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[00:00:00] What does it mean to be and become a saint? This was the question, Jamin and Anne Rowan, along with Latterday Saint author and Professor John Hilton, third, sought to help BYU students answer as they guided them through Italy, Northern Ireland, in England, over the course of a six week study abroad trip.

According to the trip description, their hope was that if immersed in the lives and lessons of early Christians, holy people from various faith traditions and modern saints, they would have experiences that would deepen their understanding of how believers from different cultures in both the past and present, have practiced faith, experienced spirituality, and pursued discipleship.

I don't know about you, but to me this trip sounded incredible and I figured if I couldn't go getting to hear Jamin and Anne's experiences might be the next best thing. Jamin and Anne Rowan are both employed by Brigham Young University, Jamin as the American Studies Program Coordinator, and Anne as the education and programs manager for By U'S Museum of Peoples and Cultures.

They are the parents of six children.

This is all in an LDS Living podcast where we ask the question, what does it really mean to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ? I'm Morgan Pearson and I am honored to have Jamin and Anne Rowan on the line with me today. Jamin and Anne, welcome. Thanks. Thanks. Well, I will start by saying that the, the impetus of this episode is that I saw where my friend Lizzie, who is Anne's sister, visited, uh, Jamin and Anne on their study abroad trip.

And I was like, what is this trip? I sometimes, like not doing BYU Jerusalem Center is my life's biggest regret. And so [00:02:00] sometimes I see these trips and I just get like wholly envy of these experiences that students are getting to have. And so I saw this trip and I thought, this looks amazing. I wanna at least learn more about it.

And so here we are. Thank you Jamin and Anne for being willing to do this. I wanna start out, um, by asking each of you, could you tell me a little bit about your background, because I think both of your backgrounds will be kind of critical to our conversation today. Yeah, Jamin and I met each other when we were in Boston.

We both moved there for master's programs and met shortly after arriving. And I was studying museum education at Tufts University and Jamin was working on a master's degree at Boston College. And over the course of, um, that first year, um, we fell in love. I graduated, um, uh, we got married and then we left and moved to England for a year, a year long honeymoon.

Nice. Officially let a study program for Jamin. He was doing a master's degree at the University of South Hampton, but it was a wonderful year, um, of just the two of us in England and traveling around and it was a magical way to start a marriage. We came back to Boston and lived there for several more years, um, while Jamin finished his master's and then his PhD there.

And our first four kids were born there, four of six. And we've, we've been here in Provo for 15 years now. Jamin works for BYU teaching English, and I recently started working Pro BYU as well. I am the education and programs manager at the Museum of Peoples and Cultures, which is B'S teaching Museum focused on anthropology.

Okay. And we, as part of Jam's job, we've been very blessed as a family to be able to participate in three study abroad programs. Our first was in 2020, we went to the BYU London Center and then again in 2023 again to the London Center. [00:04:00] And then the summer Jamin and John Hilton co-directed a program called Becoming Saints, where we traveled through Italy and Northern Ireland and England.

And that is, that is what we're gonna talk about today. But I, before we get into that, do you, when you go on these trips, do you take your kids with you? Yeah, we take our kids with us and BOU so good about supporting families and as they direct, as professors here, direct study abroad programs and it, you know, in a, in a job full of perks.

This is the biggest perk. I, we have loved our time directing study abroad programs. We feel just. We love being connected to the students. I think when Ann and I lived in England for that first year of our marriage, we dreamed of taking students back to England. That was our dream, you know, in the early, well, in 2000 when we got married, and it's better than we imagined it would be, you know, 25 years ago.

It has, it has been such a highlight for us. So Neat. You're living the dream. Yeah. So, Ann, Ann mentioned that you have led study abroad programs previously, so I'm curious, it seems like those, those two previous trips were a bit different than this trip that you just co-directed. So tell me a little bit about how this trip came to be.

I love the theme and so I'm curious about, about the impetus of this trip. Yeah, well, it was just over a year ago, and it was in early July of 2024 when I received an email from John Hilton, who I love. Yeah, shout John. I'm sure many of your listeners, listeners are familiar with John. He is amazing, and I didn't know him that well.

You know, we had met a couple of times. And Lonnie John's wife had been students at the, uh, Jerusalem Center are Jerusalem Center, center that you were envious about going to. So [00:06:00] we knew each other a little bit through there, but I, I kind of got this email out of the blue from John in July of 2024 asking me if I would be interested in co-directing a study abroad program with him.

He had proposed a program with another faculty member here at BYU. It had been accepted, it was on religious art. I, I can't remember what the name of the program was, but religious art. And that other professor had to back out of, of the program because of other commitments. And uh, but John still really wanted to, to do a study abroad program.

So he emailed me and asked if I'd be interested. My immediate reaction was, no way. Uh, even though I've just told you how much we love going on study abroad programs, it takes a lot of energy. Uh, I'm sure these programs and we had. Return, not, you know, just over a year ago from directing the BYU London Center program, which was amazing, but we were still feeling a little exhausted.

And this summer, this summer of 2025 was gonna be a big one for our family. Our daughter was getting married to one of our former study abroad students. Yeah. To a student from our 23 program. There you go. Who we had set our daughter up with, she wasn't with us on the program, but we introduced them. We, uh, she was graduating from BYU.

She was graduating, our twins were graduating from high school. Our son, uh, Benjamin, one of the twins, was gonna go on a mission. We just had a lot going on this summer, and I, I had some research that I wanted to do, so my immediate response was, no way. I just, I can't imagine having the energy that it takes to do a study abroad program, but rather than write him back immediately, no.

I decided, I may as well talk to Anne about it. And so, uh, that night, I, I mentioned that I'd gotten this email from John and asked her what she thought. And we, uh, just started reflecting on how. Much study abroad has changed our lives. We just mentioned that our daughter just married one of our former students.

When we were, uh, again at the London Center in [00:08:00] 2023. Our twins who'd had a difficult relationship up to that time, something happened. Uh, during that study abroad program, a miracle happened that totally transformed their relationship. Hmm. They went into the program having a hard time just standing next to each other and came out, hanging out with each other of their own will.

I mean, it was amazing what happened to them. And then the relationships that we developed with these students on study abroad, abroad programs. Are just amazing. They're, they are such good, uh, students and they have just impacted our entire family's lives, uh, in so many positive ways. So we just started thinking about it and like, can we afford not to go?

I mean, look at, look at how transformative these programs have been for us in the past. In the end, we just decided we, we don't know what's in store for us, but we just have faith and we trust that we will have a similarly transformative experience. We started thinking about our twins who were getting ready to go on missions and thinking about this.

