Coincidences &Miracles: Dale S Robbins on Faith, Writing and his New LDS YA Adventure

Coincidences & Miracles: Dale S. Robbins on Faith, Writing, and a New LDS YA Adventure

Host Tanya Roundy interviews author and educator Dale S. Robbins about his faith journey through multiple Christian traditions, his conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after missionaries echoed words he had written in a journal, and the lasting impact of mentors like Dr. Stephen Robinson. Robbins discusses his life in sales and marketing, later returning to finish college and earn a master’s in history, teaching on Indian reservations and in inner-city Phoenix, and serving as a houseparent for 12 teenage boys at Milton Hershey School. He previews his upcoming LDS-targeted young adult novel, retitled "Coincidences and Miracles: When God Remains Anonymous," a coming-of-age adventure tied to a decades-old boat show intrigue story involving Castro diaries, witness protection, and intertwined families, emphasizing organic fellowship, “tender mercies,” and reaching teens through platforms like TikTok.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:45 Growing Up in Many Churches
03:18 A Question About Life’s Purpose
03:51 Meeting Missionaries and Converting
06:40 Marriage Family and Healing
07:34 Boat Show Story Becomes a Novel
09:01 The Gap Years Mystery Hook
11:34 Coincidences Miracles and New Love
15:50 Witness Protection World Tour
19:23 Missionary Work Meet People Where They Are
21:22 New Zealand Temple Turning Point
27:23 Reaching LDS Teens and Promoting the Book
29:43 Hershey Temple Buzz
31:01 Back to School at 35
31:59 Teaching on Reservations
33:44 Milton Hershey School Life
36:12 Testimony Without Words
36:54 Writing Malchus
39:24 Forgotten Voices and Judas
44:11 Tender Mercies and Alton
46:32 LDS Authors Marketing
50:02 Networking and Audiobooks
52:00 Faithful Closing Message

In a world full of uncertainty, how does one cope with unbearable loss and pain? A Christmas tragedy finds Steve and Maria struggling to find hope. With the love and support of family and friends, will they find peace as they walk through the fire of Uncertainty?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:11

Welcome everyone today to Roundy's Rants, Raves and Reviews. I'm Tanya Roundy, your host, and I am joined today by a wonderful man, Dale S. Robbins, who he's been doing a lot of books, and I've just been awed by his sight and the work that he's been doing as an educator as well. I appreciate his work that he's been doing with youth, but he's got a new book coming out for young adults, especially in the LDS genre. So I wanted to share him with you guys and have a great conversation. So, Dale, will you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to becoming an author?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

I am a proverbial child of a broken home. I went to 12 different schools before I graduated from high school. I had about that many different family settings. My uh thing is the best thing I can say about any of that is that I was in Christian homes the entire time, none of them LDS. My aunt, who was one of my primary caregivers for my first nine years, was a devout Southern Baptist.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

In between there, though, my dad, who had been out of the picture, re-emerged with a new wife, who was a devout Seventh-day Adventist.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

And so for four years, I went from being a devout Southern Baptist to being a devout Seventh-day Adventist. And I love our Adventist friends, to be quite honest. Our Adventist friends, other than ourselves, very few religions do a good job teaching their youth what their doctrine is. And our Adventist friends do a very good job. In fact, they did such a great job on me that when that marriage ended and I went back to live with the devout Seventh-day Adventist, devout Southern Baptist, I had a lot of difficulty because I clearly was going to church on the wrong day of the week. Right. I mean, for four years they had been indoctrinated. We are different, we're special. We understand the fourth commandment, and the rest of the Christian world doesn't get it. And it I had struggled with it for several years. And then 10th grade, or ninth or tenth grade, I was in a Sunday school class, uh, Southern Baptist Sunday school class, and the teacher was this really cool lady. I mean, she was just one of these cool people who could identify with teens. And she got them excited, and she could talk to something, and she taught us the book of Revelations. Scared the hell out of me. The very next Sunday, I was down in front of the church because clearly she said, if you do not make your profession faithful before the man, the Lord will not recognize you that's coming, and you're gonna be you're gonna miss the rapture, which is another whole story.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

A whole other thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

And but and so I joined the baptized Baptist, and then went away to live with my mother for a couple of years, and we were basically on church. We didn't go to any church. I mean, we but that's when teen years kicked in, I started dating. And so I they I started attending the church, whatever girl I was dating. And the two options there were Baptist and Nazarene. Then I went away to college, the United Church of Christ College in North Carolina, and attended our chapels there and started dating the Good Lucent girl. But in the meantime, there I had a really breakup with the Good Lucent girl. I went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on spring break, and I sat there in the sand, soaking up sand and pondering life, and they came to me just out of the blue. And so I went back to my hotel room and I wrote down, I believe that any man who comes to this life should find out where he came from, why he's here, and where he's going after he leaves this life. At this point, I had never met an LDS person in my life. Wow. But a couple years later, I'm in Durham, North Carolina, and one of my employees at the theater I was managing, this is pre-education, guys, was LDS. And we became quite close. And I said, You never told me anything about your church. And she said, I have some friends who come over and tell you about it. A lot better than I could. So sure enough, two days later, two young men, white shirts and tigers, knock on the door, and comes in and he introduces himself. Brother Robbins, my name is Elder Earhart. This is Elder Run. We're missionaries for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Good door open. He said, We've come to share a message with you. You see, we believe that any man who comes to this life should know where he came from, why he's here, and where he's going after he leaves this life. As soon as I left, I went and found the journal where I'd where I'd recorded that. And uh, because it hit me immediately. And I said, Oh, you got my attention, may come in. And they taught me the next several months. This was back before. And now it seems like you know, if we send some person as golden, we challenged them on either the first or second visit to prepare to be baptized.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Then we went through the entire 13 discussions and the film strips and everything that went with it. Right. Make sure that I was prepared.

