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With three small children and a husband in his medical residency, Emily is a busy mother. But she has also committed herself to graduate studies in choral conducting, fulfilling a deep passion for praising God through sacred music. Emily explains why music and motherhood are so important to her, and why she’s chosen to pursue her studies at this point in her life. What were the influences that helped you decide to be a musician? My mother was my earliest music teacher. She taught me music theory and how to play the piano from an early age. My parents supported my participation in voice and piano competitions, recitals, choir through both school and church, and serving in various music capacities at church. These things all shaped my decision to become a music major when I went to college, but, as many college students do, I experienced a period of indecision about what I really wanted to commit my life to. There were many things I could pursue while still remaining musically active, after all. So, my decision to embrace music as my life calling, in addition to raising a family, was formulated in layers over time. There was, however, one distinct moment when I fully embraced it and determined to never look back: One evening when I was home from college for Christmas break, and in the midst of great turmoil over whether to stick with music as the focus of my education, I was singing for my father in the living room. The particular piece I was singing was Charles Gounod’s well-known “O Divine Redeemer.” About halfway through the song, I was overcome with feelings of the Spirit and became very emotional. I was struck with the feeling that of course I had to commit myself to music—that it was my obvious path. My purpose was to glorify my Savior through music, and facilitate others’ ability to do so also. You are currently a graduate student at the University of Iowa in choral conducting. Why have you pursued this course of study and what do you hope to accomplish with your degree? I received my bachelor’s degree in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy from Brigham Young University in 2000. After that I took some time off before pursuing graduate education, but remained professionally active as a concert soloist, teacher of a large voice studio, and church musician (both as an organist and soloist). These efforts saw us through five grueling years of my husband’s medical school and medical internship, as well as the birth of three children. I loved my work (and chose it in large part) because of its family friendliness: I set my own hours and taught from home, and my church and concert work primarily only involved me on weekends when my husband could usually be home. Emily Spencer Nearly ten years have gone by since receiving my bachelor’s degree, and I am now halfway through my graduate studies in choral conducting. I only take two classes at a time, since I still have such young children at home, but my classes are in the morning when two of the three are in school, and the youngest stays with another LDS mom for a couple hours. It is my firm rule that I study outside of class only during nap time and after they’ve gone to bed. It’s pretty intense, but it’s working out so far. It’s a miracle, really. When we first moved to Iowa City for my husband’s residency, I knew I was going to go back to school, but I didn’t have a clear idea of how this would be possible. Even a week before my first semester started, I still didn’t know who was going to watch my son while I was in class. As I remained faithful and prayerful, all these things worked out, though, even in the last hour. Another young mother who was actually looking to pick up a bit of babysitting approached me, and our schedules fit perfectly. Also, incredibly, her house just happened to be right on the corner bus stop of the exact route I needed to get to class. This proved to be a critical factor in my morning routine, as I had to get four people (myself and all three of my children) to four different places, all within thirty minutes. Also, unbeknownst to us at the time, the location of the house we bought worked perfectly for me to make all those connections. Lastly, I could not have done this without financial assistance, and an amazingly generous and angelic husband and wife—the husband I’ve never even met, and the wife only once face-to-face—became aware of my story and freely offered a substantial amount of financial help. These are the details that we do not see or have any control over, but the Lord does, and He works all things together for our good. It has always been my sincere desire to help people feel closer to their Maker, and I have always been drawn to sacred music. I never whole-heartedly embraced the vocal literature I was required to learn and study in my undergraduate training, actually, because it was much more focused on secular vocal genres (mainly opera and art song) than anything of a sacred nature. Though both the music and poetry were beautiful, the messages of these pieces often didn’t speak to me and were far removed from the innermost feelings of my heart. Still, I completed my vocal studies, and I’m glad that I did, because I did have some fun operatic experiences, and it allowed me to become a respected and sought-after voice teacher in my community, as well as gain work as a concert soloist, all of which supported my family when we had no other sources of income. For graduate studies, I turned my attention to conducting because there is a far greater emphasis on sacred music than there is in vocal performance programs, and, having directed many different choirs, I feel a tremendous sense of joy and satisfaction in helping others experience this music. It is very important to me that high-quality and spiritually potent music be experienced by all—not just those who can afford to attend concerts or are fortunate enough to gain training in elite music schools. There is something profoundly fulfilling to me about helping someone experience music that they might not ever experience otherwise, and then, most especially, for them to be transformed by it. You have three small children and a husband who is in his medical residency. Why do you feel it’s important to pursue your master’s degree now when your home life could be all consuming? What motivates you to pursue this degree in the face of such responsibilities? I knew that if I waited, it was only going to get harder, not easier. As my children grew up and became more involved in school and extra-curricular activities, and as more children came along, life would get more busy and more complicated—not less so. So I felt an urgency to get it done sooner rather than later, even if it would mean having to chip away at it slowly. Further, as I feel powerfully drawn to this work and feel a strong sense of mission, all of which is deeply rooted in my spirituality, I cannot imagine living with these feelings and not responding to them. Many times I calculated out the years it would be before our “projected youngest” was up and grown, and it was years. Decades, even. I knew it was not meant for me to hide my God-given interests under a bushel. Not with the Spirit working on me as hard as it was. And so it was my understanding with God that if I always put my family first, no matter what, He would make a way. And He has. As mother to three young children, are you in a different stage of life than most of your classmates? Yes, and there was a time I felt a bit removed from them, but our friendships have improved as I’ve gotten to know them better. Only three of the other students in my program have any children or are even married. And though I am married, in many ways I must operate as though I am not, due to the rigors of my husband’s medical residency (he frequently works 80-98-hour work weeks, at all hours of the day and night). All three of my children are very young and dependent, and one of them is autistic. None of my family or closest friends are nearby. Emily Spencer Managing a household of five people, three of them age six and under, one of them demanding great amounts of time and attention due to his special needs, a medical resident husband—yes, of course this is a very heavy load. Also, because of my children, I do not have much study time at my disposal during the day, which means many late nights. There are nights when I don’t go to bed at all. Finally, my husband and I both have demanding callings at church. So is this a heavier load than the average student? Yes, I suppose I would say so. But I don’t feel myself a martyr because of it, neither do I feel resentful or sorry. I chose my path. What keeps me going are the many affirmations that have come through prayer, priesthood blessings, and feelings of the Spirit, the obvious ways the Lord has magnified me and consecrated my efforts, the support and generosity of others stepping in when they had no idea how much I needed their help, keeping a clear vision of the end result, the ability to juggle these things and still unequivocally put my family first, and, of course, knowing that this phase is temporary! Do your colleagues at school know you’re Mormon? I am quite certain that my academic colleagues all know I am Mormon (this is not something I ever hide), and I am very grateful to be able to say they have never treated me with anything other than respect and graciousness. I’m sure the way I live my faith is something they observe, but I don’t believe it dictates their behavior towards me—at least not in a negative way. As far as how other Mormon women respond to my professional pursuits, that is a mixed bag. The overwhelming majority, especially those who know my heart, and my devotion to my family, are nothing but supportive. Of course, there are those who find it difficult to view anyone pursuing a course different than their own without some feeling of comparison, and thus judgment and criticism. Why do you think it is so easy to fall into judgment and comparison? Aiming to be an upstanding, righteous Mormon woman is a noble goal. What is problematic is when cultural extensions of the “definition” creep in and come to be regarded as “doctrine” (especially when the definition is cultural and didn’t come from Him in the first place). Then follows the presumption that our personal “doctrines” must be adhered to by all if they would also be considered upstanding, righteous Mormon women. And so we go, holding up our checklists, and comparing them to the checklists of others. Not all women will identify with my experience, but when I was younger and not as certain of my path, this ideology was very real, and so deeply ingrained that to become anything contrary to the prescription would have been (so it seemed to me) a devastating and profound failure—one with eternal consequences. Emily Spencer There is not one cookie-cutter mold we must all fit. The truth is that our Father in Heaven knows each of us intimately and individually. We have different needs. We have different challenges. We have different gifts. Each soul is precious, and each soul has its own course of development, perfectly designed and suited by Him who knows us best. The Lord wants our hearts—earnest, sincere, contrite—so that He may lead us back to His bosom. He is less interested in how well we satisfy man-made checklists and measure up to man-made titles. The idea that there was one set mold was deeply troubling to me. It is not in looking to our neighbors or marking checklists, but in entering into our closets, bowing on our knees before our Father, and in the boundless and unconditional love of our Savior, that we must seek and will find affirmation. When we lose ourselves and reach out to serve others, we discover that comparison between one’s life course versus another’s life course is completely irrelevant. And when comparison becomes irrelevant, feelings of judgment, competition, inadequacy, and fear fade. We need not take cues from friends, neighbors, or social customs in order to measure our (or anyone else’s) worthiness or righteousness. What sources do you turn to in figuring out the kind of woman you want to be? Historically, I have felt a real void in this regard. It was my tendency to view the vast and never-ending supply of writings by and about ecclesiastically prominent men, both ancient and modern, and come away focused on the comparatively profound deficit when it came to like representation of women. It seemed that what little I could find, I really had to dig for, and scrape together from here and there, and then I would still be left with more questions than answers. Who were all these prophetesses obscurely referenced in the scriptures, and where are their writings, or accounts of their noble deeds? Of course I realized that one must consider the gender customs of this (and all) ages, and the fact that most women and men were not even literate, and therefore could not have kept records, and so forth. Nevertheless, there was this void, and I found it deeply discouraging. Though this comparative void still exists, I have had several experiences through which the Lord has showed me Himself what kind of woman He wants me to be. One experience had to do with my perception of myself as a mother specifically. When we moved to Wisconsin for my husband’s medical schooling, we were hit with about every possible major life change imaginable: a move from where both our families lived to halfway across the country where we had no family or any friends at all, a brand new (and our first) baby, the simultaneous drop of two full-time incomes to zero income, my husband returning to full-time schooling, me going from full-time work to constantly being at home, and then feeling trapped there, because we had also dropped from two vehicles to one, which my husband then took to school, etc. Besides all these major life-changes hitting at once, my precious new baby also happened to be extremely colicky; thus it is sufficient to say my induction into the world of motherhood was not the rosy picture I’d always envisioned. Adding to this was the postponement of my educational goals and dreams, which I desired greatly, while I watched my husband go off to school each day to learn all kinds of fascinating things, throwing his heart and soul into a field he loved, and got to choose, whereas mothering seemed to be my predetermined and singular path, regardless of my talents or interests. This was a very hard time for me. I felt a great sense of pain and failure at not feeling the peace, joy, and contentment that I’d always been taught I would I feel in this new role—a role I’d always thought I would embrace. Finally it had arrived, and not only did I not enjoy being a mother—I hated it. Of course I loved my child, but the passing hours felt so menial and mundane. They inspired no sense of accomplishment, no intellectual stimulation, no intrigue. Where was all the profound joy I was supposed to be feeling that I’d heard about all my life? And what were my gifts and talents, my ambitions and goals—the righteous desires of my heart—given to me for, if I was now to shut them off (as the culture seemed to indicate was the “right” thing to do)? Lastly, if I was forsaking these things for a higher calling, why didn’t the intrinsic joys of the higher calling not only replace but transcend the joy I’d felt before? If I was faithfully and dutifully doing what I was supposed to be doing, why wasn’t I happy? Emily Spencer We happened to be visiting my parents right at the height of my bitterness. I remember pulling my dad aside and sobbing to him as I related my misery. His answer to me was that I must pray—pray for peace, pray for help, pray for understanding—that I would be able to discover the divinity of motherhood, and find peace and joy in this calling. Though I knew he was right, feelings of bitterness and cynicism persisted. That night, emotionally drained, I crawled into bed and mustered enough energy to mumble only half-heartedly into my pillow, “Please help me. I really, really need help.” Then, emotionally exhausted, I fell asleep. Two days later, we were back home in Wisconsin, and we were getting ready to turn in for the night. As my husband began to pray, I suddenly felt an impression begin to enter my mind, which then spread to my heart and subsequently consumed my whole being. It was clearly coming from a source outside of myself, a power greater and higher than I was. It was quiet and still, and yet it consumed my whole soul. It felt as though time had stopped and my consciousness hovered in a state of suspension between two different realms. I don’t remember hearing the rest of my husband’s prayer, though it was still going on. I could fill volumes detailing the piercing and powerful message that was conveyed, and yet it came to me fully in only a matter of seconds, and it came in perfect stillness and gentleness, and was imparted tenderly, lovingly, and totally void of any judgment. To describe all that I received and felt is beyond the scope of discussion here, but the crux of the message was this: You are the closest thing to the Savior your child will ever know in this life. After this moment passed, I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time. The anger and bitterness that had raged in my heart was quiet. I had heard all my life that “motherhood is next to godhood” and “motherhood is divine” and so forth, but I had never felt the depth or literal nature of this truth. It had always seemed to me just something nice to say—cliché expressions at best. Now, for the first time ever in my life, I sat and thought, motherhood is divine. Motherhood is the noblest thing a woman can consecrate her life to. A mother is Christ’s sacred stand-in. She is a type and shadow. As I cling to Jesus to save my soul, so does a child cling to its mother for all sense of salvation that it knows. Jesus, Mother—these are the names that are called out when we need protection, guidance, wisdom, love, comfort, sustenance, rescue. Whether we know God or not, whether we have loving relationships with our biological mothers or not, we all crave the nurture of some higher power, of some loving guardian. Since that life-changing experience, I have discovered this metaphor to have boundless applications. To me, the fact that women have generally been regarded as lowly and lesser throughout the ages is just another symbolism between women and Christ. People mock and spit in the face of motherhood—the most exquisite and godlike of all her capabilities, that of being able to beget, nurture, and guide life—the same way they mocked and spit in the face of Him who saved us. Just as there was “no form nor comeliness; ….no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2), there is nothing on the surface level that is overtly triumphant or exalting about motherhood; indeed, in the flow of day-to-day rhythms, it can seem rather common and mundane, like “a root out of a dry ground” (vs. 2). As “he is despised and rejected of men” (vs. 3), so is motherhood. As we “hid as it were our faces from him” and “esteemed him not” (vs. 3), so does society hide its face from mothers, so does it not esteem them. Just as “surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (vs. 4), so does a mother weep with her child that weeps. Just as “with his stripes we are healed” (vs. 5), so does any benefit to the child represent some sacrifice of the mother—time, money, education, employment, leisure, sleep, etc. Anything the child gains is something, in some form, that she cannot have for herself. One brief verse of Isaiah that is very poignant to me is where the Lord plainly and succinctly states how He succors His children: “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you” (Isaiah 66:13). To me, this verse perfectly encapsulates the metaphor between the mission of mothers and the mission of the Savior. It embodies the very heart of both motherhood and womanhood, and why we do what we do: it is to emulate Him who is the greatest nurturer of us all. At A Glance Name: Emily Spencer Location: Iowa City, IA Age: 31 Marital status: Married 11 years Children: Three sons, ages 6, 4, and 2 Occupation: Full-time mom and part-time student Schools Attended: Brigham Young University, University of Iowa Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” “Dearest Children,” “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief,” “How Great the Wisdom and the Love” Current Church Calling: Ward Choir Director On the Web: www.EmilySpencer.com Interview produced by Neylan McBaine. Photos by Michael Kreiser Photography

In 2005, Shannon Cox founded Haitian Roots, an organization that sends 133 needy Haitian children to school each year. Shannon recounts the unexpected adoption of her Haitian son and the ways it opened her heart and mind to the plight of Haiti’s strong-willed people. This young mother of four affirms the unexpected course of her life is not the consequence of coincidence but divine intervention. Haitian Roots provides sponsorship for Haitian children who want to go to school. How did you first become involved with Haiti and find the motivation to start this program? The story of Haitian Roots began about seven years ago when I was first married, working from home for an international adoption agency. Because I speak fluent Spanish, I was running the agency’s Guatemala program, but the agency encouraged me to expand its efforts in other countries. Through my research, I started getting hung up on the beautiful children from Haiti. I didn’t know anything about Haiti, even where it was. Soon, everywhere I turned, I heard about Haiti. I started teasing my husband that we were going to adopt a little boy from Haiti. In the back of my mind, I thought that if I got the agency to start an adoption program in Haiti maybe I could find my son, if I really did have one. I was able to get the Haitian adoption program up and running, and I thought someday—years down the road, if I was supposed to—I would adopt a child. I then had some very spiritual experiences that let us know that my son was soon going to be born in Haiti, even though we had two very young daughters and didn’t even qualify for adoption by Haitian law, which requires adoptive parents to be at least 35 years old, married for a minimum of 10 years and have no biological children. Shannon Pearl Allred Cox with Her Son Our first trip to the country was to see our son, who was two months old at the time of our visit. We were very overwhelmed by the poverty. It was staggering, worse than anything I had seen. My husband and I felt hopeless and wondered how things could get any better for these people—until we attended church. We had been in Haiti a couple of days and were able to have our son with us. As we walked through the gates to get into the church, we heard forty or fifty Elders singing at the top of their lungs “We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet.” An overwhelming feeling of the Spirit suddenly filled us with hope. After that first trip, my husband and I thought it would be cool if someday we could do something to give back. We both have a strong passion for education and feel it’s really the key to eradicating poverty. We talked about the idea of sponsoring a child to go to school. Again, we thought maybe someday down the road when our kids were grown we would have the time to put together an organization. But little by little, prompting after prompting, Haitian Roots began. While we were in the process of adopting our son, we made close friends who are native Haitians, and we started talking to them about the idea. They had sponsored some children to go to school, and we felt strongly that we should get started. We had a goal to send 20 children to school the first year, the 2005-06 school year. We have 133 children in the program right now. Eventually we plan to build and run a primary school for children during the day and a technical school for youth at night. With this, we feel our organization will give children of Haiti an alternative to the path of poverty. In the years since Haitian Roots began, how have you seen the lives of these children change? Do you still feel like education is the key to hope? Every time I go to Haiti, I become more passionate about education. I’m afraid to take credit for anything that’s happened because I see the Lord’s hands in it so much. I know I need to remain humble so He will lead us and help us. Our co-founder’s mother said, “You have no idea what you are doing for these families. It’s literally like angels have come down and lifted them out of the mud and set them on solid ground.” I see that. A lot of the time families have to choose between eating and education. In Haiti they value education so much. They know and feel that if they can get to school maybe things will change. It’s really their key to hope. Shannon Pearl Allred Cox and Her Family Our organization is not affiliated with the Church directly, but we have seen miracles and some of our families and children have become interested in the Gospel and in reading the Book of Mormon. In our original group there were two boys, 12- and 13-year-old brothers, Max and Jackie. I felt really drawn to these brothers and have kept close tabs on them. I call them “my boys.” After a series of miracles, both boys were baptized. On a trip to Haiti in 2008, Max passed me the sacrament. I was just sobbing. Right then, I had the feeling that although we can’t accomplish a huge amount there might be certain people the Lord has in mind for us to touch. And so, if this whole organization—everything—is for these boys getting an education, learning about the Gospel, joining the Church, blessing generations to come, and forever changing Priesthood leadership in Haiti, it is worth all the effort. We’re hardly making a dent. When you look at all of Haiti it feels so hopeless, so I