Joanna Brooks has emerged as an important commentator on Mormonism for mainstream media. In fact, this year Politico named her as one of 50 commentators to watch in America. She is currently the Chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. She writes about Mormonism and politics for Religion Dispatches and is the author of askmormongirl.com. Tell us about your Mormon roots. What are some of your fondest memories about growing up Mormon? I grew up at the southern end of the Book of Mormon belt, in Orange County, California. My dad was a bishop of three different wards. I remember watching him come and go at all hours. I loved the things that he involved me in. I loved the emergency preparedness drills we used to do, being sure that we knew how we would look out for each other if there were a disaster. I walked the ward with my dad on those disaster drills, and it gave me a feeling of having a tangible community. I loved girls’ camp. We did it right in Southern California. I was blessed with wonderful Young Women’s leaders who believed in backpacking. We backpacked for the first time when we were twelve-year-old Beehives, carrying our own tents and all our food, drinking water from a stream for three days. I absolutely loved it. It taught me resiliency and community. And I loved how the leaders linked in the spiritual, too. It wasn’t just about the backpacking. Entering high school, I made a conscious decision that I would hang out only with Mormon kids. I’m not sure in retrospect that my perspective was actually accurate, but I felt pretty strongly about it then because at age thirteen or fourteen a lot of kids were starting to party and starting to drink. So in high school I consciously associated pretty much only with LDS kids. It was a wonderful community. There was a good crew of us in my stake. We had dozens of LDS kids, probably twenty or thirty in my high school and some who went to other high schools as well. We were like an extended family. On weekends we did classic Mormon, goofy, fun, sweet activities like ice-blocking. Those activities really set us apart from the kids who were drinking every weekend. Having this other set of family I belonged to was a big part of my growing up—these were like my brothers and sisters. How did your faith develop in those early years? I found growing up in the Church theologically and intellectually stimulating. Seminary, scripture study—there was so much to stretch me. The Church has wonderful messages for girls and for boys. I took the responsibility to study and learn very seriously and it fed and nurtured that side of me. I know that it had a huge impact in making me into a scholar and thinker. When I was ten or eleven, my mind started wrapping around some of the more cosmic elements of the teachings of Doctrine and Covenants—light and space and the nature of time and the nature of eternity and the role of the family in eternity. My brain was so wonderfully stretched by these ideas. It’s a beautifully innovative and rich view of the gospel developed in the Doctrine and Covenants. And to be entrusted with that glimpse of the universe when I was twelve was wonderful! Where else was I going to get that kind of mental stimulation? The universe expands and is expansive and is eternally expansive. Wow! That’s pretty cool! I guess I was a theology geek. I got a geeky pleasure thinking about the shape of eternity. That had such appeal to me then and still does. There is a richness in Mormon doctrine, a real daringness that made it very rewarding for a young person to think about. What doctrines that you learned as a youth have been most important to you as an adult? The Joseph Smith story, the founding story of our religion, has always been extremely powerful to me. Here is a young boy struggling to find answers and not satisfied with any answers the adults in his life could give him, so he went out and sought through prayer a direct answer from God. I was not a young person who necessarily rejected things my leaders said. I felt very happy in the Church, but this example that when you face challenges in your life, you can pray—you can go to a quiet place in yourself and ask for help—was very, very centering for me, very grounding, and is one of the lessons that has really carried me through my adulthood. I love the fact that Joseph Smith was fourteen. And I was never told that he was some special example and that his experience did not apply to me. His experience applies to all of us! I took a lot of strength from that. And the doctrine embedded in that founding story is personal revelation, the practice of prayer. That’s one of the doctrines of the Church that has always been very dear to me. Is there a particular time prayer was important to you? My early to mid twenties was a really hard time for me. It’s very normal to go through a soul puberty around that time in your life. I was going through the classic struggle for that age of figuring out who I was and what my work in this world should be, but I was struggling with many other issues as well. Some people I cared about had been excommunicated and that was terribly difficult for me. My ancestors came into it a great deal; I was working through emotional health issues that had come down through the generations from my ancestors and needed to be resolved. So there I was in my little studio apartment in Los Angeles. I remember finding out that someone in my singles ward whom I cared about had been abused as a kid and it really upset me. The weight of everything was just a lot: trying to sort out my feelings within the LDS community, struggling with my own issues and with the issues of generations, being 24 years old and alone in the big city. I remember being so overwhelmed by emotion that I fell on my knees and said, “You’ve got to help me. I can’t bear this right now. I can’t bear the sadness I’m feeling. I just can’t bear it.” And the weight lifted. The memory is as fresh as if it were yesterday. It just lifted. I got an instant sense of peace and relief. Prayer isn’t always like that, of course. I find that the discipline of prayer helps me access a place of peace and equanimity, but that doesn’t mean that answers come right away. I have learned, whatever the issue, to just keep praying through it, waiting for the help that’s going to be on the way. But at that instant the help was instantaneous and palpable. I had a weight lifted from my chest that I didn’t think I could bear. You are married to a Jewish man and are raising your two young daughters to respect his faith as well as your own. What elements of your faith do you stress with them? Prayer is what they’re going to need first and foremost, because they’re going to need to make choices. I don’t know much that compares to the tradition of searching personal prayer that I was raised with as a Mormon. The way I was taught as a Mormon girl to take my choices seriously, to deliberate them, and to seek inspiration is something I try to pass down to them. They know that they need to seek their own answers, and that prayer is the way to get answers. They understand the process of how we find answers, the feelings that the Doctrine & Covenants teaches accompany prayer. Right now they’re at a stage where the plan of salvation is dawning on them and they are beginning to think of themselves as having a soul that pre-existed this life and that is here to gain experience and that will continue to gain experience through eternity. That’s a marvelous gift of perspective that I’ve tried to convey to them. I’ve taught them that their spirits lived in heaven before they came to this earth and that they came here to learn and later we will go so that we can be with our ancestors. That sense of perspective that the plan of salvation brings is really important so that they know that they’re not an accident, so that they know that they are spiritual beings here having learning experiences. Lately, I’ve been emphasizing, to them, “You’re a Mormon. You need to look out for the Mormon kids at school.” It’s not partisanship I’m trying to instill but a nascent sense of what it means to belong. We belong to look out for one another. If someone is bothering your friend from Primary at school, you stand up for that person. You go give them your support. As Christians we stand up for everyone, but there’s a special kinship that LDS people owe one another. We’re brothers and sisters, so look out for them! In my ward, I’m the emergency route coordinator for my little neighborhood, so I took my daughter with me to check on all the houses the other morning, our annual drill–if there’s an emergency, who would you check up on? I want her to have the same memory I have of going out with my dad to check on ward members. She’ll remember, “My crazy mom got up at 8:00 on Saturday morning to knock on people’s doors!” We look out for each other. We look out for everybody as part of being Christian, but we also belong to a community that looks out for one another specifically as LDS people. Tell me about your family’s 24th of July tradition. I was less active for 7 or 8 years. In the middle of that time I was trying to think of ways to still honor my Mormonism and figure out what was still important to me in the Church. I have pioneer heritage, and I’ve always thought of Pioneer Day–the day we celebrate the pioneers first entering the Salt Lake Valley–as a lovely Mormon cultural holiday. I decided that even though I wasn’t attending Church at the time that I was going to observe Pioneer Day, and I was going to hold a Mormon dinner. Part of my idea doubtless comes from Passover. The Jewish people are brilliant at using food to help remember. They have worked it out over millennia: eat and tell your story. I needed something like that for me! So, Pioneer Day: eat and tell your story. Passover is a spiritual, holy day and Pioneer Day is not a holy day but a cultural day, so I don’t try to make it heavy-handed. We don’t say a series of prayers or have a liturgy like you have for Passover, but we sit around a table and eat and tell stories about who we are. I make some form of Mormon dinner, usually camp and light-hearted. I’ll pull out a couple of Mormon cookbooks I have and cook things that will horrify my husband, various Jell-O dishes, and funeral potatoes (which, truth be told, I never ate growing up as a child but I really like them). My kids and I wear bonnets, and we tell stories about our ancestors who came across the plains. I invite non-member friends mostly. They think it’s great. They’re all kind of pleased to witness a cultural experience. Some of them have not eaten Jell-O before. Most of the people I associate with day-to-day are not LDS, as is true of most of us who live outside the Utah corridor, and me probably more than most because I married outside of the faith and because I work outside of the home, so I have a lot of non-LDS contact every day. So I’m just excited to share it in a lighthearted way with people I’m close to, and they are excited to be a part of it. You are a scholar of Early American literature. Your prize-winning book, American Lazarus: Religion and The Rise of African-American and Native-American Literatures, was published by Oxford University Press. How does your faith inform your scholarship, or your scholarship your faith? When I was in graduate school, fresh out of BYU, I knew I wanted to study religion in some form because it was such a hugely important part of my life. I didn’t want to write about Mormons because I didn’t know how to yet and I was still trying to figure out who I was. But I took a class where we spent fifteen weeks talking about early American religion, and I understood it because I’d attended seminary! Everyone else’s eyes at the table were glazing over, but I got it! By studying the Puritans I came to understand some of the particular emphases on works in Mormon theology versus grace. I studied the Quakers and thought about the role of the Spirit. My studies gave me a wonderful view into Mormon doctrine and into how Mormonism fits in the larger American literary/historical picture. And in my studies of early communities of color and the ways they used religion, I bring some fairly intimate knowledge I had gained as an LDS person about the ways we organize ourselves as religious communities. I have noticed in your interviews that you often laugh at questions you get asked. When I talk about Mormonism in public, I find myself laughing all the time. It’s not necessarily premeditated. It seems that as LDS people we live every day with a great deal of self-consciousness about our beliefs. We often are very nervous about how to explain these tender things that outsiders make fun of so much. We also live with some habits of being very guarded with non-LDS people when we talk about things that we hold sacred. And maybe we’re a little sensitive too. We’ve been through it. We’re not well-accepted. We’re not well-understood. It’s hard to find places outside of our own wards and families and congregations where we are regarded as full human beings who know what we believe and have good reasons for believing it. So my particular contribution to this “Mormon moment,” as I have come to understand it, is just to be fearless and candid but also unapologetic. There are elements of Mormon political life where I go another way, but one thing I refuse to be is ashamed of Mormon people and Mormon life. As somebody who studies language and culture issues, I’m fascinated to see the ways Mormons speak in very coded, self-conscious ways to outsiders. I think being married to someone who is not of the faith has taught me to work out explanations or ways of describing what we do that humanize us and that don’t rely on stock phrases that we use within the culture. I try to tell it like it is! There’s a certain amount of liberation that comes with that, but it also takes guts. I put myself out there, projecting, trying to be as joyful and human as possible. I think laughter comes along with that. I think the moment we’re still living through right now is really interesting. My goal is to defuse the tension by being open and candid and unafraid and signaling that I’m a human being too. And then I end up laughing when I do it. As you mentioned, you went through a period of not attending Church. Can you talk about the role writing played in your return to activity? I think writing is the most powerful way to work things out in your heart and soul. Being away from Church actually coincided with my period of not writing. When my second daughter was born in 2006, I started writing. I hadn’t written for years; I wrote for my job, but not from my heart. When my second daughter was born I really started thinking about how we were going to do this with our family. I started writing a very small circulation blog about our family and about family life, basically a mommy blog, looking especially at spiritual questions of parenting. A friend encouraged me to pitch it as a book. I got really close to selling the book but then they said it was “too Mormon.” That really ticked me off. I’m in the twenty-first century and I can’t say who I am? I decided that what people need is a Mormon book. So I started to write a book about growing up Mormon. The book was also a way to sort through, now that I was a parent, how it was I had been raised and what it meant to me. Writing it was very healing to me. Being able to put down on paper and examine all that I had learned, all that I’d experienced, made me review all of the positive things that my culture had given me, that my religion had given me. So my writing actually led to my return to Church. In the years that I had been gone, I had really been away from everything. I had been so hurt, so vulnerable and so tender, that I had been completely absent. I didn’t know the Bloggernacle existed. So when I started writing about Mormonism and came upon these blogs by people like me, it really, really, really helped me. Knowing that there is a community of LDS people who may have their own unorthodox take on things has been a tremendous boon to me in becoming active again. Writing has been an instrument of homecoming. It has helped me sort things out. When I write I feel like I try to make a space in the tradition for people like me where we don’t have to hide who we are or hide our questions or hide our liberal tendencies. I think people get scared away from Mormonism and think there is not space for people like us who are more progressive or questioning. There are lots of us who love Mormonism and honor it. Writing has been a way for me to make a space where I can stand with my tradition and say, I really do love this. Writing has been a way of coming home. Anything else you want to add? The difficult choices we face and the demanding theology we embrace and the very observant lifestyle that we’re taught to follow in the Church pay off with enormous dividends of resiliency and determination and clarity for Mormon women. I’m proud to be part of the tradition. At A Glance Name: Joanna Brooks Location: San Diego, CA Age: 40 Marital status: Married Children: Daughters ages 6 and 8 Occupation: Professor, writer Schools Attended: BYU, UCLA Languages Spoken at Home: English, and a touch of Yiddish Favorite Hymn: “Now Let Us Rejoice” On The Web: www.joannabrooks.org Interview by Annette Pimentel.

During a trip to India in May 2010, mother-of-five Kirsten Monson discovered the beautiful artisan work of the local women and determined that she would provide a way for their work to reach a receptive market. The result was Elevita, a site that sells products from artisans in developing countries and then funnels all of the revenue back into the local communities. In this interview, Kirsten talks about the status of women in the countries she serves and the drive she feels from the Spirit to help them. You’ve lived in several countries abroad. How did this lead to the founding of your website, Elevita? We currently live in Singapore for my husband’s work. He works for a medical device company and his responsibility is to get the company’s medical devices into developing countries around the world. This is what led to Elevita in a way because he travels a lot and I felt like I needed to go with him to India. I finally got to go in May of 2010; I felt like there was something calling me there. I had no idea what. When I got there, what I loved was seeing all of the beautiful artisan work, the native handicraft, and I met people who didn’t seem to have very much demand for their beautiful work. On my way home, I felt that there could be a much larger market for these people’s wares so that they could become more financially independent. I felt that there just needed to be a bridge from the product to the market. Elevita is something that is completely volunteer, we donate all our time, we don’t get any money or personal revenue from it. We feel that this is a way we can help people pull out of poverty through the economic opportunity. We pay the artisans for their goods upfront at the price they name. We then sell their goods on our website. Even though we are paying the artisans a very fair price, there is always a markup for their goods when sold in developed countries. We use the net profits from this markup to fund our humanitarian projects. We hope that the dual combination of the economic opportunity plus the humanitarian grants will really encourage people to work their way out of poverty. It seems like a small thing to buy something from Elevita, but it’s a huge way to help. We’re talking about people who don’t have 3 meals a day, and you buy an ornament from them and it helps them feed their family. It makes a really big difference, and a hundred percent of the revenue goes back into the communities. Kirsten Monson with a Friend What is your background that gave you the confidence and skills to start something like this? Good question! Honestly, my pioneer heritage taught me that I can do anything. We needed to do this. So I thought, Let’s do it! Also, I studied statistics in college with an emphasis in business management. My husband has a strong business background and already had relationships in these countries from his professional work. I also am an artist and have a good eye for quality and color. I come from a very entrepreneurial family; we always have some project going on. So putting all that together, I said, “I’m going to build a website and help people sell their stuff!” I had zero computer background. The extent of my computer knowledge was email. And yet I felt so driven and inspired to do this. Don’t ask me how. I hope I never have to do it again, but I built the site myself. That was definitely not something I thought I could do. All the pieces eventually came together. If you’re willing to follow inspiration, things will work out whether you think you can or not. Kirsten Monson with Others I’m curious about the logistics about this. Do you take sourcing trips to India yourself to buy the inventory? Yes, we get our inventory from a lot of different places. Some of it is from direct travel, some comes through contacts and friends, some is from other non-profit groups that import things from developing countries and sell them wholesale. Recently, for instance, a missionary couple returned from the Phillipines and put us in touch with people there. We just moved to Singapore this summer for my husband’s job and already I’ve met people here with contacts in the countries we feature. I’d like to work with any developing country. I’ve had friends who have traveled and thought of me in their travels. One friend called me when she got back from Ghana. She had met a community of handicapped people who make jewelry, so we ordered some jewelry from them to sell. I have a list of guidelines on the type of artisans we want to work with. I don’t just take anything from anywhere. I like to work with artisans who don’t have another outlet to market. We do like to help in disaster areas; for example, we recently added some ornaments from Haiti. And we like to help both women and men. There are organizations that like to help only women but I certainly don’t want to exclude men from economic opportunities. Once we make a connection with a specific artisan, I usually get a sample from the artisan so I can see if it’s marketable and if there are any changes to be made. Sometimes I need to direct the artisan to know what kinds of patterns or fabrics would sell in a western market. There is one group in India that we work with – a group of women – who recently completed a sewing course. They’re excellent seamstresses now, but that’s all they know so far. So we brought them a bunch of patterns that we thought would sell in a western market – patterns for placemats and aprons and pillow covers. We helped them buy the fabric since they don’t have the capital to do that themselves. We gave them the exact patterns and showed them how to do it and then they send the finished products to us. So we get our products a lot of different ways. We launched the site in November 2010, six months after I made my first trip to India. Since the launch a year ago, we’ve increased our inventory to about sixty products on the site now. Kirsten Monson with Her Family You say on the site that 100% of the proceeds go to funding humanitarian projects, especially in education. Would you tell me about the project you have in mind specifically? Yes, the entire project is volunteer, so I wanted to reinvest our revenue into a worthy project. Right now we’re raising money for a girls’ hostel in India. Girls in rural India live in such small villages that are so away from schools that it is impossible for them to attend. Plus, their culture doesn’t value education for girls. Third, it’s difficult for them to travel with safety along the route. Something could happen to a young girl on the road and then you run into honor killings and other awful things. So they don’t travel to and from school. If a girl from rural India wants a secondary education – meaning high school – she must stay at a hostel at a safe place near a school where she can live, attend school, and go home periodically for holidays with guided transportation. This has been a formula that has been very successful in enabling girls to get more education. In the local community where the girls recently completed the sewing course I mentioned earlier, we became associated with an organization that had already built a hostel and was having tremendous success with it but was having a hard time raising funds to build a second. They invited us to contribute our funds towards building another one. That’s what we’re doing right now. It’s actually a perfect situation because the hostel will be built directly next to the craft center where these girls are sewing for us, so the girls will be watched over by the local women at the craft center but they’ll also be getting their education and gaining practical skills like sewing. When they leave they will have their secondary education, some sewing skills, and broader economic opportunities. It is a great place to put this hostel so we just need to raise the funds. There’s been