unknown 5:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

And I was attending the Durham Ward. And I remember the very first Sunday I attended the Durham Ward. There was a Sunday school teacher, I didn't end up in what we used to call investigators. I ended up in the gospel doctrine class. And there was a young divinity student at Duke University who was teaching, getting his doctorate in religion. And I was amazed, I was blown away because he wasn't just quoting old scriptures and saying, and this is what he was actually relating it to us where we were living, and where wow, I never heard anything like this. And it was just a phenomenal listening to him speak. And I have followed him through his career. He's passed away now. His name is Dr. Stephen Robinson, who wrote the the LDS book of Believe in Christ. And I had a chance to visit with him at UIU several years after I was baptized. And I told him, I said, I got a you've heard of the bicycle parable? He said, I said, I have to tell you, I said, that really touched me. I said, that's the most easy explanation for the atonement I've ever heard. And he smiled, he said, The girl who just left your office, or left my office when you came in, was my daughter, that I worked out. So I was early exposed to some people who would just be amazing people. I would just I have been in a place where the Lord has placed me on a repeated basis to meet interesting people. The girl who introduced me to the missionaries, I did end up marrying, we did have five children. Let's just say when you have a long marriage that ends after a long marriage of five children, there's more than enough blame to go around, so I will not go into details, but both of us have put our lives back together. She's been married and sealed to a great man in the Solid Temple. And he and I, my ex-husband's wife and myself, have been in the circle many times with our grandchildren. So the atonement does some amazing healing that you couldn't. There's no other way to describe it.

SPEAKER_03 7:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Um, but that was that part of my life. I moved to Florida back in a long time ago. I lived in Florida for quite a few years. That's where I was in sales and marketing for the marine industry. I hadn't done the education part yet. And I was at one time the manager of the Miami National Boat Show, which is where the whole story that I'm uh uh now in the book actually starts.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

30 years ago, I wrote a story called Adventures at the Boat Show, which is about an inactive LDS paternal missionary, who's living in Miami, meets a Cuban girl, they get involved in all sorts of intrigue. And at the boat show, where she's been working undercover, they managed to get the Castro diaries out of a boat that's been smuggled out of the diaries that have been smuggled out of Cuba, Canada, down to Miami, and are now in display on the show. She's got them. And this is a wild chase scene. They managed to jump a drawbridge and get down and turn the papers over to the FBI and sail off into witness protection with the idea that yeah, that they probably got their life together and who knows what happened, but it literally leaves them after they have recovered the diaries, turned them over to the FBI, found out that in a new way and they're going into witness protection. You know, I wrote the story, it was fun. I wrote it one afternoon when I was in Chicago, I was having an afternoon off of a show we were working. And three years ago, I came across an old file and found this story I'd written. And I said, What happened after the witness went into witness protection?

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

So moved in ahead 30 years later. And I have their now teenage son who's been shot, who his the man in the story actually then does indeed obviously come up in the church again. He'd been a bishop. His mother was a professional Legitter mom who's always involved in everything. His father's a college professor. They live in a small town in Saltbury, North Carolina. And the kid's like, we have a good life, but could anything be more boring? And could any parents be more boring than what my kids are? My parents are. Along the way, he gets he gets challenged by young men and young women to dig into your own family history. So he's up in the attic and he discovers a box entitled The Gap Years, 1994 to 2006. And he opens the book, the box up. There's pictures of his mother in a skimpy bathing suit. There's his father with long shaggy hair. There's a directory from the Miami National Boat Show. And so, what are all the and but he's looking at these pictures and going, well? And so this story opens with him going into his dad's study. His dad's not working there. If his dad's carly professor, you know what happened then? And he goes, can we talk? He said, Yeah, I said, Well, I don't know where some go ahead, some beginning's a good place. He said, You know how we've been working on family history. See, I said, Well, we won't know more about our great-grandparents. We don't know anything about you. We have no wedding pictures, there's no evidence of what happened before myself and the swim reward. He has twins or twins, siblings, five years younger. And the father, Tim's and father says, Well, we had what you might call a past. And the boy says, I saw the pictures. And dad says, The gap years. He said, Yeah. And so then the story unfolds how mother and father met, how they went into witness protection for 12 years. And he's just blown away. Totally blown away. You just can't believe it. There's comments from Professor Dan and his mom, who you know, is president of the PTA on several boards, doing everything's perfectly cool. Maker is what did this? Yeah. So the story then unfolds through the book, it's where then the title in this book is actually the retitle was Coincidences and Miracles when Gondra Remains Anonymous. Because along the way, then comes a coming of the age story. His art partner, he's a sophomore, she's a freshman, but she's the same age as he is. And she says, Can I talk to you? And she goes, I'm adopting. And I just do you know what it's like to find out that your parents aren't the people you always thought they were?

