"I still don't know why stuff has happened the way that it has happened. But that feeling I had when I walked out of that meeting with my bishop - it wasn't just like 'yeah maybe I will go back I haven't felt the Spirit in a while.' No, I was both feet in going to Deseret Book to buy temple garments. It all came flooding back. Whatever he wanted me to do I was in."
Come Back PodcastTranscription
Ashly Stone 00:00
I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. Your brother Brian was on the podcast, and he had such a good episode. I know that I always say “This is one of my favorite episodes” about, like, everybody's episode, but it's just because I love it so much. But Brian's was so good. It was just such an impactful episode. And so when you reached out and you told me your story, I immediately sent it to Lauren, who does all the editing. And I said, “We have to interview him.” Just the fact that you know my husband Jesse is so cool, and he thinks the world of you, and so he was telling me a little bit about you, and I'm really excited to hear your story. I know that a lot of people need to hear it.
Landon
I'm excited too.
Ashly
So tell me a little bit about you, maybe what you do for work, a little bit about your family, just to give us some context before we jump into your story.
Landon
Yeah. So I'm the oldest of five. Brian is the next oldest, and then we have two more brothers. My sister Lauren is the youngest. I grew up in Farmington, UT. They're all still up there, I'm the only one that's not. We moved down to St. George in September last year, and then I met my now fiancée about 10 months ago. She's from Cedar City, so we're making a move up to Cedar, and I just took the job as the golf coach for Cedar High School.
Ashly
Oh my gosh, that is amazing. Jesse is a major golfer, too.
Landon Hedin 02:00
Ya it's exciting. So yeah, I have no idea why we moved to St. George. I think it was because my oldest son just turned 17 last week, and he wants to play golf at either SUU or down in Utah Tech. And so I think that was kind of part of the reason we need to change. We liked it down there for I guess it was only about a year, not quite a year, but now we're going to be in Cedar.
Ashly
Awesome. I love it. Let's jump into your story. I'm super excited to hear it, because you grew up in the same circle as my husband. So let's just start from the beginning.
Landon
Yep, you bet. So my story of growing up is a lot like my brother Brian's. We grew up in a very LDS family. I don't think we were very staunch LDS–we didn’t wear church clothes on Sunday all day, or forbidden to play with our friends on Sunday. I mean, we were pretty liberal when it came to that stuff. But I mean church every Sunday. Being the oldest, I always felt that pressure of having to set a good example. But that's not what kept me in the church. I think I remember having a testimony pretty early on, but, yeah, pretty normal upbringing. I went to Especially For Youth conferences four times, served a mission. I mean, until I was 21, things were pretty normal. I served a faithful mission in California, in the Ventura mission. Yeah, I don't think there's anything really interesting when it comes to the church, or growing up for the first 21 years, about my story. It was pretty cut and dry, pretty dyed in the wool Mormon family. Pretty normal.
Ashly
You know, you were living the just a regular, normal life. So how did things change from there?
Landon
The biggest thing that changed, I think, was about seven or eight months before I came home from my mission. I was serving as a zone leader, and my mission president called me in right before a zone conference. He said, “Hey, I don't know how to tell you this, but your parents’ divorce was final today.” And I was like, “What?” Out of the blue. I had no idea. I remembered they had a bad fight right before I left. But, I mean, that's the fight I remembered. It was just one bad fight. It wasn't that bad. So it was out of the blue. But I was on my mission. I think he gave me about 15 minutes to call them both and chewed them out. I'll never forget how mad I was. I said, “This is wrong! This is against God!” But then I just went back to work. I thought, I'll deal with that later. I’ll finish the eight months of my mission. I think that's the first thing that kind of started a chain of events. It definitely was not the cause of what happened to me, but when I got home from my mission, my two younger brothers were on drugs. My little sister, I think she was nine when I got home. My dad was nowhere to be found. My mom was super sad, our family was just kind of in disarray, and it was too much for me. Being the oldest, I just ran. I beelined it up to Utah State. Both of my parents’ families were up there. I just ran. I didn’t want to deal with it, so I just went up there. I was still in the church, but I think that's kind of the point where I changed. I can't remember if I made a conscious decision, like, “I'm gonna do whatever I want,” but I think subconsciously that's kind of how it was. I didn't want to deal with that heartache. What was going on at home was way too much pressure, being the oldest, and so I think subconsciously I just started doing whatever I wanted. Still, for about two years, I taught Sunday School in the Singles Ward with one of my roommates, and this is kind of similar to my brother's story.
