Disney Princess Convent vs. Anti-Mormon Santa | Temple Square Mission Tribute Pt 2

 | We're back to give you the rest of our inside scoop on the Temple Square Mission! Highlights include: not one, but THREE moonings, a nearly hazardous encounter with a certain sunglasses-clad apostle, and an Anti-Mormon Santa Claus! 😳

 Located at LDS Church Headquarters in Salt Lake City, the Temple Square Mission is the world’s only all-female LDS mission. Temple Square missionaries give tours in every language and meet regularly with top LDS leaders. They also have all sorts of amusing (and sometimes, scary) encounters with a cast of characters dubbed Temple Square “regulars”. 

Sadly, this unique mission will be dissolved in July of 2026. But lucky for us, we have an inside source to share all of Temple Square’s juicy secrets before the mission disappears forever. Join us for Part 2 to catch one of our hosts spilling all the hilarious and shocking tea of the Temple Square Mission!

We want to hear from you! Send us your Molly Mormon moments or other church-related funnies using the “Send us a text” link above, or through our Google Form.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Loud Laughter. We are so happy to have you here with us for part two of Temple Square Mission Stories. As you heard in the last episode, Stella, my co-host and my sister, served her mission in the Temple Square mission, which unfortunately will be dissolved this year. So we are looking back at some of the funniest, craziest memories that Stella has from her mission, as well as memories from those sisters that she served with who have submitted to share their stories on our podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Yes, we're so excited to share these stories. So I'm going to dive right in. I created off the top of my head just bullet points of funny things that came to mind. And I know that I'm going to forget some things and be kicking myself later, but honestly, we already had to cut this into a part two. So I'm just gonna roll with what we have and then I'll sprinkle, we'll sprinkle in some submissions from other sisters. So thank you so much to everyone who shared. This means a lot to me. So I'm gonna dive right in. So on Temple Square, we mentioned on the last episode there were some regulars that we called them, people that came to Temple Square pretty frequently for various reasons. There were the scary regulars that were banned from Temple Square, so you had to call church security on site. And then there were the sweet regulars. Those are kind of the two categories I'll put them in. There was a woman who would come up to the Westgate, like the um welcome booth, I guess. And she would just give us like little shapes that she cut out of paper. So she would run up, give one to you and your companion, and then like shuffle away very quickly. And it was just really sweet. Like a lot of people that faced various challenges, a lot of people struggling with addiction, a lot of people experiencing houselessness that would frequent Temple Square, and we just love to see them. So there was a one particular regular, and his name was Joe, I will call him. He was a very sweet disabled man who would come and visit with us, and he had one of those like motorized wheelchairs. And so he would use motorized wheelchair and get all around Temple Square. And one day we were in the conference center, which is the biggest building that we managed, and the fire alarms all went off. So we all evacuated the building, and everyone's wondering if there's an actual fire, because obviously that'd be a huge issue in such a big building. So we're all outside talking. Is this a drill? What happened? And then someone was like, Joe is on the roof. And we were like, What? And then we looked up and Joe was just in his motorized wheelchair, just wheeling around the building. So at on the conference center, there's a rooftop that it's so beautiful. It has natural, not natural, sorry, but like native plants to Utah. And unlike other parts of Temple Square, they actually don't landscape it at all. They just let it grow wild. So you go up on the roof, there's a city view, there's a view of the city, and then just wildflowers, like a field of wildflowers. It's gorgeous. So Joe was stuck up on the roof, like no one got him. So I have a question. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

So like people go on the roof. So it's not like too weird for someone to be on the roof because it's like a place where you can go. Like there, it's not like he somehow got up onto the roof, no one knows how. Like everyone can go out there. But like, was the issue that no one was with him because like you're only allowed to go up there with a tour guy, like with one of you guys? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

So you so yeah, so it has to be manned by the Temple Square Sisters. So without that, you cannot go up on the roof, you can't get roof access. So somehow he was up there without anyone with him, and the fire alarms went off and he didn't make it back down. So we're all really stressed, also because in a fire you can't use an elevator. So we're all like, oh my gosh, like Joe is still up there. What are we gonna do? So we were like, okay, we're gonna have to literally like get one of the cranes from the Temple Square construction and like lower him down. Anyway, it turned out it was all totally fine. It was a small fire that had been put out. Yeah, and everything. Yeah, it was a small fire. Whoa. Everything was okay, and Joe was totally fine. But that was a case with one of those regulars where everyone's just like, literally, what do we do? Dang. So do you know what caused the fire? I think it was like I don't remember. Was it inside the building or outside? Yeah, it was like in like the basement or something. Oh, that's weird. Yeah, it was kind of weird. So that's the story of Joe on the roof. I love him dearly. He actually passed away a couple of months ago, so I wanted to share a story about him. He was so sweet. He would come and visit with all of us and just like brightened absolutely everyone's day. There's a video of him on the Temple Square social media if you ever come across it, where they actually interview him about why he loves Temple Square, and it is the sweetest thing. So if you served at Temple Square, you will know the real name of the individual I'm talking about. But I just wanted to express love and appreciation for him since he passed away recently. So I love you, Joe. That's so sweet. Yeah, he's such a sweet man. Thank you for sharing that. That's really special. So there was a time in my mission. We had, and I'll preface this by saying we had so many rules. I'm gonna read from my first week in the mission a journal entry that I have. It says, This mission has a ton of rules. The best way that I can describe it is that it's like being a princess actress at Disneyland while living in a convent. That sounds so accurate. And it was honestly like I wrote this a couple days into the experience. This is very much like a first impression, but this rang true throughout my entire time at Temple Square. Wow. I go on to say we also have additional guidelines and books and stuff that most missionaries don't have. I'm not sure how it is in other missions, but they tell us what to study in personal study, and then I go on and on about some of the rules. So after experiencing another mission, because I did also serve in Brazil, I got the perspective of, yeah, this was really unusual. So we had the regular like missionary guidelines, which are very robust. There are several books and rules that you need to have memorized, and Sophia can attest to that. What is that like? So having a ton of rules. Yeah, just like standard mission rules. Like, what is that structure like?

SPEAKER_00 6:35

I mean, it's a bit overwhelming because basically there's a rule about pretty much everything. I think the schedule is usually a pretty serious rule that you wake up at 6:30, um, you do your personal study and stuff like that. But there's other rules, even like you're not at least when we were on our missions, the rules said like you aren't supposed to use slang. You aren't supposed to express too much negativity in talking about the mission with your family members back home. You aren't supposed to like gather in groups with other missionaries, um, you're not supposed to talk about politics, like stuff like that, like it kind of like it infiltrates everything. Like you're always supposed to be thinking about rules. Um so depending on how seriously you take that, it can be very like mentally taxing, also because it's kind of like taught that the more you obey the rules, the more success you'll have as a missionary, the more people you'll be able to convert. So there's a lot of pressure to obey all of the rules. So I can't imagine like in Temple Square having all of those rules plus more rules and also being under a microscope, like you were, of like having top church officials seeing you guys, like you always had to be on your top best behavior. Whereas we were just like wandering around with like no one who knew us, you know, on the streets. So yeah, that must have been intense.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Yeah, it was a lot. Um, but yeah, like the rules, there's a very strict guideline of like how you spend your day, wake up at 6 30, in bed at 10:30, and then throughout the day, you know, like you're just constantly working and following those guidelines. There's guidelines for technology if you're in a mission that has phones. There are ways that you are allowed to use it and aren't allowed to use it. There's an app that you have to have on your phone that limits what you can do on your phone anyway. So at Temple Square, there are all of those rules and then additional handbooks. So we had a handbook called Temple Square. Well, it doesn't matter. I don't remember what it was called. Basically Temple Square Handbook. Temple Square's mission rules, in addition to all the other ones. Wow. So these rules would develop over time and they were usually announced in relief society. So another unique thing about Temple Square, they couldn't afford to have you not working for two hours consecutively, which is in other missions, you would just take time out of your day on Sunday to go to church for two hours. That wouldn't be a big deal. At Temple Square, we actually had to split church into two different sessions. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah, so that we could staff Temple Square and be working. So this was unfortunate because you had to start your day a whole hour earlier than other missions for three days of the week. Yeah. At 5 30? No, so you had to be up and working an hour earlier. So you still wake up at 6 30, but normally you start your day at nine o'clock. So from 6 30 to 9, you're exercising, you're doing your studies at Temple Square. On Sundays, your day starts at 7 45 a.m. And on Tuesdays, your day starts at 7 45 a.m.

unknown 9:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

So you wake up at 6 30, just get ready as fast as you possibly can. You don't get to exercise. You're lucky if you can eat breakfast and then you have to be in your meetings. Wait, what time did you say the meeting starts? 7 45. Whoa. Yeah. So imagine going to church at 7 45 a.m. Two days a week. Oh my gosh. Wait, two days a week? Yes, because they had to split it into two separate days. You went to church on Saturday? No, we went to church on Sundays for sacrament meeting and Tuesdays for Relief Society. Whoa.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

That's like in the old days. They used to do that.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

No way. I did not know that. That's so weird to me. Yeah, it was a lot. So yeah, so Sundays you'd have your sacrament meeting, and the Temple Square ward is unique because it's a ward of all missionaries. So in other missions, your ward is made up of like your regular everyday members, and then you have like assigned missionaries to the ward. The Temple Square ward is just the entire mission. So every time that you go to church, it's like a mission-wide meeting.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Wow. My whole mission, I never had a single meeting with the whole mission. Really? Wow.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yeah, because my mission was too big. Actually, I didn't either. That never would have happened. Yeah.

unknown 11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

So that's that's pretty rare. You have a lot of contact with your mission leaders and with the other missionaries. And then sacrament meeting, the talks were just made up of missionaries that were going to go home. So it was like their farewell talk. Oh. So kind of like every single week. Every single week. That's kind of intense too. Because I feel like sometimes those can, I mean, they're always great talks, but they're like really emotional. They're very emotional for a lot of reasons. One reason at Temple Square is like sisters would kind of express like regrets and be like, make sure that you do XYZ. I regret that I didn't do XYZ. So you had like this laundry list of like people's regrets and things to do. And so it was very uh high-pressure sacrament meetings because they were very emotional that way. And then we would always sing, we had a special version of the hymn um called to serve. We had a special verse just for Temple Square. Really? And so we would sing that. So all the sisters would like get up in a line in front of everyone, and then we would sing that as like a farewell, and everyone would be like bawling their eyes out. Every single Sunday? Yes. Except for fast and testimony meetings when they let it just be, you know, get up and bear your testimony, which is the first Sunday of every month.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

So, oh my gosh. Okay, so wait, can you tell us the lyrics to that verse or sing it if you want to?

