The Scotland Edinburgh Mission Part II: Tracting with the Spencers - and more!

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett and I'm here with the magnificent Ian Wilkes. Ian, how are you, sir?

Oh, really good, Jim. Greetings from Canada. Smoky Canada. We've got a bit of smoke out there from some of the wildfires. They've died down a little bit now, but I think we're okay, but still a little bit of smoke.

Well, I'm, you know, I grew up in Southern California where we would have wildfires all the time, and I can remember what it's like to go out and smell your city burning. Of course, I was also in Los Angeles during the 1992 riots. So that's a different sort of thing anyway. So speaking of riots, I got, I got a message based on our last podcast. We started talking about the Scotland Edinburgh Mission, the time we served 35 years ago back in Scotland. And this guy said to me, I've been trying to figure out the purpose listening to your podcast, especially this mission one, and I think the purpose is to show how often you have ignored yourself and given in to the church's controlling operations. This last episode is evidence of the common abuses by a human labor trafficking operation. And so apparently I'm an apologist for human trafficking as a result of talking about our missions. This is not the first time actually people have referred to missions as human trafficking. I think that's not a description I would use. Is that a description you would use?

No, no, I don't understand that. I mean, I came from— we've been in earlier podcasts, I've been very open and honest about When I joined the church as a young 16-year-old, I felt vulnerable, excluded, disadvantaged. Personal life was— or my family life rather— was dysfunctional. There was, you know, family life was a source of unhappiness at certain times. And so when the church came along and the messages and the support and the programs and the friendships, I, I felt loved, I felt needed. I mean, at the personal level with these people that introduced me to the church, there was no hidden agenda on their part. It was to save my soul, help me, befriend me, be real friends. I felt nothing but genuine love, frankly, from those people. It was real and remains real to this day. I didn't feel trafficked, you know, so, you know, coming into the church as a convert, through the missionary program, which I did. I didn't feel trafficked. Do not think or feel for a moment I felt trafficked at any point. You could argue that the church probably could have taken advantage of my vulnerability. I don't see it like that whatsoever. I think the church was, you know, through the people I met, was, you know, the people of the church, right? You can't separate that. They were trying to help me and support me, and I felt loved and supported. I certainly did not, didn't and do not see the church being an organization or a conduit for trafficking people. And certainly from the other side, being a, you know, I was a convert back then, but being a missionary in Scotland where you and I served, uh, not for one moment did I see the work that we're involved in as trafficking people. It was— we were motivated by the same reasons, why, same motivations that the missionaries that taught me, was love and salvation and, you know, helping people find Christ, etc. You know, that, that's, that's why we were there. So I just don't, I don't even understand what that means. I, I don't even know how to begin to understand that or break that down.

Well, I kind of felt that way early in my mission in that I wanted to escape. And, you know, they keep your passport in the mission home. You're not allowed to keep or take your passport. Okay, so, uh, I, I guess that wouldn't have been a problem for you because—

no, I just, I, I could just go— see, I could just go on a bus or a train and head down south for like 100 miles away. So, you know, how do you feel trapped or imprisoned? Nothing like that. Yeah, I never saw any, any of that from any angle, uh, you know, uh, going into the church or even being a missionary. I just didn't see it like that at all.

