Mormon Temple INSIDER: Sealer Martin Lock | Ep. 1909

Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is May 29th, 2024, and we have a groundbreaking interview today. Today we're interviewing Martin Lock.

Hey Martin, how's it going?

Pretty good, thank you, John. Good to be here.

Martin, um, aside from being a brilliant fellow from the UK, from England, London, or Bristol, depending on, you know, how much detail you want to know, what's significant about Martin other than his amazing Mormon story? For the first time, we have a Mormon Stories interview with a former member of a Mormon, LDS Church temple presidency and a temple sealer. So, that's fascinating in and of itself, and it's kind of a first on Mormon Stories podcast. We all know now that in the, you know, in 2024 and for the past 5-10 years, Russell Nelson has just been going bananas building or announcing temples all over the world. And so, talking about temple work is something that's kind of really important because it's a real big emphasis for the Mormon Church right now. But, uh, it's also relevant; this interview is important, in my opinion, because the Mormon Church is dying in the UK, in Western Europe, and in many parts of the world. Now, it's growing in Africa, and, um, because of birth rate, it's slowly growing in Utah. Um, but in so many parts of the world, the Mormon Church is hemorrhaging, and it's especially hemorrhaging in the UK. And, uh, you know, Martin has been a member in the UK for 5507, almost 57 years, almost 57 years. So, um, we're going to be talking about his conversion to the church, his younger years in the church, and and what, uh, what it meant to him and what he valued in it. And then we're going to be talking about his service in the temple, his his his time growing, you know, a branch into a ward, serving in various levels of leadership. And then we're going to be talking about the decline of the Mormon Church in the UK, the decline of his own testimony, or his truth crisis as he likes to call it. And then, um, we'll also be talking about his late wife, to whom he was married for 50 years, and, uh, and then we'll be talking about again his views now on Temple work as a former Temple sealer and former Temple presidency member, and any other stuff that he wants to share. So, uh, I'm super excited. Without any further ado, Martin Lock, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Thank you, John. Pleased to be with you.

Okay. Um, Nemo says hi as well, of course.

Great. Apparently you knew Nemo somehow.

Yeah, I knew Doug, as I remember him. Dou-- he used to come in when he was a service missionary in the London Temple, and I was in the Visitor Center as the Director there for two years. Uh, he used to come across on occasions to visit and, uh, talk to us, and that's my first introduction to him.

What was Premo Douglas like?

Oh, he was very enthusiastic, I think, because as I remember, he was, uh, about to get married to this, I think, a young lady from Australia, or I think she, I think she's from the UK, but yeah, but she may have lived in Australia or been on a mission. I can't quite remember, but something along those lines. Yeah. And, uh, of course, the next thing I, I, uh, I see him on on the his own YouTube program. I, um, little surprised to see that, but, uh, I've listened to some of his, a lot of, well, a lot of his YouTube videos, and, uh, I found him very interesting and a very intelligent young man. Yeah. Um, and of course, I see I've listened to him on your shows and, uh, I've enjoyed the podcast. Very enlightening, very informative. Um, and yeah, when I get back to the UK, I'm going to make a, a point of making contact with him direct.

Yeah, yeah, he's excited that you're here.

Okay. Well, um, before we begin, uh, what we like to do is give everyone a chance to just kind of state their intention of why they wanted to tell their story on Mormon Stories podcast, other than the fact that I invited you. Um, do you want to state your intention?

Yeah, I, I, I, a friend of mine, my ex-business partner, once said that, uh, having served in some prominent positions in the church, knowing a lot of people in the church, and certainly in the southern half of England, that, uh, my story might be, uh, very advantageous and interesting and helpful to people that may be in the same position I'm in, and that's, uh, the truth claims of the church, and, uh, I, I've begun to question those in the last, certainly the last two and a half years of my life. I've, at about what age?

Um, about 75 years of age.

Yeah. What's it like to spend, like, we we'll be talking about 73 years dedicated, well, almost all your life dedicated to the church, and then at age 73 starting to have questions and doubts? That's its own thing.

Yeah. Well, I, like I said, I didn't have a shelf as much as I had a back burner to put them on. And, um, I thought maybe one day in the future that those questions I had would somehow be resolved. Yeah. But as I've found by pure accident on YouTube one day, um, I listened to something about, uh, I knew about polygamy, but then I didn't understand the development of polyandry, and that really, uh, made me pursue a deeper dive into what was happening in that time period in the church. And then I discovered lots of other things, and I had questions already, questions like, uh, well, why did Joseph Smith's counselor either leave the church or were disciplined by him personally, uh, and left, you know, people like Frederick G. Williams and Oliver Cowdery, um, Sidney Rigdon to a degree, and then, well, the biggest one, of course, the biggest one of all, of course, was, uh, William Law. Yeah. And I found that very, uh, interesting because, of course, the he produced the the Nauvoo Expositor, which was the the downfall of Joseph Smith. And, uh, so that took me into a deep dive. I then got onto other YouTube programs, Mormon Stories, of course, Grant Palmer, my hero, I would say that was my link really was Grant Palmer. I listened to one of his talks, the changing view of-- he served his mission in the UK, did he?

Pretty sure. Pretty sure.

Well, I, I, uh, I listen to, I'm not sure about that, I listen to his, uh, podcast on the changing view of God. Yeah. And, uh, that really kind of, uh, put things in perspective because I had views on that as well in the Book of Mormon. And I thought, well, it, you know, looking back over it, it never really explained the Godhead as we're were taught later in the, as it changed in Joseph Smith's time. And I thought that's rather strange and peculiar and, um, not very direct. And, uh, that was one of the things I put on the back burner, so to speak. And, uh, it kind of all came to a bit of a a climax then. I was, I was, and we're getting ahead of ourselves, 'cause we got to tell-- I became very much a critical thinker all of a sudden.

Oh yeah.

Uh, yeah. Well, I don't mean to stop you, but, um, that'll be a really good teaser for, you know, kind of what, um, when we get to that point in the story. But, um, yeah, some people think that when you come on Mormon Stories, you're trying to damage the church, hurt the church, or take people out of the church. That's not your intention.

No. Okay. Never has been, and and probably never will be. Yeah. Uh, the last thing I would want, want to do is, uh, um, affect anyone's faith, because I know people need the church, they need the community, they may be vulnerable people on their own with no support of either family, priesthood, or other connections, and I wouldn't want to damage the what their intentions may be.

Yeah. Perfect. Beautiful. All right. Well, let's, let's begin. Now, you are a convert to the church. You joined at what age?

I was 20 years of age.

Okay. Tell us whatever you think is important about your 0 to 20 years that made you a made you a candidate for baptism into the LDS Church.

Well, um, I've often thought about that one. I, I've always said that the I looked at it that the church found me. I was not a religious person; in fact, I was far from it. Um, even at school, I had no religious inclination at all at school. Um, I, uh, I found it very, I, I did go to, uh, the local Church of England in the village where I was raised.

What was that village called?

It was called With Church.

Okay. It's south of Bristol. It's actually in Somerset, not the Bristol County.

And where's Bristol in in the UK?

Appro-- it's in the west country. It's close to Cheltenham, Gloucester, uh, Taunton, below that, uh, over the over the Severn Bridge are into Wells, very close to Cardiff. So I was, Wi-- was a little country town, never really made much growth, but it had two churches. It had a Church of England and a Congregational Church. Incidentally, my father was Church of England, my mother was Congregational. My dad was very pro-conservative voter, and my mother was Labor, so they had these opposing forces going on in the family, although my mom and dad had a a good relationship and a good marriage and were wonderful parents to my brother and I. I had one brother. So, uh, I went to confirmation classes in the village, just 'cause I think the girls were nice there, and, uh, my friend enticed me to go there, which I did, and I was confirmed by the the Bishop of Bristol, no doubt, uh, and, uh, I kind of was very confused about the nature of God, Christian worship, um, the Bible, and all those kind of teachings, and what was in context and what wasn't. Understanding was difficult because obviously you're talking about Jewish law and tradition and culture and things like that. It was to me, and to a lot of people, it was all confusing and really quite unnecessary in a young person's life. Um, and then I was always raised to be a good person, to have Christian values, was sent to Sunday school. Um, I was a very innocent kind of young person growing up. And, uh, when I got to senior school, or high school as you call it here, um, I loved sport, loved it. I played a lot of, uh, soccer, football as we call it home, soccer here. Um, and then I, I went in down to the gymnasium one lunchtime, and the older boys were playing basketball, and they said, "Come in and join us if you want to," and I did, and I just adapted to it very quickly. I was 13, and, um, I got up a couple of years, and, uh, I met a basketball club, um, that played at our school in on a Wednesday evening, and I, I asked if I could watch them play, and the man said, "As long as you sit on the wall bars and keep quiet, you can watch the game," which I did. I was 14, and I said, "I'd like to, I'd like to join the club. What do I do?" He said, "Well, we train in the summertime. If you'd like to come along in the summer, uh, you can practice with us." Basketball was not a great sport in the UK in in the 60s. It was a considered a minor sport, uh, it still is to a degree, although it's professional now. Um, so I went along there, and they wanted me to sign on for them, which I did. I was quite an athlete, although I was a short guy, I was very quick and, um, very skilled, I would say. And, um, and then it moved on a few years, and, uh, I was playing quite a good level at football, and, uh, my coach came to me one day, and when I turned, uh, 19, and he said, uh, "We're, we're about to go enter the national league, uh, we want you to play in our team, 'cause you're good, and you're an integral part of the starting five, and you got to make a decision. It's football or basketball." Well, it was a big choice for me, and, um, at the time, and I loved both sports, so I made the decision, and I chose basketball.

He chose correctly.

Yeah, I did. And, uh, I had a a great career playing basketball in England, and, uh, that's all I did. I was probably the only person in the whole of the Bristol area that had a basketball hoop in the back garden, and I would practice out there every night. Um, and then one evening at training, the coach came up to us and said, uh, "Are we all available next Monday evening? 'Cause we're going to play against the Bristol Mormons." And I said, "Who are the morons?" And they said, "Don't show your ignorance, Martin."

Around what year is this?

Uh, I'm going to say it was probably around about '65.

Okay. Um, so I was about 18 then, 18 and a half, something like that.

And you had never heard of the Mormons?

I knew they were building a chapel near to where I was born in Bristol. This was the second chapel, and I understood it was being built as a stake center, a future Stake Center, big building, in fact. It was on the grounds of an old manor house that was at the top of the street where I used to live as a young boy, and I saw the building going up. I remember seeing people working on it, but I never ever met any missionaries or anybody associated with the church. Um, so what happened was we went along, went along on this Monday night to this school in Bristol. We got changed in the locker room, went out there, and there were these 15 young men warming up in uniform, very impressive, knew what they were doing, and I, we said, "Oh boy, we got a game on our hands tonight," and, uh, they whooped us, and, uh, uh, we learned, we learned a lesson. We, we learned how to play basketball, we learned to be a bit more aggressive, and, um, we knew then that we had to be a bit more developed in our in our our game and our tactics. So it went on. That year was a great year. I, I refereed them twice. I was a qualified referee. Um, I played against them four or five times, and, uh, I made up my mind there and then. I wanted to be as good a player as they were, and they were very good. They, they played for high schools over here. Um, I got to know them really, really well. And then the church, the the the Stake Center finished being built, and I was invited up to the mission home for a special evening. You see, they were, they were now dangling the carrot to me. Um, I got to know some of those players very, very well. In fact, I still visit one or two of them over here every time I come over. And, uh, anyway, I went to the mission home. My coach was there; he was a professor at the University of Bristol, civil engineer, and, uh, the school teacher where they, uh, rented the the the gymnasium, he was also there, but they, they kind of vanished, and I was left there, and they showed me a film, uh, presented me with a Meet the Mormons book. It was a big PR campaign at the time, and they gave me a picture of the team, and then they gave me a special award. They gave me this shield, which represented their mission, and, um, they had me stand up, and they said, "This is present, we are presenting this to you on behalf of the mission and the basketball team here as the most improved player in the southwest of England." Well, that was quite an honor for me. I'd never had anything given to me like that, and of course it was kind of sucking me in a little bit, and, uh, I felt a little vulnerable, looking back. I was a quite vulnerable individual. Um, and they said, "We're going over to the church now to have a look at it," and I went in the minibus with the missionaries, about 12 of them, and, um, went there and saw this building in its finishing stages, and, uh, went back to the mission home, and from there I went home. I got home quite late in the evening. Oh, I had a meal there as well, by the way. Um, they fed me, and I met the mission president, which was Ray Barton, uh, he was a heart surgeon, and, uh, the the team was led by a man, I don't know if you ever know him, his name was Robert Fotheringham. He was in advertising here in Utah, in Salt Lake, and, um, I've since seen him, um, and, uh, he, he kind of promoted this basketball team, and they played all over the southwest of England. They won every game they played, about 40 games, and they got to the semi-finals of the national championships in London, which I also went up to see. And, uh, they then started a branch team, and on the branch team they had three Americans, of course, to make it a good side, and I was then coaching as well as playing for my team in the National League. I coached a a little team in the Bristol league, and we played against the LDS team at the church, and, uh, it was a good game, and I had an outstanding game, and a missionary came up to me after the game and said, uh, put his arm around me, he said, "How much do you know about the the Mormon church?" And I said, "Well, I really don't know a lot, but I would like to know more." I wanted to know generally about the church, what its beliefs were, what its doctrines were, and how it started, a little bit about the history, and, um, because I heard only bad things about the church, uh, through my mother and my father.

And do you remember what those things were?

Well, my, it's okay if you don't. My my father said they believe in polygamy. I, I said, "What's that?" And, uh, when he said that to me, I had kind of an inkling what it might be, but I wasn't sure. Um, and then my mother knew about things that were going on in the local church which were a bit unsavory, to say the least, but the thing was she was right about those unsavory things. I eventually found out, like abuse or, uh, adultery and fornication, stuff like that.

Oh wow.

Uh, that was going on, sadly. I'm sad to say I discovered that. And, um, then I also discovered that plural marriage did take place in the church. And, uh, anyway, I, I had some discussions. I had, I had them at the back of the chapel. I couldn't possibly have them at home; that would never be allowed. So I was very much on my own. I had no support whatsoever. This was my own decisions that were taking place, and, uh, I had three discussions, and the missionary went home. He went, his mission had completed, did, and he lives here. He's from Ogden originally; he now lives in North Salt Lake, um, very successful man, um, and, uh, he became a mission president, um, and, uh, I had contact with him. So, um, we're now looking, uh, 1967 now, and I was coming up to 20 years of age, and, uh, another missionary took over to teach me, and, uh, two, two missionaries turned up at the door once to track me down after the missionary went home, and my dad had to get him off the doorstep. He had his foot in the door, and it was very embarrassing for me, not very nice, a bit forward, I think he was, his own leader, very, very pushy, and that kind of worried me a little bit. Anyway, I had, uh, all the discussions. They started right from the beginning. I went right through the discussions, uh, had questions on a prophet, Seer, and Revelator. I said, "Well, what's he revealing today?" And they couldn't answer that, um, which I was a bit disappointed with. They asked me to read 50 pages of the Book of Mormon. I got to Isaiah, and I found that very boring to to read, and I didn't feel I was getting much from The Book of Mormon at all, um, and, uh, but one thing that did, I think inspire me, I would say I think that's the right word, uh, I liked the idea of the work for the dead. I thought that was quite interesting to me. I found that to be very fair.

Can you explain to our never-Mormons kind of just how, what, what you learned about the Mormon Church's work for the dead, and then why you liked it, to a high level?

Sorry, John, can you just explain that again? What, what did you learn, what--

What was the doctrine that you learned? Oh, of course. Well, I learned about—it was the law of Eternal progression, and uh, I was learning about uh, The Three Degrees Of Glory and uh, the celestial, terrestrial, Celestial kingdoms. Um, I thought—the impression I got from it was that that Heavenly Father is is really quite a fair and just God, that there is room for everybody. Tell me if—tell me if it starts with Jesus saying, uh, “You must be born of the water and of the spirit to enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” which Mormons interpret as what—being saved? And isn't it baptized and confirmed?

Yeah, it—baptism was always on their lips. Yeah, and it still is today, of course. Even the Book of Mormon is full of those statements; in fact, every other page is is practically making that statement that baptism is so important. And tell me if I’m wrong, but like if—if they’re only—if Mormons are less than one half of 1% of the world’s population, but you have to have a Mormon baptism with authority, priesthood authority, to make it into heaven, that means 99.95% of Heavenly Father’s children on the earth or more are never going to make it; they’re lost to heaven, right, according to a Mormon uh, Doctrine? They’re lost. Uh, and so how does Temple work—Mormon temple work—come into play there?

Well, because that’s their—that’s their method of saving these people, um, which I find—or I I discovered from reading the Book of Mormon in Alma that um, there’s a statement that um, that same spirit that possesses you in this life will possess you in the next World. So you ain’t going to make it anyway; that’s how I read it. It—it’s not going to be a lot of good to you—that baptism is not going to be a lot of good to you because you’re going to be the same person. If you’re a bad guy, you’re going to continue to be a bad guy. I don’t think you’re going to change. I don’t—that’s how you feel now, but back then—you like—back then I thought it was all-encompassing. I thought, “This is a great method; this is a wonderful opportunity.” Cuz like evangelicals or Catholics would be like, “Oh, you didn’t get the right baptism; you’re—you’re—you’re, you know, you’re out of luck.” Yeah, Mormons would say, “Everybody gets a chance.”

That’s right, but you have to have your work done for you after you died. Yeah, someone needs to get baptized in a Mormon temple on—on your behalf. Yeah, right. And then, of course, they—they apply all this—well, you have to do all this work for the dead; if you don’t, you’re not going to be saved anyway. It’s kind of counterproductive to me. I thought, “Well, one minute they’re telling you all this work has to be done, and then they say, ‘Well, unless you do your work, you can’t be saved either,’” which I thought was a bit of a contradictory—contradiction in terms—bit of a dichotomy really. Um, I thought, “Well, you know, how do we go about—?” And we didn’t get a lot of help in those days; there wasn’t a lot of help around. It was—the Church was very young; it was very primitive.

Um, I can remember a time when we—we couldn’t even get the—the Sunday School manuals on time, and if we got the manuals, we didn’t have very many, and sometimes we never got them at all. And people were giving Sunday school lessons out of their own uh, library of books; you know, they might be teaching from Ruben J. Clark one week or Brigham Young the next. And yeah, it was—there was no pattern. Yeah, it was very primitive. And it took me six months before I was ordained to be a deacon, and I said, “What—what’s a deacon?” You know, real quick before we get there, so your baptism—what was it that like made you decide to get baptized?

Well, it was like a—going back to my earlier statement—it was the teachings of this proxy work that I felt was very important, and that was really the—the—that was—that was the uh, uh, the deal breaker for me. I thought, “Well, God’s being fair then,” and uh, it appealed to me. I found it very—I said, “Well, where did—where did you do this—this work?” “What—we do it in a temple.” “Where’s the temple?” “Well, it’s in London.” “How—how do I get there? When do I go there? When do I do this work?” Wow, you know, I was—I was kind of getting all in, you know, I was—I found it so interesting, and it kind of—that was the—the nail clincher for me. That’s what strengthened my testimony of Joseph Smith—not so much the Book of Mormon, but Joseph Smith—this holy man portrayed to me—this prophet and revelator—that I thought, “Well, perhaps this is the true church; perhaps this is the only true church on the earth; perhaps they do have all the answers.” And um, I kind of asked for baptism.