try to look at the kids we are helping. How has your focus changed since the earthquake? Right now, we’ve only been able to account for 40 of the 133 children we sponsor. We already know that two of our children are orphaned. A lot of our families have lost their homes. We do know that a couple of our children have lost their lives. Shannon Pearl Allred Cox The only thing that has saved me from being completely distraught about the earthquake is an understanding that I don’t have a right to be distraught. A lot of people have called asking how I am. It makes me feel really bad because this isn’t about me. I don’t have a right to be sad and depressed or to earn any attention. I tell people to please give all of their energy and attention to Haiti. Our focus as an organization is going to be on rebuilding. We’ve got a lot of people helping to get donations, tents, food and water filters to Haiti. A close friend of mine who is an emergency room doctor was one of the first physicians on the ground after the earthquake. After seeing all of the horror, he called and said, “We have to build a school!” It warmed me to know that with everything he saw, it was the need for education that struck him most. We have to get education to Haiti so the people can know how to do things for themselves. Some people have called the quake a rebuilding or renewal. A friend said it’s a rebirth of Haiti, and that’s the way I like to see it. I don’t, in any way, say that the earthquake was a blessing. It is a horrible catastrophe and tragedy. Every person that I know in Haiti has lost loved ones. No one has been unaffected. How would you suggest people help with earthquake relief? Fundraising. There are a lot of people who want to go to Haiti and volunteer. And there will be a time for that. But not right now. I haven’t even been able to go, yet, because of the burden, the stress I would put on my coordinators in Haiti. When I’m there, they are so worried about my safety and my comfort. Right now, I would be more of a burden than a help. They need medical and disaster personnel. I know it seems exciting to go and get your hands in, but that’s not the way to help right now. The help needed is in fundraising or in donating items. However, on a spiritual level, I would always tell people to pray. I feel like Haitian Roots is a mission the Lord has for me. My mission is also motherhood, and my children come first. But this is another mission the Lord has given me, and I love it. But Haitian Roots isn’t the only group doing good in Haiti. There are a lot of really wonderful organizations. This is what the Lord wants me doing, but it’s not the only good way to get involved. Shannon Pearl Allred Cox As you also focus on motherhood, where you do find your energy and time? I don’t sleep much. It’s constantly a struggle. I’m not perfect at keeping my priorities in line. A lot of times I find that I’m sitting at my computer or I’m on the phone with someone crying about the children in Haiti while my kids are tugging on my arms and running around me in circles. That’s when I stop and reevaluate. I try to focus my attention on my children during the day and cherish that time. My nights are spent on the computer and on the phone. I even schedule meetings after the kids are in bed. I’m not perfect at it. No one is. Some days I think, I did really well. I was a good mom today. Other days I go to bed thinking, I really lost my temper or I really neglected them. And then, I vow to be better the next day. I’m grateful for all of the things the Lord has given me, and I hope I’m prioritizing them correctly. Looking back on the direction of your life as a mother, why do you think you were guided towards adoption at a time when you were busy, successfully building a young family? I wasn’t having infertility problems. In fact, one of our daughters was two years old and the youngest was nine months old when we started the adoption process. One day I was out mowing the lawn with my daughter on my back in a backpack when I had a very spiritual experience. It was very simple. I was passing some roses and not an audible voice, but the clearest thought I’ve ever received said, “Your birth mother is pregnant right now, and you need to start praying for her.” That was amazing and also overwhelming. I had no idea we were going to be adopting so soon. It wasn’t anything rooted in wanting to do good or saving a child. It was nothing like that. I had a child in Haiti. I had been enlightened to know there was a woman in Haiti who would bare my child. I knew she needed help, so I began praying for her that she would find the peace she needed. The feelings I had were as if one of my children that I had snuggled in bed was in a foreign country living in an orphanage. I had to get that child home. It wasn’t that I felt bad and wanted to help this country. Those feelings came later. When we visited Haiti to see our son for the first time, our desire to help all the children we left behind grew. We felt they were part of our family as well. We had a natural desire to want to help. I believe that anytime God makes something happen, He doesn’t just do it. You have to do the work. He prompts you in the direction you need to go. Not long ago, you lost all of your hair to alopecia areata. How have you come to terms with that change and how have the lessons of acceptance learned through your work in Haiti helped you to love and accept yourself? When I lost my hair four years ago, it was really devastating. I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror. I thought, I can still be a good person and accomplish the things the Lord wants me to do. But I feel ugly and will never find myself attractive. That’s a very sad attitude, and going to Haiti helped change that. Shannon Pearl Allred Cox The first time I went to Haiti after I lost my hair, I was wearing bandanas. It was so hot. Of course I stood out. I’m white and almost six feet tall. Interestingly, none of the Haitians thought twice about my not having hair. That was the least of their worries. In an orphanage I visited, I noticed a boy who was completely healthy but who had no hair and no eyebrows. I discovered he, too, had alopecia. I held him on my lap. (To this point I had been terrified to show my bare head to anyone. I felt like I was naked if I did.) I took off my scarf for the first time in front of a bunch of people. The boy stared at me and gave me the biggest smile. He touched my head and he touched his head. There was an immediate connection, and I thought, Maybe it’s not a horrible thing. Maybe it’s not ugly. Another turning point came one night when I walked into the living room and screamed because I saw a tall bald man in the window. I stopped and realized it was me. It hit me that if I couldn’t recognize my own reflection, something was wrong. I prayed to Heavenly Father saying, “I am no longer that person I recognize in the mirror, so who am I?” Little by little things came to me in my study, and I knew it was Heavenly Father teaching me. I now realize that if my soul or my spirit is at least 10,000 years old, probably much older, I cannot let myself be defined by this physical body that I’ve only had for 35 years. I’m grateful for my body. It is a gift. But it does not define who I am. As I’ve discovered these things, I’ve redefined beauty. My entire way of thinking about beauty has changed. Shannon Pearl Allred Cox with Her Father How would you encourage women to find their missions for doing good? Follow the promptings of the Spirit. Every soul has worth to our Heavenly Father. If you feel prompted in any way, you should follow those promptings. It might be one person that you help. Maybe you won’t know the effect you have on somebody, but if there’s one soul it‘s worth your energy. Nothing is too little. At A Glance Name: Shannon Pearl Allred Cox Location: Riverdale, UT Age: 35 Marital status: Married 9.5 years Children: 4 (ages 8, 6, 5, and 11 months) Occupation: Mom, founder of Haitian Roots, Spanish interpreter Schools Attended: Ogden High School, Weber State University Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” (not in our current hymn book but wish it was) Current Church Calling: Gospel Doctrine teacher On the Web: www.haitianroots.com Interview by Melissa Hardy

After working as the executive assistant for the editor-in-chief of Mademoiselle magazine, Marcia Nelson studied for her business school entrance exam while nursing a baby. Now, she’s enjoying a fulfilling career in finance while her husband is a freelance writer and stay-at-home dad to their two children, one of whom has had a recurring brain tumor. Would you describe the path that led you to a career in finance? I have an eclectic background and I’ve gotten to where I am through happenstance, hard work, lots of luck, and just being in the right place at the right time. I was an English major in college. I started my career as a high school English teacher in New York City. My boyfriend was coming to New York for graduate school and I was graduating from college and didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I’d never even been on an airplane before, but I was excited about the opportunity to move to New York. I got a job as a nanny, moved to New York to work for a family, and six months later, I was engaged to that very same boy. I taught high school for four years, and then realized that I didn’t love it enough to keep doing it. So I went to a job recruiter and said, “I’ve never worked in an office before, but I want to.” I grew up in an era where women were stay-at-home moms, elementary teachers, bank tellers or nurses. Those were the limited options. I didn’t know what a recruiter really was or what the business world was really like, but it seemed like a good place to start. Marcia Nelson and Her Family I ended up getting a job as the administrative and executive assistant to the editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine. I got the job primarily because of two reasons: first, I could type. And second, the human resources director who interviewed me said, “You know, this is a very demanding position, this woman can be very tough.” They liked the fact that I was an English teacher, so I could write concise and grammatically correct letters. But I was warned that this editor was difficult to work with. And I said, “I managed a classroom of 30 high school students, how much harder can it be?” I got the job. I had no office background and no finance background—none of that. But it turned out that I was very good at my job and I moved up in the company. I became the executive assistant to the president of the company. The company I worked for (Gruner & Jahr) owned Parents Magazine and YM. It was a family-friendly place. They supported women having children and my husband and I were talking about having kids. The woman I worked for (the president of the company) brought her kids into the office with her, had a crib in her office and juggled motherhood with work. She was a great example of an executive woman who worked full-time and managed her children. When she moved from Gruner & Jahr to Condé Nast to be the editor-in-chief of Mademoiselle magazine, I moved with her as her executive assistant. I was totally the girl from The Devil Wears Prada! My boss wasn’t like that but a lot of people I knew seemed straight out of the movie! I stayed with that job for about six years and I was able to have my daughter, Kate, at that time. It was great working with a supportive boss, and the all of the other people in the office loved having visits from my daughter. At the same time, my husband was working as an editor for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the tax organization. My husband is extremely creative. While he was working for the tax organization, he was working on librettos, working with some composers… When our daughter was born in 1996, we debated which of us would stay home with her, how much a nanny would cost, daycare, etc. We went through all of that. And my husband finally said, “You know, I really want to be home. I don’t want to spend my time working on this very technical kind of writing when I really prefer being more creative.” And so we made the decision that he would be the stay-at-home parent and do his writing and I would continue to work. Part of that decision was based on the fact that I worked for this great woman who was very supportive of my taking time off for maternity leave. Everyday at lunch, my husband brought my daughter over to my office so that I could see my daughter and he could walk around and have some free time. My daughter became the office mascot – we even dressed her in white t-shirts and black jumpers, so she could fit in with the Conde Nast look. Marcia Nelson with Her Son, Dash In the first three years of her life, she knew how to say, “Mademoiselle” and “Mangia” because that’s the name of the place we ordered lunch from everyday! Eventually, there were rumors of Mademoiselle’s closing. Through a series of contacts, I heard about a wealthy woman who was looking for an executive assistant in her family office. I went to work for her and it was so fascinating. I learned so much. But one of the main things I learned about was the role of family offices and melding investments with financial planning. In family offices, wealthy philanthropic people create businesses to manage their money. I said to my husband, “I really love this. I love the financial planning community.” My husband and I had always been very cognizant of planning. We had a 10-year plan we had mapped out when we first got married: when we were going to have children, how much money we were going to save, when we were going to buy an apartment, and how much money we needed to save for college and retirement. And we accomplished all of that on our own. Our friends started coming to us for advice on their own planning. And I said to my husband, “I think I need to go back to school and get my MBA and really learn more about this whole financial planning thing works.” That was a very tough decision. What did I know about finance? What did I know about math? I had a three-and-a-half-year old daughter and six-month-old son at home at this point, and I was working full time, and sleep-deprived all the time! I signed up for a Kaplan course to study for the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) and I called a recruiter and said, “Okay, I need to go work for a finance firm because I’m going back to school for my MBA and I need to learn something the financial sector.” Serendipitously, I ended up working for the largest private equity firm in the world (the Carlyle Group) for three years. My executive assistant background was very helpful, but also I was doing Excel spreadsheets and doing research on companies and learning about the S&P and Moody’s [financial intelligence indices]. All the stuff that comes into play with working for a firm like that. And it was fabulous. I learned about trading and all the compliance issues that come up in a big organization, and how to do financial research. So I was doing that while I took my Kaplan courses and studied for my GMAT. Part of studying is taking the three-hour practice tests. Well, I didn’t have three hours alone in my apartment with the computer so I took the practice tests in the middle of the night when I would get up to nurse the baby, who was about six months old at this time. I’d feed him, put him back down and I knew I had roughly three to four hours before he’d wake up to eat again, so I would take the practice tests on my computer between feedings in the middle of the night. I was sick the day I took the test, but I got a high score anyway. I called my husband and I said, “I’m smart enough to go to graduate school!” My husband’s response was, “We’re making the right decision. This is a good thing.” I went to Fordham University here in New York, which was about two blocks from my apartment. When I started school my daughter was four-and-a-half and my son was eighteen months old. It took me four years of night school to complete my MBA.. I took two courses every semester. I figured out that I could take two classes on the same night. So I took a class from 6 to 8 p.m. and then 8 to 10 p.m. It was a long day. Each day, during my lunch hour, I would go over the library and study. Then I’d carve out three hours every weekend where I could study when the kids went to bed. Trust me, it was hard. I would walk in the door from work and my husband would say, “Okay, the kids are yours” because he had work to do, too. It took me four years to get my degree. I didn’t see any non-Disney movies for about four years. One summer during that period, in 2000, your daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Would you describe that time? Yes. The summer before I started graduate school my daughter started getting sick. It was on and off for several months, and we didn’t know what was going on and so we made multiple trips to the pediatrician. My husband had lots of food allergies as a kid so at first we thought that was the problem. We documented everything she ate, then we factored in the summer heat and thought maybe she was just getting dehydrated. I mean, as a parent, you just go to everything you can to figure out what’s going on. She would complain of headaches and then they would go away and then she would start throwing up… And then it got more and more frequent to the point where she would wake up throw up three or five mornings in a row, and then be fine for a few days. It was hard to know what was going on. Marcia Nelson Graduating From Business School I think it was on our third trip to the pediatrician that they referred us directly to a pediatric neurologist. She went in for an MRI in the morning and had emergency brain surgery that afternoon. That was the worst day of my life because we were completely unprepared. The doctors said, “She has 24 to 48 hours to live.” As a parent you go through all this guilt, like, “Oh, should I’ve done something sooner?” or, “Did I do enough?” We are incredibly lucky to live in a city with so many resources, though. There were two neurosurgeons who specialize in pediatric neurosurgery at New York University and they had just completed a study of 700 children who had her type of tumor, so we ended up getting great care and she came through the surgery with flying colors. We learned later that it was a prenatal, non-malignant tumor, and it wasn’t genetic, and there was nothing I did during pregnancy to cause it, it was just one of those things that happens. There were moments during that time that I thought we’d never get through this. About four or five days after her surgery, my daughter had been to the playroom and had found some dress up clothes and a princess crown. The crown barely fit over the padding and surgical skull cap on her head, but she insisted on wearing it, along with some dainty plastic princess shoes. She was all dressed up and wanted to see what she looked like in the mirror. I didn’t think I could bear it, but my husband and I finally wheeled her down the hall to a bathroom where she could see herself in the mirror. There she was, propped up in a wheelchair, with her puffy face and bruised eyes, the ill fitting crown, the plastic shoes, and the IV drip. She tilted her head back, shimmied her shoulders, and said, “I look fantastic.” My husband and I looked at each other and we just knew that whatever happened, we would all be fine. We might be different people when this was all over, but we’d not only survive, we’d thrive. That was a rough time in our lives. In addition to the stress of working full time and going to school at night, I had to take my daughter for an MRI every three months. Because she was under six years old and couldn’t sit still in the machine for an hour she had to have full anesthesia every time. It would take a full day – we’d go for the anesthesia and MRI, then we’d have to wait for the drugs to wear off and then we’d meet with the neurosurgeon and the oncologist to review the scans. We knew that the kind of tumor she had doesn’t normally grow back if they can get most of it the first time, but we also knew that there was still a spot that was showing up on the scan that was questionable. The doctors thought that it was scar tissue, but they wanted to be sure. Marcia Nelson and Her Family Sure enough, two-and-a-half years later, the tumor had grown again, so she went back for follow up surgery. It was much more intense the second time around. After her surgery, my daughter couldn’t sit up and she couldn’t walk, but she could move the left side of her body. She had months of complications: high fevers, urinary tract infections, kidney infections and swelling in the back of her head because her body rejected the bone graft. It was just one thing after another. That summer she was in and out of the hospital five different times and the emergency room multiple times too. We spent the entire summer in the hospital with her. I had to withdraw from the semester at school because I was in the midst of working full time, going to school and being with my daughter. I was living in the hospital. I’d sleep at the hospital, leave in the morning and go to work, and my husband would bring my son to the hospital during the day. We had a dear friend who would come to the hospital in the morning so I could take a shower. We had so many people who took care of us and took care of the kids, but it was really hard, especially on my son, who was four years old at the time. My sister took some vacation time and came to New York to help out for a couple of weeks, and many people came by the hospital with food and games. My daughter had a follow up surgery right before school started, and she insisted on wearing her hair in pigtails for the first day of third grade so everyone could see her stitches. We did not go anywhere that summer, and finally “celebrated” by going to Disney World over Thanksgiving, when things had settled down. What is your daughter Kate’s prognosis now? She has been having annual MRI’s for the last couple of years – we went from once a quarter, to once a year, which was great. She’s going to be 14 this year and it’s been 7 years since her last surgery, so we’re hoping that this is her last year. Marcia Nelson with Her Daughter, Kate She’s doing great. She has a slight tremor in her left hand but no other physical inabilities. We actually did a session with a family therapist at one point, as she made the transition from elementary school to middle school. I wanted to make sure she didn’t feel different or self-conscious because of her medical background. And it was fascinating. What came up in this conversation with the therapist was that we over compensate for her all the time and she doesn’t like it! In the middle of our therapy appointment, the therapist asked her question and my son answered for her. And I noticed it and said, “Oh, Kate, you must hate it when your brother does that.” And she said, “Well, actually mom, you and dad do it all the time, too!” Wow, that was a real eye opener. I mean, we had spent so many years watching and waiting… Is the tumor growing back? Is this the MRI scan that will show us she needs another surgery? How is she feeling today? Is anything going on? We saw what she went through and we just had it in our minds that we had to step in to protect her. But that appointment with the therapist gave her the confidence to say, “You know what, I can take care of myself.” It was a real lesson for all of us, and at that moment I knew that we’d all be fine. It was probably the best hour we’d spent as a family since her surgery. When did you finish your MBA program? I finished my MBA in 2005 and it was amazing to take my children to my graduation. They were so much a part of my journey. My daughter was 10 years old and my son was 7 years old when they watched me get my diploma. They really felt they were a part of it and they were. Did you stay at the Carlyle Group after you finished business school? No, before I was finished with school, I worked for a business management firm that specialized in financial planning, particularly for athletes and entertainers. I also worked as a financial adviser at UBS, a global financial services firm. I currently work at FMV, which is a valuations and financial advisory company. I’ve been here four years. I travel and I meet fabulous people and I even drag my kids along sometimes. It is still, however, a constant challenge being the working parent and having my husband work at home and take care of the kids. He’s a fabulous dad… incredibly creative… and my kids are much more well-rounded, I think, for having him at home than they would be if I were the one at home. But I still deal with the guilt. I’m on the road a lot. And I feel terribly guilty about that. I hate being on the road all the time. No, that’s not true…. I don’t hate being on the road. I hate that I feel guilty that I’m on the road. I sometimes think that a man wouldn’t feel guilty about working late and traveling, and a man would understand that my kids have a wonderful parent there with them all the time. I like what I do. And that adds to my guilt because I feel guilty that I like what I do! But I will admit that I love it when I’m on the road, and I get a hotel room all to myself. It’s dark, and I’m not sleeping with one eye open to see who’s getting up to go to the bathroom and who’s getting a drink of water. My husband asks, “Why do you feel guilty?” I answer, “Because I do.” Do you and your husband have any strategies for dividing up your work at home when you are home? He does most of the housework and I do the laundry. That’s my contribution. I also plan the birthday parties and the vacations, which is fun for me. On the weekends I really try to devote my time to my family – I don’t bring home my laptop, and I lock up my Blackberry so I won’t check it all weekend – but it’s hard to get through all the errands so we can get to the fun stuff. How do I do my visiting teaching when I’ve been gone all week at work? And who’s more important, my family or my church responsibilities? I have to ask myself those questions all the time. Right now I’m the Cub Scout Den Leader, so I get to meld my church responsibilities with time with my son, so I don’t feel like I have to be away from my family for another night. Do you know anybody else in your situation who acted as a mentor to you? In my early days I had a mentor, an LDS woman who went back to business school and works in the wealth management industry. When I started thinking about a career change, she told me this is a great industry for women who have families. She was the one who helped me decide I could go back to school with small children at home and she assured me that they would survive and they would be okay. Do you think that this is something that works for your family particularly because of Glen’s line of work and personality? Absolutely. In the early days, Glen (my husband) had a couple of very good friends who were also was stay-at-home dads. One was a freelance illustrator and the other one was finishing his PhD. They would get together and grab the babies on their backs and go to art galleries, museums, and support each other. So, having two other families who had a similar situation made it much easier for all of us. We were all living in small apartments, with the husbands in school or freelancing and the wives working full time outside of the home. We all had little children at home, so we were juggling work, little babies, and, quite frankly, doing it in a culture that says that this isn’t something you should do. Did you feel supported by your families and your ward in your lifestyle choices? Sometimes there’s a misunderstanding within our extended families of where the motivation comes from. I get comments like, “Don’t let Glen talk you into doing something you don’t want to do!” He doesn’t talk me into anything! We’re doing what we both want to do. I’ve also heard “You are the mother, you should be home with the children.” There was a lot of that pressure, especially early on. But we’re doing what’s right for us and what works for our family. I wouldn’t have been happy staying at home, and I don’t think Glen would have been happy if he’d stayed on the career path he was on. Now, I’m envious because the kids are in school and Glen’s starting to have more time for himself and his own work. Trust me, I know how hard he works, and he juggles his responsibilities and the constant interruptions all day long. He is also really amazing with the kids. He has a lot more patience than I do to play Monopoly or Uno for the umpteenth time. And yes, he sometimes lets the kids win! But we’re realizing that it was a short period of his life and that, as the children have gotten older, he’s had more time during the day to do what he wants to do. Next year my son will be in middle school and my daughter will be in high school, so it’s not that much longer before they’ll both be out of the house. That will be bitter sweet for us, and we’ll have to adjust to a new chapter in our lives. I’m looking forward to it! At A Glance Name: Marcia Nelson Location: New York, CY Age: 47 Marital status: Married Children: Two, ages 13 and 10 Occupation: Senior VP of Business Development Schools Attended: Fordham University (MBA), Southern Utah State College (BA) Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “For All the Saints” Current Church Calling: Cub Scout Den Leader On the Web: www.fmv.com, www.mormonartistsgroup.com Interview by Neylan McBaine