I was kind of living a double life, where I would teach Sunday School, but then I was partying at the frat house on the weekends. I met good friends over there, and I was kind of like one foot in the church, one foot in this party scene, and I had never partied before. I never drank, never smoked, never had sex, nothing before my mission. And slowly I just started gravitating more towards the party scene and not the church scene. I kept my good friends in the church, but I don't know if the party scene felt more free, but the friends that I had at the fraternity felt–and this is weird–but it felt safer at the time. Because the more I partied and the more I chose them, the less I felt about what was going on at home, if that makes sense. So I kind of gravitated toward them. And I'd go to church when I went home, I wasn't vocal about not going to church; I still had a testimony, prayed every once in a while. There’s a song by Jelly Roll, I don't know if you've heard it, the one that says, “I only talk to God when I need a favor.” That was me for a long time, but yeah, I think my testimony was still there. I still felt the Spirit. But I wasn't active. It stayed that way for probably 12, 13, 14 years. During that time, that's when the most stuff happened in my life. Right when I went to Utah State, I met a girl, we got married in the temple, and it was a mess. We were divorced three months later. That was kind of me trying to prove to my mom and dad, “This is how you do it. You get married in the temple.” Like I was trying to show my parents that they were wrong. This is how you do it. A lot of it was like I wanted to set an example for my brothers, who were struggling. So that lasted three months. And at that time, I had moved back home to get married and everything. And then when that divorce happened, I went straight back up to Utah State. I met another girl there. We partied a lot. I ended up getting her pregnant, I had my oldest son, that ended in divorce. I'm not gonna go into too much detail about the marriages, because there's a lot of detail, but that ended in divorce, and then I went through a period where I kind of cleaned myself up. I moved back home. I was living at my mom's house, and I cleaned up my life. I went to the bishop. I was disfellowshipped, and I was happy. I was really happy, because I was coming back, and I was on cloud nine for probably a good eight or nine months, and then I met my daughter's mom. She was Catholic. We got married. We met and got married within three months of each other. This is in my late 20s, and to sum up that long story, that didn't work out either. When that divorce happened, it destroyed me. The first one was three months, stupid. The second one kind of hurt because I had a son. And the third one, it destroyed me. I was devastated. My brothers kind of knew my history of partying through college and stuff, and at that time, they had been sober for years. They'd cleaned up their lives. They were sober. And I remember, I was sitting in the car with, I think my brother Brian. We were sitting in my mom's driveway, and I asked him, “Do you think I have a problem with alcohol or drugs?” Because at that point, I hadn't done any hard drugs. I probably smoked weed in college, and I drank like a lot, just partying. But I wasn't a daytime drinker. I wasn't hiding bottles. I wasn't the typical alcoholic. He said, “Man, I don't know, but you definitely need some help. You've been through three marriages in eight years, two kids from two different moms, so you need some help.” And he said, “I don't know if you're an alcoholic, but you know my relationship with Renaissance Ranch,” he said, “You can't come to the ranch in Bluffdale, but why don't you just get away and go to our sister company?” And at the time, it was in Rockville. So I left and I went to Rockville, and within a couple of weeks there, it was hard for me, because my wife and daughter were still at home. Obviously, I was away from my son as well. And I just remember having a very distinct feeling, like I knew for a fact, that I wasn’t an alcoholic or an addict. I knew it because I wasn't using drugs like they were, but we were learning the 12 steps, and I started to apply a few of them, and I thought, “This is working for me. Even though it's not alcohol or drugs, something's wrong with me, and this is working, these steps.” And so I called my brother. It was about three weeks after I had been down there, and told him basically what I just told you. And he said, “Yeah, I kind of agree. You probably don't have an alcohol and drug problem,” but he said, “What do you think it is?” And I said, “I don't know. It's probably a lot of women. It might be sex. I don't know what it is, but I know I need some help. I don't want to stay here, because I know it's not the right place for me, but I need to go somewhere, and I need to get some help.” And so he arranged for me to come back up to the aftercare program in Bluffdale at the ranch, and I started working the same 12 steps. I started realizing that I was severely codependent. I learned that each disease, whether with alcohol or drugs or sex or relationships, those are all merely just symptoms of being really messed up in the head, which I was. And so I kept working in that program. I plugged myself into recovery, met some really good guys who are still my friends today, and cleaned my life up.
A couple years into that, again, cloud nine, not back to church at this point. The church was kind of out of sight, out of mind. I think I figured, hey, last time I was on cloud nine. I was doing well, it had to do with the church, but it didn't work. So I thought, this time, I'm just gonna use the program, 12 steps, the brotherhood, plug myself in, but I'm not gonna use the church. And I got happy. Through one of the guys that I knew from recovery, his wife had a best friend, and she said, “You've got to meet this girl,” blah, blah, blah. So I met her, and we started dating. She had been sober for a year, she was super happy, and things started going downhill. It was slow for me, but it was quick for her. She was sober for a year, and then I caught her with alcohol, and then she started using Adderall. My relationship with her lasted for about six years. The first year was pretty darn good. We had a daughter together. We were planning on getting married, and then she started abusing the Adderall. She started lying. I started finding out that she had a burner phone that she said was a toy for her kids, and I found out as a drug dealer, and it was a mess. And so for four more years, I tried to hold on to that. And we were married. I was like, nope, not doing that again. I tried to hold on as like, as tight as I could, like, I'm not getting divorced again. I won't do it. I'm not getting married again. And we had another girl, so my two youngest daughters are from her. And it got so bad that I said, you know, you've got to get some help, or we've got to change, and I had slowly slipped back into the codependency. I won't go into a ton of details about her, but if you knew the extent of what she was doing, you'd think, “You stayed with her for four years?” I slipped right back into codependency. So I was working as a vice president of a media company in Lehi, and I had really good insurance, and she couldn't get into rehab. She'd already been kicked out of the ranch, on her free pass and messed it up. And so I called the bishop in the neighborhood. I asked, “Hey, could you do a marriage today? Can you just do a wedding?” He said, “Sure, come over at three” or five, or whatever it was. So we just showed up and got married so that she could go to rehab. There were two missionaries, me, her mom and her aunt. So he married us. She packed her bags the very next morning, went to rehab, and in the matter of three months, she got kicked out of four rehabs.
Ashly
Oh my gosh.
