The Power of Faith | Ep. 16

I trust that, you know, with all the obstacles that we're going to tackle this year, that God's going to be there with us. He's going to lead us. He's going to guide us. We're going to get through them just fine. And we're going to come out the other side with more information, with a better understanding of what we want to do with our lives and how we want to build our family. And it's all going to be for our good. It doesn't mean it all will be good. There's going to be a lot of negative in there, but ultimately, I think all of these things will play out for for us in the end. Welcome to the Rising Tribe. I'm Jared.

And I'm Austin.

And our goal is to inspire young men to build strong families and discover their potential as men, husbands, and fathers.

And we'll do this by having authentic conversations about faith, family, health, and business as we strive to level up our lives and the lives around us. Welcome everybody to our second February episode where Jared and I are just chatting. And today, you know, we're going to be talking about something really exciting that we have talked about throughout our episodes, but it's just about our faith. We bring up a lot of different ideas about the temple we talk about or going to church or, you know, we talk about Jesus. So that's what we want to talk about today with you guys because it's, it really is it drives most of our decisions in our lives. It's the foundation by which we call a lot of the shots. But before we go into our episode today, we're going to do a couple things. We're going to do a Where in the World Are We? We're going to do— I have a cool story, hilarious story to share that you haven't heard yet, Jared.

Dude, I'm stoked.

Dude, yeah, it's bad. Um, and then, and then, uh, and then I just want to do a recap on what we learned from Mike before we got dive into our episode. But hey, where in the world are you and your wife?

All right. So where in the world is Jared? Uh, Jared is sitting outside of a Panera in Yucaipa, California. That is right. So, um, I came back to the States back in January for a big exercise, um, with the Air Force. And so I was in Vegas for a little while. About a month, and then we started traveling to visit family. And so we were in Colorado for a week, we were in Utah for a week and a half, and then we came to California. And actually, our episode with Mike, we recorded while I was back in Utah. Now I'm here in California. We just finished visiting all of our family members and friends, and it was awesome, dude. Just playing so many board games and just having all of the fun. It was just a lot of fun. So, yeah, we, we actually head back to Italy today. Later this afternoon, I'll go drive to the airport. We have to drive separately. I have to go to one airport. My wife has to fly to another airport because my flights are contracted through the military and my wife's are, we just purchased them. So, but I'll be, she'll get back tomorrow. I'll get back actually the next day. And then we'll be back in Italy and we'll be working there. And I expect that I should actually be there in Italy for like the next 3 or 4 months, which, which should be good. So that's where I am. And Austin, where in the world are you?

I'm in Georgia right now. We're going out to— I'm in Georgia right now. We're starting— I'm starting my door-to-door season tomorrow. And it's kind of nice to just have like, I'm gonna do 17 knocking days in March. And so I'll be shooting for big revenue every day. Um, but ultimately with a summer, it's kind of like it, it, it goes up. Like all of my summers I've had, you know, my one month one isn't as good as month two isn't as good as month three for the most part. Last year was the first summer where everything was pretty just across the boards normal, like, uh, like just decent production. But, um, I'm excited to just get the rust off, get, get out there and, and, uh, throw down a bunch of accounts in March just because I said I'm starting early this year because of the kid coming. Which we'll find out if it's a boy or girl on March 11th. And really excited for, for, for, for work. And then, and then we'll actually be in Utah the second half of March, like the 22nd through April 1st. We're going to go out to Utah because I joined a coaching group and like a mastermind group for my summer sales program. Like every, every summer I choose a coach to work with. The last 2 years I was working with a guy named Alex Cornwall. He was great. However, I want to have different perspectives. So I joined a different coaching group. And we have a retreat up in Utah. So we're making it a whole family trip. We'll be out in Utah for a week and a half, spend Easter out there and then come back and really hit the ground running for, for summer. But dude, I have got a story. So yesterday, this is the story. I, uh, I've always heard a lot of stuff about like the foods we eat are affecting testosterone levels and, and all of this stuff. And so one of my buddies has been doing like testosterone, uh, TRT, testosterone replacement therapy, like helping keep his testosterone levels up. And so I wanted to go in for a consultation at this gym by my house just to see where my levels are at. They draw your blood, they run labs. And I gotta be careful talking about this because I might faint talking about it. But I go in because I get, I get a little scared of needles sometimes. And I don't know why the fear came back. But in college, and if I pass out while talking about this, it might be funny. But in college, I would go— just call my wife, tell her your husband's out upstairs. But I would go to draw plasma and it's like a thick needle and they, they shove it in.. And I would go and, you know, get paid to donate plasma. And basically what happened is I would go and I had no fear of it. I overcame the fear. Well, I go into this guy's office and it's this little tiny office with tons of stacks of papers everywhere. It's an old guy that walks in and he just starts like giving me all this information, like over the top. You could tell he was brilliant at what he knew. And he was explaining to me, you know, he's going to test my levels, make sure I'm at a good level. And he starts explaining that he needs to draw like 3 vials of blood. I said, great, whatever. One of the things that came up, he's like, how many kids do you want to have? I said, 7. And he goes, oh, cool. Are you Mormon, Catholic, or one other? And I said, how did you know? He goes, well, you want 7 kids. You're probably Mormon. Yeah, that's me. Yeah.