You know, could we do anything more for them that would, that would be more helpful for them than. Go on this study abroad program with the Hiltons. So I emailed, uh, John back and said, yeah, let's, let's meet and chat. I'm, I'm open to it. And so we started brainstorming and after our first meeting where we just kind of felt each other out a little bit, and he, the original program I think was to go to Italy and Spain, and I said, I cannot do Spain.

I don't know it well enough to feel confident that I could, uh, take students there. If we're gonna go, we've gotta do England. And you know, the UK whi, which I know much better having led study abroad programs there. And so, uh, and we talked about a few other things and, and he sent me a, a follow up email saying, listen, you out, out just a couple of ideas about, um, topics or themes that we might focus on.

And one of those, uh, uh, themes that he mentioned was, uh, he threw out the idea of focusing on what it means to be a saint. [00:10:00] That suggestion just really resonated with me. I really love the idea of exploring with our students this really important identity marker for us as members of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day Saints.

That kind of, I think, hides in plain sight. We call ourselves saints, but I think we rarely think about what does it actually mean to be a saint, to call ourselves saints. And so I thought it would be so great to do this with John, to go to Italy and explore what early Christians, uh, understood about what it meant to be a saint and what, uh, people in the Catholic tradition, you know, the, the really important culture of saints, uh, in that faith, going to England and uh, exploring early church history, how those individuals understood what it meant to be a saint.

And then learning from more contemporary. Members of the church in a global city like London, but also people from non-Christian religious traditions about what it meant, maybe not necessarily to be a saint, but what it meant to be holy. Right. Um, and, and then going to Ireland, Northern Ireland, and learning from people there about what it meant to be a peacemaker and how we might better heed President Nelson's invitation for saints to be, uh, peacemakers.

So I, we just got really excited about this idea of really examining and interrogating and expanding, uh, uh, our ability to become better saints. So, I don't know if you want to know much about the itinerary, but we started in Venice, made our way south to Rome by way of Florence and Ciena. And then we flew from Rome to, um, to Ireland, where we spent a few days in Northern Ireland, Belfast Dairy hyphen, London dairy.

Then we went over to Liverpool and the Preston area and where we explored early church history and then made our way down and, and finished out the program for two weeks in London. Um, having lots of interfaith dialogue with, uh, religious leaders in, [00:12:00] in London. So it was amazing. It it was really an amazing, amazing experience.

Well, I, I love what you said about how you all settled on the topic and I. I'll be honest, I, I've thought it's interesting since President Nelson made his emphasis on calling ourselves by the full name of the church. This, to, to be honest, I feel like it's a pretty bold claim to call yourself a latter day saint.

And so what does that mean? And I think, you know, being educated as to what is a saint, what is a saint been historically, how can we better become saints? I think all of that is fascinating. And so my guess is Jamin and Anne, that there are a lot of people listening that are like, I wish that I could go on this trip.

Obviously we cannot all go on the trip, but perhaps we can live vicariously through you and talk a little bit about what this trip was like and the things that you learned. I, I wanna start out, you mentioned Northern Ireland, you took students to Northern Ireland and you wanted to help them learn to be the kind of peacemakers that President Nelson challenged us to be in his April, 2023 conference talk.

What did you learn in Northern Ireland about what it means to be peacemakers? Yeah, I would just, I just wanna, I've jotted down a quote from President Nelson from that talk about peacemakers needed that I thought was just so powerful, and it's something that we shared with students, uh, as we prepared to go to Northern Ireland.

He said The Savior's message is clear. His true disciples build, lift, encourage, persuade, and inspire. No matter how difficult the situation true disciples of Jesus Christ are peacemakers, and we love that idea of, uh, peacemaking as a symbol of, or a representation of a. Our desire to be saints, to be Latter Day Saints and [00:14:00] Anna and I had, had been with our students from the London Center in 2023 to Northern Ireland and had such an amazing experience there that we just felt we have to take our students for the Becoming Saints program back to Northern Ireland and really focus on this idea of peacemaking.

So we, we found a group in dairy, uh, in London Dairy, uh, uh, called the Theater of Witness, um, workshop. We had reached out to them, um, and asked if they could work with our students. And what's really unique about the Theater of Witness Group is that they find, uh, uh, they are a group of people who, uh, operated during the troubles in Northern Ireland.

So this period of time in the 1970s, eighties, all the way up through the late nineties when there was essentially civil war, they call it the troubles, but that's kind of a, a very gentle way of representing the, the real divisiveness. And violence between Irish Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Irish Catholics who wanted their own governance, wanted to be part of, uh, their own republic and then Protestants, who were loyal to the British government. And there's a really long history there, and, and it's very complicated and messy. But again, in the seventies, eighties, nineties, uh, this period referred to as the troubles and there was real, uh, tension real violence.

And these people in the Theater of Witness workshop were people who had existed on both sides of that, uh, trouble. So we met, for example, with a man named, uh, Robin, who was a member of the Royal. Bolster constabulary, essentially the British police force, his job was to, uh, essentially harass Irish Catholics in London, dairies, uh, der who just wanted to make life hard for them.

And then with, we also had on this, uh, with meeting with our group, a woman named Anne. She was a member of the Irish Republican Army. Her job was to deliver explosives to the IRA across Northern Ireland. [00:16:00] These were two people that hated each other during this period of time, referred to as the Travis who were actively involved in the conference.

Yeah. Really. And knew each other. I mean, they, they knew each other when Anne was a teenager and Robin would stop her on the streets. Yeah. Robin remembers she was going through town and Yeah. Wow. Her harassing her, and here they were. Since the, the, the, um, uh, good Friday agreement in 1998, they had become friends.

They had participated in this workshop, uh, at the, uh, London Dairy Theater, the dairy forgetting their, the Dairy Playhouse is what it's called. Okay. Where a woman worked with them to help them tell their stories of what it was like to live through this period of time. And they just got to tell their story and be listened to by people from, uh, again, both sides.

And they heard each other's stories and that. Step of listening, telling and listening to each other's stories. Laid the foundation for them to become friends, to reconcile with each other, to build bridges of peace. And here they were walking through dairy with us, talking about the experiences that they, that they had had.

And then they, they met with our students after lunch and conducted a workshop with our students and in helping us develop skills and be able to ask questions to become better peacemakers. And this was one of the things we gave our students an end of this, uh, program survey. This experience was one of the things that students.