SPEAKER_03 12:07

Yes, yes, I do.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

But he and so it's become she becomes she's a devout Catholic. And she's her mother's devout Catholic, and her and AJ become fond of each other, and she ends up over the house. Turns out that she was that she, while she speaks German, because her dad served some sort of mission in someplace called Germany, East Germany or West Germany, but and she was the adopted of German orphanage, but she doesn't really know any background on it. Turns out she was born in Cuba. She's not only born in Cuba, she was born in the same city that the boy's mom was. Oh and these they these paths start crossing. And like, wow, how did these people suddenly end up in a what an amazing coincidence? And early in the book, the father is said, son, you know, coincidences are really just when God remains anonymous or chooses to remain anonymous. Because then the families find out intertwined they are. The girl's a softball player. She invites him to come watch her play softball, her first varsity game. She pitches a no-hitter. And now he's falling in love. He doesn't even know it yet because she's almost 16 and just blown away. She comes over and the family falls in love with her. And then the very next day she asks, Hey, you want to come watch batting practice? And he's like, Well, we sure are.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Or watch a genie flick with my siblings, or go watch this girl play. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Her dad's there. So his dad and her dad meet. And they're sitting there just talking the stands, we know talking about their kids and what have you. And he says, the dad, Alex Sr. says, Yeah, I'm a professor over at college uh over at Catama, uh, but you can call me Alex, not Mr. Barton. He said, shouldn't it be Dr. Barton if you're a college professor? Well, I've never actually pretended like my dissertation, but you know, and so he says, Yeah, I said, I should you have one other title also. I said, What's that? He said, Isn't it Bishop Barton? He said, I was released, you know, six months ago as a bishop. He said, I know. He said, How do you know? He said, Because whenever I come to town, I always look up the meeting house locator and find out where the meeting house is. You remember Weifer, my my great great, great, great-grandparents from the second company behind Brigham. And he said, Wow. Again, yeah. And then he said, he said, What happened? He said, it's a long story, but he said, Yeah, I said, I haven't been to church in years. Okay, he said, Well, one other thing he said the Alex Senior is saying, Yeah, I went to UI school law school. The softball player's dad said, Yeah, I know. How come? He said, Well, you I don't blame you for not remembering, but in your senior year of law school, you went against my uh Stefton Hall school team and you uh completely destroyed us. And I was just glad that I would never have to face you in court. So now the two dads of the two children who are getting ready to attract each other, have their line, their paths have crossed before.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

A couple of times.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Yeah, and both of them are returned missionaries. Alex is returned back from his mission. He was inactive the majority of the time that he was in secret and witness protection. Yeah and witness protection, by the way, they go to Hawaii, they go to San Diego, where they're put placed training with a seal on self-defense, they go to Alaska, where they live with the UK stuff in northern Alaska, they make the entire journey across North America and Canada, interviewing trial. It's part of their cover. Their cover is their grad students doing research.

SPEAKER_03 16:19

Okay, I like that kind of cover. I shouldn't I'll go undercover for that.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

And well, because along the way they get shot at a few times, also. Well, because the Castro diaries reveal not only that the that some C road CI agents were involved with the Kennedy assassination, but they also tied Castro to the Cuban drug traffic and to the mafia families that were supporting it.

SPEAKER_03 16:46

So they're being hunted by a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

They're being hunted by people who would just as soon they have a vendetta. They don't like what these people have done to them. And so they're so part of the thing is they're traveling around not still very long, and they cross into Mexico after several years, they cross into Mexico and they convince their people could we have a week off? We've been on the road, and they end and the government ends up putting them up in this incredible place called La Bloc, which is this all unique, all-inclusive hotel on the Campoon Strip. And they're still not active, neither one of them to act in the face, and so they enjoy the week that they're there. And when they get when they get ready to leave, one of the billmen has really been watching closely, and he asked him point blank, and they're under cover, they have different names. And he goes, Alex Martin, is that you? And it turns out that it's a returned missionary who oh Mexico who served with him when he was in in Paraguay, who's actually returned back to Mexico and is now working with his family. And my family, I'm not referring to the number, they're not harvesting. Yeah. And they are nearly ambushed and really uh have to just uh I mean, literally the Mexican National Guard arrives and rescues them at the last minute. Uh the decision is made. Okay, when we put you in distant areas where there's nobody, you got fine. But once we put you in a population area for whatever reason, because that always happens in Hawaii, also, they run into a missionary and they run into the brother of one of his companions and and submission.

SPEAKER_03 18:32

Darn those LDS people.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Yeah, they're well there the person who's handling the cover for him, who's their contact with witness protection, says, How many missionaries who are there? Why do you keep fighting them? Why are they there? And so they they make a decision, we've got to get you out of here. We've got to parts where, and so this, and by the way, all along this is happening, the voice it's interspersed between something happening with him and Judy. She's growing closer to him, he's growing closer to her. She's gonna go, she's gonna she's gonna end up going to seminary, find out what's going on with his church. She finds out that her dad is a return missionary, and only the only reason that he's not ever practicing his faith is because when he married her mother, he hadn't promised to raise any children, even if he didn't convert, he had to promise to raise any children as Catholics. So there's a lot of the aspects written in this story about what missionary work, the way missionary work should work. It should the aspect that you meet people where they are, but you don't immediately say, Hey, you need to come back to church, you just meet them there. So these and so it'll go back and forth. A chapter where the boy will listen to his parents, he just goes, I can't believe this. Yeah. I mean, in Hawaii, they end up meeting a very old woman whose grandmother was a very old woman, who's passed on a story to her about a young white boy who came to the islands when he was only 16 years old and started teaching Joseph F. Smith. Yeah, so they meet someone who's actually had ties to along the way. I mean, the church history is just woven throughout the story where they run into each other.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