In 2001 at age 20, Chelsea Strayer escaped cultural pressure to marry young by following a childhood dream: She bought an airplane ticket and enrolled at the University of Ghana. Chelsea spent the past year living in Ghana again, studying the healing ceremonies of traditional spiritual priests for her PhD dissertation research. She discusses the abundance of divergent but equally good choices in her life and how she’s learned to be true to herself. In my life, there are consistently contrasting realities where both side are right. I grew up in a very traditional Mormon family: my dad’s a Church Education System seminary teacher, my mom’s a stay-at-home mom of eight kids. But I also have this crazy life in Africa. I see those as two different lives, but there’s one thing that runs through it and it’s this idea that there is more than one “right”. Both of these lives are good. For some reason I’ve been able to tap into a guiding confidence in my own ability to know which of two good paths is right for me. I was an extremely obedient girl and I never did anything wrong but I always had different opinions. I remember a specific time when I was in kindergarten and my dad came home from work. I climbed on his lap and he asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I thought, and I finally said, “I want to be the President of the United States!” And my dad said, “Well, you can’t. Your husband will have to be president, cause you’ll be watching the kids.” I was just this little kid but I remember so clearly that I said, “No, I can do it. He can watch the kids.” I absolutely loved and respected my dad, but I knew even at that age that his answer didn’t seem right to me. Chelsea Shields Strayer Another example occurred in grade school when my family went to a production of West Side Story. We were all laughing afterwards because I had a crush on one of the Latino characters — I think his name was Chico. My parents were trying to teach me a lesson and they teased me: “We don’t think interracial marriage is good. Why do you always like the ‘Chicos’?” And I remember thinking, “What’s wrong with that?” It had never crossed my mind that that was a bad thing. This was a long time ago, but those sentiments were in Mormon thought at that time. They have since changed, but even at that time I felt opposing impulses. I loved the Church and was obedient, but another part of me knew these pseudo-doctrinal points weren’t right. These opposing impulses played themselves out when I got to Brigham Young University for college. I met this wonderful guy: cute, return missionary, from a wealthy family. He was my first real boyfriend. But I was unsure I wanted to marry him — it wasn’t that I thought it was wrong to marry this boy, it was just that I was unsure. After the first six months of dating him, I started receiving intense pressure from my church leaders and peers to marry him. My bishop called me into his office to tell me marrying this guy would be a good thing. I heard, “You’d marry him if you were a better person.” “You’d feel right about it if you were living your life right.” My grandma actually said to me, “That boy is the best thing about you!” Can you believe it! In my mind I knew it wasn’t bad — how could it be bad? But it didn’t feel right. I wasn’t receiving support from anyone in my culture. There was no narrative that allowed me to say, “Yeah, he’s perfect, but I don’t feel right and it’s okay for me to feel that way.” This went on for a long time — back and forth — and I continued feeling trapped. In my mind, it was this huge moment and I had to somehow break away to figure out what I really felt in the face of a culture that was so intent on pushing me one direction. The only way I could figure out to break free from this pressure was to retreat to a goal I’ve had since I was a little girl: I wanted to go to Africa. I had wanted to go ever since my mom had rented Rootsfrom the library when I was a little girl. I used that as my excuse to say, “I can’t get married until I’ve accomplished this goal.” But the problem with that was that people reinterpreted my own goal to fit the cultural expectation: “Well, you two can go on a mission to Africa together someday.” Eventually, I felt so trapped that in 2001 I bought a ticket and went to West Africa by myself at age 20, having never left the country before. You were still enrolled at BYU at this time. Did you go on an official study abroad through the school? No, I applied to the University of Ghana as an independent student. It was scary. I just flew over hoping it would all work out because email was still so bad over there. My goal was simply to experience Africa. I had no idea it would go beyond this initial visit. I thought I would just get married. I had never envisioned a future for myself. And Africa was chaotic — it wasn’t this beautiful, planned thing. It was a stupid, silly girl who wanted to do something different and felt trapped. It was more of a lifeline. I just had to do it, I had to exert some control over my own life. Did you remain active in the Church in Ghana even though you felt these tensions with the culture regarding marriage? Yes, very much so because I felt like they were both right. I love the Church and the members. I never felt abandoned by Heavenly Father or felt like my prayers or my personal experience were ever diminished, like I did by the culture. In my personal prayers I felt very confident that the Lord loved what I was doing. So there was that conflict between what other people thought was good and what, deep down, I knew was good for me. When I got back from Africa, the answer from the Lord came as, “You’ve got two choices, and they’re both great. You can get married and live a life that you know already: marriage, kids, staying at home. That’s something good and you can have that. Or you can have a life you don’t know anything about. It’s a blank slate. Who knows if you’ll find someone else to marry, who knows if you’ll succeed at anything.” I went with the blank slate and decided not to marry the boy. I just took a step off the edge. So how did you follow up on that answer? What were your next steps? After I got back, it was almost three years before I dated anyone else. I almost felt betrayed: Why did I feel impressed to follow this path if there was nothing or no one else for me? Looking back, I realize that was the gift: I was able to finish and take the next step without the distraction of boys. I wasn’t confident enough yet to pursue my dreams. I didn’t have any examples in my life of women who worked or had advanced degrees. My realm of possibilities was so limited. I had applied to graduate school when I met the man I would eventually marry, and I remember in my mind thinking, “I applied and got accepted, but maybe I won’t actually go, or maybe I won’t finish because I’ll have kids. Or something will come up.” My husband was raised by a single father in a completely different home, and he said, “Well, why won’t you go? Why wouldn’t you finish?” I’m curious about your church experience in Africa across the years you’ve been going there. What was the Church like in Ghana in 2001 when you first went, and how has it changed over the past eight years? When I first got there in late 2001, the headquarters for the entire West African area were located on one floor of an office building called the Gulf House. In fact, when I got there I had to ask around even to find where it was. There were just a couple of missionaries in the cities. This past year I spent there, there are over twelve stakes in Accra alone. We have buildings: an entire huge church building in Madina, multiple in Kumasi, multiple in Accra. A whole compound that now houses the West African area offices with an Missionary Training Center that I helped open. I don’t know the specific numbers… I just go there and see the buildings grow! A lot of the men who were the elders quorum presidents and bishops when I first went there are now the stake presidents and area authorities. What are some of the striking characteristics of the Mormon women in Ghana? What is their greatest contribution to the Church there? To answer that, you have to know something about how church structure is perceived there. The hierarchy gives people a place, a traditional structure that is being lost in their villages and certainly their cities. So as people move into cities, they are no longer part of their traditional “queen mother” or “village elders” structure that holds people together. The Church really has stepped in: It has home teaching, it has families, it has built-in positions of righteous power and authority. It gives people responsibilities that they’re not getting in their political culture at home. It provides a place for everyone, including women in the Relief Society presidency. In the traditional village structure, as queen mothers, women really do have a lot of power. They are not under the elders or under the chief. Their opinion is what it is: It’s equal. A lot of the Ghanian women I know in the Church carry this confidence over into their church callings. Mormon women in America don’t have this same attitude. We feel like our opinions are useful and they help in correlation, but our attitude is that the Relief Society is a subsidiary of a greater hierarchy. For a lot of Ghanaian women, that doesn’t run through their minds. This is their calling, they’re supposed to receive revelation, this is their revelation. That confidence is something that is amazing to me and really something to look up to. On the other hand, women in the villages are very different from women in the cities, and so church is very different in the villages. Because the village women traditionally aren’t given as much education as men, they are not as literate and don’t speak English, so that confidence and assertiveness is nonexistent. All of the Church literature and manuals are in English, and most of the women can’t read Twi, their native language, not to mention English, so they can’t read or teach the lessons. In most of the village branches I’ve attended, there are usually 25 to 30 men in attendance, and there might be some teenaged girls and an older lady. The women are intimidated and usually don’t come. This past year in the village I was living in, we had a Relief Society meeting once. The branch had a Relief Society president and she could give the lesson in Twi, but because she had to read the manual in English she didn’t feel comfortable asserting herself as a teacher. The one time I insisted “Let’s do Relief Society!” the bishop came in and taught the lesson. I don’t want people to think it’s this way all over the country. In Accra, where people can read and are more educated and there are couple missionaries, it is different. But because of the Priesthood and because men do cherish and honor it and look at it as a blessing, it’s often intimidating to the women. My husband and I had a goal of trying to engage the women in our local branch and getting them to talk more in Sunday School. Would you describe your academic program and what you did for the past year in Ghana? I majored in Anthropology at BYU and attended Boston University (BU) for graduate school where I worked on doctoral work in Biological and Cultural Anthropology. I chose this focus so I could study the traditional healers that I’ve worked with since I started going to Ghana. At BU, they have the top African Studies center in the nation. So I was able to learn specific African languages and take specialized courses that I wouldn’t have been able to take anywhere else. Once I did that study abroad on my own in 2001, I went back to BYU and began leading summer study abroad trips to Ghana with the help of a professor. In the course of those trips, and as a result of my own work as an undergraduate, I made really great contacts: traditional healers with whom I became friends. These friends allowed me to see ceremonies that no average person can just walk into. I decided I wanted to study these ceremonies further. This past year, my husband and I spent the whole year in Ghana to do my dissertation research. I was able to go to tons of ceremonies all year and record the cultural aspects of their religions, the hierarchy, the gods, what the different spirits mean, what’s really going on during the ceremony. The whole structure. Chelsea Participating in a Healing Ceremony in Ghana What is their traditional religion? The indigenous religion in Ghana is called Ashante and one of the basic beliefs is that there is an omnipotent god, but he doesn’t interact with people. Below him are smaller gods who interact with people. And underneath the smaller gods are intermediaries — human priests — who are able to communicate with both the small gods and with people. Because there is also a belief in witchcraft, you need these healers, these priests, to protect you from being cursed, find out who is doing the cursing and heal you from the curse. There is also a belief that you’re born with a spirit and a body, and so there’s a whole physical world and a spiritual world and they interact. If your spirit it damaged, it can affect your physical body. People usually don’t go to spiritual healers right away. It’s usually after something small — say, an infection — continues to persist and you’ve tried doctors and other options. At that point, you might say to yourself, “Perhaps it’s not my physical body that’s sick. Perhaps I have a spiritual ailment.” You might also go to healers for purely spiritual matters, such as, someone cursed you and you want the curse removed. Or you want to do well on an exam and you want the gods to take care of you. This past year, I was talking to a man who is LDS and also attends the indigenous healing ceremonies once in a while. He and I were discussing how many Africans are now accepting non-indigenous religions like Christianity and Judaism and Islam. He brought up the point that with traditional African religions, a lot of the punishments are imminent: If you do something wrong, you will see the punishment imminently. You will get sick or your business will fail, something like that. The punishment is immediate. Whereas with the gospel of Christ and other world religions there’s a punishment, but it’s in the next life. He kind of laughed and winked at me: “Well, which would you choose? Immediate punishment or time to say, OK I’m sorry! Christianity is a lot easier!” An interesting tension between Mormonism and traditional religion focuses on the reality of the priests’ power. There is no doubt in the Ghanaian mind that the spiritual healers have real power, but they don’t know where that power comes from. For centuries, the early Christian missionaries told the indigenous people that there was no such thing as witchcraft. But people responded by saying, “Of course it exists. I feel the effects of it in my life everyday.” So while accepting Christianity and its message, they would still rely on spiritual healing to protect them from witchcraft. One thing that’s cropping up all over West Africa right now are hybrid religions, where the spiritual priests protect people from witchcraft by invoking the power of Christ. Over the course of my eight years of going there, I’ve seen these hybrid religions increase every time I go. So people continue to feel that the traditional healers give them protection from witchcraft that the Christian churches can’t. What this does for Mormons is create a lot of confusion. People say, “Ok, so we’re not supposed to go to these traditional healers because it’s not our religion and it’s the power of Satan, but it works.” No one doubts that spiritual healers work. One of the most interesting Sunday School lessons we had was on the family and one of the first subheadings in the lesson manual said, “We are all children of God.” And there’s a paragraph about how God loves us all, we’re his children, and then it moves on. Well, we spent 90 minutes discussing this subheading: “We are all children of God”. This is why: If you’re barren and you can’t have a child, you try everything because children are such an important aspect of life in West Africa. It makes you a woman, it makes you a mother. If you don’t have children, you’re not an adult yet. Women will try medical intervention and inevitably they end up at a traditional healer. It works — people go, and they get pregnant. So the question we debated for 90 minutes in Sunday School was, “If these women get pregnant by going to a healer, is it a Satan child? Or is it a child of God?” It was this huge debate. Nothing like that would cross our minds in the United States! We would just skip over that. Of course all children are children of God! And what was so funny was that during that whole conversation not one person raised their hand and said, “Well, the healers don’t have power. It doesn’t work.” It’s never an option that it doesn’t work. The question is where does the power come from and what does that mean for our church? Are you bringing Latter-day Saint doctrine into your thesis discussion? No, my thesis is very different. My research looks at the biological aspects of the indigenous healing ceremonies. This past year I was there, I actually took measurements before and after the ceremonies — physiological measurements of heart rate, blood pressures — and I show that there’s a relaxation response that occurs during the healing ceremony via the rhythmic drumming, the dancing and the chanting and praying. There is actually a physical relaxation response which promotes healing. I’m trying to show why these healings actually do work. In America, the relaxation response has been studied thoroughly — if you adjust physical states and you get your body back to homeostasis your body can function and heal itself quicker. I would love to study priesthood blessings in the same way — show how this same principle of relaxation response corroborates with our healing experiences. Can you describe the conditions you’ve been living in the past year while in Ghana? Well, first of all, I have to say, my husband is a trooper! He has traveled a lot and so when I proposed we go live in Africa together for a year he kept saying, “Oh I’ll be fine!” And I said, “No, this is different…” At first, we lived in a family compound. The compounds in the villages are a bunch of rooms in a circle with a courtyard in the middle where everyone cooks and interacts. But at night the whole place would be locked up. So we were locked in our room every night. And our room was a concrete box. So the third night, I ended up having to go to the bathroom and I was locked in this room! We ended up having a bedpan — in the 21st century! — so that if I had to pee I could just wake up and do it there and we’d take it out in the morning. Also, you can hear everything. People will play music all night long so they can have conversations and live their lives without their neighbors and in-laws hearing. So all night long you’d hear Celine Dion in French or you’d hear domestic abuse… There was a baby who got circumcised in a room close to ours and you could tell it was done unprofessionally and the poor kid got infected and just screamed all night. There were goats and chickens roaming around… After one night when all of the above occurred, my dear husband said, “I cannot take this for a year!” So we ended up moving to a teacher’s dorm at a boarding school, and we had our own little flat. That was nice, and my husband ended up teaching English at the boarding school. It wasn’t as crazy there. We got malaria, typhoid. All sorts of crazy stuff. We were in the middle of nowhere. We were getting our water in a bucket from a pond, and we had to bucket shower and wash all our clothes by hand. We had to iron all of our clothes cause there’s this thing called botfly and it lays its eggs in anything that’s damp. So botfly lands on your clothes and lays and egg and if you wear it, even if you think it feels dry, they can actually go into your skin and grow. We had to iron all our garments! Most locals let the little girls in the village wash their clothes, but we didn’t feel comfortable doing that so we washed and ironed them all ourselves. But garments aren’t made to be ironed, so I had all these garments that were normal sized when I got there and hanging way down to my calves by the time I left! Was the past year good for your marriage? It was fantastic. Well, I don’t know: we’re pretty co-dependent now! My husband flew home to the States once while we were there and he missed his flight cause we had been traveling together for a year and a half and we were so used to our different roles that he forgot his passport. Passports had been my job! We had become so close as partners that we were in trouble when we were separated. To wrap up, I want to return to the idea I started with that has defined so much of my experience: There are times when both sides are right. I could have married my first boyfriend or I could have pursued my interest in Africa. Both were right. The gospel works, but so do traditional healings. I often think of Eve when she had two choices: Eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, or obey God and abstain. They were both right, they were both good. The whole situation put her in a position of making a decision. She made a choice, and she paid the price for that choice. We are put in the same position in our own lives. Life can be a series of varying good choices. This is specifically applicable to women in the Church. We judge each other because we think there’s one right way, but really were constantly met with a series of choices where both options are good. Both can be right. But you have to accept the consequences of whatever you choose. I think it is in that active decision making where we grow and learn. At A Glance Name: Chelsea Shields Strayer Location: Baltimore, MD Age: 27 Marital status: Married 4 years Children: Currently pregnant with first Occupation: PhD candidate in biological and cultural anthropology Schools Attended: Brigham Young University, University of Ghana, Boston University Languages Spoken at Home: English, Spanish Favorite Hymn: “Be Still My Soul” Interview by Neylan McBaine. Photos used with permission.