Commented about most as being the most impactful. It was really life changing for us, and, and Anne has some things to share about the impact upon her in particular. Yeah. I think an important distinction that Anne and Robin highlighted and that was highlighted by our whole experience there was this, there's a meaningful difference between avoiding conflict and building peace.

And in, in Belfast, one of the distinctive features there of the city are these peace [00:18:00] walls that have been built over the last century and have continued to been built higher and higher and wider and wider, and longer and longer to separate these two opposing sides and keep them separate from each other to keep the peace, uh, in the city.

And they have been effective to some degree by, by keeping these opposing people away from each other, there has been less, you know, conflict on the streets. But what was so interesting about talking with, with Robin and Anne and their friends that came with them was that there's something that needs to fill the void, right?

This avoiding this conflict is, is helpful to some degree, but building relationships is what needs to happen to actually build, build peace in that void. And the way that they did that is through sharing and listening to each other and their stories. And they talked about. Thinking they didn't have really a story to share.

They didn't have that confidence in themselves or their story. They didn't recognize their story was unique because they only knew one side of the story. They didn't know there was another perspective almost. They were so, um, entrenched in their own experience and the experience of those close to them.

And, um, being able to have somebody invite them to share that story and create a space that was a neutral, safe space to be vulnerable and share their experiences and then listen to others, share their experiences, help them to be able to come to an understanding and build trust. And they talked about how, how that vulnerability takes a lot of courage.

And, but that was the key to building trust people that they viewed as so different from them. And they said to us as they began sharing their stories with us, they invited us to listen with the ears of our heart. And they repeated that. Many times throughout our conversation of just, it takes more than just listening, but really being open, opening yourself to understanding [00:20:00] and being able to listen without judgment and being able to connect with the emotions that the other person is experiencing.

And that helps us all to be able to recognize the commonalities we have as humans that that really, we all share these same basic needs as humans and these same basic emotions, even though the context of our lives that elicit those emotions and the way that we meet those needs may be very different.

But at the core, all of these experiences, these human experiences we're having, we can connect on and relate to one another about, and that as we do that, it opens this space to trust one another and be able to build real friendships, which then allows peace to flourish. So that's been. Really impactful to me and just how when we first went there, experiencing a lot of polarization in the, in the politics at, at home, right?

In America. It was an election year, approaching an election year, and just there's so much discourse and division on that bigger level. And then on smaller levels, just interactions within family dynamics and working those things out. There's, there's always gonna be conflict in the world, but choosing to build peace within that conflict, not choosing contention, but choosing to actively build peace as President Nelson has invited us to do, can allow us to overcome that conflict and, and find these connections.

I think that is so interesting. I just this afternoon was having a conversation with a neighbor who was telling me her background is in psychology, and so she was saying, you know, Satan's whole goal is to destroy relationships. Mm-hmm. And she's like, not just marital relationships, not just family relationships, friends, neighbors, et cetera.

And, and [00:22:00] the whole goal is to isolate us and make us alone. And so it's interesting to think about how he does that within our communities, our nations. Um, and, and so I love that you, you took students and let them experience that you all introduced these students to several saints in the religious tradition of other faiths, St.

Catherine, St. Francis, St. Clair, to name a few. Tell us a little bit about what you learned about these. Saints and why you think their stories can be impactful to us and our efforts to become in word and deed Latterday Saints. I think one saint that became an important figure for our students was St.

Catherine of Sienna. We visited Sienna, Italy and explored there for a few days, and while we were there, we visited a church that's adjacent to the home where Catherine lived, and it was a very sweet and impactful experience for students. We visited there for a long time with a nun from Honduras, Maria, sister Maria, who spoke to us extensively about her own journey to be doing what she's doing and leave her home.

And everything that was familiar and devote her life to doing the work of the Lord. And she spoke to us through an interpreter who was one of our students who spoke Spanish. And we got to get this little window into her experience and her connection to St. Catherine. And then as we toured Catherine's home and saw the very sparse room that she lived in, just a stone floor with a stone pillow, she would lay her head every night on this rock and saw this beautiful painting that really touched a lot of students.

That was a picture of a vision Catherine had had of the savior Jesus Christ, offering her two crowns. One a royal golden [00:24:00] crown and one a crown of thorns. And Catherine choosing the crown of thorns and. Her story epitomizes this, giving up everything for our relationship with with Christ. And then to see this sister Maria, who then had done the same thing, given up everything, you know, for the savior and to do whatever she could for him.

And I think being in that space and learning about St. Catherine and then also seeing others following in that, that same path and I think had a, had a real impact. So I think that Catherine for sure was one that was important for. For us and for students as well. Yeah, and I think as Ann's mentioned, she really epitomized the story that we heard when as we learned about a variety of states.

Yeah, right. That they were giving up different things or dedicating themselves in different ways, or their circumstances might've been slightly different, or the hardships that they endured might've been slightly different, some voluntary, some involuntary. But there was this real deep commitment to the savior, this real conscious choice of following him that was so impressive.

And again, just illustrating her life. One of the things that I think surprised all of us to some degree was learning about some of the very early Christians, not all of whom are, are saints. Not all of whose names, you know, are mentioned or that we know, but really learning about what it was like to be an early Christian in a place like Rome, you know, where it was really dangerous to be a Christian.

I think that Christianity has become such a, a, you know, a world religion that it's easy to forget how small it was and how persecuted it was. You know, how close it was to not surviving because of how much persecution there was, and just our, our admiration for the students', admiration for those early Christians who had to hide and, you know, be under constant threat of danger [00:26:00] by the, the, the kind of Roman authorities, those in power and the, the culture.

Yeah, it was just, it was just so moving to see how much people gave up to follow Christ. I, I think it's pretty remarkable when we start learning about people of other faiths. I, I just saw a post this week that talked about. How, you know, we should be celebrating different religions and anyone that is trying to draw closer to Christ.

And so I, I'm also curious on this trip, you met not only with nuns like Maria, but with Friars, a rabbi, a reverend, a Muslim with Bahai community leaders, as well as people of the Sikh tradition. As you met with these people, I'm curious, this idea of kind of holy envy resonates with me. What, what do you feel?

Do you feel like you'd felt that Holy envy, and what did you learn from these people of different faiths? Yeah. Oh yeah. I would say that Holy Envy was alive. Well, we talked about it often with our students too, as we were, would reflect on our experiences and reflect on what we could learn, you know, from, from the things that we saw in these people we met.

Yeah. Which was for some people, you know, they were comfortable with that. For others it was a new experience. Having holy envy. I, I think I wanna answer that question Morgan, by sharing a story about one particular individual whose interactions with us. I think epitomize. A lot of the other kinds of interactions that we had during our experience.

