Four years ago, Bethany’s husband shared some startling news: He was addicted to pornography. As mother to four young children, Bethany had to continue to be mom, but she also chose to dedicate herself to her husband’s recovery. Recognizing she needed time and space to heal herself, Bethany sought out support systems and drew closer to the Lord. Bethany speaks about the need to tend to her own wounds, as well as support the man she loves. How did you meet your husband and what is the dynamic of your family? I have known my husband since I was fourteen. We met in ninth grade and were friends all through junior high and high school. I didn’t necessarily wait for him while he was on his mission, but we wrote back and forth as friends. When he returned home, we officially started dating. We married in the Mesa temple and lived in Provo for four years while I got my degree in neuropsychology and he got his masters in accounting. We had two children and then we moved and had two more. We are now raising our four children—ages nine, six, four, and three. How did you first discover that your husband had a problem with pornography? He told me about four years ago. We moved to Arizona after graduation and were excited to have a “real job.” We bought a little house and my husband started a fulltime job. Soon, he started acting removed from the family, and emotionally I could feel something different. I attributed it to the stress of starting a new job and the unexpected pregnancy with our third child. I knew he was struggling spiritually because he had to say no to a newly extended calling of Elder’s Quorum President, but I really knew very little about the whole situation because he seemed to blow it off as just a little “slacking on his scripture reading” and something about “not feeling up to leading the Priesthood in the ward”. Soon after turning down the calling, he had an interview with the bishop. I thought, oh, the bishop is going to offer him the calling again. After his meeting with the bishop, he came into sacrament meeting and I looked at him, expecting him to tell me what the new calling might be. But instead, he just told me we would talk about it later. That night before bed I asked again about the calling. He then told me we needed to talk. I knew it must be more serious, but I had no idea of the gravity of what was going to come out his mouth. His first words were, “My problems all started with pornography.” My stomach went into an upheaval. I felt like I needed to run to the bathroom and throw up, but I couldn’t really move. I felt like I was having an out of body experience. He was very sad and apologetic. He told me he had an upcoming church court; that’s what the meeting with the bishop had been about. I was heartbroken and didn’t really know how to react. Do you know how his pornography addiction began? He was first introduced to pornography as a child, around 5 or 6, which I am told is the average age these days. He struggled with it in his youth, but was able to serve an honorable mission. After his mission, he was focused on dating me and getting married in the temple so he was able to abstain during that time. When he got back from his mission, the Internet was a lot more accessible and much more of a big deal than when he left. We had access to the Internet in our home, and that’s when he started to struggle again. I learned all of this that first night he told me about his addiction. Bethany When you learned of his problem, what were your feelings about the future of your marriage? If you would have asked me before this actually happened, I would have said I would leave my marriage. I’d be crazy not to. But in the moment he told me, I was numb. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. My thoughts went straight to the Lord-“what am I supposed to do?”-over and over again I asked this. I thought I should probably leave, but I didn’t really feel like leaving. I tried going to a friend’s house, but the Spirit told me I needed to go home. I went home and we talked more in depth about the future of us. My husband was committed to making our marriage work. The bishop had told him we could go to counseling, and he promised to get that arranged and to get help for himself. That night we fell asleep in the same bed holding hands. It’s totally crazy to me, even now, but that’s how the night ended. That was the most open our marriage had been in a very long time and so it actually brought us closer together. Were you able to confide in anyone? What kind of support group do you have? The night he told me about his addiction, I called my mom. We ended up telling his family, and eventually, we knew we’d have to tell close family and friends. However, I prayed hard about who I was going to tell because I needed people who could support us, not judge us and who could handle the burden of knowing. There is a lot pain in knowing someone you love is struggling with something so hard. I soon learned that LDS Family Services had a Twelve Step Program specifically for women, the Church’s addiction recovery program. This was specifically for the wives of sex or pornography addicts, and it was a huge help. At those meetings there were other women going through the same thing. Usually when I am around people, I have to have my mask on, to pretend everything is okay and keep a smile plastered on my face. But there at those meetings I felt safe and there were women who could relate, I felt not so alone in my trial. As a Mormon woman, I felt I couldn’t go to church falling apart or people would look at me like I must be crazy so knowing that there were people that I could fall apart with was a great comfort. How did/does this struggle affect your day-to-day life as you continue to raise a young family? I still have to be a mom. I am still the one who prepares meals and does the dishes. I didn’t have the compassionate service committee bringing meals or arranging babysitting, because they couldn’t know what I was going through. So the first little while was very hard. However, forcing some sort of normalcy has helped. I have to go on. I have to be “normal” and emotionally available for my kids. I no longer carry this burden around every day. I got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore, and I said, Lord you just take it because I’m not going to carry it around anymore. I’m just going to get better and I’m going to be an awesome person because of this! I remember that Jesus Christ has already carried this burden, everyone’s burden. It seems hard to turn it over. But in actuality, it’s the simplest thing to do. I just turned it over to Him, and He took it away. After that, I looked back thinking, why didn’t I do that a long time ago? Turn it over. He is standing at the door. I just had to open it. He is waiting for us to let go of our pride and say, I can’t do this anymore. From there, I have asked Him to show me what I should do. He is the only one who knows what path will bring me happiness. I can only focus on myself and my own spirituality and not be responsible for my husband’s. I know the Lord will be there holding my hand and carrying me when He needs to. I just needed to get to the point where I was so low that I had nowhere to look but up to Him. How has your husband’s addiction affected your sense of self? There are so many women who struggle with this problem everyday and so many of us struggle with feeling like our husbands struggles are somehow our fault or that we aren’t good enough somehow. Of course this is totally false but it is out there! Luckily, I have never had serious doubts about whose problem this really was. I have always tried to be the best wife and a better mom. I really have no doubt in my mind that I have done my best. The greater challenge for me is the loss of trust. It takes a lot of lying to pull off something like a hidden pornography addiction. The lying is so upsetting because it takes away my power to make decisions for myself and my family. By lying, my husband controlled what I knew and therefore controlled what decisions I made. This took away my power, my agency. And that really, really hurts when it is inflicted on the person who you are most vulnerable with. However, this is also the man whom I loved and who was sealed to me in the temple. My love for him in the face of his deception is so conflicting because it made me doubt my own feelings and my own ability to listen to the Spirit by deadening my perception of my own emotions and therefore, my inspiration. That was devastating because without the Spirit, I have nothing. It is the only voice I can fully trust. That has been the most damaging to me. What has been your role in your husband’s recovery? The first year, I was really involved in his recovery. During that year, he didn’t have any setbacks, not even masturbation or looking at pornography. He was excommunicated, and a year later he was re-baptized. At that time I was really involved. He told me when he had a difficult thought or a hard day. I was a partner in his recovery. But there came a point when I couldn’t do it anymore. I completely withdrew from his recovery. It was too burdensome for me, and it wasn’t allowing me to focus on my own healing. I had ignored my own healing for a year because I was helping him. For myself, I started making boundaries. He needed to call other men from his support group rather than solely leaning on me. My healing needed to begin because it was starting to affect the way I behaved toward my kids and how I felt about myself. I think the healthiest decision I made was to take a step back and focus on my own healing, while leaving him to work on his healing. There have been times that this has taken actual physical separation while actively working on myself and in turn our marriage. Our counselor reminded us that my husband had been carrying around this burden for years. So of course it felt good for him to get that burden off, share it with the bishop and with me. However, for me it felt like I got all of it dumped on me all at once and this was just the beginning of the process. My husband told me he didn’t care how long it took for me to heal, he would wait. Knowing he was going to allow me to heal the way that I needed to heal and not expect me to “forgive and forget” just because he was working on it was a huge comfort. How has the gospel of Jesus Christ influenced your healing? My healing has been all about the gospel. It’s been about the Atonement and my Savior. He’s the only way a person can heal. I’ve read a lot of books, and I go to support group meetings and counseling. I’ve tried to meet other women who are in my situation, hoping someone will fully understand. But there are so many times when I just felt totally alone! Through those times, I pray by the side of my bed, and I often get the feeling that someone is embracing me. That feeling is what got me through. Those experiences helped me understand the enabling power of the Atonement. The role of the Atonement for the sinner is talked about a lot. However, there is another side of it: the Atonement’s role in the life of the person who’s been hurt. It enabled me to get up out bed, shower, brush my teeth, change the diapers, do the dishes etc. This was possible because of the Savior. The Lord guided me to my support group where I could talk with other women. He worked through some of these women to bless my life. I needed to get to the point where I felt all alone so that I knew it was Him who healed me. Because of this, I know my recovery and my healing has little to do with the books that I read and the amazing programs I’ve been able to find. It all started with Him and it will end with Him. He is ultimately where the healing is. The only time I don’t feel completely alone is when He is there with me on my bedroom floor, or when He is with me doing the dishes or at the park with my kids. What motivates you to remain committed to your relationship? From the beginning, the Spirit told me this challenge would be my refiner’s fire. I’ve always wanted to come out of it a better person with or without my husband. When I’m taking care of myself in all aspects–physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally–I feel strong and I feel like I can handle it. My husband and I have separated a couple of times over the past four years. So, we’re still in the middle of trying to sort this out, but I feel like it’s getting better. I’m constantly asking the Lord what I should do, and He has not told me, yet, to leave. He hasn’t told me that this is over. I just feel like my moving on still needs to be with my husband and I have hope that it will get better and eventually be better than I could have ever imagined. I have prayed from the beginning that I would see my husband in the way that the Lord sees him, and that love has never wavered. I’m talking about love for who he is as a man, and as a spiritual being. Certainly the romantic love has wavered. There are times when I have honestly been able to say, I don’t love him right now. When that feeling comes, I pray that someday I will have the desire to love my husband again. The Lord has told me that this emotion is okay and that I can have hope for the future of that love. I think He realizes I have been hurt and my life has been completely changed. I didn’t deserve this and it’s okay not to be in love with my husband right now. But I have prayed that I can love him, at least on a spiritual level always. There have been times when we needed to separate emotionally, and this year we separated physically. Being in tune with the Spirit during this time was so important. If we stayed apart and emotionally detached, things would end. I went to the temple a lot and I really prayed to know what the next step should be and when it should happen. After a lot of work on myself I knew I needed to turn my attention back to my marriage. I asked him to come home and I’m praying every day that the Lord will help me to know what to do with this relationship, how to heal it. We’re moving forward in baby steps towards a happy marriage with hope! How has this challenge affected your children? We have tried to make our family life as normal as possible, and even when we were separated, we tried to let the children know that Mom and Dad still loved them and that this wasn’t their fault. Of course it has disrupted their lives and their security and that is part of this that I would change if I could but I can’t and I feel that the Lord will consecrate this experience for their good. We are very upfront with our kids. Of course, we only share age-appropriate information. We don’t talk specifically about pornography; however, they know about choices and consequences. I want my children to understand that they can talk to Heavenly Father. I want them to know that the Savior is there for them, too. I’m hoping this experience will actually help them in their own life experiences. I hope they will have a relationship with their Savior and feel the same comfort I have found at an earlier age than most children because they have needed it and will need it. What is your motivation for sharing your story? I am surprised when I meet a man who claims to have not seen pornography. When we were counseling with our bishop, he said he was working with fourteen other men with similar pornography problems that had come to him. He also said that when he looks into the pews from the podium, he can see more men who are struggling with pornography but haven’t come to him. Next to each of these men is some kind of woman: a mother, a sister, a girlfriend, or wife. Too many women feel they can’t talk about the problem of pornography because it’s their husband’s issue, and they don’t want to reveal their husband’s challenges. There is a stigma attached to a man who struggles with pornography addiction. People think they’re weirdoes or perverts. I want to change that perception. Men who struggle with pornography are normal people. They are people sitting with you in sacrament meeting. It’s the Elders Quorum president. It’s the Primary teacher. It’s people who wear shirts and ties to work and have clean-cut hair. My husband and I were each other’s first kiss. My husband wasn’t sexually active in high school. He is a good guy. There is no one face of a pornography/sex “addict.” They are sons of God who struggle with a serious trial-just like anyone else! How can parents protect their families from pornography? Avoiding pornography is no longer a reality. You cannot avoid pornography. It is everywhere. It is no longer a matter of if your children are going to see it; it’s a matter of when your children are going to see it. Once you have kept your home safe, educate your children from the time that they are young and also educate ourselves. We need to teach our children what pornography is and what the feelings are that are elicited by it but we need to understand it all first ourselves. Children need to feel they can come to parents when something happens; they need to know that the word pornography is not a bad word They need to not feel shame when they see it or have a reaction to it and that is our job as parents: to shield (as much as possible), teach, and allow them to feel safe to talk to us-that means no guilting, no shaming, no rejecting. Because sex is so sacred, somewhere along the line we as members of the Church began treating it like it’s this secret thing that shouldn’t be talked about. We need to teach our children that those feelings are okay but that there is a time and a place for those feelings. In fact, they are something to be celebrated and to be held sacred, not considered secret and dirty. What advice would you give to spouses of pornography addicts? They should focus on their own needs and try to find women who are willing to support them. LDS Family Services has also been a great resource. Any kind of counseling is a help. Lots of reading, Deseret Book has a lot of reading on the subject-and don’t be embarrassed to buy them, lots of people do it! Also, getting to the temple has been important. I have found the temple to be a place of learning that helps to keep me safe and allows me to have hope for my life and my eternity. At A Glance Name: Bethany Marital status: Married 10 years Occupation: mom and legal assistant Schools Attended: Ricks and BYU Interview by Melissa Hardy.

