Latter-day Saint Commentary from the Pacific Northwest - Rocky Mountain Sunshine Podcast

Welcome, everybody!  I am recording from the lovely town of Port Angeles, Washington where it is not hot! We are REALLY far northwest, next to Dungeness. So, Dungeness crab is to Port Angeles, what the potato is to Boise, Idaho… Maybe. I don’t know really.  I’m not that great with analogies. Haha

I had mentioned in a previous episode how it might be deceiving to continue to call my show Rocky Mountain Sunshine when I actually don’t live in the Rocky Mountains anymore.  I want to thank a listener, Craig Lybbert, who lives in Eastern Washington, for sending me an email suggesting “Soggy Mountain Sunshine” as a possible rebranding for the podcast. I love that. Haha.  I’ll keep thinking about it, but that’s not bad. Thanks, Craig. He also added that the Olympic National Park here in Port Angeles is his favorite vacation spot. Lots of people come here to vacation. It is a beautiful area.

Today I talk about seminary and a prompting that I got to reach out to an old friend.  So let’s get into it.

She’s a great kid and I’m lucky to be her dad. My son Gavin started seminary this year as well. They have to do early morning seminary at 6:45 AM. None of that cushy released time that I had in Midvale, Utah at Hillcrest High School. They do have a pretty fantastic seminary teacher though. My wife Jen has enjoyed teaching early-morning seminary for the past couple of years here in Port Angeles.  This past year has been interesting as the entire year was taught over zoom.

I had a customer, Randy Varney, who had a son, Phillip Varney, who was serving in Austria and Switzerland. The Swiss government made a law in 2010 banning foreign missionaries from the USA and other non-European Union countries. They wanted all missionaries to leave. As they were discussing this with pleas from several U.S. senators, they said that if the missionaries could prove that they had Swiss heritage, and had a theology, religious, or seminary degree, they could stay. The mission contacted Randy and they were able to quickly get the proof that they had Swiss ancestry and sent a copy of Phillip’s 4-year seminary graduation certificate.  They had no idea how important the seminary degree would be.

Do you have a sacred place? Somewhere where you can go to talk with God? We call the grove behind Joseph Smith’s family’s log cabin “sacred” because of the prayer that he offered, and his vision of God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.  Temples are sacred places. Our home can be a sacred place.

Let’s go back to 1990. Sometime in early 1990, I had gone to church, something that I was not doing very regularly at all at this point in my life.  My bishop, Moroni Whitaker asked to speak with me after church.  He invited me to go on a mission. I was not thinking about a mission much. I felt like I wasn’t really living the way I should and my 19th birthday had come and gone and I didn’t see myself going.  But his invitation got me thinking about it.

I decided that I needed to clear my head. I left Salt Lake City in my 1970 Chevy Pickup. I needed to get away. I needed to find myself. I drove south and kept looking eastward to the mountains. I knew Salt Lake fairly well, but Utah County was unexplored territory for me. I decided to take a little exit in Springville and headed east. I drove for quite some time and the road led me to the mouth of Hobble Creek Canyon.  There were no people around, and it was the solitude that I was looking for.

Hobble Creek Canyon is like no other place I had been. The mountains surround this canyon which is painted with light and dark green colors from evergreens, maple, and quaking aspen trees.  If you go there in the fall, the leaves on the maple trees turn red and the leaves of the quaking aspens turn yellow. Together with the green from the pine trees, it is breathtaking.  It’s a place to go to think, to ponder life, and search your soul. And back in 1990, it was not crowded.

I kept driving up the canyon. I started seeing ranches with horses. I thought of how nice it would be to live away from the city.  Then I came to an open gate where the paved road ended.  I ventured forward on the dirt road, now really feeling like I was leaving civilization behind. The surroundings were beautiful. Hobble Creek runs through the canyon and many trees grow close to the creek. The road runs adjacent to the creek and it is heavily wooded. Trees on either side arch over the road making a natural tunnel of leaves and branches. The road became more difficult to drive, but I was able to continue in my truck. With the deep holes and rocks, most cars would not be able to continue which meant that there was less chance of there being people where I was headed.  The river had even washed part of the road away at one point. I had the radio off. It was uncharacteristic for me. I was simply listening to the hum of my engine and the squeaks of my truck, along with the sound of the water running down the creek and the wind blowing through the aspen leaves.

