On Tuesday, Oct. 29, the Church History Department celebrated the release of the fourth and final volume of the “Saints” historical series, chronicling the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Saints, Volume 4: Sounded in Every Ear” is now available in 14 languages and various formats, appropriately as the volume follows the rapid growth in Church membership globally from 1955 to 2020.
On this episode of the Church News podcast, Church History Department historians Scott Hales and James Perry join to discuss the growing publication of this literary series, the importance of personal historical narratives and the ever-expanding positive impact of the Church as it continues to roll forth in every nation, kindred, tongue and people.
Listen to this episode of the Church News podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, bookshelf PLUS, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.
Transcript:
Scott Hales: But as I think about my testimony, the thing that has changed the most is my love for and appreciation for Jesus Christ. And it really wasn’t until we began learning about the various people that we feature in “Saints,” and how their lives have been shaped by Jesus Christ and His love and His atoning power, that I began to really feel the importance of having a Savior in my own life. And I really began to appreciate why I need to rely on Him every day. And I have begun to rely on Him more and more every day because of the way I’ve seen Him work in the lives of the people we feature in “Saints” and because of the way that we’ve seen Him guide this Church every day.
1:06
Jon Ryan Jensen: This is Jon Ryan Jensen, editor of the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, we are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
On Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024, the Church History Department celebrated the release of the fourth and final edition of the “Saints” historical series, chronicling the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Saints, Volume 4: Sounded in Every Ear” is now available in 14 languages and various formats, appropriately as the volume follows the rapid growth in Church membership globally from 1955 to 2020.
On this episode of the Church News podcast, Church History Department historians Scott Hales and James Perry join to discuss the growing publication of this literary series, the importance of personal historical narratives and the ever-expanding positive impact of the Church as it continues to roll forth in every nation, kindred, tongue and people.
Scott, James, thanks for being here with us today.
Scott Hales: Thanks for having us.
James Perry: It’s a pleasure. Thank you.
2:09
Jon Ryan Jensen: It’s worth noting for those listening that we’ve got Scott here in studio with us. James is in the UK, so we’re glad to have, despite the time differences, both of you here to talk with us today.
I’m really interested to know right now, this is the fourth volume of “Saints,” and I wonder if you can give us a synopsis up to this point, for those who maybe haven’t read it or aren’t familiar with “Saints” as much as you are, what have we covered in the first three volumes? And then we’ll get to what this volume includes.
2:44
Scott Hales: Well, how about I cover the first two volumes, and James can tackle the third volume in terms of summary. But Volume 1 really talks about the organization of the Church, the very earliest history, Joseph Smith’s preparation as a Prophet, his First Vision, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. And then after the organization of the Church, we see just the development of the Church and the trials and tribulations that the Saints experience as the work moves forward and they find themselves in Kirtland, in Missouri and ultimately in Nauvoo. And really what that volume builds toward is the completion of the Nauvoo Temple and the Saints receiving their endowment of power in the house of the Lord just prior to their exodus.
And Volume 2 begins right where Volume 1 leaves off. We see the exodus west and then the establishment of the Church here in Utah, but then also the beginnings of the International Church. As the Brethren send out missionaries out into all the world, and people in distant lands begin to accept the gospel, many of them — if not most of them — gather here to Utah, here to Zion, to build up the Church here and establish, really, the kingdom of God here on earth. But there are also some who remain in their various lands for a variety of reasons.
But as these Saints are established in Utah, they are also in frequent conflict with the government over — and, really, society at large — over the practice of plural marriage. And so what we see is how the Church navigates that conflict, and that ultimately leads to the Manifesto that signals the beginning of the end of the practice of plural marriage among the Saints. And then also the volume culminates in the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple. And it’s just a beautiful moment there.
4:42
Jon Ryan Jensen: And before James, before you start, I think that’s really important for us to note, because that means that those first two volumes, if I’m not mistaken, pretty much cover the duration of Doctrine and Covenants. Is that correct? Because we’re going to start studying that in 2025.
