Well, hey there everybody, welcome out. We've got another great podcast in store for you today. In fact, we've got quite a treat. Before we do that though, my name's Scott Durfey. I've got my uncle Dave here with me. Good to be here. Beautiful morning and great to be with you, Scott, with our guests this morning. Yeah, super excited to introduce our guests.
Over the last several weeks, we've been talking about forgiveness and repentance and obviously our relationship with and how the life of the Savior comes into all of this. And today we are going to put that, as we have done in the past, we've had several opportunities to have guests on. This one I'm really excited about.
Today we'll be having a guest that I've known for 24 years and a guy that I think just kind of exemplifies a relationship with his heavenly father that is unmatched by most people that I know for sure. And when I think of this guy, before I get to his name and all that, he reminds me of a scripture here in John chapter 3 verses 16 and 17. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
And this is the one I think that's really exemplary of the things that we'll be talking about today. This is verse 17. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but the world through him might be saved. And ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, it's my great pleasure to introduce a very close friend of mine, Mr. Mark Minor. Mark and I first met. I first met Mark in November of 1998.
He at that time was very involved, as was my wife at the time and a couple of other of our close friends, Gary and Sherry and many others. Phil has taken us down a trip down memory lane just a little bit. But Mark was highly involved in helping get the addiction recovery program for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints underway and was quite instrumental in that, especially in the Utah County area. Mark has 20 plus years of sobriety.
He is a great, great man, a great dad, a great father. You might recognize his voice. He's been on several videos for the church addiction recovery program. Many of those can be seen at the church's website, for example. But we're just really excited to have Mark here with us today. Hi Mark. Hi, Scott. Hi, Dave. Great to be here with you. It's great to have you here too, Mark. So Mark, give us just a real brief synopsis, if you will, of what your involvement is.
We're going to get your story and we're going to get into all of the things that kind of got us to where we are today. But can you just kind of tell us about what is Mark Minor up to today? Well, I'm grateful to be a dad and a husband. I am currently a missionary in the addiction recovery program for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Done that for about 16 years now.
I've actually been involved with that program since it was a pilot program beginning in 1992 at the Utah State Prison. And my involvement has been as a participant and then eventually as a facilitator, which is someone who has worked the steps and helps to kind of direct the meeting a little bit. And then eventually I've become a missionary in the program because it's my passion. But my passion is really much more than just a program.
My passion is Jesus Christ, that He lives, that He is a personal Redeemer and Savior, not for just all of us, but for each of us individually. And He knows us by name. He loves us so much and He is relentless in His pursuit of bringing His children back home to heaven. Yeah. So, Deb and I and Mark have all been facilitators for multiple years in the addiction recovery program. But Mark is just kind of an icon there, if you will. Everybody knows him.
He's been so helpful and so generous with his time and his love and helping others. And so we're just grateful to have you here today, Mark. So Mark, we're going to continue on as we always do. We're going to talk about how your experience has helped you and how it can help others understand more fully that we have all been redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ.
That's literally the name of our podcast and that's our mission here is to help us understand that and more than understand it, but to help those of us who may feel weak and embracing to kind of change and embrace that more. And so I think we'll just go ahead and get kicked off here. David, I'll let you just kind of lead us into the discussion, if you will, and we'll go from there. Thank you, Scott. Again, thank you, Mark, for being here.
When Mark walked into the room, we're all three together here in a room. And when Mark walked in the room, I said, I think I know you. We've maybe met before. Then as I thought about it, I first met Mark, not in person, but I first became acquainted with Mark's story probably 12, 13 years ago by way of video. Yeah, that would be right.
Yeah. Designing that course on repentance and forgiveness, I would show some of the better videos on the addiction recovery program that the church was putting together and looking for help with individuals that were trying to repent and find their savior. And Mark's video was always one of my favorites. To see his countenance in the video and to hear his story is pretty dramatic, really. And then to be here in person with him is really a sweet opportunity, Mark.
And as we have kind of become better acquainted this morning, we've talked this morning a little bit before the podcast began. Yeah, you grew up as a member of the church. As I understand, I want to recap some of this, Mark, to get where we want to go. You grew up as a member of the church, but not in a really active Latter-day Saint home. Correct. Your parents were active, but you probably came from a little bit of a pioneer heritage.
