Heath [02:23:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so we'd already talked about this, that, that I was going to go and move in with them and, and so they didn't. They actually, you know, they bought a two bedroom house so there'd be a bedroom for Serena and a bedroom for them. I'm. While I was on my mission, Joff moved over to America and.

Nemo [02:24:11] Right.

Julian Heath [02:24:12] And he's been there pretty much ever since. And you know, so when I came back it was, it was very, very different situation. You know, the three of us did so much together. You know, we go to church dances and we go, you know, when we weren't going to church dances, we go to, we go clubbing and we go, you know, we'd have, have the band gigs that we'd all go to together and you know, and that's not to say that when I, obviously when I came back, Joff wasn't there, you know, Serena was and I moved in, actually moved into my mum and dad's conservatory because that's the only space that they had for me.

Richard Heath [02:24:48] Right.

Julian Heath [02:24:49] Yeah. So I lived there for a while, you know, and I'm not saying that I didn't have, you know, I didn't have a good relationship with Serena. I did, you know, but it's just not the same. You know, it's never the same. And I think I was very I was very. I was very glad when I came back off my mission. One of the. One of the first things that Larry said to me when he saw me was he said, oh, it's really good to see that you're the same. You haven't changed. And I really took that as a compliment, you know, because, you know, we had. We'd had friends that had kind of come back, and they were just very, very different, almost in a kind of a weird way, you know, that talk with an American accent and, you know, they haven't even gone to America.

Nemo [02:25:35] Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Julian Heath [02:25:37] And so I. I really kind of took that as a compliment, as I'm saying. And that's how he meant it was, oh, you know, it's good to see, you know, you just. Same old Julian, you know, and that was great. But of course, you're not the same. You're very, very different.

Nemo [02:25:48] And the.

Julian Heath [02:25:48] The church went from something that was very important to me to something that was. That was everything to me then and dictated so much about my life at that point. And so, yeah, those relationships were never really the same.

Nemo [02:26:02] What about you, Richard?

Richard Heath [02:26:03] So I. I think, really, in a nutshell, I think we underestimate or don't even consider sometimes as a church organization, the adverse effect of sending young people on the missions to their families. And I would say, especially young men for their sisters who are left behind. And I can say that because I've had a younger brother who's had a sister close. I've had myself and my brother Eden with a sister that's close. I've had a son go with a sister that's close. And when your sister is part and parcel of your social group and you are pulling that rug from underneath them and not just saying, I'm not going to hang out with you anymore, but I'm going somewhere else, the other side of the world, where the church tells you you can't come and see me, you can't visit, you can't phone me.

Richard Heath [02:26:52] Now, I know that those things are relaxing a little bit now. When I went on my mission, it was telling. It was letters only. And so for my poor sister Rachel, and then for my daughter Chloe. I know when my son went on his mission, it was a huge chunk of their life being taken away from them.

Richard Heath [02:27:09] What they also don't prepare you for is for what happens after the mission. That is that you'll probably never have that child back again. You'll probably never have that sibling back again, certainly not in the way they were before. They left that tight relationship where you relied on each other and you loved each other, you did stuff together. It's gone now. Obviously. As a parent, I was really keen to put a really positive spin on missions for my children. I experienced, expected Elliot to go on a mission. If he said he didn't want to, I would have put any pressure on. But we brought him up as if that was an expectation and he accepted it in that way and was quite keen to go.

Richard Heath [02:27:44] When he got to that age, I would have been very happy for any of my daughters to go, but I didn't have that expectation, which of course is wrong to have treated them differently like that. But that's how the church kind of sets it up.

Richard Heath [02:27:58] I wasn't prepared for it, even though I had talked to Elliot about it all his life. I told him all the positive things that happened on my mission, experiences I had, how strengthening it will be for him, how he will grow up. And he did, he did grow up on his mission. What I wasn't prepared for was how like losing a child it would be. And, you know, we grew up with the story of Abraham being tested by being told to sacrifice his son. That's what it felt like. Right now. What I've learned about myself is that when trauma happens in my life, life, I ignore it.

Richard Heath [02:28:29] I switch off. And I'm sure that's what happened when my brother died. And I probably have never actually addressed it. However, when Elliot went on his mission, we went through the motions. I. I was excited for him. We got him ready. We did all those things in preparation. Of course, when he's. His mission call came back that he was going to Calgary, Canada. We were so excited for him. He was excited. He's a real outdoor type person, so to go to that kind of environment was great.

Richard Heath [02:28:56] And then he went. And what Ruth and I had to come to terms with was we said goodbye to Elliot for his mission and we were probably saying goodbye to our son as we knew it. And of course, that was the case. He came home, he went to university in London. He then went to work in Cambridge. He now lives in Denmark. And while we love Elliot dearly and when he comes to visit, he's a really important part of our family. We will never have that relationship with him again again that we had before his mission. And. And it really struck me not only to see how it affected Chloe especially, I'm sure it affected Lillian and Jude as well.

Richard Heath [02:29:31] But it was about a month before he was coming home and I'd not addressed the fact that I missed him, I'd written to him, we'd spoken to him on those occasions, he was allowed to phone and.

Julian Heath [02:29:41] And all of that.

Richard Heath [02:29:42] And I tried to put a positive spin on everything, but I'd not addressed the way that I felt about it. And as I said, music is important to me. We were driving somewhere and I put a CD on and it was Alicia Keys, who's not someone I listen to a lot, but it was a song called Try Living With A Broken Heart, I think it's called. And I realized the last time I'd heard that. Excuse me, because I feel a bit emotional now. The last time I'd listened to that was with Elliot, before he'd gone. And I felt like I had lived with a broken heart and I had to pull over to cry. I couldn't drive anymore. I was so upset that I realized I'd been through this traumatic experience of losing a child, that he would never come back to me the way that he left anyway. I don't want to be emotional.

Nemo [02:30:27] No.

Richard Heath [02:30:27] Be emotional, but that's the reality of it. And I suspect, and I think it's one of those things. There are certain things in life that we don't talk about in our culture. We don't talk about death enough, we don't normalise it enough. And so it's traumatic, certainly when couples lose a child to miscarriage or whatever, we don't talk about it until it happened to somebody else, and then you learn about who else has had it. And I think this loss that we experience, the reality of sending young people on missions we don't talk about in the church, we paint a lovely picture of it. We make out what a great thing it's going to be, how important it is.

Richard Heath [02:31:04] Actually, my feelings now is that it's a huge waste of time for a lot of young people who have nothing like the missionary experience that I think they think they're going to have, but that it tears families apart in a way that could be softened if people were prepared for it. But we don't talk about it. And I know that there are people who I was friends with in my ward who had sent children on a mission, who had not said to me, richard, you're going to find this really difficult.

Richard Heath [02:31:31] So as far as mission prep is concerned, I think the church could do a much better job for its families by having a program, perhaps, that prepares them for the realities of losing their child to a mission.

Nemo [02:31:44] So just to play devil's advocate here, what would you say to Someone who said, well, isn't it just like your child going to university or your child moving out in some other way? What would you say?

Richard Heath [02:31:55] There is a reality that one day your child is going to leave, but it's not quite the same, you know. When Elliot went to to university in London, we could visit him whenever we wanted to. He could phone us on a daily basis. We facetimed with him whenever we wanted to. And as I said, I know they're changing some of those things. What I can't understand is what kind of loving heavenly Father and what kind of loving priesthood leadership would expect that of young people in the first place. I remember when I first went on my mission because I was only there for a short time and throughout my time time in Manchester, I used to have to come home for visits to the hospital and stuff again, my immune system was to shot and at one point I lost a lot of weight.

Richard Heath [02:32:35] I went down to about nine stone when I was still six foot two and I had to come home to get fed up again. My mission president was lovely about that. But it did mean that I was able to talk to Julian and Serene and the others about not only about my fervor for gaining a testimony, but about the realities of a mission. I remember talking to my mum about some of the stuff that missionaries do. Yeah, they get tattoos and they drink some of them and they go gambling into casinos and those kinds of things. And that was a big eye opener to me.

Richard Heath [02:32:59] And I don't know if it was my mum, I know Ruth has said it to me since, but of course they do, they're children. A lot of these missionaries, especially Utah American missionaries, have lived in a bubble for 18 years. You're sending them out at 18 for heaven's sake. That is far too young for them to know themselves, whether they've got a testimony or not. Certainly to not understand the, the history of the church and its teachings, but then to expect them to live up to the standards that we set for them, it's just unrealistic. You know, as a teacher I've spoken to some of my pupils before who have misbehaved and I said, I expect that of you.

Richard Heath [02:33:34] You're a teenager, I expect you to behave like a teenager. But you're gonna have to take the consequences on the chin. And I would say the same to missionaries and to the church. You got to expect that. Which is why if I was in charge, surprised I'm not, I would say let's throw away what we've got and Think about missionary work again and how we're going to achieve it.

Nemo [02:33:50] Right. I think we'll do that. We'll send this directly to church headquarters.

Richard Heath [02:33:55] They'll probably ask you for it.

Nemo [02:33:57] This is Richard's idea of how we can improve church.

Richard Heath [02:33:59] I don't know how we can improve it. I didn't get that far.

Nemo [02:34:01] This is what they should be.

Richard Heath [02:34:02] All I knew is it doesn't work the way it is. Come on, let's be honest. And for those poor missionaries during lockdown who were stranded, stuck in their flats, trying desperately, and if there's any missionaries out there that listen to this, we think you're great. Whether. Whether we believe what you believe or not, we think what you're doing is great and very brave. Please stop putting yourself on Facebook. Marketplace.

Nemo [02:34:26] Yeah, please stop. Please stop going into, like, DIY help groups and saying, oh, I don't want any gardening done.

Richard Heath [02:34:31] Well, I don't love that. But the whole marketplace thing, especially when you see young sister missionaries saying, hey, I'm here. Come and. Come and speak to me. If you were my daughter, I would be very, very cross about that because. And I don't. I understand you've got faith, and I understand you think that the Heavenly Father's gonna protect you. I don't think it's a wise thing to do, basically.

Nemo [02:34:53] I don't think so. So you guys came back off missions and. Yeah. You survived the experience. So I just want to talk before, because we're going to get to a faith crisis. Obviously, there's a few years in between. I just want to know if there's any particular events, any signs where. Looking back on it now, it seemed as though you loaded up your shelf a bit, that you didn't realize at the time whether there were any moments where you faltered and then brought yourself back. Any key callings you think had an influence, anything like that. We'll start with Julian.

Julian Heath [02:35:23] No.

Richard Heath [02:35:24] No.

Nemo [02:35:24] Okay. That's cool. Richard.

Richard Heath [02:35:28] Yes.

Julian Heath [02:35:30] So, yeah, I mean, obviously a lot happening. I got married.

Nemo [02:35:34] Yeah.

Julian Heath [02:35:36] I met Laura through the church, sort of. It was a friend that was a friend from her ward that was studying up here. And so I met her through institute. And so she, you know, she totally introduced us and kind of set us up. And that worked really well. And we.

Julian Heath [02:35:51] And. And I think, Lord. So. So Laura's from a part member family. Her mom, I think she got baptized when she was about 15. Sorry? Laura got baptized when she was about 15. She wasn't allowed to be baptized when she was 8, but mum was a Convert.

Julian Heath [02:36:10] And I think that had kind of. Kind of built into her this kind of feeling of not being a real Mormon, right. She. She could. She looks around and she can see, you know, see all these kind of proper Mormon families and think, well, that's not my family, so I'm not a real Mormon. And so I think my kind of fervor for. For the church and for, you know, bearing in mind I'd come off my mission, thought, right, I'm going to go. I'm going to study ancient history. I'm going to learn all of these wonderful things and going to make my own fantastic discoveries. I'm gonna write papers for farms.

Julian Heath [02:36:51] I'm gonna work for, you know, as an institute teacher or something like that. And, you know, so I'm throwing everything into it. It wasn't just, you know, the church wasn't just my religion. It was my hobby as well. And I was hoping that that would be my. My work. All through my. My church studies, I'm looking and trying to, you know, I'm trying to be the new Q Nibli and. And, you know, recognize these different things in everything that I see.

Julian Heath [02:37:19] So that's me. And then Laura's thinking, well, I'm not. I don't feel like I'm a proper church member. So she just kind of. We just did the whole thing on steroids. And, you know, we kind of threw ourselves into it. We would go to the temple every month and we.

Julian Heath [02:37:40] Yeah, I remember a time especially, so we didn't. We didn't have kids straight away. So. So. So they're about seven years before Jesse came along. And, you know, I remember a time when my mum and dad were kind of saying, oh, we would love to see you.

Julian Heath [02:37:57] And we'd say, okay, well, let's see if we can book you in. And looking at our diaries and, oh, no, we've got a youth activity. I miss this night. And, you know, and then we've got meetings and it was all church.

Nemo [02:38:07] We all know members like this.

Julian Heath [02:38:08] Yeah, we really, really kind of threw ourselves into it.

Richard Heath [02:38:11] Drew and Laura didn't know this probably, but Ruth and I obviously watched this happening and we were quite worried. Ruth and I discussed at various times that we think they're going to burn out. They're doing too much. You know, Laura is, you know, every night of the week almost was a young women's meeting or whatever. And. And we did notice as well that we didn't see so much of them. We could only see them when they've got spare Time they wouldn't cancel a meeting or anything to come. To come and do something.

Julian Heath [02:38:36] Yeah. So, I mean, that worked for us. That was great. I think when. When Jesse came along, that changed things, just because we couldn't. Now. Now we've got a. Yeah, now we've got a little. Little one. Then it meant that we had to kind of make some decisions to kind of take our foot off the pedal a little bit.