4:57
Scott Hales: Yeah. Essentially they, I mean, the majority of the Doctrine and Covenants. The context for those revelations you’ll find in “Saints, Volume 1.” You see a few, I mean, as you know, we have the “Word and Will of the Lord,” the revelation that Brigham Young received at Winter Quarters during the exodus. And then there are a few other revelations. One is covered in Volume 3. That’s Joseph F. Smith’s vision of the spirit world. And then also the Official Declaration 2, which is actually a major part of Volume 4, and that is the priesthood revelation of 1978.
5:32
Jon Ryan Jensen: That’s great. James?
James Perry: So, Volume 3 picks up with the Saints’ experience around the world, and particularly the least-known period of Church history, the early 20th century, that kind of 1900s through to the postwar period. It’s just not a period that many members know much about, but it’s the period in which the Church is transformed into a large part of what we see today. So, the modernization of the Church in the ‘50s, kind of which is carried on in Volume 4, comes about after years of transformation from pioneer living.
So, Volume 3 shows the beginnings of the modernization of the Church but also the beginnings of its true globalization. It’s the volume that really grapples with Church growth in different places around the world. It’s one of the challenges of writing that volume, was because we were starting to see the Church go into so many different countries. So Volume 3 really helps readers understand how the Church went from that pioneer kind of Mormon frontier experience to this kind of somewhat beginning to be standardized and globalized experience.
6:47
Jon Ryan Jensen: And that brings me to my first question that I think a lot of people want to know, and that is: “Look, I was born during this period that you’re trying to cover here. I saw some of this. What is the draw for me to read Volume 4, since I’ve lived it?”
7:06
Scott Hales: Well, I would say I think that’s true. A lot of readers, especially readers here in the United States who have been in the Church for a long time, will, for example, read about President [Gordon B.] Hinckley’s presidency and recall a lot of those moments from their own lives. So they’ll remember the time that President Hinckley announced the plan to build small temples around the world, or they’ll remember the dedication of the Conference Center or the time the Church reached the 100 temples mark. And so I think there will be an aspect of the familiar in the book.
But we’re covering 65 years of history here, and Volume 4 essentially covers the lifespan of my father, who was born in 1956, and so he’s read the book already, and one of the things he told me was, “There’s a lot of information in this book, a lot of things in this book, that I did not know about.” And I think one of the great things that Volume 4 does is it takes all of these little tidbits of information that we know or that we remember from our lives and our experiences within the Church, and it puts it all within a coherent timeline and context, so we can see how all the different pieces fit together.
8:18
Jon Ryan Jensen: I love that.
James Perry: So, like Scott, I think nostalgia is a powerful drug that really is quite an enjoyable experience to go back and think about things that have perhaps been forgotten about in some instances. I think the crucial thing about this volume for that demographic that you’ve mentioned there is that, yes, they may remember the experience of the change, for example, the consolidated meeting schedule, but what they won’t know, necessarily, are the factors that led to those changes. And so you’re able to look back on this history that you’ve lived through and see it from a different perspective and to understand the different things that brought about that change. And so for that reason alone, I think many of today’s members would actually be fascinated to read the volume and to kind of learn a little bit more about how things came to be.
9:10
Jon Ryan Jensen: So, how things came to be is different for every individual, and different as the Church continues to grow. One of the most noticeable things when people pick up this volume is right on the cover. The change from those first three volumes to today, one of them, most visibly, is the increase in the number of temples that we have in the Church.
Was that increase in temples a focus of the book? Or are the temples part of the stories of the people who are in the book?
9:41
James Perry: So, the global reach of temples was an undeniable aspect of this volume. This is a volume about where there was a real concerted effort to take the ordinances that take place in the temple out to every member of the Church. What we also found, though, as we conducted the research is that members of the Church were also able to draw more strength from their temple covenants that they were making. If you think back to many different parts in maybe Australian history or in British history, for most of its history, they had no access to temple ordinances.