Whitney Johnson is a co-founder of Rose Park Advisors an investment firm based in Boston based on the concept of ‘disruptive innovation’. She was previously Merrill Lynch’s Senior Telecom and Media analyst for Latin America, receiving the highest industry and peer awards in her field. When she’s not picking stocks, Whitney invests her time on building communities that do good and do well. She is the architect of the Know Your Neighbor and Dare to Dream communities. What do you do at your current job? How has your past career prepared you for this current position? I am currently the president of a start-up investment management firm, Rose Park Advisors. There are 3 partners: one of them is Clayton Christensen who is a professor at the Harvard Business School [and formerly an Area Authority Seventy for the Church] his son Matthew Christensen, and myself. We currently have about $20 million in assets under management from families and individuals who have entrusted a portion of their net worth to us to safeguard and grow. We do this by buying stocks in companies as being disruptive or disrupted, in the parlance of Clayton Christensen who is the architect of “disruptive innovation” and that are under or over-valued. Prior to founding Rose Park Advisors, I was on Wall Street working as an equity analyst for Merrill Lynch [now Bank of America]. I think there are a number of ways my Wall Street experience prepared me for this endeavor. First, I had to build financial models on companies, to meet with management and then make a decision as to whether or not I thought the company was over- or under-valued. Second, I needed to be able to communicate my ideas both verbally and in writing to a number of different constituencies from our internal sales force to our external clients to the management teams of the companies I followed. And third, while I absolutely had the support of a very large Merrill Lynch, a large organization behind me, I was also running my own franchise and thus needed to build my my brand. That’s very much what we’re doing at Rose Park Advisors: we’re building a business. So there’s more transferability of skills than one might expect initially. Whitney Johnson How did your upbringing and your youth in the Church play a role in where you are today? I was reading an interesting piece yesterday by Penelope Trunk, who writes the blog Brazen Careerist and is Jewish. She made the comment that “Religion is the best preparation for a career” because in both, you have to ask yourself, “What do I want from my life?” So I would start with that as an umbrella comment. My religion really does help motivate me and help me decide what’s important to me in my career path. In terms of my own upbringing, my parents were both Mormon, although my father joined the church when I was four or five. My mother worked. She was quite driven but she was constrained in her choices given that she started her career in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s, which was really the height of the post-War movement to have women go back home after their extensive involvement in World War II. So I saw that as a model of something that I too could do. As the oldest child, I was inherently very driven. I felt the need to be successful so my parents would be proud of me, as often happens with oldest children. In many ways I was raised with traditional expectations in my family, but even more so because it was in the ether at that time and it was certainly reinforced at Brigham Young University where I went for college. My mission to Montevideo, Uruguay also influenced my career decisions — I learned Spanish on my mission which I have used throughout much of my career. Studying music in college, which is oftentimes not thought of being a skill that is at all transferable, certainly to finance, has also been helpful. Music has a beginning, middle and end, studying music helps us develop “musical intelligence”, in the words of Howard Gardner, which then allows us to be able to craft or structure a presentation. In addition, giving discussions on my mission over and over again taught me how to have a very intimate one-on-one conversation with people and talk to them about things that matter. It further helped me learn to craft a dialogue which is a very important skill in business where people are entrusting their money to you. When did you discover that you were good at Wall Street work and that you enjoyed it? My husband and I got to New York after I graduated from college. It took me nine years — with my mission and time off to work — to graduate. Basically the entire decade of the 1980s. I really was not very focused, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Getting married certainly grounded me, because of the person I married. When I got to New York, I knew I didn’t want to do anything in music. I knew I wanted to use my Spanish. I also knew I had to work because I was putting my husband through graduate school. I started working as a sales assistant — basically, a secretary — for a stock broker. I couldn’t actually get a job on Wall Street because I had a music degree and because I was a woman. But it was during those two years when I was working as a secretary and I saw other people around me coming into Wall Street analyst jobs from undergrad and I thought, “You know, I’m as smart as they are. I’m going to figure out how to do that.” The drive towards a career really didn’t kick in until my late-20s. I was a late bloomer. I was eventually able to jump over to a professional track. This worked, but I would not recommend it to any woman who wants to work professionally today. Don’t start out as a secretary! You are forever pigeon holed. I worked hard and I got very lucky. As you progressed in your career, was there a tension between your career and your activity at Church? This wasn’t the mold that a lot of your peers were fitting into at that time. Did you feel pressure to drop out and stay home with children? There was some judgment among my peers at church and I would say it was on both sides. I knew that I did not want to have children immediately. We didn’t have children for ten years and that was by choice, and I felt like it was the right decision. I felt like Heavenly Father was okay with that decision. So it wasn’t me just being rebellious. It was the right thing for me. But at the same time, I found that I was judgmental of women who had children early in their marriage. I remember being in our Manhattan ward and I had just gone to see a film by myself and it was so fun and I was talking about it. A woman who was probably even younger than I was and already had a few children said to me something akin to, “You know, you really need to have children so you can be righteous.” That kind of judgment ebbed once I got into my 30s and it doesn’t happen anymore. That’s in part because I’m not judgmental anymore. I am much more comfortable saying, You know, we all get to have our own personal revelation. Let me go to personal revelation for just a moment. Where I have come to — and I think this is really important when we consider the choices we make as we live our lives — is that there are some baseline questions we need to ask ourselves: Am I worthy to hold a temple recommend? Have my husband and I — and children even — sought the Lord’s will and are we following it? And if we can answer yes to those questions to ourselves, then we’re doing the right thing. I’ve had priesthood blessings where I was told that it is important for me to work. So that’s my revelation, that’s for me. This has helped me be at peace with my decisions and not be defensive. You waited 10 years to have children. How did your career affect your children once they came? I was working over 80 hours a week and my husband was still working on his post-doctoral research, so we had a nanny for the first few years. Initially, I was working for financial reasons and then I ended up making more money than my husband. But now, I work because I want to work. I need to for me. Whitney and Her Family I think one of the positive aspects of my working life is that my ambition doesn’t get funneled through my children — well, that might not be completely true. We’re all ambitious for our children! But I think that, because I have my own life, I tend to let them have their own lives a bit more than I would otherwise. Have I been tempted to stay home with them full time? No, only on really bad days at work! I have that fantasy of, What if I were home doing this and that? But it’s really not the right thing for me and I don’t think it would feel that great. I feel I’m a positive example to my children. I’m glad, however, that they have women in their lives — women in our ward, etc. — where the moms are at home and the dads are the go-out-and-work dads cause I think it’s important for our children to see that there are different ways of living their lives and that they are both right before the Lord. They can then choose what feels right for them. Are there any specific things you have done to grow closer to your children during your time with them? One thing I like to do is read to them at night — although my son who just turned 13 isn’t so keen on that any more! They’re going to school in Cambridge, MA now so I end up driving them to school an hour away. I didn’t think it was a big deal initially, but the reality is that an hour in the car together each morning, five days a week, is actually a big deal. Moms who are with their kids all day long probably don’t recognize how valuable that is, but for me it is a scarce resource so that’s been a good thing for us. What prompted you to leave Wall Street? With any decision we make, there’s a push and a pull. The “push” for me was that I was really at the top of my game. I was a double-ranked institutional investor, which doesn’t mean anything to anybody outside the industry but it’s good. I didn’t perceive that I was going to make any more money than I was making, there wasn’t another ranking for me… I’d kind of figured it out. I started thinking, “What do I do next?” It’s not enough for me — although making money is great — to just dial it in. That was the push. The “pull” was that I was starting to realize that there were other things that were interesting to me. Entrepreneurial things I wanted to try. I was also tired from traveling a lot. After I left Merrill Lynch and moved to Boston, there were two or three years when I wasn’t working full time and that was a really important time for our family. Now that I’m busy again with Rose Park Advisors, there’s more balance than there was when I was at Merrill Lynch. Have there been specific situations in your workplace when you’ve been treated differently because you are a woman? I would counter that with the question, “Has there been a situation when I wasn’t treated differently?” It’d be easier to answer! The double-standard behavior is just constant. At my job on Wall Street, for example, I thought that there would be fair compensation for performance. One time, I approached my boss and said, “These are 10 metrics that are very easily measured and my numbers are 20% above my peers.” But they didn’t like me asking to get paid commensurate with that! There’s been academic research by a psychologist at Cornell University who says that we can’t be considered feminine if we ask for resources, and so it was considered taboo for me to ask for something because I was a woman. Another example. There was a time a couple of years ago at Rose Park when we were negotiating a deal with some potential investors. We were all in a room together, discussing the deal, and they told us, “You know, we would really like it if there was someone on your team with ten to fifteen years of Wall Street experience and who is about 40 to 45 years old.” I was sitting right there. That was me. But it was as if I wasn’t there. They needed to say, “We want a man” too, but they didn’t. There are also times when it works to my advantage and I don’t want to downplay that. If you’re the only woman in a room of 16 men, you can probably get any of those men to talk to you. What are Dare to Dream and Know Your Neighbor? How have you found time to fit in these projects in the midst of your professional and family life? I have a really supportive husband, and that absolutely makes a difference. One of the important questions to ask ourselves is “What would I do if I didn’t need to make money?” And these two projects are what I would do. I’m really passionate about building communities that make a difference in the world. It sounds cliche but that’s how I feel. Know Your Neighbor is a website and a blog focused on teaching members of the Latter-day Saint community how to reach across the aisle to members of our communities. What I have found with members of the Church is that we have a mindset of circling the wagons and, historically, for good reason. But we’ve got to move beyond that. For the sake of the Church, because it will not grow if we’re not willing to connect with people outside the Church. And also for our own sakes, because there are many, many good people in the world and we need to look for common ground outside of religion. I was serving as my ward’s Public Affairs Representative when I created the Know Your Neighbor concept. The idea was a gift to me from Heavenly Father. It was inspiration. Dare to Dream sprang out of my professional experience and the satisfaction I received from getting to the top of my chosen field. But after I left, I would talk to other women my age and ask, “What do you want to do? Let’s make it happen!” And oftentimes their response would be, “Well, I don’t have a dream” or “I don’t have the skills to do it.” I wanted to say, “No! You can do this!” I want to confirm the idea that we don’t dream in isolation. With women, in particular, the skills we bring to any enterprise are so often overlooked that we need other women to see what we’re doing and help give our dreams life. Even in women-owned businesses, men will look at them — who often control the purse strings — and say, “I don’t get it” and then the business doesn’t get funded. Something that makes me sad is that on the one hand, women in our culture are encouraged to stay home which works for a lot of people when they’re young. But then as we get older it’s ironic to me that the women who do have careers — if we’re successful — garner more respect than the women who have stayed home. And I think that’s part of the reason Dare To Dream matters to me: it’s my way of saying, Whatever choice you make, whether you’re at home or not, is valid and important. As women, we have to support other women because if we don’t then we won’t dream and if we’re not dreaming we’re not happy. At A Glance Name: Whitney Johnson Location: Westborough, MA Age: 47 Marital status: Married 22 years Children: Two Occupation: Principal, Rose Park Advisors Schools Attended: Brigham Young University, NYU Stern School of Business Languages Spoken at Home: English Current Church Calling: Primary pianist Interview by Neylan McBaine. Photos by LaNola Kathleen Stone.