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Oh man. I'm so curious. Yes, I need to find it. Okay. Um we had our own version of Called to Serve 2 for our mission. I don't know if other missions in Brazil did it. It was kind of just like a rowdy version of Called to Serve. That's fire. I think we had one of those in Brazil too. You did? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, we did. We did. Okay, so I can't find the full version. I'm gonna keep on looking. Okay. But the last line goes, see all nations flow unto it, our lovely Temple Square. Oh. Because it's like everyone comes to Temple Square. So that's cute. I found this on a blog from President and Sister Fisher, who were the missionary leaders just before I, before my mission president's recorded. So I guess they had a little blog. Oh cute. Yeah. So anyway, we had all those additional rules, and then we also had additional handbooks for teachings to memorize. So in a standard mission, you have preach my gospel that outlines all the lessons. At Temple Square, you also have to memorize and pass off all of the historic lessons, and you will get tested on them. So you have to know like the story of the assembly hall and what are all the facts associated with that, and you have to get all the dates right and be able to recite them, like and get those passed off in two languages if you speak two languages. So I had to get that passed off in English, and then I also had to do it accurately in Portuguese in order to be authorized to give tours. So there's a lot of memorization going on, a lot of things that you have to know, but this has been kind of all over the place, and I apologize for that. There's just so many memories going through my head. But the reason that I bring up church being split into two in tandem with these rules is because the rules were ever developing and you would constantly have rules added. So every transfer was like you would anticipate getting a new companion and also, okay, what's the new version of the rules going to be? Because they would print out a new version and give it to you. So any shenanigans that missionaries got into, anything that mission president perceived as inappropriate would essentially get created into a new rule. So you had to watch yourself. So for example, last episode I mentioned that we would try to do weekly planning on a train. Oh yeah. The next transfer that dropped as a new rule, and we knew it was because of us. That sucks. That must feel so embarrassing. It's really embarrassing because you're like, okay, I'm the one that messed up and I'm the one that ruined this for the entire mission. Yeah. So that's an example of a rule that dropped. But then these rules would also drop in relief society. Not so much in Sacramento, but every relief society, the mission president would get up at the beginning and start with, We love you, sisters. Thank you so much for all the excellent work you're doing. Also, here's everything you're doing wrong, and here are the new rules that we created because of it. And then those would get printed out in the new version. So one of my favorite examples of this, the mission president gets up and he's like, We love you, sisters, you're doing such amazing work. And then he's like, I have a question for you all today. What would you think if you saw me as a missionary walking across Temple Square with this? And he held up like a thermos and he like demonstrated walking around with a thermos. And there's just like radio silence, crickets. And I want to paint the picture of the setting too. This is in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, and they have theaters in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to show like church films. So there's a big screen where you would project like a PowerPoint of your release society lesson, and then the seats go up like a movie theater. It's a big movie theater, it's dark, it's 7:45 in the morning, so you just popped out of bed. This man is the first thing you see. Okay. So he's walking out this thermostat. He's like, What would you think? And everyone is so tired. So no one is saying a word. And he's like, Anyone, what would you guys think if you saw me? And someone was like, Uh, you like to drink hot chocolate? And he was like, No, what? And he keeps walking around, and everyone's like, uh, you have a drink to start your day? He's like, no. And then finally, one of the APs is like, Well, it kind of looks like a coffee mug, so maybe that would signal a caffeinated beverage. Oh, yeah. And he's like, Yes, exactly. So, what would guests on Temple Square think if they saw our sisters carrying coffee mugs? And everyone just like kind of looked at each other. We were like, because we know that no one thinks about this or cares. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Like, first of all, people who are coming to Temple Square who are not members of the church would probably like, even if they thought it was a coffee mug, they wouldn't think that was bad because they don't know that we're not supposed to have coffee. And like members would know that sister missionaries wouldn't be drinking coffee. Correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

So it's like not an issue. Yeah. So that's why everyone was confused. And there's no such thing as coffee mugs anyway. It's just mugs. Like you can, it's just a cup. Just a cup. Just a cup for that keeps liquid warm. You could you could have a soup in there. I could have had my chicken soup broth in there. Yeah. For all he knows. Yeah. Anyway, so then the new rule dropped: you cannot carry thermoses around Temple Square. Oh my gosh. So I want to give that example just to show like how picky they were about what we did. And this is one that maybe I suspect came from like top church leadership because they would watch us out their windows. Oh. So I'm like, maybe they saw us carrying thermoses and they were like, banned. That's crazy. So Relief Society was not my favorite thing to attend because these rules would drop. For some reason, we also had men in our relief society too. Relief Society is the largest organization of women in the world. And um, at Temple Square, there's a ton of women, so I was like, cool, we get to have relief society with all women. No, no, no, no. The mission president would be there, the first counselors would be there, all the senior couples and their husbands would be there for some reason. Oh, wow. So we never got to actually have an all-female space in an all-female mission. That's kind of crazy. It was kind of weird. Wow. So yeah, the mission president liked to drop his rules in those meetings, but one of those rules was that we were not a sorority. How is that a rule? Like so you yeah, you ask yourself, how is this a rule? Well, it was expressed in various rules. We weren't allowed to go into each other's apartments for like any reason. That's kind of sad. Yeah, so you couldn't hang out with your girls. Um even if you had like downtime. How many people did you live with? So we lived with four typically. Yeah, so two companionships per apartment, but you weren't allowed to like go next door and key with the other sisters, for example. You also weren't allowed to eat meals together. Whoa. Um and so these rules were created to like prevent us from becoming like a sorority vibe. We weren't allowed to hug each other either. Really? No, wait, we were allowed to hug each other, but we like like other missions, you couldn't like gather in groups and like Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

I mean, we couldn't really do that either. The only time that we got together with a lot of other missionaries was for like zone conferences and stuff, and that was really fun.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Or district meetings. Yeah, we were not allowed to hug on square, so no hugging in public. Oh interesting. So there was a transfer when my companion and I just got really overwhelmed by all the rules and we were feeling pretty angsty and just like stressed out about everything and the surveillance, and so we coped through humor, and so I started calling us the Lord Sorority, and we started like a vlog series, obviously like only hosted on our phones, yeah. But we started a vlog series called the Lord Sorority, and we had like sorority girl voices, and we would just kind of like vlog about our day. So I actually have one from the day when Joe got stuck on the roof. Oh, so it starts out and it's like, hey sisters, because the mission president would call us like that, and I just it cracked me up every time. So we're like, Hey sisters, and then you know, go throughout our day, and then um Joe's up on the roof, we didn't know what to do. But we made so many jokes about it that we started getting ads on our teaching Facebook for sorority merch, like custom sorority merch. And that's when I knew, like, okay, for sure my phone's listening because I'm on this like blocked brick phone. Okay, like I can't access anything. Wow, I'm not Googling like sorority, there's no mention of it, I'm not emailing about it, like I'm not doing anything. That's crazy. We're getting ads for that. So yeah, I was listening for sure. Yeah, so that's my ex some of my experiences at the Lord Sorority, the Disney Princess Convent. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

I think it's funny that like you coped with the pressure by making vlogs because at the end of my mission, I also coped with the pressure by making not a vlog, but like a spoof short film.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

I remember you sending us those. I loved them.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

Yeah, it was so much fun. It was a parody of this Brazilian telenovela called um Adona do Pedaço. Oh yeah. Which is kind of like saying like Queen of the Block or something, and our parody was called Adona do. Oh my gosh. So like Queen of the District.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

That is so funny.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Yeah, so it was like a it was like for missionaries.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

So like we were all playing ourselves, but I remember you showing me that when you got home. It was like, Adonna do distrito. Uh-huh. And I think you were like editing it when you got home. Yeah, I did. It was so funny. You edited like reality TV. Uh-huh. That is so funny. It was so much fun. We have let we had like interviews with people.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Oh my god. Um, yeah, cutaways. It was kind of like a it was a murder mystery. And I forced people in my district to do it. They had lines, like we filmed, we spent a lot of time filming it. I at that point in my mission, I was like just so overwhelmed. I'd like needed some creative outlet, and it was so much fun. I have no regrets.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Okay, I'm gonna play actually a clip from one of our sorority. This is the day that Joe got stuck on the roof. Hey, welcome back. We had an incident today. Yeah, it happens all the time. Yeah, but um double sorority. Yeah, so there was like something like that. That's what we heard from secure. So we're just saying that. People have to stop these other people from going inside. Yeah, but there's like a terrace. Someone asked. That's so funny. So there's a meme that I love. It's like a sorority meme. It's terrifying. It's like these sorority girls, and they're behind like two doors. And one of them goes, We've been waiting for you all summer, and we're so glad you're finally here. And then they open the doors and it's like stacked, like all of these girls that look exactly the same on top of each other, wiggling their fingers and going, Whoa! It is so creepy. We've been waiting for you all summer, and we're so glad you're finally here. So that video is a spoof of that, but we open up the door to like the mission home where absolutely nothing is happening. So my companion's like, we've been waiting for you all summer. We're so glad you're finally here. And then the door creaks open and there's just like silence and nothing going on, like a really boring building.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

We've been waiting for you all summer. We're so glad you're finally here.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Anyway, those are some fun memories. We also have submissions from some sisters that I served with, like we mentioned, but I'm gonna have Sophia read our first one. So I sent out a form to missionaries that I served with and with a couple of questions. So I'm gonna have Sophia read some of those responses. Okay, so these are responses from various sisters that you served with. Is that is that right? Yes. Okay. So the first question is what was your favorite or most unique thing about Temple Square? And they said, I absolutely adored hanging out with such incredible and diverse women.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Truly, I have never felt so empowered in my whole life than when I was there. I went in expecting everyone to be Molly Mormons, and it seemed like 90% of the women there couldn't be further from that. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

I love that one. It's true, there's so much variety, and like I will say we were all highly obedient to the rules. Some of us uh maybe wouldn't have wanted to be, but it was very much you had to be that way to survive. Um, but it is true, like the personalities there weren't like for the most part, like the rigid that you would expect, maybe visiting Temple Square. There's so many like hilarious sisters, so much like diversity and life experiences, just really the most amazing women from all over the world. Okay, so the second question that I put in here is what is your craziest or funniest Temple Square experience? I mentioned the lady that would give like scraps of fabric or pieces of paper. I assume this is the same person, but someone said that that lady grabbed her companion for an entire shift at the conference center. So that's like two and a half hours that they had a conversation. And she wasn't part of the conversation, but her companion told her that it was a really weird conversation, one of the weirdest conversations she'd ever had. Then the lady comes back a week later and made her companion a fanny pack with scraps of fabric. Then she gave her a weird look and said something like, I didn't make you one because you didn't talk to me. Oh dang. So that's really funny. That's more context on the fabric scrap lady, but I guess she picked favorites. Yeah. I wonder what the companion was doing the whole time during the conversation. Um, you kind of have to like hold down the fort for security, or like if anyone else like comes along. So Oh, just okay. So she just like while her companion's talking to this lady, she just kind of had to be like aware, on the lookout, looking if anyone needed help, kind of a thing. Yeah, or if anyone's like around. Because you're also kind of like pseudo-security guards. Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Okay, here is another crazy Temple Square experience. This sister said when the Joseph Smith Memorial Building caught fire while we were all in the teaching center.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Oh, the Joseph Smith Memorial Building caught fire? Evidently. I don't even remember that. Wow, how are there all these fires? Okay. We're just like constantly catching.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