Julian Heath [02:38:57] But then I think that the significant thing really was that we moved. So we moved out of Chalmesy Wood, the war that I'd grown up in, to Solihull, which was, you know, not far from us, but very, very different ward. We were posh now, which, you know, changed everything because now we're in Solihull, so we were very posh.

Julian Heath [02:39:21] And we. As you can probably tell from the way that I spent. Speak now. So Solihull was the ward where you've got a lot of the members are working for the. The church offices. The church offices were in Solihull.

Nemo [02:39:36] So the, The.

Julian Heath [02:39:38] The Europe area office was in Solihull. The. The area president lived there. And, you know, they would all. Obviously, because of that, anyone, any of the kind of visiting general authorities would come to Solicor Ward.

Nemo [02:39:54] Jeffrey R. Holland lived in that ward for a while.

Richard Heath [02:39:56] He did.

Julian Heath [02:39:56] He did, yeah. Jeffrey Holland lived there. Alan Phillips and Dave Cook, who was like, you know, he was one of the. The real kind of pioneers for the. For the church education system, you know, outside of. Of the U.S. and it was. It was a real kind of. Of strange set up there, really, because even though when we moved there, not long after that, the. The church offices closed and moved over to Frankfurt, so that, you know, There was like 60 members just up to the left, and it kind of changed everything. But there was still this. This kind of sense that in. In Solihull we had to be this. This kind of flagship ward, and we could be visited by general authority at any moment. So we've got. Everything's got to look perfect. And if I'm honest, I think there's a bit of a kind of superficiality that came with that because you had

Nemo [02:40:53] to keep up appearances. There was always this need to appear to be a ward that's doing well.

Julian Heath [02:40:57] Absolutely.

Nemo [02:40:58] Which leaves no room for those who are struggling.

Julian Heath [02:41:01] No, no. And I think that that became significant later on. But I think when we did that, we. One of the things that changed, we had like a new friendship group. There were a few. A few young couples. So I was young back then. There's a few young couples in the ward, all with young children.

Julian Heath [02:41:26] You know, one of them was a friend that I'd made on my mission. Another one was someone that I'd known from youth. And we really connected. We connected really well. We did everything together. So, you know, after church, you know, church wasn't three hours for us, church was five hours because we'd do the three hours and then we spend two hours after just hanging around. And you know, there were times when we'd just say, well, we might as well just bring a picnic to church so that after church we can all kind of eat together and just sit around and talk. We ended up going on, on holidays together.

Julian Heath [02:42:01] And it really was fantastic, you know, fantastic friendship group. But what it meant was that we could be very authentic with each other and we could start talking about the church without that kind of fear of being shamed for being negative in any way. We could be really kind of open and honest about it. I think that was a really significant thing to kind of how we then started to, to kind of deconstruct, deconstruct Mormonism.

Julian Heath [02:42:34] And you know, I think over time, especially with the way that I've kind of thrown myself into, into studying things, I'd, I had kind of taken the, the apologetic route, you know, and I'd, if there was a problem, then I find a solution or you know, find a faithful solution. And, and, and so I knew a lot of the kind of historic problems but managed to find a way to, to, to feel okay with that. But the things that really started to bother me was the more kind of social issues okay with the church. And, and I think that that's really what started to kind of make it fall apart for me.

Callings, Leadership, and Church Involvement

Nemo [02:43:15] So before we get there, Richard, any particular callings that you in the interim between. And I want to go to this point in time here because obviously Julian had the faith crisis before you, so I want to go to that point in time. So up until Julian started to have his faith crisis, is there anything particular going on in your church life? Obviously you met your wife.

Richard Heath [02:43:33] So I met Ruth. Ruth was a convert. She had, she tells me that getting baptized was her rebellion. She got baptized at about 14.

Nemo [02:43:41] Most teenagers smoke, drink, do whatever, others join.

Richard Heath [02:43:44] Mormonism apparently is a very strong willed and strong minded person and she was going to join the church whether people liked it or not. She's got a friend who's a member of the church. She'd learned some stuff, had attended as a non member for quite a while, joined the church. I'm glad she did because we met and fell in love and got married quite quickly, like Mormons often do. Ruth, when we got married, was just turned 19, which for my daughters is way too young and I'm amazed that Ruth's parents would allow her anywhere near me at the age of 18. But anyway, we had four children.

Richard Heath [02:44:21] I became a teacher. My ambition would have been to work for the church and we neither of us had mentioned my dad had worked for the church for a while. Church offices he worked in physical facilities and he loved it. He said he couldn't think of anything better than to work with people that he loved. His brothers and sisters start the day with a prayer and a spiritual, spiritual thought and I was up for that.

Richard Heath [02:44:42] I knew Dave Cook very well and in actual fact worked for him for a while. He and his wife used to run a tutoring company on a Saturday where we would tutor young kids that wanted to take their grammar school exams. And I was a trainee teacher and Ruth is just intelligent, she didn't have to be a training teacher and we worked for them doing that. I remember a job, a post came up in Cesar. I remember saying to Dave, Dave, I'm thinking of applying. And he taught me something that confirmed something that I'd already believed and that resonated for a number of years after that.

Richard Heath [02:45:16] And I still feel quite bitter about now. And that is, he said, Richard, you could, but it takes a special kind of person to be a CES man. Now that was the most indirect criticism he could have given me.

Nemo [02:45:31] Right.

Richard Heath [02:45:32] I don't know what it was he was saying about me. I was good enough to work for his company. I had a testimony, I was an active member. I was always active until the day I stopped going a year ago I was active, I was always a temple recommend holder, I always paid my tithing and I think I've said already that I'm an empathetic person. I think I'm a good teacher and I think I'd have been a great CES seminary institute type person.

Richard Heath [02:46:04] But Dave was the arbiter of those applications, I think so I didn't even get an interview that first time. That bothered me and the reason it bothered me because I've for a long time, and I can't perhaps put this into words but for a long time I've said my face doesn't fit or I've got the wrong surname and it always felt like that to me. My dad was a good bloke and a really hard working priesthood Holder. I remember my dad saying, if when I die, if the best that anyone could say of me was I was a priesthood man, then my life would have been worthwhile.

Richard Heath [02:46:40] And I genuinely. He's not died, but I can genuinely say he's a priesthood man. He wouldn't say no to anything that anyone asked him to do. And he was underused and I felt underused. Now I'm going to be honest, because I'm not a Mormon anymore.

Julian Heath [02:46:54] Everything you've said up to this point

Nemo [02:46:55] has just been lies, lies, lies and slander.

Richard Heath [02:46:58] No, I aspired to callings, and I suspect that most men in the church do. I have been told before, it's not a ladder, Richard. And then yet I've had it explained to me as if it's a ladder that you climb. And I couldn't understand why, if I wanted to serve and I got these skills, experiences that I thought I'd got that were enough in my professional life, that meant that I was leading a department or an assistant head teacher or whatever it was, why wasn't that good enough for the church? Why was it that the person that was the bishop or the stake president, for instance, don't get me wrong, I've had some lovely bishops and some lovely stake presidents, but on the whole were businessmen who didn't understand people that were not good with people and made what I consider to be some really unchristian, lousy decisions sometimes.

Richard Heath [02:47:48] And I just wanted to serve. And was it a little bit for a bit of status? Probably, because that's the environment that we brought up in, you know, the whole, you know, we're going to sustain a new bishop or a new state president or whatever calling. The fact that people come and congratulate you is an unspoken acceptance that, that you've achieved something.

Richard Heath [02:48:13] I've had lots of callings. I've been an elders quorum president. I've been a young men's president, I've been a state young men's president. I've been on the bishopric. I've been a Sunday school teacher. I've been a seminary teacher for a few years. And I was happy to do anything, but I felt undervalued and underused.

Richard Heath [02:48:32] And I think it ties into a little bit of the nepotism that's in the church and not. Guess I'm using the word nepotism loosely because it isn't just nepotism, it's also cronyism, you know, giving your friends the jobs and what have you. And I understand how that works, especially when and I am going to be a little bit cynical now. When callings aren't done by revelation, they are done in a practical way. You know, who do I know is going to do the job? Who do I know that I can work with? I see it. I get how that works. But I would have liked to have had the chance to. To do that, to. To be able to serve.

Julian Heath [02:49:12] Yeah, I. I feel exactly the same as.

Richard Heath [02:49:14] Well.

Julian Heath [02:49:14] Again, a lot of what you said there resonates with me. I. I mean, I. I applied to work for CES as well. I don't know if at any point we were applying for the same job. It's quite possible. And I also had a conversation with Dave Cook as well, and. And what he said to me was kind of like, well, you know, from. So from my point of view, it's like, well, look, I'm a. I'm a teacher. I've got a degree in ancient history that, you know, that should put me in a good position. And I think his take was. Yeah, but you haven't been a bishop, Right?

Nemo [02:49:48] Okay. So I know we don't like to talk in terms of higher or lower callings or whatever, but let's be honest, there is a ladder, like you said. So how high up the ladder did each of you get?

Richard Heath [02:50:00] Counseling, Bishopric.

Julian Heath [02:50:02] So I. I'm not high priest. And again, you know, going right back, like I say, these things have always been important to me. These things have always been kind of a sign of. Of divine approval, you know, So I. I was a. I think as soon as I. In fact, while I was in youth, I was called as Sunday School president, you know, and I know that's not a massive thing because Sunday School president doesn't really do anything, but I remember at the time, people being kind of like, wow, Julian, you know, you're Sunday School president.

Nemo [02:50:35] You know, I was exactly the same. I was a teenager when I was called as Sunday School president.

Julian Heath [02:50:38] Yeah. And so you know how that feels. You think, wow, I'm Validation Sunday School president now. Apostle. You're on a trajectory. And, you know, I was an Aldous Quorum president before I left on my mission, you know, and felt, you know, again, when I get on my mission and I'm a little bit old, so I'm 21, so I'm a little bit older. But also I'm around, you know, mostly Americans from areas where this, you know, they've got massive wards. So the idea of another missionary being out as corn president, it's just like. That wasn't heard of, you know, so. So, you know, that all that made me feel, you know, really good and feel like I'm on the right path.

Julian Heath [02:51:21] And so, you know, definitely when I got back, you know, I served as Aldous Corn president again, and I served as young men's president and as world mission leader and all of these things. But again, I did have that sense of just feeling like I'm overlooked. And it is nonsense to kind of say that there isn't a hierarchy, because even some of the language that, that we use, you know, when we talk about the fact that, you know, we might say, well, oh, well, you know, in the church, there's no hierarchy. You could be stake president today and then tomorrow you're working in teacher employment.

Julian Heath [02:51:57] The very fact that you're making that comparison suggests that there is a hierarchy, otherwise that that comparison wouldn't even exist. So we know that that is the way that it is.

Richard Heath [02:52:08] We also. We also know the way that members look on social media. Someone who's called to be a bishop or a state president, they've achieved something. They are singled out as being special. And I would have liked that feeling. My last calling before I told the bishop I didn't want any more callings, was a teacher in primary. And I quite enjoyed that class. I did think it was a slap to give it to me, but I also, I'd been young men's president before that, and I thought I'd put a lot of effort into being young men's president. And I passed a sacrament every week. And I remember one time the stake president was a member of our ward, and he's a nice enough bloke.

Julian Heath [02:52:48] I didn't really.

Richard Heath [02:52:48] I don't really know him very well, but I remember one week when I was sat on front and I'd passed the sacrament and he came up to me afterwards and shook hands, said, oh, nice to see you, brother. It's a privilege, isn't it? I felt like saying, well, it's privilege. You can have you do it. So would you feel privileged if you weren't the state president anymore? People weren't treating you with adulation and looking up to you, and you were doing this every week and teaching in primary because. And I know that if I, if he was here, he would say, of course I would.

Richard Heath [02:53:16] I would serve wherever I'm asked to, as we do. I know that's not the truth, you know, and he's not the state president anymore, and I suspect he's got a bit of a black hole that needs filling again. Because it's very busy. I know he put 100% into his calling. He probably was out most nights of the week doing it and during the day as well.

Richard Heath [02:53:36] But as we know, when we've had callings where there's a degree of responsibility and you are released from that calling, there's an emptiness there.

Nemo [02:53:46] There is.

Early Seeds of Doubt and Faith Questions

Julian Heath [02:53:48] So, so this goes alongside, you know, we kind of. We're going to get to talking about how I kind of left the church.

Richard Heath [02:53:55] There are two things, I think there

Julian Heath [02:53:56] are two things that kind of go along side by side.

Richard Heath [02:53:59] I think,

Julian Heath [02:54:01] you know, throughout all of this, I'm changing the way that I view the, the church. And like I said, it was mostly down to social things that were. That were kind of bothering me. The money that was being like. So obviously this was before the whole Ensign Peak thing was, was leaked, but it had been leaked on Mormon leaks. I think it was leaked. The, the, the letter that talked about the increase in the stipend for general authorities, you know, and, you know, just this, this, this fact that these people. And also there was a leak about mission present expenses. And you start to realize these people aren't, you know, going out without personal script, you know, they're not giving up everything that they're doing pretty well off of this, you know, and, but also some of the stories that you got as well, being in those wards that were around the people that worked for the church as well.

Julian Heath [02:54:59] So I remember hearing that when Alder Lund left as area president, so they had in the office, they decided, okay, well, let's do like a little buffet, you know, to kind of say said goodbye. And one of the.

Julian Heath [02:55:19] So a friend of ours was, Was told or was asked, can you go out and get some food, you know, so we can have like a little office buffet thing. And she said, well, okay, well, how much, how much should I spend? And oh, just, just about a thousand. You know, I'm thinking, what.

