"I just felt an overwhelming rush, a feeling of love that I had never in my whole life felt. It was a lot, it was a lot of feelings and I just collapsed to the floor, I just felt all the weight of everything that had been going on had been lifted and I felt wrapped up in love. I knew that God was telling me that I was doing the right thing and that I needed to take President Nelson seriously and I needed to be listening to his teachings. It is one of those things I still cling to on my bad days because the only way to describe that experience was a complete feeling of God's love."
Transcript
ASHLY
00:00
Okay, Amanda, so excited to have you on the podcast. I think it's just really cool that we have all these connections behind the scenes, you know, my little sister, Ally. And she's actually played a big part in me getting this podcast started because she's just really good at, you know, technical stuff. And then I know your mom, which is so cool. And your mom and my dad are really good friends. So, my dad, he's always talked so highly of your mom. So, it's great. She's great. She is amazing; power woman. But yeah, I am so excited to hear your story. I think one of the cool connections is that you work with the Uplift Community of Faith with Leo, who was recently on the podcast, and his episode was so powerful. So, I'd love to hear a little bit about you, kind of what your involvement is in Uplift Community of Faith and then just a little bit of background on you.
AMANDA
01:00
Okay, all right. So, my name is Amanda Freebairn. I live in Mesa, and I grew up in Southern Utah. I'm married, I've been married for about seven or eight years. And I have three children. Like you said, I work with Leo Winegar, and a really great team in a Facebook faith crisis support group called Uplift Community of Faith. I do a lot of kind of the back-end stuff, admitting people into the group and posting posts and that sort of thing. But it's a group that, as Leo talked about a couple weeks ago, really kind of tries to find this sweet spot between, like, being able to welcome peoples’ questions and struggles and frustrations without allowing a lot of the distracting like anger and noise so that as people work through those questions, they can do that with the Spirit and have an environment, like an online community, where we can have the Spirit and not just kind of be combative or constantly have a lot of the kind of anger and cynicism that tends to develop in faith crisis communities online. I've been involved with that for a couple of years now. And I actually got involved with the group when I was struggling with my own faith crisis, which we'll talk about today.
ASHLY
03:36
Awesome. Well, I think that group is so needed. I think that I mean, as we were just talking before we started recording is it's just, it's so loud right now. And you know, I think you're exactly right. We need that support in that community for people to be able to ask questions and get answers with a lens of faith. And so, what you were doing is so needed and so powerful. So, thank you so much for doing that. It's just, it's awesome. Well, cool, why don't we go ahead and get started? You can just, you know, start wherever you want from the beginning.
AMANDA
03:58
Okay, all right, great. So, I grew up, my parents actually joined the Church when I was seven or eight years old. So, my mom had grown up in Mesa, she had been kind of around the Church, and she was pretty familiar with it. Her dad was Jewish, and her mom was sort of somewhat Protestant, but she didn't really grow up going to church a lot. My dad, his dad had been a member of the Church, but had kind of left when he was a teenager. But my dad didn't really have much familiarity with the Church. And so, but when they had kids, they felt like they needed to be raising their kids in the Church. And so, they started looking for churches, I kind of marginally remember attending different churches when I was young. As my parents kind of embarked on this ‘figuring out” journey, and one day my dad found an ad, I think, in the newspaper, he found an ad in the newspaper for LDS church. And he mentioned it to my mom. And my mom said, “Well, I don't know about that, I don't know, they're pretty strict.” But they went anyway, and didn't go to any more churches after that. And we kept going.
At the time, we lived in Arizona, but pretty shortly after that, we moved to Southern Utah. And we had in you know, we were raised in the Church. But my parents, like I said, were converts. We kind of sometimes were active, the different kids – there were five of us – we kind of did different things. And by the time I went to college, I had kind of. you know, I just wasn't going that much. It wasn't that I was struggling with faith or that I was having big issues with any of the commandments. I just wasn't kind of too interested in that. I always figured, “yeah, it’s probably true. But I'll figure that out when I'm a little older.” And, you know, “I'm not super interested in going right now.”