So, well, I, I mean, I can understand people who who want to dismiss what the church does and want to dismiss the impact of missions, uh, to try to find the most negative way to describe them. But I, I look back at my mission now, and I guess everything's with rose-colored glasses, but the things that I remember most are, are not really any kind of the traumatic experiences, although there were some of those, but, uh, it's I remember it with nothing but fondness for just all of the wonderful kinds of opportunities that I had to meet people that I would never have met otherwise, to live in a culture I would never have lived in otherwise. But it took me a while to get there. You know, as I mentioned in the last podcast, for my first area, I was very much in a clinical depression. I left my first area and went to be Chris Hiscock's companion in Dundee, and, um, Dundee was really a kind of my first exposure to a, a real Scottish city. Livingston was just kind of this funky little suburb, and Dundee had this old-school architecture. I remember going to downtown Dundee and just feeling like I was in the midst of all of this beautiful history that eludes us in the United States. You know, the United States is only 250 years old-ish, and there were houses in Dundee that were 3 times as old as that. Well, maybe 3 times is too much, but at least twice as old. I mean, you had, you had houses that were hundreds of years old, and it was just so much fun to sort of be in that environment. And, and, but I was still struggling with depression. I remember drawing a picture of a, of a little guy and writing the words, smile, be positive, good morning, and slapping that piece of paper above my bunk bed. I was on the top bunk. Chris Hiscock was on the bottom bunk, and I would wake up every morning to look at my little smiling stick figure And that actually helped me a little bit in sort of getting through it. And, and, but I was only there for about a month and a half. And for part of that as well, we've talked about this. Chris Hiscock got the chickenpox and, and Spencer Collins got I don't know what was wrong with him, but he got sick as well. And so they— we traded companions for 2 weeks. And the companion, again, we're not going to mention his name out of respect, or maybe out of not wanting to be sued. But that was the roughest 2 weeks of my mission because I spent those 2 weeks with a companion that was psychotic and he was nuts. And we would get to people's doors and he would threaten them with eternal damnation because they were members of the Catholic Church and the Catholic Church is the devil's church. And he would do things like he would go to convenience stores and buy candy cigarettes. And we'd be standing in the door and he'd take out a candy cigarette and look like he was smoking. And I just look at him going, "What are you doing? And why are you doing it?" And he just thought it was so funny, but people would answer the door and look at this missionary with a cigarette in his mouth. And it was just, "Why am I here? What's happening?" And I got through those 2 weeks thinking, "Okay, well, Spencer Collins is going to get better." Chris Hiscock's gonna get better. It's gonna be fine. We're, you know, this is just temporary. But it just went on. It just felt like forever. They were by far the longest 2 weeks of my mission. It was very painful, very difficult. He didn't pull a knife on me the way he pulled a knife on you. You know, I didn't have that level of experience with him. But those were probably the darkest days of my mission. That were, that, that were ended when I finally got to my next area. So I left Dundee and I went to Ayr, A-Y-R, which is the land of Robert Burns. And my father on his mission had bought the collected works of Robert Burns and a biography of Robert Burns. And when he found out that I was going to Ayr and to Robert Burns country, He was just beside— the letters I got from him were all about, oh, well, you need to make sure, you know, read Tam O'Shanter, which is Robert Burns's only narrative poem. You know, most of his poems are sort of talking about, you know, the human condition. But Tam O'Shanter is a story. It's a story that takes place in the city of Ayr, where this guy Tam O'Shanter. He doesn't want to go home to his wife because he's drunk and his wife's mad at him, and so she's nursing her wrath to keep it warm. And so he refuses to go home. Instead, he goes to the old church and sees that the devil is holding a party that includes all these sinners, including wee unchristened bairns. So they're unbaptized children. That died at sea, that are dancing at the devil's party. I mean, it's just this wonderful poem. And then Tam O'Shanter calls out, well done, Cutty Sark! And the whole thing goes dark and all the demons turn on him and they run toward him and he runs over the Brigadoon and demons can't cross water apparently. So one of them grabs his horse's tail and rips off the tail and Tam O'Shanter escapes and survives as a result of that. And I can remember on P-days going to every single location. The old Kirk is still there. The Brigadoon is still there. And it was just so much fun to sort of marinate in that kind of wild, wonderful cultural stuff. And, you know, Eire, I had some of my best successes in Eire. We baptized a missionary referral of a young woman. She ended up getting baptized and she ended up being a very active, solid member of that ward. And then we tracked down another family and we baptized them and they went inactive within 2 or 3 days. They came to church the Sunday after they were baptized, and they never came to church again. And I had thought, well, geez, we just had this great success with this young lady, and I thought that's the way it's supposed to be. You're supposed to baptize people, and they're supposed to stay active. And that was my first sign that no, that's not how it works. Sometimes these people go inactive very quickly, and we would go visit them, and there was nothing we could do to drag them back to church. But they had a neighbor who was an inactive member of the church. He had not stepped foot in the church for 30 years, and his story was really tragic one because he had a son with a speech impediment and he had been bringing him to church and his son was called upon to pray. And his son stood up to pray, and you could hear the speech impediment. And everybody— somebody giggled in the middle of the prayer as this person was praying. And this guy was so offended, says, I walked out of that church and I never walked back in again. And I would tell that story for years afterwards to point out that people leave the church because they're offended. And look how much damage that does when you're offended. And, you know, I would always sort of tell that story as part of a narrative to say, people don't leave the church over history, people don't leave the church over anything, they just leave the church because they're offended. That's the only reason they leave. And I have since been wildly disabused of that notion in the years since. But that one story, we ended up— we reactivated him. He ended up continuing to come to church. And so out of that, that was, I think, when they started focusing on the fact that, okay, we're not baptizing a lot of people, let's reactivate people. And I really enjoyed that because reactivating people meant you could go visit members of the church who would let you in their house. And you got out of the rain and you could sit and talk to somebody and, and you felt like you were doing something productive and you were doing missionary work. But, you know, it was often, at least for me, an excuse just to get out of the rain. Ayr was also the area that— that's when I bumped into you for the first time because you were down in Stranrar and you were the branch president down in Stranrar, and you had baptized the Tease family. Did you baptize them, or was that somebody else? Were they baptized before you got there?

Uh, no, we baptized them. Yes, yes, Elder Clark and I baptized them. I think one of the family members were baptized later, but we— yeah, we— that was quite a profound experience with the Tease family. They were, uh, a blind family.

The entire family was blind.

Was blind, but also they had more serious issues. They had— some of the children had brain tumors, which was just heartbreaking. So we, we tracked that family up in Bar Hill in, in Scotland there, and they were eventually baptized. The whole family joined the church. Yeah, that was That was an interesting experience for sure.

Well, Janet Teese came up to air with her son who was dying of this awful brain tumor. I mean, you could see the tumor off the side of his head. It was just huge.

Yes.