Yes. My parents were not active, but they made sure my sister and I had opportunities to be active. Yeah. And this was, where did you grow up, Mark? I grew up in a military base. I'm an Army brat. Okay. Born in Germany, there twice, the D.C. area, California, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma. But wherever you went, the church was there and you would find yourself going and oftentimes without your parents. Correct. Latter-day Saints are really good about offering rides to young kids. And that's awesome.
But as families can be hard and your family had its challenges, your parents, and as you described it, Mark, even as a young boy, you can still remember kind of the worry and the anxiety, a little heartache, you know, when your parents had their challenges. And the responsibility that you felt, you know, even as a six-year-old, to try to fix their marriage or to try to make things better.
And early on in your life, you kind of developed this, I'm going to fix you mentality and that created some problems for you throughout your life, probably. It did. Just as parents are not giving an owner's manual on how to raise children per se, nor children given a manual on how to fix their parents' broken marriage. Yeah. But what pressure? I often think of the words in the movie, Hope Floats, the phrase, childhood is something we spend the rest of our life trying to get over.
A lot of truth to that, brother. You know, it's a hard thing. Mark, get that a little closer. It can be a really hard thing to go through some of those experiences. Your father went to Vietnam, came home. And how old were you when they got divorced? Well, they didn't technically get divorced until literally I was in the MTC at the age of 24 when their divorce was final. But they had been living in separate bedrooms for years.
And my dad had actually moved out of the house for the last year that they were still technically married. But their marriage was rocky from about the age of six on for me. And all through my teenage years, there was more separateness than there ever was togetherness in our family. Yeah. And yeah, you mentioned that you went to the MTC and you told us that you went to the MTC and you were there when you turned 25 years old.
It's an interesting story, Mark, that we want you to tell about two different times in prison, once before the MTC and once after the MTC, being a successful missionary in the San Bernardino Mission, California, coming home, going to BYU, all of that, and then relapsed and ended up back in prison. So you spent some time in prison in Arizona and then another time here in Utah. It all began when you were about 17 or 18 on an Army base.
Why don't you just tell us a little bit about the beginning of that and your first experience in prison and what you learned from that experience and how you were able to overcome that through the love of God and the redemption of Jesus Christ to be able to even go on a mission.
Well, I thought I had failed in fixing my parents and gradually the faith that I had in Jesus Christ and my belief in any kind of authority figure, parents, teachers, preachers, whoever, slowly faded out because I thought I had done my best and my best wasn't good enough and that set me up for addiction.
I remember drinking a beer for the first time right close to my 16th birthday and literally in less than 18 months, I was addicted to a couple of the hardest drugs on the planet and I got arrested. I was 17 years old in my senior year for a couple of burglaries to pay for my addiction because there was no way I could make enough money at my job to pay for my daily use of these drugs and I had tried multiple times to quit and I was so far over my head that it was basically impossible.
And so they don't throw away the key the first time they lock you up. They put me into the youth prison system, but every time I got out, even for just a day or two, I would find alcohol or drugs and they violated me three times in a row and told me that if I don't follow the rules, which is basically don't use alcohol or drugs and get a job or and or go to school, that you're going to be locked up again.
And the third time I got locked up again, they remanded me to adult court and I ended up spending five years in the Arizona State prison system and it got my attention. They offered me religion. They offered me 12 steps, but I thought I'd burned all those bridges and that if there even was a God, he was surely too disappointed in me to ever accept me again. And so I tried to disbelieve in God. Fortunately, I can say now that God never stopped believing in me.
That's the bottom line, because I believe now, looking back, it's really clear that God continued to knock at the door of my heart. I think there's this innate desire in every human who is at least in a relatively stable place, this innate desire to improve, to progress. And so I got my high school diploma. Then I got a college diploma.
I went from not even being able to bench press 90 pounds to bench pressing 300 pounds and squatting 500 pounds and I could run 10 miles and I could hit a baseball better than almost anybody at the prison. And yet, with all that accomplishment and all that work I put in during those five years, it wasn't quite enough. Because can we really fix ourselves? We can do a lot of good things and I'm not going to begrudge any of the efforts I put in. It served me well.
