Out Into the World

After our failed attempt at delivering pamphlets, my dad asked my younger brother and I to come up with another way to preach the gospel.  Since passing out papers at ward-houses was not "my way", my dad encouraged me to come up with a method that was more suitable to me.

My brother and I prayed about people we could go teach.  We came up with a list of names, and, one by one, we went to see these people.  The first person we visited was a friend of my brother's, someone we both went to high school with.  She had just recently got married, and we went to see her and her husband at their apartment.  They accepted us in, but it was a cool reception.  My brother spoke with passion.  This was something that he deeply believed in, but it became evident that they were not receptive.  When my brother quoted something from the temple endowment, she shut us down and asked that we not speak any further.  We left her apartment, and my brother had tears in his eyes.

The next visit was to an LDS man that was rumored to be open to Mormon fundamentalism.  So we called him and made an appointment to meet him.  He agreed to see us.  So my brother and I prepared to go.  We took a copy of "Four Hidden Revelations", "Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith", and a few other basic books.  Then we headed to his house one evening.

He answered the door and asked us in.  He had been working around the house, and so he sat us down in his living room while he went to clean up.  While we waited, I took a glance at his bookcase.  Not just all the Journals of Discourses, but the whole Truth Volumes, "Treasures of Knowledge" by Rulon Allred, and every book written by Ogden Kraut.  My heart sank.  What did this mean?  This man was no mere novice to Mormon fundamentalism.  His books were hardcore.  He wouldn't own them unless he had already done his studying.  It turns out that, in his younger years, he had been quite a student.  He had talked extensively to Owen Allred, to Odgen Kraut, and even to Rulon Jeffs, then leader of the FLDS.  My younger brother and I were out of our league.

When it became evident that we were floundering, this man told us, "You boys had better know what you're about!  Or else someone like me will come along and eat you up!"

It seemed like a discouraging event.  But two weeks later, this man was knocking on our door.  He wanted to talk to my father.  After several long talks, it ended up with this man being lead by me into the waters of re-baptism at the Salt River, and then my father re-conferred the priesthood on him.

Shortly after that, our entire family moved to a small ranch in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona.  After we got settled, my dad wanted us to have the experience of "tracting" - or knocking Jehovah's Witness-style from door to door.  One of my friends laughed when he heard this.  "What are you going to tell people?  'I represent a small group in Arizona that once was part of the AUB that broke off from the LDS Church'?"

But one sunny February morning, a couple of vehicles of young men drove to Sanders on the Navajo Nation and split into pairs.  Then we set out on foot.  We started knocking from door to door.  Kindly natives would answer the doors, but they mostly weren't interested in what we had to say.  I was paired up with my brother-in-law.

On about the third knock, two young white men answered the door.  I couldn't help but start laughing. We had knocked on the door of the local Mormon missionaries.  They invited us in.  The older companion was from Chicago, and he had never heard of Mormon fundamentalists.  He wanted to hear what we had to say.  The junior companion - a small blonde guy from Utah - knew exactly what Mormon fundamentalists were.  He didn't say it, but you could tell by his face.  He had that deer-in-the-headlights look.  We sat down and had an awkward discussion on Doctrine & Covenants section 132.  After having a polite banter, we excused ourselves and continued walking down the road.

No sooner had we left that the two missionaries got in their car and blazed down the road, doubtlessly to report their encounter to their mission leaders.  Years later, hints of an urban legend floated back to me about polygamist missionaries trying to convert some LDS missionaries.  I still laugh when I think about it.

By this time, I was a practicing polygamist, and I was now active on the internet.  I thought that the internet would be a good tool to find other wives.  It turned out to be the opposite.  That is a whole story on its own, but the conclusion that I reached was - the internet was NOT a good place to find wives.  For me, at any rate.

I read an article in Yahoo! Magazine.  The Catholic cardinal in New York was speaking of the internet as a teaching tool.  He said, "If St. Paul was alive today, he wouldn't be writing epistles; he would be online."

This struck me when I read it.  It was absolutely true.  The internet is the best tool to reach people all over the world.

By this time, I had found which teaching method was best for me, and that was example.  I didn't start teaching people doctrines or religious ideas.  I just started talking about my family, living plural marriage, what worked for me, and what didn't work for me.  I discussed on public forums, on chat sites, and eventually wound up doing TV shows, radio broadcasts and blogs.  This was the best teaching tool I could find.  I found that people would contact me.  They still do.  Scarcely a day goes by that I am not contacted by someone with some sort of question.  Some are just curious, which is fine by me.  I am an open book.  Some want to ask doctrinal questions, which I try to answer the  best I can.  Others are seeking priesthood blessings or ordinances, and I try to point the way the best I can.

I am no prophet.  I am no guru.  I am just a simple man who is seeking the will of God for myself the best I can.  But most of all, I want to be a servant.  A servant to God.  But mostly a servant to humankind.  When I die, I want my life to have meaning, to have purpose, and the only way that can happen is if I was of service to everyone with whom I came in contact.

Some times, I am not the best example.  I watched one of my marriages splinter apart earlier this year.  But even in that, I desire to be an example of how to handle it with dignity and kindness.

It has been a long, strange trip.  There is so much more to tell.  But now, I have to prepare for the next step in my adventure - which is to literally go out into the world, without purse or scrip.  And I will documenting it all right here...

Almost Getting Run Over (and other first missionary attempts)

It was a fall morning in September, 1994.  Even though it was fall, it was still hot.  This was Mesa, Arizona.  It didn't help that I was wearing a long-sleeved, white shirt and a tie.  I stood near the intersection of a busy street, on the sidewalk with my two younger brothers, one of them only 11 years-old.  They were also dressed in shirts and ties.

Behind us was a large, redbrick LDS chapel.  The three of us had stacks of pamphlets in our hands, and, as people drove out of the parking lot, we passed out pamphlets to whomever would take them.  At the time, I worked for a utilities company, so I knew exactly church property started and ended.  We made very sure that, as we passed out pamphlets, we did not set a foot on church property.

Two men on foot approached me, with concern on their faces.  They asked me, "¿Qué es lo que está pasando, hermano?"  "What is that you're passing out, brother?"

"A testimony," I replied in Spanish.

"Would you permit us to have one?" they asked.

So I passed each of them one, and then they left.

A few minutes later, they were back.  One of them approached me angrily.  "The bishop has asked me to tell you not to pass those out here!"

I answered, "We're giving them out to people, and if they want them. they're welcome.  If not, they can throw them away."

The man was flustered by my refusal to comply with his demand.  "But the bishop doesn't want you to pass them out!  This is church property!"

I pointed to the curb I was standing on.  "This isn't church property.  Why don't you go speak to my father on the other side of the building, but until then..."

"So you're not going to leave?" he demanded.

I looked him in the eye.  "No."

They stormed away.

I was getting a little nervous, so I sent my youngest brother to the other side of the building, to the curb where my father was handing out pamphlets by himself.

Another man approached me.  This one was a smooth talker.  He told us that we needed to talk to the bishop, and, if the bishop agreed, maybe we could present our case in Sacrament Meeting.  I wasn't stupid.  I knew that there was no way that the bishop would give us a forum in public meeting.  I told him that I would love to talk to his bishop.  I wasn't there to make war against the Church.  In fact, I loved the Church, and that I was there to bring them the truth.  (I was a very zealous and naive 24 year-old.)

Another car passed by us, and I handed out another pamphlet to the people inside.  The man looked on in horror as we continued to deliver pamphlets.

Emphatically, he spoke to us, "Brethren, I'm  going to have to ask you to abstain from passing those out!"

"Very well, we'll stop," my brother said.  "Then permit me to bear my testimony to you."

"No, no, no!"  The smooth talker shook his head, losing his cool.  "No testimony until you speak to the bishop!"

I wanted to ask him why he needed the bishop's permission to hear a testimony, but I restrained myself.  I wan't there to fight.  Taking out a pen and notebook, he asked me for my name and phone number.  I gave it.  I have nothing to hide.  Then he asked who my bishop was.  My younger brother gave the name who was the LDS bishop in our neighborhood.  But that wouldn't matter.  We had been excommunicated four years earlier.  He asked if we had obtained permission from our bishop to hand out these papers.