Landon
It was horrible, and it was devastating, because the reason she got kicked out had to do with male patients that were there with her at the same time, and I was bringing our daughters to see her, and it was a mess. About a year or two years before that happened, I was on a business trip in Atlanta, and this is where the church stuff comes in. So since that time, I had kind of gone back to church. And, you know, after my second marriage, church was out of sight, out of mind. So I was on this business trip in Atlanta, and about. Do you from elementary school reaches out, just a cool kid. I hadn't seen him in since like, seventh grade. He's said, “Hey, I'm an attorney here in Atlanta, I'd love to see you.” So we go to lunch together, and we start talking about family. He was active in the church, and he said the bishopric at the time. He's got a wife, he's got three or four kids doing really well. So we started chatting, and about an hour into our lunch, we just started chatting religion, and I kind of told him my history. “Oh, I've been inactive for 20 years,” or whatever it was at that time. I remember him asking me, “Do you still have a testimony?” I said, “I guess so. I've never doubted it. I served a good mission, I …” you know. I asked, “What about you?” And he said,
“Yeah, I totally do.” But he said, “I'm more of a progressive Mormon.” That was the first time I heard that term. I asked, “What does that mean?” And he explained it to me, “We just have more liberal ideas.” A lot of progressive Mormons think that the church is an apostasy and that the Brethren have led it there. Some think this. So it's kind of the liberal side. And I mean, he was an attorney in Atlanta, and it totally fit. It fit as a fourth grade, like when I knew him in elementary to a T, so he starts sharing, and that's when the book came up. He said, “Yeah, you need to read this book. This Denver Snuffer guy is kind of a progressive Mormon. He still reads the Book of Mormon. He's got a following.” I thought, “Whatever. I'll read it.” So he brought me a copy to my hotel room later that night, and I stayed up all night reading it, and till like 10 the next day. I don't think my flight was until three or four that afternoon. I remember the feeling of, “This dude is not well. I could see that right away. Oh, it was interesting.” I thought, “There's no way he has actually met with Christ.” I just had all my doubts about it. “Okay, thanks for letting me read this book. It was super entertaining.” But I just kept thinking to myself, “How do people really think that this is real?”
Ashly Stone 16:54
So for people who've never heard of this guy, I did actually interview a girl on the podcast named Brooke– maybe go back and listen to her episode one time. She's actually the one that told me about this. And so for people that have no idea about the Denver Snuffer group, tell us a little bit, just to give us some context here. So he is saying he met with Christ, and then, give us some context.
Landon Hedin 17:21
Yeah, so that book The Second Comforter. It's conversing with the Lord through the veil, I think is what it's called. It's not a very long book, super interesting book, but he claims in his story that he met personally with Jesus Christ, face to face. And then the rest of the book is the steps that you need to take in this life to be able to have that same experience.
Ashly
Mmm. Okay.
Landon
I had learned enough about, like, calling and election, made sure, the second anointing. I knew that's not how it works, you know. And I started questioning that. And then I started thinking about my own testimony. I hadn't been to church for 20 years. Where did I stand? Kind of at a weird spot. No desire to go back. Zero. And keep in mind like this was about three and a half years into this fourth marriage that she was shooting meth intravenously. I was worried sick about my kids being there with her. My life was a mess. But actually, the job I was doing at the time was fantastic. I loved it. I was a pretty happy dude. So anyway, back to Brett. I called him back right before I left on the plane. Well, four or five hours before. I said, “Hey, I read the book.” We had like, a good hour, hour and a half conversation about it. He was telling me why he does believe, but I had no interest. I didn't believe it. I knew this guy was a crackpot. He's a great guy. I've listened to a lot of interviews. Very decent, good human being, but super weird, way out there. And so are his followers. And I think he'd laugh if he heard me say that. I've had lunch with Denver before. And he gets it all the time where people are like, “Dude, you are crazy, you're a crackhead, your ideas are way out there.” And he just laughs like he loves it. Super good guy. So then Brett said, “Well, I have one more thing to share with you. If I bring it by, will you read it on the plane?” And I said sure. So he brought me the CES Letter. Never heard of it at this point. The CES letter was like, Jeremy had written it, and he had a PDF copy of it. It wasn't published. This was a few months after Jeremy wrote it. And I said okay, and he kind of explained to me what it was. He said, this guy, Jeremy, super good dude. He had questions, he wrote the CES director, and he was waiting for an answer. He was still waiting, to make sure I would read it. So I got on the plane, and here's where the theme went south for me. This was about six years ago. So I started reading, it was probably like 25 pages, just 8 by 11. PDF, some of it was hard to read. It was actually a photocopy, PDF of Jeremy's handwriting. At first, I was like, “Okay, this is the stuff I heard on my mission. It's the rock in the hat. It's blah, blah, blah.” Some of it was new, I had never knew about some of the Book of Abraham stuff. So it was like someone was punching me in the face, punching me in the gut, because I trusted Brett. And Brett's a super smart dude, attorney. I'm thinking, he's not crazy. At first, I thought, “Okay, giving me that book by Denver, Brett, you might be a little weird,” but I trusted him. Because every time I had questions on my mission, or asked my dad, or asked my mission present, whatever it was about, people would always just brush it off. “Don't worry about it. We'll find that out later in the afterlife. Just have faith.” No one would ever say whether it happened or not. I always thought on my mission, “This is just crap.” I'd laugh at it, but then when I was reading the CES letter on the plane, I knew some of this was true. Joseph really did put a rock in the hat, besides the first 116 pages, that was the only time he used the urim and thumim, and then he put a rock in a hat. I thought, “Whoa.” And I remember having this feeling in my gut like, “Holy crap. Some of this is true,” so I was shaken. In fact, I think I got