EXCITING NEWS ALERT~This Is the Gospel is going to join Deseret Book at this year's RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City! To celebrate, we are sharing one of our favorite episodes all about the power of our ancestors' faith stories, "The Roots of Faith." Stories in this episode: An extraordinary lesson from her family history helps Sister Linda K. Burton find the right words to minister to the women of the Relief Society when she is called as president; Deserey is called to be the Family History specialist in her single adult ward and receives a special spiritual confirmation from her father beyond the veil about the value of her calling. SHOW NOTES To find pictures and more from this episode, please visit LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel TRANSCRIPT: KARYN LAY: Did you know that reviews on iTunes help new people find the podcasts that inspire you most? Well, they do. So if you found something valuable in the stories that we share on This Is The Gospel, would you take a minute to rate our podcast and maybe even leave us a review on iTunes? Every written review helps us to show up in the search results for more people who could use a little bit of storytelling magic in their week. We really appreciate it. Welcome to This is the Gospel. An LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay. A few years ago, I got a phone call from my grandma who we call Nanny. And it was routine stuff. She was telling me all the details for the upcoming family party. So I took notes. I wrote it all down like a dutiful granddaughter and I hung up the phone. About five minutes later, the phone rang again. And it was Nanny. So I assumed she was calling because she had forgotten something. And instead, she proceeded to tell me the exact same thing she had said five minutes earlier, almost word for word. When I hung up the phone, I sort of laughed about it. Because in my family, we have a tradition of finding the humor in just about everything, but it didn't take long for the weight of that phone conversation to settle in. Not long after that nanny was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and it didn't take long for her short term memory, her long term memory, and her ability to communicate clearly, to disintegrate. It was around this time that I also got my very first iPhone. I'm a late adopter. So it took me a little while to get one. But when I did, I realized that it had this app, the voice memo app, and all I would have to do is push a button and It would record anything. So I started to record everything. I would take that iPhone and put it in the middle of the room during family parties, and push the record button, just to try to capture whatever I could. I was looking for stories. I wanted to make sure that even though my grandmother's memory was going away, the stories that she had, wouldn't. As you can imagine, sometimes I got stories. Sometimes I got grocery lists, and sometimes I got testimony and other times I got the tail end of a phone conversation. My hunger for the routine and the mundane have made me a bit of an indiscriminate recorder but honestly, I just didn't want to miss anything. And I'd like to think that I was actually rewarded especially when recently I stumbled upon this little story from my mom. KARYN'S MOM (SUE): There was a big box that we used to keep up in the storage closet for like in the wintertime our summer clothes went in the box. In the summertime, our winter clothes went in the box. And whenever I would get into trouble, I would go up there and go in that closet and hide under the clothes and cry. And I'd just be like, "They're never gonna find me." And then I'd be KaRyn's Aunt (Kathy):Which house are you talking about? SUE: The one in Middletown. That we added on to on Aspen Street. And I'd be up there singing the song."Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me so I'll eat worms. Big ones, fat ones, small ones, skinny ones. Oh, how I'll eat worms. I'll bite their heads off, suck the juice out, throw the skins away. I don't see how birds can stand them for three meals a day."And the kids would come in that closet and they'd go, "She must be in here. I know she must be in here. Sue? Sue?"And I was just quiet as a mouse. And then they go out and I'd laugh quietly and say, "They didn't find me." NANNY: Oh my goodness, oh, it's funny how you probably don't even— KARYN: I am so glad that I captured that moment of unbridled laughter from my Nanny, especially now that she can't remember who I am most days. There's also this really cool little snippet of audio where I caught my mom and my aunt and my grandparents telling the story of their trip to Idaho Falls to receive their temple blessings and to be sealed together as a family a few years after my family converted to the gospel. You will hear my aunt on the phone, in the background, trying to find a place to get scrapple for me. And if you don't know what scrapple