October 16, 2024 • 45 mins
When journalist Murray Jones investigates the vast wealth of the Mormon church in New Zealand, an intriguing Facebook post alerts him to a scandal that’s much bigger, and much, much darker.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kyoder Kirsten here one of the producers of the show
A Quick Content Morning. The series deals with abuse, including
child sexual abuse and domestic violence, so listen with care
and see our show notes for details of support services
if you need them. This podcast is funded by New
Zealand on Air.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
In the church that Gayleen grew up in, they'd sometimes
do these things called firesides, no actual fires involved. Rather
it would be an evening meeting where a church leader
would speak on some topic or other and members, perhaps
a youth group, perhaps adults, would be encouraged to discuss
it and ask questions. Once, when Gayleen was in her early.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Teens, somewhere between twelve and fourteen, she.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Went to one of these firesides. This time there was
more than one speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
We went from room to room getting different lessons.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
And in one room there was a lesson that is
really stuck in Gallen's memory. The bishop's who was leading
the discussion, had put a cake on a table at
the front of the room. It was quite the cake.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
This really really beautiful looking, very white cake, and it
was almost sparkling with sugar crystals.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
The youth group knew that the theme of the lesson
was chastity, but the cake, They weren't sure what that
was about.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
But then she said, who would like a piece?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Well, of course everyone wanted a piece.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
But then she got this handful of dirt like dirt
from the ground and threw it all over the cake,
and she said, hoo, wants a piece of cake? And
no one then wanted a piece of cake.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
So the cake you got this already is a metaphor.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
She likened that to being pure and chaste and keeping
ourselves clean versus as somebody touched us inappropriately or kissed
us or anything. How then we wentn't clean and nobody
would ever want us.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
That was forty years ago, but the memory has always
stayed with Gayleen. I mean, seeing an adult throw a
dirt over a cake is pretty memorable under any circumstances.
But the bigger point the bishop's wife was making was
that if you were impure, if you were unchased, if
you with a dirt spattered cake, you would be imperiling
(02:23):
your chances of getting into heaven. But missing out on heaven.
That was taking the long view. The more immediate incentive
to keep in line was that.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
If you did make a mistake, you would end up
in the bishop's office.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
And there were so many mistakes you could make in
this church, so many rules that could be broken.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Not to your coffee.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
You don't if a swear you can't be involved in
six year relations before marriage.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Don't watch TV on Sunday.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
This podcast is all about the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter day Saints, the Mormons. You'll hear about the
things they leave.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
The living can also be united with the deed.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
You'll learn about the importance of service and obedience.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
I was just a full on soldier for the church.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And the unbreakable commitments that people in the church make.
Speaker 6 (03:17):
There is nothing that warrant breaking up our.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Family commitments that lead members to put the church first.
If the church gets embarrassed, I get embarrassed, no matter
the cost.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
They did what I was supposed to do.
Speaker 7 (03:29):
I told my bishop a church wouldn't deliberately put a
child in harm's way.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
They kept insisting that I needed to forgive him. Not
just tell the helpline and they can make it all
go away.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Is this the LDS church abuse helpline speaking to this
is Heaven's Helpline. A six part New Zealand Herald investigation
into the Mormon Church in New Zealand, Episode one, The
Business of Saving Souls. Where are we We're heading on
(04:04):
to State Highway one, so we're in South Auckland or
heading into it, I should say.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
And why are we here?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Because I'm going to show you the Mormon Temple, Adams
the Auckland Mormon Temple. This recordings from a couple of
months ago. I was with Adam Dudding, one of the
producers for this podcast. I wanted him to see what
I had been seeing every time I drove south of Auckland,
and every time I drove back and boom, there it is.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Okay, that is really absolutely stonkingly huge.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah, it's been. It's been going up for a couple
of years now. Every time I drive to Hamilton and
come back to Auckland, I see it getting bigger and
bigger and bigger, and it's nearly done. I'm Murray Jones,
I'm an investigative journalist, and yeah, it's fair to say.
Over the past couple of years, the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter day Saints, better known as the Mormons
or the LDS Church, has become a bit of an
(05:00):
obsession for me. The church its money, its vast new
Auckland Temple. But I think it's so noticeable right it's
put right up on the hill, It's looking over the
whole of Manico. It's really quite a big statement from
the church. You know, when I first started writing two
years ago, I didn't even know the Auckland Temple was
coming up. And then to the fact that this huge
(05:20):
temple is being built in the city I've been living in,
just as I've been introduced to the Mormons. This obsession
began not long after I arrived in New Zealand from
the UK. You might have spotted from my accent that
I'm not from around these parts. Originally I got a
contract to help Enzeme's business desk with a project looking
into charities and their money. Which ones are rich, where
does the money come from, how do they spend it?
(05:42):
That kind of thing, And really quickly it became obvious
that the LDS Church was worth a close look, because
it turns out they are mind bogglingly rich, and there
are all kinds of fascinating side issues around their wealth,
like the way they tithe ten percent of all their
members incomes, many of whom aren't all that rich. To
(06:03):
begin with, or the fact that they spend just a
tiny fraction of that tithe money on the kind of
things you might expect from a charity, you know, soup
kitchens or helping the homeless or running hospitals, or the
way that the Mormons have this huge focus on constructing
these extravagant and expensive temples all over the world, just
like the one in the south of Tarmaki, Mikodo. Anyone
(06:26):
who's driven or flown into Auckland in the past couple
of years will have noticed it.
Speaker 8 (06:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
I mean it's quite beautiful though, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I mean, I'm just looking back at it now, you know,
the spy sort of goes up like a tin layer
wedding cake. Yeah, sixty meters. Although I was focused on
the New Zealand LDS Church, I couldn't ignore the global
wealth of the Mormons. They've got investments worth two hundred
and sixty billion dollars US. That's more than the annual
(06:53):
GDP of New Zealand. Anyway, when my articles came out,
well they've got a pretty big reaction. Online journalists like
to pretend that we don't read the comments on our stories,
but of course we do, and these ones were fascinating.
There were non religious readers outraged that churches have tax
(07:14):
free status at all. There were current members of the
church coming to its defense, saying that my articles were
a hit job by a so called journalist. But there
were also conversations kicking off in the comments that made
me realize there was more to say about Mormon money.
There were some heartbreaking accounts of the way tithing had
been really punishing for members. One woman talked about how
(07:36):
she still felt emotionally scarred by.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
The realization that I could have provided my suicidal team
the specialist therapy the bishop refused to help pay for
if I hadn't been paying tithes for decades.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
One woman talked about how she was asked by a
senior church leader.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
To pay tithing on my student line because I was
receiving money.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Another woman, commenting from Salt Lake City, US, Utah, the
home of the Mormon faith, said she'd been led to
believe that if you pay tithing, the Lord will provide.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
But funny, once we start paying tithing, we had enough
on our own.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
What a scam. Reading all these I wanted to do
some follow up stories on the human cost of tithing
and also hear from more women, since most of the
people in my original Mormon Money articles were men. So
I sent messages to a dozen or serve of the
people who'd made comments. Would they be interested in telling
their stories in a bit more detail for a follow
(08:34):
up article. Half of those people got back to me.
Half of that half agreed to a phone call, and
one of those three people, well, she didn't want to
talk to me about tithing. She wanted to talk about
something much much darker. That first call lasted for a
(08:56):
couple of hours, and.
Speaker 8 (08:57):
So you think you're the only one such disparate circus,
But that's the mentality are edit.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
At time, And to be honest, it shook me. So
I have a bit a bit lostful words.
Speaker 8 (09:11):
Yeah, it's not as it is hard to understand.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
This woman who I'll be calling Caroline. So she had
been in the church for more than forty years before
finally leaving. Her story was one of betrayal.
Speaker 8 (09:26):
You just trust that the leaders are going to take care.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Of them, trauma and denial.
Speaker 8 (09:31):
I tap myself off from everything. I cut myself off
from the news, try to predict myself.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Of missed opportunities and cover ups. You said that people
knew he was predatory. Who knew and what did they know?
But talking to her also made me realize I needed
to be asking some very different questions about the church. Yes,
(09:59):
the church is rich, and sure it's important to look
closely at the bird and tithing places on some members.
But after talking to Caroline, it got me wondering about
things like who does the church value and who do
they see as expendable.
Speaker 8 (10:15):
If you feel superior to somebody, it becomes real easy
to just say, oh, well, wouldn't have happened to my kid?
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Who holds power in the church and how do they
use that power?
Speaker 9 (10:30):
You ever think good that your family wants of you,
you have to get this person's approval.
Speaker 6 (10:34):
The opportunity for abuse as a means.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
And when things go wrong, when lives are ruined, when
families are torn apart, when crimes are committed, what will
the church do to keep things quiet?
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Handle problem?
Speaker 2 (10:49):
She'll it off, get the victim into figures. It would
be almost two years before some of those questions were answered.
