S1:E55 - Jaxon struggled with many aspects of the church as a youth, but he learned the value and power of repentance from his mission, as it brought him closer to Jesus Christ.

"For the first time in my life I decided to humble myself and say a sincere prayer. I just wanted to know, ‘God, are you there? What can I do, what do I need to do?’ Immediately after saying that I heard a voice, ‘You need to go back on your mission.’ All of the feelings of anger, frustration, and confusion that I had felt from many past years were gone. I will never forget how at peace I felt and how close to God I felt at that moment. That experience has been the bedrock for everything I have done since in the church because I know that was real."

Transcription

ASHLY

00:14

Okay, so, Jackson, I'm really excited to have you on the podcast. I was super happy that you reached out and, and shared your story with me. I'm excited! So I'd love to hear a little bit about you, and just a little bit about yourself and give us some background and some context for who you are before you jump into your story. So do you work or you go to school, or do you have a family?

JAXON

00:41

Yeah, so I just graduated from BYU. I have a master's degree in accounting. And I'll be working for a big accounting firm down in Texas. So we’ll be moving down there this summer, so pretty excited about that. I have an amazing wife, my wife, Bianca. We've been married for three years next month. So that's kind of cool.

ASHLY

Yeah.

JAXON

I'm a military brat. I grew up all over the place. My dad was an Army doctor. So we kind of bounced around a lot, and I actually spent most of my time growing up either in Hawaii or in Germany.

ASHLY

Wow.

JAXON

Yeah. Pretty, pretty privileged, pretty blessed to have that. And so a lot of cool memories in those places. I'm currently living in Utah. I've been here for about four years. I've had a really good time here. But a little cold,

ASHLY

It is cold.

JAXON

and I can't wait to go down south where I don't have to worry about snow.

ASHLY

We’re moving right now. I live in Bountiful right now, and we're moving to St. George, my hometown. And I'm just so happy. can't wait, no more snow!

01:46

I love it down in St. George. If I were to live in Utah, I would probably like Cedar City or St. George.

ASHLY

Totally. Yes.

JAXON

Yeah. So I guess the main reason that I'm on here is I’m a huge fan of the show. I love hearing stories of people coming back. So I'll probably give a little bit of background. But the main reason I'm here is because I was a missionary, who was a very troubled youth that did a lot of bad things. Went on my mission, not worthy to be there, and then after a period of time came home. Really struggled with the church, really struggled with my testimony, and then went back out on my mission, eventually had a really cool experience with God, went back on my mission. And then here I am loving the church, love being a member.

ASHLY

And it's funny, because looking at you, I would never suspect that you were a troubled teenager. The Savior's Atonement can make somebody totally look like they never did anything bad!

JAXON

Yeah, I like to think that I'm just sort of like the most generic Latter-day Saint. Like if they got 10 people, you wanted to pick out the Mormon, you’d probably pick me.

ASHLY

02:52

And it feels good, doesn't it? It feels good.

JAXON

Yeah. It is good. Yeah. So I was raised in the church. My dad's dad was a convert, my dad's mom was raised in a less-active family. So he's more or less first generation, and my mom's a convert. So I didn't have a whole lot of cultural, Mormonism Latter-day Saint stuff growing up. I always had really great experiences in church when I was really young. Like I said, I lived in Hawaii. So we had really awesome wards there. Lots of Polynesian members who were just fantastic. And then when we were living in Germany, we were in the military church, which is pretty different from a normal congregation. I mean, the oldest person usually would be like, in their mid 40s. And then there'd be a ton of kids and a ton of youth. Lots of great experiences growing up, and being in middle school and moving to Germany, that's really where I had a lot of my most formable experiences. And really where I came to be me as a person. Living there, we attended a really big ward. My dad was stationed where there's a cluster of military bases in Central Western Germany, where there's just tons of Americans. There’s like 100,000 Americans that live there. So we went to a huge ward. And eventually it got split, there were probably like 250 to 300 people there, lots of youth. And it was a really good environment.