And we felt it was our responsibility to sort of minister to her. We would go visit her and her son in, in the hospital. Uh, pretty much every day. We wouldn't be there for long. We'd be there for maybe an hour if we were lucky. But, uh, our district leader got mad at us. Our district leader being my former companion, Elder McMichael, uh, was furious that we were spending this time in the hospital and not spending time knocking on doors. And that was sort of my first point where I went, you know, uh, maybe listening to mission leaders, maybe they're not always right. I thought that this was a much more important thing to be doing. And it wasn't like we were spending all of our day every day doing it, but just 1 hour a day visiting somebody in the hospital with a terminally ill child was considered to be a scandalous use of missionary time. I found out later that McMichael was writing me up in what Elder Collins called fiery green sheets. You know, the green sheets that the district leaders fill out and you talk about everybody? Yeah. And apparently some of my green sheets were absolutely scathing because primarily we just weren't spending enough time knocking doors., and we were spending time ministering to a woman whose child was dying. And I look back on that now, and I'm very grateful that I didn't pay attention to mission rules because that was actually a very tender time. That was a remarkable family. I treasure having gotten to know them. I treasure having gotten to know that child. And we, you know, because he was happy to see us and he was in constant, constant pain. And the opportunity to just be there and we would, we would play cars with him. He had his little toy cars and, and it was just a lovely, a lovely opportunity to be of service to somebody else. And we've talked about the idea that missions ought to transition to a service model. And I think that that is, that experience with the Tisas was a great, great example of how that should work. You know, so I was there, I was an heir for 5 months. I was there for 4 months with Elder Romney and we had a great time. And then I had my next missionary companion, did not want to be there. He just didn't want to be there. He didn't want to get up in the morning. And I remember getting up 6:30 and turning on the lights to sort of shame him into doing his personal study. Didn't work. He would just sit there on his bed and not do anything. And in— I had made the full transition then to gung-ho super missionary and did everything I could to get him motivated and get him excited. We got along okay. I mean, we didn't really fight. He just didn't want to do anything. And I had to drag him out of the house and, you know, but after that month was over, I got a call from President Bengt and said, we're transferring you. Says, we're transferring you to Thurso. And Thurso is where my ancestors came from. You know, I'm a McKay through David O. McKay's line, and David O. McKay's grandfather joined the church in Thurso, Scotland. Thurso is at the northernmost point of the British mainland. It's right up at the very top of the country. Looking out over the North Sea, and there are these huge cliffs. And one of my clearest memories of those cliffs was watching Elder Wilkes go out to get his picture taken. And he went out— there's a fence that blocked off the cliffs, and you crossed over the fence and you walked over to this rock. Do you remember doing this?

No, I don't remember.

You don't remember this? No, I don't remember this. These cliffs were 1,500 feet off the ground.

They were pretty deep. They were bad.

And they were sheer drop down, and you wanted a cool picture at the end of the cliff. And so you crossed the fence and you went and sat there and we took pictures of you. And I was terrified that you were going to slip off that rock and die. It was like, wow, Elder Wilkes, what are you doing? You were my zone leader up there. And, and, and President Banks told me when I was being transferred to, to Thurso, he said, look, we, we don't have any members up there. Nothing's happening up there. And we're going to send you up there for 6 months. And if you can't do anything up there, we're going to shut it down. We're going to pull all the missionaries out. So we get up there and I'm up there with Elder Hinckley. We just had a wonderful time. I just adore Jaron Hinckley. And, you know, we had— I was with Elder Hinckley for 3 months. And we also had the Spencers up there, who were a missionary couple who'd been called over there. They were from Bountiful, Utah. And I don't know how specific we want to get into that. But up in Thurso, I went to church for the first Sunday, and there were Besides the Spencers and besides Elder Hinckley and myself, there were 3 other people. There was a woman who led the singing. There was a guy who blessed the sacrament. And there was a young primary girl who— maybe she led the singing. No, no, it was the other woman that led the singing. We met in this community center, and this, this guy who blessed the sacrament was mentally handicapped. And he, you know, Elder Spencer at one point asked him, "Brother, why are you so faithful?" And he says, "Ah, 'cause I don't have anything else to do." And, but he loved to bless the sacrament. And I can remember, you know, he gave an opening prayer once, and I remember opening my eyes during the prayer and looking at him, And he was staring right at me while he was praying. And I went, "Ah!" I closed my eyes again, like, "I don't want to watch that." It was very spooky. But so, yeah, we thought, okay, this is— this is— we have a mission here to revitalize this area. I felt a very profound kinship with Thurso because that's where my ancestors were from. So clearly the Lord has called me to come and rescue Thurso. And before I'd gotten there, they were trying to do all kinds of things to liven the place up, get people interested. One of them being Jaron Hinckley was a— and still is— a world-class clarinetist. And right now he's the head of the clarinet department at Brigham Young University. Still plays the clarinet, still teaches the clarinet. And they let him put on— President Banks let him put on a concert to get people to come to this concert. And apparently they did, and it went fairly well. Didn't result in any interest in the church. But one of the ideas that we had was, okay, I'm a descendant of David O. McKay. What if we did a sort of a public lecture not necessarily a church fireside, but a public lecture about the McKays and the McKays from Thurso. And President Banks called my parents and said, we want to do this fireside with Elder Bennett, and can you send him any materials about President McKay and the relationship with Thurso in Scotland and all of that so that he can put this together? And my grandfather at the time was writing a book called My Father David O. McKay. My grandfather's name was David L. McKay. The L stood for Lawrence, and that's the name he used. He went by his middle name. So Lawrence McKay was writing a book called My Father David O. McKay. So they sent me a lot of the stuff that he was using, including a copy of David O. McKay's missionary journal. And David O. McKay had served his mission in Scotland. He never served in Thurso, but he visited Thurso and he visited people who knew his grandfather and recorded that. But the thing is, that was such a huge turning point in my mission because I read David O. McKay's missionary journal and discovered that David O. McKay was a lousy missionary. He was discouraged. He had a girlfriend that he wanted to go home to. He would take days off from his mission and go tour whiskey factories. You know, he would do things that we couldn't even dream of doing. Like, you took— he's like, yeah, we just took the day off and I didn't want to go tracting today. He says one woman, at one point, he handed her a gospel tract and she thought I was handing her a gas bill. And she ripped it up and threw it in my face. And the sentence he writes, that is, I'd as lief die as distribute tracts. And as lief being a very interesting— I had to go look that up. But he said, I'd rather die than go tractoring again, is what he said. And, you know, he used to tell stories in conference about how he was a discouraged young missionary. And it was fun to see the firsthand evidence of that. But then he tells the story of how he stumbled upon an inscription over a church in Stirling, Scotland. You know the story?