nauseous on the plane. I was shaken. And I thought, “Dude, I'm on a plane going home to a mess of a wife, trying to stay happy at work. Now, I have these questions in my head.” So I got home and I remembered reading that CES Letter. I mean, I went through, I marked it, I highlighted it, I circled it, I had notes. I had my own pages, and I had all these questions that I wanted to ask my mission president. I wanted to ask my dad. I did ask them, and I got the same answers, “Don't worry about that stuff, that stuff will pull you away.” Blah, blah, blah. I said, I don't care. I want to know why the church still to this day teaches the wrong translation of the Book of Mormon. I felt betrayed. That's the best way to say it. I felt like I had been kicked right in the gut. That set me on a six year journey of studying everything I could get my hands on, deep doctrine, conference talks, church apologists, Mormon Stories podcasts, Mormon Discussions, anything I could get. And I loved church history anyway, and deep doctrine. I was loving this stuff. That kind of started– I hate the term faith crisis, but it's true, it is a crisis, but it's also beautiful in the same way. Sometimes it's happy. And I went through this six year journey of hate, betrayal, “Maybe I'll go back. No, I can't.” Or, “Okay, God, I'll go back. But just explain this. Just explain why the 14 year olds that Joseph married. Just make it make sense, even if there's no answer, and then I'll go back.” And I made so many deals with God. I know some things don't have answers, but there's got to be an explanation. “God, I'll go back if they just stop asking children sexual questions in Bishop's interviews, all the stuff I was mad at. About four years into that, I own an advertising agency, and I was doing the advertising for Mormon Stories podcast and Mormon Discussions, and I was deeply involved in the ex-Mormon community, not ever in the way to try to tear down the church, but I will be honest, like there were times I was so mad that I would bad mouth the heck out of the church. I hated it. I hated it. But once in a while I would talk to God and just say, “Hey, please, just an explanation. Just make it make sense. I'll go back. I have the intent. Like the whole Moroni 10:3-5, I'll go back. Just make it make sense a little bit. Tell me why they don't teach it the correct way. Help me understand why Joseph did marry 14 year olds.” Knowing now what I do, God probably just laughed, like, “That's not important.” Like, “That's not what this is about.” I was starting to get bored with studying, because for six years it was when I was in my car, it was a podcast or a conference talk or an apologist that consumed my life. When I was at home, that's what I read. And a lot of people would say, “Were you reading the Book of Mormon?” I'd say, “Yes.” You can't just read, that, you gotta read the other. I wanted to know. “Okay, here's a church history thing. What does the church say about it? What do the scriptures teach about it?” I was doing both sides, and it was just not making sense, and it would make me more angry. I was done. It wasn't fun anymore to study, which was why I did it. I never was trying to study and learn answers so I could go back. I didn't want to go back most of the time. I didn't. And so my daughter, Lennie, she turned eight last February, and she had asked questions about baptism here and there. You know, my mom was active. My stepdad, my brother Brian, obviously, my dad, I had tons of active family members. And I said, “Yeah, you can get baptized.” She finally asked me, Lennie, and I said, “Yeah, I don't care.” So we started talking about it. My next door neighbor is a sweet old lady in St. George, and she kept inviting us to church. And so I said, “Hey, Gwenna, can you get the bishop's number? Lennie wants to be baptized, and I probably have to meet the bishop.” She gave me his number, and I texted him, and I said, “Hey, Bishop, this is Landon Hedin, and I moved into your ward in September. I've got a daughter who turned eight last February. She wants to be baptized, and I know she probably needs to talk to you.” And then, for some reason, I said, “And I, if you've got time after, I'd like to talk to you too.” No idea why I said that. Lennie and I went to meet with the bishop, and it was funny because I walked in and I saw him, and I said, “Chad Evans?” He said, “You know me?” It turns out that he played basketball for Utah State all four years I was there, and he was one of their stars. I loved this guy. And I said, “Are you my bishop?” And he said, “Are you Landon?” I said, “Yeah.” No way. So we sat there and reminisced forever. Hit it off. He's my exact age. So we went in, Lennie had her little interview when I was sitting there, and then I had her bring her iPad so she could sit outside the bishop's office. I didn't want her in there because I didn't know what was about to happen. I didn't know if I was about to have my name removed, yell, I don't know. I just knew I was done studying. My mom had said, “Whatever you do, just don't have your name removed, because that'll break my heart.” So I don't think I would have done that, but there were times I was so mad I almost did. So Lennie was just like sitting out there. We kind of left the door open, and I started talking to Bishop Evans, telling him the same story. I don't know if it was him as much as it was just the right time. I don't know. But I know that when I left that meeting, I was both feet in the church. He had texted me a talk by I think it's Michael E Wilcox on prayer. For anyone out there that wants a killer talk on prayer, he talks about how the God we worship is, he calls it a “fourth watch” God, and he compares it to when the apostles used to go out and fish. There were three watches during the night. Some of the guys would sleep and one would take watch, right? And so before the morning that Christ walked on water, it was storming and it was dangerous, and like every single watch, they prayed, “Save us, save us, save us.” They had questions, and He didn’t. He saved them in the fourth watch. There was no such thing back then. There were only three watches, and then it's morning time. And that made sense to me, because I had been praying for years, six years, “Make it make sense. I'll go back, if it's true, just please let me know.” And I had the intent, like Moroni said. “I'll go back, just …” But it was what I wanted. “Just do what I want, and I'll go back.” And looking back, it's silly, but it wasn't at the time. I was serious. And also in that talk, he talks about how God and life prepare spots in our heart until we're ready to receive something. I think that's what really hit me. And Bishop Evans had shared that talk with me in the meeting, and then he sent me the actual talk after, but that