04:14

And going into high school, my dad was made a high councilor, and we were asked to attend a really small military branch. That was probably about 20 minutes further away than the ward that we were attending. And so that was really, really important for me. I didn't have really any friends who were in the church in high school. I didn't really have any kind of social pressure to be a member. Two things–one of them was good, one was bad. You know, I had really enjoyed being active in my church community. But then, outside of church, I was not a very good person. All my friends were nonmembers. So I got into a lot of really bad stuff. Like all teenagers, I really wanted to be liked, or be accepted. And so I was always trying to be like, “I'm the cool Mormon.” You know, “You can drink around me, you can swear around me, we can talk about things we shouldn't talk about,” and like, “I'll be fine.” For a while. You think that “I can handle this, it's okay.” But it really starts to wear you down. Starts to really tear you down spiritually. And so now I found myself more and more, doing a lot of things that I shouldn't have. And while I was really active in church, I definitely was not active in the gospel, and living life the way I should have. And so I did home study seminary, because I didn't want to go in the morning. It was really just like one hour a week. So I really didn't have a lot of church influence outside of actual church. My parents were great. They always tried to do stuff, but I really wasn't super into a lot of that. During that time, I had a good friend of mine who had moved who started really getting into anti-Mormon literature. And I had had some encounters with it when I was just starting high school. I remember there was a time in class, this kid was trashing on the church. And I stood up trying to defend it. And he mentioned something about like, I don't even know how the Book of Mormon came to be. And he mentioned seer stone, and I was kind of thrown off. I didn't know anything about that. And so I went home, and I said, “I'm never gonna let that happen again.” So I spent a lot of time kind of slowly diving into a lot of the arguments that critics had. I remember, one of the very first, really thorough things that I came across was like an analysis of the different writing styles in the Book of Mormon. I just remember, there's this weird chart, how these clusters of words and stuff, and it's showing, “okay, this is Martin Harris, this is Joseph Smith.” And at the time, I remember thinking, “Oh, people have really thought about this stuff.” There are people who really, really like to tear into the church. And so fast forwarding probably about two years later, I had a friend of mine who said, “Hey, I've discovered some stuff about the Church. It's not what it claims to be.” And he started sending me stuff, like horses in the Book of Mormon. And supposed anachronisms.

ASHLY

Classic.

JAXON

Classic stuff. So I thought like, “Really? This is the stuff that's getting you?” Because he was a smart kid. And so I decided, we spent months going back and forth. And this is when I really started to come across a lot of really anti stuff. I think I came across the CES Letter, and it was either late 2014, or 2015. I'm very grateful I came across it at that time, because I was very curious. And I went through and I read it. And I thought, “This is crap.” It didn't seem very well written. I think in your interview with Richard, he mentioned diving into the actual quotes of the Book of Napoleon and stuff. And I remember doing the exact same thing. I thought, “Oh, man, this is not an intellectually honest document. This is not what it claims to be.” So I had all this knowledge, I had all this anti-Mormon knowledge, but it was just kind of like, it doesn't matter. This isn't really important. And so that stuff didn't really bother me. But at the same time, I had all the things that I was doing in my own personal life that were not in congruence with the gospel. And that was really starting to tear me up. And so eventually, the time comes around, where I'm supposed to go serve a mission. And I wanted to go because my dad served in New York. He had really crazy stories. Lots of really fun stories. And I remember talking to all the elders, we would have them over all the time, they had really fun stories. And so while I wasn't really living the gospel, and I definitely wasn't converted, I just wanted to go and go to cool places, and have fun stories wherever I would go.

So I got all the papers in, lied to my branch president, lied to my stake president, and thought, “Everything's good, I don't need to worry about this stuff. Doesn't really matter,” because I didn't understand the concept of repentance.