Uh, a guy named Father Pascal, we met Father Pascal in Assisi. We were sitting on the steps of the, of a basilica that had been built around the small little church where St. Francis of Assisi, uh, had his. Kind of, uh, first, uh, vision who, when he was called to rebuild the Lord's [00:28:00] Church. And while as we were sitting there and John was talking to us about just prepping us for this experience that we were about to have, he saw, uh, Franciscan Friar walking, I don't know, 20 yards away or so.

And John said, I'm gonna run and I'm gonna try to see if, if this, uh, Franciscan father will come in and meet with us. And his name was Pascalo Father Pascalo. And he said, yeah, I would love to talk with your students. I've got a meeting right now that I'm on my way to. Let me just go check and see if I can reschedule my meeting, and then I'll, I'll come back and visit with you if I can, if, if I'm able to reschedule.

And so a few minutes later, we saw fa Father Pascal walk outta the building adjacent to the basilica and came over and he spent about. Half an hour meeting with our students, just answering questions and memorizing everybody. Every time someone would ask uh, a question, he would ask them their name and then he would, uh, call upon, like if they had another question, he would have remembered their name.

He was just amazing and said some really powerful things to the students, just things that students talked about all the way until the end of the program. So he kind of finished with us and, and, uh, we were done with questions and walked out. And just before we met Father Pascalo, we learned that our bus, our, our coach driver, was not going to be able to take us up to these caves where St.

Francis and Franciscan Friars would retreat to, to pray. That was one of the destinations we really wanted to go to. We're like, how are we gonna get up there? So I followed Father Pascal into his building. I dunno if he was on his way back to his meeting or not, but I'm like. Father Pascal, would you be able to help us find some taxis up to these caves that we want to go to?

And he said, oh, of course. Let me call. So he called and he arranged for, I think six or seven enough taxis for our group, 51 people. 51. And he said, I'll, okay, they're gonna meet you outside of Basilica of St. Clair. And so we we're like, great. And we thought that was goodbye to Father [00:30:00] Pascalo. Uh, which would've been amazing, you know, that he arranges.

But no, when we got, when we were finished with our visit to the Cathedral St. Clair, we walked out to catch our cabs. And there was Father Pascalo. He had sh he had showed up. And this wasn't close to where we had first seen him, you know, it was quite a ways away. He had shown up just to make sure that we were sorted, that we, that there was enough cabs to fit all of us to make sure that he spoke in Italian to the cab drivers.

'cause none of us spoke Italian. Communicate with them exactly what we needed to have happen, and send us on our way. And then when we got done with the case, we, we drove down to this convent for, uh, an order of nuns called the Poor Claires. And there was Pascal again who greeted us at this, uh, convent, made sure that we knew kind of where to go.

And he said, okay, after you're done making your way through the convent, I want you to meet me in this chapel and I want to give your students, uh, additional opportunities to ask questions and that I can maybe share more with them about the order of St. Clair's. And he lived in a community at this convent, or near this convent.

I'm not exactly sure. So this was kind of his home base, but he had come home early to meet with us, and then he took us out into this garden behind the chapel that visitors typically don't, don't get to, uh, walk to. And took a beautiful view. Yeah. With an amazing view and, and gave every single one of us a Franciscan Tao.

Cross a a, a particular, a little necklace. A little necklace that's with a cross that's specific to the Franciscan order. And uh, it was just, we were just blown away. And our interactions with him as we learned from interact with Father Pascalo and so many other people, like you've mentioned Sister Maria, who Ann just talked about, uh, Shaima.

This, uh, Muslim woman who guided us through the East London Mosque and Muslim Center in London. And Jess was so generous with her time with us. Yeah. Just so many people. I, as, as we [00:32:00] met with all these people, I kept thinking about a book that I've read and love. Uh, it's a memoir by a, a guy named Will Guara.

Uh, he writes about his experiences of the general as the general manager of a really famous restaurant in New York City called 11 Madison Park. And the name of his book, his memoir is called Unreasonable Hospitality. Uh, will Gadar defines unreasonable hospitality as seeking out ways to create extraordinary experiences and giving people more than they could ever possibly expect.

And I just loved how many people we met that greeted us with unreasonable hospitality. These holy people taught us that unreasonable hospitality means responding in large ways to seemingly small needs. We probably would've been just fine, you know, in a CC without Father Pascal. We might not have made it to the caves.

Uh, but he, you know, that was a small need and he went overboard in, uh, in responding. He was unreasonable in his hospitality for us, and I think that this disproportionate generosity, what we learned from them is that this disproportionate generosity is really at the heart of what it means to be a saint.

As you were talking, I kept thinking that is what it means to minister. It's to go above and beyond. I've been thinking a lot about ministering because I'm supposed to speak about it in sacrament meeting on Sunday. So thank you for your help with my talk. But I, I keep thinking, you know, is ministering, simply figuring out what somebody's need is and trying to meet it.

And I don't think that's it, but I think by going above and beyond and meeting a need, we give people a taste of what the Savior's love is like because it is above and beyond. Totally agree with that. I want to talk a little bit about in, in the itinerary for your trip, which I appreciate you sharing with [00:34:00] me, you had students study passages from the New Testament so that they could become acquainted with Christ apostles and other early Christians as they walked after the death of Christ.

And so I wondered what was most impactful to both of you about these passages of scripture as you were kind of walking where the apostles walked? Yeah, I think that, I mean, we, we got to visit three separate basilica that were built upon or around the burial sites of three of the apostles, St. Mark in Venice, St.

Peter's Basilica, of course in the Vatican City, uh, you know, inside Rome. And then St. Paul's outside the walls, the basilica outside, kinda on the outskirts of Rome, but which is where. There's more confidence that that's where Paul is buried than any other kind of original apostle that we know about. And it was really cool to have these experiences and, and again, we're gonna talk about one specific experience hoping that will, it will stand in for the whole.

When we were at St. Paul's outside the wall, our son Benjamin received, received notification that his mission call had just come in. And it was right at the moment where John Hilton was reading to us from the epistles of, of Paul, right? He was having us read things and at that moment, Benjamin got his, got his mission call and he just couldn't contain himself.

He was laying on the floor. Uh, if you know Benjamin, he's a very exuberant kind of character and. It was amazing for us to have that experience that about 20 minutes later we kind of made our way around, uh, inside the basilica. And then our family gathered in a corner of this courtyard outside of the basilica.

