Immigrants–How the Melting Pot Used to Work

In my recent novel, Growing Up Tough, I weave stories my father told about his childhood in a small mining town in Utah during the twenties and thirties. A key theme is the interaction of various immigrant groups who had come there to work in the coal mines. They started as Greeks, Italians, and others, but they ended up as Americans. Here is Chapter One:

Chapter 1

Eddie

Eddie giggled as he nudged the big chestnut forward. Mother stood in front of him, head up and very straight and stern, but took a tiny step backward.

“Shirley Edwin Taylor,” she said, “You come down from there this instant!”

Eddie had found the horse wandering about the alley behind their lot. Carefully he had walked up to him, speaking softly and quietly until he could stroke his neck, being careful not to look him in the eye, not to spook him. He then pushed him over next to a trash can he could climb on to, and from there slid over to his back.

He hugged his new animal friend, buried his face in his thick neck and mane, and breathed deeply. There was that good smell of life. Eddie loved life. And this horse was a wonderful living creature.

Now that wonderful living creature towered over his little mother, who was less than five feet, even when she pulled herself up as straight and tall as she could.

He laughed more loudly. “Uh uh.”

The horse took another step forward and Mother stepped back again, one hand patting the hair that strayed from where it was gathered on the top of head.

She shook her finger at him. “I mean it. You are too small to be on such a big horse. You could fall off and break your neck. Come down!”

Eddie considered her demand. He loved Mother and tried to be a good boy, but he knew her fear of horses. This was just too much fun to resist. The horse snorted, flicked its ears, and pawed the ground a little.

“Uh uh.”

Before she could stamp her feet and speak again, Father came out the back door, suppressing a smile. He strode over to the horse, reached up, and pulled the five year old down. “Come along young man. I want you to go with me. And stop teasing Mother.”

He looked at the horse, made a clicking sound, and said, “Go home.” The horse ambled away toward the alley.

He then swatted Eddie on the bottom, squeezed Mother’s arm, and said, “I’m going over to Anderson’s office to watch the strike. Taking Johnny and Junior too. We’ll be home in time for supper.”

“He deserves more than a swat for that. He could have been hurt.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Father said as he headed around the side of the house to the front yard.

Eddie’s older brothers were waiting for them. They shared the prominent nose, sharp features, and natural spunk that were typical of the Taylors.

“Follow me, boys. We’re going the back way.”

They struggled to keep up with their father, who always walked briskly. As they crossed the side streets they peeked to the south where in the distance they could glimpse Main Street. It was filled with people. Some carried signs, some stood, others milled about. There were loud voices, but Eddie could not make out what they were saying.

From Sixth Street they went east past the construction site of the new Roman Catholic Church, around the back of the Mormon Tabernacle, across the gravel play yards, behind the City Office Building, to the back entrance of the Carbon County Courthouse, a big double door beneath a portico with square pillars.

Eddie’s eyes widened. A soldier with rifle and bayonet stood guard by each pillar; they stiffened a little as the man and his sons approached. Behind them a sheriff’s deputy leaned against the door frame. He tipped his hat and waved them on, saying to the guards, “It’s okay, boys. They’re friends of Judge Anderson.”

“Hi there, Carl. ‘Come to see what happens, huh. Go on up, there’s a crowd gathering.” They hurried up the back staircase, avoiding the county staff and officials and reporters milling in the foyer to hear what was going on.

The second floor judge’s office had a large window that looked out on Main Street. About a dozen people were in the room, alternately looking out at the street or passing back and forth into the hall to the other offices. The transom window was open so they could hear the voices outside.

 Judge Anderson was older than Father, with a sprinkling of grey in his hair and cheery smile wrinkles around his eyes. He stuck out his hand and shook Father’s. “I am glad you could join us, Carl, and I see you brought your boys.”

“Yes. These are Junior, Johnny, and Shirl.”

“Call me Eddie,” piped up the youngest.

“Mind your manners! He prefers Eddie, from his middle name. I thought it would be good for them to see a little history in action. They might remember it later.”

The Judge laughed. The man next to him snorted and said, “History! Bunch of nonsense by a bunch of troublemakers. They did the same thing in ’03.”