some opposition from the village to building a second hostel there because, again, traditional villages don’t like girls to be educated. But we’re working through that right now with the local organization we’re affiliated with. Kirsten Monson Let’s turn to you personally. How do you stay motivated to tackle a project like this day after day? Where’s the drive coming from? It’s got to be from the Spirit. When you decide to do something like this, you just get the energy you need. There’s really no other answer. I love what I do. Already, we can see how we’ve made a difference in individuals’ lives. That’s totally motivating. I love the crafts themselves. I get so excited when we get a new batch of tablecloths or ornaments or beading. I do all my own gift-giving from Elevita because I love these products so much. I benefit personally from having this store. The motivation really comes from the joy of helping other people. I’m a firm believer that because I have been given much I too must give. My husband has a great job; we’ve had all these opportunities to travel. I’ve always felt that the Lord wouldn’t give me all these opportunities just for fun. There’s got to be some reason behind it, some way to build the kingdom, to serve and to love. You have five children, almost six. What impact has Elevita had on them? Yes, I have four boys and a girl, from 14 to 3. And one due in April 2012. They have been very supportive. We’ve explained to them about people living in poverty. People in America generally don’t understand what living in poverty really is, what it means for a family of our size to call a tarp a home, with a little cooking pot. We came home from India last year and explained to the kids that there was something we could do to help these people. And they became excited. They’ve always been supportive of the time I’ve spent on it, the trips I’ve had to take. I have total flexibility over what I give and when I give it, so it is something that has not at all been disruptive to my children. I’ve had to reprioritize some things but I can still be the mom I want to be. I do a lot of my work between the hours of 10pm and 2am. My kids know we’ve invested a lot of our own money in this project with no financial return just because it’s something we believe in. My kids lead really privileged lives, so hopefully a project like this will help them realize long term that their lives are the exception and that there’s a lot they can do to influence and affect and help people outside their sphere. I also want them to realize that just because someone is on the other side of the globe doesn’t mean you can’t do something for them. Kirsten Monson with Others You said earlier you like to support the women and also the men, but most of the artisans on your site are women. What do you think it is about being a woman in these developing countries that causes them to look outside their sphere for opportunities to support their families? I’ve learned that women in many developing countries, especially central Asia, have no status. None at all. They have no property rights. They are considered equal with animals. They’re often beaten, they typically are not allowed to keep money. They’re really just in servitude to their husbands as a cultural norm. Obviously from our gospel perspective, that’s not right. There is an expression: If you teach a woman, you can change a village. Give a woman an opportunity, you can turn a whole family around. Women are the ones who make choices about education, and food and hygine and nutrition. You put the money in the hands of a woman and they do amazing things with it. When a woman is seen as being capable of making money or being able to provide, all of a sudden she earns respect from the men in her community. Her status changes. Historically, in India and Afghanistan and Nepal, people have said it’s not worthwhile to educate a woman. But that’s changing. Now people realize that an educated woman, even if she doesn’t go into the workforce, will have an impact on her children that will affect generations. What has learning about the status of women in developing countries done for your vision of yourself as a modern Mormon woman? It’s made me feel so much more blessed than ever. It’s unbelievable to think I was born in the time and the place and the culture that I was. There are so many women born with no hope. The more I’ve studied, the more I’ve been heartbroken and sick to my stomach. We learn in the gospel how valued each daughter is in the eyes of our Heavenly Father. Part of my mission is to share that vision with others. Take these women and show people what they’re capable of. Give them economic opportunities and education and help them feel valued. I believe so much in a woman’s role in the home and I love my role in the home. So one of my hesitations in starting this project was that I didn’t want to go out and create a whole new generation of career women in developing countries. But once I visited these countries where a woman is considered as low as a dog, I realized that anything I could do for her is worthwhile. That confidence and social change will filter down to generations and they can choose what they want to do. The key word is “choose”. We are giving them choices and they can decide what they want to do. A lot of projects we support are things women can do at home. We take village girls and give them an education, but it’s not like they’re going to then abandon their families and villages. They can choose to go back to the village or go to the city whereas previously there was no choice. At A Glance Name: Kirsten Monson Location: Singapore Age: 34 Marital status: Married Children: Five (14, 13, 10, 6, 3) — and one on the way, April 2011! Occupation: Homemaker Schools Attended: BYU Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “Because I Have Been Given Much” On The Web: www.elevita.com

Sandy Clark, Betty Ann Curtis, Terry Mastny, and BJ Medler met when they all lived in the same ward in Naperville, IL. As their children grew up and got married, they turned to each other for help in putting together wedding receptions. This helped them develop their talents and gain a reputation as the people to call to organize graduation parties, weddings, funerals, and community events. Through their shared service, they became lifelong friends, developed their talents, and deepened their testimonies of the gospel. Although they now live all over the country, they still get together regularly to work and play together. How did you get started doing weddings? Betty Ann: I moved to Naperville, IL in 1994, and was the first one of the four to arrive. I lived there two years before Sandy moved in, and then Terry and BJ moved in around the same time, a couple of years later. I had never done anything weddingish at all when my daughter Rachelle got married. I was just thinking of doing a little open house in my backyard for her, and I knew nothing. I had to throw together an open house, and I had people like Sandy who stepped in and helped me. We were in my garage, and I had all of this stuff going on…. Sandy: We were building an arch. Betty Ann, Sandy, Terry and BJ Betty Ann: People from church would drive past, pull in my driveway, and say, “Put me to work.” I was amazed. I couldn’t believe that people would stop by and say, “Let me help you.” By the end of the night, I was so overcome with such a feeling of gratitude and joy that all of these people would realize how important this night was to me and stop and help me put the whole thing together. I vowed right then and there that anyone who asked for my help, I would be there for them. I learned a lot. I bought wedding supplies. I felt like I had a network to step out and help other people. A few years later, my son got married during the week of 9/11. We had scheduled the open house for Saturday the 15th and they kept saying they would open the airports the next day and they didn’t. My husband was out of town. The bride and groom couldn’t get there. We couldn’t figure out what to do, and we finally ended up holding the open house without them. Terry and BJ and Sandy were all there. I had my friends all around me, supporting me, and saying, “Everybody is going to come and have a good time anyway.” They did. People wanted to get out of their house—they had been glued to their TVs for a week. People came. People relaxed and enjoyed themselves. We did it with a picture of the bride and groom. And my husband wasn’t even there. Through that experience I realized that friends are everything. What are some of the individual strengths you bring to your work together? BJ: I like to put together meals. Terry: I like the desserts and the baking. Betty Ann: And Sandy and I love to put together the buffet table. We like to make it look gorgeous. I love to put together the veggies and the fruit—it’s my creative way to put together a vegetable basket. Our friend Jean Keenan has an eye for decorating, and Cora Jolley worked for a florist, so we could go to Costco and buy flowers, and she could make gorgeous bouquets for all of them. She did so many flowers and things for people, never, ever expecting anything in return. Ever. Jackie Monson was just amazing at everything. She could do it all—the food, the decoration. Sandy: She did it effortlessly, and she did it in an hour. No matter what you needed to have done, she did it quickly and it looked beautiful. That was one of the things about Cora and Jackie–they could look, could see, could do, instead of thinking about, “What are we going to do?” Terry: They did it for the ward, they did it for the stake, they did it for weddings and graduations and homecomings. Betty Ann: We didn’t just do weddings. We did funerals, prayer breakfasts, health fairs, graduation parties, YW events. We always knew we could call these ladies. I loved calling Cora and Jackie because at the drop of the hat they would say yes and they would be there. They both worked and were busy. But they would drop everything and come to my aid and I loved having them. Sandy: We’ve also learned lots of new skills through our work together. Then we incorporate that in our lives so we can teach someone else how to do it. It’s the greatest thing to help others do things that they don’t think they can do. I never would have thought that I could do some of the things I can do now, but because I’ve seen the example of others I’ve learned that I can. Betty Ann: I think that because of the callings we have in the gospel and through working together, we are blessed to increase our talents one hundred fold. It’s amazing to me how we can increase our talents because of our callings and because of our willingness to serve. Terry: I think it’s important not to hide your talent. When you’re blessed with a talent, whether you have two talents, or five talents, or ten talents, if you hide it, and don’t share it, it disappears and is of no benefit to anyone. But if you share it, it continues to increase and multiplies. For instance, if I learn something from BJ and I share it with someone here in Minnesota and they share it with two people, it really grows. There are people who don’t want to work as much, but there are always people in your area who really want to serve. I know that Sandy and BJ especially have been reaching out in their community. Sandy has been in Naperville for a long time, and BJ is always actively looking for ways to serve in the community. I’m sort of struggling more with that, and Betty Ann hasn’t been home as much, but she’s been trying to help her daughter raise quintuplets for the last four years, but that doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying. Setting Arranged by The Wedding Ladies What are some of the divisions of labor when you work together? BJ: Actually, I think we’re all very well organized, but the interesting thing is that whoever is the person that’s doing the event is actually the leader, and we don’t have a problem following whoever that person is. We’ve all had the opportunity of being worker bees in given situations. For me, I think a memorable experience we had working together was when we did [Terry’s daughter] Jillian’s wedding reception. I asked Terry a question and she said, “Do whatever you want to do because I trust what you.” Sandy: That is huge for Terry to say. You know she wants to be in charge of everything [laughs]. BJ: So that trust was really important. It was a lot of work, but it was something I really wanted to do. Sandy: The most recent wedding was my daughter Mikale’s wedding in August 2011. The whole way this came about was a tender mercy. My daughter had definite ideas about what she wanted, and I didn’t know how it was going to work. She wanted fruit pizza and she wanted different little things, and I knew I wanted Terry and my other dream team members there. At the time, Terry’s daughter Jillian was pregnant and she didn’t think she would be able to come. Then Jillian had her baby a little early and said, “Mom, go ahead, you can help.” Terry: One thing we really try to do is to make each reception very personal to that particular bride and we really, really want each wedding to be that bride’s fairy tale or dream wedding or whatever you want to call it. Mikale had a challenge for her mom because she wanted fruit pizza and snickerdoodles and it sounded more like a singles activity than a wedding to Sandy, but it was so important to Mikale that we were determined to make that work. So the challenge of it is sometimes the most rewarding part of doing a wedding together; it’s not only trying to get through the work, but also trying to figure out how to make it as close as we can to what this bride wants. Setting Arranged by The Wedding Ladies Sandy: Sometimes it feels like an impossible task, but the doors are opened a little at a time that make that happen. Terry: When we did Jilly’s wedding—was it you, BJ, who arranged for freezer space all over Naperville? BJ: Yeah. We had a list. Terry: We had freezer space in a dozen different homes because we started making food six weeks before the wedding. I was using freezers in homes of people I didn’t even know. Everything was labeled and we just collected it all for the various events. We tap into one another’s different organizational skills and talents in order to make things work. BJ: Sandy wasn’t able to go Nauvoo when we did Jillian’s luncheon and I had to think “Who can I get to go with me?” Two days before the luncheon I called our friend Jackie Monson and she said she had to work that day, but she called me back and said, “Now I can go.” I knew it was a hardship for her, but she took the opportunity to serve, and she didn’t even hesitate. Terry: It was beautiful. Sandy: It was never just us. We could always call on others. Terry: One friend always had decorations to use, another helped with flowers. Betty Ann flew her son in from North Carolina to be a DJ for the reception. I think about that now, and it melts my heart to remember what so many individuals did to make it that perfect day for her, and how sweet the memories are. It was exactly what Jillian wanted. Talk about some memorable experiences you’ve had as you’ve worked together. Betty Ann: Several years ago, Sandy and I lived across the street from each other and we decided that we wanted to be able to get to know our neighbors together. The two of us decided that if we put our heads together we could come up with a way to invite them into our home. So at Christmas time we did a Christmas goodie exchange. The first year we were really nervous about it. We invited everyone on the street and a large number of them did not come, but a large number of them did, and the ones who did come said, “We can’t wait for you to do this again next year.” We weren’t expecting that at all—this was a one-time shot, and we realized then that we had started something that could bring our neighborhood together and help us to get to know the ladies in our neighborhood. Amazingly, because we have the gospel in our lives and Relief Society, we went to a Relief Society meeting where Terry and BJ put together this beautiful presentation on how to do different meals for Christmas and the holidays, so we decided to add a little mini-class each time we had our goodie swap and we invited Terry to do our Martha Stewart moment. Each year that you did it, it was amazing to me that you would step in and do that for us. She didn’t live on our street or anything, but every year Terry would drop everything at a busy time of year, and she was more than happy, and I know it was a lot of work for her, and she would come over and help us with that. To me that was absolutely amazing. I had been invited to these kinds of events in my neighborhood before, but basically those revolved around drinking and eating and standing around talking with a glass in your hand… The Wedding Ladies Sandy: And giving an ornament that you’d purchased— Betty Ann: And what we did was a totally different thing. We had everybody bring their goodies in. We socialized. We had a little luncheon. Terry: Everybody had to share a story. I loved that about it. Betty Ann: We had them tell what they brought and what the story was behind the item that they brought. Then we’d have Terry give her moment which she did very lovingly every single year. Like I said, she wasn’t in our neighborhood, and I thought it was so amazing that she’d do that for us, but I think she did it because that’s just the kind of person she is. People were so impressed that she would come and do this major demonstration. Sandy: People could tell that it had taken her hours and hours to prepare and make all the goodies and they couldn’t believe that somebody would do that just for a presentation they were going to watch. So it shows that we don’t care how much time it takes, we want to do our best. Terry: I think that’s what you learn as members of the Church, that you want to give your best. When I think about the cookie exchange, I don’t think so much about the demonstration, I think about all the little glass stars-shaped dishes filled with fudge that were take-home things. The little details that make the difference bring our hearts into what we do. Then we give our hearts to the people that are in our community. Sandy: And they really feel it. They feel something different. Terry: That’s what we try to do. We try to take that spirit that the Lord has blessed us with and share it, whether they’re members of the Church or not. Why do you feel that the work you’ve done together is important? Terry: I think our friendship is probably the biggest gain as far as I’m concerned. Sandy: When you came through for me with Mikale’s wedding, it meant so much. I could have hired a caterer, but it never would have looked as beautiful or tasted or felt as beautiful. Mikale was talking to her dad and said, “Dad, I don’t know why Terry would come and do all that because she hardly even knows me.” Of course my husband said, “Mikale, she didn’t do it for you. She did it for your mom.” And that’s what this is all about: friendship. Also, getting together like this from the very beginning taught us all how to work hard together. In Illinois, it was hard to find a reception center that would let us have a traditional Mormon reception, so you really had to put them all on yourself. There are people who don’t have means or who see hard times whose kids get married, so we’re able to step in, do what we do, and even pay for a lot of the things, in order to provide receptions. Betty Ann: And know fair well, we will never get anything monetary in return for that. But we receive blessings. We benefitted so much. We grew closer together as friends and at the end of the night we could step back and feel so good, and proud to know we were part of something that turned out beautiful. Terry: One of the big lessons I learned, and I learned it especially from BJ, was that you learn to pay it forward when you do service like this. It’s not about “She did this for me, so I do that for her.” It’s about “She did this for me so I can reach out and do it for somebody else.” It just gives me chills to remember Jillian’s wedding. I could never pay back what each individual did for us. Rick had lost his job just before her wedding and he had just gotten a new job and we were going to be moving within weeks. It was just a mess. So many people, my friends, reached out and made that wedding happen and without expecting to get an equal amount back. BJ: We’ve also learned to be willing to accept help when we’re the ones in need. You know, sometimes it makes me sad when I say to someone, “I’d really like to help you. Is there something I can do for you? I know you have family coming in. I know your daughter is getting married. I’d be happy to help you with something.” And they say, “Nope. I don’t need any help. I have everything under control.” And you think to yourself, “That person is really missing the boat.” The Wedding Ladies What are some ways that your work has been seen in your community? BJ: After we’d been working together for several years, we took on the challenge of organizing a citywide Prayer Breakfast together. It was very difficult to put together in a community where there are lots of different churches, but none of them seem to be working together, and the main purpose of having the prayer breakfast was to bring many of the churches together. The first year we did it, we had representation from 34 churches and we were thrilled with that. We made contact with 47 of them, but to have 34 there, and 2 rabbis, we had met our goal. It’s very difficult to find individuals who are worker bees and who are doing it for the right reason when you’re looking at a community. I found lots of people who were interested in being on the committee, but they weren’t really there for the right reasons. They wanted to be seen but they didn’t really want to put in the time. But because we’d worked together for so long and worked so well together, we were still able to get the activity done successfully. Many of the attendees said, “Oh these Mormons–this couldn’t have been done without these Mormon ladies.” What are some of the things you’ve gained as individuals from being “The Wedding Ladies”? Sandy: Friendship is one of those things that is sometimes hard to describe. I recently found a quote by Oliver Cowdery that helped me to realize that sometimes you can’t find words to share the feeling in your heart. He said, “I shall not attempt to paint you the feelings of this heart, nor the majestic beauty and glory which surrounded me on this occasion. But you will believe me when I say that earth nor men, with the eloquence of time can begin to clothe language in an interesting and sublime a manner necessary.” That’s how I feel about the friendship I have with these girls. We are girls, even though we’re old, because we’re girlfriends. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to find girls that you can relate to even though you’re hundreds of miles away, and when you get back together you still have the love and feeling and friendship that we have. How has your work together strengthened your testimony of the gospel? Sandy: We derive strength from each other and from the service that we perform. Sometimes I’ve had a hard time accepting service, but certainly through giving service I see how much I’ve gained. It’s also strengthened my testimony to see the situations of various women in the church and to realize that everyone has difficulties and strengths. A lot of times we see people that we don’t think have difficulties, but when we get to know them we see that they do. Betty Ann: I think it was Elder Holland who gave a talk a year or two ago about the angels among us. I have felt like my friends are my earthly angels and they have stepped in and helped me and blessed my life. They know I’m not perfect and they love me anyway. I’m so glad that we have a bond that did not end when we moved away. At A Glance Name: Betty Ann Curtis Location: Mesa, AZ Age: 57 Marital status: Married to Steve Curtis for 37 years Children: Six children, eleven grandchildren Occupation: Mother and Volunteer Schools Attended: BYU Favorite Hymn: “Where Can I Turn For Peace?” Name: BJ Medler Location: Mission Viejo, CA Age: 68 Marital status: Married to John Medler for 30 years Children: Jason (40) and Ryan (37), four grandchildren Occupation: Taught for 30 years, primarily in an adult setting, at-risk programs Schools Attended: Fullerton College, UCLA Favorite Hymn: “Come, Come Ye Saints” Name: Terry Mastny Location: Apple Valley, MN Age: 60 Marital status: Married to Rick Mastny for 41 years Children: Three children ages 36, 33 and 29 and twelve grandchildren Occupation: Homemaker, mom, wife, grandmother Schools Attended: Adrian College (Michigan) and American River College (California) Favorite Hymn: “I Stand All Amazed” Name: Sandy Clark Location: Naperville, IL Age: 54 Marital status: Married for 31 years Children: Four children, 2 grandchildren, one on the way Occupation: Volunteer Schools Attended: Dixie College, Southern Utah State College Favorite Hymn: “Each Life that Touches Ours for Good” Interview by Shelah Miner.