And we are going to get to all of that.
And yes, we are going to come back to Caroline
and hear her whole story. But first we need just
a bit of context about this church. Where did it
(11:10):
come from and how did it make it over to
altai ROA. Mormon history is really fascinating. We're going to
give you the potted version here, but if you're keen
to understand more, then listen to our explainer episode in
the podcast feed. So in eighteen twenties New York State,
a young man called Joseph Smith had some religious visions
(11:31):
which told him not to follow any of the current
churches out there, but to set up his own instead.
The way Smith tells it, he was first visited by
God and Jesus. Then one night in eighteen twenty three,
an angel called Morone I appeared in his bedroom.
Speaker 7 (11:50):
Standing in the air, for his feet did not touch
the floor.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Moroni showed Joseph the location of some golden plates that
were hidden near his home.
Speaker 7 (12:00):
There was a book deposited written upon gold plates.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Under divine guidance, Smith translated the pages, and those translations
became what's known as the Book of Mormon. It has
a huge narrative spanning centuries, climaxing with Jesus visiting the
Americas after his resurrection. Smith was into polygamy, the practice
of men taking multiple wives. This would get the church
(12:25):
in trouble with wider American society, so they fled Westwoods
and set up shop in Salt Lake Valley, Utah, which
has remained the beating heart of the church ever since.
Just a quarter century after the Book of Mormon was published,
in the eighteen fifties, the first LDS missionaries arrived in
(12:49):
New Zealand. They had minimal success converting European settlers, so
turned their focus to Marii and it went really well.
Large numbers of Tanga to Fenua joined the church. There's
a number of reasons that people point to for this. Language, ancestry, polygamy,
and prophecies all played a part. But crucially, unlike European missionaries,
(13:15):
American Mormons weren't involved in the British crowns Land grabs.
But again we dive into these factors in the Explainer episode.
Whatever the specific reasons, though, the fact is Mormonism became
really big in Marydom. By the nineteen sixties, over sixty
percent of the membership of the LDS Church was Mardi.
(13:38):
So couldn't we go and can we go thing? Nope,
So only the most worthy of church members are allowed
to go in. It's where special rituals and ordinances happen.
So you've got your ceilings, which is your weddings, You've
got your baptism and they are dead. You've got your endowments,
So not anyone can just go in at any time.
It's only for special situations, ceremonies.
Speaker 6 (13:59):
Watch out for the.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Temples are one of the most important symbols of faith
for Latter day Saints. Sure they have churches all over,
but temples are much more rare and much more special.
As I mentioned there to Adam, only those who are
deemed to be behaving well enough according to church doctrine
are allowed inside the temple. This new temple in the
(14:23):
south of Auckland will no doubt be a huge deal
to the many members living nearby. But if you wind
the clock back to the construction of this country's first
Mormon temple in nineteen fifty eight, well, it literally shifted
the landscape.
Speaker 9 (14:37):
An American style suburb spraying from the swamp and Tui
Karamea became Temple View, a beautifully landscaped village, snugly and
closed by one thousand acres of church owned farmland.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
That was from a nineteen seventy three documentary marveling at
how the church had built a self contained community in
the Waikato, centered around a brand new temple, a vast
white building with a sharp spire reaching for the sky.
This was just the eleventh Mormon temple in the world,
so it was a matter of enormous prestige and pride
(15:10):
for New Zealand Mormons. The school next door, Church College,
was a co ed secondary school that took borders and
day students. The temple, the school and the houses of
Temple View were all built by volunteers called labor missionaries.
Their mantra was Kiirhanga mortunu ake, build for eternity.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
The labor missionaries were just ordinary people who were mostly
Maori being missionaries.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
That's doctor Gina Colvin her father have been Mormon for generations,
and although Gina has been a vocal critic of the
church over the years, she's only recently left. The idea
of Temple View was to build a community where Mormon
family could flourish and look after each other. But for
some of the Mari among them, it was something even more.
Speaker 5 (16:06):
You know, after generations of having your land and your
livelihood taken away from you through the confiscations and the
land grabs, and all of the agony and the traumas
that were as result of that. It was phenomenal, I think,
to be part of something that built something for Marii
and for their spiritual flourishing and their spiritual welfare.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Mormons flocked to live near the temple. Some came from
Pacific nations or from Australia, places which at that time
didn't have temples of their own. Remember Gayleen, the woman
who watched someone throw dirt all over a white cake
when she was a kid. Her family moved from Dunedin
to live near the new suburb.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
We moved up here and that was different because like
there were Mormons everywhere. Like you'd go to the super market,
you'd bump into them. You'd walk down the road, you
bump into them. You wanted to talk to someone, and
it's just over your fencer, over the down the road.
They were everywhere.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Temple View is still a really distinctive place, although it's
much quieter since the school shut down in two thousand
and nine. The whole suburb, which is southwest of Hamilton City,
is a little bit eerie if you drive into it
without realizing what it is. A tiny land island of
suburbia centered around spotless white buildings in the middle of farmland.
(17:27):
There's around twelve hundred residents, and just about everyone that
lives there is a Mormon. For a very long time,
this really was the epicenter of Mormonism for the whole
of the Pacific region. Many of the people you'll meet
in this podcast lived in or near that suburb, or
studied at church college, or married their spouse at that temple.
(17:51):
But even though it's kind of a religious enclave, and
even though this is a really tight knit community, Mormons
haven't completely separate themselves from mainstream New Zealand. We've had
Mormon all Blacks, including Joonolomu Mahanonu and in the sixties
and seventies the Going Brothers Sid, Brian and Ken. We've
(18:13):
had Mormon Olympians including Valerie Adams and Joseph Parker. There
have been Mormon Miss New Zealand's. One of them made
it to the top seven in Miss World Miss New Zealand.
Speaker 8 (18:26):
My name is Vicky Lee Humi.
Speaker 9 (18:28):
I'm a student teacher and I'm studying English and education.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
There are New Zealand judges who are Mormon. Mormon politicians.
I mean, our third most recent prime minister was a Mormon.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
I was Mormon.
Speaker 10 (18:41):
I lived in Mornsville, and while I loved politics, I
never ever dreamed I would work in it.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Ja cinder Ardern quit the church in her early twenties
for reasons we'll get to, but her family is still
very involved. Her uncle Ian is a senior leader and
was principal of Church College in the nineteen eighties. The
church has made a real effort to help the country
understand that they're pretty decent folk. Since the mid nineteen eighties,
the people of Temple View have put on their epic
(19:09):
Christmas Lights extravaganza, and around the same time in nineteen
eighty one, the church commissioned a documentary for the New
Zealand audience.
Speaker 7 (19:17):
I've asked me to tell you a little bit about.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Themselves, narrated by five star gold plated New Zealand hero
Edmund Hillary, who, as you know, climbed Mount Everest before
anyone else.
Speaker 7 (19:31):
Four the Mormons, the most important single unit in the
church is the family.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
To be clear, Hillary was not a Mormon himself, but
as he put.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
It, maybe they didn't convert me to anything, but I
couldn't help admiring their politeness and their sincerity.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Clean cut, family focused, hard working, polite, harmless. And that's
the space, more or less where Mormons of sat in
the eyes of non Mormon New Zealand for a good
half century or so. A minority religion, fifty four thousand
members according to the twenty eighteen census, closer to one
hundred and twenty thousand according to the church's own figures,
(20:14):
a church whose followers here are mostly Maudi in Pacifica,
but a sizable minority of Pakia, with some doctrinal quirks
that make it a bit different from a lot of
other Christian churches, a bit old fashioned, a bit straight,
and sure outsiders might find some of their rules and
rituals a bit unusual, worthy of a bit of teasing,
(20:37):
Like in the TV show South Park.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
That's another thing, Why do you have to be so
freaking nice all the time?
Speaker 4 (20:41):
It isn't normal?
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Or in the hit Broadway musical The Book of Mormon,
which was written incidentally by the creators of South Park.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
That's a partner, then't Jackson Challi theory.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
For this sketch from the mid nineteen eighties New Zealand
comedy Funny Business.
Speaker 9 (21:01):
I don't drink coffee, I don't drink tea, and I enjoy.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Celibacy.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
And I don't know if there's any connection between that
kind of teasing and the fact that around two thousand
and nine, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day
Saints started distancing itself from the label Mormon and insisted
that people refer to the religion as LDS or by
its full wordy title. Most members I spoke to still
referred to themselves as Mormons, even though it's no longer
(21:36):
the official line.
Speaker 9 (21:40):
Norman Mormon.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
But if the worst thing you're known for is your
straight laced faithfulness and your Christmas lights, then reputationally speaking,
you're not doing too badly, my dames, Elder Norman, after
the break your front dormant, Oh, we meet the door knockers.