As a graduate of Caltech with a PhD in Chemistry, Elizabeth Krider understands science. She also understands that spiritual experiences are real. Elizabeth uses her knowledge of science and her faith in God to ask questions about how the world works, and she is now passing along that skill of scientific deductive reasoning to her children so that they, too, can understand the world around them. What was the role of science in your childhood? I grew up in Southern California and was really into sports as a child. I spent a lot of time outside, making things. Looking back, I can see that the theme of making things and building things translated into the love of doing science. My parents weren’t scientists, but education was really emphasized. I didn’t have any examples in my immediate family of someone who had gone into science or had gotten a PhD, but it was clear we would go to college. It was my sister, who is 10 years older than I am, who sat me down and said, “I really enjoyed science in high school but I didn’t pursue it in college. If you like science classes, you should take a closer look at them in college.” It was her encouragement that planted the seed. I was pretty achievement-oriented in high school and college and I did well. When I was a junior in high school I encountered my first big academic bump, which was honors chemistry. My volleyball coach was my chemistry teacher and it was at that time when I really struggled to do well on tests in that class that I had to dig deep and develop myself as a test-taker and as a student. I remember studying so hard for the semester final and I was shocked to find out I was the only one who had gotten an uncurved A on the test. That was a turning point for me because, even though I’d done well in other classes, that one I’d really had to dig for. It was a turning point for my confidence academically that I could achieve whatever I set out to do. To have that triumph associated with my volleyball coach and chemistry made me feel positive about chemistry, which of course influenced my decision to study chemistry in college and graduate school. I think one reason so many people hate chemistry is because they didn’t have a good teacher, and a personal triumph like mine never happened for them in that class. Elizabeth Krider and Her Family No one wants to sign up for punishment by taking a class that’s not their favorite, but from that chemistry class I learned that if you’re within striking distance of achieving something and you have the potential to turn a disappointment into a success, it’s worth the effort. Tell me about the educational support you received as an undergraduate. The years I was an undergraduate at BYU, 1990-1994, was a very supportive time for me. The science departments were just starting to encourage people to get undergraduate research experience. I applied for internships – one at the University of Utah after sophomore year and one at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) after my junior year – because I thought that would be a way to apply the science I was learning in the classroom to research projects. What prompted the decision to go to grad school? While at BYU, I saw a poster from the University of Utah’s Department of Pharmacology talking about research opportunities studying the medical foundations of mental illness. I had an aunt who was mentally ill and I made the connection between this research opportunity and her illness. I felt I could get hands-on experience in the neurochemical disease I was familiar with from my aunt. So I had a personal motivation to pursue that specific research opportunity, and it made it much more fulfilling to me. I had an outside personal connection to my studies and I coupled that with the language of chemistry and biology that I spoke in the lab. Research is hands-on, very labor intensive, and when I felt I was able to combine personal motivation from my family life with knowledge from the classroom, I decided that’s what I was going to pursue. I graduated from BYU, married my husband and I started a job at Caltech as a research technician and actually applied to the PhD program after I was already working there. My husband started a graduate program at UCLA, so we were both students again. What were your intentions when you entered the PhD program at Caltech? My goal was to get a PhD but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to teach or do research when I was done. I knew I wanted to contribute to science while I was there. What was your path after you got your degree? I chose to continue working at Caltech in the capacity of a lobbyist. I represented Caltech to an external audience: government officials, science funders, etc. Research money for universities comes mostly from federal tax-payer sources like the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. Congress decides how much money should be given to schools. Caltech is one of the top science research schools in the country, and I was part of the team representing Caltech to Congress. I was effective in my job because I had been part of the research enterprise, so I could represent it to the larger world. I didn’t do chemistry necessarily, but I could speak the language to policy makers and officials and I was a tangible example of what kind of person that enterprise produces. Elizabeth Krider and Her Husband One of the projects I represented was the Mars Rover from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for NASA by Caltech. People and ideas are what lead to innovation, and this project was a great example of ideas and people coming together to do really incredible work. It was rewarding to help people understand the scientific discovery process and how exciting it is when you have a group of people all focused on putting a rover on Mars. All the talent and the thinking that goes into that is remarkable and then the feeling of having done something completely unprecedented…. It’s incredible. Did you have children at this time? Well, one reason I took this job out of school is that we wanted to have children, so I had to get out of the lab so my children would have ten fingers and ten toes! The kind of work I did in the lab during school wasn’t conducive to healthy pregnancies. As a lobbyist for Caltech, I could still apply all my experience to science policy making. I held that position for five years, from 2000 to 2005, and I had my first two children during that time. How did you balance your motherhood and science pursuits at that time? After my first child was born, I reduced my hours to part time, which was another benefit of my lobbying job. After my second child was born I decided to go to a consulting capacity. There were other things I enjoyed doing rather than having all of my discretionary time devoted to one job. Now in my consulting, most of my work is serving on the board of two local non-profits. One is science-related and one is mental health-related. I’m on the board of Homes for Life Foundation, which provides housing to the chronically mentally ill who are homeless, two qualities that are highly correlated. The Foundation buys homes and refurbishes them and applicants apply for spots in the homes. They’re nice places. And so my policy and community relations work helps them as the Foundation is trying to grow. It’s about 25 years old now. I help them navigate the neighborhood community and the legislative hurdles. The second nonprofit is a chemistry research institute. I participate in the selection process for the students who apply to work there, the direction of the research projects and general strategy. That’s been a great outlet for me in terms of maintaining my connection to science. I recently co-authored a paper with the founder and president there and that helps keep my list of publications growing. Did you ever think your science knowledge would be used for good in these ways? Was that a deliberate goal of yours? I think so. When I was considering what to do after graduate school, the options kind of fell into two categories: fluff jobs and then making the world a better place. Science, health care, education … those are the kinds of things I believe make the world better. How does your science knowledge contribute to your mothering? I have two sons and a daughter now. Having been trained in the scientific method and the scientific discovery process, I try to look at things as they really are. I try to teach my kids to ask themselves, “How do things really work?” Breaking things down to all their different parts and showing how they work together is such an important skill to teach children, whether you have expertise in it or not. One of the most powerful things I can share with my children is the approach of uncovering the answer to a question or solving a problem. What you’re teaching them is a process, you’re teaching them an approach to discovering truth. In an academic environment, you try to unravel difficult scientific problems with only a certain amount of information to go on, and you have to ask yourself: Okay, if I design the experiment this way, what will I observe? And then, What will that observation tell me? Our kids can apply that same process to learning about the world around them. Can you give me specific examples of things you do in your home to help foster this kind of thought process? A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with my kids about photosynthetic bacteria and their ability to do photosynthesis and how it’s being applied to new ways to create energy. For an 8 year old and a 5 year old, we talked about how a plant’s leaf is an antenna and how it gathers light and powers the life cycle of the plant, and how certain bacteria can do the same thing. You’ve got to keep it at a basic level, but just as when you teach your children stories from the Book of Mormon and the Bible, you don’t give them all the details at once. What you’re teaching them is the process of discovering truth and the way things work. You teach them the scriptures at different levels and then add more layers to their knowledge as they get older. It’s the same with teaching children about the way the natural world works. Recently, I involved my kids in choosing plants for our yard when we landscaped our backyard. We decided we wanted plants and bushes that would attract hummingbirds to our yard. The problem is that some of those plants also attract bees, so we needed to figure out which plants would attract hummingbirds but not bees. So I looked up the sugar content in the nectar made by the plants on our list and the shape of the plant’s flower since bees can’t reach the nectar down in the flower like a hummingbird can. It turns out that hummingbirds can survive on nectar that is about 20% sugar, which is too dilute to attract a lot of bees. (Bees generally prefer nectar that’s more concentrated, like over 35%). So we planted bright flowers that produced mildly sugary nectar and that had tube-shaped blooms. It worked, and we have lots of hummingbirds flying through our yard, and not very many bees. Elizabeth Krider Another example comes from when I was talking with my 8 year-old son about habits and how important it is to develop good ones. He gets focused on what he’s doing and tunes out the rest of the world. He told me, “I know, I know, Mom, it’s a really bad habit. I’m trying to listen, but it’s kind of like smoking. It’s a really hard habit to break.” I had to smile when he said this about the parallel to smoking since he and I had talked about why it’s hard for people to stop smoking based on neurochemistry. When a young person smokes for the first time, the receptors in that person’s body that respond to nicotine go into overdrive and within about one day, more and more receptors are produced. (Receptors are like Pacman shapes in the brain that match with nicotine and cause a cascade of chemical events in the brain). Then the body has this army of nicotine receptors all ready for the next dose of nicotine. So, yes, a young person can get hooked from the first cigarette since that single cigarette triggers this big response, and that’s why it is so difficult to quit. And talking about the science behind addiction helped our son understand from a different perspective about the importance of keeping the Word of Wisdom. It’s through examples like this that we as parents have the chance to teach the process of understanding how God works and how the world works. It sounds like you’re comfortable with the intersection of faith and science. How do those two coexist in you? That’s a question so many people struggle with, whether they’re in science or not. I return to the question, “Do I believe in spiritual experiences?” There are people in science who don’t believe in spiritual experiences so the Bible, Book of Mormon, or anything religious for which they don’t have a tangible evidence, is not going to resonate with them at all. But as for me, I believe in spiritual experiences. And so I believe I can get answers to questions. I get those answers through inspiration. Those spiritual experiences are the data that I obtain to support my belief. On a broad level, there’s a lot of interaction between faith and science because the two are asking the same questions: What is the nature of things? We don’t have all knowledge revealed so it can be frustrating, when, for example, you’re teaching your kids about the Flood and you’re asking yourself how there could physically be enough water to create the effects we’re told it had? That kind of thing is tricky to explain. But I believe in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the most extraordinary event I can conceive of, so from a scientific standpoint, the Flood really isn’t a big deal. Elizabeth Krider I’m comfortable with not having answers to some questions because what I like to do is ask the questions. Did you ever have a crisis of faith when you thought, This isn’t compatible with faith? Or does science confirm your faith because you see the hand of God in things? More the latter than the former. As with anyone who’s active in their faith, faith is a constant process of asking questions and seeking for answers. Everyone’s going to have little things come up now and then that make you question your beliefs, but there’s never been one specific time that my faith has been wholly shaken. When you’re presented with information or data, we instinctively think, “How does this reconcile with what I know to be true or what has been revealed?” That’s an ongoing process. It’s the nature of faith. But in general getting closer to how things work has made me appreciate the creation and the elegance of God’s hand. As I scientist, I’m trying to pull back the layers and understand how life works, and it’s so very elegant. With a more day-to-day perspective, I’m just trying to be a patient mom most days. So debating about pre-Adamic man might shake the foundations of some people, but I know that what I’m trying to do here and now is raise good children and raise a family. I think service for me has really been the driver of my testimony. That’s something I was known for in grad school. My colleagues wondered how I could be active in a demanding program at school and then have a husband and have time to serve. Is it through service that you get these spiritual experiences that help fuel your testimony? Absolutely. Those who spend so much time in a quantitative environment start to see the world in a quantitative framework. Spiritual experiences exist in an entirely different paradigm. If I just looked through my quantitative eyes, my faith and my love of God would start to fade because I wouldn’t be renewing them, investing in them. But through serving others, God teaches us. One example: When I was in graduate school (and still had time!), I met a woman named Margaret at the super market who was born with mental challenges and lived in a group home. She didn’t have enough money to pay for her groceries and she was getting very frustrated and I helped her out. Then I kept seeing Margaret in the community and the missionaries introduced her to the Church and she started coming to my ward coincidentally. I would take her out once a month to Carl’s Jr. or to get pizza and we’d have the same conversation every time. We talked about how she liked police officers and she thought it was the greatest thing whenever we saw them on our way to the restaurant. But over time, after I started working and we had our first child, I couldn’t keep taking Margaret out to lunch. I realized that sure, it was fun for her to go out and get pizza and talk about police officers, and I helped make her life a bit brighter. But more importantly, I realized that it wasn’t so much about what I could do for her, it was about how she was changing me. My relationship with Margaret was a test: What kind of person was I going to be? What does God want me to do, to help this person? That is the kind of test that can’t be done in a laboratory. At A Glance Name: Elizabeth Stratford Krider Location: Pasadena, CA Age: 38 Marital status: married to David Krider since July, 1994 Children: Stephen (8), Julia (6), Jonathan (2) Occupation: mother, science policy consultant occasionally Schools Attended: Brigham Young University (BS, Biochemistry), California Institute of Technology (PhD, Chemistry) Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “Faith In Every Footstep” Interview by Neylan McBaine. Photos by David Krider and Mark Boalt.