But in the absence of a spiritual connection and a spiritual identity, it simply wasn't enough. And as soon as I got out of prison, I found myself relapsed again. They put me back in for the last few months of my sentence and for the first time in almost 10 years, I found my relationship with God. I felt God reaching out to my soul through a combination of different things. There was a girl I was writing to. She I'd seen her at the University of Arizona. We had gone to high school together.
And when I quit showing up to class, she found out that I'd gone back to prison. She actually wrote me a letter and I didn't have I'd never had a romantic relationship before. But I started to care for this young woman. And at the same time, I was taking a class in comparative religion and philosophy. Because if you're going to be locked up, you might as well use your time doing something. And in that class, they said we had to write a thesis. This was an upper level college course.
And the thesis was going to be who or what is your religion, your worldview or your philosophy and defend it. And so you had to write the paper and then defend it in front of the class. And I was going to write something about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the I'm OK, you're OK, pop psychology, because that was the only thing that seemed to make much sense to me. But God had a different plan. So real quick, Mark, before you did all of that, you talked about you were trying to fix your parents.
They had a rocky relationship. And when we were talking earlier, and I've heard you talk about this before, too, you said you had this big open pit right in the middle of your chest that just needed to be filled with something. This big spiritual hole. Yeah. And and I can relate to this because this was my experience, too. You know, I was 15, not, you know, not 16 when I was filling that hole that I had. And I filled my hole with alcohol and filled that.
And I felt that kind of relief come from filling that hole. You kind of explained earlier a similar situation. Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. Because when your world is rocked, everything that you believe in, everything that makes you happy. For me, this was my relationship with my family and my relationship with God, who when I was a little boy, I inherently knew there was a God and I could walk and talk with God. And life was good. It was baseball, puppies, Fourth of July Christmas.
And when all of a sudden my parents were arguing and I heard accusations about another woman in my dad's life and realized my dad was drinking every day, I realized something was missing. And I thought, OK, if I become good enough, I can help my dad to love my mom more. I thought that was my job. And nobody was because I wouldn't articulate this. How can a six or seven year old articulate this to someone outside the family? I didn't share it with anybody.
I just thought God was putting it in my heart to go fix my family. Yeah. So you found alcohol and that kind of filled that hole for a minute like it does for all of us, alcoholics and addicts that engage in those kinds of things. And so eventually, and we're coming to this, but eventually, and you started to talk about it already, but eventually we find that to substitute that that liquid spirit, so to speak, with the spirit of our Heavenly Father.
And you know, when we've talked about putting on the atonement of Jesus Christ as part of this process, we have also talked about that how that happens for us. Dave says this is one of the biggest questions that comes up in his classes, teaching seminary and Institute for 30, 40 years. And you know, in the short time Deb and I have been teaching it at BYU, this is the one that comes up is how do we know we're putting on the atonement of Jesus Christ? How do I know?
And we're going to get to that in upcoming episodes as part of this podcast too. But we've determined and identified early on and already that we know that because the administrator of the atonement of Jesus Christ is the Holy Ghost. And when we're feeling that and when we feel that Holy Ghost inside of that, in place of the alcohol, in place of the drugs, that's when we really start to make a conversion. And I think that, you know, you're a pretty good example of that.
So you go from prison to a mission. How did how did that happen? Was it an event or a process? Mark, describe that to us. Well, in the process of filling that hole in my soul, which I knew I knew by then alcohol and drugs never would. It would only it was a temporary and ultimately very deceitful attempt to to change what I believed in. But yet my soul knew better.
And when it was finally filled with the Holy Ghost and with the the the sure knowledge that Jesus really was the Christ, I became alive and I said, this is what I've always looked for. This feels right. It lasts. I don't wake up with regret. I wake up with joy. And now I want to share it with the world. So that impelled me to try to seek a mission. And fortunately, God is really good about cleaning up his children who come to him.
Every single behavior that I had from smoking to inappropriate thoughts, to anger, all dissipated at the feet of Christ. I turned it all over to him and I was worthy, not of myself. My my only my only real part was continued willingness, which I prayed for every day. But Christ came into my life to such an extent that I was ready to serve a mission and I was ready to be used in whatever way I could. And fortunately, they said yes.