And so when we see in the ‘60s and the ‘70s and ‘80s and going on all the way up to the 2020s, just this huge, meteoric rise in temples, it’s also paralleled with, I think, a strengthening faith in the members. And so we see that the role of the temple becomes more central to the Saints. And as a result, we found many stories where they were able to draw on those covenants to help them through difficult times.
10:48
Jon Ryan Jensen: James, one of your big roles, your principal role, with “Saints” was to go and find those stories. And I was commenting before we started that I think that that’s one of the toughest things, because you’re going to hear more stories of faith than could possibly be included in the book.
But could you kind of share for our listeners what that process is? How did you — did you just walk into random Church houses around the world? Did people submit stories to you? How did these people come to be included in the story?
11:17
James Perry: That’s a great question. So, Scott and others on the team often referred to me as “the tree shaker.” And so I would be given a particular task, and I would have to go and shake some trees to find the stories. I can give you an example, and this came at the end of Volume 3, and I’ve had similar experiences on Volume 4 as well, where the task was to find a very specific type of person, someone who fit criteria. This case, it was a French-speaking European woman who was endowed on the day of the Swiss Temple’s dedication. She needed to be being endowed for her own reasons; not married, not going on a mission. And so we worked with FamilySearch to narrow down, “OK, how many of these sisters were there?” And there were, like, a handful. And so we kind of set to work on these handful, but the majority of them were much, much older, left with just one or two that fit the criteria.
And we jumped on the phones and just kind of worked to try and find out about these people. We found that this sister had died just a few years earlier, and we contacted the local members and said, “Is there anything here?” And they said, “Oh yeah, she was a wonderful sister, but her family were not members, and they burned all of her papers.” And so that was kind of heart wrenching. And then we went and looked through the missionary journals and missionary records, and we identified missionaries and went and contacted them.
At the time, I was living in Utah, and one of those missionaries, actually, I spoke to my neighbor and said, “Hey, this lady, she’s from West Bountiful. Do you know her?” And he said, “Oh, yeah, she just died recently, and she literally lives on the road next to us.” And so I walked around there, knocked on the door, and her daughter answered and said, “Yeah, absolutely, that’s my mom.” Here’s her twin sister, who was in her 90s. And they said, “And here is her missionary journal,” and it had content that we needed. And there was seriously, throughout the four, almost five, years I worked on “Saints,” experiences like that all the time, where we were led to individuals and to stories and to records that made a huge, huge impact.
And with that particular story, it went one step further. And another missionary we contacted, who was elderly, said, “Oh yes, I remember her well. I was one of the first missionaries there after the war.” And he said, “She never had any family, but every few years, I would ring her up and write down her life story and her writings and her thoughts,” and he gave us all of this material, which we were able to use to use her as a character. Volume 4 was exactly the same way; the hand of the Lord was manifest repeatedly.
14:13
Jon Ryan Jensen: So, you gather these stories, and then, Scott, then your role is to take those stories and to create one cohesive timeline by intertwining the experiences that James and others are finding.
What is that experience like for you as you’re reading these stories as individuals and seeing it from the history of the Church and how they all play together?
14:35
Scott Hales: Well, I think I want to say, first, one of the things that James didn’t mention is that we often called him “the unflappable James Perry,” because he really had a thankless job in going out to gather hundreds of stories and then, one by one, having to sit there and listen as we tell him why this or that story is not going to work for the volume. And so he had to put up with a lot, because really what we did is, as you said, we gathered all these stories, then it was up to us to figure out how to intertwine all of these stories, or interweave all these stories, into one single narrative in a way that will feel seamless to the reader and not feel choppy in any sort of way.