Richard Heath [02:55:36] Hang on.

Nemo [02:55:37] Pardon me.

Julian Heath [02:55:38] So, so we're gonna spend a thousand pounds on this little buffet for, you know, because Alder Lund's going, you know, going somewhere else. He's leaving as area president. But, you know, in all of the callings that we do, we're taught that these are sacred funds and we need to be very careful with them.

Richard Heath [02:55:57] And we will.

Julian Heath [02:55:57] You know, let's face it, we've all probably had callings where. And, and this was especially true of Laura, right? Because Laura, you know, very. Just, just didn't care about money at all. You know, just not really not bothered about Money. And I think possibly for us, because of we. The fact that we were a big family, we didn't have a lot growing up. You know, money's important to me. I don't want fancy clothes or any things, but. But, you know, I don't want to waste money. Don't waste it. And we would often have church activities where Laura would never bother to. To send in a receipt and get things reimbursed.

Julian Heath [02:56:36] And we just kind of go, okay, well, that's us kind of doing our bit. We're helping. It's all in, you know, we've covenanted to, you know, sacrifice everything. So that's us doing that. And then to hear, well, hang on, but you're just going to blow a thousand pounds on some sausage rolls and,

Nemo [02:56:51] and, you know, and how, how do you blow a thousand pounds on a buffet? Mormons don't drink. Alcohol's usually the main expense in some of these very expensive meals.

Julian Heath [02:57:00] Like what, what, you don't go to Iceland?

Nemo [02:57:02] No, they're off to Waitrose. But how do you spend a thousand pounds at Waitrose?

Julian Heath [02:57:06] Maybe they didn't spend a thousand pounds, but it's the fact that they just said, well, okay, well, let's do that. And you hear those stories, don't you? And I've heard stories about how, you know, a general authority was due to. To visit a ward. And they said, right, okay, well, we need new carpets, we need to do this, we need to do that. And I just think, why, why are we doing that?

Richard Heath [02:57:27] Those.

Julian Heath [02:57:29] Why we go to all of that effort, you know, cars, you know, they'd hire for when the general thought, because they had to have these really nice cars. I just thought, none of this feels like Jesus's church.

Richard Heath [02:57:42] Or they're coming to you, they're coming to your chapel for Sunday meetings and they can shut the car park to everybody else. So everybody else that attends there regularly has to go and find somewhere else to park because they want to make sure there's plenty of space, space for the general thrust. They're not going to be crowded in and what have you when it's coming and going time and, oh, my goodness,

Julian Heath [02:57:59] I just haven't got a lot of time for that. And it was that kind of thing where you think, well, hang on, you know, there's a lot of issues that we're pretty, you know, we take very seriously. We're quite concerned about in the church. Things like homosexuality and word of wisdom and stuff like that. Jesus never said anything about those things. He was completely silent on those issues. But he did talk a lot about people that were rich and, you know, people with their fine twined linen and all of that kind of stuff. And it's like, well, we're just going to ignore that because that's convenient.

Nemo [02:58:35] Jeffrey R. Holland has the audacity to try and use the example of the rich young man in a conference address. How can you say that when the Church has all this money? My experience of meeting General Thor's been slightly different. Dan H. Oaks turned up in my ward once. He just arrived and no one really knew what to do. And then I, Elder Christofferson came to Ashton Stake when I was living up in Manchester, and he came and I bumped into him when he was on his way to the loo. So he's bumped into each other. I was like, oh, hi, nice to meet you. Shook his hand. He's like, the bathroom's this way. Yeah, the bathroom's this way. Off he goes. So there is that element to it as well.

Julian Heath [02:59:12] But there's also all this other stuff.

Nemo [02:59:13] You hear about where they're closing car parks and they're buying new carpet and Russell M. Nelson's talking about how people are in Hyde Park Chapel scrubbing it clean with toothbrushes, because I think he used the phrase that the Inspector General's arriving or something like that, right? So there's these sides, these two sides to it.

Julian Heath [02:59:28] And we. So I remember having a conversation with. With the state president because. So the state president was in my ward at. And, you know, lovely guy. But we'd had this conversation in. In priesthood where they talked about the fact that General Authority was coming over. I can't remember who it was. I think it was. Ballard was coming over and they were going to have a. So he was going to be there for state conference or for some, you know, some big state meeting. But that also before. On the. On the day before that, they were having a special meeting at Solihull Chapel for all the missionaries or.

Julian Heath [03:00:11] Or something like that. And, you know, we would be okay. So what we want you to do as a ward, we'd like you to come. If you could come down on. This was going to happen on Saturday. So if you could come down on Friday evening so that you can kind of clean the chapel and we can put the chairs out. And I remember in the meeting just saying to him, I'm sorry, but I just got a real problem with this, right? So I've got to leave my family at home so that I can put out these chairs for these People, they can grab a chair, put out your own chair, you know, you don't.

Julian Heath [03:00:47] They don't need us to do the. And I guess maybe I was being a little bit kind of pedantic, but the whole thing just, just really grated with me. It's like, why are we doing this for them? They could, you've got all the missionaries going. Tell the missionaries to get there early, put out their chairs. It was the fact that I think really what irked me was that all of the talk beforehand of this is a really important thing. And so we've got, you know, it's like they were preparing for the second Coming.

Nemo [03:01:14] Well, you know, that is kind of how it's treated. And I think this is really important for the American viewers, particularly in Utah, to understand that if you live in Utah, there's this idea that a general authority might just appear in your ward or, you know, particularly if you live in that Midwest part of America. They're moving around all the time, you know, and you're surrounded by moors. It's a different thing Here in the uk it's always a big deal when they turn up, even if you do have these little incidental run ins with them or sometimes they do just appear. I think that was a really strange thing that happened to me in my childhood and it was a very unique set of circumstances, but normally it's a very big deal.

Nemo [03:01:46] So I think it's important to drive that home, that they're, they may not see the prophet worship out there because they're close to it, but it's very much a thing here and it's a problematic part of church.

Richard Heath [03:01:59] I've never been, I've never had a problem with, with respecting church leaders and I've always enjoyed when they come to talk, especially when they give an interesting talk that's, that's uplifting.

Nemo [03:02:08] Yeah.

Richard Heath [03:02:08] Or something. But it, it's always struck a raw nerve or a chord with me the way that we treat them like superstars and I don't think that's Christian. Now. I was taught that Heavenly Father and Jesus are not respecters of persons. So to expect me to stand up when someone's going to come into the room or on a hot day, wait until the person presiding takes their jacket off before I can take my jacket off. Well, I'm not going to subscribe to that ever, because I don't think I actually find that to treat somebody that way in a religion that claims to be Christian is disrespectful because Christ wouldn't have wanted us to do that to him and, or certainly not the one that I've read in, in the New Testament.

Nemo [03:02:48] So you're putting them above Christ, essentially.

Julian Heath [03:02:51] So I'd had a conversation with the State, I think after that Sunday scene, that was really annoyed. And he called me up for a chat. And I said this to him. I said, look, you know, you can. When we have this big meeting, he's going to come in and everyone's going to stand, and that's not okay. We shouldn't be doing that. And, and he said, well, yeah, you know what, I get your point, but they probably don't want that.

Richard Heath [03:03:14] Well, then don't do it. They say they don't want us to do it. I think they do want us. But that was my point.

Julian Heath [03:03:19] And I said, I said to him, well, look, it would be so easy if they genuinely don't want that. It would be so easy for them to just say, you know, to get up and say, look, you know, please don't do that anymore. It's not really appropriate.

Julian Heath [03:03:35] You know, I'm just the same as, you don't need to stand up for me, you know, thank you. I, I, I appreciate why you're doing it, but please don't do it anymore. It's not appropriate. But of course they don't. And, and we know now as well from that, that video that I think it was. Was it Jonathan Strater? Yeah. That put out that, that video of, of the person kind of telling them all to stand because they hadn't.

Julian Heath [03:03:58] And it's wrong. And it was that kind of thing that just made me think, this isn't what Jesus's church looks like. What I'm seeing here is a big corporation, not Jesus's church. And so that really affected me. Something that had a massive impact was the November 2015 policy, policy change.

Julian Heath [03:04:22] And that really upset me because I kind of thought, we're moving in a much bigger, better direction. And then that, you know, it's kind of like, no, no, no. In case you were wondering, we still hate the gays. Okay? If you don't get any ideas, we still hate the gays. And that really upset me because I think it was the first thing really, that I, I heard that and thought, that isn't, I don't care what anyone says. To me, that is not revelation. It doesn't make any sense. You can't say on the one hand that, you know, men are punished for their own sins and not for Adam's transgressions.

Julian Heath [03:04:57] You know, and that the Holy Ghost is this amazing gift. And then say, well, but we're going to deny that amazing gift to you based on the actions, the actions of your parents. It doesn't make any sense. And that really upset me. And I remember kind of thinking, you know, I've got three boys. You know, there's a. Statistically, there's a good chance that one of them might be gay.

Richard Heath [03:05:21] It's not just boys that are gay, you know.

Julian Heath [03:05:23] Well, I know, but I've got three boys. There's zero chance of any of my girls being gay. One of them, One of them might be gay. And I'm not gonna sit in these pews with. For an organization that thinks that my child is less than or is a sinner in God's eyes because. Because of the fact that they're gay. And then I just remember thinking, but hang on, it doesn't matter whether my kids or not. They're somebody's kids, they're somebody's kids. And that's just not cool.

Richard Heath [03:05:53] And that.

Julian Heath [03:05:54] That really affected me.

Nemo [03:05:55] Yeah, I think, I think what's important to, to really push home here is that in, in this church, there's the idea that if you're in the pews, it does mean that you agree with the policy of the church. It does mean that you are complicit in the way the church wants to act. It's not like other churches where you turn up and you might not agree with everything that's going on, but you're not expected to either. You kind of. You're just going, there's such, especially with the way that you guys describe the way how seriously you took the church, this idea that I'm there, it's because I agree.

Nemo [03:06:23] It's because I sustain. It's because I'm part of it. And so I can imagine then that's why you're having these thoughts of, well, can I do this if I don't agree with this? And to ask you, is this. Whereabouts is this in terms of your faith crisis? Is this loading up your shelf around 2015? Is that when things are starting to build? Yeah.

Julian Heath [03:06:41] Yeah, it is. And I mean, we'd. So, so going along with this, I kind of said that there were these two different strands. So there are these things that are kind of bothering me, but I'm having to try and make them work. So I'm altering the way that I view the church. And so, you know, I'm starting to think, well, I don't think this is the true church. I Think it can be a true church. It doesn't need to be the true church, you know. And you know, I don't believe that God is really a, an interventionist God. I think, you know, that, that he is kind of allowing us to just come down here and do our thing.

Julian Heath [03:07:19] He doesn't really get involved with this stuff. And, you know, when these people receive revelation, you know, what do we really mean by that? And, and so I was starting to kind of tone down the way that I viewed the church because it was the only way that I could make it work.

Nemo [03:07:35] You had to lower your expectations to match the environment in which you are now.

Julian Heath [03:07:39] It was the only way that it would make sense. But going along with this, I've also got this, this feeling that kind of ties into what Richard was saying about just feeling like I'm not valued here. You know, this is, you know, so I, when I, when we moved to Solihull, I think it was, it was probably about 18 months before I even got calling, which is very, you know, in the church in the uk. You know, a return missionary to not have a calling was really, really bizarre. And I don't know why that was. I don't know whether that's because that

Nemo [03:08:14] is strange because there's often a push as soon as you get a missionary back, get them busy.

Julian Heath [03:08:18] Yeah. What particular? I mean, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't just back, you know, so I was, you know, it was, it must have been about 10 years.

Nemo [03:08:28] Oh, sorry. Yes.

Julian Heath [03:08:29] Yeah, yeah, something like that. Nine, 10 years, you know. But still bearing in mind this is, this is Solihull Ward that was part of Coventry Stake, was taken out of Coventry Stake, put into the Birmingham state because they were so short on priesthood holders that they needed that extra ward to kind of bolster their, the, the number of priesthood holders that were available. And so for me to not be given a calling kind of felt a little bit like, you know, what's going on here?

Julian Heath [03:09:01] And, and then I was, I was, I was given a calling. I was called onto Aldous Quorum. And it's so funny because I remember having this, I remember having my interview with the. So I was called as Alders Corn president. I remember having my interview with the Stake president and would never really. I knew he was an old friend of Richard, so I knew him from kind of back in the day, but I hadn't really had much to do with him other than that. So it was our first real kind of sit down and conversation and I remember him kind of at points kind of leaning into me.

Julian Heath [03:09:39] Insane. You know, I just wanna. No, no, I'm not gonna say that. But do. You know, I just. I can see us working really closely together in the future, and it's almost like, you know, it's almost like grooming.

Nemo [03:09:55] Yeah.

Julian Heath [03:09:56] So for me, he'd had a revelation, basically, and God had said to him, you realize you're sitting in front of future apostle here. Yeah, but he died. I'm not gonna.

Nemo [03:10:07] In your head.

Julian Heath [03:10:07] I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna reveal that yet. I'm not gonna reveal that yet. I'm just gonna say we. I can see us working closely together, but that's the kind of thing. Because, you know, I know that some people will criticize it, but I don't mind. I'm just gonna reach on and say. I wanted those callings, you know, for several reasons, some of them being because I want to be up there on the stage. I want the. I want to have an audience. I want to be in the limelight. That might not be a great thing, but it's part of who I am. So it's irrelevant, really. You know, I'm not a bad person.