We said, "No."

Then he launched into a spiel about not doing anything without proper authority.  We shook his hand and left.  My youngest brother came back to say that my father was arguing with a group of men.  I sighed.  There it goes - that Jessop temper.

We walked around the building.  My father was surrounded by about a dozen men.  As we approached, I could see that, in essence, he was telling them that he could pass out pamphlets if he wanted to.

One young elder was speaking out loudly, invoking a villain from the Book of Mormon.  "You're just like Corihor!"

"Why?" asked my father.  "For speaking the truth?"

The elder got in my dad's face.  "This is my ward!  I  won't permit this!"

"They're just words.  Why are you afraid of words?" my father asked.

"I'm not afraid of words!"

"Then let them read the words.  We're not forcing anyone to read it.  If they want to read it, fine!  If they want to throw it away, fine!  This isn't on church grounds.  When we go into your buildings, we show respect."

"Why don't you go pass these out in the cantinas?"

"Do you send your missionaries to the cantinas?"

"You will cause confusion here!"

"This will help them to grow," I told the elder.

He glared at me.  "Confusion will help them grow?"

"It doesn't matter what your bishop says," my father said.  "I will do what the Spirit indicates to me to do.  I'm sorry if we've offended you."

We were getting nowhere, so my dad shook hands with them and we left.  Being the good salesman that he was, my dad left each of those men with a pamphlet in their hands.

We did it a few more times.  There were more confrontations like that.  One good LDS woman tried to run my dad down with her car.  It got to the point that I dreaded Sunday mornings when my dad would wake me up and tell me which ward we were going to.

I later told my dad, "I know this is the way you were a missionary in the Church, but this just does not seem my way.  Doing it this way is not me.  It's too confrontational."

My dad blinked.  "So what is your way then?"

"I don't know!"  I said.  "But not like this!"

It would be a while before I discovered what "my way" was...

To Publish Pamphlets and Papers

When my dad started down the path of Mormon fundamentalism, he started to have meetings in his own house.  He served the sacrament to his own children and would hold testimony meetings with just the family.  He told his children, particularly his teen boys like me, that they had to attend some sort of religious meeting.  They could go to the LDS Church, or they could attend the family meetings at home.  Most of us went to both.

Around 1991, the whole family got involved with the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB) in Utah, a polygamous group known as "The Group" to its members.  It was mostly a positive experience.  The AUB descended from early Mormons who were given a commission to keep plural marriage alive since the mainstream LDS Church abandoned the practice.  They were given a very specific instruction when they were organized - they were not to do anything that the LDS Church was capable of doing.

For this reason, the AUB did not practice many things.  For instance, they did not begin doing temple endowments until 1981, because the question arose - if the LDS Church is changing the ordinances of the temple, are they valid anymore?  So it wasn't until 1981 that the AUB began instituting temple rites.

Another practice was missionary work.  The AUB did not send out missionaries.  They viewed this also as the responsibility of the mainstream LDS Church.  Whereas the Church may have abandoned many principles, it was still perfectly capable of sending out missionaries to teach about the Book of Mormon, to "teach the First Principles".  And so the AUB strongly discouraged proselyting.  Yes, they did have a Quorum of Seventy whose responsibility was to teach the gospel.  And you can argue this point with me if you'd like, but it is true - the Seventies in the AUB were mainly there to screen out undesirables.  And that's about it.  There was no real push to proselyte.  There was no real push to send out missionaries.

Oh yes, there were exceptions.  There were a few in the AUB who did try to go out and teach as often as possible, and the branch of the AUB in Central Mexico did send out missionaries, as I have already posted.

But mostly they avoided missionary work, because their responsibility was the perpetuation of plural marriage.  Nothing more.

A side note - in 2006, I was told by someone in the AUB that the Council had created their "No Internet Teaching" policy because of me.  At the time, I was very actively teaching the fullness of the gospel on the Internet.  There was nothing so sacred that it could not be taught through cyberspace.  This rankled them.  Not wanting to sound too critical, the reason for this is that this information, to them, must not be wholesale.  It should come from them, and not be disseminated to the masses.  And there was nothing that I was afraid to talk about.  This upset them, and there "No Internet" policy came about.  Because of me.  I wear that badge with pride.

But I digress...

Eventually, most of my family came to  leave the AUB.  That is a whole story in and of itself.  The family went back to Arizona, and we continued having meetings in our living room.  My father had never been satisfied with the lack of missionary work in the AUB.  After all, he had spent most of his life as a missionary in the mainstream Church.  It was hard to put that aside.  He started to ask me about what we could do get the message to members in the Church.  He asked if I could write some sort of pamphlet, something that could be handed out to people.  The reason he asked me - I have always shown a talent for writing.

So I sat down and tried to write something.  Talk about writer's bloc!  I could not come up with anything!  My dad came to me a couple of weeks later to ask me how the pamphlet was coming.  I told him that it wasn't coming very well.  He told me to keep trying.

Then he took me and my younger brother aside and ordained us as Seventies, which is the office that he had originally held in the mainstream LDS Church, and also in the AUB.  As I mentioned earlier, the duty of a Seventy is to be a teacher - a traveling teacher, to be exact.

That evening, I sat down to write a pamphlet, not really knowing what I was going to write.  I picked up an LDS hymn book and opened it to a hymn by Eliza R. Snow, who was a plural wife to both Joseph Smith and, later, Brigham Young.  The hymn was "The Time is Far Spent".  I read the first verse:

The time is far spent, there is little remaining

To publish pamphlets and papers by sea and by land,

Then hasten, ye heralds!  go forward proclaiming:

Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

I read this and smiled to myself.  "To publish pamphlets and papers.."  How appropriate, I thought.  And then I wrote my pamphlet.  It flowed out of me.  I wrote it in one sitting.  The pamphlet started with the above verse.  Whereas I had struggled for two weeks previously, it was like I knew what to write.  I believe to this day that it was the spirit of my calling, the calling of a Seventy, that came upon me.

That night, I sat down to Sunday dinner and shared with my family the experience that I had writing the pamphlet.

"The hymn said, 'To publish pamphlets and papers by sea and by land'," I said.  "I just thought that was kind of appropriate since I am writing a pamphlet."

My brother frowned at me.  "That hymn does not say 'publish pamphlets and papers'.  It says: 'To publish glad tidings'."

"No, it doesn't," I retorted.  "It says pamphlets and papers.  I read it."

After arguing about it for a while, we went and got the hymn book and turned to that particular hymn.  Sure enough, it said:

To publish glad tidings by sea and by land

I stared in disbelief.  "I saw it.  I read it.  It said pamphlets."

My brother smiled at me.  "I think you just had a vision."

So over the course of the next couple of weeks, I typed this pamphlet.  Then we printed it out en masse and got ready to distribute it.  Next time, I will discuss what happened when we started handing these out, which is a very interesting story.

Subsequently, this pamphlet became the first issue of "Truth Never Changes" magazine, several issues of which you can find here.

My Badge of Honor

This is how I wound up not going on a mission for the LDS Church...

From the time I was young, I was told that I had a mission to perform in my life, a purpose for coming into this world.  Everyone who is raised Mormon is told that they have a mission - a special something that only they can perform, something that you agreed to accomplish before you even came to this world.

It is like serving a mission for the Church, and I had been told to prepare from the time I was young to go on a mission.  I had the change jar that held my coins that were the start of my missionary fund.

But the mission I am talking about is a bit different.  It is more like a life mission.  And it is up to you to find out what that mission is.  The LDS Church provides certain tools for you to find out.  For instance, when you are maybe in your early teens, you can go to the stake patriarch.  The patriarch is someone who is given special authority to give blessings called "patriarchal blessings" that can serve as a map, offer clues for one to discover their true purpose in life.

I had been told since I was a child that I had a special mission to perform.  My parents were done having kids before I came along.  They had some sort of spiritual experience that convinced them that I should be born.  To this day, I still don't know what it was; they never told me.