Judge Anderson laughed again, “Carl, you probably haven’t met Fred yet; he’s County Clerk and Town Cynic. Carl just moved here from Provo.” Fred was short, shorter than Dad, thin, and quite a bit older. His skin was tanned and leathery. Anderson added, “Fred is a rancher when he’s not clerking. He has a spread out north of Castle Gate. ‘Doesn’t think much of miners.”

“Oh, nice country,” said Father. “I go out there for customers.”

“Carl is in the wholesale grocery business. He also manages the old Scowcroft warehouse over on the southside,” the Judge added. “He’s Karl Karlson’s new boss.”

“Carl and Karl. Nice to keep things simple.”

“Yeah. He’s Karl with a K. I’m Carl with a C.”

“Ah, that makes it easier.”

“My territory goes out to the Ute reservation and Roosevelt; I cover much of the eastern and northeastern parts of the state.”

“Must be a lot of travel.”

“At times. Life’s a lot easier now with telephones, when people have ’em. Unfortunately, a lot of my customers do not. I spend a lot of time in town at the warehouse too.”

Loud voices from Main Street interrupted the conversation. Eddie stretched to see.

The town of Price was platted with very wide streets, large blocks, and large lots. Main Street ran from East to West parallel to lettered strees, with crossing numbered streets from the train tracks in the west eastward. Now that large Main Street in front of the Carbon County Courthouse was filled with people for as far as Eddie could see.

Most were men in work clothes, not very clean looking, the coal dust permanently staining them. Like nearly all men in 1922 they wore hats–homburgs, bowlers, newsboy caps. No fedoras like father’s, and no cowboy hats, which was disappointing for Eddie, who had understood they were moving to Cowboy Country when they left Provo. Then again, these were mostly foreigners.

Shirts were buttoned right up to the top and had long sleeves. There were very few ties. Grown men usually wore ties, but most of these miners did not. Almost all the men had dark hair, with mustaches, and a few beards. And they all had unhappy, angry expressions. One authoritative voice rose over the others.

“I want to assure you, we are giving every consideration to each of the complaints we have received. The governor and the mine owners are meeting with leading individuals in the mining community. But nothing will be accomplished by marching around here this afternoon.”

Eddie craned his neck to see where the voice was coming from. It belonged to a man standing beneath the portico in front of the courthouse to the right of Judge Anderson’s window. He was distinguished looking, with a large round belly, and dressed in a suit with black top hat. All the officials wore top hats.

About this time the whistle blew; it was one o’clock. The whistle was at the steam laundry and blew every day at 8 am, noon, 1 pm, and 5 pm. This was convenient since it helped people keep track of time and stay on schedule. Coming now, though, it caused a stir in the crowd, startling a little at first, then just nervous shifting of weight and more milling around.

It was then that Eddie noticed the machine guns.

Thirty or more soldiers with rifles and bayonets were on either side of the portico, with more right behind the speaker. In front of the right and left pillars were machine guns secured behind sandbags, with soldiers manning them, hands on handles. They looked grim, and nervous.

Looking back to the crowd in the street, Eddie saw that most of the men had a pistol at the side or were carrying a rifle or shotgun.

“Old windbag,” muttered Fred with a scowl,nodding toward the speaker in front. “It’s all the Italians’ fault. ‘Bunch of Bolsheviks. Anarchists. They oughta just clear ’em out.”

“Well,” added Anderson, “it did start with them, but now the Greeks have joined in, which is a bit of a surprise and a disappointment to me. I didn’t think they would.”

“They’re troublemakers too. The refuse of Europe. And it’s not the miners I mind, at least not as such. It’s the blasted immigrants.” Fred thought a moment. “Well, not immigrants really. Mother’s family came over from Ireland not so long ago. It’s just this lot, they’re full of communists, want to do the same thing here they did in Russia.”

“That’s a bit of a stretch, Fred,” replied the judge.

“Listen, if they can take down a czar, they can take down a president too.”

“Getting carried away, Fred.”

Fred sighed, “Oh, I don’t know. What I do know is they started coming too fast. It takes time to turn ’em into Americans. ‘Takes time for the stuff in the pot to melt.”

“Huh?”

“You know, the ‘melting pot’. It takes time for them to not be foreigners anymore and start thinking like Americans.”

“You have a point there, Fred.”

Father asked, “What are they striking about?”

