Sahar Qumsiyeh is the author of Peace for a Palestinian: One Woman's Story of Faith amidst War in the Holy Land where she tells of her life as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Palestine. In this interview we hear her story of converting to the LDS Church at Brigham Young University and then serving in church leadership positions when she returned to the Jerusalem Branch and also in Turkey during her graduate school. Sahar currently lives in Rexburg Idaho where she teaches Mathematics.

Episode Highlights

* 2:20 the development of her faith before joining the Church

* 4:20 What lead her to BYU

* 5:45 What she knew about Mormons before going to BYU

* 7:30 Her conversion story

* 9:30 The transition from Provo, Utah to Palestine as a member of the Church

* 12:15 Why going to Church was difficult for Sahar as a Palestinian

* 21:25 Sahar’s experience serving in the LDS Church in Turkey while she attended graduate school

* 23:15 Being in the Relief Society presidency in Turkey

* 28:00 Being called as Relief Society president in the Jerusalem Branch

* 29:30 What the Jerusalem Branch is like

* 34:00 The creation of the Bethlehem Branch

* 42:00 Serving as Primary President in the Bethlehem Branch

* 47:00 Leadership principles learned as a leader in the LDS Church

Links:

Buy Sahar's book

Kurt Francom from Leading Saints with Sahar Qumsiyeh during the interview

Interview Transcript

Kurt Francom (LS): Today I'm sitting down in downtown Salt Lake at the [00:03:30] Deseret Book headquarters with Sahar Qumsiyeh. How are you Sahar?

Sahar:  I'm doing good thank you.

LS: Awesome. Now you are not from Salt Lake. You were from the other side of the globe.

Sahar: Yeah.

LS: When people  ask you where you're from what do you tell them?

Sahar:  Palestine.

LS: Nice, And is there specific city?

Sahar:  I tell them I'm from Biet Sahour but a lot of people don't know Biet Sahour but it's right next to Bethlehem is about a five minute walk from the Church of Nativity where the Savior was born so its just down the hill.

LS: I've heard of Bethlehem [00:04:00] this is good. You're born in Jerusalem right? The reason we were together is you recently wrote a book about being a Latter-day saint in Palestine.  Obviously there's a story behind this but what led to this book actually coming to reality?

Sahar:  Well actually it started out by a very simple Relief Society Project where they encouraged us to write our personal history and I decided I'm going to write my life story. And I did. And I kept adding to it.[00:04:30] As time went by and then one of my friends is like well why don't you publish this. This is interesting because I was sending her my weekly e-mails about sneaking in to get to church and all the difficulties I was facing. She's like you have an interesting life.  You should publish this. People could be interested in my life? So I changed the format a little bit and made it look like something kind of inspirational and kind of topic base. So it's not a biography format.

LS: [00:05:00] Here it is, nice!  There is a few things I want to talk about. Obviously it's interesting you've served as early Rel...