So, I have a lot of LDS friends that I lived with. And a lot of good influences when I went away to college at SUU, but I wasn't super involved for a few years. I went to church occasionally, after a couple of years of being away at college, I kind of started having some mental health issues, and I ended up going home, taking some time off college and just trying to figure out. I didn't like my major, I didn't like what I was doing. I just kind of needed some “take a break” times. So, I moved back home with my parents and was just kind of working, hanging out, trying to figure stuff out. And one weekend, I went up to Salt Lake City just to see some friends, to hang out with some friends. And I decided before I drove back down to St. George, that I would stop at the temple grounds. And I hadn't been to on temple grounds in years. But I just thought, “oh, you know, I'll stop by and see the temple. It's so pretty.”
And I went, and I just kind of sat there on a bench. I watched this sister missionaries talking, giving tours, and talking to people who were learning about the Church. And I had this overwhelming feeling that that needed to be me, that I needed to be serving a mission. And, and I said, “that's crazy. I don't remember the last time I went to church.” But I just stayed there for a little bit longer, and I kept having that feeling over and over again. And I prayed and I said “is this is this really? Am I just going crazy.” But I felt that so strongly that when I, you know, got in my car and started driving back to St. George, I called my mom and said, “Mom, I think I’m supposed to go on a mission.” And she said, “Well, okay, let's get it figured out.”
So, I went home and I started going back to church, I just barely started a new job. I had started dating a guy who wasn't LDS, but I just kind of just pulled it together and got myself on a mission. I was not the most prepared missionary ever. But I, you know, we talked earlier about focusing on the miracles, that was kind of my first miracle in the life of my faith, where that was an impression, and I had never had that clear and distinct of an impression before.
So, I got ready for my mission. I left on a mission. And I served in Toronto, Canada. And it was wonderful. Like I said, I wasn't the most prepared missionary ever; it wasn't something I had ever planned on doing. So, I had a little bit of a rough adjustment. But by the end of my mission, I really had kind of gotten used to the discipline and the obedience and really felt like I had a firm testimony and I was really happy on my mission. And when I returned home, I just I had had nothing but the most wonderful experience of me coming closer to Christ and meeting all of these people who really just, you know, people say it all the time, but the people that I met and that I taught, they helped me feel Christ's love so much. They taught me and they served me and it was amazing. So, I got home from my mission, and within a couple of years I had met my husband, gotten married, we had our first baby like a year after we were married –our first baby was born. And then right after that, I graduated finally from college. And so, it was kind of a lot in a really little period of time. I had kind of waffled for my first couple years of adulthood and then all of a sudden like my adulthood fast forwarded.
And so, my husband I both graduated from school. At this point, I was 27 and he got a job in Arizona some of my family had moved back down to Arizona so we moved down here and all of a sudden like I said, I kind of had this extended YSA-age period for like almost 10 years, and then now I'm like my husband's at work all day, we have one car, so I get up I drive them to work, I come home, I'm with one toddler all day, I'm in this apartment complex by myself, there's like no other members of the Church, no other young moms in my apartment complex. And it was a real big adjustment.
ASHLY
That's hard. That's hard.
AMANDA
It was hard. It was hard. The new mom thing is hard, the stay-at-home mom thing is hard. And I started really struggling with a lot of depression. I didn't recognize it at the time, because that wasn't an experience I'd ever had. But I was super depressed. And with that depression started coming like distance from God. I kind of stopped praying very much. I stopped studying the scriptures, but I kept going to church. But it wasn't, I just wasn't feeling it. I wasn't feeling God in my life. And as that depression kind of sink in, as I started feeling, sort of, I was unhappy in my ward. It was the first time I'd ever been in a family ward. And I'm in a ward with all these big families. And most of the people are like in their 40s. And I don't have friends. And they're all so nice and lovely people, but it just kind of I wasn't clicking in.