There's like restaurants in there, so I feel like that could potentially um or any day at the Hope Street Walmart. Okay, crazy Walmart, I guess. Or when my comp and I tried to do um comp planning on the tracks so we could be at the DI, right when P Day started, because no one would drive us because we wanted to go every week. That makes sense. Um, also when we saw the guy who plays Nephi in the newer Book of Mormon videos, the one everyone thinks is hot, and he was weird, and his wife was super rude to us. Oh my gosh. She was probably like jealous. She's probably like knows that everyone thinks her husband's hot. Yeah, that's really funny. Um, he spoke Portuguese on his mission, and my comp spoke Portuguese, and she tried to say hi, and he just stared at us.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Oh my goodness, that's crazy. Maybe he like forgot all his Portuguese. Maybe, I don't know. That's really funny. I want to give some context for the Hope Street Walmart. So yes. This was the Walmart that we frequented for some reason. Like it was the closest one, and we only had a couple of hours of like car time on P-Day. So we wanted to get our grocery shopping done as fast as possible so we could do things like be at the DI right when P-Day started. So the Hope Avenue Walmart, it's a real place. Uh, it's a really sketchy Walmart.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Um, many people in my mission reported being like followed out of there and have people like knocking on like the um like van windows, like the minivans that we would drive, like knocking on the windows and stuff. Oh, that's my ex-boyfriend emailed me on the mission because he actually moved to Salt Lake while I was serving there. And he was like, Are there any spots that I should avoid so that we don't like run into each other? And I was like, honestly, as long as you don't go to the Walmart by the haunted house, like you should be fine. And then I was like, Wow, I sound super lame. It's like I'm on the mission. The only other place I frequent is a haunted Walmart. To this day, I call it the evil Walmart. I will not go there unless forced. Wow. It is a truly dark place, but it's where we did our grocery shopping. So okay, another mission story by my ex, just really quickly. So when I was training a new missionary, it's like her second day, and I'm in charge of showing her the ropes, making sure she gets all those tours passed off, like I mentioned, teaching her Portuguese. It's a pretty big responsibility, but um we were on Historic Temple Square, so we're in charge of showing people around those buildings, and suddenly I see someone that I know, and I grabbed my trainee and I was like, sister, get in the building now. And we run in the back side of the assembly hall, and I'm like breathing hard, and she's like, What? Like, what happened? And for context, earlier that day, I was training her on like security of Temple Square. So I'm like, here's what you do if X, Y, and Z happens. Because like I've mentioned throughout these episodes, there are a lot of people who want to do harm to missionaries at Temple Square. And I was like, Oh, like I just saw my ex. She was like, What? Like, I thought we were gonna get shot. And I was like, I'm so sorry. Like just like the knee-jerk reaction I had, like, I'm so terrified. You're on a mission, you haven't even like spoken to a man in at this point over a year, and suddenly my ex appears, like where I'm living. Yeah. So apparently, so I'd seen his brother and assumed he was nearby. And he emailed me later that night and he was like, Hey, I'm so sorry. I don't know if you saw me. I didn't mean to mess with your groove. We were genuinely just walking through, didn't think that you'd be around, but told me that he saw you. And I was so like stressed out. I was just like punching a tree, and I was like, What? What? Like this email is so rolling. Because he was so stressed out. Apparently, my ex my ex's brother sees me. Running away though. Running away. Oh my god. Starts punching a tree. So all of a sudden, I thought your ex started punching the tree. He did, yeah. So my ex's brother sees me, tells my ex my ex starts punching a tree on Temple Square. Whole time I'm just with my trainee hiding in like backstage of the assembly hall. Oh my gosh. Explaining to her the lore on my ex. That's so funny. That was pretty funny. So there was always a risk that you'd see someone that you know because it is kind of like this is a place that people visit frequently. Um it's like Mormon Central. It is, and we were banned from like seeing family members, obviously, things like that. But one time I did find my mom while I was walking home. I yeah, I saw mom crouched over in like a bush. No. And I was like, mom, and she was like, Oh, hi. Sorry, I know, I know you're not allowed to see me. I was just hiding these earrings for you. And I was like, And I was like, Mom, this is so nice. But literally, how would I find earrings in a bush and know they were from you? She was probably gonna mess up. I don't know. Yeah, wasn't she gonna text you? I don't know. It was so cute, but that's so cute, it was so sweet. So I actually ran into my family a few times, and then when I went to Brazil, they did the cutest thing. It was again during COVID, and so you could like cancel a flight without any charges. So what they did was during my layover, I had a layover in Atlanta, they and they lived near Atlanta, so they bought plane tickets, made it through security, canceled the plane tickets when they made it through security, and then hung out with me for a few hours during my layover. So nice. And like got me food and got me new luggage because mine was falling apart in the airport. It was so fun, it was so sweet. So that's another perk of Temple Square. You're not supposed to see people, but if you do have family like in Utah or whatever that passes through, there is a chance that you can run into love, like a lot of loved ones, which is really sweet because on missions you're not allowed to do that.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Yeah, and if you're like serving in a place really far away, yeah, there's no chance. They can't, they're not allowed to come visit you. So when I was doing some like research about Temple Square, I saw this thing that said you were I actually I think it was on um President Sister Fisher's blog that said that you were allowed to like get dinner like one time with your immediate family members once on your mission.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Yeah, so what you could do, it kind of evolved. So during my time, I guess, you were allowed to give one tour to them. Oh yeah, that's what it was. Yeah, one virtual tour. Oh, a virtual tour? Yeah, because it was. You can do an in-person tour? And then unfortunately, even after the COVID restrictions were lifted, the rule stayed just a virtual tour. Oh, that's kind of lame. It was very lame, but that's I saw you on your mission. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah. So was that allowed or was I trying to run into you? I can't remember. No, you were probably trying to run into me. In the beginning, it was more like, oh, if you happen to run into them, whatever. And then it kind of turned into like, no, you have to like see them.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Well, I'm glad that I got to see you before things got stricter.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

Me too. And honestly, like that was one of those things that's like really hard to control.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Like, yeah, it's like sad. Like, if your family's there anyway, like you should be able to say hi. Yeah. Wait, I remember that was when I got the Russian book of Mormon.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Oh my gosh. Did we already talk about that on this? Yes, but you should if you should describe it again so people know the context.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

Well, yeah, I think one of the reasons I don't remember if this was the reason I went to Tumble Square that time, but that'd be fire. I want a whole excursion. I know. I was crazy. So I I listened to this ASMR channel.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

And the lady that does it is Russian. And at the time I was like, she would be such a good member of Russian. Gentle Whispering ASMR. If you're listening, shout out to you girls. Me too. Me too. Yeah, she's she's a very she's a very talented entertainer. ASM artists. That's what they call them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Oh my gosh. Um, yeah. So I was like, she was like, at the time she had talked about on her vlog, she has like a separate vlog channel. She talked about like how she was kind of looking for a church or something. And I was like, oh my gosh, she would just be like the perfect member of the church. Like she's so sweet, and like she wants like a direction for her family.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

She has such a gentle voice. Exactly. She'd make a great Mormon. Yeah, she's so reverent.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

So I was like, I gotta get her a book of Mormon in her native language of Russian.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

She would just love it so much. But Russian Book of Mormons, Books of Mormon, turns out are really the Book of Mormons. It's Books of Mormon. Okay. If you know the reference, you know. If you know, you know.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

Um but yeah, they're really hard to come by Russian Books of Mormon because they don't make that many of them and they like don't really sell them online. Uh the church can't really like proselyte exactly in Russia, so like I don't know. So I looked for a Russian Book of Mormon everywhere, couldn't find it.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

So then I asked Stella, like, do you guys have Russian Books of Mormon at Temple Square? Because they have like every language. And she was like, Yeah, totally. So then when I went there, I asked her for one. And we just like went in some building and like she like grabbed one from like behind some cabinet or something like that. Yeah. And I was like, sweet. So I was gonna send it to her, but I couldn't find her address. I thought like maybe she'd have like a PO box or something.

SPEAKER_00 37:19

Yeah, I thought she would have like a P.O. box for like fan mail or something, but she did not, she didn't have an email, like no way of contacting. Actually, I think I DM'd her.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

I DM'd her trying to like tell her about the church. I think you guys a link to a church website, but unfortunately I was never able to send the Russian Book of Mormon. Man. So, but I did get it from Stella when I visited. Speaking of Book of Mormon languages, we had some like codes at Temple Square for unsafe situations. Oh. So if, for example, like if you were feeling unsafe with someone, you would well, I guess I shouldn't say what it is in case they still use it. We had like a hand symbol to signify to other sisters to call security. So if you're in a situation with someone and you can't really like pick up the phone and be like, I don't feel safe right now because you're talking to the threat. You do like a hand signal, and then the other sisters will notice you, they'll call security and then come and interview you. Wait, can you show it to me? Yeah. Yeah, so that's oh, okay. I know she knows the secret. So that's how you would say no that you weren't feeling safe. And then we had another term. That's really good. We had walkie-talkie systems, and so something else that we would do, there's a language that the Book of Mormon is not printed in. And so it's printed in like all these languages, but there are a couple of languages that for like legal reasons, they are not allowed to print books of Mormon. Oh, really? Oh. And so we had one of those languages where like you can't get one that we would announce in the walkie-talkie we needed a copy of in our location. So it was a way of telling the other missionaries, I'm at this location and I need help. Oh my gosh. And then they would send like a senior couple as like a divert, like a divergent, divergent, divulgent, diversion, diversion, thank you, as a diversion to like help you out. So because the person that you're talking to wouldn't have the context to know it's illegal to print a book of ordinance language, so obviously they don't have one. So to them, you're just like doing your job, but it signals to everyone else that you need help. So that one was specifically used for if there was someone who was like very antagonistic toward the church and making you feel uncomfortable. Interesting. There were these groups that would come, like evangelical Christian groups, that actually went on their mission trips to Temple Square to try to convince you that you were wrong. So we'd get youth groups, we would get like young adult groups that would come through and just be like, Well, what about this? What about this one? And they would just like corner you in and make you feel like their whole mission was to be pretty much you guys, right? Exactly. So they were there and they would open with a prayer. You'd like see them praying. One time they had to sh shut down all of Temple Square because it got so intense and they had to send all the missionaries home. So people would just be like alone, like roaming around because they Was that when you were there? That was not when I was there. Um because in the summertime when things pick up, their entire tour buses come. And so they'll have like tour buses of like people from that speak certain languages come in, and then you have to organize, you know, like the language coordination, people schedule in advance, and then sometimes you'd get these evangelical Christian groups that were very disrespectful, like they in their minds they're doing the right thing. Yeah. Um, but it's it's an interesting situation where they're like, Oh, can we like pray over you? So you'd have a normal conversation with someone, and then they'd be like, Can we pray over you? And you're like, Yeah, of course, that's so nice. And then in their prayer, after a normal conversation, they'd be like, Lord, please help these missionaries, they are so misguided, they are so brainwashed. And it was so rude because you just had this whole encounter with someone that was so normal. You're sharing your beliefs, they are acting like they're open to it, and then they say this prayer that where they just call you stupid, brainwashed, dunk on your beliefs. And what are you like, what do you do in that situation? You're just like there while they're praying over. It's so interesting. So we had some codes for that too. Um, what was it? I want to know the cows. It was the Brook of Worming. Oh, okay, okay, okay. I'm so curious. I want to know the cow. Okay, this next story. I really wish that I had my friend to experience this with me. Tell the story because she does a better job than I do. But there was a time in my life when I was unwillingly a computer programmer, essentially. So on my mission, I received the most dreaded Temple Square calling, which is called the Temple Square Coordinator. And that means that you are in charge of creating a code that generates everyone's schedule. So 200 people that you have to make sure are in the right place at the right time. Dang. And if you don't do it right, the mission shuts down. That sucks. That should be a job, I feel like. Oh, 100%. And I was treated like an employee. Like they would, the mission president would come to my office and be like, Do you have the spreadsheet ready for XYZ? And like I'd be in trouble if it, you know, wasn't ready. Dang. So high stress calling. So we shared cubicles with several different companionships, and then one senior couple who were over transportation, they were amazing. They did like the most complicated logistical work to get missionaries in and out of the mission and everything coordinated. And all of these office assistant jobs were like would probably pay good money in the real world. Wait, those were all callings though? Yeah, those were all callings that you would get assigned. Oh, for regular sister missionaries? Yes. And then the transportation couple was a senior couple. Oh, okay, okay. Wow. So we would like overhear conversations from like other companionships and things, because you all share these cubicles together. So one day it was dead silent. I'm doing my coding, and the other companionships are focusing on their work, and then we just hear, oh my dear, we are having salmon tonight. What? And we all were just like, What? Like we all each other and just started laughing so hard. Like, but the where you're not allowed to, no one can know you're laughing. So we were like crying, but it was this senior couple, they were so cute. And I don't know if salmon was a euphemism for something else, a code word, but they were really excited about having salmon. So you heard some things, you heard some things. I didn't I never lived on this floor, but apparently. So one of the buildings was all missionaries, but the top floor was all senior missionaries. Okay. So if you happened to be on the second to the top floor, you would hear certain things. Oh dear. Those are the joys of living in kind of a mixed age mission. Oh my god. Yikes. So a friend of mine and I laugh about the salmon incident sometimes. So it was like. A shared workspace where everyone has a cubicle? Yeah. There was also a senior elder who farted a lot. Really? Oh no. Like audibly? They were yes. They were like juicy big farts. You just had to pretend like you didn't hear. Why? I'm confused why these people seem to be so like unaware of the fact that they're in a shared space. Like, uh, they just don't. So weird. Just didn't give a crap, I guess. But we were we were all there, we all heard it. So funny. So funny. Oh no. But yeah, so I ran that program and my companion and I, and because it's such a high stress calling, you typically only have it for two transfers. One transfer where you're in training, the next transfer you train someone else, and then you are out of there. But in my case, in my second transfer that I was training someone else, she then got her visa to go to Cape Verde. And so she left me, which meant I had to stay an extra transfer. And the whole world knew that I was suffering because during that transfer, that second transfer, Temple Square reopened after COVID. And all the missionaries who had ever experienced like Temple Square pre-COVID had gone home. There was no one that even knew how things ran.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