That is cool.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

In as I said, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, they run into missionaries who who work the damage to the right. But so they decide we're gonna put you on, we're still gonna let you go look for indigenous people and how the effect of Western religion has had on their cultures. And so the boy says, Well, where'd you go? He said, The islands of the sea. So they go to Tonga, and on Tonga, church history's written into it where they've they've done a Tonga 66% LDS. Yes, it's a probably LDS country, yeah. And from Tonga, then they go to Australia. In Australia, and they travel the out back and they run and they run into LDS communities all over the place, and they actually run in some real people who were LDS and had been there since and this it's well-written church history because it actually documents when they actually first got there. And the boycase asked them, but when did you decide to come back to church? You know, you go to temple grounds, you walk around, you talk about the church, but you're still not active. When do you decide to come back? And okay, well, that's the rest of the story. We end up in New Zealand, the end of the earth. And in New Zealand, they run into uh I bring a real life person into the story, and I'd have his permission. He's okay, Red. In fact, he actually wrote the review on the book. That's awesome. Charlie Rudd was the missionary who taught and confirmed me a member of the church. When and I saw him literally in New Zealand, which is where the story comes, where I got. Ideas for this part of the story, but he was presiding over the MTC in New Zealand.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

He's also presided over the Hamilton LBS mission there as somewhat of a legacy because his father was a missionary there and assistant to the president of Matthew Cali.

SPEAKER_03 22:17

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

And so I weave in some of the stories that they learned while they were while they were interviewing the Maori the Maoris, because there's an there's definitely a group of local people who've been influenced by the church.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

And I weave in some of the stories that the Maori still still to this day. When Matthew Cali raised someone, was there when someone was raised from the dead, when Matthew Celly blessed his avoidance blind, his parents said, We've never got around to giving him a name. And they give the kid the and go, Oh, President Cali, when you give him, when you give him a name of Blacksay, when you give him a site, I'll say he was born blind. And that's a true story. That's they tell that story to this day. Charlie then takes this young couple on a tour of Hamilton and shows them the place and goes, and there's the place where the boy who had his side clips at Restore, he lives with that old man. He said, I saw him when I was a child because my father was presiding over this mission. And so Charlie's actually giving me this young couple of the story of a tour that I actually went on. Charlie's actually took me on that very tour.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

That's so cool.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

And it's there that Laam Carmen on one quiet afternoon, because by that time her husband, part of their cover, then is he's actually teaching at a university in Hamilton. And she goes to the temple grounds and pours out her heart and has the revelatory experience. Yeah, you know what you're supposed to do. And sure enough, well, then they have the problem though that since they've been undercover, even though they've been sort of attending but not really active, they have to go tell the bishop who they really are. And they have to go and get government people. Fortunately, the church has a lot of collection of government people who unfold this story. She joins the church, and they come and they decide they're coming back to Salisbury, North Carolina. Well, before they come, the reason they end up in Salisbury is that they're looking for a place where a small American city where there really probably wouldn't be any major people, they would be close to a major airport where he could teach. Because by that by this time, he wants to be a college professor.

SPEAKER_03 24:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

And they have done enough work that they've actually compiled two or three different books during their travels, one of which is going to be a PhD dissertation. And so he will eventually be doctored. But so they float the idea of where to go. Turns out that he, the dad, had actually in one of his pillar of post lives, his life, but I mean, I will admit, he's um he's my Walter Median. He had gone to school in Salisbury, and he remembered Cartago College. So their handler at Witness Protection reaches out to Cartago College and is surprised to find that the chairman of the history department is a former agent with federal president protection, someone that she had worked with closely before.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Oh wow. Again, no coincidences.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

And he's able to take this person who only has a master's degree with unpublished dissertation to the president of the college and go, I know this background. His dissertation, his work will stand any dissertation. We need to go ahead and hire him. And so he gets hired as a college professor then. And they settled in, uh, they start having children. They have AJ. AJ meets a lot of interesting people along the way. He meets the Vietnamese woman that's a widow in the ward that they go over and do service project work for, and she explains how she joined the church. And boys going, Dad, why are there so many ways for people to join the church? You were a return missionary who went in active. Mom wasn't even a member, but you're active now. Sister Jenkins was in Vietnam. She and her and her husband joined the church when he's old, and she said, and son, he was 45.

SPEAKER_03 26:27

That's ancient, didn't we know?

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Yeah. I mean so that it just keeps weaving together. These people's lives are intertwining with each other. All these amazing coincidences. And needless to say, at the end of the day, the uh boy and the girl are going to end up having their first date together when they're turning 16. She's gonna join the church, her mother's gonna join the church very good. Her father's gonna come back into activity. As a result of what I consider the fellowshipping in the mil the way that you should, you it should happen organically. It's not something like you should immediately go, oh, you need to repent and come back to church. No, you just be where they are.

