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what pops up. We're just glad you're here to join us. Hey. In this episode of Leading Saints, we step into the Leading Saints studio, not this one, but the the other one I use with Rich Hanks, who is the author of to be a friend of Christ, the life of Marian d Hanks. Now if you're older than 50, you probably know who Marian d Hanks is. I vaguely remember my, you know, parents talking about him, but he you could say was like the Elder
Holland of general conference before Elder Holland. Like, everybody enjoyed and looked forward to his conference talks. He spoke in conference 50 times, a remarkable life, a remarkable disciple, so many leadership principles, so many behind the scenes stories that are worth listening to. Rich is actually the son of elder Marion d Hanks. They called him Duff Hanks in his day to day life. All his friends and family knew
him as Duff. And we just get into some fun stories and and draw out some leadership principles going to London, England to be the mission president in his thirties as a young general authority and getting some culture back on on track here. There were some really unhealthy practices of how baptisms were being handled, and elder Hank stepped into that and shifted the culture. He was the mission president to elder Holland and elder Cook, so his influence continues to go
on. The the reason we have the symbol of the Christus as our church symbol really is tied into Elder Hanks and some early work he did at Temple Square. So so many fun, insightful stories and leadership principles, and Rich does a remarkable job sharing the life of his father, which we all got to enjoy, at least the church did in general, for almost 40 years of him being a general authority seventy. And, it's a remarkable
remarkable book. I highly recommend it. I read every word and really enjoyed I really enjoyed my time in that. So one of those you read the book and you're kinda sad it's over. But let's get into the interview. Here's my interview with Rich Hanks as he talks about the leadership of elder Marion d Hanks. Hanks. Rich Hanks, welcome to the Leading Saints podcast. Thanks for having me, Kurt. Now we're old friends. Right? Can we say that? We used to be in the same ward. I
was your ministering brother. I'll go with that. So we're gonna count this for this month too. Come? I come to your house several times. Come on. Don't don't indict me here. But, now we have so much to talk about because we're not talking about you as much as we're talking about your father. So when people ask, who was your dad? What do you say? He was my dad. No. I I I say, he was a general authority for 40 years, just about a little bit under. You know, there's not a lot of people that can
remember back that far. It's been a while. He was made Emeritus in 92. So it's that 32 years ago. That's hard to believe, but for his time and age, he was sort of the person that the young people all looked up to. And, general conference would come on and those few kids who said, yay would want to listen to dad. And then most of the kids would go, oh, no, I'm sure everyone doesn't do that. There's nobody that does that. But he spoke 50 times. 50 general conference times. He spoke in
5th yeah. And the last few years, they're only speaking every 2 or 3 years. Right? So at the beginning, it was, you know, every general conference. 40 years. Yeah. What else is interesting? He was the youngest general authority, I think, called since Oliver Cowdery. Wow. Pretty sure. 31 years old. Right? Yeah. People who don't don't know what things were like back then, I sometimes say, look. Let me just put this
in perspective. Gordon b Hinkley had was a paid secretary in the missionary department for 5 years while my dad was a general authority. Wow. Just to put the time just the timing in place. One of his first state conferences as a general as a new newly called general authority was to Howard w Hunter's stake in Pasadena. So, I mean, basically this is a man who was called very young and then served the Lord really until, until he went emeritus. Yeah. And when he was
called, there was no emeritus. There was, was, this is what I'm doing for the rest of my life at 31 years old. Right? It's kind of a soapbox of mine, not just for dad, obviously for our family, but also for the current brethren. I don't think people really understand. There's 2 things that most people don't really understand about the general authorities in the, in the logistics, part of their lives. I would suggest that most of us look
forward to a weekend. If I ask you, you know, what do you do on Friday at 4? You know, you're thinking weekend. And then usually I'm now approaching, you know, 65 And people are thinking about retirement. So those 2 words, weekend and retirement, they're gone. Uh-huh. I mean because they're getting on a plane. You look at Elder Holland and and these these, apostles now. And and back in in my dad's day, it was all of them. There was no Emeritus.
And their weekends are getting on a plane Friday, getting off a plane Sunday night after having been in Poughkeepsie or Orlando or Boston at a state conference. And then and as with today's 15 apostles, and your retirement is when you die. Mhmm. Which then changed. Right? I mean, my dad had been in for 39 years and all of a sudden this
emeritus thing. And now he gets to, you know, spend the last years of his life with my mother, which was And and he was a big proponent of the Emeritus status, sort of pushing for it. Yeah. I'd I'd try not to talk to him. I think he actually wrote the paper that caused it. Yeah. I know that was 1976, I believe. I mean, I put in the book that it's he was it had been knocked around for a while. I think the forties. I think Hugh Brown talked about it for
a while. And and then, eventually, president Kimball made the decision. And, yay. We got our dad back. Yep. Yeah. So because you were born you was a general authority when you were born. Right? I was. Some of them are All your your developmental years were Yeah. Yeah. And I we try not there were a lot of positives. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we try not to be I don't think I have 4 sisters, and we try our best not to be negative out about a wonderful thing that
happened to us. But having said that, I never went on a campout with my dad. I never had fathers and sons. And Mhmm. I always was there with the ward, but, you know and there are a lot of people that are in that same position. In this particular case, it was caused by him being at a state conference somewhere in the
world. Yeah. But like I said, the positives, we were given blessings we didn't deserve and hadn't earned, and we were probably bullied by people, you know, that we hadn't earned or didn't deserve. Yeah. And, I mean, growing up, like, you know, the kids whose whose dad's a firefighter, they think every kid's dad's a firefighter. Did you feel like every dad dad was a speaker and general authority? Or Well, I get no. Because
that's an interesting question, Kurt. I don't think anybody's ever asked me that. So dad would take I was the only son. And so we would go, he would take me to priesthood session of conference even when I was 9 and 10. Oh, nice. And I'd sit in my mom's seat because she wasn't there because it was a priesthood session. So those folks who are the sons and daughters of other general authorities, I knew them, but we all kind of knew that this is not
the normal. In fact, I saw one of my friends, Shane Clark, who was Richard Clark, his son. He was at one of the book signings I did last week, and it we were reminiscing a little bit about those days. But, yeah, I never took it as anything but a positive. There's no doubt from reading the book, he was a a very positive influence on your life. And though maybe there was unorthodox, some of the father son interactions you had, nonetheless, he was he was definitely there for you and and really
saw a strong mentorship there. No. We didn't do the normal things, but we had some abnormal no. We had some abnormal things that were interest I mean, he was a letter writer. Mhmm. I don't know if everybody was back then, but he would write us all letters from wherever he was. And, when I was on my mission, I had a companion, Tony, who said, this is or elder, Caputo, who said, this isn't fair. When you read your dad's letters, that counts as scripture study.