So I had to figure out from scratch how to run Temple Square. Oh no. What about your mission president? He didn't know either. Oh no, that's terrible. So imagine being in charge of figuring out the logistics for like 200 people. That's crazy. Oh man. And running the program that would make that possible. That's nuts.

SPEAKER_00 45:43

They should have had someone like that's like a job title of someone like experienced and that kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Absolutely. Like there's definitely like shift coordinators that work at like Disneyland, for example. Like for sure. 100%. That's like a job that people have. I'm sure they could find a member of the church who's done that before. Oh, for sure. That's crazy. They found me in your job. I was minding my own business. And then they were like, Oh my god, what are you gonna do? And I was like, literally, why me? Like, what about me? says that I would love to do this job. So anyway, we were five days away from the like grand reopening of Temple Square, and we needed to coordinate. In addition to one of the most stressful parts about it, we had very limited language resources, but you have to have language coverage. So, like the companionships were kind of split up with that in mind too. So, like, okay, we have a Spanish-speaking sister with an English-speaking sister, so that if Spanish needs come along, you have both languages. So we had to split people up on the different locations at Temple Square, keeping languages in mind, keeping in mind, like, okay, we can't, we have we only have three Chinese-speaking sisters right now. We can't put them all in one spot because if a Chinese language need comes up, they can't have to travel all the way across the other side of Temple Square. So you're considering so many different things. Well, this is happening. That sounds like a nightmare. We're five days away from the reopening of Temple Square, and I realized we're opening a new building that has never been used as a visitor center before, the conference center. And I was like, no one's told me anything about this yet, but I'll bet there's a specific protocol for that building. So I reached out to the head of visitor centers like worldwide, and I was like, hey, just curious, are there any security requirements while we're putting together this schedule? And he was like, I am so glad you got in touch. Yes, there's so much new information. Let's hop on a video call. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is literally a job. Yeah. So he gets on the video call and he's like, Okay, here are all the different positions. You have to have two companionships at this spot, two companionships with this spot every hour of the day, or else security will shut down the entire building. Oh, that would have been good for you to know. Oh, gratified. Oh my gosh. So we start frantically putting together the schedule. We're super understaffed because we just didn't have enough missionaries during COVID. So we're understaffed in the first place, don't have the languages meeting in the first place. We have an entirely new building that we have to staff when we're already understaffed for all the other buildings that we're in charge of running. And if I mess up, they will shut down Temple Square. Oh, that is insane. So I'm putting together this schedule, we're like doing all the work, and it just got to be too much. So we were so close to reopening, and I had to have this done. This is a very hard deadline because if I don't do my job, the entire thing will run. So I was crashing out. I'm like crying. Yeah. I'm like, I can't, I cannot do this. And so then other missionary. You have no experience in this. Like it's not like goodness. They picked you because you did this before or something. No, nothing. Wow. So I'm crashing out, and so then we brought in other missionaries who'd previously had this calling and put them on other computers because they were trained for it. So it's like here's what we need to do. They should have been doing that before. I know. So then we had a bunch of people like running the programming and we finally got it done at like the very last second. Wow. But yeah, we were working from home, like taking laptops home, working from you know working over time to make this work. So that's crazy. So that is a point on my resume. Yeah. You have that on your resume for real? Yeah, like that's good. Facilitating organizing the reopening of like a top tourist site. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, you should have that on your resume. That's crazy. So then my third transfer in that calling, I was I was tapped out. And thankfully, I was blessed with the most genius, most patient, kindest companion who actually, and I'm I'm not bad at this stuff. I have a business degree, like my mind is naturally oriented this way. But at that time, I was very inexperienced. And I got this companion who was just like pure genius, and it was fun for her and it was easy for her, and she was good at math, and she was quick at working, and nice. So when I was training her, it was a kind of it was kind of tense because I'd be like, Oh, this is how we do this. And she was like, Why do you do it that way and not this way? And I had kind of pride with it because I was like, I've been writing this, like I did the whole reopening. Like, why are you questioning me? But I realized very quickly her ways were better than mine, and she was super smart with it. So I just let her take the reins and I would take naps. She would have me take naps under the desk, like hide from a mission present that I had a pillow there. And if I got stressed, she'd be like, take your nap. And then she would do the work. That's so sweet. I love that. That woman was her. She was the best. I had such amazing companions. So that's the story of how I became a computer programmer slash Temple Square Coordinator against my will. Shift coordinator is really what it is, right? I mean, that's what your title was. Yeah, and I made such a stink about it that I became like a legend. So missionaries that came in after would be like, Were you the one that was in the office for three transfers? Because I complained about it so much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:51

Everyone knew three transfers is like four months, right? At least. It'd be three times 1.5.