But I was told that I had a special mission.  I needed to prepare for it, or it would be given to someone else.

Throughout my entire childhood, I wondered what it could be.  At around 6 years-old, I became convinced that it would have something to do with plural marriage.  On a trip to Phoenix, my father had stopped with the family to see my Uncle Vergel Jessop in Colorado City, the husband of several wives.  I didn't know anything about him, but, that night, they had spread out blankets on the living room floor for the children to sleep on.  I woke up at midnight when their tall, grandfather clock struck midnight.  I had a feeling come over me.  There was something special being lived in that home, and, even though I was only six, I knew that I would live it someday.

I look back to that moment with amazement, looking at the direction my life has taken.  Self-fulfilling prophecy, or not, it came true.  Of course, then, I had no clue how it would happen.

My father gave us a lot of direction.  As an adult, I am amazed at how he wasn't afraid to discuss controversial topics with his kids - at the kitchen table, in the car.  He was talking to us all the time.  (I was the only ten year-old, I'm sure, that brought up the Adam-God Doctrine in class.  I'm sure that he got in trouble over that.)

At the time, I also didn't realize what a maverick my dad was.  He was constantly in the proverbial hot water.  His local priesthood leaders were always coming to see him, and they would retreat for what seemed hours to his bedroom for private discussions.  Later, my dad told me that they were threatening him with excommunication.  And, because he didn't want to affect his family, he would always acquiesce, back down on his controversial opinions to maintain his church membership.

Afterwards, he would always stop going to church for a while, a kind of silent protest.  But he would still send his family.  One Sunday, I announced to my dad that I would not be going to church that day.

"You don't go," I pointed out.

"I tell you what," he responded.  "When you have put as much study into your religion as I have, then you can decide for yourself whether or not you can go.  But until then, you're going."

The teachings of my dad upon me were unmistakable.  As a result of his teachings, I seemed to know a lot more about Mormonism than many of the other kids I attended church with.  I remember when the Sunday School or seminary teacher would ask questions, I was often embarrassed that I was one of the only students who would know the answer, could raise my hand.  Most Mormon kids had to memorize key scriptures.  My dad made sure that I delved into the meaning of those scriptures, into the mysteries, if you will.

This doesn't mean that I was a saintly kid.  I was anything but that.  As a teen, I kind of went wild.  But the main reason - not only did I have a spiritual experience that let me know that my mission somehow involved plural marriage - I had some pretty scary spiritual experiences as well, of the opposite nature.  They scared the hell out of me.  And in my teenage logic, I figured that if I was as wild a kid as I could be, that God would be forced to withdraw my "mission" from me, and I would be left alone.  No spiritual experiences - scary, or otherwise.

It's kind of funny how we run from our destinies, but they always catch up to us.

My dad could see what was happening to me.  So he made a deal with me.  If I moved to Utah and went to college, boarding with a polygamist uncle of mine, he would help pay for my college.  I think often about this decision and how it totally shaped my life.

By this time, my dad had been excommunicated.  He got sick of backing down.  Later, he told me that he had felt called to something greater, that he had felt this call all of his life, and that he felt that this was the last time he would receive this call.  So he stood up.  This time, he didn't back down like was expected of him.  He stood up for what he believed.  My dad was the most principled man I have ever known.

Within a short time, my mother and oldest brother were excommunicated, also.  There were rumors that the bishop wanted to talk to me.  I was nervous.  This was around the age when I was ready to go on a  mission.  As the inevitable confrontation came, I told my dad that I didn't want to be excommunicated, that I would serve a mission and not say anything about what I truly believed.  My dad tried to talk to the bishop about this.  But in a way, I think I had my mind made up when I walked into the bishop's office.

It was the day before I moved to Utah.  It was a sunny September morning, and there was no one in the chapel building but me, my younger brother, and the bishop.  He sat us down and asked a total of two questions:

"Do you believe that plural marriage should be lived today?"

Me:  "Yes."

"Do you support Ezra Taft Benson as Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, and the only man on the earth who holds the keys?"

Me:  "No."

That was it.  There was nothing more to the interview.  The next day, I moved to Utah and enrolled in college.  A month later, I received the invitation to my excommunication trial, and the results of my trial - both on the same day.  I was excommunicated from the LDS Church.  I wouldn't be serving a mission.

Deep down, I knew that I had taken a stand for a greater cause.  But that doesn't mean that I didn't feel the loss of all the things I would never enjoy.  I would never receive my endowments in the temple.  I would never marry in the temple.  But what I felt the most keenly - I would never serve a mission.

Over the course of the next year, my entire family got involved with a fundamentalist Mormon group.  That is where I met Martha, and we got married shortly after being introduced.

One Sunday, I met with my family at my parents' house.  They had invited a special visitor - a man who was qualified to act as a patriarch.  I had never received a patriarchal blessing in the Church, and my father had invited this elderly man to come and give patriarchal blessings to all of us.  The man, with a very good nature, agreed to give us patriarchal blessings with the condition that my father would give us blessings of our own, saying that it was very important for father's to act in that capacity for their own families.

Before the blessings, he asked each of us to get up and speak a little bit about ourselves.  When it came time for me to speak, I told the story of my excommunication, and then I expressed regret that I had never had the chance to serve a mission for the Church.  The patriarch then interrupted my speech.

He said, "You will go on a mission.  But it won't be like the missions in the church.  It will be to all of the world, and it will be for the rest of your life."

When it came time for me to receive my blessing, he put his hands on my heads and pronounced many things upon me.  But he again reiterated that I would go on a mission to all of the world, for the rest of my life.

Within a matter of months, this old patriarch was dead.  But I always remembered his promise to me, guarding it in a special place in my heart.  I attended a religious service, and someone got up and spoke of this old patriarch and some of the things he had said while he was living.  They said that he had said that the winding-up scene will not happen until two men go into every nation and dedicate that nation for the gathering out of the elect, and the gathering out of the records.

When I heard these words, I felt chills going up and down my spine.  I knew, I KNEW that this was part of the mission that was in store for me.

Twelve years later, I stood on a beautiful hill, overlooking Auckland, New Zealand, and three of us dedicated that nation for that purpose.  So if I never visit another nation in that matter, that part of it was indeed fulfilled.

When I was excommunicated, I received two sheets of paper.  I called them by Badges of Honor.  Did I want to be excommunicated?  No, there are days when I wish that I still belonged to the LDS Church.  But the blessings and experiences I have experienced since then are far greater than anything I would have received otherwise.

In posts to come, I will talk more about my experiences as a different sort of missionary.

There is one other story that I want to tell about this old patriarch.  He told me that he had been a student of the gospel all of his life.  He had traveled to temples all over the United States and Canada to learn the mysteries of the Mormon religion.  On one occasion, he was in Washington, but he became very ill.  He picked up a hitchhiker.  He made up a bed in the back of his station wagon so that he could rest, and he asked the hitchhiker to drive him back to Utah.  The whole way from Washington to Utah, he lay in the back of this station wagon and talked with the hitchhiker.  This mysterious man seemed to have a grasp the gospel in way that was uncanny.  He taught the patriarch many things that he had never heard before.  When he got to Utah, he tried to find out who this hitchhiker was, but he was never able to find out...

Elder Jessop

It was 1963, and the morning was cool.  The snow-capped peak of the volcano Popocateptl loomed on the horizon of the town of Atlixco in Puebla, Mexico.  Two Americans walked down the street dressed in white shirts and ties.  The tags on their shirts announced that they were Mormon missionaries, and they carried their scriptures under their arms.

The younger missionary walked slightly behind the tall missionary named Elder Jessop.  The younger one had only been in Mexico for a short while and didn't really speak Spanish yet.  Elder Jessop, on the other hand, had been in Mexico for a while and spoke Spanish almost perfectly.