09:02

And so I got my mission call to Detroit. And Detroit is– I was very excited, because I had grown up, basically, in Hawaii. And then this little teeny tiny town in rural Germany. There were like six houses in my little village that I lived in. So really small. And here I am getting a call to Detroit. I hadn't been to America in over six years, I was stoked. I was really excited. I didn't really care about preaching the gospel, I just wanted to go to Detroit and have crazy things happen to me. That's all that I wanted. During that time, between when I got my mission call [and beginning the mission], I kept doing lots of really bad things. When I went to the temple, I was not worthy to be there. And eventually I go out on my mission, and not a super great experience at first. The Lord was definitely trying to break me down. And it wasn't just me. So I’ll talk a little bit about my whole mission as a whole, like all the different missionaries. When you have all that spiritual baggage, it really weighs you down. And it makes it so difficult to find joy in the little things, because rather than going through, “Okay, they slamed the door in our face, but it's okay. We love them. They'll be fine in the end,” it was like, “Oh, dang. That sucks.” And, “That person really sucks. I don't like them.” And so it was really hard to feel the Spirit. I really struggled. And I had an awful trainer. I was with him for three transfers, so four and a half months. And the Lord was doing everything he could to just try to break me down, and humble me to help me out. So at this time, I came in about a transfer behind my mission president, President Cleveland, one of the most Christlike, amazing men that I’ve ever met. And President Cleveland, his very first day conferenced with all the missionaries. He was extremely inspired to preach repentance to missionaries. And his whole focus while he was there was to clean the Spiritual wounds of all the missionaries. And it was the greatest thing ever, because there were so many missionaries out there who were similar to me who should not have been. An analogy that I've used in the past is that if the church is supposed to be like a hospital for sinners– we were definitely the ICU of that hospital. There are so many of us who just had substance abuse, all sorts of law of chastity stuff, coming from rough families. And so President Cleveland was divinely inspired to teach us about repentance. And so going into this, I did not want to repent. Because I just wanted to finish my mission, I just wanted to get it over with, we'll deal with repentance–if I even want to do that–in the future. We won't worry about that now. I just wanted to get it over with so I can go back home, get back to my girlfriend, resume life as normal. And so whenever bad things would happen, I would just kind of rationalize like, “Oh, this is God trying to make me suffer,” which is ridiculous. I can't believe I thought that, but this is a way that I can atone for my own sins. This went on for about nine months. And during this time, I really felt like I was just spiritually lost. I was not accessing the Atonement, I was not coming close to the Savior. I really was not saying sincere prayers, I

12:20

was so distanced from God because of what I had done. And because of my refusal to humble myself, and to repent. Eventually, I mean, I was really struggling with my faith. I had all this previous knowledge, all these things that were just kind of floating around in your head. The more that you start to think, “Well, I'm not happy with this church. Maybe, maybe it isn’t true,” right? “Maybe all that stuff that I've read is accurate. Maybe I'm just wasting my time. Why am I out here? I was happy before I came on my mission. Now I'm not.” And instead of realizing that I'm the problem, I kept saying, “This is my mission president's problem, his fault, the church’s fault,” or whatever. And so I really was, I was losing my faith. And all because I just was too proud to humble myself. And so eventually, things started to get a little bit rough with my girlfriend and some other friends that I had, that I hadn't been talking to. And that was more or less the final straw for me. So I'm done. All right. And I went to confess everything with my mission president because I knew that that was essentially a surefire way to go home. And I'm very, not proud, that's what caused me to decide to go home. It's something that I definitely still have to live with, God can make crappy things turn out very great.

ASHLY

13:43

Yes, He can.

13:44

Absolutely. I waited a couple weeks after that, and I got the call that I was going home, and I was pretty happy. I was very relieved. I could be done in this church, so I don't have to worry about it. My girlfriend was Catholic, we'd been talking about getting married. So to get a Catholic wedding, you can't be a Latter-day Saint because they don't think of us as Christians. Maybe I’ll just convert to Catholicism because Catholicism is cool, they have lots of buildings. I went home, my family did not take it very well. My mom didn't talk to me for like a month, which I understand, it was very difficult for her. My dad actually took it very well. And what frustrated me at the time, because I wanted to be disfellowshipped so that there really wasn't an opportunity for me to go back on my mission. I can just kind of use that as the white flag and give up. My dad kept saying, “I know you'll do the right thing.” And that was it! He just would kind of leave it at that. And that just frustrated me, because in my mind I was doing the right thing. Because this was supposed to make me happy. Because the church wasn't making me happy. The mission wasn't making me happy. But this will make me happy. Being back home, listening to music, going and visiting my girlfriend, that was gonna make me happy. At this time. I was still, I started to go into the YSA just to kind of pass it by my parents, started getting into anti stuff again, with a little bit more fervor behind it. Because, “this stuff is true, which means I don't really have to go back on my mission, because the church isn’t true, it’s just a waste of time for me to do that.” And so it's really easy to weaponize and rationalize that kind of information. And so eventually I decided I'm gonna go out east, go visit my friends, move up with my girlfriend. This will finally make me happy, because I really wasn't happy with things worked out in the past. So I flew out there, visited my girlfriend, visited my friends, and I wasn't happy–spoiler alert. It really did not bring me any of the joy that I thought it would. For the first time in years, I consider the possibility that maybe I was doing something wrong. Maybe all of these sins and all of these worldly things actually wouldn't bring me the joy that I thought they would. And I mean, looking back on it, there's a great verse in the Book of Mormon. It’s either Nehor or Korihor, I think it's Korihor, where he gets trampled on by the people, and it says, “In the end,” the devil will not support his servants.” And I really feel like that happened to me, because I just, I came to the conclusion that, “Okay, I probably am wrong.”