SPEAKER_01 51:00

So that's like uh four and a half months, I think. Yeah. So we had like these posters up in that cubicle where that said like who the previous like coordinators were and whatever. And I got really into these collages. So I made a collage of my last transfer, and it was like Sister Oaks crashing out. Sister Oaks at the chiropractor because her back gave out. Sister Oaks taking her nap so that people would know that I suffered. I thought so funny. Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. Like your memorial. Yeah. One thing that we did that was really shocking, like a kind of like a culture shock moment at Temple Square, was we exercised at 6 30 a.m. and I was staying in a new building. There are two buildings that the missionaries will live in, and my companion was like, okay, let's go exercise. And I was like, okay. And she takes me into the garage. And like I you go into the garage, and it's just like 50 plus women exercising in a garage. And there was something just that looked weird about it. I didn't really think about it. And then we drove in one day, we had to like drop someone off at the airport. So we pulled in, the garage doors like slowly open, and then you just see like people like running in circles, like running miles in a garage, like people on like one of those like yoga balls bouncing, like lifting weights, jumping up and down. I was like, this is actually the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Like, it is way too early for this. I want to be in bed. It was really, really weird, but that was so fun. We did exercise. We also got our phones confiscated randomly for device audits. And this is a thing in all missions, but in my experience, other missionaries, other missions don't really take it seriously. They took it real serious. So I had one particular unfortunate phone confiscation. They would just knock on your door and be like, give us your phones. Wow. And then they would go through everything. And we had an incident where some of our zone leaders went through like legally sensitive emails of one of my companions and lied about it. Okay. It was terrible. And then they were like, Oh, the spirit told me to go through this. Bruh. Who's a nightmare? The spirit told you to break the law. Yeah. I don't think so. I don't think so. So there were some guidelines for what they could and couldn't look through, but in my experience, they were not followed. I think that's so bizarre. Like as a fellow missionary, like, mm-hmm. I ain't no snitch. Okay. No, literally, literally. But everybody was a snitch at Temple Square. The president would be like, I called the zone leaders into my office to um tell us, tell me what isn't happening and going right in the mission. And they would snitch on everyone. Wow. So that is different, I feel like, from other missions. I mean, I feel like in other missions there's some personalities that are like that, some people, but for the most part, it's kind of like everyone's just chill. They made the culture was like they made callings like pretty prestigious. And so it was almost like competing for a job. Drunk on power because you're like the zone leader. Yeah. I had sometimes it was really unfortunate when this happened, but there were certain missionaries that, like, there was one missionary in particular who was like super chill, she was awesome. And then she got a calling as a zone leader and completely changed personality. Wow. And that happened pretty frequently. It was really unfortunate, but they would kind of be on like a power trip. Wow. Yeah. So um, oh yeah. So we had this was a really high stress phone confiscation situation because I was doing a pass-off tour with my trainee. So this is the part where they decide if she's like capable of giving tours or not. And it at the end of the day, it reflects on me because I'm the one that teaches her how to give tours. So this is a bilingual case. I'm teaching her tours in Portuguese and in English, and she has to perform the tour in front of the zone leader to say, okay, yes, you're good, or no, you're not, and it's your trainer's fault for the following reasons. So this is already super high pressure. But at this moment, they were also like, Okay, we're in a time crunch, we're gonna do your device out at the same time. And I was like, Okay, me. So they took our phones. One of them is like looking through our phones and like checking off we're doing everything. Also, you had to announce what app you were going on on your phone. So you had to be like, messenger, so announced. So you had to like announce that. So during our tour, while we're trying to focus, and my trainee is doing this for the first time in front of an audience. She's like, messenger, oh my god, text, phone, and I'm like, this is so stressful and annoying. And the whole time I'm like, okay, anything that goes wrong here is my fault. I'm gonna get in trouble for it. So she's giving the tour, she's doing a really, really good job, but it was just a lot going on at once. And then afterward, um, they would put the notes of things that you had to improve on in your notes app, and it would be a note that was like, We love you, sister. Thank you so much for your good work. Please do the following. And then it would be like a laundry list of things you're doing on your phone. And then, like, thank you so much for your service. Like, love you so much. Wow. So I get my phone back after that, and I have a note in there that's like, please be careful of like the pictures you take or whatever. And I was like, What? And it's because I had taken selfies, like with like I so I like would embroider dresses on like P Day and stuff, and I had some pictures of me in the dresses that I embroidered. I got in trouble for that, so that's a note. That's crazy. But the thing that drove me the most insane, I had a note on there once that was like, please remove all unapproved music from your phone because they would go through and shift through and make sure you didn't download any music. And I was like, that's one thing I mean, I was a really good missionary. Like, honestly, when whenever I got corrected on things, it was the most nitpicky, like, not even a rule thing. Like, there's no rule that says you can't take selfies, but they decided that was an issue because they have to find something wrong with you. Yeah, if there's nothing wrong, they will invent something. That's crazy. So I had on there like delete unapproved music, and I'm like, okay, that's like a very standard rule. Like, what are they talking about? Because I'm really good about this. I went on my phone, it was a Samsung ringtone. What? Automatically installed, impossible to delete, like you literally can't. Oh my god. That's like it's like trying to uninstall Marimba from an iPhone. You can't do it. It's so weird. Wow. And I got in trouble for that. Did they they must not have known what it was? I was so mad. And then I had like a meltdown in front of my trainee because I was trying so hard to put on a brave face for her and be like, you know, like, but at that point I was pretty late in my mission. I was like about a year in and I just started bawling, and she was so nice. She was like holding me, and I was like, hey, like this might seem super random, but like I just have a hard time handling the surveillance here sometimes. So that's something you should be aware of. Like that this is like a really exhausting thing, and like I'm not mad at anyone. I don't want you to think that like this is like you know, but like it just can be a lot sometimes. But I had tried for so long to like not express that negativity because I didn't want her to come into the experience with glasses on of like things to look out for, things to like, you know what I mean? I just wanted to experience it for herself, but that was a case when I had a breakdown because I just the surveillance just got to me. And the like highly critical environment of like just like trying to find things that you're doing wrong. Yes, yeah, was crazy. We had obviously like strict dress guidelines, they have them everywhere, but we were the only mission that was where women were not allowed to wear pants. That had changed like somewhat recently. Oh yeah. But at Temple Square, you still were not allowed to wear pants except for on P-Day, but you had to literally like sneak through the underground tunnels of Temple Square so that nobody would see you wearing pants until you were off site. Wow. So if someone saw you wearing pants, they would be like, is it P Day? Just to like check. It's like, obviously, yes, like it's P-Day. Like, oh yeah, because you guys had different P Days on different days. We also had which what was called the question mark. Have I told you about this, Sophia? I don't think so. So the question mark is if you are wearing pants, you're allowed to wear them, but only if you don't have a quote unquote question mark. Wait, is that like your butt? Oh my gosh, I hate that so much. So if you are able to see the outline that you have a curve, basically, where your butt is, you are allowed to wear pants specifically. Oh my gosh. So women with different body types. So just awful. Mm-hmm were allowed to wear pants. And women that had other body types would get barred from it. Or you had to wear a cardigan that was um that covered your butt entirely. And you would get them. This was before my time when they were allowed to wear pants on Temple Square, but I think it got barred because of the question mark. You would get your pants inspected by your district leaders. So you would put on, you'd model your pants. Like, picture like when you go, when you go like shopping and then you do like a fashion show or whatever with your back to school clothes when you're a kid, you're doing that, but with your district leaders, and they're looking at you, evaluating your body and saying, You have a question mark you can't wear that. That's so disgusting. There was also the test for if your skirt was long enough, you had to kneel on the ground, and then your companion would measure if your skirt touched the ground on all sides, and if it didn't, you weren't allowed to wear that skirt, even if it went below your knee when you're standing up. That is just if something was called into question, it'd be like, okay, kneel down and like we'll check. Oh my gosh, that's so demeaning. Isn't that? I can't believe that. That's that's pretty different from other missions, like very much so.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:10

And also, like, as far as like the whole question mark thing goes, like I remember having that difficulty when I was shopping for my mission because we could wear pants and also it's really strict, like it can't be too tight, it can't be too loose, it can't look sloppy. And so, like, if you're if you have a butt, like and you're trying, yeah, and you're trying to get pants that don't show any like curve of your body, well, that means you're gonna have to be wearing like wide leg pants, which I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:44

Like those would be like too loose, and they would say, like, that's sloppy. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:48

It's literally just like body shaming, body, body categorizing, like body making your body like a moral thing when it's not.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:58

Like that's just so just harmful. Yeah, and this is an issue like everywhere outside of the church, too, where like women's larger chests, for example, get flagged for like showing off their bodies more, and it's like a top that I, for example, could get away with wearing easily. And someone else, you know, would be questioned for it. Like, if you're gonna make dress standards, make them standard across the board. Yeah, make them standard. Like, that's not fair. No, absolutely. So I actually wrote this is something that my mother taught me. Shout out to her. She was like, Oh yeah, if you see something weird on the church website, I just like write them letters all the time. And I was like, What? She's like, Yeah, there's a lot of interesting. And I was like, I didn't know that. So there are a couple things I've written about. One of them was like, I wrote like a feedback form on the church's website about the modesty like double standards. Oh. One of the things that I wrote about was how men can't dye their hair on missions, but women can. Oh, I didn't know that. And I'm like, free them. Like, why can't they? Like, what like that's interesting. What do you mean? You're only allowed to dye your hair natural colors, but female missionaries can dye their hair, men cannot. And I was like, that's why I don't know that. They also like can't like perm their hair. Oh. So anyway, it's a sidebar there. But I have a note here that says Bonnie Corden's Tesla. So yeah, I think you you mentioned that in that blog video. Yeah, we did have a vlog mentioning it. We also joked about how we were gonna invite Bonnie Corden to be part of our sorority. I love it. There was a girl in my mission who was like a super fan of Bonnie Corden. Oh, really? And she wrote her an email when she was gonna give her farewell talk. So I mentioned that every Sunday was a farewell talk for the missionaries. She emailed her, no one thought she was gonna show up, she didn't respond, and then she just like spawned into our sacrament meeting, and it was like kind of chaos because we would have pretty intense like instructions if we had like a uh an auxiliary leader coming to our sacrament meeting, which happened pretty frequently. We'd have like members of the 12 come and speak to us or whatever, like guest stars, but no one knew that she was gonna be there. So the mission president was kind of like, uh, who didn't tell me? Like, but no one knew. Yeah. So that was really nice of her to show up. But yeah, that was a girl who's like a super fan of Bonnie Corden's. But the church leaders are given of those organizations, their cars are color-coded. So the young men's presidency, for example, has a fleet of red cars, and then the general young women's presidency is a fleet of white cars. So Bonnie Corden had a company car and then her personal Tesla. So you'd know if it was her if she was driving that white Tesla. So she still matched the color scheme, but she had her own, her own little brain. Wow. So there was also a missionary who said that they almost got hit by Elder Ruchdorf in sunglasses. So they were like walking past the um like the underground parking, and they almost got hit by a car and they were kind of mad. They turned around and it was Elder Ruckdorf, and he had like sunglasses on, and he like waved a gun. That's so funny. Wow. So the music standards we had were very strict. You could only listen to like church-produced music, so tabernacle choir, youth songs, whatever. I had a roommate that I lived with who became obsessed with this one Tabernacle Choir number called Hot Pipes. And it's Is that an organ piece? Yes. I don't know why, but I feel like I saw that earlier. You probably did. It's really incredible. Um I haven't listened to it, but yeah, it's this guy just going absolutely ham on the pipe organ. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna look that up later. And then I have a video of her, and I'm like, I'm just like, Sister So-and-so, what's your favorite music to listen to right now? And she goes, Hot pipes, 1992 by the Tabernacle Choir, featuring the and like knows the like the full title of the entire YouTube video because she hasn't downloaded. Hot pipes. We also had a forbidden meme folder. This this is one of those things that made it up to leadership and then was added in the Temple Square standards that got banned. So previously it wasn't an issue, then they decided it was. But there was a shared Google Images folder where people would put memes that were like sent to them from home or that they made or whatever. It was awesome, and then it got banned and had to be unshared. We also had a Google Drive folder that passed through the generations, it was called The Good Word, and it had really obscure Mormon teachings on it. Oh yeah, it was really cool. It had like you know, like UIU speeches and then like like old enzyme articles or something. Not quite. It was mostly it was mostly auditory, and so it'd be like these long speeches, but one that we had was the Dead Sea Scrolls. Oh, like a speech about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yeah, that it was like a 12 part whatever. And so that passed through generations. So when one missionary went home, they would pass the ownership on to like their trainee or their like best friend or something. And I don't think I have access to it anymore. It must have not got passed down or banned or something, but that. Was a really cool thing that we had to kind of share, like because we get really difficult questions at Temple Square from people, and so it was a way for us to do kind of like the more in-depth studies that weren't necessarily encouraged, but that we kind of needed to know. That's cool. Cause like in my mission, sometimes we were like disencouraged from studying that kind of stuff because people would never ask us about things like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:22

So that's kind of cool that you like actually needed to.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:25

Yeah. It was under the table. Um I don't think they would have liked it if they had known. But yeah, it was our little under the table information exchange. Fun. We had to also unfollow all of our loved ones on Facebook as soon as we got to the mission. Is that standard for most missions? Maybe it is now. I think we were the only ones at the time, yeah. Huh. I didn't have Facebook on my mission, so we also had to approve any profile picture and social media posts by our district leaders. Oh. So if you were like, hey, I want to change my profile picture, you started out having to get it approved, and then you started having to get it approved, and you could only do it every six months. What? Yeah, because the mission president thought we were like showing off or something when we changed our profile picture. How does it matter how often you change it? He just didn't like it. Yeah, he just wasn't a fan of us changing.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:17

Every time I change my profile picture, I change it like four or five times because I'm like, does this look good? Because you can't really tell until it goes into that little tiny circle. Until it goes live.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:27

You're like, oh no, that's not good. Yeah, no, we had to get all of that approved. Oh, that's so annoying. I know. We'd get Facebook audits, and I once was told I had like a photo dump, and then one of them, one of the missionaries, is holding up a peace sign, and I got a DM one day that was like, Hey, Sister Oaks, you need to remove this image. Because they were holding up a peace sign. They were holding up a peace sign. So you never knew the depths of surveillance that you would uh you were under because randomly they would just Why were they wasting their time scrolling through your photos? I often wondered, but they were just obsessed with us, I guess. Yeah, so and it was also really anxiety-inducing to get one of those messages. Yeah, because you just suddenly feel like, oh my gosh. But it was things that you didn't even know you could possibly do wrong that you would get corrected for. Yeah, that would give me tons of anxiety. Yeah, there was one time when I was giving a virtual tour, and long story short, I ended up having a panic attack during this tour, and I was not allowed to step away.