And one of the things that I think holds all the stories together, and one of the things that we did to make sure that the narrative felt smooth and seamless, is choose stories that spoke to specific themes within the volume. And so, as you can see, the title of the book is “Sounded in Every Ear,” which is meant to suggest that the gospel is going out and being taught to all people. And so we were very interested in finding stories that showcase people from all around the world receiving or sharing the gospel in some way and really becoming Saints through the Atonement of Jesus Christ in their own land.
And so, many times, what would happen was we would get stories from James or other historians on the project, and we would look at it and say, “Does this story help us advance the narrative? Does this story speak to the specific themes that we’re working through in this volume? Does this story help us show important changes in the Church over time?” And if the answer was consistently yes, then that was a good candidate for a story in “Saints.” And then the challenge there was just trying to figure out how it fit in the narrative.
From the very beginning, when we were trying to figure out how to tell such a big story, one of the things I read was if you ever get stuck in trying to figure out how to write a narrative history, just always go back to timeline, go back to chronology, and that will help you out. That will help you kind of see the solution to the problem. And time and time again, that’s what it was. If we were ever unsure how to fit a story in, we would just say, “Well, we just need to put it where it belongs chronologically, and things will work out.” And that’s essentially what happened. We would just put it where it fit timelinewise, and it worked.
17:18
Jon Ryan Jensen: So, along with that, then, I have a question for each of you. James, I would love to hear the favorite story, perhaps, or a notable story that you’re excited that is included in the volume. And Scott, if you have a favorite, or perhaps if there is a favorite way that you saw the stories intertwine, I would love to hear.
So, James, do you have a favorite? I know it’s choosing a favorite child. But just something notable, perhaps.
17:42
James Perry: Yeah, it is choosing your favorite child. Firstly, one of the great pleasures, the greatest pleasures, I have of working on this project is to see so many of the stories that I was able to go out and find, and each of them has their own story.
But one of the stories that I particularly love is that of Delia Rochon from Uruguay, who is a child herself, a teenager, who was called as a Primary president. And just, I mean, not only was it a pleasure to interview her and to learn about her story and to gather records, but it was very clear as we triangulated the story, As we spoke to other people who were involved, just how much that she was loved and how well she was respected for her faithfulness, not just during the time of the story but later, as well, as she lived her life and did so many other things, and she just seemed to appear everywhere.
So it’s a story filled of, similar to my own, of grappling with becoming a member of the Church as a teenager and choosing to serve despite some very obvious downsides. And she’s a real example to me, and it’s true of so many of the characters that we feature in “Saints,” but hers is a story that I particularly really relate to.
19:06
Scott Hales: So, if I can, I would like to answer both of the questions you threw at me. And when it comes to characters, it is kind of like picking your favorite child, which none of us do, but when I look at Volume 4, the story that really resonates with me is the story of Willy Binene, a young Congolese man who, when we first meet him, he’s studying at university to become an electrical engineer. And then his Church leader approaches him and says, “We would like you to serve a mission,” and that’s not in his plan. And so he begins; he has a powerful experience that confirms to him that he needs to serve a mission. And then as soon as that happened, violence erupts in his country, and he has to flee his home, and he’s ultimately unable to serve a mission.
And as we were working on the story, I kept referring to him as our George Bailey character, in reference to the character George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” And if you remember that film, you know that George Bailey is this young, idealistic young man with big dreams, and he’s trying to leave his hometown for bigger and better things, but he keeps staying in his hometown for the greater good, to help his fellow man, and whatnot. And in many ways, Willy’s story is like that. He ends up in a very small village in the middle of nowhere in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And there are times when he tries to leave to continue pursuing his dreams, and each time he has to stay.
And what I find interesting about Willy is — in contrast to George Bailey, who despairs when he’s unable to reach his dream or achieve his dreams or follow his dreams — Willy thrives in that experience. It’s almost as if the act of consecrating his life empowers him. And so I really love his story, for the way that it shows power that comes through consecration, which, as we know, is a temple covenant. It’s one of the best stories I can think of in the “Saints” series that shows the power of keeping a temple covenant.