And so, I was, you know, I was unhappy with my ward. I was unhappy with just my faith in the Church in general. And around that same time was when I started to see a lot of just kind of a lot of friends that I knew mission, companions, mission people posting a lot of stuff on social media, criticism of the church. And that didn't help. That stuff started sticking with me, as you know, I had felt the distance from God, that was kind of sticking with me. And some of it luckily, a lot of the church history stuff that people struggle with, my dad is a big history buff, I like to read, and so a lot of the stuff that people are just like finding out when they start a faith crisis, like I already knew, and so that good.
But some of the other things maybe I didn't know, or maybe I just sort of struggled with, I struggled with polygamy, and women in the priesthood, and a lot of the stuff that women typically struggle with. And I started thinking about those things more and more and more often. And then I don't really know when it happened, but I just kind of realized that I didn't really think I believed any of it anymore. I wasn't sure there was God at all. And maybe it was just all such like too good to be true. You know, if it was right, then what a great story it is. And maybe people just made this up to feel better about life, because life is really hard. And of course, now saying this out loud, that sounds like depression, right?
13:50
I didn't know that. I thought I was just, you know, I was just thinking through things for the first time in my life. And I was pretty mentally checked out. I went to church with my husband, I sort of had a calling teaching Young Women, and I would just kind of do it, but I felt a little bit uncomfortable. And I got to the point where I was like, I think I need to talk with my bishop, I need to tell my husband and like, I just don't know where I'm at anymore. So that was kind of the worst. That was the worst part of it. And then at that point, I had to figure out okay, well, what am I going to do?
ASHLY
14:36
Did you end up telling your husband and your bishop?
AMANDA
14:37
I did. With my husband, I didn't ever have like a sit-down talk with him where I was like, “Look, I don't believe it anymore.” It was more I had kind of talked to him a little bit, like “I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling with that.” And then finally, I was like, “I just I don't know, I don't know if I can I can stick this out.” And he you know, was wonderful and supportive. But he you know, of course wanted me to stick it out. And would send me sort of podcasts and send me anything that he could find, you know, to kind of help me. He looked for General Conference talks to send to me that I could listen to, he would help me with, you know, encouraging me with my scripture study and everything, so he was really supportive.
ASHLY
15:24
Him sending you that stuff, do you think it was helpful, or do you think you were seeing that stuff with a different lens after you know, the headspace you were in or what was what was that?
AMANDA
15:37
It kind of depended, honestly, on the day. Sometimes I was like, you’re not gonna fix me, like you can't, you can't fix me. And then other times there would be things that would help. I know you’ve mentioned that you're going to have Don Bradley on your podcast, right? My husband, one time, just came across a profile, I think in the Deseret News, something about Don Bradley and his journey through faith and his return to the Church. And I, my husband had sent me that and I was like, oh, like, Okay.
ASHLY
16:15
So inspiring, right? I think it was at Salt Lake Tribune, actually, which is interesting, because, you know, that’s not some of the things that you usually get. But that article is incredible. And this is kind of a side note, but I have to tell you really quick, I recently listened to another podcast, I think it was actually FAIR that did the podcast. But he went into detail about how he was out because of some of the things that he saw with like the temple and things like that. But then he dove deeper into his research, and when he dove deeper into it, because he was writing his book. And so, he was out, he took his records off, but he was still working on his book. And hopefully, I don't need to fact check myself here. But I, you know, from my memory, this is what I'm remembering it said, that he was out, but he was still working on his book. And so he was, you know, still doing the research and things like that. And then he found these similarities, and with the temple and the Book of Mormon, and just put these puzzle pieces together, and it was so good. I'm gonna send you the link to that after we hop off because I called my mom immediately after, and I'm like, “oh, my gosh,” because we had just been talking about, you know, it was after Jasmine was on the podcast talking about, you know, some people have questions about the Freemason and the temple. And his just putting those pieces together with that, and in the Book of Mormon, and the brother of Jared, and just all of these things that he mentioned, blew my mind. And it was so cool. And so, I'm gonna have to send you that. But anyway, sorry, that was a total hiatus off of our story here. But so go ahead, continue.