Bonnie Winterton had distinguished careers as a conductor and as a professor at the University of Utah, all while raising six children. She feels God guided her musical and personal paths so that she could serve the church as a musician. Although she is eighty-one years old, she continues to teach twenty students, and her goal is to have at least one student when she is one hundred. More important than her accomplishments is her commitment to serving the Lord and to sharing the gift of music with others. What are some of the moments in your life in which you feel you have been guided and directed? My favorite scripture is “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he will direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6) I know that my paths have been directed because, as I think back on my life, the things I have done seem impossible to me. And so I know that the Lord has guided me and helped me. I feel that the Lord just took me along for the ride. I have had two huge careers—as a pianist and as a conductor. I have conducted for the Church in the Tabernacle and in the Assembly Hall and in every venue where you can conduct. I taught private and group piano at the University of Utah for twenty-seven years. For the University, I also conducted three different groups—Women’s Chorus, Masterworks Chorus, and University Singers. I have been on three general Church boards, as well as conducting choirs for general conferences, women’s conferences, and youth conferences. Tell me about your childhood and how you became involved in music. I was born in the backwoods of Wyoming. You’ve heard of the “wild, wild West.” That’s where I grew up. My father grew up in the Salt Lake valley, out in Granger; I’ve often thought my life would be completely different if I’d grown up in Salt Lake. But he married my mother. They were on a mission together. In those days, they put one man with two women. I have pictures of my mother and her companion and my father. I am sure this was for protection. But my mother fell in love with my father’s prayers. They would pray before they would go out, and she could see that he was a wonderful man. After they came home, she invited him to Wyoming. He fell in love with Wyoming and with the beauty and the fishing and the hunting, in addition to falling in love with my mother. They married, and then there we were in the backwoods of Wyoming, in Star Valley. There were no piano teachers there. There wasn’t one teacher in the whole valley as I grew up. When I was nine years old, however, this fabulous teacher—Chester Hill—came into the valley and heard about me. He felt I had talent on the piano, so he taught me and really tried to bring out my potential; and he really did. He assigned me this interesting piece by Lizst—“Rigoletto-Paraphrase”—which is a very difficult thing, when I was ten. I played it, which seems impossible, now, to think that I did. He was going to send me to an Eastern conservatory. He was preparing me for the big time, musically. He wanted to take me with him to live in Southern Utah, where he could give me lessons when he left the valley. I was eleven. As we left for his hometown in Southern Utah, he became desperately ill. He was moaning and groaning. It was terrible. I remember how awful it was to listen to him. When we got to Salt Lake, his family took him to the hospital; then he was operated on (I think it was for gallstones). I then became desperately homesick. They were very kind and good to me but I was a child. After two weeks, they they left me at my grandparents’ home. That was the end of my prospect of going to a conservatory. I feel absolutely certain that the Lord wanted me to serve the Church instead of having a big career. Several times I had possibilities—great teachers—and I was stopped every time. I am thankful that I was stopped because I have married and have had six wonderful children. If I had been a concert pianist, that would not have happened. As I graduated from BYU, the music department told me they wanted to send me to Julliard to study there for a year or two, and then I would be the main piano teacher at BYU. When I went to BYU, they didn’t have one piano teacher on the faculty. Can you imagine? Impossible. I took piano lessons and organ lessons from the organ teacher. I took piano lessons from the theory teacher, who could play the hymns and that kind of thing, and from the head of fine arts, Gerrit de Jong. My best teacher was the band teacher. He couldn’t play the piano at all, but he was a fine musician. So I took lessons from him, and he helped me musically, with the interpretation of music. I didn’t have a desire to go to conservatory, though. I wanted a family, and my husband, Boyd, didn’t want to sit and wait for me to go to Julliard. He was twenty-eight and wanted to marry, and so did I. So we married, for which I have been very grateful. I have six children and now have twenty-seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. And wonderful careers in both conducting and piano teaching and playing. As much as I love music, I wouldn’t trade any of my children for all the music in the world. I am grateful that the Lord guided my paths. There is no question in my mind that our paths are guided. Bonnie Winterton How do you serve God through music? A student gave me a picture that says, “Music is a gift given by God, one that grows when lovingly shared with others.” That’s how I feel about sharing music, and that’s why I’m still teaching. I’m eighty-one. I have twenty students, and I wouldn’t think of stopping. I love it. I love teaching them. Last Sunday I played the organ for church, which is part of my calling; I play the organ once a month. Sometimes I will also go to the sacrament meeting of one of my students, and recently a student and I played an organ and piano duet. Hopefully we will contribute to the spirit of the sacrament meeting. Music is a gift in our lives. I had one lady say she couldn’t face life without music. So I have felt it is my responsibility to serve in music, in the community, in the church, wherever I am, and among my friends. What is it specifically about music that lends itself to service? I feel that it is a gift from God. I am absolutely convinced that when we participate in music we are bringing the Spirit of the Lord into our lives and into the lives of those who listen to our music. Music is a direct pipeline to heaven. As I play the music of these classical composers, and as I teach this music, there is no doubt that they were inspired to write the things that they wrote so we can have the great gift of the Spirit of the Lord when we hear the music. We have some music now that doesn’t reflect the Spirit of the Lord. There is some music and there are some lyrics that go in the opposite direction. A wonderful scripture says, “For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is aprayerunto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads” (Doctrine and Covenants 25:12). I am absolutely sure of that, too. When we participate in music—and it says the song of the righteous, so the songs that we sing in church—are a delight to the Lord. It’s a communication with the Lord, and he is delighted with it and it’s like a prayer. I tell my students that when you play the hymns and the children’s songs it’s like a prayer to the Lord. He’s told us that. And we’ll have blessings come down upon our heads. I tell that to the children and the young people—that blessings will come into our lives because of music that we are dedicating and singing to the Lord. Bonnie Winterton What are some of the pieces of music that you feel have been most important to you, either for their musical significance or their spiritual significance or both? I believe that the hymns are one of the greatest gifts that we have. I believe that if you were to start at the first of the hymnbook and read the words to every hymn that the whole plan of salvation could be found there. As a child I learned to play on an old pump organ. I remember sitting there and pumping as hard as I could playing the hymns. I loved the hymns, and so I was blessed right from the start. I would sing while I was playing, I would sing the words, and I knew by the Spirit that they were true. My testimony came through the hymns of the church. I teach all my students Primary songs and the hymnbook. And I tell my students, “This is the most important book we have.” Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, you name them all. But the most important, I think, are the hymns because they teach the gospel. I’ve had lots of experiences playing background music for general board dinners. Sometimes I take the music by wonderful composers and play it. I find that when you play all those songs people sit there and it’s nice background. Then sometimes I say, “I think I’ll surprise them. I think I’ll play the Primary songs.” So I begin to play the Primary songs, and the result is amazing. Up goes the head. They look at me, and they clap. They love the Primary songs. It touches their hearts. So, it isn’t just lovely music. It is the music of the Lord. He’s given it to us. I love all the classical composers. Some people will say to me, what’s your favorite composer? Impossible. It is whichever one I’m playing at the moment because they were all inspired of the Lord. Right now I’m playing this piece I played when I was ten. It’s by Liszt. Right now Liszt is my favorite because he was inspired. He was a gifted genius when he was a child. He could do anything. He played the Grieg concerto for Grieg—he sight-read it—and Grieg said the only thing he did wrong was he played it too fast. Imagine that. Impossible. How do you help your students cultivate their gift and love for music? I feel very strongly that there needs to be a real communication bond between the teacher and the student. Students come to a teacher scared to death. I have to convince them that I love them. Love is a huge part of music. So I have to convince them that I think they’re wonderful and that I think they’re smart. I try to tell my students, “Your hair looks pretty today,” or, “I love your blouse.” I try to find something to compliment them on so they feel that I like them. I find something they’re doing well and say, “You must be smart! You have to be smart to be able to do that.” I try to make my students leave happy and feel like they’re glad they came. I’ve had people tell me that I am blessed that way—that I am able to let the students feel that I love them. I have had one student who was bipolar. Her teacher didn’t sympathize with that. She screamed at her and said, “What’s wrong with you?” Well, she did have something seriously wrong with her, but she was gifted. After several people couldn’t stand to teach her, the music department sent her to me. And so I went to work on that other part, where I worked with her to let her know that I loved her and that I cared about her. She told me, “I can’t afford to take piano lessons in the summer, so I have to stop.” I was teaching her at the university. I said, “No, I will give you free lessons. All you have to do is practice.” I have a studio policy that is very firm. But then I give on it, like I did for this girl. The summer went by and she moved forward so that she was able to perform beautifully and graduate. Now she teaches piano. She has a good life. She has a happy life. We need to meet the needs of our students so that they know we care, that we love them, and then they respond to that. We all suffer and have problems that we have to just learn to live with. We’re supposed to help people with their problems. You can touch people’s hearts through music. By finding music that they love they feel the Spirit of the Lord. And so it helps them in their life. I don’t hesitate to tell them about faith. I’m very careful not to go too far. Particularly on the university level you have to be careful. One can’t preach to those kids, but one can bring the Spirit of the Lord into their lives. Everybody needs help on this earth. We all need help. I believe in helping students spiritually, too, so I do, every way I can. Bonnie Winterton Would you share more about teaching as a responsibility to help people? I feel a real responsibility to help other people feel that music is a gift to make the world more beautiful and a responsibility to teach other people what I know. Especially at my age, I can see why people sometimes stop teaching because we get frustrated with our own world and our own physical problems and our own mental limitations and all those things that happen as we get older. I feel if I could just do a little good that’s a blessing to me, and I have that responsibility to help other people as much as I can. So, I won’t quit. In fact, I have a picture of a man who is one hundred years old, and he has one student. I’ve thought that’s the way I want to be. I want to have one student when I’m one hundred. Life on this earth is a challenge, but if we try to meet the challenge every way we can, then it helps us to contribute and to give other people hope. I believe that women are desperately in need of something to hold onto and a little piece of this life. That’s what I’ve loved about music—it, my teaching, is this little piece of the world that is mine. Those students walk in my door, gorgeous students, the most beautiful young women and young men, they walk in my studio door and I get to look at them and I see what they wear and I gain insights to the youth of today. They sit down and play beautiful music for me and then theypayme. That doesn’t seem fair. I feel like I should pay them because I get to look at them, I get to feel their spirit, and oh, what a gift that is in my life. I have prospective missionaries prepare a three-ring binder with all the good music that they can use on their missions. It needs to be a skinny binder filled with music, and I really fight them to get that ready so that when they leave on their mission the music goes with them. I told one student, “Your music will touch people. First you need to give them some music, and then present the gospel. Then their hearts will be ready for it.” Brigham Young said we can’t teach the gospel without good music. I love him for saying that, and I think that’s true. I’ve been telling my student who is leaving for a mission this month, “Have programs. Gather up all the rest of your missionary companions who perform music and give a program, a free program, and invite people. Then after you have performed for them, tell them why you’re here, and their hearts will be ready to hear it.” Music is one of the greatest gifts that the Lord has given us. Martin Luther said, “Next to the word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest gift that we have on this earth.” I believe that. Music brings the Spirit of the Lord, sometimes better than the spoken word—it really does. At A Glance Name: Bonnie Winterton Location: Salt Lake City, UT Age: 81 Occupation: Piano teacher, homemaker Schools Attended: Chaffey Junior College (Ontario, California), Brigham Young University, University of UtahLanguages Spoken at Home: English, German Favorite Hymn: “Lord, I Would Follow Thee” Favorite Scripture: 2 Nephi 31:20 Interview by Elizabeth Pinborough. Photos by Elizabeth Pinborough.

As a Protestant growing up in Northern Ireland, Florence Slease experienced first hand the extreme conflict between people of her faith and the neighboring Catholics. In her highly engaging conversational style, Florence describes her lost Catholic friend, her abusive early marriage, the miracle of joining the Church and the joy and triumph that has blossomed from her colorful childhood. I was born into a street called Fowler’s Entry in Portadown, Northern Ireland. My mum was a Gibson. Her parents had fourteen children who grew up and married and got houses on this street, and they all had eight, nine, ten kids, so this street was just cluttered with Gibson kids. Everyone on the street was mostly related to me. The houses were old. No hot water. We had a tiny two-bedroom house, probably about 400 square feet, and there were ten of us living in it. We kids slept four to a bed–two at the top end, two at the bottom. At the bottom of the street there was a big wall and behind the wall lived a group of wild cats. Have you ever heard a wild cat screaming? They are creepy, eerie things. Sounds like a baby crying. Fifteen or sixteen cats would wail every night. We were told they were banshees come to take the souls of the people. Florence with Her Brothers and Sisters as Children We’d be all crowded into these beds, and we’d hear these banshees. You’d be afraid to breathe; if you breathed too heavy, the banshee might come and you wouldn’t have time to run. One night my brother said, “The banshees were at Wee Mary’s last night.” I said, “What happened?” “They found her dead at the bottom of the steps.” I was five years old. I felt extreme fear as a child. Always afraid to look out from under my blanket, afraid to stay under too long, afraid to breathe. How did the religious divisions in Northern Ireland affect you? Fowler’s Entry was all Protestant. I had no idea what a Protestant was, but I knew that I was one of them. I didn’t know there was anything else until our street was demolished and we moved into the housing estates, which at the time had a mixture of religions. The next day my two brothers disappeared. My parents searched everywhere. Finally they found them tied to a pole, their pants pulled down. They were crying. “Mummy, the Catholics beat us up. They said we can’t live here because we came from the Protestant part of town. They said we need to go back there.” And I said, “Good grief! Who are the Catholics?” It was there I met my best friend, Colleen, who was Catholic. But when I was ten, the Catholics were being put out of Protestant estates. The Protestants were being put out of Catholic estates. They were being burned out, shot at, whatever. One side was as bad as the other. Colleen came to me one day and said, “Florence, we got a letter saying if we’re not out by Friday we’re going to be burnt out.” I said, “I didn’t send you the letter.” She said, “I know you didn’t. But my mummy says the Protestants will always stab you in the back so we’d better leave.” I was shocked. We were best, best friends, and now we were pulled apart by this religious war. I sat on a wall and watched her leave. I didn’t wave at her and she didn’t wave at me. It was the saddest stomachache you could have to watch your friend leave. I was afraid to say goodbye and she was afraid to say goodbye. She moved into the Catholic area. When I was about fourteen, I saw her in a store. She winked. I winked back. After that, when we were both in the store, she’d stand aside me if nobody was looking and she’d whisper, “How you doing?” “All right. How you doing?” “All right.” And then we’d quickly part. We could never ever be seen talking. As we got older, the factories decided the only way to get peace was to have Protestants and Catholics working together. So when I was sixteen I worked in the carpet factory, and Colleen worked there too. We would sneak behind these big carpets so nobody could see us and just talk and talk and talk. We had to be very careful. If someone at the factory saw us being too close, then either her side or my side would hurt one of us. The day before I ran away to England I called Colleen and said, “I’ve got to get out of the country.” She said, “Don’t you ever forget me, Flo.” How did you meet the missionaries? First time, the road was full of children playing jump rope and hopscotch when someone shouted. “Get away! Mormons!” I looked up the street and saw these two men coming. I took off running, flew down the alleyway, and skidded in the back kitchen door shouting, “Mummy! The Mormons are coming!” I didn’t even know what I was running from, but my mum certainly did. She closed the blinds and pulled the curtains across and we all sat down with our arms folded. My brother would peek through the blinds and whisper, “They’re at McNallys’ house.” And then, “Oh, no! They’re at McDonalds’!” McDonalds’ was the very next-door neighbor. Then, “They’re coming down our path.” They knocked on our door. Mummy said, “Shh! Don’t move! Don’t talk! They’ll hear you.” So we were sitting there real quiet waiting for these Mormons to pass on and they didn’t pass on. Then our one brother, who we thought was at a friend’s house, walked through our door with a Book of Mormon. He said, “Look what I got!” My mum exclaimed, “What have you done? Why did you take that Mormon Bible?” And he said, “Ack, Mummy. It’s not going to do any harm.” Florence with Her Family as a Child She said, “You get it out of this house right now.” He said, “Shall I throw it in the fire, then?” She said, “No, don’t put a curse on us.” He said, “Then what shall I do with it?” She said, “You take it and throw it up behind that medicine cupboard as far as you can so nobody knows it’s there.” So he did, and the Mormons finally left the street and we were out with our hopscotches and jump ropes, but that book preyed on my mind. It tortured me that there was this Mormon Bible in the house. So one day soon after when nobody else was in the house, I stood on the bread bin and climbed up the shelves and got that Mormon Bible. I opened it and read as fast as I could. I wasn’t very old, maybe eight or nine, so I wasn’t that good a reader, but I read what I could, and then I panicked inside. I took that book and flung it back behind the medicine cabinet, slid down the shelves, down onto the bread bin, and ran like the hammers. Next time I met the missionaries, my next-door neighbor had introduced me to the Ouija board. We went into this dark, dark coal shed, so dark you can’t see your finger in front of your nose. She lit a little candle. On the board, there’s the alphabet all around. She said, “You put your hand on the glass and ask a question and it moves from letter to letter and gives you the answer. We can ask it who you’re gonna marry.” I said, “I don’t want to marry anyone.” I was eight years old! She said, “We can ask it your favorite color. It even knows that.” I said, “I don’t know what my favorite color is. “ We bickered until she said, “Okay, put your finger on the glass.” I put my finger on the glass, and then I said, “Wait a minute. Who answers the question? The glass can’t talk.” She said, “It’s the devil.” I almost broke the door to get out of there. I ran up the alley like I’d just come away from the land of the banshees. The devil’s in the room, and he’s worse than a banshee. I ran into two missionaries. I don’t know where they came from, but they were just there. I looked at them and I remember thinking, Oh my goodness, look at those feet. They have really big feet. They said, “What’s wrong?” I said, “The devil’s after me! I was trying to talk to him, and he’s after me!” The missionaries said, “If you play with the devil, he’ll never go away.” I said, “Is that true?” They said, “Yes. Don’t ever play with the devil.” I always remembered what those missionaries said. When I was in my teens and everyone was doing devil worship and going to séances, I never took part. Even though I didn’t know those missionaries were from God, they had left a deepness inside of me that protected me my whole teenage life. “Don’t play with the devil. He’ll never go away.” When I was seventeen, I fell madly in love with Reggie. He was handsome, he was witty, he came from a different town, which made him even more popular. I married Reggie at nineteen, and we had a son, Marcus. But Reggie had been deeply disturbed by his devil worship. He tried to kill me one time—hung me out a window. Finally, somebody tried to cast demons out of him. Apparently, the demons said, “We are legion,” and beat her up. The police came and said, “That’s rubbish. We don’t believe you have demons,” and they put him in a sanatorium. One night when Reggie was just out of the sanatorium, I was in the kitchen drying dishes and crying because my life was a mess. The Catholics and Protestants were fighting and shooting. I heard helicopters and bombing every night. I was frightened of that and of Reggie. I threw down the tea towel and I shouted, “God! Where are you?” In just hours two Mormon missionaries knocked. Reggie said, “Do you believe in demons?” “Yes, we do.” “Can you cast them out?” “Yes, we can.” “Can you come and cast them out for me?” So these two missionaries came in and they talked to Reggie and me. They said, “You have to come to the chapel.” The arrangement was–and everyone we knew laughed at this–“You can’t eat or drink the whole day before you come to the chapel.” My mum said, “What good’s that going to do? Not eating or drinking?” Reggie said, “I think I have to starve the demons out.” Still not understanding this thing called fasting, Reggie did it. He said, “Will you go with me?” I said, “I will not go to the Mormon Church with you. I don’t want any of the neighbors to see me.” So he went. He’d already had an exorcist before, and I wondered what these Mormons were going to do. When he came home I said, “So what happened?” He said, “A whole bunch of men put their hands on my head and told the demons to leave.” For two years I can’t remember one time he didn’t call out at night with nightmares and with seeing things, but that whole night he didn’t call out at all. I had to shake him a couple of times because I thought he was dead. He slept the whole night. I said the next morning, “Whatever those Mormons did, they really made you tired.” Then the next night he slept again. And I thought, this is weird because he hasn’t been with the Mormons today. The next day the missionaries came by. They started teaching us. I had a Sunday school teacher from when I was a little girl, Uncle Johnny, who lived two doors from us. The night Reggie had tried to kill me, I had banged on his door— “Uncle Johnny, help me! Reggie’s having a fit!” He had popped open his letterbox and said, “Call the pastor. Call the police. I don’t like messing with the devil,” and he let the letterbox down and wouldn’t come out. So Johnny didn’t want to come when I needed desperate help, but this day he came to the door and he said, “Flo, I need to talk to you. I seen the Mormons at your door.” I said, “Yes. Reggie’s had no nightmares for a week. He’s slept really solid for a whole week. We’ve had no troubles, no visions, nothing. He thinks they really did cast the demons out.” He said, “That is the devil’s church. They haven’t really cast the demons out. They’ve just told them to be quiet.” You know how scary that was? I said, “What? The Mormons are of the devil?” He said, “Yes, they are.” So when Reggie came home from work, I told him. The missionaries came about an hour later and Reggie said, “I just found out you’re from the devil. I can’t talk to you anymore.” The missionary cried. He had tears streaming down his face. He said, “Please believe me. That is not true.” We closed the door, and they knocked again. I stood there behind the door panicking because we’d closed it, and I couldn’t figure out why. How did you come to leave Northern Ireland? Reggie started drinking again and in six months he was worse off than before. He ended up being put away for a long time. I decided, this is not working, so I finally left him. I started dating an English soldier, Gary, who is now my husband. You just don’t date English soldiers if you’re Irish. It was especially bad for me because Reggie’s brother was the top of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a Protestant terrorist group. The law was very strict and divorces took five years. So Gary and I moved in as common law husband and wife. But we had to move out of town and live in the country where nobody knew us. The government gave us a house where soldiers could patrol and protect us. They knew my brother-in-law and knew I was in danger. We lived there a year and a half in secret. But then the soldiers got word terrorists were coming to shoot me, shoot my son, shoot my boyfriend, and take over the house. We sneaked out at four a.m., never to return to that house. We went to London and lived in a homeless hostel for four or five months. In the hostel we met a man who told us he wanted to become Mormon. I said to Gary, “Everywhere I go, I keep running into Mormons. Every distress or every scary time, they’re right there!” I couldn’t get it out of my mind. First thing I did when we got a council house was run to the phone and call the Mormon Church. I said, “I need missionaries out to my house as soon as you can get them.” I started to read the Book of Mormon. I wanted to run outside and scream, “People, I’ve got really good news!” But I probably would have been locked up. I called my mummy, and said, “Oh, Mummy, I have good news. I’m reading this Mormon book. It’s not what you thought it was.” “Oh, daughter, here you go again. You’ve joined every church in Northern Ireland.” And I had! Every church I came across I joined just in case it was the right one. So she thought this was another fad with me. I said, “No, Mummy. This is the real thing. I don’t have to look anymore.” It was what I’d been searching for since the day I was born. I finally found it at age twenty-two, this magnificent, real, true church. But one day when the missionaries came they gave us the big gloam. “You tell them,” one said. “No, you,” said the other. I said, “What have you got to tell us?” He said, “Our mission president said you can’t be baptized because you’re living together.” I said, “I still have three years to wait for my divorce.” They said, “We can’t baptize you till it’s all over.” It was devastating. The branch president said, “We ought to fast.” So the whole branch fasted that my divorce would come through quicker. I thought, “They don’t understand the Irish law. I’ll fast because the branch president asked me to, but I know it’s not going to happen.” Six months later I get a call from the lawyer in Northern Ireland saying, “Would you like to come over Wednesday for your divorce?” I gulped and said, “I will be there.” I hung up very confused. I’d only been separated three and a half years. I still had a year and a half left. So I went. I never saw my family or friends while I was there or talked to anybody. Reggie didn’t show up at court. The judge gave me my divorce. Florence with Her Husband and Children When I received the final papers in the mail, I called up my sister-in-law who was married to Reggie’s brother, and I said, “Sandra, I got my divorce.” She said, “There’s no way you could have, Flo. I filed a year before you and I’m waiting on mine coming up in the court right now.” I said, “I’ve got it, Sandra.” So Sandra called back in a few days, and she said, “I went to see the lawyer, and it wasn’t you that was supposed to be divorced. It was me.” They were confused because we both had the same surname. So it really was her divorce! The branch laughed, “Heavenly Father’s got this whole universe to run, and he goes into the lawyer’s office and shuffles the files.” How has being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints changed your life? So many miracles. Before I left Northern Ireland I was being treated for cancer cells in my womb. In England, they wanted to remove the womb. The doctor explained everything, but I was in a daze, thinking, “I have one child. And I have a new husband and it’s not his child. And the Mormons have tons of children and the Gibsons have tons of children. I’m a failure at everything I do. I want more children.” The missionaries were over and I said, “You said you had a prophet. Where does he live?” “Salt Lake City, America.” “What’s his name?” “Spencer W. Kimball.” That night I wrote a letter to Spencer W. Kimball. I thought, “If he’s like Moses, I’m going to cram this letter, get in everything I can.” I wrote, “Please pray for my mummy and daddy in Northern Ireland, because you know there’s a war going on there. And could you pray for my brothers and sisters and could you pray for me cause I have cancer cells and I need to get rid of them because they’re on my womb and I want to have another baby.” I just spilled it out. I posted this letter and then I confessed to Gary, “I wrote to this Mormon prophet.” “How do you know him?” “I don’t know him. He lives in America.” He said, “You wrote to America?” I said, “I wrote him a two-page letter.” He said, “How did you post it?” I said, “I put a Queen’s head on it and put it in the letterbox.” He said, “He won’t get it. You have to have international stamps for America.” But I get a letter back from Spencer W. Kimball in his own handwriting. And he paid for my postage! He said the most stunning thing. “Those two missionaries that are teaching you, they have the same power that I do. They can give you a blessing for this cancer you’re suffering from.” I was so disappointed. Where was “I am the prophet of the Lord—be healed”? Finally, I asked the missionaries to give me a blessing. When I was Pentecostal, I’d see people command sickness or demons to leave in the name of Jesus. So I was waiting for that, but no, the blessing was very gentle, very tender, that when you go in for surgery, your body will heal fast and you’ll return to health fast. I thought, “No! I don’t want surgery. You’re giving me the wrong blessing!” When they were done, I was so disappointed, I could barely thank them. I went in to have the surgery. When I came to afterward, I felt no pain. I touched my stomach. I thought, “I’m not stitched. What’s going on?” The doctor came by and said, “Well, Florence, I decided to do a biopsy instead of removing the womb. You’re desperate to have a child and your womb didn’t look as bad as I thought when I went in there.”I got pregnant, and there’s my Aaron. They were keeping an eye on my womb again. Normal, normal, normal. The doctor said, “That operation did wonders.” I was thinking, “No, it was the Lord.” So I got pregnant again and had a little girl, Shantell. When she was three months old, we moved to America. About four or five years later, I had a tubular pregnancy and nearly died. We just got to the hospital in time. I was in intensive care for a week. The doctor there in Las Vegas told me I had almost bled to death. He said, “Do not get pregnant. You will die. Do you understand my English?” But I fell pregnant right away while I was still healing. That was my Charmaine. The doctor said, “Are you capable of going onto birth control?” I said, “I will,” but before I could get into the doctor’s to get birth control, I got pregnant again. I went to see the doctor and he told me to leave his office, that I was too high risk, that he didn’t want to deal with me. He was completely nasty. The whole way home I couldn’t even see for the tears. What am I going to do? The bun’s in the oven. I don’t know how to get a new doctor in this country. I fell on my knees in the bedroom and said, “Lord, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I need an answer today. This stress is more than I can handle.” And the most peaceful feeling hit me, that I would have the baby in the bedroom, and the Lord would be with me. And that’s exactly how it happened with Luke. We moved from Las Vegas up to Hurricane, Utah, and Gary said, “No more.” My pregnancies weren’t easy. My births weren’t easy. He said, “I think you’re done, Flo.” But then Gary had a dream of a girl standing in the room with her arms opened. He started crying and said, “We’ve got another girl, Flo.” And so within that month, another miracle. I’m pregnant again. I go off to the doctor and tell him, “It’s a girl. She came to Gary.” Well the doctor, good LDS man that he is, believed every word. When the baby was being born, he said, “She has a mass of black hair, Florence!” I said, “All my girls do!” And as the baby was coming out, he opened the baby’s legs, and said, “Well, this baby girl has something else.” So I looked and said, “A boy?” I looked up at Gary and said, “You told me it was a girl!” He said, “It was!” I said, “Well, it’s obviously not.” I held that little boy and I said to him, “I do love you. I just didn’t know you were coming! I didn’t expect you!” It was the biggest surprise of my life. Gary said, “What are we going to call him?” I said, “We’ll call him after Spencer W. Kimball.” So we named him Spencer Joseph. When Gary left and I was lying with this little boy in my arms, I had the impression that somebody was in the room. I quietly listened and thought I knew who it was. So I talked out loud. “I know you’re here. You’re our little girl. As soon as my body gets any bit well, you can come. I will keep my body open for you.” Then there was this peace, this wonderful peace. And Shinade was born a year later. I wanted to end with this. I don’t need to search and join every church that I meet anymore because I know that this is the true church. I’ve been in it now thirty-two years, and I’ve never regretted a second of it. I’ve loved everything I’ve learned, everything I’ve become. At A Glance Name: Florence Slease Location: Spanish Fork, UT Age: 54 Convert: November 1980 Children: Marcus (38), Aaron (29), Shantell (27), Charamine (23), Luke (21), Spencer (18), Shinade (16) Occupation: Work at Glenwood housing with BYU students Schools Attended: Clounagh Junior High Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “Oh My Father” Interview by Annette Pimentel.

