Episode #215: Deepening Our Faith In The Restored Gospel Of Jesus Christ W/Trina Boice

0:14 How you doing? Great. How are you doing? I'm doing awesome. I'll tell you what. I am so glad that I got your e-mail because as you and I talked about this and and you told me what we were going to talk about, I kind of did just some preliminary research and boy is this fascinating. So thank you for being here. I think so. And so I'm so thrilled that you think so too. I could talk all day long and your viewers and your listeners should know you and I have been talking for I don't know how the last 40 minutes, just we could talk all day long about so many things. You're such a fun guys. Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate that. And look, I, I just run a microphone.

0:56 It's folks like you that make this thing go. So you're, I think you're pretty great yourself. So you know, real quick before we get in to talk about what we're going to talk about today, I want to find out a little bit about you first. Are you OK with that? Yes, but you have a big announcement. Did you want to make the announcement? What's happening in your life right now as of? Oh, yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Look, everybody knows I'm pretty prolific when it comes to social media and especially stuff like this because quite frankly, these are things that don't happen every day. And gosh, I'm just super proud of that kid. So I'm, I'm excited. I really do appreciate it.

1:36 And, you know, to go along with that, I want to say, you know, he's already way better looking than I am. So that's another reason I can be proud, proud of him. No, I'm super excited. So I'll, I'll tell you what, there's quite an age gap between my twins who are 19 and this baby that we, that we just had. And man, it's, it's just been such an emotional, I don't want to say roller coaster, but just kind of an emotional high. I I'll tell you what, I I probably wept for three days as I held that little boy and, and talk about making my mascara run. It was rough. I I was, I was tearing up every time I turned around just as I was holding them.

2:22 For your for your 19 year old twins, you have. And maybe they've already done this because you're out in Missouri, you're close to Ohio. Have they been to the International Twins Days festival in Twinsburg, OH? There's such a thing. Yes, I so I have an identical twin sister and my twin sister married a twin. He has a fraternal twin sister. And so the four of us wore a little matchy outfits and went to this big twins festival. It was hilarious and awesome. And so your twins need to experience it because it kind of feels like you're part of this special little club. And they had triplets and even some quads. When we went, there were 3000 twins, triplets and quads there and it was so much fun.

3:10 And these science companies come out and they give you cash prizes and other gifts to answer questions and smell things and, you know, do little. I was not going to say science experiments on us, but, you know, other than smelling and tasting things. And they would ask us questions. And anyway, it was super fun. And they have twin entertainment and twin food and twin everything. And then twin parade and a twin cocktail party and a twin everybody. All the twins stay in the same hotel. And it's just a visual delight. I almost peed my pants. It was so funny to just see, you know, all of these matching pairs and people don't just wear matching outfits, but they were matching costumes.

3:52 It's a whole thing. You, you, they need to experience it. It's super fun. See, I'm a very practical man. And when you talk about like twins who are, who are dressing the same, the only thing I can think of is that's a trap. Because I can only imagine that if, if one of my wives had a twin sister and they were dressed the same as I walked by and maybe get a pat on a rear and I pat the wrong the wrong woman, that's going to make Thanksgiving really, really rough. You're going to laugh because that actually happened on my twin sister's wedding day, in the temple no less.

4:32 Her husband walked up to me. I was, to give him credit, I was wearing her coat for some reason. I don't know why. But anyway, he walked up to me, put his arm around me, just started to lean in and I went whoa. And we are identical, but obviously our husbands can tell us apart. But in that moment, you know, he has never lived that down. I mean, we do. I mean, we are identical, but you know, anyway, so but he's made that mistake since his wedding day. I'm trying to think if I don't think he has, but it's true because our grandbabies now will look at both of us. If we're together.

5:13 They'll look and they're like so confused, you know, it's really cute. Awesome, so so were you raised LDS? I was, I was raised by inactive parents, so they took us to church. I was just telling my daughter-in-law this the other day and she was so fascinated. They basically dropped us off at the church. They knew it was good for us. My father was raised as a member of the church, but he was never super active. And then my mother joined the church, but she was never super active. And so I, I think that they, they saw truth that was there and they wanted us to go and, and get a good religious foundation. And what's interesting is all two of my sisters and ME3 girls, all of us served full time missions. We were all in, we all graduated from BYU. And those were things that neither of my parents did. They, sadly, they divorced and remarried different people. And so I have a brother who's not a member of the church, but the three of us, yeah, the three girls, we're still all in. And yeah, it's been interesting because I think growing up that way, it caused us to really think about what we were being taught, you know, because we saw things that made sense to us, but our parents didn't necessarily live accordingly. Do you know what I mean?

6:45 And so we had to decide early on, you know, did we? Did we believe this or not? And, and I think that made us pretty pretty all in pretty valiant, you know that we we bought it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because mom and dad probably aren't necessarily like, like I used to have to deal with my kids, right? Like, hey, get up, come on, get your brush your teeth, get your stuff together. It's it's time to go to church, right? You probably, you probably as a young adult have it pretty, have it pretty well wrapped around in your mind that hey, if this is what I want to do, I'm going to have to be a self starter in it, right? Yeah, that's true. And you know that way as well.

7:28 I mean, you had to figure out what you believed in and out of the church and even, you know, with what you're doing right now. What parts do I believe? What parts don't die? Where am I going to be all in and where am I still questioning? Everybody still has doubts and questions as things new policies come up in the church. You know, that kind of thing. You said you served a mission. I did. I went to where'd? You go. The Spain Madrid Mission. Really. Yeah. How? Was that sister? It was amazing. Of course, I loved it. I had been to Spain before with the BYU study abroad program, so when I got my calling, I was kind of disappointed. I wanted to go someplace new and different. I wanted to go to Japan and learn a different language. And Heavenly Father made it very clear. I could hear him saying, Trina, this is not a travel and tourism gig.

8:26 You know, you're you are needed in Spain. And I have to tell you so many times, it was unmistakable to me through experiences and conversations that I had that I absolutely was supposed to go to Spain. I loved it. It was interesting too, because as a study abroad exchange student type of thing with BYU, you know, I saw a touristy side of Spain, a fun, you know, just vacation type of Spain. And then when I went back as a missionary, I saw the real Spain and I love them both for sure. So my twin sister served her mission in Colombia, the country, and then my older sister, she served in Costa Rica and Panama. And so we all, you know, whatever, we don't want everybody to know what we're saying. For years we would speak in Spanish, but with a little bit different accents.

9:23 But two of my sons served Spanish speaking missions. One went to Nicaragua and one went to Argentina. Again, very different accents. And now we can't talk in front of them because now they know what we're saying. So we're like, we need new languages. So we've been learning, trying to learn different languages that we can speak, you know, whatever we speak in Spanish. My brother-in-law, the one that's married to my twin, he's always just like, I know you're talking about me because you're speaking Spanish. And we're like, no, we legitimately might not be, you know, we're just practicing Spanish. Oh, that's great. That's great. And so then you get home from BYU and what's next? You get married.

10:04 Like what happens from there? Yeah, well, I graduated from BYU 1st and then went on a mission. My dad, bless his heart, I'm so grateful to him. He was adamant that his three daughters absolutely get a degree before they did anything else. Whether it's a mission or a marriage or, you know, good things, he said you've got to get that degree. And I'm so grateful because I remember being a young girl, little girl, and he would say, you don't know if you're ever going to get married. You need to have a degree and it's some education and experience to be able to support yourself.

10:45 And we were like, well, that makes sense. And then he said, and even if you did get married, you don't know, maybe your husband would die. And you still need to be able to support you and maybe the kids that might now be in your life, you know, your children or you don't know, maybe your if you get married, maybe he'll lose his job. And all of that made logical sense to all of us. And so we were like, OK, that sounds like a plan. And what was fascinating is all of those things actually happened to US. One husband did die, one did lose his job. My older sister didn't marry until she was later in her 30s. And I just thought, I'm so grateful for a wise father.

11:26 But what makes me laugh is he always said, well, I never said I was paying for all that education. So all three of my sisters have doctoral. I mean, like the three girls, two sisters plus me, we all have doctoral degrees. That's when he was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. I just said I'd pay for the bachelor's. That was it. But he had drilled that into our head so much that we all had doctoral degrees. We've all taught at the university level for many years. And then my brother who came along later when my, after my parents divorced with my mom and, or my stepmom and my father, he is, he earned a joint JD, MB A. So he has a law degree.

12:06 He's actually an attorney for Facebook. And again, my dad was like, I'm not paying for anything like that. But we were like, Hey, we, we believe that education is important. So all my kids just had such a nerd because I love school. I would keep going to school if somebody would pay for it. Nice. You know, you may have to give me your brother in law's number just in case I ever get put in Facebook jail again and see if you can't spring me. I'm just kidding. You know, back to women and being educated. I think people forget that there's a rich history of that in Mormonism.

12:48 That's not a new thing. Brigham was really telling some of the sisters early on, go back east, get educated, become doctors, then come back West and practice. It's it's not something that as Mormons, I think we necessarily struggle with as say some of our our sectarian Christian brothers and sisters do. Right. So there seems to be more latitude given to to women in the latter day St. Tradition then historically had been available in other Christian centered things. Yeah, especially educating your women because the mother's educating the children and their. Friends, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

13:29 And I had so many girlfriends growing up who years later, we reconnected and they always said, wow, I remember you talking about going to college when we were in elementary school, you know, and they said we didn't, I didn't have a father that or a mother for that matter, that told me to go to college. So I never did, you know. And again, I'm just so grateful for a father that really pushed education. And I remember when he got his MB, AI was maybe 6 years old. And I remember going to his graduation and that visual had such an impact on me. And I remember at some point asking, what's the most education you can get? Because I want to do that.

14:10 And somebody must have told me, oh, you know, earn a doctoral degree. And I'm like, I want to do that. And so that was my goal from just such a young age. Got you. What'd you get doctored in? All my degrees are just in totally different fields because I love variety. So my doctoral degree is in management and leadership with a concentration in higher education. And then my I've got a couple of masters in Health Administration and community Wellness promotion. And then I have a couple of bachelor's degrees, 1 is in international relations and 1 is in Spanish. In fact, I earned that degree in Spanish before I went on my mission to Spain.