And he said, you're all dirty. Right. I thought it was funny, but you know, I have these beautiful letters in his handwriting and they were personal and they were, they were just terrific. The other kind of interesting thing is he'd take us with him. He'd say, rich, why don't you come with me? And we'll, you can come to the state conference in Parowan, you know, or wherever Ida Boise. And so
if we could drive, we would drive. I learned how to drive a clutch in the, I guess, the Perrawan steak Saturday afternoon sessions while he was interviewing people, I guess, before conferences started. And I'm out there burning up his clutch and he came out and said, well, that's a, that's a great smell, Rich. Did you figure it out? So, Yeah. There were unusual, like I said, you're not gonna get any complaining out of us, but it was, there were compensatory things, but there were also,
you know, you didn't have him around. Yeah. So the fascinating thing when I think of Marion d Hanks that he was like, especially what my father tells me. I mean, so many of us get excited when Elder Holland speaks or, you know, some of these they're like they just had a had a way with words at the lectern. But just the the the nuances, the the little steps he took throughout his ministry that really still influence us today. For example, early morning seminary was some something that he sort
of put together. Yeah. In fact, I think one of the most fascinating things that I learned in researching this book was that and this is kind of almost unbelievable or hard to believe. The church had no formal teaching of the Book of Mormon when he was a seminary teacher. They just had the book? They just didn't go through it? No. They would teach the Old Testament, the New Testament, church history.
And, there was this book called the Book of Mormon, but there was no official there was there were no materials. When I say no, I'm sure someone somewhere is going to say, wow, we had some, but just in general, for the whole church, it's on the church website. You can go read all about it. And some of it had to do with, I think there were problems, church versus state and some other things particularly here. And so, yeah, I mean, he, he would start on 1st Nephi 1 and he would just teach.
And it was, it just drew the kids to him. And, they even sent, the church education system sent in guys to check on him, to find out what this crazy Hanks is doing and said to his face, the kids will never come. If you do it this way, you need to be teaching the way we've always taught. And he said, well, they're coming. Not only are they coming, but I now have a lot of kids that want them come at 6 o'clock in the morning, which is unheard of, right.
Which is early morning seminary. And he created all of that. Then they, it went so well. They asked him to go to California and he said, no, I can't do that. So he taught early morning seminary. And, and like you said, a lot of, a lot of what he did and what he was is kind of similar to, elder Holland or others who have an appeal based upon just relatability. And and that's what he was. He had stories and he had scriptures and he would mold them together.
Yeah. And then, a few years ago, president Nelson introduced the the church symbol. I think he called it the Christus and the arch. And what was the influence your father had on that? Wow. So dad goes on a mission. And then at the end of his mission, he's he's seeing his friends going to war, to World War 2, and he's wanting to go do that.
And his mission president convinces him to stay through the end, comes home, goes to war, comes home, meets my mom in Honolulu, where she was from on a little R and R. They they brought the ship into Pearl Harbor to be outfitted. They met. And that's another story if we if we have time. Comes home, goes to law school, graduates law school. By then, he is the assistant director of Temple Square. And was that like a church calling? It was,
it was, both. I think it was a church calling first and then it became, I think, a paid calling. Okay. And so there was a presidency of Temple Square. Richard l Evans was a general authority and was the president of the Temple Square of Temple Square. And dad and, Bob McKay were the counselors, and dad had been a guide for a long time on Temple Square. So interestingly enough, they remained in that capacity after they were called as general authorities. So I'll come back to that.
So, dad and and, and brother McKay and, and elder Evans were this were dealing all day every day with the thousands and thousands of people coming to see the Mormons Mhmm. On Temple Square. And did they have, like, missionaries like they do today? They had guides. There were no missionaries. These are all generally older men and women, mostly men, and who are just doing it. And Russ Nelson, president Nelson now was one of dad's guides as was, Neil Maxwell and Truman Madsen. And we could go on.
Dad had been pitching hard to, to elder Evans and to the first presidency that we needed some sort of way for people to know we were Christians. Because the number one question is, are Mormons Christians? Mhmm. Probably still the number one question, I guess. So anyway, the first presidency was David O. McKay, J. Reuben Clark, and Steven L. Richards. And J. Reuben Clark was not a fan of iconography. Did I get that right? It's a word like iconography.
And so dad would pitch and they he'd say no. And then he'd go back, I guess, a year or 2 later and he'd say no. So in June of 1957, the 3 of them went in for the big push. Dad convinced Richard L. Evans. We need to pitch hard for the CHRISTUS to our Valson's CHRISTUS to get us a copy and put it here. Now they just designed with the architects of the church, these 2 new visitor centers, which by the way, didn't come to fruition for, I guess, 7 or 8 years.
But the theory was let's get this CHRISTUS people who are nowhere Christians. They went in the 3 of them. Now, just as they're walking into the council room, Richard L Evans turns the dad and says, how'd you like to go down in history as the man who messed up temple square? And with that encouragement, they went and they sat down and they presented the visitor centers and then dad presented the CHRISTUS idea.
And he wrote, it's in the book. He wrote before president Clark J Reuben Clark could give his, we don't believe in icons speech again, president McKay slapped his knee and said, why not? And then he turned to Steven L Richards and said, don't you have a friend that has, that can get us a Christmas? So they clearly had been thinking about it, but, but it just hadn't come to fruition. So I, I think it's, for rest of my life, we all knew dad got the CHRISTUS or at least made the pitch. Yeah.
Yeah. The actual obtaining of the CHRISTUS is too long a story for here, but it finally came about. And now we have them in visitor centers all over the world, and now it is the symbol of the church. Yeah. That's really cool. So That's really cool. I was excited. And then just the the the continued influence that he was a mentor to 2 of our current living apostles. They he was their mission president, Elder Holland and Elder Cook. Yeah. And that's,
that's a a sweet story. They elder Holland and elder Cook were were missionaries in England, and I don't know if you wanna cover England as well. Well, part of my question, you you can fit this in. I'm curious because he was called there to be a mission president. He was a general authority. He was called there because it's commonly known as the baseball baptisms where inappropriate things are happening with, getting too many numbers in baptisms. Right? So he was there to
to clean it up. Is that accurate? Yeah. So it's the end of 1961. Dad's been a general authority for 8 years, flying all over the world and doing what they do. And he got called down to president McKay's office and president McKay said, I need you to go clean up the mess in England. That's a direct quote. We need to fix what's happened there. There were, certain apostles and general authorities who didn't believe it was a problem. And so dad said, well, yes. And it was asked, when can you go?