(22:09):
For us non Mormons, the most likely way we've interacted
with a Mormon is when a couple of clean cut
young men in black suits and shiny shoes with a
little black name tag saying Elder Smith or Elder Jones
have turned up at our door. Maybe you've politely shut
the door. Maybe you've chatted on the doorstep for a bit.
Speaker 8 (22:33):
National program call a family whole evening program.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Maybe you've invited them in.
Speaker 9 (22:38):
That it's a pleasure for us to be with you tonight.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
And just maybe you liked what you heard and ended
up joining their church.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
When I was about five years old, two Mormon missionaries
knocked on my mum's door.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
This is Marlin Dean, and.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
My mum became interested in the messages that they head
to share and felt that the values and the principles
that the church had really resonated with her and aligned
with how she wanted to live her life and bring
up her family. As a consequence, she was starting to
attend to church.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
This was the mid nineteen seventies. Marlin's father came on
board a couple of years later, so now the Deans
were Mormons. They lived in Wairoa, just down the road
from Newhacker, home to one of the oldest Mormon meeting
houses in the country, a majority Maori area with strong
(23:32):
historical connections to the church. When he was thirteen, Marlon
was sent off as a border to Church College. Remember
that's the Mormon high school, right next to the temple
on the fringes of Hamilton. For Marlin, this was life changing.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
It was a massively positive experience for me, the highlight
of my life. You know, you get to connect with
youth from all around New Zealand. I was in a
dormitory was sixty to seven the other boys in so
from my years of being thirteen right eighteen, that was
my life.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Everything at Church College was geared towards the teachings of
the church, or the teachers were Mormons. There was extra
scripture study after school, and also because of the American influence,
they played a lot of basketball and they were really good.
At one point they won the national champs eight years
in a row.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
My teammates were Mormon. My roommates were Mormon, so they
become your friends for life, and they still are friends
some respects today.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Gayleen, whose family had moved from Dunedin to be close
to the temple, she went to Church College too.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I always remember thinking, if I wanted a good academic grounding,
I probably shouldn't have gone to Church College.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
But that kind of wasn't the point.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
It was about building your spiritual.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Life and the building blocks of a spiritual life. Rules,
lots of rules, some around your schedule.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
You don't watch TV on Sunday, you don't study on Sunday.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
How you should speak.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
You don't ever swear. You can't even use the word
peg because you might as well swear. That's saying something
bad to somebody.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
What you eat and drink.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
I don't know if you've heard about the Word of wisdom.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
This is the law that says no ty coffee, alcohol, tobacco,
or illicit drugs.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
And stitched on to the hot drinks was the idea
that one of the bad substances was caffeine and coke
haad caffeine. So that was commonly accepted as part of
the Word of Wisdom.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
It's not bad advice. In fact, to study in Utah
showed that Mormons lived six and a half years longer
on average than non Mormons. But the rule that was
drilled home more than any other was how you should
absolutely keep to the law of chastity.
Speaker 8 (25:53):
We're all striving to get married in the temple. And
if you ruin it once and you've spoiled your chance.
Speaker 10 (25:59):
What do you do affect so much? The boy?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
This is from a nineteen eighty documentary about the Mormon Church.
And this is a middle aged man speaking to a
teenage girl in a mixed gendered seminary class about how
girls should behave.
Speaker 10 (26:16):
And the reason he's all over you is not necessarily
that he's that way inclined, but because you've stirred him
inside because of your shoulders, because of the way you
weigh your gris see through tops can do terrible things
to boys, They really can.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Gaileen says she took those childhood lessons really seriously and
carried them well into her adulthood.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
I had to obey the rules with execness because I
was the black and white person, and I thought that
was good then.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
For both sporty Marlin and studious Galeen. Getting through school
was just the warm up act for the most important
act of service and rite of passage that a young
Mormon can do, going on a mission. Going on a
mission to knock on doors, to proselytize, to attempt to
(27:04):
convert non members is an absolute cornerstone of Mormon life.
The church estimates that since its founding, more than a
million Latter day Saints have served a full time mission.
You could think of it as being a bit like
military service. You're sent out into the world for up
to two years, quite possibly to another country, as a
(27:26):
kind of soldier of the Lord, doing a tour of duty.
It usually starts with a couple of weeks of what's
basically biblical boot camp would be door knockers attend a
missionary training center or empty seat where they learn the
rudiments of preaching the Gospel to total strangers. Then you're
off saving as many souls as you can. It's a
(27:48):
massive global operation and it helps the church grow. In
nineteen ninety, the year both Galen and Marln began their missions,
the church claims it converted more than three hundred thousand people,
a high watermark in church history. And for young Mormons themselves,
there's a chance to serve the church they love.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
That showed that I was a good, faithful member of
the church, and that's what we were all striving to be.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
And to make your family proud. And of course there's FOMO.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Some of my best friends were already out and they
were seeing leaders. They're saying they're in a great experience
Marlin again, and so you sort of think, well, what
else am I going to do? You can't just go
surfing by yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Oh and did we mention you have to pay for
it yourself?
Speaker 3 (28:33):
They recommended you, say, sixteen thousand. Back in those days
quite a.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Lot of money, and that was a lot. Marlin pulled
together the funds with help from its hard working family
plus a church sponsor. Gayleen scrimped and saved for years
so she'd be ready for her call to mission. And
sure enough, just as her last year at UNI wrapped up,
the call came destination Christ Church.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
We had fifty five of us crammed into this little
mission training center.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Gayleien had always thought of herself as a pretty hardcore believer,
a rule follower, the righteous Mormon.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
But when I got there there everyone's all righteous as well.
So I remember thinking, gosh, this really is the army
of the Lord.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
And the Lord's army was busy. Once the training weeks
were over, the big door knocking days began.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
You woke up at six thirty, half an hour ti
shower and make you study A seven. You would have
study for an hour, breakfall, breakfast, nine thirty year out
on the job. People in all day, an hour for
lunch and dinner. Yeah, to write in your due and
outdate the missionary records so very exhausting, and then you'd
go to bed and start it all again. And that
(29:47):
was five days a week oxxept for church on Sunday,
and then on a Monday you would have till six
o'clock to shop, to wash your clothes and clean your
house in that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
That was called your preparation day or p day. But
it wasn't a full day off. After six pm you
had to head back out for an evening's proselytizing. Out
on mission, Gaileen discovered there was one more rule.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
We weren't allowed to listen to any music that wasn't
put out by the church. Or we were allowed to
listen to a group called after Glown.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
After Bellzeskin alone. It's a little bit scary design of
his work the Commandments.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Marlin started his mission the same year as Gaileen, but
he was called to Sydney, whose territory included pretty much
all of New South Wales. Rules differ from mission to mission,
and poor old Marlin wasn't even afforded the meager joys
of Afterglow At his MTC in Sydney. There was no
music allowed at all.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
I love music, so that was really really hard for me.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
He struggled with a lot of things at first, so.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
I was very shy, didn't know what I was doing,
certainly didn't know any scriptures, so I was really raw
arriving into Sydney, and for the first part I was
just following the senior companion.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
On your mission, you're assigned a companion and you cannot
leave their side. The pair of you is known as
a companionship. Every waking minute is spent with them. The
only time you're not in each other's eye line is
when one of you goes to the bathroom, and even
then your partner has to wait right outside. Marlon was
shy and was anxious about speaking in public, but he
(31:34):
compensated for that in other ways.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
I have a capacity for work. My family are workers,
so worked in shearing sheds and out on the land.
I just figured I'm as well just work as hard
as I can. So I would knock doors all day,
every day until people tell me to go away, and
I wasn't afraid of doing that.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
You can knock all you like, but it's hopeless unless
you're making some conversions. Marlon and his fellow missionaries had
monthly conversion targets, and they simply weren't meeting them.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
We would maybe do seven to ten a month across
two hundred companionships. So we were struggling.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
But then a new senior leader arrived at the mission,
and he quickly impressed Marlin.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
He's a businessman, self made millionaire. He was very motivational,
he was charismatic.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
This guy set wildly optimistic monthly targets.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
Said well, we're not going to try to get to fifty,
We're going to try to get towe hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
And he showed Marlin's cohort some tips for hitting those targets.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
I thought, what the heckclimb as will apply those scripts
and those tools and techniques, and I was starting to
get success.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Scripts, tools, techniques. I'm intrigued. What does it take to
save a soul? As a journalist, I've introduced myself to
a fair number of strangers. Sometimes they're a bit hesitant
to talk to me, and I need to win them round.