In the almost two years since Elder Jessop had arrived in Mexico, he had picked up the language so naturally until he spoke it like a native.  He had totally immersed himself in the culture and found himself considering himself more Mexican than American.  Hard to believe that a few years ago, he had been growing up in Los Angeles of the 1950s, a typical teenager listening to the new sounds of rock and roll.  No longer.  He preferred Mexican rancheras now.  Mexican food suited his palate.  He couldn't stand speaking in English anymore.  Was this really the same young man whose only previous experience with Mexicans was to get into fights with them in high school in L.A.?

They came to the door they were seeking - a small, humble house made of concrete.  They knocked on the door, and their prospects answered the door - the family that they had been teaching.  They were invited into the small, spartan living room.  There were two other missionaries waiting for them on a couch.  They were not dressed as the LDS missionaries, and they were Mexican.  One was older, and the other was so young that he looked like a boy.

The family was receiving lessons from the Mormon missionaries, but, at the same time, they were being taught by missionaries from the fundamentalist Mormons - Mormons that still practiced polygamy.  These two natives were remnants from the Third Convention and represented a small faction in nearby Colonia Industrial - a group of native Mexicans that refused to obey the mainstream Church when they were told to put aside their plural wives.

The family wanted to arrange a confrontation between missionaries of the LDS Church and missionaries representing the Mormon polygamists.  Elder Jessop was sure of himself and cocky.  He had right and might on his side.  He was convinced that he could show up these apostates.  In order to attend this debate, he needed to get the permission from  his Mission Home.  He was advised not to go, but the elder was afraid that if he didn't go, it would only make the Church's position look week.  He was ready to fight for the Lord.

So they took a seat opposite these other missionaries, and the debate started.  Elder Jessop argued with passion.

Perhaps the passion came from the fact that his last name was "Jessop".  His grandfather (named Moroni Jessop) had been one of the key figures in the start of the Mormon fundamentalist movement in Utah in the 1920s.  He had never really known his grandfather.  Although the Jessop family broke off and became a part of the polygamist groups that are well known today (AUB, FLDS, etc.), Elder Jessop was never a part of these.  His mother made sure that they stayed in the LDS Church.  His father had halfway sympathized, but he died with the elder was only fourteen.  Elder Jessop knew that he had polygamist relatives, but he was not allowed to talk about them.  They were a dirty secret, and he constantly observed the whispers in church about him, "Yes, he's a Jessop, but he's not one of those Jessops."

Even while on his mission in Mexico, he had encounters because of his name.  An old woman - Grandmother de Gante - in the city of Puebla had belonged to the Third Convention.  She remembered when the Salt Lake polygamists had come to Mexico.  There was an old man with the last name of "Jessop", and she assumed that this was the father of the elder.

The debate was fierce and heated.  Elder Jessop defended the position of the Church, and the fundamentalist missionaries pushed across their beliefs.  Years later, the elder would say that he really didn't remember everything they discussed.  But one event came to mind.  This is from his memoirs:

"Towards the close of the meeting, the older missionary said, "Elder, I don't know how or when, but someday you'll be with us!"  He was moved by the Spirit to say this, and I felt perplexed, wondering why the Spirit would move him to say such a thing.  I shared this experience later to my wife in our early married life."

After his mission, Elder Jessop moved to Utah to study at Brigham Young University.  He had a polygamist uncle who lived in Salt Lake.  The elder, still full of missionary zeal, set off on a quest to prove his uncle wrong.  He had access to library at BYU.  There was a restricted section with old Mormon documents and books.  You could only read these papers if you could arrange to have a professor sit across from you while you read, and you could not take the books out of the library.  In these books, he found the old teachings of the LDS Church, teachings that are no longer taught by the Church, teachings still taught by the fundamentalist Mormons.

Elder Jessop looked up from the dusty book and demanded of the professor, "Is this true?  Did they really teach this?"

The professor looked up from his own papers, "Yes, they did.  There is no question.  But they were wrong."

What ensued after that is a story in and of itself.  It was a twenty year struggle.  He was continually in trouble with the Church.  He continued studying, but he was afraid to do anything about it for fear of having his family excommunicated.  The short version is - he was eventually excommunicated, along with all of his family.  He began to have meetings at home with his wife and his children.

In 1990, he was directed to a small congregation of Mormon fundamentalists in Phoenix, Arizona.  They were all Mexican, and their meetings were in Spanish.  Elder Jessop felt at home again, in his element.

One Sunday, he was invited to a special meeting.  There would be a some of the leaders from Salt Lake in attendance.  The two visitors were too elderly men.  They brought an interpreter with them.  As the meeting commenced, Elder Jessop looked at the interpreter.  He was a thin man in his fifties, wearing a white shirt that contrasted with his dark, Indian face.  The years melted away, and Elder Jessop could see that this man was the younger missionary all those years previous in Mexico.  This man was one of those fundamentalist missionaries from all of those years ago.  The words of the heated debated came back to him, "Elder, I don't know how or when, but someday you will be one of us."

Elder Jessop could only stare in silent amazement at the events that had led him to this room.  It was as if a prophecy had been fulfilled.

It was through these events that Elder Jessop led his family into the fullness of the gospel.  His experiences as a missionary changed him and influenced all of his actions and decisions for the rest of his life.

Amniomatrix

*WARNING - GRAPHIC PICTURES BELOW - NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH*

Hello, it's the guy who is supposed to go on a full-out walk-about next year.  Except that I murdered my feet on a weekend in New York last August.

In the weeks following New York, my right foot - the foot that has given me problems for a couple of years - healed up pretty nicely.  But I still had to keep it bandaged.  It was still oozing blood slightly.

The left foot.  The left foot that gave me no problems before New York.  It just got worse and worse. My daily routine:

1)  Clean the wound.

2)  Put triple antibiotic in it.

3)  Put a gauze pad over it.

4)  Wrap it with rolled gauze.

5)  Put sock and shoe on.

6)  Pull off bloody gauze and sock at the end of the day.

It wasn't getting any better.  My foot was developing a thick callus that did not want to close up.  To make matters worse, my doctor was out of town on vacation.  He got back and took one look at my feet and scheduled the stem cell treatment - a procedure that we had been talking about for a while.

When I talked about this procedure and mention stem cells to people, they automatically assume that I will be putting dead babies in my feet.  No, these injections are called "amniomatrix".  They harvest the stem cells from discarded amniotic fluid from delivering moms.  I was surprised how often I had to explain myself, sometimes more than once to the same person.  This shows how controversial stem cell research still is.

The doctor's assistant told me to show up to the hospital.  I could eat that day, take my meds, etc.  The hospital called the day before - no food or liquids after midnight.  So I showed up that afternoon - lightheaded from not eating, hoping for some propofol.  (I no longer eschew anesthetics.)  The doctor walked in and said I didn't need any anesthesia.  He scraped out the wound and injected my wounds every centimeter with the amniomatrix.  He wrapped them and told me to stay off of my feet.

With a stack of movies and a stack of books in my room, I set out to heal my feet.  I stayed in bed as much as I could, and I got around with crutches.  After a couple of days, there was a smell like rotten meat.  It started to worry me.  Plus my foot was still draining like crazy.  I called the doctor.  He said it was normal.

Most of all, it was being down.  It reminded me too much of last year, when I was tethered to the same bed by an IV line.  It reminded me of that dark time, and everything horrible that happened afterwards.  In other words, it was a very emotional time for me.

It has been a little over a week since the procedure.  It is too soon to tell.  I would like to believe in a miracle cure.  But I have to fight my skepticism.  Hopefully my feet will be healed soon, and I will be on my way to walking this world again.

Below is my right foot, and then my left foot, before the procedure.  Hopefully, I can someday post a photo of them healed.

Empire State of Mind

When I was about twenty-four, my younger brother gave me a blessing.  He laid his hands on my head, and he made a prophecy on my behalf.  He said that someday I would go on a mission without purse or scrip.  He said that I would suffer in my health while on this mission, but that God would heal me.  He told me that - in that moment - that I would remember this blessing.

I have never forgotten it.

Back then I was twenty-four.  I was young and healthy.