And he said, right now. So my sweet mother took these, little family of 7 of us. I was, how old are you? I was 18 months. And we, we moved to London and his experience there. It was not pleasant. He got called into Prince Phillips buddy who was working across the street from 10 Downingtown, who just beat him up to the point where dad, I put this in the book. He just said, look, I just got here and he looked him right in the eye and said, I can promise you this will not happen again.
And Because he was frustrated that there's Well, I I grabbed a whole bunch of newspaper clippings and put them on one page in the book, but there are 100 and 100. Yes. These are not positive. The church had a bad name for Yeah. These are not. There are In fact, he hit one of his quotes. They were gonna kick us out of the country. Wow. And essentially, missionaries were just saying whatever it took to young people to Yeah. Yeah. I I try not to talk about the negatives of
I don't mean to push that away. But basically, it was a it was a really blight. It was a big blight, and it's happened in a few other missions over the years. Mhmm. And it's usually an overzealous mission president who becomes focused on numbers, and that's clearly what happened in England in the early sixties. The numbers were more important than the people. Mhmm. And no one would say that. They but that's how it that's how it became Right. That
was the culture of it. Yeah. In that context, he spent a lot of time fixing each of the major issues. And I that's what I was trying to find. I wrote down what I thought was kind of interesting. I spent a lot of my career doing things on change management Mhmm. Which is, I think applicable. I don't know that there was change management back in those days, and I don't know that he'd thought about it being this sort of, precise and, structured in his approach.
But I did write down all the things I I could take out of what he did. So the first thing he did is he he talked to every missionary. He interviewed every missionary, communicated with them and said, the new program is this. By the way, it's the Lord's program. And so we're gonna do that going forward. We're gonna focus on conversion and activation and not on on baptisms. He met with each of the stakeholders, the missionaries, the mission leaders, the the stake leaders, the government.
And he promised each of them that a change was happening so that they could see there was a sort of a new way of approaching everything. He changed the definitions in England. It's interesting to read all this, but the previous mission president had defined a family as 2 people in a household, which could be 2 children. Mhmm. And he made that so that one of the 2 had to be a parent. He got personally involved. He said, I'm going to go to every baptism for the next
6 months. Wow. And that's what he did. And then he gave them something to replace the old and in his mind, that was the book of Mormon. He had every missionary read the book of Mormon 3 times. I love this approach. And so, consequently, I've got all these letters from these missionaries who say things like you saved our life. You brought integrity into a bad situation. So And going back to the book of Mormon thing, they they would read it 3 times, like, in 6 weeks. Right? Yes. They're
supposed to read it. I think well, the first two were supposed to be within 6 weeks, I believe. And then the third one was things that apply to you. So that would be your whole life. Yeah. Anyway, that's how he found this love of all these wonderful elders and sisters. And, you know, elder Holland and elder Cook were leaders from the beginning, And, I talk about each of them. They would of course get the lion's share of the
attention because they're both apostles now. Yeah. But he had tens of, you know, I don't even know how many stake presidents and religious society presidents, bishops, and, and, he'd be the first to say that their contribution was no less important. He would often talk about, Moroni, who was, you know, this awesome, guy in the book of Mormon. It says it's a whole host. All of the people were like Moroni, the world would, or the
Satan would tremble in his boots. And then right after that, it says the other people, the other leaders were no less serviceable. So in his mind, yes. How great is it that 2 of them became apostles? I'm not, It's just wonderful. I mean, it's a great thing, legacy for him, but so were so many others. And I think that comes from, well, his just get along nature and his desire to be a part of their lives even after they came home. Yeah. Yeah. That's
awesome. And then the interesting just being a general authority for so long, a prominent one, an influential one, but never becoming an apostle and that you shared moments in the book where people would come to him and say, well, obviously, you're the next one or whatever. Because either from when president Monson was called, I mean, it would have shocked anyone if, you know, elder Hanks was called at that point either, you know, up until even president Nelson was called.
Right? So but I think that's an interesting leadership dynamic of just this feeling of, well, I'm doing this. Obviously, maybe the next step is there. Not that he thought that way, but the culture thought that way. Like, when is elder Hank's gonna be the apostle? You know what? I just said this straight on. I mean, I could not I I could have left a chapter out on that, but it's just so such an obvious thing. Yeah.
And as a little boy, I remember walking down the street and people, some, apostle had just died and they would just come up and they'd say you you're next. I just know it. And that went on and on for 40 years. And how did he handle that generally? I mean Well, what did he say? Tell you what he said externally, my favorite one. The 1st year he said, 1st years, he would be very serious, and he would say, one serves where one is
called. Mhmm. In the last years, he was a little more cynical and then people would say, well, why are you not an apostle? And he'd say, because God knows me and loves me. And there's a humor in that, but it's it's actually pretty apropos. He he was not a, he expressed his views openly. He wasn't in rebellion, my opinion. But he also felt it important to tell why he believed certain things. And I can explain that. Yeah. Let me finish this train of thought first.
When he was a temple president of the Salt Lake Temple, he had one of this is a great explanation. 1 of his counselors got called as a temple president somewhere else. So he needed a new temple president. And the day he announced that one of the people who thought he would be his new counselor came in and was not happy. And dad wrote, well, I don't, I'm not sure why he would be upset.
I've been passed over more than the children of Israel, and I have trained singularly more apostles than any living person on the earth. And he had. Yeah. And I don't know. You know, I he never I never heard him complain, but Yeah. It wasn't an ego thing. No. People come in here. Richard Scott. Richard G. Scott is driving around. He's the executive secretary of the Washington DC stake. Fast forward 15 years, he's an apostle and dad's
still in the 70. I mean, he just didn't, Dan, the titles didn't matter. In fact, he acted as if he were an apostle in most cases. And it didn't. And I should also add that this concept of apostles, although it's been around forever, it was different back in the forties, fifties sixties. There were 33 general authorities, and they were all treated equally. Today, things like,
yeah. Well, today, there's 100 and 100. And now we just say these 12 are the sort of the the, focus, but it wasn't like that back then. Yeah. And so, yeah, I think that he just chose to be a leader and and follow what the Lord was telling him in his mind. And and if you want, I can tell you why that was that story. So he comes home from England. He's just had this brutal experience changing.
