Why We Believe

Bronco Mendenhall picked his college for one reason. BYU was on the schedule, and he wanted to beat them. He got his win in Provo and lay spread-eagle on the Y. Years later, sitting at a stoplight while the radio named the coaches BYU wanted instead, a still, small prompting told him he would lead the program himself. Days later, the self-described last resort was named head coach of the only football program owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he spent 11 seasons measuring the job by something other than the scoreboard.

In this episode of Why We Believe, Bronco tells host Nathan Gwilliam how faith kept outranking football. He recalls the interview where an Apostle asked him a single question, the firesides his team held inside a prison where an inmate choir met them with hymns, and the morning LaVell Edwards knocked on his office door before sunrise. He shares the letter signed Jeff that now guides his work at Utah State, his father's farewell haka on the front lawn, and the counsel from his dad that made sense only decades later. Through it all, Bronco witnesses that borrowed light became his own testimony of Jesus Christ as he shared it, and that the reassurance of the Spirit has come each time he has asked with a broken heart and a contrite spirit.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs a reminder that testimony grows as we share it. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

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What does a behavioral economist studying retirement savings have in common with a wizard battling darkness? More than you might think. Bridget Madrian spent 25 years at Harvard Kennedy School researching how people make financial decisions. Her work shaped pension law across America and influenced hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

But at the peak of her career, she made an unexpected choice: leave Harvard and come home to BYU as the first woman dean of the Marriott School of Business. When she asked God what He wanted instead of climbing higher, everything changed. The gospel truths she discovered woven through Harry Potter spoke to her faith in ways that transformed how she sees both leadership and discipleship.

In this episode of Why We Believe, Bridget shares why she asked "What does God want?" instead of accepting advancement at Harvard. She reveals how the temple deepened her gospel understanding exponentially. And she shows how a single scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban became a profound meditation on vision, faith, and becoming who God sees us to be.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to know that choosing God's will leads to greater blessings than any worldly advancement. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

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Podcasts:

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Vince Biegel had every reason to believe football would define him. Named after Vince Lombardi and raised on a hundred-year-old family cranberry marsh in Wisconsin, he earned two-time All Big Ten honors and six NFL seasons with the Green Bay Packers, the New Orleans Saints, and the Miami Dolphins.

Then the injuries came. Seven surgeries. A roster cut by the team he grew up loving. An Achilles tear that ended his career. Somewhere in those valleys, Vince discovered that the game was never what held him together. His faith in Jesus Christ was.

Vince is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In this episode of Why We Believe, he sits down with host Nathan Gwilliam to trace how his inherited faith became his own.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs the reminder that God places us exactly where we need to be. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Read this week's story. Keep the lesson for good:

 How Seven Surgeries Taught This Former NFL Linebacker That the Savior Is Real

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Chris Crowe got a book as a breakup gift. The girl he loved wanted a temple marriage he could not give her, so she said goodbye and handed him a black paperback on her way out. He tossed it in his locker and forgot it. Months later, alone in his bedroom in Tempe, Arizona, he opened it and read Joseph Smith's account of the First Vision. There was no vision and no jolt, just a quiet certainty that it was true. That certainty led him into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has anchored his testimony for more than fifty years.

In this episode of Why We Believe, Chris tells host Nathan Gwilliam about the 36-hour fast that gave him an answer he did not want, the night he told his Catholic father he was getting baptized, and the lessons in Christlike leadership he learned playing for Coach LaVell Edwards. He also shares how his wife Elizabeth taught him to pray for confirmation instead of answers, a pattern that carried their family to Japan, Hawaii, and finally Provo. The retired BYU professor and award-winning author still knows Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs the reminder that one quiet witness of Jesus Christ can anchor a lifetime. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Read this week's story. Keep the lesson for good:

https://whywebelieve.com/blog/a-breakup-a-black-paperback-and-the-first-vision-that-anchored-a-lifetime-of-faith-1

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Podcasts:

Why We Believe: https://www.whywebelieve.com/

Podcasting Secrets: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

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Most comedy earns its laughs by tearing something down. Jenna Kim Jones built her career doing the opposite. She left Utah for New York University, landed on the staff of The Daily Show, and learned to make a room laugh without tearing people down. Her jokes stay clean because her hope is real, and that hope reaches back to her faith in Jesus Christ.