Always drawn to art and the artistic process, Rebecca discovered hooked rugs when the youngest of her six children was in kindergarten. In the years since then, she has produced a large collection of rugs that reflect her spiritual searchings, her love for her children and family, and the joy she finds in creating something that inspires thoughtful contemplation in her audience. How and when did you begin creating? It was just something inside of me. As a child, I just knew that I was really good with my hands. I liked to make things. I would get old clothes and undo them and redo them so that they would fit me. I remember getting praised for that. I was surprised at the praise because as a child you often assume everyone is just like you. I knew I was good with my hands but as far as being exposed to art by my family there wasn’t a lot of material or creativity to work with at home. We just had pencils and paper. I had a mother who loved to balance her checkbook so she was much more practical and task oriented than I was. Things had to be done at a certain time; for example, my job was to pour the milk in the glasses for dinner at 5:55 everyday. I grew up in that atmosphere mainly because she ran the household and did a very good job at it. My father was a very creative person but his presence wasn’t as apparent as my mother’s because he was gone a lot as a dean at Brigham Young University. I think my dad always wanted to be an artist but was much too practical, since he grew up during the Depression. He used his creativity by his innovative ideas in his position at BYU. Rebecca Knudsen with Her Grandchildren When I was a senior in high school, I became friends with a girl who was really creative. She had a big influence on me. My husband Kurt was also a really big influence on me. We moved next door to each other when I was 15. We were good friends and did a lot of creative things together. I was so intrigued by his creativity. He was one of those people who thought in a creative way. I was drawn to him and his ability to look at life differently. I went to BYU for college and registered as an English major. That first semester I took some art classes, and I never got back to English. The art classes swept me away. I was so intrigued. I ended up majoring in graphic design, but graphic design is a hard world. The commercial part of art brings with it a lot of pressure. I didn’t like having to focus my work for a specific audience. I wanted to do my own thing. There was also a problem with majoring in graphic design in the 1970s: computers were on the horizon, and everything I learned, other than the basic design techniques, was of no use. I worked for a year with a graphic designer before Kurt and I got married and started having babies but I never really used it after that. I just kind of drifted away from that world of commercial art. How did you get involved with textiles? That didn’t come about until we moved back to Provo from New Mexico in 1990. I had 6 kids in 8 years so mothering was pretty much all I did. By the time we moved to Provo the youngest was in kindergarten, and I had a lot more free time. Hooked rugs were starting to surface at this time. People had them stuffed away in their closets, but now they were becoming valuable commodities. The rugs were mainly from the East Coast and created years ago by people who had wood floors and no carpet. When carpets became popular, it just wasn’t cool to have a hooked rug so they were thrown away or stuffed away. Some of them survived and some of them didn’t. I was just fascinated with the process of how these rugs were made. I’ve always loved fabric. I love the tactile part of fabric. Seeing it. Holding it. The texture it creates. I just love that. I couldn’t find anybody in Utah who knew how to hook rugs so I taught myself. My very first rug, Why Should I Desire More?, is probably one of my favorites and is about my great grandmother. I had no idea what I was doing. Sometimes it’s good not to know. Sometimes it’s good not to have training. Sometimes training makes you scared. I wasn’t smart enough to be scared. I just knew what I wanted to do, and I thought, “Surely, I can figure it out.” I started exhibiting my rugs and through my shows found people who knew how to hook rugs. I met mainly older women who hooked very finely detailed rugs. Mine were not like that. At the time, there weren’t any people my age–I was in my 30s then–who were actually hooking rugs. So, I taught myself. Why Should I Desire More, 1994 A few years later, I went to graduate school at BYU and got my MFA. I felt like that was a turning point for me. I had a hard time getting my professors to understand what I wanted to do with my work. At first, all my advisers were male, and it was truly difficult for me to feel like they valued what I was doing with textiles. To be fair to them, they knew little about textiles and the process I used. It was a turning point for me to finally not care what they thought but to produce something that was really meaningful to me. At that point it just seemed to come together. What themes do you keep coming back to in your art? I keep coming back to family and my experience with my children. I just can’t seem to escape how deeply my children have affected me. Not that I want to escape it, but it just keeps reoccurring. When my children were younger, I made a rug for each of them as part of the Prayer Rug Series. I had always done great big rugs, so I decided to do these small rugs which were portraits of our children. I took their patriarchal blessings and symbolically represented the messages of their blessings in those rugs. It was really a spiritual experience. I didn’t use any wording from the blessings but I did use scriptures. I took concepts and specific promises from the blessings and tried to represent those pictorially. Now my children are grown. Long Armed Woman depicts my arms up with my grown-up children on my head. This rug in part represents how I feel now as a mother with grown children. It’s a different role that keeps reoccurring. Each stage in your life as a mother is different. From Patriarcal Blessing Prayer Rug Series, 1996 I also keep coming back to gospel principles. My view of the gospel has had a huge affect on how I do my artwork. Reading the scriptures themselves and interpreting the scriptures is very much right-brained activity. If we are too left brained we miss it. We miss what God is trying to tell us. The scriptures are so amazing: the imagery, the concepts, the paradoxes. One of my favorite scriptures is in Moses when it talks about all things being touched by Christ–all things in the earth, above the earth, and under the earth. Reading this scripture, I thought, “This whole life is symbolic. We live on another plane, and we let this symbolism pass us by day after day after day. If we watch, listen, and feel carefully we start to see how everything testifies of the Savior.” I will often become obsessed with a concept that I’m thinking about or studying about in the scriptures. One of these concepts is the law of restoration where we learn that everything you give–whether it’s good or bad–comes back to you again. I became obsessed with that concept and studied everything I could about it. It never seemed complete until I had tried to represent it visually in the rug Restoration. At that point I could let it go. Restoration, 2005 Art making is a form of spiritual learning for me. Kurt and my daughter Ashley and I participated in a show at the BYU Museum of Art called Metaphorically Speaking. The show featured work that was spiritual but wasn’t didactic or representative of something specifically religious. At the time I was really struggling with the idea of sacrifice and what that meant. I studied and studied and studied. I ended up doing a triptych titled Sacrifice Triptych. The man has his arms up in the air, and the woman is holding some milk and some bread. The middle image of the lamb represents the Savior. It was a really big learning experience for me to go through that process of studying this idea of sacrifice and then translating it into a piece of artwork. I think art making is a process of bearing witness of the truth. If you explore gospel principles sincerely, God blesses you with insight. He also blesses the artist with the ability to translate it visually. What challenges and surprises do you experience during the creative process? I think the great torment of being an artist is my own insecurity about creating. I was listening to someone speak about the terror of the blank page and the terror of the blank canvas. That to me is so real. You have to have courage to create. I really admire people who are willing to do that because for me it really takes a lot of energy to say, “I’m going to do this” and then do it. There is a huge vulnerability as you create. It’s really hard work. It doesn’t come that easily to me. It’s emotionally exhausting. I know what I have in my head but to somehow make that tangible is really good discipline. I have a tendency to think abstractly. To have to put it down physically and symbolically is really exhausting for some reason. But the challenge of communicating visually is a good challenge. From Sacrifice Triptych, 2004 When you create, you almost become separate from what you do. As the artist, you decide, “Well, this represents this and this represents this.” Then you put it up on the wall, you have people come to see it, and they bring such different ideas to what you’ve produced. I was really surprised by that, especially with the Metaphorically Speaking exhibition. I went through the exhibition with different groups and talked about my artwork. It was interesting to hear people share, “I thought you did this because of this” or, “This is why I thought you did this.” Their ideas were not what I had intended but it was kind of wonderful that my art work had a life of its own. It was providing other experiences for people. That’s the miracle of it. How did you apply your creativity to raising your family? It seemed like our family life was so hectic when the kids were young. Of course as a mother you never feel like you’ve done enough, but actually we did a lot to encourage creativity. We exposed them to different ways of looking at the world, which I think is one of the most important things. We tried to expose them to people who were really good at what they did. Probably because I didn’t have any art making tools as a child, I made sure we had all of the tools my children wanted. When we lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we had this big laundry room with lots of cupboards and a big table. I never called it the laundry room–I always called it the drawing room–because I wanted them to think of it as a place where they could go and create and leave things sitting out. If I were to support any crusade, it would be for children and art. When we were in Albuquerque I taught art in the grade schools as a classroom volunteer. One time we did a wire sculpture, and I talked about Alexander Calder. I had pictures of his wire sculptures and gave all of the kids wire to work with. After we were through, their sculptures were so fantastic. This was probably 4th grade, just at the age where they’re thinking that maybe they don’t have any artistic capabilities. The teacher said to me, “Can you pick out 4 or 5 wire sculptures that you think are they best, and we’ll hang them up?” I said, “Absolutely not! You have to hang all of them. I’ll help you hang all of them. You can’t tell them that one is better than the other, especially at this age.” They were all so marvelous in their own way. I think children have such an ability to create, and it’s devastating to see that destroyed. Children need to find their own confidence and their own voice. I think I’m still working on that with myself, too! What compels you to keep creating? I am so compelled by materials whether it’s fabric, metals, glass, thread or yarns and using these materials to create something unexpected. Kurt and I love to go up and down the isles of hardware stores to see what might jump out at us to use in a project. Long Armed Woman, 2005 I think something else that compels me to do art is that it has to do with the greater thoughts and events of life. Somehow I need to express that. Art provides that for me. It’s not like you can just plop down by somebody and start having these really deep conversations. That’s the value of doing artwork. It helps initiate those conversations I would like to have with other people. Rebecca Knudsen and Her Family I wish I could inspire more people to create. I think the ability is inside of everybody. There are some who have the gift naturally, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be developed in all of us. If someone could learn to create and feel joy because of me, that would make me really happy. I’m hoping that someone who wants to create will read this interview and have the courage to do so. It changes your life to create something that never existed or never would have existed without you. That’s pretty exciting. To create is as close to the divine as we get. At A Glance Name: Rebecca Knudsen Location: Durham, North Carolina Age: 57 Marital status: married to Kurt W Knudsen Children: Six (33, 32,31, 29, 26, 25) Occupation: Artist Schools Attended: BYU BA, BYU MFA Languages Spoken at Home: English Favorite Hymn: “Oh, May My Soul Commune With Thee” Interview by Krisanne Hastings.