I think the US average is like 2.1. It's, it's pretty low. So yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So he knew right away. And they have to ask that stuff because they want to find out like if you are fertile and stuff like that. So long story short, he starts drawing my blood and me thinking I was going to be able to overcome my fear. I'm like, I'm gonna look at it the whole time. So that I can, you know, overcome this and not have it be an issue at all. And so as he's talking to me, I don't even remember what he was saying, but all he says is, are you okay? And I go, I think I'm going to pass out. And then I just feel all the blood just, just like get sucked out of my brain and I'm out. And I don't remember, like, I don't remember anything after that other than I wake up, I wake up and I just go, ah, screaming. I don't know where I am for 30 seconds. I can't move. Because I'm like, I'm still coming to, I can't move. And then I'm like, I'm trying to put together the puzzle. Like, where am I? Where did I go today? What am I doing right now? Where, what am I looking at? I couldn't see 100%. So I finally put the two and two together and realized I'm getting my blood drawn to get my hormones checked. I just want to see where I'm at. And, and I say, look, I need water, I need water. So they're scrambling to get water. And they get me my glass of water. And as I'm sitting there, I'm like, is it normal to, to like pass out? And they're like, yeah, like you're not the first one. I go, is it normal to scream? And they say, you are the first person to do that. You are. Yeah. Like that doesn't happen. Well, as I'm, as I'm drinking my water, I look down on the floor and I'm like, there's this like puddle of water on the ground. And I'm like moving my, I have my sliders on. I'm like kicking the water around. I'm like, what is this? And, uh, I'm like, did you guys spill all of this? Like what's going on? And then I looked down at my pants and I'm like, I have like a, I'm, I feel like I wet myself and I'm like. Guys, did I, did I pee myself? And they, they would not answer the question. They wouldn't answer it at all. And there's a pile of, there's a puddle of piss on the ground. And I don't know where I didn't know where I was 100%. I just pee, I just passed out, woke up screaming. And they wouldn't tell me that I peed my pants. Because I even looked because I was sitting on the chair. And I even looked at my legs like there was nothing going down my leg. But what happened was I passed out and it just, it just spilled off the chair. And there was a puddle on the ground. And the worst part was they just let me sit there for a minute. Like, my feet, like my shoes were in the puddle. And they didn't tell me at all. Nothing.

They didn't.

And it was like, it reminded me why they wouldn't tell you. No, they were just super awkward, man. Like, I don't think they wanted to like address the fact that I peed my pants. And so I didn't realize, I called Kaya and I'm like, I need help. I need help now. Like, please come get me. So she was in the car.

Please come bring a change of clothes. And oh my gosh.

Well, no, she was sitting in the car while I did it. And we walked to the Mexican restaurant right next to the gym. And it wasn't until I actually got to the Mexican restaurant where I'm like, I totally peed my pants. Like, I still didn't realize it. Like, I don't know why I didn't feel it. But I, I passed out, woke up screaming, and simultaneously peed my pants. That happened to me yesterday. How's your day going, dude?

Well, I can't say that I had any of those things happen to me yesterday, but. Okay, so what—

I've got like a follow-up appointment with them because they're going to tell me how my, my, my blood levels are because they check your health overall. And ultimately their goal is to get you on TRT. And, um, I'm like, well, I just, I, I don't think I have any issues, but I, I think naturally, and I'm sure you've seen reels on this on Instagram, but it talks about like overall testosterone levels of a man like 20 years ago were way higher and it has to do with our, what we eat, how we live, et cetera. So I'm really curious to see what the results are, but I'm like, I have to walk into this room with these two dudes that saw me peed myself and I was passed out. So that would be a fun conversation, dude.

But hey, you know what?

That was my story.

It would be hilarious if you walked in and like over your pants you had like an adult diaper on. You're like, hey guys, how's it going?

I'm ready this time.

I'm prepared today.

Well, like, dude, that's awesome. I get— I get a little— I get a little lightheaded when I talk about it. I don't know why the fear of needles came back. But it is, it's probably because I'm not getting paid like $100 every time they draw my blood. But like, I did not care in college. And for some reason, it got me, dude.

Anyways, yeah, I got, I've got family members who like, can't stand the thought of needles, like getting any, getting any shots, getting any blood taken or an IV, dude. It's like, it's like life or death for them. It's, it's pretty crazy.

I don't want it to be a fear. Like, the thing is, like, I don't want to be afraid of it. So that's why I like was like, I'm going to be macho and look at it the whole time. Bad idea, dude.

Well, for a long time, that's what— for a long time, I've like, I've stared at the needles because I'm like, I mean, I don't enjoy getting pricked, but I'm like, well, no, I can watch this. I could do this. And most of the time when I watch, I'm like, I don't know if I needed to do that, but I did it anyway. Here we are. Yeah, but I'll keep that in mind the next time. You know, maybe next time if I, if I go to get my test testosterone levels checked, maybe I won't stare at the needle or I'll wear a diaper just in case.

You can do that.

That's hilarious.

You can lose control of bowel movement too. So I'm glad that didn't happen. But like, there's, there's a lot of stuff I looked up online. I thought I should go to the hospital. Like, do I have a rare condition? No, it was just you passed out, peed your pants. So That's fun, man.

We're, uh, that's awesome.

But, uh, okay. Uh, so we're in the world. Uh, Austin's, uh, story. Is it the word incontinent? Incontinent? What's the word?

Incontinent.

Yeah. Yeah. My incontinent story. And then, uh, what did we take from, what did we take? What was your biggest takeaway from Mike?