is, please don't look it up. You will not think more highly of me after you find out what it is. Anyway, here's the story. SUE: This year we're actually going to Idaho Falls temple. We had a station wagon Kathy (in the background): ...someplace that has scrapple for KaRynnie SUE: and the back didn't have any seats. KARYN: Were all of the kids born then? SUE: Yeah. Thank goodness we didn't have to have seat belts and car seats and all that junk or we wouldn't have been able to go. And Kathy was responsible for handing out the sandwiches when it was lunchtime. And we were only allowed to take a shoebox full of stuff with us. Each person could take a shoebox. That's it because you didn't have room for right people to bring all their facts. If we wanted to buy any trinkets we had a room in our shoebox to put it or we couldn't get it. And we had- did we pull our camper? Our popup tent? And it sometimes would rain so hard that our sleeping bags would get wet. Right? It's not hurting but we- PAPPY: ...slept in the car, or out in good weather we just slept out on the ground in our sleeping bags. KARYN: Like did anything difficult happened on the trip? SUE: Oh yeah the brakes went out. Pappy: Yeah. SUE: Coming down a mountainside Pappy: Yeah. KARYN: Down a mountain? SUE: Yeah it was a mountainside. Where were we? Yellowstone area? Pappy: I don't remember exactly. SUE: But it was— Pappy: I made all these side trips too. If there was something interesting, I'd go there. SUE: Yeah the bear came. One time we were in the sleeping thing. And we started screaming. Pappy: The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Yeah. KARYN: So I forgot to ask anything about the actual sealing in that conversation. But it was still so cool for me to know about the details of a trip that changed the eternal trajectory of our extended family forever. And aren't we so glad that there are seatbelts now? Though the recordings are totally amateurish and ham-handed. I love listening to them because they represent my newly found desire to hold on to the people, and the places that have shaped me. And all of the stories that are the basis of my own faith. I think we actually call that the spirit of Elijah, right? The turning of the hearts of the children towards their parents and the parents towards their children. Well, today we've got stories from people who found their faith in Jesus Christ rooted in the power of their family history, and that turning of the hearts of the children to their fathers. Our first storyteller is Sister Linda K Burton. And she's telling a story from her family history. The miraculous, yet simple experience from her great grandfather's life that became a guide to her during her time as the general Relief Society President of the Church. Here's Linda. LINDA K BURTON: Well, I don't really remember the very first time I heard this story. I can kind of put it in a time frame of when I was a very young mother, I must have been doing some family history at the time. When the little ones were in bed just to have a break from my regular routine. But I did come across this story of my great-grandfather that he had written down. I don't know at what point in his life he wrote it down but by the time the story took place was when he was about 10 years old. And that intrigued me, but the thing that really intrigued me was the broken English that he wrote it in because he was right from Denmark. And so it was so charming for me to read his own account. And I just was drawn in by this story, because he tells about his mother. And so I could see myself. I could actually relate to her as a young mother of several children. And so this is my great-great-grandmother, Caroline Catherine Holmes Kjar. And at this point in her life, she was pregnant, with I think her seventh child. She had lost one. And her husband had been sick in the hospital for about 26 weeks, so about a half year, six months. And as a struggling young mother, trying to provide for her children with her husband unable to work, she was taking in laundry, she was doing whatever she could make ends meet, and could not make ends meet. So they get to the point where the landlord comes and says, you know, pay up or move out basically. And as it always happens in sad stories, this is in the middle of the winter. So from my great grandfather, Joseph Julius point of view, he remembers looking out the window with his older brother Peter. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself, I got a back up a little bit. My great-great grandmother was discouraged. And so she gathered the children in prayer after the landlord had come and kind of given his ultimatum. She kneels down with the children in prayer, puts her arms around them and, and says a heartfelt prayer and tells Heavenly Father, she's done everything she can do. She can't do anymore at this point in her life. I remember feeling that way at that point in my life as well. And she told Him t