I eventually came to a fork in the road. I had recently read Scott Peck’s “The Road Less traveled and decided to take the road which clearly was less traveled. The grass was growing up the two parallel tire paths, but it was obviously a road. The unused road led to the top of a hill where the road ended. I parked my truck, stepped out into the long green grass, and was inspired by the view.

Tune in to hear more!

Welcome, everybody! As usual, I recording from Port Angeles, Washington, which is not in the Rocky Mountains as the Podcast name might imply.  I started a blog called Rocky Mountain Sunshine while living in Utah in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, but we moved to Port Angeles, Washington, which still has mountains, but these are the Olympic Mountains.  I kept blogging and kept the name. I started the podcast back in November last year, and just decided to go with Rocky Mountain Sunshine. So here we are! Maybe one day I’ll change the name. Who knows.  Let me know if you have an opinion either way or if you have a suggestion for a different name.

I got a really nice message from a good friend of mine, Matt, who is a pro at Norwegian dancing, and a listener to the show. He said, “I listen to your podcast and it totally cracks me up. Also, it is better than any other LDS podcast that I have found. Do you recommend any others? The ones that I have listened to are incredibly boring.”

Well thanks Matt! That is really nice.  I of course replied, “Sadly my podcast IS the best podcast out there, so I suggest just re-listening to all of my podcasts.” haha - I’m kidding. So I’m going to talk more about this today.

He also reminded me of something that I had forgotten about. I was a counselor in the bishopric in Highland and our bishop was in the national guard so he was gone one Sunday every month. As the first counselor, in his absence, I would conduct bishopric meetings, ward councils, sacrament meetings, etc. I didn’t like sitting in the bishop’s chair when he was gone. My friend Mat wrote, “Remember how you used to sit next to the Bishop's desk and not behind the desk in Ward Council, etc. when Bishop Baker was out of town? Do you still sit next to your desk in the Bishop's office or have you tried sitting behind it? Just wondering.” haha  If you’ve picked up a bit of my humor, from the show, and get a sense of Mat’s humor, who was our Executive Secretary, and then add in our bishop and 2nd counselor. You start to see that we sat around laughing a lot more than we probably should have as a bishopric.

This also reminds me of a little prank I did on Bishop Baker.  He had gone to see Boston in concert the night before.  We had a google sheet that we shared which had our sacrament hymns and the outline for our program.  So I thought it would be funny to change all the names of the sacrament hymns to Boston Songs and see if the bishop noticed.  I was sitting there straight-faced in our bishopric meeting when Bishop Baker reviewed the program. It went something like this. “We will begin the meeting singing hymn # 275 “More than a feeling”. Sister Johnson will give the opening prayer. We will have our sacrament hymn # 304 “Peace of Mind”. We will have a talk from Brother Jones, and Sister Smith, and our closing hymn will be Hymn 85, “Don’t Look Back.”....  Long pause.  Wait.  Are these real hymns?

Tune in for the rest of the episode! 

#latterdaysaints

#latterdaysaint

#thechurchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints

Did you see the movie Twister back in 1996? Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.  Or maybe more iconic, how about The Wizard of Oz from 1939 with Judy Garland? If you’re like me, these movies made you terrified of tornados. And, well, I think that we should be.

When we moved to Highland, Utah we were excited to have a big yard. We had three daughters; Julienne was 6, Maggie had just turned 5, and Emma was almost 2. Part of the appeal of the house was a big playground in the back yard and room for a trampoline.

We bought a trampoline and my brother Nick and I spent a whole Saturday putting the thing together. It was very heavy and it had a big net that went all the way around it connected to big tall metal poles. You could not move the trampoline by yourself, and we had difficulty moving it where we wanted with just two of us. The day was almost over but the kids had a good couple of hours to jump on it. We were all excited about the trampoline. It looked really nice. It looked safe. I was tired, but it was a good day’s work and I felt like we had accomplished something my kids would enjoy for a long time.

We had the kids come inside, eat dinner, take baths, and read scriptures as a family. We did all the regular things on a Saturday night getting ready for church the next morning. Later that night a big storm came through.