Richard Heath [03:10:41] Being a priesthood holder in a patriarchy, if. If we operate in a patriarchy, then surely being the top patriarch is what everyone aspires to.

Julian Heath [03:10:52] Yeah. And. And so, you know, that kind of thing, you know, meant something to me. I ended up essentially being sacked as Aldous Corn president because I called as my counsellors. Well, I say I called God called as my counsellors, two of my friends, and they were going through a bit of a faith crisis. And.

Julian Heath [03:11:15] And so I was asked to release them, and I refused. You know, and what I was saying was, look, you know, you. You release him, it's gone. That's it. He's. He is never going to do another calling again, you know.

Julian Heath [03:11:32] Absolutely. At least at the moment, he's having to do a little bit of scripture study and stuff like that, because I'm getting him to teach from time to time. You release him. That's it. He's gone. And so I, you know, I refused to release him. So eventually they thought, well, the only way to do this is to just release all of your.

Julian Heath [03:11:49] Which is what they did. And, you know, and again, in my. My kind of release interview as well, it was like, so I want to release you from this calling. You know, you've done a fantastic job. And, no, I don't. I don't want to say too much, but let's Just say, I'm.

Richard Heath [03:12:10] I'm sure.

Julian Heath [03:12:11] I'm sure Bishop has got, you know, something in mind for you. You know, kind of like, I'm not going to say anything, but Bishop's got something special for you. Which, of course, you know, it was just nonsense. You know, there was. There wasn't any. You know, he didn't. I don't think I was given a calling straight away then, either. But it's just those things that you say. But for me, I really, you know, I internalized that thought. Okay, well, this, you know, everything's okay still. It's still good. You know, God. God's got a plan for me.

Julian Heath [03:12:40] And, you know, I just. I just had more and more experiences where I was kind of speaking out in, you know, speaking out in lessons and. And stuff like that, and. And, you know, saying things. And I was always very, you know, I wasn't trying to be really controversial or anything like that, but I was just trying to. I was trying to be real. I was trying to be real and authentic about things, but because it wasn't, you know, it wasn't, you know, this kind of polished, whitewashed view that everything that I said would very quickly be followed by a comment of, don't worry. What really amounted to. Don't worry about what Julian just said, that everything's okay. Don't worry. We're fine. We're fine.

Navigating a Faith Crisis While Still Attending

Nemo [03:13:25] Did you. Okay, so essentially, you found a point. Your faith crisis, with the point at which you found your authenticity just diverged so much from what you were expected to do and what was expected of you that you just couldn't mesh the two.

Julian Heath [03:13:40] So for me, you know, a real faith crisis consists of kind of two things, and one of them is the things that you learn, and the other is the way that you feel. You know, I really feel like you can know a load of this stuff and still stay active in the church. You know, obviously, we know people that are living that life.

Julian Heath [03:14:03] The deep, real difference comes when you don't feel good about it. And there were things that were making me feel bad that I was learning, like the November 2015 policy, but also just felt like I'm not appreciated here. You know, I'm making people feel uncomfortable with my comments. And as much as I could, I would try and, you know, I'd try and make those comments with a little, you know, a little bit of humor, a little bit, like, hot, you know. So, for example, I remember someone talking. We had a lesson where he was talking about Brigham Young and people saying, well, you Know, I know that some people have got negative things to say about him.

Julian Heath [03:14:34] Some things. People got positive things. I'm like, well, I heard that it was a hit with the ladies, you know, my wife kind of pointing out these things, but. But in a way that we, you know, we could have a bit of a laugh about it. And I remember there was one. There was one.

Julian Heath [03:14:49] There was one Sunday school lesson where I was talking about the prophet, and it was all very much, this is the prophet for the whole earth. He's the only man with authority from God to do these things. And, you know, and I just. I kind of put my hand up and said, that's just bonkers, because he can only speak one language. You know, there's so many people, you know, in the world that are never, ever gonna hear from him.

Nemo [03:15:19] Yeah.

Julian Heath [03:15:20] You know. You know, and that. That's. That's what God has got. Just this one guy, you know, convenient, is always English, this white English man. Well, English speaking man, you know, that's just crazy.

Nemo [03:15:34] Yeah.

Julian Heath [03:15:35] But. But. But, you know, trying to say it in a positive way. I'm sure God is inspiring people all around the world. And. And, you know, as you can imagine, that just went down like.

Nemo [03:15:47] Like a lead balloon.

Julian Heath [03:15:48] Yeah.

Richard Heath [03:15:48] Yeah.

Julian Heath [03:15:48] And. And I remember Dave kind of making, you know, you all right, because you could tell that, you know, this was the foot. I was getting upset about this, you know, and. And it was upsetting. And, you know, and I remember actually going home from church that. That Sunday and crying and just saying to Laura, just, I don't know what to do because I'm starting to feel so out of. So at odds with people. And I'm not trying to upset people. I'm just trying to be authentic and try and, you know, kind of put things in a different way. And I just. Just didn't. Yeah. Just didn't feel good about it, really.

Nemo [03:16:30] So I just want to ask, while all these changes are going on in Julian's life and he's. He's clearly moving towards the point which is now his shelf is just gonna snap, did you notice any of these changes going on?

Richard Heath [03:16:42] I did and I didn't. So just to put into a little bit of context for where I was at and Ruth and my family,

Nemo [03:16:52] I

Richard Heath [03:16:53] was becoming more and more at odds myself with what was going on at church and what I was listening to at church. And the more I wanted to be open to everybody and to say, well, Christianity is about embracing people, about us all being different. I found that, you know, that wasn't the message that was being taught at church. I applied again for a CES post. I got to interview this time and this is I've been teaching for 20 years. I thought I'm a shoe in for this. Didn't get it again and I'm sure it was for those you're not the right face type reasons. I've since been led to believe that the other the person that got it had pretty much been told he'd got it before they went to interview.

Julian Heath [03:17:34] Did you shave?

Richard Heath [03:17:35] Yes, I did. Apparently they're not very good, but I don't know. That might be someone trying to make me feel better about not not getting the job. I'm so glad that I didn't work for the church in church education because I think I would have come to the point much quicker that I can't do this anymore. So there are lots of things that I was finding difficult along the same lines as not only the nepotism I'd worked out. I'm not very good at judging things. Height, distance, weight, all those kinds of things. I remember one time trying to judge the amount of tithing that the church must get in every year and it wasn't because I thought it was bad.

Richard Heath [03:18:14] But as I started to think about it, I thought, whoa, that is a lot of money. They don't need my money anymore now. I didn't stop paying tithing, but I did stop paying any fast offering. And Ruth and I decided we would give it to homeless people. We'd let our children give it to homeless people. We wanted our children to see that you can make a difference by giving money directly to people that need it. I didn't see where the church was spending that money. Obviously I know a lot more about that now. I didn't back then, but that was a problem to me. I also felt obviously there was the homophobia and the racism that the church had got in its history and continued to have.

Richard Heath [03:18:50] I was so tired of sitting in Sunday school lessons with people that have been members of church longer than me, who was still saying stuff about blacks not being as valiant in the war in heaven and all that kind of thing. This was after this is post the Gospel Topics essays and us, Ruth and I, we would talk on the way home, often moaning about what we'd heard and I can't believe they're saying this. I can't believe that's what was said in a sacrament talk today. And we had decided we're going to call BS from now on. We are not going to sit and listen to those kinds of cliches anymore.

Richard Heath [03:19:18] If it's sexist, racist, homophobic, if it's anything to do with prosperity gospel, anything of that nature, you know, we only pay our tithing because we know we're going to get that same amount back in blessings. We're going to call BS on that. And we did start to do that. And it's a really uncomfortable place to be. You get to the point where you feel like you're being viewed in your ward as, oh, they're the awkward ones. Oh, Richard's got his hand up again. Let's see if we can ignore it. Oh, no, he's kept his hand. Up we go. I'm going to have to listen to what he said. It's not a nice place to be.

Julian Heath [03:19:46] Which is a better way of explaining. Explaining what I was trying to say. That was my thing.

Richard Heath [03:19:51] I also got to the point then when I thought, well, I'm not going to say anything anymore. I'll just get from it what I can because I still believe the church is true. I'm still this, cut me wherever you want. And it says Mormon all the way through. I'm the one that's going to be there till the end. And I remember sitting in sacrament meeting and it was someone else giving a talk, someone who I quite rate and respect. And I remember thinking, that's not true, that's not right. That's cliche. That's what you've heard somebody else say. That's not what it says in the scriptures. That's not what the church teaches. And again, even when I wasn't physically putting myself forward to say, actually that's not true, I found I was spending my whole time criticizing other people, which I don't like doing, but it just didn't feel Christian anymore.

Nemo [03:20:35] When you started to uncover the group thing, essentially you started to spot where people were just repeating what they'd heard from someone else, where they were just repeating the same old thoughts where that had always happened. Yeah.

Richard Heath [03:20:45] And there was a time I was quite happy to buy into that. I remember around Prop 8 time being very uncomfortable about some of the stuff that was going on in church. I remember being in my home ward and they were talking about a petition that was being sent round to sign against a gay marriage and about going to a demonstration and I walked out at that point. I couldn't. These were people that I love. These were my own family. And they were getting involved with that. And I'm thinking, that is not Christian. That's not nice.

Richard Heath [03:21:19] I wasn't enamored by the proclamation to the world on the family. And that was a little way back, but I felt that was unnecessary. We all know what we believe already. That's just a slap in the face to gay people, really.

Richard Heath [03:21:31] And so I wasn't happy about that. There were lots of things I was uncomfortable about, and Julian and I talked about them together so very often. You know, Julian, I.

Nemo [03:21:40] While you're both still in. But.

Julian Heath [03:21:42] Wow.

Nemo [03:21:43] Well, you thought Julian was in.

Richard Heath [03:21:44] Yes. Okay.

Julian Heath [03:21:45] Was when we were still in as well.

Richard Heath [03:21:48] So I didn't know that Julian was out when he was out. But very often, in the same way as I would with Ruth, in the same way as I would with my children, we would discuss things, you know, after church and say, you know what, guys? I know this is what was said in this meeting. I don't think that's what Christ would have us do. I don't think that's what a loving heavenly Father would have us do. There was also a guy that had joined the church in our ward, Scottish chap, lovely guy. Called me Brother Rich. He'd asked if I would baptize him, and I did.

Richard Heath [03:22:14] And when I baptized him, I was nothing to do with his teaching. He asked me because I said hello to him one day when he came as an investigator. But I took it upon myself then to fellowship him and be a friend to him. And he got to the point where he says, brother Richard, I can't come to church anymore. And I said, why not? And he said, because you don't worship Christ there. You worship Joseph Smith. I sit in sacrament meeting and you sing songs about Joseph Smith. And because he was a single man, he spent a lot of time with the missionaries. He says, all the missionaries want to do is talk to me about Joseph Smith and about what an amazing man Joseph Smith is.

Richard Heath [03:22:45] And I don't think that's right. And I completely argued against that. Now for years, with all these issues that were coming up, I'd learned to be my own apologist, to come up with reasons for it. To say, richard, the word of wisdom makes no sense.

Julian Heath [03:23:01] Oh, but this is why.

Richard Heath [03:23:02] This is what makes sense about Richard. What is the priesthood. You know, what difference is your priesthood blessing and a sister's prayer? Well, there is no difference because it's the same authority, but it's for this reason, for that reason. And I've come up with all these convoluted reasons for why it had to be the way it was.

Richard Heath [03:23:20] And eventually I got to the point Where I thought, no, he's right, we do worship Joseph Smith here. And it was at the time that they started to talk about the fact they were going to review the hymn book and they were asking for suggestions from members. And my suggestion was only have songs that mention Jesus or Heavenly Father. We don't need anything else. Those are the songs, they're pleasant and you can have the Mormon Tabernacle Choir recording them and you can listen to me at your home. We don't need those in meetings. And for a long time also I'd been saying, especially to my non member friends, I love the gospel, I love Jesus and I enjoy being a Christian.

Richard Heath [03:23:59] Worst thing about being a Mormon is the organized part of it, the coming together on a Sunday. Because if I'm honest, I got to the point where I know there are people in my world that didn't like me and didn't like my family. We were a thorn or I don't know what it was that meant they didn't like us. I don't know what we'd ever done other than what we were supposed to do and try hard and serve and, and teach their children in primary and youth and young men's, young women's in seminary. And yet I knew they didn't like us. And without going into the details of that, they'd made that very obvious at one point, to the extent that we moved wards one time because we couldn't stay in the ward that we were in, right.

Richard Heath [03:24:36] And I wanted to stress at this point, Nemo, that with all this going on, I wanted to be a member of the church still. I wanted it to be true. And my family remained faithful. We kept the commandments, we kept the word of wisdom, we kept going to the temple, we went to our meetings. I tried.

Richard Heath [03:24:59] I'd always like to bear my testimony. I thought that was an important thing. I got to the point where every fast and testimony meeting I'd say to Ruth, I want to bear my testimony, but I don't know what of. I don't know what I believe anymore.

Richard Heath [03:25:10] I didn't like the organized part of Mormonism. It wasn't a friendly place. Munch and mingle was not something that made me want to stay behind. I wanted to get out of that chapel as soon as I could. And I've got to be honest, I think my feelings were borne up by the fact that when we left church, people didn't really reach out to us. There was no, where have you been? What's wrong? What's happened? What's changed. We were just forgotten.

Nemo [03:25:36] I think they'd labelled you as an apostate before you'd realized it yourself.

Richard Heath [03:25:39] Very possibly. Although I hadn't done anything that would come across as apostate, everything that I did was fueled by love and equality and trying to be open and to put our arms around people and include everybody.