14:53 And even still, I remember, and I'd been to Spain and I remember struggling in the beginning, like I've got a stinking degree in Spanish. And I don't understand what you just said to me, but I learned quickly obviously. Yeah, that is impressive. And look, I always get people on the podcast who are way smarter than me, but then there are certain people who I have on, like yourself, who have, you know, multiple master's degrees and a doctorate. And I'm like, yeah, I'm a bum, but no good. Good for you for getting that level of education. I think that's just absolutely awesome that you were able to do that. So you said you taught at the university level. Where'd you teach and what'd you teach? Yeah.

15:37 Well, I taught at a bunch of different colleges. Right now I'm teaching at BYU Idaho campus online and I've been with them for about 15 years. And and it's so wonderful because I love being able to talk about academic subjects with the gospel lens, right? Because that's who we are. We live the gospel of Jesus Christ. And to tell somebody or have somebody tell you no, but you can't talk about that, you know, it's stifling. But I do teach at another college, also online, but it's in Tennessee. Awesome. All right, well, let's let's dig into these two books that that we want to talk about because I'm super excited to get to these.

16:21 So what's the, what's the first one we're going to look at Trina. Well, the first one, the both of these are a lot about Israel, Jerusalem, Judaism, some Hebrew. So we'll see how much we can get to. So the first one, I did a bunch of other books for Cedar Fort, but I had gone to Israel for the first time and wasn't planning on writing books. And now I've written too about Israel and all of that. Let's see, Can you see that without it being backwards? Absolutely, via Dolorosa. Yeah, it's called Via Dolorosa, Christ's path to the cross.

17:03 So Via Dolorosa is Latin, but it also is in Spanish, which means the painful path or the sorrowing path. And what it refers to is the actual path in Jerusalem where Jesus walked from condemnation. You know, Pontius Pilate's praetorium, where he was condemned to be crucified, and then the path that Jesus walked through Jerusalem, through those city streets to where he was crucified. And so that's what they call it, the Via Dolorosa. And you can go to Jerusalem today and they have a specific path that you walk. There are signs and markers along what they call stations, like a stop.

17:49 So there are 14 stops or stations where certain things happened. Now, the controversial thing about these stations is, are they legit? So there are historians and archaeologists and Scripture scholars who have, you know, continued to excavate and study Jerusalem to see can we really verify some of these locations? So over the centuries, the Catholic Church predominantly was the one, the ones that identified it. So Constantine's mother became Christian and wanted to find out where are the actual spots. So she went to Jerusalem and long before Google and AI and you know all of that, obviously she did the best research that she knew how, and she was pretty confident that she had identified certain places along this path. And so traditionally in the Christian world, people would go on pilgrimages to walk this path. And you can see today, people will often be carrying big crosses or holding little crosses, singing hymns along the way, stopping at each station, reading scriptures, reflecting on those things that we do know happened in the Bible. And then at there was at one point, some Christians were like, wait a second, not all of

19:21 these stations are actually in the Bible. And so the Roman Catholic Church said, OK, you're right. So there are 9 official stations that we can point to scriptures in the Bible and say we know this happened and we think it might be here. And then there are a few other stations that are kind of more traditions, legends, slash myths. But regardless on whether or not you're standing in the exact spot, it's just a wonderful, sobering, very spiritual experience to walk that path and to think of the Savior and what he did for us through his atoning sacrifice and those last brutal hours that he was willing to go through for us to pay the price of our sin sins so that we could repent and be forgiven and washed clean.

20:19 You know, it's, it's really neat. And so I started writing this book. When the prophets, the President Nelson, I don't know if you could see my screen, I just got a little pop up, Let me get rid of that. President Nelson encouraged members of the church to make a bigger deal out of Easter because we go all out for Christmas and rightly so. I mean, Christmas is amazing and it should be celebrated, but the whole value of Christmas is that Easter happened, right? And so I thought, well, this would be a really neat book to write because members of our church don't really know about this tradition, the Via Dolorosa, so many other Christian denominations do. And you see them all over Jerusalem singing hymns in different languages and you know all of that. It's so wonderful, but in our Mormon culture, we don't really talk about it and we don't make a big trip, you know, like a big pilgrimage like other Christians do. And so I thought, I want to introduce this because it it is so valuable to be able to reflect on the Savior and what he experienced.

21:38 And so I wrote the book kind of to help families think about each of those stations and maybe a week or two leading up to Easter, maybe read those chapters. And it has scriptures that go with it and quotes and even activities that you can do to learn about what happened at that station and how we can incorporate those lessons into our life, or at least be more grateful on a profound level of what Jesus Christ went through. And of course, the last station is the crucifix or the, the, the crucifixion and the burial.

22:19 It's all inside this massive church right now. The last several stations are in this huge church building, which has been built on top of other churches over and over the centuries. But it doesn't tell the final story because the end of the story is that Jesus was resurrected, right? So, yeah, so there are some who believe that Jesus Christ was buried in the same tomb right where this church is built. It's called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and it's just massive. And yet there are others who believe that it was Golgotha and the Garden Tomb, which is another part of Jerusalem, the Old City of Jerusalem. And again, you know, I visited both and I, I couldn't tell you because I've heard arguments for and against both locations. But again, it doesn't matter because it, what both locations do is force me to think about the savior in unique ways and to reflect on what happened, you know, in at either that location or whatever the real location was. You know what I mean?

23:33 No, I know what you mean. Let me ask you this question real quick. You made an interesting statement and it's something that I I've seen and, and excuse me, I've seen this kind of, of, of being ubiquitous across Mormonism, right? Whether that's the mainstream church, whether that's the fundamentalist, it's this idea that we, we don't give Easter a resurrection day. It's due, right? We, we don't put it in its proper place or maybe celebrate it as much as we do, like Christmas or something like that. I'm just kind of curious to get your opinion on why do you think that is? Possibly because everybody loves to celebrate a birth. I mean, you just had a new birth in your family and it's joyous and wonderful and fun to talk about and celebrate, but who wants to talk about crucifixion and how brutal and horrific these last few hours were that included torture and blood and you know, of thorns on the saviors head and blood drippy. I mean, it's awful.

24:48 And so I think that generally Mormons like to think of Jesus as the resurrected Christ, which of course he is, because that's happy he's alive, it's good. And we don't want to dwell on all of the just awful stuff that he went through. I. Think. Your children, you know? Yeah. You know what it is? I, I, I've always said if someone was to sit down and actually create a movie of the Bible, I mean, a, a, a true to the narrative, that thing's probably going to get an R rating. I hate to break it to people right, but like, it is a serious book. Sometimes I think we tend to look at the scriptures and perhaps we like to focus a little bit too much on the shiny happy parts, right?

25:40 Which is good. That's, that's what it's there for. We, we should get it, you know, we should get that, that feeling from studying the scriptures, but I don't think we give it its total due and pay attention to the parts that maybe we should pay attention to a little more. And, and this ties in, I think real heavily with the, with what the Savior had to endure right in the Scriptures. It shows us this, it's a brutal part of the Bible in terms of what he had to endure, which was a lot. But I think, I think those are the verses that that I think we really need to pay attention to those painful verses, if you will, that we need to pay attention to because I think it's probably pretty true that that most of humanity learns a lot more from their failures than they do their successes.

26:31 Now, I'm not saying that the the savior failed. That's not what I'm saying. But there there's for sure parts of the scripture where we see people fail. And if we just brush over the difficult parts and and look, nobody likes to, nobody likes to dwell on horrible things, but that doesn't mean that there's still not some lessons that can be extracted from that. Just like when we extract lessons from our own lives based off of our own trials and our own tribulations. I don't know about you, but many of my greatest spiritual insights came during a time where I am stretched thin. And because of being stretched like that, my perception changes and I discover more truths.

27:13 And that only comes through real growth. And oftentimes, whether it's at the gym or in your spiritual walk, you're only going to grow through pain and, and through a little bit of anguish, you're. 100% right. It's those moments that drive you to your knees with despair, that you finally appreciate how valuable hope is and that that hope comes through Jesus Christ. It's those horrible moments where you suffer and that you finally gain insight there. In fact, there was a moment on my mission. I was in one particular area in Spain and it was, it was a beautiful area. There were lots of green rolling hills, which I know doesn't sound Spanish.

28:02 When people, especially Americans, think of Spain, we think of South southern Spain dry more like Southern California versus Northern California, right? More dry and touristy and sunny and Northern California and northern Spain are were almost like Scotland with green rolling hills and windmills and you know stuff that a lot of Americans don't even know. But anyway, it was a beautiful geographically was beautiful, but there was this dark cloud hanging over this little city and I felt it. And all of the people in that little city felt it. I've never been surrounded by so many people who felt despair and they were so depressed. And I, I just hadn't been around that before. And it got inside me.

28:53 And to top that off, I was with a companion who hated Americans. The first thing she said to me was, you're American. You Americans have made me suffer. I'm like, what? And so it was not the, you know, the happy, fun companionship that I had with all of my other companions. But anyway, it was really weird. And she was the senior companion at the time. And so she wanted to spend time with people that were really not progressing, that we're not going to be moving toward baptism or even wanting to learn more. And I felt like it was a waste of time. And I was so frustrated anyway. And on and on.

29:33 I had never felt despair until that time. And not to say my life was easy because I lived through my parents divorce and that was awful. But spiritually, you know, I just was like, what is happening here? And so I remember going to a little district meeting and my sweet little district missionary elder, he said, you know, hermana, which means sister, He's like sister, you know what, what's going on? You don't seem like yourself. And I said, oh, I'm fine. You know, he's like, no, what's going on? And so I'm like, OK, you know, it's a mom. I'm telling him, you know how I'm feeling. And he says, huh, that is so interesting and thank you.

30:16 I'm so glad that you've had to go through that. And I'm like, what? And he says, no, thank you for sharing that with me because I didn't understand why I was going through something very similar until just now. The fact that I can relate to you and know how you're feeling helps me to be a better servant, to be able to help you more because I can truly empathize with what you're feeling. And all of a sudden, both of us were like, that's why Christ had to suffer so that he could sucker us, right? So that he, he truly knew our thoughts and our feelings, which is what led him to bleed from every pore that I can't even imagine that kind of suffering that your, your soul and your body are crying out physically in blood.