Yeah. So dude, I, as I was going through editing the episode and everything, I probably listened to the full episode like a total of like 3 times, just back to back, you know, all the editing. And dude, each time I was listening to, I was like, man, dude, he's such an awesome guy. Like, and I think one of the coolest parts about doing interviews now is that I'd have conversations with like total strangers and get to peek into the lives that some good guys are living, you know, other guys who are out there trying to succeed in their career, trying to make a bunch of money, trying to take care of their wives, trying to help them feel fulfilled and thrive in whatever it is that they're doing, in raising a family and wanting to have a bunch of kids and wanting to have a big family. Because like you were saying earlier, dude, not, not a lot of people want to have a bunch of kids. Almost everyone I work with in the military who has kids has 2 kids and done. Some, some, yeah, some of them have 1 and a bunch of them don't have any kids. And so like, I get looks all the time. Every time I tell anybody that, uh, my wife's pregnant with our second and that we're hoping to have a third one before we even leave Italy and whatnot, dude, people are like, what is wrong with you? And I'm like, well, I wanna have like 6 kids, maybe more. And they're like, what? Uh, like, are you gonna have to get a bus? Why do you need that many kids? Are you starting a farm? Like what? I was like, no, we're starting a factory actually. I'm just joking around. But like, we just wanna have a bunch of kids, dude. Um, and we just like, yeah, our toddler's getting, getting to be a little bit crazy, you know, lots of tantrums and the screaming and the scratching and all of that. But we want another one and we want more after that. And, you know, we'll keep having kids until it makes sense to not have any more kids. But I don't know, dude, it's so, it's just so cool to get to like peek into these other guys' lives because there's so many people around the world who are just doing their best to succeed at every level in life and I think part of what makes this, uh, you know, part of the purpose behind this podcast, The Rising Tribe, was to reach out and find other guys who are trying to raise the tide together so that like collectively we can realize that there are a lot of good people out there in this world just trying to do cool things. And why don't we try to connect to people a little bit, a little bit better and build a stronger community?

Yeah, I I really, I really look at Mike as an example, just how he holds himself too. And you even like, we talk about this all the time. We're not perfect at all. Like I've talked about, like, hey, I'm, I've struggled with this with my wife. And like I had, we had an argument and I really appreciated like Mike talking about communication. He was, yeah, yesterday, I'll show you, I'll show you a bad example of communication from yesterday. And how I didn't communicate with my wife and what, what, what that caused. And it resonated a lot. Like, he's a really real dude. He, I just enjoy chatting with him. I'm going, I'm flying out to Utah at the end of this month, right? This next month. And plan on working out with him while I'm out there. But it was, it was cool. It was cool to be able to talk with him and get to know him, get to know about his life. But yeah, just an example of somebody that's trying their best in all categories. I think we are like multifaceted people. We have, you know, we talk about faith, family, business, health, like all this, all these different categories. And sometimes you can feel like you're juggling a lot. But with Mike, I felt like he does a good job at being present where he's at and still deciding to make little incremental changes and gains in each area of his life. And that was one thing. The other, the other thing that I got from it was how he talked about, like, it's a muscle, like being able to juggle all of these things are a muscle. If he would've heard 5 years ago that he was gonna have all those responsibilities on his plate, he might've been totally— he would not have believed it. But just over time, you get better at taking on little responsibilities and adding things to the plate. And I kind of look at that with, with my dad, like he was able to juggle so much and I'm like, well, if I were, how did he, how was he able to do that? Well, just little by little, you figure it out, your muscles grow, you get stronger and it, you get better at it. So those were my biggest takeaways from Mike, man. It was really cool. So I'm, uh, one of the things that Mike talked about was his faith and like how his mom really helped him realize like, hey, you've got to, uh, you can, you can accept, you can follow God and like make him proud, or you can follow God. And if you, if you don't, like you might make him disappointed. And I thought that was a really interesting way, because it was almost like he really did think of God like his father, you know, which is cool. But going into that, man, like, I think we should talk a little bit, like I said, for our episode today, we're going to talk about our faith. And the first thing, and first and foremost, I think we ought to talk about like, who is God to us? And who is Jesus? Like, just to start out, And I mean, me and you spent 2 years of our lives teaching this stuff to people on a mission. But it is, to this day, it's still stuff that drives what we do every day. But in my mind, God is our Father in heaven who loves us. He looks out for us. He's up, he's in heaven and he's got a game plan for us and everything that we have in life. I believe that he's given to us. For us to learn. But, and we're today we're going over like part of the doctrine that we believe as well, because there's this really hard to talk about who God is and who Jesus is, and who the Holy Ghost is without going into doctrine. But we believe that God is our Father, that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and the Holy Ghost is another member of what we call the Godhead. Who can help communicate with us. And each one of those, like, members of the Godhead, we'll call it, is super important to our journey here in life. I don't know what you would add to that, Jared. Like, it's very, like, textbook. Yeah.

But I think you're right, because it is kind of important to understand what we mean when we say that God has given us something great to do with our lives, like that he wants the most for us, he wants the best for us. Well, who is he and what does that mean? So we believe that we have a Father in heaven who is a Father of our spirits, who created all of our spirits. So we are all children of him and we have the potential to become like him in all of his goodness, his greatness, and his glory with with time. And so we believe that he tasked Jesus Christ, who is our older brother, one of God's children, to create this world. And together they created a world for us to come live in. And so we obtained bodies and we came here to this earth. And now we're here on this earth and we are all imperfect and we are all subject to temptations and to sins and to to falling away from Him. But He's given us a path to go back home. And that is that He sent Jesus Christ to be born here, to be born of Mary on this earth, to live a perfect life and to be crucified for all of our sins. And He was resurrected on the third day. So He overcame, He overcame all of the temptations of the world and He overcame all of the pain, the sorrow, the suffering, and death ultimately. He overcame it so that we can do the same someday. So we believe that eventually we'll all die, but we will be resurrected and all of the imperfections of our bodies, those will all be made, made amended, or they will all be amended, they'll all be made perfect. And our spirits and our bodies will be reunited again. And then we'll go to be judged before God, and then that will determine kind of where we go after this life. You are muted right now, Doug.