It was beautiful courtyard lined with palm trees and outside the city walls just the most picturesque, [00:36:00] peaceful place. Yeah. And it was so meaningful to us. Benjamin's journey to getting his mission call was hard. Full of delays that were kind of outside of his control, you know, but he wanted this so bad.

He wanted to go on a mission so bad. And so it was really cool, uh, at the very spot where Paul's body is buried, the kind of OG missionary you might say, for Benjamin to open his call and to have him read the language of those mission calls about, you know, being called to be a missionary to represent Jesus Christ reminded us of.

Yeah, this is what the early apostles were called to do that, that these missionaries are following literally in the footsteps of those early apostles who were sent out into the world. And we had another student, uh, who opened her mission call on our program. And in previous programs, there is something so sweet about that experience of opening a mission call in that kind of tight community of people, but especially here when we were learning about these early apostles and these early Christians and reading from, from their, uh, words about the savior and about their missions.

And that was a really powerful experience for our family. I think that's so neat. As you were talking about your son and his experience with, with wanting to go on a mission and it being hard, reminded me just this week my dad shared with me a talk that he had given, and in the talk he talked about how my mom had recently been reading scriptures and she was reading about opposition in all things and how she had this realization that in the scriptures the opposite of misery is not happiness.

The opposite of misery is holiness. And so my dad was like, in his talk, he said, you know, if. If for a time you feel misery or, or [00:38:00] life feels really hard, the opposite of that is holiness. So maybe you're on your way to holiness. And I think that that is, it's interesting thinking about the apostles and thinking about your son and thinking about us and how in our efforts to become saints or to become holy mm-hmm.

We often go through really, really hard things. And so I think that that's, that's an important thing to realize. Yeah. Just prior to being at the, at the St. Paul, outside the wall where we'd had that experience with Benjamin, we had walked along the Appian Way, which is a, a Roman road, you know, that, that led into and out of Rome.

And there's a, a story about St. Peter walking, just fleeing Rome. He was done with it. He was done with being persecuted and nobody listening, just getting outta Rome. And he, he has this vision where he encounters a savior walking back into Rome. He is like, Lord, where are you going? Like, I just, I've just come from there.

You don't wanna go back. You don't wanna go there. Yeah. And, and again, the tradition is, the story is that the, the savior said to him, I'm returning to Rome to be crucified again. And, and that gave Peter what he needed to turn around and go back, uh, and, and hand in there. And I, so I love that idea of like, when it's miserable and it's hard.

It's, uh, yeah, it is. You wanna run away and you wanna get away from it. But sometimes it takes just like. Coming back at it in a slightly different way, with a slightly different approach and, and yeah, getting after it again. And, and yeah, I hope that that's a, I hope that that's an experience that Benjamin will remember on his mission when things are hard, when, when he feels like getting, getting out of Oregon.

He got called to the Oregon Eugene mission that he'll just like he'll, he'll remember that experience that Peter had of, of the Lord going into the heart of the, of the conflict of the, of the persecution and, and, you know, having the courage to get back at it. Yeah. Well, speaking of, of hard, [00:40:00] from what I understand, you also studied martyrs, and I think as Latter Day Saints, when we hear martyr, we tend to think of Joseph Smith and the martyrdom.

What did you learn as you studied and taught about other martyrs in the cause of Christ? Um, when we were in Rome, we got to visit a really interesting church called the Basilica of St. Bartholomew, which has become officially the shrine of the new Martyrs Pope John Paul, the second, actually in the previous Jubilee in 2000 Jubilee year, he kind of.

Initiated a commission to collect stories of recent martyrs for Christ, and it kind of culminated in this little exhibit within this museum in the, the basilica of St. Bartholomew. And we, we went with our group of students to visit there and got to meet with Brother Moses there who talked with us a little bit about his own experiences and his work, but also introduce to us some of these martyrs before we, we went down to look at this exhibit and it was really impactful again, for these same reasons that we've kind of touched on before.

But to see the devotion, the active devotion of so many people in the name of, of Jesus Christ, really giving up all that they have to follow him and do his work. The exhibit is kind of divided into regions of the earth of the world, and then each room was, you know, had multiple examples. Dozens, yeah. Yeah.

Of a photograph and a short biography of a person and an artifact or two, a tangible piece of them, you know, and what they, what they did and what, what their lives meant, and why they did what they did to, to support and follow the savior. I think that seeing current modern [00:42:00] people do that, right, it's not martyrdom, is not just Joseph Smith or these ancient saints who were killed for their faith, but people are still standing up and actively doing things in the name of their Christian faith to protect the poor, to build peace disrupting systems that prevent that and, and living their Christianity and at the risk of their lives and willing, willingly doing that is, was really powerful to, to be a witness of that and, and inspiring to be able to feel that strength and, and be emboldened to, to be courageous like they, like they were so neat.

At one point in the trip you visited Liverpool and you had asked students whose ancestors sailed from England or who joined the church and immigrated to America to share stories of your ancestors. And I wondered how did that turn out? What will you remember about that? I'm a museum educator and I love the magic of real objects, the actual artifacts I of bring people and stories and history to life and being in real places I feel like has that same magic as we've kind of talked about.

Being here at St. Paul's outside the Walls or St. Catherine's home and being at the Royal Albert Docks in Liverpool was one of those magical experiences we gathered at the edge of the dock near a sculpture by called The Legacy Sculpture by Mark Deen Reed, and it's a life-sized bronze statue of a young family with their luggage ready to depart on a journey.

And the statue was commissioned and given by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to the people of Liverpool nearly 25 years ago As a tribute to the. Many families from all over Europe who embarked from Liverpool and sail to America. And we sat there on the grass near the statue in a circle overlooking the water in the late afternoon summer [00:44:00] sun, and students took turns just sharing stories of their own ancestors, many of whom left from Liverpool.

And being I have, I have ancestors as well, who left from those docs. And hearing these students share these sacred stories in that sacred place makes them tangible in a way that you just can't replicate in your living room. Reading the Memories tab on your family search app, it's just not the same, even though it's still beautiful.

But being there in that space really brings those experiences a life of their own and makes them, makes them real. And it was a really sweet experience hearing those stories and feeling the love and gratitude. That these students have, for those people that came before them and did those hard things, who did, like St.

Catherine did, gave up everything to, to choose Jesus Christ and follow him. And I, I hope that those same ancestors were able to be a witness to that from the other side of the veil and, and feel of that love and gratitude that these students have for them. And that was a really, really special and sacred experience to be there and, and be a witness of that.

