Bruce and Marie Hafen: Understanding and Navigating Stages of Faith, Pt. 2

Erin Hallstrom: What does the journey of our faith look like? It often starts out simple but what happens when trials come? When we have questions we don't know how to answer? Today we're continuing our conversation with Elder Bruce C. Hafen and Sister Marie Hafen, authors of the new book, Faith is Not Blind. Together, we will be digging deeper into questions and unexpected experiences that challenge our faith.

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?"

A note to listeners: throughout this episode, we will be referencing the Hafen's three-stage model for dealing with uncertainty in matters of faith. Stage One is simplicity, innocent and untested. Stage Two is complexity, recognizing a gap between what we actually experience and what we were taught. Stage Three is finding simplicity again, beyond the complexities of life.

We are so privileged to have the Hafens joining us again for a second episode continuing this discussion, Elder Hafen, would you give us a summary of what we've already talked about?

Elder Hafen: Well, we've been talking about what we call the three stages of spiritual growth, how we attain a kind of authentic, well-tested spiritual maturity. Let me give that a little context, that's kind of personal to us. We have been through surprises and disappointments and puzzles and our own faith journeys and we've concluded that those experiences are really part of the natural process of growth and faith. Working through such opposition, we've concluded, is really the only way to develop what we would call an authentic, well-tested spiritual maturity. The reason I chose that way to summarize is that what we've personally concluded, rather than this being a scary subject, is it's really a very important positive energizing experience. Because our focus for us and in our conversation with you is how can we learn from hard experiences, what we've been calling complexities, how can we learn from them, rather than being kind of knocked over by them or disillusioned or uprooted by them? Some people run across things they haven't heard before and they're conditioned by the internet to say, "Somebody lied to me about this." And maybe, I don't know if you would have caught this example, it's a little one in the book, but it was so real from "Grandma and Grandpa Camp." Each year, we have "Grandma and Grandpa Camp" for our—

Erin Hallstrom: Oh, I was gonna bring it up because I want an invite next year.

Sister Hafen: You can come.

Erin Hallstrom: Thank you

Elder Hafen: This was a patriotic theme, camp happened to fall the early part of July, we hadn't done a lot of patriotic things. We've done a lot of musicals and other things, but a theme for the day before we do our--

Erin Hallstrom: So you have your grandkids come?

Elder Hafen: Yeah. Of a certain age group, they come to the house and because we have a whole bunch of them, it's just scriptural, about making a joyful noise unto the Lord. But we had assigned them to talk about a historical figure from the founding era. And I'm just remembering when Peter, our little 10-year-old philosopher, was giving his report on Benjamin Franklin, he stood up and sort of said, what you'd expect about Franklin. And then towards the end, he said, "But he didn't invent electricity like everybody thinks." And then he flipped over on the floor with a little laugh. And I thought, what was that about? I didn't say anything, we kept going. And the next day, I said, "So Peter, what were you talking about Benjamin Franklin? I was quite interested in that, you really did a good job. But what was the part about he didn't invent electricity?" And he said, "Well, he didn't." And I said, "Are you talking about the kite that thing with the lightning?" And he said, "Well, yeah, that's part of it. But a lot of people think he invented it, and he didn't. And so they lied to me an elementary school." I thought, well that's a pretty harsh indictment. I didn't say more, all I did was thank him. I did say, "Where did you learn so much about Benjamin Franklin, Peter?" and he said on the internet. So when I got a chance, later that day I, I googled Benjamin Franklin. And there's a lot there. But you know, there are these historians who quibble about did Franklin know what he was doing with the kite experiment? And then I found a site for children that has a little headline in it, "Did Benjamin Franklin invent electricity? Maybe not." And then they tell about these British scientists who were the first ones to use the term "electricity." And they talk about what Edison did later on and I just I realized that when young, well-meaning, normal kids or just anybody who's sort of coming at a topic that they aren't, they don't have a Ph.D. in, they read sources written for people who do have PhDs, and they get into all these nuances. And what is it about the current climate that makes people say when they learned something they didn't know, before, I was lied to. Why can't we say, "Oh, I didn't know that. Tell me more." I mean, it's just it's an attitudinal thing but there's something about the current climate that creates this immediate polarization, if it isn't positive, it's negative. In fact, it's really negative. There's no room in between for kind of learning and growing incrementally.