Another thing that I’d like to point out is that you never quite know how the stories are going to work well together, working together, working off of each other. And these little miracles happen, and the scenes get shuffled around so much. And when we have to cut a scene for whatever reason, or we have to expand a scene, or we add material here or there, sometimes stories get shuffled around a little bit, especially in this volume, just because there’s always so much happening at one time, it’s hard to maintain that chronology the way we had in earlier volumes.
But one of the things that I really, really came to appreciate is the symmetry in the series as a whole. And what I mean by that is that Volume 1 opens with a natural disaster, with the eruption of Mount Tambora. And what we see is people scrambling for answers, people who are suffering, looking to the heavens for direction, and they don’t find it. And what we show in Volume 1 is that the Lord’s response to that is a Prophet. When He sees the calamities that are coming in the last days, He sends us a Prophet.
And Volume 4, and I don’t want to ruin things, but if you look at the dates, 2020, a lot of things happened in 2020, including a global pandemic, another natural disaster. And what differs from 1815 is that in 2020, we have a Prophet. They’re giving us direction. And that’s something that I hope comes out in the series, is that the more things change, the more things stay the same; but this time around, we’ve got a Prophet. This important change has changed everything. We have a Prophet of God who is leading the Church, who is showing us the way. And I think that’s incredible.
And that’s not something that we planned. When I started on the project in 2015, 2020 hadn’t happened yet. We didn’t know —
Jon Ryan Jensen: That that was coming.
Scott Hales: Yeah, we didn’t know the end from the beginning, right? And so it’s just, for me, it’s to see the fact that we have a Prophet in place who is leading and guiding the Church means a lot to me, and I think it’s one of the most inspiring messages that we have throughout the “Saints” series, is that God has not left us alone here on earth. We have a Prophet to lead us in the latter days, through the latter days, even.
23:37
Jon Ryan Jensen: When you were telling the story of Willy, I was immediately thinking about the Book of Mormon and the very first story that we have there. You have a young man in Nephi who probably had his life planned out. His family is well established where they live. They have a good life. He has things that he wants to do. His brothers probably did too. And those plans get changed, not by decisions of their own making, either. But then to tie it to the second story that you tell, the resolution comes because you trust in a Prophet. I love that.
With the growth of the Church that you’re covering, you mentioned it was nearly — it has to be — nearly an impossible task. Did you feel it sometimes, like, “Man, we almost need to have one volume of “Saints” per area of the Church to be able to cover all of this adequately.” And for those who are living in places that aren’t close to Salt Lake City, how are they going to see themselves and their areas represented in this book?
24:35
James Perry: We worked really hard to provide a representative, not just in terms of geography, but also of life circumstances in the characters and the stories that we featured. I mean, we go from being in some few dozen countries at the beginning of the volume, and by the end of Volume 4, we’re in 125-plus countries. And so it’s just impossible to be in every single place in every single decade.
So we had to be pretty ruthless at times in terms of trying not to do too much but instead to choose characters that people could relate to. This might be a young man or a young woman or a mission leader, the different circumstances. I mean, Willy Binene’s story is a good example of a refugee who’s able to really see their life change through membership in the Church. We also have youth characters who experience the Church growing up and how it is able to bless and protect them from some of the trials in life.
So even if a person’s specific country or region is not featured, I would hope and think that they could look at a story and connect to it and hopefully transcend that geographical limit that we had on us in terms of trying to fit the number of stories we have into the book but still feel and identify with other Latter-day Saints, and to feel what it means to belong to a group of diverse people. And sometimes their stories, although it may be a different continent and with different surroundings, might be able to relate and connect to that really well.
26:17
Jon Ryan Jensen: For as broad as the topic is, for as broad as the Church has grown, it all comes back to individuals honoring covenants and living the faith that they have in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and the plan that they’re living out.