Were there other things like—just the basketball leagues or cute girls or families that looked real—like to have Mormon families that had really appealing lifestyles or a nice Church—any other trappings? I found—I found the people very uh, very kind, uh, very good people, very sincere. Yeah, all trying to do their best. Um, I liked the sports program of the church; it was a very great athletic program they had in England; it was attracting younger people like me, uh, sort of 16 to 30 age group were involved in uh, soccer—football—soccer, basketball, volleyball—lots of things going on. When I was investigating, they were doing a road show. I thought that was—that was interesting. That—tell our listeners what a road show is. Pardon me. Tell our listeners what a road show is.

Well, the road shows in England—they do it differently here, of course. A road show is a show that goes on the road, I understand. And when you have the Stake Road shows here, the winner takes on the road to all the other awards, but it’s like a play or a musical—written—written by the members, performed by the members. Yeah, they would have a—they would have a theme, and the theme might be modern musicals, uh, it might be countries, uh, it might be an era of time where you dress up in costume and put this drama on, and you’d write some music, you’d have songs, you’d have a narrative, um, a story, of course, and uh, it would develop, and—and it had to be done in 20 minutes. If it went over 20 minutes, you got points deducted; it was a competition. And you took care of your lighting and your sound, and you try to involve as many people as you could because in those days—Mia—as I remember—was 12 to 20, so you know, everybody could join in, um, except the Young—Young—the Young Primary kids, but 12 to 20 and adults joined in if they wanted to, but mostly young people. And—was that called Mutual or not? It was called uh, Mia. Mia. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And so all those things were attractive to you.

Do you remember having a spiritual witness when he got baptized or not? So much—that’s a—that’s a good question. Um, people have asked me in recent years when I’ve had this discussion about the church and where—how it’s going forward, um, and they said, “Well, surely you had a—a conviction, a testimony.” And I said, “Well, I had to analyze that,” and I said, “Well, I—I believed in a testimony; I wouldn’t say it was a—a deep conviction. It—I wanted a testimony; I wanted it to be true because the—the young missionaries were such a—a credit to the church, and I didn’t—all about missionary life then, of course. I didn’t know that some of them probably had issues and problems and challenges and testimonies of their own, but the ones I met were very positive, and so that had an influence on me, and I saw myself as being like them. I was their age. And uh, I remember going to a dance—I was only in the church three weeks—I went to a—a dance in Cardiff, and a member—a lady member—came up to me and accused me of being a missionary at a dance, which I shouldn’t have been at, and I try—I had to try and convince her that I wasn’t a full-time missionary because at 20 with a suit on, I looked like—like one. And of course, we didn’t have badges—badges in those days to wear, and I had to kind—it was very difficult to convince her that I just joined the church. And—CU—you looked apart. Yeah, I had a—I had a few issues in the church that were embarrassing. I mean, I spoke to a man once and uh, he said—I went to a district council; they were very concerned about Martin Lock. And I said, “Harry, why were they concerned about me?” He said, “Well, they were concerned—concerned about the young women in the—in—in the branch that you were a very eligible young man,” and uh, and Harry said to the district council, he said, “Well, I wish him well,” he said, “because I wish I could find a wife.” He married very late, by the way.

Let me ask you uh, th—this early 60s in the UK is prominent in my mind because of what I know as kind of the baseball baptisms kind of phenomenon, yeah, and the Chapel building phenomenon. So David O McKay is Prophet, Henry D. Moyle is like a helper, maybe First Presidency, and he decides, “If you build it, they will come.” So kind of devastated spending—Mormon Church—build a bunch of chapels and then have sports programs like in the British Isles—baseball programs—and will baptize a ton of young men who, you know, are really interested in baseball, but they’ll have to join the—the church as a—as a—as a way to qualify to be on the leagues, and then hopefully ladies will, you know, see cute men and they’ll get baptized too, and—and that’ll be a great way to seed the church. And for those of you—we should have our own episode about that. My first Mormon Stories episode was about that, but um, it turned out to kind of—well, I think a lot of people got baptized, and in some ways I think it did grow the church in the British Isles. It’s worth mentioning Jeffrey R. Holland was a missionary in the UK during this time, so was Quentin L. Cook, uh, and I think it—it—it jumpstarted growth in the Mormon UK church, but also it led to thousands of young men needing to be excommunicated because that was the only way to get people off the roles, and there were a bunch of men who didn’t really want to be Mormon, and they didn’t want them on the roles, so it ended up kind of backfiring. And so when you say you were part of a basketball league right around that time period, it makes me wonder whether you heard about the baseball baptism stuff and whether you saw the um, the results of that uh, during your—those—those 60s years in—in the church in the UK.

Well, to answer your question, the baseball program, as I understand, was in the early 60s; it kind of petered out by—I would say by—all right, I reckon by ‘64, ‘65. And I’ll tell you why. I met a wonderful man in the temple when I was serving there who uh, from Utah, and um, he passed away two years ago, and I met his wife recently down in Sandy—wonderful couple—helped us out a lot when we first went to the temple. But he served a mission in the Central British Mission, and uh, he had a six-month uh, responsibility to go into South Wales and sort out the baseball membership—baseball baptism membership. It was very difficult because the records were so poor, and they never—a lot of them never attended church. I only know of probably two people in Bristol that came through that program uh, that are still around, but other than that, it was a thing of the past. Okay, it never developed; it—it was never really successful, right, in my opinion. Okay. But the CH—but the church development and growth, as you said, is quite true. They had a—a massive public campaign in Britain with the press um, on the back of the—on the back of the uh, London Temple that opened in 1958—huge publicity on that—big open house. And yes, Henry D. Moyle was instrumental, uh, of course, his ancestors came from Cornwall—the Moyles—and uh, he was very instrumental in the—the chapel building program of the time. That my friend—friend that was involved with the baseball membership also realized what was going on in Britain—in his opinion—it was too early uh, that he said that to me—“It’s far too early,” and um, but the chapel building program was like mushrooms in a field—growing—they just sprouted up everywhere. All major cities and towns were—had congregations uh, from just—left over from after the war, I suppose—had small branches, and there was growth in the 60s—was—it was um, I would say incredible growth in the 60s, as far as I remember and was told, and I—I was part of that, and I was infused by—I think because they had—they had um, they had training sessions for—to train personnel that were involved in Mia; they went all over the country—went to Scotland, middle of England—Nottingham—they had these weekends set up—these camps where they instructed people on how to run things, how to do road shows, how to do festivals, uh, how to do sports, how to referee, had to coach, had to organize the events. And I had friends that were very—very involved in that in Bristol—extremely involved—and I still have friends around now that were involved in those programs, and it was—it was very successful, and we went all over the country—we went to Scotland, we went to Birmingham. And then all of a sudden they stopped it.

But more recently, right? I mean, yeah, about uh, I’m going to say yeah, 15 to 20 years ago. Okay, CU. Because I just wanted to say this is something you and I have in common because my growing up in the Mormon Church in Houston, Texas—Katy area—my fondest memories of my childhood and youth are dance festivals, of you know, scouting, um, W dances, stake dances, Golden GRE—Green Balls, road shows, just the pot—you know, potluck dinners—whatever they’re called—like the cultural hall was in every chapel, and it was just this big gymnasium with a basketball court that could be used as a volleyball court, but there would also be potluck dinners there, and there was always a stage, and there would be talent shows—just the—the really vibrant cultural life—social life for me was a—was a gigantic part of my love for the Mormon church and for my memories in the Mormon church. And you know, spoiler alert, we’re going to talk about how at some point the church starts um, downsizing and kind of eliminating these programs, which I think is part of the church’s demise in the modern era, but I share with you just fantastic memories of the cultural social life of the church.

Definitely. I mean, my life was the church. We—we had firesides; we had cottage evenings; we had always something going on. We had District conference—mine in those days—four times a year—every quarter. We had leadership—every—every month—there was—the church was always open; there was always activity. My life was full; I was fully engrossed as a young man, um, leading up to the time when I decided to serve a mission. So I was really in it—always up to my neck. Mhm. The sad—there was a sad side to that, though, of course. I didn’t do much with my mom and dad. I—I didn’t see my brother very often. Were they opposed to you getting baptized? Yeah, they were. I—okay, I had to get permission; I was 20; uh, my dad signed a little note; my mother was very opposed. It did cause a little bit of a riff between Mom and Dad. I was unaware about—I was unaware of it, but I was aware of it, uh, and I learned something fairly recently. My youngest son, Joseph, was uh, discussing with a—a basketball friend of mine that um, uh, was having a discussion fairly recently, and my friend uh, Allan said to my son, he said, “Do you realize that when your dad joined the church, Joseph, it broke your mom’s heart?” I never knew that; that saddened me. I lost my mom at 47, six months after I came back from my mission. I never knew that she—she was 47. Yeah. Okay. You were 20; I was then 26. Okay. Okay. Oh, so you went on your mission late—late. I was a late boy. Yeah, there were three of us that went out at 24. Yeah, three in your ward or branch? Three in the whole mission. Oh, okay. Okay. Got—got it. Yeah. So uh, where were you called to—what mission? I was called to the Ireland Mission. Okay. I was—went there in 1970—August 1971.

How did that feel to go to Ireland? Well, I—I put my papers in—good to New Zealand, of all places. I was in love with Matthew Cowley and his experiences; he was a Mormon leader—leader—Apostle, and I was impressed with his experience there, and I thought that sounds like a nice place to go. And um, I didn’t think of anywhere else in the British Isles at the time, um, and someone in the little branch I went to in Bristol who was—this is a lady that was heavily involved in the Mia program and athletic councils of the church in England—she said to me one day, she said, uh, “Have you got your mission call yet?” I said, “Nope.” She said, “I’ll tell you where you’re going to get your call.” I said, “Go on then.” She said, “Ireland.” I went, “Really?” She said, “Yeah, you go to Ireland.” What did you think of the Irish at the time, or did you think any—you know—I didn’t know anything about them, John, really. I—I—I thought they were all Catholic. I didn’t—I didn’t know there was a Protestant faith over there. I didn’t know much about the history; all I knew was they—they fought amongst themselves, and they drank a lot. Because the English don’t drink, right? Sorry, the Welsh don’t drink, and the English don’t drink. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That’s awesome. So uh, anyway, um, yeah, so I got called to Ireland, and I was quite thrilled about that, to be honest. I was—I was happy that I was going on a mission. Um, my uh, motivation was that I wanted to—I wanted to learn the gospel because I wasn’t learning much in the local church, mhm, because it was so primitive, I think, and wasn’t getting taught very well. Um, I thought the best way to do it is go on a mission, and I thought, “Well, why not—why not go on a mission?” And it was—I think it was the best thing I ever did. Then it was a great experience; I loved it.

What did you learn from your mission? Well, I—I learned a bit about the gospel; um, I learned how to deal with people; that was my education—learning how to deal with people, um, learning how to communicate, learning how to listen, uh, uh, learning how to uh, teach the gospel principles, um, and all my life I’ve been a—an apologist really for the church. I—I’ve had to defend it all the time—around every corner—had to defend it. But I went there, and I—I—I learned to overcome a little bit of shyness; I came out of myself; um, I learned to speak with a lot more confidence, whether it was in a—a lesson discussion or from the pulpit. I gained a lot of confidence. And uh, my mission pres—I was the only Englishman in the mission. What—I was the only—there were other Englishmen before me, right, but while I was there, I was the only Englishman for uh, about um, between 18, 20 months. Yeah, the rest were from the United States mainly or Canada. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. Uh, how did you find the Irish people any different than the—the Bristol people? Yeah. Well, Bristol people are very reserved. Okay. You don’t ever want to be a salesman and work in Bristol. Okay. Yeah, they uh, it’s a—it’s a—it’s a—a salesman’s graveyard, they used to say—very reserved people—can never make decisions. And it’s West country, so it’s agricultural—very—Bristol was—it’s a big city and very historic. Um, you’re getting into the country—rural—there’s really nothing in the church between uh, Bristol and Exeter; that’s a 70-mile journey. So yeah, I found the Irish people very—very warm, very friendly, especially in the north. And you have to remember my mission was quite unique in—

As much as I spent 22 months of my 24 months in and around Belfast, I didn't go anywhere else. I didn't go north; I didn't go south until the very end. I had 10 weeks in Dublin, and by the time I got to Dublin, I ran out of money. I was quite ill; I wasn't eating properly, um, and I was training. Uh, problem missionaries had three of them in 10 weeks. Missionaries had issues and challenges, and I was—they call—they, we used to call people like that a "proel liting specialist"—tell us what the Mormon church was teaching about the Catholic Church.

Okay, there's Northern Ireland and then Southern Ireland, Republic, and one is Catholic and one is not, right? Well, one is predominantly Catholic, which is which is the Republic in the South. The South, South Ireland is predominantly Catholic. Northern Ireland is predominantly Protestant, although you do have Catholic areas there, and some of them we were never allowed to work in. There were about four areas we could never work in; they were too dangerous. I was there right in the height of the IRA, uh, Civil Rights Movement, the trials, the problems there.

So basically, there were terrorists. Yes. Was it the Protestants or the Catholics that were—well, IRA were mostly uh Catholic. Were they wanting—was one wanting to separate from the other? Is that they were—they've always been fighting for a United Ireland. Okay, yeah, of course, the Protestants protest—they don't—a lot of the hardcore do not want a United Ireland. They want what their ancestors have always fought for. They like the prosperity of the north, and um, it's a very delicate, sensitive subject, um, but um, the Civil Rights—the Catholics in the north, you see, were not getting the same uh opportunities as their Protestant neighbors. So if you went for a job and your name was O'ly, you weren't going to get the job, you know. It's what would be a Catholic Irish name?

Oh, O'Roy, uh, uh O'Donahue. Those are right. Those are Catholic. Yeah, and you wouldn't get a job. No, if you had a Catholic—not—you would not get a job because the Protestants would take the job. Yeah, they'd always give it—favor the Protestant. What would a Protestant—Catholic—what would a Protestant Irish last name be? Oh, Moore, oh, we—so, no O's on the beginning, basically. No. Yeah, the O—there would be no O's on the beginning. Got it. Yeah, okay. And why would it be—what would be unsafe—what peoples or pockets would be unsafe for a Mormon missionary in Ireland? A predominantly Catholic area because you'd have safe houses there for terrorists, you see. Um, so, you know, I I did go into one place once by—I didn't think about it really, and uh, I won't mention it, but there's four areas over there you would never go into, but I went there one Sunday afternoon. It—LO—like we were detectives getting out of a car, suits on, going into a house, you see. All the curtains squeeze open, and we were just there to see a member's uh relative, but uh, that's—it was—all the sister missionaries were always placed in Dublin; it was safer for them to be down there. I mean, I—it was—it was not uncommon to hear bombs going off and explosions and see puffs of smoke going up in the city.

And those who were setting off the bombs wanted what? Well, that was their protest to make themselves known that they were a force to be reckoned with. And it was the Catholics—well, IRA—wherever they were. Okay, they could have been infiltrators from anywhere—the Irish Republican Army. Yeah, and again, they wanted a unified Ireland. Yeah, okay. And they—they were following up the Civil Rights Movement by uh Bernadette Devlin that started it, and of course, Londonderry was a a bad place to be. There were—there were towns which were pretty bad where there were major troubles, barricades, petrol bombs, and generally—was the IRA generally Catholic? Yeah, generally speaking, I would say they were, yeah.

And then just to complicate things, what were the Mormon Church's teachings about the Catholic church at the time, if you remember? Well, you know, I've known—I have known English Elders that have gone out there, and they come back with all these silly rumors, you know. For example, they would say—now, bearing in mind I served there 22 months in Belfast, so I knew it well—and uh, they would say things like, well, if you go to an LDS Sacrament Meeting, the Mormon Catholics would be sat one side and the Mormon Protestants on the other. That ever happened? We had—we didn't have many Catholic converts to the church; they were mainly Protestant converts. Um, so that really was a not true. What I used to say—do you remember what Bruce R. McConkie taught about the Catholic church in Mormon Doctrine, the book? Uh, well, of course, the Book of Mormon calls it the great and abominable church. I mean, it doesn't name the Catholic church, but that's how we interpret—well, they—they spin it, don't they? Put a spin on it now, let—they do on everything. But the way the Book of Mormon describes—oh, they describe a bad Church. They describe it completely—well, what—as what—if any Catholic read that, they'd be embarrassed, wouldn't they? Yeah, 'cause it's talking about clothing and, you know, Inquisition, sitting on Thrones and like fine clothing in apparel, and the—it says the horror of all the Earth.

That's right. Yeah. So is that what you thought was Mormon Doctrine about how you should feel about the Catholic church at the time? Well, I understood it—my understanding is it was certainly a view on the—on—on the Catholic church because it was the only church that ruled the—ruled the world or the Earth, yeah, and population-wise, and uh, it was quite obvious; it was staring you in the face. MH, but there are many other things in the Book of Mormon that stare you in the face. I mean, uh, I had an—an embarrassing time once in a—in a Zone meeting, and um, I think it was my second meeting in my wife's hometown, and the mission president—while he never said a lot, he was a wonderful man, but though he never said a lot, he stood up this one time and said—and I was his AP then, so it was very embarrassing for me—and he said—and I had some other embarrassing moments, by the way, being the only Englishman while I was AP—and uh, he said—um, well, he said, I want to talk to you today out in the Book of Mormon about how—how we beat the British and got our independence and became a republic. And I would sat there cringing in my shoes, thinking, did you really have to bring that up today, President? You know, all the elders were looking at me; you know, they felt sorry for me. Um, I just brushed it off and thought, well—well, you know, Nemo will love that story. Well, it was embarrassing. Say how crazy it is for one Church to call another church the—of all the Earth. Well, it's this uh—is this superiority—like the—the church called the Catholic Church the—of all the Earth for decades? I just—it's hard to believe.

Well, John, that's a word that's used a lot in uh by General Authorities in the past. Yeah, and you know what I'm talking about. Tell—tell our listeners and viewers what do you mean by that. Well, it was—um, Joseph Smith had an angel uh and a—a—a pre—a prescript of how to induce young women to be his brides, and uh, if they didn't agree or comply within 24 hours, he made them feel really bad, and the word horror was used on several occasions for the women that declined his advances. Yeah, not a nice word to use, is it? No, no, it's not. Um, and made excuses. You had a good way of getting out of things; you could give a good excuse. I'm guessing you weren't tired of any of that when you were investigating the church. Not at all. Um, really quickly, are you comfortable sharing whether you had any baptisms on your mission and if so, what that was like for you? Well, in Ireland, uh, if you had a baptism, you were doing well in your whole mission. Yeah, two years—in two years, if you had one baptism, you were doing quite well. You were doing well. Okay. You—you know Todd Compton, don't you? Yeah, in Sacred Loneliness. Yeah, yeah. I have the book at home. Um, he served in Ireland. Oh, I'm—I'm trying to pinpoint the time he served there; uh, it was during the troubles. Now, he was either there before me uh or just after me. And ex—talking to—I think it was—Mormonism with the Murph—I know Steven Murphy quite well. I used to home teach that family when they lived in our Ward. Um, he—he kind of explained that he was there when the troubles were rife, and he said where he served, and he only had one baptism. Okay. What about you? I had about 15. Whoa, 15—times the average. Yeah, that's why you were AP because you were successful. Well, I don't know about that. Um, I think the mission president had his—he had me earmarked. He told me after my second move—I went through the mission home to have a move to the other side of Belfast and uh the other side of—of the river—and um, he said to me, are you ready for leadership? I was out five months then—less than five months—um, and uh, I said, well, what does that entail, President? And he said, well, being a district leader. He said, you tell me what it entails. So I gave a little overview of what I thought it entailed, and he said, well, get ready. So I went to this new move on the other side of the river, and uh, we had a big bunch of leadership going home, and uh, the—I had a phone—I was the last one to get a call to be a district leader that day, and I went to the Stake Center, Hollywood Road, Belfast, and uh uh, although I was happy to go there, there was another missionary that really wanted to go there, and he—he hated me because I got the call to go there instead of him. He had contacts there; he had s—a little bit of success there, and he wanted to go back, but he didn't—he went—went down to Dublin, I believe. Anyway, I went there in the uh probably the end of January, early Feb. I went there for six—six months as a district leader.