In December 2004, Patricia’s oldest son was charged with murdering his girlfriend. Tormented with grief and unable to sleep, Patricia saw a late-night infomercial for the Church on television and called for a Book of Mormon. What she has learned about forgiveness, compassion and the warm embrace of the Saints has carried her through the crushing experience. Something happened to me the other night. I had problems sleeping because of the heat. I don’t have an air conditioner because it makes me and my granddaughter ill. It was so hot, I took off my undergarments and went to sleep. I had the worst dreams, my confidence level went down, all the things I am handling came into my head. I felt as if I was about to lose everything, I felt like I can’t handle the situations in my life. I became a very weak person. I became convinced the only way out of this is to pack up and leave the United States, to go home to my country of Trinidad, give my granddaughter Christina back to her mom, not thinking at all of how that would affect her. I became this uncaring, weak minded person. My thoughts were to just give up and go. It was the worst feeling I have had since my baptism. I got up feeling so very sad, not knowing where to turn. It was warm and I was perspiring. I took a shower and put on a clean set of undergarments. It was too early to leave for work, so I went back to bed, only this time my courage to face anything came back, the sadness went away. I asked myself, “What were you thinking to uproot Christina again? That would be devastating for her.” I felt as though the Patricia I know was back. That was when I realized it was because I had put my undergarments back on. They are my shield of strength and courage. It was yet another story for my spiritual journal. *** I have two sons, Kirton, who is 38, and Mike, who is 34. Both are college graduates, Kirt from Hunter College in New York City and Mike attended the University of Maryland. Kirt liked history and reading. He will read anything from comics to politics, and he liked reading the encyclopedias as a child. We had a good life: I worked and they went to school. My husband moved out when Mike was in middle school. We are legally still married, but we have been separated for almost 20 years. He will not accept or sign divorce papers, I don’t know why. We will never get back together. He did step up though when the boys were in college. He paid for their education, so they never had to work while attending college. Patricia Joseph Would you describe what happened to your son, Kirt, and how it affected you? Kirt was once the center of my attention. I missed him when he moved out, but he would always pass by on Fridays with his dinner. He liked Mediterranean pizza, no meat only vegetables. He took good care of his health and his teeth. He suffered, however, from very deep depression. He hid it well. During Thanksgiving in 2004, I felt something and asked him if he wanted to get help. He said he could handle his depression on his own. His girlfriend of eight years had recently moved to Connecticut and he was traveling back and forth to see her. I thought that was making him tired. On December 14, 2004 my world changed. It changed in a way I would never have expected. I got a big blow to my head and heart. I was at work when I received a call from a nurse in a Connecticut hospital: Kirt had tried to commit suicide. I went to the hospital only to find out his girlfriend was dead. She had been killed. I asked Kirt if he had anything to do with her death, and he said, “No mom, how could I?” I always trusted my sons so I believed him then. It was when I got home my world started to turn over: I called his hospital room, only to be told that he was being questioned by detectives. I spoke to the detective, and he told me he was arresting Kirt for the girl’s murder. My only question to him was, “Did he confess?” He said no, but Kirt was with her, had opportunity and motive. Kirt had been at the girl’s Connecticut apartment where he drank some Vodka. He didn’t even like beer, so this was very unusual for him. But he was also on some pain medication for braces he had just had put on his teeth. His girlfriend had another guy at the apartment and she yelled at Kirt and called him names and said the other guy could give her more than Kirt. Kirt told me that he got in his car and drove home. When she was found dead, the other guy who was there that night gave Kirt’s name to the police. About a year after that horrible night, Kirt he wrote me a letter telling me he believed he did kill her. He doesn’t remember how or with what, but he thinks he had to have done it. That night, he was charged with the death of the girl. I screamed and cried and curled myself up in a ball, I had no idea what to do. What I did not know at the time was that I had guardian angels with me. A friend of mine arranged for a lawyer in Connecticut. Everything happened so fast, I was in a dream. My son, my quiet, polite son, who did not believe in anyone taking another life! My Lord knows how much it hurt. Every bone in my body ached, then the first time I saw him in handcuffs and leg irons, I thought my world would end. I wanted it to end, there was nothing else, or so I thought. I barely existed. My son took a plea bargain, which was what his lawyer suggested, but the district attorney at his sentencing confirmed there was no proof he had killed the girl. I was running out of money, I used my annuity and my pension, so I could not put up any more fight. I had to let it go. I lived in shame, I hid from the world except to go to work and home. The only joy I had in my life was Christina, Mike’s daughter — my granddaughter– who lives with me. My son has abandoned his own daughter to live with another woman. I have lost all faith and trust in this son also. I thought I was a great mom: both of my sons went to college, never having to work their way through school. I was always there for them, before and after their dad left. They got the things they needed, they were never without anything. I even took a week vacation to spend with Mike in college, which he asked me to do. I attended his classes with him, had lunch, met his friends and took notes. I believed that I was a good mom, but it seems to have been in my dreams, because now I have woken up and it is not so. How did this experience lead you to the Church? One week I was so ill, I stayed under the covers in pain, but the doctors could not find anything wrong with me. I had difficulty sleeping, I slept for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. It was at this time, one night — or early morning — when I could not sleep I turned on the TV and caught the end of an advertising program for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Always being sort of curious about the Church, I called for the tape they were advertising. This was about 2:00 a.m. in the morning, but when I called I got a person on the other end. The person asked if I would like someone to come by and meet with me. All along I assumed Mormons only live in places like Utah, Missouri or Arizona, not New York, but I said yes anyway. Later that day I received a call from a young man. He introduced himself as a member of the Church and asked when he could come over to meet with me. We set a date for Thursday of that week. But still I figured, “This person cannot come from those Western states to meet with me!” I was unprepared for them, and they showed up promptly at my door on the day and time that was set. When I saw these two young men, I had to invite them in. They told me about Joseph Smith and my silent thoughts were, “Why would God show up in the United States?” But I listened, because I was impressed by their knowledge of the scriptures. They offered me a book, The Book Of Mormon, and as a silly New Yorker I asked how much the book cost. They said it was free! Wow. Before they left they asked if they could say a prayer with me, and I agreed. When the young man prayed, I thought, “What a strange way to pray.” However, I promised to read the book and they said they would be back. I took the book with me the next day on the train. I took the ‘R’ train which would take longer so I could read. I started to read and did not understanding anything, so I put the book away. I planned to give it back to them and say, “This will not work out.” But one of the elders told me, “No one understands it at first and we are still learning from to understand it ourselves!” That made me feel better. The next day, again I tried and began to understand it. I even did the worksheet at the back of a handout they had given me. This truly surprised me and it felt wonderful. The feeling puzzled me. I continued to read and to listen to them pray. Their prayers touched me. After about two weeks they invited me to the church. They told me that there were two Mormon families living in my building! I said they must be new, I would have known, because I thought I knew everyone in my building since I have lived here for over 30 years. When I learned who the families were, I could not believe it! One was Susan, my friend of five years. I had babysit her children and watched her apartment when they went away. One thing I’ve learned about being LDS is you do not have to push the religion on anyone, or wear it on your shirt sleeves. The fact that Susan had never pushed her religion on me made me want to be a part of this Church. After several visits to the ward and lessons from the missionaries, I knew I wanted to be a member of this Church. The teaching of the scriptures, the way they prayed, the sacrament meetings, the testimonies, the honesty of the members, it was what I wanted, or, rather, needed in my life. The members welcomed me every Sunday. I was made to feel so very loved and supported, even though they did not know I needed support at the time. I was carrying the world on my shoulders because of Kirt’s crime. I walked with my head down in the streets. I thought I was the only person with this sort of problem. When I decided to be baptized, I felt I needed to tell the missionaries and Susan and my other LDS neighbor, Jeff, about my son in jail. It was painful and shameful to talk about, but I knew I had to. However, when I did tell them, there were no shocked expressions or no one pulled away. It was an embrace I had never felt before, no contact but I could feel the acceptance and embrace without the touch. I had never experienced anything like that in all my life. I knew this was the place and people I wanted to be with for the rest of my life. I have finally found the true meaning of Christianity. Patricia Joseph What had been your experience with Christianity up until that point? I was born and raised a Catholic in Trinidad, West Indies. I was christened, had my first communion and confirmation and we went to church every Sunday as children. When I came to this country, I went to church for a little while, but quickly grew tired of it. It was after Christina came into my life that my thoughts about going to church changed. We went to church every Sunday morning since her birth. One Sunday when she was about two years old, we got to the church and she sat down on the steps and said she did not want to go to church. (Children in that church had to be very quiet, there was nothing for them to do until they were old enough to attend classes for first communion at 6 years.) For some reason I did not force her, and we went back home. We met a family — Susan and her husband and kids — that day outside our building waiting to go to their own church. I didn’t know what church they went to, and I didn’t ask. So no church for a long time. When my son went to jail, I went back to church to see if I could find some peace. I tried talking to the priest but he never seemed to have time to listen. He was only interested in how much money you put into the church. There was no one else. The other members all had their cliques and that’s who they stayed with. I tried to get comfort out of the sacrament or the sermon, but nothing. I had heard other people talk about reading the Bible when they wanted answers, only I did not know how to look for the answers or even how to pray except to say the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the I Believe, the prayers I grew up saying. I said them over and over but still no answers or peace, no courage or strength. One night I wanted so bad to end my life, I called my sister she told me to call Unity [a Christian hotline]. I did, but the person was so sleepy, she hurriedly said some sort of prayer, which did nothing for me. I knew I had to face this alone, so I stayed alone with my thoughts of dying. It was during this time I made the call and that changed my life, my way of praying and studying the scriptures and the Book of Mormon. What was it about the Gospel that touched you most at this difficult time in your life? Reading the scriptures and praying as I heard the elders pray, my life started to change. It was then I realized that I could also save Kirt and his girlfriend. I prayed and started to walk with my head up again. I blamed myself for giving birth to a person who might have taken another person’s life, and it was not until I read the Book of Mormon that I realized I was not responsible for my son’s action. Without the Church, without the word of God and Joseph Smith I would have not been able to ease the pain in my heart. I have two dear friends in my ward, Susan and Jeff. They and their families are the other Mormons that live in my building, and now Jeff is my home teacher. When talks and parts of the scriptures seem foreign to me, I call on Susan to help and this she does, regardless of what time it is or what else she’s doing. Jeff is my strength, he see in me what I think I have lost: courage. He is always there to pick me up and I love them both so very much. From the very first day I set foot in the church I have been made to feel needed and wanted. The Relief Society sisters are so very remarkable. They have rallied with me in my sorrows and pains. When I received my first Ensign, it was after my first General Conference. I read the talk given by Elder Bruce D. Porter on “A Broken Heart and a Contrite Spirit” and I read the 51st Psalm. It blew me away. I was on the train and for some reason could not breathe, I wanted to get out of the train. When I did I called Susan, I asked her to explain to me if I had read and understood clearly that Kirt can be forgiven if he seeks the Lord’s forgiveness. We talked for a long time. The words of the talk give me hope and courage. My concern is his future. He is not a bad man, it’s just that he cannot live with himself, he wants so badly to die. I knew it would be hard to convince him that he can be forgiven, but for me, just knowing that he can be forgiven and that I can see him after my death makes a huge difference. In that same Conference, there’s President Thomas S. Monson’s talk on the mark of virtue: “Our actions are preceded by our thoughts, and when we commit sin, it is because we have first thought of committing that particular sin.” I took the blame for a while for not seeing the pain my son was in and doing something to help him. I have passed on what I’ve learned to Kirt. He has said he cannot not live with himself thinking he caused the death of someone he loved, or having to say on an application where he was for 6 years and why. But even though he has not shown any signs of belief he has stopped attempting to take his life. He is still clinically depressed but not suicidal. Only my sister, Jeff and I have visited Kirt in jail. He is still in prison and looks terrible. He has stopped showering and brushing his teeth. He looks like an insane person. Having the Gospel in my life is the only thing that has gotten me through this ordeal. Being able to pray like we do is such a blessing, I can say exactly what is in my heart to Our Heavenly Father. I have been able to openly talk about the bad judgement my son made. I no longer hide from the world. Giving up coffee and tea was nothing compare to the blessings I have received. I was given my dignity and my courage back. Patricia Joseph What has been your biggest challenge in joining the Church? Having to accept for financial help from the Church. A couple of months ago I was so backed up with my maintenance and I was trying to keep up with the mortgage. My home teachers came to visit and asked if there was anything they could do to help me. I said no, I was OK. When they left I realized I had lied to them, so about 2:00 a.m. I got up and sent them an e-mail, sort of clearing my mind about the lie and also hoping they would not see it for a long time. But they did and went to the bishop, after asking a family member who I thought could help me and being turned down. The Church offered me help. I was so ashamed, but desperate, I had to accept it to keep a roof over Christina’s and my heads. I tried missing church but was too guilty and wanted to be honest and stand up to the fact that I was losing my confidence all over again. I did however, keep up with my tithing, leaving my mortgage unpaid for 2 months. I received a letter from the bank saying they were going to default on my loan because I owed them 2 months’ mortgage payments. I called the bank to let them know I would give them the money when I got paid that Friday. The person at the bank said, “You are paid up. We received your payment of last week.” I did not send out any money, I had none to send, no one knew what was going on in my life, as this I did not even tell my home teachers. I called back the next day and was told the same. It blew me away. Then I thought maybe they took it from my husband’s account, and if they did he will call me soon and call me the worst of names! They did not take out his money, but somehow it was paid. I thanked the only person who could do that: the Lord Jesus Christ. No one else could have paid it, no one knew. At A Glance Name: Patricia Joseph Location: Brooklyn, NY Age: 61 Marital status: Married but separated for 18 years Children: Two (38 and 33) Occupation: Medical biller Convert to Church: November, 2007 Schools Attended: Graduated high school in Trinidad, attended New York Business School Interview by Neylan McBaine. Photos by Julie Darger.

In 2000, Thérèse Kanyanga was living in the Republic of the Congo as a wife and the mother of seven children when her husband, Gilbert, mysteriously disappeared. Thérèse discovered he had been accused of treason and exiled to South Korea. For the next six years, Thérèse raised her children alone. In 2006, she was able to join Gilbert in Seoul where she was baptized into the Church. Why did your husband move to South Korea while you and your family stayed behind in the Republic of the Congo? My husband was on the council of the state minister and was also working as a professor. As a member of the council, the state minister asked him to make a report concerning the political rebels in the Congo. My husband refused to make the report because of the risks involved. His refusal angered the state minister who then accused him of political rebellion. My husband was arrested and put in a military prison for two weeks. It wasn’t possible for him to contact me in any way. The state minister feared that if they released my husband from prison, he would share confidential information with other people; so he decided my husband must be killed. At this time there was a meeting with the state council. Some members of the Zimbabwean military were present and they knew my husband. When they heard that he was going to be killed, they came up with a plan to help him. That night they freed him from the prison and put him on a plane to South Korea. Because of diplomatic relations between the Congo and Europe, the Zimbabwean military decided that South Korea would be the safest refuge for my husband. I was very, very, very troubled by this situation. I didn’t know where my husband was–I didn’t know if he was in the Congo, if he was somewhere else in Africa, or if he was dead. It was very, very difficult for me during this time. Thérèse Kanyanga and Her Husband I had my seven children. At the time, the youngest was 11, and the oldest was 24. I told my children that I didn’t know where their father was. We were looking for him but we couldn’t find him. There were many tears that were cried, and we were all very sad. I fasted and prayed a lot during this time. My unshakable faith was and is in my God and in His son Jesus Christ, our Savior. But I was also weeping because I was torn by the darkness of my husband’s mysterious disappearance: Was he dead or alive? My husband disappeared in November. When he arrived in South Korea he contacted a friend in the Congo and sent him to find me. At the end of December, this friend found my oldest daughter and told her about the situation. When my daughter called to tell me that my husband was alive, I was very relieved and thankful to the Lord because at that point I didn’t know where he was or if he was even alive. Were you able to support your family during those years your husband was exiled? My husband’s work had provided our income. Now that he was gone we had very little money to live off of. We had a deposit saved up but that money ran out quickly. I had no money to pay for the rent, food, or my children’s schooling so I started to sell things. I sold fry bread on the streets to support my family, so that we could survive. At this time the children weren’t able to attend school. It was the most difficult, sad, bitter experience of my life: Being a mother with seven children in my charge to feed and console. Eventually, my husband was able to send small amounts of money over from South Korea to help us. He joined a Christian prayer group and some of the members collected money for him. In 2003, three years from the time he left the Congo, he received his refugee status from the South Korean Ministry of Justice which allowed him to work. He began to lecture as a professor, as he had done in the Congo, and made money from his lectures. For the next two years he sent much of this money back to Africa to help support us. It was during this time that he joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. How was your husband converted to the Church? My husband met a senior missionary at the subway stop on his way home from church on Christmas Day. This was in 2005. They had a conversation and exchanged business cards. One month after meeting the missionary, my husband received a Book of Mormon in the mail. He was very skeptical of this book. He didn’t understand it. He reluctantly agreed to have a meeting with the senior missionary and his wife that week. During the meeting my husband wanted to tell them that only the Bible was the word of God. He was going to teach them! But he kept hearing the Spirit tell him, “Do not open your mouth, let the missionary teach you.” He obeyed the promptings of the Spirit and listened to the missionary tell him the history and purpose of the Book of Mormon. When the missionary asked him what he felt, my husband knew it was true. He was baptized two weeks later. Thérèse Kanyanga After he was baptized, my husband told the missionaries about his wife and family back in Africa. They all agreed that I must come to South Korea so that my husband and I could be together. The missionaries assured my husband that they would provide enough money to purchase the plane tickets for his family to travel to Seoul. My husband then went to the immigration office to get permission to invite me and our children to live with him. Immigration granted him permission to invite me over, but they didn’t grant him permission to invite our children. According to the law, our children were no longer dependents and therefore unable to live with us legally in South Korea. When I heard this news I expressed my profound gratitude to the Lord, who had heard my prayers, comforted my broken heart, and wiped away my tears. But I was faced with a new heartbreak: I could go see my husband, yes. I could witness that he’s alive. But I had to leave my children? I decided to pray, saying to my Heavenly Father, “Here I am, a poor woman, wife and mother torn between the love for my husband, whom we miss, and the love for my children. My children and I are alone with You, our last defense. Not knowing what to do, I place my trust in thee and my children under thy loving care. I go to meet again my dear husband, ‘the ghost’.” When you were finally reunited with your husband, he introduced you to the Gospel. What was that experience like for you? First, I felt joy in hearing the name of the church: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Then my husband, as the pioneer of our family, testified to me. He told me how he had met the missionary at the subway station and how he had understood the truths in the Book of Mormon. He said to me, “Really, really it is the true church of God. Can you accept this?” The Spirit of God testified in my heart that this was the true church of God with his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Head. I told him I would join this church. A few weeks later I was baptized by my husband, and I felt so much peace. I felt the love of God upon us because I had joined His true church. I felt very strongly that this was Jesus Christ’s church on the earth today, and I was full of joy. Being sealed to my husband in the temple some time later was further proof that this was the true church of God. He instituted the marriage covenant Himself in order for the family to be eternal. This is the love of the Lord. How has your spiritual perspective changed since coming to Korea and becoming a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? Since becoming a member of this living church, my faith in God has been strengthened, solidified, and is indestructible like a rock. It is the culmination of my many prayers. Our family suffered so much for those six years my husband was away. I asked, “Why was my husband sent away? Why are we here alone?” Now I think about what God told Abraham: “You live here. Go to another country. There I will bless you.” I think about God helping Joseph when he was sent away to Egypt. Joseph suffered much. He was in prison like my husband, and the blessing of the Lord came upon him. Ten years later we know why the Lord sent my husband to South Korea. All is the plan of the Lord. The Gospel is the Gospel of faith. Each of us knows how we joined the Gospel. Each of us knows how we met God. I testify that Jesus Christ is the Life, the Resurrection, my King, the subject of my faith. This is true. In the name of Jesus Christ I testify. Amen, yes, amen. At A Glance Name: Thérèse Kanyanga Location: Seoul, South Korea Age: 55 Marital status: Married Children: Seven children (ages 21, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 34) Occupation: Homemaker Schools Attended: Toyer Social Languages Spoken at Home: French and Tshiluba Favorite Hymn: “There Is Sunshine In My Soul Today” Current Church Calling: Temple worker Interview by Krisanne Hastings. Photos by Robyn Larsen.