As you read those stories of all of these individuals, James, and then you come back home at the end of the day, did the way that you read those stories and the way that people recorded their own histories, did it have an effect on you personally or within your family of how you journal or of how you record the goings on in your own life?
26:53
James Perry: For me, reading the stories that I did — and in fact, in this volume, it involved a huge amount of interviewing and emailing and gathering records — it did, once again, reiterate the importance of keeping a record. If there is no record, there’s not much in the way of history. And so for me, sometimes the facts and details we needed were kept on things as simple as a program of an event.
So, in Volume 4, we detailed the origins of the For the Strength of Youth conferences and how that came about. And do you know what? It was remarkable how something that happened some 20-25 years ago, there seemed to be an absence in the number of programs. So we knew the precise details of when things happened and whatnot. And so it did strike home the importance of keeping a record, but also not just of the administrative things, but also of the way that the hand of the Lord.
And I think during this time, a lot of my personal scripture study went to, kind of, I had my Church history glasses on, and, for example, reading in Moroni, Chapter 10, and this is something I had read on my mission, and it always stuck with me, is that one of the conditions of receiving the answer to the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon was predicated first on remembering all that God has done for us, from even from the beginning of human history. And so combining my kind of gospel studies with the work I was involved in, in hearing, sometimes the most tragic and sometimes the most beautiful stories reiterated to me the need to preserve and to document.
So, yeah, in my family, we, my kids are always told, “OK, ask Grandma questions. Ask Granddad questions. Let’s interview Grandma. Let’s sit down and record our story and how God has played a role in our lives.” And so far, so good. It’s been really positive.
28:57
Jon Ryan Jensen: I love the way you look back at the Book of Mormon that way. I was speaking with a sister in my own ward yesterday. She’s a Sunday School teacher, and she’s so excited to be studying Doctrine and Covenants this coming year because she said, “It’s the one year that I missed seminary. And I feel like I’m just missing this chunk of what is so important in my life, the Church, and I don’t know this as well as I want to. I’m so excited to immerse myself in it.” And I hear that in what you’re saying. Scott?
29:22
Scott Hales: I’d like to speak a little bit to this question as well, because it’s been very influential in my own personal record keeping. I’ve kept a journal for most of my life, off and on, where I’ll get, there’ll be times when I’m writing every day and other times when I skip weeks or months or even years in some instances. But when I began working on “Saints” in 2015, I began to see the importance of record keeping and detailed record keeping. And so in 2016, I had the thought, “The work that I’m doing right now is really important, and we need to be keeping a record on the process of ‘Saints’ and the story of ‘Saints,’ the production of ‘Saints.’”
And so I began to keep a work journal in 2016, and so I’ve kept a journal every work day since 2016 about my work in “Saints,” just documenting this experience. And from that process, a couple years ago, I can’t remember exactly when, I began to keep a better personal record. So, you can’t see this, audience, but I am reaching into my back pocket, and I have my personal journal in my back pocket there I carry with me wherever I go, and I record my day. Some entries are better than others, but this is something that President Eyring has taught us to do. He said, “If you have a spiritual impression, write it down. If you have a spiritual experience, write it down.” And so I try to do that. If I have some sort of spiritual impression or experience, I write it down. And if I don’t, I write down what happened to me during the day. I say what movie my wife and I went to see. That may not be that interesting to people down the road, but maybe it might.
Whenever I think about the importance of record keeping, I think about Connie Taylor, who was a character from Volume 3, and she was a young woman who grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and she is featured as one of our main characters in Volume 3. And the reason why she appears so much in that book, relatively speaking, is because she kept a really good journal when she was a teenager. And her daughter is living in St. George right now, and I was the one who went down to St. George and collected that journal for use on this project. And in some ways, the journal just kind of chronicles the day-to-day life of a young woman.