made sense for some reason. Maybe it was that spot in my heart was finally big enough or ready. I thought a lot about this in these last three months, because it's crazy, but maybe the six years that I was studying, hating the church, bad mouthing in the church and advertising against the church, maybe Heavenly Father knew I had to do that. I don't know. But somehow, like, that experience in life, and Heavenly Father, when I walked out of there, the spot was ready. I remember I walked out of that room, and I'm a pretty emotional dude. Obviously, I was crying, and my daughter asked, “Daddy, what's wrong? What did you guys talk about?” And I said, “Oh, I wish you could understand what Lennie. This is crazy.” And the funny thing was, I had met my current fiancée about eight months prior, and she knew how I felt about the church. Her whole family is active, and she's not, and she had a lot of hard feelings toward the church. And the crazy thing was, I had to call her. I said, “Carly, this is gonna be a hard conversation, but I'm not gonna drink anymore. I'm not gonna vape anymore. We gotta stop having sex,” like out of the blue. And you can imagine how she felt, Like, what the … what? And I said, “I'll call you in a half hour after Lennie’s thing is done,” right? And, “Yeah, whatever. Pick up whiskey on the way home,” I don't know. And then all of a sudden … So she said, “What the heck just happened?” I mean, she's been incredible since then. And the next time I met with my bishop, I remember he said, “It's obvious that your heart's been changed.” He called it a miracle. It's a miracle, what happened. And then he said, “Well, do you want to baptize Lennie?” And I said, “What?” I didn't think I even had that chance. I mean, I had been in disbelief 12 years before, and then thought, I was for sure going to be excommunicated, and I was ready for it. So, long story short, a week ago, Saturday, I was able to baptize Lennie and my soon-to-be stepdaughter.
Ashly Stone 30:59
Oh, that just gave me the chills all over.
Landon Hedin 31:03
Yeah, pretty cool stuff. I still don't have a handle on it myself. Obviously, it's been crazy for three months. I still don't know why stuff has happened the way it's happened. The feeling I had when I walked out of that meeting with my bishop, it wasn't just like, “Ah, maybe I'll go back.” I hadn't felt the Spirit in a while. It was like I was both feet going to Deseret Book to buy garments, whatever he wanted me to do. I was in. It all came flooding back. I was able to baptize them, obviously, back in full fellowship, like wearing garments again, paying tithing for 12 weeks.
Ashly Stone 31:47
Wow.
Landon Hedin 31:48
Yeah, it's been absolutely insane. I'm still trying to put it all together as to why things had to happen like they did, and why I had to go through what I did in the last six years. To me, it seems easy. I've had conversations during prayer. “You could have just done this six years ago. You could have done it three years ago or five years ago, whatever. All those times I said, ‘Just help me. Help it make sense,’ You could have given me the same feeling, and I would have done it.” But then I think to myself, “Would I have done it?” Maybe for a month or two, or maybe He knew, for seven or eight months? Yeah, I just try to have faith. I probably wouldn't have done it. Plus, Bishop Evans, the things he said in that meeting. It wasn't just sharing that talk with me, but he didn't answer my questions either, but he was honest. And I've talked to him too. What was said in that meeting? What did we talk about, really? Besides the prayer talk and stuff, he says, “I can't really remember either.” He said, “I just remember the feeling, you know, and the spirit that was there. It was incredible.” But the coolest thing is that everything I had learned on my mission, and more, just everything, came flooding back. Scriptures I used to know that were memorized, and I was reading scriptures the last six years. You know what I mean? I was studying everything good and bad, it just all came flooding back. It's been a pretty crazy three months to say the least.
Ashly Stone 33:15
That is seriously so amazing. So how did all of your ex-Mormon crew respond to your coming back?
Landon Hedin 33:26
I have some that are really close friends. I changed my profile picture on Facebook and my background to a photo of me and my daughters. I didn't go so far as to put me in whites, but it was like me and my suit and them in their baptismal whites. And some of them thought it was a joke. I've got a mission companion, that was my favorite. I trained him, a Samoan kid. He's incredible, and he and I have had a lot of good talks, because about four years into my faith crisis, he called me and he said, “Man, this is all a bunch of crap.” I said, “Yep, I didn't want to tell you, but …” So we had been talking, and then I haven't had a chance to talk to him yet, but I sit here right now wondering, I wonder what elder's thinking right now. He's probably like, “What the heck is going on?” And I've had some pretty nasty snide comments from people on social media. And I don't post a lot of big events. As soon as that happened, it was the next day that I texted the guys for Mormon Discussions, and I just said, “Hey, this is kind of a conflict of interest. I don't want to get into what's happened in my life, but I'm going back to church, and I can't advertise for you anymore.” He was super cool about it, and I hope I can still remain friends with him. His name's Bill Real. He's a stud. He's an incredible man. He's helped me a ton. I don't know what he thinks. It's only been three months. I hope that I can talk to some of these guys. All I want to do now is tell my story. There are so many people, and I noticed this. There's obviously so many people that come back. You know that. You have a podcast about it. I've listened to a lot of your episodes, but there's maybe some that I don't know. But it seems like when people get deep into church history, like there's no coming back. And I always thought to myself, “There's no way.” I hope to be someone in the church now that can tell those people, “Hey, there is a way. I can't tell you what it is, but I can tell you that in my life, there was a miracle, because I still don't know how the heck I'm sitting here.” I mean, I'm sitting here wearing garments. I just baptized my daughter three and a half months ago. I was huge anti-Mormon, even advertising against the church. I don't know. It wasn't a prayer. I didn't kneel down and say, “Is the Book of Mormon true?” I didn't do any of that stuff. Not that that's bad, but like, for me, it was a six year process. Well, I guess it was a 20+ year process, getting married four times, and going through what I did, and studying my butt off, whatever it took.