But convincing someone to join your church, to experience a
(32:59):
spiritual conversion, to have a religious experience, that's a whole
another ballgame. But it was a skill. Marlon got down
to a t So here's how he did it. Perhaps
the most important step of all was the first one, preparation,
(33:19):
practicing and memorizing those scripts.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Marlon mentioned, we had a sequence of words, actions and
gestures that are designed to create an emotional connection.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
And this included the way you talked.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Is a certain cadence and even winter pause.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
So once you're actually on someone's doorstep and they haven't
slammed the door on you, where do you start? Well,
Marlon would start here.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
We're messengers of Jesus Christ. We're here to talk about
the purpose of life. Where did I come from? Why
am I here? And where am I going after this
life is over? Have you ever wondered about the purpose
of life?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
At the same time, would be trying to glean some
basic information.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
Getting to know them. We would find out about what's
important to them and then match the message to what's
important to them emotionally.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
So whether it will he acknowledges now that often it
was easier to make headway with people who were vulnerable
in some sense.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
Looking back, I think they were socioeconomically challenged a little bit.
They were searching for support in their community, a little
bit isolated. People that are questioning what the purpose of
their life is that are experiencing some heartache, whether that's
some financial struggles, whether that's some loss of a loved one.
And I would tailor the message so I knew that
I would get a better result if I spoke on
(34:39):
the door about those types of things.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Next step, if the conversation was flowing, he'd lean into
those tough subjects, like if Marlon found out they'd recently
lost a loved one, he'd say.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
You will see them again. If you endure to the end,
you will be with them together forever. How good would
it feel for you to be with him and see
them again? Or he might get really specific with your daughter,
who's next to you, How would you feel if you
were to live forever with your wife and your daughter.
(35:15):
As we share these messages with you, you're going to
have feelings, feelings in your heart and in your mind.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I want to dig in for a moment to this
emotional triggering of the investigator. That's the missionary's term for
someone who hasn't closed the door on them. So Marlin
says he and his fellow missionaries became so confident that
they could evoke these kind of emotions that they'd even
warn them in advance that it was coming. A bit
(35:45):
like a stage magician who tells you to watch extra
closely because that coin in their hand is about to disappear,
but you still don't see how they did it.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
So be sensitive to those feelings in your heart and
your mind as we share this message. Did we share
a message and we go, how do you feel in
your heart right now? And we were told pause and wait,
and then you would say these words, I feel peace
and come in my heart. This feeling is the spirit
(36:16):
and it's the hole. He goes, telling us today that
what we've shared with you is true, that we are
messengers of Christ. Wow.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
That pause so simple, Yeah for Marlon, so effective. And
the final step closing the deal, Marlon would invite the
investigator to make a specific date that would then move
them towards getting baptized and completing their conversion.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
That was the most powerful time to get them to
make a commitment because they're feeling in an emotion. We
would attach the emotion to that as the spirit of
God confirming to you that this is the right thing
to do. I feel very strongly that the week of
the twenty fifth or whatever it was, give them a date.
That's what I'm feeling in my heart, and it must
be true because you're feeling it too, So that's how
(37:11):
I would set a date.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Just because Marlon had memorized the scripts and was acting
them out didn't mean he didn't believe in what he
was doing.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
But I really felt I was a representative of Jesus Christ.
You're even told in your missionary commission to say and
do what He himself would say and do. If he
was talking to the very people to whom you are ministering.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
And if you're showing up for Team Jesus, you can't
exactly half ask it.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
But I was representing Jesus, so I've got to give
it my best shot. So part of what we do
is crying as an emotion would be translated as feeling
the spirit. So my goal was to get the investigated
to cry, and if they cry, they buy. Was how
I viewed it.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
It was exhilarating and Marlon worked hard.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
It sounds delusional now, but I was like, even if
we were walking to the bust to the train station,
I was just talking to anyone because I felt I
had to save souls. And then to be able to
give an accounting by the end of my mission that
I fucking did as much as I could do. So
I was totally focused. I was just a full on
soldier for the church and loved it.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Marlins worked hard to memorize all scriptures, all the tactics
and scripts, and he's out there beating the streets, knocking
on doors.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
I was just all in animal.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
His relentless efforts and his knack with the pause paid dividends.
When he baptized three families in a single Sydney street mission,
leaders noticed and gave him a role training up newbies.
Now he'd become the guy he'd looked up to eighteen
months previous.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
I'd take them out, knock on doors, show me how
to do it. I would teach them the scripts, do
the training. That was my life. I was the dude
on my mission.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yeah, that was Marlin's dude journey, a two year transition
from shay but hard working kid to an extraordinary salesman
for God. Once back in Hamilton, he also discovered there
were other ways to use his newfound skills. He moved
swiftly into a very successful career in sales for the
(39:18):
Fishing industry and media, and then selling gym memberships.
Speaker 4 (39:22):
I was in Australia telling Australians you couldn't drink alcohol, smoke,
no drugs, no to your coffee, no sex before marriage,
and we'll take ten percent of your gross and I
was fairly decent at it. So to come home and
sell advertising space was perse easy to me.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
It was uncanny how closely his work in the fitness
industry resembled what he'd done in Australia.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Same thing. Joining gym's losing weight? How many kilos? How
would you feel when you've lost that weight and you've
got to your wedding day? How good are you going
to feel at that moment? That's the time to ask
them to join. Let's start today, Let's get you started.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Marlin's experience is just one story. But at any given time,
there's more than fifty thousand young men and women out
there on their mission, knocking on doors in more than
one hundred and fifty countries and teaching in more than
sixty languages. It's a numbers game. The more people pounding
the pavement, the better the church's chances of growth, success
(40:24):
and stability. But that rings true for the individual Mormon
as well. Taking the jump as a youngster, doing what
the Church asks of you and completing your mission fundamentally
boosts your chances of getting all the good things in
life a young Mormon might want. If you complete your
two year mission, you can come back as an r M,
(40:46):
a returned missionary. Not to be too blunt, but this
means you are hot ship, especially when it comes to
the old courtship and marriage game, which you know is
meant to follow.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
So for the boys, I guess that's like the badge
of honor.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
We're back with Gaileen.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
It's like the best thing you can do that would
make you an eligible bachelor. I for gilk Marian Irim,
that was what you were encouraged to strive for. I
remember my friend saying I don't necessarily want to marry
an Irim, and everyone goes ah, you know, because how
dash she say that out loud around us. None of
the other people in the room agreed with you.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
From the male RM's point of view, marriage after your
mission is just a no brainer. Here's how John someone
will meet properly. In the next episode, describes what happened
the moment he was back from his mission.
Speaker 6 (41:35):
I did what all good Morments coming home from a
missions do. Look the round for a wife. It's just
what you do. You don't think about the rationale behind it.
That's the next step.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
It's just the next step. But it's also the first
link in a chain of positive outcomes. Mission leads to marriage,
Marriage leads to children, and that puts you on the
first rung of a ladder of leadership roles and see
all your status and your significance in the community, as
Gayleen puts it.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Building your way up the hierarchy of the church. If
you're an Ariam, that probably places you in a bit
of position to be a bishop and a state president
and then move on atthrinks.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
So that's your Mormon life. One oh one. You've been
introduced to Joseph Smith. You know how the Mormons came
to New Zealand, and you've got a sense of what
it was like to be an LDS child and teen
growing up in the late twentieth century. You've got a
flavor of Mormon life in Hamilton's Temple view, a tight
knit community with a sense of common purpose and identity,
(42:41):
and some clear guidelines about what makes a good life
and a good Mormon, and you understand the way service
to the church can put your life on a trajectory
to success.
Speaker 8 (42:52):
I was consisted that I've been commanded of God to
marry him, and I believed that.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
But there's another version of Mormon life where growing up
in temple views surrounded by church members with a clear
life path set out in front of you.
Speaker 8 (43:06):
Even though I didn't love them, I really wanted nothing
to do with them. I thought it was awful.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
I thought it was just like my father could instead
lead to some very dark places.
Speaker 8 (43:18):
It just goes higher and higher and it's not dealt
and meanwhile these people continue abusing.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Next time on Heaven's Helpline.
Speaker 8 (43:27):
I remember thinking, this is really really weird. The rituals
that are waving your hands there, taking clothes on and off.
Speaker 6 (43:35):
What is this church I belonged to? It was something
off about here.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Immediately I was never out of his sight for a moment.
Speaker 6 (43:42):
I drove them to the woman's refuge, and you're not supposed.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
To do that.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Heaven's Helpline was funded by New Zealand on air and
the New Zealand Herald endsed me and iHeartRadio. It was researched,
written and presented by me Murray Jones. My producers were
Adam Dudding, who co wrote the series, and Kirsten Johnston
from pop SoC Media, who edited and sound designed it.
(44:10):
Phil Brownlee is our sound engineer. Music was by Thomas
Arbur and Anita Clark. Archival audio came from TVNZED and rnzed.
Ethan Sills is executive producer here at New Zealand Herald.
If you have a story you'd like to share with
me about the Olds Church, or just want to get
in touch, email me securely at Murray Reports at Proton
(44:34):
dot m or dm me on X at Murray Reports.