Now we were new to Highland and didn’t know that Highland, Utah is known for its strong wind gusts. Highland sits at the base of American Fork Canyon. Well, this storm was a big one. I could hear the rain against our bedroom window and the wind howling. I had the thought, “I wonder how the trampoline is doing?” I turned on the floodlights to the backyard. I looked hard squinting and scanning the backyard, then I said to my wife Jen, “It’s gone!” She said, “What do you mean it’s gone?” and I said, “I can’t see it anywhere!” I got dressed and grabbed a flashlight. I went out to where the trampoline had been. Nothing was around. I looked over to the swing set and it had been smashed and toppled. I shined the flashlight all around the yard, on our roof, in the trees. The trampoline had vanished. Sticks, branches, and other things were flying through the air like in a tornado. A large piece of aluminum siding from a shed flew through the air above me and I began to think that it might not be safe for me to be out in the storm. I went out to the front yard and through rain hitting my face and blurring my vision, I could see a crumpled trampoline across the street. I crossed the street to get a closer look. As I shined the flashlight on it in unbelief, I could tell that it actually wasn’t our trampoline. It was a different color. I later found out it was our neighbor’s who lived three houses down the street. Completely puzzled, I looked around and finally gave up. It wasn’t in Kansas anymore… or at least it wasn’t in my yard. So I clicked my shoes and said, “There’s no place like home!” and went to bed.

Tune in to hear the rest!

Have you ever been asked a question about the gospel, the Church, or any of the commandments and didn’t have a good answer? Maybe you didn’t know the “why” behind it? Sometimes we are called to a calling and we wonder why. Sometimes there are aspects about the gospel to which we don’t have clear answers.

We had the missionaries over for dinner last week. These two elders both are delayed from going to their final mission destination. One is going to Japan and has a missionary tag in Japanese. The other one, fresh out of the home MTC due to Covid, is eventually heading to Toronto, Canada, Mandarin Chinese speaking. His missionary tag is in Chinese.  I have been so impressed as I’ve seen the missionaries over the past year obediently quarantine, stop visiting members and investigators, and move their efforts to Facebook, and other creative ways. Now that we are vaccinated and they are vaccinated, it is so nice to be able to have them over again and it’s always such a blessing to have the missionaries in our home. I was telling them how we don’t always know why things happen in our lives, but the Lord knows, and I suspect that there is a reason that they are here in Port Angeles, Washington.

I’ve been thinking a lot about obedience over the past few days.  When I think of obedience, I often think of Adam being questioned by an angel about building and alter and offering sacrifices.  I’m paraphrasing Moses 5, but the angel said, “Why are you doing this?” And Adam replied that he didn’t know exactly, except that God had commanded him to.  Sometimes that is all we have. We don’t know the why in every detail. 

Tune in to hear more!

Where would you travel right now if you could go anywhere?

I have been fortunate to travel a bit around the world. I have lived in Europe, in France, Holland, and England. While living there I was able to go to Germany often and have traveled to Italy.  In the U.S. I’ve lived in Utah and in Washington state. I’ve traveled quite a lot in the U.S. and have traveled internationally to Asia, traveling to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.  I do enjoy traveling, meeting people, and experiencing new cultures, foods, and seeing beautiful architecture. I love getting out and seeing how the locals live.

If I could travel anywhere though, my heart always longs to go back to France. I particularly love southern France.  I had a member of the Church in France tell me once how lucky I was to have learned the French language because it was the celestial language and we’d all speak it in heaven! She may have been right, but Elder Uchtdorf thinks German is the celestial language. As we say in French, “On vera.” or, we will see. haha

There is a place in southern France called Carcasonne. Carcassonne is one of my favorite cities in France. You are transported back to another time as you enter the walled city situated on top of a hill.

I never served there while on my mission. I think it might have been just outside of our mission boundaries or maybe we just didn’t have missionaries there. But I’ve been able to visit several times since my mission.

I love wandering the streets, walking the walls of the city, visiting shops, and peering out of the watchtowers.  It is a place I highly recommend visiting if you are traveling in the southern part of France. It’s an unforgettable place.

I served in Pau which is not very far from Carcasonne. It’s in the southern part of France, not far from the Pyrenees.   Carcassonne dates back to at least 200 B.C. and has a long history of invasions and sieges.

In the Middle Ages, Carcassonne was a major center for commerce and trade with the Middle East.  It was a tempting, prosperous, target for any invader.

Tune in to hear the rest!