After 15 years of marriage, Meredith’s husband came out as gay and requested a divorce. In her interview, Meredith talks about how her husband’s announcement motivated her to look more carefully at the foundations of her testimony and turn to the Lord to know how to proceed. As she maneuvers her new situation, she is working hard to stay close to the Lord, do what is best for her children and continue to love her ex-husband. How did you find out about your husband’s homosexuality? I never had any suspicion. I truly never thought that this would be something that I would have to face in this life and never saw anything that would lead me to believe that. My ex-husband is a gentle person by nature and got very involved in exercise and doing marathons and triathlons, but I thought it was a little midlife crisis and it was okay because there was still balance. Then he underwent a drastic personality change. He became very angry and we had a lot of contention in our home, which did not exist in our prior 15 years of marriage. I work in healthcare, so I worried that he had a brain tumor and was trying to figure out how I could get him in for an MRI because his behavior was so different. We continued to have contention, and then he suddenly left. Within a week he told me he was moving out and that he thought it was the best thing for our family. Before this I’d always had a testimony and been active in the church, but hadn’t had to work very hard for it. I got to a point where I thought, “I can’t fix this. I am trying to be as nice as I can, but this isn’t like him and I don’t know what to do.” Around the same time we had some other seriously life-changing experiences – the kind that bring you to the cliff and force you to rely on the Lord. I became much more diligent about going to the temple and reading my scriptures and praying, but I had to be scared into it almost, which is unfortunate, because it would have been better if I’d been more prepared for this and been doing it in my family before on a regular basis. For a couple of months, he didn’t have a lot to do with me and the kids and was still very angry. It was about six to eight week before he talked to me, and in that time I feel that the Lord was preparing me for the crisis of my life that was coming. I didn’t know what was causing this emotional change in him and felt hurt because he was so short with me, but I loved him and was tired of being angry because it wasn’t helping. So I prayed for the anger to leave so I could get through this. Finally he told me that he needed to come and talk and I faced up to the idea that he was going to ask for a divorce. We sat down and he said, “I am gay. I’ve had these feeling since I was young, but always tried to push them aside and I just can’t do it anymore.” Luckily, my husband hadn’t engaged in any other relationships at that that point, but he wanted a divorce so he could pursue a different lifestyle. Because he’d been carrying such a burden, after he told me, all the anger left and he became the kinder and gentler person I know. That was such a relief to have him back, because before that I couldn’t converse with him in any way. I think he wasn’t sure if he was going to come out. Since then, he has told me he hoped that if he was mean enough that I would leave and not want to have anything do to with him, but I wasn’t leaving. What was your reaction when you found out? I was definitely in shock, but as I said before, I think I was prepared because I did not feel anger. I know that seems unbelievable, but I needed to have that reaction. For me to be humbled enough and for my heart to be softened enough to hear him out and to even comfort him in some ways. I have great empathy for him and I don’t think he’s making the right choice by pursuing this lifestyle, but I love him very much. He also loves our kids and is a very good father. After he left that night, I was still in shock. I have a good relationship with my home teacher and earlier that day told him, “My husband is coming over to talk to me and I’m kind of worried about it, so I may ask you to come and give me a priesthood blessing.” I did call and he and his sweet wife came over at 11:30 at night and he gave me a wonderful blessing that was very comforting and direct. It helped me have some peace in my heart, to try to grasp this, because my life had just shattered in front of me. It was so overwhelming. What role has the gospel and your testimony played in dealing with this experience? I travel for work once a month and needed to go on a business trip two days later. At first I didn’t know if I could go because I didn’t know what to do about the situation and we still needed to talk to the kids about getting a divorce. I spend a lot of time in the car driving for work, which has been so healing for me. It allowed me to have time by myself to process this in my head and really pray, as well as figure out how I felt, my questions, and how I was going to face this. My bishop also gave me a blessing and afterwards counseled me to write down what I remembered from my priesthood blessings because they would be a source of help and strength to me. I decided to go on the business trip and as I was driving, I started feeling the Spirit very strong, speaking directly to me. So I pulled over to the side of the road and started writing. I kept going until I had a two page blessing. I had so much anguish and the Spirit really helped bring peace to my soul and gave me perspective to go forward and function because I would have to face some hard things over the next few months. Now I go back and read over my blessings and they give me hope. Sometimes we have trials that the Lord gives us directly and sometimes we have trials because of the actions of others. I believe that Heavenly Father still uses those trials. He doesn’t necessarily want to direct them to us, but he knows that there are things we have to live through and grow from. This has been the case with me. I have really had to turn to the Lord, put all my faith in Him, and turn this over to Him because I don’t understand it. For a while it was so hard for me to understand why homosexuality is here because it’s so contrary to the plan of salvation and is destroying my family, but finally I found peace through lots of prayer, pondering and study. The answer I received is that there are many things we’re not necessarily going to understand in this life, but we will eventually. I have a strong testimony of the gospel, I believe the words of the prophets, I believe in the plan of salvation and the Proclamation on the Family. Those things guide me. I had such anguish and would ask, “How do I move on with my life? Is he gone forever? What’s going to happen? I know you can’t really tell me the future, but I need some direction.” I received strong revelation as a sweet mercy of the Lord to know that all is well and that he will return in time. But I know that it’s not today, it’s not tomorrow, and it’s probably not in five years. It may not be in this lifetime. But we were sealed in the temple, he has completed all the covenants he needs to make in this life, and I believe that in the Lord’s time he will make things right. That helps me to have more of an eternal perspective to do the hard things and to be with him and have him around us as much as possible. How have you explained the situation to your children up to this point? Up to this point it’s been pretty vague. When my husband started being angry all the time, they definitely were affected. He explained that he had to leave because he feels differently and that it’s what best for our family. It’s not the greatest explanation, but it’s worked so far. Telling children you’re going to get a divorce is horrific. I did not want the divorce but really had no choice in the matter. That is something that my children have really struggled with. They have wondered why I agreed to the divorce, as if that would make it not happen. I’ve just said that sometimes we don’t truly have a choice and that I’m trying to make the best of it and do the best I can as a result of the situation. Choices have consequences whether they are our choices or the choices of others. My younger child is struggling with the whole situation much more than my older child. It was just so shocking for all of us. It wasn’t like families that have lots of conflict for a long time. It all happened within a few months and then he was gone. So in some ways it feels more like a death than a divorce because everything changed so quickly. It’s heartbreaking because my youngest child will be baptized next year and knows his father won’t be able to do it and he’s really having a hard time with that. I’m fortunate to have family members nearby, and I try to have my kids around family as much as possible, hoping that the support will help them through all of this as they grow and develop. When do you plan on telling your children about their father’s sexual orientation? He would like them to know sooner than I would. He doesn’t have anyone in his life at present so there’s no reason to talk to them about it right now. That’s not always the case. In many situations you end up having to tell the children sooner than you many have wanted. But from what I’ve read and felt about it, you need to wait until after they’re 12, because before then they’re not going to understand it in the scope of sexuality and family roles. I just pray that when the time comes I will be blessed with wisdom and be able to explain the situation and put it in perspective so they can really grasp it. My husband still lives somewhat in the same community, and he tends to be pretty careful about not exposing us. He tries to protect the children as much as he can, but he’s still out there dating and doing other stuff, so it’s going to come to light and I’m hoping that we can be the ones to talk to the children instead of it coming out in a different way. I wish that I could carry the burden for my children forever, but I can’t. This is going to be something that they’re going to learn about, and that’s okay. I want them to be accepting and respectful to all people, no matter their beliefs or choices, but I worry since it pits a mother against their father as far as actions. I have to trust that the Spirit will bear witness to them of the truth and lead them to find peace. I believe that, because the Spirit has prompted me, “Things will be okay, all is well. You just need to be a good example and keep the commandments and keep doing what’s right. Keep reading your scriptures and keep praying and they will find peace in time.” How did you decide to take the steps to relocate? Financially, I couldn’t afford to stay in the house we were living in, so I prayed for lots of guidance and the children and I were very much protected and watched over. Moving was hard because it was our family home and it felt like another blow, but it was for the best. We haven’t relocated very far, but we’re in a different ward, which was good for my kids so we had a fresh start coming in as a set of three, instead of a family of four. There weren’t a ton of questions and my ward has been really kind. My bishop knows the situation and has been great about keeping everything discreet and private, knowing my wishes for my children, that they are struggling with this, and not wanting to add any more grief. He’s been very thoughtful about choosing my home and visiting teachers and assigning me a calling. How did you decide who to tell about the situation? We ended up telling his family together, which sounds crazy, but I think I was also spiritually prepared to help him tell them. I feel blessed with an eternal perspective on this because it’s not something I had before. It’s helped to me do the really hard things and be more charitable because that’s also not a quality I possessed previously. But I am starting to understand what that means. They all love him and took it well, but everyone is on the same grief train. I am very close to his siblings and parents and we see them on a regular basis, which has been an amazing strength to all of us. I think my reaction helped them accept it as best as they could. My siblings are supportive and have been from the beginning, but my parents really struggle with it. They are doing better, but initially it was not good. My parents had some old fashioned and incorrect ideas, such as equating homosexuality with pedophilia. I’ve tried to help them understand that my husband is making choices that I am sad for and don’t agree with, but he’s still my kids’ father and he’s a very good and loving father who needs to be a part of their lives. It was really hard when things they said were not supportive, adding more grief. I was in such a state of shock that I just couldn’t take it for a time. Outside our families, I have a few friends that know. I’m very private because I want to protect my children, but have come to know people who have this same issue in their own families that I wasn’t aware of before. It’s amazing how the Lord puts people in your life to prepare you for what you’re going to have to face, and it’s comforting because they understand and we can talk about things. I have some nonmember friends from my professional circle that know and have been very supportive, but there are only a select few people in the community or at church who are aware of what’s going on. My bishop from the ward I was living in when I found out prepared the new bishop for the situation, so I didn’t have to start all over again. Has this experience affected your sense of self? No, and that’s a blessing from the Spirit. I don’t mean it in a proud way, but I have known from the beginning that this is not about me. That’s not always the case. I know there are some women who wonder, “How did this happen? What did I have to do with it?” This is his choice and decision. He’s using his agency. I’ve tried to focus now on my role as a mother, feeling heavy responsibility at times, trying to be an example for my kids in how to interact with their father, as well as with other people who may be doing things that we don’t agree with. What can others do to support those in a situation such as this? What has been helpful or unhelpful to you? It’s helpful for people not to be judgmental. There are so many ideas and strong opinions about homosexuality in society, which is part of the reason that I want to keep my children as protected as possible. For the most part, anyone I’ve talked to has been very kind because often they’ve already had experience with this issue. I am also careful because I am sensitive to the issue and feel suffocated by it at times. I finally found some peace realizing there are many things in this life that people face that just don’t make sense, like mental illness and autism or physical disability. You really have to follow the prophet with this issue and form your own opinion based on what the Spirit witnesses to you. How have you coped? What tools have you used to process the emotions involved with this life change and the grieving process? Before this I didn’t understand grief. I am grieving the loss of my spouse, and the spiritual death of my spouse for the time being. I have incredible grief for the loss of him in our lives on a constant basis, but we love him very much and we pray for him to be well and watched over. I have an amazing ability that I did not have before to not be angry, and I try to not be, because I think that could consume me and make it so I’m not at my best in being a mother. I’m disappointed, frustrated, or sad at times, but I deal with that and pray for strength. The grief is cyclical and there are still things that still hit me and days when I’m emotional and teary, but I find strength in having a personal relationship with the Savior that I didn’t have before. I’m grateful for that and feel like it’s a blessing from this trial. There are days when I feel angels carrying me through, being with my children. Priesthood blessings have played a big part in the healing process. Writing them down afterward, then going back and reading over them, trusting in the promises. I also received counsel from my bishop to keep attending the temple because we don’t comprehend all the blessings and protection that come from our temple service. So I try to go to the temple at least once a month. If I’m really struggling, many times I go to the church website and look at general conference talks on various subjects. I am almost always led to something that helps answer a question or gives me comfort and peace. Having a close circle of family and friends has also helped me survive this. With grief it’s helpful to have people in your life that don’t want to give you all their opinions or that are experiencing some of the same emotions. So I talk to family members a lot because although I may be dealing with the consequences day to day, they are still grieving because of the choices of their child or brother. It’s helpful to talk about how I’m feeling or if I have a fear of a question. I talk to my brother-in-law a lot and it helps to put things in perspective because there’s so much about this particular issue that we don’t understand. Have you pursued any of the traditional counseling or therapy routes? We were seeing a marriage counselor for a month, but I didn’t want to go back because she didn’t understand and share my perspective on the gospel and the family unit. If I were to see anyone it would be with LDS Family Services, but I haven’t felt compelled to. What’s your relationship with your ex-husband like now? My ex-husband and I are very good friends. We still do many things as a family, such as celebrate holidays and go on vacation together. It doesn’t make sense for anyone who’s looking at divorce in a traditional way, and while it’s hard, I’ve been blessed with the capacity to do what’s right for my kids. It’s important for them to have a relationship with their father, even when he and I disagree on gospel principles and things we never used to. For the most part, he and I have a good understanding of what our family rules and standards are at this point. Sometimes doing the things that are typical to a married couple, I still wake up and go, “What happened?” But I think that one of my roles is to show him that we still love him and that we’re still here. I’m not saying that I’m not going to move on with my life, but I think that part of what I need to be doing is raise my kids and do the right things as far as teaching them about the gospel and trying to influence him in that way. One thing that I deeply grieve is that I don’t feel the Spirit with him anymore because I miss it terribly. But I hope that he feels that influence in my home. What advice would you give women facing similar circumstances? Pray for strength. I really have found so much peace in turning this over to the Lord, knowing that I can’t control this. I need to take care of my own salvation, take care of my children, still be kind, and have faith and hope. For a while I was so consumed with my husband’s decision and worry about him and his testimony that it was overwhelming. Finally I had a blessing that said, “You need to focus on your own trial and your own growth, and peace will come from that. I am aware of all of my children.” I think there’s a lot of peace that comes from being humbled yourself and trying to have the Spirit soften your heart and help you cope because there are so many emotions involved. Let the Spirit guide your decisions, your interactions, and your conversations about the topic. Each person has to decide how to handle their personal situation because sometimes there has already been infidelity or another partner involved. The subject is so contentious in society and it’s hard not to get caught up in that. The Proclamation on the Family came out in 1995 and I’ve read it before, but didn’t really go back and examine it until a few months ago. It’s amazing to me how it’s prepared us for what’s happening today. What motivated you to nominate yourself for the MWP? I kept hearing about individuals struggling with this issue, which is becoming more and more prevalent, but hasn’t been talked about much. I hope my story can help others who are facing this. I found the MWP during my trial and it has been so comforting for me to read the entries of other women, so I wanted to add my own testimony. I believe that people definitely struggle with homosexuality in this life and I hope that people would treat everyone with respect and dignity, no matter their choices. My situation is better than some, but worse than others, and I empathize with people who are struggling with this, either personally or with a loved one. I absolutely know that the Savior and our Father in Heaven know each of us intimately. They know our situations, our thoughts and feelings, and the worries and sorrows we feel in our hearts and minds. I know that living the gospel principles will bring us true happiness. We are sent to this Earth to learn and grow, but also to show that we can be obedient to the laws of God, even when it is difficult due to our own limitations, temptations, and desires. Interview produced by Nollie Haws.