Uh, I'm back. Okay. I think that it's fun with, uh, it's funny that you talk about the body being restored and, uh, where there's a scripture in the Book of Mormon that says like, not a hair on the head will be lost. And I'm like, that is so cool. Cause I get my hair back.

You're going to get all those hairs back, Doug.

I might want to keep it bald. Um, But I think so. So the cool thing is with, with this is like, uh, I was just— so in our church right now, right, we're studying the Book of Mormon, which we'll get into here in a second. But it talks about Christ overcoming spiritual death and physical death and, and experiencing everything we've ever experienced. And that's where like we really are here on this earth to grow, to learn, and to make mistakes and to learn from them. And ultimately, there's no way, you know, talk, the scriptures talk about no unclean can be with, no unclean thing can be with God. And so it is like impossible for us to live with God if we don't turn through Jesus, like turn to Jesus Christ, repent, have faith in him and follow him. And so I love that the, we call it the atonement of Jesus Christ, like what he did for us. We believe that he suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane. Where he like felt all of our pains and suffering and all of the times you're sad, like not just the time where you made a mistake and you sinned, like, like that's not just the things that he experienced. He experienced all the heartache too, and all the physical pain.

And so the grief, the regret, the sorrow, all of the emotions.

Yeah, well, and that's what's so cool to me because like, I just thought that Christ experienced like our sins that because, you know, if we sin, then we can, then we can He took upon us our sins and that just when we sin, we can, you know, have forgiveness. But it's really so much more than that. And I think in the Book of Mormon, it dives into all the scriptures there. It talks about like everything that he did for us, but it helps us know that, hey, like we can have Christ in our life to overcome so much more than just sin. And he knows how to, in the scriptures it said, succor his people or to like give peace to his people. And so that's why sometimes when we talk, dude, I don't think, I don't think, and we talked about this too, and we talked about this with Jeremy, I don't think God cares too much about like what we do in our careers or all these other things like where we live, what we choose to do for hobbies. I think he does care because we love to, you know, we're his children, but he just wants us to follow him. And as we're doing those things that matter to us, he wants us to follow the gospel and make that make that the foundation of our life, which are so many different things that Jared and I live by and or commandments that we live by that guide us on a day-to-day basis. But ultimately, it goes back to doing what Christ told us to do, which is very simple. Like while we're here on this earth, we have faith in him. And by having faith in him, we repent, like faith, repentance, and we have repentance. So we change, we We are baptized, we receive the Holy Ghost to like guide us throughout this life. And then we just continue doing like doing the things that he would have us do throughout the course of our life. So really, when you think of it like this big plan, like, hey, God sent us here to learn, we have a Savior that helps us like be forgiven, that is the only way back to God. And we can be forgiven because of Jesus Christ. It really puts things into perspective that life is for learning. Like life is to grow. Life is to, to like learn how to trust God. And so it makes life way happier if you're looking through that lens as opposed to, okay, why am I here? Right?

Like, yeah. Well, and, and it, and it extends the timeline significantly because we, we believe that after this life, like after we've died, we will be resurrected and we will continue to learn and to grow. In a degree of glory and in a kind of a form of heaven that a lot of people conceptualize. So it's— but it's not like heaven is this place where you go to sing songs and float in the clouds. Like, we believe there's so much more progression still after this life, but that this life here on earth, this mortality, is one of the steps of learning in this process of becoming like our Father in Heaven. So like we've got, we've still got so much more to do even after this life is over. And so thinking about like, what is, what is truly important? So when we talked to Jeremy, we're asking him, you know, how do you, how do you discern between good advice and bad advice? Because there's just so much information out there. And one of the things he said was, like, the good, the advice that, that moves me towards my goals, that moves me to action in the areas of life that are most important to me, like family, then that's advice that I'll look into or that I'll take. And the reason we want to have big families, the reason why a bunch of kids and, and all that is because, like, family is one of the only things we take with us after this life. Like, we're here, we can do a lot of good, we can make a lot of money, we can have all these experiences and memories and vacations and, and moments of learning and overcoming hardship and all of that. But when, when we die, all of all of the material things get left behind. And what's left is the, the impact we had on people in their memories and in how it changes their lives and our families, you know, all of the— all we believe that all of those connections, those bonds, the friendships and the family relationships that are here in this life will continue with us after this life. And so we want to have a bunch of children, we want to have big families because that just makes us that much richer in the things that are eternal. And so that's, you know, that's, that's why, that's a huge reason why, why we want to have big families and why it's a stereotype that Mormons have a bunch of, bunch of kids. Yeah.

It was like, there's no better— and me, it's for me, like now, like it, it, there's no better like wealth than having a happy family. Like when I, I am the happiest in my life when my wife's happy, when my daughter's having a good time, when I'm playing with them. There's a clip that I just shared on my Instagram reel about like, when do you feel like you're able to just unplug and be totally disconnected? For me, it's just when I'm playing with my daughter. Like, that is when I feel the happiest. Um, so our goal today, like I said, to reiterate, is like share with you like different beliefs that Jared and I have. And one of the things that Jared and I touched on, Jared, I almost feel like we're like in a missionary lesson too. Like, like just like sharing some of the beliefs. It's fun.

Yeah.