And for more on this podcast, head to nzedherld dot
co dot NZED slash Heaven's helpline. It's time intensive doing
investigations like this, so if you value this kind of journalism,
(44:56):
please support it by going to your podcast platform and
rate it and reviewing the series
Kyoder Kirsten here one of the producers of the show
A Quick Content Morning. The series deals with abuse, including
child sexual abuse and domestic violence, so listen with care
and see our show notes for details of support services
if you need them. This podcast is funded by New
Zealand on Air.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
In the church that Gayleen grew up in, they'd sometimes
do these things called firesides, no actual fires involved. Rather
it would be an evening meeting where a church leader
would speak on some topic or other and members, perhaps
a youth group, perhaps adults, would be encouraged to discuss
it and ask questions. Once, when Gayleen was in her early.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Teens, somewhere between twelve and fourteen, she.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Went to one of these firesides. This time there was
more than one speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
We went from room to room getting different lessons.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
And in one room there was a lesson that is
really stuck in Gallen's memory. The bishop's who was leading
the discussion, had put a cake on a table at
the front of the room. It was quite the cake.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
This really really beautiful looking, very white cake, and it
was almost sparkling with sugar crystals.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
The youth group knew that the theme of the lesson
was chastity, but the cake, They weren't sure what that
was about.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
But then she said, who would like a piece?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Well, of course everyone wanted a piece.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
But then she got this handful of dirt like dirt
from the ground and threw it all over the cake,
and she said, hoo, wants a piece of cake? And
no one then wanted a piece of cake.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
So the cake you got this already is a metaphor.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
She likened that to being pure and chaste and keeping
ourselves clean versus as somebody touched us inappropriately or kissed
us or anything. How then we wentn't clean and nobody
would ever want us.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
That was forty years ago, but the memory has always
stayed with Gayleen. I mean, seeing an adult throw a
dirt over a cake is pretty memorable under any circumstances.
But the bigger point the bishop's wife was making was
that if you were impure, if you were unchased, if
you with a dirt spattered cake, you would be imperiling
(02:23):
your chances of getting into heaven. But missing out on heaven.
That was taking the long view. The more immediate incentive
to keep in line was that.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
If you did make a mistake, you would end up
in the bishop's office.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
And there were so many mistakes you could make in
this church, so many rules that could be broken.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Not to your coffee.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
You don't if a swear you can't be involved in
six year relations before marriage.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Don't watch TV on Sunday.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
This podcast is all about the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter day Saints, the Mormons. You'll hear about the
things they leave.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
The living can also be united with the deed.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
You'll learn about the importance of service and obedience.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
I was just a full on soldier for the church.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And the unbreakable commitments that people in the church make.
Speaker 6 (03:17):
There is nothing that warrant breaking up our.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Family commitments that lead members to put the church first.
If the church gets embarrassed, I get embarrassed, no matter
the cost.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
They did what I was supposed to do.
Speaker 7 (03:29):
I told my bishop a church wouldn't deliberately put a
child in harm's way.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
They kept insisting that I needed to forgive him. Not
just tell the helpline and they can make it all
go away.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Is this the LDS church abuse helpline speaking to this
is Heaven's Helpline. A six part New Zealand Herald investigation
into the Mormon Church in New Zealand, Episode one, The
Business of Saving Souls. Where are we We're heading on
(04:04):
to State Highway one, so we're in South Auckland or
heading into it, I should say.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
And why are we here?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Because I'm going to show you the Mormon Temple, Adams
the Auckland Mormon Temple. This recordings from a couple of
months ago. I was with Adam Dudding, one of the
producers for this podcast. I wanted him to see what
I had been seeing every time I drove south of Auckland,
and every time I drove back and boom, there it is.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Okay, that is really absolutely stonkingly huge.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah, it's been. It's been going up for a couple
of years now. Every time I drive to Hamilton and
come back to Auckland, I see it getting bigger and
bigger and bigger, and it's nearly done. I'm Murray Jones,
I'm an investigative journalist, and yeah, it's fair to say.
Over the past couple of years, the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter day Saints, better known as the Mormons
or the LDS Church, has become a bit of an
(05:00):
obsession for me. The church its money, its vast new
Auckland Temple. But I think it's so noticeable right it's
put right up on the hill, It's looking over the
whole of Manico. It's really quite a big statement from
the church. You know, when I first started writing two
years ago, I didn't even know the Auckland Temple was
coming up. And then to the fact that this huge
(05:20):
temple is being built in the city I've been living in,
just as I've been introduced to the Mormons. This obsession
began not long after I arrived in New Zealand from
the UK. You might have spotted from my accent that
I'm not from around these parts. Originally I got a
contract to help Enzeme's business desk with a project looking
into charities and their money. Which ones are rich, where
does the money come from, how do they spend it?
(05:42):
That kind of thing, And really quickly it became obvious
that the LDS Church was worth a close look, because
it turns out they are mind bogglingly rich, and there
are all kinds of fascinating side issues around their wealth,
like the way they tithe ten percent of all their
members incomes, many of whom aren't all that rich. To
(06:03):
begin with, or the fact that they spend just a
tiny fraction of that tithe money on the kind of
things you might expect from a charity, you know, soup
kitchens or helping the homeless or running hospitals, or the
way that the Mormons have this huge focus on constructing
these extravagant and expensive temples all over the world, just
like the one in the south of Tarmaki, Mikodo. Anyone
(06:26):
who's driven or flown into Auckland in the past couple
of years will have noticed it.
Speaker 8 (06:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
I mean it's quite beautiful though, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I mean, I'm just looking back at it now, you know,
the spy sort of goes up like a tin layer
wedding cake. Yeah, sixty meters. Although I was focused on
the New Zealand LDS Church, I couldn't ignore the global
wealth of the Mormons. They've got investments worth two hundred
and sixty billion dollars US. That's more than the annual
(06:53):
GDP of New Zealand. Anyway, when my articles came out,
well they've got a pretty big reaction. Online journalists like
to pretend that we don't read the comments on our stories,
but of course we do, and these ones were fascinating.
There were non religious readers outraged that churches have tax
(07:14):
free status at all. There were current members of the
church coming to its defense, saying that my articles were
a hit job by a so called journalist. But there
were also conversations kicking off in the comments that made
me realize there was more to say about Mormon money.
There were some heartbreaking accounts of the way tithing had
been really punishing for members. One woman talked about how
(07:36):
she still felt emotionally scarred by.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
The realization that I could have provided my suicidal team
the specialist therapy the bishop refused to help pay for
if I hadn't been paying tithes for decades.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
One woman talked about how she was asked by a
senior church leader.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
To pay tithing on my student line because I was
receiving money.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Another woman, commenting from Salt Lake City, US, Utah, the
home of the Mormon faith, said she'd been led to
believe that if you pay tithing, the Lord will provide.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
But funny, once we start paying tithing, we had enough
on our own.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
What a scam. Reading all these I wanted to do
some follow up stories on the human cost of tithing
and also hear from more women, since most of the
people in my original Mormon Money articles were men. So
I sent messages to a dozen or serve of the
people who'd made comments. Would they be interested in telling
their stories in a bit more detail for a follow
(08:34):
up article. Half of those people got back to me.
Half of that half agreed to a phone call, and
one of those three people, well, she didn't want to
talk to me about tithing. She wanted to talk about
something much much darker. That first call lasted for a
(08:56):
couple of hours, and.
Speaker 8 (08:57):
So you think you're the only one such disparate circus,
But that's the mentality are edit.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
At time, And to be honest, it shook me. So
I have a bit a bit lostful words.
Speaker 8 (09:11):
Yeah, it's not as it is hard to understand.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
This woman who I'll be calling Caroline. So she had
been in the church for more than forty years before
finally leaving. Her story was one of betrayal.
Speaker 8 (09:26):
You just trust that the leaders are going to take care.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Of them, trauma and denial.
Speaker 8 (09:31):
I tap myself off from everything. I cut myself off
from the news, try to predict myself.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Of missed opportunities and cover ups. You said that people
knew he was predatory. Who knew and what did they know?
But talking to her also made me realize I needed
to be asking some very different questions about the church. Yes,
(09:59):
the church is rich, and sure it's important to look
closely at the bird and tithing places on some members.
But after talking to Caroline, it got me wondering about
things like who does the church value and who do
they see as expendable.
Speaker 8 (10:15):
If you feel superior to somebody, it becomes real easy
to just say, oh, well, wouldn't have happened to my kid?
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Who holds power in the church and how do they
use that power?
Speaker 9 (10:30):
You ever think good that your family wants of you,
you have to get this person's approval.
Speaker 6 (10:34):
The opportunity for abuse as a means.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
And when things go wrong, when lives are ruined, when
families are torn apart, when crimes are committed, what will
the church do to keep things quiet?
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Handle problem?
Speaker 2 (10:49):
She'll it off, get the victim into figures. It would
be almost two years before some of those questions were answered.
And we are going to get to all of that.