And it became one of the more the less it was, the more satisfying and the least regretful experiences of my life, not necessarily an easy experience, but it was wonderful. So you have a successful mission. You be you baptized probably lots of people. I imagine you were a powerful missionary. The experiences you had been through the maturity that you had the age of 25 serve as an assistant to the president and be able to testify of the reality of these things.
Then you come home, go to BYU, fall in love there with someone and that doesn't work out. Just describe briefly the relapse you experienced. Well, so I started to experience that my best isn't good enough, whole in my soul that I had felt with trying to fix my parents' marriage. And that, you know, when you start to go into depression, when you start to go into discouragement, at least with me, I started to feel like the way I feel right now is the way I'm always going to feel.
I'm fated to feel this way. That's a lie. I didn't I wasn't mature enough yet to truly trust in God to get me through that to the other side because God was there all along. But I was saying to God, basically, I failed with this girl that you set me up with. And so I guess my best isn't good enough. And that's an untenable position for anyone to be in. You can't just live. It mean it's not even living. It's just existing. And that hole just continued to get more and more open.
And finally, I caved. I had a root canal done. Somebody gave me a prescription for a pain pill, and I knew in my soul that I should not take it. But I said, I'll just put it in my pocket just in case. Famous last words. And Mark, you've kind of described in introducing yourself to me as we've talked before the podcast began about all the different labels that you had at that time in your life that came back to you.
And I believe through experiences that you've maybe had negative some of the negative experiences that you had had would result in some of those labels. But I also know that all of us have a voice, or Satan and his followers, whisper that we're not good enough, that there's a certain shame and labels that go with it. So just describe for our listeners some of the labels that you felt that you were putting on yourself, or that Satan was putting on you.
Yeah, ex-convict, alcoholic addict, even if in recovery, not good enough, never will be good enough, phony, fraud, all sorts of negative voices. And I knew there was a degree of truth in all of that. And what I didn't recognize yet, but I now know is that Satan will sometimes teach us four or five truths if he can slip in a destructive lie.
Because the truth was is that I was a recovering alcoholic, I was an ex-convict, but the biggest truth of all was that I was a son of God, a son of the living God who never stops. And Satan was able to deceive me that in that regard, I thought if I am a son of God, okay, intellectually I know that, but right now I'm not feeling it. So I must be a broken son of God, and I don't think I can be redeemed.
What overcame those labels to what you knew from God that who you really were, and did this happen the second time you went in prison, where the labels turned to your identity, your eternal identity? Yes, the whole story of the relapse doesn't even deserve the time to be retold. It's just relapse, it's just giving up. And when we give up, Satan has control and he whips us all around and tries to destroy us. And in the middle of my self-destruction, which I had bought into, God was there.
And it was not this warm, fuzzy, come to Jesus moment. It was a moment of raw, awful truth in which I saw all the deceit, all the negativity, all the pain that I had caused, and the ways in which I had refused God, even refused his help. But he was here, and he was offering me help. And I knew it's because God is God. His love is his number one attribute. He is the God of truth. Well, love is the highest truth of all. And he wasn't moving.
And I said, well, if you're here in this, you've descended beneath all things in this pit that I created for myself. I think this happened right after you had robbed a bank. It wasn't a bank, it was a store. But yes, it was right after a robbery in which all the rationalizations were taken away from my head. And I saw that I had literally put another human being, a brother in the gospel sense, because truly we are. I had put him in fear of his life.
And me, whose life had been saved by a heavenly father and by a savior, how could I have done that to another human being? And I thought I didn't deserve to live anymore. And that's when God showed up and said, I'm still here. All of that while you were hiding from the police in a bush. Correct.
And as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mark, to hiding in a bush after an armed robbery, how does that—again, the relapse, we don't need to go into all the details of that. But just explain the process of how is it that an individual can fall from grace so far? Well, there is no justification that actually—or rationalization that makes sense.