Let me ask, did you have a—a tactic or an approach that made you more successful in baptizing people than other missionaries? Any—well, I think uh I always had a good spirit of discernment, and I told the mission president that as well in an interview. Um, I knew my discussions were perfect—the 92-page dialogue, Brother Brown. I also—I also—I'm not boasting, but I took the time to memorize the additional discussions we had. We had—we had an arm of 32 discussions on faith; we had a—a discussion on the steps for baptism which I memorized, and we had one on the Alma 34 which I memorized, and then I memorized all my scriptures; we had 42 of them. And when I did the Zone conferences, they—they used to call it the uh the Elder Locks—like—um, they used to have a name for me; they used to call me the bloke, by the way. I had that reputation as being the bloke. What does that mean to an American? Well, translate for us. Well, like a—a Paddy if you're an Irishman, you know, it's a nickname, or a Jock if you're a Scot, okay, or in Australia they call you a—a Pommy, don't they, or something. But anyway, they called you a bloke if you're English, and uh, so um, they had a nickname for my little workshop, you know, it'd be like the uh something like—oh, this—the scripture bash session with Elder Lock. Watch out, you know, it's going to be painful; he knows the stuff. Yeah, watch out. Yeah, he has all the answers.

So um, it sounds like for just a kid growing up in what—rural—rural England, um, the Mormon Church would provide all the structure, opportunities for achievement, for advancement, for learning, leadership. It sounds very exciting for—for a kid, and—and athletics. Well, like it just sounds like a wonderful structure to—to join and become a part of. Well, the mission president that set me apart to be a missionary was John Matson, and uh, he became a General Authority Seventy, um, Emeritus now. Uh, he—he set me apart, and in that blessing he said uh you will blend in with your fellow missionaries uh and that uh you will succeed in all that you do, blah blah blah, and—and I—and I by accident, I suppose, I did—I did blend in. I got on well with the missionaries; I got to know them well. Uh, I tried to be their friend. Um, well, I wanted to be their friend. I uh enjoyed my companions. I had a rough start in the mission; I had a companion that was quite bushy uh and strict. He was a year out; he actually knew my wife before I did uh before she went on her mission, and um, so I had a difficult start, um, but I blended in. I—I managed to find my feet, as it were, and got to grips with it, and uh, I was full on with the mission. I worked hard every day, every evening; I worked hard, and there was nothing wrong with hard work. I knocked those doors day and night.

Sounds like it was rewarding and gratifying for you. It was like a college education for me. Mhm. That was my college education. Um, yeah, it—it—it uh grounded me. My mission president told me when I was in the mission home, he said, don't you dare ever come to Utah. He said, the church needs you in England, Elder Mar. Desperately interesting. Yeah, interesting. And you have to remember, um, at that time, August '73, we had our first area conference in England, presided over by Joseph Fielding Smith. Whoa. And he made a statement. Now, wait, he would have just been made Prophet. Yes, at that point. Yes, he did. It was a big deal. Yeah. And he said in the conference, we have 50 young missionaries serving full-time from the British Isles, and I was one of them. He said—he said to the Saints and the leadership, I want to see 500 in the next few years. Wow. So they took up the challenge. Well, I kind of set the ball rolling; I was the first one out of Bristol as an elder to serve a full-time mission. Do you know if they made 500? I don't know; they probably did, actually. Joseph Fielding Smith was like only Prophet for like a year; he was—I think he was Prophet for a very short amount of time. So that's interesting; you—you were able to see him. You didn't meet him, right? No, I was—I was in the mission in August, and the conference I think was held at the end of August when he made that statement. Okay, it was held in Bellevue, Manchester. Tell us really quickly uh how you met your wife and how you got married. Well, that's—that was a love story, John, not a marriage story. I said that at the funeral; it was a love story. Um, the missionaries when they went out from Ireland to go anywhere in the world would come back through the mission home to be released because it was a mission—in a district. Two young sisters—when I was there, I was only there three weeks—and three sister missionaries came home from missions. Uh, one was from Hollywood Road, Sister Moffett, and the next one came in a week later; she was Sister Orm; she was from somewhere in Belfast, and um, third one that came in was Jennifer Weir from Portadown, Ireland. Yeah. So you—your wife was—was Irish. Yeah. Okay. Protestant family background. Okay. Yeah. And uh, they joined the church in 1950; very primitive then, very small. One of nine children. Wow. One boy. That sounds Catholic. Yeah, children does, but they wanted a large family; they took five years to have their first child, and my wife—wife was third in that line. Anyway, she came in the mission home. I was talking to her with my companion; he wandered off, left me talking to her. She was a—a delight to talk to. We talked all about her mission and where she lived; she lived in a little country town 30 miles away and uh spoke with a very slight accent—little bit—little bit American, Canadian, and a little bit Irish, Northern Ireland, but lovely accent, very sweet girl, uh red hair, dressed up very nice to see the mission president to get her release. So after about—it seemed like 20 minutes or so—um, she walked up the stairs—I've been to that mission home recently, by the way—um, she walked up the stairs with the president, and I was still stood there, in a—her really—I was in a—and she looked back at me to see if I was still there, probably, and uh, our eyes just focused, and uh, something—something took place in that smile, and my companion said to me—he knew the family 'cause he—he was the Zone leader up there in Portadown, the area that was the north of Ireland, the real North—and uh, he said uh to me one day uh she—there from—she's from a nice family, you know, he said, you know, you ought to get acquainted with her. I said, yeah, she is rather nice. So anyway, um, the family—I asked her at the time, I said, what's your plans, Sister Weir, going forward? She said—well, this was—this was the—the downer now—she said, well, I'm planning on going to Rexburg, Idaho, to study with my missionary friends. I went all—under my breath, I went all, dear, and uh, so I—I realized that the president invited these families back for a—an evening dinner—as families to have like a little homecoming. Well, this was November—in the January, I had to go up and fetch them in the mini-bus; they had no car, and I went up—my companion—to fetch them. I sat with Jan in the front seat on the way down; on the way back we were in the back seat opposite each other; my companion did the driving, and we talked again; it was all above board and uh everything about her mission and her family and—but that at that evening I said to her, I said, J—or Sister Weir, I said—I said, what's your plans going forward with America? And she looked at me straight in the eye—to eye—and she said, um, I—I am not going to America now. Now, I didn't know the reason why; I did find out later after we were married, and I'll come back to this in a minute, but uh, she showed me her patriarchal blessing that she had while she was a missionary, and there were only two Patriarchs in the whole of the British Isles at that time, and this Patriarch's name was Rth Mount from St. Albans, and she went to get her blessing, and—well, after we were married, she showed me the blessing, and I was dumbstruck, to be honest with you. The blessing said in this one sentence, it said, um, there is one ordained for you whom you will someday meet through your activities in the church and whom you will readily recognize. And she never showed me that until we were married. So about two weeks before she passed away, I said, Jan, I've never asked you this question, but when did you actually fall in love with me? I'm interested to know. She said—did you know she was dying at the time? Yeah, you asked this. Yeah, okay. I never asked her this question; it was a silly question in some respects, but I did ask her the question, and she said, the very first day I met you in the mission home. And then she asked me the same question. I thought this was coming now. What? So I said—uh—she said, when did you fall in love with me? I said, it was when you told me you were not going to America. And uh, she said, well, how nice. But then—then the big—the big swinger was—I—the mission president came up to my room one day and he said, you've had an invitation to go to Portadown for a lunch—in appointment on Sunday the so and so, a few weeks away. He said, do you think you can make that date? I said, I'll have to check my diary, President, with a—with a wink in my eye. Anyway, I said, yeah, I can—I can make that. So what—they always had a lot of people for lunch; the—we were notorious in those days; all the Zone leaders went there, the district leader—all had their lunch there; the house was always full—wasn't a very big lounge; they extended—

The tables, extra chairs came out. But her mother would cook a dinner for 20-plus people every Sunday. And uh, so my companion said, "Well, I've cleared the table, you have to do the dishes." So I said, "Okay, I'll do—I can do the dishes." So I go out in the kitchen, and there's Jan slaving away. We called her—her name was Jennifer, but everybody called her J. So there she was, slaving away. And uh, I uh, I had to say something to her; this this was getting stupid now. Uh, so uh, I had sent her some flowers by the way on her birthday, as a as a missionary. Yeah, now that's naughty, I know, at least in my my Mormon experience. Well, I had to show her some kind of—I had to give her some sort of notice, so I sent her these flowers. She sent me back a little curt letter thanking—thanking me for sending the flowers. Anyway, um, there's another story behind that, but uh, I'm in the kitchen. I think, "How do I do this? What do I say to this young lady?" So I plucked up the courage and I said, "Jan, there's something I need to say to you." And she looked at me and she said, "Well, okay, what's that?" Very matter of fact. And uh, I said, "Well, I got about 3 months left on my mission, and uh, I would really love to come back over to Ireland to get, you know, kind of acquainted with you. I like to get to know you better." And and she looked at me and she said, "Well, is that all?" And she really put me on the spot. She didn't say, "Well, well, that would be nice. I would look forward to it." She said, "Is that all? Is that it?" And I said—so I had to break another Rule now—so I said, "Well, the truth is, Jan, I'm in love with you." Oh, and whoa, yeah, whoa indeed. So what's the response going to be? Is it going to be rejection? Or she turned to me, that lovely look on her face, she said, "Well, I want you to know that I'm in love with you as well." I said, "Well, let's get back on with the dishes then." And then, of course, I had to break the news to my mission president, which was quite funny. And uh, I took him aside one day. I said, "Can I have a meeting with you, President?" He said, "Yep, what's on your mind?" I said, "Well, I want to tell you that I'm very fond of a young lady here in the mission, and uh, as far as I'm concerned, I've I've I've fallen for her, President. I'm in love with her. I'd like—I'm going to marry her." He said, uh, "Well," he said, "she's a fantastic woman." I said, "Well," I said, "well, who are we talking about, President?" He said, "Well, I hope we're talking about Sister Weir from P—ter." Down I went. I was very relieved when he said that, by the way. I said, "Yes, we are talking about Sister Weir." He said, "Great decision, Elder." He knew—he knew. Okay. He said, "We we've been thinking about a long time, Sister Summer Hayes and I." Oh, wow, yeah. Well, the truth is, the church uh, and you know, in Utah, anywhere outside of Utah is kind of referred to as the mission field. But if the church was going to develop uh a strong, you know, a a strong culture, a strong Community, a strong presence in the UK, it would really want Mormons to be finding and marrying other Mormons and then staying. Yeah. And so the church seems to me would have had a very strong vested interest in matchmaking its missionaries and return missionaries. Well, he was a very understanding Mission president. Um, he knew I was a mature individual. He knew I'd done everything he asked me to do. He he just said to me, "You stay focused." I said, "I'm focused, President. You got no problem there. I'm focused on the mission. I've not got much time left. I am focused." I said, and he gave us all the responsibility in the mission field. He looked after the members. We developed the missionaries. We'd done all the Zone conferences, and uh, it worked a treat. Had a great compan—companion with Elder Scott. Wonderful man. We're very good friends still. And uh, he encouraged me as well. And uh, so that was the way it was. And then one day we had moves, and I had about 10 weeks left. And the first move off the board was Elder Lock out of Red Hill into Dublin. My companion was like that with a card, and I was, "What's going on, you know?" So uh, was that closer or further from Sister Weir? Oh, further away. Okay. So so the Mr. President wanted to get you away from her. Well, there was a reason, you see. There rumors started to fly. Oh, okay. And uh, it wasn't healthy. It wasn't healthy for Jan, it wasn't healthy for me, or the mission. Yeah. And he—I said, "I go do the moves." He said, "No, you stay here. I want to talk to you." So I sat back in my seat, and he said—went like that—old—did that with his chin, you know. He said, um, "I'm doing this for the benefit of you and Jan. He said, "Few rumors spreading around. He said, um, "I thought might be best now to just move you down there, out the way, let it quieten down, and you know…" My last interview in Dublin, all he talked about was Jan and me and our marriage. Oh, and he stood in for my parents—so my—no, my family—when you were married. Yeah, none of my family were there. None of them. How long after your mission ended did you get proposed—did you propose to Jan and get married to Jan? I proposed her while I was a missionary. What? Well, that was another funny instance. Um, I had a missionary going home, and he's in a nursing home in Leighton. I I should go and visit him tomorrow, probably. I've been to see him three times. Lovely guy. And he was going home, and he said, "Let's go and let's go and find Sister Weir tonight, and I want you to…" I thought you were in Dublin. No, no, I still in the mission home. Okay. He said, "I want you to propose to her." I said, "Mike, I can't do things like that." He said, "I—it's only for a bit of fun." And I went, "Well, okay." Well, she was at a dance—some some show going on at the Stake Center. This is really funny. So I was there with Mike. I side that we—no phone boxes would work; they're all busted, they're all damaged in the troubles. But we did find a phone that worked finally. So I made the phone call to the center—the Stake Center—and a convert of mine answered the phone, a girl called Jennifer. And I said, "Oh, hi, Jennifer. It's Elder Lock here." "Oh, hi, Elder Lock. How are you?" blah blah blah. I said, "Yeah, I'm doing fine." I said, "Could you just—is is Jan there tonight?" "Oh, yeah, yeah, she's there." I said, "Good. Could you ask to come outside for just 10 minutes? I'm with Elder McShan and another girl—a friend of Jan's." So what does this girl do? Jan's stood right next to the mission president, and she says, "Jan Lock—uh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Let me repeat that." She says, "Jan Weir, Elder Lock's on the phone for you." Of course, the mission president—he might have been a bit deaf, but I'm sure he heard that anyway. Jan crept out to the phone—a little bit embarrassed—and uh, she said, "Who is it?" I said, "It's it's it's Martin." I said, "Can you come outside just for a few minutes?" "Yeah, okay. I'll come out." So she came out. It was quite a cold night. She had a little bit of a shore on. She had a long dress. She looked gorgeous as usual. And uh, I was there with Mike McShan. Mike McShan said, "Well, go on then, do the business." So I walked 10 yards down the pavement outside the building. I said, "Jan, will you marry me? You still love me? Yeah. Will you marry me? Yeah." When I said, "I finish in August…" "Um, how about September?" "September? A month after your mission was over?" "Six weeks." Yeah. So you're married in the London Temple. Well, you have to get married in a chapel first—to—in outside of the United States. Yeah. So we married in her hometown, P—ter. Down. She had older friends there. We had a big a big event. Um, and we had to catch a plane to go to London Temple to be sealed. And the tragedy was there was a bomb scare in the airport, so we didn't fly out until 11:00 at night. And fortunately, I had I had an older gentleman that was a friend from Bristol. He was on a little Mission there with his wife, and uh, we managed to make some sort of contact with a phone. He said, "Um, what time you flying in?" I said, "It's going to be after 12:00." "Well, I got I got the minibus." We flew into Crawley. He said, "Do you still want to be sealed tonight?" I said, "Of course we do, 'cause we booked a room already in the accommodation over there." So we said—I'll have to get a sealer ready. So we were sealed at 1:30 a.m. What? In the morning. And you said your mission president stood in—not for that. He stood in for the Civil marriage. Got it. Yeah, because why? Because I couldn't get any of my parents there. Oh, so your parents weren't at your wedding? No, because my mother was ill. Oh, she was dying. So nobody came. I couldn't even get my brother there. I couldn't get one of my best friends there. That wasn't because they were excluded from the temple; that was just—it was too far at the time, and they w—well, yeah, okay. So why was that sad—to not have your parents at your wedding? Yeah, it was a bit, yeah, yeah. They were sad they couldn't be there. Yeah, because I was mixed up in this different kind of Faith—this sort of cultish faith—and uh, they would call it—and uh, yeah uh, like a Jehovah's Witnesses; that's how they looked at it—like I was belong to Jehovah's Witnesses, 'cause my brother got involved with them once and jacked out of it. Um, so I had nobody there—just Irish friends, a few missionaries, I knew people I knew um from Ireland because I served 22 months in Belfast, so yeah, I knew a lot of people. Let me ask what—so you went—you went through the temple when it had a lot of those really kind of violent Masonic—yeah—artifacts, including the the penalties uh, you know, where you where you make the motion of slitting your throat and cutting out your heart and disbaling yourself. Uh, it also mocked other religions in the temple ceremony at the time. Uh, it had Satan doing his Mischief, you know. It was a it was a temple ceremony that I experienced as well. Was—was there a movie when you first went through it? Was the movie? Okay. What was your—what was your native emotional reaction to that Temple ceremony when you went through it for the first time? I went with an old priest gathering at the temple to get a lot of male names done. I went with a group of uh um men in the ward, probably about six or seven of them, and one of them—I remember one of them—he said to me, "You'll regret doing this. You're in for a shock today." You were getting your endowment—out—for the first time. First time before your mission. There were two of us in this all priesthood Gathering. There must have been about 300, maybe 400 men in that endowment room. They had a balcony around the top. Wow. Could see extra people. It was packed to capacity. It was a 3-hour—a 3-hour deal. And I was—well, I didn't know what I was doing there, to be honest. I I found it all very strange. Um, the guy on the veil got impatient with me because I was not standing right or holding the clasp in the hand right. Uh, I found it all very weird. And yeah, it was strange. And I thought, "Where did all this come from? Did this come from Joseph Smith? Was he—was he that clever of a man to reveal all this?" I mean, wow. It was it was it was weird. It was very weird. Then we had a lecture; we had to listen to a 15-minute lecture. Um, yeah, it was weird—and not—but not weird enough to make you question whether you wanted to stay a member? No. I thought this was a done thing. So you made your decision. Yeah. Carry on. Okay. Carry on. Regard, you know, eventually I'll find out what it all means. Yeah. That was what happened to all my back burners. I'll find out one day what it all means. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you married uh Jan a month after your mission—six—six weeks after. Yeah. And we unfortunately we probably won't have time to really really delve into your your family—you know, the the growth of your family—y'all ended up having how many children in total? Six children. Six children. That's a lot. Yeah. But she came from nine. Yeah. And we wanted a we wanted a biggish family. Okay. We had four girls first. Uh-huh. And then Aaron came along. Okay. And then Joseph. Okay. There was six years difference between the two boys. We had four girls under six years—six years of marriage. We had four girls by then. Okay. MH. And if you had to summarize your happiest memories in the church with your young family and with your—you know, your kids as they become teenagers—list off the types of offerings or activities that the church offered you and your and your wife and your kids in the UK that brought you Joy or fulfillment or meaning—just to give people a sense—yeah—for what the church meant to you and your family. I think the involvement—family involvement—kids singing as a family. Jan would dress them all in the same outfits. People still laugh now that all the kids—not the boys, but the girls—were dressed in all the same outfits, with the boys kind of similar color with a tie. And we would sing at Christmas, and we would be involved in the homeless shelter in Bristol every Christmas. We'd all go down as a family and do things down there—always of service to people. We taught the people—we taught the children to be independent. We taught them to engage with adults, to be kind, to be courteous, to be uh good-mannered—to—when the door open—to welcome the—into our home. Our home was an open home; uh, door was always open to people—anybody and everybody. Um, that was their lives. They were involved in all the activities—Road shows, singing events, festivals, Sports. We were just a complete family. We looked—we looked the LDS—typical LDS involved family. Dad was the priesthood holder, um—mom was the great homemaker—wonderful Homemaker—um, and people—we reached out to people. We've always reached out; we've always been engaging to people. Um, my family would tell you that. Um, did y'all do the scripture study and the family home evening and all that stuff? Well, we we tried—family prayer. Yeah, family prayer—blessing of the food—always—always assigned it out. Family home evening—we're always kind of—yeah—not too heavily involved. I did—I never wanted to—what the expression—"ram it down her throat" type thing—some people do it religiously. I wasn't that kind of person. I was a more hands-on uh, teach by example—"follow me"—Follow the Leader—"follow the leader" of your mom. Um—wasn't—we used to share scripture. We have, you know, we used to do things in the summer—we go out and play down the field together—invite other people to join us. Um, we would play hard. I'd work hard; we'd always play hard. Um, I'd take them to the theater—concerts—um, things that were fairly uplifting. What about sports? Sports? Yeah, they—all the kids played Sports—Church sports or—yeah—all those kind of things. Yeah, okay. Yeah, we got involved with that, but then, of course, it died out, you see. Yeah. Was taken away from us. Yeah. Eventually. Encourag—the kids to go to university. Mhm. They all went—bar the youngest boy. Uh, Amy did a little bit towards that—all the rest got degrees. I mean, I, you know, sometimes I'm accused of like hating the church or want to destroy it, but if those who know me know that I loved my Mormon upbringing, and that's—that's part of what has impacted me so much is because I didn't hate my Mormon upbringing. I loved it. I loved everything about it, and just my—the memories uh are phenomenal. And it just sounds like in the UK you had—you and your kids had—and your wife had a very similar experience of just an amazing positive structure for raising a wonderful family—for raising good kids—and to have strong family Unity. Yeah, we did. We had L—we had all that. It was great. Right. We we were a great family. People—I I think I could say with my hand on my heart—people admired us. They said, "There's a good example of a good family." I mean, Saturday evenings before church, my job was to clean the shoes of the kids, get the clothes ready for Sunday, get the baking done for Sunday—never filled the fuel up in the car on a Sunday, never went to a restaurant on a Sunday, never went to see a show on a Sunday—might walk—might go out for a walk in the countryside—Get Back To Nature—but we kept—us—we kept the Sabbath holy. Um, traveled many many miles to get to the temple in London to do uh vicarious work for the K—was that like a 5-hour drive? What was the drive? Well, in the early days it was 5 hours. Yeah, until the motorways were built. Okay. Then it it got down to 2 and a half hours. Okay. Yeah. But our commitment was always there. Yeah, yeah. Coffee and tea? Oh, no. Tobacco? No. Never touched tobacco. I haven't touched tobacco or alcohol for 50—well, I never smoked really. M—uh, it was easy to—for me to live the world—dead easy. I was a sportsman. Yeah. I thought that's healthy. I I never smoked anyway. I drank for about a year—hated the stuff to be honest—before you joined the church. Yeah, for about a year—meddled in it, you know, had a bit of fun with my friends. Yeah. But um—never—never enjoyed it—waste of money. Um, yeah, yeah. I lived a—I want to live a good life—healthy life. Was the fact that the Mormon church was American in its Origins a positive thing for you or a negative thing for you or neutral for you? I would say a little bit of a negative thing, really. What? Well, why is that? Well, you know, Jesus Christ coming to America—well, that was kind of hard to take. You didn't believe that? I found that hard. I find it incredible now. Right. Yeah, for—yeah. But I mean, I mean, Michael Jordan—like, okay, let's go back to Dr. J or Wilt Chamberlain or Bill Russell—like, if you love basketball—loved all that—then you must have loved, you know, the fact, you know, the the the the church was American—for—and then there's American baseball and entertainers—the Osman come along—was—so—but—but—but I also know that that Americans are often viewed as borish or arrogant or or ill-mannered, you know, and there's always the political stuff. So was it mixed—the fact that the church was American? A bit mixed. I realized that the—there was a big influence of the Utah church. We can't live the Utah Church in Britain; it's impossible. There's too many things going against it. It's uh geographically—it's spread out—small in numbers—small in leadership quality—uh—yeah, it's just—you can't do it. It's impossible. You can do some of it, but the trouble is we tried to do all of it, yeah, and it just, you know… I felt sorry for people when I first joined because they were always at the building in meetings—always—they never went home. Families were falling apart. Um, they didn't realize it—they were falling apart. And I've seen families fall apart—it's dreadful. I've—a lot of divorce—dreadful—separation—it's dreadful. But that can happen with or without the Church, of course. And I guess I didn't—I didn't expect it so much in the church. Yeah. I felt—with everything—the knowledge and the information that was eventually coming through—I thought we had enough to keep us on the straight and narrow—to keep us focused. Yeah. Or perhaps I was overfocused—perhaps—it—to me—I was focused, you know. So is—I'm thinking about when things started to change for the church—CH—there was some point—and I don't—I think it might have been Packer—who—boy—K Packer—who was behind this—but like…