In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Jenna as she recalls the dorm where strangers put her testimony on trial, the answer of no that turned into a blessing, and the quiet fast that led a friend to baptism. She talks about motherhood, cynicism, and why she trusts that the Savior knows her by name.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs permission to laugh again and to remember that joy is a promise of the gospel. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Follow the Why We Believe Show:

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Justin Kunz's art lives in the nation's permanent record. He has designed gold coins and Congressional medals for the United States Mint, including the $100 American Liberty Gold Coin and both sides of the medal honoring the secret World War II Ghost Army. Before that, he helped build the visual world of World of Warcraft as a senior artist at Blizzard Entertainment. Today, he teaches in the illustration program at Brigham Young University. Yet the work that matters most to him is not struck in gold or rendered for millions of players. It is the face of the Savior, painted again and again on canvas, and a testimony that took root when he was a teenager willing to test a promise for himself.

In this episode of Why We Believe with host Nathan Gwilliam, Justin shares how a nightly habit of reading, prayer, and journal-keeping in seminary led to a single moment when the Spirit showed him, in an instant, every blessing his small acts of faith had already brought. He recalls a mission to frozen northern Japan where ninety percent was hardship and ten percent was joy so sweet he would do it all again. He describes waking before dawn with an unbidden image that became an award-winning painting of grief and resurrection, casting a dying friend's family into the scene of Christ raising the daughter of Jairus. Through coins, canvases, and a quiet witness among coworkers who did not share his faith, Justin shows that a gift offered back to God can make the Savior visible to anyone willing to see Him.

Loved this episode? Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to see the Savior's hand in their own gifts and trials. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

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U.S. Mint Artist Profile: https://www.usmint.gov/learn/artists/aip-justin-kunz

Corey Lindley became a CFO at 32, took a company public, ran Greater China from Hong Kong, and served as CEO of doTERRA, a company doing well over $2 billion a year. Then he walked away at the height of it. He says his faith in Jesus Christ has been the one North Star guiding every decision of his life.

In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Corey to trace that faith. Corey shares his Greek-speaking mission in New York, the young elder whose severe stutter healed after a priesthood blessing, and 18 months in the Solomon Islands that brought over 2,000 baptisms. Jesus Christ, he says, is the why behind it all.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that putting Jesus Christ first can bring more joy than any success the world offers. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Follow the Why We Believe Show:

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Kirby Heyborne is the face of a generation of Latter-day Saint film. The RM, The Best Two Years, Singles Ward, Saints and Soldiers. He has narrated more than two thousand audiobooks and won two Odyssey Awards, and today he serves as a bishop. But the applause once shook him, and he had to learn where a testimony really belongs.

In this episode of Why We Believe, Kirby tells host Nathan Gwilliam how hate mail over a film role sent him searching for solid ground, what his wife's resurrection response taught him about answering people with charity, and why the films he makes now point back to Jesus Christ. His witness is simple. Nothing matters more than the Savior.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that a testimony can rest on the Savior instead of the approval of other people. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Follow the Why We Believe Show:

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Follow Nathan Gwilliam:

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Patrick Mason has spent his career inside the hardest questions of Latter-day Saint history, the ones that shake other people's faith. He holds the Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, and he wrote the book many bishops, stake presidents, and parents now hand to members walking through doubt. But this episode is not really about his scholarship. It is about a woman at a fireside who looked him in the eyes and asked where she could go to read more, and about the years afterward when his own wife, a convert with none of his cultural baggage, kept teaching him what the gospel of Jesus Christ actually is.

In this episode of Why We Believe, Patrick shares the prayer in the MTC that became the foundation of his testimony of Jesus Christ, the fireside moment that moved him to write Planted, and what teaching devout Muslim students in Cairo and worshipping with four elderly sisters in a tiny Romanian branch taught him about the gospel and the culture that surrounds it. He talks about the mission companionship he almost let unravel, the lesson in burying weapons of war, and why he believes the Church and the family are the two schools God gives us to learn how to love. Patrick's witness is simple. Faith is a gift from God, and he has spent his life trying to honor it.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to know the difference between the gospel and the culture that surrounds it. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Follow the Why We Believe Show:

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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/

Follow Nathan Gwilliam:

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Podcasts:

Why We Believe: https://whywebelieve.com/

Podcasting Secrets: https://podcastingsecrets.com/

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Faculty Profile: https://artsci.usu.edu/history-cultures-ideas/history/directory/patrick-mason

Podcast:

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