AMANDA
18:10
No, I love that because as I was preparing for today, I was kind of thinking about what are some of the things that I like, learned going through this journey, and one of the things is, you think, you know so much when you know, this much, you know. It's like, you go through kind of your childhood, your adolescence and you know, about, you know, a little teeny tiny bit. And then when you get to be a little bit older, you learn a little bit more, and all of a sudden you think you know everything. And you don't, you don't know everything, and there are people, and there are books, and there's so much, there's so much that you don't know. And when you get to that point where it's like, “okay, I'm a, you know, I'm a young adult, I need to take care of my faith for myself.” There's so much to dive into. There's so many smart people and amazing books, and so many people asking the same questions that you're asking, they've asked these questions for hundreds and thousands of years. And so, I think of myself being so arrogant thinking, you know, “I'm the only person who's ever thought of this problem that I have with the church.” And of course, that's not true at all. There's still so much to learn.
ASHLY
19:23
Yeah, absolutely.
AMANDA
19:25
So, you asked me about my bishop. I did talk to my bishop too, and I know that like, not all of these experiences are the same, but my experience ended up being really wonderful. I talked to him, I just told him, I just I don't know if I believe anything anymore. And he talked to me, he gave me encouragement. And he didn't accuse me of sinning or being a terrible person or not reading my scriptures enough –which I was not reading my scriptures enough – but he just told me, “You know, what, I know that there are a lot of people who are concerned with these issues, especially right now. But honestly, many of these questions people have had for a long time. And the best thing that I can tell you is to both try to seek the spirit and also seek out information, good information from scholars.”
And he also kind of talked to me about how you know, I might know a little bit but there's still a lot more to know and a lot of wise people to consult, and a lot of books to read, and so he was very supportive. I asked him, you know, “should I keep doing my calling?” and he said he thought it would be a good idea if I was comfortable to keep doing my calling because I was a Young Women advisor, so I’d teach young women like I think, like once a month. And so, as I was preparing for those lessons, he thought it would be a good opportunity for me to be studying. And he said, “you know, if there's anything that you're struggling with, in particular in the lesson, you know, you can always invite another leader to share their testimony instead, I don't want you to feel like you have to be dishonest.” So, he was really supportive in that way. And I decided, “okay, yes, I will, I will keep doing this.” And, and that was a real turning point for me that night, because then I was like, “okay, yes, I am going to try this, I'm going to try to stick it out.”
And after I kind of made that decision, I remember, like, driving home from that meeting with the bishop and just like I had some hymns on, and I was crying, and I was overwhelmed. And I was like, I'm going to try this. I'm going to try to stick this out. And I'm so grateful that I did, because that was when the next round of miracles started, I think.
So, I mean, one of the first miracles was that I kind of started on, first of all, I started being able to get through my scripture study and prayers in a way that I could focus and my brain wasn't always going crazy with distractions and things that I was upset about. I noticed, like a real kind of clarity of mind that hadn't been there before. So that was really, really great. That made a difference.
The next thing that was a wonderful miracle was that I was on YouTube, just kind of like listening to I think I was listening to like, maybe a FAIR conference or something. And I came across, like on autoplay, there was an interview, and it was this guy named Leo Winegar who was just starting a Facebook group called Uplift, and it was a faith crisis support group. And he was doing this video interview interviewing Dan Peterson, who was a professor at BYU at the time. And they were talking about people struggling with the church, they were talking about apologetics. It was really interesting. And so, I thought, well, I should probably you know, I'm on Facebook, I should probably try to find this group. And so, I found the group and joined. And I found that it was really different from other online spaces where people were talking about faith crises, where it was mostly just people saying, “I can't do this anymore. I hate this. I hate that.” You know, it was, I want to try, I'm struggling with this, but I do want to regain my faith. And that was huge for me. So that was another big miracle that I found.