One of the things that I realized as I was listening to students share these stories, I had come to Liverpool prepared for this moment of our trip right now. We were transitioning from early Christianity and Roman Catholicism to early latter day Saint History, and I was prepared to say things like. At this moment, there's this big transition from a culture that believes that very few people can be saints to a culture where everybody, you know, is called a, a, a saint.

And, but what I remember feeling instead of this like distinction or differentiation was really more continuity that these people gave up. Just as Anne said, what [00:46:00] early Christians and these saints who we've been learning about, right, they're on, they're on that same continuum of, of sacrifice and consecration.

And for me that was a really cool thing to experience at that moment and, and recognize those continuities and, and similarities. That's awesome. That makes complete sense. Speaking of hard things, and you had a really neat experience of, of being able to take students to a place that is probably familiar in, in memory to, to members of our church 'cause we all love your grandfather, president Gordon b Hinkley, and you took students to the apartment where President Hinkley received his father's forget yourself and go to work letter.

Can you share a little bit about what it was like for you to be able to visit that spot and, and share that with students? Yeah, so I had been to that spot once before with Jamin and our children and, but I'd never been there with another member of my extended family, and this is one of the places where my sister, Lizzie was able to join us and it was so sweet to be there together.

This is a place that. I was really significant to my grandfather throughout his life and therefore to our family and because of the transformative experience that happened there. And my, my parents have been working on collecting and indexing my grandpa's mission journals and letters, and my dad shared some of those with us as we were preparing to to visit Preston and some of these places where my grandpa had served on his mission and his early journal entries from the beginning of his mission are not full of the optimism that became one of his trademark characteristics.

Instead, they describe dreary weather and unfriendly hecklers, his severe allergies, his homesickness, his discouragement that was amplified [00:48:00] by the financial sacrifices that his dad and his brother were making so that he could be there and. So as you were alluding to, he sent this letter home to his dad, confessing his worries and saying, I don't feel like I'm having any success here.

I'm wasting my time and your money, and I wanna come home. And his dad sent him back a letter and the letter said, dear Gordon, I have your letter. I have only one suggestion. Forget yourself and go to work. And my grandpa said that earlier that day, he had read the words in Mark chapter eight, verse 35, or whosoever will save his life, shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life, for my sake shall find it.

And so we gathered there at the, on the street in front of this little house where he lived, and went up to that second floor of his apartment and gotten on his knees and poured out his heart to the Lord and promised that he would try to forget himself and to go to work to build the kingdom. And he later wrote that that July day in 1933 was my day of decision.

A new light came into my life and a new joy into my heart. The fog of England seemed to lift, and I saw the sunlight. Everything good that has happened to me since. Since then, I can trace back to the decision I made that day in Preston, and then six months later after that experience, he wrote kind of this end of the year New Year's update in his journal.

And this is what he said. He said, the new year dawns full of cheer and expectation. Some sort of a foundation has been built. Now prayer and work will build gloriously with the help of a guiding heavenly Father and the encouragement and inspiration from Dear Ones over the sea. I pledge myself to make my life one of accomplishment, such a life that someday someone will rise up and call my name Blessed.

And it was a really sweet [00:50:00] privilege to be there at that place 90 years later with my sister and our families, and be someone to rise up and call his name blessed and reflect with our students on that process of what it takes to become a saint. That experience of his missionary service, the hard work, the personal sacrifice, the study, the decision to keep going, even when you wanna run away like Paul.

And that commitment to forget your own comfort and focus on doing the Lord's work. That's what it looks like to be a disciple of Christ. And that's what it takes to become a saint, to be sanctified, become, to become holy. I love hearing a little bit more about that. I am one of many people all around the world who love your grandpa so much.

And as you were talking, I thought again of this talk that my dad just sent me. My dad will be released on Sunday from being a stake president in North Carolina. And so this was like his last ward conference talk that he sent me. And I have always known that my dad was a very homesick missionary, but I was listening to this talk and, and he talked about how when he arrived in Arizona as a 19-year-old missionary, it was 116 degrees in August.

And he said in the talk, he said, my, I think he said in the first month and a half, his nose bled every day so gross. And I thought, I thought, I've always heard him talk about being homesick, but I never thought about when he arrived, how hot it was. I never heard about the nosebleeds, but what I, what I have heard my whole life is how grateful my dad is, the difference that his mission made in his life.

And so I think that there are people all around the world who their missions are [00:52:00] transformative in their effort to become saints. And I love that story of your grandpa. You mentioned Jamin, this like transition from Saint s olden times to Saints today. Um, you were able to visit with modern Latterday saints in Italy, Northern Ireland, and England.

And so I wondered why was it important for you to, to give students a chance to see modern day examples of faith lived from Latter Day Saints today, right? Yeah, we did. We wanted, we wanted students to feel like they were part of a broad international community of not just. Holy people, but of latter day Saints and John in particular did a great job of trying to set up conversations with saints of the wards that we visited.

So we had a particularly memorable conversation with saints in dairy, I in London, dairy in the foil ward. Yeah, the foil ward. It just beautiful saints there who stuck around after the block of meetings and, and did a q and a with our students. We went to the, uh, Peckham Ward in London and met with saints, uh, from all.

Over the place just from, uh, various countries in Africa and the Caribbean. And it was just amazing to, to meet with these, with these saints from, from all over the world and just feel like they were part of a, uh, uh, of this bigger, um, uh, of this bigger effort to become saints and to do so in a very different context than they might have been, uh, used to doing so in small, in places where there's not many members of the church and global cities like London.

We met in London with two latter day saints who were particularly impactful. One of the saints that we met with was a woman named Julie Jones. She's a member of the church in Wales. She founded and now [00:54:00] directs the, our all party parliamentary group for international Freedom of Religion or belief. These acronyms are forb.

She was amazing. She helps the British government, uh, the UK government, I, I should say. Protect what she described as prisoners of conscience. So anybody, she had these, these just jaw dropping stats about how many people around the world are persecuted for their religion or their beliefs. And, and she helped us understand the distinction between those two things.

But yeah, I think it's, uh, it was so powerful to meet with her and hear these stories for her to really call out our students or call our students attention to these prisoners of conscious people who like the, you know, the martyrs that Anne mentioned, uh, contemporary martyrs, people who are, uh, standing up for their, uh, faith or belief and who, uh, are suffering as a result of it, some more extremely perhaps than others.

And just called upon our students to stand up for that, stand up for this protection of people of other faith. One of the things that she helped. Our students understand and have certainly helped me under understand is that saints are activists. Saints are people who proactively not just stand up for their belief, but also as Anne mentioned, stand up for the people who are more vulnerable, the people who are perhaps subject to greater degrees of persecution and harm.