And there were more things I didn't really share earlier, but let's just say that, even though president McKay handpicked him to go and fix this problem in England, there were others in the first presidency and in the quorum of the 12 specifically who didn't like the declining numbers because the numbers went skyrocketing and then over 3, and then back down, he had the missionaries baptizing families and holding on and getting priesthood leadership and all the things that, that you would hope
that didn't sit well with some of the brethren who had been pushing the numbers. So he has this problem where he is sent to England by the prophet and then basically second guessed or taken shots at by others of the general authorities. Brutal and hard. He comes home after two and a half years, president McKay unilaterally invites him down to his office and gives him a blessing without duffer that dad requesting it.
And what he said in the blessing was let your voice be heard, even if it's in opposition to the status quo or what others think should be happening. And those were almost the identical words of his patriarchal blessing. So he took that to heart, and that's how he acted. Yep. And sometimes diplomatically and sometimes not diplomatically. Yeah. Right. And that was intriguing me throughout the book is this and, again, I'd love to get into this. And, of course, we respect all former
current general authorities. We love them. They these we know their men and doing their best. And but it's so intriguing because on the local church level, leaders deal with this too when maybe in the council saying there's some tension there. I don't I don't wanna embarrass this person, but I wanna make sure I push back on this or that idea. And so there were some figures like him and Bruce Harmonic Conkey. Were they called the
seventies the same day? No. Bruce Harmonic Conkey had been a seventy for I can't remember. Maybe 5 or 6 years. And then they were together for 17, 18 years. Yeah. But good friends. Very good. Oftentimes on different sides of maybe an argument or orthodoxy, would you say? How how would you articulate some of those You know, I don't know how to I've been thinking about this. I'm not exactly sure how to apply that to a a bishop's council or a
state presidency or a mission presidency council. And because in this particular case, you had someone who who I guess, I don't wanna put words in his mouth, but must have believed that he had some authority to do what he did. And that Your your father? No. No. Or this is Chris McConkie. Gotcha. Okay. He would make, forceful pronouncements
that I mean, forceful, tough words. He gave a talk at BYU called the 7 day deadly heresies that I can't remember the word, but he said, anybody who believes these seven things is, I think, an idiot or I don't want to get in trouble with the exact wording, but it wasn't pleasant. Mhmm. I was on my mission when that talk came out and, communicated with my father and said, well, I believe 3 of the 7, am I going to hell? And he said, no, I believe those same
3 rich. And I just came from Spencer Kimball's office, the Prophet's office, where we discussed it following. I am me having talking, spoken with Bruce. Yeah. You know, I was a kid during most of that, but the real truth of the matter is, is that elder McConkie somehow didn't read doctrine covenants 28, which is really clear. There's one prophet on the earth. It's Joseph Smith. And when he's finished, there'll be another prophet to take his place.
It, you know, the 15 brother and the 15 men are prophets, seers, and revelators, but they don't act. That's in abeyance. There's only one who speaks for the church and that's the prophet. So you can see my dad coming out of me here now, as I've researched this book all these years. So when, his dear friend, he actually, when he sat with me for his funeral planning, this is years before he died. He said, I want Bruce to speak. They were dear friends.
They respected each other. They were both really smart. They were both very well versed in the scriptures, scriptures inside and out. Somehow elder McConkie felt that he could, whoops, sorry, that he could say these things definitively when in fact the church has still never said if there was evolution or not. The church has still never said if there's progression between kingdoms after this life.
He even went down, I think, a couple of months or a year later to BYU gave a talk on why we don't worship Christ. And dad just said, this is silly. The book of Mormon is full of times we worship Christ. And Bruce, your own song says, we'll worship him with all I mean, so, you know, I, I can't talk about that. It's not none of my business, but I can tell what dad did. And that was dogmatic assertions do not take the place of revelation. And that was by Charles Penrose, who was a leader.
So, you know, Mormon doctrine, they finally stopped publishing that. And I guess, somehow, elder McConkie and others have felt that they could deliver revelation for the church in contrary to doctrine and covenants 28, which is very clear. So dad took it upon himself, I guess, to let his voice be heard. And I'm not exactly sure how you would apply that in a Well, I think stake setting.
I think it's helpful just to see, you know, the the church and most people maybe aren't familiar with how the correlation department works, but you can kinda see the importance of that that, you know, seventies aren't allowed to just go write a book like they could back then. You know, Elder McConkie, you know, writes Mormon doctrine just sort of there and suddenly they're retracting and, you know, and then some of these talks, right, of let's come together. Let's maybe check,
make sure we're on the same page. Yeah. The certain, leaders in the church and even maybe even today like to make a big deal about the unanimity of the quorum of the 12. Well, that's just silly. Mhmm. If they're unanimous all the time going into a meeting Right. That makes me worried. Right. I mean, these are 12 men from 12 different walks of life. I hope they come into the meetings and, you know, have great disagreements or different now when they come out of the meeting, different story.
I mean, I'll be there right there with my stake president. If I'm on the high council and he, I will be right there, but going in, I mean, the question is, are you asking, or are you telling, if you're telling me to go on my way to Missouri right now, if the prophet says, you're not going to see me, I'm going to be walking to Missouri, Missouri. But if you're asking, yeah, this isn't a good time for us to go to Missouri right now. I mean, do you know what I mean?
Somehow we confuse, obedience and belief systems that makes us so we're not allowed to speak the truth or at least speak our minds. And I can't remember who it was that said all is necessary for evil to triumph is for enough good men to to do nothing to sit around. And boy, that was not him. Right. Again, I don't think he looked for, I think he was trying to be, you know, cohesive with his brethren, but and he could be disagreeable.
He could, but he would prefer I think he would prefer to to disagree without being disagreeable. And and that's one thing, like, as far as leadership principles go that I took from observing his life through the book is that it's not like he was some renegade that was pushing against the orthodoxy and demanding change or but he would be willing, like, you know, going back to that
blessing. His voice should be heard, and there's that's completely appropriate for the calling he held, the authority he had to Well, and, plus, it's human nature. This is the 5th or 6th podcast I've done on this subject, and it's just human nature to move in and focus in on the things that are different. When he was letting his voice be heard, I think 95% of the time it was to testify of Jesus. It was to
pitch a new program. It was to forcefully, I guess, in some some ways present his opinion about what he thought was right, but it wasn't always negative. Now there were some areas where his desire to let his voice be heard, I think probably became a broken record to a few of the prophets over the time. For example, he just did not believe that Matthew 28 was more important than Matthew 25.
So to refresh anybody's memory, Matthew 28 is go ye into all the world, baptizing and teaching them to observe whatsoever I've commanded. Matthew 25 is the goats and the sheep. And, you don't go to the hospitals and the prisons and the poor, and you're not getting into heaven. That's a paraphrase. And so the church, just by definition, pushes hard on Matthew 28, proselyting. Mhmm. Right. Baptizing. But he didn't see any reason that that should be more important than Matthew 25, service.