You and I would agree that that whole Road Show, temple trip, youth conference, dance festivals, Golden Green balls, cultural Hall, potl—that whole element, the cultural element of Mormonism—was kind of what made it so amazing and attractive and compelling. And then, at some point, Packer and other church leaders apparently said, “Everyone’s too busy; we’re stressing people out; everyone’s, you know, being overworked; we’ve got to simplify down to the bare bones.” And they started cutting the sports programs, cutting a lot of road shows, cutting a lot of these cultural events. And that did simplify, but what sociologists tell us is the more the religion demands, the more people are committed to the religion; and the less religion demands, the less committed they are to the religion. So it’s—there’s a double-edged sword of simplifying, yeah, but also making it less compelling or powerful and ultimately engaging in the lives of the members. And that’s it. It’s like they killed the cultural backbone of the church as they started to weed out these programs. Now that’s my perception. What’s your perception?

Well, that’s exactly right. What you said is exactly right. I couldn’t agree with you more. The other thing, the other element to it I would add is that it’s also—they were teaching this family unit orientation: it’s about the family, protect the family, teach family. In other words, the thing—what happened was it isolated people because you didn’t get included if you’re on your own. Like you do get—you do get older people, uh, women and men on their own, nowhere to go on a Sunday, no one to talk to, no one to have a discussion with, never included. And the some of the problems you have back home—you have family clicks in the units, with the family dominating activities and leadership, especially. And so the—these families don’t even start—they don’t even continue to talk to you; they would ignore you because they have all their—their own family connections to keep them together; they don’t need anybody else to join in their groups. And I—I see this a lot in my own ward back home, and I see it in other wards where there are big family connections. So it has a—it has a double-whammy effect: not only are the programs taken away, but the families become isolated. And therefore, I see now what we have is a Sunday-to-Sunday church; nothing happens in the week. They’re trying hard—some areas are trying hard to create some things to weld us back together again, but it’s—I think we’ve lost—we’ve lost the plot now. I really do. We’ve lost the plot. It’s very sad.

I see this decline. There’s a—there’s a brother in my ward back home who’s—he’s—he’s very serious about the church, bless him, but he said to me one day, “Now they’ve taken everything away; there’s nothing to replace.” So when someone joins the church who, for example, is a member of Rotary or a former Mason or um, some other club that does charitable work, they join the church and what do they replace their lives with? Because the church demands their time, and you can’t be a Rotarian anymore because the church wants that time, that contribution, whether it’s financial or otherwise. And therefore, what—what you replace it with? Oh well, you can go to the temple, you can—your ancestors, and you—you can be at that Temple up that M—M4—M25 every other week, you know. Um, then they’re trying to revitalize that in our ward at the moment: go to the temple, go to the temple. But it won’t work. Ministering doesn’t work very well; no accountability doesn’t work; people—they—well, “I don’t have to report on it,” so they won’t bother with it, you know. And I used to be a faithful home teacher every month, and you know what? I’d always get the worst families to visit. Do you know what I mean?

Wor—in what way? The ones with troubles, ones with issues, yeah, ones with challenges, uh, kind of semi-active, come out once in a while. And I always—I always used to get those to visit and take a brother weaker with me. And so I—doing a double job—is trying to help him and then help these families. But I did my home teaching every week, and I was a full tithing payer for all those years, and I paid a lot of money into the church. Yeah, a lot of money. Yeah, yeah.

What—what really quickly—what was it like to be a husband, to be a dad of six kids, to be serving intensely in the church, and to be trying to build a business or businesses? Wow. It was—that was busy, especially the first few years. Um, I admitted to my son Aaron, my—my eldest boy, on one occasion—I actually apologized to him. I said, “I’m sorry I don’t spend much time with you.” I wrote him a letter in—when he was on his mission, and I said words to that effect. I said, “I’m—I apologize, and I’m sorry I didn’t spend some—as much quality time with you that I did with the girls,” maybe because I was busy with the business, building the business. And years ago I said to my wife when we had a tough start out in life, “I will make this up to you one day.” And um, I’m still doing that. I think I’m still trying to make it up to my children and my brother. I mean, I had nothing to do with my brother for years—even when I was at the temple, I never spoke to him for three years. And I said to him, “I’m sorry, Steve, I’ve neglected you.” He said, “Oh, don’t be sorry; I know you were busy; I know you’re involved.” He said, “There’s no one more surprised than me that you’ve come out of the church.” Even my friends know you’re a—remember LDS, and they’ve asked—always asked from time to time, “Oh, how’s Martin doing with his assignments in London?” “Oh, he’s—he’s—he’s come out; he’s—” What—people are staggered, shocked. Well, we—well, that’s a—that’s another um, foreshadowing of what is to come in your story. But did you feel like it um, made it difficult for you to have high—a high-quality marriage with your wife—all the busyness—or were you all able to have a pretty healthy friendship and relationship—all the business?

We had challenges when we got married. I busted my leg up playing sport; I lost my job; she was pregnant with our first child; we were living at home with my parents; I had no money. I just got a good job; I lost the job because of this injury. And uh, that was a challenge, but my Jan stood by me, and uh, we had a lot of faith, and um, we got into our first home. And the very first night I came home from work in that new home—we had nothing there but she—uh, I walked in at 6:00, and there was a little orange box on the floor—we had no seats to sit on—she had a little tablecloth, little dolly, little balls of flowers, and she made me a fantastic dinner. And we sat and cried, “How are we going to do this? How are we going to make the mortgage payments?” But we did, and we had blessings come our way. Mhm. And um, we did it because we loved each other, and it was never an issue in our lives. Um—um, I said to someone recently, “I never ever imposed myself on my wife in an intimate way.” It was enough for me to hold her hand, to touch her, to smell her perfume, and just to touch her skin, and just to love her. I just—that was enough for me. And I said that to someone recently, she—and he said to me five years ago or seven years ago, “Your wife said the same thing to my wife.” It was always enough. And uh, I know how much she loved me; I’ve checked it all out with her sisters, and I’m grateful for that. I knew she loved me, and uh, I certainly loved her, and we always overcame it. She always had time for me, even when she went through the—the menopause in her life. I was very patient with her, and she said, “You’re so understanding.” I said, “Well, it’s just because I love you, Jan; you’re everything to me.” And we got through everything together—all the challenges, the downside in the business when we had a struggle on one occasion—things weren’t too—looking too good—recession—um, when we had the babies, and I used to help with the babies and uh, change them and get them ready. We were never late for events, uh, always on time, but I always made time to take her away—weekends occasionally—so we could have time to ourselves, to readjust, rethink, recalibrate, um, and I—SP—I would—spoiler—and uh, all those things got us through. She—we had—we—she could trust me. She said, “I can implicitly trust you, even when you go out and meet ladies in a house to measure up or give a quotation.” She said, “I never worried about you with your work—never.” And um, that was the way it was. It was—it was a—we had a wonderful marriage. Yeah, 50 years—50 wonderful years.

Yeah. How did you end up—so we’ve never had uh, a guest—we’ve had former Mission presidents, former Area Authorities, you know, former Stake Presidency members, former Bishops—we’ve never had a former—that I know of—a former Temple Presidency member. Tom Phillips—I’m not sure if he was ever—he was never in the Temple Presidency. No, but you know, he’s pretty high up. Yeah, it’s a pretty high-up position to be in the—in a Temple Presidency—one of the three people that were in charge of running a temple. Because temples are super sacred. It’s—it’s the most sacred thing—probably the most sacred place in all of Mormonism is the temple. Am I—am I stating that—

Um, well, some would view that. Yeah, I would—I would also view the most sacred place in your home, right? Yeah, I think that’s also true—might be one against the other, I don’t know. But I—I understand what you’re saying. Yes, it is. Yeah, super—super sacred. So how did you become such a high-level Mormon leader to be able to become a—a member of a Temple Presidency? Just talk quickly about like the path that you took to that high-status position.

That’s—that’s a very good question. I’ve often asked—asked that question myself. Um, Raymond Lowry became the new Temple president. Had you—had you been Bishop or Stake President or any of—

I’ve been a Branch President in—in the ward—four times, on the High Council—Stake High Councils, okay, one in Bristol, three in Sheltenham. Um, three times—three times a Branch President’s counselor, uh, once the Branch President, and twice on the Bishopric. Okay. Um, so always involved—a lot of leadership. Yeah. Okay. And uh, very faithful. Yeah. Um, yeah, I was your typical Mormon family. Yeah, had a lot of good friends; people respected us as a family. Um, so I met Raymond Lowry on my mission—my second area. He was the—the newly called young Branch President; he’s my age; he’ll be 77 this year; he’s a few months younger than me—wonderful, humble man. Uh, he became the Bishop eventually and became the Stake President and an Area Authority, which was the regional rep then in Scotland. So um, I didn’t see him very often—not much at all—did see him in Chand once where we had Elder Packer there, and he was there as the Mission President. He was only there for three months; his wife became very ill; she had cancer, so they went home; they were home for 10 years, and he got a call from Elder Ballard to be the new—new Temple President in London. My wife was over here—my wife was over here um, at the uh, birth of one of Aaron’s children, I think it was Emerson, and um, I was at home, and I was going to join her uh, one evening. I get—I get—I got home from work, and uh, my daughter said, “There’s a strange man that’s been on the phone tonight with a weird accent, Dad; he wants to talk to you.” So I phoned the number; I didn’t know who I was calling, and it was Raymond Lowry. And uh, I said to him, I said, “Oh, hi Raymond; I recognize your voice”—or I should say, “President Lowry.” And uh, he—he said, “How—how are you?” And we were talking away, and uh, he then said—uh, I then said, “Well, Jan and I are looking forward to uh, come into the temple, and we’re going to give two years service at the temple.” And uh, he said—he said, “Well, what about—” I said, “We’re going to look forward to serving under you for two years.” He said, “Well, what about serving with me for two years?” And to be honest, I didn’t take any—I didn’t take any—I didn’t take the uh, upside of what he was saying there. And uh, he asked me what I was going to do, what my plans were, and—and that was the end of that. I went over to Ireland. I mentioned to Jan that uh, I had this strange call from Raymond Lowry—unusual—what was that about? I told her—said, “Oh, that’s interesting.” You did tell him we’re going to go to the temple for two years. Said, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.” So she comes home from America, and I—I was—we came on—on different flights, and um, within an hour we were together, and uh, we were going to bed one evening, and she said, “Do you think that President Lowry has now uh, called the new counselor?” And I said, “Oh, yeah, done and dusted, Jan; I said we’ll read about it in the—in the British Isles segment in the middle—we’ll read about that next month; they’ll all be there.” Went to bed; that was the end of that. The very next day I had a phone call from Germany, and my wife gets me on the phone, and she says, “Martin,” she says, uh, “you’ve had a phone call from Germany.” Uh, I said, “Oh, what missionary do we know from Germany that would want to speak to us?” Cuz we had one or two from Germany. She said, “Well, try Elder Kishu.” And I went—“Elder Kishu? Do I know him?” Oh, I said um, I said, “Yeah, he’s—he’s the Area President, isn’t he?” She said, “Yes; he wants to speak to you, but I told him you had a busy day, so he said, ‘Well, call by 4:30 your time today, and you’ll get a direct line to him.’” So I uh, I called back at 4:30 and got straight through to his office, and we had a chat, and he asked me three questions, and my wife kept saying in my ear, “Say yes to that question; say yes to that question; and say yes to that question.” I was so nervous, anyway. He said, “That’s fine, then; I’m going to issue a call for you to serve for three years in the London Temple.” And I went, “Wow,” with President Lowry. He said, “Yes.” I went, “Wow, that’s fantastic!” I was thrilled to bits. And when we got up to our shops that afternoon, Jan kept saying to me, “Why did I keep saying yes to those questions?” I said, “Cuz that’s what you told me to say, love.” So he said, “Don’t you tell anybody until you get a letter back from uh, Salt Lake Temple Department.” And that went on and on and on, and we never got a letter for ages until three weeks before we—due to go there, and then we broke silence on it. So that was how I got called. The—our Stake President knew; he had a phone call from the member of the Seventy about my worthiness and my ability, I suppose, and uh, he gave a glowing report, and uh, that was that.

What—what role did the temple play in your life in the 30, 40 years leading up to that call? What—what temple activity did you regularly engage in?