But like one of the things, like if you're new to this, to to what Jared and I believe in, part of our beliefs are that we have a prophet on the earth today. And like, so to kind of sum this up, we believe that when Christ came to earth, he established a church and he gave the apostles the priesthood or like the authority to act in his name. And it was an organized church with, you know, the prophet being Jesus Christ and his 12 disciples, right? So 12 apostles. So when Christ died and people started to attack the church, all of the apostles continued to keep the church going, but little by little they were killed off and little by little the authority was lost, the doctrine, the pure truth was changed. And we believe that today, like, and even back in the 1800s, like, during the revival, like all these different churches that were starting were just different interpretations of the Bible. And so there was so much confusion back in 1820 that there was— and I got the year correct, right, Jared? 1820. Done. Okay. Yeah. Just want to make sure I'm still fresh on that. But back in 1820, during the big historic, like during the big revival where everybody's trying to find out the truth and all these different churches are starting, there was a young man, 14-year-old boy named Joseph Smith, who did not know what the truth was. He really wanted to know what the truth was because he knew that God was a God of order and that there had to be an answer to this question, right? And so he read in James 1:5 that if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to men liberally and upbraideth not, which basically means he's not going to hold back, right? If you want to know something, he will tell you. What you ought to do. And that's true. Like, we believe that we can receive revelation for our lives. God can direct us. So cool. But he went out into a grove of trees, like, right around his home. And he was living in New York at the time. And he prayed to God, and Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father appeared to him and said, like, hey, none of these churches are true. Like they don't have the full truth. Like they, they've got some of it, but it's not the full truth. And so eventually God used Joseph Smith to restore the church with the proper authority that Jesus Christ had on the earth. And so the, the same church that, that Jesus Christ had when he was here is now on the earth, and it was restored through Joseph Smith. And there have been other prophets that have come after Joseph Smith that have also been called of God. Um, but the biggest thing for me, like, cause I'm not a member of the church. I wasn't a member of the church prior to being baptized, like prior to 15 years old. Um, I got baptized when I was almost 16, cause my stepmom married my dad and my stepmom got married. She was a member of the church. It was actually really hard for me to like separate. Like I wasn't super happy about having a stepmom at the time cause just divorce sucks. Um, looking back, my parents' divorce was like the best thing that ever happened to me. Because like my life's amazing now. I love my mom's boyfriend. I love my stepmom. Like so many good things have come from it. Granted, we could go into all this later. Divorce can get really, really ugly and there's a lot of stuff that can go wrong like with parents. And you can kind of get like, feel like you're stuck in the middle. But ultimately, I think my parents, you know, going their separate ways actually opened up the doors for me to find out about the church. And so long story short, one of the things that I really liked about the message of the Restoration is what we're talking about here is that like it makes sense. Like there is logic, there's order, and that there is a like God's church has been restored on the earth just as it was when Jesus was here. Which I mean, there's so many other like things that we have as a result of having a prophet that speaks today. But the reason why I brought this up, there's like the Book of Mormon we can talk about, but The reason we brought this up and the thing that I love the most and the reason my dad like got baptized was because he, he loved the doctrine that families are an eternal principle. Like my wife and I, we got married in the temple and that's where like we didn't just get married for now. We got married forever. Um, like when I die, when Kaya dies, for some reason, I think I'm going to kick the bucket first. Um, I don't know if that's something you've thought about, but, um, Yeah, my life insurance policy is way bigger than Kaya's just because I have a hunch. But point is, I think it's cool that like after this life, like, and when, when we don't, when we all die, like I'm still gonna be Kaya's husband, and I'll still have all my kiddos up there. So it'd be kind of cool. It's so, it's so cool. Like, it's way better than the idea of like, I'm just gonna go up there and play a harp with a robe on. Yeah, which might be fun. I'd love to learn how to play the harp, man.

So there's a lot of instruments I want to learn when we get up there.

But, uh, yeah, it's hard to— it's hard to just give like a simple answer, but it's cool to learn like, hey, this is what we believe, you know? Yeah.

So, and, uh, a couple— want to just dispel a couple notions out there because, uh, I didn't realize until I joined the military just how many people had never met a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And so a bunch of people that I was with at school, they were like, "Do you guys believe in this? What about this? What about this? I have no idea. I've never met anyone before, so I want to ask the question." So there's a notion out there that we believe or that we pray to Joseph Smith and that we worship him, and that is not true. We believe that we have a God in heaven and that we pray only to him. And we pray to him through Jesus Christ and in the name of Jesus Christ, because he is our pathway back to our Heavenly Father. But we believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet in the same way that in ancient times Noah was a prophet and Adam was a prophet and Moses was a prophet. We believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, and when he died, the senior apostle of the Twelve Apostles became the new prophet. And that is how it has been since, since the 1830s. So, um, today there is a living prophet. His name is Russell M. Nelson. And dude, he's almost 100 years old now. Like, yeah.

And he's 99.

He's 99. And he is, he is still just thriving, man. I mean, he's walking a little slower and I think he uses a walker now, but like, dude, he was still skiing until like 2 or 3 years ago.

I mean, I was about to say that. Yeah, there is like an unbelievable— like he's skiing the slopes out in Utah and stuff and he's in his 90s, which is insane.