Yes, I do.

Whate'er thou art, act well thy part. And that is the motto of the Scotland Edinburgh Mission, or at least it was.

It is.

And I think the original stone is right outside of the mission home. Or at least that might be, or there's a replica in the MTC and the stone is at the mission home or vice versa. I can't remember which one has the real one, but I know in the MTC, in the lobby of the MTC, you can see this, "Whate'er thou art, act well thy part." And in the stories that David O. would tell after that, it was, "Aha, yes, that was my turning point. And I realized I needed to act well my part and be a good missionary." But the fact of the matter was he didn't— he never baptized anybody on his mission. Wasn't necessarily his fault because not long after that stone incident, he was called into mission leadership and spent most of his mission as an administrator, spent most of his mission. I mean, it was different. We wouldn't call him an AP, but he was just organizing stuff. For the mission president, and he wasn't proselyting. He didn't really serve a proselyting mission. So I read that and, and, you know, I had grown up with this expectation of, okay, I've got these prophets in my background, look how righteous they are. And I thought, well, look what a slob I am. And it was so much more encouraging to realize The David O. McKay did not come down perfect from Mount Olympus. He was as much of a slobber more than I was when he was serving his mission. And if he can go from being that to being David O. McKay, the president of the church, the prophet, maybe there was hope for Jim Bennett. So that really lifted my spirits in terms of my commitment to the mission. And I met the family, my favorite family that we baptized. I met them up when I was serving in Thurso, although they didn't live in Thurso because I was called to Thurso and Wick. The town of Wick is 30 miles away from Thurso. We had a car and Elder Hinckley got into a car accident because I was At the time of the accident, we were discussing an R-rated movie and we attributed the accident to our unrighteousness. I was telling him the plot of the movie Fame, which I loved. It was one of my favorite movies. And he was like, oh yeah, I've always wanted to see that. And so I was telling him the plot and then he got in a car accident and both of us decided this is the punishment from God for discussing an R-rated movie. How stupid is that? But that's, that was the mindset. And so I had to drive for most of the time up there because he wasn't allowed to. Once you get in an accident, the mission rule was you can't drive a car again. But that, that area was so big you had to drive. And we were tractoring in Wick, which was 30 miles away. We had to drive 30 miles every day. And I remember knocking on a door. I even remember the address. I won't say the address in case somebody's a stalker and decides to go visit them, because I think this family still lives there. We're knocking on the door and this woman answers the door and she just says, if you're Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, I'm not interested. And she comes this close to slamming the door. She was English. She was not Scottish. And so that's exactly what she sounded like, by the way. If you had recorded that and you heard my voice. And I said, no, no, no, we're just conducting a survey. No, this was in the days when we had this deceptive survey where we would say, oh, we're just discussing a survey about religion.

Family questionnaire, was it?

A questionnaire, yeah. And this was deep in the heart of the questionnaire. And so she went, okay, fine, and she let us in and we asked the questions. Then she started— we started our first discussion and she got serious with us. It's like, you just said you were gonna do a questionnaire, and now you're telling me all about your church. You're liars. And, and, but the problem was, we kind of hit it off. I mean, she was mad that we were liars, but we were talking. There was just sort of this spark. I mean, she had these fun kids that were running in and out the whole time. And she agreed to take the discussions. And we taught her, and she was the most golden contact I had on my mission, and we just fell in love with this family. And her husband wanted nothing to do with it. He wasn't upset with us. He didn't dislike us, and he was kind of okay with it. But, you know, we drove all the way down to Inverness. That was the closest Font, and that's a, that's what, a 3-hour drive?

Easy.

Something like that. Through really wild roads and, uh, you know, one, you know, two-lane roads. It took forever to get down there, but we went down and we baptized her. We baptized her oldest daughter, and I think you actually interviewed the daughter for baptism. Remember correctly.

Okay.

And you got, and you got mad at me. You rebuked me because I, we hadn't taught her appropriately. She didn't know the right answers to some of the questions.

Okay.

Does that spark any memories?

It doesn't. No, I'm sorry about that. I, I, I, my memory, um, old age.

Oh, I, well, I just felt bad because you apparently asked her questions and she didn't know the answers to some of them. And it was like, you guys must not have taught her appropriately.

And I went, "Oh, I've disappointed Elder Wilkes." But I remember the times where, a few times, too many, I think, across the mission where the, you know, people were taught and myself or others interviewed them, you know, zone leaders or whoever interviewed them or district leaders interviewed them. And there was a conversation with President Banks about people not knowing enough about the church before they joined the church. Yeah, the responsibility we had to make sure that they at least, they, you know, they had a pretty good take of what the church is about and understood the commitments that they were making before we baptized them. So we took that pretty seriously. The instruction I got was to make sure that the, um, uh, this is only the training, I think, as well, make sure that, you know, the investigators knew, you know, had a good take, a good understanding of what they were getting into, um, you know, before they, you know, were baptized. And there was times, uh, quite a few times, or sometimes at least, where the, you know, members, the investigators weren't— didn't know what they were getting into. Like tithing, for example, they didn't know the commitment of tithing, some, some of them. So we were instructed very bluntly by President Banks to make sure that people understood, you know, the commitments. So I hope I wasn't too hard on you.