Arleene was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness in Southern California. Her parents converted to the religion after they moved from their home in Moroleon, Guanajuato, Mexico to the United States. She studied the Mormon faith for two years before being baptized, an action considered taboo by her family’s religion. She shares her experiences as she transitioned from her childhood thoughts and beliefs to her current testimony of the gospel. Along the way she has held on to her continued love of family and has found that the knowledge of the gospel has opened her mind and brought her new blessings. How did being a Jehovah’s Witness help or hinder your acceptance of the gospel? I already had a religious background, and my standards were very much the same as Mormonism growing up, so once I got to know the Church I felt comfortable. I definitely felt welcomed. We had the same standards, and that was something I wanted to uphold because I knew it was good and I wanted to raise a family in that way. My religion was considered to be very strict by my friends at school, but now that I am an adult, I feel that it was a really good religion to grow up in. It had standards, it kept me spiritually involved in the religion, and whenever something questionable came up with friends I would definitely think, “That is not right.” I knew that my way of thinking as a religious child was different from those who were not. My dad would always tell me our family was different. I remember when I would want to go out with friends at night without someone watching us, my dad would say I was not old enough to go and not be chaperoned. I would say, “My friends’ moms let them stay out until 11:00, why, why can’t I?” Arleene Regalado Taylor, Her Husband, and Parents My dad would say, “Well, that is them, that’s not us.” I always felt like that was such a big restriction. But now I understand. His thing was there’s always a curfew, and it was always 10:00. Up until I was eighteen it was still 10:00. I can now see where his worrying was coming from. It wasn’t that he didn’t want me to be hanging out with my friends–of course he wanted me to have fun–but he always wanted me to be safe. His main priority was he wanted me to be safe. Mormonism makes me feel that same kind of safety in the world. However, my religious background hindered my conversion to Mormonism in that my whole life I had been told that I shouldn’t or couldn’t look into other religions, so in that sense I felt I was doing something wrong. I was super curious as a kid, and as a teenager I felt a little rebellious because I was interested in my friend’s religion or I wanted to delve into other things. I was curious about spirituality, not just religion. My parents were converts to Jehovah’s Witnesses. They lived in Mexico and were Catholics. My dad said that when he was young they would go to mass because that was where all the girls were. Both my parents lived there and met there. This was where they married and where my sister was born. When she was about two years old, my dad started going to work in California and he traveled back and forth from Mexico to the US for the next five years until he had enough money for the family and all their papers were in order. My sister was seven by then. They finally were able to live as a family in California and later my brother and I were born here. They joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses after someone knocked on their door and they thought it was a great religion to raise us kids. They went to a Spanish congregation and my parents taught us to read and write in Spanish so that we could participate. Did you ever go to another church? I never did. I didn’t go into a Catholic church until I was at least nineteen or twenty. Both of my really good friends are Catholic. And that was the reason I finally went, for a marriage or a baptism, but by then I felt like I was an adult and could decide. It still felt really weird for me to be there. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate holidays. How did you adapt to that aspect of your new religion? Holidays are still really strange to me. I will never have this emotional, spiritual attachment to holidays that I see other people have. I was taught that holidays are pagan. We couldn’t be involved in them, we couldn’t sing the songs, we couldn’t draw a Santa Claus, we couldn’t do any arts and crafts that have to do with holidays. I got completely removed from these celebrations, so in my mind, these things were wrong. In old pictures I see that my parents used to celebrate Christmas. But once they converted they didn’t have any more holidays and birthdays, and my brother and I would look through the photos and see they used to celebrate, and we would say, “No fair, you got to celebrate.” I don’t even know how it’s going to work out with my kids; I’m still trying to figure it out for myself. I don’t feel that holidays are wrong any more, but it’s one of those things that’s going to take time. When I was young, Christmas was the same as any other day. Imagine it being the same year round. Most families mark the year by the holidays: “Oh, you will get that on Christmas,” or, “In the summer, on the fourth of July, we’ll get together. We never had that. We never had those little markers on our calendar. It was society’s way of celebrating, not ours. My parents did a great job making up for it; they made sure we got presents year round for accomplishments or other celebrations in the family, so we never felt neglected. We only did Passover in the springtime, but not Easter. It’s the only holiday that a Jehovah’s Witness celebrates because it’s the one mentioned in the Bible that should be kept with each generation. That is the only one that we got together to celebrate at church. A talk is given and a prayer, and unleavened bread and wine are passed around, but you do not get to eat it, only pass it to the next person. We had no actual tradition that is done repeatedly, such as the sacrament with Mormons. There is no big tradition. That was a big change for me when I became a Mormon. I was really intimidated by the sacrament. I didn’t want to partake of it until I was baptized. I felt that it was something very special and I wanted to earn the privilege of taking the sacrament. It would mean so much more to me once I completely understood what was happening. Arleene Regalado Taylor and Her Husband When did you feel that you had a testimony of the gospel? I felt like I had a testimony at my baptism. My testimony grew when I read the Book of Mormon and began praying about it. I had not prayed for a few years and it was nice to be challenged: “You mean I’m really going to get an answer? This is really going to work?” Once I started seeing that the Book of Mormon and my prayers were taking me in a good direction, I realized that I was in a good place. And I knew for sure when my life started changing in a positive way. Then, after I got baptized I was reminded of how important my testimony was, and that it would continue to grow. When my boyfriend, Hyrum, and I were making plans to get married, we started getting answers to our prayers in very specific ways. That strengthened my testimony the most. What made you decide to wait for a temple marriage and not just get the civil one? I got baptized in 2008, so Hyrum and I could have gotten married then outside the temple. But at that point I knew enough to know that it was the right choice to wait, to go to the temple. That was really important to Hyrum. Ever since we met each other he had talked about a temple marriage, even before I knew what it was. So I knew it was important to him. That’s what put so much stress on our relationship prior to my baptism, because he would not let this go–the temple marriage. He would tell me, “This is so important to me that even though I know you are the right person for me, if we can’t get married in the temple we should not get married.” It really confused me. I thought, “We have each other; what else do you need but love?” I felt like going to church and reading the scriptures was making us stronger, and I thought, it could only get better when we get married in the temple. I had already waited long enough as it was–three years of dating. So I decided to wait the one year after my baptism to get married, then we could go to the temple. It was four days to the year after I was baptized that we were married in the temple. Arleene Regalado Taylor and Her Husband How does your family accept you as a Mormon? I was really nervous to tell my parents, because you are not supposed to even delve into any other religions, and I didn’t know how they were going to take it; I didn’t want them to shun me or reject me. I’ve known several other families that do this when they have a family member join another religion–they completely stop talking to them, they don’t want anything to do with them. I knew my family was not like that, but I was just still very nervous because no other person in my family had ever done that. They had just stuck with the religion, however inactive at times. So me defying that rule was kind of scary. When I told them that I was going to the Mormon Church my mom said, “I love you, you are always going to be my daughter, I am going to support you no matter what. I’m never going to stop talking to you, and you are an adult and old enough to make your own decisions.” She told me, “Your father and I raised you in a religion that we thought was right, and we had seen as something good. We did what we could, and this is your decision.” Since then, my father has read the Book of Mormon, attended church and has begun to take the missionary discussions. And I have a cousin who has joined the church. Who is God to you? God to me is Jehovah, because this was how I was raised. I see God the Father and His Son by His side. Now I know that Jehovah is the name for Christ, before He came to this earth. That still feels backwards to me; Jehovah has been the name for Heavenly Father because that is the name I have had in my head. Plus, I learned all my scriptures in Spanish. When I pray now, it is to Heavenly Father, but before it was Jehovah and it would be in Spanish. God to me is the same one who has helped me through my struggles in life. He is the same God. The transition was easy in that sense. Knowing that when I am in a bind I can pray, that He has known me since before I was born and He is the same God that I grew up with, it doesn’t matter that I’ve made a choice to change religions. Heavenly Father is going to be the same to me, the same God to me. I tried to explain that to my family the other day, when I was there; I tried to tell them that my God is the same as their God, it is the same God that we learned about together, and no one is going to take that away from me. Just because I am a member of a different religion, that doesn’t mean that I am pagan, that I am going against everything that I learned when I was a kid, everything that I was raised with. In fact, I have learned so much more on top of that. It’s just building on it; I feel like I am progressing. It isn’t that I wanted to forget my entire upbringing. Most people that leave the Jehovah’s Witness religion never want to see it again–it’s a sour reminder–but that was not the case for me. Those are all good memories with my family; I love my family. Half of them are not attending that religion now, but I know that a part of them is always with me because we were raised in the same environment and the same religion. How does it feel being a Mormon now? It makes me feel like a better person. My friends would say, “Don’t feel like you have to change religions to become a better person., you’re already a good person.” But I felt like Mormonism helped me become a better me. I work as a make-up artist. In my work, when I do people’s makeup sometimes it will come up. One woman asked me, “So do you go to the Mormon temple?” That was her way of asking if I was a Mormon. It also comes up when I talk about not working on Sundays. I so look forward to Sunday. I used to work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Now, not working on Sunday helps me prioritize my life; I wake up and know that this day I get to rest. Working on Sunday is not something I am going to compromise with my religion. But I am often told that I cannot ask for Sundays off. I work hard and this Sunday thing should not be an issue in hiring someone. But it is, so I am freelancing now instead of being a full-time employee for the makeup industry where I am certified. This I can choose not to do–to work on Sunday. Arleene Regalado Taylor at Work Would you like to serve a mission someday? I hope to serve a mission one day with my husband, and be of service to others and share my testimony. Mormons see service as a priority, and this is one of the things I love. Before I joined the Church, I didn’t know what a testimony was, or what Priesthood blessings were. Now I think of all these great things that we can get out of this life. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that this life is just here on this earth and when you die you are just sleeping in the ground. There is so much more to learn. Serving a mission would give my life much more meaning and the opportunity to help others is a blessing. Looking at the stars, I think, “How many other worlds are out there right now?” I love to think about the possibilities and that life continues. There are so many things that we do not know about. I love that. I enjoy opening my mind and this religion has allowed me that.. It’s liberating. It’s great to have open conversations with members and family and friends now. I took my time learning about the gospel. I took the discussions and asked all my questions. Others from my childhood may think I was brainwashed, but my mind has been opened, and I can ask and find. I studied it out for a long time, almost two years before I was baptized. I never knew the history of the Jehovah’s Witness religion until I joined the Mormon Church. I never asked, because when we were preaching we did not teach about the founder of our religion. I feel it’s sad that we were not more passionate about our religion. I love the passion in the Mormon religion. I would like to ask my family if they have questions, if they want to know more. And ask them if they are happy. Having the courage to ask is the first step to going outside of what you already know. At A Glance Name: Arleene Regalado Taylor Location: El Dorado Hills, CA Age: 25 Marital status: Married in 2009 Occupation: Makeup artist, Wedding Planner Convert: 18 April 2008 Schools Attended: Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Languages Spoken at Home: Spanish and English Favorite Hymn: “I Know That My Redeemer Lives” On The Web: http://myheartistry.blogspot.com Interview by Deila Taylor. Photographs by Duston Todd Photography and Tikko Studios (Louis Trinh)