31:15 Not to get all graphic, but, you know, it was at that moment that I thought that's the value of going through some of those things. And he said not to brag or anything. He said, but maybe someday I'll be a Bishop and I'll have married couples coming to me who aren't getting along or I'll have, you know, other situations where people are struggling and I'll know what that feels like. And I'll be able to cry with them and, and hopefully help them. And I was just like, OK, I get it now. And I don't know that I really fully got that until that moment. So I think that that those struggles, those challenges are incredibly purposeful in our lives, even though we don't want to do it. I I would never wish all those horrible moments on anybody, but they're what bring us to our knees and they're what bring us humility and hopefully lead us to Christ, right? Absolutely.

32:10 And you, you know, you brought up another good point here, which is you were able to share your experience with that district leader. Let's look at Jonah, right? Jonah on the surface as a natural man probably wouldn't be super happy that he was known from running from God and getting swallowed by a whale, probably not what he was thinking. So I think as people, especially as men, men are, are doubly this way. We're like, no, we're good, we got this. I'm fine, I have no issues. We're good, let's carry on. But I think we, we do, we do a, we do a good service.

32:53 We don't do a good service in doing that. And this is something that I've had to think about myself a little bit, right? If I don't share what I go through with people who ask or people who are close to me, or, you know, if I'm only bearing testimony of the shiny happy things with, with how I, I got there and, and excuse me, not how I got there. Am I being as effective as I could, could be and ministering to other people? I'm not saying just always spill your guts, but let people in a little bit. Let them see what you're going through because it's out of that suffering that we find a lot of beauty. It's I call it the Facebook paradox, right? You go on to Facebook and everybody is having their best day ever, but you never see what it takes to get there, right? Like the mom, the young mother who looks like she's got her crap together.

33:56 She's, she's just got her two hour gym session done. She's, you know, her house is always put together. What everybody else doesn't see, however, is how she got there and, and the truthfulness of, of how she gets to that moment is going to look a lot different. It's not going to show her yelling at her kids to pick up the house, right? Or show her waking up in the morning and just being disheveled. Everybody's having their best day on Facebook all the time. And I think it's important that we, we recognize that. So there's value in sharing what, what you're going through, even the parts that are hard. I think scripture really illustrates that for us in, in Christ life and in other places to show us that it's OK to do this. And for a while I, I, I really closed off from that because I didn't want to, to show any of my weaknesses. I thought that, I thought in Mosiah, where we're kind of commanded to do that right, that, that we got to be willing to mourn with those that mourn.

35:05 And I I think that that that's the point it's trying to illustrate. I think you make an excellent point that we were placed here on this earth alone. I mean, we could have been, you know, here, live, live your life alone. We'd all do pretty well, you know, But the goal was to have us be together to help each other, to learn how to help each other because eternity isn't, you know, you're not going to be alone. It's it's a family affair. It's a, a community affair. You know, we are commanded to fellowship one another. Anyway, I think that that's a really good point.

35:47 Thank you for making that. So real quick, do you want, I, I don't want you to give away the whole book because outside of consecration in United Order, I'm a pretty big fan of capitalism. I, I think it's done wonders for, for humanity in general. So I, I want people to go buy the book. However, I would, if you wouldn't mind, maybe I'd like you to share maybe one or two of your favorite insights from the book. From this book. Yes. This one, here's an insight not new to me, but it might be new to somebody listening as you go. Have you been to Jerusalem, by the way? I have not.

36:30 It's on my short list, but but and and I got to get that done or else I'm I'm never going to get there because things keep getting dicey in that region of the world. I know. So way back when I was an undergrad at BYU, my twin sister and I signed up to do BYU study abroad and it got cancelled because there was terrorism going on. And the next year we tried again and it got cancelled again because there was terrorism. I mean, that's kind of how it always is over there. And I just feel so grateful I was able to catch a little window of relative safety. Although like 2 days before we flew into Jerusalem, there were shots fired on Temple Mount even. And I'm like, Oh no, should we cancel? And you know, our tour guide at the time was like, now this happens all the time, but it is scary. In fact, I was going to lead a group in October to Israel and 1 by 1, all of the guests were pulling out because they're like, it's too scary.

37:29 And I'm like, pull out. I'm not going to go. I'm not going to send anybody if it's not safe. So we didn't, we cancelled the whole thing. And I'm bummed about that because I would love to go back. But what, but what I was going to say, the insight that I that I wanted to share was I've been to cathedrals and churches, synagogues, mosques all around the world. I guess I love that. I absolutely love experiencing other religions and different faiths and the architecture, language, music, all of it. I love all of that.

38:09 And so when you go to Israel or when you go in Jerusalem specifically, it's divided into four quarters. There's the Christian quarter, the Muslim quarter, the Jewish quarter, and then the Armenian quarter, which seems super random, but they were the first country really to become a Christian country. And so somehow they got their own quarter. But anyway, a lot of these stations specifically for the Via Dolorosa are maintained and run by the Roman Catholic Church, some by the Armenian Church and then a few other denominations.

38:50 But Christian denominations, including this Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is shared by the Greek Orthodox, I think it was the Armenian and the Roman Catholic Church. And they all take ownership, not legally, but ownership in that they all work together. They take turns worshipping in their certain areas of that church building itself. They take turns cleaning it. And there's this really cute a physical joke when you walk into the entrance, way up high, there's a ladder and it's just sitting kind of on a mantle going up to like another window. And I thought, well, that's super random. And later, when I researched it, the reason it's still there and it is centuries old, it's a wooden ladder, is because all of these churches have to get together and decide by policy how they're going to take care of this building physically. You know, who's going to clean it, who's going to worship at this time and who's going to light the candles and who's paying for that?

39:58 You know, and as a group, they work together. And I think that's so fantastic. But they could not agree on what should be done with this ladder. Do we put it, take it down? Do we leave it up? Who owns it? What do we? They use it for and so for lack of being able to agree that ladder is still there on that facade of the building, which I just think is really cute. But what I was going to say is a lot of members of the church, Mormons specifically, when we go in it, it's, well, how I have to say this delicately because our temples are very light and airy and white and symbolically so because those things evoke certain images and feelings and teach a certain gospel principles, right? And so in many Catholic cathedrals, they're very dark. You can often smell incense or there is incense swinging, You know, there are candles.

41:03 And it's just not the same aesthetic. And so I've heard many members of the church say, oh, I cannot feel the Holy Ghost or I can't feel the Spirit when I'm in a cathedral like that. It's dark and it feels oppressive and, you know, it's not good. And I always say, oh, contraire my prayer, you know, that was terrible French. I, I totally disagree. I have felt the spirit in all of those places along the stations. I have felt them in many other cathedrals and in synagogues and in mosques that I've been in. Because if you're looking for this spirit and you're sensitive to it and you want to feel it, the, the Spirit's, the Holy Ghost's goal mission is to testify of truth, right? And I love you because you are open to truth wherever it comes from, right?

42:04 And so I was just going to say, if you do go to Jerusalem and you end up at this final station and this church, it has all of those darker elements and the paintings and the oils and the smells and all of that. And yet it is beautiful. And there's so many lessons that you can glean by just physically being there. And before we started filming, you and I started talking about that expression that's become really popular now in Christianity. It's called holy envy. And, and you said you were familiar with that. Do you know how that expression came to be? Do you know the story behind that? I don't.

42:46 So the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was getting ready to build a temple in Stockholm, Sweden. And I've been to that temple. It's not even this big massive structure. It's very simple and very sweet. And the community around was alarmed and not sure what to expect and not sure what it meant to have a Mormon temple in their community. And so there were debates and some protesting and you know, that often happens. I I just moved from Las Vegas and we were getting ready to build our second temple. And I just thought this was hilarious. The the neighbors where this temple is going to be built protested that the lights would be too bright. And I was like, we live in Las Vegas. You realize that, right?

43:42 And that was a big argument, you know. But anyway, so it was a Swedish, Swedish Bishop who actually was the the Dean of Divinity School of Harvard at some point. But then he became a Bishop in Stockholm. And he said, oh, hold on, everybody. Do you even know all the good that can come to your community? When Mormons build a temple, they're known for service and family and love and kindness and peace. And he went on and on and said, we want that in our community. That will be a huge blessing to our community.

44:22 And then he introduced this phrase that he coined called holy envy. And he said, I have holy envy for the Mormons for all of these good things. You know, they were Boy Scouts or, you know, all the things that he listed. And then he said, but I also have holy envy for the Jews for how devout they are to the commandments. And I have holy envy to the for the Muslims for how committed they are to daily prayer five times a day, you know. And then he listed other religious groups and denominations and said, surely we can make room in our faith for admiring and respecting the good in other religions, right? And and you, my friend, are such a great example of that because as you and I were talking about earlier, you know, you are so open and willing to accept truth from wherever it comes. And so I love that.

45:17 And so maybe that was my insight as I worked on this book was I just, I sang hymns with people from other religions in Israel, where, you know, all the various sites that I went to. And and then there were people singing in other languages and they would sing and then our group would sing back to them in English. And we didn't know what the words were, but we all knew we were there to worship and celebrate Jesus Christ. And I loved that. And I just fell in love with the Jews even more by watching how they behaved in Jerusalem specifically. So if you get to go someday, try to go on a Friday, because Friday morning is where thousands of Muslims go to the Temple Mount. Two of the most sacred buildings in Islam are on the Temple Mount.

46:18 One is the Alaska Mosque and one is the Dome of the Rock. And so they fill the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem, heading to Temple Mount to pray and to worship and to do all their special Sabbath. We don't call it Sabbath, but you know their special day. And then soon as they're done, they leave. It's a mass exodus of the old city. And then the Jews pour into the Old City, and they also head to not on top of the Temple Mount because there are policies that prevent them from going.

46:59 Even as Christians, we were not allowed to open our scriptures and read them on the Temple Mount. And so anyway, so they don't go on top of the Temple Mount, but they go to the Temple wall or what they believe is the, yeah, the Western Wall. It's called the Wailing Wall sometimes. And they believe that that's the last remaining wall of the Second Temple, right? And then they begin their Shabbat, their Sabbath service. And one thing that I saw there that was just amazing to me, especially as I compared it to how people of my faith worship the Sabbath day. You know, as Mormons, we tend to be very reverent, right? The Sabbath day, it's just, you know, you're very reverent and quiet, and you sing hymns and you give serious talks at church.