Ashly Stone 35:58
So if you had to give some advice to somebody that is just deep into all the anti stuff online, and they feel bamboozled, or they feel lied to, or whatever, what advice would you give to somebody in that situation?
Landon Hedin 36:26
That's a good question. First of all, there is a way back, but I don't think that should be the focus. I've had discussions with my bishop since. He calls all of that stuff fluff, all of the stuff about Joseph Smith and church. He calls it all fluff, meaning what's really important in the gospel, that stuff doesn't matter. And I've heard that before. It didn't make sense until that day when I was finally ready to hear it. But I heard that before. I thought, “No, it does matter.” And I think there's a lot of people that are in that spot right now, wondering how could the church be true if A, B, C, D … Nobody can deny that. And I know the General Authorities, the apostles brought, it's not their job to say that. And a lot of people want them to say that it's not their job, but I think it's okay to say that, and to add on to that, it's okay that that stuff happened. One of the examples that I thought since, in the last three months, and I don't know why this didn't hit, this probably would have helped me the last six years, but I think to myself, I've gone through four marriages, tons of horrible stuff. I don't mind putting that out there, I'm an honest person. I have nothing to hide. I've been rotten at points in my life. What if God came down to me right now and said, “Hey, Landon, I've got a job for you to do.” Maybe it's not as big as restoring the gospel or restoring the priesthood. Maybe it's just something little, right? Then I look at myself and I say, “Okay, 150 years from now, if people were looking back on my life and then saying, ‘Yeah, God called that dude to do A, B, C and D,’ they would say, ‘bull crap. There's no way. There's no way. No way. Look what he did. Look how he lied. Look how he deceived. Look at what he did. Look how he cheated on this, and cheated on that, cheated on her.’” It's the same exact thing.
Ashly Stone 38:17
Landon, I have to tell you, I think about that all the time, because I get messages from people literally every day, and they say, “Oh my gosh, the podcast helped me out of my faith crisis,” or, “This podcast has changed my life.” And I'm thinking to myself, I was a heroin addict, I was a liar and a thief and in jail, and I did everything bad under the sun, and if anybody like saw me back then, and to think that even this person who did all this bad stuff, and here I am, 10 years later. If somebody were to put a microscope on my past and see all these things that I did, but yet, God is still using me as a vessel to get these messages out to people. And it's so life changing for them.
Landon
100%. 100%.
Ashly
He can use imperfect people to accomplish His work.
Landon Hedin 39:18
Right and you could have people down the road that would look at you and find out about your life and your history and discount the heck of what you're doing right now.
Ashly
Yep.
Landon
Like, “There's no way she could be making a difference. Look at how she was,” and it's true, you're absolutely right. So what I would say, a long answer to your question is, if somebody's in that spot where they're thinking, “I am not okay with this,” that's okay. If you're not okay with Joseph marrying 14 year olds, that's okay. It's fluff. That doesn't matter. That doesn't mean that God still didn't use him as an instrument to do good stuff. The other side of it is he didn't just do bad stuff. God can still use that person to bring about the work. Stop trying to answer the question of, “How could this be true, if Joseph did this?” How could it not? It doesn't matter. To me it seems pretentious for me to sit there and try to judge the truthfulness of something that–let's be honest–none of us can know until we die, but we can believe with all of our hearts, right? It's not worth trying to find out what actually did and didn't happen and is right and isn't wrong. Can it be true if this happened? It's exhausting. Believe me, the last six years, it's not worth it. And I'm not saying just ignore it. It's just the church's history, that's all it is, and it's okay.
Ashly Stone 40:39
I mean, it's online, on like the Joseph Smith papers. And, you know, they're owning the history. You know, as of late, they own it. It's there.
Landon Hedin 40:51
I've been having a lot of thoughts lately of, why wouldn't I want an apostle to use the Atonement like I do? Why wouldn't I want him to? I want them to make mistakes. Not that I want them to, but they need to utilize the Atonement the same way that you and I do. It's okay. And there's all this finger pointing at Joseph and Elder Holland and all. It doesn't matter. The finger pointing doesn't matter. And honestly, unless you see Christ or whatever, you can't really know for sure. Unless you have something like that, all you can do is have faith. So really, what it comes down to is who are you, or who am I to say that these things couldn't happen, or God wouldn't do these things, because this person was like this. It's so silly to me. That's easy for me to say now, because I've had the experience, but that's the advice I would give someone. It's okay to doubt, it's okay to hate, it's okay to be pissed, it's okay to curse God if you want to. Be as mad as you want, figure it out, it's okay, but realize that God uses very, very, very imperfect people to do very, very good things. And that's also okay.