“Wages, mostly. They were cut when the price of coal fell after the war. And working conditions–they are bad, especially living conditions in the camps. They want improvements in the company houses–but I don’t see how they can be made any better without a lot more money than the companies can spare. And they want a union, the UMWA.” He looked over at Father. “Have you been in the mining camps?”

“Drove past. Didn’t see much. I don’t have many customers there.”

“The companies own it all. They rent the houses to the miners and their families and sell them everything they need at the company stores. Oh, and don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good things about the camps–ball fields, dance halls, theaters, schools, churches. Lot’s to do to keep people happy. It’s just the homes that need improvement, especially in winter.”

“That’s where it started,” said Fred. “That guy right there.” He pointed a bony finger at a young man in the front row of the crowd just below the portico. “Frank Bonnaci. The union sent him here as an ‘organizer’. More like Italian immigrant troublemaker.”

“Well, talk is one thing,” added Anderson. “Problem is, now there have been casualties on both sides. Some Italians were wounded, and Greeks shot a company guard and a sheriff’s deputy.”

“Yes. I read about it in the paper.”

“We have several in jail, but whether they are really the culprits–who knows? No one admits anything.”

Fred’s face brightened. “Did you say your name is Taylor? Are you the son of Alfred Taylor? I knew your father. A good judge. Straight shooter.”

He looked out at the crowd again. “He would have known what to do with a mob like this. He spent most of the war chasing Quantrill in Kansas, you know.” He meant the Civil War.

“Yes, I know.” Being the son of Judge Alfred Taylor meant automatic acceptance into the social and political leadership circles of the state, at least those that were Republican. It had counted for a lot in Provo, but not so much in Price, where Democrats were the majority.

Another man ambled into the office, square jaw, straight shoulders, and sandy brown hair, about Fred’s age. He wore a fedora like father’s only a lighter shade of tan. And he wore there was a star on his shirt.

“Matt Warner,” said Anderson, “good to see you.” They exchanged pleasantries and introductions.

“Matt is a justice of the peace and deputy sheriff. He usually hears civil disputes and juvenile cases.” He cast an eye at Eddie and his brothers. “Stay out of trouble!” The boys’ eyes widened. The judge turned away to smile. “But it wouldn’t hurt to get acquainted with him in any case. He spins a great yarn.”

“Nothin’ but the truth,” insisted the deputy.

The adults turned back to politics, but Eddie kept glancing at Warner. There was something about him that was interesting. Eddie was not sure what it was. He seemed a little different from the other men in the room, jovial, yet at heart very serious, and a little sad. Eddie thought he had a rough edge to him. Finally it occurred to him that Warner reminded him of the cowboys he had seen at the movies, sort of like Fred the rancher and Town Cynic, only more so. Sort of like what’s his name in The Great Train Robbery? Tom Mix. Neat name, thought Eddie.

Warner looked at the street a few minutes and grew quiet. “Mobs give me the willies. Maybe ’cause most of the ones I’ve seen, they were after me. These fellas’ look a lot like a bunch that surrounded me in Ellensburg. Only they had ropes.”

Anderson chuckled, “I remember your telling me about that. If I remember right you talked your way out of it.”

“Yeah. I was pretty darn lucky. Problem with a mob, you cannot predict what it will do, except it’s usually nothin’ any good. It has a lot of emotion, but no brain.” He stared out the window a minute or two at the crowd milling about. “Looks like the mayor has plenty of help. I think I’ll go home.”

After he left, Anderson said quietly, “Matt is quite a character. A real cowboy. He’s a reformed bandit, you know, partner of Butch Cassidy. One of the more interesting people you will meet in our little town.”

“Aha!” thought Eddie. He was right. He looked over to where Warner had just left. Mobs had been after him–what did that mean? He looked a little harder at the crowd outside and marveled that so many people could get so upset. “A lot of emotion, but no brain”–that sounded important. Eddie tried hard to remember it.

There were only a few women, uniformly thin. Prominent cheekbones, hardly any muscle on their arms and no fat. If Eddie had known the word he would have called them gaunt.

There were only a few boys–no girls–standing close to men Eddie supposed were their fathers. One of the boys caught his eye, a boy about his age with jet black hair. The boy was staring back at him.