No, no, I just, I just remember you intersected with us in that experience. But we baptized her, we baptized her oldest daughter. She was the only one old enough to be baptized. And, and we, we had these wonderful experiences with her family. But we also After she was baptized, there were a series of transition discussions that were supposed to be administered by the missionary couple in charge. And the missionary couple in charge were Elder and Sister Spencer. So, um, we've talked about Elder Spencer a little bit. Uh, I don't know if he's still alive. I doubt he is. He'd be in his 90s if he were. He'd be in his late 90s. He was in his early 60s when he was called out on the mission, and that was 35 years ago. But have we talked, have you talked about your experience tracting with Elder Spencer?

No, no, I think that might be worth covering because that was quite an extraordinary experience for me at least. That was Yeah, I think we should talk about this.

I think you need to share that with our audience here. So we were—

tell me who I was serving with at the time, who my kapane was.

I'm trying to remember because you were with Jacobs and you were with Hanson.

Yes.

And then you were with this sort of lanky guy. He was a really nice guy. I can't remember him. Tall, lanky guy.

Do you know what I'm talking about? The one that—

Uh, Kahoon. Was it Kahoon?

Yeah, Elder Kahoon. Yeah, well, I did serve with them. I'm trying to remember, there was, uh, oh, Elder Wrigley.

Wrigley, I think it was Wrigley.

Wrigley. He was, uh, extraordinary missionary. He, he lives in Seattle, I think, now. So I think this old Wrigley night come up, and, uh, I think it was you and Elder Hinckley, um, that were serving at the time, and the Spencers were there. And the Spencers were quite new. I think the Thurso was their first area, if I'm not mistaken.

It was, it was. They tied to Thurso the same time I did, right?

So they were fresh out of the MTC, fresh to Scotland, very exuberant and very zealous, even perhaps overzealous a wee bit. And so we, uh, came up from Inverness to you guys, and we would trade and tract and, and, um, spend time. You know, we kind of, you know, you and I attracted, meaning attracted. And then there was a time while we were there over that few days that we got the opportunity to, uh, I got the opportunity to tract with Elder Spencer. I don't know if you were on the door. I think it was just me and Elder Spencer, if I'm not mistaken.

Just you and Elder Spencer.

Spencer. So we knock on these doors, uh, we met, they seemed amazing and motivated and super excited to be there. This is the first few days, you know, within a few days of being in, in Persia. We knocked at this door and this, uh, this lady came to the door and we, we explained who we were. I think we were doing the family questionnaire, it was called at the time, and I was uncomfortable about that. So I was always upfront about who we were and what we were trying to do, that we were, you know, we were members of the church, uh, missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She's all, the Mormons? And yeah, the Mormons. We're not interested in at the moment. And I said, well, is it anything that you're not interested in? Right? So a good trained comeback question, you know, what are you not interested in? What a question is that, right? Tell me what you're not interested in.

Right, right.

Just some way to try to, you know, try to make an inroad somewhere. Oh, she said, we've got our own religion, you know, we're from the Free Kirk of Scotland, because there was some free That's a division of the Church of Scotland or some aspect of the Church of Scotland. So very, very strict faith, very committed. And then Elder Spencer said, well, you've not heard about our church yet. You know, give us the opportunity to tell you about our church because our church is the only true church upon the face of the earth. And I think at that point, at that point, the conversation went sideways. I was taken aback by that. I think there's a time and a place for that at some point, but within minutes on the doorstep of saying that, you know, we're the only true church on the face of the earth. And then he said, look, you know, your church has fallen away from the true gospel. It's one of the many, many churches that has fallen away from the true Church of Christ. We offer the full restoration our church is complete, it's fully restored, and we can explain to you why, uh, this, the church of Jesus is the only true and the only path to God. She was absolutely gobsmacked, is the word, and, uh, you know, just stunned. And she said, I'm not remotely interested in, uh, learning about— and he said, how can you not be interested in the only true, uh, church upon the face of the earth? Do you not know that your salvation is on the line? And that if you do not accept this message, that your soul, uh, will be, um, uh, sent to hell and, uh, you will be condemned in the last days. And he said that these, your words will con— our words will condemn us in the last days. This is an opportunity, perhaps the only opportunity you are gonna get to even hear about the church. And if you reject this message, then you and your family, uh, the salvation are on the line. She absolutely was. She looked absolutely red-faced. I was very uncomfortable at this point. I'm trying to— I'm looking, staring him into the side of his head saying, what the heck are you doing? I remember pulling his suit sleeves, yanking on it and like, stop talking. And he just blurted out, her soul was on the line. She was going to be condemned to hell. If she didn't take this, perhaps the only opportunity to accept the gospel. And then she said, "Please leave, we're not interested." And then he kind of shouted at her and he said, "How can you not be interested in the gospel? How can you not be interested? And it's the only true church. Surely this is the opportunity. We've been sent here by Jesus Christ." And at this point, I'm saying, pulling on him pretty hard. And I said, 'Elder Spencer.' And he wouldn't look at me. I was pulling on him pretty hard. 'Elder Spencer, Elder Spencer.' He was just in this lady's face and condemning her and not shouting, but raising his voice. And it was extremely uncomfortable. The poor lady was in absolute shock. And I turned to her and I said, look, I am so sorry. This is not the behavior of, you know, members of our church. And I said, you— I said, we're going to go now. And I grabbed him by his arm and I yanked him off that doorstep mid-conversation, mid-shouting.