When Lindsey Redfern and her husband were told they would never be able to bear their own children, Lindsey wondered why she was denied the opportunity to be a co-creator with her Heavenly Father. But because of her husband’s professional experience and a number of miracles along the way, Lindsey discovered the joys and challenges of open adoption and now helps others to navigate that same path Tell us how you gained a testimony of adoption. I’ve known of my husband, Josh, since we were in junior high school, and we got married in college. Josh was getting his master’s degree in social work, and at this point we’d been married for four years and had been trying to have a baby for two but weren’t having any success. Josh got an internship on the East coast with an adoption agency, and saw miracles happen from all sides and had a profound education that I didn’t get on the subject. He shared bits and pieces, but many of the experiences were confidential so he couldn’t get into details. We came home from that internship and did some fertility testing, and I remember being nervous about the results but thinking there had to be some sort of medicine or solution and voila – everything would work fine. People have been making babies for centuries – they must be able to solve infertility now with all the modern medicines, right? Our doctor sat us down in the exam room and gave us our results together – she told me some of my hormone levels were a little wonky, and told my husband that he had some issues also, so together these issues meant that there was zero chance – despite medical intervention – for us to be able to create life. Lindsey Redfern and Her Husband I was pretty stunned. I felt so bad for that doctor who had to come in and give us the news. There we were, older BYU grad students, in Provo, which felt like the baby-making capital of the world. I’m sure that doctor felt horrible. When it sunk in, I started to weep and I asked, “Well, what do we do?” The doctor turned to me – I still get emotional about it, and it was years ago – and said, “You need to pray.” Who knows why she said that – she probably wasn’t allowed to say it – but it made an impact on me. We walked out of the doctor’s office totally devastated, wondering “Why are we on earth if we can’t make a family?” We stood in the parking lot and sobbed and then drove home. I called my mom and my mother-in-law and told them what was happening and they wept with us. We were exhausted when we got home and tried to do a bit of research on other medical options. I remember we’d stupidly planned to go to dinner that night with three other couples, all of whom were expecting, so I’m sure that was an awkward dinner for them when we let them know what was going on. We didn’t know what to do. Josh didn’t approach the adoption issue yet, but he did get some information from local agencies and just happened to leave them out around the house while he was at work. I wasn’t at that point yet, wasn’t ready to think about it – but he was, since he’d had that experience with the internship. I’d been told my whole life – in the temple, in Young Women, growing up – that being a mother is the highest calling, and that bearing and rearing children is a gift that the Lord gives women. I was told that I’d spent my whole life preparing to be a mom and that there was nothing more important than having a righteous family that could be with you in the next life. All I could think now was, why me? If that’s what I wanted to do, why would Heavenly Father deny that? Why wouldn’t He let Josh and me experience becoming co-creators with Him? Obviously you don’t have to be worthy to become parents–there are plenty of horrible parents out there – what was wrong with us? I’m lucky that I never got into the “Why is God punishing us?” mind frame because those are really dark thoughts, but the Heavenly Father I know doesn’t want to punish His children – He wants to bless them. We were struggling and my in-laws came to visit. My father-in-law gave me a powerful blessing; my husband gave me a blessing – I remember my father telling me, “You get as many blessings as you can right now – there is no quota.” I questioned my whole worth as a woman and my role here and how I could fill the measure of my creation if I couldn’t have a family. In one of the blessings, I felt Heavenly Father tell me, “Lindsey – sometimes I create people who cannot have children so that there are homes for my children that need them.” That was so profound for me. I’d had this idea that I was broken – if my husband and I couldn’t reproduce and have a biological family, that meant I was less than the norm – but coming to realize Heavenly Father created me this way, created my husband, knowing we’d be together and that we couldn’t create life – that was His plan all along. It was empowering. I have bad “infertility moments” where I still think why me, this isn’t fair, but most of the time I feel empowered to know I was created this way, for whatever reason. Why wouldn't He let Josh and me experience becoming co-creators with Him? We decided to investigate adoption and my whole persona changed. I’d been in a daze and depressed for a couple weeks, but the idea and hope of adoption and the love I already had for my future children and for the future birth mothers we’d work with gave me hope and the strength to get out of bed in the morning. I was teaching elementary school and the first few days after finding out we couldn’t have kids were rough since I was looking at kids all day, but after that it was really exciting. I knew I could love a child that wasn’t related to me. After all, I was teaching at the time, and I loved my students; they weren’t biologically related to me. I loved my husband; he’s not related to me. I love my college friends with all my soul. I could love these children just as much even though they wouldn’t be biologically related to me. Lindsey Redfern's Children We did more research and decided to talk to our bishop. He didn’t know why we asked to meet with him, but we told him our plan and that we were going to look into other medical options but also explore adoption. Our bishop was looking down while we said this, and then he looked directly at us and said, “No. The Lord does not want you to waste your money on other medical procedures – He wants you to adopt. I feel really prompted to let you know that there’s a young woman out there who just found out she’s pregnant, and she’s scared. You need to start praying for her.” We just stared at him. We knew this was something Heavenly Father felt strongly about for us, so we went forward with adoption. We got cleared with an adoption agency in record time – only three or four weeks to get approved – and we made an online profile with the agency. Six weeks later we were chosen by a young woman across the country, who had found out she was pregnant around the time we spoke with our bishop. Over the next six weeks we fell in love with her and her entire family; we flew out to visit her, we got to learn all about her. She even recorded her baby’s heartbeat on her phone and let us listen to it over lunch one day. A couple weeks later we got a phone call from her mom telling us to get out there immediately because the baby was coming. I love that our oldest son, Tyson, can tell people his parents were on an airplane when he was born. With our second, Gavin, the birth mom had been a close friend of my husband’s brother. They’d kept in touch and had a conversation about her finding herself in an unplanned pregnancy, and my brother-in-law shared the testimony he’d gained of adoption after watching us and seeing Tyson’s adoption unfold and meeting his birth mom and knowing what our relationship with her was like. Because of that talk, the friend looked into open adoption and said, “It’s too bad Josh and Lindsey aren’t hoping to adopt again, because I’d really like to place with them.” I got a phone call from Josh’s brother who said, “Remember that friend I had who was pregnant? She decided to place the baby for adoption and she’s really only interested in placing with our family. With you and Josh.” We said we’d get to know her and her family, and it took off from there. Now we’re working with a new birth mom who had read my blog for the past few years, and when she found herself in an unplanned pregnancy she called some adoption agencies but nothing felt right. Then she left a comment on my blog that she needed help. I sent her a message back and it snowballed from there. Our third baby should arrive in early 2012. Lindsey Redfern with Her Family You’re obviously huge advocates for open adoption – why is that important to you, and how do you help other families through that process? To us, open adoption means you open your home, heart, and family to your children’s biology. My children’s’ biological families are part of our family and are always welcome in our home. If you contrast that to closed adoptions, which were the norm even as recently as fifteen years ago, agencies would take care of everything, even cut adoptive parents’ faces out of photos before giving them to the birth parents. The child may never know anything about their biological family other than race and height and maybe a few other details. I love that it’s changing now, because in our religion we put so much emphasis on knowing your roots and your genealogy – we even have these huge resources in downtown Salt Lake City to help us trace our lines. I think knowing where you came from is so important to your spirit, and I wanted that for my children. They’re more than welcome to adopt our biological lines, and we have adopted their lines. When we do our genealogy, we actually do an additional set – we do their biological line and our biological line, so their family trees are very large. Our boys are sealed to us and we know in the eternities they’ll get to be with us and that’s awesome — but I also feel like there’s a connection you can’t deny within your DNA and where you came from. I don’t know how that will all work out in the world to come, but I have faith that they’ll be part of my family. My husband decided to make a career change and we opened our own adoption consulting firm as a way to help others going through the adoption process. My husband had always been drawn to social work and felt like it was the right path for him, even though I tried to convince him to go to law school like everyone else in my family. He’s very passionate and knowledgeable about what he does. So we opened this firm not knowing it would snowball into what it is now. We work with adoptive couples to help them have a good experience, whether it’s with an agency or a private adoption. We’ve also worked with birth parents and adoptive parents in helping them figure out what they want out of an open adoption. There’s a huge scale on what exactly open adoption can mean to parents, so we talk to both sides about their options. Do they want pictures once a year; do they want to visit a couple times a month – what will make both sides happy? What challenges have you experienced with open adoption? Our kids are young (ages three and four, plus one on the way). The kids haven’t had any problems so far – adoption was never a big revelation to them because we’ve been so open about it, and it’s normal for them. Both boys have a framed picture of their birth mom in their room. They have a box with letters and pictures and scrapbooks. But, since open adoption is just another type of relationship, of course there have been ups and downs and miscommunications. We try to be open with our feelings and emotions and trust – hoping that the biological parent has the same love for us that we have for them. One of our birth moms needed a break once – she told us she wasn’t ignoring us and she wasn’t mad, but she needed a break from us. I asked if I could still text her and send encouraging messages and she said that’s fine but she probably wouldn’t reply. Because I know her and love her, I believed her – if we didn’t have that open line of communication, that could be hard. I could think she really was mad at us, or misinterpret her words and think she regrets her decision or whatever – but in reality, she’s grieving. She has made peace with her decision, but she’s grieving the way others are seeing her. When Tyson’s birth mom first placed him with us, she had friends who didn’t agree with her decision to place him for adoption. On Mother’s Day a few years ago, her friends staged an intervention and told her she was a horrible mother for giving him up. Because she knew she could trust us and that we loved her unconditionally, she felt comfortable calling us and explaining what was going on. Her friends didn’t understand open adoption and how it is now. That kind of stuff is hard to hear because I hate that she is hurting, but I’m glad she feels close enough to us that she can be honest with us. How has your blog, The R House, influenced your experience with adoption? I love to write; I’ve always loved to write since I was in elementary school. My parents signed me up for writing camps during the summer. The R House blog technically started in 2006, but the idea came about in the year 2000 when I was living with my best friends in college in an old 1920s house. My dear friend Laura decided to name all the houses on our street – and we named our house the R House. All the roommates and I started collecting giant R’s that we’d use to decorate throughout the house. Eventually all the roommates got married, AND I was the only one to end up with a last name that started with R – so I inherited the R’s. I went to visit one of the roommates a few years later in Chicago — she was a pretty accomplished writer and I admired her. She set up a blog for me and said, “You can call it The R House for old time’s sake,” so for the first year I kept this blog for those college roomies who had lived in the original R House and they were the only ones who would read and comment. Then my husband and I found out we couldn’t have children biologically, so I wrote a little about that and a lot of people started to comment. Once we decided to take the adoption path for our family, more people started reading and wondering about that. When we were chosen by my oldest son’s birth mother to be his parents, I wrote about those feelings and how intense they were. I was really gaining a testimony of adoption and more people could relate to that. We started to have some snags with his adoption and I guess everybody likes to watch a train wreck, because as I wrote about the problems we were having I also got more and more readers and they’ve just kept coming. It’s been really neat to watch this community grow organically – it wasn’t designed to be a business or anything, it all just started with that trip to Chicago. Through your blog, you’ve been instrumental in helping other families adopt babies. How did that come about? I believe in paying it forward. For me, there is this mentality that adoptive couples are competition for each other, but the way I see it, it’s not a race or a business – it’s a family. For me, adoption is all about an expectant mom who decides on an adoption plan and gets to choose the life she wants for the child. She picks what the parents do, where they live, where the child will fit in the family – she can design the life she wants for her child. Every adoptive mom is different and wants different things. I don’t see other couples as competition – they want to be parents and have their own special circumstances. I have places on my blog where people can put links to their online agency profiles or adoption blogs to share info more easily. I have empowering articles and resources for members of all sides of adoption. I guess, these are ways I feel I can pay it forward and help other parents hoping to adopt. Lindsey Redfern with Her Family When we started our consulting business, the first thing we did was invite about ten friends over who were birth moms. Some had placed babies for adoption a couple months before, some a few years before – we got together and talked about what they looked for in adoptive parents. They gave us pointers on things they wanted and didn’t want from looking at potential parents, and that’s something we share with our clients now. What catches their eye and what doesn’t, how you can truly present yourself the best way. If I found myself in an unplanned pregnancy and was putting together an adoption plan for my baby, I would want to know what the potential adoptive parents look like – what they look like on a regular day, when they’re not all dolled up. I want the real them, not a polished version. A blog is photo heavy, and I’m a visual person, so my adoption blog is photo heavy. I encourage other adoptive families to have lots of photos – not just snapshots, but photos that tell about your family, your animals, your extended family. Do you think adoptive parents face stigma in the Church? I grew up in a very diverse area outside of Washington, DC, in northern Virginia. It didn’t occur to me until years after I’d moved away that I had lots of friends growing up who had been trans-racially adopted – they were a different race than their parents – and it never crossed my mind that those were adoptive families. I don’t know if that’s because I grew up in a huge melting pot of cultures and races, or if the Lord was preparing me, but I just always thought it was no big deal. I realized I’d been in Young Women and all through church growing up with multi-racial families. Even later, when we were finding out about infertility, I thought I didn’t know anyone to turn to for advice who was an adoptive family, but I realized I actually knew a lot. Throughout the Bible, there are women who suffered through infertility – Hannah and Sarah and other core pillars of our religion – and they prayed and had enough faith and eventually were able to conceive. I’ve had people who I’m close to, and even some people I’m not close to, tell me that if I had more faith, I’d be able to get pregnant. People say things under the guise of “I’m just trying to help,” but really what they’re saying to me is that how my family was and is formed is not enough. For me, the faith and miracles ARE there. Miracles are in the experience we had with our bishop that day, how I’ve felt in the temple, the feelings I have when I share our story even now, five years later. The miracles are there when I look into the faces of my childen. The faith is learning not MY will be done, but Heavenly Father’s will. My plan for my family may not be what my Father’s plan for my family is. And when I realize that I can let go and let Him tell me what His plan is, then I can get rid of my sadness and be happy. I think that’s true for all of us in any situation. If your plan for your life is turning out different than Heavenly Father’s plan, and you try to discover what Heavenly Father’s plan for you is, life will be easier and smoother. I do think that sometimes we, as LDS people, are so rooted in the faith we’ve had since our pioneer ancestry that we forget to open our eyes and realize the way we think a miracle should unfold is not the way that miracle has to happen. These people who say hurtful things don’t understand that I DID get a miracle — the miracle was that there are three women on this planet who got pregnant and decided they’d put themselves aside and have their baby and then place that baby with my husband and me. That’s a miracle. Sometimes it seems like more of a miracle than conception to me. I choose to have a positive point of view about adoption and infertility. That doesn’t mean there aren’t hard things about it – there ARE hard things about it. But I think the Lord has asked us and expects us to take the trials we are given and turn them into something beautiful. He tells us in Isaiah that He will give beauty for ashes; out of the fire and pain of my infertility and from these struggling expectant mothers in an unplanned pregnancy – who choose heartbreak for themselves when they place that child with us – out of all that pain can come beauty. At A Glance Name: Lindsey Redfern Location: West Jordan, Utah Age: 32 Marital status: Married since 2002 Children: 2 kids, both were adopted, ages 3 and 4 …and one on the way scheduled to arrive in February. Occupation: MommyCast’s Community Manager, Blogger, Co-Owner of The R House Couture jewelry, Mom Schools Attended: BYU Favorite Hymn: “Where Can I Turn For Peace?” On The Web: www.therhouse.com and www.therhouse.etsy.com Interview by Lyndsey Payzant Wells. Photos by Shadetree Studios and Kim Orlandini.

French sisters Véronique and Adeline both credit their mother with their love of music and the fact that they both make their living in music. Both unmarried, they appreciate the fulfillment that comes from interacting with so many children and embrace the opportunity to have an impact on young lives. They also have an impact on their mother, who they care for in their home. Their generosity of spirit and their willingness to engage deeply with others contributes to their rich enjoyment of a fully productive life. Lire cette interview en français. Tell me what it was like to be raised in the Church in France. Adeline: Our parents converted several years before our birth. Véronique: In the sixties. Adeline: Yes, so we were born into the Church, and we immediately had the benefit of a religious education–it was wonderful. We liked going to church, we enjoyed participating in activities and programs. We were pretty involved. Véronique: Very much so. Our parents never had to force us to do things; we did them spontaneously because we enjoyed it. We liked seminary and institute. Not wanting to go to church simply wasn’t a problem. Adeline Defranchi Why do you think it came so easily? Adeline: First of all, we had a rather unique mother: she wasn’t the kind of person to force religion on us, and she wasn’t fanatical about it either, so we felt pretty free to choose. It wasn’t our father’s style either. I think there might have been something like a grace from God; it’s a gift that it came so naturally. Véronique: And maybe also a legacy from our ancestors. We are descended from a protestant branch. They were Huguenots who fought for the right to live their faith, and perhaps in a way they gave us a legacy of faith. You could wonder why my father accepted the gospel (he was the first in the family), and I think it was because of this religious legacy that when the missionaries knocked on our door, he was ready. He wasn’t a practicing protestant, even though he had been raised to be, so there must have been something–something in the air! You have both served missions. What brought on that desire? Adeline: First off, all of our brothers served a mission. We have three brothers; the eldest set the example and the others followed. Véronique had always spoken of serving a mission, and I was kind of the little one watching. I didn’t feel any sort of pressure to go because everyone else had done it, but in the end I wanted to serve a mission as well. I’m sure the examples of my siblings played a part, and there were all the mission stories they told when they came home. I wanted to experience it too. Veronique Defranchi Véronique: And I served in New Caledonia, the same mission as my older brother who had left a few years before, and it was a very enriching experience. I loved serving this people with so many different ethnicities and I learned a lot. It’s something I will never regret, and I’m still benefiting from that today; what I learned on my mission continues to bless my life now. Adeline: And for the funny story, Véronique wanted to go to a colder, English-speaking country, and she ended up in New Caledonia; and I definitely didn’t want to stay in a francophone mission, and I was sent to the Brussels, Belgium mission. But the Lord knows us better than we know ourselves, and it turned out to be an extremely enriching experience, especially since I returned to my birthplace, in the north of France, and found members I hadn’t seen for years. There was a very warm atmosphere and the people I served there were wonderful people and I loved my mission. It’s at that time that I really understood the gospel’s vital role in my life. It’s not just some good thing–it’s vital, and without the gospel I am nothing. Now you are both music teachers. Why? Véronique: Well it’s because of our mother. Adeline: Thanks to! Veronique and Adeline with Their Brothers [Laughter] Véronique: Yes, thanks to her. It’s kind of a mix of the two, because she’s a professional musician. She received her piano diploma from the Conservatory of Rome. It was always an extremely important part of her life, and she fought for each of her children to study music and learn an instrument. And it really takes a lot of courage, because with children, there are times when they don’t want to practice or do anything at all. My mother always fought to have us continue; she got us to our lessons, and in the end we all received music degrees. Of her five children, three of them play or teach music for a living, and another one did it professionally for a while. Adeline: And honestly it was never a question of whether or not we wanted to do music. It was like breathing, eating, or drinking; we just had to do music! And I am happy about it because I truly love my job. I love teaching and I do not regret at all the fact that, in a certain way, my mother made the choice for me. Véronique: It’s also a job that allows you to have a lot of free time and flexible hours, and an autonomy that you wouldn’t necessarily have in another line of work with a boss always supervising you. I manage my own classroom, and on top of that it’s so pleasant to be with children. Adeline: Yes, the human contact with students and what we can bring them goes beyond just teaching them to play an instrument. Sometimes it’s helping students who are having family issues or stress in their life; sometimes you almost act as a therapist. One of my adult students told me that she started playing the piano at a time in her life when she was going through a really rough patch, and that music had helped her to get out of it. Veronique Defranchi Véronique: We can also have an impact on their confidence – of course, we could never replace their parents, but a professor has a privileged relationship with the child because sometimes the child is in conflict with their parents. There are tough times during adolescence and the professor can be a third party. The professor is the master for whom the child has respect and with whom they can establish a special relationship. We can help children get through tough times with music and through the encouragement and support we give them. And neither of you are married. Véronique: No we are not married. Adeline: Not yet! [Laughter] In the Church we talk a lot about the importance of family. You are two sisters who live together. How do you experience the concept of family right now? Véronique: First off–and this might be bit unusual–we’ve never been alone. We’ve always been surrounded by people, whether it was our parents, whom we cared for when they were sick (and we’re still caring for our mother), or extended family. Our brothers had children so there are nieces and nephews. Even though we’re single, we’re a family. Adeline Defranchi Adeline: Yes, and it’s been a pleasure. We’re so happy to have a big family, to have nieces and nephews that we adore; it’s enabled us to care for children from infancy through adulthood, to have a special relationship with them, and for us, that was a huge blessing. And it really makes you think about how the Lord always pulls something positive out of situations that would seem “negative” or difficult. It’s true that we don’t have husbands or children, but on the other hand, we’ve had time—time to care for our parents, time to care for our brothers sometimes, time to care for our nieces and nephews, so we’ve had the opportunity to share our time with all of our family, which is something we couldn’t have done if we had had families of our own. Véronique: And in the Church, too. We’ve been leaders in the Young Women’s organization; we’ve organized camps, young adult and single adult conferences, temple trips (Editor’s note: the stake’s assigned temple is in Madrid, Spain). Adeline: And Primary. And aside from all of that, we also have friends, members of the Church who are like family to us. We have wonderful ties with those people that go beyond just friendship. And you also spend a lot of time with students. Véronique: Yes. We’re surrounded by kids—maybe we’ve just never grown up! (Laughs.) We haven’t aged; we’re still constantly with kids. A big part of your life is dedicated to caring for your mother; she lives with you and you have been her primary caregivers for years now. It isn’t always easy. How do you cope? Adeline: Our mother was an example for us in that way, because she was always very concerned about her family. She cared for her own mother, and it never occurred to her to think “Okay, well now that I have my own family, the rest of my family isn’t my responsibility anymore.” Not at all. And always, even when she got married, she was concerned for her parents’ and her brothers’ well-being. I think we’ve inherited that from her. She was also a very loving mother, despite having what you could call a strong personality. She sacrificed a lot, and she was a very generous woman. My dad would often tell me how he would “test” her when she was eating something he knew she really liked. He would ask if she’d give him a bite when there was only a little bit left, and she never refused once! Finally, things just worked out so that we were able to care for her, and we’re happy about it. For a while she had to be in a rest home: after our father’s death we cared for her for seven years and things got pretty complicated because she couldn’t stand to stay alone while we were at work, so she had to go to a rest home. After a few years she expressed the desire to come back with us. It was a lot to set up, since with age she’s become more complicated to care for, but we strongly felt that she should come back. It’s been several months now and things have gone incredibly well. I feel at peace. Having her come back to live with us was what we needed to do. Veronique Defranchi Véronique: And I think it’s pretty normal, after everything our parents did for us. They cared for us, they sat up late at night, so it seemed normal that when the time came that they were tired and needed their children, we stepped in and the roles were inverted. It’s the natural order of things, and we have been blessed and helped. We’ve always been able to find a way to make things work out. We’ve done it out of duty but also out of love–after all, what we’ve done with our mother we wouldn’t just do for anybody! In the end, we feel so blessed to be members of the Church, and I don’t know what we did to deserve it but we must have done something good! Having the gospel is such an advantage– having a direction in our lives, knowing where we’re going, why we’re here–and it helps us in tough times, gives us hope and support to overcome whatever may happen. In the gospel there’s the “perfect” model for family, but outside of that there are many different situations: you could be a widow, you could be divorced, you could have children who left the Church, all sorts of situations where in reality it’s not much like the ideal model. But even if we’re not in that situation, it’s important to uphold the ideal model. Even if things don’t go the way you wish in life, it’s okay; we just need to keep the commandments and if we are righteous Heavenly Father helps us and we can have a fully productive life. Whatever the situation may be, if we apply the principles of the gospel we’ll have a productive life, and that’s what is important. Then any adjustments that need to be made will be made later. But just because we’re single doesn’t mean that we cannot accomplish anything and that we don’t have a mission and a role to play on earth. There are great things we can do and it would be silly to miss out because we’re sitting at home wallowing in self-pity. And most of all, I’ve never felt alone with the gospel. When you’re surrounded by family, by the members of the Church (even if they’re not family, the members become our family), and when you have the Holy Ghost with you, you’re never alone. It’s a feeling I have simply never experienced. Adeline Defranchi Adeline: And we each have a place in Christ’s church. In Relief Society or elsewhere, I’ve never felt like I didn’t belong because I didn’t fit into the core family mold. It’s true that we all have different lives, and we each follow a path in life that we didn’t necessarily choose. “C’est la vie,” and you just have to deal with it. Even if we haven’t received certain blessings, we’ve received so many other blessings that it would be incredibly ungrateful to only see what we don’t have. We have a rich life. Sometimes with trials, for sure, and it isn’t always easy, but the Lord gives us everything we need to overcome the trials of life, and the gospel gives us so much joy. At A Glance Name:VÉRONIQUE DEFRANCHI Age:47 Location: Talence, France Marital Status:Single Occupation:Music teacher Schools Attended:Bordeaux Conservatory Languages Spoken at Home:French Favorite Hymn:“Abide With Me: ‘Tis Eventide” Name:ADELINE DEFRANCHI Age:42 Marital Status:Single Occupation:Music Teacher Schools Attended:Bordeaux, Toulouse and Poitiers Conservatories Languages Spoken at Home:French Favorite Hymn:“Our Savior’s Love” Interview Produced by Lydia Defranchi