Satan, when we give up on our faith in Christ, or we give up on ourself, which is essentially the same thing, we take our agency and say, God, I don't need you anymore. I don't deserve you anymore. It doesn't matter. That's the outcome. We separate ourselves from God. And then Satan will plunge us into death and hell as quickly as he possibly can. And it wasn't like that was my plan. I'm just going to jump off the deep end and go ruin my life and destroy everything that's good in it.
I was in such fear and depression and discouragement that I thought all I can do is just numb the pain that I'm feeling until I reach the point where no amount of drug would numb the pain. And I was doing the things that I said that I would never do. So the turning point for me was literally God saving my life. And he said, start by being honest. Take my hand. I'll show you a better way. And I did.
I walked out of those bushes, turned myself into the police and pled guilty to a five to life armed robbery charge. But sometime later in prison, I was I was back going to Institute of Religion classes, back in college, exercising. I had the spirit back. They literally had had a church court for me and decided to keep me in full fellowship in the church. Of course, you can't wear your garments in prison. And I couldn't believe that.
So I asked my uncle, who was a general authority, I said, I think they made the wrong decision and said, no, Mark, they made the decision that God wanted them to make. You are to retain your membership in the church. So this all came to a head one day when we got a visitor to our institute class. Elder Marion D. Hanks of the presidency of the 70 came and spoke to our institute class at the Draper Prison. Mission president of Elder Holland and Elder Cook.
I don't know if you knew that, but no, I did not know. Mary D. Hanks was a mission president of those two apostles. And as a matter of fact, his nephew was my mission president in the Seattle, Washington Mission, Seattle, Washington, Mission. So many cool times in the church. But I'll never forget literally sitting at his feet as we learned one of the most important lessons of my life. He came in and said, brethren, I don't have anything to share with you, anything prepared.
I'm just here to answer your questions. And we were like deer in a headlight, but somebody threw out a softball question and he answered it really easily. And pretty soon we were all smiling and talking about enjoyable gospel topic. And then this one fellow there, he was a tortured soul among tortured souls. And he's he shot off this question. How do I know I'm not a son of perdition? Well Elder Hanks took that very seriously and said, brother, why would you ever say that?
He gets he said, because I've known the truth since I was little. And again and again and again, I've fallen back into sin and addiction and crime and sin and addiction and crime. And it just never ends. And then Elder Hanks turned to the whole class and said, your brother has asked a really, really important question that I think applies to all of us here. How many of you think your son's a perdition? Well nobody put up their hand. OK, let me rephrase that.
How many of here despair of ever making it to the celestial kingdom? Well pretty soon we're all starting to put up our hands. He goes, the real question is, can you make it to the celestial kingdom giving giving what you have done? Is that still a possibility or is the best you can ever hope for the terrestrial or celestial kingdom? Isn't that what your brother here is asking? And I looked at my friend there who had asked the question and he was nodding.
Yep, that's basically I don't know that there's any hope of this higher kingdom when I can't even stay straight in this earthly in our mortality. And he goes, this question can only be answered as we ask more questions. And he goes, this is the big question. Do any of you ever feel the spirit? And one guy said, yeah, when we're here and brother maybe's Institute class, I feel the spirit. Another guy said, yeah, when my boys come to visit at visiting and I get to hug them, I feel the spirit.
Another guy said, yeah, when grandma writes to me, I feel the spirit. Oh, and we have those LDS music nights and they come in, they sing and they perform for us. Yeah, music and all sorts of people are saying, yeah, we feel the spirit. So you would say that the Holy Ghost is alive and well within the walls of the prison, Mark? As is Jesus himself. But yes, and brother Hanks turns to my friend there and said, is any of this registering with you? And he goes, no, I never feel the spirit.
And then he says, well, then why do you keep coming to Institute class and church? Because you say that you keep coming all the time. And this guy shot off because it's the only place I feel peace. And that just hung in the air for like five or 10 seconds. It seemed like a long time. And the slow smile spread across Elder Hanks face. And he said, he goes, that's your answer. He goes, did you know that peace is the one thing that Satan can never imitate nor duplicate?
And the fact that you feel peace, it's a fruit of the spirit that testifies that the atonement is alive and working. And if the atonement is alive and working, then that is a sure sign that every promise of the celestial kingdom is still available to you. And I looked over at this big six foot five convict and he's rocking back and forth and the tears are pouring down and he's going, yes, yes, yes, thank you. How sweet.