And we walked out of Parliament Buildings just totally blown away by Julie Jones and the extensive efforts that she goes to to protect people of all different religious traditions or beliefs. So she was great. Another letter to Saint that we got to meet with in London is named Jordan Broadbent, and he's the humanitarian manager for the Europe north area of the, of the church.

And he met with [00:56:00] our students to talk about the humanitarian work that the church is involved in, in, in that region. And again, like Julie Jones helped us understand one characteristic of Saints is that their activists and Jordan helped highlight that, that saints are humanitarians. And he said humanitarian work is about caring.

F. Caring for others. It's all about humanity. The value is is placed on, on humanity. And he said, sainthood isn't about knowing stuff, it's about doing. And this was near the end of our program where we'd spent a lot of time reading about saints in the scriptures, learning about different saints as we visited these different places.

And it was a beautiful reminder that now it's time. Not to just know that stuff, but to do something about it. And really inspiring to hear about the things that, that he is helping the members and the church do in that area of Europe and the work that they're involved in. And reminding us that that's part of our baptismal covenant.

We have a divine mandate to care for those in need. And we've accepted that that mandate through our, our covenants and saints are humanitarians students were so, they walked out of that. We met with him in the basement of the Hyde Park Chapel in London, and students walked out. I'm like, I want to be him.

That that's the job I want. I mean, he was so inspiring. Amazing person. Yeah, both Julie, absolutely amazing and Jordan were just amazing. So inspiring. Isn't it amazing? I feel like that's kind of how I feel about this podcast is like, I'll meet people and I'm like, that person is so cool. And then I go onto the next, I'm like, also, so cool.

So I think it's neat to, to get, to see how many different ways Latter Day Saints impact the world and, and how many different ways you can. Before we get to our last question, I wanted to ask you, I noticed that at the end of the trip there was this storytelling element [00:58:00] that you asked the, the students to not only listen to the stories of other saints, but to also share their stories with each other.

What role did storytelling play in their own process of becoming saints and why was this a part of your, your trip? So I'm really pumped about storytelling right now. I love it. It's like the, the thing that I think about the most. It's not how I started out my career as an English professor, uh, but it's something I've come to over the last three or four years and interested in thinking about how storytelling helps us connect to each other and how storytelling can help us find and create a sense of belonging.

So when, when John asked me to be part of this program, I was like, you know what? The only thing I can contribute, I'm not a religion professor. Storytelling. I can do that. Like I, I can do that thing. And so early on in the program, by the end of the first week, students had all, uh, shared a story with each other as a way of forming our community of, of saints.

We wanted students to be able to share. And my approach to storytelling as I've worked with colleagues and students here, here on campus, is that what sets stories in motion are what we describe as needs. So it's when a character or a group of characters needs something, that's what, that's what sets a story in motion.

And then a lot of stories are, uh, characters trying to get what they need and encountering obstacles or complications on their way to getting the thing that they, that they need. And then they most often end not necessarily with them getting the thing they originally thought they needed, but experiencing some kind of insight that changes who they are.

Or how they think about what their need actually is and discovering that, oh, I thought I needed this one thing, but now I've discovered that I needed, I actually needed this other thing. So, uh, some kind of insight that allows them to move forward in their lives despite all the challenges and obstacles in a different way than they had been, uh, moving before.

[01:00:00] And so we invited students at the beginning of the program to talk with us about what is a need that they're dealing with in their lives right now. And we invited them to be quite vulnerable when, when, considering that if they were willing to do that and how has a saint intervened in their lives and help them arrive at that insight that allowed them to change internally to understand their need in, in, in a slightly different way.

And students shared such powerful stories. Students talked about their experiences with emotional challenges. Sometimes brought on by like neurodiversity students dealing with really hard relationships within families or with friends needs about really deep loneliness. Students were really, really, again, open, open themselves up to, and it was amazing what happened as a result of their willingness to share their stories that we became, we found out about each other in ways that we would not have found out each about each other if we had been living with each other for five years.

Right? They shared things that you just don't normally share in conversation, and it really, uh, connected us to each other. One of the things that I've learned by, by doing neuroscientific studies of, uh, of storytelling when we, when we. Articulate needs that activates in other people, uh, our brain in, in other people's brains.

This desire to connect with and help people, we are wired to want to help each other meet each other's needs. Um, and so at the beginning of the program, that was the role that storytelling played. Near the end of the program, we asked students to, um, talk about essentially how this experience on this study abroad program had helped them overcome.

Whatever had been the largest obstacle in their path to becoming a better saint. And, uh, what, how had the experiences that they had on this program changed them? How had it helped them arrive at some sort of [01:02:00] insight that would allow them to return, to transform, to return, committed to being a different kind of saint than they were before, or able to be a different kind of saint than they were before?

Because this, the experience they'd had on the program helped 'em overcome some of these challenges, and it was the most powerful experience to listen to what had been happening inside of, of them. Now, we'd had them write in storytelling journals all along. So each day they were responsible for creating a scene that could potentially be part of their story at the end of the program from that day.

So we'd been reading their, their journal entries and, and hearing about what had been meaningful, but. It was amazing to hear about the experiences they'd had on this program that that helped them work through, uh, the primary obstacles to them becoming a saint and, and really feel, again, their commitment to returning home as, uh, committed saints committed disciples of, of Jesus Christ.

It was a way for them to, often, it's not uncommon for students to return home from a study abroad program and say, that was an amazing experience. That was such a transformative experience. And then if you're to ask people like, well, how was that transformative? For students to be kind of at a loss for words.

Like, well, I don't know. I mean, it was just like amazing, right? Just had such a tra you know, uh, we want students to be able to come home and when their, when their parents or their, uh, family members or friends ask them, tell us about your study abroad program. That they would have a story that they could share with their family, with their friends about how they're becoming Saints experience had transformed them.

And yeah, it was amazing. It was amazing for us as parents to listen to our, our teenagers, Benjamin Kate, who participated in the program right. Tell their own stories about what it meant to them to be, to become better saints. It was. Amazing. That's awesome. Well, I am so jealous. I'm even more jealous now than I was, so I'm not sure.

This might have been counterproductive, but I appreciate so much [01:04:00] you both sharing with us a little, a little taste of, of this experience. I want to conclude with the question that we ask at the end of every episode of this podcast, which is, what does it mean to you to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ?

I. I think the phrase all in is often interpreted as an individual level of commitment. But my experience on our becoming saints, um, journey this summer has helped me see it in a more collective way that we as a group of humanity are all in the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we're all included in his gospel plan.