And like, you listening to him talk, he is, he is with it. He is. And he is just bright and happy and he just knows deep down that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that God has a plan for all of his children. So it's really awesome that we, you know, we have— we believe in the Bible. We read and study the Bible. We believe that it's not— it does not contain all of God's truth because of all of the changes that have been made to the Bible since—

since—

well, since it was written, basically. But we also believe in another book of scripture called the Book of Mormon. Mormon was a prophet in the Americas. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and we believe that God loves his children everywhere all over the world, and that he had instructed— he had called prophets in the Americas, in the ancient Americas, and he had instructed them to keep records of their writings of his teachings to them, and all of that was compiled into one large set of scriptures called, which we now refer to as the Book of Mormon, And that was a book that an angel appeared to Joseph Smith and told him where these records were kept buried in the ground, and he translated them by the power of God. And now we have a second book of scripture. So together we use the Bible and the Book of Mormon as, you know, as the foundation of the gospel. Is there anything you want to add to that?

Well, I think the biggest thing is I think it's important to like— I feel like a lot of people that listen to this might already be like might already believe in God. And so one of the biggest objections I would say to the Book of Mormon that I hear all the time is like, well, like why would God need another book? The Bible is perfect. Well, I mean, the Bible has changed quite a bit and like over time, like little things have been taken out, but the Bible itself is awesome. But when we think about like God and how he loves us, like I don't think God's just going to leave us with one little one little book and then not say anything else to us ever again. And so that's why he's constantly used prophets. But I love, like in the book, in the Bible, it talks about if there were, if Jesus, if everything that Jesus had said had been written, there would not be enough room in the world to hold all the books. And so in my mind, I'm like, cool, there's got to be more. Like Jesus probably had to say more when he talks about visiting other sheep that are not of this fold. During his Sermon on the Mount, he's referring to the people in the Americas. But one other thing I'd like to clarify, because like in the Bible, it says that no man can add unto this book. Well, and that's in Revelation at the very end of the Bible. And so what we know is that the Bible is a collection of books that were not written in that chronological order that they have been compiled in right now. And so a lot of times when people bring up that scripture, it is referring, it is literally just referring to the Book of Revelation, not to the entire Bible, because those books were literally written at different times and they were compiled to create the Bible. But I just love, like for me, it made total sense that Jesus would visit the people in the Americas. And if you haven't read the Book of Mormon, dude, I would totally invite you to read it. It is so freaking cool. And there's like— it is literally a story. Like, I get excited talking about it. I'm reading it right now. It is a story about a father named Lehi who leaves Jerusalem when it's starting to get wicked. And an angel comes to— is it, uh, an angel comes to Lehi and says, hey, you got to get out. God comes late. Shoot, I'm very—

yeah, it's about— yeah, and it's about 600 BC. When this happened. But yeah, he has a vision that he needs to leave and he takes his family with him.

So yeah, and then they come to the Americas. They get— they build a boat and they come to the Americas. And it's all the stories that come from it. And there's war stories because there's a— there's a— like Nephi and his fam— Nephi and his lineage end up being righteous at first. And Laman and Lemuel, his brothers, who they fight with— he fights with a lot— they end up falling away from, for the very beginning, like falling away from the gospel. But it's so cool to see the, you know, like how these people lived and the trials they had in their faith. And so I love reading it. Like it feels like it's not a hard book to read. It teaches the gospel of Jesus Christ as you read it. But yeah, if you ever wonder Like Jared and I kind of go over like different things, topics about what we believe in throughout this podcast, but if you ever have any more questions, like message us because we'd love to chat with you more about like all of these different points. Like it's so, it's exciting. I got excited talking about the Book of Mormon because it's like, yeah, you can see it.

It's, it's awesome. All this is, it's so important to us that, um, it's, uh, we believe that it's actually our responsibility as young men in the church to go out and serve a mission for the church, to dedicate 2 years of, you know, this time of life that should be centered entirely around you, right? When you're 18, 19, 20, like everything is about you and the decision you're going to make, what you're going to do with your life. You, you're out of high school, you moved out of the house, like what are you going to do? Are you going to work? Are you going to go to school? Like it's all about you. And that is the exact time that, you know, that God has asked us to put those things aside for 2 years and to go serve other people and to go teach other people about Jesus Christ and how their families can be together forever. And so that's how we met, was serving our mission in Santiago, Chile. And it was, dude, it was awesome. It was so awesome. You get to go live with incredible people, some of them in just the most humblest of circumstances, and seeing just how important it is to them that they can return to their Heavenly Father and realizing that we are all God's children, all of us everywhere, no matter where we are, no matter what we're doing, we're all God's children. And He loves all of us. He has asked us to help each other and to not forget that the humanity of everybody around us., and so, so one of the things that's, uh, extremely important to us is, is the temple. Um, so there are, there are church buildings, uh, especially if you live in Utah, you see them like every 10 feet there. I mean, they're everywhere and they all kind of look the same. Um, but there's also these buildings called temples, and the temples are these big— they're like made out of like marble. They're these big white, grayish, pinkish, depending on where you are, these, these big tall tall buildings. And they're incredibly sacred to us. We believe that they are the house of the Lord here on the earth. And right now, I think there's about 200, 200 and some odd temples around the world, with a whole bunch under construction too. And it's in those temples that we believe that the veil between us and our Heavenly Father is the thinnest. And so we go to those temples to perform sacred ordinances that can only be done in those temples. There are plenty of things that we can do in our normal church buildings, like be baptized or take of the sacrament, the bread and the water every week. Those things can be done at the church, but the temple is an even more sacred place, and there are certain ordinances that we do in the temple, one of them being getting married and sealed together with our spouse and our family for time and all eternity. So I don't know what you want to add to that.