unknown 1:08:24

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:25

So I had to keep giving the tour mid-panic attack in my second language. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. So I'm giving a virtual tour. I'm in training, so I'm new to the language anyway, and I'm forced to give this tour in a language that I am just learning. I'm having a panic attack, and I just have to keep pushing through. So I'm hyperventilating, I'm crying, I'm sobbing, and just forced to continue this tour. So we get to the Christmas statue, which was like the final like cherry on top of our some of our virtual tours. We flip the camera around to my face, I'm sobbing and just giving like a final testimony, and then the person on the other end just like burst into tears, and she's like, the spirit is so strong right now. You sisters are amazing. Like, I just can't feel like your testimonies. And I was like, girl, I'm having a panic attack. Like, this is like I'm not crying because I love Jesus. Like, I can't do this anymore. So I thought that was really funny because I was like, you know what? Like, I'm really glad that she had a positive experience, but yeah, but it was not what it was not the situation she thought it was. Like, wow, that's so interesting. Little did she know. Yeah. Oh man, I'm so sorry. That sounds really hard. No, it's okay. I told someone about that recently because to me, these are all just like kind of like funny anecdotes at this point because I have been in therapy and things like that. But I told someone about that and they like sat me down and they were like, Hey, so like, are you okay? Like, do I need to be like aware of this? Like going forward. I was like, no, it's fine. But so I realized some of these things are kind of heavy, but to me, I genuinely can laugh about them now because the concept of someone thinking that it was the Holy Ghost and it was just me having the worst day of my life is like objectively kind of funny. Yeah. We also had to read the entire restoration proclamation every single day. So we would stand up and have like a list of like recitations we had to go through. So in a meeting like Release Society, for example, 6 45 in the morning, you're just you're up and reciting scripture. So we had to do several verses from Isaiah, the like the missionary purpose, some other things, and then we also had to do the entire restoration proclamation, which is a proclamation that the church released about the restoration of the gospel. And this is a let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine paragraph documents. Oh my gosh. We had to do the entire thing. Whoa! Every single day? Yeah. So you just stand up and go through all these recitations. It was so creepy. Like, I was like, if I were someone watching this from the outside, I'd be so scared in that relief society meeting in particular, because it's like dark, you're on like risers, it's so early in the morning. Everyone gets up in sync and just starts chanting. Oh my gosh. And you're like tired, so you're probably like monotone and like yes, we were not into it. We were not into it. It seems that there's just a lot more memorization in the Temple Square mission because you had to memorize the tours, you had to memorize that long thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:31

Like, and on in other missions, you don't memorize your lessons. So like the only thing that we had to memorize was literally the missionary purpose, which is so short.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:43

Yeah, there was so much memorization, and there was also you had to know so many things because people would just people would ask really random questions, but they'd be frequent questions, and so you would pick up on things that you needed to know. But we had to know what like everything on Temple Square was made of, like the wood, the kind of that's so funny down to that because people would be like, Is this real marble? And you'd be like, No, it's actually white oak painted to look like marble. Oh my gosh, I love that such and such. So wow, yeah, it was fun. There's a lot of like random facts, and you learn so much about that. I don't know if I remember a lot of it, but you would also learn a lot about art too. Because you would talk about historic buildings and the ways they're painted, the ways they're constructed, different art pieces in the um conference center, and those would be like rotating displays. So you'd try to know as much as possible about different things. One of my favorite things to do was the temple model. It was like a two-scale, but it's a miniature of the Salt Lake Temple, and it's like cut open so it shows all the different rooms. And so we'd show people like, hey, you can't go inside the temple, but we can tell you like what happens in each of these different rooms and go through it. And I loved it so much that when I left the office, because I had that scheduling calling, like I mentioned, when I left the office, I scheduled myself out for the entire transfer to be on that shift more than everyone else. I rigged it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:57

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:58

And someone noticed one day, they were like, Sister, you're always here at the temple model. And I was like, I know, it's so crazy. But like I 100% rigged that. Like I did that on purpose. That's so funny. And then my companion, who continued in the calling that I had trained, like honored that. So she like kept me like on the nice. She's a real one. I absolutely adore her. That's great. I have a note here about church security flirting with us. This is a really unfortunate truth. They were married men that worked for church security, but they would and and like at the time I was kind of like, oh, they're not really flirting like my no, 100%. Like they're using their time on the clock to flirt with us, unfortunately. So that did happen a lot. It was really uncomfortable. They kept us safe, which is good, but it was also kind of like an oxymoron because I'm like, okay, you're keeping us safe, but you're also like obviously flirting with all of us. Wow, that's crazy. So that was always really uncomfortable. I think I've mentioned a lot about this, but just being like an easy target almost because it is a lot of beautiful women in one place, they're predictably going to be there every single day, so it attracted a lot of attention to say the least. We had a guy come up to us while we were at Westgate and he was like, Hey, I'm looking for a polygamous wife to go to Mexico with me. And like we thought he was like joking, and so we were kind of like, ha, like, no. And then he was like persistent about it, and then he pulled out a camera and started filming us. Oh my gosh. And so there were a bunch of people at the Westgate, like the entry gate, and I was the one that was like directly interacting with him. So I we were like pulling the panic poles and then like signifying to their sisters, like, call security, call security, call security. And they finally came and got him off, but that was a weird one. We get filmed without consent a lot, and like we were the ones that were in charge of like shutting it down for some reason, which I found kind of frustrating. Because I'm like, our whole like we have to be polite, we have to be like well presenting to the public. Yeah, when someone pulls out a phone, I don't want to get into a confrontational situation. Yeah, but it did happen sometimes, and because we were tour guides, we would often get tipped, but we weren't allowed to accept it, which always killed me because I was like, no, please, like, I'm not dang. So we had to, we had rules. So if someone offered to tip us, we had to say no. If they insisted again, we had to say no, and if they insisted a third time, we could say yes and accept it. And we had to use it for whatever they gave it to us for. So if they were like, hey, like just go buy yourself a new pair of shoes, you had to buy a new pair of shoes probably. You couldn't use it for anything else. Yeah, so we had to honor like their requests. That's so funny. Oh my gosh. I wish I had done that for you. Oh, I would have been like, I think. I don't know, whatever you wanted. Use this to buy a Nintendo DS. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:33

And you're like, I'm sorry, I had to.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:35

Sorry, I had to buy the iPhone 15. It's look, it's in the handbook. Oh, I had to buy the high-heeled boots. Yeah. So we also had this really weird phase of the mission where we had to pray to find someone in a specific outfit to teach. So this went in tandem with whatever genius. Sorry if you listen to this. I shouldn't. Sorry, sorry. Maybe they're on here. Oh my gosh. Anyway, someone decided that we should do daily planning and determine exactly what building we'd be at, exactly what topic, and then what the person would be wearing. What? And it was like a test of our faith to be like, Heavenly Father, help us to find a woman wearing short denim shorts and red tennis shoes today that we can teach about the family proclamation at the assembly hall. That's like delusional. I'm sorry. Like no, like I can't make this stuff up. That's so weird. And I thought it was super weird, but we'd get checked in like our area book. So there's an app on your phone called Area Book where you do your daily planning. And our zone leaders would go in randomly, check it, make sure that we were doing the planning as told. And if we weren't, they would message us and be like, Why aren't you doing the planning the right? Oh my gosh. They're like, You didn't say what color shirt she would be wearing. Yeah. Oh my gosh. So that's so weird. Yeah, and it was really because obviously the thing is, like, if you're we talked about this cognitive bias in a previous episode, but if you're looking out for those things, you will find them. I guess. But it was it was framed as like a miracle. So there was one time when we had prayed to it was a woman in like red high heels or something. And I didn't see anyone in red high heels our whole shift, but then we had a lunch break, and at lunch I saw a woman in red high heels, and I was like, dang it, because I really didn't want to. Like I really didn't. It was an uncomfortable situation. Like this woman is eating lunch with someone, it's a really inopportune time. I'm trying to eat lunch, but I feel this intense pressure to go and speak to a woman in red heels because, according to the missions logic, if you prayed for that and God put it in your path, that's a sign that you need to share the gospel with them. And I think I chickened out, but I walked past her several times and was just like, Do I do it? Do I not do it? And finally at the end of I chickened out, but I did say, like, hey miss, like I really like your red shoes, those are so fun, and had a brief conversation with her where I didn't bring up anything church related. But I was like, let me kind of like half-check the box because I approached her, you know. Wow. There was also a transfer where we this was so annoying. We had to start the day with a prayer, and that's like standard, but when I say start the day, it was 6 32 a.m. a zone prayer. What? So in the hallway or what? On your phone. So we do a like messenger group call. Whoa. So our zone leaders would call us at 6 32, and this was like a double-edged sword kind of. It was a way for us to have a zone prayer, but then also it was their sneaky way of making sure we were all being obedient and waking up on time. Yeah. So give you two minutes, how generous of them. Two minutes to like open your eyes. What? And then you had to be on call, ready to be called on to say a prayer because they would randomly select you. Oh no. And the sneakiest part about it, the thing that made me the most upset about it, they would intentionally turn the ringer off so that you wouldn't actually get a call. Wait, I'm so confused. So the call would start. You were expected to be on there, but your phone wouldn't make a sound. Oh. So, like if you weren't already awake, then you wouldn't get woken up. Mm-hmm. They made it that way. Oh my gosh. And the the ironic thing about it was it actually put us back to sleep because my companion and I were we'd get on our knees and then listen to this prayer. Oh, and one of the stipulations of the prayer, you had to pray for everyone everyone was teaching in the zone by name. Oh. Oh wow. How did you get that list? People submitted. You had to send it. So at the end of every day, or once a week, you had to send a list of all the people you're teaching, what they need to be prayed for, send it in the chat, and then you had to go through by name every single person. So depending on the week, this was an extremely long prayer.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:54

Whoa.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:54

So my companion and I would roll out of bed, hop on the call at 6 32, we'd be on our knees, but you're so you've only been awake for two minutes. Yeah. That's nap time. So we'd be on our knees and then fall asleep during the prayer. And then we low key would stay asleep. Yeah. Because we were gone at that point. There was no like second alarm because our alarm already went off. So we often got put to sleep by the rote prayer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:21

So like if no, like would you guys be like the only ones left in the call? Or like well, yeah, sometimes, yeah. I'm honestly surprised, like, based on what you've told me. I'm surprised that they wouldn't like wait to see who didn't hang up at the end of the call and then like get you in trouble for falling asleep.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:41

Yeah, it was crazy. So one time we picked up the call, they called on like a someone to give the prayer. So sister so-and-so and her companion are in charge of saying the prayer. And then um, or they would be like, so and so, can one of you say the prayer? So the companionship is called on, they select which one. So one of them like starts giving the prayer and then the voice switches, and then it switches back, and then it switches back. And I'm like half asleep, and I open one eye and look at my companion, and we were like, we're just trying to be like, whatever. So they decided to see the burnt gathering. I love like as a joke, and it was the funniest like slap in the face to the people that cooked up this whole like thing. It was so so funny. Honestly, I'd be like, You sleep, I'll say the first half of the prayer while you sleep.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:25

Yeah, and then I'll wake you up and you say the second half of the prayer.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:29