And now, 60 years later, we're doing all those things. We have the church has humanitarian departments, and none of that was happening. It was all just sending missionaries out to Yeah. And I don't mean to he was never alone. I I well, in some things, he was. But he was always pushing hard for the church. Let's be humanitarian, the institutional humanitarianism of the church. And he'd used tough examples in meetings.
He got sent to become the area president in Hong Kong for all of Southeast Asia. And the, one of the first things he did was handpick sisters out of each mission, put them all together and then put them into refugee camps in the Philippines and Thailand and Hong Kong. The church had had zero activity in, in anything like that. In fact, he was walking along the road with the high, the United nations high commissioner for refugees. And this guy says, we're not letting Mormons
in here. You people are self absorbed. You don't do anything for anybody. So he had to promise him. He said, look, you look at me, I will give you my home number. I will fly here in a moment's notice from Hong Kong. I will promise you there will be no pros lighting. We will do what Jesus taught us to do now. That's all well and good. Now he goes back to salt lake and pitches pitches for the money. I mean, you have to have money to do anything.
And one of the brethren who will remain unnamed said, how many baptisms is this going to cost us now? Just put that in perspective. How do you answer that question? What would you say? I'm not trying to put you on the spot. I mean, you know what he said? What's that? All of them. So he's sitting with the committee of his peers or in some cases, maybe his, his one of his bosses on the committee. And he says, all of them, we're going to do this because this is what Jesus said to do in Matthew 25,
no baptisms. We are not gonna We'll wear our name tags. The sisters will wear our name tag, but we're not gonna do it. Now, he pushed that every year and, over and over and over again. And I, you know, in a church that at that time was just, and to this day is still pushing baptisms, baptisms. He compromised. They compromised to S to have the missionaries do 6 hours a week. And then it moved up to 10 hours a week. If he'd had his way, it would have been a 100 hours a week. It would have been.
Well, let me give you an example. I put this in the book. I think if you ask a 100 people, what's a Mormon, let's say we go to times square, Manhattan, and we say what's a Mormon. And what do you think you'd get? Either a polygamist or now they've seen the Book of Mormon musical. So yeah. Polygamy, Book of Mormon musical. One of these horrible HBO specials on Sister Wives or whatever. I don't know. Guys in white shirts, you know, knocking on my door.
Whatever. Yeah. Donny Osmond. I don't know. Wouldn't it be great if in 30 years, if you got a 100 people in the street in times square and they said Mormons, oh, LDS church of Jesus Christ letters. Those are the people that helped me rake my leaves and empty my out. My U Haul donated blood. I mean, what if we were the church of Jesus Christ that did not only what Jesus Christ said, but what Jesus Christ did, which is easily seen in Matthew 25 and many other places.
Yeah. Everybody, I say that to nods their head. That'd be awesome. And then I ask which of those two methods would result in the most baptisms over a 50 year period? Because clearly the baptisms will fall. Yeah. Right? But over time For a while They would explode. One might argue Yeah. That the demonstration of Christ like attributes in our lives with 70 or 80,000 missionaries would physically result in more baptism. Can't prove it. Have no way of knowing.
All I know is that he did experiment after experiment in different parts of the world where he was in charge. And to him, they were all successful. I believe they're all successful. I don't have the numbers that prove that. But even if there are no numbers, isn't that what Jesus taught? That's huge. And that's really made me think as I was reading those chapters, just thinking about my own experience, you know, in in Utah and running wards and church leaders that we sometimes
become insular. Right? We want to we take the meals to the the people having babies in our ward or we help the people in our ward move, but sometimes they don't take those few extra steps to look more
at the community. You know? What does the community need or the our general area if service and helping the homeless or these things we kind of see, well, that's that's the government's issue or, you know, we're we're just focusing on maybe doing the church thing, making sure everybody's got callings and we're teaching the gospel, but just maybe be more self reflective of how can I be more intentional there? You look I told you on the phone, you're gonna get a
little bit of starry eyed sun here. I let's hear it. I do my best to be objective, but this was another one of his deals. I mean, we didn't know what to put on his tombstone, his grave. A man who gave 50 general conference talks and 100 of thousands of So what do you put? Well, we didn't put a picture of the temple. We put a picture of the scriptures. Nothing wrong with the temple. It's just and, these words serve others, whatever their faith, wherever they are. That is the anti insular.
Yeah. So a couple of fun story interesting stories. He's a brand new general authorities. I don't know how old he was. He's probably 33, 34. And he's on on the board of directors of the Salvation Army, the, YMCA, the community chest. He ends up 30 years later, 25 years later being on his way to being president of the of Rotary International. He was the non insular general authority. And this was at a time when no one else was. So it's not like the church said, Hey,
will you go do that? He just, no. In fact, he got a little bit beat up for it. And it's not like they took away some of his state conferences. I mean, he'd have to get on red eyes to get back to some of these meetings. He was on, the president's council of physical fitness and sports for 5 US presidents. So it's a lot of trips to Washington DC. There was no Zoom. Right? So you're getting on airplanes. So here's a couple of fun stories. It's the middle of
the decade of the fifties. He goes into the 1st presidency, and he says, can I have $25,000? A lot of money back then to help with Salvation Army. I'm on the board of Salvation Army. And J Reuben Clark says, isn't that another church? And my dad says, no, president Clark. I'm a member of your church. We're the Yeah. But we need the money because they're taking care of the homeless in our city. This is salt lake city and the Mormons are doing
so. President Clark says, well, let them take care of their own. And my dad said, president Clark, they are our own. This is our city. Fast forward. Dad is the chairman of the desert gym. For those of you who don't know what the desert gym was, before there was a conference center, the church would build gyms. We had a big, beautiful gym there called the Desert Gym for all the athletics and weight lifting and racquetball and so forth.
And he he became the chairman because he was quite an athlete, which I talked about elsewhere and in the book. Mhmm. So on Saturdays, once in a while, he'd be home on a Saturday, almost never. But once in a while, he'd say, hey, Rich, let's go play squash. And so here's the chairman of the desert gym and we're playing squash. Where do we go to the YMCA? And I'd say, dad, what are we doing here? I like the spittoons. But other than
that, why are we here? And he'd say, because these are my friends and I want them to know it shouldn't be Mormons at Desert Gym, non Mormons at YMCA. He did it on purpose while he's the chairman. And I got, I don't even know, 50 stories that are similar to that. Here's another great one. He's he's in the rotary club and he and the top Jew
in the rotary clubs. You got one of the top Mormon in the rotary club and the top Jew, and they're standing outside of ZCMI, which is a downtown mall that doesn't exist anymore. In 3 hours of ringing the salvation army bell, they raised more money than all the rest of the bells in the entire month of December, all over Utah. And that's because these top business man who happened to be a Jew and this top religious leader who happened to be a Mormon would just say, Hey, Bob, a 100, Tom, a 100.