You physically pulled him?

I did. I had to pull him away. It was extremely uncomfortable. It was threatening. He was intimidating. He was very, very angry that she wouldn't— she didn't understand the importance of this message, that her soul was on the line. You know, he was rebuking— it was a rebuke. It was a rebuke. And it was a very strong rebuke. And it was very— he was very offended that she wasn't— she just rejected completely out of hand without even listening to— he was talking about, you know, how can you not let us at least share the message with you. You don't know that your soul is on the line right now. God is looking down at this conversation. And it was the most uncomfortable. I think, Jim Bennett, that was the first door that we knocked on where someone opened the door. We might have knocked on the door before, but no one came. But that was the first door where someone opened the door. That was the conversation. It was extremely uncomfortable. And I was very, I was pretty pissed off with him, to say the least. I was pretty angry with him. And we walked down the path out of the gate. And I said, what are you doing? I said, this is not the way to, this is not what we're about. This is not who we are. This is not the approach. Yeah, but she's not. Why is she not interested? Why is she not interested in the gospel? She might not hear it again. Her soul is on the line. I said, Elder Spencer, this is just not the way we do mission work here. We had serious conversation. I said, you can't do this. You can't— if this is your approach in every door, you know, we need to speak to President Banks because this is going to be, um, very upsetting and offensive. We're going to get a whole lot of complaints. I said, these people could even call the police on you if they feel intimidated, harassed. You can't shout at them. You can't rebuke them. If they're not interested, it's their agency. They have a free— they're free agents. They can choose. That's their right to reject the message. But how can they reject gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ? They're rejecting Christ. They're rejecting all the message. He just couldn't get it. And so I said, look, we'll do a few doors. We'll see how it goes. Let me do the talking and you come in, but do not rebuke. If they're not interested, just respect that. He said, Elder Wilkes, he said, he said, this, this is not what we were taught in the MTC. We were taught that they will be accepting, that the spirits have gone before us and that they will prepare souls ahead of us and that these people were ready to receive the gospel. He said, he said, if they're not like, if they're all like the same, then they're not ready. I said, others have failed. He said, others have failed us. They've not done the work before us. I said, look, these people, they've got their own religions. Yeah, yeah, but they're false. I said, perhaps, but you can't tell them that. You've got to start with building common ground. I said, you need to really get back into some of the, you know, some of the basic training on how to, how to proselyte. And he was, he said, oh, the work, he said, he said, I don't even know why I'm here. And then he said, he went into it fairly quite depressed, very clear. And he said, I don't even know if I should be here. And I said, of course you should be here. You can do this, but not this approach. And he said, I shouldn't have come here. I'm gonna speak to President Biden. This is all happening within a few minutes of getting back to the car. I've gone from a situation where the person's— That's one door. One door, rebuking the person and being very offended they won't accept, to now that talk is talking about going home or being reassigned to a mission where they are ready and receptive. So, you know, it was, it was, I think, attracted a few more doors with him. But there weren't many. I think we did maybe 10 doors, if that, maybe 5, 6 doors. The doors, by the way, when we went back to some more doors, it wouldn't speak. So he went in on himself. And I kind of, you know, we approached it in a very nice, respectful way. And I looked at him on the doorstep to say something, wouldn't say anything. He was very angry. I think he was angry with me, angry with the people. He just didn't feel— he said, uh, you know, we're casting pearls before the swine and, um, you know, they're not ready to receive the gospel, they deserve to, to go to hell, et cetera, et cetera. And, um, and I said, I said, I was playing, I said, you've got to sit down with Prison Banks. I said, I, I don't think I can help you. And he, and he said, you know, why are you not on my side? And I said, well, because that's just not the approach. That's new. We do, you know, we don't approach it. We, we're supposed to be kind and loving and, and yeah, but we haven't got time. He said, we haven't got time. They need, they need to join the church now. Christ is gonna be coming soon. And, um, I said, look, you know, and I think I, I did speak to President Banks and I, and I explained what was going on. I said, President Banks, I cannot help him. I'm young. I'm very young. He's older than me. He doesn't respect me. He doesn't respect my opinion. I'm just a young kid, missionary work, et cetera. And I said, I told him what happened and then President Bang spent some time with him. And I think in the end, I think he, he can help me on this, but I think he kind of settled down and came around to the idea that, you know, he needs to take a different approach. You could speak more about how he, um, but, but yeah, he had a good heart. He was a good man.