Fifteen years later, I would be suffering from out-of-control diabetes, venous stasis, blood clots (DVTs), a diabetic ulcer on the bottom of my foot, endless doctor's visits and hospital stays, home nurses, IVs, etc.  I was unable to work, not really able to walk long distances, or really do much of anything.  It felt like my life was over.

This project was born of this suffering - the desire to go out and be whole.  To walk the world again.  To make a difference.  After two years of poor health and after dealing with a failed marriage, I want to do something that will give me a purpose again.

So this year, I brought my diabetes under control through diet and exercise - whatever exercise I can do with a hole in my foot.  This month alone, I have dropped ten pounds.  The wound vac came off of my foot in June, and the ulcer was totally healed.  Things were looking good.  I even went on a few trial walks.  The foot was very tender, but it seemed to be holding up.

The question in my mind - will I be able to make a journey next year without purse or scrip with my health condition??

When I planned my anniversary trip/ reverse honeymoon to New York City with my ex-wife, Temple, I had the "Without Purse or Scrip" project in mind.  In particular, I wanted to know what it would be like carrying a backpack.

It has been in the back of my mind what I will take on my journey.  I have been making an inventory list in my mind of what I will take, and what I will not take.  And this because of the Bible.  In Luke 9: 3 it says:

And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, neither staves nor scrip, neither bread, neither money; neither have two coats apiece.

My first Manhattan trip was in 2005.  The advice I was given was to travel light, since a person will do so much walking in New York.  So on my first excursion, I took a small satchel with one change of clothes and some toiletries.  But I wanted to look good for my first visit, and so I bought a new outfit, including new, shiny, black shoes.  My first day there, I walked 50 blocks.  When I took my shoes off that first night, I had blisters all over my feet.  The next day, we resorted to taking the subway instead of walking.

So the first vital lesson I learned about any journey on foot - wear shoes that are comfortable, not fashionable.

A few days before our journey to New York, I talked to Temple about my plans.  I was going to travel with the backpack I use for my laptop - but without my laptop.  I would take one change of pants, underwear, socks, three t-shirts, diabetic supplies, phone charger and wound care items for my feet.  I could take this bag as a carry-on on the plane, and carry it around easily with me around New York.  Temple bought a backpack as well.

Before the trip,  my foot was totally healed.  But I had been helping Temple move out the week before. Being mindful of my foot ulcer, I had not lifted any furniture, but I had packed and lifted many boxes.  And after Temple moved out, I helped Martha start to move into Temple's old place, as it is bigger and in better condition.  Once again, not a lot of heavy lifting, but a lot of constant activity.

One night, I took off my shoes and socks and noticed a spot of blood on my sock.  I couldn't help it.  Tears came to my eyes.  Was this never going to be over for me?  I started bandaging my foot, and I made sure that I stayed off of my feet.  But the wound kept opening up again.  I had this New York trip staring me in the face.  Should I go?  I already had tickets.  I already had a hotel room reserved.

So two nights before I left, I took some Super Glue to my wound.  It worked like a charm.  It stopped bleeding.

I went to New York with my diabetic shoes on.  In my bag, I took syringes with saline solution to clean my feet, petroleum gauze strips wrapped in foil, Q-tips, gauze pads, gauze wrap, cloth tape, and Ace wrap.  After two years, I know my wound care.

Our first day in New York, we did a ton of walking.  Using the backpack was perfect.  Temple's pack only had one strap, and she complained about that, because it was impractical to shift from shoulder to shoulder.  Of course, everyone I was with was mindful of my feet.  We took the Subway as much as possible.  We rested often on the many park benches.  But it was still a lot of walking.  My feet were very sore.  By the end of the day, I could feel something going on with my toe.

When we got back to the hotel, the moment came that I was dreading.  I took my shoes off.  The ulcer on the ball of my foot was fine, but the tape that I used to secure the gauze wrap had slipped over my fourth toe and kind of strangled it.  There was a huge blood blister on the bottom of the toe, and an ugly, purple hematoma all over the whole toe.  Temple was mortified.  There was also a huge watery blister on the bottom of my left foot.

Maybe this trip was not such a wise idea, after all...

The next day, I wrapped both feet very well, for extra padding, and I made sure that the tape would not slip around my toe.  It was still a lot of walking.  We took  the subway often, but my knees were starting to get stiff from going up and down the stairs.  In the evening, we were in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and that was the worst.  The constant standing in place while looking at art was murder on my feet and legs.  I could feel that all-to-familiar feeling of pressure as my legs and feet swelled up.

The night of the second day, I cleaned the ulcer and re-bandaged it.  Then I quietly took the shoe and sock off of the left foot.  My entire sock was covered with blood from the newly-developed blister.  I didn't want to alarm Temple, so I discreetly bandaged it and hid the bloody sock in my shoe before I went to bed.

The next morning, I had a rude surprise.  My extra pair of socks that I had packed in my bag was somehow not there.  They must not have made it into the bag.  I went to get my dirty pair of socks.  But they were missing as well.  It must have got tossed out with the laundry when housekeeping had cleaned our room the day before.  So I had one dirty sock, and one bloody sock.  There was no way that I was going to put the bloody sock back on, so it went into the trash.  With one sock on, and the other foot with no sock, Temple and I walked around Midtown on a Sunday morning, trying to find a store that sold men's socks.  No luck.  We found a women's store and bought a colorful set of women's ankle socks.  I put two socks on my left foot, and we spent our last day in New York.

At this time, I was starting to get worried.  I have had deep vein thrombosis (DVT) before, and I know what blood clots feel like.  Both of my legs were swollen.  As long as I was sitting or walking, they felt okay.  But the moment I just stood still, the feelings of pressure and pain in both legs were tremendous.  I started to wonder if I had blood clots in both legs.  I didn't show Temple, but I was very worried.  Did I kill myself coming on this trip?

We didn't do as much walking, and, in the evening, we took the train back to JFK.  Temple and I went through security.  They require you to take your shoes off.  I had a suspicion, and I waited until the last possible moment to take my shoes off.  When I did, Temple gasped.  Both of my socks were blood-soaked.  As I walked through the metal detector, I was leaving bloody footprints on the tile floor.  I was humiliated, but no one said anything.  I put my shoes right back on and walked straight to the bathroom.  In a stall, I stripped off my bloody socks, put fresh ones on, tossed the bloody ones in the garbage, and then joined Temple at out departure gate.

The flight back to Phoenix was bad.  Sitting in one position for five hours was almost unbearable. My legs were so swollen I could hardly bend them, and yet I had to jam myself into a cramped airline seat. Then, upon arriving in Phoenix, we had to make the three plus hour drive up the mountain back to our home.

By the time I got back home, I had walked all over New York, flown back to Arizona, and driven across half of the state.  As soon as I got home, I stripped out of my bloody socks and changed my bandages.  The socks, again, went into the trash can.  Then I collapsed into a feverish sort of sleep.  I had hallucinations.  I kept waking up Martha, because I could feel mice crawling all over my feet.  I just knew they were mice, and I had Martha pull back the covers to expose them.  There was nothing there, but I swore there were mice, drawn to the blood on my feet.

After two hours of sleep, I went to the ER.  I had to see if there were blood clots in my legs.  Much to my relief, an ultrasound showed that my legs were free of clots (although both of my lymph nodes were swollen).  The swelling was caused by my venous stasis.  The valves in my veins don't work properly.  Blood goes in; blood has a hard time coming out.  The ER doctor also determined that my INR was astronomical - 4.6.  Due to my history of DVTs, I have to take blood thinners for the rest of my life.  But my blood was too thin.  That was why the blisters on my feet were squirting out blood and filling up my shoes.  From the ER, I went home and slept the rest of the day.

The next day, I was so sore that I could not get out of bed.  So I stayed in bed and added up the miles we had walked in NYC.  Over the course of three days, we had walked a total of 19.6 miles.  The day after that, I went to the doctor.  He didn't have to say a word.  As I told him that I had walked all over New York, I could see the accusation of "stupid" written all over his face.  He looked at the blister on my left foot, took a scalpel and cut off a callus from the bottom of my foot the size of a small pancake.    Then he trimmed away at my right foot as well.  When I left the doctor's office, not just one, but the bottoms of both of my feet were a bloody mess.  He bandaged me up and sent me home.