SPEAKER_03 27:08

Yeah, just love them.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Yeah. And I apologize, I don't know if you want the narrative of the entire book, but that's where the story weaves into.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

I think it's a great teaser for me because now I'm going, I need to read this book myself. I want to know how it all comes together and does that. I'm excited to read this.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

And so in preparing myself for Mark, I have I've done at least the research on it, and I've had chat help me do some more research. I need to reach an LDS team years audience. I'm not gonna reach them on Facebook. The only person on the only person that has a Facebook on the for in the age of 40 is a kid who is someone who wants to show it to the parents of their grandparents, right?

SPEAKER_03 27:54

Or the parents will find it there and get it to their kids, maybe hopefully cross our fingers.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Yeah, but even LDS kids, TikTok is where TikTok, yeah. Yep. And so right now my search is for a savvy person who can give me who can take the theme. Because I'm uh it ain't entirely at the LDS audience. I'm not if anyone else wants to read and find an adventure story, that's fine.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

But it's definitely a LDS target, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

It's an LDS target audience.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

We need to talk to seminary teachers and youth leaders, and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Um yeah, I'm looking, trust me. I have been somewhat brazen on it in that the elder uh Gilbert Clark, one of the new apostles, yeah, did a big talk last in April on coming home, talking about people coming back in the church.

SPEAKER_03 28:41

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

The moment I heard that, I went. In fact, as I was listening to him, I pulled up my phone and said, send the elder Clark a copy of the book. I've actually sent an apostle copy of the book and said, I would love to talk coming home. And I've written a story, which you know is this story, yeah. Yeah, please pass this on to a member of your staff and see. Yeah, we just had a stake, we just had a state conference. Well, we reorganized the stake here in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And so I'm sending three copies, one to the outgoing president and one to the and two to the general authorities that were there, a member of the 70 and a member of the uh an area authority.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Perfect budget on this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Well, I'm it can't hurt. I'm putting it into the hands of people who might. You you remember that that great story on the person who found a copy of the Book of Mormon that the cover was off? Yep, and studies it becomes converted to it, not knowing what the book here is church is, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 29:38

Yeah, it wasn't Lorenzo, right? Yes, yes, from Voices of the Dust. I remember his story. That is so interesting. You just said Harrisburg, and I just remembered my sister served her mission in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 29:54

And it's been years and years, but oh my gosh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Central Peak, and we're we're getting a temple.

SPEAKER_03 30:00

I know it's so exciting.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

It's literally going to be built across the parking lot from our state center.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

That's so we were it is because we're we now go to Villy or DC. It's about the same distance and just depending where the traffic is, and traffic going into either one of those cities is horrible, but they have one on the 17 minutes away.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

That'll be so exciting for you guys on that. So you're yeah, you're an English teacher. I just want to like so History. History. Okay, so history teacher. I love history. As an English teacher, I teach the history that goes behind it with it. And my kids are often leaving my classroom going, Are we in a history class? I said it should be both. Just say they go together. But so you went from Marina and then this whole journey. How did you get into teaching and then go into writing your other novels? Because your other novels of and your other stories and stuff have come before this one. How did you get to their through your journey? That way I'm curious. I just want to know.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

I went to college in Salisbury, North Carolina, Cotabacollege, so literally the one that's in my book. You know, and I attended class for two years and took it, and I was at that time I was actually working in the theater business managing theaters. And I took a year off to find myself. It's really big in that era.

SPEAKER_03 31:23

Yes, it was.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

And it stretched to 35 years.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

And along the way, I got married, had five kids, and I preached to my kids this theory that if something is worth starting, it's worth finishing. It's worth doing, it's worth doing well. And so if we're doing poorly, and we don't know how to do it well. And that started gnawing on me. So after that loss of the child, uh, the 17-year-old, I had just enrolled in a community college and went back to community college, finished my associate's transfer to the university, finished my bachelor's degree, and then I later got my master's degree on history. So and one of the high school dreams, because we had a high school teacher and my history teacher, I just thought was amazing, was and I'd also been reading about Indian reservations. And I thought, wouldn't it be needed to be able to teach on Indian reservations? And so when we moved from Alaska to Arizona, I did indeed teach how to do an Indian reservations and I fulfilled that childhood dream. And I also taught the children of Mexican immigrants. We had an school in the University of Phoenix where I was a middle school history teacher for the children of Mexican immigrants. And then along the way, we also worked as post parents for international exchange students. We had students from Japan, China, Taiwan, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico. We hosted them in high high school areas. And along the way, we were teaching parents at uh home, a grew home for trouble kids in Alaska. And for the past five years, we've been in Hershey, Pennsylvania, where in addition to writing the books, we are house parents for 12 teenage boys. We I'm the de facto dad for 12 high school age boys.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

And that is incredible that you are just sharing your love and knowledge continually.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

And it's just that's while I'm not in the classroom setting right now, I am teaching every single day. I mean sometimes it's really one-on-one, like okay, can no, you can't wear that out of the house.