Sister Hafen: For a good discussion.

Elder Hafen: Yeah, sure.

Erin Hallstrom: Well, it's almost an early determining of what is truth, right? Like, we very quickly want to determine what's true before going through the process of exploring.

Sister Hafen: Right. And sometimes people would rather be certain than right. I mean, they want to take a position and say, that's my position and I'm certain about it.

Erin Hallstrom: Absolutely.

Sister Hafen: But we've learned from life, no.

Erin Hallstrom: So that actually, the internet is interesting. I personally love the internet. There's nowhere else you can go to learn it every about anything and everything. But to your point. Are you learning about anything and everything? And how do we know how to find sources that we can trust?

Sister Hafen: That's a really good question.

Elder Hafen: So it's a really important question, Erin because I wonder how many people have been following what is becoming more clear, just within the last year, we've had a very kind of dramatic year for the Internet, and exposing its flaws. I mean, Facebook, uses stuff they shouldn't have used that reveals private things about some of their users. And then the Russians are trying to follow up the 2016 election with fake news. They're manipulating social media. And so now we're reading what some people have sensed before, but now Congress is exploring it. And there's pointing at Silicon Valley and saying, hey, this stuff is not only the most powerful force any of us know about, it's also a force that is so easily subject to manipulation and misuse. They're pointing at them, asking them to do something, I don't know that they will know quite what to do. It's kind of thrown back on us because there isn't a kind of technological answer that's going to do all the filtering we want. So some of it is learning how to expect this, how to prepare our children for it. You know, we're in the church, we're used to that when talking about pornography. It's a really pretty good example of what the internet does. But there are other dimensions besides pornography, that have the same problem. And they have to do with questions, not just about the church, but anything. That's why I use the example of Benjamin Franklin, because that's exactly what some people would say the first time they read a kind of a nuanced, subtle, so-called thorough research job into Joseph Smith on this or that, then you read it and say what Peter did about Benjamin Franklin, "Oh, well, I guess he didn't do that." That's a normal response for somebody who's new at this kind of reading and they just don't know the context. And they may be faced by someone on the other end of their internet, who has a message, who is definitely out there doing what—

Sister Hafen: An agenda.

Elder Hafen: An agenda, yeah. Some people have called them "doubt merchants." There are those who have an agenda, you know there may be money behind it, there may be some other purpose, but they know exactly what they're doing in manipulating the internet. So I don't know what else we do besides become aware of it and apply everything we've learned about pornography, which we have, I think learned a lot about in the church. The same principles apply when we're trying to know how to process and deal with information of other kinds of—

Sister Hafen: So you're saying, moving out of the complexity into this simplicity?

Erin Hallstrom: Well, I'm saying that as you get into the complexity, that one of the most important things-- okay, now you're ready to look at both the ideal and the real at the same time, what are you going to do about it so that it's a constructive stage of growth? I think that's your question, Erin, and actually, one thing that occurs to me is that I hope everybody is reading the book, "Saints". That is literally a little gift from heaven, to have that book presented in a form that is written for, I think, sort of sixth grade level to understand, and it has tucked most and maybe all, I think it probably is all, from what my friends and that's your history department tell me. They wanted to tell that story but in this age, what they're doing is putting into the overall context of the narrative of church history, all the little issues that people who had questions about, about well how many versions of the First Vision were there? And how did Joseph translate? Read "Saints," it's all there. So I would say one of the most helpful things to do is let's start using "Saints" as the advanced curriculum because it's hard to get into that in our church classes and a lot of people don't want to read anything. Well, if they'll start to read that,

Sister Hafen: They'll be pulled in.

Elder Hafen: They'll be pulled in, they'll want-- they will love it and they'll want to talk about it,

Erin Hallstrom: You can listen to it too.

Elder Hafen: You can listen to it, and families can talk about and it's so natural, that you wouldn't even know that what you just got there was the answer to what some critics said the church wouldn't ever talk about. It's all right there.

Erin Hallstrom: Well, I do find it interesting and I read this in your book, but it's something I've also thought a lot about in my life when I have people who have said to me, "Well, I don't want to read what the church has to say about this. Because they're biased."

Sister Hafen: Right.

Erin Hallstrom: And and so what I'm hearing from what you're talking about and the reality is, everyone is.

Sister Hafen: That's right. That's right.