47:55 You know, it's just very reverent. That's just the big word. But I saw exuberant joy at the Western Wall. It was just amazing. I don't know how much you want me to spend talking about this one experience, but it was kind of life changing for me. First of all, you see all of the Jews coming in wearing all of their fun different outfits depending on which type of Jew they are. And they're Orthodox or Hasidic. And they have different hats and hairdos and robes and black trees on their forehead, you know, prayer shawls, the whole thing, whatever it is. Oh, I think my, oh, my son just came in from the front door. And I love that because, you know, a lot of religions have something that they wear, but oftentimes they're embarrassed or shy.

48:50 Hey, honey. Oh, awesome. Thanks. I've been doing a podcast, OK? This was at. The door Oh, thanks, A little Christmas gift at my door. That's so awesome. Anyway, and they just, they pour in and they're wearing all this stuff and they're just, I love all of the outfits and they're proud and they're happy about it. And, you know, members of the church have garments that we wear and a lot of members are embarrassed or they don't wear them correctly or they don't wear them at all, you know, and I'm like, and that's underneath our clothes. Nobody even sees that. And yet the Jews are, you know, just proud to show that they are on Team God, you know, and I love that about them. And so then a bunch of teenage boys came and out like right up against the wall, people are worshipping. And then there's this massive concrete area. And so these schools, they were Jewish schools that were bringing in all these teenage boys and they had their arms around each other and they're singing and they're dancing and they're putting each other up on their shoulders and they're worshipping the Sabbath.

50:05 And I'm like, that's kind of different from the Mormon teenage boys that I know, you know, because again, we're so reverent. But they were like cheering for God and singing songs. And, you know, I didn't know everything they were saying, but I was just like, wow, that's celebrating the Sabbath. That's amazing. And then have you ever seen pictures of the Western Wall? There's like a division and so men are worshiping on one side and the women are worshiping on the other side. And so generally you walk in and but it's outdoor, so I shouldn't say you walk in, but there's kind of a little gate kind of a thing. But anyway, you walk up to the wall and then it is one of the most important things you could do as a Jew is to study the Torah.

50:58 And the Torah is the first five books of the Old Testament. We call it the Pentateuch also. And those are the commandments. And they are so faithful about not just reading the commandments, but really studying. And there's this really cool word called Haggah in Hebrew and the definition that as I studied with a rabbi, he said, it's kind of like you're tasting the scriptures. You're not just reading them, but you're you're meditating, you're ingesting them into your soul as you're pondering them and reflecting. And I love that in the Book of Mormon, we learn that we should kind of taste the scriptures as well. Feast of the Scriptures, right, is what the Book of Mormon encourages us to do.

51:53 And so there's this rocking motion because they also believe that if you're really ingesting and pondering and meditating, that your whole body is into it. And I love that imagery. And so you see the Jewish men and they're holding the Torah, they're reading it, they're rocking it. And part of that word also connotes a murmuring of saying it out loud so that your soul can hear it, but your ears can also hear the Scriptures. I mean, talk about being all in, right? The whole body and soul are engaged. And I love that. And so women are not allowed on that side.

52:35 So my twin sister and I got to travel there and so she or our husbands were hanging out with the guys, you know, with the Jews and and they have a little yamakas that you could put on your head if you don't have 1. And so I have a picture of them standing there with all of these wonderful Jewish men. And then so we went to the women's side and it's really just kind of a curtain wall kind of a thing. And the women don't have all the outfit stuff, you know, that the men have, but generally they'll wear a shawl over their heads. And we, my sister and I, brought 1 so that we could be respectful. And so, you know, we put the shawl over. And I remember as a little girl, I don't know where. It must have been, some TV show or movie or something where I saw people worshipping at the Western Wall. And I saw all the slips of paper with prayers and notes put inside the rocks.

53:30 You know what I'm talking about. I know exactly what you're talking. About yeah. And I was like, I want to do that. And so this is was a just a dream in the making. I had my little letter prepared and she and I read our letters to each other and we cried and we're like, we're here. We're finally here, you know, and so we put them in the rocks and we were just so excited. And, and then after that we kind of sat down just to kind of observe and the men, you know, you definitely see that rocking motion. And with the women, not as much. But there was this cute young girl and we called her a beehive because she looked like she was 12 or 13. Do you remember back in the church I. I remember what a beehive was.

54:17 Yeah, I had. Several daughters who were a beehive so I I get. It so 12 and 13 year old girls, right so that's what she looked like and it must have been her first time because she looked unsure of herself She kind of slowly walked up approached the wall, but she wasn't touching the wall. She was kind of standing back and she kind of kept glancing over to see if she was doing it right and I, which I thought was cute. There's no right way to do religion, you know, or, or even worship in my opinion, you know, but anyway. And so she's kind of looking around and she had some scriptures because they have them on tables for the women as well. And she kind of started rocking and again, was kind of looking around.

55:01 And then, you know, we were busy looking at other people and we kept glancing back at her. Pretty soon, she was in her rocking mode. She was in her groove. And you could tell she had forgotten that everybody else was around. She stopped looking around. She was worshipping. And it was just a sight to behold. I was so happy for her. And then a little bit later, another teenage girl showed up. And there's, this is, you know, women across the wall. It's a long space, but we were just kind of focused on these two young girls for a time because they were so fascinating to us. So this other girl was a Laurel, what we would call a Laurel, you know, 1617 year old girl.

55:44 She was wearing all white and she did not hesitate. She clearly had been there before. Well, I think she walked up to the wall and put her whole body on the wall. Her feet were touching the wall. Her, you know, her whole body was touching the wall, her hands, her face, and she just started pouring her heart out to God. And I was I, I can't even think of a good adjective to describe or how I was even, you know, feeling. I just was so overwhelmed. She was so all in and and I'm going to get all the klimt, which is a Yiddish word for teary eyed and and choked up.

56:31 She just was so all in and I thought that's what I need to be. That's what I want to be. I don't want to be looking around and making sure I'm doing religion right. I want God to know I am there with him and I believe in him and I hope in him and I'm grateful for Him and all of those things. And I just loved that moment so much and have not obviously forgotten about it. I share that story in this book and this book, both books because. It seems like that's a great segue into the second book.

57:11 But before we go to that second book, I just want to unpack a few things here because I think I think you're 100% correct that that that thing you said about how maybe some Mormons might say, well, I can't feel the spirit here, right? It it's, it's not there. Well, look, I don't know how else to say this. So I'm just going to put it bluntly. If, if you, if you, if you're someplace and you can't feel the spirit, that's kind of a you problem. Now obviously you don't want to be going into a bar or something like that, right? That would be a problem. But if, if, if you're in a a place that is a sacred site and you can't feel the Spirit, not always, but nine times out of 10, that's a you problem.

58:04 Even if the Spirit wasn't there. It's kind of our job as disciples of Christ to bring the Spirit with us. So, so kind of get yourself in that proper, proper headspace, right? That, that, that proper heart space space, spiritually speaking and, and you will feel the spear and you will get there, right? So that that's what I'd say to that. Granted, we are counseled to stand in holy places, but anywhere the grocery store could be a holy place if that's where you're feeling the Spirit or your car or whatever. But I mean, you know, of course you do want to. I mean, I wouldn't challenge anybody to go to a bar and fill the Spirit, you know? Sure, sure.

58:49 Right. There's absolutely there's reasons to that. But by and large, we hear it all the time, right? Sacrament memes are one of those things I think of a lot. You'll hear guys who go to sacrament meeting and I'll say, gosh, the the speaker didn't do a good job. Well, had you been in the right place spiritually, the spirit would have given you what you needed. But you were, you were relying on somebody else to get you to feel the spirit. That's nobody else's responsibility. That's your responsibility to put yourself into a position to where you can feel the spirit and and be able to receive that revelation you need. If you don't do that, you're just kind of signing yourself up for disaster.

59:37 You got to knock that off. That's not going to work long term. You never want to sacrifice your, your beliefs, your, your, your principles, those things that you know to be true. We never want to sacrifice that or or doctrine that we know to be true, but that doesn't mean we can't learn from other people of other faiths either. Look at sometimes I've looked at Muslims and thought, man, I should be completely serious. What would it look like if I was to try to pray five times a day, very deliberately get into the to the ceremony and ritual of prayer five times a day, even if they're not long prayers, could that help me?

1:00:18 I I don't see how praying more is ever a bad thing. In fact, I think as Mormons, we're commissioned to do that, right. Joseph Smith said that all truth belongs to Mormonism. Every bit of truth belongs to Mormonism. It's our job to go out there and gather as much of that truth as we can and incorporate it into our lives. So I see nothing wrong with that idea of being able to learn from others to your I'm not breaking any news here. We live in spiritually perilous times. It seems like danger is all around us or our family spiritually all the time. But our God hasn't left us defenseless. We read in Ephesians chapter 6 verse 17 and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. So in our spiritual battles, the scriptures are our sword. But just like real swords, not all Canon of scripture are made equal.

1:01:09 You need to make sure that you're entering the battle with the right gear. With that thought in mind, Drew Brownie and others have been working on a project to bring you what is now being called the Restored version of the Scriptures. So what is the restored version of the Scriptures? The Restored version is the most accurate, exhaustive, comfortable to read a triple combination ever made. It was designed to honor Joseph Smith's revelatory words and edits through clean and accurate Joseph approved texts. The restored version contains each book found in the modern LDS triple combination that is the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl. Great price, except it has Joseph's original inspired text and an easy to read format. It restores was the Lectures on Faith, which were removed in 1921.

1:01:54 It adds an additional 87 uncanonized revelations of Joseph Smith, as well as 33 revelations received by Brigham Young, John Taylor and Wilfred Woodruff and other members of the Quorum of the 12. Each copy of the restored version is built to last. These scriptures look good, feel comfortable, and are bound to last. The restored version uses cover material that is ideal for for high quality books that is both hard wearing and soft and should handle many years of use. It has beautiful gold and silver gilded edges. It has sturdy, flexible binding, making it so the book may comfortably and safely be laid on a desk. It has reliable paper that is very thin, yet sturdy and thick enough that it's hard to see through, and comes with marking ribbons so that you never lose your reading place. Each copy of the restored version are built with the intent of lasting for years and years, just like the LDS versions of the triple combination. You might be asking yourself, what are the benefits of owning your own copy of the restored version of the scriptures? Well, how's this for starters?