ASHLY
24:30
Before you talked to your bishop, were you kind of really like spending a lot of time online, like in those communities? Or what was your experience like with those communities, were you participating in the conversations surrounding faith crises? Like, you know, we were talking about how you know, TikTok and other places, and also just people that we know that, you know, and we're, you know, obviously, I know that you're not here or me either here to invalidate anybody's journey, you know, that chooses to leave. But, you know, I know that we've both seen a lot of people that are close to us, and friends and family leave the church, and they are, they share all of their reasons why they left, and it can be, it can really hurt. And it really stings. And it can kind of create this like, spiral inside. Like, why like, what is it they're thinking? And so anyway, I'm just curious to know, like, you know, what was your involvement like with those communities and all of that?
AMANDA
25:16
That's a super great question. So, there were some communities that I had joined, like, mostly other Facebook groups. I know that ex-Mormon Reddit is a big one for some people. That was one that I had got on, gotten on a few times and just felt like this isn't the place for me. I don't feel like this is really very helpful. But there were some sort of groups that, you know, might be referred to as sort of exit groups, groups that kind of encourage people to leave the Church, groups for people who were attending but kind of mentally out, that I was in.
I didn't find myself participating in the groups a lot for some reason, I just kind of always, I don't know what it was that I was blessed kind of with this spirit, but I just kind of always intuited like, this isn't for me, I'm not feeling good here, this isn't what I'm looking for, you know, plenty of nice people who are there trying to help and support and help people find community because it you know, when you do leave the church, it can be scary, you feel like you don't have a community anymore. And so, plenty of these people are wonderful people trying to be supportive. But I just kind of felt like this isn't what I although I was still there, and those things were still weighing down on me. And it took me a while to say, “Okay, no more of this, I know that this isn't making me feel good. I've just got to leave it all.” And eventually, I was kind of able to do that.
ASHLY
26:53
Awesome. So you are, you're continuing in Young Women’s. You're feeling kind of you still don't know, but you have this experience with the bishop that's kind of, you know, motivating you to keep going. So, what happened after that?
AMANDA
27:09
So, the next General Conference, after kind of all this was going on, this would have been, I think, April of 2018. So, this was President Nelson's first conference when he was sustained as the president of the Church. And I was really, at this point, this was after I'd made the decision, “okay, I'm gonna, I'm going to try, I'm going to give this thing at least like till the end of the year, give it some time. Because if it is true, it's worth trying.” So, I was watching the General Conference, I was taking it very seriously. I was like, “this is going to be the conference, it's gonna be life changing. I'm gonna feel it. I'm going to feel the spirit.” And I watched conference, and most of the time, I just kind of felt stressed and numb. And I didn't feel what I was expecting. And I might have just overhyped myself, or I was feeling like that sludge of depression, or whatever it was, but it was not, it was not great for me, even though now I've looked back and rewatched those talks and reread them. And there wasn't anything in particular that wasn't absolutely as wonderful as conference always is, but I just wasn't in a good place.
And so, we got through all the sessions of conference until the very last session of conference, in that very last talk where President Nelson was doing his first kind of farewell to conference and announcing temples. And I was grumpy. I was in the kitchen kind of getting ready for dinner, I was mad that I was like, I was feeling like this was going to be a big turning point for me, and it just hasn't been. But I'm still listening and watching him. And while he was announcing the temples, I just felt an overwhelming rush of a feeling of love that I had never in my whole life felt. And it was a lot, it was a lot of feelings. And I just like, collapsed to the floor, which sounds so dramatic. But I just fell to the floor because I just felt all of the weight of everything that had been going on just kind of lifted, and I felt wrapped up in love. And I knew that I knew that God was telling me that I was doing the right thing. And I also knew that I needed to take President Nelson seriously, that I needed to be listening to his teachings because God was telling me that this is who you should be following right now. This is this is the Prophet. And it's one of those things still that I cling to on my bad days because I don't have any other way of describing that experience other than complete feeling of God's love.