There’s nothing necessarily deeply doctrinally significant, or even spiritually significant, in some of the entries, but it documents her life and helps us understand what it was like to be a young Latter-day Saint woman in Cincinnati, Ohio, during the 1930s. And that’s precisely what we needed for “Saints, Volume 3.” And so if, if Connie hadn’t kept that journal, or she had thrown it away because she thought it was silly or frivolous, our history would not be as rich as it is. And so, keep your journals, keep your journal and then keep your journal; preserve it, pass it down, make sure that it’s taken care of through the generations, because you never know who’s going to benefit from it.
32:35
Jon Ryan Jensen: I love that.
James Perry: Really, it really was sometimes small, fragmentary aspects, the small entries in a journal. I mean, Scott has fantastic taste in movies, so I actually think it’s quite valuable that he documents the movies he goes to. But, no, it really was amazing how sometimes people were like, “I don’t know why I kept hold of this. I don’t know why I kept this and held onto it for so many years,” and we would very quickly find out the precise reason why.
One example is of a story that we have in Volume 4, Giuseppa Oliva, an Italian lady who joins the Church in Argentina and moves back to Italy, where she helps get the Church started in her area. And we used the journal of a mission president, who was a mission president at the time, who was serving in Argentina. And, Scott, you can correct me, but, I mean, we don’t use much. It’s like one small entry, but it absolutely makes the story, like it absolutely just gives you the whole context as to why she was going back. But yeah, Scott’s advice about keeping journals and keeping a record is right on the money there.
33:47
Jon Ryan Jensen: So, as people pick up the book, or as people open the book in Gospel Library, how is it that reading “Saints” is going to help increase their faith in Jesus Christ and their understanding of Heavenly Father’s love for them?
34:01
Scott Hales: Well, it’s going to be different for every person. And the “Saints” narrative is designed to not preach to you but to share. What we’re doing is we’re sharing a narrative, and we don’t necessarily step back the way Mormon does in the Book of Mormon and say, “And thus we see” and then tell readers how they should experience or what lessons they should learn from this story or that story. We tell the story simply and let the experiences of the individual characters speak to the reader through the Spirit.
And so the lessons I may learn from the story of Willy Binene, for example, or the story of Delia Rochon or others that we’ve talked about or that we haven’t talked about, may be different from the lessons that you gain. And what we’ve tried to do is we’ve tried to tell stories about people who have made a difference in the Church, people whose experiences have — and whose testimonies and whose dedication to the restored gospel has — shaped it in some way, large or small.
And what we’ve also tried to do is we’ve tried to show people in the process of becoming Saints. And so we know in the Book of Mormon, King Benjamin teaches us how we are all born as natural men and women, and it is through the Atonement of Christ that we become Saints, that we able to set aside all the things that keep us natural men and women, and move forward through the Atonement of Christ. And so we try to show people at various stages in this journey and show what it sometimes takes to become a Saint through Jesus Christ. And for some of the characters that we meet throughout the series, it’s really hard.
And I think I spoke recently at Education Week about Volume 4, about the series in general, and I told the story of Drusilla Hendricks in Volume 2. She is traveling west, and she relies heavily on her oldest son, because her husband was paralyzed during the Missouri persecutions, and so she doesn’t have a whole lot of help in terms of people who can drive a wagon or carry something heavy. She needs her son, and she is very resentful of the treatment that the Saints received from the United States government. And so her son is called upon, or the Saints are called upon, to take part in the Mormon Battalion. And she does not want her son to take part, because she needs him. And she’s resentful of this government that has taken so much from her.
And so she has this experience where, despite how hard that is, she lets her son go. And as I was sharing this story at Education Week, I found myself in tears, because sometimes the gospel calls on you to do really, really hard things and to let go of things that you hold on tight to. And for me, reading Drusilla’s story taught me the importance of just letting go and giving it to God sometimes. And I think that’s what these stories can do; they teach each of us lessons individually. And I love that it’s a different experience for everyone.
37:17
Jon Ryan Jensen: That’s wonderful. I love that.