1:02:59 Number one, the spiritual significance. The restored version contains every known revelation of Joseph Smith as well as those of his first successors, the historical significance. While the foundational text for the Restored Version is the latest edition of each book of Scripture that Joseph approved, the Restored Version carefully documents through footnotes, italicized texts, every substantive change made by Joseph or his editing committee, making the Restored Version a truly original set of Scriptures. Formatting Significance The Restored Version contains no columns, no cumbersome Croft references, and no paragraph breaks at every verse just like the original, and has been improved with many verse numbers in the paragraphs, which provide a smooth, seamless reading experience that makes it easy to lose track of time while reading and makes it easier to see the large, larger narrative within the Scriptures. It is also the first original editions published that can be used with study guys, since almost all of the other originals don't have verses in it. The restored version offers a pure offers pure doctrine in the most historically transparent Mormon triple combination ever made with a modern format that provides for a smooth, seamless and spiritual read.

1:04:17 Now to get your copy today, just go to www.restoredscriptures.com or click the link in this episode show notes. Again, that is www.restoredscriptures.com or click the link in this episode show notes and order your copy today and arm you and your family with the word of God. Now let's get back to our conversation story about your observations at the Wailing Wall. Brigham Young. There was an interesting account in the Nauvoo Temple that after a temple session, they essentially got up and danced. They danced and and Mormonism is very unique in its view of of our flesh or our humanity.

1:04:59 The doctrines that come out of Mormonism says your humanity can be holy and all of its facets, right? That's why we believe in the temple. One of the covenants says you're going to bridle all of those passions because your humanity doesn't have to always be an enemy to God. You can overcome some of that that stuff in the natural man. And if you can do that, your humanity becomes holy, your relationships become holy, your appetites can become holy, your friendships can become holy, your relationships can become holy. All of those things can be an exercise in holiness.

1:05:42 And so this idea of being all in, in your worship, I don't think is necessarily out of sort that that, let me rephrase that, that everything we can do, everything we do in life can be a form of worship. Again, there's a, there's a time and place for everything. But I think even our, our vocations can be, can be holy if if viewed through the right, right lens and, and the right perspective. Yeah. And Speaking of dancing, King David danced before the Lord and the Jews adore King David.

1:06:23 I mean, Jerusalem was built by King David. And I think often times Mormons will look at King David and go, oh, he was a naughty boy. He did some bad. I mean, we're talking adultery, murder. He kind of did all the stuff. And but, and Jews know that, of course, but they're like, but that's OK because God knew his heart. Of course he repented too, but he knew his heart. And it gives me hope that if God called King David, you know, a man after his own heart, and I thought that's so sweet because he did love him with his heart. And it gives me hope that I'm completely imperfect.

1:07:04 I mean, I haven't done any of that bad stuff, you know, but that, that that God can still love me even though I'm imperfect and that we should be dancing. We should be so happy. We should be the happiest people on earth because we have the gospel of Jesus Christ in our life. And anyway, so on to this one. Can you see that one? Language of Heaven. Yeah, so the old test it's called, the subtitle is Hebrew words every Latin. This is a long one. I have to read it to remember what I called it Hebrew words every latter day St. should know to better understand the Bible, covenants and God. And so it's got the Jewish menorah on here. Obviously, it's called the language of heaven because the Old Testament was predominantly written in Hebrew. And the book's goal, my goal with the book is to teach just a few Hebrew words and their deeper meaning because it truly provides insights that I think oftentimes we just don't even know are connected with that particular word. Like the word that I told you before, when you know, it means to study the scriptures, to read the Scriptures, but no, it means so much more to ingest them, to taste them, to live them, you know, that kind of thing.

1:08:27 And so I love symbolism. I love layers and diving deep. And so as I had, I've been studying Judaism for many, many years and I just find the words to be so fascinating. Here's an example. Oh well. So hold on. I'll come back to the example here in just a second. So what the book does is offer a Hebrew word for every week of the year, plus a few extras. So if your family wanted to study one word and you know, practice using the word in your sentences in your daily life or whatever for a week, the each chapter features one word and then gives examples of the scriptures where it has that word. It uses that word and it just brings that scripture to life when you go, oh, interesting, you know, and then there are quotes and then there are stories in the Bible that perfectly illustrate the concept of that Jewish word. And then it also has a section where it shows how Latter Day Saints understand that word and even how it appears sometimes in the Book of Mormon, sometimes in the actual Jewish word, even though the Book of Mormon wasn't written in Hebrew. The Book of Mormons started with Lehi and his family and they came from Jerusalem, you know what I mean? But anyway, and then it offers

1:09:59 activity ideas on how to, you know, again, as a family, maybe incorporate those words. And then it has a little fun fact of Judaism related to that word. And I think that section is probably my favorite part just because I think it's so interesting anyway, So I'll give you an example of a word. So the word is shema. Have you ever heard that word before? Sounds familiar, but no. So Shema is a type of prayer that the Jews call it the Israel Shema prayer.

1:10:40 They pray it the first thing they do when they wake up in the morning, and then they're also supposed to pray it the last thing they do before they go to bed and if possible, the last thing they say before they die. You know, again, if that's possible. And So what it it comes from Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 through 9. And it basically, you've heard this because it's also echoed in the New Testament and it even in the Book of Mormon, which is to love God with all your heart might and soul, right? And some people even say heart, might, mind and soul.

1:11:21 But anyway, you, you know that concept, right? And so have you ever seen the TV show The Chosen? Have you ever seen that series? Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Have you seen all of the OR all of the episode or seasons so far? I have not gone through all the episodes yet. OK, so you might not have seen it, but there are two or three episodes where you see Jonathan Rumi, who plays Jesus, reciting the Shema prayer. And then there's another episode where he's reciting it with children. Or they're he, he's asking them, do you know it? Because every Jewish child learns it and memorizes it. And so they're like, yes, of course. And he said, say it, you know, share it with me. And so the children are saying it to him, which is so symbolic and so beautiful.

1:12:10 And so it's a commitment to God. It's a promise to God, saying again, I'm team God, you know, I, I hear you, I'm listening and I'm obeying. And it's, it's very sweet. And so sometimes when I, when I'm asleep and then I just start to wake up, I'll try to say it out loud or sometimes just in my mind or if I'm exhausted, sometimes I'll just say Shema. And I know Heavenly Father knows what I'm saying just again, waking up saying God, you're the man. I'm I am willing to do whatever you need me to do today. And again, you're such a great example because you said you did not want to do this podcast, but the Lord Oh at.

1:12:57 The beginning, yeah. Yeah, the Lord told you you should do this, and you did it. And it what a blessing it's been to so many people. Anyway, that's the concept of shaman. I just think how wonderful that would be if everybody woke up and the first thing on their mind was God. You know, whatever, however you see God, whatever denomination or faith, you know, religion. But if we all had that eye single to the glory of God, you know the first thing when we woke up and the last thing before we went to bed, that would. Change the world. You know, I, I was just looking this up. I think it's worth reading, right? I just read through it here as we were talking. I think it's worth reading Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 4 through 9.

1:13:42 Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is 1 Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently into thy children. And thou shalt talk of them when thou art in the house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou lie us down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes, and thou shalt write upon them upon. Excuse me. And thou shalt write upon the post of the house, and on thy gates. What this is, if I'm not mistaken, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but if I'm not mistaken, a lot of Jews, when you, when you see them go to the wall, they'll have something on their hand or a box on, on their forehead, right? Yes.

1:14:45 Well, so they have something called the phylactery, which is that little box and it is the Shema prayer inside. Sometimes they have other things as well in there and then they have it connected. You can see like leather straps that that connect this phylactery from the forehead and wrap it around the arm. And the, the imagery that I love about that is that when you're thinking about God, trying to obey God, studying the scriptures, it, it starts, you know, learning in your head, in your mind, but it doesn't end there. It's that idea of taking action. And so I love that the leather straps go down the arm. The arm historically, artistically from forever, has represented movement and power, taking action.

1:15:33 And so I love that not all Jews wear that, but that they do that. There's also something you may have seen on Jewish homes, and that's called a mezuzah. You know what that is? Yep, it's, it's, it's a place where where they stick a scroll. Is, is, is that what you're what you're kind of talking about? Yeah. And again, it could be the Shema prayer, but it also could include other scriptures. And they put it in this little, tight little scroll and they put it inside this little box. And So what they do, they were commanded again in the scriptures in the Bible to put it on their houses.

1:16:18 And so if you go to a front door and sometimes for, you know, for growing up as a young girl, I never noticed it. But then when I learned what a mezuza was later, I was like, oh, I've seen that on this house and on that house and on this building or on, of course, you know, on synagogues or whatever. And what's cute is rabbis love to debate. So the Torah is the first five books of the Old Testament, right? The Tanakh is the rest of the Old Testament. And then they have a third body of not exactly scripture, but it's called the Talmud. And it is rabbis debating, arguing, trying to decide what does this Scripture mean. And so, you know, for centuries they have all of these writings from rabbis.

1:17:05 And so some Jews will put the menorah vertically on a doorpost of their house. Some will do horizontal, but most of them will do it at a diagonal because that way they're kind of in between. They're compromising, you know, instead of straight up or straight across. You'll see it more often than not diagonal. And I don't know why that just tickles me to death. I just think that's so funny. I mean, you know, kind of compromise, I guess anyway. But I love that when you see a Jew walk out of the house, they will touch that and then, you know, to their lips when they come into the house, they'll touch it to their lips and then touch the mezuzah. And God is so much a part of their daily lives.

1:17:47 And I had told you before, I didn't want to get all political about the nation of Israel and you know all of that because that will take us in other places. But in terms of the Jewish religion, there's so much good there that we can learn from and incorporate. I'm not saying we all have to have mezuzahs, but you know, do we hang scriptures on our walls at home or have pictures of the temple or have pictures of Christ? You know, that would be maybe an equivalent. Are we praying together as a family morning when we wake up, evening before we go to bed? You know the it's the same concept, but how, how valiant are we in doing those things?

1:18:31 100% and I I have a theory. It's just my own theory, but I don't think that, that there's another religion that we may not be able to relate to more than perhaps Judaism, right. And, and I first noticed this when on, on all things. It was, it was when I was in the LDS Church and I was a young man's president and we took the young men on trek, right? And so we're, we're going up to Wyoming where, you know, going to pull those hand carts, you know, and all, all that sort of thing. And, you know, it's the typical stuff. Somebody's got blisters, someone's irritated about this or someone won't quit touching my stuff and, and all these things.