16:21

And for the first time, in probably years, maybe my life, I decided to humble myself and say a sincere prayer. I just wanted to know, “God, are you there? What can I do? What do I need to do?” And immediately – I love, I feel so good every time I try to say this part – but immediately after saying that, I just heard a voice, “You need to go back on your mission.” And all of those feelings of anger and frustration and confusion that I had felt for the past, I mean, multiple years–just gone. And I will never, ever, ever forget how at peace I felt, and how close to God I felt at that moment. And really, that experience has been the bedrock of almost everything else that I've done in church, because I know that that was real. And I know that that was God reaching out to me, because He loves me, cares about me. And if He loves me and cares about me then He loves and cares about everyone. Later that night I changed my flight. I think it was I couldn't get a flight the next day, I had to wait two days or something. But I flew back home, never talked to my girlfriend again, never talked to any of my other friends again, all these bad influences. I went and I met with my stake president, I met my branch president. So I wanted to get back out. Let's do this as quickly as possible. So of course, I couldn't, I couldn't just jump right back into it because I had done a lot of things. And it took some time. I think they start counting the time till you're good from the moment you stopped. So it had been close to a year that time and needed to be a little bit over a year. So I think it was about another five months. During that time, I really started diving in and scriptures really started diving into all sorts of really cool stuff about the church, I would go out with missionaries in my parents’ ward, in Washington–they live in Washington right now. And so we'd be out there in the pouring rain tracting and getting yelled at by all the friendly people up there. And so it was really great. And so at that time, I was really committing myself to the gospel. I went back on a mission. And it was night and day experiences that I had.

ASHLY

Wow.

JAXON

When I was first out there, really frustrated, really confused, didn't really feel like working, had a hard time just being motivated. I get back out there, I'm in the middle of Detroit, just the best, nicest people you could possibly meet. Everyone loves missionaries there. So we're going on, we're talking to people, we're teaching lessons like crazy, getting lots of people to church, and the rest of my mission was just one of the most phenomenal experiences that I've ever had. And I can completely attribute that to having a clean conscience and learning about repentance. Because really as missionaries, they teach you that you're there to teach repentance and baptize converts. And if you are not repenting, you can't possibly teach proper repentance. And that's just going to hinder you. I'm grateful for that experience. Because I will never question whether or not being in the church is the right thing.

ASHLY

Mmhmm.

JAXON

I know the opposite. I know what else is out there. And I just, I’m glad I got my faith crisis out of the way early on. So I don't have it for 20 to 30 years or whatever.

ASHLY

19:46

Right. I think the thing that I can relate to is the feeling of living in dishonesty.

JAXON

Oh yeah.

ASHLY

Just that feeling of knowing that you are pretending to be somebody that you're not. And in my years, when I was going through all my stuff back in the day, that was one thing that I remember feeling–it was living incongruent with the way that you know, you should be living. It gives you this constant feeling of unease.

JAXON

Oh, yeah.

ASHLY

Or dis-ease? unease, dis-ease?

JAXON

20:27

Yeah. I would say both, really.

ASHLY

Yeah.