Well, while you're in prison, Mark, we've had a few other individuals in our podcasts share that in the prison, they had some experiences that were life changing for them of crying out, crying out and really coming to know God in a more personal and intimate way and strengthening their relationship with Jesus Christ. Did you have any of those experiences in prison and would you share them, please? Multiple, because there is opposition in all things and basically at all times.
We have moments and periods and times of peace and of growth and of steady progress. And yet we know that's not the nature of life is to to not have opposition. And when the opposition comes, it can come in the form of being tempted. You know, you can get drugs in prison. Well, I was able to refuse all of those, but it can come in the form of losing people that you love and not being able to go to their funerals. It can come in the form of something like this.
I knew I needed to make amends to all the people I had heard. And who did I hurt the worst? Probably my family. I called my mom and literally within the first three minutes of talking to my mom, she said, Mark, I forgive you. You're my son. You'll always be my son. I couldn't call my dad. He was still working for the government. He was back in Washington, D.C. So I wrote him a letter and never heard from him. Two and a half, three years, every letter just never heard back.
My parents were divorced by then. My sister, my best friend, the one who had never given up on me when I was in prison the first time, every single letter was returned to sender. Once in a while, that letter didn't come back, but no answer. And I talked to my mom who lived close to her in southern Arizona and she goes, no, she's just too hurt. You're going to have to give her time. I don't know if she'll ever come there. And five and a half years that went on.
And finally, I went to the pro board after five and a half years. I'm down in the Gunnison prison by then. And I see it's my parole hearing and I see my mom walking in and I go, how did mom get here? She doesn't even like driving to the grocery store. She was in her 70s by then. And then I see my sister walking in behind her and I realized my sister had driven my mom that 800 miles from southern Arizona for my parole hearing.
My sister looked at me and she gave me a little half smile and a little half wink. But I knew the door had become open and I had begged God for years to be able to make amends to the people I had hurt the worst. And by the time I got out of prison, my sister was writing to me regularly. I've had so many moments in which I've begged to know that God has forgiven me and that I can become the person he created me to be.
And I could talk until the sun comes up about all of those, but I'd like to only share a couple with you. One was when our son was at Sarah Park Elementary. It took almost eight years to have a kid and then he was born on Christmas morning. And when he was in third grade, he came home right at the beginning of the year and said, we have this assembly, it's called Watchdog Dads. And come on, dad, it's me and you. So I went down to the school and I'm hearing this music thumping from the cafeteria.
It's the Rocky theme song, I Have the Tiger by Survivor. And as you walk in, they hand you Coca-Cola and pizza. And I was saying, okay, I can do this, whatever it is they want me to do. And they want you to be volunteers in the school. And you know, they need more dads, because they're almost all just women who work at the school. They need dads in the kids' lives. And I said, sure, sign me up. And I'm filling out the application.
I don't need much more incentive because my boy wanted me to be there. And I get to the last line of the application and it says, background check require $20 felons need not apply. And I had to turn to my son and say, Ammon, you know, I'm a felon. What does that mean, dad? I've been in prison. Oh, yeah, I know that. But no, this is what you're supposed to do. And I said, they won't let me. And he asked me like four times.
And do you know how that makes a dad feel when you can't do something really good that their son wants them to do? It's not a good feeling. And some of that shame starts to come back again. And even though I recompense in multiple ways, helping coaches, basketball team and helping coaches baseball team the next spring, it's still stuck with me. And the next year, beginning of fourth grade, same assembly. And he goes, Dad, this is your year. And I said, go get the application, bring it back.
It's the same application. And I said, son, I really want to do this, but they won't let me. And I'll never forget the look in his eye. It was maybe two days, three days later, and it was still sticking with me. That kind of dripping shame that God, why did I screw up my life so bad? That I can't do what you want me to do and be who you want me to be because of my past. And in the middle of that, I got a phone call from his principal. She could tell I was driving. She asked me to pull over.