And yes, we are going to come back to Caroline
and hear her whole story. But first we need just
a bit of context about this church. Where did it
(11:10):
come from and how did it make it over to
altai ROA. Mormon history is really fascinating. We're going to
give you the potted version here, but if you're keen
to understand more, then listen to our explainer episode in
the podcast feed. So in eighteen twenties New York State,
a young man called Joseph Smith had some religious visions
(11:31):
which told him not to follow any of the current
churches out there, but to set up his own instead.
The way Smith tells it, he was first visited by
God and Jesus. Then one night in eighteen twenty three,
an angel called Morone I appeared in his bedroom.
Speaker 7 (11:50):
Standing in the air, for his feet did not touch
the floor.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Moroni showed Joseph the location of some golden plates that
were hidden near his home.
Speaker 7 (12:00):
There was a book deposited written upon gold plates.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Under divine guidance, Smith translated the pages, and those translations
became what's known as the Book of Mormon. It has
a huge narrative spanning centuries, climaxing with Jesus visiting the
Americas after his resurrection. Smith was into polygamy, the practice
of men taking multiple wives. This would get the church
(12:25):
in trouble with wider American society, so they fled Westwoods
and set up shop in Salt Lake Valley, Utah, which
has remained the beating heart of the church ever since.
Just a quarter century after the Book of Mormon was published,
in the eighteen fifties, the first LDS missionaries arrived in
(12:49):
New Zealand. They had minimal success converting European settlers, so
turned their focus to Marii and it went really well.
Large numbers of Tanga to Fenua joined the church. There's
a number of reasons that people point to for this. Language, ancestry, polygamy,
and prophecies all played a part. But crucially, unlike European missionaries,
(13:15):
American Mormons weren't involved in the British crowns Land grabs.
But again we dive into these factors in the Explainer episode.
Whatever the specific reasons, though, the fact is Mormonism became
really big in Marydom. By the nineteen sixties, over sixty
percent of the membership of the LDS Church was Mardi.
(13:38):
So couldn't we go and can we go thing? Nope,
So only the most worthy of church members are allowed
to go in. It's where special rituals and ordinances happen.
So you've got your ceilings, which is your weddings, You've
got your baptism and they are dead. You've got your endowments,
So not anyone can just go in at any time.
It's only for special situations, ceremonies.
Speaker 6 (13:59):
Watch out for the.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Temples are one of the most important symbols of faith
for Latter day Saints. Sure they have churches all over,
but temples are much more rare and much more special.
As I mentioned there to Adam, only those who are
deemed to be behaving well enough according to church doctrine
are allowed inside the temple. This new temple in the
(14:23):
south of Auckland will no doubt be a huge deal
to the many members living nearby. But if you wind
the clock back to the construction of this country's first
Mormon temple in nineteen fifty eight, well, it literally shifted
the landscape.
Speaker 9 (14:37):
An American style suburb spraying from the swamp and Tui
Karamea became Temple View, a beautifully landscaped village, snugly and
closed by one thousand acres of church owned farmland.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
That was from a nineteen seventy three documentary marveling at
how the church had built a self contained community in
the Waikato, centered around a brand new temple, a vast
white building with a sharp spire reaching for the sky.
This was just the eleventh Mormon temple in the world,
so it was a matter of enormous prestige and pride
(15:10):
for New Zealand Mormons. The school next door, Church College,
was a co ed secondary school that took borders and
day students. The temple, the school and the houses of
Temple View were all built by volunteers called labor missionaries.
Their mantra was Kiirhanga mortunu ake, build for eternity.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
The labor missionaries were just ordinary people who were mostly
Maori being missionaries.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
That's doctor Gina Colvin her father have been Mormon for generations,
and although Gina has been a vocal critic of the
church over the years, she's only recently left. The idea
of Temple View was to build a community where Mormon
family could flourish and look after each other. But for
some of the Mari among them, it was something even more.
Speaker 5 (16:06):
You know, after generations of having your land and your
livelihood taken away from you through the confiscations and the
land grabs, and all of the agony and the traumas
that were as result of that. It was phenomenal, I think,
to be part of something that built something for Marii
and for their spiritual flourishing and their spiritual welfare.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Mormons flocked to live near the temple. Some came from
Pacific nations or from Australia, places which at that time
didn't have temples of their own. Remember Gayleen, the woman
who watched someone throw dirt all over a white cake
when she was a kid. Her family moved from Dunedin
to live near the new suburb.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
We moved up here and that was different because like
there were Mormons everywhere. Like you'd go to the super market,
you'd bump into them. You'd walk down the road, you
bump into them. You wanted to talk to someone, and
it's just over your fencer, over the down the road.
They were everywhere.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Temple View is still a really distinctive place, although it's
much quieter since the school shut down in two thousand
and nine. The whole suburb, which is southwest of Hamilton City,
is a little bit eerie if you drive into it
without realizing what it is. A tiny land island of
suburbia centered around spotless white buildings in the middle of farmland.
(17:27):
There's around twelve hundred residents, and just about everyone that
lives there is a Mormon. For a very long time,
this really was the epicenter of Mormonism for the whole
of the Pacific region. Many of the people you'll meet
in this podcast lived in or near that suburb, or
studied at church college, or married their spouse at that temple.
(17:51):
But even though it's kind of a religious enclave, and
even though this is a really tight knit community, Mormons
haven't completely separate themselves from mainstream New Zealand. We've had
Mormon all Blacks, including Joonolomu Mahanonu and in the sixties
and seventies the Going Brothers Sid, Brian and Ken. We've
(18:13):
had Mormon Olympians including Valerie Adams and Joseph Parker. There
have been Mormon Miss New Zealand's. One of them made
it to the top seven in Miss World Miss New Zealand.
Speaker 8 (18:26):
My name is Vicky Lee Humi.
Speaker 9 (18:28):
I'm a student teacher and I'm studying English and education.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
There are New Zealand judges who are Mormon. Mormon politicians.
I mean, our third most recent prime minister was a Mormon.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
I was Mormon.
Speaker 10 (18:41):
I lived in Mornsville, and while I loved politics, I
never ever dreamed I would work in it.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Ja cinder Ardern quit the church in her early twenties
for reasons we'll get to, but her family is still
very involved. Her uncle Ian is a senior leader and
was principal of Church College in the nineteen eighties. The
church has made a real effort to help the country
understand that they're pretty decent folk. Since the mid nineteen eighties,
the people of Temple View have put on their epic
(19:09):
Christmas Lights extravaganza, and around the same time in nineteen
eighty one, the church commissioned a documentary for the New
Zealand audience.
Speaker 7 (19:17):
I've asked me to tell you a little bit about.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Themselves, narrated by five star gold plated New Zealand hero
Edmund Hillary, who, as you know, climbed Mount Everest before
anyone else.
Speaker 7 (19:31):
Four the Mormons, the most important single unit in the
church is the family.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
To be clear, Hillary was not a Mormon himself, but
as he put.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
It, maybe they didn't convert me to anything, but I
couldn't help admiring their politeness and their sincerity.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Clean cut, family focused, hard working, polite, harmless. And that's
the space, more or less where Mormons of sat in
the eyes of non Mormon New Zealand for a good
half century or so. A minority religion, fifty four thousand
members according to the twenty eighteen census, closer to one
hundred and twenty thousand according to the church's own figures,
(20:14):
a church whose followers here are mostly Maudi in Pacifica,
but a sizable minority of Pakia, with some doctrinal quirks
that make it a bit different from a lot of
other Christian churches, a bit old fashioned, a bit straight,
and sure outsiders might find some of their rules and
rituals a bit unusual, worthy of a bit of teasing,
(20:37):
Like in the TV show South Park.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
That's another thing, Why do you have to be so
freaking nice all the time?
Speaker 4 (20:41):
It isn't normal?
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Or in the hit Broadway musical The Book of Mormon,
which was written incidentally by the creators of South Park.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
That's a partner, then't Jackson Challi theory.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
For this sketch from the mid nineteen eighties New Zealand
comedy Funny Business.
Speaker 9 (21:01):
I don't drink coffee, I don't drink tea, and I enjoy.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Celibacy.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
And I don't know if there's any connection between that
kind of teasing and the fact that around two thousand
and nine, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day
Saints started distancing itself from the label Mormon and insisted
that people refer to the religion as LDS or by
its full wordy title. Most members I spoke to still
referred to themselves as Mormons, even though it's no longer
(21:36):
the official line.
Speaker 9 (21:40):
Norman Mormon.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
But if the worst thing you're known for is your
straight laced faithfulness and your Christmas lights, then reputationally speaking,
you're not doing too badly, my dames, Elder Norman, after
the break your front dormant, Oh, we meet the door knockers.
(22:09):
For us non Mormons, the most likely way we've interacted
with a Mormon is when a couple of clean cut
young men in black suits and shiny shoes with a
little black name tag saying Elder Smith or Elder Jones
have turned up at our door. Maybe you've politely shut
the door. Maybe you've chatted on the doorstep for a bit.