Introduced to the gospel as a teenager in her native Hungary, Ildikó had to wait four years to be baptized due to her family’s disapproval. Ildikó discusses the challenges of joining a community that is still small in Hungary, marrying another Hungarian member and raising her three children in the Church there. She expresses confidence in the Savior’s role as head of the Church, the practical and spiritual safety that comes from living by its principles, and benefits of raising her children in the gospel. How did you find out about the Church? My parents lived in Mátészalka and I went to high school in Debrecen. I lived with my grandparents during my high school education. I come from a faithful Catholic family. My parents had always taught me to be obedient to the laws of the gospel. We went to church every Sunday. It was the same with my grandparents. They were also faithful and good people. One day (when I was sixteen) my grandpa came home with a brochure, which said that we could order the Book of Mormon, another testimony of Jesus Christ. Since my brother attended a Catholic high school, my grandpa thought this might interest him. So, we ordered the book and thought it would come by mail. To our great surprise two missionaries knocked on our door and brought us the book soon after we ordered it. As a teenager I thought, “Hmm. That was a pretty quick andhandsomedelivery!” We let them in and they started to teach us the gospel of Jesus Christ. We all thought it was neat and we always felt peace and comfort when the missionaries came. Kovács Ildikó Then one day they asked if we wanted to be baptized in the true church of God and learn more about the gospel. My grandparents and my brother decided not to. I, on the other hand, had this wonderful, peaceful feeling that I should be baptized. I had a great desire to learn more about the Savior and His church. I knew in my heart that all I could learn here was goodness and love. I knew I could only be a better person, a better child of my parents, a better grandchild, and most of all a better child of God if I followed the Church’s teachings, which are basically Christ’s teachings. I prayed and prayed every night. I liked to kneel down and pour out my soul to Heavenly Father. I wanted a clear answer to my prayers that this was what I should do. But I was scared. Now when I think back I don’t even know why I was so scared. I knew my parents loved me very much and maybe I was afraid that I would disappoint them if I told them I wanted to be part of another church. I didn’t mention anything to my parents and I decided to go to both churches on Sundays (LDS Church in the morning, Catholic Church in the evening with my grandparents). My grandma even told me one time: “You’re gonna be a saint. You spend the whole day listening to the word of God.” After two years when I turned eighteen, I finally had the courage to stand in front of my parents and tell them that I wanted to be baptized. My dad got furious and said, “I won’t let you belong to any sect! Period.” We both started yelling and I’m sure the Holy Ghost wasn’t with us at all. I remember I packed my stuff and went back to Debrecen right after our awful and useless fight. I knew I needed to be baptized to grow more in faith but I also wanted to an obedient child of my wonderful, loving parents, so again I decided to please my parents and kept postponing my baptism. But it didn’t stop me going to the “Mormon Church” on Sundays. When I was nineteen, I had an opportunity to be a nanny in New Jersey, where I got in contact with the Church and attended the meetings every Sunday. I stopped going to the Catholic Church while I was there. I kept learning more and more about the gospel and the teachings and the way the Church works and my testimony kept growing, too.After I came home, my first thing was to get in contact with the missionaries and ask them to have the discussions with me again, so I could be absolutely sure that I was doing the right thing if I got baptized. When a missionary told me, “Ildikó, you have an opportunity now here on earth to be the follower of Christ and be baptized in His church,” I had a crystal clear answer to my prayers, as if Heavenly Father had whispered into my ears: “You must be baptized. Can’t you see? Make a decision and I will ease your mind and lift up your soul!” So, when the missionary asked, “Will you be baptized?” I said “Yes.” (Actually, since I was said to be an eternal investigator, the missionary said: “Ildikó, this is a serious thing. Don´t joke with us.” They thought I was joking when I said yes.) After four years of being “only” an investigator, my baptismal day was such a precious day of my life. I will never forget it. For four years I had this dream that my parents would come to my baptism. They weren’t there, but Heavenly Father made sure that I would feel peace and comfort on that special day. It was all perfect. I was baptized in 1995. A year later, I sat down with my dad and told him I was a member of the Church. A lot of fasting and prayers preceded the day of our visit. I got an assurance from Heavenly Father that everything would be just fine and I shouldn’t be scared to tell them the truth. Dad was calm and we had a wonderful talk. He said he knew that I had been baptized. He wanted to know why I finally told him after one year. I said, “Because you are important to me and I want to share my happiness with you. How can I be fully happy if those I love the most don´t know about what´s most important to me?” He accepted my decision. My whole family did. They still keep a good distance from the Church but my relationship with them hasn’t changed a bit. We love each other dearly and I know that someday–maybe not in this life–they will also be brave enough to recognize the light in the true gospel. What was it like, being a new member of the Church in a place where the Church is still fairly new? It’s very difficult to be a new member of the Church because all of a sudden, a lot of the things that were natural to you, like, let’s say, not buying a ticket when you get on a bus, or not cheating on a test, no longer seem okay. Before I joined the Church I only thought that big sins–like big spots on clothing–mattered, but little ones wouldn’t. Actually, I thought you could forget about the little things. But all of a sudden, you just start realizing that your little sin is a stain; it’s like a small dirt spot on white clothing–it’s still dirty. That’s why on the one hand it’s difficult to adjust to these new standards, but on the other hand, this is the only way that you can say yes. I tried to be Christ-like. That´s why I think a lot of new members, first they get enthusiastic, and then they find out that, oh, I’m doing this and this isn’t right and I’m doing that, too, and that isn’t right. If you can´t handle it and you can’t change for the better, it´s easier to be rather inactive. But this is the one thing that I think differentiates our church from others; it’s much more about the subtle things, the little things that you have to change in your life to be more Christ-like–not just about whether you kill someone or not, because it´s easy not to kill anyone, but it’s not so easy not to work on Sundays or not to spend money on Sundays when everyone else does. Once you realize this and make it a habit it becomes easier and easier. Kovács Ildikó and Her Husband I always say I have two important things in my life: enthusiasm and endurance. You have to be enthusiastic about the Church and God and the teachings and the gospel and the scriptures and the temple, because if you´re not enthusiastic then you won´t continue to stay here. Once you’ve got this enthusiasm, then you need to endure. For example, since I work with the kids, it sometimes seems useless to go to church. For six years I´ve been in the Primary on and off, and I cannot tell you the last time I was in Relief Society or Sunday School. You know you make an extra effort on Sunday and get up earlier and prepare the clothes, and I´m thinking, what did I gain from this Sunday? Most of the time, I have to tell you, I don´t gain anything. I don’t do anything different than I do at home, only with more kids. But you have to appreciate what you have at the moment, even the things you don´t like, because this time won´t last forever. I know this time is going to be over sooner than I think and I can be active again in Relief Society or Sunday School. Here’s the other thing: you have to forget about relying on others–if you want a spiritual experience, you have to “create” it for yourself. You can´t always expect Sundays to be the most uplifting days or times of your week. If you go to church with expectations, you will go home disappointed; but if you go there with enthusiasm, then you come home renewed. When I hear my six-year-old’s accounts of his learning in Primary, I know he´s growing in faith and I know right then it was oh, so worth going to church. I also think that you have to grow up to these things. At age 20, 21, you think differently than later when you’re closer to 30, plus being an eternal investigator I could see more clearly what the Church was all about. Growing up in Hungary, most people have this mindset that there’s their life and there’s the Church somewhere else. But our church doesn’t work like this. You live in the Church, you live with the Church teachings. The Church belongs to my life; it´s not a separate thing anymore. All of a sudden you start thinking about the Church not just as something distant, or as a concept; all of a sudden the concept becomes a reality, and you realize that, “Holy cow! Do I really belong to the Church of Jesus Christ?” And if you think of this, if you think of the Church like this, that this is Christ’s church, you can’t just say this is a concept far away from me. I can’t imagine my life without the Church. It´s not just the structure of it, but it´s Heavenly Father. I couldn´t learn more about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ elsewhere than in the Church. I know that you married in the Church. How did you meet your husband? In 1999, I was an English major at a university in Debrecen, and in my last year I decided to write my thesis on Mormonism. I applied for a scholarship and I got one to USU (Utah State University). The scholarship was for one semester. Not too long after I came home I was sure this was it, I wasn’t going to get married, I was just going to be part of the ministering of angels. Kovács Ildikó and Her Family Shortly after that (in February, 2000), there was a district conference in Budapest, which I attended. A mutual friend introduced me to Laci (pronounced Latsi), my husband. Laci was a relatively new member of the Church then, because he was baptized in 1999. After the meeting, this common friend called me and asked what I thought about Laci. I told him, “Well, I like him. He’s nice. Finally I’ve met a smart guy in the Church, somebody who doesn’t have depression problems, who has a job and went to school–someone who seems normal.” Then my friend told me that Laci had fallen for me. A couple of days later I got a phone call from Laci and I was so relaxed–I thought, this guy already likes me so I don’t have to worry about what I say. I don’t have to act like I’m more than I really am. After we’d dated more, we found out that this common friend told Laci the same thing, that I’d fallen for him. That’s why we were so comfortable talking on the phone for the first time. After six months, he proposed, and I said, “Oh, I’m just too young.” To be honest I’m very scared of making commitments. I just questioned my maturity and I said, “Let’s wait a little bit. Let me find a job in Budapest so we can be closer instead of seeing each other once every two weeks.” I just wanted to make sure this was what I wanted. So I looked for a job and I moved and we saw each other more, almost every day. I think, at age 26 you’re mature enough to use both your heart and head when you decide to get married. I wanted to be in the Church forever, so I figured I had to find someone who was strong enough in the Church. Now here was this guy who just barely got baptized and then went to the temple. But the fact that nothing was shocking for him in the Church, or that he never doubted things, made me realize that our marriage was the right thing. Our civil marriage was at my parents’ place in Mátészalka in July 2001, and we got married in Spain, in the Madrid temple, a week later. How has being a member of the Church influenced your marriage? I really like that my husband has always wanted to follow the counsel of the person who sealed us. The sealer told us, first, that we should never go to bed if we have bad feelings towards each other. He also said that we should always pray together and never yell at one another. Praying together is so essential. You can almost look into the other person’s head when you listen to his or her prayer carefully. It’s the same with the children. I love to listen to their prayers, not just because it’s cute but because it´s amazing what’s in their head and you find out things that otherwise you wouldn’t have an opportunity to find out. I think prayers are wonderful. When you’re single and you go to church regularly and if you really listen to the teachings, the teachings of old and recent prophets, you have a very clear picture of what you’d like to expect in a marriage. Then, if you follow those lessons, you don’t say, “Oh, it’s still okay if he’s lazy.” “Oh he’s not reading the scriptures, but it’s going to change when we’re together.” I never believed in these things. Kovács Ildikó and Her Children I’m not saying that our marriage is perfect or that our family life is perfect–it’s definitely not. You know, sometimes people, especially young women, in the Church come to me and say we´re a “holy family” –oh, I wish! It’s a very good thing to have your faith in the right place; you can turn to your faith and the teachings of the gospel and it’s always there for you. We have our ups and downs in our marriage, as well, but I think it’s really a great blessing that both Laci and I have the same goals. When we have difficult times, it’s just wonderful to have something stable in the home and the stable thing is your faith and the Church. You both know where you should turn to and you turn to that way and you get out of any difficult situation. We know that because we have our endowments, we want to get out of any slump, and we turn to God again. I love that. The Church has also helped our marriage in practical ways. Just recently my husband was out of job for a longer period of time. Thank goodness we are both good savers. I think our saving comes not just from watching our parents, but also from following the teachings of the Church, because this is what you hear in the Church all the time–that you need to be prepared. Even when my husband earned relatively good money, we still didn’t spend more. We felt gratitude, thanked Heavenly Father, and saved money for worse times. We thought, the kids don’t need big things; we don’t need to go to Hawaii from here to have a nice vacation–the Balaton (a lake in Hungary) is perfect. Oh, we were surely grateful and happy to have those savings, otherwise we would have been in a big trouble. It was difficult to see that there was no money coming in, just going out, but because we had saved when we had the opportunity we didn’t feel hopeless. What is it like raising your children in the Church in Hungary? We have three children: Barnabás, Julcsi, and Tomi. I like that talking about the Church, God, and Jesus Christ are so natural to them. Secularism is all around us. People don’t like to belong to a church, they don’t want to follow standards. They want to set their own standards for themselves. If my children see someone smoking, my oldest child asks, “Do they know God?” I say I don’t know, and he says, “I don’t think he knows God because he smokes.” It’s great to see how they store the teachings of the Church in their heads. The Church is growing in Hungary and I’m hoping they will have friends in the Church to do lots of activities together and they will see other non-member young people, as well, and will see the difference. They are still very young and want to follow their parents’ teachings, and I have to admit I still wonder sometimes what it is going to be like when they become teenagers and face peer pressure. It always seems easier to look at the Church from a distance than to be in it. But once the doctrines and correct behavior become habits, everything goes in the right place. You have to be consistent in everything. I admit that we´re horrible at doing family home evenings. For us, it’s something we have to work on. You have to be consistent when it’s about going to church, as well. The children got used to getting up early on Sundays. It takes us about forty minutes to get to church by car. The meetings start at 9 am, so everyone should be up by 6:30 at the latest to get ready for church. As parents our role is to do our best and give the most we can: we have to love and nurture our children physically, mentally, and spiritually. I do not want to look back with fear of regret. I’d like to think back and say, I’ve done all I could to teach these children the gospel of Jesus Christ to help them learn and find out for themselves, as well. At A Glance Name: Kovács Ildikó Location: Göd, Hungary Age: 35 Marital status: Married Children: Barnabás (6); Julcsi (4); Tomi (2) Occupation: full time mother at the moment; graduated as a teacher of English, also a translator and interpreter Languages Spoken at Home: Hungarian Favorite Hymn: “Sweet Hour of Prayer” Current Calling: Nursery Interview by Rosalyn Eves.