At the age of twenty-three, Sabina Suggs was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML). Her cancer was in remission for over a decade when it unexpectedly returned in 2009. Sabina was also a member of the United States Air Force/Utah Air National Guard, served a mission in the Netherlands and Northern Belgium, and is the mother of one adopted daughter. In this interview Sabina compares running to life’s journey and lessons learned along the way. How were you first diagnosed with leukemia? My husband, Scott, and I married in July of 1997. Three months later, we were going to move to Moscow, Russia, to work at the embassy together. While preparing for that move we had to get our medical clearance. I remember the night the doctor called and said, “How are you feeling?” I said, “Oh, I’m fine. A little tired, but I just got married. I’m going to school full-time and I’m working full-time.” But my white blood cell counts were really high, so he had me go to a specialist the next day. I remember when they first told me that I had leukemia… the shock of it all and them asking if I had any questions and thinking, “I don’t even know what to ask!” I think it’s funny now, but the first thing that came to my mind was, “How am I going to tell my grandma?” I don’t know why. And right after that was, “How am I going to tell my mom?” My mom is also a cancer survivor. I think the hardest part of having cancer is that everyone around you feels so helpless, and you feel helpless. There’s really nothing you can do other than decide, “I’m going to get through this.” Scott was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis while we were in Russia a year later. I feel like we’ve had our share of medical problems. We’re made for each other. Everyone has a disability of some sort, whether it’s something that people can see, or whether it’s something that’s inside. Everyone has insecurities, or a disability. It is really up to you how you deal with it and how you face it. I think 95-98 percent of the time I can stay positive about it. But I still have moments where I do the “poor me” routine. For instance, I feel like I’ve missed out things, like not being able to go through a pregnancy. After your husband, Scott, was diagnosed with MS, you returned to Utah. How did you make the decision to adopt? The doctors told me that with my type of cancer, I had less than a two percent chance of being able to conceive. My first reaction was, “You’re telling me I have a chance?” For a while I thought I was going to be the miracle, part of the 2 percent. But in 2000 we prepared to adopt. Katie’s birth parents are Russian. She fits right into our family. I feel like I have my angel baby. I feel like she is for me. Had I not had cancer, she wouldn’t be my daughter. If all of my health challenges are so that I could be her mom, it is worth it. I don’t think there has been a time when Katie hasn’t known that she was adopted, and that’s because everyone loves her and wants the best for her. We’ve talked to her about maybe one day trying to find her birth mom in Russia. Sabina Suggs and Her Family When did you decide to join the United States Air Force? When I was a senior in high school I joined the Air National Guard. I enlisted when I was seventeen. When I left for basic training that fall I was eighteen. I was on active duty for about two and a half years. I was a Spanish linguist/cryptologist and flew as a crewmember in C130s. I was stationed in Panama for a while. I went to basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio for six weeks; then to Monterey, California, to the Defense Language Institute; back to Texas, to San Angelo, for my technical training; then to survival school in Spokane, Washington; and then to Panama for on-the-job training. I spoke Spanish, but then learned Dutch when I served a mission to the Netherlands. How did you decide to go on a mission after being in the Air Force? Is it something you always wanted to do? I think, especially when I was young, ten or twelve, it seemed like the only reason girls would go on missions was because they didn’t have the chance to get married, so it was kind of a negative. If you said you wanted to go on a mission, people would look at you like, “You don’t plan on being married?” But it was something I wanted to do. You see and you hear so much about how a boy goes on a mission and comes home a man. I wanted that kind of growth for myself. I served a mission to the Netherlands and northern Belgium. I felt like one of the gifts I’ve been blessed with is that I’ve always known the gospel is true. Yes, there are things I don’t understand. But the basis, I know it’s true. For some people, being away from home or from Utah can be the hardest time of their life. But for me, being as young as I was, leaving home to go into the Air Force was amazing. One of my very good friends who is not LDS told me, “You know what? Even if you wanted to start drinking, I wouldn’t let you.” She knows that I had made that commitment. I was able to be out on my own and still feel strong and still know it was true. Seeing the difference the gospel made in my life and seeing people in the world who didn’t have that focus the gospel gives, I wanted to be able to give back in some form. There’s no doubt I partly wanted to go for selfish reasons – to grow as a person – but I also wanted to go because I wanted to help. I wanted to give back; I wanted to be able to somehow dedicate a portion of my life back to my Heavenly Father. We feel like we can pay Him back, but we just can’t. We get so many blessings. It’s just part of my life. If Scott or my brother, Karl, hadn’t served a mission they wouldn’t have met – and it was my brother who introduced me to Scott. So I feel like in my life, in our lives, serving a mission has helped us find the happiness that we have now. But the actual decision to go on a mission? I had just always felt the desire to go. It wasn’t really a decision of do I go or do I not go. You are now an avid runner. How did you get started running? In the Air Force I had to run a mile and a half, and I would get timed quarterly. I had to pass it in a certain time, and it was usually more than enough time. After having leukemia, I wanted to be healthy; I wanted to do something more active with my life. I had done 5Ks. My mom is a breast cancer survivor, so I did Race for the Cure. One year I finally had my brother, Alex, do that run with me. It was the first race he did and then he took off with running. That same year, he did a 10K and then a half marathon and then a full marathon. I was in awe. I thought, “We’re in the same family, we have the same genes, if he can do it, I can do it.” So in 2008, I ran my first half marathon. The next spring I decided I wanted to train more seriously. I ran a couple more half marathons and then last year, October 2009, I ran my first marathon. Sabina Suggs What is Team in Training and why did you decide to join it? Team in Training, or TNT, is a branch of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society that helps people train for long distance events and raises money for cancer research. At the time, being a leukemia survivor I thought, “You know, I feel like I have a personal investment in it.” It had been ten years since my bone marrow transplant. So I signed up for TNT in the fall of 2009. Ten days later, I was told that my leukemia was possibly back. There was such irony in that: I joined as a survivor and then ten days later I was told I was having a relapse. I had been going annually for a blood draw; now, since the relapse, I go every three months. Medicine has changed since I was first diagnosed in 1997. They don’t even do bone marrow transplants for this type of leukemia anymore. They have an oral chemo drug that I will take daily and it will keep it in remission, but it’s not a cure. I will still have to stay on it. But it apparently won’t affect my quality of life. I haven’t started the oral chemo yet; the docs want to just monitor my blood counts and will decide when the timing is right for when I should start. Since I had already signed up with TNT, I decided I was going to still do it. I felt like I had even more of a reason to do it – finding a cure. I was doing a little research and found out that TNT funded the man who discovered the oral medication I take. I thought that was pretty neat. We just keep going. Mentally I feel like, yes, I have cancer again; but, because I don’t feel any physical symptoms, I feel like I can keep going. Sabina Suggs After my first season with TNT, I signed up to participate again, not only as an alumnus but as a Team Captain. The purpose of a Team Captain is, in addition to my own training and fundraising, I assist new participants with their questions or concerns, help them with their fundraising goals, and offer any support to help them succeed. Do you think it inspires the team to know that you are a survivor? I would assume it does, just having a close connection to the reason. Some people, when they join TNT, it’s usually because they know someone with, or have been affected themselves, by either leukemia or blood cancer or cancer in general. But some people just hear how it is training and support that will help them run an endurance event. TNT provides the coaches and training – and the inspiration – we have an honored teammate who is usually a child, because leukemia is commonly a childhood cancer. It brings it home. It makes it personal. That’s why I enjoy participating in Team in Training. I actually don’t love running. I want to love it, but I don’t. Some people talk about how they are just so addicted to it and they’ve just got to keep going because they love it. I like how I feel after, and so I think maybe that’s what they’re talking about. You can feel accomplished when you run. Sabina Suggs You say you don’t love running. Why do you run? I think part of it is that I don’t know how to work out. And what’s running? You put on shoes, you don’t need equipment, and you just run. You just go. You’re at your own pace; it’s you against you. All along my goal in running has been to improve; it’s me against myself. When I did my first half marathon I was running a 12:30-minute mile. The last one I did in a 9:30-minute mile. I’m improving. My goal eventually is to get under two hours, which means a nine-minute mile. But it’s not about the time. It sounds so cliché, but it’s about the journey. One of the main reasons I wanted to join Team in Training was because I heard about the Nike Women’s Marathon. I want to be there. I want to see the sea of purple TNT jerseys, people all supporting the organization that is trying to find a cure for my disease. There are so many unknowns in life. Running is symbolic of my life. I get out there and it’s hard. Life is hard. Running is hard. I thought life would get easier, but just like running has been for me, it hasn’t gotten easier. It’s hard to find the motivation to get up and to run. I think, “I can do this.” The point is I’m going to get there. I’m going to enjoy the journey, the training, the run itself. When I was going to run the St. George marathon for the first time, I wasn’t ready. Scott said, “What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? You’re going to walk? What does the finish line symbolize?” It’s not about the race, it’s not about finishing. Really it’s about your training. It’s not like you cross the finish line and then you’re done. You feel like you’ve made another milestone, but you’re not done. If you think you’re done, that’s when you need to reevaluate. When I first got married, we started talking about when we should we start having kids, thinking that it was really up to us, and then within the moment of my diagnosis, it wasn’t up to me and then I realized it never really was. What you think is up to you, isn’t. The choices that you make, you think are only about you, but they’re not. We can affect other people in good ways. After all is said and done, you never know what difference you make. You’ve faced many challenges in life. What has been the most difficult? There are different kinds of hard. Some things are more physically hard. In the military, basic training was mostly physical, but it was also a mental game. On the mission you have the spiritual challenges–strengthening your testimony, wanting to share that with other people. The military was physically hard, and then the mission was emotionally and spiritually hard. Then the big cancer diagnosis… Well, that was hard in every way because you feel like you’re given a death sentence. Sabina Suggs Do you feel like you have peace about the future? Or does that come and go? I feel like I’ve always had peace about the future. And I think it’s because I learned early on that even with the choices I make, so much of my life is not in my control. That’s true as a parent as well: we have to find that balance of wanting to give, give, give our children everything, but finding that they need to work for things and learn things on their own. There is light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope. If we do what we’re taught in the gospel and in our homes, we will see the blessings sooner or later. Sometimes it’s later. Sometimes I’m still waiting. But other times I feel like I’m blessed more than I deserve. Sabina finished the Nike Women’s Half- Marathon on October 16th. She plans on running her fourth full marathon in Paris in April of next year. She still has her blood drawn quarterly. At A Glance Name: Sabina Suggs Location: Saratoga Springs, UT Age: 37 Marital status: Married Scott Suggs on July 19, 1997… and still married Occupation: one adopted child (Katie) – age 8 Occupation: Resident Coordinator at a Group Home Schools Attended: Utah Valley University Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “How Great Thou Art” On The Web: http://pages.teamintraining.org/dm/paris11/ssuggs Interview by Marintha Miles. Portraits by Jenica McKenzie.

Gabrielle Blair is best known as Design Mom, the founder of one of the most popular design and motherhood blogs on the web, named as one of Time magazine’s Top Websites of 2010. In this interview, Gabrielle reveals the spiritual and personal motivations behind the blog’s origins and purpose, as well as her own philosophies about mothering her six children and developing all mothers’ innate creativity. Have you always been a creative person, and how was this instilled in you growing up? I’m the only one in the family that actually studied design but everyone in the family has creative instincts and I think this is from both my mom and my dad. One of my earliest memories is when I was six years old, and we moved into the new home that our family had built. My mom, who could see that I had an instinct for art and design, let me decorate my bedroom. She let me have input on what the room would look like, the fixtures, the wallpapers, and what would look good together. She guided me through the process of interior design. She wouldn’t let me make a major mistake because she was spending money on this room, but I really did feel like I got to make some of those decisions and knew what it was like to live with those choices and the impact they had on me. We ate great meals, but I remember just as much the table setting and the plates and the silverware. Thanksgiving would come around and the table presentation was at least as big a deal as what we were cooking. It was a very visual thing. There wasn’t a ton of money but thankfully creativity is a free thing, and when we needed a little centerpiece, my mom would just ask us to go out into the yard and find something pretty. I am sure she would have loved to order fresh flowers for the table weeks in advance. That wasn’t an option, but it didn’t mean that you couldn’t do something pretty or beautiful. I feel like there was always a lot of beauty in our home. I don’t think of my dad as an artist at all, but he was a real entrepreneur. He was always starting a new business, or side opportunity. It’s natural for me to start a business. The businesses I own now are not the first ones I have owned; I have always had something like this going on. I think I was very much influenced by growing up with a mix of entrepreneurial adventures and creative pursuits. Gabrielle Stanely Blair Would you describe the path that led you to a career in graphic design? When I was sixteen, I received my patriarchal blessing. One of the lines in it said that I would be blessed to be able to make a living should that ever become necessary. This was at a time when all you ever heard at Church was “Moms, you need to stay home with your kids!” I know different things are being said now, but at the time this statement in my patriarchal blessing was just mind-blowing to me. My mom and I walked out afterward and the only interpretation I could put on it was that my husband was going to die! There was no concept where you would need to provide for your family unless your husband couldn’t. That was a pretty bold statement in my patriarchal blessing. When I went to college a couple of years later, I was very conscious of what I could do from home with the large family that I hoped to have. It was always in my head. I was accepted into the design program at BYU, initially in interior design, because that was the only design I was familiar with. One day I found myself walking around the Brimhall Building on campus looking at different work on the walls from different design majors. I could see neat CD covers that someone had done for different bands, and there were some typography studies, and I remember being told it was the work of the graphic design majors. I started looking into it and found it even more interesting to me than interior design, and more easily done from home. The only thing I needed was a computer. The Internet was just getting huge then and I could see that I wouldn’t even have to go and make presentations in person. It felt revolutionary, and so I reapplied to the graphic design program. This changed the way I could approach work and the way I could approach motherhood. I graduated from college at the same time as my husband, and then two weeks later I had my first baby. Although I completed my work experience in advertising design and art direction at Ogilvy & Mather in Greece as a student, I have never known work without having children. We have always done some form of trading off the childcare while we have worked, and it has turned out brilliantly for us. I know it wouldn’t work for all couples, but that is how we have done it and my major and my patriarchal blessing influenced all of that. As I interpret it now, my patriarchal blessing could refer to a specific time when we moved to New York and my husband was doing a PhD at Columbia University. We had been very prayerful about this move and what we should do as a family. Our third child was born just weeks after we moved and at first, we were making it work financially through student loans and my husband’s campus office job. A year later it wasn’t working anymore. My husband lost his job and couldn’t find another one. We prayed about it and the answer was that I should go and get a full-time job. Although I had been doing some freelance work, I was terrified! It had been several years since I had worked full-time and we were in New York instead of Utah so it was really intimidating to me. I put my portfolio together and went out. Within the week I had three great offers at the salary that I wanted and, reflective of my patriarchal blessing, I felt clearly that I was supposed to work while my husband completed his degree. I ended up taking the job that seemed the best fit for my family and I still have wonderful contacts from that. It was a blessing in a lot of different ways. How did DesignMom come about and how has it helped you maintain a sense of self? Since having my third baby, I have always been aware of my need to have a creative outlet. It was a challenging time, having just completed a big move and going from two children to three. It was financially stressful, and then three weeks later the September 11th attacks occurred. Sometime before the baby’s first birthday I had a total breakdown. I didn’t connect it to my baby, but I was diagnosed with postpartum depression. I was able to return to health pretty quickly and started working full time not long after that, which also helped a lot. Since then, I have tried to be very conscious of having something that helps me stay positive after each baby, and I have really never had a problem with depression since, in part because I was making sure I was doing something creative immediately after having a baby. I know this isn’t the case for everyone, but a creative outlet is key for me to stay mentally healthy. I quit working full time after my fourth baby, and had the fifth baby 16 months later, and knew for sure that I couldn’t go back to full time work. It was just too overwhelming to have any sort of commitment or deadlines. Right after I had baby number five, I started thinking about what I could do that would be a creative outlet because even freelance design, which had worked so well for me in the past, was too much. It just so happened that when I had my fifth baby, my sister started her blog, “Oh Happy Day.” I loved it because it was so fresh to me, and it was a daily place I could visit that had pretty things and inspiring ideas. A couple of months later, I decided I could write my own blog, modeled on my sister’s, about being a designer and being a mother and how that changes how I look at motherhood. I realize that many mothers are also designers, but someone writing about that felt unique at the time. There was this huge design boom going on, and design was a big deal. A popular magazine at the time had the tag line, “design your life,” and the idea of being deliberate about your life resonated with me. Ben and I had very much tried to design our lives and to be very conscious about things like what kind of books we were bringing into our home, and the kind of artwork we collected. Then there was the fact I was a mother. I was 31, and I had just had baby number five. Most of the women around me in New York were having their first baby! So I was their peer in age, but then I could confidently talk about surviving potty training or putting together a birthday party and how motherhood works. I just hit this really hot spot where design was cool and being a mother was cool. And here I was, an actual designer and I actually had five kids. Gabrielle Stanely Blair and Her Husband I started blogging and I tried to post frequently because it seemed to be this great creative outlet. And it was amazing! There was no boss; I could blog if and when I felt like it, at any time of day. In the same way that graphic design had felt like a better fit than interior design, suddenly blogging felt like an even better fit than graphic design. I could totally mesh it with motherhood in a way that no other job that existed before blogging could. At first it wasn’t even a job, it was a hobby. But pretty quickly I had a readership base and although it didn’t make money for a while, I could see that there was potential and could start treating it like a business. What started as something to keep me from going crazy has turned into this accidental career. A few months in I ended up co-founding a website called Kirsty, and now I am a “social media expert” that speaks at and puts on conferences and is doing the blog. Of course, I could not have picked this for a career because it did not exist when I was a kid, and I don’t know how long it will last, but I cannot believe I get to do this for work! It is this huge blessing in my life and I love that I enjoy it. At the same time, I do work hard, I put in lots of hours, and I am constantly trying to be innovative. Do you feel that you are able to empower women inside and outside of the Church through your blogging? I really do hope so. I have a memory of pre-blog days, when I had three kids. We were walking to the library, I had on a cute dress, my kids looked clean and cute, and everyone was in a good mood. I remember a friend driving up and very sweetly saying, “You make motherhood look good, you make it look so fun.” I know motherhood isn’t always fun, believe me! But that was such a compliment. I hope I make motherhood look good. Through my blog, I am not going to pretend that motherhood is always blissful, but I am going to try and show the joy in it and a way to find beauty in it, even when it is challenging. Yes, it is frustrating to make Halloween costumes, but let’s make it fun. I think it is about finding what is interesting to you, and making that work in your motherhood. For me it is art and design but for someone else it might be literature or science. As a parent, I find it helpful when people model things that I do not know how to do well. I appreciate seeing what’s working for others so I can have a template and try that in my own life. For example, I’m always on the lookout for models of how to speak gently to your children. I need help with that! Likewise, I hope I am modeling for other people where I have strengths. I can model how to love your husband and how to speak kindly to him. I know how to do that and I am good at that. I can model how to do a fun activity with your kid because I know how to do that. I know people do not come to my blog to have spiritual discussions or learn about the beliefs of my church–that’s not what my blog is about. But I am trying to portray a Mormon who is pretty normal. Someone you could be friends with. I’m always fascinated that the further I get from Utah, the more I realize no one knows anything about Mormons, or if they do there are a lot of misconceptions. I know I am not overtly religious on my blog but I hope I am still modeling a religious person. I like to mention things like we went to church on Sunday, or we blessed the baby, or I did girls’ camp last summer. I know we like to be a peculiar people, but I also see benefits to showing Mormons as regular sorts of people. Gabrielle Stanely Blair Do you feel your evolution in social media has enriched your life as a mother? Yes, absolutely. I am prone to tell new mothers who email me that they should start a blog! We live in such isolation now compared to the past, when you had your mother in the home and there were other people around. Now we live our lives separately, but we still need people, especially when our babies are young. Blogging to the rescue! There is this blogging community that you can access 24 hours a day that provides comfort and encouragement and real advice. When I was a new mother, this did not exist and I was on the phone with my sisters and my mom for hours at a time, because I needed help. I remember feeling sorry for people who didn’t have their mom or their sister, but now blogging has changed that. All of a sudden you have many many people to ask for help and you can connect with a whole world of people you never could have before. The other thing that blogging has done is glorify in a good way what moms do. For example, I detest the task of buying my kids shoes. If I take them with me so I can get the right fit, I am going to have to fight with them about getting the Buzz Lightyear shoes. If I go without them, then I am going to have to buy three pairs of the same shoe in different sizes to bring home and get the right fit. I used to dread the task because no one seemed to appreciate what a pain in the neck it was. But now, if I write about buying toddler shoes on my blog, all of a sudden that task is legitimate; it’s a part of motherhood that all these other women relate to, and can genuinely appreciate, and they leave comments with their own tales of shoe buying. So many things that mothers didn’t get credit for (like potty training, or figuring out a birthday party) are now acknowledged through blog posts and comments, and it validates what you are doing. Of course, we know those tasks were valuable all along and don’t require validation to be worthy, but validation is important. When you become a mother you just don’t get validation often, but a blog can provide that. Blogging has been this huge personal thing that has helped me grow and appreciate what I do each day: what we’re cooking for dinner, how to put together a room, what chores to assign the kids, etc. I am now constantly looking for the beauty in whatever it is we are doing. As a mother of six children, how do you balance everything that you do, and what tools of the gospel do you use frequently? Balance is elusive. I don’t even know what people mean by “balance” anymore. But I know there are very specific things that allow me to have the big family and the job. One is that my husband and I have flexibility in our work. If one or both of us had a job that required us to be in a specific place at a specific time each day, the way we are living our life now wouldn’t work. The fact that both of us have a flexible schedule makes a huge difference and just makes life easier. Every few months we re-evaluate our family’s needs. One of the things we have found is that if I work between the hours of 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., the house and family life fall apart. So from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. is sacred time. We’re doing homework, we’re doing dinner, we’re doing reading, and I do not look at my email or take phone calls. At another time in my life, that probably won’t matter as much, and when the kids were younger and home all day, it didn’t matter. But it matters now. Evaluating regularly and making changes accordingly works for us as far as keeping balance goes. In addition to evaluations, we try to do a monthly interview with each of the kids where we talk with them two on one. There’s a scripture about Christ as a child that says, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52). So we base their interview on those four categories: wisdom concerns their schooling and education; stature is their physical health; and favour with God and man is their spirituality and their social life. Ben and I interview them together, and we keep a little journal where we record these interviews. In some years we’re really great at it and we do it often, and some years we laugh because we’re not so great at it. We don’t have guilt around it, we just do the best we can. At the start of the school year or at any time there is something important going on, we make sure the kids have access to priesthood blessings to offer extra encouragement. We like being together and we look for ways that we can spend time together. I feel like we get that basic structure from the gospel. Family prayer is part of our day; we do our best with scripture study; we’re at church every Sunday and the kids know we take our callings seriously. They look forward to Family Home Evening, which is part fun, part learning, and very much part practical where we go over the calendar for the week and address needs. Gabrielle Stanely Blair and Her Family How has your husband supported you as you have worked inside and outside of the home? Not all men would be comfortable with their wife taking a turn as breadwinner, or would be comfortable with both spouses adding to the income in major ways. But it does work for us and I think a huge part of that is my husband. One thing that is unique about our relationship is that we have experienced the opposite “traditional” roles. He has seen how hard it is being at home with children, since we had a period where he was the stay-at-home dad when he was doing his graduate work. He knows the schedule for our kids as well as I do. If I have to travel for work now, there is no sense of handing the kids off to the dad who is sort of clumsy and doesn’t know what he is doing. The house doesn’t fall apart if I’m gone. At the same time, it was really good for me to be the full-time breadwinner, so I could be compassionate toward someone who works full time. Before I worked full time, I assumed Ben had it easy at work with lunch breaks and adult conversation and not being interrupted any time he needed to use the bathroom. But working full-time, I realized that when the breadwinner gets home, he is exhausted, and it is hard to dive right back into the family. Experiencing each others roles was really great for us. Interestingly enough, we switched back because I ended up having a couple more babies so I needed to be home with them, but I don’t feel that we ever switched back as fully. I feel like we have carefully built these careers that we can be flexible with. Once I was done working full time, we started a business together doing after-school language programs, where I did the design of the company and he was doing the curriculum. From there he started working as a professor, which is a very flexible schedule, and I started blogging at the same time. Now, four years later, we have this great situation where we both can work from home. Ben has a very steady job where as long as he puts his hours in and gets his projects done, he can be flexible. And of course, my schedule is completely determined by me. I know it wouldn’t work for all couples to work side by side and be with each other this much, but we love it and it works really well for us. How has the Spirit guided you in having a family and pursuing a career? I don’t feel it is as big a deal now because women are working more, but when I was starting to have a family, it was hard for me to say to fellow church members, “Staying at home with my children and not doing anything else is not working for me” and not feel judged. No one was talking about any alternatives at that time, and all I was being told was not to fight against it, and that if I’m doing it right, I’ll love it, that’s just the way it is. In response to that, I tried to cope by filling my evenings with creative projects like designing a logo for someone, but I knew that if I abandoned all creative pursuits outside of motherhood, I would go crazy. I wanted to do what was right by my family and by the Lord, and so from the outset of our marriage we were very prayerful about what we should do that would keep me sane and keep me loving my children and excited to be spending time with them instead of discouraged. I didn’t want to rebel and I remember having a conversation in prayer and saying to Heavenly Father that if He really wanted me to stay at home then I would submit to that. But I never had the sense that that was what He wanted of me. I absolutely feel that Ben and I have been guided through our different experiences as we have gone to the Lord and outlined our concerns and our desires. I remember when we moved to New York, we were not comfortable with the expectation of working from 9:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. We knew many New Yorkers did it and made it work, but we knew it wouldn’t work for us. So we took it to the Lord and asked Him to help us see another path that would work for our family. And an alternative path was shown. We could never have seen the path we are on now, as the careers we have now did not exist. There really is no one pattern; it is about going to the Lord and being willing to receive what He will send us. I really appreciated President Uchtdorf’s talk a couple of years ago about creativity, which was such a shift from how I felt women had been spoken to previously. I was so grateful for it because he emphasized that it is good to create, it is good to be happy! I believe it is okay to make motherhood what you need it to be so that you can value this time in your life, take joy in your children and help your children love life. There is no one fixed model for being a good mother. I believe that the Lord designs paths for us that we can’t see, or even imagine. If you keep your heart in the right place and know where your priorities are, you can find a way to make your motherhood work for you and for your family. At A Glance Name: Gabrielle Stanely Blair Location: Denver, CO Age: 36 Marital status: Married to Ben Blair on August 19, 1995. Still married. Children: Ralph 13, Maude 11, Olive 9, Oscar 5, Betty 4, June 5 mos. Occupation: Blogger (formerly a graphic designer) Schools Attended: Brigham Young University Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “All Creatures Of Our God And King” On The Web: http://designmom.com and http://kirtsy.com Interview by Louise Elder. Portraits by Justin Hackworth.