Ashly Stone 42:09
That's beautiful. I love that.
Landon Hedin 42:11
That is the way I look at it.
Ashly Stone 42:14
One thing that I really notice in doing this is by their fruits, you will know them. As you're telling your story, I'm imagining you in that bishop's office. I'm sure you went in there, and there was a feeling. And in my own life, it's like the fruits of the gospel, when I am active in the church and I am doing these things, the fruits of that are so good. And then, like before, when I was out, and I was on heroin, and all the things, the fruits were so bad, you know. The light that you have, I just imagine you going in and seeing your bishop, and you knew him, I just imagine that being like you recognizing good fruit.
Landon Hedin 43:16
Absolutely, it's so true. I remember hearing that a lot of times on those Mormon Stories podcasts. A lot of faithful people that would go on, and there weren't a ton of them, but they would always say that, “Just look at the fruits,” blah, blah, blah. And it never made sense to me until now. It's true. The other thing I've thought about a lot in the last three months is, what is it gonna hurt? If you're someone that's kind of on the outside right now, having problems with church history and stuff like that, what's it gonna hurt to be in the church and be a good person? Like, what's it gonna hurt to go to church? Don't go to church, it doesn't matter, just be a good person. You know what? It's not gonna hurt anything to go do good things, to be in the church, and it feels so good to be back. It really, really does. And I'm sure there are other churches that feel so good to be there too, and that's okay. I think that's the biggest message I have: it's okay whether you're in, whether you're out, whether you hate, whether you doubt, it's okay. Stop focusing on like, if A equals B and B equals C, that kind of crap. You can't focus on that because it leads nowhere, believe me. I went as far deep into that as you can, trying to find answers. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, you'll never get anywhere.
Ashly Stone 44:46
What's the biggest thing that you've noticed since you decided to come back, in your own life? What's the biggest thing you've noticed about yourself, or just your experience?
Landon Hedin 44:58
If there was something that said, “Hey, three months ago, what happened is real, and you did the right thing,” that's probably the biggest thing that I've noticed: having that constant companionship of the Holy Ghost again. And that might sound corny to some people, especially if they're outside of the church. I know five months ago if I heard that, I would have said that is so cheesy and so lame, but it's true, because I feel it again. I'm more patient, especially with my kids. I wasn't impatient before, but now I'm like, I've done and said things in the last three months that I have no idea where they're coming from. I have no idea where that feeling came from. Feelings will come up that I remember from my mission, or earlier, such good feelings of the Spirit. I think that's the biggest thing. That constant companionship, again, that peace. So many people talk about peace. During those last six years, I mean, when I made the decision to leave the church, I wanted to find peace. I never doubted that. It felt so peaceful when I was in church or on my mission, and I would always try to justify that, like, “Well, that's just because I was doing what my family did.” But no, there is an obvious peace. Is there in other Christian churches? 100,000,000% there is and that's okay, but that's what I've missed. I'm a totally different person spiritually than I was 12 weeks ago, for sure.
Ashly Stone 46:31
Wow, that's so beautiful. You are awesome. Lauren and I, we've definitely had some encounters with ex-Mormon people coming for us,
Landon
I bet.
Ashly
on doing what we're doing. And I feel like that is one thing that I've noticed. I don't want to invalidate anybody's experience, so people that have been wronged, I don't want to say you shouldn't feel the way you feel. I'm not trying to invalidate anyone's experience. But one thing that I've noticed is the ex-Mormon community is very focused on hating something, and very focused on having disdain for one thing and I understand that everyone's on their faith journey, but it seems like it doesn't seem to bring good fruit.
Landon Hedin 47:30
Trying to prove something wrong, or prove, right? Always. I agree with you. Always trying to prove something, that's totally true. I remember I'd always look at people that were in the church and active, my family members, anybody, Jesse, you, Jerem, Jesse's older brother. How do these people honestly believe? How do they not see this? For six years, that was my feeling–how do they not see it? It's so blatantly obvious, you know? And now that I'm back, and that's so silly, because it's fluff. It doesn't matter. The feelings in the church, the Spirit, the fruits, like you said, that's what matters. None of that matters. I don't care if that stuff is true. Like it honestly, is all fluff. Whether so and so did this or Joseph did that, it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. That's why they don't care. Yeah, they see it, they don't care.
Ashly Stone 48:26
It's interesting, because doing the podcast, I've heard a lot of things that I didn't know before. And I mean, clearly I know things that are, like, blacks and the priesthood and polygamy, you know all the things like, obviously I was aware, but there are things that I’ve heard for the first time here. At this point, I've seen such a drastic transformation in my own life that I can only attribute it to coming back to church and the Savior's atoning sacrifice working in my life. I mean, when you mentioned that you quit vaping, that was one of the things that I saw so clearly in my life. When you're on drugs, it's destroying your life. So you either have to make the choice, am I gonna quit using drugs, or am I gonna die? You can't keep living a normal life. But with smoking, or back in my day, 10 years ago, it was smoking, but like today, it's vaping. When you're doing that every day, and it's not killing you instantly, it's not ruining your life today, it's really hard to quit your everyday routine. That was one of the things that I really noticed. The enabling power of the Savior's Atonement working in my life was when I quit smoking after I'd been smoking for years, because I wanted to get my limited-use temple recommend, and I wondered, how am I going to do this? How am I going to quit drinking coffee and smoking? I literally do this every single day. It's part of my life. It's part of my routine. How am I going to quit this? But I just quit. After all these years, I just stopped doing it. It was such a true miracle to be able to quit. And for you to just tell your fiancée, I'm quitting vaping, I'm quitting drinking, we're not having sex anymore, and then to baptize your daughter and your stepdaughter, that is the Savior's enabling power of His Atonement working in your life, to be able to pluck those things out.