Speaker 8 (22:33):
National program call a family whole evening program.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Maybe you've invited them in.
Speaker 9 (22:38):
That it's a pleasure for us to be with you tonight.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
And just maybe you liked what you heard and ended
up joining their church.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
When I was about five years old, two Mormon missionaries
knocked on my mum's door.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
This is Marlin Dean, and.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
My mum became interested in the messages that they head
to share and felt that the values and the principles
that the church had really resonated with her and aligned
with how she wanted to live her life and bring
up her family. As a consequence, she was starting to
attend to church.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
This was the mid nineteen seventies. Marlin's father came on
board a couple of years later, so now the Deans
were Mormons. They lived in Wairoa, just down the road
from Newhacker, home to one of the oldest Mormon meeting
houses in the country, a majority Maori area with strong
(23:32):
historical connections to the church. When he was thirteen, Marlon
was sent off as a border to Church College. Remember
that's the Mormon high school, right next to the temple
on the fringes of Hamilton. For Marlin, this was life changing.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
It was a massively positive experience for me, the highlight
of my life. You know, you get to connect with
youth from all around New Zealand. I was in a
dormitory was sixty to seven the other boys in so
from my years of being thirteen right eighteen, that was
my life.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Everything at Church College was geared towards the teachings of
the church, or the teachers were Mormons. There was extra
scripture study after school, and also because of the American influence,
they played a lot of basketball and they were really good.
At one point they won the national champs eight years
in a row.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
My teammates were Mormon. My roommates were Mormon, so they
become your friends for life, and they still are friends
some respects today.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Gayleen, whose family had moved from Dunedin to be close
to the temple, she went to Church College too.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I always remember thinking, if I wanted a good academic grounding,
I probably shouldn't have gone to Church College.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
But that kind of wasn't the point.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
It was about building your spiritual.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Life and the building blocks of a spiritual life. Rules,
lots of rules, some around your schedule.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
You don't watch TV on Sunday, you don't study on Sunday.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
How you should speak.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
You don't ever swear. You can't even use the word
peg because you might as well swear. That's saying something
bad to somebody.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
What you eat and drink.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
I don't know if you've heard about the Word of wisdom.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
This is the law that says no ty coffee, alcohol, tobacco,
or illicit drugs.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
And stitched on to the hot drinks was the idea
that one of the bad substances was caffeine and coke
haad caffeine. So that was commonly accepted as part of
the Word of Wisdom.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
It's not bad advice. In fact, to study in Utah
showed that Mormons lived six and a half years longer
on average than non Mormons. But the rule that was
drilled home more than any other was how you should
absolutely keep to the law of chastity.
Speaker 8 (25:53):
We're all striving to get married in the temple. And
if you ruin it once and you've spoiled your chance.
Speaker 10 (25:59):
What do you do affect so much? The boy?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
This is from a nineteen eighty documentary about the Mormon Church.
And this is a middle aged man speaking to a
teenage girl in a mixed gendered seminary class about how
girls should behave.
Speaker 10 (26:16):
And the reason he's all over you is not necessarily
that he's that way inclined, but because you've stirred him
inside because of your shoulders, because of the way you
weigh your gris see through tops can do terrible things
to boys, They really can.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Gaileen says she took those childhood lessons really seriously and
carried them well into her adulthood.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
I had to obey the rules with execness because I
was the black and white person, and I thought that
was good then.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
For both sporty Marlin and studious Galeen. Getting through school
was just the warm up act for the most important
act of service and rite of passage that a young
Mormon can do, going on a mission. Going on a
mission to knock on doors, to proselytize, to attempt to
(27:04):
convert non members is an absolute cornerstone of Mormon life.
The church estimates that since its founding, more than a
million Latter day Saints have served a full time mission.
You could think of it as being a bit like
military service. You're sent out into the world for up
to two years, quite possibly to another country, as a
(27:26):
kind of soldier of the Lord, doing a tour of duty.
It usually starts with a couple of weeks of what's
basically biblical boot camp would be door knockers attend a
missionary training center or empty seat where they learn the
rudiments of preaching the Gospel to total strangers. Then you're
off saving as many souls as you can. It's a
(27:48):
massive global operation and it helps the church grow. In
nineteen ninety, the year both Galen and Marln began their missions,
the church claims it converted more than three hundred thousand people,
a high watermark in church history. And for young Mormons themselves,
there's a chance to serve the church they love.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
That showed that I was a good, faithful member of
the church, and that's what we were all striving to be.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
And to make your family proud. And of course there's FOMO.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Some of my best friends were already out and they
were seeing leaders. They're saying they're in a great experience
Marlin again, and so you sort of think, well, what
else am I going to do? You can't just go
surfing by yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Oh and did we mention you have to pay for
it yourself?
Speaker 3 (28:33):
They recommended you, say, sixteen thousand. Back in those days
quite a.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Lot of money, and that was a lot. Marlin pulled
together the funds with help from its hard working family
plus a church sponsor. Gayleen scrimped and saved for years
so she'd be ready for her call to mission. And
sure enough, just as her last year at UNI wrapped up,
the call came destination Christ Church.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
We had fifty five of us crammed into this little
mission training center.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Gayleien had always thought of herself as a pretty hardcore believer,
a rule follower, the righteous Mormon.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
But when I got there there everyone's all righteous as well.
So I remember thinking, gosh, this really is the army
of the Lord.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
And the Lord's army was busy. Once the training weeks
were over, the big door knocking days began.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
You woke up at six thirty, half an hour ti
shower and make you study A seven. You would have
study for an hour, breakfall, breakfast, nine thirty year out
on the job. People in all day, an hour for
lunch and dinner. Yeah, to write in your due and
outdate the missionary records so very exhausting, and then you'd
go to bed and start it all again. And that
(29:47):
was five days a week oxxept for church on Sunday,
and then on a Monday you would have till six
o'clock to shop, to wash your clothes and clean your
house in that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
That was called your preparation day or p day. But
it wasn't a full day off. After six pm you
had to head back out for an evening's proselytizing. Out
on mission, Gaileen discovered there was one more rule.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
We weren't allowed to listen to any music that wasn't
put out by the church. Or we were allowed to
listen to a group called after Glown.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
After Bellzeskin alone. It's a little bit scary design of
his work the Commandments.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Marlin started his mission the same year as Gaileen, but
he was called to Sydney, whose territory included pretty much
all of New South Wales. Rules differ from mission to mission,
and poor old Marlin wasn't even afforded the meager joys
of Afterglow At his MTC in Sydney. There was no
music allowed at all.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
I love music, so that was really really hard for me.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
He struggled with a lot of things at first, so.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
I was very shy, didn't know what I was doing,
certainly didn't know any scriptures, so I was really raw
arriving into Sydney, and for the first part I was
just following the senior companion.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
On your mission, you're assigned a companion and you cannot
leave their side. The pair of you is known as
a companionship. Every waking minute is spent with them. The
only time you're not in each other's eye line is
when one of you goes to the bathroom, and even
then your partner has to wait right outside. Marlon was
shy and was anxious about speaking in public, but he
(31:34):
compensated for that in other ways.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
I have a capacity for work. My family are workers,
so worked in shearing sheds and out on the land.
I just figured I'm as well just work as hard
as I can. So I would knock doors all day,
every day until people tell me to go away, and
I wasn't afraid of doing that.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
You can knock all you like, but it's hopeless unless
you're making some conversions. Marlon and his fellow missionaries had
monthly conversion targets, and they simply weren't meeting them.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
We would maybe do seven to ten a month across
two hundred companionships. So we were struggling.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
But then a new senior leader arrived at the mission,
and he quickly impressed Marlin.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
He's a businessman, self made millionaire. He was very motivational,
he was charismatic.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
This guy set wildly optimistic monthly targets.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
Said well, we're not going to try to get to fifty,
We're going to try to get towe hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
And he showed Marlin's cohort some tips for hitting those targets.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
I thought, what the heckclimb as will apply those scripts
and those tools and techniques, and I was starting to
get success.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Scripts, tools, techniques. I'm intrigued. What does it take to
save a soul? As a journalist, I've introduced myself to
a fair number of strangers. Sometimes they're a bit hesitant
to talk to me, and I need to win them round.
But convincing someone to join your church, to experience a
(32:59):
spiritual conversion, to have a religious experience, that's a whole
another ballgame. But it was a skill. Marlon got down
to a t So here's how he did it. Perhaps
the most important step of all was the first one, preparation,
(33:19):
practicing and memorizing those scripts.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Marlon mentioned, we had a sequence of words, actions and
gestures that are designed to create an emotional connection.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
And this included the way you talked.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Is a certain cadence and even winter pause.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
So once you're actually on someone's doorstep and they haven't
slammed the door on you, where do you start? Well,
Marlon would start here.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
We're messengers of Jesus Christ. We're here to talk about
the purpose of life. Where did I come from? Why
am I here? And where am I going after this
life is over? Have you ever wondered about the purpose
of life?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
At the same time, would be trying to glean some
basic information.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
Getting to know them. We would find out about what's
important to them and then match the message to what's
important to them emotionally.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
So whether it will he acknowledges now that often it
was easier to make headway with people who were vulnerable
in some sense.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
Looking back, I think they were socioeconomically challenged a little bit.
