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...