Yeah, no, I, I feel like, and a lot of times we'll Well, I'll go to the temple just to get clarity on decisions that we're making in life because you said like, yeah, the veil is really thin when you're in the temple. Well, if I want help or guidance with something in my life, I probably ought to be there to kind of get some impressions from God to know like, hey, am I doing the right thing? And it also just is a great place like where you can disconnect from the world 100%. Like you're not on your phone. The temples are gorgeous, all white, like very lit up, like perfectly clean. And everybody's wearing the same thing. Everybody's wearing these white clothes. Like everybody looks the same. There's no status there. It's really a great place to go to just be with God and just disconnect. And so that's what I've, I have found that the happiest I've ever been in my life is when I'm frequently going to the temple. And, uh, and one of my buddies, Talon— we'll have to have him on, maybe we'll have him on for March— but, um, one of my buddies, Talon, he literally says like, yeah, I'm gonna go spend time with God. And that's how he looks at it. Like, he's, he's developing his relationship with God. And that's kind of how I look at when I go to the temple. I'm spending time with God and then like trying to be closer to him and focus on really what matters. Um, but But yeah, I mean, it's that I feel like that covers a lot of the things that we believe and how it probably how it impacts like what we do on a day-to-day basis. And I mean, as far as like what we could add to it, one of the things I wanted to like end our episode with today is like some of our favorite scriptures from mine's from the Book of Mormon. And it's kind of how I approach life is, I guess this wouldn't be a favorite scripture, it'd be a favorite story. I'll just share a little bit of it. But in the scripture, there's a missionary named Ammon who is going to preach to this guy named King Lamoni. And what ends up happening is King Lamoni is like, hey, you're You're a stud. I want you to marry one of my daughters. And I sped up to this point in the story, but he's a missionary preaching to King Lamoni. Lamoni says, hey, I want you to marry my daughters. And Ammon says, no, I want to be your servant. And so the whole point here is that Ammon's trying to preach to King Lamoni and his people about the gospel. And becoming a servant to King Lamoni was probably one of the worst positions that he could have taken. Because if you failed as a servant and watching King Lamoni's flocks, then most of the time, like, he would kill all the servants that didn't do a good job. And this is like ancient times in the Book of Mormon, right? But what had happened was while Ammon was watching the flocks with the other servants, there was a group of Lamanites that came and started to scatter the flocks. And what ended up happening was like all the flocks ended up being scattered and all the other servants started to just cry and they were scared that the king was going to kill us. They literally said, now the king will slay us as he has our brethren because of their flocks were scattered by the wickedness of these men, being the Lamanites. And they began to weep exceedingly saying, behold, our flocks are scattered already. And it goes on, now they wept because of the fear of being slain. Now, when Ammon saw this, his heart was swollen within him with joy. So, okay, this is my favorite story in the Book of Mormon because Ammon just sees things differently. When other people were like down on the ground crying because of something that had happened to them, Ammon was like stoked. And at first you're like, what the heck? Like, why are you happy? And he says, I will show forth my power unto these my fellow servants, or the power which is in me, in restoring these flocks unto the king. That I may, and that I might win the hearts of these that are, these my fellow servants, that I might lead them to believe in my words. And so literally, he looks at it as opposed to like a problem. He looks at it as an opportunity. And so while the Book of Mormon teaches us like the doctrine of Christ about, you know, having faith, repenting, and being baptized, it also just teaches you like life lessons on how you can look at life.. And one of the things he does is— I was a cheerleader in college, so this is why this scripture stands out to me. But he says, "My brethren, be of good cheer, and let us go and search the flocks, that we will gather them together and bring them back unto the place of water. And thus we will preserve the flocks unto the king, and he will not slay us." And so to kind of— what ended up happening is, you know, he gathered the flocks back together. The king was stoked and the whole group of people ended up accepting the gospel. But it's the coolest story to me in the Book of Mormon because instead of shrinking and complaining and deciding that it was over, that he couldn't do anything about it, he had a good attitude and he just made the best of it. And so it's one of the, yeah, it's all about what perspective, what lens are you looking at? At life. Um, yeah, hands down one of my favorite stories, and probably, probably has an impact because he's like, be of good cheer. For the longest time, any scripture that had the word cheer in it, I'm like, that's a cool one, I like that.