Involved in fitness training since high school, mother of three Claire Harries recently became a body-building champion in Holland. A native of South Africa who recently moved back to her home country, Claire talks about how body building has contributed to her mental and spiritual strength, her competitive nature, and her talent for entrepreneurship, including a surprising business for a body-builder: cake decorating. You are the 2011 Juliette Bergmann C-Class Figure cup holder. How did you come to be involved in Dutch body-building? When I was fifteen years old, a gym opened near where I grew up in Durban, South Africa, and my five sisters and I all joined. I learned that a member of our ward was a personal trainer. He showed me how to do weight exercises and taught me how to work really hard. He told me, “You will find that training like this will develop your mental strength.” I’d be at the gym at 5:00 a.m. when it opened, so I could work out before school started at 8:30 a.m. So that’s how I started. I thought that when I was grown up, I’d live in the same area for the rest of my life. But while we were in university, my husband, Bryn, who was studying mechanical engineering, got a great job with an oil company in the Netherlands. We were there for ten years, and we have just this year moved back to South Africa. Shortly after we’d moved to Holland, I gave birth to Madison, our second daughter, and was trying to get back into shape. At the neighborhood shops, I saw a poster advertising an aerobics class just around the corner from my apartment block. So while the baby slept in her stroller, I would do my exercise. I became friends with the instructor, Jenny. Claire Harries Eventually I started doing personal training with Jenny. She had begun entering—and winning—body-building competitions. She said, “Stick with me, and I’ll teach you everything I know.” She really believed in me. She said, “You should be on the podium one day. You’ve got the body for it, you’ve got the build for it, you’ve got the mental strength for it.” I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to compete, but I loved the training. I trained seriously with Jenny for a year, and then I fell pregnant with Sophie, our third daughter. I was in a wonderful place in my training, getting close to where I could go onto the stage, so I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t continue at the same pace. But having children and raising a family have always been a priority for me. I was excited that I was going to have a baby, and Jenny said, “Having a baby makes you stronger.” I continued training with Jenny for the first six months of the pregnancy, and on my own right up to the delivery. It was the easiest pregnancy of the lot because I was so fit. About six months after the delivery, I was back to where I had been before the pregnancy, and I resumed strength training with Jenny. She asked, “Do you want to go on the podium? Let’s set a date and work toward it.” Certainly, picking the date was what I needed. If you don’t set the date, you don’t achieve the goal. You just change your mind and don’t do anything. So we picked the date for a Musclemania competition in Milan, Italy. I told Jenny that I didn’t have much time to train. I said, “Family comes first. I can’t let this take over my life. But whatever time I have left over, I’ll give to training with you.” Preparing for competition is demanding. I was training six days a week, sometimes twice a day, a different muscle group every day, and with Jenny three times a week. The diet is strict, although really healthy, with lots of vegetables and fresh food, but it’s not something you can do for an extended period of time. You’ve got to bring your body’s fat percentage down to about thirteen or fourteen percent, which is very low. Bryn was fantastic. He looked after the children when I needed to train in evenings and on weekends and he understood when I had to eat all these crazy things like lots of green beans and broccoli and boring chicken and eat them in fixed quantities at fixed times when he didn’t feel like eating. But you’ve got to do it all or nothing. Church friends were a fantastic support for me, too. They helped me make lists of what I had to bring to the competition. They helped me with my make-up and with my hair. They even came along with me to Milan. Jenny, my trainer, was wonderful, too. She came with me even though she wasn’t competing and helped with my tanning, with my costume. Definitely it was a team effort. Preparing required so much dedication, so much discipline, and to finally just reach the day of the competition was rewarding. Claire Harries What is the competition itself like? The morning of the competition you have a good breakfast and then you go for the pre-judging, which is the actual, proper judging of the show. You do posing, modeling, and, for the Fitness competition, your fitness routine. I do completely natural figure training. Some people use steroids, but I don’t believe in doing that at all, so just before I go on the stage, I do some push-ups and some elastic band exercises to get the muscles pumped up. I was absolutely exhausted between sections of the competition, and I struggled with so many negative thoughts. It’s easy to let doubts creep in. I saw other people who looked so much stronger than me. I had to crowd those things out, to be mentally tough. After the pre-judging, you have the afternoon to relax. The evening show is public. You do the same thing again, but obviously it’s much less stressful because the evening show counts for a much smaller percentage of the score, maybe 25%. People can relax and put on the show. And then the final call, and the trophies are handed out, and that’s the end of the day. In my first competition, Musclemania in Milan, I took seventh place. Six months later, I took first place and won the Juliette Bergmann cup. Some argue that competitions like this objectify women. How do you respond to that? A lot of people don’t understand that this is a sport. Still, I must say I prefer the Fitness competition to the Figure competition. In the Figure competition, you model and pose. In the Fitness competition you also do a routine, showing how you use your strength. I didn’t feel comfortable just being a model. I never wanted to get up on the podium just to show myself. I wanted to be able to do something with what I had learned. In a Fitness competition, I can also choose what I want to wear. The judges want to see the muscle groups obviously, so the calf muscles, the shoulders, and the legs need to be exposed. I enjoyed putting together a costume that tied into the music for my routine. There are people who live for the competition. I don’t, but I had to set the competition goal to take my body to that extreme point. I needed the competition to get there. I must say, looking at both the training aspect and the competition aspect, I enjoyed the journey more than the destination. How did people respond to you while you were training? Some people don’t really understand what you’re doing when you are in serious training. Your body goes through an enormous change, and a lot of people thought I was doing something really crazy. They would say, “Your body has changed over a period of six weeks. Are you OK?” A friend at church said, “You must have an eating disorder.” I said, “You ought to see what I’m eating! I’m eating so much!” I know she was speaking out of love and concern for me, but she didn’t understand what I was doing. Others did understand, though, and were a fantastic support. Claire Harries and Her Family Your first trainer, back in high school, told you that training would help you “develop your mental strength.” Have you found that to be true? I’ve found strength-training to be a fantastic way to make me stronger, not just physically but mentally. Once I get to the seventh repetition of lifting a very heavy weight, I can’t do it another time. But my mind takes over and keeps me going. I have used that mental strength in motherhood. We want to develop in our daughters the drive and determination to achieve their goals. Because I have achieved my goals, I understand better how to help them achieve their goals. For example, Savannah wanted to earn money for a fancy backpack after we’d already given her one for school. So we asked her, “What’s the goal?” We gave her extra chores and then reminded her to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to keep going. Heavenly Father has given us our talents. He wants us to succeed. Satan doesn’t want us to succeed. He gives us doubts. Through strength-training, I’ve learned to put my mind to something, believing that I can do it, and then to not allow doubt and thoughts of failure to creep in. Claire Harries and Her Family How did you turn your interest in fitness into not just a hobby but a job? A gym near where I lived in Holland sponsored me and I got training as an aerobics instructor. The training was all in Dutch, which was a stumbling block because I wasn’t fluent in Dutch. I was given a three month limit to learn all the choreography and be able to give the entire class on my own in front of a video camera, making a tape for the examiners to mark. So I had to learn fast and do the technique really well. When I started teaching aerobics, the most difficult part was to feel easy in front of adults. I wasn’t sure how to connect with adults. Teaching children is natural for me. They are so loving and forgiving and non-judgmental. I have a teaching degree, specializing in Montessori education, and I taught in a pre-school in Durban. I wasn’t sure how to help adults enjoy what they were doing. But with practice it got easier. I’ve found that giving a class to English speaking people–British or whatever–is very different from giving a class to Dutch people. I have really enjoyed exploring the cultural differences, learning what the Dutch find interesting or funny so I can crack a few jokes and make them want to come back. It was a real challenge at the beginning. Shortly after Sophie was born, I did a course to certify as a personal trainer as well. But my children are young and I knew I wanted to be with them while they are growing up, so I would only give training to clients between 9:00 a.m. and noon, while the girls were at school and Sophie could be at the crèche at the gym. And then in the afternoons I was free and available to the kids. There’s always someone who wants training, and it’s an easy way to make good money in the Netherlands. But I didn’t want to allow personal training to consume my life. Competing helped establish me as a personal trainer. I got so many personal training clients because they saw that I was living what I was trying to teach, whereas some personal trainers I know try to teach by word and not by action. Because clients saw that I was achieving my goals, they trusted that I could show them what it would take for them to achieve their goals, whether it was to run a 10K race or to get into a dress they want to wear to a wedding. A lot of people coming to the gym want to change what they look like, want to change their bad habits, but they don’t know how. I am able to use skills from my Montessori teaching days to help my clients learn how to change. I really enjoy coaching and training people. My motto is, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.” I help my clients start eating healthily and exercising properly. That combination is a winner. In addition to teaching aerobics classes and offering personal training, you ran a cake-decorating business in Holland. How do you reconcile the cake business with the fitness business? A lot of people ask me that! Here I am, baking high-calorie, very unhealthy things and all the time preaching something very different. I love baking and decorating and sharing what I make with people. Also, it’s a wonderful tool to get closer to my girls. I enjoy teaching them to bake and baking with them. Claire Harries My cousin’s wife has a very successful cupcake business in Durban and she has asked me to open a Capetown branch, so I will have a cake business here, too. It’s perfect. I can do just as much or as little as my schedule permits. I’ve always got some business going. I’m now learning to do eyelash extensions and waxing and spray-on tanning, too. These business ventures of mine–personal training, cake decorating and eyelash extensions–seem unrelated, but the common thread among all of them is that I can choose my hours, I can do them from home, and I can do them with my family. How did you become so entrepreneurial? Part of it is that I’m South African. Every South African has some little business going. You have to be entrepreneurial to make a go of it. I certainly tried to be entrepreneurial in Holland. I don’t know if many Dutch people appreciated the way I tried so many different things: I sold a line of healthy muffins for the gym’s restaurant and I was a personal trainer and I was an aerobics instructor. I think people wondered, “Who does this girl think she is?” But that’s who I am. I’m always busy. I was very blessed to have a mother who was entrepreneurial. She worked from home, running a very successful private pre-school, so she was always able to be there for the family. Like her, I try to do things that allow me to be home after school for my daughters, to focus on their activities, just to be around to talk. My father was also very keen for us to learn new things and to start businesses from them. When I was in high school, I learned how to do cake-decorating. I said to my dad, “I’ve learned how to do this, and I want to make some money from it. Can you help me pick up something?” He said, “Sure. Christmas is coming.” In South Africa we have British Christmas cakes which are decorated in a traditional way. He suggested I market Christmas cakes to the parents in my mom’s school. A whole bunch of people placed orders, and I made the cakes and iced them. I was extremely busy at Christmastime for the next three years making Christmas cakes. And people started asking me to make anniversary cakes and birthday cakes too. I was able to pack that skill in a suitcase and take it to Holland with me. And now I’ve packed it in a suitcase again and brought it back to South Africa. That’s something I love to do, to learn a new skill and to pack it in a suitcase and take it with me. Claire Harries You’ve had a very busy year, with a competition and an international move. How do you stay spiritually nourished at times of stress? When life gets busy, it’s easy for the basics to fall away, and that’s how we get further and further away from our Heavenly Father. It’s important to be anxiously engaged in doing the things He’s asked us to do, the simple things like reading our scriptures. I’ve become very aware of the importance of balance in life. Especially when we’re busy, we need to constantly assess whether we’re in the “thick or thin” of things. For example, all the training I did for competition was good, but if I had ever let it become so dominant in my life that it drove out more important activities–my family, scripture reading—then it would have become a “thin thing.” I think Heavenly Father expects us to develop our talents and become stronger but to never lose sight of what really matters. We must be wise stewards. At A Glance Name: Claire Harries Location: Cape Town, South Africa Age: 32 Marital status: Married in the Johannesburg, South Africa Temple on 8 Jan 2000 to her sweetheart, Bryn Harries Children: 3 girls aged 10, 7 and 2.5 Occupation: Harries Family Chief Executive Officer aka wife to Bryn, mother to Savannah, Madison and Sophie, personal trainer, pastry chef Schools Attended: Kloof Pre-primary-High School, College of Modern Montessori, University of South Africa Languages Spoken at Home: English, Dutch Favorite Hymn: “I Know That My Redeemer Lives” On The Web: Family blog: www.brynandclaire.blogspot.com. Workout on YouTube: http://youtu.be/5NMkbFFa4R4 Interview by Annette Pimentel.

As a vice president at the Silicon Valley giant, Oracle, for 17 years, Liz Wiseman learned to say no to any commitment that wasn’t work, church or her four children. Now as an author and managing her own leadership consultancy, Liz works with her husband at home and recently visited her 32nd country. She feels her greatest honor, though, is putting everything she’s learned to work for the benefit of the Church. I graduated from BYU with my master’s in organizational behavior back in 1988 and, against the grain, went to work for this little maverick company called Oracle. There were a couple thousand people at the company at the time – it wasn’t a meager startup anymore – and I thought I’d work there for a year or two and get a “real” job somewhere. But I fell in love with the culture, which was an absolute meritocracy of “We don’t care if you are young or old or male or female or Christian or Muslim or LDS or evangelical, we just want you to be good at what you do.” Nobody cared. If you were driven and bright, there was something for you to do. I’d been working there a year and a half in a technical role and at 24 years old, my boss came to me and said, “Liz, we want you to start up an internal training group. Larry Ellison wants Oracle University, a corporate university and we need you to build it.” I felt so overwhelmed. I had no clue had to do this and no experience to draw upon. But somehow that lack of experience, coupled with having someone believe that I could, fueled something in me. I built a team and a year later we were taking Oracle University global to the 120 countries Oracle does business in. Can you describe Oracle University and its purpose? It is the corporate education group. Its job was to ready the workforce to build and deliver Oracle technology and to grow the talent inside the company. Its early mission was to absorb the massive number of college graduates (most with graduate degrees in computer science) who were coming into this unique culture and prepare them to be successful in a community environment. Oracle University taught new employees about Oracle products, helped them build professional skills, and how to be successful in the company culture. As the company grew, our focus expanded to include the professional development of the workforce which had ballooned to 20-25 thousand people. I spent a lot of my time working on the development of strong management capabilities in our leaders. Liz Wiseman Did people attend your classes only when they were starting or were they required to attend at certain points during their careers? We would invest about 2-3 weeks of training when someone started, but they would come back throughout their careers at Oracle, with the amount of on-going training varying based on someone’s job role. But coming in and out of the University was part of everyone’s regular work life. I ran this organization for a about a decade, growing it, making it work around the world. I was still very young. Then I had my first child in 1994. So you met and married someone locally there in the Bay Area? I had met my husband when I was 17 years old. I had graduated from high school and I went to my first young adult church dance in Santa Clara, CA, and met a boy who had just finished his first year at BYU and had a mission call. Of course, I thought, this is perfect: a little summer romance, maybe I’ll write him a letter in the Missionary Training Center, I’ll never see him again, send him off to Japan… and he was thinking the same thing: I’ll get cookies in the MTC! Here we are 28 years later with four children! You’ve been living in the Bay Area that whole time since marrying. In American culture today we think there’s such virtue in having different experiences and moving around and trying a new job every couple of years and taking a break to go to grad school. You’re kind of a testament to the power of staying put. Very much so. I did get married young in the grand scheme of things – I was 22 – and in exchange for that my husband and I decided that we would work a bit before having children. We came back from BYU to the Bay Area because our families are both here. Other than 6 years at BYU, I’ve been here in California my whole life. But, I’ve been given opportunities to see the world through my work. I just got back from Kuala Lumpur, Mayalsia and it was the 32nd country I have visited. When I was first assigned to take Oracle University international, I didn’t even have a passport. Since then, I’ve been to Asia 15 times, Europe dozens of times; and have recently completed a book speaking tour in the Middle East. How do you do that with children? There are a few fallacies about working and mothering that I’ve discovered. One is you can’t work and be a mom. And I’ve just found that not to be true. My experience is that being clear in my priorities at home has allowed me to be really effective at work. I remember coming back to work after having my first child and telling my boss, “Anything I’ve accomplished up until now is because I’ve put in the time. I now have to split my time between work and home and I can’t solve my problems just by working harder. I really need to think about my work differently, and I am clear that if my work and my home ever come into conflict, my home is going to win. My job is to keep them out of conflict with each other.” Establishing this upfront felt liberating to me. For me, there was such incredible clarity in knowing that my family came first. But just because something takes first place doesn’t mean there can’t be a second place. It’s not a “winner takes all” game. But there is a clear priority: my family, my home. I discovered that I became so much more effective, and dare I say powerful, at work because I was so clear that I was a mom first. I came back from my first maternity leave and I had no time for nonsense, for time wasters, for office politics, and my staff who would squabble and fight. I’d say, “We don’t have time for this. Let’s get to work because I have a cute little baby waiting at home for me.” I think I had a detachment to my job that was so different from how absorbed other people felt. Perhaps this no-nonsense attitude allowed me to have a clarity and objectivity around my work that made me a pretty good executive. Which leads me to another fallacy: that you can’t be an executive and be a mom. I haven’t found that to be true either. When you are in a senior position at a company, yes, you hold a lot of responsibility and face a lot of pressure, but if you are smart about how you work, you can have a good team around you and you delegate. During the years I was a Vice President at Oracle and the mother of three young children – I had my fourth child a little later – I wasn’t working till 2 in the morning (I couldn’t, I was too busy taking care of kids then!). I went home at a reasonable hour and had dinner with my family and put kids to bed. I delegated. You said when you went back to work after your first child you told your boss that if one had to suffer, it would be your work. Were there any specific boundaries that you made personally or publicly to your work team about how you would keep the two out of conflict? Absolutely. I had a few strategies for how I managed my team and then a whole slew of rules about what I said “yes” and “no” to doing. I treated my work time the same way I treated school work in college: the work week is for work and the weekend is for family and church. I approach work the same way: Monday through Friday is for work. I was always home in the evenings. Sometimes I had to go to business dinners or functions and in those cases I would get up and leave the event early with polite excuses. In the 17 years I worked at Oracle, I almost never worked on weekends. I had a rule that I didn’t do external conferences, I didn’t participate in networking groups, in women’s groups, book clubs, any reading for fun… anything that wasn’t my job or my family or church, I just said no to it. There was a whole set of activities I had to give up. I couldn’t do it all. Would you tell me about your husband’s perspective on all of this? I have an amazingly supportive husband. In the 24 years I’ve been married to him, he’s never said anything unkind to me. He’s just a very kind person and supportive life partner, which has allowed me to I’ve spent our married life free of marital strife. He has never added to my stress, which is so important to a life like mine. He’s never expected me to take care of him, so he hasn’t added to my work load that way. In all the years, not once has he ever made me feel guilty or stressed. His work in real estate and investing has been flexible, so he has worked out of our home office since 1998. There was only a 2-year overlap where we both left the home and went into offices. Other than that, one of us has always been working at home. Today, we run our own consultancy firm and we both work from home. We get to walk our kids to the bus stop and one of us is here when they get home. We have a partnership in the fullest sense of the word. It’s lots of fun, but I’m sure our kids get tired of us “talking shop” at times at the dinner table. What impact has your work had on your children? Has your example affected the way they see their own potential? I think it has. I made the decision to leave Oracle almost 6 years ago. I was ready to leave earlier, but my husband suggested that I should stay there because it was such an easy job in which to put our family first. We were both concerned that if I went out and started my own company, it would be consuming and the family would suffer. For years, I delayed leaving, but finally got up the courage after I went to an executive coaching program at Wharton and my coach there – who has no LDS lens to put on this – said, “What better example to your children than having them see their mom doing something she’s passionate about and she’s good at.” It made me realize that it was a gift I could give my children. They have cheered me on as I took on the herculean task of researching and writing a book. Liz Wiseman I’ve been a working mom and an active member of the church my whole motherhood experience. My kids are certainly no better than anybody else’s kids, but there are definite ways they’ve really benefited from my working. They are put together, confident, and independent, it’s not by accident. They’re this way because they have to be. They don’t have me looking over their shoulders making sure they do all their school work or reminding them to bring their soccer shin guards. I don’t have time to micromanage that for them. My husband and I support and enable, but they’ve got to take responsibility. My work travels have also created amazing opportunities for our family to experience the world, because I often find ways to take the kids on international trips. My daughters came to China with me when they were six and eight. My little seven-year-old boy has never had a birthday in the United States! He turned one in Japan, two in Costa Rica, three in Mexico, four in Indonesia, five in Thailand, six waking up in Guatemala and going to bed in Belize, seven in Honduras and this summer he’ll turn eight in Australia. Our children definitely share our love of travel and our over-active sense of curiosity and adventure. I have been my own watchdog for years: Am I short-changing my family? Are my children suffering? I check in with my children all the time: Am I working too much? Am I traveling too much? They help me stay in balance. For years I watched to make sure my children weren’t paying the price, always ready to let go of work if they were. But, my children are fantastic and our family is strong. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that it the one who was probably paying the price was me not them. Yes, I’ve made some sacrifices and I’ve missed out on some of life’s quiet, precious moments. But you can’t have it all, and have to be comfortable with both your choices and their consequences. How do you see your spiritual mission being fulfilled in the actual work that you’re doing? I have always felt at peace spiritually with working. I have inquired of the Lord, we have talked about it as a family, and I have never felt I’ve been making the wrong decisions. At times I have wondered how I can feel so right about this, but the message to me was, “Liz, you are to do what you’re doing and there’s a reason for it.” It’s a message of permission, of allowing, and a vote of confidence that I can do both. I’ve never felt I was to work instead of raising my family. It has always been in addition to raising my family. I’ve always felt that through my professional endeavors I was being prepared to do work that would benefit the church, that this work would build on everything I’ve learned – how to run an education organization, how to coach, teach, operate around the world, how to connect with people of different faiths and backgrounds… It’s all for a reason. I can’t tell you what that reason is, but I feel an inner peace. I look at the work I’ve been able to do since I left Oracle and went out on my own: I’ve written a book and taken a message about leadership out into the world. And I’ve recently been invited to put my professional skills to work helping the church administration develop strong leaders. I was delighted to be specifically invited to bring a female perspective to this effort. There are so many ways I can pay tribute to the Lord. He’s growing me, but these experiences aren’t for my benefit (or even my family’s benefit) but rather to help build the kingdom. The energy level I’ve needed to sustain all of this has been given to me for a reason. I have lived my whole life in the Church and I love the gospel and the members. I realize that I don’t fit a certain stereotype and is can be easy to feel like you therefore don’t fit in. Yes, I sometimes feel a bit judged by others who wonder “How good of a mother are you?” or by some men at church who don’t quite know what to make of me. But, I’ve learned that it is more important that we understand the Lord’s will for us and tune our lives to His voice rather than conform to the world’s or a neighbor’s definition of success. I feel at peace with who I am as a wife, mother, a daughter and as a professional. There is so much integration between who I am at home, at church and at work that I just feel like myself. The women of the church have so much to teach, both within the church and out into the world, and I love being part of this. At A Glance Name: Liz Wiseman Location: Menlo Park, CA Age: 46 Marital status: Married 24 years Children: Four (ages 16, 14,12, and 7) Occupation: Management author and educator Schools Attended: Brigham Young University, Bachelor of Science, Business Management (finance); Master of Organizational Behavior. Executive Education programs at University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), MIT, and Harvard Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” Interview by Neylan McBaine.