And they just, they just raised all this money. That's cool. I don't think another general authority rang the bell again. I told you a little story. I'd hear a son, but he was so unique. Yeah. Such a great example. He was really unique and it didn't matter. It wasn't Mormons in and everybody else out. That's a whole another question, Bill. Mhmm. I'll wait and see if he asks that one. So I'm curious just from your experience being a mission president. That was 5, 6, or 7 years ago that you're
a mission? I've been home we've been home 8 years. How did like, as you found yourself in in these similar roles as being a leader, what parts of him came out through your leadership? So, I called with my wife to be the the mission president in Alabama. And, of course, I immediately thought, what would dad do here?
And I had been saving materials from his mission presidency and from all the years of going and doing mission tours and and speaking at all of the hundreds of seems like thousands of of meetings on missionary work. And so I thought about that. I I wrote down a few that I wanted to do, and I I hope I did them well. I I I think Liz and I did them well, but that will time will tell. Right. Yep. We focused on the missionaries, not on the baptisms.
I bet if you ask 50 random members of the church who's in charge of baptisms, they'd get it wrong. It's actually the stake presidents. Mhmm. Mission presidents are supposed to be in charge of missionaries, interestingly. Yeah. Unless that's changed in the last 8 years. I think you're still accurate. So I did that. I focused on the missionaries, not at the expense of baptisms. That's why we were we were there, but I wanted the missionaries to know that I love them. Dad was not never a catcher.
And so I determined right up front, I'm not going to be a catcher. I'm not going to try and catch my missionaries doing something wrong. I'm not going to try and catch them in, in, into late or into early, or I'm not going to try and catch them listening to the wrong music. I decided I'd do what he did, which is I'm going to treat these young people as if they are adults because they are adults.
I've been to missions that had 23 pages of rules, but we had one rule in my mission other than the white handbook and the, and preach my gospel, the ones that are standard, we had one rule and it was, there will be no U turns in my mission. And that's because I almost lost the sister. So U-turn, like a literal U-turn literally in their car, a U-turn. That was it. That's my only extra rule.
And you've got, you've literally got some missions that literally have 100 of, you know, or I don't know, 100, but tens of rules. I decided that on the 1st night they arrived, I was going to tell them that I was going to treat them like adults and that I wasn't going to try and catch them. I'm not going to send the assistance in to catch you. You're an adult. You're on a mission. Behave like one. We pushed hard on service in our mission. I just talked about a
minute ago. I wanted the missionaries to not just be knocking on doors all day, but to serve people. I would tell the sisters and their first night in the mission home, they're all exhausted. They've come from the MTC. And I would say those are beautiful dresses and all those hymns are going to be ruined. And the reason they're going to be ruined is because you're going to rake leaves and ride bikes and rake leaves and ride bikes and rake
leaves and elders. Your pant legs are going to become dirty because you're going to empty you halls and you're going to serve, your fellow, your fellow beings. We also emphasized work all of our missionaries every day, we would have them recite a DNC chapter or DNC section 4. And then we would also have them recite a poem, which is the same poem that elder cook and elder Holland, I think both recited in their various talks over the years. And that poem is by, Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul. And, you know, missionaries are in a tough spot. This is a brutal thing. Those of you haven't been on missions, it's it's not easy. And I wanted them to know that if they resolved to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, that they could do it. We stay in touch with our missionaries. They don't run from each other. They see somebody across campus. They run towards them. I hope that's what
I've been told. They don't run away from them. And that's, I think what dad would have done. So I tried to follow those, those same things. That's really inspiring. Anything else come to mind as for your time as the mission or, does that sum it up? Yeah. Some things have never changed. I was told by a general authority visiting that, my missionaries were doing too much service and in a fit of cynicism and stupidity, I responded, really? Did you want me to quote you on
that? Can you really do too much service on this planet? Pretty sure that's what the savior. Yeah. And that was stupid of me. Bad. But how do you handle that? Cause that's the I don't know because I that's just, I just don't get it. How can you do too much service? I'm proud of, of my wife and I, I think she was phenomenal. And we went out when the surge happened. She and I did, and we're not here to talk about me, but it was amazing.
You know, I had 12 mission, 12 sisters on my mission in Scotland as a young man. We had 150 at one time. I had 300 missionaries and half were sisters. Wow. So, we were equally yoked, my wife and I, in serving these young people and tried to follow the same things I think that dad would have done. Yep. On that note, like, I wanna talk about your dad's wife, your mother, Maxine. Yeah. Sure.
So I'm just curious, like, if we were to bring her here in the eternal, scope of things and she was to address, like, the wives of leaders, like, what advice would she have for bishops' wives or mission present wives or elders quorum wives? Oh, that's a good one. Service. I think she would follow dad, and they were equally yoked in that support. She was no shrinking violet. I mean, she was a force. And, you know, she taught school and she could have been all kinds of different things.
She chose to be a wife and a mother, and she chose to support my dad. I mean, she was totally supportive. I mean, you think about this. She's taken him to the airport every Friday, picking him up on Sunday, taking his suit off and hanging it up outside to air off all the cigarette smoke that he's been sucking in for 5 hours on his flight from wherever. Such a different thing. She's got all these little people. If 5 of us, little kids, no no father helping her or no husband helping her out.
Even during the week, he was counseling other people. She was graceful and determined, and she was supportive. And she was really just unbelievable. He would say, I put this in the book. She raised the kids. Just think about, I just tell him a quick story. This will just maybe help some people see what this was like. He spoke at the general conference opening session. There were 3 sessions, 3 days back then, Friday opening session. And he gave a prayer and he was 31 years old and the
assistant director at Temple Square. And he was working for Richard L. Evans, who was a general authority in the seventy. Dad was not gets a call from David O'Mackay on Sunday morning at 7 am. So 3 hours before conference is going to start. President McKay says, this is David O'Mackay. I'd like you to come down to my office right now. My dad's like, who is this really? True story. Goes down. President McKay says the Lord has spoken.
You are to be a general authority and take Richard L. Evans place in this council, first council of the seventy. He's going to be an apostle. Wow. There's a whole story there. Dad knew it was going to happen. It had a spiritual prompting. He didn't believe it. He's 31. How could this happen to me? Yeah. Here's the point with my mom. He goes to the hotel, Utah. He calls up and he says, Maxine, I need you to come down here for the 10 o'clock session. I'm taking Richard L Evans place.