James Perry: Just to add to that, I think one of the things is that for some people, they don’t necessarily need to gain more faith in Christ, but they sometimes want to feel and know that this is the organization that is Christ’s, and that this is the Church that they should be a part of in worshipping Him. In Volume 4, we obviously tried to do that by showing the maturation of the Church, in particular regards to its humanitarian efforts and its abilities that change during this volume to go from just helping the Saints and some isolated incidents to being heavily involved in events and activities across the world, and that it’s a Church and an organization that is able to comfort and to heal and to bless the lives of others. And so that can help build their faith in not just Jesus Christ but also that this is Christ’s Church and that it’s doing and living what it preaches.
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Jon Ryan Jensen: I love that. We’re coming up on time, and I want to thank you both for the testimonies that you’ve shared and the experiences that you’ve shared in the putting together of this fourth volume of “Saints” and hope that members of the Church will go there. Saints.ChurchofJesusChrist.org is one place where they can go and read the stories. Store.ChurchofJesusChrist.org is another place where they can go to purchase the book.
And before we finish, we have a tradition here on the Church News podcast where we like to allow our guests to have the final word. And so, James, I’d like to start with you, and my question is: What do you know now that you have participated in the creation of this volume of “Saints”?
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James Perry: It was a very special experience to be able to read through the personal writings of some of the leaders of the Church and to be able to see so many of the meetings, minutes and reports, to see that the Church is staffed full of leaders, men and women from across the world, who truly believe in what they are doing, that this is Christ’s Church. And it was profound for me to see that these men and women who were not too dissimilar from myself, in some cases, we came from all kinds of different backgrounds, but that they were willing to just give so much of their time and energy.
There’s a moment with President Russell M. Nelson in Volume 4 where he really kind of settles on his identity as a leader of the Church, trying to really appreciate and understand his situation. And these are not people driving around in gold-plated limousines, living a life of double standards. These are people who, on New Year’s Eves, are out visiting people in hospitals, who are doing good.
And that was just — I kind of knew that. I kind of suspected that these were people, but I didn’t really know them that well. You see them at a general conference, or you read a nice article, but I really feel as if I came to know some of these leaders and just, wow, yeah. So my testimony in not just the Church’s kind of core identities as being the restored Church, but also in the goodness of its leaders, just went through the roof, and so very grateful to have had that experience.
Jon Ryan Jensen: Thank you, James. Scott?
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Scott Hales: I think, speaking generally, there’s nothing that I know now testimonywise that I didn’t know in 2015 when I started on the project. I came on the project with a pretty solid testimony of Joseph Smith and the Restoration. And that was only deepened by my study of the life of the Prophet Joseph Smith and learning more about his teachings and his contributions as a Prophet of God. And that’s the same, the same is true for the Restoration. I gained a deeper appreciation for the role of the Restoration and the plan of salvation and the need for restoration and how much the Restoration has helped people around the world.
So I would say my testimony has only been deepened in that respect. But as I think about my testimony, the thing that has changed the most is my love for and appreciation for Jesus Christ. And I grew up in the Church. I’ve known Jesus all my life. I’ve understood His part in the plan. I taught as a missionary why we need a Savior, but it really wasn’t until we began learning about the various people that we feature in “Saints,” and how their lives have been shaped by Jesus Christ and His love and His atoning power, that I began to really feel the importance of having a Savior in my own life, and I really began to appreciate why I need to rely on Him every day. And I have begun to rely on Him more and more every day because of the way I’ve seen Him work in the lives of the people we feature in “Saints” and because of the way that we’ve seen Him guide this Church every day.
I think it is safe to say that there have been times when we as members of the Church have not always followed Him the way we should, but there has not been a single day that He has not tried to guide us as Latter-day Saints to be more like Him and more like His Father. And that’s something that I think I learned the most from this volume and this series in general.
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Jon Ryan Jensen: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News editor Jon Ryan Jensen. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.