And I remember saying literally, okay, what happened? Because yeah, he was in my office. You thought Emin was in trouble. I really did. I thought he was in trouble. I knew he was, he's a good kid, but you know, principals don't call parents and tell you to pull over for a little light thing. And she goes, Mr. Miner, your son was in my office. And he said, I want my dad to be a watchdog dad. And she goes, oh, well, that's great. Here's the application. Bring it back with the $20.
The training starts next week. You don't understand Mrs. Boletti. My dad's been in prison before, but he's not that man anymore. There was a little pause. And then Mrs. Boletti says, Mr. Miner, I've done my background check and you're approved. You are the kind of dad we want in our school. Now you still owe me the 20 bucks. And that broke the tears because I was, I was sobbing by then. I had marvelous experiences for the next three years, five or six full days a year in all the classrooms.
By the time sixth grade rolled around, Ammon didn't want me in his classroom quite as often. So I would go to all the different classrooms and out on the playground, the lunchroom, the library, the hallways. But this is where God spoke to me. I was with the kindergartners and those little young five and six year olds get their love all over you. I was helping them with their reading out in the hallway one by one.
And this one little boy, Johnny had done so well and I said to him, Johnny, you did so good today. Thanks for reading to me. And he was at the door. He turned around and ran back with this huge smile and he hugged me around the knees as he looked up and he says, I love you, Mr. Miner. And I felt the spirit say, you know, those labels you've hung on yourself for all these years, all this shame, all this unresolved guilt. He says, why don't you try this on? You are a dad now. You're a coach.
You're a businessman. You're a husband. You're a citizen. You're a missionary and you are mine. And the spirit just washed over me to such an extent that the only way I can really describe it is to say it's almost as if God and the Savior put this Teflon coat on my soul that doesn't allow sin and shame and guilt to attach quite so readily because I know who I am now. I have been redeemed by a very personal, dear Redeemer who is relentless in how he comes after me again and again.
And he has refined my understanding of what repentance really is. Repentance used to be kind of a heavy, even a foreboding word for me, a concept that was kind of like, well, I got a strap on this semi-load behind me and lug this down the road until I've paid the price. And I realized I was completely wrong about repentance. Repentance is simply recognizing that we're doing wrong. And we've made a wrong choice and we turn to the right choice and he who makes it right.
It's a change in orientation in which we just realign our heart with God. And he's willing and anxious to embrace me as I do that. It's not where we've been, Mark. It's the direction that we face. Not only that, Mark, you talk about he helped you see who you are, but in a very real way too, he through his son Jesus Christ has helped you see whose you are. We talk a lot about that in this podcast.
Who we are and whose we are are some of the, and arguably, probably the most important things that we can know here because once that's happened, then we can have this experience like you have explained, this change of heart, this change of the natural creature to something much more beautiful. I hear you singing the song of his redeeming love because Jesus Christ descended below all of these things for you, for me.
It helps you to know who you are, but even more importantly, that you're his and whose you are. Yes, that you bring up the essential point of the whole thing. And not too long ago, I get many chances to speak in schools and 12-step recovery centers, meetings, and I was invited to tell my story at, and then they told me it was going to be more than a thousand people and they gave me the list of all the people who had spoken there before and it was some of the best and the brightest.
Elder Bednar was on the list and Elder Holland, and really, I'm going to follow Elder Holland? Come on. But I had already agreed to it and in the middle of my preparation, I make a mistake. I work a pretty good program except for when I don't. And this was one of those moments that I didn't. And I don't remember what it was. It could have been a moment of anger. It could have been a lustful thought. Whatever it was, it wasn't drugs or alcohol, but it caused me to lose the spirit.
And I'm used to having the spirit nearly all the time. And when I lose the spirit, I feel devastated. And Satan comes rushing in with all the storm troopers in those moments and I dropped to my knees and I was begging God, saying, God, I don't know why I did what I did, but I'm so sorry. And I felt the Savior come into the room of my mind and He looked at me and He put His arms out wide and He says, come. And I cast my head down in shame and I said, I can't. I'm not ready. I'm not worthy.
And He compelled me to look back at Him and He was looking in my eyes and I could see Him looking deeply in my soul. And He said this time, I didn't ask if you were ready. I didn't ask if you were worthy. I ask if you are willing. And my spirit cried out, yes, before my brain could interject. And as soon as I did that, He was holding me. He had flown to me and swooped me up and was holding me like a baby in His arms.