Over the past 18 months, as the MWP volunteers and I have asked over a hundred women to tell us the stories of their lives, we’ve been repeatedly surprised by how often childhood sexual abuse has been a part of their pasts. Because many interviews at the MWP examine women’s reactions to challenging circumstances in their lives — from disease to infertility to family losses — we felt that examining faithful LDS responses to childhood sexual abuse would be in keeping with our mission. Below, you will find three very different anonymous accounts of childhood circumstances, followed by an interview with Julie de Azevedo Hanks, an LDS therapist, who discusses themes and similarities among the three accounts. Julie, LCSW, is the director of Wasatch Family Therapy where she specializes in helping LDS women create emotional health and fulfilling relationships through therapy, workshops, writing and educating through the media. Married 22 years, Julie and her husband Jeff reside in Utah with their 4 children (ages 4-20). We sincerely hope that the stories offered here as well as the professional LDS perspective will help open the doors to healing for other LDS women who might be searching for answers within their spiritual framework. – Neylan McBaine, MWP Founder and Editor-in-Chief Story #1 I was sexually abused by my father from the time I was six until I was twelve or thirteen. A close friend of my mom’s approached her to tell her my father had molested her daughters. I remember her taking my older sister and me in turn to talk to us, to see if it had happened to us as well. I have three sisters and I only know that my older sister and I were abused. I have never talked about it with my younger sisters. What was your mother’s reaction? It broke my mom’s heart; she was abused as a child. To find out her husband had abused her children, it was devastating. We only ever talked about it that one day because it was such a shameful thing. I am not sure why things didn’t get taken to the police, either by her friend or her. Maybe that is how things had been dealt with in her experience. I do remember her taking us to talk to the stake president soon after she had talked to us. Why did she decide to take you to see the stake president? What was the purpose of the visit? He asked me if I had any hard feelings towards my father. I assumed he wanted me to say no, so I did. Of course I had hard feelings! My father lived with us for a few more years until he was arrested for molesting a neighbor girl. Were you scared of your father? What was the relationship like at home after the abuse was discovered? He tried once more to abuse me to see what he could get away with. I honestly didn’t hate him until then. After that I wanted as little to do with him as possible. I never told my mom about that either. It turned out he molested many, many children. Were the victims all neighborhood children? Did you testify at his trial? He was arrested in the middle of the night and that was the last I saw of him. He was in and out of jail and finally put into prison. He’s been in and out of jail for twenty years. I wish we had been part of the trial, I don’t know why we weren’t. I know that there were neighbor kids he sexually abused. He worked at a hospital as a tech and I think there were accusations from the hospital too. Have you struggled with how it was handled by the stake president? Do you wonder if it had been handled differently if it would have protected other children? I haven’t struggled with how it was handled. I think it was such a different time, and I think people did the best they could. Things were a lot better around the house when he was gone. It was hard on my mom as she had been a stay at home mom and she now had to work to provide for her children, but the mood around the house was much better. You were a sophomore in high school when your father went to jail. Did you ever tell anyone or seek therapy? I never told anyone about the abuse. Not a soul. A couple of my closest friends knew he was in jail, and maybe they suspected, but I never told them why. I think it felt so shameful because no one ever talked about it. I wasn’t told it was okay to be mad or okay to be upset. I wasn’t told it was even okay to talk about it. It was a secret. When I got engaged, I knew I should tell my fiancé, but I wasn’t sure how. Why did you feel it was important to tell him? I am not sure why I felt the need to tell him. It was like divulging some huge secret. It was like I felt guilty for having it happen to me. It was such a big part of my past. He knew my dad was in jail and that I hated him. A few months before our wedding I noticed the Ensign was looking for submitted articles on forgiveness. I wrote something up, but didn’t send it in. I think I’ve gone back and forth at different times in my life in the degree to which I have forgiven my fatherI wrote my article on trying to forgive. I gave what I had written to my fiancé to read. It didn’t give any details about the abuse, just that I had been abused. That was the most I’d ever told anyone. What was your fiancé’s reaction? Did he have questions? He asked a couple of questions, but he was mostly just sad for me. I think I thought I had forgiven my father, but honestly, I am not sure if I have fully even now. How is your relationship with your mother? I have no issues with my mother. She has always been my rock and I know how hard life has been for her. We had still never talked about it until a few years ago when I told her I was going to therapy. She was glad for me and said she’d tried to find something for us earlier, but couldn’t find anything. She also wished there had been something for her, that she could have gone to therapy. How has your life been affected by the abuse you suffered at the hands of your father? I have always struggled with self-esteem. I have never been able to truly love myself. I was very insecure in junior high and high school. I think I went on two dates during all of high school. I was a huge bookworm; in therapy we learned this is one way to escape reality. Before and after my mission I was doing very well. I liked myself then and had a lot of fun. Sometimes I feel like I tricked my husband into marrying someone I am not because I was in such a good place when we got married. About two years after we got married, we started trying for a family. I got depressed when we struggled with infertility. My husband was the one who noticed my depression. I just thought everyone was being insensitive. He wanted me to go to counseling; I didn’t want to. We had moved and I met a friend in our new ward. She and I were talking one night after a get together. We soon figured out that we both had issues with our fathers. The fact that we hated them bonded us. My friend was in counseling at LDS Family Services. She was getting ready to go to her dad’s trial. Her counselor suggested she go to a group, Adults Molested as Children, or AMAC. It was an eight week commitment. My husband thought I should go, but I wasn’t thrilled. Children who have been sexually abused often feel shame for what happened to them as children. Could you explain how you explain how that shame felt for you? Twelve years later it was still a shameful secret. Somehow I felt that because I had been abused, I was defective. I felt like I wasn’t as good as someone who hadn’t been abused. I think because it was so secret it felt like it must something horrible What was your first meeting like? How were you feeling? Before the group started I met with the social worker and had to tell her my story. It was a big deal for me. I had never told anyone details. I felt yucky all day before and after.I remember our first group meeting. It was all so awkward. There was a girl there who had been in the last therapy group. She was there to kind of show us the ropes. We started with a prayer. Then we made group rules, like you couldn’t tell anyone what was said in group. We talked about what to do if we ran into someone at a church function, should we acknowledge them or not? The girl who had been through it before said, “Don’t worry! By the end you’ll be able to talk about it to anyone.” I remember thinking, “Riiiight.” But she was so right. Look at me now! Although this interview is anonymous for my family’s sake, I am usually pretty open about it. What was the process of the group? How did it work? Each week one woman would share her story with the group and then we would go around the table and give her positive feedback. There were also guided discussions with our social worker. When it was my turn I was terrified because I had never told anyone other than my husband and my therapist about my abuse. I had to write notes out the night before so I could be sure to share all I wanted to. Once it was over one woman called my dad a pedophile. I had never though of it like that, but she was right. I didn’t feel great right away; it was a rough day and a rough class. Each week I would take those women’s stories with me and take them to heart. My friend and I called our headaches and heartaches the day after group ‘AMAC hangovers’, which we often cured with Krispy Kreme donuts. In spite of all the heartache, in the telling of my story I went from being a victim to a being a survivor. It was no longer a horrible secret. It was now something that had happened to me in the past that had shaped my life, but no longer was the defining element. Our therapist said our energy in life is like a 100 watt light bulb and hiding your abuse uses 80 watts. That felt right to me, I had always been tired and drained. I was excited to have more wattage now. It didn’t happen overnight, but I feel like my life has just been heading up ever since. I am a survivor. Was telling the story what made it less shameful? I think so. I think it was the whole process, realizing you are not alone. It was the therapist telling us it was okay to have the feelings we did, all the validation. Did you also understand and internalize then that it wasn’t your fault? Putting a real label on my dad, realizing he was a true pedophile helped me. We talked about how predators stalk their victims, how they look for certain things. The therapist taught us that it was not our fault no matter what. Even if we didn’t tell, it was not our fault. What part did faith and your relationship with Heavenly Father play in your life at that time? Honestly, this was a time I wasn’t feeling all that close to Heavenly Father. But it’s interesting because the therapist always used scriptures to validate and help us. She was very spiritual about it and could always bring the spirit in. The manual we used in AMAC had lots of articles and talks from church leaders. Have you struggled with the abuse since going through the group 7 years ago? Do you feel you’ve been able to forgive your father? Yes, I still struggle with self worth. Our therapist taught us that your brain develops differently if you are abused as a child. I think I will always struggle with that. I still struggle with forgiving my father. How could someone do that to their own child? I am upset about the lingering struggles with depression and self worth that he caused in my life. I blame him for that. How is your relationship with your family now? Have you been able to help your older sister who was also abused? I get along well with all my family now. My older sister still struggles a lot. We finally talked about my AMAC about a year ago. She said she’d love to go to something like that, but it wasn’t offered where she lives. I wish it were everywhere; I can’t stress how amazing it was. The Atonement helps because I know Heavenly Father and Jesus understand my struggles. They love me and understand that things aren’t easy for me. They are patient and won’t give up when I fail time and time again. The resurrection gives me hope that my brain can be healed one day and I can come to love myself as they do. Story #2 My childhood sexual abuse lasted for about 10 years, between the ages of 2 to until about 12 by people who I trusted would love me and take care of me. It was always very secret and behind closed doors and no one ever said anything. So the fact that it was with people that I loved and trusted made it really devastating for me. Tell me about your home environment growing up. Did you come from a stable home? Well, I came from a home where my parents really loved me and they were doing the very best that they could with what they had at the time. My father was an active alcoholic until I was about 7 and still had some other problems after he stopped drinking. My mom worked hard to keep our family together and pay the bills and be a mom. Honestly, she had no idea what was going on with me. I have two younger siblings. I don’t know if they had the same experiences. They really weren’t there when I was in the middle of my experiences. It’s a unique, individual thing so I can only speak for myself. Did you feel that you could ever trust your mother or tell her what was going on? To people who haven’t had their own experience with sexual abuse, it seems obvious that you should want to tell someone what’s going on. But when you’re going through it yourself there’s a part of you that is so ashamed and feels so broken, damaged, wrong, just because you were there, even though it wasn’t your fault. “Dirty” is actually the word that comes to mind. It’s almost a feeling like you want to protect yourself too cause you don’t want anyone to know you were a part of it, even if it was forced on you, even if you didn’t want it. A lot of women I’ve talked to have these layers upon layers of false beliefs. And the first belief is “I don’t have any value, I don’t have worth.” Another thing you internalize is that somehow this is my fault. Somehow I’m a bad girl, and the whole thing becomes this entwined yarn of lies and it’s almost like you start to protect the secret too. You don’t want people to know. When you have those experiences as a child, and you’re told not to tell, you feel so helpless that you believe those lies. You don’t have the words to explain it to an adult. If I ever did try to tell my mom, it was in such a vague way. I just knew that I felt that I had to keep the secret. I know my mother: if I had told her, she would have done anything to help me and protect me. As a child, how do you know that this is something that’s wrong? Is it just that people tell you it’s a secret, or is there a conscious voice telling you it’s wrong? The body might be five years old, but the spirit inside of you is eternal. And the spirit knows and has a feeling of what is safe and not safe. Any time there’s activity like this there is so much darkness around and involved in it, that the spirit is sensitive to those energies. I remember once, somebody walking into the room and I felt their intention and I felt that darkness and immediately went into fear. It’s more than just a physical experience because it is such a violation of the love of God and light and sanctity, the spirit knows because of it’s level of intelligence. So you experience it on lots of levels because even if it’s new physically, emotionally you know something is wrong. What kind of a child were you? I was a very resilient child. I had straight As. I was always trying to be a good little girl. I was probably one of those kids that no one would ever suspect would be a victim of this kind of behavior. I was the first female seminary president in my high school. I had a full-ride scholarship to Ricks College. I was just carrying these deep, deep secrets that I was very good at covering up. Let’s talk about your healing. When did you realize that this was something you needed to address directly? Here’s what I know for certain: you can create and you can work so hard to create a good life — I was active in the Church, I was married to a great person, and had two great kids — but you cannot get away from the poison that’s within you. What I found was that on the outside I was working really hard at this picture perfect life – getting the house clean, raising my kids, doing my own work – but I had issues inside that I didn’t have an explanation for. I was depressed a lot, I had really deep fatigue, there were times I’d be in public and I’d be overcome with intense fear even though I didn’t know why. I had mood swings and sometimes I’d be just fine happy one minute and then the next minute I’d be filled with anger and have to leave the room. It was the same into my twenties until the level of that depression, those mood swings got so severe, that I had to ask myself the questions I was never willing to ask myself before. At that point, I had no memory of my childhood traumas. What happens to many victims of trauma is that, to cope with the experiences, your subconscious will bury them very deeply until you’re ready to heal. Until you’re ready to heal, it’s really a disservice to have them at the front of your mind because you don’t know how to cope with them. In psychology it’s common for traumatic memories to be buried so we can cope, but sometimes that protective mechnanism gets in your way because you think that if you can’t remember the trauma clearly, maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe it was just a weird dream. You’re faced with the challenge of actually believing what you’re remembering and then getting other people to believe you. For example, post traumatic stress in soldiers will sometimes will result in their shutting out an entire year. It’s a survival mechanism, but it means that you also live in denial and it takes a lot of courage to even ask the questions. The truth is that I had years of my childhood that I just couldn’t remember at all. My mind shut down the memory of all of it. Finally at age 25, I was having crazy dreams and memories were coming to the surface, and I finally prayed, “Father, I just need some type of healing.” I was praying to heal from depression and social anxiety, but I had a willingness to look at whatever was the real culprit and so the memories came back on their own. What tools did you use at this point, when the memories started returning? I had the feeling that I had been abused and I went to see a psychologist. As a young woman, I did not identify myself as a sexual abuse victim. That came in my late twenties. Before then, I knew that my dad was an alcoholic and that my family had problems and I had the deep fear that I had been a victim of sexual abuse. I also had random dreams sometimes that seemed really real, and I’d wake up in a panic, but I did not identify myself as a victim. I didn’t connect that the problems I was having at that time were related to those dreams. The process of self-identifying as an abuse victim began about when I was 30, so five years ago. Initially, I went to see a psychologist for the depression and we just talked, and after I left his office the spirit said to me, “Now you are ready to remember.” And over the next couple of days I saw the memories in my mind, while I was awake, and then I acknowledged that I knew. It was no longer under the surface. That’s why it’s so hard for some people to heal because of that safety mechanism of forgetting. I think it was because I was finally in a place where I could accept some help. I really want this to be conveyed so clearly: the Atonement can heal everything. At the time I went to seek help, I was using what I call the Key 5: going to church every Sunday, reading scriptures, praying, going to the temple and getting Priesthood blessings. I was doing those and it was still not enough to touch the depression and social anxiety. And at that point, the Spirit led me to someone who could help me. I don’t think people realize that depression and healing from abuse is like a disease of the mind. Did you involve LDS services at all? My first psychologist was not LDS. I never went to LDS Services specifically, but I’ve worked with one person in particularly who is LDS, a really gifted, devout person who had special understanding of my experience. She has a life mission of helping people heal. Is there ever a time when you feel you’re completed healed? Or is that even possible? It’s a process. The process is several stages. I would say for any person to know when you are truly healed is when you can think about the experience, you know that it happened, but you don’t have any anger anymore. No hard feelings. You have the learning and you feel the gratitude from that learning. And that was when I knew I had healed. Forgiveness comes from that feeling. Before that time, forgiveness feels really difficult. There was a time when I was in this therapy process and I was still so angry and hurt. It was a lot of time to heal, a lot of money, it was a huge process and in the end, nobody had ever been held accountable. Not one of my abusers had acknowledged their fault. No one had apologized. No one had given anything back. It felt to me to be a ten million dollar debt over my life. And not only had no one paid back anything, but they had actually even denied it and never acknowledged that it happened. It’s like no physical thing can offer comfort when you’re looking at this depth of pain. The way you hang on to God, your relationship with your creator… that’s the only thing. There’s no money, there’s no apology, no reparations. I was in prayer one time and I remember praying almost as if I was face to face with the Savior: “Who is going to account for this debt?” And the answer was, “The Atonement will cover this debt.” And I had to take that answer and surrender and say, “I don’t know how you will pay this, but I surrender it. I give it to you.” It was like at a cellular level, the decision to do that. At that point, a true feeling of healing took place. As soon as I felt that no one owed me anything anymore, that I wasn’t waiting for an apology, that the Savior could pay it, I really became free. Story #3 When I was nine years old, my mother took my youngest brother to visit her family and my other brother and I slept with my dad. And it was my dad who molested me. It was such a surreal, strange thing. One night we were sleeping next to him, and he just started to touch me inappropriately. At that age, you just don’t know what to make of that kind of thing. It only happened once. There are a couple of things that resulted from that. One was that I never had a trusting relationship with my dad after that. The older I got, the worse I felt about it because I understood more the implications of it. What was your response when you were 9? I just knew something bad had happened, but I didn’t understand what it meant. I’m sure my dad felt guilty about it. I don’t know what causes a father to do that. He hadn’t done anything like that before, and nothing since. But I do think, looking back, he was a bit of a misogynist. Just comments he would make about women. I remember many years later getting into an argument with him about how he thought girls are responsible for boys’ sexual advances. Did it occur to you to talk to anybody about this? That’s the thing I’ve thought about a lot since then. Should I have told my mom? I didn’t really have anyone I could trust, I just didn’t. If I had told someone, it could have really had a huge impact on my family and my parents’ relationship. My parents are still married; I don’t know how happy a marriage it is. I think it would have really affected my mom greatly. She has a history of depression, which I didn’t realize until I was an adult, and she had a really harrowing childhood. I think knowing about this could have been really traumatic for her. I also don’t think my mother would have believed me, and I think that’s pretty common. I think that’s why it’s so important for there to be Primary and Young Women leaders who young girls can trust. In the rural area where I lived, there was no LDS Social Services. It would have been really helpful to have those resources. I never talked to anyone about it till I went to college. My dad and I had one conversation that alluded to the episode and he said that he thought I had forgotten about it. It was very awkward and I don’t remember much else besides the fact that I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it. When I went to college, I talked to a bishop about it, and he was utterly clueless. He said, “Now that you’ve come to me and told me, you’ve done your part.” I left thinking, “I didn’t have ‘a part.’” I was nine years old, I didn’t need to do restitution. I was looking for peace. Why did you choose that time to bring it up with a bishop? I felt there was something wrong. I wasn’t getting ready to go to the temple or anything so I’m not really sure. I just felt I should try to talk about it. He didn’t have anything to say. I think he should have, at that point, referred me to a professional. I hope that bishops now are counseled to do that, that they’re much more equipped to handle things like that. I had a very hard time trusting my husband and I didn’t realize it until we were having marital issues. I really believe in marriage counseling and therapy. That’s been the most difficult repercussion of my whole experience with my dad, the fact that it has reverberations in my marriage. At one point, our therapist asked if there might be something that had happened to cause the mistrust I felt. At that moment, it hit me like a tidal wave. I suddenly realized how this experience with my father had planted a seed of mistrust that grew and grew until it threatened my marriage. That social worker really helped. At one point in my therapy I said, “I can’t imagine how horrible it would be to be abused for years, instead of just once!” The social worker gave such a great response. He said, “It actually doesn’t matter the extent – the pain and loss of trust that you feel is intense no matter how frequent it was.” I also appreciated that the therapist said, “Forgiving him doesn’t excuse it. Forgiveness is turning it over to the Lord and letting him carry that burden for you, but it doesn’t excuse it.” Reasoning like that really helped me heal. You have several daughters. What are you doing to prepare or protect them? I think it would have been really difficult for me to have sons instead of daughters because when I was having children I was really afraid that I wouldn’t be able to love a boy. That’s a strange psychological thing, but I think I was blessed that way, except of course I’m very fearful for my daughters. My husband does know I was molested and he knows that if I get the slightest feeling that something is not right with a friend, or uncle or guy around my girls, my husband simply has to trust me. There is no arguing about that. He has to trust my instincts. I try to know our neighbors well and not let my girls hang out at places that don’t have a lot of female presence. I have a friend who wouldn’t let her daughter go to friends’ homes for sleepovers. She’d just tell people, “We had an instance of abuse in our family.” I really respect that. You didn’t feel like you could go to your mother after your incident with your father. What are you doing in your relationship with your daughters to make sure they feel they can come to you? I really try to spend a lot of time with them just talking about their lives. It’s hard because I’m not a natural mother. It’s not easy for me to nurture them, but I try to be really open especially with my oldest, who’s 11, about everything. When I talked to my oldest about her sexuality, I fasted the whole day. In my own experience, my mom never brought up the subject with me.I had a friend who said, “Anyone who touches a child inappropriately is bad at that moment.” It took me a while to understand that, that even if your dad or your cousin or someone you trust who is nice usually touches you in an inappropriate way, they are bad at that moment. I think that’s important to share that with your kids. They may think because that person is usually good to them, that a sexual advance may not be wrong, and then they feel guilty or confused about feeling uncomfortable. I rely on the Spirit when I’m teaching my kids these things. That’s the only way I can do it. Conversation with Julie de Azevedo Hanks, LCSW. From your perspective as a professional therapist, what are the common threads that run through these three different accounts of childhood sexual abuse? Shame is the most common theme. Shame is the pervasive experience of these stories and also of clients I’ve worked with over the years, this sense that because someone did this to you, you are bad and you hold some of