Nemo [03:25:51] Motive isn't important in a lot of these scenarios, people. It's about how what you say makes them feel. And if what you say makes them feel uncomfortable, therefore what you're doing is wrong. Yeah, that's, that's how it seems to me. Rather than. Well, he's just trying to engage seriously with the church's history, which is a good thing to do. They don't see it like that.

Richard Heath [03:26:10] Bearing in mind that at that point I knew very little about the church's history. In fact, if anybody had said to me, richard, there's some stuff about the church you need to know, I would say, I know it, I know, and it's fine. I've got reasons for it. The whole. No one's perfect. Joseph Smith wasn't perfect. He, he admitted that himself. He was the first one to say, I'm too light hearted and frivolous. If only that's all it was. And so I thought I could manage all that history.

Richard Heath [03:26:37] So at this time, whenever Julie and I got together, we'd talk about stuff. Have you heard this? Have you heard that? How underwhelming is this that's happened at church, that the whole church is saying what fantastic revelation we've had. And I could have told you that I've been saying that for the last 15 years, that we should be doing this or doing that. And little did I know that for at least two years before I left the church, Julian wasn't going to church anymore. Which brings us to a point where we all got together one time at my brother's house.

Julian Heath [03:27:11] Before you get to that, can I just say we had met. Laura and I had made a conscious decision when we kind of got. Got the point where we just said, enough's enough now, you know, we don't believe in this anymore. And I, and I must say I did actually, before I made that decision, I got down on my knees and I prayed.

Nemo [03:27:31] Can we get a date for this just for the viewers? So when, when, when did this moment happen when you, when your shelf broke? When you're like, I. I've got to do something, it's broken. I'm gonna say my final prayer. What? When is this?

Leaving the Church and Telling the Family

Richard Heath [03:27:43] I don't Know, it's got to be three years ago.

Nemo [03:27:45] I need a year at least.

Julian Heath [03:27:46] Yeah, I would. I would say it was probably about five or six years ago now.

Nemo [03:27:53] So I said 2017.

Richard Heath [03:27:55] See, he's still not told me how long he wasn't going to church. Yeah.

Julian Heath [03:27:58] And I mean, we'd. We'd kind of gone through a process now where we started to say, well, look, you know, we've got to do certain things to make the church work for us. You know, we had. Had again, tried to make things work in our minds, but then we got a point where we kind of said, well, no, this is it now.

Julian Heath [03:28:18] But, but before we. We made that decision, I got down on my knees and I prayed and I said, look, Heavenly Father, please help me to know whether this is true or not. And obviously, I mean, I didn't get a feeling that told me that it was. I didn't get a feeling that told me that it wasn't. I just felt nothing because there was nothing there to. To answer me. But that. But for me, that was, you know, it was an earnest attempt to go, well, I've got to do this. If I'm going to make this decision, then I've got to make, you know, I've got to try this.

Julian Heath [03:28:52] But it was enough for me to think, okay, well, I'm okay with this. And I shouldn't even say that I wasn't okay with it. It was really hard. It was a. You know, especially for that week, it was.

Julian Heath [03:29:04] It was really tough. And I think, again, something that you said earlier, Rich, about trauma and about the, you know, just kind of like just shutting it off, that's my way as well. And that's how I've coped with a lot of things that in my life, I've just kind of turned it off.

Julian Heath [03:29:23] And that is the Mormon way. The Mormon way is to just turn it off. We're not going to focus on anything negative. And when you consider that the kind of pivotal moment in Mormon theology is all about suffering, but we are not allowed to suffer, not really, or we're not allowed to talk about it, we're not allowed to go through it. And in fact, the main thing that we get, and this is awful, I think it's only kind of recently dawned on me just how bad this is. But if you are suffering, don't dwell on it because Jesus has suffered more than you. Okay? There's somebody that's been through more. So you've just got to look at that and take that.

Nemo [03:30:02] That's your Theological one upmanship.

Julian Heath [03:30:03] Yeah, we're not gonna. Which is awful, isn't it? Because that is just like some kind of dick of a friend that when you're telling them your problems, goes, oh, yeah, well, this. What happened to me? And you go, oh, okay, well, I can't really talk about my problems. And we've got that from God now. Don't process your emotions. Don't. Don't really. Let's not work through that thing that you're going through. Let's. Someone else has got it worse than you, so get over it, forget yourself and go to work. That kind of stoicism, and I don't think that's very healthy. And so, you know, I had. Had. You know, it was a period that was really, really tough. But as best as I could, I just.

Richard Heath [03:30:42] Right.

Julian Heath [03:30:42] I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna bury that. We're not gonna. We're gonna move forward. I'm not gonna really process that. And we made a conscious decision. We're not going to talk to the family about it.

Nemo [03:30:54] Right.

Julian Heath [03:30:55] And the real. Really my reasoning for that was my biggest fear was that when I left, you know, if I told them all that I'd left, that things would change, that our relationship would change, and I really didn't want it to change. And so in my head, it's just stupid now in hindsight, but in my head I was thinking that I would just. We wouldn't mention it. We'd kind of hide it. We're in a different stake, so it's not necessarily gonna kind of come out that we've left.

Julian Heath [03:31:24] And when it finally does, we know that it will eventually. But when it finally does, and Richard says to me, what's this I hear about you leaving the church? And gets all angry with me for it, I can kind of go, well, actually, it was five years ago, you know, and nothing's changed. You know, we've been able to kind of have these conversations for the last five years. And so I don't see why anything should change now. And so we decided we're not going to talk about it. Go.

Richard Heath [03:31:53] So I'll put this in a nutshell. We got together one night. My older brother and his wife, myself and Ruth, Julian and Laura got together. We spent the whole evening talking about all kinds of stuff. It wasn't until we were all ready to go home.

Nemo [03:32:04] Which older brother was this?

Richard Heath [03:32:05] Eden.

Nemo [03:32:06] Eden. Right.

Richard Heath [03:32:07] So it wasn't until we're all ready to go home, really. It's gone midnight already past as long as we're going to stay that. We started talking about church, and Laura became very militant about it suddenly and said, right, well, you need to know, actually that we don't go to church anymore and we haven't been going for the last two years. And it was a bombshell. Right. And of course, we then spent the next hour tearing them anew. Whatever.

Nemo [03:32:30] Yeah.

Richard Heath [03:32:31] And. And that aside, you know, we moved on from that, but I suddenly felt quite betrayed. Now, you need to know that while I am an empathetic person, and I am. I try to be as little judgmental as possible. In the past, I had not been friendly or kind about people that left the church. And like a lot of Mormons, what I said was, well, and bearing in mind, I did say I'd come back to Mike Williams, who had been my.

Richard Heath [03:33:00] My targeteer teacher and the bishop both when I was baptized and who I had to confess to. And he was a lovely man. He was the kind of man who, when he gave a talk, he researched it properly. And if you turned up on a Sunday and who's talking today? Mike Williams. This is going to be a good one. Yeah, this is going to be.

Richard Heath [03:33:17] He's going to feed us spiritually. Fantastic. I was so unkind when I heard he wasn't going to church anymore. And my response is, well, there's obviously something in his life that doesn't fit in with the gospel. So he's a sinner or he's a liar. Because I've heard embarrass testimony, I don't know how many times about it. And if he's not a liar, he's stupid. And that was my go to for people that left the church. They're either sinners, liars or stupid.

Julian Heath [03:33:41] Or.

Richard Heath [03:33:42] Of course, we know those ones that have left because they've had their feelings hurt.

Nemo [03:33:44] Yeah.

Richard Heath [03:33:45] Or we think we know that. We think we know that. Yeah. So I then the first thing I did, I. I love Julian, despite what he is. I love him. I love Laura, I love his boys. I love all of my brothers and sisters. They perhaps don't think I do. Perhaps I don't show it as much as I could. I don't know. It's hard when you've got a family as big as ours. I love them all. And I'd always been very accepting of people that aren't members of the church. And although when it's people that I know who have left the church, I might have judged them harshly, ultimately, my.

Richard Heath [03:34:20] The way that the church had taught me to view the Eternities was, there's going to be a millennium to sort this out. It doesn't matter if Julian leaves now, he'll join again in the millennium. He might have to do a little bit of repentance, what have you. But once the Savior comes again and he knows it's all true, it's all fine, it will be sorted out. Felt the same about. I had a sister that stopped going to church for a while. My older brother stopped going to church for a while. And I had that kind of experience and that feeling about that. So I wasn't worried about that.

Richard Heath [03:34:44] But I did feel betrayed because he had tricked me into criticizing church leaders to a non member, ostensibly. I know he's still a member on the books as such, but he wasn't going to church. He wasn't a believer. And I felt like he had found a soft spot of mine and attacked it.

Nemo [03:35:03] That's really interesting. This idea that it's okay for us to sit and moan about the church is not because we're the in group.

Richard Heath [03:35:10] Yes.

Nemo [03:35:11] But then all of a sudden he's the out group, and that's wrong.

Richard Heath [03:35:13] And it was very much that feeling. Now, that didn't last for long. That didn't last for long because of what I was feeling. Anyway, I wasn't enamored of the church at this point.

Julian Heath [03:35:23] Before you go on, though, can I just say so going back to this night, I think it is really.

Nemo [03:35:27] I think, no, this night is a very important night.

Julian Heath [03:35:28] It is important. And I do need to say, because the way that you told it, and I know it's only because you're trying to kind of whip through it. We weren't just chatting about the church. Oh, I was. Church, how's your calling? And then Laura goes, well, we don't go anymore. That's not what happened. So. So the reality is, whenever we would get together and talk about the church, it would be.

Richard Heath [03:35:47] It would get contentious at times, but

Julian Heath [03:35:49] not even necessarily contentious, but like, again, kind of, oh, can you believe this? And I can't believe those people that are doing that. And I don't agree with this. And I don't agree with that. You know, so we might be moaning about EFY or, you know, and those standards are ridiculous and.

Richard Heath [03:36:06] Or what.

Julian Heath [03:36:06] Whatever it was, you know, so talking in a negative way about the church wasn't an unusual thing for us to do. And it certainly wasn't something that we had necessarily.

Nemo [03:36:17] Yeah. Critiquing. Yeah.

Julian Heath [03:36:19] But it's not something that we had necessarily instigated because we had left. We were just kind of having those conversations anyway.

Richard Heath [03:36:27] Every Sunday afternoon we used to get together as a family and you were

Nemo [03:36:29] sat there going, will we follow the logical conclusion of some of these critiques by actually just ceasing to attend? But we're with people who are still attending. But there's good to be had in being able to have this conversation. So we don't want to jeopardize it by telling them we've left. Because as Richard's pointed out, that in group out, group thing will kick in and all of a sudden they won't talk.

Julian Heath [03:36:47] If Laura was here, she would.

Richard Heath [03:36:49] I'm.

Julian Heath [03:36:49] Because she's got a much better memory than me. If Laura were here, she would say. She would go through that whole conversation.

Richard Heath [03:36:55] I don't know what we were talking about.

Julian Heath [03:36:57] This was said. And so I felt that I needed to say why. You need to understand this.

Richard Heath [03:37:00] I think I used the wrong word when I said, how about Laura? I said, she got militant. She didn't get militant at all. It probably. Laura is a really lovely person and if you met her, you know her and generally she's. She's soft spoken, she makes space for everybody's opinions. But on this particular occasion, it looked like she'd really steeled herself to say something that she would find difficult. And that is actually, you need to know, we don't go to church anymore. And that must have taken a lot for her to do that, especially to Eden and myself, who like the rest of my family are loud, bullish and can shout her down.

Richard Heath [03:37:35] So that's kind of what it felt like. Our feelings were hurt because they hadn't told us. I understand completely now why they hadn't. Having been there myself, our feelings were hurt because we were. We'd always. For a long time we've been a little bit jealous of his church friends who he did a lot with and, and left us out for. But the fact that they knew where Julian Laura was, they'd had those conversations with them and not us, that hurt. And that shows how petty I can be sometimes, but that's the reality.

Richard Heath [03:38:04] But I was determined that Julian and Laura's decision was not going to change the way that I felt about them. And I could accept and, and listen to what they had got to say and listen to their reasons, although we didn't really go into in great detail about it.

Richard Heath [03:38:19] And he was my brother and I loved him and it wasn't going to change that at all. I certainly could never understand any of these things that you hear in Mormonism about people being cut off when they leave the church, people being disowned, families not talking to them anymore, or any of that nonsense. That's just silly.

Nemo [03:38:41] Julian, were you the first sibling to publicly say that you stopped attending church?

Julian Heath [03:38:47] No. Okay, so. So my oldie. My oldest brother left. Had probably left, what, 10 years before that or something? Yeah, been about 10 years before. Before us. So, you know, about 15 years ago, something like that. And do you feel like that helped? Not. Not really. In fact, not at all. And just be. Because. So there's a big. A big age difference between us. And, you know, I think if he were here to speak for himself or certainly in the conversations that I've had with him in the past, he can't say, well, I never really believed it anyway. You know, I just kind of, you know, I went there because that's what we did. And when all those times that I served, I wasn't serving.

Richard Heath [03:39:32] I didn't.

Julian Heath [03:39:33] Wasn't doing it because I felt like I was serving God or I was serving the church. I was doing it. So some of my friends, you know, when I was on the bishopric for however many years, I was on the bishopric with my friend. And so I wanted to do whatever I could to help and support him, you know, I mean, and he is. He's a very, very kind of empathetic guy.

Richard Heath [03:39:50] Sound guy.