Oh, well, uh, it—uh, we always found the temple an important place to go, but we didn’t go that often when the kids were small. We—we made the effort, but it was always a challenge; they were little, demanding, active kids. Uh, child-minding was not easy, uh, but we used to attend when we could, and it was a—it was paramount in our—in our vision and understanding. And in 2001, our Bishop came to us and said, uh—our—he was our Bishop at the time—I think he said, “About time you two went and worked in the temple.” And I said, “Well, what—what does one do in the temple?” He said, “Well, go there and find out.” So we said, “Well, okay.” So he said, “I’ll arrange that; I’ll phone the Temple Pres and make sure they know you’re coming up, and they want you there for a week.” I said, “A week? Why a week?” He said, “Well, they want to train you.” I said, “Train us for what?” He said, “Well, they want you to be ordinance workers.” I said, “What does an ordinance worker do?” He said, “Well, you’ll find out when you get there.” So we went up there for a week, and we met President Jones, and within three days he invites us into his office, and he said, “I’ve heard good reports about you two; could you come full-time and work in the temple?” I said—I said—I said, “President Jones, I said I—I’m running a business; I said I—I can’t leave that business at the moment; it’s impossible.” “Oh, yeah,” he said, “I remember you had a business, cuz you done work on the mission home for me when I was there,” blah, blah, blah. And I said, “Yeah.” So uh, he said, “Well, we’ll carry on if we can see you here once a month; that would be fantastic.” So every month on a Friday, we travel to the temple; we work every evening, and then we got on the—a late shift, and we wouldn’t get to bed till 1:00 in the morning, and then we’d be in the temple—we didn’t know any different—we go in the temple instead of—to—to 10, we’d be in the temple for—hour 7, get five hours sleep, we’d be back in the temple until—one person said to us, “You don’t have to be in the temple to quarter to 10; you’re on a late shift.” I didn’t know anything about shifts at the time or what was—what—all I was happy to do was serve, and I—we picked it up very quickly. I mean, I was officiating within that first week; I could officiate pretty—what—pretty much everything. Um, I learned all the other areas—the slowest one was the initiatory—took a while to learn that. But can you—can you explain to our never Mormons in—whatever, you know—and I’ll just acknowledge that talking about what goes on in the temple for Mormons generally is forbidden. In fact, before you go in to take out your endowments, you don’t even know what you’re going in to do or what’s going to happen or any of that stuff. You do learn about baptism for the dead as a kid, and it’s very much like a normal baptism, you know, and Mormon kids get baptized when they’re eight, and—and the baptism in the temple for the dead is very similar to a baptism for the living that happens in a Mormon Chapel. The only difference is when you go to the temple to get baptized for the dead, you’re baptized in the name of somebody else. So it’s like, “I baptize you for Jose, who is dead,” and then you get baptized. So—but you know, aside from that, when you’re an adult going through to the temple for the first time, you really have no idea what you’re getting into. What are you comfortable communicating with our never-Mormon audience about the main things that go on in a temple that would at some point need to be managed by a presidency? Just to give them a sense for what happens. And if you want to say, “I don’t want to talk about it,” that’s totally fine; I just want to give you a chance to say whatever you wanted to say.

Well, some people going through for the first time, uh, man or a woman, they—they are taken through the temple uh, but either by the matron or the assistant matron—that would be my wife—or by the Temple President or by his counselors. And most of the time it was—I had a lot of responsibility in the temple in that presidency. The Temple President did—did not know much about Temple work or how to conduct the training or the instruction or how to operate it; he left a lot of responsibility uh, to me. The other counselor served in the Church Seminary and in Institute Department; he—he—he was the director in England or for Britain—great man—and he didn’t know his way around either. A lot of it fell on my shoulders, so I had to set up everything in the temple. So when a new person—

Would come in more often than not. I would take them through everything in the temple; that was what they had to participate in. Um, taking them down to the locker room, showing them what they had to wear to receive a uh uh an initiatory ordinance. Uh, is that called the washing and anointings? Yes. Um, and that's a ceremony; it's a ceremony where they put white clothes on, but in in earlier times it would just be a shield-like, silky poncho, like a poncho, opened at the sides. Yeah, uh, not done up in any way. A little bit embarrassing for people. I got a friend who would never do that again if it doesn't like um, doesn't like cuz people can see your nakedness on the sides, and then they're anointing you with oil, oil, water and then oil. It's the same blessing, but just ones with water, ones with oil. You move around different cubicles, and then you would be uh

And what's the purpose of the washing and anointing ritual or ceremony? They they call it a preparatory ordinance. You are you are there prepared to receive the endowment ceremony. So you need to be washed clean, your sin, yeah, wash clean from the blood and sins of this generation. Okay. And then anointed to become such. So it's it's a man or a woman anointing you with oil in different parts of your body. Yeah. Is there any other part? Is there is there do they put their—was changed, of course. Yeah, and they just you just place the hands on the head now. Okay. And proceed with the The Narrative. And they they say a prayer, yeah, a blessing type thing, a blessing. Yeah. And is are the words the word still refer to the different parts of your body? Yeah, uh, still the same, and but the hand stay on the head. Okay. Um, so it's a ritual with oil to anoint you and wash you clean in preparation for you receiving your endowment, the holy endowment. Tell people what the endowment is.

Well, um, the endowment is referred to as a gift. And what would happen to the new the new Patron? They would go into a room, uh, receive their new name, of course, then go into a room after these initiatory ordinances, and you'd spend 10 or so minutes with them just giving them a a bit of a uh an a preamble to the endowment. You would tell them what the endowment means. It's a gift of knowledge, of empowerment, of uh new knowledge to them, where you're going to make uh sacred covenants between you and and Heavenly Father, uh, where you would be you You' obligate yourself to service and to the to the four main covenants that you make, and uh and you would hold them um secret, that you never divulge what those covenants are about. Um, and then he'd be there most of the time with his father or an escort of some description; it would be a best friend or a brother or a brother and a father, and and they would have that Preamble. Then they would they would be seated, then courted to what we call the assembly room prior to going upstairs to the endowment room, where they would sit on the front row of seats next to their escort, and they would see a film and uh that depicts the creation and uh and there they would go through these uh sacred covenants and obligations um that were to be held. I mean, members, the Brethren now say well they're not sacred, they're they're not secret, they're sacred, but it's the same thing, same difference in my opinion. It's it's it's there to be held secret. You do not discuss those things outside the temple, those uh obligations of um of covenant making. Uh, you're dressed in white, you change robes, white robes, uh someone officiates a sacred Altar, and it's all done by a visual as well as a narrative, and it's usually would last these days about an hour and a half or so. Um um, and then You' be presented at the veil of the temple, which represents the veil preceding meeting God. This is like a hanging sheet, hang holes with holes in, where you exchange uh hand grips and give the tokens of the priesthood to somebody representing God behind the veil.

And just just to restate if I'm getting it right, so you get a new name, that's one of the main—you get you you get a new name, right? Everyone's given a new name? Yes. Everyone gets their washing and anointing, their initiatory, and then everybody goes to their endowment where they make four—you said four covenants. It's the law of sacrifice, the law of tithing, law of the Gospel, law of the Gospel. What are the what are the ones—it's been a law of Chastity, law of Chastity, and the law of consecration, law of consecration. Yeah, and consecration is what—everything you you dedicate your time and talents to the building of the kingdom of God in Zion upon the Earth. It's basically you committing to give your life to the church for your entire life. Is tithing one of the laws? No, sacrif—that encompass—it's all encompassed in the laws of the Gospel. Chastity is you know, no sex outside of marriage. Yep. Yeah, yeah. They changed that slightly over the years. I explained it to my wife once, and she missed it. It was uh it was no sexual relations at one time, right? It's no sexual intercourse. Okay. Oh, I made that change. Yeah, I forget now, the might be the other way around, I forget, but it it add a slight connotation to it, so there should be no sexual relationships. Okay, got it. Yeah, they made it more broad. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so you you make pretty serious covenants, yeah, with the church, yeah, that you don't know you're making before you get there. No, sir. So imagine if you you're told the most important religious ceremony of your life, you're going to go do this when you're 19 or 18 or 21 or whatever, you don't know what you're committing to. You're there with all your friends and family, and then all of a sudden they're saying, you know, do you solemnly swear whatever to give your entire life to the church for your entire life for the building up and the strengthening of Zion, yes or no, and you're on the spot, you got to decide if you want to make that Covenant. Yeah, it's not really a covenant, is it, because you don't know what the Covenant is. A covenant is a two-way promise. Surely you shall—the the opportunity of knowing what that Covenant is about. Yeah, and also, of course, you have the opportunity to withdraw if you so wish, and the church does give you at the very beginning an opportunity to withdraw. Yeah, but who's going to withdraw? I mean, you got your sometimes you got your family there, and you got your friends there, and other friends, and it's a little bit embarrassing, isn't it? I have seen it happen once with an American sister. She didn't really she didn't really withdraw at that time; she withdrew right towards the end, and we had to make her sit in the chair, and I had to contact her Bishop over here in America. I forget what hour of the morning, morning it was. Did she say why she was withdrawn? Well, she said, well, she just said it's I'm not ready for this. Oh, no, I'm not ready for this. It's a lot of nonsense, but her Bishop informed me that she was well prepared, as I remember, but uh so um so your overall thoughts on the—I I imagine that when you went through the temple both at first and over the decades you were a faithful member, you were happy to make all those covenants, you were proud of them, right?

Yeah, it was my it was my um it was my commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I I um yeah. And when the church now constantly refers to the Covenant path, they're talking about the Covenant you make at baptism, but mostly they're talking about the Covenant you make at the temple, yeah, to give everything to the church, right, basically to give your life to the church. Yeah, you do for your whole life. Yeah, yeah. People say, well, you know, the best place to be is in the temple, you know, cuz you learn a lot. Well, well, you don't really—they keep saying, well, I always learn something new or something different. Well, that doesn't happen for me. I don't learn anything new um or anything different. I've tried that tactic, and then I think it's an old nutshell that uh people throw around. Um, I I find also I've learned that it the temple experience, most of what you learn about the gospel is not in the temple, is it? You spend most of your life outside the temple; the temple just reiterates a covenant, this binding as far as the LDS church is concerned. So but most of your living the gospel is in the walls of your own home and associating with your people you work with and people you live with, your community. The temple reinforces all of that. I think people that say, I love being in the temple, I love being close there, and yeah, but most of your life is not in the temple. And um, I used to find when I was in the temple for three years, when Monday came or day off, I used to say to my wife, come on, let's go, love, let's go and visit somewhere, let's get some fresh air, let's recharge the batteries, let's experience something different. We've had this for 5 Days, full on instructing people, um, and I did a lot of that. I I did so much that I I kind of forgot the impact of what I was what the temple was really for because I was involved in the administration, uh the the workings, the running of the temple. I think the patrons probably got the experience they were looking for, but looking back, I don't think I did. It was mine was very mechanical, very physical, very Hands-On, sorting out uh uh putting out fires amongst workers that had issues. We have some of them, you know, some were very very good, uh but some of them just just didn't get it, did they, what they were there for? For some it was a status symbol. I work in the temple; I'm an ordinance worker, you know, that kind of thing. And we had people come to us and say, I i' like to be an ordinance worker, and i' I'd start talking to them, well, how far away do you live? Do you realize what the commitment is? And there was a time, sadly, when if you couldn't make the commitment uh you were least—and these are people that lived 130 Mi away, 180 Mi away, couldn't always get there, car would break down, or something would happen in the family, and they would release these people. Made a big mistake because they were always short of workers. Yeah. Okay.

In addition to doing the Washings and anointings and the endowment and the covenants, you also learn these handshakes that literally you're taught will be required of you when you die and you go to heaven. If you don't get the handshakes right with whoever is on the other side, you won't be allowed into heaven. And there's the first token of the ironic pries, the second token of the ironic priesthood, then the first—and they're basically the Masonic grips that a Mason would learn. Um, any thoughts on this idea of needing to learn literal handshakes to be able to make it into heaven? Any thoughts on that? Well, I've heard that story before. There'd be no one on the other side to help you get through the veil. You' have to memorize at all; that's why you that's why you got to keep going to the temple; you must learn those handshakes; they're important. That's rubbish. You don't now, but now you don't like that. Well, I I knew that anyway. I mean, let's think about it: if you're an old person going through the veil, and you might be deaf, you might be blind, you might be impaired some way, you might you might have very bad arthritis, you might not quite remember all the words, someone's going to have to help you cuz you have to remember these sayings, yeah, as you're doing the handshakes, right? Someone's going to have to help them, aren't they? Yeah. Someone's always going to be there to help you. Yeah. That's that's obvious. Yeah. God's not going to keep you out if you say the words wrong, right, or you like put your thumb on the wrong knuckle or whatever. Well, I've done all that, yeah, yeah, yeah, many many times, um cuz I always tried to do it correctly because it's a teaching moment; it's a it's an opportunity; that's why they go back many times. Repetition is a good way of learning, and I used to—they used to say don't correct people too much, mhm, or they'd say uh H the ve uh that is correct. Now they might said it all wrong, but you still say that is correct. I us say to people presenting on the V, please concentrate, sisters or brothers, think about what you're doing there, don't get distracted, you know, and and and concentrate and and help people. Some people don't want to be helped; some people don't like you all over them as a worker correcting them, but just be gentle, be kind, be thoughtful, be sensitive. So you would say let if they say the words wrong, let them through anyway? Is that okay? Yeah. Okay. Um, all right. And then there's the penalties that they used to have if you ever divulge the signs and the tokens, and any—I mean, I guess they've taken those out. What do you think about the fact that the temple is supposed to be given by Revelation from God and yet in response to public criticism and pressure they've changed it so much over the past 50 years? Incredible. I uh I find very good Incredible or bad? Incredible bad. Incredible uh I me I'm sure you're glad you're not slitting your throat in the temple, right? Yeah. Um, so it's good that way. How is it that the baptismal prayer or the sacrament prayer, for example, has to be word perfect and yet in the house of the Lord and has never changed? Right? Never changed. Never. Yeah. I I guess they I guess with the with the sacrament prayer they changed it from Wine to Water. Water. Yeah, yeah. So they did make a slight change, slight change. Okay. But basically it's got to be Word Perfect. They always look across to the Bishop Rick, don't they? Yeah. Have I said it right, Bishop? Oh, if you say it wrong, you got to say it again, to say it again. Same with the baptismal prayer; if you dunk them first time and it's wrong, you got to dunk them again. So I find that strange that the temple changes when there are statements by the past prophets that said everybody is to be saved and exalted under the same Covenant and the same ordinance, to quote Joseph Smith and John Taylor, very adamant it should be the same, and I feel that in the house of the Lord they've changed it so many times, recent in recent years, you can't keep up with it. And people used to come, workers used to come to the temple and approach me and say, anything new this week? I need to learn any changes, President Lock, and I say, no, it's all the same the last time you came. And then when they gone home, next month something's changed and altered, and um yeah. And the biggest thing for me with all the endowment ceremony and all this statement by Brigham Young that you have to walk back to get back to God, you have to pass the Angels who stand as Sentinels, given been able to give them the keyword signs and tokens pertaining to the holy priesthood and gain your exaltation spite of Earth in hell. I thinking, goodness me, how does Jesus feel about his atonement and his Garden of Gethsemane and his suffering on the cross? What does that mean for us now? What? So does that lose meaning? Does that lose Integrity? Does that lose our understanding? Where does the atonement come into this from a statement from Brigham Young like that? I find that incredible. I find that I find that uh I can't accept that you you you have to accept that uh Jesus died for me as an individual for my sin, and it's about building a relationship with him. And I used to get people come to me in the temple and say, don't talk much about Jesus Christ, does it? It does now, just the past few years, but doesn't like we're in 2024, and just in the past couple years they've kind of added yeah a lot of Jesus. I knew they would. You I knew that would come, but but in your experience prior to the most recent changes, there wasn't a lot of Jesus in the temple. No. I mean, the whole more of more more of Satan, what he takes Prime position, Satan. There there is a in the film or in the play, There's an actual Satan character that's quite PR because there's very prominent, and Satan in the garden, and then there's Peter, James, and John, and God, and I mean, I guess Jesus and God are walking up in the clouds up in the councils of heaven, right? Yeah. But it's mostly God talking about Jesus, right? No. God tells Jesus to talk to Peter, James, and John, right? No. Yeah, it's all it goes down the line; it's patriarchal; it's uh subordinate, you know, you uh you talk to me, and I talk to him, and he talks to him, you know, then it comes back down the line again. I mean, they taken a a lot of that out now because it was very time consuming. Yeah, uh, but um yeah, you know, it's it's like I a lady came to me once, I I knew quite well, and she said to me, why does um why why does the woman kind of subject herself to Adam in the garden, and and then Adam subjects himself to Jesus? I said, that's a good question. I said, but it's all about order, it's ordering the kingdom. I said, and you're subordinate to your husband, aren't you? You know, but now that's changed, so she's probably quite happy now. Yeah, she's got a prayer answered there, you know. It's it's very subtle; it's even subtle when you think about the Adam God Doctrine, and it's not a theory, that's a doctrine that was taught, and it's in the temple today, still there, and people people don't recognize it, but it's there. I said, well, you know, who was Adam? What he was placed in the garden? I said, yeah, but who was he? Oh um yeah, he was Michael. I said, yes, that's right. And how do you what have you got to do to create an earth or a world? You have to be a God. So who created the Earth with Jesus? Why didn't Jesus create the Earth with his father? No, it's plainly taught in the in the Mormon Temple that Michael becomes Adam; Adam is already a God; that's why he's the God of this Earth, and it perpetuates all—you can see it there, you—and you got to be astute to see, I think, and I never saw that for years, never saw it. And the idea is is that we're literal offspring of God, yeah, both spiritually and physically. Yeah, there's there wasn't a belief in early Mormonism of organic evolution. No. And so we're you know, so Adam as a God would have come to this earth to then perpetuate I don't know the the race of God's children on the Earth, right? GED embro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then and so we're literally because in Mormonism one of the features as it evolved with Joseph Smith is that God has a body of Flesh and Bones, that Jesus has a body of Flesh and Bones, and that they were once Mortals like us who achieved godhood status. Yeah. And so Adam, the only way to get humans on the earth and to get Spirits into those bodies is for there to be a first human, and so must have been Adam who is also a God. I don't know, is that it? Yeah, it's hard to comprehend, but yeah, that's kind of it. Yeah. So also another thing that happens in the temple is Temple marriage, where where when couples first get married they're sealed for eternity in the temple, and then if they convert to the church and um and then get married later after they were married civy, they would get sealed as a couple, and if they have any children, the children will be sealed to the couple. So those are the main things that happen in the temple, pretty much covered it. Yeah. Okay. Um, and then the second endowment, is there anything you want to say about your knowledge or lack of knowledge about the second endowment that happens in the temple? You would have been in the temple that Thomas that uh that um Tom Phillips would have received his second Endowment in, am I right? Probably. I might have been around then as an ordinance worker, but I didn't know him. I didn't know that happened. President Larry, I think, told my wife that he received it. Now I know that President Nelson came over one week; we weren't there because the lowers used our

Bedroom and President Nelson was a member of the quorum of the 12. Then he used the downstairs apartment where President Larry lived. He was there, but he told me he came over to see his daughter. He had a daughter serving in the temple. Now that may well have been right. Uh, I, I don't know, but um, but you think he might have been going there to receive a second anointing? Quite possibly. Now, looking back, and they're told they have to lie if, if anyone asks, they can't tell why they're there. I, I've been asked, I've quite a few times, have I received it, being a, a sealer and a, a counselor in the temple, and I said, "Nope, never received it." You, you were never invited to get your second anointing? I know what it's about, and uh, I was flabbergasted then when I found, when I found that out. That was another thing to put on the back burner: the second endowment. Well, what is that all about, and why is it? And then again, my, my ex-business partner said, "Next time you go," he said this a few years ago, "he said, 'Next time you go to the temple, listen to the opening G.C.I.T. of the endowment, and you'll hear it said there that you're now only ordained, uh, the time will come when you be called up and anointed, whereas now you're only anointed to become such.'" Think about the wording; that's what it means. And he's right; that, that's what it means. Yeah, that you, and and we're going to be having a whole series on Mormon Stories about the second anointing. Yeah, and we've, of course, interviewed Hans Matson and Tom Phillips in the past who talked about theirs, but, but it is the highest ordinance in Mormonism is the second anointing; that's super secret.