SPEAKER_03 33:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

But if you've not heard of Milton Hershey School, I'll put a replug in. Milton Hershey School is the most unique private school in America. Middleton and Catherine Hershey, the founders of the Hershey Chocolate Company, back in 1909, they couldn't have children. So they left their fortune to start a school. And so now, 16 years later, uh, we're all the recipients of it. There's 2,500 kids here, ages from four to seniors in high school. They uh they all live in pseudo homes. We don't have dorms. Well, we have dorms part of 12 creditors, but uh K through 11th rate live in pseudo homes, and usually an average of 10 to 12 kids per home with house parents such as my wife, wife, and myself. And it is tuition free. Um the kids, once they qualify here, have all their expenses met from the entire time they're here, including their clothing, their shelter, their medical. It's all yeah, it's an amazing place.

SPEAKER_03 34:48

That is incredible. And you get to be a part of that. That is awesome too.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

It is incredible to see the growth that we have. I had an interview with a member of the state presidency for a tumble recommend. And of course, the question is asked, Do you keep the Sabbath? Well, I'm working about at least two Sundays out of every month.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

I said, That's hard, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

President, I said, you know what I do for a living here, where I work. I said, Yeah, I attend a church every Sunday, but sometimes it's our chapel service, which is a far stretch from where we have. And I said, But I try my best to remember the Sabbath and keep the Sabbath. And he looked at me and said, Brother Robbins, you're doing the Lord's work. And when you're doing the Lord's work, you're keeping the Sabbath. Come on. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 35:34

I was gonna say that seems like a very big like mission opportunity. It's like you're serving a mission here at this point.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

A lot of our parents, and we do have a smattering over there's probably at least another seven couples here that are LDS. And one of our high-ups, and the who's in charge of training and development and a bunch of other things, is LDS as well. So we have an LDS presence in our this evangelical invade, yeah, keyword. Evangelical. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:08

So well, you you can ask for better types of people to be parents to these kids in these situations and help them to grow. So, you know.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

We draw, I uh yeah, on the subject of bearing testimony, but I I paraphrase Albert Schweitzer. Albert Schweitzer once said that you should preach a sermon daily, if necessary, use words. I feel that's the same way about our testimony, is we should be bearing our testimony daily, but we seldom will have to use words if we're doing what we're supposed to do.

SPEAKER_03 36:39

So absolutely. Our lives should be our testimony and the way we act and behave. And hopefully that's what's going on. And you know, but again, meeting people where we are, because we're all on our own journey and doing our best.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

So hopefully you didn't ask about being some of the other yes, yes. So other work, yeah. I wrote a book called Malchus, which happened because one of those Sundays I was in church, a sister who was giving the talk and said, told the story about Christ's last miracle when he heals the ear of the person who's has been severed, Peter. And she said, I wonder whatever happened to him afterwards.

SPEAKER_03 37:21

And there's the book.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

Yep. And so I reached out to a BYE professor friend that I have and said, Are there any legends about Malchus? He's only mentioned it in John. He's mentioned all four gospel, but he named only in John. I said, any reference in most of the early saints is a magnificent amount of legends of what happened to them after they joined the church. There's nothing in Malchus, none. So I was free to create the story of Malchus.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

And it's I enjoyed writing that one as well. I decided to be needed a unique background. So I had his father being a Roman Roman centurion who was stationed in Jerusalem, who falls in love with a Jewish girl, and he gets permission from dad to marry a girl, providing that in each offspring is raised as a Jew. And he gets the blessing of the Sanhedrin because at that time Caiaphas was uh head of the temple, and Caiaphas thought, one of our own. Yeah, we'd have an air with a Roman Roman centurion who happens to be the son of a Roman senator. Yes, I will give my blessings on.

SPEAKER_03 38:28

It sounds like a Caiaphas thing to do for sure. Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 38:32

And and that one I try to be historically accurate. I've messed all the times the Roman remaining all back together. And so in that case, Malchus, as you introduces him to him, is an 80-something-year-old man who is talking to his 10-year-old grandson, telling him about how they're living in it, and they're living in Ephesus. And that's where people worship Diana. And there's a even in the biblical times, it was this conflict between the Christians and the goldsmiths, blah, blah. And so that's all written into the story. And uh Malchus just relates to his grandson, how he became a Christian, how his mother and father met along the way. I place him in some interesting point, uh, interesting places. Malchus is actually charged with going with Saul to the Damascus, and so he's there when Saul becomes Paul. And it's later the Apostle Paul who directs him to go to Ephesus. Yeah, that was a fun story. But it opened up the second version of the idea, which uh which is the next book, which is called Forgotten Voices. And so I said, Well, it's a Malchus, where we don't know that much about what about the others? And so I've written a short, I put Malchus back in there as the lead person, and he then narrates the story of the people that he's met during the first century of Christianity. He meets the woman who had the issue of blood, uh, he meets the leper who came back and prayer and thank God for every Christ for healing him. Yeah. And he even lectures a little on Judas. Well, Judas obviously betrayed the savior, there's perhaps a side of Judas that we don't know. Judas was a zealot. Judas truly believed that if he could force Jesus to show his hand, that he would bring back his Messiah, messianic rule. So I'm not giving Judas a pass, but I'm just saying there might be another side of that story.

SPEAKER_03 40:31

I love the idea because there's actually books in the Apocrypha, there's books of Judas and stuff that kind of gives them those hints that there was some of that there.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

So there's so many of the other early scriptures we don't have.