Julian Heath [03:39:50] Yeah. And he. I mean, I remember. It's funny, I remember having a conversation with my mum. This was before we'd left, before Laura and I had left the church. And it was just after Christmas, and she was just saying, oh, you know, I just. I worry so much about Larry, you know, and she would go to church, and I just said, look, Mum, I don't know what you're worried about, because the other day, you know, on Christmas Day, I was sat with my family in this really big meal. Larry was in a soup kitchen. You know, he's okay, there's a God then. God. Well, I didn't say if there's a God because there was a God.

Julian Heath [03:40:26] You know, God's gonna be okay with Lara. You know, he's. He's doing all right. He's doing all right. I don't think you need to be that worried. But to some extent, that shows where my thinking was at that time as well. This idea that, look, it doesn't. It's not really that important. This isn't the only true church, and unless you're doing it the Mormon way, you're going to go to hell. You know, it just wasn't my thinking at the time, but. But it was very different because he. He just kind of left and that was it. He wasn't.

Richard Heath [03:40:55] And we knew.

Julian Heath [03:40:56] We.

Richard Heath [03:40:57] Larry's a great bloke and he's very intelligent. And I remember, I think he was seminary teacher for a while. And I've never known anyone prepare so hard for seminary lessons, but Larry was always the one. On Sunday afternoons, we'd get together as a family and it would always end up with some gospel discussion that would often get heated. Larry was the one who would pull out the pin, throw in a spiritual grenade, polygamy or atonement or whatever it is. What do you think about this? And so Larry, we knew, had lots of questions anyway and like to discuss it. So. Yeah.

Nemo [03:41:31] Okay. So then, Julian, how do you feel from your perspective? There's this night where, you know, as you say, Richard Needham kind of ripped a new one, and they, you know, they let out all their frustration, their feelings of betrayal, you know that. But with the surface after that, rather than just withdrawing. How do you feel? How did you manage to keep the relationship alive? Because we've heard from Richard that he. He didn't want it to change, and he's your brother and he loves you, but you didn't necessarily know that. So how did you. What made you decide to continue to engage and to talk us through that?

Julian Heath [03:42:06] I don't. I don't remember kind of getting a sense of being ripped a new one, you know. You know, obviously it wasn't. It wasn't the most comfortable, but, you know, I'm sure we all hugged and, you know, at the end of the night and everything was fine. And I think we probably all left that feeling, you know, similar feelings of. Well, it doesn't matter. We're family, we love each other, so that's not going to change anything. But it's just not that easy, is he?

Richard Heath [03:42:39] I am going to tell you because you probably don't know this. I don't think I've told you this before. Obviously, Ruth and I talked about it on the way home. I did use the expert because you not only told us that you weren't going to church, but you'd mentioned sunstone and your. Your involvement in some other things and some other groups. And I remember saying, I don't mind it is that they want to go to church, but why can't I just leave it alone? Why can't I just walk away?

Julian Heath [03:43:00] And that was the big thing, and that was what made me Very different to Larry.

Nemo [03:43:07] Yeah.

Julian Heath [03:43:07] Is that. You know, I still. I still wanted to talk about it. I still wanted. You know, it's interesting that you use. A couple of times you've used this idea of being this, like, you know, Mormon sticker rock, because even though I'm out, it's still there. It still goes through me, you know, you can't help it. And I still wanted to talk about it. And, you know, we got involved in Sunstone. We had made a decision, I think, before that night that we were going to be quite open on.

Julian Heath [03:43:40] On social media about certain issues. You know, so, for example, LGBTQ issues. You know, we were going to talk out about that and say that, you know, we think that this is wrong or that we. Or whatever, just because we wanted to be there as a support. You know, we're a massive family, and we're thinking, you know, somewhere along the line, one of my nephews or nieces is going to be, you know, he's going to identify with that community in some way. We want to know them, to know that we're an advocate for them. We want them to know that they've got some support in us.

Julian Heath [03:44:12] So we hadn't kind of come out and said, well, we've left the church, but we were still being a little bit vocal in ways that I think that would have upset certain members of the family.

Nemo [03:44:21] So Julian's out, Richard, and out of the closet. You know, he's come out and. And you've made this determination, go keep a good relationship. By the sounds of it, you did throughout. But I want you to talk to me about what this relationship was like to the point where you then went, okay, I'm out, too, and I'll hear Julian's perspective as well.

Richard Heath [03:44:39] Okay. So, obviously, Julian was my baby brother. He was a baby to me, and I saw him growing up as a toddler. And I would like to think that I was the brother to Julian and to Jonathan and hopefully to Serena as well, that Adrian was to me, and Adrian was a great brother in that he shared interests and skills and time. And I had done that with. With my younger brother, brothers and sisters. And so the fact that he's now hairy and in his early 40s or late 30s and things have changed in his religious belief, doesn't mean I'm going to treat him any differently.

Richard Heath [03:45:15] Yes, I was hurt initially, but for petty things, just my feelings being hurt, really. The fact that he had come to a conclusion that I felt I had already concluded anyway, but was keen to stay in Because I was this one that was going to be the last one standing.

Richard Heath [03:45:34] Didn't make a difference Now. I did make a point. I remember talking to Ruth and I felt this in lots of areas of my life. If there's an issue, it's best to hit it head on. So what I wanted to do within, I think it was about a day later, I gave Julian a call and we spoke for a long time on the phone. And I basically said to him, dude, it's okay. It doesn't matter the fact that you're out and we talk. We probably talked about some of the church stuff, but I needed him to know that nothing's changed.

Richard Heath [03:46:00] And that's really what it was for me. And so we continued doing what we do. We have a lot of interests in common and we continue to do that. We would get together still. We've never lived in each other's pockets. None of me and my siblings have. But we continue to do stuff together, go camping or whatever it was, or getting together with the kids, and that's fine. We probably didn't talk very much about the church. Julian did make himself unpopular with some of my family, and myself included, when I was still in over. It was quite a minuscule thing, really, but it was something that he put on Facebook to do with Sunstone, and. And some of. Some of us have been hurt by it.

Nemo [03:46:38] Is this the high vis vest?

Richard Heath [03:46:39] It is the high vis vest.

Nemo [03:46:41] Do you want to tell that story briefly?

Julian Heath [03:46:43] Yeah.

Nemo [03:46:43] So.

Julian Heath [03:46:44] So we're Laura and I at this point. I mean, the whole Sunstone thing is a whole other story. You know, we're kind of promoting the Sunstone UK conference that went on to become a digital conference because of COVID And we got very talented friend of ours to do some graphics for it. And so the theme was Reconstructing Zion.

Nemo [03:47:07] Yeah.

Julian Heath [03:47:08] And so he'd done several different graphics that involved typical kind of church scenes, but with kind of construction elements to it. You know, so there was one with Joseph Smith standing with the Book of Mormon and he's wearing a hard hat. And there was one with like the sacred. Sacred grove, but with a. Like a kind of a. Some kind of building sign there. And one of the first vision where you've got God and Jesus and they're wearing Harvey's jackets and.

Nemo [03:47:39] And hard hats. Yes.

Julian Heath [03:47:41] And, you know, just kind of the recon. Reconstructing Zion and the details and. And we. We thought that they were great. And it's such a. It's such a brilliant kind of example of the Issues that we're going to talk about now. You know, we had no intention to upset or offend anyone here, but one of the problems with when you leave Mormonism is that kind of psychologically you change your viewpoint very quickly. And although we try very hard to kind of put ourselves back in that mindset, ultimately we can't. And you don't realize how offensive things can be to people. And, and, and clearly that was very offensive to members of my family. And you know what kind of upsets me a little bit is the fact that, you know, I get, I get that you're offended by that, you know,

Richard Heath [03:48:40] but I would hope that you would

Julian Heath [03:48:42] know me well enough to think that that wasn't my intention. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it's like, okay, I might have got that wrong. I mean, there is another element of, well, it's not about you. You know, I'm not putting that out for you. It's not about you. But, but then there is this also this thing of, well, I would like to think that, that you wouldn't see me as being. Of doing that, knowing that it would offend you. You know, if nothing else, credit me with a little bit more imagination. You know, if I really wanted to upset you, there are better ways, worse things than hard hats that I could have stuck on their head. Do you know what I mean? And so, so that was something that upset a lot of people, wasn't it?

Richard Heath [03:49:26] It was, it was. And, and it didn't upset me, but I did see everything that was going on. I could, I could read everybody else's messages and I had suggested an alternative that they could have done to your credit.

Julian Heath [03:49:40] So, so this, this all blew up on social media. And yeah, it's funny because it was mostly my family that were involved, but then like, Jonathan Streeter would come in

Richard Heath [03:49:51] and make a comment, you know, all

Julian Heath [03:49:53] different people kind of commenting on there. To your credit, you were very much a kind of balanced voice in that. Where you were able to, to say, where you're able to say, well, you know, this is how it makes me feel, but maybe I'm being too sensitive. Maybe, you know. So, yeah, you were quite balanced with that, I think.

Richard Heath [03:50:12] And, and again, I said the whole, I wish he could just leave it alone if he doesn't want to be a member of the church, he didn't have to ruin it for everybody else. And, and, and I understand those feelings. And I know that Julian, if he cast his mind back to when he was an active member, would have been offended probably. Probably. If somebody else, I'm sure. And that's kind of the difficult situation we find ourselves in, isn't it? As those that don't go to church anymore, especially when we've got loved ones that do. I want to be. I spent 54 years being encouraged to be evangelical about what I believed, and that need to be evangelical is still there.

Richard Heath [03:50:46] And in actual fact, I think that what I have now that I could share, that I believe is more important to my loved ones than what I had before. They already know what I had before. They know that. I worry that they don't know what I believe now and again. I'm jumping way ahead, and I will come back again. One of the things that's hurtful is that your friends and loved ones who are still members of church don't want to know what you think or what you believe. And while it does encroach a little bit upon what we're talking about, because I think there was a lot of talk of respect.

Richard Heath [03:51:20] You might not believe it anymore, but you have to respect what we believe, and respect is an important thing. However, there is very little respect for what I now feel and what I now believe, which is as equally important and valid as what anybody else believes or respects. And sometimes respect only goes one way. Now, the way that I feel about the church at the moment is that I'd be quite happy for it to not exist anymore. I don't think. Think it's healthy, and I don't think it's. It's a good thing for people based on what I believe now.

Richard Heath [03:51:52] And so when people go to church, not really respecting how I feel now, people might say, richard, you've been silly. You're taking that way too far. You're going over the top. But it's the same. I really don't want to go to Mormon Chapel anymore. I spent all my life going in and out of them very comfortably, but suddenly it is not a comfortable space for me. I don't want to validate the church by going into a Mormon chapel. And yet I know that there are friends and loved ones that wouldn't understand that, and they would think, richard, you're being petty. You know, there's nothing wrong with it. Just come into the chapel. So going back to.

Julian Heath [03:52:28] Can I just say, oh, this is difficult because I'm going to want to kind of chip in.

Nemo [03:52:32] Please do. Just chip back and forth.

Julian Heath [03:52:34] I don't respect beliefs. I don't like that whole thing because no one really means it when people talk about you should respect beliefs. They don't mean it because some people have got some really messed up and dangerous, harmful beliefs, and we don't believe that we should respect them. No one would argue the point that we should, you know, we should have respected Hitler's beliefs. No one would argue that. So we don't really mean that when we're talking about respecting beliefs. We respect people, don't we? You know, it's about respecting a person. But, you know, equally, I share that idea that people think that now because I don't believe in Mormonism anymore. It's almost like there's just a vacuum of belief, you know, I haven't replaced it with anything.

Richard Heath [03:53:13] Of course I have.

Julian Heath [03:53:15] You know, it might not be another religion, but there's still beliefs. I still have beliefs about, you know, and worldviews that are, you know, just as valid as anybody's. Out. I'm not saying that they're deserving of respect because they might be absolute nonsense, but they're just as valid as anybody else.

Nemo [03:53:32] Yeah.

Richard Heath [03:53:34] So we continue to go to church and we continue to either speak up or not. I had feelings that I struggled to put into words, and I probably still do. I remember asking the bishop if we could meet with him at one point. And I said, I just want you to know that you're going to release Ruth. And after my calls, we're not going to have callings anymore. We don't want callings because we felt that we didn't have a testimony that we could share with people. Therefore we couldn't really be of much use in that, in that respect. But I couldn't really explain to him what it was that I didn't like, not without going into a great amount of detail, which I don't think you really wanted to hear at that point.

Julian Heath [03:54:11] So you're going to talk about you leaving, aren't you? Yeah, but before you get to that, I just want to make the comment that during this period where I'm out, he's in, I really appreciated you. The relationship that we had was really important. You might not thought that it was a big deal, but it was a really big deal to me because, you know, all throughout our lives, the church has been so much of such a big thing, you know, and has been the center of a lot of our family interactions, you know, so for a large portion of my life, we were all in the same.

Julian Heath [03:54:47] The same ward. So we would meet each other at church functions. You know, my typical week would be that I'd go to, you know, Obviously, I'll be at church on Sunday, so I'd see all my family there. But then on Monday, we might have a ward family home evening where we'd see everyone. Tuesday, I'll be at Young Men's, and I'm bound to see some of my family there, either because they're involved in the youth program as well, or they're there for the meetings, you know, and then there's going to be ward welfare meetings and ward council meetings and PEC and all of these things where I'm seeing my family.

Julian Heath [03:55:21] We're talking about the church all the time. And whilst I think for my family, once people found out that I left, and I don't know how that happened, because we had that night that we referred to where we kind of came out to you. We didn't talk to anybody else. We didn't at that point go, right, that's it. Now we're going to kind of come out to everybody. We didn't. So that information clearly kind of traveled through the.