JAXON

And I think it was especially awful as missionaries, teaching people and some of the lessons on things like the law of chastity and Word of Wisdom. And you're out there saying, “Hey, this will help you come closer to God and bless your life,” knowing that you haven’t lived that way.

ASHLY

Right.

JAXON

Yeah, it is. It is really awful. It just sucks. It really, really sucks. So I’m with you right there.

ASHLY

Yeah, it seems like now you've had a lot of blessings come into your life, since you decided to just listen to the Spirit and jump in with both feet. It seems like you have a really awesome life.

JAXON

Yeah, it's been, it's been phenomenal. And I am really grateful for that time that I went back. So I started my mission in August 2016. I came back March 2019. And I went to BYU spring semester, that next month after I came back, and I met a really good friend in my ward there. And in the fall semester, she was roommates with this really cute girl. She eventually set us up on a date, and that cute girl is my wife now. So that was really phenomenal. Just the timing of all that–I don't know if I ever would have met my wife, if I hadn't. And I think the whole experience has really helped me because I've had the opportunity to serve in a couple of different leadership capacities in my wards here at BYU. Most recently, I was in the bishopric of our married student ward. And we have a couple of people who were really struggling with their faith. But a really good friend of mine, she was struggling with a lot of that. And I felt like I could really empathize with her. And recently, we were able to all go to the temple together. It was her first time in several years. And so I feel like going through all this– as I'm sure you know, you can really speak to people, and you can say, “Listen, I have been where you've been. I'm not just some Peter Priesthood who has checked every box and never questioned once. I have been through the wringer. I've struggled with all this.” And I think that there really is a power in saying that “This is what I have chosen for myself, this isn't just something …”

ASHLY

Right.

JAXON

“… it’s not a path that I’ve more or less followed, I have completely stepped off. I was going in the opposite direction. And then I have chosen to come back.” I'm just very grateful for that. Because like I said, I'll never doubt and I feel like this will give me lots of opportunities to help people. And I'm hoping that this will be one of them. Because I think there's still definitely a stigma around coming home early from a mission.

ASHLY

Totally! Yeah.

JAXON

23:01

And it really is unfortunate. I think the one that we hear a lot of our people come home for mental illness. And that's, that's a really difficult thing. We have a couple of people in my work that did that. And they still struggle with it. But we don't really hear about the repentance side of it. One because I don't think a lot of them stay very active, which is unfortunate. But at least in my mission, it was a huge thing. I think we had, there was one point about one out of every 12 elders was an elder who had gone home, and came back.

ASHLY

Wow.

JAXON

So we had a lot of people who were repenting, and were getting clean the way that they needed to.

ASHLY

Yeah.

JAXON

And so yeah, I think there's a lot of struggle in it. And there's a lot of forces at play, too. I was very fortunate in that my family had moved right before I had gone on my mission. So when I came back home, in a sense, I didn't know anybody there, there wasn't any bad influences to go back to. I was more or less isolated from all that. I'm sure it's really difficult. If you come back, and there's your girlfriend and drug dealer, and their party friends, and all that stuff.

ASHLY

Yes. Totally.

JAXON

Yeah, it's really tough. So I think the best advice that I can give to anyone who is in the situation, I hope that there's someone that's listening. I think the most important thing when you go through something like this is to really figure out what you need to do to come closer to the Savior.

ASHLY

Mmhmm.

JAXON

I would say just as general advice, I think nine times out of 10 that is going back on your mission, because it will bless you, and it'll be such a great experience for you. But I think like President Nelson has said, personal revelation is a huge part of that. And trying to determine whether or not you know, is there something else that I can do? Is it marrying that girlfriend and going to the temple the next year, or is it staying in your YSA and being a really awesome member missionary? There's a lot of different forces at play. And so it's a tough thing. It's really, really tough thing.

ASHLY

25:10

Yeah. And my husband, he came home early from his mission for different reasons. And if you want to hear more about his story, he's on episode two of the podcast.

JAXON

Okay, fantastic.