And then he had to hang up and go on. She's scratching her head saying, okay, so Richard Evans, isn't going to be the director of temple square anymore. So Duff's going to be the director of temple square. Yeah. Can you imagine when she shows up at the Tabernacle and she's 27, 2 little girls, and her whole life
was put on hold. Every dream, hope that involved what they were going to be and do Now it's put on hold and your husband's going to be a general authority till he dies and you're never going to see him on weekends and so forth. And so I pay homage to my mom. I mean, she didn't bulk. She just dug in and she was a terrific mom. She was, she didn't like necessarily all the fancy party type things. It wasn't her way, but she lived the life that she could in support of him
and her testimony of Jesus Christ. I love it. Love it. As we wrap up here, like, I wanna make sure some broader topics, like, just his approach to teaching or speaking that we haven't mentioned, like, to to speak that many times. What did you or others learn about how to give a a talk? Yeah. He was constantly, constantly reading. I mean, more than anyone I ever knew and marking.
Going through his materials, you know, so he died, and and I've been researching for the book and finding 100 and 100 thousands of his own talks that he then marked up as if he was just reading it. I think he was going like, oh, I could oh, I should have done this better. Yeah. Yeah. And marking it. Every year, he would read I don't wanna make this sound like an annual thing because it wasn't necessarily 12
months. Might have been 9 months. Might have been he would read the book of Mormon, and he would mark the daylights out of that thing. I mean, he his book of Mormon, all colors and lines and circles and notes to himself. And then he finish and give it away and start over again. Wow. People come up to me, when I haven't lately, but for years years and say, I have your dad's book of Mormon. I'd say, no. You have one of my dad's book of Mormon. And they'd say, would you like it
back? And I'd say, no. You can keep it. I've got several. Yeah. He just was a voracious reader and marker, and he would thresh and digest, he would say. When he spoke, he was always over prepared. Mhmm. Always. I mean, he would stand up at BYU and say, well, I got enough material here for a couple of days. Anybody want? And sometimes he throw it all away and and and do a completely different talk. But he had so much stuff.
One of my favorite quotes is, the holy ghost will never elicit thoughts out of an empty head. His brain was full all the time. Poetry made for some pretty long car rides when we were kids. He would be helping us memorize. I mean, you just choose something. We look at something beautiful. And what comes into my mind is enraptured by this glorious scene. I gaze in meditation, like one lost in some sweet dream, amazed at God's creation.
Well, I only know that poem because he had us memorize that poem, looking at the grand canyon or wherever, and that's what he did. So his preparation involved, pleading with the Lord for help and then doing the necessary work. And then he just had a way of presenting. He was humorous. I put a whole chapter on humor. I think my publisher wanted me to take it out. And I thought, no, no, I'm leaving in his best jokes. Yeah. He also rarely, I always feel a little bit ashamed by
this. He rarely ever did something twice once in a while, but he had stories he would tell, but he would always prepare from scratch. There was none of this. Oh, I gave a talk once every talk was from scratch. Again, it might repeat a story, but yeah, I'd like to address one thing that he loved to do when he when he taught. He loved 1st Nephi 1922. It talks about why we should read scripture. And the three reasons given are to know of what happened to other people,
to increase our belief in the redeemer. And then the most important one, well, not most important one. The one for my conversation here is to learn things that would apply to me. Mhmm. I try to do that as I am teaching my gospel doctrine class here. I was trying to think of, well, how would dad teach this? Let me give you a perfect example. Mhmm. 1st Nephi one one. You don't happen to know what that is, dude?
Sure. Yeah. I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore, I was taught somewhat. Well, if if I'm teaching that I and the way most people, that would be a a presentation of information. Mhmm. Nephi was born of goodly parents. You know, we just go through the different things. It's not how he ever taught that. He taught that. What if you weren't born with goodly parents? What if your parents were horrible? How does that scripture apply to you?
I, Kurt, who will someday be a goodly parent. See, that changes the whole thing. Yeah. And so that's how he taught. That's how he spoke. How will this be beneficial? Not in the abstract, but in the specific goodly parents. Another quick one. Lehi starts to complain. They break the, Nephi breaks his bow. Lehi's complaining. We don't have any food. Where are we going to go? And even Lehi starts to murmur. And it says, Nephi went and asked his father, where there shall we go to obtain
food? Well, how do we apply that? Well, we apply that in sometimes old men and women, our mentors need to feel some encouragement, some support. And so this young prophet, Nephi, the old guy's washed up. Lehi's washed up. Right? Goes and gives his father back dignity. Didn't need to ask him where to go to. I'm sure God had told me if I where to go to get food. I don't know if these are resonating with you, but these were the kinds of things that he wanted to teach. This is what
he taught his missionaries. This is what he taught for 40 years. How can we apply the savior and what the savior has taught us and what the scriptures teach us to our lives. How can we change our daily life? Yeah. What about just the concept of the leaders deal with of repentance? You know, helping somebody
through repentance and Yeah. That's a you asked in the preparation for this if I had a favorite general conference talk, which is impossible because there were 50 and another 150 at BYU and another 10,000. But what I wrote down, I wrote down 6 because I couldn't think of 1, but one of them is my specialty is mercy. He gave a great talk on that. And the reason I love that is because that was him. He just didn't understand the concept of punishment as being a part of repentance. Yeah. And
he would say, okay. Lost coin, lost sheep, prodigal son, woman taken in adultery. I mean, the woman taken in adultery was taken in adultery and she's right there and he's bent over, you know, riding in the sand, the savior is. And he doesn't say, don't take the sacrament for 3 weeks. And I'm going to excommunicate you for a couple of years. He says, go thy way and sin no more. That's what dad believed now.
If there were bad experiences, maybe in some visible things, but in general, his approach was go thy way and sin no more. He, he just believed that God, as it says in the doctrine and covenants, he'd forgive and forget. Yeah. And I tell you what, that's a wonderful way to approach life as opposed to, but I shouldn't do this, but I'm going to, we had a sweet man that was in our ward. I'm a deacon. And I remember he was a Bishop long before I knew about any of these kinds
of things. He'd been a Bishop. He'd counseled a woman and gotten involved and gotten excommunicated. And he sat on our back row of our ward for years years. And I know cause I was a deacon and we all knew to pass pass it to him and he passed it to his family. And he was kept out of the church because of a problem he made. And dad wrote I think I wrote us in the book. It was you know, we made Alma the president of the whole true church. Alma. Mhmm. Paul. Mhmm. On and on and on.