Richard Heath [03:55:47] I rang around everybody,

Julian Heath [03:55:50] so that information traveled, and I'm sure all of them felt exactly the same way. This idea of, well, it doesn't need to change our relationship. You know, we're still family, we still love each other. It doesn't need to change our relationship.

Richard Heath [03:56:03] But it does, because all of a

Julian Heath [03:56:04] sudden, we can't talk about church anymore.

Nemo [03:56:07] Yeah.

Julian Heath [03:56:07] You know, so my believing siblings can't talk to me about church. And actually. And that's a big part of our lives. So, you know, I remember being around at my oldest sister's house where we'd often gather on a Sunday, and I was around there on a Sunday afternoon, and two members of my family kind of struck up a conversation about church and left the room because I was there. So they obviously felt like they couldn't have that conversation while I was in the room. You know, maybe it was because they wanted to be. Be a little bit critical about stuff, which is a very natural thing to do, which certainly was for our family on a Sunday afternoon, because that's what you do.

Nemo [03:56:45] They didn't want to feel like they were fueling.

Julian Heath [03:56:46] You didn't want to do that in front of me, you know, and so. But, but. But nothing changed about our relationship as far as I was concerned. We would still have that conversation, and you would come over, you know, we'd be out in the garden carving or whatever, and we'd be talking about the church still in exactly the same way. And that was really important to me because I said, still Wanting to talk about it. It's still important for me to be able to process those.

Richard Heath [03:57:09] I have to add, our criticisms were always ones of. Of wanting to make the church better.

Nemo [03:57:14] Yeah.

Richard Heath [03:57:15] To make the church more Christian, more accepting, more inclusive, more fair and balanced. And. And, and it wasn't just pulling it down and, And. And trying to destroy the church.

Julian Heath [03:57:29] If only we could do this. If only they would do that. And. Yeah, But. But I just wanted to say, for that period, that was really important to me to have a, you know, a brother that I could still talk to about those things and not feel like our relationship had changed, because for the others, it had. It's not intentional, it's just how it happens. You know, we. A lot of church is about feeling comfortable, isn't it? If you really boil down the Sunday experience, we go there to feel good.

Nemo [03:57:56] Yes.

Julian Heath [03:57:57] You don't go there to learn anything.

Nemo [03:57:59] No.

Julian Heath [03:57:59] We go there to be with people that feel the same way as us. So we can look around and go, oh, isn't it good? We all feel the same. This is brilliant. Everything's okay. And, you know, and. And I'm not. I'm not criticizing that, but that is the function.

Richard Heath [03:58:16] Yeah.

Julian Heath [03:58:17] So throw somebody like me in the mix and suddenly that ruins everything.

Nemo [03:58:21] You know, it's like Peter Bleakley says. He said people go to hear the lullabies of their youth sung to them. Right. At Sunday school. That's what they go to Sunday school for.

Julian Heath [03:58:29] Yeah.

Nemo [03:58:29] And so you're there and like this, like I was saying to Rich there, it's not about whether what you're saying is true or not. It's not about whether you're digging up ghosts. It's because you're making them feel uncomfortable.

Julian Heath [03:58:37] Yeah. For them, it's like getting that.

Richard Heath [03:58:38] And that means you're wrong and dragging the needle.

Nemo [03:58:40] Yeah.

Julian Heath [03:58:41] You know, and so it makes them feel uncomfortable, and I understand that, but it was important for me. I really appreciated having somebody that I could carry on having those conversations with.

Richard Heath [03:58:51] We had always had these conversations, the things that we felt uncomfortable about and how we were going to approach it, how we were going to interface with the world, how we were going to be Christians. We've always had those conversations with our children. And at this time, our eldest son, who we talk with quite often, was having some questions as well. He'd been on his mission and come back. His friends were all members, but he had started to read some books about Eastern philosophy, Eastern religions. He'd read the Bhagavad Gita, the Dao de Ching, some of those other books. And he was calling us to say,

Julian Heath [03:59:30] dad, you've got to.

Richard Heath [03:59:31] You've got to read this. And not because it was leading him away from Mormonism or Christianity, but just to say there's like this universal morality out there that other religions believe as well.

Nemo [03:59:43] Yeah.

Richard Heath [03:59:43] And it's so close to what we believe. In fact, he got this one copy of, I think it was the Tao Te Ching, where every time it talks about Dao, it takes it out and put in the word Christ.

Julian Heath [03:59:56] Right.

Richard Heath [03:59:57] As I understand it, dao means way. So rather than say this is the way it would be that Christ is what it is that we're aiming for. And it worked really well. And. And that kind of started making me thinking a bit more universally about religion and about how perhaps there's a underground spring of truth. And we just put down our. Well depending on what religion we are. And I was still saying at that point, and I am a Mormon. That's the well that I choose to drink from. That's absolutely fine.

Richard Heath [04:00:27] Then, of course, lockdown happened and church was closed for a little while. And we quite enjoyed the. The being able to be together at home that that allowed us to have. When the chapels reopened again, Jude and I went every week to church, and we got there early. We prepared the sacrament, we blessed them and the sacrament, and then we cleared the sacrament. Afterwards, no one really spoke to us. Bishop would say hi, because he'd be there at the same time. Having said that.

Richard Heath [04:00:57] Fair, dudes. I didn't go out of my way to talk to anybody else either. At one point, everyone was masked up anyway. But at the end of the meetings, when everyone else is stood around in huddles chatting and what have you, Jude and I were putting away the sacrament. Then we go through the huddles to get in our car and go. And that's what we did every week. And I was. This was almost a point of honor to me that I was going to go every week.

Julian Heath [04:01:17] I was not.

Richard Heath [04:01:18] Despite how I felt about it, I was going to go every week. And we did. Ruth didn't and didn't want to, nor did the girls, because they didn't need to. We didn't want to risk catching anything. We'd had a loved one die during that period as well, so we knew how real it was. We knew what the risks were, but we went throughout.

Richard Heath [04:01:42] But what we learned was that I've been right all along, and that is that the organized element that wasn't particularly nice sometimes wasn't essential. And that we didn't need to be in church to worship, to study, to pray, to be good Christians, to be nice to our neighbours, to love each other. We didn't need our weekly Sunday top up for that. Now, whether we're different to everybody else, I suspect we're not. And I suspect a lot of people had that experience. And when it was time to go back, we're quite reluctant to go back because they'd enjoyed their family time. My goodness, isn't Sunday lovely when you're not having to prepare a lesson, prepare a top talk, drag children to church that don't want to be there, all those things, organize interviews afterwards and everything that takes up the.

Richard Heath [04:02:29] What actually becomes more like four and a half hours of your Sunday. And we kid ourselves in the church that Sunday's a day of rest. No, it's not. I'll tell you what, rest is what we've got now. It's lovely. Or that it's a family day. It's not a family day. I was separated from Ruth, I was separated from my children for three. Well, for at least two of those three hours.

Reasons for Leaving and Life After the Church

Richard Heath [04:02:50] The other thing that I should mention, that was a bit of a shelf item for me is I love Ruth and I love my girls and they are far more intelligent than me, they are far more Christian than me, loving, empathetic and all those things. And yet I know the church members would say they're not treated any differently. Well, we know the reality about Mormonism. We know what the. The history and the foundation of the patriarchy is and how women were treated previously. And that continues through now. It really does. The, the whole we've got the priesthood, you can have babies thing just has always sat uncomfortably with me because I want the babies as well as the priesthood.

Richard Heath [04:03:33] But also any aspect that my daughters were not a match to any of the young men that were at the chapel, less of less worth or value. And I know they do their. I'm a daughter of God and all that kind of thing, and I know my. My sacred value and what have you. Well, my girls had worked out very, very young age, actually, that sacred value and worth was to get married and have children. Short of that, the church doesn't want me for anything. And they were quite happy to get stuck in as well. One of the things that always used to stick in the throat of both of my daughters is when the young men or the priesthood were asked to put out or put away chairs and my daughters would make a point of making a beeline and say I can carry chairs as well as the next person.

Richard Heath [04:04:19] And so again something else that sat uncomfortable with me. I had a very good friend who had come out as gay and although I'd always thought that I wasn't homophobic, it really made me reflect on that and realize what that experience must be like as a gay man or woman in the church.

Julian Heath [04:04:38] I don't know if you remember this but I think the first year we're at Alveston. So Alveston's like a woodland like festival thing that they do up in Derbyshire

Richard Heath [04:04:50] where we would sell spoons.

Julian Heath [04:04:51] We would go there and sell things that like you do. And the first time we went there we're sleeping in the teepee and you, and you were talking to me about, about your friend and, and that whole story and you know, I'm, you know, we just kind of having a conversation inside of like, you know, because they're the kind of things that make me think it's not just me, it's not just me. We are, you know, and they're the

Nemo [04:05:17] sorts of feelings based things that will eventually break through the logic because you've got that logic cycle that doesn't really matter because you can justify and justify and justify when you start to feel like it's wrong. Like you said earlier, Judy, all about feelings.

Richard Heath [04:05:30] So. So Ruth and I hadn't really spoken too much about how we felt about gospel and our membership. But as lockdown ended and we were getting the call to go back to church again, Ruth said I don't want to go back to church now. I knew how Ruth felt about being in the chapel with people who didn't particularly show love towards her, in fact had shown her that they didn't love her. And me, we felt uncomfortable with that anyway, but we put up with it. But having had a year and a half of not doing it, she thought actually no, I'm done with that now and I can be a Christian.

Richard Heath [04:06:02] I can worship from my home and within my life and the things that I do. I might get these facts wrong but as I remember Ruth had then dived into the gospel topics essays and she read them all and she was sharing with, she reads much better than I do. She was sharing with me some of the things that she'd learned and they were obviously were supporting some of the things that we'd felt previously that weren't right that the church had not made clear to us. Ruth felt particularly cross about some of the stuff because she said, hold on. When I was 14 years of age and the missionary sat down and taught me.

Richard Heath [04:06:39] They did not teach me this and they did not teach me that. And she got quite cross with me. When you're on your mission, did you teach people this, Ruth? I didn't know that. I didn't know that stuff. I felt it, but I didn't know it. And it certainly wasn't part of the discussions.

Richard Heath [04:06:52] And so that started to cause a real problem for us. And then Ruth came across the CES letter and read that right through. And then no doubt that branched off to a number of other things and, and then she shared some of those things with me. And I remember one day saying, right, Ruth, just read me some of it. Just read it to me. Now, bearing in mind what I said previously, that I thought I knew what there was, I thought that anti Mormon stuff was that Mormon missionaries have got horns and that's why they wear a top hat and there's a tunnel that goes from Liverpool to Provo.

Richard Heath [04:07:25] And I knew that wasn't true. So what else can they throw at me? Well, there was actually quite a lot more there. And so when Ruth started showing the secret CES letter with me and the questions that whatever his name was, who wrote that Jeremy Runnels, that Jeremy Runnels was trying to ask his CES man were the same questions I would want to ask if I was at a. I remember feeling so cynical about these face to faces that the church started to organize where it was this more informal kind of time with a general authority.

Richard Heath [04:07:57] And you can ask questions. And of course, you know, the questions were all written down beforehand and they were all vetted and they'd pick out the ones they wanted. Well, these are the questions that I would have liked to have asked if I had unfettered access to somebody that might have the answers. And actually I think I knew the answer already. And that is they don't have the answers. There aren't any answers to these. So when I started to hear what Ruth was reading from the CES letter, I listened and I listened and by the time she finished, I think I took a deep breath and said, while I'm out, that's me done. And that was it. All right.

Nemo [04:08:29] And then, and then how did you inform Julian and Laura?

Richard Heath [04:08:33] I think it was by carrier pigeon. No, no.

Julian Heath [04:08:36] Do you remember that letter that you. No.

Richard Heath [04:08:41] You can't remember anything?

Nemo [04:08:43] Okay, Julian, tell the story.

Julian Heath [04:08:45] I can remember. I can remember. Before we get to that though, can I just say. So all this, all this while the thing that's causing the Problem with my family is the fact that we're involved with Sunstone vocal about it. And, you know, the reality is I want all my family to leave. I don't. I don't want my dad to leave, you know, because, you know what? Why would I want him to leave? You know, he's 84 now, you know, and I just don't think it would do him any good. But for the rest of my family, I feel like I now have found that it's not true.

Julian Heath [04:09:25] And, you know, and so my take on truth and their take on truth is different. But there are certainly things that I discovered that are demonstrably true or think claims that are demonstrably untrue. And so I want them to know these things, and I want them to leave, because I think that if they knew that these things weren't true, that they would want to leave. And. And I want to talk about these things, and I can't.

Julian Heath [04:09:53] And it causes this. This problem, and it really winds me up because all of these things, all of these aspects of me, you know, so I know that there must be people that see me doing Sunstone. I think, oh, here we go. It's typical Julian. He's got. It needs to have the attention. He's got to be up there telling us all about these things on his podcasts and stuff like that. And I just think, well, hang on. These are these character traits, these. These things that are part of me,

Richard Heath [04:10:19] they were a virtue.

Julian Heath [04:10:21] 10 minutes ago when I was talking about how wonderful the church is, when I was bearing my testimony, when I was giving a tour, when I was on my mission, trying to spread the truth, all of those things were a virtue. The only thing that's changed is the message. I haven't changed. I'm still being me. I'm doing Julian, you know, the same way as I always have done, you know, but. Whereas before it was a virtue, now it's become a problem, you know, but that's how I'm feeling through all of this. I can't have these conversations. And that's the really, really the most frustrating thing is the fact that I'm not able to have these conversations.