I went home and propped my feet up.  I was so depressed.  I texted Temple about my whole experience at the doctor, and she answered me, "I feel bad.  I feel responsible.  If I had known this would happen, we would have never gone."

"Don't you dare, Temple," I answered.  "New York was important for us.  We needed to go on this trip.  I know that I'm going to be okay."

As I write this, it is two weeks to the day that I left for New York.  My feet have healed remarkably fast.  Within three days, the ulcer on my right foot totally healed up again, and there is a layer of tender, new skin growing on my left foot.  I am still very tender-footed.

When I left on this trip, part of my reason on going was to gauge my physical abilities for the whole "Without Purse or Scrip" project.  And I am forced to admit - New York kicked my ass.  And that is just walking around one city.  How am I going to handle hitchhiking across the country?

However, I am still going to do it.  Call me stubborn.

When I told my daughter Sophie (who is going to college for physical therapy), she told me that I needed to use the time between now and my departure to get in shape and train.  I know that the key to getting over my propensity for feet problems and diabetic ulcers is to lose weight and control my diabetes.  I will have to develop strategies that will be prevent New York from happening again.

Why am I doing it?  Part of it, I am sure, is that I refuse to admit that, at 42, my life is over.  And I also remember the blessing that I received eighteen years ago.

There has to be some sort of healing in all of this.

My failed marriage is a part of it.  For years, the purpose of my life was to represent plural marriage.  That is gone from me now.  As I watched my relationship disintegrate, I tried to find a purpose to my life, and this project came to me overnight.  So whether she realizes it or not, Temple is my muse.  It's all about her.  I will try to make something of my life.  I will live the rest of my life to make her proud of me.

Reverse Honeymoon

So I am going to talk a little bit about the breakup between Temple and I.

The first thing I will emphasize - I will not talk about specifics.  Because I love and respect Temple.  And she loves me.  I am not going to say anything that would embarrass her.  I don't blame her.  I don't accuse her.  And if anyone carries the burden of this failed marriage, it is me.  There are a ton of things I could have done better, as a husband, to prevent it from happening.

It is not about plural marriage.  It just shows that plural marriage is like any other marriage, and sometimes marriages - polygamous or monogamous - come to an end.

For many months, Temple and I slept at opposite ends of the bed.  We rarely talked, and if we did, it was to argue.  I tried to stop it, but it was like holding back the tide with your hands.  You can grasp at it it and try to prevent it.  But in the end, all you have are handfuls of foam, and the current slides around you.

She needed space, and so she took the kids to see her family out of state.  I tried my best not to call her, text her, bother her.  It was a tough two weeks, not knowing what was going on.

Martha stood by and watched all of this with concern.  She didn't know what was going on between Temple and me.  But she knew something was up.  Hell, I didn't know what was going on.  Neither did Temple.

"I don't understand what's happening," I said.

"I don't understand, either," Temple would say.

It all went back to that black time when I was in my bed with a wound vac stuck to my foot, and the IV in my arm.  That dark hour when I had dark fluids running into my veins, changing my moods, saying things to my poor wife that I could not take back.  Depression - chemically-induced, or not - does some real damage to people, and those around them.  Whatever the case, the bubble was burst, and there was no bringing it back.

Earlier in the summer, Martha had come to me and suggested that I take Temple out of town for our thirteenth anniversary.  In fact, she insisted on it.  So I secured tickets for New York City and found a room.  We have friends who live in Philly, and so I invited them along.

In the meantime, Temple called me from her getaway.  Even though she was out of state, she had secured her own house in town.  She had been talking about finding her own place in town for a while.  Living on the ranch is spartan.  There are few comforts.  "Town" is closer to her job.  And then there is the mud.  Few people realize that Arizona has a monsoon season that dumps rain nightly for about six weeks.  And when you have five miles of dirt road, rain becomes mud.  Mud, mud, and mud.  It is hard on vehicles - if you can even get out.  Temple was tired of the mud.

So she called me to tell me that she had found a new place, and that she would be moving immediately upon coming home.  I asked her a question on inspiration:

"Will I be moving with you?"

She hesitated.  "I didn't want to tell you this on the phone.  But no.  Not for now.  I need time and distance to think about things."

So she came home on a Sunday, and on Monday, her friends were loading her stuff into a trailer for her new place.  Of course, I helped.  It was strange to know what to think or how to feel.  I kind of knew what was happening.  But it was hard to process.  She moved out on the day before our thirteenth anniversary.

The next couple of weeks, I adjusted to life without Temple.  The boys went back and forth between us, between the two houses.  We were separated, and yet we had this trip coming up to New York, this anniversary celebration.  One day, she met me at the highway with the kids, and we talked about it.

"Are we still going on this trip?"

We decided to go.  I mean, it's New York.

So on Thursday, she got off work, and we drove down to Phoenix.  I had decided that I would not bring up anything negative, or talk about our separation.  I would just go and have fun.  She slept much of the way, because she was exhausted from work and from the move.  We took a red eye to JFK and took the Long Island Railroad to Manhattan.  There, at Penn Station, we met our friends.  When that shooting took place at the Empire State Building, we were one block away - on our way to the Empire State Building.

We had a great first day.  We toured the New York Public Library.  Then we went to Brooklyn Heights and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.  The Staten Island Ferry gave us a good view of the Statue of Liberty.  And we finished off a perfect day with tandoori at an Indian restaurant.

It had been a great day, and we enjoyed ourselves.  But the whole separation thing was like a monkey on our backs all day - the proverbial elephant in the room, and other animal metaphors.  When we got to our (tiny) hotel room, we sat down and talked about it.  Temple brought up several of her complaints about me over the years.  I listened to her, and they were legitimate.  Any one of them were grounds for leaving me.  I take full responsibility for our break-up.  If anyone wants to know what I did, they can contact me.  I am not hiding my fault in this.

I could see where this was going.  And I could see that nothing I was going to do or say was going to change it.  So I knew what to do.  I told her that I felt like I needed to give her a blessing.

She said something like, "Why?  So that you can 'bless' my feelings away?  So that I can get the same answer as you?"

I told her, "I don't know what I'm going to say.  I just feel like I need to give you a blessing."

And I didn't know what I was going to say.  But the minute I laid my hands on her head, I knew.  I quoted Jacob 2 from the Book of Mormon, where it talks about the daughters suffering at the hands of the men who abuse plural marriage.  And then I gave her a release.

The next morning, I woke up and thought, "Moroni, what the f*** did you just do?"

But in that moment, I knew it was right, and, in that moment, I knew it was what I had to do.

A "release" is the Mormon concept of letting a woman go from the marriage covenant.  In Mormon vernacular, there are no divorces, only "releases".  And I felt to release my wife.

Thirteen years of plural marriage ended in a small hotel room in New York City.

She started sobbing and saying that she was a failure.  I took the woman who was my wife in my arms and comforted her.  We talked for a long time that night.  I had been fasting and praying for several weeks.  Each time I fasted, the answers and thoughts that came to me did not seem to relate to what I was going through.  But as we talked, everything made sense.  The puzzle came together. 

For some reason, it was supposed to happen this way.  This experience is unfolding exactly the way it is supposed to, and it is for our own growth.

I have never understood nor loved Temple more than I did in that moment, and I know that she felt the same way.

Temple told me that she knew that I would have a claim on her in the next life, that we would be together.  We vowed to be the best of friends in this life, and to still be a family, to raise our children together.  The only difference - in this life - we will no longer live together as husband and wife.

It was a deeply spiritual experience for both of us, and it is hard to for us to make other people understand what we experienced that night.

From there, we went up to a party on the rooftop of the hotel where we were staying.  Temple was wearing her pajamas.  We ordered a round of drinks and toasted to our thirteen years and kissed beneath the bright lights of the New York skyline.