After graduating with her master’s of public health degree from Yale, Trang Thach moved to Romania to research drinking water with the aid of a Fulbright Grant. Her search for a career, along with her family history and temple work for ancestors from Vietnam, has helped strengthen her testimony of God’s love and mercy. How did you join the Church? My mom joined the Church when I was about five or six, after we’d been living in the U.S. for a couple of years after leaving Vietnam. It is basically because of her that I was involved with the Church. When I turned eight I was baptized because my mom was still active in the Church and we were still going. But after a couple of years she became inactive. When we first joined the Church, my dad wasn’t in the United States. My mom got involved with the Church because she felt like it was a great organization. So when we first started coming to church we attended the Asian branch, and there was a young American couple who didn’t have children. During that time that the branch was trying to strengthen their Family Home Evening program so they assigned ward missionaries and couples in the branch who were stronger in the Church to newer members and families to help them get started. So, this young American couple was assigned to our family, and they would come over to our house every Monday. My mom would make them a big meal. We’d all sit around the floor and eat and afterwards would have a lesson and an activity. And this went on for years. And so our families just became really close. My mom started to work a lot, and so they would come even during the week. But especially on weekends they would bring us—me and my brother that’s just older than me—to their house. And we’d spend the weekend with them so that we could go to church on Sundays. It was kind of from that interaction that I stayed involved in the Church when I was younger. A lot of my family became inactive, with the exception of me and my brother just older than me. You know, I wasn’t really surrounded by the Church, aside from the weekends when I would go to my white parents’, as I call them, house and go to church with them. Trang Thach You have expressed feeling a sense of uniqueness as a member of the Church because of your personal history. How did that difference manifest itself? After I graduated from the University of Houston and moved to D. C. to work, I decided that I would live in a house with three other girls who were members of the Church. I was really extremely nervous because I wasn’t sure if I would be “Mormon” enough since I had no idea what it was going to be like living with other members of the Church. And to be honest I thought it would be weird, and I thought that they would be weird. I asked things like, “Are they going to expect me to pray with them every morning and read my scriptures with them?” Because I have enough trouble doing that by myself as it is. But, you know, fortunately, when I met these girls they were all very down-to-earth—very strong in the gospel and were totally not like that at all. That made me feel more comfortable. You were committed to going to medical school, but that didn’t work out for you. How did you deal with living away from home and with disappointment as you tried to find your career path? When I moved to D. C., I strongly wanted to pursue medical school, and when I took the MCAT for the third time and didn’t do well on it, I was completely devastated. Only the difference was this time, living away from home in D.C., I didn’t have my family as a support system near me as I had the first two times. And I didn’t have my friends who I felt really knew my story. When I was in Houston, all my friends were with me the entire way, and they’d known me ever since I started to pursue that career path. In D.C. I told a few people about it, but it felt like no one really knew how much I had struggled with a feeling of failure and with a feeling of being lost, of not knowing what I was supposed to do with my life at that point. It’s really through that experience that I feel like I found my own testimony. I also discovered that while I did have a testimony, a lot of it leaned on my white parents and what I’d known because of them. I think for me it was really the first time that I discovered my own relationship with the Lord, which for me was a very important milestone because I didn’t have them to lean on as I would have at home. It was hard but I really feel that that was important because it really stretched me. There were just days when I felt so lost and so confused. And it was also actually the first time that I’d asked a friend of mine for a blessing of comfort. Up until then it was my brother or my white dad who had given me a blessing. It was through that I gained my own testimony of the priesthood, as well, and of the power of priesthood blessings. I would say that was where I was really converted. How did you find your way from the medical school career path to the public health career path you are on now? I’ve always had the “I want to save the world,” idealistic perspective, which is one of the things that made me want to go into medicine and become a physician. Then in college I worked with an organization called the Collegiate Cancer Council, which basically had a mission of going out into the community—particularly the under-represented communities—to educate them about cancer, about how to avoid the risk. And I realized that I really enjoyed doing that. I enjoyed educating people. I enjoyed the prevention aspect of education. I enjoyed getting out in the community and being involved and being an active part in teaching people about different cancers and how to avoid them. I discovered Masters of Public Health graduate programs, and that path complimented my save-the-world mentality. Since pursuing public health instead of medicine, I’ve actually found that it fits better with my personal goals because I can go into under-developed countries and be more involved in the communities than I would have been in a medical practice. I can see more immediate, tangible results of what I’ve done. I will say that it was hard for me to allow myself to see other options outside of medicine because my pride wouldn’t allow me to see past medical school because I didn’t want to be thought of as a failure. But somehow, through the grace of God—and I really believe that it was only through Him—I stopped seeing myself as a failure. And once I stopped seeing it that way that I was able to see other paths and options. Trang Thach You’ve now graduated from the Yale School of Public Health with your masters degree and are currently living in Cluj, Romania, on a Fulbright scholarship. Would you explain what work you are doing in Romania? I went to Cluj, Romania, for the first time last year to study trihalomethanes in drinking water. Basically Romanians disinfect their water with chlorine. Chlorine oftentimes reacts with the organic matter that is already in the water to form different byproducts. And among them is this class of compounds called trihalomethanes. There are four major ones, but the main one that I am looking at is chloroform. Chloroform has actually been found to be linked to different bladder cancers. And a lot of these studies have been done in the U.S. because the technology and research is more advanced here, but it hasn’t ever been done in Romania. I went over there last year to collect water samples, at both the water treatment plants and at different resident facilities where water from those treatment stations is distributed. And I took the samples and I measured how much chloroform, or these trihalomethanes, are in their drinking water. And what I’m here to do this year is figure out how much are these people actually being exposed. I want to do an epidemiological study to see what the correlation is between those waters and the risk of bladder cancer. My other interest is birth defects because at least with that I am certain of the exposure time; bladder cancer has a much longer latency period. It’s at least five to ten years. So that might be more difficult. So I might actually switch over to studying birth defects. How do your idealism and your interest in public health interact with your understanding of the gospel? Public health just feels so natural to me. And it feels natural to me because it’s something that I would do anyway. If I saw someone drinking something that looked funny or if they were doing something that didn’t seem good for them, I would want to help them. I would want to do anything and everything I could to make conditions better for them. And that’s how I often feel with the gospel as well. The feeling that I get with public health is similar to what I get from the gospel: When I see someone struggle with something like loss or when life doesn’t go the way they planned, I feel like I can make a difference to that person. For me, I’ve found so much comfort in the gospel and in knowing that the Lord knows me so much better than I know myself. It’s kind of a natural thing for me to want to do that for people as well and to share that story with people when I see them struggling also. I just want to share with them my experiences and what I know and how it was for me. And really all that does come down to my faith and my testimony and the relationship I have developed with the Lord. Public health is me bearing my testimony in a different way. Your family is originally from Vietnam. Tell me about taking your grandmother’s name to the temple. I really feel our branch presidency was inspired to give us the challenge to do family history work and to find a name for the branch temple trip in May of last year. For a long time I struggled doing my family history mostly because Vietnamese people don’t keep records. There are no birth certificates or anything so it’s just really hard to track that stuff down. I just felt like it was so daunting. I just thought, “How am I ever going to find information? I have to go off people’s memories.” People in Vietnam just don’t seem that interested in talking about family history anyway. One day there was a Family Home Evening where I learned that for the Church’s new FamilySearch program you didn’t need that much information. All you needed was their name, either their birth or death year, and location. And when I heard that I thought, “I can do that. I can probably get that information from my mom or my dad.” Three of my four grandparents have passed away. So, I did call my mom and just asked her what she could remember. She didn’t know my grandmother’s birth date but she did remember the exact date of my grandmother’s death. It was at the eleventh hour that I got this information as we were preparing to go to the temple. My friend helped me figure out how to get the card printed ready for me to go, and I went to the temple. That trip was actually particularly hard. I prayed to feel the spirit, but I have to be honest and say I didn’t feel that immediately when I came in. But, for some reason, when I got into the baptisimal font and was baptized for my grandmother, I just felt a complete, overwhelming feeling of the Spirit. I felt a peace come over me. I’d like to say that it felt like my grandmother was happy and excited that I was doing that work for her. She was the first relative that I had ever done. I was just completely overwhelmed with the Spirit. I was tearing up as they were reading the words of the prayer, and as I was in the font I just felt so thankful that my grandma could have that opportunity because I really didn’t know how she would have that chance otherwise. She never had the opportunity to hear the gospel in her life because our missionaries aren’t allowed into Vietnam yet. And that’s actually always been something really difficult for me to understand. And I also wonder about my family and how all of that is going to work. Just, how? I have so many questions with that. At the same time I believe in a God that’s merciful and knows the desires of my heart and will allow me to be with my family somehow. So, I just found peace in that and was really thankful for those ordinances that we can perform. You have taken more of your family names to the temple since then. I have been baptized for my paternal grandmother now. And then I’ve done both of my grandmothers’ endowments as well, which has been really awesome for me. How has doing temple work for your family members changed your perspective of the gospel? It has really helped to strengthen my testimony of the eternal nature of families. I think this is again mostly because right now it’s only me and my brother who’s older than me who are active in the Church. That’s hard for me, too, because I think sometimes I struggle with the fear that I won’t get to be with my family because of that. So I think that’s one of the things it’s taken me a long time to overcome, or to work through and reconcile for myself. I still don’t really know how God will take care of that or how it will all work out. But I think I’ve just found peace in knowing that it will somehow. That’s the whole purpose of the temple, to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and the fathers to the children. I just know and have a testimony that He will somehow make that happen, whether it be in this life or the life to come. Although it’s hard for me to see that with my family here now, I think I have found comfort in knowing that I can be sealed with my family that has passed on through doing their work and giving them that opportunity. And so this just helps me to kind of see things from a less immediate and temporal perspective and more from an eternal one, which is again what I think the temple is all about anyway. At A Glance Name: Trang Thach Age: 26 Marital status: Single Occupation: Student of life, public health professional Schools Attended: University of Houston (BS in Biology), Yale School of Public Health (MPH) Languages Spoken at Home: Vietnamese & English; now, a little Romanian Favorite Hymn: “Because I Have Been Given Much” Interview by Elizabeth Pinborough.

Raised near Bethlehem, only a few blocks away from the birthplace of Jesus Christ, Sahar Qumsiyeh intimately knows places that are considered holy by many religions. However, this significant area is marked by conflict and war, and as a Palestinian, Sahar faced barriers (both figurative and literal) to joining the Church. In this interview, Sahar describes how her introduction to the Church and understanding of the gospel enabled her to overcome the feelings of anger and frustration that accompanied her life in this turbulent region. How did you convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? After receiving my undergraduate degree in math at Bethlehem University and teaching at an elementary school in Bethlehem for a year, I received a full scholarship for a master’s degree at American University in Washington, D.C. I was really excited and planning on going there, but then I saw an advertisement offering scholarships to Brigham Young University for Palestinians. Even though I already had a good scholarship to the American University, I decided to apply to BYU and was accepted to a program for a master’s degree in statistics. Everyone, including my family, told me not to go to BYU. I had also heard strange things about the Mormons, which made me discouraged. Despite this, I had a feeling that I should go there, and although I didn’t understand why, I couldn’t walk away from that feeling. So I ended up attending BYU. I was scared, but I went and felt at home. I wasn’t really interested in the Mormon Church, and the thought of joining the church never crossed my mind. I was raised Christian—my family is Greek Orthodox—although over the years, my parents lost interest in religion. I personally lost faith in God; because of many injustices that I had witnessed in Palestine. I thought that God must hate Palestinians because we were oppressed and the situation was really bad. I said my prayers, but didn’t think that God would listen or answer. Sahar B. Qumsiyeh At BYU, one of my friends invited me to church and I went, but it was very different from what I grew up with and I wasn’t interested in returning. But then it was General Conference, and my friends told me that they were going to listen to the prophet speak. I thought it was really strange that the Mormons believed there was a living prophet on the earth. I called my mom and said, “Mother, do you know what the Mormons think?” But I was curious and I decided to listen to what the prophet—at that time President Hunter—had to say. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he referred to my land as “Palestine” and that was a really big deal to me. After the Israeli occupation, Palestinians lost our identity and few people around the world recognize that we have the right to a land or a country; a lot of people call this country “Israel.” My country, Palestine, doesn’t even exist on a map. The word “Israel” shows up in its place. So hearing an American call my country “Palestine” meant a lot to me. After conference, I asked a friend to tell me about the Church. She told me everything: she started with the creation of Adam and told me all the details of the restoration. Other people in the room said that she was confusing me by telling me everything at once, but it all made sense; when you hear it all at once, it is simple and perfect. I started to show interested in the Church. One of my friends gave me an Arabic Book of Mormon and told me to read 3 Nephi 11 and pray about it. I thought that didn’t make sense to pray about a chapter in a book, so I decided to read the entire book instead. It took me a few months to read but I knew it was true; I didn’t have to ask Heavenly Father if it was true. I started going to Church and I decided to get baptized. If other people had tried to convert me, I likely would have walked away. But my BYU friends just left me alone. That was good because I took my time to learn about the church on my own. How did your family react to your decision to be baptized? When I told my family, they said that the Mormons had brainwashed me. They said I was crazy to even think about getting baptized. Their reaction was very difficult for me, so much so that I decided not to go through with the baptism. But I attended a friend’s baptism and I knew that was what I needed to do. I was finally baptized on February 4, 1996. I have now been an LDS church member for more than 14 years. Over the years, most of my family has accepted my membership in the Church. But my mom still tries to convince me to leave the Church. Others in my family think that I’m lost and confused, but they don’t say anything about it anymore. They know that I’m happy and they’re fine with that. I was so miserable in Palestine before I went to BYU. After joining the Church, I was scared to go home; I thought I would be unhappy again and I thought it would be difficult because my family wouldn’t accept my membership in the Church. But I have been happy, even through difficult situations and even though my family tried everything possible to encourage me to leave the Church. Sahar B. Qumsiyeh What has been your experience as a member of the Church in Palestine? It was really difficult being a member of the Church when I returned to Palestine after being baptized in Utah. There were two other members of the church in the Bethlehem area, but at the time I didn’t know them. I felt very alone. Also, I couldn’t go to church much of the time, because I lived in the West Bank and the Israelis imposed travel restrictions on Palestinians living in the West Bank. I wasn’t allowed to enter Jerusalem and I often had to sneak into Jerusalem to get to church. Yet I had the Holy Ghost with me and that helped a lot; having that joy and peace inside took care of everything. I grew up a few blocks away from Christ’s birthplace in Bethlehem. However, I never felt that site, or others in Jerusalem had any significance to me personally. I believed in God, but did not understand many things about the Gospel. I hated living in Bethlehem and thought I was cursed for being Palestinian, because we had very few human rights and were not treated with dignity. Even though I grew up in the Holy Land, I had to travel across the world to Provo, Utah to get to know my Savior. After I was baptized and returned home, my view completely changed. I felt blessed to be Palestinian and to have the opportunity to live where my Savior lived. Every tree, every site, and every street reminds me of my Savior and what He has done for me. Out of all the places He could have chosen to be born, He chose my little town of Bethlehem. Can you explain more about the restrictions that made it difficult for you to get to church? Before 1987, Palestinians living in the West Bank were able to travel freely to any area in the Holy Land. The restrictions imposed by the state of Israel started increasing gradually. At first they stopped allowing us to drive outside the West Bank. Then they stopped allowing taxis, then buses. After that, they started restricting individuals from traveling outside the West Bank at all. Many checkpoints were established on various roads leading out of Palestinian cities. Different checkpoints allowed selected individuals—such as women or men over age 50—to exit their cities (and go to Jerusalem, for example). The restrictions increased until no one was allowed to travel, except for the select few who worked in Jerusalem and were able to get a proper permit to enter Jerusalem. In 2003, Israel began building the separation wall: a 20-foot-high concrete wall that surrounds many Palestinian cities. The wall was designed to control Palestinian movement through designated openings in the wall. Now, permits are given to very few individuals, and the checkpoints that were simply roadblocks 15 years ago are now bigger than an airport terminal. Because all travelers are searched thoroughly, the few who work in Jerusalem have to wait in line at checkpoints for hours each morning to get to work. For many years, I didn’t have papers to enter Jerusalem—where the Jerusalem Branch (at that time, the only branch in the Holy Land) meets—and it was very difficult to get to church. During the early years, I was able to sneak into Jerusalem by climbing hills and avoiding the checkpoints the Israeli soldiers placed at the main roads leading out of Bethlehem. Later it became more difficult as soldiers and checkpoints were placed almost everywhere. After the separation wall was built around Bethlehem, it became very dangerous and difficult to get into Jerusalem. Even after entering the city, one had to remain cautious, because soldiers would stop people and ask them for their papers. Do you still struggle to get to church today? The last time I snuck into Jerusalem for church was in 2007. At that time, the only way to enter Jerusalem was through a small hole in the separation wall. The hole was small—maybe a foot or two wide—and it was located about 90 minutes from my house, so I had to take a taxi to get there. Soldiers usually stood guard on the other side of the wall, so I had to wait for the Israeli soldiers to move away before climbing through the hole. We went through the wall in groups and people were assigned to watch the soldiers and then they signaled to the rest of us when it was safe to go through the hole. I waited for about 30 minutes before the soldiers left, and then everyone squeezed through the hole. Then we had to run to another wall that was about 10 feet high and made of concrete. Someone lifted me up to climb the wall, and then I jumped down the 10 feet on the other side. It was rainy and muddy on the last day I snuck into Jerusalem. That day, I ran and hid behind a building, waited until a bus came, then jumped onto the bus and rode into Jerusalem. Later, at church, a friend asked me what would happen if I were caught. I said, “I’ve never had to find out. I’ve been sneaking into Jerusalem to attend church for years, and I’ve never been caught.” A lot of times, I felt like I was invisible, because other people would be stopped and caught and I would get through. But that same day, as I was going home on the bus, soldiers stopped the bus. Two people—another man and I—didn’t have permission to be in Jerusalem. They took us off the bus and detained us for an hour. We were forced to sign papers that said, “I was found in Jerusalem on this date.” I was lucky because after we signed their paper, they let us go. After that day, I was physically and emotionally exhausted from the stress of trying to get to church. For years prior, I sat in church thinking, “How can I get home without being caught?” and it took away from the focus of worship. I had promised Heavenly Father that I would try to go to church every week if I was able to, and I tried every week; sometimes I was able to make it through the checkpoints and sometimes I wasn’t, but I always tried. However, after that last time, I didn’t want to do it anymore. I prayed and said, “Heavenly Father, I am tired. Please provide me with another way to get to church.” Not long after that experience, I started my current job with the United Nations as a database analyst. As a U.N. employee, I have proper papers that allow me to enter Jerusalem for work. Today, I go through checkpoints to get to church in Jerusalem, and they let me in. I am really privileged as a U.N. worker, because I can go through any checkpoint, whereas the people from Bethlehem have to cross at one particular checkpoint, where it’s always busy and you have to wait in a line for 3 to 4 hours. It takes me about an hour and a half to get to church now, depending on traffic and how long I have to wait at checkpoints. Sahar B. Qumsiyeh I am currently the Relief Society president in the Jerusalem Branch. Our branch has many members from all over the world: many BYU students, people working at the U.S. consulate and others working in Jerusalem. It is a challenge for us to reach out to the many members in the branch who live in West Bank cities and are unable to attend church. U.S. policy does not allow those working with the consulate from the West Bank into Jerusalem and the B.Y.U. Jerusalem Center rules don’t allow those affiliated with the Jerusalem Center to freely travel and drive their own cars into West Bank cities. Therefore, we have members living in the West Bank who have not been able to attend church services for over 12 years! How have you found the inner strength to remain in the Church despite such difficult circumstances? Knowing what it’s like to not have the gospel makes a big difference; I’m so much happier now because of the knowledge I have, so it’s easier to hold on. Heavenly Father has been by my side the entire time and has helped me through everything. Amidst this conflict, I’ve been comforted many times. For example, one time Israeli helicopters were shooting at houses in my town. The electricity went out and the phones were dead, so we couldn’t call our relatives to find out if they were okay. My family and I went up to the roof to see which areas were affected. I left my family on the roof and went down to my room and prayed and I felt Heavenly Father’s loving arms around me. I knew that He was there and He was protecting the people I loved. Dealing with the conflict has been a real challenge internally. I’ve seen a lot of injustices done to my people over the years: restricted travel and curfews, friends or relatives arrested or shot for no reason, humiliation, loss of identity, house demolitions. When I was 16 years old and attending Bethlehem University for my undergraduate degree, there was a demonstration on campus and some Israeli soldiers shot a student. The soldiers wouldn’t allow us to take him to a hospital. For two hours, he lay with a bullet hole in his head. That day, I developed feelings of hate towards the Israelis because of what I witnessed them do to my people. After I joined the Church, that hatred kind of dissolved, but I still didn’t love them. One day when I was trying to go through the checkpoint to attend church, one of the Israeli soldiers told me to go back; he said I wasn’t allowed in. I looked into his eyes and remembered a scripture I read in Matthew that morning in which the Savior said, “Love your enemies.” It occurred to me that I didn’t love the Israelis, and it really bothered me that I could not obey one of the Savior’s commandments. I struggled with that and didn’t know how to overcome those feelings. I came across a scripture in Moroni—chapter 7, verse 48—which talks about charity as the pure love of Christ. It reads, “Pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love.” I decided that this was the only way to gain love for my enemies; I couldn’t love them through my efforts alone. I needed help from my Savior who had perfect charity for everyone. He was able to love and forgive the very soldiers who crucified Him. If anyone knew how to love, He did, and I knew He could teach me. I decided to ask Heavenly Father to help me because living with anger and hatred damages the soul. I prayed for this for a long time, and I thought He didn’t answer, because I didn’t notice a particular change. But about a year after I started praying, I was passing through one of the checkpoints and I looked into the eyes of a soldier (who told me to turn back) and felt an amazing love for him. I knew that we were all children of God, and we don’t have to hate the people who do bad things to us; we can just hate their actions, but we don’t have to hate the people themselves. It was a tremendous comfort to me to learn that when Heavenly Father tells us to do something, He provides a way for us to obey His commandments. The Palestinians and Israelis are seeking to establish peace. In order to do that, they have met at a negotiation table for years. I believe the only true peace has to come from the Prince of Peace himself, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The peace that the Holy Ghost brought into my life after I was baptized has remained with me during days of trouble and conflict. The Savior said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” Only He can soften hearts, provide feelings of charity, and supply that peace that my country needs. At A Glance Name: Sahar B. Qumsiyeh Location: Beit Sahour, West Bank, Palestine Age: 39 Marital status: Single Convert: February 4, 1996 Occupation: Database Analyst Schools Attended: Bethlehem University, BS; BYU, Masters, Middle East Technical Universityin Turkey, Ph.D. Languages Spoken at Home: Arabic Favorite Hymn: “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief” Interview by Barbara Christiansen.

Teruko Nakayama was raised in a Japanese family in Hawaii and although her parents practiced Buddhism, she never had any formal religious training. Giving birth to her first child, though, motivated her to seek for truth. Now in her 80s, Teruko and her husband have served three missions for the Church. Born to immigrants from Japan, can you tell us a bit about your childhood? I was born and raised in Waialua, Hawaii. In my family, I was the sixth of nine children. When I was born, my father was irrigating sugar cane for the Waialua Sugar Company. That’s how we lived—in the middle of the cane fields in Hawaii.My siblings and I attended Japanese language school after school every day. It was difficult to pay the tuition but my parents did all kinds of extra work to send us to school and learn about the Japanese culture and language. Teruko Tsuneda Nakayama and Her Husband My father wasn’t very religious until he lost his fourth child. He thought that losing a child was a punishment from God because he used to gamble every night. By the time I was born, my father had changed. He became very strict. He was a different father than he was for my older siblings. I was afraid of my father but I learned obedience. He was very righteous even though he did not have the gospel. With parents who practiced Buddhism, in what ways were you prepared to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ? Although my parents were Buddhist, my siblings and I were never taught religion. My parents did, however, teach us obedience and listening. My parents were examples of hard work and honesty. I’m grateful for that example. Even if we weren’t a perfect family, my siblings and I saw that my parents worked hard to provide for us and sacrificed for the family. My parents practiced Buddhism together, but there was no religious education for the children. When they would go to the Buddhist Temple, my siblings and I played outside, waiting for them. How did you learn about the gospel? It was the summer of 1952. I was married, had my first daughter and living in Honolulu. I had never practiced religion but when my daughter was born, I thought, “How am I going to teach my child about God?” I wanted her to know about God but I didn’t know anything about religion. When the missionaries came, they were wearing double-breasted suits and they looked uncomfortably hot during the Hawaii summer heat. I offered a cold drink to them and asked them to come inside the apartment. In those days, missionaries asked the three “golden” questions (Where did we come from? Why are we here?; Where are we going?). I responded, “Don’t ask me, go to someone who knows the answer”. Teruko Tsuneda Nakayama as a Child They were willing to teach me and I didn’t mind learning because I wanted something more for my daughter. I didn’t know what to expect because I had never read a Bible, I had never owned a Bible, and I didn’t know what scriptures were. I didn’t know anything about religion or being Mormon but when I spoke with the missionaries, I knew they were telling the truth. I think it all goes back to my parents and what they taught me about honesty. Everything was so strange because to me religion is something that a lot of people grew up with but I never had. Within less than a year my husband and I joined the church together and gradually, one by one, a little at a time, we learned about the gospel. That’s how we progressed—a little at a time. Your faith in the gospel began because of your parent’s example, regardless of their different faith. In what other ways did your parent’s example help you to develop your testimony? My parents taught me strict obedience and being obedient was important to my testimony. For example, the law of tithing was an adjustment for my family. We never gave a cent to another church but suddenly we were asked to give ten percent of our income. We thought, “We can’t do it, we’ll never save any money.” However, we just tried and tried and that was the blessing. I don’t know how long it took but eventually we were able to pay tithing and that has been a blessing. In 1955, my husband became an Elder and we went to the temple the next year. I had the mindset that if I make a commitment, I don’t go halfway. It’s all or nothing. When we were approached about going to the temple, I told my husband, “If we don’t do this now, forget it. It’s all or nothing.” And that’s how it was. I didn’t want to be lukewarm about anything. Teruko Tsuneda Nakayama and Her Family You went on to be obedient to callings given to you through the Church by serving four missions. Can you tell us about those opportunities? My husband and I served in the Tokyo Temple Mission from 1986 to 1988 when I was just 60 years old. My husband was planning on retiring at age 62. The calling came and we thought, “We must go and serve.” We didn’t have much so we had to rent our house while we were gone and it was just enough to go on a mission. It cost $1,100 a month to serve a mission together and my husband and I were able to rent our house for $1,200 a month. The rent is how we supported ourselves on our mission to Japan. Teruko Tsuneda Nakayama and Her Husband on Their Tokyo Temple Mission After we returned to Hawaii, someone asked, “When are you going on a mission again?” I said jokingly, “If someone gives us money, we’ll go again.” My husband and I later learned that our ward had some money set aside to help couples go on missions, so we signed up for another mission! We went to Chicago, Illinois on a proselyting mission from 1991 to 1992. We had some success in bringing others to the church and it was a very precious experience. Later in 1997, we went on a family history mission to Salt Lake City for one year. A family history mission is so inspiring. We still have wonderful memories of that time. When we returned to Hawaii again, we were asked to serve a part-time mission in the Bishop’s Storehouse. Today, my husband and I are in our 80s and don’t have too much to do but we try our best to continue to be missionaries. It’s wonderful, this journey through life. I have been able to meet so many inspiring people who have helped me become a better person. I think I’m a missionary at heart. Teruko Tsuneda Nakayama and Her Family As a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, what kind of legacy do you want to leave for your posterity? I always tell my grandchildren, “Listen and obey.” I try to be an example of obedience for my grandchildren. I want them to be happy. If I didn’t have religion I don’t know what kind of condition my family would be in. Prior to joining the church, we didn’t have any goals and would just live for pleasure. Through our membership in the church, I have come to know that happiness is living a simple life in the Gospel with my family. At A Glance Name: Teruko Tsuneda Nakayama Location: Honolulu, HI Age: 83 Marital status: Married to Walter Tetsuo Nakayama since November 11, 1949 at Harris Memorial Methodist Church by Reverend Harry Komuro of Honolulu, HI. We were endowed and sealed in the Laie Hawaii Temple in 1956. Children: Four grown children: Daughters: 59 & 53. Sons: 50 & 45. Occupation: Hairdresser/cosmetician, Sales & Service, Groundskeeper, Housekeeper, and various part-time jobs while raising our children. Schools Attended: Waialua Elementary School, 1st to 6th grade; Waialua Intermediate & High School, 7th to 10th; McKinley High School in Honolulu, Junior & Senior years. Honolulu Beauty College, 1946, Introduction to Fashion Dressingmaking @ SingerSewing Studio. Japanese Language School, 1st to 7th (after regular school and half-day during summer vacation. Languages Spoken at Home: Spoke Japanese to parents, but English spoken with our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Favorite Hymn: “Joseph Smith’s First Prayer” Interview by Amy Doxey.