ASHLY

25:23

Yeah. But anyway, he didn't go back out on his mission. And he regrets it every day. He went down a really rough path. And I think that one thing that I noticed is that I've actually received several emails from people that say things like, “Well, it feels like people who leave and then come back, it's like it almost …” People are concerned that I'm almost promoting leaving, and then coming back. Which is absolutely 100% not the case at all, I think that the thing that I've kind of come to the conclusion of is that when you are outside of the safety of the gospel, and you are dealing with challenges that are somewhat self inflicted, because you're going down that path, and you have all of these different things, it's like, you're dealing with life's challenges in just such a raw painful way. When I was going through my whole drug addiction and everything like that, there were so many things happening in my life that were so heartbreaking and so painful, and my family and what they were going through, and it was just, there was just so much pain, and anguish. And since coming back to the church and doing things like I'm doing everything I can to stay close to the Lord, I feel like I'm able to deal with trials in my life in such a different way.

JAXON

Mmhmm.

ASHLY

Definitely, there's things that happen that are really painful. My husband and I lost a baby. I was 21 weeks pregnant, and we lost a baby. And I had to go through the whole delivery process and deliver the baby. And it was really traumatic. And this was actually in 2019. It was so traumatic. But one of the things that I felt was that–my dad actually says this in his episode, in the first episode of the podcast–but it being insulated against these tragedies. It's like you have insulation around you because you can see it through a faith-filled lens. And it's almost like these trials that we go through, they're so refining in our lives. And they're different than the trials we go through when we're going down this other path. And I see in my own life, and I see it in your life–once you decided to go on that path, it's like things start falling into place and working out. And you start this other direction of happiness and peace, and you can have peace despite hard things that happen. But when you were on your mission the first time, and you're living this incongruent lifestyle, it's like that peace is not there.

JAXON

28:17

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think living the gospel gives everything. Like you were saying, it puts everything in context. Because we have, which I think the most most impressive theological innovation that we have in the Gospel is the plan of salvation. This life is not our beginning, we chose to come here, recognizing that it would be difficult. And all those difficult things, as much as they suck, they are there to make us better. And they're there ultimately, to draw us closer to the Savior. If life was really easy, and everything was just a piece of cake, I think it would be really easy for a lot of people. And I mean, we're seeing this in the world today for people, just, “I don't need church, I don't need God,”

ASHLY

Right.

JAXON

“I don't need anything here. Because my life is great. I make six figures …”

ASHLY

29:03

You are SO right.

JAXON

Yeah. And so it just feels like when things are too easy, it's too easy to rely on the arm of flesh. And I think going through these refining fires, like we've been, like so many of the people that you've interviewed have been through, I think that really sears into your memory, the importance of relying on the Savior, and never letting go of the iron rod, because it's just, it makes life so much better. And I can recognize that as much as these things suck,

ASHLY

Yeah.

JAXON

Christ will make everything better. And in the long run, the big, big picture doesn't really matter. Because God has created this perfect plan that will make all things right through Jesus Christ. And so I'm so sorry to hear about that, that baby, and that’s awesome, that you have that hope.

ASHLY

29:52

Yes. And honestly, I don't ever really even talk about it, ever because it was a sacred experience for me and I don't really ever share about it. I guess my point in sharing it was just that we go through all kinds of things in life, but, when you're close to the gospel, it gives new meaning to these things. And this tragic experience was actually just a really sacred experience for our family. And I think that's something that, you know, you can see these things with a new pair of eyes when you're close to the gospel.

JAXON

30:27

Absolutely. In my opinion, in what I've experienced, it is a much better life, living the gospel of Jesus Christ. You have that context, you have that hope that things will turn out better. And then even in just temporal aspects, we are so blessed to have some of the strongest communities and closest knit communities in the world. Here in every single Latter-day Saint congregation. And all of my really close friends right now are members of my ward, because of what we have been through together. One of my best friends, we served in the bishopric together. It's so great knowing that I have a community of people who have similar beliefs. We are all committed to the same thing, which is bringing forth Zion and trying to help everyone come close to the Savior. There's the spiritual side, which I would love to talk about more, but we are just from a temple standpoint, right?

ASHLY

Right.

JAXON

My wife's family has recently left the church. We really don't talk to them that much anymore, unfortunately. But they are saying how lonely they are. They’ve lost that big, that big community that was there. And they don't really have people who are interested in doing something meaningful with them. So, we’re seeing all the blessings we have.

ASHLY