1:19:22 But it got me thinking like, OK, I, I get the why for the most part, right? And then I was thinking then we have like the 24th of July, which is a official holiday in Utah, which is great if you live in Missouri because it's just an extra day off it. But yet the banks are all still open. So I can go get whatever I need to get done. But the, it got me thinking, I was like, do other religions do this sort of a thing, right? Put themselves kind of in the place of the ancestors. Well, Judaism does a lot, right? And like if you've ever seen a Passover meal, it's interesting verbiage because it's not.

1:20:08 They say, they don't say this is what the Lord did for our ancestors. They say, this is what the Lord did for me. And then they'll explain everything that happened throughout Exodus, right? Yes. Likewise, if we look at our temple rites, we are putting ourself, especially the endowment, we are putting ourselves in the place of the ancestor. In fact, we are instructed to consider yourselves as if we were the ancestors, right? And it's through that mechanism that we will make the same covenants with God. And I find it very interesting that we have very similar parallels in in both religions.

1:20:57 Yeah, absolutely. You just said something that, oh, we were talking about the Passover. There's so much rich symbolism. And again, I think my goal for this book as a supplement for the 2026 Old Testament Study Program through the Come, Follow Me program is to help members of the church see Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. A lot of times there's a disconnect that God of the Old Testament was so mean. He was always punishing everybody, and he was just weird, you know? And yet the God of the New Testament, you know, we see Jesus Christ and he's so loving, and he taught us such good principles. And it's the same God, it's the same Savior, right? There's, I think there's such rich symbolism in the Passover and it was there all along to point the Jews to the Messiah. So when he came, they would recognize him. And some did.

1:22:03 Some obviously followed Jesus Christ and and proclaimed him the Messiah. But so many Jews missed that mark. They didn't see the symbolism. For example, their typical Shabbat dinner. Or. It is. You've got the board, a wood board which would represent the cross. You've got the loaf of bread, the hala bread, which is unique for Jewish Shabbat bread, where it's kind of a twisted, braided thing. It's really pretty and delicious too. But we know that Jesus has been referred to as the bread of life and he was born in Bethlehem, which means the House of bread. I mean, you can kind of go on and on.

1:22:44 And then part of the Shabbat is, oh, then they have usually a, like a, a linen, white linen or napkin that goes over the bread, which represents to us the shroud where Jesus was wrapped and buried in the tomb and all of that. But there are two other pieces of that Shabbat setup, and that is 2 candlesticks. And I had asked Jewish people for years, OK, I totally get the other symbolism. What's the deal with the two candlesticks? And they were always like, you know, I don't know, light is good or, you know, they would kind of grasp for things that maybe resonated with them. And I thought, OK, but there's kind of be a reason why are there 2?

1:23:32 You know, that's got to mean something because I'm always looking for meaning and symbols. And anyway, finally I talked with this Jewish rabbi that I had studied with when I was writing this book. And he's like, oh, that's because you don't just hear the word of God, you do the word of God. Again, it's the learning and studying and the taking action. And I was like, yes, I love that. That's absolutely what those two candles would be about. When you study, you get light, but when you study and take action, that brings light to others as well. Anyway, so how do we get on that tangent? I was talking about how we Mormons and and and Judaism share this idea of putting ourselves in the place of the ancestors with some of our practices. Yes, yes, you know, and there's AI keep. I don't know if you keep seeing these pop ups on your screen, but.

1:24:28 No, I do. I do not. No. Oh, good. OK, well, I got rid of that one. There's another really neat Hebrew word and it we don't really have a word for it in English. What it means is a kinsman Redeemer and how it's used is let's say your nephew owed a bunch of money and you didn't have the money and you were going to be thrown into jail because you didn't have the money to pay your debt. One of your family members, a relative who wants to help you and restore you to the position you were in before, can save you.

1:25:10 And you can think of a lot of very practical worldly adaptations, you know, you owe money or somebody goes to jail or, you know, whatever. But obviously the, the deeper symbolic meaning is the Jesus Christ is our kinsman Redeemer. He's literally our brother. He's the Son of God and we are children of God. He's our brother and he's redeeming us. He is restoring us to what we once were without sin. And I love that imagery. I mean, that one word in Hebrew says all of that that I just said. I don't.

1:25:52 I think that's really cool. I love it when other languages because I I do like to study and learn other languages when one word just has this all this connotation and meaning summed up in one word. Absolutely say 100% and, and I have a theory and it's just my own theory, but I think that, that, that there's a, there's not another religion that we may, excuse me, there's another religion that, that we may not be able to relate to more than perhaps Judaism, right. And I first noticed this when, of, of all things, I was in the LDS church and I took a group of young men when I was young men's president on Trek. And, and so we were going out into Wyoming where, you know, going to pull hand cards and, and all, all that sort of thing. And as we were doing that, of course I hear all the complaining, someone's got blisters, someone's irritated or someone won't quit touching my stuff, just go down the list, all those things.

1:27:00 But it got me thinking, OK, I get the Y for the most part, right? And then I was thinking then we have like this 24th of July celebration. But these things got me thinking it, it got me thinking, I was like, do other religions do this sort of the thing right? Put themselves in the place of their ancestors? Well, Judaism does, right? Like a lot. And I think if, if you've seen a Passover meal, it's interesting verbiage because it's they, it's not. They say, they don't say this is what the Lord did for, for our ancestors. They say this is what the Lord did for me. And, and that's kind of impossible, right? They weren't there for it.

1:27:47 And then they'll explain everything that happened through throughout Exodus, right? Likewise, if we look at our temple rites, we are putting ourselves especially in the endowment in the place of the ancestors. In fact, if we are instructed that that that were to consider ourselves as if we were the ancestors, right. And it's through that mechanism that we will make sacred covenants with God. We see this to a lesser degree with Trek, right? You're putting yourself in the place of the ancestors. And so I, I find that there are some interesting parallels between both religions. I was, I was talking about how we as Mormons and and and and and Jews share this idea of putting ourselves in the place of the ancestors with some of our practices.

1:28:39 Absolutely. And, and you know it. The more I don't, I don't know Hebrew. I'm not proficient in Hebrew. I have a little app on my phone that my buddy showed me and it's called Scriptures for All, which allows you to take a verse and it will you just type it in and it will give you the Hebrew translation of what that word meant in the Old Testament and what it means in the Greek in the New Testament. And when you get to the to the context of things in Scripture, things begin to pop a little more you. One of my favorite examples of this is Jesus teaching by the pool of Bethesda, right?

1:29:24 There's a man who's laying beside this pool. He's been there for 30 years. And Jesus comes along and he said, would thou be whole? And it seems like kind of a silly question, right? Because the, the, the whole gist of this, of this story is, is that at certain times of the year, they, they believed an Angel would go down and quote, trouble the waters and the first person in there would be healed of whatever infirmity they had. But this guy beside the pool, he's crippled and there's no one to take him into the pool. And so Jesus comes along and he's like, would you be whole? And we think what Jesus is asking is, do you want to be healed? Well, that's kind of a silly question, right? Because he's been hanging out there for like 30 years. Of course he'd want to be healed. But when you look at the word whole, Jesus isn't simply asking him, do you want to be healed?

1:30:18 What he is saying is, Are you ready to become an self actualized individual? Are you ready to hold down a job? Are you ready to have a family? Are you ready to live live life in the gospel the way your God describes? Are you ready to do all those things? And that changes everything drastically because obviously the guy is making it somehow, right? The guy's, the guy's being fed and so he's obviously be being taken care of somehow. Well, we can see what Jesus is really driving at in the subsequent interaction between the man and the Pharisees.

1:31:03 Because the, once the Pharisees learn that this guy's been healed, they, they basically ask, who told you you were healed? And so we see what Jesus is really doing here. And, and yes, he is healing this man, but he's obviously upsetting the power structure of the day. And the Pharisees were the ones who were making sure that this man was getting his sustenance. So this man kind of was beholden to the Pharisees, right? It's a power dynamic. And Jesus comes along and he's going to threaten that dynamic. And so we can see how context creates a getting the context absolutely changes the meaning of what's being said in the Scripture.

1:31:49 And it's important then to understand that the idea as it, it's important to try to understand the idea as it was originally there. Same thing with the word perfect, the Sermon on the Mount. You're commanded to be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect. Well, that doesn't mean our idea of perfection, when you look at that word perfection in its original Hebrew, it means literally whole or balanced, right? A complete person, they are complete. That's a whole lot different than perfection. And I think we can look and, and we can see where this Scripture has been maybe used to, to allow ourselves to beat ourselves up because we weren't perfect.

1:32:39 And in all reality, that's not what the Savior is saying there. He says, be whole, be complete, be, you know, have have your physical life in order, have your spiritual life in order, have your family life in order, be balanced, be complete. And once you put context to all those things, well, then the scripture goes from being something where you're like, Oh, geez, here we go again. I got to try to be perfect. And you get to a point of no, I just need to be balanced in how I approach things. And balance is a lot easier to try to tackle. It's still hard, but it's a lot easier to tackle than perfection. I love that. That's such a great insight.

1:33:19 And I'm not an artist, that is just so not my talent, but I love art and learning about art. And before Hebrew was a written language as we know it today, they wrote kind of like Egyptian hieroglyphics. In other words, they use pictograms, you know, in the pictures of things to convey ideas. And the very first sentence in the Old Testament in Hebrew, well in English too, is, you know, the very first sentence. In the beginning. Yeah, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, right? Yeah.

1:34:04 And so when you pick apart today's Hebrew, the words that they created you and they read, they read and write from right to left. So I don't know, what if I'm pointing right to left on, you know, how things get switched on camera. So anyway, pretend like I'm going right to left because that's what I'm doing in my world right now. But anyway, you pick apart those words and it describes in the beginning, before this mortal existence, the gods plural, because Elohim is plural, whether it be Adam and Eve together as a God entity or the council of gods. And there's debate about both of those ideas. But you know, they created basically the way that it it works is I mean, the way that it translates is they had man come here to earth and there was a plan and there would be a savior to redeem them from the sins of this world. And the pictogram showed like a a bowl, which bulls horns like even in sign language if you do bulls that. Represents alfit if I'm not mistaken right? Isn't that the name for it?