I loved visiting the Rome temple in the middle of our experience, and I was able to participate in an, an endowment session there, and I continued to ponder the parallels that I recognized in our familiar temple rituals and, um, to these symbols and rituals and sacred clothing that we've been learning about along our way.

Meeting with these people of different denominations and different faiths, um, in Italy and throughout the uk and. Noticing these parallels helped me appreciate in a new way the ancient nature of these priest priesthood ordinances in the temple that were restored by Joseph Smith that we have access to and God's infinite desire to give all of his children all that he has, no matter when or where they experience their moral lives.

So for me, the most salient thing I'm taking away from this becoming Saints pilgrimage is that overwhelming sense of our connectedness to each other as children of God, that all of us on the planet now and all of those who have come before us, and with that physical human connectedness, there's this spiritual connectedness too.

A sense that our Heavenly Father's divine love and light and ordinances are things that he's given his children in every dispensation and they've been cherished and [01:06:00] safeguarded through sacrifice and passed down by those people who love him for centuries. And seeing glimpses of that throughout these experiences this summer has been really amazing to me, and I've come to see that no matter what our faith tradition is, or even absence of faith, in a sense, we are all in the gospel of Jesus Christ because we are all part of this human family.

I believe that we're all children of God and we're all part of his divine plan, which is possible through the sacrifice of His son, our savior, Jesus Christ, and that we need each other to become like he is. We need to grapple with our differences. I love the primary song that says, God gave us families to help us become who he wants us to be.

That it's these differences within our families, our immediate families, and within our, our larger human family are what help us become. Like God is, we have to come in contact with people that are different than us and listen with those ears of the heart and learn to love each other better and minister to each other more purely.

And that process through Christ Atonement will literally change us in a way that we can all become sanctified saints and receive his ordinances and power and be worthy to live with, with our Father and our savior again. Thank you Ann. I love this question, Morgan. And I wanna start with maybe just talking about an experience we just had.

We just went through, through the temple with our son Benjamin, on Tuesday night, just a couple nights ago. And I was reminded, uh, through covenants we make there about what we, what we promised to Consecrate to God. And for me in my life, I sometimes focus on. Consecrating my time. Like that's a very measurable thing.

Like, to be all in might be to like, okay, I'm gonna give my spare time. But I love that we also promise to consecrate our, our, uh, talents, our gifts. And to me, [01:08:00] I never feel more joy than I do when I'm, when I am using my gifts and my talents to hasten the work of salvation. I love it. I love that feeling where I feel like I, with my specific gifts and being used by God to bless his children.

We visited a monastery in Florence when we were on our program that I just loved. It was a St. Mark's monastery in Florence, and there was a, a monk there, uh, named Fra Angelico, who was a painter. I thought a really good painter and, you know, he could have just, you know, hung out in the monastery, I suppose, you know, contemplating and, and doing things that monks do.

I'm, I'm, I'm very much, you know, reducing the significance of what they do, uh, here. But he, he felt compelled to paint and he put, his paintings were everywhere in this monastery, and they were gorgeous. He painted in the chapels, he painted in each individual cell of the monastery. He painted a little fresco, uh, a different one, uh, almost in, in each room that whatever monk was staying in that cell could look at that and contemplate the life of the savior.

And I love that example of fraud on Angelico, of using his gift to, uh, do what he could to serve the people around him. And that, that kind of reminded me of an experience that I've had recently. About, I don't know, six months, seven months before we started this program, I was called to serve as our wards elders, corn president, and I was, I have been so afraid of being called as the elders corn president for my whole life.

Essentially, it was the calling that I was most afraid to get. I think there may be several reasons for that. I, I just didn't see myself as the kind of person who had the gifts. That an elders quo president needed. I just thought, I don't, I don't have what it takes to do that job. I also felt like I [01:10:00] just don't enjoy oftentimes being in elders quorum that much.

I find myself trying to like, sit in the back and, you know, not be noticed if I wanted to check, you know, my texts or, or whatever. Right. I, that was just the kind of a bad Elders Corps member. I, I was. So, I probably felt some guilt too about not, not being a better Corps member, but then I was called, uh, to be the Elder Corps president.

I thought like, how am I gonna do this? Like, I ha I don't, I don't like being an elders Corps. How am I gonna, how am I gonna do this? And uh, then I remembered this lesson of using my gifts to. Do whatever God asked me to do. And so I am, I I I had my quorum presidency over and, and one of the things that we focused on first was, okay, how do we make elders quo a place where members of our quorum want to be?

We want this to be a place, a space where they come, they, they rush there after Saac meeting, they don't wanna leave. We want the priest quo to, to come down and feel like there's something cool happening in elder's quo. This is an exciting place to be. And so each of us used our gifts, our talents, to kind of tackle this, this problem of how to make elder's quorum a place that members of our corps wanted to be.

So I use my, my storytelling. I'm like, well, I'm really into storytelling right now. I'm gonna, we're gonna release all of our Quorum teachers and we are gonna do storytelling in Elder's Quorum. Each week we are gonna have a different member of our quorum tell a story, uh, about their lives. And we are then going to use that story as a launching point for our conversation.

We'll connect it to, um, scriptures or a conference talk. Right? But I want, I want to get to know, and I wanna feel connected. I want members of my corn to feel connected to each other. We also started having treats in elders corn. We realized like, men are not too old to want treats. And so we, we started asking members of our quorum who have a gift for cooking, [01:12:00] um, will you make an offering?

Uh, will you offer something to our corn? That's one of the things we realized is that, that in order to feel like you're all in, you have to feel like you, you're offering something. And so we wanted to make our quorum a place where people felt like they could offer. Something of themselves, whether that be food or their story.

And it has, uh, transformed our elder core meeting. People want to be there, the priests deed, and even the teachers and deacons rush to our, our core meetings as soon as they're done, mostly in hopes of getting extra food. But I think also they recognize that something is happening there. That there, this is a place where men in our ward want to be.

And that's, uh, you know, my most recent experience of this idea of being all in means using your gifts, using your talents, consecrating those to the work. And there's deep joy for me and, and doing that. Well, I love both of those answers and I think that there's, there's so much to unpack from all that we've learned from both of you, so thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me and I'll catch you on the next trip.

Alright, thanks. Thank you. We are so grateful to Jamin and Anne Rowan for sharing their experiences with us today. We're also grateful as always, to Derek Campbell for his help with this episode, and we are so grateful to you for listening. We'll look forward to being with you again next week.