Erin Hallstrom: Right? So the important thing is, at least with the church, we know their bias. We know-- and their bias is not necessarily to deceive, it's with the idea of faith, right?

Elder Hafen: In some cases, the bias is very much the bias of the sponsors of some of the websites, the negative ones. Their bias is very deliberate and I know-- they're very sincere in believing that the Church has totally lost the plot, and they're very sincere in wanting to help other members of the church realize these guys have lost it. Well, people have been saying that about Joseph and Brigham from the beginning. Well, now, those same voices are amplified on the Internet and on a billboard we just saw on I-15, that invites everybody to get into this. But they will get into it not knowing that they're dealing with somebody who has a bias and an agenda that is deliberately intending to undermine the faith of those who look at it. And while I acknowledge that those people may be sincere, they are not going to give the complete version that you would get in a source like "Saints."

Sister Hafen: So you're saying we can trust "Saints?" You know that you can. The other thing that I think that book does so well is take all these complex issues and make them so simple. That's the simplicity, I think, in a very positive sense. And that requires the most what I'm thinking of those who can teach something that's really complex, but make it simple. It's the hardest thing to do that.

Erin Hallstrom: I want to talk a little bit about the stage, the faith journeys-- the stages of faith that you've outlined, and particularly I want to talk a little bit more about stage one. So I think it's one of those stages that can sometimes be dismissed by people, or potentially condescended to because there's a simplicity to it, right? And we all know people in our lives or we've been that person in our lives, that has just a pure unquestioning faith. Is that really what stage one is? And maybe I'm misrepresenting stage one?

Sister Hafen: I think that's the most common. Well, I think there are some who are just so completely negative, they don't consider the positive or the ideal, they're so wound up in the negative bias that they have that I would also consider that a stage one. Because they have not grappled with the complexity, which would be realism and idealism.

Elder Hafen: Tell me about your mother.

Sister Hafen: My mother was one who, just from the moment she could talk, she just believed and she never disbelieved. And we have a daughter who's like that, and she's— one of the other kids challenged her a little bit. And she said, "No, I'm like, Grandma, I just know it's true."

Elder Hafen: "I've always known it's true." And I think that's true with her but we have watched her deal with some complexities that are not intellectual in nature.

Sister Hafen: So there are some that are not.

Erin Hallstrom: And maybe that's the point to make, Erin, is that we've thought about that. We've thought, you know, the last thing we want to do is put down the believing faithful, loyal people, you know, the humble followers of Christ. That's really what we want to be and there are some for home that's kind of native, and they may have to go through intellectual tests. But the scriptures, the doctrines of the restoration make clear that everybody's going to get some kind of complexity. There are people who experienced trauma and we would say complexity includes trauma. Maybe it's the trauma of a mission, that it's just is not what you expected. Maybe it's the trauma of a marriage, that isn't what you expected. Maybe it's the trauma of being single when that isn't what you expected. We have a friend who's single and just turned 50 and her patriarchal blessing talks about having children. That's traumatic. And that's not an intellectual complexity but it's the complexity that Adam and Eve know, it's the trial of our faith. And, Marie, do you want to say something about how that sort of fits generally?

Sister Hafen: Well, I was just thinking uncertainty and opposition and different people have different stage two's, different complications, different complexities if you want to put it that way. I don't know if it would help, and Erin, whether you think maybe we could put this in a little bit of doctrinal context.

Erin Hallstrom: I'd love that.

Sister Hafen: Because it goes way back to the beginning, goes back to one of the most beautiful, wonderful people whoever came to the earth and that was Eve. I'm a little prejudiced, you understand but we have grown to appreciate so much what she gave. And it goes back to a story that we experienced in St. George when we were there working in the temple. When someone came up to Bruce and said, you know, we have all these pictures of Christ around the temple, you know, but how come Christ is not the center of what we learn in the temple? How come this story is about Adam and Eve? And we thought about it, talked about it for quite a long time and yes, actually, the temple is about Christ. But it's about Christ giving the atonement.

Elder Hafen: If it were about the story of the life of Christ, it would be the story of his giving--

Sister Hafen: Giving the atonement. But the temple shows us that life and what it means, Adam and Eve. So the story of Adam and Eve is the story of receiving the atonement. And there are so many levels in the temple, that when we go if we can begin to access that, if we can go open to that, and that helps us.

Elder Hafen: Do you see the three stages in the lives of Adam and Eve?