SPEAKER_03 40:44

Exactly. We don't know the whole story, uh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

So I I sometimes almost feel not sorry, but I feel that our good Christian friends who truly love the scriptures. Oh my gosh, do they love the scriptures? No doubt about it.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

But to think about that, the only apostles that they have are basically Paul doing half the talk, a few short letters from Peter, a short book from James, you know, most of Paul, saying the whole thing. Because what they don't realize, which we know as LDS, is that anytime an apostle visits an award, he sends a letter and talks about everything they summarize. So that's what Paul is doing.

SPEAKER_03 41:25

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We've got epistles galore going on. We get one a month.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

It's called the inside, or they see the lejoner.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

The Lihona now, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Yeah. But no, this uh May the 12th of this year will mark my 50th year as a member of the church. I'm planning on calling Charlie up and reminding him that where we were 50 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 41:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:51

Ellie Earhart, the one who did the door introduction, uh, is inactive, but we still stay in touch with him. And he's a great man, had a great career. Uh he can't give me an answer on why he's not active. He is reaffirmed, he said, Yeah, I believe everything that I taught you. Okay. Why are you where you are? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:14

Meet him where he's at, right? Yep.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

We love it, we love Charlie and my later heart for sure.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

But so I've been, you know, I've got two things from the books on that aspect. There is a quasi-sequel uh where Alex and Carmen perimedy talking to one of his young students happens to be coming from North Carolina, and she greatly reminds me of my granddaughter. And she's gonna come and she has a manuscript that her father, who would have been my son, who wrote, has about the visitors from another planet who uh who were teaching what we now would recognize as LBS doctrine. It's actually on the website, it's called the visitors.

SPEAKER_03 43:03

I was gonna say, yeah, I remember seeing that.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

Well, I'm actually putting the visitors into the story with Abby asking Alex and Carmen, what do you think my dad was trying to say over this? Why he's because he he's gotten this manuscript where evidently his father gave it to him and he's marked up things, and it'll be an interesting story and see where it comes from.

SPEAKER_03 43:24

I thought it would be interesting. I like I'm very much a Faulkner fan, so I love the weaving of stories together and stuff. So when you're talking about this, it's just reminding me of all the Faulkner stories, just like how they intertwine in so many ways.

SPEAKER_00 43:38

Years ago, I was sick in the hospital, and a good friend of mine who was a devout member of the church, also an attorney, Harvard attorney, uh, came in with the was an author, a new author that he had just discovered. He said, This is really good trashy fiction. John Grisham and the client. And Grisham will probably never win a peel up to. For his for quality of his work. But I love the way he weaves stories and I love the way he takes people down the streets and describes the street, describes people. And I will admit that I'm probably mirroring some of that for sure.

SPEAKER_03 44:15

Yeah, absolutely. But again, it goes with the idea that there's no coincidences, right? God is just anonymous putting us together where we're supposed to be, when we're supposed to be there, just in our like in our real lives, you know. Yes. Those stories just always come together.

SPEAKER_00 44:30

Well, that's where I'm remote talking about when he was calling the apostle, how the song was sung the moment that he was in the sense of what he was saying was one of his favorite hymns. And he referred to that as the tender mercies of the Lord, where things you could call tender mercies coincidence is also a thing that is sort of right there when MOS.

SPEAKER_03 44:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

In fact, there's a well, there's a I have a Facebook page that will be supporting coincidence and miracles, which actually needs to be on Instagram, but uh in which we will explore the idea of coincidence and miracles. We had a great one when uh there's another book on there that's now scheduled for a re-lodge called Alton Smile. Alton Smile is about the 17 and a half year old we lost. And there's one of the most amazing uh coincidences there that I ever experienced. Alton was known for his smile. Wherever he went, he smiled. When the kids just had this amazing smile, and we've got dozens of pictures of it. It's always Tiki's smile. He had braces, and when he got rid of the braces, I think the smile just came out.

SPEAKER_03 45:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:37

On the Friday after he passed away on Wednesday, we had a celebration of wives at his high school, in which our kids, his classmates, did this amazing variety show over lack of better words. Just they walked out, they're wonderful. I mean, it was so they were it was outpouring love like you couldn't imagine. When we left that night, as we were driving out of the parking lot, there at the tree line was a crescent moon and a perfect smile. Now the moon was placed into orbit a jillion years before we were there. But to be there at that very moment when we were coming out was such a perfect symbol. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:24

God is in the detail.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

They're there if we are tune for them. They are there.

SPEAKER_03 46:29

And I think that's the biggest thing is we have to be in tune and we have to look looking for them and aware and receptive when they are there too.

SPEAKER_00 46:39

So you should ask about the challenges we have with all these authors.

SPEAKER_03 46:46

Yeah. Especially at this day and age, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

Well, because there's so much competition for our attention, it's just a constant barrage.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

I don't know that I don't know that felt real opposition from it. I think what really surprised me is finding out that some of our friends who even really like us and go really respect your values, what have you, have some concerns about us. Yeah. I think the best we can do is just continue to live Christ-like lives.

SPEAKER_03 47:21

Again, if we're if we live our example, then that's all we can do. And it'll get I know with my book, it's been just I've just been every time I go to a book event or a fair, I'm like, okay, whoever I'm supposed to reach, I reach them. And I haven't sold a ton of books over the last couple of years, but I feel like who's supposed to have gotten them is where they've been getting to. And if that's what I'm supposed to do, then that's what I do. And I'm having a hard time getting on TikTok. I I just I've gone on there a couple of times and I just don't understand how to do that there. So I hope you have much better luck because your audience is definitely there. Mine is definitely a little bit older, so I'm not as stressed about mine. But that is either it's just ah, it's such a different world out there.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

Well, if you run into if you run into a savvy 17 17 to 21-year-old, because it's amazing what these kids produce.