It's so funny, it was so funny, but yeah, and then like they even asked us, like, they were like, So, like, what do you guys think of the prayers? Because then I had the same zone lear a following transfer. Uh-huh. And she was like, So, like, what did you think of the prayers? Like, did you like it? And I didn't feel like because if you say anything, you're just disobedient. If I said, like, um no, I think it's a lot to force me out of bed at 6:32 and start talking. Yeah. Like, how do you say no to that? So I was just like, oh, it was cool. And then unfortunately it got repeat for another transfer.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:03

Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, I defin I mean, like, I think I have fallen asleep definitely during personal prayer first thing in the morning on my mission. And I know I had companions who fell asleep while I was giving prayers. I can't remember if I ever fell asleep while they were giving prayers, but like even more so if it's on the phone. Like, yeah, there's no pressure to stay awake.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:27

I mean, there's there's no way.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:29

That is my snooze button right there.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:31

Yeah, but we and it's like freaking we talk about ASMR so much, but like you wake up and then someone's just like saying a nice prayer. It's like, what do you think I'm gonna do? What do you think is gonna happen?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:42

Yeah. I'm just like a list of people's names who you don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:47

It's like yeah, oh my gosh. That's so funny. Crazy. Um, here's another favorite thing about Temple Square from another anonymous sister. She says, I love that sisters serve in leadership. I loved calling elders for referrals and telling them that we were the zone leaders or the district leaders, and sometimes immediate, but you don't have the priesthood, nanny. Oh my gosh. Oh, I'd be mad. So they're calling their equivalents, like their leadership equivalents in other missions to give referrals of people to teach, and they're like, hi, we're the zone leaders at of whatever at Temple Square. And then the the elders are like, Well, you don't have the priesthood. And so it's kind of like it's you get to like dunk on these missionaries because people aren't aware, and it makes the men realize you ain't that special. Yeah. So one of my favorite flexes when I got to Brazil was being like, just like mentioning, like, oh yeah, when I was in the office, and they'd be like, What do you mean? Because that's other another calling that only men have is like being an office elder. So what I did with the schedules, well, that calling doesn't exist anywhere else. The concept of being one of the missionary logistics is uh is only given to a man. It's also hilarious to me that um mission secretaries are also men because that's a like a traditionally female job, and yet even that they have men do in missions because it's like I literally don't know why. I don't know. That makes no sense, not a lot of sense, but but yeah, so I would drop that and they'd be like, What? Like you were in the office, but you're a girl, and you would just look at them and they would feel so stupid right away. That's so funny. I loved it. I loved it. Yeah. This person goes on to say, or on the other hand, hearing them be super stoked about it and really feeling like we were helping change the perception of what women can do in the church. Oh, that's nice. That's true. Sometimes, like, you would tell others and they'd be like, That's so cool, like I've never heard of that. Wow, like you guys are awesome. Like, oh, that's good. You know, like I hope they keep this up in other missions or something like that. That was also really fun. Nice. Someone else says their favorite thing about Temple Square was how close the sisters could be, which is true. I did provide some stipulations for that. As long as you don't look like you're in a sorority, you're good. Yeah. I loved meeting up with other sisters for lunch at their apartments or at City Creek. So this must have been before my time when you were allowed to go in each other's apartments and meet up for lunch. That was later on banned, but I'm very happy for this person. They got that experience. Someone said, I love the spirit of sisterhood there. Something about so many strong women altogether is so powerful, and you can feel it. It's so true. It's a really, really unique place. Yeah. So I have another question here for those missionaries, and it's what is your craziest or funniest Temple Square experience? Someone said, with the results, when the results of the 2020 presidential election were finally announced, a bunch of, in parentheses, I'm assuming right wing people gathered at the Salt Lake Capitol building to protest and brought guns and were doing their usual angry emotional thing. For our safety, they decided to close down the square for the day and made all the sisters gather in the North Visitor Center, a Just with Memorial Building where church security would then escort us to our apartment buildings. While we were waiting to cross the street, a car drove by and started honking to get our attention while someone in the backseat mooned us all. What? Also, post Malone waved at me one time. Oh that is a wild coaster. That's gracious. Dang, that's crazy. That is crazy. And unfortunately, she's not the only one. I was also mooned on my mission. Oh really? But not intentionally. Yeah, I'm like, what? I was going to lunch with some of the senior missionaries, a couple that I just adored. They would, because the office was such torture, they would treat us to lunch once a transfer at like a nicer restaurant. So we'd go to like the Cheesecake Factory or something in City Creek that's a bit more upscale and just have lunch with them, relax a little bit. While we were walking back to Temple Square, there was someone like working on the street, like in construction or something like that. And they bent over to grab something. Their pants came down. Oh no! On one cheek, they had a tattoo of a red smiley face, and on the other cheek, a tattoo of a blue frowny face. Oh my gosh. And that's insane. I didn't know what to do because I saw it. Did anyone else see it? And then I looked, I like looked and I like I was like making a face and I looked, and then the one of the senior office elders looked at me and we just both looked at each other mortified. And he goes, Well, that's a bummer.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:19

Oh, that's funny.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:21

And I started like crying, laughing. And then his wife was like, What? What happened? What happened? Because she didn't see it. And he was like, I'll tell you later. Because we were both like laughing, and she was like, What is it? Like, tell me right now. I want to I want to know the job. Like, I want to be in on it. And she was like so mad that she missed seeing it. And then we told her about it, and she was still mad. She was like, Oh, I wish I'd have seen that. Really?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:39

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:40

I love that. It's hilarious. It was it was so funny. So, yeah, also the first time that I ever saw a uh naked man was awesome. Unfortunately, he was like bending over a trash can. Oh no. And for some reason, forgot to wear underwear that day. Wait, oh yeah, duh. Like I oh my gosh, I didn't even think about that. Oh, his this is a different guy. So his pants, oh, this is a different guy. Different, different, different. That guy was wearing underwear, it was just like he was sagging and then his pants fell down. Oh, okay. Too far. But this individual was also sagging his pants, bent over a trash can, wasn't wearing indie underwear, his pants came down and I saw everything. Ew. These people need to secure their pants. People really need to secure their pants. Oh, secure your pants, y'all. Another regular of Temple Square, he was a street performer in City Creek. And I need to give him a fake name. Um, George. His name's George. He was actually from Brazil, and he played the saxophone. Oh, love. Nice. Very, very talented guy. I love talking to him too. When I was fresh in my mission, I was like, oh, he's gonna convert. Like, he needs it so bad. And then I scheduled like a lunch with him, and my trainer was like, he's like an eternal investigator, like he will never convert the church. And I was like, I was so like bright-eyed, bushy-tailed. I was like, no, like it's I'm gonna be the one who finally converts George, the saxophonist. Such a talented performer. But when I went to like get his number, I was like, oh, yeah, if we get our like number, and he had like one phone, and then he was like, Oh, this is the wrong phone, and then he he had like three iPhones for some reason. And I was like, what are you doing with all these phones? And what kind of money are you making? Like as a street performer. I saw him one time, I was at Chick-fil-A in Provo, so pretty far away, and he was performing the street corner in Provo. And I was like, What the heck?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:40

Oh, I might have seen him before because I have seen a guy performing, like playing the saxophone at the Chick-fil-A. Yeah, like it's like where there's Macy's too in Provost. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:51

He's oh cool. He's awesome. He's really good.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:54

Like, I remember really enjoying his music.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:56

No, he's so talented, and he also so sweet, he learned a lot of the LDS hymns. Oh. And so he would play them, or like he would play like LDS requests from like Temple Square visitors, like for the missionaries. If we walk by, sometimes he would like switch to playing an LDS hymn. I adore him. I love like street performers. There's a guy who's still, and I'll like walk past him and um you know, like give him money still because I work close by, allegedly, and um he he plays the flute. So it's a man he doesn't have hands, like he doesn't have functional hands. Oh, but he with like his stubs, he like plays a set of like flutes of like re pipe flutes. Oh wow. It is so beautiful, he's so talented. He also does percussion. Wow, just beautiful. If you see him, give him some coin because he is so talented. Wow. There's also we would get really interesting people that didn't like the church that were trying to evade the like harassment rules. Um because obviously if you harass this just enough time, you're gonna get banned. But they would try to evade that by so you couldn't, you're not allowed to distribute like materials for your own church on Temple Square. Okay, but you can distribute like what members would call like quote unquote anti-material within a certain like square footage outside of the square. So one day there was during Christmas time, there was Santa. So a lot of these street performers, especially and like entertainers would come out during Christmas time because it's just the most business. There's a lot of buzz around Christmas time. So we had Santa and Buddy the Elf, and they were like placed, they were hanging out just like on this kind of like random part of Temple Square, which we didn't clock. So they were hanging out, talking to people, talking to sisters, and then later on I saw a couple sisters like crying, like one of them was like balling. And I was like, Hey, like what happened? And she was like, I was talking to Buddy the Elf, and then he gave me this, and she hands me this thing. It was called Buddy Box, and it had a picture, like it was like structured like a dollar bill. But then instead of being George Washington, it was that Santa and Buddy the Elf, like their own picture, and then in teeny tiny text all along the edges, it was like the Mormon church is evil, it's doing XYZ. Like, oh my god, look at this scripture, look at this Bible scripture, look at this Bible scripture, blah blah blah blah. So it was so mean, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:20

It's so like disturbing.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:21

I know, like to like surreptitiously, I don't know. And I'm like, are you guys getting paid for this? Like genuinely, how do you have the time as like a normal civilian? You're spending your own money on costumes, you're coordinating your ride here, you're traveling to get here, you're printing out this like you got wrapped. Custom made custom made money. Like, and it was really sad because they would bait the sisters, be super friendly, and then be like, hey, let's take a picture. And the mother taking the picture hand you the buddy bucks that then dunk on your entire belief system.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:55