Sister Hafen: Well, I do. If you just think about Adam and Eve when they were in the Garden of Eden, even before they came to the earth, maybe they had intellectually in their minds, what it would look like, well they were part of those we think, who jumped for joy for that opportunity. And sometimes you wonder, would they have jumped for joy if they had known exactly what they were getting themselves into? I think they probably would have, we just don't know how much they knew. But we do know that they said, "Yes, we want it to go." They were in the Garden of Eden. They were given to each other, that was an arranged marriage if ever there was one. And then they went in after Eve had decided to partake of the fruit and Adam had said okay and he had. They were thrust out of the garden into total complexity. So they're laying an altar to have prayer and who comes? It's Satan. It's not their father that they had hoped and expected. So they had something immediately difficult to have to deal with. But then they use what they had learned already, and said, "We want to talk to somebody else. Have you got somebody else up there? So, Heavenly Father, we're looking for your messengers." So they dealt with their complexities. They went all through their lives, we read that they had children. Immediately after that, you have Satan coming. It wasn't 'till later on, they had all the challenges of Cain and Abel. But after they had been out praying and in mortality on the earth, the angel came to teach them, right? What did Eve say after the Angel came? What did the angel teach them?

Elder Hafen: First they asked the question, Why are you doing this?

Sister Hafen: Yeah, why are you doing this? Yeah. Why are you offering a sacrifice? Well, we're offering sacrifice, because the Lord told us to do that. We don't know the reason why. And then the angel starts to teach them about redemption, about what is this life for, Christ's role, God's role, their role. And then they understand it was them that Eve said, and we got Moses 5, I really like Moses 5 on the Adam and Eve story, the verses 10 and 11, where she said, "if we hadn't partaken of the fruit, we would not have had seed, no children, we wouldn't know the joy of our redemption." So she was glad, that's the word that's used there. So I have grown to love Eve and the courage that she had, not only to partake, but to go from there, out into the world, and learn from their experiences knowing that the atonement was coming. They didn't have that in the past to rely on, they knew that was in the future, a long ways ahead,

Elder Hafen: maybe we could say that they, because of the Atonement of Christ, they could learn from their experience without being condemned by it. And we could say that same thing about other people's complexity.

Sister Hafen: That's what I was thinking too.

Elder Hafen: Because of the atonement and the gospel, we can learn from the hard things, the complexities, without being condemned by them, without being stuck in them. And that's just stages, one, two, and three.

Sister Hafen: That they can be strengthened by them, it doesn't have to be a deficit.

Elder Hafen: And maybe one PS I could add to that, Erin, we were talking with one of our kids who's actually helping us on this project a little bit, lives in the east. And after we've been talking about some of this that we've just been discussing here, he made this observation, which has kind of stayed with us, let me see if I can recall it, I'll be paraphrasing. But he said something like, "If we're not willing to give the Lord and His Church the benefit of the doubt in close cases," and when we're in stage two of complexity. "If that stage we're not willing to give the Lord and His church the benefit of the doubt, in close case, it won't be long until we will be unwilling to go down the road of faith and sacrifice at all. Whether that's a mission call, whether it's a church call, whatever it is, we will have become skeptical about the whole thing and we will not go do the things." I guess the way but it was, "If we don't go down the road of sacrifice, we will never discover the happiness that waits for the saints, because you only get there by paying the kind of price that Adam and Eve did, or that the pioneers did." You know, not all the pioneers gave up and said this is too hard, but some did. And so that shows us it's pretty normal for people to get stuck on their complexity, disillusioned by it, irritated, annoyed, angry, feel betrayed. That's all that's been happening for centuries.

Erin Hallstrom: Well, you mentioned skepticism. I'm curious, when does it help and when does it hurt? Is there ever a time where skepticism can help? Because I mean, we all experience skepticism in our lives.

Sister Hafen: You mean, when you say, "Oh, that can't be right, or that can't be true."

Elder Hafen: It's a really good question, Erin. I taught law at the BYU law school and we were trying to teach our students, especially in their first year, I guess I could liken the three years of law school to the three stages of dealing with complexity. I remember one student, just back from a mission who said, he said, "I have a low tolerance for ambiguity. Don't ask these questions that I want to give a skeptical response to, I don't want to be skeptical." And we were trying to teach them skepticism is really essential so that you don't get manipulated or so that you help other people understand what's really going on. But it is not being a "doubting Thomas" it's not the endpoint of the journey of discipleship.