And he was a good man and was a fact. I, I, I, I served with him again because he was transferred out of Thurso down to Galashiels, and I ended up serving with him again in my final area and was able to sort of reconcile with him because your experience with him was the catalyst for a conversation I had with President Banks where President Banks says, you know, Elder Wilkes says that this is— Elder Spencer probably shouldn't be proselyting. We need him to function as the branch president up there, uh, but he should not be proselyting. So he and his wife shouldn't go out proselyting because, you know, initially he and his wife would go knock doors apparently. And I can only imagine what that was like or what he did when he was doing that. But I know his wife, you know, she was just the sweetest, most gentle, kind person you could possibly imagine. And I'm just trying to imagine what that door approach looked like as Elder Spencer's yelling at everybody and she's just standing there with this little smile on her face like, I'm sorry, Anyway, so President Banks said to me, "You need to tell him that he can't proselyte anymore, that he's not going to be proselyting up there." And I went, "Aye, really?" And he's like, "Well, who else is going to tell him? I mean, you have to tell him that." And so Elder Hinckley and I went over to the Spencers' house. And And I started talking to him and started saying, okay, Elder Spencer, we have a problem here. This isn't going to work. I've been asked to tell you not that you're not going to— I mean, I'm getting nervous just recounting it. It was just so— I mean, I was a kid. I was like, who am I to tell this guy anything? And so I sort of launched into it and he started screaming, started yelling at me. And it's like, whoa, who do you think you are? Uh, well, I've been called by Jesus Christ to be here. Why would you? And I remember Elder Hinckley and Sister Spencer quietly walking into the kitchen and Sister Spencer closing the door slowly. Leaving me alone with a madman who was just screaming at me how, you know, you can't do this. And, and I just sort of sat there and took it. I didn't really have much to say in response. I just said, this is the message. This is, you know, you can't proselyte anymore. And I called President Banks and I said, President Banks, didn't go well. You need to come up here. You need to talk to him. He's not listening to me. He's not listening to anybody else. And it was interesting because Thurso was not in a stake. Thurso was part of a mission district.

That's right.

Which meant that the stake president was the mission president. And, and so President Banks, I saw more of President Banks when I was in Thurso than I did in any other area, even though it was further away from the mission home than any other area. Because he had responsibilities to come up there. Also part of the Mission District were the Shetland Islands, uh, way out in the middle of nowhere. And during this time, President Banks was in the process of excommunicating half of the Shetland Island branch. Do you remember that story?

I do. I remember some of that.

Yeah, yeah. There was a guy up there that decided that he was the real branch president, and they would have Sunday meetings where the branch president would set up a pulpit on one side of the room, and this guy would set up a pulpit on the other side of the room, and they'd have a competing sacrament meeting. And so some people would go and listen to the one side, and some people would go and listen to the other side. And eventually the entire other side got excommunicated. Uh, and we weren't allowed to know this. We, we kind of pried this out of the Shetland elders. At the time. But, you know, President Banks kept flying up to Thurso and then flying up to the Shetlands. I said, what's going on? You don't need to know. You know, he wouldn't, he wouldn't talk about it. But he came up to Thurso and walked in to Spencer's house, the same room where Elder Spencer had just gone off on me. This was probably the next day, or at least 2 days. It wasn't, it wasn't very long after this. And he said, okay, so Elder Spencer, what seems to be going on? And, you know, that was the beginning of what was supposed to be a friendly conversation. And Elder Spencer just went off. I don't even feel like I'm on a mission. Seriously, he said. I don't even know. And I was actually just grateful that he went off the top quickly. So that President Banks wouldn't think that I was overreacting. It's like, see? See, President Banks? He's nuts! He's nuts! You gotta do something. And— and President Banks said, okay, well then maybe we'll send you home. You know, if that's your attitude, you know, then maybe we send you home. And that scared him.

Yes. Yes.

I mean Elder Spencer was like, whoa, oh really? Because he thought that President Banks was just going to sort of roll over it. President Banks just was a rock. And it was like, you can't— we can't send you out to proselyte if you're going to yell at everybody like this. You can't behave this way. And so I don't know how that resolved other than the fact that President Banks was in solidarity with me and recognized just what a difficult situation it was. But when we, when we baptized this family,, and the Spencers were teaching them the transition lessons, that gave them something to do, uh, that made them feel sort of productive. And they were going off of a script that they didn't have to deviate from. So I, I don't think they handled that that poorly. And actually, this family loved them because they really were sweet people. Even though he was just— had a temper like nobody's business. Uh, but I just remember this family. Um, I, I think I can use their names. Well, except for— I, I don't know. Uh, I'm a little nervous because they, they ended up not staying in the church. Um, we ended up baptizing the father, the husband, And, you know, he was seeing his wife and his daughter going to church, you know, which was an experience in and of itself because we would have two sacrament meetings. We had one in Thurso and one in Wick. So every Sunday we would drive the 30 miles to go have a sacrament meeting in Wick. In Thurso, we had the, the 3 people, and in Wick we had 2 people. We had one woman who was essentially housebound. She was morbidly obese and really couldn't move. And the only time she left the house was to go to church, but she went to our church and then she went to the Church of Scotland right afterwards. And we were just grateful to have anybody, so we didn't care. And we actually picked her up and took her to church. And then there was another lady who would stand up in testimony meeting and she would always bear testimony kind of as a prayer. And it was always, Heavenly Father, I testify to you that my daughter is lazy and that she's terrible and she's dating an awful person. And we was like, okay, well, all right, if that's what you wanna do. And she'd also say, I keep all the commandments and I don't take tea very often either. I really like that one. Uh, so we were always scared when we were gonna bring this new family into the, to this WIC, uh, you know, whatever that was. And we always spoke the church meetings where we would speak and the Spencers would speak. And, uh, that was always a little nerve, nerve-wracking cuz the Spencers could get a little interesting. But we brought her, we brought her to church and her husband was seeing that and her husband finally said, okay, well, I'll be happy to read your Book of Mormon and see what it does, but I'm not expecting anything. And he had this experience. He came back to us and he said, have you ever read Protagoras and Meno? And I had no idea what he was talking about. And he says it's a Socratic dialogue where Protagoras and Meno are, are ancient Greek characters who are describing the fact that they're essentially arguing for the idea of a preexistence. They're arguing for the idea that values our values are learned prior to this life, that each of us knows the difference between right and wrong because we've had that instruction before we were born. And I mean, and I thought, okay, now this is an interest that no one's ever talked to me about like this before. And he said, I started reading the Book of Mormon and I was sure that I had read this before. And my wife said to me, oh, you're reading in 3 Nephi. That's very similar to the Gospels. So you probably have read it before. He says, but I had that same experience when I started right at the beginning. I started reading it through and I went, I have read this before. I lived before this life. This is true and I want to be baptized. And we were like, wow. I still have his copy. I'm even looking at it right now of Protagoras and Meno that he signed for me and gave to me when I left Thurso. And so that entire family ended up getting baptized. Later on, his father passed away. And, and I remember President McConkie— this happened after President Banks left— President McConkie was talking about the fact that the family left because his father had passed away. President McConkie said, so I suppose if he hadn't joined the Church, his father would have been immortal. And I went, that really isn't the kind way you should be responding to this. I think they were kind of left up there all by themselves as a family. Elder Tolworthy ended up moving to Thurso and got to know this family really well. And I think they still stay in touch. And I reconnected with them just— Elder Hinckley stayed in touch with them over the years. Some of them are on social media, but the mother is not. And she's my favorite. I mean, she's the one who said, "If you're Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, I'm not interested." But we've exchanged emails and are now in touch, and they're just such lovely people. I just adore them. Even though they clearly don't seem to have any connection to the church anymore, they're still just wonderful, lovely human beings. They were also very liberal, politically liberal. Human beings. His favorite shirt was a shirt that said "Free Nelson Mandela." Clearly Nelson Mandela ended up getting freed, but at the time he was still a political prisoner in South Africa. And the Spencers, I remember at one point we went to a— we celebrated both Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve at their house. They opened their home to us and we had this lovely We'll see you at the New Year's Eve party, which we probably shouldn't have done. But by that point it was, this is the only family that's coming to church. We're gonna do everything we can to keep them happy. And so we, we went and, uh, and spent Christmas and New Year's with them and they put out a bowl full of Brazil nuts. Are you familiar with Brazil nuts? I am.