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.

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.

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.

Catherine Humphrey was married to her first husband for 28 years. Parents of six children, Catherine and her husband served together as mission presidents in Brazil when she was 32 years old. Their marriage slowly dissolved after she learned that her husband had embezzled from clients and been disbarred. As a single mother, she went back to school, completing a master’s degree and a Ph.D. Thirteen years after marrying her second husband, he was diagnosed with an acute brain disease that has slowly robbed him of cognition and function. How did you find out that your first husband was no longer the man you'd married? We had the best of everything—the best house, the neatest children, we lived in Glendale, California—a wonderful community where we’d both grown up. My husband was an attorney in partnership with other LDS attorneys. We had everything we could wish for. My husband was called as a mission president when he was 40 years old and I was 32. By the end of the marriage, we had been married for 28 years and had six children. Things started unraveling when my husband came home one day and said, “There’s no money,” and I thought, “What is he talking about?” During that week we also received a knock on the door and I learned our house was in foreclosure. At that time, my first husband was serving as a bishop. It was awful. He was released soon after—he only served eighteen months. I learned that he had been fired years earlier from the law firm and he hadn’t told me; instead he told me he was opening up a branch of the law firm in Glendale and I believed him. Every day, he went to an office he’d rented and embezzled money. He became emotionally and physically abusive to me, our children, and my extended family. Catherine Humphrey with Some of Her Children During this experience, I learned that you cannot effect change in other people. I prayed often and church leaders, his former senior law partner, and professionals attempted to counsel him. I wanted to work with him if there was a change in behavior, but there was no change, not even an acknowledgment of, “I’m sorry,” or “I did wrong.” Nobody knew why he did what he did but it was so hurtful and scary. After we divorced, my first husband sued me frequently on made-up charges. Once he sued me in three courts on the same day. If you’re sued, a process server comes to your door. So I’d have to pay a lawyer to answer the summons. He’d serve me summons on Valentine’s Day, on Mother’s Day, even on my birthday. When he died, he was unrecognizable to me in his coffin. He had become a different person. What was it like to unexpectedly become the sole provider and return to school? The day my husband told me there was no more money, I said, “Well, should I get a job?” And he said, “I think you’d better.” He never provided for our family again. I’d never worked before but I had my teaching certificate. So the next day I went to the Pasadena Board of Education and said, “I need to work as a substitute teacher immediately.” They weren’t hiring full-time teachers so I said, “I’ll teach anything, but I need to work every day.” And I worked every day as a substitute teacher. There was never a day I wasn’t called in to teach, because I said I’d teach anything and I did a good job. I ended up getting a summer school job too and I taught Spanish and English. Then the next fall, I got my first full-time job and I taught English for the next twenty-one years. I thought, “If I’m going to teach, I want to be the best teacher I can be, so I’m going to get a master’s degree.” I started going to one class at night at California State Polytechnic University, because I hadn’t been in an academic setting for so long. I didn’t know if I could succeed. I found that not only could I succeed, I loved doing it. Catherine Humphrey with a Grandchild My kids all knew that I was working hard for us, so they all rallied together and were a great team. I did not have childcare; we did it together. The youngest was in second grade when I started working; since I was teaching school I’d be home when they were home. There were enough older ones to watch the little ones; at the very beginning I was only in class one night a week. We did it together, that’s one of the things that made us so strong. It was hard, because eventually I was working full-time and going to school full-time. But it showed my kids the importance of education and the importance of a woman being self-reliant. I’d just started my Ph.D. when the divorce was finalized. I showed the children, “This is how you manage. You get the most education you can and you take care of business yourself.” Women cannot be helpless. They have to be able to take care of themselves and their children. A side benefit, now that I’m retired, is that I have a pension—which I never even thought about during those years! Your Ph.D. is in English; did you ever find that your studies made you question your faith? A relative said, “You’d better not get a Ph.D. in English, Catherine, because if you do you’ll lose your testimony.” People seem to think English is scary in that way. It always seemed contrary to me if what you’re looking for is truth, or greater truth, to be afraid of knowledge. In my education, I wanted to know what the great minds were thinking about. I found it enriching. I loved it; I would sit in class and tears would just roll down my cheeks, especially when I’d read some of the more contemporary women who were thinking through issues that I didn’t know enough to even think about. The most valuable skill I gained in my education was that I learned to be a good critical thinker. You think critically and you’re changed forever. I really wanted to know more about everything so I could understand a lot of the events that had happened in my life. I was interested in women’s voices. I’d always been very careful to not speak out of turn and it was interesting to me to see how minorities could rise and could have voice and could actually make a difference in the course of history. I thought, “Maybe there’s something that I don’t know that could help me solve problems better.” So I approached my discipline with an open mind, but it was never, “This will shake my faith.” In fact, it was the opposite. I thought, “This will NOT shake my faith,” and it didn’t. I think I was born with a believing spirit. One attitude that’s helpful is to accept that everything doesn’t have to “fit in,” because over time I’ve seen many theories change. Things can move and things can change. And I’m very much a New Testament sort of Christian; I believe that we’re meant to love one another, to do well, to not be judgmental. Even when I was at my lowest point, it never occurred to me to neglect church attendance. I’ve said to people my faith is in my DNA. I just have it. I didn’t really have to search for it; I just had it. Growing up, my dad was Presbyterian and my mom was Mormon. When I was little they’d drop me off at church and pick me up afterwards; my mom didn’t attend. But I always believed. I was always serious-minded. I’ve also always been a student of something; I was a student of the Church. There was a time when I felt I’d read everything at our local Deseret Book. Twice I’ve been a Gospel Doctrine teacher and gone through all four standard works. I think my faith came from being a believing child and a believing teenager. Do you think that the experiences you had in Brazil impacted your approach to your graduate studies? Serving as the mission president’s wife in Sao Paulo, Brazil, prior to going to graduate school definitely fortified my faith. When we were called to serve, I had four children; the youngest was twelve months old, the oldest was nine years old and I gave birth to a new baby seven months after arriving in Brazil. So I was in the mission field with five little children and our mission was an absolute time of miracle. The children and I joined together as a family to take care of each other, which formed habits to help us later when I was going to school and working. On our mission I learned how to approach anybody; I learned how to hand out TheBook of Mormon on an airplane, I learned how to find people to teach, I learned not to be afraid to bear my testimony anywhere, anytime, in Portuguese or English. Following our mission, I was Relief Society President for five years in Glendale, CA. I was also PTA president, so I had one foot in the community as well as in the church. My sister says, “How can you be the salt that savors the world if you never leave the shaker?” I was named the California Young Mother in 1972 and I was always comfortable in the community; I worked as hard there as I did in the church. I never found a conflict of values. The women that I worked with as the PTA president wanted good families; they wanted strong homes, they wanted good educations, too. As I studied, I found more and more similarities between whatever I was reading and the gospel. I wrote my dissertation on Toni Morrison’s novels. I analyzed her early novels and showed how one can read them as the fall, the redemption, and the apocalypse, and how through her female characters you can see what’s lacking. Love is always what’s lacking…that and an understanding of people. Morrison’s characters show us that it is possible to have a sharable world; we become stronger when we care about others, which to me is Christlike. And in the apocalypse of the later novels, we see the great trouble that comes if we don’t. You remarried three years after your divorce—to a man you describe as the kindest man you’ve ever met. I never thought I’d be married again; but I thought I’d like to be married again because I liked men and I liked companionship, and it was important for the children to have a father. I met Ted when I was working on my MA at Cal Poly; we fell in love when I was studying for my PhD at Claremont Graduate University. He was an English professor, and he was a Renaissance man; there wasn’t anything he didn’t know or couldn’t do. Ted was also very kind. He had an open heart in terms of investigating the church; what he liked best was the philosophy in Mosiah 18:8, bearing one another’s burdens and mourning with those that mourn. Catherine Humphrey and Her Husband It was important to me that getting married wasn’t contingent on his baptism; they were two separate events. We were married in March and he joined the church in August of that year. I had peace about it; I wasn’t worried about it—he was such a good man. We were sealed in the Los Angeles temple in May 1995. The same week that we arrived in Sao Paulo, James Faust was assigned to live there as Area President. We became dear friends with Jim and Ruth Faust, sharing our lives and experiences with each other. I stayed close to Elder Faust after our mission. When I married Ted, James Faust, then the First Counselor of the First Presidency of the Church, called me and said that he wanted to meet Ted. We flew to Salt Lake and had a long and wonderful visit with him in his office. At the end of the visit he invited Ted to assist him in giving me a priesthood blessing. His blessing promised me all that I could ever want and through blessing me, he blessed each of my children, whom he knew, by name. His priesthood blessing remains a source of continual peace. I have faith in his promises. You’ve had two husbands who’ve changed dramatically from the men they were when you married them—obviously, this is a much different experience with Ted. Ted now suffers from brain disease and brain injury. Four years ago he was diagnosed with adult onset normal pressure hydrocephalus and his condition will only decline. He has suffered four neurosurgeries, followed by complications from each, a brain hemorrhage, a subdural hematoma, and a brain infection. His ventricles have increasing amounts of spinal fluid, causing progressive dementia, incontinence, and an inability to walk. He is confined to a wheelchair and I can never leave him alone. Recently, I hired in-home nursing care three times a week so I can leave for errands. A dear friend gave him a blessing at Christmas last year. He said, “Your life will be preserved as long as you desire to live. You have fulfilled your mission, which was to become the husband and father in this choice family.” And that’s what Ted does. He healed our family by loving and caring for us. There are moments or days where he’s better than other moments. But I’ve never thought I’d made a mistake in marrying him because he’s so good. And whatever it takes to take care of him in our home, I will do. Period. How do you do it? It’s just what I do. For example, for fun I dress us so we match on Sunday. Last Sunday, I wore a blue and white sweater, so I fixed Ted with a white shirt and his pretty blue tie. I do a gratitude chain that we write on at breakfast. We do little things to savor the present moments we are still together: we hold hands, we kiss each other, we smile at each other. I create little programs for us like I still do for my kids to keep them close. In discussing these very challenging obstacles in your life, you have so much grace and dignity. Is that a conscious choice? I learned it from my mother—if you’re going to do something, do it with grace and don’t be a martyr. If you’re going to do service, make it seem effortless. You’re never going to get credit for it anyway! I think that being resilient is a skill that can be learned; I’ve had to learn to be resilient. Throughout these experiences, it’s obvious that your priority has been protecting your children. I have something that a lot of women don’t have, which is a peace about my family. I guess that’s what I most wanted, but I have a confidence that whatever they have to deal with, they’ll be able to deal with it. I’ve tried to do this in my own life. I care about the legacy that I leave for my children. I want my children to be honest, to be good. I don’t want them to have any remote vestige of prejudicial attitudes towards anybody who’s different from them. I want them to have a high regard for other people, to be scrupulous in their dealings with their fellow men. I want them to pass on an attitude of strength and resilience and education to their children. I think all of my children revere education and aren’t afraid to learn about anything. I trust that if bad things happen to them, they will overcome it. I used to worry about that, but I don’t anymore. You should be faithful and good and make right decisions because that’s who you are, because that’s your core, because you can’t be altered. You have to be true to the goodness inside you. At A Glance Name: Catherine Humphrey Location: West Lafayette, IN Age: 67 Marital status: Married twice, currently married to Ted Humphrey Occupation: retired English professor, forever mother, homemaker and thinker Children: Six Schools Attended: BYU, University of Maryland (BA), California State Polytechnic (MA), Claremont Graduate University (Ph.D) Languages Spoken at Home: English; Portuguese for three years while serving as the mission president’s wife in Brazil Sao Paulo Favorite Hymn: “Because I Have Been Given Much” Interview by Rachael Bailey.