Sister Hafen: Now, some people may not get to it through the three levels, we're not saying that's the only way to approach this. We got a note from a woman who lives in Omaha, we were just there a little more than a week ago. And what she said is that the image or the metaphor that fits for the best is a big puzzle. She said I'm trying to put the pieces of my puzzle together so that I can see the whole picture clearly. And so for her, the puzzle was a better metaphor for working with the complexities than maybe these three stages would be, but they were working for her.

Erin Hallstrom: So it seems like we are seeing more and more, even more of these complexities in the world today. Is that just me? Or is that really true?

Elder Hafen: Just a comment on your question,a really good question, Erin. Is there more complexity around us? I think the answer is yes. One of the characteristics of the internet age is to pick up on the extremes, you know. A sociologist would tell you about a bell curve, on almost any subject, if you look at the huge population, the mainstream will be in the middle and you've got the ends of the curve. And the people at the extremes, in past history, didn't have much access to the marketplace of ideas. They might have been in pain, they would scream out and anguish but people wouldn't hear them because they weren't in the mainstream. They were a small percentage, they were not you know the middle of the population, and they weren't typical of it. And but now, the internet is magnifying voices at the extremes. And you can get the impression that the people who are having the complexities at the extremes are they represent everybody. And so when younger people start hearing all this, I think, I wonder if this was one of the reasons why we get the sense that there's a lot more anxiety, depression, pornography, the whatever the really challenging hard issue is, you get the impression that this is widespread, this is normal. This is the political correctness kind of defines the way we think about everything. I don't know that it does. If we could be sure that we had representative samples of these voices, I think we'd find the extreme voices are giving the impression that everybody should have the same problems that those that the extremes are having. And it's like one of our sons said, going through medical school, in that second year of medical school when you start learning about infectious diseases, the students all start thinking they have every one of them. And this is a bit like that, you keep hearing about it and wonder, "Oh, well maybe I've got that too." And then you start to entertain ideas that you might not have even thought of. And I don't say that's bad or good. I'm so thankful for the digital age for so many reasons. We just need to learn how to make the most of that and learn how to channel it, and educate our kids and each other so that we don't get overwhelmed by these kinds of what inaccurate portrayals of what's really normal. Whether we really have a strange problem, or just think we do.

Sister Hafen: And so to find the sources you mentioned earlier, the ones that you can trust, the ones that you know are good--

Erin Hallstrom: That's essential.

Sister Hafen: Yes, and then go to their footnotes and their possibilities. Bruce wrote an article way back in the 70s, that was published in the "Ensign," it was called "On Dealing with Uncertainty." And it has some of the same ideas that are much amplified and have changed and grown over the years. But I was teaching a class at the time, so it was later than the 70s, but at be what BYUI, then Rick's, which as you know, is it's maiden name, and had a student in a class I was teaching in English. And he said, "I just want you to know, I want you to tell your husband that that article when I was on my mission, saved my mission because I was able to see some things in a new way." So it's not just now that the issues are important, they go way back, but I think they're amplified by the internet.

Elder Hafen: I'm glad you mentioned that Marie, because in explaining how did we get to talking about all this, the fact that we've been interested in it for years what that old talk, it's an old BYU devotional, probably from before you guys were born.

Sister Hafen: I'm sure.

Elder Hafen: What's been interesting to us is that-- and since the advent of the Internet, we've had an increasing number of people, younger people say they have run on to that, and they're grateful. What they mean is they're grateful to have been introduced to the concept we've been talking about here, in very general terms, we weren't using the same language and our own understanding of this has grown a great deal, because we've been trying to apply that concept to the internet age. And that's the current challenge and it's a very interesting one.

Sister Hafen: Your example, I think the one about the returned missionary?

Elder Hafen: Oh yeah, this is one other example, Erin, that I think describes the general nature of what we're talking about, but it can grow out of challenges people have with their faith. We knew family from another country years ago, quite well. And one of their kids grew up and went on his mission to have a place in Utah. He was a wonderful missionary. And when we were in the St. George temple, a family came to be sealed in the temple and said he had been their missionary, we recognized his name and we didn't know for sure where he was. And then they said, "Oh, well we wish it could be with us here in the temple. He is still here in Utah, but he left the church after his mission." And we were stunned and said, "Do you have any idea why?" And the father said, "Well, the only thing he said to me was, 'the church just didn't meet my expectations.'" We found that very memorable statement because I think for him it was true. He expected the church to do certain things or to be a certain way, he was kind of determining what it was going to be. So any surprises were not pleasant ones for him.