And yet we're keeping people out, and we're we're making them suffer because suffering is somehow part of repentance. He just didn't believe in it. That also applied to the way he approached. So you think about the 1,000, I don't know what the number is, but must be probably 1,000, maybe a 100 of state conferences. What's his goal? Here comes the general authority to visit your stake. You're the stake presidency. You're a little concerned. This guy's coming from
salt lake. What's he going to find? I'm fast forward. Now I'm a Bishop in my ward. I'm at a funeral, the funeral home guy, the fellow that takes the casket in and out says, Bishop Hanks, may I speak with you in your office? I said, sure. And he comes in, he sits down and he says, you don't know me. He's he looks like he's in his mid sixties. I was a stake president in the Midwest. I want to tell you a story about your dad. And I'm like, well, there's a, and, he said, just wait. We have time.
And he said, we had, an apostle come to our stake and look at all the numbers and look at what we were doing and just beat us senseless. We went home dejected with our head between our, hanging down. Our countenance was down everything. We all felt like what in the world and said, frankly, I went home and told my wife, I need a bath. I need a shower. Said your dad came. He was the next
visitor to our stake. And the short version of it is he left us uplifted, encouraged with hope and gratitude for our willingness to be in a state presidency. He said when the previous general authority visited, we all felt like we needed a shower. When your dad left, we all felt like we had one. And that's, it's a pretty poignant story. I've tried to be like that as best
I can. I'm sure I've failed, but what he did was he, he wanted to uplift the individual and he, he didn't feel the need to beat up. People already know where their weaknesses are. Right. They don't need help. I already know what my sins and weaknesses are. I don't need help on that. And so he chose to follow the savior's way, which is this lifting lift me up is is how he talked. Yeah. Love it. Any other point principle that we wanna squeeze
in here? I think part of dad's uniqueness in addition to the things we've talked about service and was his willingness to walk the talk on things. And, you know, here he is able to speak and is speaking all over the world and large congregations, not just church, but also secular ones. You know, he was slated to be the president of the boy scout of boy Scouts of America when he was sent to Hong Kong. At the same time, he was slated to be president of the rotary club, which is
massive. People don't know how massive the rotary club is. So here he is speaking all over. And then the thing I wanted to point out is then he walked to the top when no one could see. And I'm going to give you some examples are going to blow your mind. Cause they're just so simple. He made me take his garbage over to his house. He'd say, take the garbage out, will you, Rich, on on Tuesday? And I'd say, sure, dad. And he'd say, make sure you put it all the way down the
street. We lived on this cul de sac with 6 homes. And I said, why is that? And I said, so the other people don't have to walk so far. We're walking down the street. I'm a little boy I'm walking behind and there's 2 elderly ladies that crosswalk. They look like they're in their eighties, maybe nineties, puts his hands through both of their arms and says, ladies, I'm feeling kind of shaky on my feet today. Would you help me across the street? He'd get home from general or from state
conference. He'd be exhausted. There'd be a big snow in Salt Lake and we'd get out the Bronx. He'd say, Rich, fire up the Bronco. We'd go and we'd get in the Bronco and go out and drag people out with chains who are stuck in snow drifts. Yeah. I mean, I literally could go on and on and on. He just, it was just his way to do
to walk the talk. One of my absolute favorite stories is he's flying from Honolulu to Salt Lake stopover in Oakland, gets on the, or gets at the airport and meets a young Marine with his wife. His wife's pregnant with a little child, a little child and pregnant. She's flying home to salt lake from Honolulu. Having seen her husband. The plane is late and gets in Oakland after or with, I guess, just a few minutes before the connecting flight to salt lake.
They're both on the plane. They're nowhere near each other. He's probably sitting in the front of the plane and she's probably sitting in the middle of the plane with a child and, and is pregnant. They get off, she gets off and she starts to run with, with all her bags and the child. And here comes my dad flying down the other way. And he, he had gotten off the plane and took off running
and walked. You can do this today, walked onto the Delta flight to the cockpit and said, gentlemen, there is a pregnant woman with a child who needs to get to salt lake. Will you hold this plane? I'll be right back. And then he ran all the way down to her, took the child and some of the baggage and they went together and made the plane. That's it seems like a simple little thing, but not to me. Yeah. That's huge. Cause that's what he did. And he did
it all the time. And then, you know, the next day he'd be up on stage in front of 5,000 people talking about what Jesus taught us. And then I would think, well, I just saw that yesterday, but he never made a big deal about it. He didn't really talk to anybody about it. Yeah. Well, in those days that it's tough to be like Jesus, we can at least try and be like Duff Hanks. Well, I don't know. Thank you. And the the again, here's the book. To be a Friend of Christ, the Life of
Mary d Hanks. And where would you send people to, check it out? Just say there are a few, local LDS bookstores where you can always get it on Amazon. It's a Yeah. And I read every word and, loved it. You. That's, you know, everybody loves the early church history years, but my favorite part of church history is the the years that he he lived because it was inspiring just to see how the church, function in those modern days with great leaders who weren't perfect, but tried to
to make a difference in the kingdom. So Can I finish with one last quick thing? Yeah. The opening line of the book. So think about that. What are you gonna put? You're writing a book about your dad, right? What are you going to put as the opening line and the closing line? And we've talked about, his life and some of the things he focused in on. And I chose to write Marian Duff Hanks was a believer. Yeah. And that's, I didn't put it as the last sentence, but it's the second of
the last sentence. I think Marian Duff Hanks was a believer and I I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that I was able, our, my sisters and I were able to be born to believing parents didn't make it easy and it didn't make it, without its difficulties, but we always knew that Jesus was at the center of his life. Hey. You made it to the end of the episode. Wasn't that so good? You know, I tend to pinch myself that this is what I
get to do. I get to sit down with some remarkable people across the world, experts, everyday leaders, PhDs, therapists, whatever it be, and have such an impactful conversation. I hope you'll share it, drop it into text message and email, and share it to someone who maybe came to mind during this episode. And if you go to the show notes and scroll to the bottom, there's actually a list of some of our most popular episodes. So don't stop with
this episode. I mean, you're not done with the dishes or mowing the lawn or working out. So you might as well keep it going at the bottom of those show notes and, make sure you listen to each one maybe a couple of times on a few of them. Remember, up your teaching game by listening to the David Farnsworth presentation by visiting leading saints.org/14.
It came as a result of the position of leadership, which was imposed upon us by the God of heaven who brought forth a restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And when the declaration was made concerning the only and only true and living church upon the face of the earth, We were immediately put in a position of loneliness, the loneliness of leadership from which we cannot shrink nor run away, and to which we must face up with boldness and courage and ability.