They were searching for support in their community, a little
bit isolated. People that are questioning what the purpose of
their life is that are experiencing some heartache, whether that's
some financial struggles, whether that's some loss of a loved one.
And I would tailor the message so I knew that
I would get a better result if I spoke on
(34:39):
the door about those types of things.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Next step, if the conversation was flowing, he'd lean into
those tough subjects, like if Marlon found out they'd recently
lost a loved one, he'd say.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
You will see them again. If you endure to the end,
you will be with them together forever. How good would
it feel for you to be with him and see
them again? Or he might get really specific with your daughter,
who's next to you, How would you feel if you
were to live forever with your wife and your daughter.
(35:15):
As we share these messages with you, you're going to
have feelings, feelings in your heart and in your mind.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I want to dig in for a moment to this
emotional triggering of the investigator. That's the missionary's term for
someone who hasn't closed the door on them. So Marlin
says he and his fellow missionaries became so confident that
they could evoke these kind of emotions that they'd even
warn them in advance that it was coming. A bit
(35:45):
like a stage magician who tells you to watch extra
closely because that coin in their hand is about to disappear,
but you still don't see how they did it.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
So be sensitive to those feelings in your heart and
your mind as we share this message. Did we share
a message and we go, how do you feel in
your heart right now? And we were told pause and wait,
and then you would say these words, I feel peace
and come in my heart. This feeling is the spirit
(36:16):
and it's the hole. He goes, telling us today that
what we've shared with you is true, that we are
messengers of Christ. Wow.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
That pause so simple, Yeah for Marlon, so effective. And
the final step closing the deal, Marlon would invite the
investigator to make a specific date that would then move
them towards getting baptized and completing their conversion.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
That was the most powerful time to get them to
make a commitment because they're feeling in an emotion. We
would attach the emotion to that as the spirit of
God confirming to you that this is the right thing
to do. I feel very strongly that the week of
the twenty fifth or whatever it was, give them a date.
That's what I'm feeling in my heart, and it must
be true because you're feeling it too, So that's how
(37:11):
I would set a date.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Just because Marlon had memorized the scripts and was acting
them out didn't mean he didn't believe in what he
was doing.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
But I really felt I was a representative of Jesus Christ.
You're even told in your missionary commission to say and
do what He himself would say and do. If he
was talking to the very people to whom you are ministering.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
And if you're showing up for Team Jesus, you can't
exactly half ask it.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
But I was representing Jesus, so I've got to give
it my best shot. So part of what we do
is crying as an emotion would be translated as feeling
the spirit. So my goal was to get the investigated
to cry, and if they cry, they buy. Was how
I viewed it.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
It was exhilarating and Marlon worked hard.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
It sounds delusional now, but I was like, even if
we were walking to the bust to the train station,
I was just talking to anyone because I felt I
had to save souls. And then to be able to
give an accounting by the end of my mission that
I fucking did as much as I could do. So
I was totally focused. I was just a full on
soldier for the church and loved it.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Marlins worked hard to memorize all scriptures, all the tactics
and scripts, and he's out there beating the streets, knocking
on doors.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
I was just all in animal.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
His relentless efforts and his knack with the pause paid dividends.
When he baptized three families in a single Sydney street mission,
leaders noticed and gave him a role training up newbies.
Now he'd become the guy he'd looked up to eighteen
months previous.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
I'd take them out, knock on doors, show me how
to do it. I would teach them the scripts, do
the training. That was my life. I was the dude
on my mission.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yeah, that was Marlin's dude journey, a two year transition
from shay but hard working kid to an extraordinary salesman
for God. Once back in Hamilton, he also discovered there
were other ways to use his newfound skills. He moved
swiftly into a very successful career in sales for the
(39:18):
Fishing industry and media, and then selling gym memberships.
Speaker 4 (39:22):
I was in Australia telling Australians you couldn't drink alcohol, smoke,
no drugs, no to your coffee, no sex before marriage,
and we'll take ten percent of your gross and I
was fairly decent at it. So to come home and
sell advertising space was perse easy to me.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
It was uncanny how closely his work in the fitness
industry resembled what he'd done in Australia.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Same thing. Joining gym's losing weight? How many kilos? How
would you feel when you've lost that weight and you've
got to your wedding day? How good are you going
to feel at that moment? That's the time to ask
them to join. Let's start today, Let's get you started.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Marlin's experience is just one story. But at any given time,
there's more than fifty thousand young men and women out
there on their mission, knocking on doors in more than
one hundred and fifty countries and teaching in more than
sixty languages. It's a numbers game. The more people pounding
the pavement, the better the church's chances of growth, success
(40:24):
and stability. But that rings true for the individual Mormon
as well. Taking the jump as a youngster, doing what
the Church asks of you and completing your mission fundamentally
boosts your chances of getting all the good things in
life a young Mormon might want. If you complete your
two year mission, you can come back as an r M,
(40:46):
a returned missionary. Not to be too blunt, but this
means you are hot ship, especially when it comes to
the old courtship and marriage game, which you know is
meant to follow.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
So for the boys, I guess that's like the badge
of honor.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
We're back with Gaileen.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
It's like the best thing you can do that would
make you an eligible bachelor. I for gilk Marian Irim,
that was what you were encouraged to strive for. I
remember my friend saying I don't necessarily want to marry
an Irim, and everyone goes ah, you know, because how
dash she say that out loud around us. None of
the other people in the room agreed with you.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
From the male RM's point of view, marriage after your
mission is just a no brainer. Here's how John someone
will meet properly. In the next episode, describes what happened
the moment he was back from his mission.
Speaker 6 (41:35):
I did what all good Morments coming home from a
missions do. Look the round for a wife. It's just
what you do. You don't think about the rationale behind it.
That's the next step.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
It's just the next step. But it's also the first
link in a chain of positive outcomes. Mission leads to marriage,
Marriage leads to children, and that puts you on the
first rung of a ladder of leadership roles and see
all your status and your significance in the community, as
Gayleen puts it.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Building your way up the hierarchy of the church. If
you're an Ariam, that probably places you in a bit
of position to be a bishop and a state president
and then move on atthrinks.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
So that's your Mormon life. One oh one. You've been
introduced to Joseph Smith. You know how the Mormons came
to New Zealand, and you've got a sense of what
it was like to be an LDS child and teen
growing up in the late twentieth century. You've got a
flavor of Mormon life in Hamilton's Temple view, a tight
knit community with a sense of common purpose and identity,
(42:41):
and some clear guidelines about what makes a good life
and a good Mormon, and you understand the way service
to the church can put your life on a trajectory
to success.
Speaker 8 (42:52):
I was consisted that I've been commanded of God to
marry him, and I believed that.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
But there's another version of Mormon life where growing up
in temple views surrounded by church members with a clear
life path set out in front of you.
Speaker 8 (43:06):
Even though I didn't love them, I really wanted nothing
to do with them. I thought it was awful.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
I thought it was just like my father could instead
lead to some very dark places.
Speaker 8 (43:18):
It just goes higher and higher and it's not dealt
and meanwhile these people continue abusing.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Next time on Heaven's Helpline.
Speaker 8 (43:27):
I remember thinking, this is really really weird. The rituals
that are waving your hands there, taking clothes on and off.
Speaker 6 (43:35):
What is this church I belonged to? It was something
off about here.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Immediately I was never out of his sight for a moment.
Speaker 6 (43:42):
I drove them to the woman's refuge, and you're not supposed.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
To do that.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Heaven's Helpline was funded by New Zealand on air and
the New Zealand Herald endsed me and iHeartRadio. It was researched,
written and presented by me Murray Jones. My producers were
Adam Dudding, who co wrote the series, and Kirsten Johnston
from pop SoC Media, who edited and sound designed it.
(44:10):
Phil Brownlee is our sound engineer. Music was by Thomas
Arbur and Anita Clark. Archival audio came from TVNZED and rnzed.
Ethan Sills is executive producer here at New Zealand Herald.
If you have a story you'd like to share with
me about the Olds Church, or just want to get
in touch, email me securely at Murray Reports at Proton
(44:34):
dot m or dm me on X at Murray Reports.
And for more on this podcast, head to nzedherld dot
co dot NZED slash Heaven's helpline. It's time intensive doing
investigations like this, so if you value this kind of journalism,
(44:56):
please support it by going to your podcast platform and
rate it and reviewing the series
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