SPEAKER_03 48:11

They can't, and it's incredible. And I'm like, how do you do that? Because I'm like, I I can push record and I can push and I can do some editing, but I can't do that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

Yeah, and uh remember I'm surrounded by a teenage audience entirely.

SPEAKER_03 48:28

Exactly, all the time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

And I watched them. Um I mean, the high school girl is a softball player, and she came out of the fact that one of my boys was actually dating a girl on the softball team. No other than that, there's no similarity with that. Where would a high school boy get invited to go watch a girl play? Softball.

SPEAKER_03 48:50

Softball or volleyball.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:53

Yeah. Not soccer, usually.

SPEAKER_00 48:57

Well, we do have we have girls field hockey here.

SPEAKER_03 49:00

We have this is true. You are beast, yeah. That would be an interesting yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

Well, I'm like rider is just one of those things that just it's all around us. Um I actually got challenged recently to go back to a book of a short story I wrote years ago, which deals with growing up in the deep south in Birmingham, Alabama, during the immigration era. And uh a young senior high school white boy has two black friends who insist on calling him white boy. Right. You know, it's a good story. It was another development story where he he finds out that yeah, his own faith didn't know how for in the south at that time. It was really in fact, parts of the south.

SPEAKER_03 49:55

I guess I still very much is that way sometimes, yeah. Yeah, so well, I'm excited to see your work coming out and doing it. It sounds incredible. Have you joined LDS PMA?

SPEAKER_00 50:10

LDS, obviously not.

SPEAKER_03 50:12

Okay, so LDS PMA is an LDS publishing media and arts organization. And we have like there's a Facebook community group there that could help you. I'll send you some links and things to join them. Yes, absolutely. And then there's another LDS authors group and stuff like this, but they hold a conference and stuff every year too, and stuff in there. They've got great ways for marketing and helping get people out and stuff. Plus, they can network and stuff, and you can network with them, and maybe we can help get the word out there as well. There's a lot of teachers and people in there too. And so that might help as well.

SPEAKER_00 50:48

Yes, please send me the links. And do you read or do you listen?

SPEAKER_03 50:51

How do how do you I read, I listen, I do it all, and I love it. So I'm excited to, I'm gonna like start pulling your books because I will be more than happy to send you an author's copy if you would like. Oh, I love that. Oh, yes, absolutely. And then I can share it. I've got not quite teenage girls, but I have uh teenage-ish cousins and stuff, so I can help as well that way and see what I can do.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

I'll send me your mailing address in there.

SPEAKER_03 51:17

We'll do that for sure.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

And if you ever even send the audio vision, I'm waiting to this time when I launched the thing, will launch. I want to make sure I've touched all the bases and I actually have an opportunity to reach the people I want to see within. So, and so the audio vision I want to be really be a good one. I've got the original book, which was titled Adventures of the Boat Show, is is in audiovisual, but it's virtual voice. It's not bad, but it's virtual voice.

SPEAKER_03 51:47

So, yeah. I enjoyed recording mine. I was hesitant at first, but they people love hearing the author read it now and authentic voices, that is for sure.

SPEAKER_00 51:55

So yeah, getting probably wanted to read yet, but okay.

SPEAKER_03 51:59

I'll probably we'll find someone who can for you. There's lots of people, yeah, I'm sure. For that. Well, before we leave, I always like to hear what is a message or something that you want to leave our audience with before we go today. What is it you want to leave us with and take with us?

SPEAKER_00 52:16

I am just grateful to have the opportunity to share the work I have. I walked past the middle and said I'm talking too much, but I just enjoyed the opportunity to share with you. I am grateful, as I said, I'm coming up on a 50th anniversary. I am still grateful to know in my heart what the church means. I actually quoted from my book on the pulpit and fast and testimony. I said, I'm reading a book in which a non-minimal friend asked a friend, in your heart of heart, soul, soul, do you really believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet? And he translated the Book of Mormon. And I said, if I were to ask the same question, the answer would be yes. And I'm hoping that any work that does does not detract from the work of the church, but simply adds to it. That would be my closing comment on that one.

SPEAKER_03 53:04

I appreciate that. And I think that's a lot of our hopes, right? Is to share and add to the good word and the joy and the love and the gospel in any way we can and help other people and reach them where they are and maybe give them that spark. We could be one of those tender mercies.

SPEAKER_00 53:21

They're there, and just I pray daily, will you let me be an instrument in thy hands?

SPEAKER_03 53:27

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 53:28

And Tony, thanks so much.

SPEAKER_03 53:30

Thank you so much, Dale. It is a pleasure. And I hope I can meet you in person one day.

SPEAKER_00 53:35

I'm sure we will.

SPEAKER_03 53:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:37

All right.

SPEAKER_03 53:38

Thank you so much for being here. And hey, everyone, check us out and go check out Dale's work, all of his stories. I hope that you'll find joy and peace in that and some great adventures as well. And we'll see you next time on Roundy's Rats, Raves, and Reviews. Talk to you later, Dale. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.