Yes. Yes.

Are you familiar with the colloquial expression that describes Brazil nuts?

No, I'm not. Go ahead.

Uh, neither was I. Sister Spencer, uh, I, I don't even want to say the word, uh, they— who, who looked at them and she picked one up and she said, oh look, N-word toes, is how she described them. And I was just like, what? What did you just say? Just all— she's like, what? No, these are called n-word toes. And I was like, you can't say that. You can't say that. And their whole family was obviously aghast. But the mother finally was kind of took it in stride and knew who the Spencers were by this point. And said to her youngest daughter, oh, here, darling, here, you can have an n-word toe. And with a chuckle on her face, I mean, and looked at me like, Can you believe it? So, so they had exactly the right kind of attitude where they were able to sort of take that in stride. But these were people that just did not have any sort of sense of, of social propriety or any of that. I'm looking at this and we've rambled on and we're past an hour already, but I can do this all day.

I could. I knew we would get into these stories, these experiences, because they're quite, quite, they're very interesting. I think in regards to the Spencers, you know, their approach to mission work and Ellen Spencer in particular, I think it's testament of the life that they led, you know, the environment in which they, they, they, they lived and lived in. And the people that they associated with, I suspect they're, you know, they, they, well, not suspected, they're pretty sure that they were surrounded by people who thought and felt like they did, that, you know, this is the only way people must accept. They don't accept now, then there's a problem. Why can they not accept the, the gospel now? And so they are a product. Their, their thinking, their mindset, their attitudes weren't just didn't simply appear the first day on their mission, didn't suddenly arrive in Scotland the first day and suddenly decided to take, you know, Spencer take this very, um, somewhat hostile approach and, and, and, and, um, uh, react to rejection the way that he did. You know, that didn't happen overnight, you know, when they landed in Scotland. That was their thinking, his thinking, his attitudes, behaviors. Were in the making for many, many, many years. And so it's interesting how that, um, that insular thinking in those type of, uh, cultures and this type of culture, the church and those kind of communities, and you're surrounded by the, the people who think exactly the same, same language, same behavior, same attitudes. And then you then take them out of that and put them into a very, very, very different— it couldn't be more different. Scotland could be no more different than, than, um, you in Bountiful, Utah. And I think that was, uh, you know, with someone like Elvis Spencer, that was extremely difficult. I expect other people would find it equally difficult who are used to that way of thinking, just suddenly uprooted and then dropped into that situation where they think that, um, the old-fashioned way of thinking is acceptable, and it's not. So it was an absolute shock to him and to his wife somewhat, as it was it was, and as it was to the people on the doorstep. It was a huge shock experience. I'm like you, I've got so much to share, so many aspects of this which, um, historical and doctrinal, mission leadership, General Authority leadership, some things that I saw there, that the people of Scotland generally, you know, the history there. You've talked about Dundee, the culture of the church there, I think is quite distinct in the church compared to, say, Utah, for example. There's so many, there's so much more to share here, which I think is quite rich and hopefully interesting to the folks that are listening.

All right. Well, let's, let's, let's leave it at this for now and, and come back to this. I think I monopolized this particular round.

It's okay. It's okay.

But let's, let you monopolize the next one and, and let's keep talking.

Absolutely. I'm really enjoying this and I And I hope, again, I hope the folks listening are enjoying it as well. Thank you, Jim.

Thank you very much, Ian. We'll see you next time on Inside Out, everybody. Thanks.