1:35:23 The Alfit Alfit. Yeah, Aleph. Yeah. So it represents power, but in sign language it does too, which I think is really interesting. So we're talking about the gods and those who were in power set up this plan. And then there's actually a cross. The pictogram has a wooden cross. So Jesus Christ is in the very first sentence of the Bible in Hebrew. And yet again, some Hebrews saw Jesus for the Messiah when he came the first time, and then some of them did. And some obviously still don't see him in the Old Testament at all. But there are so many things that point to Jesus in the Old Testament.

1:36:08 And I told you I just moved to Utah and from Las Vegas and I just got a new calling here since I just moved here. And I'm going to be teaching Old Testament and or you should say Gospel doctrine. I taught the last lesson at the Doctrine and Covenants for my first lesson, But then the next lesson I'm teaching is the first Sunday in January. And that's my big goal. And I'm going to spend the whole lesson. If you've seen actually do fundamentalists use the Come Follow Me program? No. No, we, we, we do not. We, we tend, we tend to, to, to, well, look, there's a bunch of different fundamentalist groups and then there's independence.

1:36:54 So I can't say no across the board. We typically have not that, you know, the, the, the group I I associate with doesn't mean that there's not families out there who aren't using it or whatever. It's pretty good curriculum. I was there. I was still in the church. I want to say year two of the program but don't go. OK. So it's, it's not, yeah, it's not not a bad program at all to work through the. Scripture with it's a great program and every year we focus on a different block of Scripture. So last year we just finished Doctrine and Covenants. 2026 is all about the Old Testament obviously. And the first lesson that they have us teaching is look for Jesus Christ in the Old Testament.

1:37:39 It is sometimes we just get all wrapped up in these weird stories and we're like, why should I care about this random thing? You know, because there are layers of understanding and so many types and symbols that point to Jesus Christ so many times that God was trying to say, do this thing so that when Jesus comes, you'll recognize him. Like the whole Passover, like you just said it all, all of the symbols, all the food items, for example, on the Passover meal, they all point to Jesus Christ. And the Bible of the Old Testament is filled with stuff like that. So I'm super excited.

1:38:21 Awesome, awesome. So was there any other parts of the book you wanted to share? If not, I got other questions and we can move on from here. Yeah, we, we can move on. I mean, obviously you can get both of these books on Amazon, my little shameless plug, as well as I have 35 books. And so you can find almost all of them on Amazon, some of them in bookstores. The the newer ones that are still in books, well, even some of the old ones are still in bookstores. Don't worry, we're not we're not done shamelessly plugging. I'll I can do that for you. I my buddy Ken Peterson, shout out to him. Active LDS guy wrote the book Mormonism in the Apocrypha. Every time he comes on, I'm like, what was that book again? You got that from Ken. Can you tell me that one more time? And he gets I wear him out with it. He hates that.

1:39:04 But yeah, that is such a fascinating topic. I went to BYU Education Week this last August because we had just moved here in July and I'm like, I live here, I can go every day if I want anyway. And so I went to a whole series on the Apocrypha. Super fascinating stuff. So some of my follow up questions here are are first, are you proficient in Hebrew? Is that is that how you were able to to get this book done? No, I would not say that at all. No, I I love learning it and studying it, but no, I would never ever say that I was an expert at all. Gotcha. All right, No, I was just curious. I, I know a couple of guys who are and, and typically when, when they're talking to me, I'm like, Yep, Yep, I'm a moron. Those guys who can learn Hebrew like that, man, that's that's really, that's, that's top notch stuff. I'm I'm not sure I'll ever get there. I hope to someday, but I'm not sure I'll ever get there. I can understand some word, for example, I was at a gym and this is sort of the origins of that the the Hebrew book or the language of Heaven book.

1:40:16 I was in the gym, I was in the sauna, and there were two guys sitting next to me speaking Hebrew. And I knew they were speaking Hebrew, but I wasn't catching everything they were saying. And so finally there was like a little pause in their conversation. And I said, are you guys speaking Hebrew? And they're like, yeah. And so I'm like, oh, I want to write this book. You know who? What? Which rabbi in town would you recommend? And they were like, shocked, you know, this lady in a bathing suit in the in the saunas talking about Hebrew and wanting to study with the rabbi, you know. Anyway, turns out it was a couple of really great young guys. They were actually talking about this one guy was having an argument with his girlfriend, you know, and I wanted to give him my female advice, but I didn't talk about that.

1:40:58 You know, it was just kind of entertaining to hear what they were saying. I was like, I have a lot of advice for you, but let's talk about Hebrew anyway. So they were the one that put me in touch with this one rabbi that I studied with. And they both the both the young guy and the rabbi wrote endorsements for the book. And one of the rabbi was really sweet. He said, you know, I, I love how Trina has presented this information, especially to help Christians understand Judaism. But he said, you know, the reverse is true. Jews can understand and learn a lot about Christianity based on, you know, how she's comparing and contrasting words and trying to dig deeper and find relations between our understanding and maybe a deeper level of understanding.

1:41:46 But anyway, said this rabbi, he said I was asking a lot of really dumb questions, some good questions, but some really basic stuff. And he said, but, you know, I think you might really benefit from reading this one book by this one rabbi that I really like. And so I was like, absolutely, whatever you want me to read. And so he recommends this book. And I go on to Amazon. I see the cover of the book, and it doesn't show you how thick the book is. If I'd paid attention, it would have told me how many pages. But anyway, so I buy it. It comes in the mail. The book is like that thick. You know, I'm like, oh, I've got a lot of reading to do. Anyway, it's a great book. That's awesome.

1:42:26 So did he help out a lot with the translation? That one, That one rabbi. Yeah, with some of it. And then you mean the the, the in person rabbi and then the book. I learned a lot of stuff and then just doing research online. And they have classes that you can take from colleges where even BYU has a really great one where you don't get college credit, but you can get a certificate in Hebrew from BYU. If you go through this particular class. The teacher that does that is Doctor Perry, Donald Perry. In fact, he was the one that was teaching that class at BYU Education Week. And so he kind of put in a plug for that.

1:43:07 And Duolingo has Hebrew where you can learn Hebrew. Do you know what Duolingo is I. Do not. Oh, it's a, a free app or you can pay to upgrade it and have more functionality, but it teaches you languages, whatever. And so I've been learning Hebrew, Mandarin, German and French on Duolingo. And it's, it's like a gamifying education, language learning Anyway, So I do it every day. In fact, today I'm on a 1040 day streak, meaning every single day I've been studying on Duolingo. Wow, that's impressive.

1:43:47 Yeah, I think language is fascinating. I mean, think of what Jesus Christ is. He's been described as the word. Right. Yep, right. Absolutely. Words have power. Absolutely. As as you were putting together the book about about Hebrew and that sort of thing, what was the biggest challenge to you? Probably learning Hebrew. Do you mean like the writing of it or the content? All of it. Any of it. Yeah, probably just learning about Hebrew. And even though I've studied Judaism for many years, I learned so many new things that I was like, how did I not know that before?

1:44:33 That's so fascinating. But even understanding concepts of of the actual language of Hebrew, I, I, it it's hard for me especially like I can understand I because I'm fluent in Spanish already. I can understand a lot of Portuguese, French, Italian, because they're Latin based Romance languages and they have so many similar roots. And, and so I'm familiar. So those are fairly easy for me to learn. But then I started learning German last year because my grandmother is from Germany and my husband and I actually went to Germany in Austria twice last year. And it's very different.

1:45:19 It's, you know, a Germanic language, but English has roots of both the Romance and the Germanic languages, but their sentence structure is so different. And then Hebrew, like Mandarin with the, the chicken scratch, you know, I call it, the letters are so hard for me. My one of my sons married a girl from Hong Kong. And so I had been doing a lot of business going to Hong Kong or to mainland and Hong Kong, but mostly mainland back and forth for a number of years. And I just loved it. And so I could speak a little Mandarin and have conversations, but I couldn't read signs because it just looks just all chicken scratch. It's really hard for me anyway.

1:46:08 So the language probably that was the hardest part for me. But also fun. I could see it, I could see it. I get it. I. So for example, we were talking about what was the word that we were talking about? Oh, in Shema, for example, if you take the last Hebrew letter in Shema and then you take the 1st letter of another word, which is sort of related Enoch, and you put them together, it spells the word in Hebrew witness. So when you're saying that Shema prayer, you are witnessing to God what your faith is, that you believe in him and that you're going to obey and and try to be worthy of all of his blessings. You know, that's just another little element that's embedded in that.

1:46:53 I just think that that's so cool. Absolutely. Let me ask you this question. What is your hope that that people will get from these books that you've written? Well, the simple answer would be a greater pro, more profound testimony of Jesus Christ that he is real and that he lives and that the more I learn, the more it just seems so obvious that it's all true. You know, I, I have dear friends who don't know if God is real or if Jesus Christ is real or if he's the Messiah, you know, and we all have to get there, right? We all have to study and learn and like you, be open and willing to learn and to find the truth. And for me, it just seems so obvious because there's so many layers and each layer teaches you another element or another character of God.

1:47:57 Hey, I've got a podcast I would recommend to you and your listeners. I think it's fascinating. It's called the ancient tradition. Have you ever heard that? I have not. It is so cool because one of my sons wants to know what is the original religion, right? And, and that's what this whole podcast is. It's this professor, I think she goes to Yale, she teaches at Yale University, but she's really impossible to find online. But she just kind of leaves these little clues. And I think she also is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints based on the things that she says.

1:48:39 I'm just like that's we believe that it's totally supports everything that I already believe. But what she does is she has gone and, and I have wanted to do this, but she's taken the time to do this, to really study every religion out there in the world and find what are the common elements? Where did those common elements come from? And so she goes way back to ancient scripts, ancient manuscripts from all of these cultures and religions around the world. And there's a common story. And other religions maybe will really latch on to this one part of the story.

1:49:24 And then that's how their religion is founded, you know? And then another religion maybe will pick that part of the story that they really get into anyway, I think that's super fascinating. So if you have any listeners who would love to do the same thing but don't have the time, I highly recommend that podcast. I think it is so good, so full of symbolism, so many things. For example, the symbols of it's almost like the epic drama. You know, as a writer, I don't write fiction, but you know, the epic drama, the heroes journey, that's the story. And when you look at, for example, the Olympics and you look at all of the symbols in the Olympics, where did those come from?