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:56

So people got real creative trying to invade, you know, the harassment rules and and things like that. But for the most part, those street performers and entertainers are so talented and kind, and we had great relationships with them. But that's good. There were a couple of couple of weirdos. We had to carol one Christmas because we weren't allowed inside Temple Square, so then we would go outside Temple Square and carol to them. Wait, during COVID? Yeah, during COVID, during Christmas. Oh, okay. There were varying levels of like uh musical talent. So I couldn't mission? Yeah. And I got really frustrated one year because I was with the caroling group that like just couldn't stay in the same key? In the same key, couldn't stay in the right time. And I was in training, so I was kind of like being annoying, but I was like, I would like tap my foot super loud and be like, okay, one, two, three, and like stomping your clapping. So like give me the time like, let's go, let's do it. That was pretty fun to carol for people. I didn't enjoyed it, but the worst was if you got on the shift where you just wander around the outskirts of Temple Square for several hours, like proselytiding, basically, yeah, but there was like not really anyone to talk to. Yeah. So it was kind of torture. That's like my whole mission, though. Like literally. Yeah. That's so funny. That is so funny. Here's a another crazy or funny Temple Square experience from a former missionary. I had my roommates cover Westgate for us, so you could sometimes have other people cover shifts for you if you weren't able to make it. And one of them was trying to feed a squirrel when suddenly this drunk, shirtless, crusty man started chasing her across Temple Square. Church security got him and took him away, and he stuck his tongue out at all the sisters crammed in the little Westgate building. Ah. Terrifying. That's really scary. So scary. Dang. Here's another regular. So uh I asked the question: Are there any Temple Square characters you recall? I give the example of the small bald man who frequented Temple Square in the wolf shirt and threw rocks at the display screen, listened to the previous episode if you want more info on that. This is, I'm guessing, the man with the face tattoos. He's mentioned several times throughout this. I recognize these stories, but there was one guy who was banned from Square who showed up a couple of times while we were proselytiding, and one time he got tackled by security because he wouldn't leave. Occasionally you would see security off the distance, like just like literally like jump on people and you're like okay, like you just had to mind. You're like giving a tour and you see someone get tackled and you're like someone gets jumped. And this is Yeah, that's crazy. Oh my gosh. Okay, I need to invent a fake name for this guy, but I know him. Um, Fred. Fred, who spoke the worst French ever and would keep petite écoliere in his coat and pull it out at the last second and make us take it home. He always said it was, quote, super rare and brought from France, but you could buy it at Harman's across the street. I don't even know what that is. Is that a it's a it's a French butter biscuit topped with European chocolate. Oh yeah, I know those things. I've had those before. They're really good. Mm-hmm. So he would come up, like in my experience with him, because I didn't speak French, he'd come be like, We're the French-speaking sisters, and he'd be like, oh, over there. Oh. Then he would go over there, trap them in a conversation in broken French, and then at the very end of it, give them a petit écolier and be like, I got this from France just for you. That's so funny. He was harmless, but I think he sometimes annoyed the French sisters. Yeah. Did they eat the petites? I don't know if they ate them. I personally would be anything given to me by anyone on Temple Square. Yeah. I asked again, anything else you would like to share with us, the more the merrier. Someone said I always admired how cute everyone dressed, and I always thought you, me, had great outfits. Thank you, girl. I had a great time dressing up. You always had cute outfits on your mission. It was fun to be in a mission where your clothes wouldn't, you like you knew your clothes wouldn't necessarily get beat up. Like they obviously got old and you sweat in them, but you weren't like tracting through fields or anything like that. So yeah, the clothing exchange on the mission was so fun because missionaries would go through their clothes. We actually had a space called the Rack. It was in the mission home. That's what it was called. It was a calling to be rack coordinator. Really? And it was a thrift store for the missionaries. Everything was free, but you could drop off clothes that you didn't want and pick up other things. It was so fun. So whenever we passed to the mission home, we'd go check out the rack and one. And then if you were in if you were the rat coordinator, you had to DI clothes that were deemed like inappropriate. So you had to like go through. And so like we found like my companion was the rat coordinator, and we found a lacy black bra in there. Oh. So that obviously was going in the no pile, but then I was like, what if I kind of want that? So because my companion was the rat coordinator, I got to keep it because she wouldn't tell anyone. Nice. So that's how I got a spicy bra on my mission. I still have it to this day. Someone else said, I think we were really lucky to have served with, I won't name them, but the mission presents that I served with just had to put that out there. During my time on Temple Square, I managed to take a nap in every single building due to them being closed for COVID. I get a 10 to 15 power nap in between virtual tours. That's great. So between virtual tours, she tried to take a nap in every building. There was another sister on my mission who had a goal of sitting in every single seat in the conference center. Whoa. There's a lot of seats. Aren't there like 5,000 or something? Yeah, I should know this. Oh my gosh, I should know this. This was like one of our main facts. And like when I was memorizing these and training, I was like, okay, who's gonna be like, how many seats are in here? Because I like I wouldn't think to ask that question, but it happened every single day. Yeah, there are 21,000 seats in the conference center. Oh my goodness. She sat in every single one because she did? Yes. For her morning exercise, she would go and sit in as many as she possibly could in one sitting. Oh my gosh, that's fun. That's a fun morning exercise.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:51

That's so funny. Wow. I mean, that's a flex. Like she might be the only one in the whole world who's done that.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:57

Yeah, no, for sure. Oh my gosh, I love that. That's so funny. It's so funny. I yeah, I love it. It'd be like good exercise too. You basically just be like, Yeah, you're hopping around. Yeah, true. Exactly. Doing squats over and over again in the folding chairs. Yeah, that's so funny. One thing I also want to mention is what's called quiet dignity. Have I told you about this, Sophia? It it sounds familiar, but I don't know. So we had an emphasis placed on quiet dignity, which is basically just shut up, be pretty, be nice, don't make too much noise, don't laugh too loud, don't hug each other, don't be rowdy. I I visited Temple Square recently and was talking to some of the sisters, and we were kind of comparing rules. I had two sisters, I was talking to two sisters who were about to go home. And so I sat them down and I was like, hey, give me the full rundown, be totally honest with me. How are you doing? What's going on? So we talked about things, and then I was like, I was like, hey, what are the rules like? And they're like, Do you want to read them? And they actually gave me their phone and I could go through. Oh, cool. And I told them, I was like, Yep, this rule came from my time. This is from President So and so, you guys still have this. So, all of this, a lot of this is still in full effect. But wow, one of them brought up a complaint. She was like, Did you guys have quiet dignity? And I was like, Oh my gosh, like years later, they're still emphasizing this. But anyway, so we were told to be quietly dignified in any everything. Our outfits had to be quiet dignity, and it kind of drove everyone crazy. We all had to be like, you know, kind of hush-hush about it. Outfits, quiet dignity, just modest. Like, yeah, we had a presentation once on dress and grooming where they were like, if you have to wake up early to look better, do it. So like do your do your makeup, do your hair, you know. And then we there were these horrible skirt extenders. Have you seen those before? Are they kind of like lace things? Yeah, it's like a lace extension. So we had this whole presentation about like what to wear, what not to wear, and the final like slide, and the presenter was like crying about it. Crying, look how beautiful these sisters look. And it was just these sisters in the worst outfits I've ever seen with spirit extenders. And she's like sobbing up there, like, you guys are so beautiful after they just fried us for like having greasy hair. They're like, make sure you're showering and like all this stuff, and then crying about how beautiful these sisters look in the most outdated, hideous outfits I've ever seen. Wild. Anyway, so that was Quiet Dignity. I I think Quiet Dignity to me is that skirt extender that just says, I'm here, I don't care what I look like simultaneously. I care so much about what I look like. So that's kind of the oxy moron there, I guess. It's like you're not supposed to care, but you're also supposed to really care. But then if you're too fashionable, that's bad. We also had a rule, you could only have earrings that were one inch in length, so you could get randomly called out. And I had a friend, absolutely iconic. She kept a ruler on her so that if anyone questioned her earrings, because she had ones that were like exactly one inch long. Oh, if anyone questioned her earrings, she'd pull out the ruler just like preemptively. So I dare you. Nice but come at me. Like they're measuring. So funny. I love her. I love her. But yeah, you could randomly be like, are your earrings one inch?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:22

It's so funny. Like, I don't know, it's so different from my mission where like we were just so scruffy because like you just get so sweaty, like all your makeup would come off. And like we taught this, I think I've told you this before, but we taught this evangelical lady who was part of a church where you weren't allowed to wear makeup or earrings or nail polish. Yeah. And so she was like telling us like, it's so beautiful to see young women like yourselves, like eschewing the things of the world, you don't wear makeup, you don't care about your hair, you don't wear earrings, you don't wear nail polish. We just like looked at each other and we're like, uh yeah, I guess I guess we just happen to not be doing that today, but we like accepted the compliment. We're like, oh, thank you so much. Like, yes, it's so important to us. Yeah, but we just like didn't do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:20

That's so funny. Here's a an entry about someone that inserted themselves in one of the tours. This is an email to my ex-boyfriend. An old man member dude decides to talk over me and guide the entire tour, bringing up all of the other worlds Jesus created, revelations given to Wilfred Woodruff and the Doctrine Covenants, and explaining the story of Samuel the Lamanite when it isn't at all relevant to a group of complete strangers to the church in English and broken Spanish. This was a horrible one. So I'm teaching a group of brown people. This guy comes up and just decides that they are Spanish speakers. Oh no. It was horrible racial profiling. Oh no. I was so uncomfortable. I was like, um, and his Spanish was horrible, by the way. Oh my god. And then he's explaining all these random things, but this would happen with members, or like they'd be in a tour with us, and if they didn't think that you were like saying the right things, they'd just be like, Sister, why don't you talk about this? Why don't you talk about this? And it's like we were trained to help people feel comfortable, yeah, you know, hopefully. Anyway, and then I said, Well, that is all I have for now. I've been complaining so much lately. I'm working on being more temperate and easily entreated. And then I put in heart eye emojis, flowers, and hearts. So I think I was being sarcastic. That's funny. Thank you for listening. Also, sorry, this email sucks, but at least the first part is funny. Oh, did I say sucks? My bad. That word has been outlawed by the mission president. Oh my gosh. He would outlaw random words too.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:45

That's so crazy. Was that guy that you said was talking about like the Wilfred Wood Woodruff Other World thing? Was that Gary?

SPEAKER_01 1:44:55

No, actually, this was it was a different guy? No, and he was like and he so Gary like obviously had some mental limitations. This guy was just a regular dude who started out super nice and then just started popping off. And I was like, you are torturing these poor people. Like they want to leave.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:15

Also, besides the racial profiling of like assuming that people speak Spanish, like the assumption that they can't understand English is just so rude. Like, even if they are Hispanic and speak Spanish, like I'm sure okay, I'm not sure, but like they probably understand your English better than your bad Spanish. And like you were already giving them the tour in English. Why would they be listening if you if they can't understand? And you have like people who speak Spanish, like if they needed a tour in Spanish, they would already be getting a tour in Spanish.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:47

No, exactly. Like that's just so insane. It was insane.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:52

Uh so uncomfortable for you to have to deal with stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:55

Yeah, it was um very uncomfortable. Wow. I don't really know how to conclude this because that was so all over the place. I guess in summary, I wanted to make this episode to pay tribute to a place that was so formative for me. I obviously, like any mission, had some negative experiences, had some positive experiences. Hopefully, I've been transparent about those while still paying my respects to such an important place. I want to give a shout-out to all the missionaries that contributed to this. And I want to say thank you for the impact that you all had on my life. You are all amazing women. These people are just such top-notch people that I try to stay in touch with as much as possible to this day because I'm just so grateful for the impact and thankful for a place like Temple Square, bummed that it won't be the same, but curious to see how things unfold. So thank you all for listening. I know this was a long episode, it's just very personal to me. And on loud laughter, obviously, we want to grow our audience and create this safe space, but we also want to do it authentically. So if it's a bit long-winded, that's what you get. If it's bi-weekly, that's what you get. So we're so thankful to have you along with the journey. Thank you to Sophia for patiently sitting through this. Of course, this uh recollection and for all of your thoughts. Oh, yeah, of course. Thank you so much for sharing.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:23

It's so interesting to get um an inside look into the Temple Square mission. I feel like it's a really unique opportunity to learn all of these things. So thank you so much for sharing, and yeah, thank you to everyone who contributed to make this episode possible. Please share this episode with your friends and family, anyone who you think um would find it interesting. And if you can, please follow our podcast, share a review, a rating. It would really help us to grow our audience and be able to expand our community. So thank you so much for being a part of our loud laughter family. We will see you guys next time. Bye! Bye.