the responsibility. And building on that, how that shame impacts their relationships with those close to them. There were unique qualities in these stories given they were three different experiences, but to me as a therapist there were all very familiar. I’ve had clients who have mirrored each of these different types. Let me ask you about Story #3. How often do you get a case in which there’s been a one-time experience that’s had such an impact on the victim? It’s quite common! With people who have been abused only once, they struggle with the question, “I was only been abused once, so why did it have such an impact on me?” It’s hard to understand that the frequency isn’t the issue. Abuse is a violation of your body and your spirit, whether it happened once or multiple times. Similarly, there’s a belief among victims that it was “only” fondling or “only” touching so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. But the truth is that the level of abuse doesn’t matter; the response is what matters. I’ve had clients who have been looked at sexually, without any touching, and it’s still horribly traumatic. What is your response specifically to the concept introduced in story #2, this idea that there could be deep-seated emotional traumas that eventually resolve themselves in adulthood through recovered memory? As a therapist, I never do anything specifically to elicit traumatic memories but I believe that we recall and remember certain experiences when we’re ready to process them. I think they bubble up when the client is ready. The facts about what actually happened matter far less than the client’s subjective experience. As the therapist, I have to ask myself, “What does this emotional experience mean to them?” There’s little point in focusing on digging into all of the facts. When a child being abused at an age where they don’t have the language to describe what’s happening, sometimes they have to wait until they have a framework in which to process the experience. Another thing that was interesting to me about Story #2 was that the woman was quite a successful student in high school. Often we imagine victims of abuse walking around with big stamps on their forehead, telling us they’re a victim. Is there any way someone from the outside can be sensitive to the needs of an abuse victim even if they don’t appear wounded on the outside? There’s a whole spectrum of ways sexual abuse can affect people. On one end of the spectrum you have people who go into a perfectionist mode, overachieving, like they have to prove their worth. They have to prove that they’re good enough because there’s something deeper inside that feels damaged. That may describe woman #2. At the other end of the spectrum are people who are less functional, who continually get into relationships where they’re abused in some form, and the abuse keeps repeating and repeating. There’s depression and self-destructive behavior that goes with those continual patterns of abuse. Repeating the abuse is almost an effort to get it right: “Maybe someone will protect me this time or maybe I’ll stand up for myself.” Those are two ends of the spectrum, and of course most people fall somewhere in between. It’s all an attempt though to heal that trauma. Let’s turn to the spiritual angle of your therapy approach. What do you think about Story #2’s statements that even as a young child, she knew what was happening was bad because her spirit is eternal. What is it you think speaks to a child and tells them what’s happening is wrong? I think it’s the light of Christ. There’s something in us that tells us something is good or something isn’t good. We all have that. It’s particularly confusing for young children when they’re abused by someone they trust, because children look up to family members as role models. So, if a dad is molesting a child and that child has a voice in them telling them something’s not right, the child concludes that it must be herself who is at fault. It can’t be dad because she needs him, she relies on him to survive to adulthood. That’s why I like what woman #3 says: “If someone you trust who is nice usually touches you in an inappropriate way, they are bad at that moment.” Your practice treats a large percentage of LDS patients because you market yourself as being LDS. What are some of the tools or strategies that you use when an LDS client comes to you to heal from sexual abuse? As the therapist working with deeply spiritual people, I don’t try to separate the spiritual and the emotional. One thing I do is encourage the client to talk to God as a person. When children have been abused by a male, it interferes with their experience with God as a Heavenly Father. We tend to project onto Heavenly Father whoever our earthly father is. I try to help my clients spiritually separate their Heavenly Father from their earthly father, and explore the idea that He is entirely different from the wounded, imperfect earthly father. Even if the abuse wasn’t necessarily a father, the abuser is frequently an important male authority figure and so it is crucial to develop a personal relationship with God outside of the lens of the abuse. That’s a theme I’ve seen with people of faith: they will experience Heavenly Father in the way that they’re experienced their earthly father and/or their abuser. He’s scary, he’s secretive, he’s punitive. And that interferes with their ability to have a loving experience with Heavenly Father. Another intervention I use quite a bit is to encourage the client to have a dialogue with her younger self at whatever age she was abused. I tell her to be that adult nurturer that she may not have had in her youth. She is the adult talking to the younger version of herself, empathizing and telling the child that it is not her fault. This gives her a context to the abuse and the emotional nurturing that she likely didn’t have before. How important is therapy to a spiritual healing? It’s less pervasive today, but generationally there has been the perception that if you’re doing those basic things you’re supposed to be doing spiritually – reading your scriptures, going to church, etc. – that you shouldn’t need professional therapy. I honestly think that’s ridiculous. No one would say, if you were in a traumatic car accident, “Don’t get that broken femur set. If you can get to the temple your ribs won’t be crushed anymore.” This stigma of therapy is changing more slowly in LDS culture. I’m really passionate about this and I’ve spoken for a decade to LDS women’s groups about demystifying therapy and getting rid of the shame of therapy. We’re not putting on our dark glasses to slip into the dentist’s office unnoticed cause we’re ashamed of getting a filling. We shouldn’t be ashamed to take care of the emotional or mental health either. I always do a little cheer when I hear our leaders in General Conference that professional therapy is a needed part of healing. If we have a reader here who has unresolved trauma from sexual abuse, what would you counsel her to do? I would suggest she talk to someone about it. Share the experience with a friend, her bishop, her therapist, her spouse. It’s so important to start talking, to get it outside of you. It’s like a cancer that sits inside and grows. One of the first step to healing is actually sharing, getting it out of you, in a relationship of trust. So many women think, “It happened so long ago, it doesn’t make a difference.” But I can’t tell you how often it happens that the mother is abused as a child, and then the daughter is abused as well. I’ve seen countless families where abuse repeats itself through generations if it’s not dealt with. The idea that if you don’t tell anyone about it is won’t impact your life or your children’s lives is simply not true. The best thing you can do to make sure it doesn’t impact your children is to heal yourself. It’s eerie how often a daughter is abused at the same age as the mother was abused. Life gives us chances to heal. Don’t turn away from opportunities to heal. If you’re suffering alone because of sexual abuse, please reach out and share your story, just like these brave women have done. Part of why sexual abuse is so damaging is because it interferes with your ability to trust and can leave you feeling disconnected from yourself, and from the very people who can help you heal. We need each other. We heal through loving relationships with family and friends, with trusted professionals, and through our deep connection with Heavenly Father and our Savior, Jesus Christ. If you would like to get in touch with one of the women in this collection, email mwpeditor at gmail dot com. Julie de Azevedo Hanks can be found at http://www.juliehanks.com/counseling/

While many moms juggle kids and a career, Bonnie has juggled kids as a career. She has been a mother to her own four biological kids as well as her six adopted kids, and many foster children have been blessed by her care and love. She didn’t know that this was part of the plan for her, but she has come to understand God’s word, and follow it. He has trusted her, and she has learned that the difficult things in life bring many blessings. You have a lot of kids. Did you plan on this? I come from a very traditional family. My mom and dad got married, had seven children. My parents are still married; they will celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary this November. On the other hand, my husband, Joe’s mom and dad had both been previously married with kids, they had two children together, they had foster kids, and adopted kids. Seventeen foster kids came through his family, three of which they adopted. It was “his, hers and theirs.” Adoption was something we talked about as a possibility for ourselves before we got married, because of Joe’s experiences. I grew up in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Joe grew up in Santa Barbara but moved to Wyoming for work. We met there and were married in the Salt Lake Temple. We lived in Wyoming for the first seven years of our marriage and all four of our biological kids were born there. I got married when I was eighteen and Joe was twenty-two. I had my first baby when I was nineteen. We had four children in five years, which wasn’t the plan, but it was Heavenly Father’s plan. After Greg was born, who was our fourth child, I decided I was done, and I didn’t ask Heavenly Father, nor did I listen to any counsel. I made a permanent decision that I came to regret rather quickly, but I could not change or fix it so I had to learn to accept and live with my choice. I was twenty-three. When our kids were four, six, seven, and eight, we moved to Santa Barbara from Wyoming. About that time, we thought about adopting and we contacted the local social services. It seemed that every week there was a child on the news that needed a foster home. Bonnie Butler and Her Husband, Joe I had two part-time jobs and I was going to college at this time. I worked and went to school while the kids were in school. I worked Mondays and Wednesdays at a bank and Fridays at a laundromat that we owned with Joe’s mom and sister. I went to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays while the kids were at school. I had missed out on my college degree when I got married young, so I sat at the dining room table and did my homework while the kids did theirs. I look back on that time and wonder how I did it. How did you decide to adopt? In 1994 we had moved to Nipomo, California. We became good friends with a man in our ward, Michael, who was a marriage and family counselor and he worked for a foster care agency. He approached us and asked if we would be interested in being a foster care family. We thought we would do better with adoption because of the “in-and-out” nature of the foster care system–Joe felt it was hard for him when he was young and the foster kids would come and go. He is very tender hearted. So, he felt it would break his heart to have kids leaving. Our ward friend, Michael, was very wise, and counseled us that if we wanted to adopt, we should do foster care first, because any children we adopted would come with the same issues and problems as the kids in foster care. You need to find out if you can really raise someone else’s child. If you start with foster care, those kids are going to have the same kind of issues that adoptive kids have, but it is not a permanent situation. If you get in it and find out you can’t raise someone else’s child, you can get out easier. But a failed adoption is horrific. Our youngest son, Greg, was ten or eleven at this point. After a lot of prayer, we felt good about moving forward. I had finished my associate’s degree before we left Santa Barbara and I was thinking that I would go back and finish my bachelors once we got settled, but again, that was not in the cards. How soon did you get kids? We started the process to get approved to be foster parents in June of 1996 and got our license in August. We got a call almost immediately asking if we could have kids come that week. I had no idea placements could happen that quickly. It took a couple of days to get my brain wrapped around it. Three kids came to live with us in August of 1996.There was one little boy and two girls, ages three, five, and seven. They stole our hearts. They were adorable kids. And we learned what foster care was all about. They came to live with us at the end of August, and in November, one morning when I was saying my morning prayers; I got the strong impression that these kids would not be ours. I thought it was odd since I had not been praying about the kids. When Joe came home from work, I told him, but he wasn’t ready to hear about it. The next day the social worker called and said they had an adoptive family for those three kids. I was so grateful for that heads-up from the Spirit that they weren’t supposed to be our kids, because we really did love them. It was hard, but because of that inspiration we were able to help the kids make that transition to their new adoptive home instead of fighting it. It was a tough time. They left right before Christmas. The family that adopted them was wonderful, perfect for them. They were in another part of the state so they would not be near the dad. We had run into their dad a few times, in grocery stores, and it was uncomfortable at times. It was much safer for them to be moved somewhere else. I remember when they were leaving that Brian, my oldest son who was sixteen, asked us, “What are we going to do with our lives when they are gone?” They had become so much a part of our lives and family. Did you feel like maybe that was the end of doing foster care? That was only the starting point. Over the next three years we had eleven kids come and go. At one point, we were asked if we would consider adopting a boy and a girl. My kids were now aged thirteen, fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen. The two children we were considering adopting were ages nine and eleven. It would have been a perfect fit. The had already been placed in an adoptive home, but that family had a son already, and only wanted one child. We were really excited about the possibility of getting these children, and we went through the process of meeting the grandparents, who wanted to stay in their lives. But then we got a call saying that another family, who was friends with the grandparents and had previously, turned down an opportunity to take the kids, had changed their minds and wanted the kids after all. When it went to court, the judge said that since that family already had a relationship with the children it would be an easier transition for the kids. That was my first experience being heartbroken with adoption. After that we were a little more guarded. Over the next few years we were called seven times to adopt different groups of kids. Before the court can terminate parental rights, they have to have a family that is willing and able to take the kids that day. The day the judge says the parents’ rights are terminated, you have to be able to take the kids into your home. And it is up to the judge to decide to let them go. It seemed that for us something fell apart every time. Either the parents got their life together and the judge gave them another chance, or the grandparents showed up or something came up every time, and none of it came through. By early 1999 Brian was getting ready to go on his mission. Joe and I decided we couldn’t keep trying to adopt. It was such an emotional roller coaster ride. By the time you say yes I am going to do this, your kids are involved too. If it had been just Joe and me, we would have continued, but every time they call, you get to the point you share this information with your kids, and it’s their hearts breaking too. We decided to accept the fact that we had a house full of teenagers – our four plus two foster boys–and our lives needed to turn in a new direction. We needed to help Brian prepare for his mission and get ready to leave in March. It was a very spiritual time. We made the decision that when we returned from dropping Brian off at the Missionary Training Center we would send a letter to social services and ask for our name to be taken off the list of available adoptive families. Did you write the letter? No, we didn’t. We never really got a chance to. Literally a week after dropping Brian off at the MTC we got a call asking us if we would consider adopting six kids, five girls and a boy. We had our four kids and we had two more foster kids at the time. Our first thought was, we can’t afford six more kids. During the process to become adoptive parents we had said we were willing to adopt two kids. But they pushed and asked, what if there were three siblings? What if it was a sibling group of four? We felt that four would overwhelm us. That would require a lot of prayer. We cut it off at four kids. Then they called and asked us to take six…Joe came home from work and I said guess what? Bonnie Butler and Her Family's Sealing in 2001 By this point we had stopped telling anyone that we were trying to adopt because it had not panned out so many times. But this was so overwhelming we felt like we needed the support of our families. We called my parents and siblings and Joe’s parents and siblings and asked them to keep us in their prayers as we made the decision. We spent the next three to four weeks fasting and praying and going to the temple as often as we could. We were in the Celestial room of the temple when Heavenly Father made it very clear that these six children were ours and that we needed to take them. It was what He wanted us to do. It was overwhelming, at the time, but it was still reassuring to have that answer. It gave me a confidence in the moment of making the decision that has carried me through many difficult days of insecurity and confusion as to why Heavenly Father would think that I could handle this. If I had really understood the challenges that lay ahead I am not certain I would have had the courage to continue. As if this were not challenging enough the week we found out that the parent’s rights had been terminated and the kids would be coming to us, Joe was called to serve as Bishop of our ward. We now had twelve kids: our biological kids, aged nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, and fifteen; our two fourteen-year-old foster sons; and our newest children aged ten, nine, eight, eight (twins), six, and four. All together we had five boys, seven girls and a brand new Bishop. This was the beginning of an incredible journey. How do logistics work in your home as far as laundry, food, and homework? Do older kids help the younger ones? When our first three foster children arrived, the seven-year-old had been treated as a maid in the previous foster home. She was in constant fear of not having things clean enough. She would not rest unless the vacuuming was done. As soon as we were done eating a meal she would rush to clean up the table and do dishes. We have always used a chore chart with our kids, so to help her out, we assigned her a “chore buddy” and she only had to help with whatever chore that child was assigned. She liked this and finally let go of the responsibility of cleaning the entire house. The two younger children did not want to be left out and asked if they could have a chore buddy, too. They were assigned to one of the older kids and helped do the little things that they were capable of at their age. This system proved so successful that we continued it with each of the children who came into our home. They kept their chore buddy until they were old enough to clean a room on their own. As for laundry, my oldest children did their own by the time the foster kids started coming. Our teenage foster kids did their own along with our children. When we had younger kids in the house I did all of their laundry. Several months after the adoption I tired of rewashing clothing they had not put away so I taught them to do their own laundry at fairly young ages, and they quickly learned that it was easier to put things away the first time rather than rewash and refold them. Bonnie Butler and Her Family in 2011 Homework time was often stressful. I generally oversaw all of the work but my older kids were so good about stepping in whenever I needed a break. My oldest daughter was often my afternoon angel. One particular foster child struggled with school and would melt into tears and completely shut down at the first sign of difficulty. Amanda had the patience of Job with her. She would sit with her for hours until everything was completed. I could not have handled that child without her. About four years ago we pulled our four youngest children from the public schools as they just could not cope with being on campus. Three of them began an online high school program and the youngest, who was in seventh grade, was homeschooled, with me as his teacher. Our three girls graduated from those online programs and our son is now a junior in high school. He is in a program where he does his schoolwork at home but meets with a teacher every other week to turn work in and get new assignments. Even though he is a junior I am still very hands on, as he struggles to complete his work on a regular basis unless he is directly supervised. The food issues are too numerous to even get started on. Bonnie Butler's Grandsons What sort of systems do you have in place to keep you sane? Off the cuff my answer would be “I’m not sure that I am sane!” More seriously I would say I have a strong support system around me. I have a loving Father in Heaven; I have a wonderful husband and very supportive kids. I am also blessed with a handful of fantastic friends who understand my life and help me to laugh when I want to cry, allow me to cry when I really need to and remind me to play as well as work. I have the ability to put myself on time out when necessary and if I forget Joe helps me out. What role do you feel you played as a foster mother in the lives of the children? For the most part my role as a foster mother was the same as my role as a mother to the rest of my kids–to love and nurture them, to teach them, and give them security. We did our best to provide a safe, loving environment for them while they were with us. What changes in emotions did you feel towards a child when you knew they might be adopted rather than just passing through as a foster child? That is a hard question for me. I gave a piece of my heart to each of the children who came into our home. I think the difference for me was feeling a deeper sense of responsibility towards those we adopted. With the foster children I felt a sense of shared responsibility with their social workers and counselors. With the adopted kids I felt more a sense of personal responsibility. How did you deal with the hopelessness of a child “passing through”? While the children we fostered dealt with many different issues, hopelessness was not one of them. Of the eleven children we fostered, nine of them were very young and had not developed the hopelessness that sets in when children have been in the system for a long time. One of the teenage boys we had was placed with us as a long term placement, which gave him more of a sense of security, and the other was in foster care for the first time so neither of them was dealing with feelings of hopelessness, either. What has been the greatest challenge to you personally as a foster mother? Helping kids leave when my heart is breaking over the loss. It is important to be supportive when the kids leave so you have to do your best to be positive and help them find good in the situation. One of our teenage foster sons made the decision that he could not stay with us any longer due to the chaos with all of the younger children. He had adjusted to our home full of teenagers and everything revolving around teenage life. When the six younger children moved in, the dynamics in our home changed drastically. He could not cope with all of the changes and asked to be moved. In an effort to speed up his move he began behaving very poorly, hoping they would move him sooner. When a new placement was found I had to help him pack up and get ready. I also ended up driving him to the new home. I helped him carry all of his things into his new room, gave him a tearful hug and cried all the way home. Even though he had created a lot of stress and difficulty while he was with us, it took me several weeks to get past his leaving. How have you had to grow and what character traits have you developed? I have grown in countless ways. I have learned to rely on the Lord daily to help me cope with the constant ups and downs of parenting traumatized children. I have had to learn which battles to fight and which ones to let go. I have learned to discern between needs and wants–both my own and the kids’. I have had to develop a thick skin as people who look in from the outside pass judgment on my parenting abilities without walking in my shoes. I have learned to trust the Lord in all things and I am in the process of learning to trust myself because He trusts me. Bonnie Butler and Her Family in 2009 As for character traits, I have to rely on my family for that answer. I often feel inadequate or incompetent as a parent. The only thing I can think of is faith. I have developed a lot of faith. While I feel like the following are in short supply my husband assures me that I have developed an abundance of patience, love, understanding, tolerance, and compassion. I hope he is right. What has been your most useful mothering tool as a foster and adoptive mother? Prayer. Understanding that this is a partnership with Heavenly Father and knowing that I cannot do it without His guidance and support. I often say that I live from priesthood blessing to priesthood blessing. I would be lost without His input. What are the greatest signs of hope that you have seen? For me the greatest signs of hope are seeing where our kids are today. One of our foster sons has graduated from college with a degree in physics and is gainfully employed. Six of our kids are currently attending college. Of those six, four of them are adopted. Helping them move forward into adult life and supporting them as they work through the traumas of their early years gives me hope that they can have a better future. It has been twelve years since we adopted the six kids. Our kids are now thirty-one, thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-seven, twenty-three, twenty-one, twenty, twenty, eighteen, and sixteen. The eighteen- and sixteen-year-olds are still at home. Our oldest son Brian, his wife and two boys are currently living with us while he completes his schooling, so we still have a full house. Six of our kids are now married and we have six beautiful grandsons. Over the years of parenting and moving I have learned to trust in Heavenly Father. While parenting these kids has been by far the hardest thing I have ever done, it has also been the most rewarding. At times I still question why Heavenly Father trusted me with this assignment but I am grateful that He did. He promised me early on in the process that He would never leave me alone to handle things. He has kept His promise. At A Glance Name: Bonnie Butler Location: El Dorado Hills, CA Age: 50 Marital status: Married 32 years Children: Brian, 31, Amanda 30, Andrea 29, Greg 27, Brittney 22, Alexandra21, Riley 20, Kelly 20, Kaitlin, 17, Kevin 15. Occupation: Homemaker Schools Attended: Rock Springs High School, Wyoming, Santa Barbara City College Interview by Deila Taylor. Photos by Katie Butler.