1:50:12 They came from the ancient tradition. And they mean this, that. And the other thing where you look at any religion and you're like, that is that same hero's journey that we're all on in this life to we were we. I mean, what is the the hero's drama? Are you a big fiction fan? You know what? Happens Oh, Oh yeah, no, I love me some Joseph Campbell. So yeah, the hero's journey is is kind of a pattern that that we find throughout history, both as a literary device and I think it follows the human experience. Look, we're all heroes of our own stories, right? It's it's just the way it is.

1:50:55 And the hero's journey typically begins with, with a call to action, right? Something has happened that that causes you to go on a quest, either a physical quest or a, a metaphysical quest, if you will. And then usually you're, you're accompanied by a mentor, then the mentor goes away, then the hero gets defeated. Then the hero goes back and, and tries to get better and comes back and finally gets rid of the adverse, you know, whatever adversary they're working against. And then there's a return home. And if I'm not mistaken, that is kind of the, the pattern of the hero's journey. And, and you can see this in all sorts of literature ranging from, and movies, by the way, ranging from like the classics and, you know, Greek mythology.

1:51:46 Odysseus goes on the hero's journey. Hercules goes on the hero's journey in modern day. Star Wars is all about the hero's journey. And so the reason it's so powerful is because it really does mimic real life and how we do things. I think all of us repeat the hero's journey many times in our life as we as we seek to go and we try to get better, right? All of us start out on some sort of journey, whether that is figurative or literally, and we're going to repeat that pattern several, several times, and that's where growth comes from. But it's the hero's journeys in Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and you know, all of these epic journeys where absolutely the hero has to find out who the he is or she, you know, who they are as they go through challenges. And you and I just talked about the value of going through struggles and challenges because it is a journey of self discovery and the ultimate goal of returning home victoriously, right?

1:52:54 Exactly. Yep. And so that's kind of the hero's journey. It's it's, it's, it's, it's secular in nature, right, Because you ultimately end back to where you started. But you, the hero has, has come to full actualization, right? He knows who he is. He's defeated the monsters and has returned home victorious. And, and the, the reason we should know this, right? Because I think the reason it's a pattern is because it's true, right? People, people look at the, the hero's journey and sometimes they divorce themselves of the, the utilitarian benefits of, of understanding that. And whether we realize it or not, we are the heroes in our own story.

1:53:42 And I think God meant it to be that way, right? And so we all, we all imitate the hero's journey at one point or another. And so, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty familiar with the the concept there. Yeah, it's like even the story of the Good Samaritan, you know, you can look at that at face value and say, oh, the lesson we're supposed to learn is to be kind and to help other people, right? Great lesson. But wait, there's more, right? That that man who was out in the wilderness is US, and he fell among thieves, which is all the wickedness in the world, right? And that Samaritan who helped him is Jesus Christ, right? I mean, you could go on and on and dig even deeper and look at even more layers.

1:54:32 And so you asked again, what is my hope? I hope that people look for those layers and they see Jesus Christ and all of the things that testify in Jesus Christ. Beautiful. Well, Trina, we've, we've been going down this road now for, for just about two hours. Is there anything else? You yeah, yeah, no, it goes quick, right. Is is there anything else you wanted to to bring up? I hope somebody still. Don't worry about that. I've had I've done way longer podcast. You're just fine. Oh trust me, this isn't bad. I have had a couple of five hour podcasts before. Yeah, you totally have 4 hours. Wow. And, and I've also had some that have been several episodes that total about 18 hours on certain subjects. So it's yeah, no, you're, you're just fine. Is there anything you want to mention? We didn't, you know, I didn't ask a question about or anything you wanted to bring up that that we didn't have a chance to. Well, you would ask me what was the most difficult part of writing the book.

1:55:34 And so we didn't really talk. I mean, I didn't talk so much about the writing of it, but I kind of feel like everybody has a book in them. I mean, I think it's telling that that God gave us scriptures, you know, to read books and that you mentioned we are the writer of our own story, our own hero's journey. And So what book do you have inside of you that hasn't been written yet? Is that actually a question for me or was that like a rhetorical question? Yeah, it could go out to everybody too, but for you specifically, do you have a book in you that you haven't written? Well, there is.

1:56:15 But look, let's face it, there's a reason I do a podcast. That's because I I stink at writing. Well, you can turn transcripts into a book. You know, like back in the day when everybody was blogging. You can turn a blog into a book. Yes, well, that, that is true. But I mean, look, there's things that that I have to do and, and I'm going to do them until I tip over. Ultimately, some people were like, I just want to go out sweetly and softly in my bed and that's great. I, you know, I, I can see the piece in that. However, I think I would just prefer to tip over. And so the, the, the story's never done.

1:57:00 The story's never finished. Chapters are done. Parts of it are done, but I don't think we ever get finished. I think, I think you're never done even in the eternities. I, I think it continues to go on forever learning and growing in those sorts of things. So the story's never done, right. The story is never finished, right. Chapters get finished, sections get finished of that book, but if you think you're ever done, you're not done. I love watching a lot of eternity. Yeah, thank you. I, I was just going to add to that and say I love watching a lot of these near death experience videos on YouTube, you know, and we think, you know, my life is done here on earth.

1:57:54 But like you said, it goes on for eternity. The story is still going on. One thing that I love and I again, I think that that you're so good about this. I mean, it just inviting me on your show that when people die and they see Jesus, there's this overwhelming sense of love, not judgement, not oh, you're a fundamentalist. You go in that line. You're, you know, a mainstream member of the Church of Jesus Christ. You go in that room over there, Catholics are down the hall. You know, there's none of that. Nobody ever says that. It's just this feeling of love and goodness and kindness.

1:58:35 And you know, I think when when we all get there, we'll all just go, Oh, it was also simple. Just focus on the Savior and you'll get there. A. 100% You know, when we when we start to talk like about Zion, I think we all have this idea in our head about what Zion's going to look like. But if you go and read the early guys and what they had to say about it, Joseph, Brigham, those kind of guys, usually it's going to paint a different picture than what you think of for a lot of people, they think, well, Zion is just just for Mormons.

1:59:16 Well, if you read Joseph and Brigham and what they had to say on it, they both say we expect to see Catholics there. We expect to see Presbyterians there. We expect to see Episcopalians there. And, and it's going to run the full gamut of, of representative religion, I think for the most part. And so the older I get, the more it becomes very apparent that I don't know nearly as much as I thought I did. And this idea that, that there's something that that you're, that we can look at outwardly and say, oh, that's, that's a good person or that person will never make it.

2:00:00 I think sometimes we can woefully error in in those decision makings. And, and I can, I can use my own experience as an example. When my wife first first met me before I was a Mormon, I had hair down to my shoulders. Both my ears were pierced. I mean, I was rough. I was, I was kind of hell on wheels. But what people couldn't see through and, and this wasn't their fault because of my appearance, I understand that there was a facade there and I was using that kind of as a way to shield myself. They, they didn't see the young man who was questioning existence itself and the mystery that surrounds why it is we have consciousness and, and other animals seem to have a lesser form of it and, and trying to figure out all those things. And so I fully expected to, to, I fully expect to get to the other side and, and quite frankly be surprised as to who's there and who's not.

2:01:01 So I'm totally open to that and actually kind of relish that, quite frankly, because I enjoy awkward humor. And I can't imagine, you know, 2 mortal enemies having to meet up in the same place going, how'd you get in here? And the savior being like, well, you were both kind of right and you were both kind of wrong. And I think there's going to be a lot of sorting out that's done on the other side. And it's going to be both to our chagrin and our happy surprise as well. Very well said. Anyway, Katrina, this has been awesome. I appreciate it. Now, I tell everybody this and I mean it. Once you've been on the podcast, you have a standing invitation to come back.

2:01:42 So you just got to call me and we'll get you. We'll get you on. So you do a new book or or Yeah, yeah, you're doing some new research that you think might be interesting. Hit me up and we'll get you back on right away because I, I can tell you got a lot of great things to to say here. Perfect. Well, thank you. I would love to. It's so much fun talking to you and we could talk for 5 or 18 hours because there's so much fun stuff to talk about. Let let's plug that book. Let's let's plug those books one more time here. Where, where do people go to to to find those books and and what was the name of them again? So this is perfect for Easter via Dolorosa.

2:02:22 Let's see. There we go Christ path to the cross ice. And and by the way, when they first showed me the cover, it was red, not orange. And I was like, oh, that's very realistic and accurate, but might be a little bit much for Mormon sensitivities, you know, so they, they had to count it down with the orange, which I appreciated because I'm like, that's just so harsh. And the language of heaven. Let's see, here we go. So you again, you can find almost all of my books in bookstores, but certainly on Amazon and on my website, whichistrinaboyce.com. And some of them are at Cedar Fort Books and they often have sales going on.

2:03:10 And you can follow me. I'm on all the socials, you know, on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and Twitter and you know, all everywhere. So I always have links when my books are free, which is every weekend. I have one of my books that Ioffer up on Amazon for free. So if you follow me you can see which ones are being offered for free. In fact, well, I don't know what day this is going to. OK, let me tell you what's going to be on for free on Saturday. It is one of the first little books that I've ever written. All of my books are non fiction, but this one, I sat at the kitchen table with my young little boys and we were cutting colored paper and making little artwork. And again, I told you art is not my thing. But I just started making a bunch of hearts and I was in, you know, like a mood that you get in. I like awkward, funny, weird jokes and things. And so I made this little book and have they're all visual puns.

2:04:11 They're different types of love, like the perfect heart with an arrow going through it. That would be, you know, pure love or true love or whatever. And then I have, wow, my mind's going blank. But like puppy love would be instead of the arrow, they're puppy paw prints going through the heart. Or I have one that's it's a heart and it's got little blood drops coming off of that. So that's the liberal, that's the the bleeding heart, you know, anyway, they're all just visual funds on derivations of a perfect heart. Anyway, that one's going to be for free on Amazon. So it's called a gift of love.

2:04:54 I don't know if I sold it or made it sound super weird, but it's a it's kind of a fun little gift you can give somebody, you know, for anniversary or a wedding or your birthday or any occasion where you love somebody. It's kind of a cute little gift book. Perfect. All right, Well, you hang out for just 5 minutes. All right. Bye everybody.