#latterdaysaint

#lds

#mormon

#thechurchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints

#churchofchrist

#christian

#family

#carcassonne

#france

#latterdaysaints

Have you ever had the Spirit reprimand you? That happened to me this past week

I’ve been a little hesitant to talk about this, but I think that my experience might be helpful to others.

My stepfather passed away last week. I was not close to him and my mom was only married to him for a few years, but when when I was about 12, my mom had my brother Nick. Technically Nick is my stepbrother, but I’ve never called him that. He’s my brother. And after talking to him on the phone about his dad’s passing, I felt like I should go down to Utah to be with him during this time.

It’s a long drive down to Utah from Port Angeles, WA and I had a lot of time on my own to think.

I remembered some of the disappointment that came around that time of my life. I wanted a family. I wanted my mom to be married. I wanted my brother. I wanted us to go on vacations and do things that families did.

But there was one thing. My stepfather Nick was an alcoholic.  I realized that I was harboring some resentment and bad feelings.

Do you have an amazing family?  Me too.

Back in 1995, if you can believe it, so long ago, President Gordon B. Hinckley gave a very important talk to the women of the Church.  Jen and I had only been married for a few months. We had rented an apartment in Springville, Utah directly across from a church building. She had gone to the women’s session of General Conference, September 23, 1995.  When she came home from the meeting she told me that Pres. Hinckley had told them something very important.

When I finally was able to read it (we really didn’t have the internet at this point), I thought it was great.  I honestly didn’t see the importance.  It seemed so basic and straightforward.

I couldn’t imagine why it was necessary. But a prophet of the Lord thought it was so important, that he, the first presidency, and the quorum of the 12 apostles wrote this proclamation to the world. Now 26 years later, I can only say it was prophetic. And Jen was right. It was very important.

I wasn’t going to read it in its entirety. I was going to read a couple of parts that I had highlighted. But I’ve decided that I will read it all. It’s fairly short.

Titled, “The Family, A Proclamation to the World,” it says,

In addition to these prophets, seers, and revelators, I add my testimony to theirs, that this is of God.

Tune in to hear the rest!

Have you ever had the feeling that you’re not good enough? Not good enough as a parent? Not good enough at your job? Not good enough for the University you’re attending? Not good enough for your spouse? Not good enough for your calling?

Recently I had that thought come into my mind. I’m still a fairly newly called bishop. I was sustained and set apart back in January.

I was kind of going over all the things that I needed to do and things that I should be doing and I had this thought, “you’re not good enough to be bishop”

I was kind of surprised, and then started thinking of why that was right, and then I had the thought, “Where did that thought just come from?”

I remember as I was released from being a counselor in the bishopric in my ward in Highland, Utah, that the new bishop said that the first week or so it felt like Satan was going all out after him. I don’t know if he was talking about thoughts like these or what, but I can only say that this thought must have come from Satan to discourage me.

I tried to find some things on the Church’s website which might help.

There is an article from October 2018 Liahona called “What every bishop wants his ward members to Know.”

I have known very few bishops who felt they were truly “prepared” for the calling. I do know, however, that “whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies.”1 While a bishop knows he is becoming qualified, he also struggles with feeling like he is never going to do the calling well. He will do his best to give wise counsel when needed, to not offend people, and to be in tune with the Spirit, but he will still wonder at times if he is fulfilling his calling acceptably.

Tune in for the rest of the story!

In today’s episode, I talk about fear. To be clear, I am not referring to a political party or candidate.  Clearly politicians historically have used fear, but I do not specifically address that. I have talked with many people over the past year who seem to have a lot of fear. It can be a scary time. We have lived through a worldwide pandemic. But recently, I have been thinking a lot about fear and how that is not something that Satan can use against us.

He then says that we are to fear the Lord according to the scriptures.He clarifies, by saying that Elder David A. Bednar once explained, this as “righteous fear”, It’s different from the fear we are commanded to avoid. Righteous fear is instead “a deep feeling of reverence, respect, and awe for the Lord Jesus Christ,” a feeling that induces “obedience to His commandments .

So if fear of real danger and fear of God are not covered by this commandment, just what is it that we are commanded to avoid? That fear is what some psychologists call “irrational fear” or “fear of the unknown, or ”a fear of future events that will not likely occur.” This can be a kind of fear that is debilitating, sometimes paralyzing, and almost always soul- and energy-sapping.

Tune in for the rest of the show!