Sister Hafen: Instead of Heavenly Father, you mean.

Elder Hafen: Instead of letting the Lord kind of take him where he needed to go, he was basically dictating by his expectations of where he wanted to go. And so when he didn't go there, the church had failed him. And that reminds us of a story we've shared, I may invite Marie to tell you this one, but expectations, interesting problem. You know, you're about to be thrown into the fiery furnace but if you will confess in the false god, we won't throw you in. And they say, "Well, just throw us in, he will deliver us. But if not, throw us in anyway." They had the right expectations. They weren't faithful just because they knew they'd get saved from a fiery furnace. They were faithful whether they were burned or whether they weren't. That's where the story is. So but if not, and I'll just invite Marie to tell you about.

Sister Hafen: Now there's the contrast that this goes back to a wonderful song that's in the Swedish hymn book. We've actually sent it in to be considered for the new hymn book with a translation that was done by a member of the church who was translating for us when we were in a meeting in Sweden, it's called "Day by Day." But it was written by, the words were written by a woman named Lina Sandel, who was a well respected, well-known poet, poetess, who wrote hymn words. And her background was that she grew up in the home with her father being a minister. And their association, their relationship was so close that he had a little desk for her in his office, so that she would write and color in his office and grew up with a very close relationship with him. And when she was 26, they were crossing a lake and a storm came up suddenly, and her father was washed overboard and died, drowned in that accident. And she was devastated. She didn't know how she was going to live life. But eventually, she overcame that and her trust in God led her to want to express how she was feeling in these hymns. And another man who played the guitar extremely well, Ahnfelt was his name, wrote the music. These hymns that are the favorites of the Swedish saints, this particular one, because it states why our translator said was the attitude of this woman. And her attitude was: her faith was based on trust, and not on blessings and therefore, she could withstand any trial. We've thought about that a lot.

Elder Hafen: That's stage three.

Sister Hafen: That is stage three.

Elder Hafen: Trust me,

Sister Hafen: It'll be good.

Erin Hallstrom: Over the course of these two episodes, we've illustrated what faith looks like for many. And have seen how, frankly, different it can look. So I just have one final question. What does it mean to you to be all in the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Elder Hafen: Erin, I've been waiting for weeks to give you my first answer to that. It means, to be all in the gospel means to be utterly exhausted. And yet, that's not a completely funny answer because when you throw yourself all the way in, there are times when you are exhausted, and it's a price worth paying. And some people don't, they don't want to do that. They see what happens when you just sort of spend yourself and you are so exhausted that it's too hard and there are some who hold back. So when you say, "what's all in?" There's a price that goes with it.

Sister Hafen: Yeah, I would just agree with that and say, for me, the temple is all wound up in that "all in" because that has come to mean so much for me, and to me because Christ is all wound up in the temple. He has given us the ordinances and the covenants of the temple and made it possible, not only for us to be resurrected, but to become like him. And the temple teaches us the way he taught Adam and Eve. How do you receive the atonement in a way that helps you become like he is? I just express my gratitude and growing knowledge of Him, growing tenderness in my gratitude to Him.

Elder Hafen: I knew Marie would mention that about Christ. I once discovered in the Scriptures, the place of the word "all," so I'm really glad you use that. The man who sold all that he had, so that he could obtain the pearl of great price, sold all that he had. That's us, we give all, we hold nothing back. And then we read in the 84th section of the Doctrine and Covenants that those who are faithful will receive "all that the Father hath." So we give all, he gives all and we're all in.

Erin Hallstrom: Oh thank you. Thank you for your testimonies, for the thought and for all the work that went into this beautiful book, I encourage everyone to read it. I'm just very grateful for your time, so thank you.

Sister Hafen: Thanks. Tell them how short it is.

Erin Hallstrom: Oh, yeah, the book is really short.

Thank you to the Hafen's for such an enlightening conversation. Their new book, Faith is Not Blind, is one you won't want to miss and can be found at Desert Book stores. To listen to more episodes of All In, Visit LDSliving.com/allin