So were you not trained about or informed about the second anointing in your training as a temple presidency? Never discussed. Never discussed. Okay. Nemo is, uh, he's listening in. Hey Nemo. And Nemo is informing us that Tom Phillips received his second anointing in the Preston Temple, probably, which is not the London Temple. No, that'd be probably right. Thank you. Thank you, Nemo. Yeah, yeah. And then Julia is, is giving us the phrase "anointed to become such." Right. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Anything? And you sealed, so you would marry couples in the temple; you would seal couples together. That's a pretty big deal to seal.

Well, I used to get, I was very blessed; I got requested to be a sealer by lots of young couples. Some of them have now left the church. Yeah, quite a few of them I would say that I know of personally. So people you sealed in the temple have since left the church? Oh yeah, they've given up on the church. Okay. I mean, I, I've looked at the sealings in the church; I used to enjoy doing it. Big honor, big privilege. I was a young sealer; I was ordained by Jeffrey R. Holland. I was the first one of three that day, uh, up in Su Hall. Um, we had a half an hour interview with him. Um, he was very funny and amusing with us, and uh, I said, "Well, we'd like to serve a mission eventually." He said, "Looks to me like you're ready right now to go on a mission, Brother Lock," and uh, I said, "Well, thank you for the compliment," and uh, we had a little nice chat with him. Nice man to meet. Um, and so I, I was, uh, 61 years of age when I was made a sealer. He said I was quite young to be a sealer. I said, "Well, thank you." Very involved with the temple then, and I was one of the youngest sealers up there; I'd be one of the oldest ones now in time I served. Um, but uh, I've, I've often thought, "Well, where were these sealings performed in Jesus's time? What was the purpose of the temple in Jesus's time?" And you do a little research on that, and you realize, of course, it was the sin offering for Israel under the Mosaic law, and there was no Temple marriages that I know of, uh, or Celestial marriages or anything like that. My own opinion is I believe the endowment was instituted to protect the plural marriages that went on in Nauvoo; that's my firm belief. I don't think I'd be far wrong, but I think that's my, that's my conclusion; it was, secz, mainly to protect those plural marriages. Um, and uh, that's why these, uh, penalties were instituted was to put them under severe penalty, and um, if they, if they told anyone polygamy was going on.

Is that right? Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. It was all kept very underground. Yeah. Um, and I believe it was the downfall of the church, polygamy. Yeah, I believe it's a terrible stigma. I believe that's why we don't get many converts in the church is because people don't want nothing to do with the church; it's cultish. Because all cults, I've learned, most of them go down the same route; it's power, it's money. Money inherits power; power, you, you're above the law. And Joseph Smith was very much above the law; he ignored the Ten Commandments; he ignored everything; he was, he was above the law. Everything he said went; if you raised your arm metaphorically speaking, watch out, the Danites would be after you. Very much so. There were terrible things that went on that we don't know about. The general public of the church do not know the history of the church; it's very weak because it's never taught. I taught Gospel Doctrine; my last calling was Gospel Doctrine teacher for three years, and when I got to Section 132, I don't discuss it, but I found out the manual, that's the polygamy section, the Doctrine and Covenants, the manual only goes up to verse 45 anyway; they don't want to discuss the rest; it's too dangerous.

Okay, so can I blow your mind for a second, Martin? Sure. You knew about the association with polygamy in the Mormon Church before you got baptized; you told us here in your story, and that didn't keep you from getting baptized? Not at the time, because I understood then it was no longer practiced. Yeah, I didn't know still true; I didn't know when it, I didn't know when it stopped officially, um, and I didn't know it carried on to the 1930s either. Yeah, I've learned an awful lot about this, uh, Doctrine, so I, I put it on the back burner because I thought one day it'll all be explained to me. Well, I found out my own explanation, my own his, the history of the church now, so I don't need anybody else to tell me about that. Yeah. Any, okay, anything else you want to say? You said it was a very administrative role being a, um, Temple presidency member. I imagine you enjoyed being a sealer? Oh, I loved it. Yeah, it's a special moment in people's lives; special moment. I made it special for them, and we were always taught never to draw attention to yourself, never to have any little five-minute talk. We used to say the maximum was 15 minutes to give a little talk to the couple. Well, 50 minutes is too long. You have to remember in England they've already had a wedding ceremony; they may have had a reception; they come to the temple, and they're very tired; they're exhausted. So my talk, five minutes max of encouragement and tell them what my wife and I experienced about being married for so long and what the secret was, and to that marriage, and uh, would, um, employ those, those words to them, and then really get on with the sealing ordinance and make it really special for them. Um, make sure we got the room ready, make sure we got the right persons to be the witnesses, um, make sure they, I give them a preamble of what we were going to do and how we're going to take the patriarchal grip in the marriage ceremony, and I've also sealed couples with their children as well; that was really nice. And uh, I was in charge of sealing rooms on Saturdays, and it was, it was a big commitment, and uh, yeah, I enjoyed doing it; it was really nice. Uh, but I think it, it's kind of a very, I think it was a very romantic idea as well as being there for the polygamous situation; it was a very romantic kind of, uh, situation, um, that's how I would term it. Um, yeah. Julia is asking if you're aware of any bedrooms in the temple. No, not in London. Okay. There were sealing rooms that we never use very much; they were very small. Was there a Holy of Holies? No, I've been asked that question many times. I used to, I used to kid people along and say, "Yeah, it's behind that door there." Really? I said, I said, "Yeah, yeah. What are they doing there then?" I said, "Well, we have all the operating equipment to run the films in there; we call that our Holy of Holies." So there is no Holy of Holies in a Mormon temple. I didn't know that. Well, the, I guess maybe Salt Lake, the only one I'm aware of, and I've been right outside it, is Salt Lake. Okay. I'm not aware that other temples would have a Holy of Holies. Is there a second anointing room in the, in the temple? They would, I, I think they would use one of the smaller rooms; that's my thinking. We had on one floor, we had four sealing rooms; one was a large room for main, uh, Saturday, uh, weddings after civil weddings; we wouldn't use that one too often; we'd keep that for Saturdays. The other three rooms we'd rotate, um, and then upstairs there was, I was, I think there was three up there, seven, seven rooms, and three very small rooms upstairs. I went there once for a, a sealing that President Larry performed for a girl from Ireland, just the once, but they're very small rooms; don't get many people in there. Nemo says he did some exploring, uh, when he was a temple worker, and he said that there's a tower, but the tower is full of dead flies, is what he said. That's exactly right; dust and dead flies. I've been up to the, as far as you can go, and it's full of dead flies. You need to wear a mask and a, a hat and a, a scarf. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, this is something I'll come back to. What the way this episode is going to end is with Martin telling us about how he lost faith and how the church is dying in England or in the UK. What I'm observing in this interview is you talking about all these wonderful, amazing experiences you had as a Mormon from your time as a, you know, young man to the Athletics to your mission to your service in the church to the branches and your leadership and, and then the temple. You're basically saying two things, um, we'll get to it's, it's not true anymore, and you think it might cause harm, but what you're also saying is you're telling me about a wonderful, beautiful life that was ordered and structured and informed by your devotion to and membership of the Mormon Church in the UK.

Yeah, that's exactly right; that's exactly right. You couldn't, you couldn't have said that any better. I couldn't have said it any better. It was very fulfilling. Um, it was interesting; I met loads of people. My wife and I loved people; that's part of our success in the temple. We reached out to people. I'll give you an example: one Friday evening we had the ones who stake attend predominantly black people. My wife was hugging the sisters coming in with a little kiss on the cheek; I was shaking the hands of the Brethren, and the American brother on the desk that the, the recommend desk, when they all came in, about 80 of them, he said, "Sister Lock, how, how can you do that?" She said, "Do what?" He said, "Kiss all those black people," and my wife said, "Well, it's like this, brother; they're God's children," and that shut him right up. He learned a lesson; they're God's children, and they were faithful people led by a great Stake president who's now the temple president; he's gone in from Africa, West Africa; nice, wonderful man. Nice. Yeah. Okay. So you would have concluded your service as Temple presidency member in what year? 2013. Okay, so that's 11 years ago. Yeah. Okay. And let's, anything else you want to say about, oh yes, I have one very important question right now. The, you know, the Mormon Church's missionary program, other than in Africa, is pretty much in decay and in demise because the product isn't selling like it used to, except in Africa as a general rule. Um, the Mormon Church is in decline in most places of the world, again, other than Africa, some developing countries, and in Utah only because of birth rate, but it's soon to be, it's almost flat and soon to be in decline even in Utah. There's Wards and Stakes closing every month in Salt Lake City, so like the church is in trouble. Where the Mormon Church is investing is in temples, and Russell Nelson has announced, I don't know, a couple hundred, several hundred temples just in his administration, and it's bizarre because historically you've always needed the church has always required a certain level, a certain population strength before they would build a temple in a certain area. You build up the church; it gets strong in Houston. Okay, Houston gets a temple. You know, you build up the church in Guatemala. Okay, Guatemala gets a temple. But like that all changed with Russell Nelson. He's like Oprah; it's like, "You get a car, and you get a car, and you get a car." You know, Nelson's like, "You get a temple, you get a temple, and you," and he's building hundreds of them in places that don't have the membership even to support the staffing of a temple, let alone the attending of a temple, and nobody's fully unsure, nobody is fully sure why, but there's a lot of speculation. Here's the question I'm going to ask you as someone who served in the temple for most of your life and who, uh, sealed people in the temple and who is in a temple presidency: What is your opinion about what the Mormon Church gets out of having temples and encouraging temple attendance? What's the benefit to the Mormon Church that would, um, compel it to spend so much money buying the real estate, building these temples, and then really, really pressuring the members to constantly go to the temples? What does the church get out of it in your opinion? That's probably a big question.

It is a big question, from what you saw; interesting question. I think it's, I think it's, uh, they're building these temples to, to try and demonstrate to an, an alien church that there's growth, and there isn't growth, um, but they think they, they have to believe they're getting something out of it, too. I, okay, so you're saying if you build a lot of temples, it gives the impression that the church is strong and healthy and growing, but also, why are they telling members to spend so much time in the temple? What do you think the church gets out of pressuring members to be committed to attend the temple? Well, it's, uh, the answer staring me in the face is it's because they get the tithing. What do you mean? What? Well, you, you got to be a tithe payer to go to the temple. Okay, if you don't pay your tithing, you don't get a recommend. Um, it, it, it creates a commitment for members that, okay, they're, let's say they're going to announce a temple in Ireland in the next conference; I think it's coming, by the way. Um, they just announced Scotland, right? Yeah, yeah. So they're going to put one in Birmingham, but Birmingham's no good for the people in Cornwall; they've got almost the same distance to go to Birmingham as they have to London; that's not helping anybody, um, certainly the people in Cornwall; it's a very rural area, very small; it's not helping them, and of course these people are dying out; the older generation are dying away; there's no younger generation; they move out of those rural areas to the big cities to get work. But the temples, yeah, they're building temples because they want the members to, I think it's the last hope, and if they can get members to go to the temple, they get the tithing receipts because you have to be a tithe payer, which I disagree with. I look at the widow's mite principle; if you're doing your best, um, then you should better go to the temple. Um, it's the same with the second endowment; I, I've known people very, very faithful in the church, been ward clerk all their church life, kept the records bang up to date, faithful, good home teacher, good temple attender; are they ever going to get the second anointing? Probably not. And uh, because it's reserved generally for wealthy members of status who are connected to top church leaders; it becomes a club. Yeah, um, a little bit of nepotism involved. Well, a lot of nepotism here in Utah, um, it's easily recognizable, um, uh, but uh, people wouldn't have that opportunity even if they've been very, very faithful and go to the temple every other week, which some people do; they just, that's never going to happen; they're never, you know, I'm never going to be a stake president; I'm never going to be a bishop, probably not. But why should they be, why should they not have the same, uh, experience and the same blessing? Like Hans Matson says, um, I'm hoping to see him in September in Spain, by the way, uh, wonderful man, I know you've met him, but um, he says, "Why, why should I have that privilege? I'm, I'm no different; I'm no different than anybody else; in fact, I might be weaker than somebody else," and he might be, we, you have to be a fly on the wall, um, but uh, I, it breaks my heart really because I see, I don't see the church that I joined; I see a different church; I see, I see betrayal to faithful members like me. It breaks, it breaks my heart; it breaks other people's hearts; they find it really tough. My sister-in-law says, "You're on a lonely journey; come out, out of the church." She was a faithful girl growing up in this large family, my wife's family; she's come out; the First Vision was a big thing for her. I mean, I got a list of stuff here that, on my shelf, that broke me; it just broke me. I felt total, total betrayal of people I placed my trust in implicitly, and uh, I said to my wife, "You think it hurts me; it's killing me." My business partner said to me once, he said, "There's three things I wish was right in my life." He broke his neck in an accident; he said, "I wish I never broke my neck; he said, 'I wish my daughter could come out of the mental institution,' and thirdly, he said, 'I wish the church was true; I wish it were true,' he said, 'but it's not'," and uh, the church has betrayed so many people with its, uh, hidden history. Let me, let's jump to that in a second; let me finish just talking about the temple really quick. So Devil's Advocate: so you say it's about tithing, commitment, and control, and, and projecting an image of success. Yes. And of status. Yes. Um, Devil's Advocate: in 2024, we know the Mormon Church has 150, 200 billion in just investments of stocks, of bonds, of real estate, of cash, and if you just do 7% returns on, let's just say 150 billion, that's, that's 10 billion dollars a year that easily funds the operations of the church. So what if somebody says to you, "The church doesn't do temple stuff for the money; they don't need the money; they could literally just through the interest on their assets easily fund the operations of the church without any of the members' tithing," so it can't be about tithing because they've got more money than they could ever spend and that they even know how to spend now. So what would you say in response to that argument?

Well, the church always teaches that tithing is not about money; it's about faith, which I disagree with, but from the church's perspective, that's what they say all the time; it's about faith, brother; it's not about the money; we don't need the money. Well, if you don't need the money, don't worry about the money. Think you kind of it both ways. What I think I hear you saying, and it makes sense, like, like I said earlier, the more commitment the church requires of its members, the more devoted they are to the church. So making members pay the church, it's not that the church needs the money now; it's that it bonds the members' faithfulness to the organization; is that what you're saying? Yeah, we, we have a, a little member in our ward, a lady, sweet lady, a little bit older than me, joined the church many years ago, and she's never been to the temple, to go inside, and people say to me, "Oh, that would never suit her; she wouldn't understand it; waste of time." I say, "Hang on a minute; it's never a waste of time, whether she understands it or not; she is entitled to the experience of feeling something," but

She's on she's on the state for income to support herself, but it could be made available. We can make it available for her, you know. I've helped people out in the past and made it available to do things in the church. Um, why should that lady be deprived of that blessing in her life when people go at the stand and fasting testimony and talk about the temple and talk about ceilings and doing this for their dead ancestors, and this lady sits next to me in church and she says, "I can never do that. I'm on I'm on state handouts, Martin. I could never get a recommend 'cuz I don't pay tithing, and you can't pay tithing when you're getting state benefits; they catch up on you. Why are you giving that money to that charity? We we we reduce your income because of that." It's sad. It's very sad. I think it's criminal, you know, that that person can't enjoy that blessing and talk about it like everybody else talks about it and be included. But there's a lot of people like that struggle; there's a lot of poverty Mormons in the British Isles that are, you know, on the threshold in life. You know, it's it's I think it's I think it's a criminal; it's a crime that we're we're ignoring that possibility for that individual to have a little bit of satisfaction that she can say, "Yeah, I've been to the temple; it was lovely. I didn't understand much, but I felt something." That's all; that's all it takes. And I've seen people go to the temple that are blind, deaf, aged, and they just love being there, just to be there. I've assisted people in the temple, people that are in wheelchairs; I've looked after them, seen them all the way through; that was my job. And and and deaf people fall into my arms behind when they come through the veil.

Did you understand that today?

Yes, I understood everything today. What a blessing, saying it's been for me today. And she said that, falling into my arms through the veil, a deaf person—great moment. Yeah. Um, what are your thoughts on the fact that family members and friends who aren't faithful members can often be excluded from marriages or wedding ceremonies? Like a a non-member father yeah, can't attend his own Mormon daughter's wedding in the temple and would be excluded unless he joined the church and paid tithing, and siblings can't even see their own siblings get married if they're too young.

Yes, because you have to have done your endowments to witness it. What do you think about exclusion from Temple weddings?

I don't like it, in a nutshell. I think it's uh I think the church has created created something that's uh they've created a problem in itself, this this secret marriage, this a secret marriage, um, and it it uh disenfranchises the family from it. I don't think it's right. I'm I'm glad in a way that we have a civil marriage first in our country, that the bride can wear something nice, what she wants to wear, um, because when they go in the temple sometimes they've got to change the the dress, um, and they can keep it nice a wedding, of course they can. Um, and I got nothing against a civil marriage; it's lawful, and everybody can be there, and everybody can participate; they can have a fun a fun time together, a nice time, a sacred time. Um, and the temple marriage kind of spoils all that for people when they're not in the a culture like I know they have the problems here, but in the culture here most of the family are members; it's a little bit easier, less less and less and less.

I would agree with you.

Yeah, yeah. What do you think about just this idea of proxy work for the dead? That that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Mormons all across the world, especially ones that are older, 60 and above, retired, are spending day after day after day, or younger people, just Temple service, doing washings and anointings for the dead over and over and over again, baptisms for the dead over and over and over and over again, endowments for the dead over and over and over and over and over again, instead of getting water to people who don't have clean water, feeding the hungry who are living right now in the world, clothing the naked, um, teaching literacy in places where there aren't literacy, all the ways that Mormons could spend their lives, their time, doing what Jesus taught, which is which is serving humanity? Instead, tens to hundreds of thousands of Mormons are spending infinite hours, almost it seems, doing dead ordinance work for dead people who lived a long time ago under the idea that these dead people won't be able to get to heaven unless Mormons spend a gazillion hours doing these dead Temple ordinances. What do you think about all that now?

Well, I I'm just blown away with it all now, really, because I'd like to see them do more for the living than the dead. All those things you just mentioned are on my would be on my bucket list; they should be doing that in places, building universities, schools, libraries, water, uh, wheelchairs, whatever they whatever they can do to help mankind, bless mankind. Surely that's the object of our tithe and offerings is to bless mankind. Um, I always used to like to think that my offerings were helping somebody somewhere. I still I still donate to two children in Ethiopia; we've done it for years because Aaron went there, volunteered, um, and he said there's there's a need there, Dad. Um, sometimes he would say to me, "I've raised this much for this family; would you like to make a donation?" I said, "I'll double whatever you've done; I'll double it." And we've always been generous in that area. So yes, I would like to see the church do a lot more with its money. Money, I mean, what would Jesus do? What did he say to the rich young man? I used to use that quote with the new endowments in the temple. Um, he said, "Go and give give uh your money to the poor." He said, "What should I do for my youth up? I've done all I kept all the Commandments; what else should I do?" He said, "Go and sell all that thou hast and give to the poor." And what happened to the young man? He he walked away; he he bailed. Yeah, he he couldn't do it. I don't think Jesus was asking him to give all his money, but give a poor of it, do something useful; that's the message, and he walked away sorrowful, and he was an influential man; he could have done something great in the church, and I think that's the same with our church today. I think we can do a lot more with our time and effort um than what we do on this work for the dead. I don't think that work for the dead is necessary. I believe we talk about this wonderful Jesus in the Mormon Church; the Mormon Jesus is the great healer; he's the great protector; he he knows you by name; he's going to do all this for you the next life; don't worry; it's all going to be taken care of; he's going to take up the slack; he's going to do this. Well, if he can do all that, I'm sure he can then he can take care of he can take care of all those who've gone on without hearing the gospel in this life; it can all be done miraculously in the next life. If Jesus can die for our sins, Jesus can make it right, that we don't need to get a Mormon baptism to make it to heaven, right?