So, after that, I had been involved in this group Uplift for a little bit, and I got a message from one of the admins in the group saying “hey, you know, we've noticed that you've been participating. We need a few, you know, we need some help moderating the group. Would you like to help out a little bit?” And I was like, “Well, you know, I'm still working through a lot of these things that I'm struggling with,” you know, “That's okay. Everybody on the team’s kind of in different places, but as long as you're on board with the mission of the group, you know, we'd love your help.” And I said, “Okay, all right, I'll help out a little bit.” And I helped out a little bit. And as I was doing that, I kept sticking with it, I was listening to conference talks. And I was, I was listening to old FAIR talks. And I was reading my scriptures. And I noticed that I was experiencing that sort of Alma 32 Promise where it's starting to feel good. And I just, you know, I started out with that desire to believe and I can feel good, and feeling excited. And I felt like that was a real fulfillment of the scriptures in my life, where I just, you know, I was starting to love the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And as I did that, as I put my faith in Him, as I stuck it out on the hard days, I found myself getting little impressions of the things that I had been struggling with, being led to read this or that scripture, or Ensign article, or whatever, that would kind of help me help my thinking in the right direction. You know, direct me to some good books. I just kept getting impression upon impression, and they were little, but I learned to listen. And after, you know, that, by the end of that year, that I said, you know, “God, I'm gonna give you till the end of the year, at least,” I felt like, okay, yeah, I believe this. I'm not totally sure about everything, but I believe it. And ever since then, it's just been amazing. I've had all these amazing opportunities to have some questions answered, others of them, realize, okay, maybe just that's not something that I need to figure out. But the weight of this testimony that I have, let's just kind of set that question to the side for now. And I yeah, I feel like I really can say that I love the gospel of Jesus Christ.
ASHLY
33:29
Wow, that is so incredible. And I love how you, you know, talk about how they just came little by little, it's not like, you know, when we have these questions. It's like, the answers don't come that satisfy in a worldly way. It's not like, “Okay, I have this question about polygamy or whatever. And I'm gonna get on Google and find the answer.” It doesn't work like that. It's like, the answers that we have, they come in a spiritual sense. And it's a piece and it's something that, you know, it's not like, of this world. And so, I just love how you describe that, you know, these things came little by little, and it wasn't just some overnight thing.
So, I have a couple questions for you. If you're open to some questions. So, you kind of touched on this a little bit, but one of the questions is, what was the turning point to make you want to return?
AMANDA
34:26
I think meeting with my bishop, talking with my husband, and being okay with understanding that I had people there for me, and that it was okay where I was at, and it was okay that I needed some time to figure it out. I had a support system. And I think that's what made a big difference. And I would really encourage people. I know there's always a horror story online about someone like, “I talked to my husband about my faith crisis, or I talked to my bishop or my Relief Society president they said, the nastiest thing or whatever.” I don't think that's the majority of cases. I think that sometimes people can say things that we might read as judgmental because we're in a tough emotional state or whatever. But I think most of the time, if you're willing to open up to someone, that's a really good start in a good direction. And I would say as crazy as it sounds, because I do faith crisis support online, I would say, open up to someone in person, open up to someone that you trust in person, whether that's a family member, or a friend or a bishop or Relief Society president or whatever. Talk to someone in person so that there's someone who knows what you're going through who loves you, who's going to text you and say, “hey, just checking in on you,” whatever. But if nobody knows what you're going through, it's gonna be a lot heavier. And I'm sure that there's someone you have in your life, who will help you bear that burden, who will help you carry it.
ASHLY
36:11
So beautifully said, I love that. Do you have any final advice or words of wisdom or any last things that you want to leave with our listeners on just what you went through, or any final thoughts?
AMANDA
36:37
Sure. I didn't talk much about this, but I mentioned a little bit about being unhappy in my ward. And if anybody who was in my ward at this time is listening, it was great ward, they were wonderful people. But I just for some reason, was not clicking in that ward. And now I have great friendships now that I'm not in that ward of great friendships with people who are in that ward.