As a young clothing designer selling to Neiman Marcus and Henri Bendel, Maralyn’s clients included Jackie Kennedy Onassis. But because of influential parents and a mission to New Zealand, Maralyn was always grounded in loving others and teaching the gospel. In her interview, Maralyn discusses her ever positive outlook, her life with an inactive husband, and her continual quest for projects that keep her mind and spirit invigorated. Tell me a bit about your background in the church. I grew up in a home where the gospel was really lived. Mother and Dad always encouraged my siblings and me to be the best we could be. My dad always said that if you read the scriptures and go to church, you can do anything. My father was a professor, a doctor of sociology, and my mother was an author, artist, and actress. They served two missions to New Zealand and I was born there. I don’t remember that first mission because we returned home when I was six months old, but my parents served their second mission when I was older. At that time, Daddy was the mission president and said, “Maralyn, come over and visit us!” So I went to New Zealand to visit and he called me on a mission. I had a Maori companion. She was only about five feet tall and I’m five feet seven and a half inches tall! My companion was a terrific sister missionary. I’m grateful I had the opportunity to serve a mission and learn a new culture. I learned both from my parents and from my own experiences that the key to teaching the gospel is love—loving the gospel, loving the people, and loving the opportunities that you have. I think that teaching the gospel is one of the greatest challenges; it’s all about teaching and living the gospel to the best of your ability and helping others to see the good in it. Maralyn Lavenstein How did you get interested in fashion and the business world? My mama—I remember she was always doing something—she always had to have a ” project.” She sewed a great deal and she taught me to how to sew when I was three years old. As just a kid, I learned how to cut a doll’s dress! It was mom’s influence. Because of her, we always had a very clean house, she cooked great meals, and she went back to school at age 50 to get her master’s degree! She was also a great painter, she wrote two or three books, she acted in plays, she was a president of BYU Women and she was a Relief Society President. Mama used to say, “to create is good for the soul.” I believe that. I think there is so much to do, so much to create. I can remember when I went to visit her when she was about 86 years old (she died at 88). She said, “Oh honey if I just have a project, I can keep going.” I said, “Mom what more do you want to do?” I looked to mother as an example of a woman doing all that she could. As long as she had a project I could see how happy she was. I majored in merchandising in college. Well, I had a double major in merchandising and in textiles at BYU. Then I had a minor in dance. After working at ZCMI for several years, I had an interview with Jerry Stutz, the president of Henri Bendel, a high fashion store in New York City. Jerry made me an offer to buy for their sportswear department and for their sports dresses, so I took it! Why not, you know? The job involved travel . . . we traveled all around the world, to Paris, Ireland, England, and Italy. We went to all the couture fashion shows. I also designed ready-to-wear for Henri Bendel. One year, I designed a coat that was on the cover of a magazine and Jackie Onasis Kennedy called up and bought it. It was exciting! Later I owned my own women’s and children’s clothing stores in Salt Lake City. I also designed and manufactured clothes for some larger department stores like Neiman Marcus and Lord and Taylor. At one point I went back to school for Interior Design and owned an interior design studio as well. Did your colleagues know you were Mormon? Oh yes, when my husband and I were planning on getting married, Jerry Stutz, the president of Henri Bendel, said,” I want to give you an open house.” She called me up the day of the open house and said, “I have ginger ale, orange juice, tomato juice, and 7-Up. What else will you drink?” She knew I didn’t drink and neither did Jim. We had a great time. Tell me about your husband, Jim. Jim was a vice president at CBS at the time we met. One day, my sister’s father-in-law, who was also the President of ZCMI, and his wife called me up. They had been in New York for some meetings and called me at 11:30 at night. She said, “Would you have lunch with us tomorrow?” I said, “Oh I’d be glad to.” If I had known it was a blind date I’d never have gone! But I went and Jim was there. They had known Jim for a long time. We had a wonderful time. After that, however, he didn’t call me for two weeks. He always kids me about that. Anyway, he finally called; we dated, and got engaged. Jim was not a member of the church when we met, he grew up in a Jewish family. But he had worked closely with some general authorities who were instrumental in putting the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and The Spoken Word on CBS. They introduced Jim to the church. Later he was baptized and we were married in the Logan Temple. Maralyn Lavenstein Jim’s father died before I could meet him. But his mother lived to be 102 years old. I’ll never forget one day when I had been to visit her with my daughter. We were sitting on a terrace in New York City. Jim’s mother said, “Do you believe that there is a hereafter? Will I see my husband again?” Of course that opened the door for a conversation on testimonies and sharing the gospel. We had a nice discussion but she never joined the church. Our first baby was born in New York City, several years later we moved to Salt Lake City. Jim took a job with a communications company and we had our other two children. We were both very engaged in raising our family and furthering our businesses. It was a busy time! During the period when our children were young Jim discontinued his activity in the church. That was a tough time. But throughout our marriage we have had love and respect for each other and the things we believed. There has also been a generous dose of humor –to get us through! That’s what I mentioned earlier, we have to love—to love living the gospel and to love others no matter what! As a woman married to an inactive member of the church, I’ve never felt like I was out of the norm. I think in our life we all struggle through different problems. I certainly have been challenged by Jim’s inactivity but it’s a rich and rewarding life. I don’t think it’s hurt me. It hasn’t hurt my testimony at all. He has been very supportive of me and my church work. When you ask me to tell you about my husband the first thing I want to say is that he is a wonderful man and has taught me so much and I know he loves me and I love him. Next, he is known for being an avid newspaper reader. He reads several papers everyday and there is never a dull discussion in our home! He keeps me on my toes! He’s been a great father and has always been interested in the kids and what they are doing. He still sends newspaper articles to our children and grand children about the things they are interested in. Maralyn Lavenstein You have such a positive outlook on an issue that many people would find difficult. What are some of the tools that have helped you in this nontraditional situation? The most important thing is to remember you are a child of God. Through prayer you’ll be guided and directed if you do what is right. The Lord can only help you if you are obeying his commandments. Namely, we have to love one another. None of us are perfect. And therefore you have to be tolerant and give of yourself and never deviate from what you believe. I think that’s the biggest test and challenge that we have. Always remember the gospel plan as we know it to be true and never deviate from those principles, and yet love one another. That’s the center of the gospel. You get the strength from prayer and the Holy Ghost. What was it like moving around with a young family? We did move around a lot. Jim’s business opportunities took us around. From Salt Lake City we moved to Boise, Idaho, then we moved back to Salt Lake for a few years, then we moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and from there to Chicago. We’ve actually lived in several areas of greater Chicago too! Well, it was a challenge. I think the first thing that helped us was staying active in the church. The kids and I went to church and met a lot of great members in all the places we lived. I had many opportunities to serve and share my testimony. In Tulsa, I was the Relief Society President. I held callings in the primary as well. And later when the kids were in high school I taught early morning seminary. That was a challenge! The kids adjusted okay to our moves because I was home most of the time. I was home while they were in their teenage and growing-up years. Jim was supportive and always wanted to help me out where he could. Our kids made friends easily and Jim kept them focused on their school work. How time flies! After our kids moved out, we sold our business in Tulsa and retired to Chicago. We thought Chicago would be a good place to be in order to see all the kids. Even while moving around and getting homes settled and helping the kids adjust, I always found time to create and to learn something new. Here in Chicago I started a business designing home textiles with antique and vintage fabric, jewelry, and handbags. I’ve done a number of shows and have had a retail space in a great antique store called Vintage Pine. What advice would you give women searching for who they are? I believe in life that women have to be fulfilled as much as men. We have a time and a season, as the scripture tells us. But too many of us forget that and we let ourselves get lost. There are so many things to do in life and so many places to go and so much to see and so much to read. I usually have five or six books from the library at any one time. I can’t keep up with all of them so I read what I think is interesting. I think that we have to keep our minds bright, too. Jim’s mother worked for the United Nations on women’s projects well into her 90’s and my mother kept her mind going through painting and writing. When I think of the gospel, it’s a gospel of progression. If we want to get to the Celestial Kingdom we have to do more than what we think we can do. We sometimes lose sight of the wonderful things that can be done. The more we grow, the more our children grow. To stay home and take care of our children is the most important thing in life. On the other hand, you have to be doing something so that your children see you and grow by that example. All of us have gifts and great challenges in life that we should try and make the most of. I would say think about what you like to do. If you like to sing, practice singing. If you like to read, read good books. You might find that you want to do some painting or drawing. Or if you like to write, start doing it. It’s a matter of doing! I think too many of us are to the point where we think, “I’ve gone to school. . . I have my degree. . . and that’s it!” You have to find yourself and what you want to do and figure out what you need to continue your path of growth. It will change and take a different direction as you get older but I think it’s so important to understand that you are you. And have fun doing it! At A Glance Name: Maralyn Lavenstein Location: Chicago, IL Age: 80 Marital status: Married Children: Three children, six grandchildren Occupation: Homemaker, designer Schools Attended: Brigham Young University Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “‘Til We Meet Again,” “We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet,” “I Know That My Redeemer Lives”—There are just so many, it’s hard to nail down just one Current Church Calling: Relief Society Instructor Interview by Cassandra Arnell. Portraits by Momoko Fritz.