Correct.

Absolutely correct. Which makes Mormon temple work a catastrophic waste of time.

Nailed it.

Yeah, nailed it. I should I should have phrased that as a question: Does that make Mormon temple work a catastrophic waste of time, Martin?

Yeah, it does. And yet and yet I'm gonna I'm gonna shock you again, Martin; that's what made you want to join the church is the teachings about proxy work for the dead; that's what you liked about it back then.

Yeah. What do you think? How do you how do you reconcile that that that's what brought you to the church?

Well, I was I was a young man then; I was quite vulnerable; this was all new to me, and I saw that as yeah, that's a good idea; that's fair in my estimation, as other churches were teaching heaven and hell. Um, I don't even believe that anymore. Um, yeah, I just come to a time in my life which I I thought, John, I would never reach in my time of life. I remember working at British Aerospace when I was uh 35, 36 years of age, and a very wise man came up to me—they all knew I was I was a member of the church, and I was devout; they all knew that because I worked there before my mission and came back there—and he said to me one day, he said, "When you get to the age of 40, 50," he said, "you'll have a different overview of religion and Christianity." And I went, "Nah, nah, not with me, not with Martin Lo; when I do something, I'm all in; I'm all in for life." Yeah, and uh, I got hit between the eyes when I discovered the history of the church.

How did it start?

So how did your truth crisis, as you like to call it, with Mormon with the Mormon church, where did it begin?

Well, like I said, I had a few things on the back burner: polygamy, yeah, polygamy, Temple endowment, this Masonic interest. I read loads of books at the time about the Knights Templar to see if I could find anything with them with uh ceremonies, rituals, etc. Um, I tried to study a little bit about Masons, um, but it was uh about 2 and a half years ago, during Covid, bit more time on my hands.

You're in your early 70s.

Yeah.

And uh, your wife's still alive?

Yeah, okay, very much so. And uh, we had this disease of motor neuron, L-Grick disease, and uh, she took everything, you know, really well, and um, I just uh one day I was flipping around, and I just happened to get YouTube; I'm not very technically inclined with all the Social Media stuff, and uh, I just happened to flip on to a YouTube, and uh, I learned about this polygamy, and uh, I don't know who was presenting it; might have been Grant Palmer or um RFM, something like that, maybe Sandra Tanner, and um I looked, I thought they're talking about they're talking about polyandry; what's polyandry? And when I found out about it…

So in your early 70s, you had never heard that term?

No, no. 70 years as a Mormon…

You never heard…

50 years. 50 years as a Mormon, 70 years as a human, never heard the word polyandry. Tell our listeners and viewers what that word means.

Well, I discovered it was where um Joseph Smith was marrying or being sealed to women that were already married with husbands, and I and I and I got to learn after a while, well, if it's all about a dast, why didn't you marry the men anyway? Just marry the men. No, it had to be a woman for obvious reasons, of course. Um, it became um, in my opinion, it was sexual; I think we have proof on that anyway. Um, some would deny it, um, but I was disgusted with that, really disgusted with it, and uh, I then started to probe then, and the avenues of the church history opened up to me, and um I learned, well, I learned about the endowment ceremony, um the second anointing bothered me. I learned about the First Vision.

What about it?

Well, my sister-in-law was—that's what turned her off. Well, I I learned through Paul Cheesman's uh dissertation at BYU that he discovered that the the First Vision recorded um did nobody knew about it till 1832, 1833 time period, um, and he said in there he went to get a remission of his sins, and he met the Redeemer, described the Redeemer, the messenger as the Redeemer, the Lord.

Yeah.

And we would associate that being the Lord Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

And so I was shocked at that, and then I learned that—'cause you had been taught a different story, of course—I was taught the 1838 version. I didn't know the church was in an apostate condition then, but it was a big apostate condition, and he had to kind of re-regurgitate his presence as this wonderful Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, leader, because he was losing the plot and was accused as of fallen prophets; he had to reinvent himself and reinvent the revelations and retrofit revelations, and it became to the the revelations became too uh um glorious and too unique and too grand grandiose, and uh, I mean, you know, the Bible talks about John wanting to stay on the earth, one person, and Jesus allowed that, not not the Mormon Jesus; he allows three to stay on the earth; everything's bigger and better, and um I just delved more and more, and then I got involved with your series, very much so; loved your series, the LDS Discussion Series.

Yeah, great series.

Followed that, checked it out, followed it through, um, listened to RFM and Bill Reel, Sandra Tanner.

Um, how about Nemo the Mormon?

Well, good old Nemo, yeah, getting involved with him now more so lately. Um, yeah, and all all the 21st-century Saints; I love them. I knew Peter Bleck's uh parents quite well; the Bleckley family are a big family from Northern Ireland; the the granddaddy was a doctor, Dr. Bleakley, big family, big presence uh in Ireland and in England. Um, and so yeah, I've got involved in it. I for two and a half years solid, John, every evening when I went to bed, switch it on, learn—oh yeah, I've read about that, read the list.

You had a list you were reading, go read to the list.

Well, uh, Joseph Smith and the peep stone.

Oh, okay. What about it?

That's a big one; that is a stone in the hat. I said to a brother in the board recently, I said, "Don't look out the window, don't look at your shoes, look at me; you're concerned about my truth crisis; I want to tell you just one thing…"

Do you tell me how the Book of Mormon was translated by the the witness statements? Tell me what your version is.

Yeah, quite easy. Said Joseph was sat at a table, um, a screen between him him and one of the scribes—that's a bit unusual, Tony, you know, be unusual that um can't see him. I found that really weird. And then he said, yeah, and then the plates were on the table, and he pursued the plates and did the translation.

Ah, so you've never heard about the rock in the hat?

He went rocking hat? What was that about then? This is a man been in the church 40 years; I never heard about it until two and a half years ago.

70s, in your 70s…

My 70s, a rock in a hat, for goodness sake! What we what are we talking about here? Black mag magic, ult… So I got into that; I learned about that; I read all the witness statements, Emma Smith—well, I moved the plates, but I never saw them. She saw them; she lied at that cloth; she's not an idiot or a fool, but she sto she lied for her husband all the time; they're both good liars, actually. She denied later after he died that he had ever practiced polygamy, of course he did. Yeah. Book of Mormon translation, what about it? 19th-century um Evangelical novel; what was going on in his time, FR time frame? Um, the Gadianton robbers—well, that's about Mason secret combinations; I don't know what they're going to handle in Sunday school when they come to that one, but they put a spin on it. Uh, great and abominable church, um the uh the black skin of the American Indians—well, you know uh they didn't have didn't have the materials to build a temple like Solomon's, but the verse before says, "But we had gold, silver, and precious metal, steel, and iron," but they didn't have the materials to build it like Solomon's Temple. Can't get me head around that one. Um uh the the conversion of Alma in there—well, it goes on the plagiarism and anachronisms. Anachronisms; why is why are why are Native Americans before Jesus's birth Christian? Like that's just a basic problem with the book of that came up to me time and time again. I thought, "How can they have the word Jesus in Old Testament time frame?" It's a Greek word of Christos; they didn't have the Greek language there; they should have about Hebrew anyway, not reformed Egyptian; that doesn't exist. Book of Abraham, another one. Wow, that was a biggie. Now I joined the church in '67 when all that was going on, but did I hear of it in Bristol? Not a Dicky bird, nothing. So Book of Abraham, big one, um restoration of priesthood, retrofitting in, of course, John John uh David David Whitmer never knew a thing about priesthood in 1834; I think he was in that M that mey priest stuff that Joseph's claiming that that never happened, and that's one of the three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, people don't know all the stories of the three Witnesses unfortunately. Yeah, if you read your history, you can find out about it. Uh, was there anything else? Um, a blood atonement was another one, Council of 50 and the Danites, the great story of the Nauvoo Expositor, William Law. I mean, and he's an Olman from Ireland; what a connection! My hero, I love William Law for what he did; he stood up; he stood up to him and all what was going on underhanded; it was corrupt. Um, and people when they speak to me, I put it in a nutshell: I say, "Joseph was a liar to Emma; he he told lies to the church, and he told lies to the world," and if you got that all in one to start with, then everything else follows; it was totally corrupt; he was he just took money off people; he cheated people left, right, and center; he got wealthy people around him, surrounded him, and when everything things got wrong, he got rid of them; when everything when anything went wrong, he got rid of them, and uh, he just cast them out, excommunicated them, didn't want them anymore; he just wanted yes men around him. And I'm just looking forward to the day when the church may finally open up the the uh clerical records of uh W.W. Phelps; looking forward to that and the minutes as the Council of 50, Nauvoo minutes; I'd like look forward to looking looking at that, seeing that; I think that would tell a big story; it will add it will add to the the corruption and the lies, and um I think the church is now, with the coming of the internet, uh I think they had it all buttoned down, and now the lid's blown off, and I I can't see it; I think the church will always be there because of the money, but I don't think it will I just don't think it will develop; I think it will it will go the other way.

What was it like for you? You you've referred to this already earlier in the episode; what was it like to be a convert at 20, to have 50 amazing years as a Mormon, you found the love of your life through the church, had all these amazing experiences, leading the church, growing the church, raising your kids in the church, serving in the church; clearly your life was blessed, and and clearly you benefited from your church membership, give 50 years of your life, you're in your 70s, and then for the first time you're learning the truth, the facts about the church's origins and very problematic, disturbing facts; what was that like for you in your early 70s?

Totally devastating. Completely devastating. It's it's like a romance; it broke up, deep in my heart. I felt I felt um I felt so betrayed, so disappointed um that it was not true anymore. It was like a probably—I mean, I've never been divorced, so I can't I've never experienced that; would never want that; was never on our lips, Jan and I, but I feel divorced from the church; I feel it's I've been robbed of my integrity, uh my my allegiance to a cause, um but I don't I don't see anything being fulfilled in the church either; I don't see this Gathering to Jackson County, the temple being built there, and don't see these some of these prophecies that were made being fulfilled.

Um, but stick with your your feelings like like and and there's just a devil's advocate: you had an amazing life.

I did, so far.

And and you know Jesus said, "By their fruits you shall know them." The fruits of the Mormon Church in the UK, you just you just spent two and a half hours, almost three, telling us the amazing fruits of the Mormon Church in the UK and in your life. So what if someone were to say to you, "We don't understand the history; it's we don't know for sure what happened, and none of those are facts of history; they don't matter; what matters is the fruit; you felt the spirit; you…"

Have tasted the fruit. You've benefited from the fruit; that's what matters. Don't let silly history take you away from what you know was a super positive thing in your life and in the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of others. It's the fruit that matters. Don't let the other stuff get you off track. Be grateful. Be grateful for the amazing role the Mormon church had in your life. But you—that's that's exactly right—but you can't go on um without the without the truth and the history of the church. You just can't go on believing in that church if it doesn't tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And um, it's not taught the truth. The Book of Mormon is not the word of God. It it paints a nice picture because it teaches some nice things about Jesus, and it's attracted to people because it's it sounds biblical. But the book was there as a vehicle for Joseph Smith to get this prestigious position as a spiritual Prophet, SE leader, and um, and I believe he did some awful things. He was, I believe, was a very cruel man. I wouldn't want to be around him with my wife; I'd be scared to death. And I can't I can't trust the church like I used to. I thoroughly believed in the leadership of the church at one time. I believed in those men; I've met a few of them over the years when we had a chance to meet them. But I just see it now as a very—it's not progress; the church is not progressing; it's decreasing; it's going the other way. And I I've had to ask myself the question: why is that? Why don't people in England convert to the church? Why is it—are they too intellectual? Are they too um—are they too uh prideful? Pro Pride there? Are they—do they not need God because they can do all themselves? Are they well off? Are they influential? What is it that stops them?

I believe when they have an experience with the missionaries about the Mormons, they pick the phone up up in 5 minutes today, and they can read all about it. Like I said to my friend the other day, "Go away and Google searstone; it might educate you." Now, did he do that? I don't know; I've not been around to ask him. But you know, I I like to follow the truth, and you know, I look at a little the Methodist Faith. They don't they don't make any truth claims; they just say, "We believe in Jesus; we follow the the Bible as best we can, and we're happy, and we got a relationship with Jesus; we got a relationship to a salvic message," and that's good enough for me and for them, and we're very happy, and we don't need to make any truth claims or say we have all the truth. You know, we have a parcel of it, a paral partial truth, I guess, and they're happy because they have a relationship. It's like a Baptist or a Presbyterian. What about Authority, like the church would say its primary value is that Jesus sanctioned our ordinances, but all the ordinances—baptism, marriage, and other Church—they don't count 'cause they don't have God's stamp of of authority. Well, you can challenge authority in the LDS Church, of course, because there's only two guys there to talk about it. And um, you mean Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery? Yeah. Um, and Joseph on his own with the first Vision in the Book of Mormon that we've never seen, so-called handed back the Golden Plates. Yeah. Then you got 116 Pages missing; that's another one. Um um, so it goes on. But uh, I think a Methodist, for example, say, "Well, you know, I have a relationship with Jesus; I'm doing the best I can, and I don't think the church ever did finish on the earth because the Holy Spirit was sent," and they believe they have the Holy Spirit, and it gives them a conviction, and they have, in their eyes, they have an honest conviction, and they're not too concerned about Authority as such. For baptism, they might not find that essential because they find, you know, their belief is essential. And and and and Jesus sometimes said, "Well, you know, if you have faith in me, I've made you whole." Doesn't talk about a baptism; doesn't talk about a belief. He says he just says, "You've got a belief in me, in me, the Savior."

Um, and I think I think it's got to be more simple, Christlike Faith than what the LDS church put out there. It's all about works; it's all about all you can do. Well, what—how do you define all you can do? How do you define—you can't define it. It's the life you lived for 50 years; that's what all you can do was. It? I don't know. No, seriously, you lived it for 50 years; you know what it is; you did it, and it made you a good guy, and it made it created a great family. But I also believe I'm saved by grace, as Paul quoted. Yeah, and I I've been in meetings and people that have been in a church a long time and say, "What is Grace?" And so I put my hand up, and I and I and I tell them, I I'll explain what what Grace is to you. It it's an invitation of the the enabling power of Christ that's available for you, but it's his invitation to come unto him, um to believe in him. "Follow me; I am the bread of life; I am the truth of life; I am the way, the truth, and the life; and no man cometh unto me but by the Father," and nobody else, by the Father. It's not by Joseph Smith, as Brigham Young said; it's by the Father. And and um, and I believe that. I don't believe you have to go through anybody or have to have a handshake or know a password or pay 10% or pay 10%. His grace is sufficient for all men. He is the Healer; he is the god of Miracles; he is at the door; he is the door to the Sheepfold, and we have to come through him. And therefore, we don't need Temple rituals and Temple obligations. I see it all now quite clearly, and I believe I can think clearly now. I am free of all this um ritual and works, and I have a relationship with my brother finally. I have a relationship with the friends I used to have and the people I've neglected and some of my some of my immediate family. My uncle I look after in a nursing home; I haven't seen for years and years, and I've I've related to my cousins, my long-lost cousins. So I'm doing things now that I've neglected for other things, um, and I felt very guilty about that. I about to apologize to people that I've neglected them, and they say, "Well, don't worry about it; it's in the past." So I try to make it up to them now. I talk to my brother every other day on the phone. I go and visit him; he welcomes me to his home. "Come and stay; come and stay and spend some time with me." So it was wonderful. I couldn't do that in the past. And um, that's a sad thing, I suppose, the other side of the the other side of the coin; the other things get sacrificed uh for your time commitment in the church. Yeah, it you spend a lot of your life serving. Yeah, and that's if this is the only life you get, then that time could have been spent in other ways. I I don't regret being a member of the church because it gave me those um blessings in my life, but I could have got those blessings somewhere else with those that kind of service.

Um, I just feel um that I can't carry on. I can't attend a sacrament meeting and hear things I don't agree with. And this year they're teaching the Book of Mormon. I I I I can't go into that class. I would I would I would have to keep my mouth really zipped, otherwise I'd cause a disturbance and then probably I finish up having a High Council disciplinary, you know. And it's like my friend said, "Do you want to go leave the church, go out fighting, or do you want to have your name removed, or do you have nuisance value by being a member?" Big decision, but I'll probably have my name removed eventually, sooner than later. It's—I don't want to go to church and upset someone and start saying, "Well, I don't believe that; have you have you look considered this? Have you read this?" Could you get these filthy looks, um, and then you have the presiding priesthood breathing down your neck, and uh, "Could you be quiet in the next lesson, please, Brother Lock?" You know, I find that hard to do. Truth is truth, isn't it? I thought this—I thought the LDS church believed in truth. Um, a lot of lies told in the history of the church; a lot of lies; a lot of subd diffusion going on, um bad bad deals, um, and it just sickens me; makes my heart bleed. I I I've never never thought I'd ever get to this. Never. My wife took it pretty hard when I told her, um, you know, and I said, uh, "I I have to stick to my conscience, Jan. I can't I can't go on accepting this stuff that's taught from the pulpit and in lessons." It's difficult; it's so difficult. And I've met other people the same; they find it so hard. You know, we shed tears over it; it's it's so difficult. You know, my brother-in-law is a bishop in Peterhead down in Ireland; he's a good guy. But him and his wife say, "Well, we found Christ in the church, and that's all we're interested in; we're not interested in anything else." I said, "But you can't do that; you you know, you have to conduct interviews; the temple recommend depends on your faith in Joseph Smith and the current leadership of the church and the restoration. Yeah, prophet, seers, and revelators. You can't you can't do that; you in the Book of Mormon. Yeah, you can't you can't do it; you got to come to some conclusion over it." And he tried; he he tried to grill my sister-in-law a couple of years ago in Ireland; he was very heavy with her. I said, "Rob, you know, back off; back off a little bit, you know. She's made a decision; she has a faith in Jesus. I know where you're coming from; I know you have a great faith in Christ, and I admire you for that, but I also have faith in Christ, and um," you know, he was disappointed in me, but he's still, you know, we still have a good relationship. I love him; he's ill with cancer at the moment, and I do love him dearly. And my intention is to get over there when I get home and see him. I love all her family; they're wonderful people. Most of them have left the church.