But one of the things that I think we could do better on in general is remembering the church is somewhere we go to give, not somewhere where we go to get. I think that people can feel unsatisfied in church a lot, if we're going there expecting for people to always be reaching out to us, rather than us going to reach out to someone else. If I'm sitting alone in Relief Society, I can sit and wallow and be like, “Why is someone not coming to sit by me?” or I can look around and figure out who else is sitting by themselves. And maybe they're feeling like I am too. And instead of, you know, listening to the Sunday school teacher who might not be super well prepared, or might not be saying all the things that I think are right or that I agree with, maybe feel grateful for the time that that person spent preparing for that lesson, and let that kind of be the lens through which you interact with that person. Because the getting we get in church is when we get to go take the sacrament, and when we get to repent of our sins and start fresh, the rest of church is about giving. And that lens helped me a lot when I was struggling with interactions in my word. So, I think that that helps a lot.
And then one other thing that I wanted to mention is you kind of touched on this before but seeking out the right kinds of resources. Making sure like, podcasts are great, I love this podcast, but books are important. Read books. Conference talks are important. Scriptures are important. Don't take sort of the easy way out of just like consuming content. Take some time to study, to pray, to reach out. I mentioned Dan Peterson, he was a professor at BYU, he's retired now, but I sent him an email, and I know Leo did a similar thing when he was struggling. I sent him an email, and he emailed me back that day. He's a busy college professor, and he emailed me back the day, and he said you know “here’s a couple books. Here's a couple of other things. I'm in between classes, I'll get back to you soon but here's this and that.” There are people who want to help, so look for look for good resources. So those are my two big things that I would kind of probably wrap up with
ASHLY
39:57
I love that. “Church is a place we go to give, not a place for you to get.” That was so profound, that was amazing! What books, just as a recommendation for listeners, what books did you read that you really love? One that I've mentioned a couple of times is Faith Is Not Blind. And I hope that's one that you read because it is a game changer. It is so good.
AMANDA
40:20
Yeah. Faith Is Not Blind is wonderful. It kind of came out after I was going through a lot of this stuff, but it is definitely probably in my top two. So, that would be one. My other one is one that I think either you've mentioned on the podcast or you've posted on your Instagram, The Crucible of Doubt by the Givenses. Those are my top two.
Faith Is Not Blind, as you kind of mentioned, it's about kind of the general process of faith, the steps that you go through. It's not necessarily about particular issues. But The Crucible of Doubt, that is wonderful because it tackles some of these issues like, you know, “why did Brigham Young say this thing that doesn't sound very prophet-like and what is the prophet even?” and it tackles some of those more individual specific issues. And so those are the two books that I would recommend that I think are really fantastic.
Another you've mentioned, I don't think I have anything new to offer you that your wonderful guests haven’t already brought up. The Stand Forever Strong devotional is excellent. And that's one that hurts when you're struggling because you're like, “No, I want to study about polygamy.” And he says “No, you need to start back from the basics.” And he's exactly right. As much as it sounds like not what you want to hear.
ASHLY
41:52
Totally. Yep. I love that so much. And, Amanda, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time, and your story is so powerful. And I just love the little miracles that you mentioned that you experienced. And yeah, I just, thank you so much for coming on my podcast.
AMANDA
42:16
Yeah, thank you so much. I just love what you're doing. I love listening to your podcast every week. And it's something that I've loved sharing with people, and I hope that your listeners whether they're struggling with faith themselves or want to learn better about how to minister to people with struggling, that they will join us on our Facebook group, It's Uplift Community of Faith, and we welcome people no matter where they're at in their faith, whether they're feeling super strong, or having lots of doubts, or you're just kind of in the middle. We would love to have you join us.
ASHLY
42:48
Awesome, and I will link that that Facebook group. Thank you so much!
AMANDA
42:52
Thank you so much!