Julian Heath [04:10:55] I know still that there are, you know, the members of my family that have left. They might think that they know why I've left. You know, they might think that they know what the reasons are, but they don't, because they haven't asked, because we haven't really had these conversations. And that's not all on them, because the reality is, if they sat down with me now and said, well, tell me. Well, actually, do you know what? If they sat down with me now and said, tell me, I would tell them, but back then, I wasn't ready to tell them because I didn't want to be responsible for that.

Julian Heath [04:11:22] I want them to find out these things, but I don't want to be responsible for that. And again, I don't think that me just vomiting information, you know, on them is going to have that impact unless they've got that. That kind of feeling that it's not going to make any difference. So, anyway, so I. I came round one day. I don't know what it. I don't know why it was probably to, I don't know, go and build something in the shed with you or just to hang out or whatever it was.

Richard Heath [04:11:54] But we knew you were coming around.

Julian Heath [04:11:55] Yeah. And you were in the. We were in the kitchen and you just said, oh, yeah, you know, by the way, you know, we don't go to church anymore, by the way.

Nemo [04:12:06] FYI.

Richard Heath [04:12:06] Yeah.

Nemo [04:12:07] Just in case you're wondering, were you that casual about it, Richard?

Richard Heath [04:12:10] I was.

Nemo [04:12:10] You just think I was.

Richard Heath [04:12:12] Oh, by the way, we knew there'd be a response and a reaction.

Julian Heath [04:12:16] Yeah. Now, the reaction, my outward reaction, was very different to how I was feeling inside, you know, so, you know, I kind of wanted to put. Be very measured with the whole thing. Go. Okay, well, you know, talk to me about that, you know, and. And, you know, be aware that, you know, it's a long process and you can, you know, do a lot of these and don't rush into anything and having these conversations. And inside I'm like, yes, you know, but for selfish reasons, you know, because that was really important for me, you know, but also, you know, because I know that. That that would be better, you know, that that's better for them in the long run.

Julian Heath [04:12:56] I know it's very painful to begin with, but in the long run, you know that it's going to be better for them. So, you know, I knew that they would be better out, you know, and. And again, from a selfish point of view, that. That made them more of a kind of a. A safe space for us. You know, I just. I wanted somebody else to get it as well, you know, somebody that shared some of my DNA to. To kind of be in that same situation.

Nemo [04:13:25] It's very validating.

Julian Heath [04:13:26] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, but exciting as well. It's really exciting, you know, and to be completely honest, you know, I think we've always had a really Good relationship. You know, there's so many things, kind of common interests that we've got, you know, from the band and from Holton Heath and all of that. Those. The kind of these things that we've done together. But, you know, it's been so much better since. Since they've been out as well. And there just is that kind of extra level of. Kind of authenticity that is just priceless a thing.

Richard Heath [04:14:10] So Ruth and I obviously had to break the news to our children.

Nemo [04:14:14] Yeah.

Richard Heath [04:14:15] That we weren't going to church anymore. And that was difficult. And that was difficult for them as well, because I know one of. One of my daughters cried at first. Now, she hadn't been going to church for quite a while, actually, and had been out for a little while. But what she equated with adults leaving the church is that there must be a problem with our relationship.

Nemo [04:14:34] Yeah.

Richard Heath [04:14:34] And she was afraid that that meant that Mum and Dad were splitting up, which, of course, we're not. Ruth couldn't get rid of me that easily. However, I think on the whole, we said from the outset to our children, if you want to go to church, you go to church. We'll support you. In fact, I won't just take you. I'll go. I'll sit in church with you still. But it's not something I believe anymore. And I'm glad they chose not to, because I wouldn't have found that a comfortable place to be, but I would have done it.

Richard Heath [04:15:02] I remember Jude, after giving it some thought, saying, actually, I don't really want to go either. And he explained in a very simple way, for a young person, that is, I now feel free to be a Christian. I feel free now to be the good person I've always wanted to be, where I don't have to judge other people.

Richard Heath [04:15:21] And Lily for a while said she might go, she might go, she might go. She didn't go. And actually, we are all very happy in our relationships. We've still got a lot to learn. It's still hard being Mormons that don't go to church, because even if I decide I want my name taken off of the record, I'm still going to be a Mormon. That's how I've been raised. That's my culture.

Richard Heath [04:15:46] Ruth and I feel a little bit of guilt for Julian and Laura because we feel like it's been easier for us with our family to leave the church than it was for them. Now, they were very open and still are very public about their leaving the church. Ruth and I haven't Been.

Julian Heath [04:16:02] It's.

Richard Heath [04:16:02] It's not until now. Well, you know, if this is as public as it gets, that's fine. I'm just telling my story. It's not something that I feel I need to. And I'm not saying that Julian and Laura felt the need to replace the church. I don't feel like I need to replace the church. I don't miss it, actually. And as Sundays are lovely without it, our weekday nights are lovely without it. We are still the people that we were before. We didn't leave to sin. We didn't leave because there was something that we wanted to do that we couldn't do. We found some things that we couldn't do that now we enjoy, that we wouldn't have done as members of the church. But that's come after leaving the church.

Julian Heath [04:16:39] Can I just say something on that though, as well? Because that is one of the cliches, isn't it? When people leave, it's because they wanted to do some kind of sin, you know. You know, they've left because they want to drink or they want to smoke. And it's really seen as a kind of, you know, like, you know, oh, that's just pathetic, isn't it? That's really weak or pathetic. Just think all of those things that

Nemo [04:17:00] as

Julian Heath [04:17:02] believing members that we don't do, all those things that we sacrifice, all those those things that we, you know, we abstain from. That's only a virtue if it's right. If it's not right, that's just ridiculous.

Richard Heath [04:17:16] Ridiculous. You know, you can't.

Julian Heath [04:17:17] Don't be pleased with yourself for not drinking alcohol. You know, if the word of wisdom is just something that Joseph Smith made up, you know, do you get what I mean? Those things, they're only a virtue if it's based on something that's true. So you need to know that that's true.

Richard Heath [04:17:34] Even if it is true, it's only a virtue if you are buying into that belief system. I remember talking to young men. I remember it was a Sunday and we were having a young men's meeting. They were talking about some. Someone and they drink coffee. And I'm like, hold on, guys. Coffee is not a sin. It's never hurt anybody. I don't really think God's got a problem with it. The only thing with coffee is if you've promised not to and you do, then you've probably done something wrong. If you have not promised, then it's not a problem. So I've lost my train of thoughts.

Nemo [04:18:04] I had that Same point of view as a youth. And I thought, so. I just wish I'd never made the promise because then I could still go on. Right.

Richard Heath [04:18:11] You know, I thought that about lots of things.

Nemo [04:18:13] I had that logic even as a young youth, before he was even having a faith crisis, I had that logic, oh, it would be easier if I just never put myself under these obligations. Because some of these things aren't wrong. They're just. I've said I won't do them.

Richard Heath [04:18:26] So I was saying that Ruth and I felt guilty, and we do feel guilty, that perhaps Julian and Laura have had a more noticeably negative response from our family and loved ones.

Julian Heath [04:18:36] You seem to have got over it pretty quickly, though.

Richard Heath [04:18:41] I would love. In exactly the same way as Julian, I would love my family to not go to church anymore. Not because I want them to lose anything that is precious or dear or special to them they love, but because I love them. And I want them to know that there is a life outside of Mormonism. And I don't. I think what they. You don't know when you're in the effect that it has upon you. It wasn't until we left the church and that we had a bit of breathing space. We could think about some of the experiences that we had that we realized some of the traumatic experiences that we'd had.

Richard Heath [04:19:12] And certainly our children, our daughters, that told us about things they'd been taught and how they felt. And what was very difficult for us as parents was that they thought that we were okay with those opinions being given them because we were the ones that took them to church. We were the ones that. That gave them wholesale into the care of young women's leaders and young men's leaders who weren't qualified to do the things that they were doing. And so they never came to us to say, did you know that they've said this about such and such because they thought we were complicit?

Nemo [04:19:41] Yeah, they thought you were fine with it.

Richard Heath [04:19:43] I've got nephews and nieces who are very young, who I love, and I don't want them to have the pressures and the guilts and the misconceptions about relationships and the things that the church standards in their lives. I don't want them to have those things because I don't think they're healthy.

Richard Heath [04:20:00] And I would love to be able to have. In the same way, as Julian said, my loved ones find out for themselves that actually, I've been believing this all my life and it's not true. So I'm going To find a different way. And that's kind of where we find ourselves now.

Richard Heath [04:20:16] We are very happy world out there. We're very happy again. There's a misconception that non members are miserable. They've got nothing to live for. They've got no idea about what their future might hold. No sense of purpose. And that's just not true. All the dreams and the ambitions and the goals I always have, I've still got them. Sorry, Ruth. I've still got all those dreams and ambitions and I actually have a more brighter sense of hope as far as those are concerned now. Because actually the church was one of those things that's who holding me back from starting my own microbrewery.

Richard Heath [04:20:51] I've got no interest in alcohol whatsoever. It's horrible stuff. But that's, that's kind of where we are. Yeah, I, I, hopefully the relationships I have with my family are still the same. I hope if any of them see this, I hope they see this because I don't think I've said anything that would hurt them. But that they realize how important it is to us that we have left the church. How important it would be to share what we, we have got. And I would love for people to honestly say, Richard, what, what is it that you think that we need to know? And I like Julian said he felt at the moment I'm at the point where I'd say actually you need to find out for yourself.

Richard Heath [04:21:23] If you really want to know. It's really easy to find out. You find out for yourself because I don't want to be the one that affects your testimony. If your testimony is precious to you and Julian.

Nemo [04:21:33] Where are you at now? Now that you've got your, in some ways you never lost your brother, but you've got that better relationship now because you are essentially both able to be in the same sort of place. What's that like for you? And what, what are you doing?

Julian Heath [04:21:48] That's fantastic. You can, that, that means a lot to me, you know, and I love, I mean we don't see each other as often as I was. I would like, you know, because we live a whole 45 minutes away.

Richard Heath [04:22:03] I'm gonna talk about bedtime on FaceTime. Aren't you?

Julian Heath [04:22:05] But, yeah, but you know, we do have lots and lots of, of kind of remote conversations usually with one of

Richard Heath [04:22:14] the four of us semi dressed with a towel on right out of the shower or something.

Nemo [04:22:19] This, this isn't just. Okay, right. Because whenever we do a video call because Julian is part of the kind of podcasting scene here in the uk. Often when we'll do a group call to discuss something. Julian has no shirt on. So I'm glad it's not just us that he is, you know, undressed for.

Julian Heath [04:22:32] It's pretty standard.

Nemo [04:22:34] Standard.

Richard Heath [04:22:34] We live on the edge and we're talking away, but all the time thinking, Laura, please don't drop the phone. Please don't drop the phone. I don't want to see any lower than I can see already.

Nemo [04:22:45] So, Julia, what are you doing now? What is your kind of life like now outside the church? Tell us a bit about Sunstone and just generally.

Julian Heath [04:22:53] Yeah, so we're at the moment, we're getting ready for. For the next Sunstone UK conference, which is taking place on the 7th, 8th and 9th of October in Stonehall.

Richard Heath [04:23:10] Ruth and I are going, yeah, really excited.

Julian Heath [04:23:12] And that, I mean, that itself is brilliant because, you know, when, when we

Richard Heath [04:23:16] did it last year, we didn't want to go. We avoided it.

Julian Heath [04:23:19] I think you, you know, you came for a bit of it and you came very much to support us, you know, which I really appreciate.

Richard Heath [04:23:25] You didn't pay us.

Julian Heath [04:23:27] I didn't appreciate it that much, you know, but that, that's great to be able to kind of get them involved and, you know, be able to have people to kind of, you know, shoot ideas off of and stuff like that. So that, that's fantastic. Really excited about that. We've got John Hamer, um, coming over and, um. And Lindsay's coming over as well this year, which I know she's been. Been kind of hoping to be able to come over for a while because of all the COVID stuff that hasn't really been able to happen. So that's going to be brilliant. There's a guy called Nemo coming over as well. That's. That.

Nemo [04:24:01] Don't. Don't go. Don't go. It's not worth it. He sucks.

Julian Heath [04:24:05] So, yeah, really, really looking forward to that. I am this close to launching my own YouTube channel as well.

Richard Heath [04:24:18] How long have you been that close?

Julian Heath [04:24:19] No, but last time I told you I was that close.

Nemo [04:24:22] All right, okay. He's getting close.

Julian Heath [04:24:23] I haven't told you the scale, have I? Called the ironic priesthood where we'll hopefully have some, some interesting discussions, hopefully have a bit of a laugh as well, and I'm sure that we'll see his face as well regularly on there. So, yeah, looking forward to that. So watch this space. By the time this comes out, hopefully

Nemo [04:24:47] there'll be something to watch.

Julian Heath [04:24:49] Yeah.

Nemo [04:24:49] Yeah. Well, thank you very much, both of you.

Richard Heath [04:24:52] Thank you.

Nemo [04:24:52] Thank you.

Richard Heath [04:24:53] Richard Inane Bubble.

Nemo [04:24:55] Thanks for opening up your home. Thanks Tuning in for everything, particularly all the help in the Britvenger stuff as well. Thank you everyone for watching. If you like this, hit the like button. If you really like this, hit the subscribe button. And if you really, really like this, you can consider becoming a monthly donor to Mormon stories. Donor funding really helps. The podcast helps us do this sort of thing, helped me come onto the team so I can travel around and tell stories from a different part of the world. So thank you very much. Make sure to tune in next time and we'll see you all soon. Take care.

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