And I felt His goodness and His purity and His power cleansing me, redeeming me. And I felt what He was saying to me. He said, remember this always. This is your pattern. In me, you are whole. In me, you are redeemed. Now remember this forever and go forward and serve.
That's the essence of our objective on this podcast, Mark, is that individuals feel that they have been purchased through the blood of Christ, that they belong to Him and that they have been ransomed by Him, and that He freely, without price, invites us to come unto Him always, no matter where we're at, no matter how far down the stairs we may have fallen, He invites us to turn around and to begin to ascend back into His presence with open arms. His hands are outstretched steel. Amen, brother.
Thank you so much, Mark, for being here. And so good to personally meet you, feel of your spirit and feel the spirit while you're sharing your experiences. Thank you very much. Mark, my love for you grows deeper every time I'm around you. I hope you know that. This has been a friendship that began 24 years ago for me, and I look forward to it reaching into eternity, and I know it will. And I know it already has, and I appreciate you. Deb feels the same way.
Yeah, I truly believe that heaven won't be heaven without the people that I associate with us on earth, and it's you, brethren, and the feelings that are here. This is our foretaste of heaven, and Christ is my all. And it shows. You have received His image in your countenance.
It's easy for those of us who know you to see, and I think that it's one of the things that, you know, in the rooms of recovery, we talk about attraction, a spirit of attraction, rather than promotion, and Mark is the epitome of that attraction to following the Savior and doing all things that are right. Mark, before we conclude, is there anything that you would like to say to finalize your thoughts and feelings here?
When I asked the Lord in prison, when I knew that He had literally brought me back and saved my life, and He had instilled the gospel as my model in which to live my life, I said, what am I missing? And I believe what Neal Maxwell said many years ago, and I'll just paraphrase. He says, I will custom tailor and tutor each of you in your individual plan of salvation. We all have the same plan of salvation, but He personalizes it.
And He said, Mark, you need to work on humility and you need to work on gratitude. And if I can stay in gratitude, then I got a chance for humility. Yeah, that's for sure. Well, we've said many times here, haven't we? Gratitude is the beginning of desire. And I know that's really true, and I think that's what you're describing. And I also, we've also said, Mark, you want to comment on this, that how do you know that you're forgiven of your sin?
When your gratitude for Jesus Christ and His Atonement is greater than your guilt of sin, you should know you're forgiven. Absolutely. I 100% concur with that, and the way that I know it on a daily basis is simply by having the Spirit. When I say simply, I don't want to diminish how magnificent that gift of the Holy Ghost is, but the Holy Ghost simply cannot abide unless Christ is first sanctified.
And the Holy Ghost is the messenger and administrator of the Atonement of Jesus Christ in our life. What a wonderful time we've had today doing this podcast. I appreciate so much the opportunity that we've had to be here together and talk about these things that are important.
Their importance is paramount to absolutely everything and anything that we could endeavor in this life, and that is our relationship with our Redeemer, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and through His power that is enacted upon us by the Atonement, by His Atonement, and administered through the Holy Spirit, even the Holy Ghost, member of the Godhead.
What a great opportunity we have to feel His love, to dissipate the shame and all of those other feelings that come as being part of a natural man. And I'm grateful for that, and I'm grateful for your example. And all these blessings, Scott, because we are sons and daughters of a loving Heavenly Father.
Remember, as we go throughout the week to think about, and it's our challenge, our invitation actually, our invitation to each of us is to think about where in our lives that we are seeing ourselves in an inaccurate way, what labels are we wearing that are not cohesive with the teachings of and the life of and the death of and the Atonement of, the power of rather, that comes through the Atonement of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
As we consider those labels, let's take serious consideration and prayerful consideration as to which labels those should be substituted with, which are real. We are truly sons and daughters, as Dave just said, of our loving Heavenly Father who loved us so much that He gave His Son to save us, not condemn us. Remember, you have been redeemed through His blood. We're grateful that you've been with us today, and we look forward to being with you again next week.
Until then, take care and may God bless you. God bless you.