Landon Hedin 50:29
Yep. And the coolest thing too, is that I was scared at first, because I knew how my fiancée kind of felt about the church. She didn't hate it, she wasn't on the same journey as me, anti by choice, not active for a long time, and she's been super, super supportive. I've caught her on her knees a few times praying. It's amazing. My 12 year old daughter got baptized about a year ago. My brother Brian baptized her. I wasn't there. I wasn't living in Denver at the time. And then he baptized his wife, and then he baptized my little girl, and then her mom, my ex-wife, got baptized. I've talked to my son, who just turned 17 last week, and I've had conversations with him saying, “I will support you 100% if you go on a mission, but it's a freaking waste of time.” I told him that a million times. Now he sees me, he says, “Whoa,” and he's seen the change in me. And now my daughter will send scriptures to me, saying, “Dad, I read this scripture.” It's sad that she felt like she couldn't do that before, but it's so cool that she does it now, you know? So my point is, it's touching other people's lives. My fiancée, my daughter, my son, and both of my daughters have asked me for –they call it a daddy's blessing. Four months ago I was probably making fun of it. So it's been such an incredible transformation, such an incredible change. I still don't understand most of it, but I love every second of it. You know?
Ashly Stone 52:06
Mmhmm. I love that, that’s so beautiful. As we're wrapping up here, I just want to hear, what is one final thing that you want to leave people with as they're listening to this episode, to your story? What is one final thing that you want people to know?
Landon Hedin 52:23
Well, the first thing would be, as I've said before, it's okay. Wherever you're at in your journey, it's okay. The other thing, I think, and maybe this sounds cheesy or corny, but for those who have been active in the church and know how it feels that are not active anymore, you're missing out. If where you are on your journey now, if it takes you four more years to get there, don't just do it now if it's not your time, but you're missing out. Reach out to somebody. I love what you do, Ashly. Reach out to somebody who's been on this podcast, somebody who's a bishop. I wish I just would have gone back to somebody. I had plenty of chances with General Authorities. I talked to my mission president just to say, “Just help me figure it out,” right? Oh, it was always, “Tell me this, or tell me why this? Or tell me the answer to this.” I wish I just would have been humble enough to say, “Just help me figure this out.” Not whether the church was true, just life. Just take my hand and help me figure it out. And that's one thing that I would leave with people, because I know how it feels. It's so heavy, it's sad. You feel like you've lost a part of yourself. So one, it's okay. Two, reach out to somebody. And then three, be truly humble enough to be okay with wherever it goes. If it goes down a Christian church path, cool, go down it, but be humble enough to just go where that path takes you. But you've got to reach out to someone and just say, “Hey, help me along this path.” Because I was so alone. A lot of times during those six years, I didn't want to talk to my family because I didn't want them to know what I knew. I was scared they'd leave the church. And I was alone. I really had nowhere to go. It all goes back to it's okay wherever you're at. It's okay that you hate, that you're pissed, that you're angry, it's totally okay. Don't be afraid of it.
Ashly Stone 54:25
I love that, and I love that you brought up like, hey, if your path is to a Christian church, that's okay. I have to comment on this. I started my path back at the Salvation Army rehab, and it was a Christian based church, and we did Bible study. And that was when I started to have that, “Oh my gosh, this feels good.” And I was in the praise band and singing the praise band songs, and I thought, “This feels good.” So I like that you said that it's okay where you're at, and it's okay to work through that.
Landon Hedin 55:07
Yeah, the last thing I would say is, I try not to focus so much on what is black– I'm less black and white. Now, when it comes to the Savior and God and Christianity and Mormonism, in my belief, the way I look at it, stop focusing so much on what's right and wrong, is it true or is it not? I think a lot of people in the church do that–it's either true or it's not. Maybe, but who cares? Stop worrying about the black and the white and just be a good person and just do what feels peaceful and right. The anti Mormon podcasts, some of the Mormon apologist podcasts, the same thing. There's such a focus on proving so and so wrong, proving that so and so lied, proving that Joseph did this. Who cares? Doesn't matter. Stop focusing on the black and white and just live a life that's peaceful, because, like you said before, in that spot, the feeling is just empty. It's sad. I was left longing for something. I don't like that. I had to let that go. So just don't focus on what's wrong or right. Just be a good person.
Ashly Stone 56:18
I love that. Go where it feels peaceful. I love that so much. So good. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I am just so happy to hear your journey and just so happy.
Landon Hedin 56:35
Thanks for having me. I want to let you know too, I've listened to probably 25 episodes in the last three months. I wish I would have found your podcast before. Well actually, I don't know, because I might have totally torn it down. So I don't know, but the last three months, this podcast has helped me tremendously. When I was out of the church, it felt so good to have people that understood me, and now that I'm back in, it feels so good to have people that understood me and thank you for what you do. It's so needed.
Ashly Stone 57:24
Thank you so much.