So dude, well, that's awesome. Um, and actually ties exactly into, uh, one of my favorite scriptures. Uh, so, and mine's not the whole story, it's just a scripture, but I'll tie it in together. So it's in the book of John chapter 16, verse 33, from the New Testament, and and it's Jesus speaking, and he says, "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." And it's exact scripture that like Christ is saying, you know, so in the story that you shared, that's Ammon speaking to these other servants, and here it's Christ speaking to all of us, like that all of these, all of his teachings, all of his gospel is to, um, is to give us peace. Peace in a crazy world, right? There's so much going on in the world all the time, and it's not just going to get better. It's not just going to get easier. Things like— things just get more complicated and more crazy. But his gospel provides us a peace and an assurance that, uh, that, that this is all part of his plan. And it doesn't mean that he wants everyone to suffer and for there to be tragedies around the world, but that all of this is for us, and that he has overcome all of the tribulations of the world, all of the trials, all of the heartache, the suffering, the grief, the regret, the pain, the heartaches, all of it. He's overcome it all. And because of that, we can take heart and we can be of good cheer. And I love in the Spanish translation, it says, I think it says, "Estad de buen ánimo." Sed divina, right? And when ánimo, like that word ánimo is not one that we use in English, but if it was, if there was a translation, I think it would be to the word cheer, which is, but in Spanish it's the animating spirit. It is the spirit that gives us life inside of us. And so that's what he's saying is to let that spirit live and breathe inside of you and to take heart because he has overcome everything. There isn't a trial that we could face in our life that he hasn't overcome, that he hasn't dealt with and felt the pains of. So we always have someone we can turn to no matter what is facing us. And like, he puts these obstacles in our paths, or he lets obstacles appear in our path, but he has provided a way for us to overcome them all so we can return to him in the fullness of time. And I think that's It's just, it's really motivating to me because like there's, there's so many things, um, that we could do with our lives, good or bad, but he wants us to do the best things. He wants the best things for us. So like, why not trust in him? Why not have faith and take step forward? You know, I, well, maybe I want to, I'm thinking about switching to this new job. There's, there's an opportunity here, but I'm kind of nervous because I don't know if it's going to work out, or I don't know, maybe we're thinking about moving, but we don't— we're not sure because, well, you know, what if, what if we don't fit in? What if, um, it's, it's hard for us to work in this new place or whatever? Like, dude, take things to the Lord and he will help us make the decisions that we need to make. And then if he tells us that this is the right thing to do, if we feel that kind of warm and fuzzy feeling in our hearts, it's from the Holy Spirit. And, and that's the, the feeling that tells us to go. And So for example, like my wife and I have had so many plans change since we joined the military because that's the state of affairs in the military is that things change all the time. And so we're constantly having to make new decisions. Okay, well now with this new information, what do we do now with this new information? What do we do? And we, we, we just, we rely on those feelings. You know, we pray about things and then we talk and say, how do you feel about this? And, and we, we trust in those feelings. And so far it just, all it's done is lead to more opportunities. We were worried about getting a pay cut here. We were worried about this job being like this, and then we show up and things change, and now we're not getting a pay cut anymore, and we're actually going to pay more. And this opportunity arose that we didn't even know existed, and now it's here, and now we have it, and now things have changed, and they're so good because of this and that and the other. And there's a whole bunch of obstacles that we're looking at this year, and I just— I'm fine with it. Like, I'm not worried. I was actually talking to President William just the other day, so When you're a missionary, you have a president who's like a— you have mission leaders, right? A man and his wife, and they're kind of in charge of all the missionaries. And I was just visiting our mission president in San Diego, and he was saying that when I was a missionary, I was always so worried about just not being sure what it was going to look like. I didn't know for certain if it was going to play out this way or this way or this way. And I was worried about that. And it was crazy because he told me that and I was like, I don't remember being like that because now I'm not. Now I'm not that worried about how things are going to play out because I've made a whole bunch of decisions so far in my life where I've just trusted that God's going to make it work out. Like, I believe this is what I'm supposed to do and I don't know why, but I feel that it's the right thing to do. I think these are promptings from the Spirit and things have played out tremendously and I've just been blessed over and over and over again. And so I trust that, you know, with all the obstacles that we're gonna tackle this year, that God's gonna be there with us. He's gonna lead us. He's gonna guide us. We're gonna get through them just fine. And we're gonna come out the other side with more information, with a better understanding of what we want to do with our lives and how we want to build our family. And it's all going to be for our good. It doesn't mean it all will be good. There's gonna be a lot of negative in there, but ultimately I think all of these things will play out for us in the end.

I listen to all the different moves that you have going on in your life, and I'm like, man, it's cool to see how you've navigated it, especially your wife. I mean, be fun to get our wives on for an episode, dude. That'd be kind of fun.

But dude, we totally should have them on. I think that would be— Yeah, I think that'd be really fun.

Yeah, just like me and Kaya. You're like, what do you think of our podcast? I know your wife's listened to them frequently. Kaya's got a couple to catch up on, but, um, I, I think it's cool to see how you and your wife have both navigated it. Like all the different changes and everything, you've kept a really level head. And all of that comes from when you have like a larger timeline and you understand that like things are eternal and like this is just a small moment in our lives. Like things don't get as bad. It's if, if this was all it was. If birth, life, and death was all it was, okay, maybe you could, you know, maybe you could argue that this one bad moment is just a huge deal. But when you look at like the grand scheme of thing, or we talk about the eternal perspective, like when you have, when you look through life through eternal, through an eternal lens, life is so much easier to navigate. Um, but yeah, I, I, one thing I wanted to bounce off there was like a lot of times we, my wife and I too, will make decisions on based on how we feel.? And like, is there peace in our heart? And if there's peace in our heart about a certain decision that we have to make, then we just go and we move forward. And so that's, that's just the Holy Ghost speaking to us and helping guide us. So I love, I love talking with you about this. If you have any questions about like our faith, what we believe, message us directly. We'd love to talk more. Our invitation for this episode is if you haven't read the Book of Mormon, like, read it and pick up a copy. Like, message Jared and I, we'll send you one. But read the Book of Mormon. I, I think you'll learn a lot from it. And even if you aren't a member of our church, you'll learn more about God and grow closer to God than I believe any other book in the world. So, um, that's all we have for you guys today. Jared, you got anything else?

No, that's it. I'm glad we were able to hop on, and I'm gonna go, uh, pack things up and hop on a flight to to head back home to Italy. And I know you've got a lot going on right now, so, uh, you can hear it.

Well, maybe screaming.

You can hear all these trucks driving by. But, you know, that's— it was funny, we were just talking before about how there's all the background noise in all of our episodes and we can't edit it all out because this is life, you know. This is—

this is—

it just is. And sometimes I'm pretty sure everyone can relate.

Yeah, like, life isn't always perfect. Sometimes you pee your pants when you get your blood drawn, you know?

So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go back and tell my wife about that story, dude. Freaking hilarious. But all right, brother, it was good talking with you. And thank you, everybody, for listening. And we'll catch you guys on the next episode.