So you don't regret giving your life, most of your life, to the church? You don't regret it? No, I think it was I think it was um it was a good contribution to society. Um, met my wife, life through it. Um, I enjoyed my mission. Um, no, I don't think there's a regret there. I just have a regret now that I found these things out, and it saddens me greatly; just saddens me. So you don't wish you had never been Mormon or that you joined the church; you wish you hadn't learned the truth about the church; is that what you said? That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So you're not happier now? I'm happy that I know I have a conscience and I can make a clear decision. I'm happy now. I am I am um what's the word I'm looking for? Complete. Uh, I feel relaxed; I can think more for myself; I can um feel free to make decisions outside of the church; I can pursue other avenues of interest. Um, you know, I I had a place in Spain, and I had a car, a trailer, and when I bought the trailer for my wife mainly to make her happy—she always wanted a caravan—I thought, "Well, when are we going to have time to use it?" You know, that was difficult because of commitment to the church. So yeah, it was uh yeah, I enjoyed it overall, but feel now I'm free. I am free. I am free to follow the New Testament Jesus that I've always tried to learn about. So I like listening to Bart Ehrman theologians; great man, great mind; opens up avenues for me I'd never thought of before. And uh, I can I can develop my mind in new avenues of spirituality, not so much religion, but spirituality. Yeah. Sometimes ex-Mormons end up deconstructing the Bible just like they deconstructed The Book of Mormon. Have you been through that? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I'm interested to know a bit more about Jewish history, tradition, culture, language, um because I'm very ignorant. I I I um I don't know a lot about that. I know some of it; I know a little bit about ancient Israel and the law of Moses and the Ark of the Covenant and the ups and downs of their righteous Behavior or unrighteous behavior, um and how it was all directed to come in the Fulfillment of Christ. He fulfilled the law, um not according to LDS theology, he didn't, but in my opinion, he fulfilled the law; he is the law and the prophets. And um, so I'm learning those Avenues now, and it's interesting, and it's fulfilling, and it's uh I realize that um it's important to maintain a relationship to Christ. I don't understand the Holy Ghost too much; I find that confusing. Um, people people say, "Oh, well, I find out through the spirit." Well, I think you mean your intellect; you know, God's given you an intellect, and you use the intellect. Um, yeah. So so really quickly, I don't know that members of the LDS church here in the United States know how bad things are for the church in the UK and the extent to which the LDS church in the UK is emerging and or dying. Do you want to paint a picture? You know, you you were a witness to the incredible growth; do you want to quickly paint a picture of of the church's demise in the UK?

Well, I got a very good friend up in London who's in the same position I am; he's been a member since 1965. His Ward recently was closed, and he built that ward; he feels very embittered about that, um, because he says it's difficult for the elderly members to move around on buses in the London area. Um, he recently went to a conference where they closed down the Maidstone stake, which usually gets 750 plus members there, and uh, Elder Boom was at that conference, and he this friend said to me, he said, "Well, don't worry about the Stak being closed; oh, there's only 250 in attendance, by the way," he said, "Don't worry about the stake being closed; in four years' time you'll be back here." Well, I had another guy reach out to me from Gloucester, good member, and he he was asking how I was and how was feeling, and um, 'cause the word's out over there; most people know; goes through the Great Vine very quickly. Um, he said—I said to him, I said, uh, "My friend in London informs me there's only 133% activity in the church in the London area," and he said, "Well, let me tell you something; it's 99.6%." So less than one of 10 members of the church that the church claims in the UK or at in London are actually attending or self-identifying as Mormon. Yeah, 90% of the Mormons in London, yeah, are out of the church. Yeah, well, just don't attend. Yeah, of course, the uh I think what happens in in Britain, the vulnerable people, I'm saying, would um would have the the missionaries in; they like they like the the Americans coming to their home; it's a novelty. "Where are you from? Oh, I'm from uh St George, Utah. Where's that?" "Always down in the desert, and it's very hot," and blah, blah, blah. They get to know them and get to know their personalities; they become friends, and they might have them around for dinner, and then they have another discussion, and and eventually they get the commitment. "Well, would you like to be baptized if you know these things are true?" And they finish up getting baptized for argument's sake, and the missionaries get moved, and they never come out again; they just sometimes they never even go to church after their baptism. I I've learned of those experiences where people—young boys was baptized at 8 with his family, and uh, he's now 58 and never went to church and doesn't even know anything about the church; don't know who's who in the church, and his wife would say, "No, he's not a member." I said, "Well, according to our record, he is." Uh, and she gets him on the phone and says, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah; I was I was baptized at eight, but never went out to church." And that's commonplace. So that happened a lot. And uh um, the modern a member with uh an intelligent person, you might say, would pick up the phone in five minutes; we know all about the church and history; we'll get on to websites; be directed to websites; learn about it and say, "Well, I don't think I want them back, dear; I've learned a few things I don't think you'd like to hear about," you know. And, "Oh, what's that, dear?" "Well, you know, they they used to practice more than one wife and practice this, and I'm not very happy with that." And uh, they're mature enough and intelligent enough to make a decision and say, "No, I don't really want that." It's very high demand. Uh, "Where's the church? Oh, is uh is 10 miles away or or something," you know, and we live out here in the country or whatever; it puts them off a little bit; they just fade away. And the missionaries in England are not having much success; they do a lot of stuff on Facebook; we never see them on the streets; never hardly ever bump into them. So yeah, but I think it's dying in England. I did an estimate once, and I got it dead right; I estimated uh as as a good estimate 30,000, between 28 and 32,000 people active, and there's 30,000 active in Britain, I believe, uh, out of a membership of about 186, 188,000 people; a lot of them are lost file, by the way; you can't find them; they just move away and don't leave any any forwarding address, nothing at all. And then it's embarrassing when you go out to find them, and you meet people that are now living in the house that are not members of the church. "Well, you know, why are you doing this?" And we don't know where they live, and we think they moved down south somewhere, and the whole exercise—you waste a lot of time; there's a lot of wasted time out there with people you go and see less active members, and they say, "No, I the church is okay; keep me on the records, but I'm not interested; don't bother me; I'm I'm okay; I'm very happy. Yeah, family's doing well; haven't been at a church for 30, 40 years; don't don't bother me." Get a lot of that; sad, but—and you get some good people that have given up on the church now for all these reasons today; they've given up; they feel the same way. Uh, things have been whitewashed; we don't discuss these things; you don't—you're not supposed to read anything; it was just called anti-Mormon literature. And I had a brother come up to me, and he said, "What's all this anti-Mormon literature you've been reading?" I said, uh, "I don't read any anti-literature, but I tell you what I do read; I do read church history, and and I discover things, and I try and qualify it," and that's what I've done; I've qualified it, and it's it's ripped me apart, John, with my wife; it ripped me apart. And uh, it's hard to handle as someone who's enjoyed it all his life and believed in it and sustained the leadership, and I've sustained my leadership locally when my children have been disfellowshipped, uh, rightly or wrongly, but they had terrible treatment from pre said leadership, in my opinion, and I still sustained them, and I was wrong to do that; I should have made a made a case for them. "How dare you speak to my daughter in the tone you spoke to her," you know, but I didn't. So two of my daughters have had their names removed, and so was my youngest son. And my wife and I, we knew nothing about that; nothing about it. But they they preceded your Truth crisis. Yes, they did. Okay. And uh, Aaron, my eldest son, came over to England about 2 years ago this month, and uh, he turned to me in the car—his wife was in another car with my daughter—and uh, he turned to me and he said, "Dad," he said, "I just want you to know I'm I'm not very okay with the church; I have some issues." And I said, "Well, good for you, son, 'cause you're talking to someone with the same problems." I think he—

I was very relieved to know that, and uh, we were on the same wavelength. And uh, I felt confident I wasn't an idiot; they had enough common sense and enough intellect to discover what I've discovered and um, evaluate it all in a reasonable situation. Um, and from not all, not all from an intellectual point of view, but from a a view of reasoning of my own mind and bearing the truths on the table, you know, let's let's discuss the Book of Mormon; let's see where the flaws are; let's see what I'm not happy with there; let's see if I can get an explanation, but no one can give me one. I've met with the state president and the bishop, and they just can't help me.

Are you worried by doing this interview you could be disciplined, maybe excommunicated? I, I no, I'm not bothered about that. I, I would only ever explain the truth; truth is all I'm interested in. And I just felt, I felt let down and deceived, and I'd have to stand by that, and I can, I'd have to prove that in a defense, which I would do. I would uh, do exactly what Bill Real did: tell the truth.

Do you think there's anything the church could do to turn it around and to get things healthy and growing again in your opinion? The church comes to you and says, "Martin, Martin, lock, help us out; we want to turn things around and get things positive, healthy, and growing." What advice would you give the church? The church would have to get rid of all their truth claims; they'd have to—what are they going to do—they'd have to say, yeah, the Book of Abraham is not, not true, not written by the hand of Abraham; it's not true. Could get rid of section 132 in the Doctrine and Covenants. Um, what about the Book of Mormon? Yeah, that's to get rid of that. I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not, it's not true scripture; it's not scripture, certainly not ancient; it's just a modern mind thought of 19th-century New England Evangelical rhyme, um, plagiarized greatly; plagiarized. I mean, you can't have, there, word for word in there, almost thousands of words straight out of the New Testament, which also is a translation, as we know, and the Old Testament. Yeah, you know, and then, yeah, there's just so much stuff that's not right.

What about the claim that Russell M. Nelson is God's Prophet on the earth, and he talks to God and Jesus? No, don't believe that for one minute. He's a nice man to the LDS people; I think he's a good man, um, but uh, no, it's not a seer; he doesn't give us any advice how to get ready for the Millennium or epidemics. And yeah, he does, he says, "Go to the temple; go off it; go." Yeah, yeah. Would you, what would you tell the church about Temple work? I say it's a waste of time and money, and money. Yeah, it's a lovely building; it looks nice from the road, uh, bright and shiny. Bright and shiny, and lights up at night, uh, yeah, yeah, that's all lovely, but that's the picture they paint to the public. Yeah, so no, don't agree with it at all; it's got no place in, for me, no.

And yet, will the world be, let's say the Mormon Church disappears, will the world be better off? Will the, you know, will the Martin Locks of the world have a better framework and structure to, to build themselves and to build their family? I mean, is the world better off in your opinion without the Mormon Church, given all the good that it's delivered to you and your family? You can find, you can find good in any worthwhile organization, whatever you, whatever you put your hand or your mind to, you can do good; you can be part of good. I and you, it's all about being informed; it's no good being informed about a truth claim which is not true; that's no good to anybody. But what if it makes, gives you a happy, healthy life, even if it's not true? It's like a myth; it's, it's a set of beliefs, of myths, of Heroes, of morals, of values, of Ethics that produce happy, healthy individuals and families. But you can't build it on a lie, John; it's got to be built on a foundation of Truth, and it's got to be, you got to have some facts and some evidence. Um, the LDS Church doesn't have that. Yes, it has all those good things as qualities, but that can be found in lots of organizations, uh, in lots of, um, uh, communities. You can belong to a community, and you can develop those things and have community and have a healthy lifestyle. People, people, there's lots of people like they like their lives to be a bit private, and they find happiness in, in a private, quiet moments of their lives. Some people like to be around a lot of people; I was kind of like that, enjoyed being around good people, and the members of the members of the LDS Church are wonderful people. I love them; I love the people I've been with these last four weeks; wonderful people, um, people that respect me as a missionary.

Oh, I remember when you were the AP, and we all looked up to you being the English guy, you know, and, and I didn't look at it like that; I looked at just, I was, I felt like I was just a normal everyday missionary; I didn't want to be the big boss in the mission as some APs used to be, and other missionaries would bow down, would hero-worship them; that wasn't for me. I just wanted to be on their side of the ballpark, you know, not the other side. Yeah, I'm just, you know, get on and do the work; let's make people happy; let's teach the gospel well, um, yeah, those are all good things, and the church does a lot of good things; I wouldn't take that away, and the members are great; they're wonderful, wonderful people because they've been trying to live a good life. Yeah, but there's a lot of members like that that are very disappointed, and I've seen them on many podcasts, uh, they're devastated by the things they learn, and I, if you have a conscience and you're into truth, then you have to accept that some things aren't quite, not what you think they were or are, and that's where I am, and I have to, I have to be a voice, I suppose, for uh, truth and um, yeah, I, I think the church have tried to turn it around over the years to be this a squeaky-clean, moral-thinking church at the turn of the century; they had to turn it around and bury the past, and they're still trying to do it; they're still trying that. But when, when leaders of the church say, "Well, you can't quote the dead prophets," that's, that's silly; you might as well throw away the Bible; might as well throw away the Book of Mormon, um, throw it all away.

Do you believe you'll see um, Jan again? I do. I believe in a spirit existence; I do. Yeah, yeah. I talk to her every day; I tell her what I do every day, and uh, I feel that closeness with her, and I miss her. She was raised in the church in the 1950s; she was 1958; she was baptized as a little girl; struggled in her teenage years; came back to church and went on a mission, and that was the making of her, um, but she understood in those last moments of her life that there were, there were issues in the church that had to be resolved. Loved, and uh, she didn't love me any less; she told me, 'cause I asked her, and uh, I just told her that I can't go against my conscience, and I've learned things, Jan, that one day you will learn as well, but she couldn't, she could hardly talk, so I, and she was on her journey, and I couldn't move her away from that; it would be unfair; she couldn't defend herself very well, um, and she always say to people, "I was the studier in the family; I was the reader; I was the speaker; I, you know," um, she always played in the, in the back queue, be in behind the scenes, but she was, she served State Primary president, Stake Relief Society presidency, Ward Relief Society president, Young Women's president; we've done all, John, three times over; we got recycled all the time. She's a wonderful woman; I, I married a, a great woman.

Will it be, through, in your view, will it be through Jesus that you see her again, or just the way the universe is? Is, is Jesus critical to your being able to see Jan again in your beliefs? Um, no, I think as the world sees, I will see her again, and I hopefully Jesus will be there to welcome us home, to give us a mansion that he talks about in, "My Father's house are many mansions," and by darn, I hope it is a mansion, not a room; beautiful.

Yeah, any final things you want to say to our audience, especially to our UK viewers? Some may be still believing; yeah, some may be questioning; some may, you know, may be sad to hear this, sad to see someone of such status and influence fall in their eyes, and then they might be terrified, and/or they might be influenced by you in ways that may or may not be positive for the rest of their lives. So what do you say to those? Any final words to those, especially from the UK who might be watching? Well, it's a, it's a very delicate balance this, uh, if you follow truth, you have to follow your heart and your mind, and it could cause problems in your marriage if you're married to a very devoted woman; most of the women I come across are very devoted, um, spiritually wise, probably more spiritual than the men, and they're very devoted; they follow a calls, um, and this is a difficult one, John. I think you have to watch, be conscious of your marriage relationship; I don't want to see marriages uh, falling apart over the church, and I've got a friend at the moment, a very close friend who's in that position, and uh, I'm trying to give him some advice because he respects my advice, and it's a difficult one, but he's been married as long as I have, and to a very faithful woman, and uh, I think you have to tread very cautiously. The problem is, is when you come for your temple recommend interview, isn't it, you know, do you lie or do you tell the truth? Do you lie and be faithful, or do you tell the truth? Difficult. But for most people in Britain, um, come to know the truth and be happy about it in yourself; make your own decisions; be wise; uh, be sensitive; be cautious, but be truthful to your conviction; that's the most, you know, I had to join the church on a conviction, and now I, I'm at the other end now, and I'm leaving the church on a conviction of the things I've discovered; not healthy, not for me anyway. Yeah, other people would probably brush it under the carpet; won't worry about it, but I, I couldn't possibly go on in my life and confront the Savior and say, uh, "I'm following you because I love you, uh, but I got to, I got to do it Jesus's way," and that's a private way for me; it's a private way, and that's where I am; it's a private, heartfelt conviction that I still believe that Jesus is the savior of the world, and he will ultimately be my savior.

Yeah, last question, uh, how many, there's four temples currently in the UK, is that right? Well, there's two in, there's two currently operating, okay, and there's two in the build plan, okay, so four total; there will be four. Yeah, and what do you, you've probably already answered this, but what do you think about two new temples being built in a UK church that's dying? I don't think it will make a lot of difference for attendance, um, the London Temple now is not attended very well, um, I certainly seen a decline even when I was in the presidency, uh, they only have one shift on the temple now where it used to be two, uh, I hear things about the temple in, Charle—that is, Preston—is that called the Preston Temple? Okay, it's Charle—that's not attended very well like it used to be; at one time it was a mad rush; now it's not so, not so demanding, um, and I think it'll be the same in Edinburgh; there'll be a quick flurry at first, and then it'll, it'll die off, I think, and same, but Birmingham's in a, in a sort of big area, industrial area, few Stakes around there, but they did close the stake last year; they closed the Lichfield stake, um, so the stakes are shrinking in membership; Wards are being closed; it's rampant; it's going to be epidemic proportions; I think we're going to see a lot more happening because the more that leave, the more leave, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's like your kids leave, then you leave, right? Generations are leaving; yeah, they're not coming through; the next, uh, uh, tier of leadership is not there. People often say what we did in the church, our children, our grandchildren won't do today; they can't do it; they can't do what we did, John; they can't give their all; they make too many excuses, and you get burnout; get a lot of burnout, and people say, "Well, I can't do anymore," and burn out; "I'm neglecting my wife; I'm neglecting my children." I see that all the time with our current State President; same thing; his dad did everything; never saw my dad. Yeah, it's sad, and uh, you have to be so careful of your time commitment. Yeah, yeah.

Well, Martin Lock, this has been a fascinating three and a half hours; I really appreciate you, on your vacation, on your holidays, whatever you call them, taking the time to do a Mormon Stories interview to help us learn about your story, to learn about the Mormon Church in the UK, but also to speak the truth about what you've learned, especially coming from a position of relatively high status; that takes a lot of integrity; takes a lot of courage, and um, it's very, a very generous thing to do, so I want to thank you, uh, on behalf of my viewers and listeners; I really appreciate it. Thank you, John. I, I appreciate the time you spent with me today; I hope that your viewers have enjoyed some my content today, that it's helpful, and people realize how we do things in, in, in Great Britain, um, it's difficult; we're like a poor cousin over there to the church over here; don't think we get the benefits that we would like to see happen, and it's even worse in Europe, of course, in other parts of the world, but uh, I, I've given an honest appraisal today of, of everything, all the questions you've asked me, and they've been quite in depth, and uh, and I've enjoyed the, the time with you. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to me, 'cause my wife says I can talk for England; bless her. It's been my pleasure. All right, thanks again. Thanks again, Martin, uh, thanks to Nemo, thanks to all those in the UK, um, wishing you all well, in or out of the church, uh, quick thanks to Julia and Maven and Herard and Brooklyn and those on our board that make the Mormon Stories Foundation, Mormon Stories possible. Thank you; thanks to our donors; keep us going, um, and to our viewers and listeners, please like this episode; please subscribe to it; please share it with others; that really helps get the word out; get this episode to the people that could value it or need it, and of course, uh, we rely on our donors to make all this possible, so uh, if you want to become a monthly donor to support this work, you can do so at MormonStories.org; click on the Donate button. That's it for today; we hope to have more episodes in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead, and to be profiling other countries as well, um, because we think the international story, Mormon story, is a very important story, so be good to each other; be kind to each other; uh, apply to be interviewed if you want; you can go to MormonStories.org; there's a link to uh, apply to be a guest on Mormon Stories if you're from a country, um, that you think we'd all benefit from hearing about; if you're from a country that hasn't been profiled yet, uh, we would love uh, to consider you for an interview as well, along for all the other categories, uh, that we're looking for interviewees for. Anyway, be good to each other; be kind to each other; we'll see you all again soon on another episode of the Mormon Stories podcast; take care.