Vicki Dalia is the mother of eighteen children, eight of whom are adopted. She also runs a family business and a non-profit orphanage in Guatemala. She sees the hand of the Lord guiding her work helping children. In this interview, Vicki tells of the trials and rewards of establishing the orphanage and offers a helpful perspective on parenting and living a gospel-centered life. How did you discover the Church? My husband and I had been married for just a short while. He was my second husband, and I had a nine-year-old son from my first marriage. And then we very quickly had one child and then a second child together, just fourteen months apart. I decided I needed a mother’s helper to help with two little ones. And I knew our marriage was in trouble. We were fighting a lot. We happened to move to a neighborhood that was a block from a stake center where the missionaries often tracted. And the mother’s helper I hired was a member of the Church. We were impressed with her family. My son, who was then eleven, and I started taking the discussions. And we were baptized six months later, and then my husband was baptized a year later. That was thirty-one years ago. How was the transition to the Church? Well, my husband had grown up Catholic, I had grown up in the Baptist Church. Neither of us had gone to church for quite some time. We were hippies, and we’d been living a hippie lifestyle, which didn’t really form the basis of a good marriage. And all of a sudden we had three children, but our marriage wasn’t strong. Our new membership in the Church satisfied both our need for a religious foundation as well as the family element we needed to strengthen our marriage. We had five children in six years. We both had a lot of baggage we brought with us from our families of origin. Although we went to church and we were mostly active, it took us seven years from when we were baptized to when we were sealed in the temple. So it was a work in progress. But we have been temple recommend holders now for a long time. Our fifth child is on a mission. How did you come to adopt eight children? My husband and I had eight by birth, and I had my son from my first marriage whom my husband adopted. So that was nine children for us. I was forty-one years old, and the doctors told me that I wouldn’t have any more birth children. But we felt like we wanted to raise more children. We had both grown up in unsafe, dysfunctional homes, and we really felt like we wanted to give children an opportunity to have a safe home. We thought at first we would go through the state foster care system, but that didn’t work out because they said we had too many children of our own to adopt through the state. So then we did private adoptions. We adopted black and bi-racial children, and we have a Hispanic Down syndrome child. The oldest of our adopted children is seventeen; the youngest one is four. We actually ended up having one more birth child after that. She’s fifteen. We just like raising children. As the years went by, we finally started having a little bit of money, and that made things easier. We both have worked at home our whole married life so the children have both parents here. Now it’s even better because the business we started that enabled us to work at home is now being run by our oldest daughters, who have their master’s degrees. Were the adoptions from within the States? Were they from other countries? They were in the States. The for-profit business we started from home is AdoptionAdvertising. I have a degree in social work, and I had completed a year of law school before I quit when I married my husband. So I networked and worked with attorneys to find our adopted children and then people started asking me to find children for them. Eventually, we turned those searches into a business. That business has worked really well for us as far as enabling us to work at home, allowing our daughters to go into business with us, and making enough money for us not only to support this large family but a lot of the work we have been doing in Guatemala. How do you balance family, business, and non-profit work? It’s a daily challenge; it is not something that you learn and then you are through with it. You learn because you made a mistake the day before and you say “Okay, I need to focus on my family a bit more tomorrow.” We now have five family members who are employees of our business, so it is a constant, balancing act between being the mother they need and the boss who gets the best out of them. We want to make sure we have a good, ethical, efficient business so our clients will be well pleased, but we also enjoy the family aspects of the business. We still have nine children at home, so they require a lot of attention. For instance, today we spent the first hour and a half getting the kids up, getting them fed, getting them dressed, getting them to the bus. And then my husband and I did our scripture reading, which we do every day to strengthen our relationship. And then we spent about an hour talking about some issues in the business that are challenging right now. We spent another hour and a half dealing with various problems that some of our adult children are having right now, trying to help them out. After that it was time on our program in Guatemala. So it’s a constant balancing act each day, pulling open our day planners and looking at what needs our help the most. And for sure if our kids are having a crisis or need some help, we’re there to help them. But we also are very committed to what we do in Guatemala. If it’s something the children can manage on their own, we’ll tell them, “You know, we have a job here we’re doing, too. It looks like you can handle this issue on your own.” How does the gospel help you in your family life in keeping priorities balanced? I can’t imagine my family life without the gospel. I start out the day with scripture reading and prayer. I take the challenges that I know are going to come up during the day and I take them to the Lord right then. I work hard to live according to gospel principles so that I can receive personal revelation. We feel that Family Home Evening and the principles we teach our children are so important. Do we ever quit needing the gospel? What is an example of a situation where you needed to seek personal revelation? The thing that comes to mind right now is that I have two children in their early twenties. I learned, on the same day, of issues that both of them have—challenges that really knocked me for a loop. They’re adults, and I can’t control their lives, so I struggled with how I could best help them. I became quite depressed. As I prayed about it, the answer came: “Take ten minutes a day to pray about these two children only. And each day you’ll get inspiration on how to help them.” So that’s what I’ve done. And then I’ve followed the direction I’ve gotten during that prayer time, simple things like, “Call this child,” or “Help in this way.” It’s working really well. I am impressed that the Lord can take something that weighed so heavy on my heart, and in just ten minutes a day, I can help them. How did you get involved in the work in Guatemala? Our business, AdoptionAdvertising, started doing well enough where, for the first time in our married life, we had a little bit of extra money. We’re not very materialistic people. Three of our daughters were interested in humanitarian aid missions in college, so we paid for the girls to go to Haiti and work with an orphanage down there. They discovered there was not nearly enough room in the orphanage for all the children, so we donated five thousand dollars for the orphanage to have a much bigger house for a year. We wanted to become more involved, financially and emotionally, but we wanted to have some control over how our money was spent and the organization was run. I started looking online at opportunities in Guatemala. I have two children who went on Spanish-speaking missions, and the third one, Sarah, was getting her master’s degree at Columbia University and spoke fluent Spanish and was looking for a job. At that time, six years ago, we were reading the scriptures in the book of Luke when Christ is talking to Peter, James, and John about making them fishers of men. And for some weird reason my husband and I both at the same time had this inspiration that we were supposed to open an orphanage in Guatemala. Vicki Dalia and Children We hired Sarah when she graduated, to work for our for-profit business as well as become the director of the orphanage work in Guatemala. We located housing and did the legal work, and that was how it started. It became apparent pretty quickly that our new orphanage needed more supervision than we were giving it from our home in Virginia. Our daughters who had been major players in the establishment of the orphanage were starting to get married and have children of their own, and it became more and more difficult for them to go down to Guatemala. So we felt like we were supposed to move down there. And we did. We moved down there with those children we still had at home. We lived there for three years and had some pretty awesome experiences, from good to horrible. We got run out of one place by banditos. It was just a whole different world. But we fell in love with Guatemala. We ended up moving back to Virginia a year and a half ago because six of our adopted children have proven to have special needs. We didn’t have the education in Guatemala that would enable them to fulfill the measure of their creation. And now they’ve been thriving. My husband and I go down to Guatemala every couple of months for a few weeks at a time, with the help of our married children who come in and watch the children who are still at home. Our facility now holds sixty-four children in the orphanage building, but it needs to be bigger than that. We’re in the middle of 1.5 million Mayans, and we do launch feeding programs; we do formula feeding programs; we do nutritional feeding programs; we do tutorial programs where we hire teachers and they tutor the kids three hours a day; we do student scholarship programs. We’re building a clinic right now; we host medical teams, and with the clinic we’ll have our own birthing center so the local women won’t have to give birth anymore on the dirt floors of their shacks. And now we also have seventeen grandchildren under the age of six, so we’ve got to add that part into it, too. We don’t want to miss our grandchildren growing up. What have been some of the most fulfilling things about your work in Guatemala? We take in street children at the orphanage. Seeing their lives turn around–taking in teenage boys who have lived on the street and a year later are passing the sacrament, taking in a family of four children who had been beaten and abused their whole lives and watching the oldest child, a boy, embrace the gospel–those things really mean a lot to me. I mean, I can still cry watching these boys pass the sacrament. Taking in little girls who have been raped, picking them up from the hospital, working with them, knowing that I’m helping children who’ve gone through the same thing that I went through as a child but now they have a place to live where they don’t have to worry about that anymore–those things. A little boy, Samuel, was brought to our orphanage by his parents. He was almost dead. They didn’t have the money to take him by bus into the city to the hospital. Our orphanage director called me and said, “If we don’t help them, this child is going to die within the hour.” And I said, “Give them the money to buy a bus ticket to the hospital.” They took him in. He ended up having spinal meningitis. With the help of the wonderful email support group we have for the orphanage, we were able to raise $2,100 and get him the medical care and the medicine that he needed. Three weeks later he came home. And when I was down there in January I got to meet him and his mom. Watching his mom cry as she thanked me for saving his life, and watching Samuel smile, was really touching. We had a medical team there last week, and the physical therapist worked with Samuel for four days. He hadn’t been able to walk since his illness. But she got him so he could stand, and he took two steps. Those things just mean a whole lot to me. Since going to Guatemala, how has your work there strengthened your testimony of the gospel? Have you continued to see the Lord’s hand in what you’ve been doing? Yes. That’s why I love being down there: I feel the Holy Spirit with me so strong when I am there. Yes, I see His hand. It was Heavenly Father who whispered to me, “I want you to start some feeding programs for the community children because some of them are starving to death.” And so we started the feeding program. We subsequently found out that our gardener’s sister-in-law’s baby died because she had no breast milk and she couldn’t afford formula. We knew that Heavenly Father was talking to us then, prompting us to start the feeding program so more babies like that don’t have to die. “Help this child,” He said. There is no question in my mind that we are doing what the Lord wants us to do. My kids don’t ever question it either. I mean, I’ve been surprised. I have a couple of kids who like their material things and beg for money for this and that. But they never say, “Well, you don’t have to be doing your work in Guatemala. You could be giving that money to me.” All my children are involved with this. It’s just a family project. How do you respond to different models of mothering you see in the church? Where do you fit in? I’m very different in my mothering from the other families in my area. Nobody else has eighteen children. My daughter Erin, who’s almost thirty, had a friend ask her, “How did you get the parental attention you needed when you were growing up with that many children?” And Erin said, “Well, I probably didn’t get as much parental attention as you did, but I got a ton of attention from my brothers and sisters. And we’re really close even today.” And that’s kind of the way it goes. I delegate a lot. My older children help with my younger children. All the older children have chores. Usually we start about age four—well, we start younger than that trying to get them to pick up after themselves—but we start trying to give out assignments like “Clear the table” or something like that when they’re about four or five. They’re not overloaded; I’m talking about half an hour a day during school days. And then we try to do family cleanup for two hours on Saturday if my mental health can stand it that long. It’s very difficult to get nine children to do family cleanup for two hours on Saturday! I know all of the kids’ needs as well as someone who parents fewer children, but I may not be the one who helps them with each of those needs. For example, I have two ten-year-olds that have a lot of homework right now in third grade. And I have a fifteen-year-old who loves to help with homework, so she gets paid to help her sisters do their homework. In another family, the parents might feel they need to be the ones to help with the homework. We just do things a little bit differently. I watch other mothers and learn from what they do. I have attended a million parenting classes. With adoptions you just attend a lot of parenting classes. But I don’t feel like you ever finish learning as a parent. It’s like a continuing process. I watch people at church, or any place else that I am, and think, “That looks cool. Maybe I can incorporate that into my parenting skills.” Or, “They did that really well. Maybe I can tell my daughters about that so they can do it with their children.” What do you do for you, to take care of your needs outside of work? One thing I do is I pay attention to exercise. No matter what else is going on I get thirty minutes on my bicycle every day. Period. I make sure that I eat healthy, that I’m not so rushed that I’m having to stop at McDonald’s for my meals. I love music, and so I take out a week each year where I go to a music camp. I have lots and lots of CDs, and some of my favorite times are the 25 minutes it takes to drive to the bus stop to pick up kids from school. I get that time just to listen to some of my favorite songs. I love to sing, and I take Tuesday nights to jam with a group nearby my home. And my husband and I take a couple of nights every month to collect ourselves from all the chaos that we live in to attend the temple. I think it’s very important for a mother to address her needs. I think she can be a better mother if she takes time for herself. At A Glance Name: Vicki Dalia Location: Guatemala and Virginia Age: 60 Marital status: Married Children: 18 birth and adopted between the ages of 4 and 42 Occupation: Owner and fundraiser for Casa De Sion Projects in Guatemala, when I am not being a mother and wife Schools Attended: North Carolina State University, North Carolina Central Law School Languages Spoken at Home: English, some Spanish Favorite Hymn: “As Sisters in Zion,” “If You Could Hie to Kolob” On the Web: www.casadesion.blogspot.com Interview by Elizabeth Pinborough.

Heather Willoughby discovered she had a destiny: To study ethnomusicology and return to teach it in the beloved country of her mission, Korea. Now a professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, the largest women’s university in the world, Heather teaches comparative culture classes, as well as classes on gender and human rights. She has a special appreciation for Pansori, a traditional Korean music, and feels a deep spiritual connection to this country she loves. What is your history with Korea? I first visited South Korea in 1986 as a missionary. But even before my mission I had connections to the country. My undergraduate roommate at BYU was a Korean American—her mother was from Korean royalty and her father was Texan. I greatly enjoyed the stories she told. I loved trying to figure her out and learning about the complexities she faced as a Korean American. I was interested in Korea because of her and then traveled to Korea on my mission. Many missionaries love where they serve; I don’t think I’m special in that way. But I did something that a lot of missionaries don’t do—I constantly asked questions about Korea. I wanted to understand the cultural and sociological basis of the country so that I could better share the gospel. I felt that if I understood how people thought or what their religious or philosophical backgrounds were, I would have a foundation for communication. But it was more than that. Even then, I felt deep ties to Korea. I remember when my mission ended, my mother traveled to Korea to pick me up, and I remember that I cried on the plane trip home. I’m not a person who cries a great deal, especially when I was in my 20s, but I cried leaving Korea. I felt like I would never go back. I had made some very dear friends and I felt a profound connection to the country. Heather Willoughby in Traditional Hanbok After my mission, I visited Korea many times as a graduate student and researcher in ethnomusicology, which is the anthropological study of music. I love ethnomusicology because it combines the study of music of the world, travelling and the analysis of people. I graduated in 2002 with a Ph.D. from Columbia University and spent an additional year in New York City working as an adjunct professor at three universities. After that I had a one year post-doctoral fellowship at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. As I finished the year at Springfield, I applied for quite a few jobs but didn’t find anything. I saw a job posting at Ewha Womans University in Seoul for a ‘Culture Specialist.’ I wrote to Ewha with no idea if my ethnomusicology background would constitute the type of culture they were looking for. Luckily, they wanted me, so I came back to Korea again. Originally, I didn’t think that I would stay very long because what Ewha wanted me to teach wasn’t directly related to my field of study. When I was hired I planned on staying for three years; I thought that would allow me time to complete some publications and branch out and research some of the ideas I was working on. However, I’ve already been at Ewha now for more than six years! I’ve found that teaching outside of my field has expanded my knowledge and breadth and interests, and at this point, I have no intention to leave. What do you love about teaching at Ewha Womans University? Ewha Womans University is the largest women’s university in the world. It has about 26,000 students—including the medical school, the law school, the undergraduate and the graduate programs. Ewha was established in 1886 by a woman named Mary Fletcher Scranton. She was a remarkable woman. I love this woman dearly. I feel like I know her in some ways and am looking forward to meeting her in the hereafter and thanking her. Mary came to Korea in 1885 with her son and daughter-in-law as Christian missionaries for the Episcopal Methodist Church. Mary noticed that there were no schools for women—literally. Women were taught at home but there was no formal education system for them. Mary approached Korea’s king and proposed starting a school. She was granted permission but it was not easy going. The school started with a single young woman who was an orphan; many of the young students who subsequently attended were also orphans. At the time, Koreans were wary of foreigners and felt their daughters might be kidnapped, so they wouldn’t send their daughters to the school. Because of this belief, orphans had a greater chance of being educated. Among the early orphan students was a woman who later attended Columbia University and became the first Korean female doctor. Ewha started out as an elementary school/junior high/high school and eventually expanded into a college and then a university. Fairly soon after the school was established, Mary went back to full-time missionary work. She continued for a time to teach at the school, and spent the remaining twenty-four years of her life in Korea. A total of six foreigners served as presidents of Ewha, one of whom was the first Caucasian born in Korea. Heather Willoughby Ewha has a very rich heritage of remarkable women who did astounding things. I feel that in some minute way I’m a part of that heritage. A group of students and I were writing a book about the history of Ewha. As we were writing about the women who dedicated their lives to the service of God and Korean women, I felt a very deep spiritual connection to them. I felt like I was supposed to be here as part of their heritage and that I was supposed to learn about them. That’s one of the reasons that I love them, love the university and love being here. Another thing I love about Ewha is the students in my department. Many of them have grown up abroad, especially the undergraduate students. Their parents were either missionaries, graduate students, or worked as ex-patriots in various countries. I taught a student who lived for 16 years in Turkey and is now attending Columbia University as a graduate student in the Islamic Studies program. I work with students from more than thirty countries—from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and all throughout Asia and Africa. They have very diverse backgrounds and I love learning from them. In a class just this week, we were discussing Buddhism. I started the class by asking, “How many of you or your parents or grandparents are Buddhist? How many of you are affected in your immediate family by an active, participating Buddhist?” I encouraged them to talk about their experiences and one of the girls said, “I’m not religious but my grandmother is Buddhist so she puts our names in the temple and prays for us and that really means a lot to me.” Hearing such experiences is a beautiful thing. I feel a very deep spiritual connection to the students. I also love that I’ve been able to teach comparative culture classes, ask questions of the students and learn about their life. I get to teach classes about comparative religion and learn about the religions of the world. I’ve also taught courses on gender. Last semester, I taught a class called Women of East Asia. We studied the diversity of women’s lives, including their work, marriage and courtship, reproductive rights, prostitution and the so-called “comfort women,” who were sexual slaves during the Second World War; we covered a whole range of women’s lives. Probably most significant is that I’ve been able to teach classes about human rights, specifically women and children’s rights. I’ve even contemplated going back to school and getting a second degree in humanitarian law. I guess the beauty of my life is in how many things I’ve gotten to do. Even though I love ethnomusicology and wish I could teach more music classes, my life has been incredibly enriched by being at this university. It’s great for my spirit. Heather Willoughby with One of Her Diverse Classes As part of your ethnomusicology background, you study and perform a form a traditional Korean opera called Pansori. How were you introduced to Pansori? In 1986, I was in my third area as a missionary. It was a time in Korea when there were a lot of anti-government demonstrations and with that came some anti-American demonstrations as well. Beginning in the late 1970s, Koreans used folk music as a way to rally the people before political demonstrations. Knowing of my interest in music and Korean culture, an investigator invited my companion and me to a Pansori concert. I didn’t know what Pansori (a solo narrative genre) was at the time, but found that the concert was part of a pre-rally demonstration designed to get the students fired up. I was sitting in the back of the auditorium with my companion. There was a woman on the stage…she was quite small and it was just her and a drummer. She began to sing and tell a story. She had more charisma than anyone I had ever seen in my life. I’ve been to a lot of concerts: pop, rock, everything, but I had never seen something like this—the way that this single, diminutive woman captured the audience’s attention. I was so drawn to her that I got out of my seat and walked along the edge of the wall and down toward the front of the stage, so that I could stand very close to her and watch. I was astounded at what I heard and saw. I met her after the show and in my halting Korean told her how much I loved and was amazed by her performance. I later learned that I was talking with Kim So Hee, one of the great masters of Pansori and at that time, probably the greatest Pansori singer ever. Do you feel a spiritual connection to Pansori? Absolutely. I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of Pansori. I love it. It’s fantastic. As a graduate student, I traveled to the southern portion of Korea to attend a concert in the town where Kim So Hee was born. Something felt different in that place and at that time. The performer that day was named Ahn Sook Sun, who was a disciple of Kim So Hee and a phenomenal singer herself. In all the hours that I had listened to Pansori and really enjoyed it, for the first time the story became real to me. She was singing the story of Chunhyang, a young woman facing incredible hardship. The sorrow that Chunhyang endured was real. The joy that Chunhyang experienced with her lover was real. The profundity of the story was real to me—not as an outsider, not as a researcher, but as someone alive and experiencing those things. There’s something specific about Pansori—the use of the voice and the immensity of emotion being expressed—that is phenomenal to me. It’s phenomenal that one person standing on a stage alone can express the entire gamut of human experience and emotion in a story that really isn’t their own and yet at the same time, somehow is. It is ineffable; I don’t know why or how I feel this way but it’s real and it’s spiritually profound. Heather Willoughby in Kalapatthar, Nepal with Mt. Everest in the Background It’s remarkable that you are so spiritually enriched by your career. Do you think that you could do anything or does your career have to be spiritually meaningful to you? Definitely yes….at least for the type of person who I am. Since I was 12 years old, I’ve had a very good sense of who I am. It’s always been a spiritual connection. I recognize this spiritual path and that the only way that I’m going to be satisfied or happy is to connect myself to things that my spirit is drawn to. I can do any job, but if I have the chance to do what makes my spirit complete and full and happy, then why not? I’ve been blessed to do that. There is a word in Korean that I love which is ‘kureoda’ and it means, “It is the way it is.” After I graduated with my undergraduate degree, I worked as an elementary school music teacher for three years in Southern Idaho. I was looking into graduate schools, and I wanted to go into music therapy so I looked at schools that had music-related majors. As I was researching, I ran across a pamphlet with the word ‘ethnomusicology.’ I thought, “I don’t know what it is, but this is my destiny.” And it was my destiny. It has worked out well. Coming back to Korea has not always been easy. It’s hard that I’m away from family and friends but I have family and friends here as well. There are still things that are difficult, but there is something comforting about being here that is a part of that destiny. Is there anything more you would like to share in regards to your experience in Korea? I have a very profound love for Korea. It’s a fascinating thing. I wrote a poem about it called Yunhoi which means “Transmigration of the Soul”. It’s about the re-discovering of life. ??(Yunhoi: Transmigration of the Soul) The golden grain bows its heavy head As it has done for a thousand years before My own head bowsIn deference and awe To what I now understand I am coming home How long has it been Since I trudged through these hills A puk upon my back A song falls from my lips With words I do not know, but meaning I comprehend I am coming home My hanbok wraps to the left A symbol of my profession My fingertips and voice are calloused As well my heart at times must be When I am coming home Black soil escapes my fisted hand I feel the depths of its essence Do my bones lie beneath The surface of what the eye can see? I am home. The final line refers to the Pansori concert I attended as a graduate student. Being in that space literally felt like home. That is the only way that I can explain it. This is my home. I don’t know why it is. In the LDS church we don’t believe in reincarnation in the literal sense, but there is something that is beyond this mortality that ties me to this country, these people, and this music. It is not something that is just of this mortal life. I have no idea how that happens or why, but it is why I am here. At A Glance Name: Heather Willoughby Location: Seoul, Korea Age: 45 Marital status: No history whatsoever in this regard Occupation: Professor Convert? 1972 Schools Attended: Brigham Young University (Bachelor’s in Music), Columbia University (MA,PhD) Languages Spoken at Home: Kittyspeak (usually including the word “No!”) Favorite Hymn: “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” “Jesus Savior Pilot Me” Interview by Krisanne Hastings. Photos by Hilary Finchum-Sung and Kim Yeong-Lan.