The next day, our friends must have thought we were crazy.  They kind of knew that our marriage was in trouble.  But here were Temple and me, acting like a lovesick couple on our honeymoon.  Holding hands, kissing, hugging - except that it was as friends, and no longer as lovers.  I felt such a deep connection to Temple.  We thoroughly enjoyed our last two days in New York, as well as each other's company.

I told my friends, "If you are going to break-up, this is the way to do it, right?  Holding hands and taking a trip?  A sort of reverse honeymoon to celebrate your marriage before you end it?  It's a good way to say goodbye."

On Sunday, we flew back to Phoenix, and, from there, made the three hour drive home.  Temple dropped me off at home.  I got out of the car and gave her a tight hug and whispered, "Goodbye."

Then I went into my house to Martha, who was asleep and waiting for me.  And Temple went home to her life.

I did ask her that we take about a week to think about it before we made it public.  I didn't really think that one week would change anything.  But I wanted to know that, after thirteen years, I was worth praying one last time to God and asking, "Is this really what you want?"

But in truth, both Temple and I knew that this was the right thing for both of us.  I still love her very much.  And I miss her every day.  But the understanding that we gained in New York helps me get through every day, one day at a time.

Announcement

After 13 years, Temple and I are ending our marriage. It may seem cliche, but we really love each other and are still the best of friends. We will continue raising our children together, just no longer as husband and

 wife. It is a very sad time for us, and yet I wish her the best. There are reasons for it, but I won't discuss it on a public forum. I won't tolerate people badmouthing Temple or dragging her name through the mud. There are reasons for the split, but honestly I have to take responsibility for this. If it is anyone's fault, it is mine. I will likely blog about this in coming days, but without embarrassing her. My thirteen years as a polygamist are over, and I will still defend this Principle until my dying day, as I will defend Temple. This photo was taken the evening it became final. I LOVE YOU FOREVER, TEMPLE!! ♥

Sunshine

To me, this song and video capture the spirit of going out into the world without purse or scrip - the hope that angels go with you!  I hope that you enjoy!

A True "Without Purse or Scrip" Story

This is a true story.

There were three young men, still teenagers.  Their priesthood leaders had given them a calling as missionaries.  They did not represent a church or a group, simply the presence of priesthood existing outside of the bounds of the LDS Church.

The calling they were given was an experiment of what it would be like to go out as missionaries without purse or scrip, the way they used to do in the Mormon Church.

They lived in eastern Arizona and were nestled between reservations belonging to the Hopi, the Zuni, the Navajo, and the Apache.  These three young men were called to serve the Native American peoples in this area,  or - as Mormons term them - Lamanites.  They were told not to preach to them, unless the opportunity came up.  They were to use Alma and the sons of Mosiah as an example, as taught in the Book of Mormon.  In that story, the sons of Mosiah went among the Lamanites and worked for them as servants, and, in this way, they were able to have an influence over the people.

The young men drove to the edge of White Mountain Apache Reservation and parked there and set off on foot, with no little trepidation.  They followed the highway through the ponderosa pine forest until they came to a dirt road.  After following the dirt road, the came across an old house.  There were old cars around the house, and the whole yard was choked with weeds that came up to their chests.

They knocked on the door.  An old Apache man came to the door, and the three young men introduced themselves and asked if they could clean up the yard.  They worked for most of the day clearing out weeds and garbage from the old man's house.

When they were done, they followed the dirt road deeper in the forest.  They started to notice many cars taking this road into the middle of nowhere, and so they followed the cars.  Soon, they could hear drums pounding out a rhythm through the trees.  Soon, a large gathering came into view.  Several cars were parked, and hundreds of natives were gathered.

The three young men wandered into the gathering.  It was a sunrise ceremony, and most of the community was in attendance.  They were invited in and seated at a table and served food.  They found themselves seated at a table with the heads of seven different nations.  Some had traveled from as far away as Oklahoma.

The young men stared at each other in disbelief.  Just hours ago, they had parked their car on the highway, not sure what was going to happen.  The next, they are seated at a table, eating dinner with seven chiefs.

They were given a tent.  The pow wow went on long into the night.  The next morning, they wandered back to the car and drove home, still dazed at the whole experience.

The young men were my brother and two brothers-in-law.  This story took place about eleven years ago.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico...

For most Mormons, they look to Utah for their history.

My family also looked to Mexico.  Mormons have had a rich history in Mexico.  First of all, Mexico is a conflicted nation that can't decide whether to embrace its European heritage, or its Native American roots.  It is a nation of Native Americans that is almost ashamed to be indigenous.  And yet, to Mormons, the Native American lineage is almost sacred.  We believe that Native Americans are a chosen people, of the house of Israel.

So, at the end of the 19th Century, not only did Mormons settle in northern Mexico to live polygamy.  (Yes, Mitt Romney's family.)  But the Church started an active mission throughout Mexico.  In 1910, this became interrupted by the Mexican Revolution.  All white Mormons - under the threat of death - were expelled from Mexico, back to Utah, leaving their indigenous congregations to fend for themselves.

In 1915, the town of San Marcos, Hidalgo  - 45 miles north of Mexico City - was taken over by Zapatista guerillas.  In this town was a Mormon missionary of Mexican decent named Rafael de Monroy, along with his companion were captured.  They were identified as "Mormons" by the Zapatistas.  They distrusted anything American, and Mormonism was identified as typically an American institution.

The two Mormons were detained by the soldiers and commanded to forswear their religion.  The two brave missionaries refused.  They were told to surrender their weapons.  Monroy reached into his knapsack and took out a Book of Mormon.

"This is the only weapon I need," he said.

They were told that they would be executed by a firing squad.  The missionaries asked if they could kneel and pray first.  They were allowed, and then they were offered blindfolds, which they refused.  They were shot where they were kneeling.

They are considered martyrs by many Mormons, and I grew up hearing this story.

The Revolution had driven the church authority out of Mexico, and, afterwards, the political climate as well as financial problems kept the Church out of Mexico.  In the meantime, the congregations had to govern themselves, independent of Salt Lake City, and without their influence.

When the missions were established in Mexico, it was done by white Mormons who knew the language and loved the culture.  Men like Rey L. Pratt.  The men that Utah send after the Revolution were not of the same caliber.  They were men that looked on Mexicans with disdain and refused to give the indigenous people autonomy.  It doesn't matter whether these Church leaders really viewed Mexicans this way (although I think they did).  The Mexican people felt that they were treated this way.

Twice, they entreated Salt Lake City to allow them leadership of Mexican decent.  Twice, they were denied.  On the third attempt - which they called the Third Convention - they declared themselves separate from the Mormon Church.

You can read some unique things in history books about the Third Convention.  But historians - in their attempt to revise history - neglect to mention certain things.  The Third Convention continued to live polygamy - long after the mainstream church abandoned the practice.  The Third Convention was the last bastion of plural marriage in the Mormon Church.

In 1946, the LDS Church sent ambassadors to try to woo the Third Convention back into the proverbial fold.  Men like David O. McKay and J. Rueben Clark negotiated a deal with the leaders of the Third Convention - they could return to the Church, but they must only live in public with only one wife.  Most complied, and returned to the Church.  (Some didn't, but that is a different story.)

My father, who served a mission in Mexico in 1961-63, remembered going to sacrament meetings in the LDS Church and seeing old couples with more than one wife.

When my father came into the Mexican mission, one of the heroes in his mission was a man named Benjamin Parra.  This missionary was a grandson of Rafael de Monroy, who gave his life for the sake of Mormonism.  He was also the son of the second wife of Third Convention polygamist.  He was famous, because he had over 200 baptisms under his belt.

Sometime in 1960 or 1961, Benjamin Parra and his companion were traveling by train through Mexico. A moment of inspiration fell upon him, and he stopped the train in the  middle of nowhere.  He told his confused companion that he felt impressed by the Holy Spirit that they must get off of the train.  It was 4:00 AM.  They started walking into the wilderness.  They walked over a mountain, and down into a valley.  They climbed another mountain, and another one.

There was a small village on the other side called San Andres.  The sun was just coming up.  There was a small fountain in the middle of the village, and they made their way to the fountain and started singing Mormon hymns out loud.  The curious villagers came out to listen, and the two missionaries began to preach to the village.  The preached all day.  By the end of the day, they had baptized the entire village in a canal that flowed nearby.

Nowadays, Mormon missionaries must follow a certain protocol and teach potential converts a series of classes called "lessons".  Missionaries can't baptize without following the formula, and they certainly can't baptize on a whim in this manner - with permission.  Yet this was a faith-promoting story that was told to me all through my childhood,  It was published in LDS magazines such as the Improvement Era and the Ensign.

My father told me this story several time when I was young, and he idolized Benjamin Parra as the perfect missionary,  In 1972 - at the age of 32 - Parra was placed in charge of the mission in Vera Cruz.    Three years later, he was made responsible for church real estate transactions in Mexico, and made a special representative of the Quorum of the Twelve in Mexico.

Eventually, Parra was accused of embezzling from the Church and excommunicated.  This shattered my dad's image of Benjamin Parra.  In 1997, my dad traveled to Mexico City and stopped by the Church offices at the Mexico City Temple.  He took a clerk aside who knew Benjamin Parra and asked him about the whole embezzling thing.  My dad was told that the whole thing was a lie.

Benjamin Parra might have had a knack for missionary work, but he had no talent for business.  He used to just sign the checks.  He never knew what they were used for, or what the money was being diverted to.  He was cut off for signing his name to checks that he had no clue what they were used for.

It goes back to the whole reason the Third Convention occurred in the first place.  It is no doubt that churches are businesses, and businesses are money.

What happens if you take money out of it?  What happens if you stop trying to build up the business and focus instead on spreading the good news of the gospel?  What if you made it about faith instead of numbers?

Would you have the bravery to hold up the scriptures to men who want to kill you and say, "This is the only weapon I need!"

A Hitchhiker's Guide to Polygamy

This is one of the ways that I conceived this project:

At the beginning of July, my plig van was broken.

By "plig van", I mean my 15 passenger, beat-up, old Dodge van that is the only vehicle big enough for my enormous family of two wives and eleven kids.  It had been parked for a few weeks, waiting for me to come up with enough funds to fix it.  In the meantime, we were all using my second wife Temple's Ford Taurus to get back and forth - the car upon which I had put a cow print on the hood while navigating our five miles of dirt road one night.

The way this usually worked - I would stay home with my first wife Martha on our ranch as much as possible while Temple got up early and took her car to work.  Then she would come home late.  If I needed the car, I would get a ride into town to Temple's place of work and pick up her car.  After my business was over, I would try to have her car back to her on time to go home, and somebody (like my mom) would pick me up and take me home.  It was a frustrating arrangement, but it worked in a pinch.

I have to say at this point that Temple is a very hard worker.  And at the moment I write, she is the only one working, supporting all of the family.  I have had a rough couple of years - with my health.  For the past two years, I have had a diabetic ulcer on the bottom of my foot - a gaping hole on the ball of my right foot.  The doctors had tried everything to get me to heal - three surgeries, along with several complications - DVTs (blood clots in places you don't want them), bone infections, the possibility of amputation, allergic reactions to antibiotics, crutches, IVs at home, nurses coming to my house, and deep, dark depression.  It was not a good time for me.

In June, they had finally taken the wound vac off.  The wound vac is this - you put a piece of sponge into your wound, and then you seal it all up with sticky plastic.  There is a tube coming out of the plastic that feeds into a little machine that you wear over your shoulder with a strap.  This machine sucks and sucks at your wound, creating a vacuum that provides an environment where your wound can heal.

They had pulled the wound vac off of my foot, and what was left was a tender scar on the bottom of my foot.  It was not all the way better.  But it was closed for the first time in two years.  I was ecstatic.  I had to wear special shoe that took the weight off of the ball of my foot and put it on my heel.  It was basically like wearing one clown shoe.

But I was walking!!

Walking has always been how I cleared my head.  Walking was how I gathered my thoughts.  I used to walk for miles and miles every day.  And I hadn't walked for two years.

So I picked up the car from Temple in the morning.  She made it very clear that she needed her car in the afternoon and wanted to make sure that I would have it back on time.  I went into town and ran errands.  Then I called my mother to see if she could pick me up.  No luck - she was gone.  No one else was around, either.

On the way home, I stopped by Maverick and bought Temple a big Mountain Dew (her addiction) in a 42 oz. cup, and a Coke Zero for myself.  Then I drove back to her place of work.  She came out to meet me, and I delivered her drink to her.  She asked me if I had a ride.  I lied to her and said that I did.

I didn't even know what I was doing.  It was four miles of highway to the turn-off to my house, and it was another five miles of dirt road until my house.  I got a wild hair.  This was something I hadn't done in years.  It was exciting and dangerous.

Carrying my Coke Zero, I walked out to the highway and started walking.  I stuck out my thumb.  The first car passed.  Nothing.  They didn't slow down.  The second car passed.  It was a pretty girl.  She waved at me.  But she didn't stop.  The third car was a battered Datsun.  It stopped for me.

I ran over to the car and got in.  There was trash everywhere.  The man inside was of indeterminate age - leathery tan skin, scraggly hair, bad teeth.  He looked like he was on meth.  But he stopped to give me a ride.  He told me he was on his way to Show Low - 35 miles away - for a court case.  DUI.  He hoped that he won.  That was the extent of the conversation we made.  He drove me the county road and dropped me off with an apology that he couldn't take me in all the way.

The dirt road stretched out in front of me.  It was a hot, July day, and I was sweating.  The Coke Zero was already going warm, and there wasn't much left.  I started walking.  I didn't realize how remote we live until you walk and realize that there are no cars passing at all.

Luckily, I had my bluetooth headphones and was jamming to my favorite music - the Pixies, Silversun Pickups, etc.  My feet crunched on the cinders in rhythm to the music.

It was a hot day, but far to the South, over the gentle peaks of Arizona's White Mountains, thunderheads were starting to explode over the crest of the hills.  This was the start of the summer monsoon season, and I wondered if I could make it home before any rain would come.

I started to think about my whole situation.  It had been nine months since I had even held a job.  For a while, Temple - who worked hard to provide for the family - had to drive home every day on her lunch breaks to change my IVs.  I couldn't help around the house.  I couldn't contribute.  I had to just lay there on the couch every day and watch TV until TV held no interest, or read a book until I realized that the entire day had slid by and I hadn't even read three pages.

What the fuck had happened to me??

Was this going to be the rest of my life?  I served no purpose in our family any more.  I didn't feel like I was needed by anyone.  I had always worked, always provided, always protected while my wives built a home.  Now they did everything, and I did nothing.

Not to mention the asshole that I had become.  It wasn't until later that I learned that vancomycin - the drug they had me on - can cause mood swings.  And, boy, did they swing.  My foot was better, but, during the healing process, I had managed to push away anybody that meant anything to me.

As I walked, I stopped the music, and the tears started.  I cried and I cried until the tears stopped.

And then I prayed.  I talked to God as I walked and poured my heart out about everything that I had gone through.

My foot was still tender and starting to hurt.  So I stopped and sat down for a few minutes.  An ant bit me on my ass.  So I kept walking.

I kept walking until I was so tired that I stopped thinking.

At one point, I sat down to rest my foot again, and an SUV passed by.  I was sitting at the side of the road, and so I stood up and brushed myself off.  An old man and woman stopped and asked if I was okay.  I smiled and explained that I was just walking, that I had just had surgery on my foot, and was just resting my foot.  I held up my clown shoe in demonstration.  They looked at me like I was strange and drove off.

About four miles in, I gave up.  My foot was throbbing, and I called my brother who came and picked me up and took me home.  I was hot and sweaty and took a shower before my wife got home.  She was a little angry with me when she found out I had hitchhiked/ walked home.  Not only was hitchhiking dangerous, what about my foot?

However, I was exhilarated by the experience.  After not being able to walk after two years...  It put some thoughts into my head...