Growing Up Tough

A couple years ago I wrote a novel based on the stories my father used to tell about growing up in the small coal mining town of Price, Utah. This was during the 1920s and 30s and Price in those days had not quite made the transition from the Wild West to the 20th Century. Add to that Prohibition, the Great Depression, ethnic conflicts between varying immigrant groups, and the brief rise of the KKK . . . well, it was quite the time to be a young boy.

Reviews at Readers’ Favorite include these comments: “I enjoyed this read immensely and can highly recommend it. . . touching and engaging . . . crisp detail . . . personal and enthralling . . . touching upon some vital social issues still relevant today . . . (a) coming-of-age story that you can’t help but love. Highly recommended.”

Available at Amazon.

Review of The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley

You have probably heard the story of “The Star Thrower” in a sermon or motivational talk sometime. I first heard it in the late 1960s. It goes something like this. A wise old professor goes for an early morning walk on a beach just as the tide is going out. He sees a young fellow also out for a walk. Every now and then the young man picks up a starfish and throws it far into the receding waters. The old man asks what he is doing and the young one points out that the starfish will die once the tide is out. The old man looks down the long beach and sees hundreds, maybe thousands of stranded starfish. “There’s no point in doing that,” he says.  “It won’t make a difference.” The young man looks down the beach, thinks about it a little, nods, and walks on. Then he picks up another starfish and throws it into the sea. “It made a difference for that one,” he replies. Now it is the old professor’s turn to think a little and nod. He joins the young man on his walk, finds a starfish, and throws it in.

            That is the short version. I had not read the original until I found a great little reprint of Loren Eiseley’s essays, available at Amazon. Eiseley was a true naturalist, a physical anthropologist and paleontologist by training and vocation, but a lover of all the natural world and endowed with great talents of observation and poetic/philosophic commentary. His writing is simply brilliant (though at times a little turgid because of his broad vocabulary, excellent diction, and depth of thought). He has been compared to Thoreau, but Thoreau did not have the scientific understanding and historical depth that Professor Eiseley had.

            Like many of his essays, “The Star Thrower” is about the meaning of life, the purpose of man’s existence, and our relationship to the universe. It runs seventeen pages and concludes with this insightful passage:

“I picked up a star whose tube feet ventured timidly among my fingers while, like a true star, it cried soundlessly for life. I saw it with an unaccustomed clarity and cast far out. With it, I flung myself as forfeit, for the first time, into some unknown dimension of existence. From Darwin’s tangled bank of unceasing struggle, selfishness, and death, had arisen, incomprehensibly, the thrower who loved not man, but life. It was the subtle cleft in nature before which biological thinking had faltered. We had reached the last shore of an invisible island—yet, strangely, also a shore that the primitives had always known. They had sensed intuitively that man cannot exist spiritually without life, his brother, even if he slays. . . .

“. . . I would walk remembering Bacon’s forgotten words “for the use of life.” I would walk with the knowledge of the discontinuities of the unexpected universe. I would walk knowing of the rift revealed by the thrower, a hint that there looms, inexplicably, in nature something above the role men give her. I knew it from the man at the foot of the rainbow, the starfish thrower on the beaches of Costabel.”

            “The Star Thrower” is but one of the ruminations in this book. Included are the author’s observations of spiders, birds, flowers, frogs, fossils, and more, each filled with anecdotes of his experiences with nature and awe at its beauty and goodness. There are essays on Thoreau and Emerson, Leakey and Snow, and many others, including references to Tolkien and a host of great writers, historians, and philosophers. He at times quotes the Bible.

            And that raises an important question. Did Professor Eiseley believe in God? He clearly understood the vastness, the greatness of Nature. And he clearly believes in a greater power than Man, poor man strutting and fretting his time on the world stage. As W. H. Auden points out in the Introduction, living creatures, photosynthesis, and especially man cannot be explained by chance. These are miracles. Loren Eiseley clearly agrees.

            He certainly did not care much for the organized religion he met through the years, but he knew there is a greater power, and he seems to recognize Jesus of Nazareth as connected to it. Towards the end of an interesting essay about the relationship between past, present, and future, titled “The Lethal Factor,” he writes:

“By some I have been castigated because I am an evolutionist. In one church which I had attended as the guest of a member I had been made the covert object of a sermon in which I had recognizably played the role of a sinning scientist. I cannot deny that the role may have fitted me, but I could not feel that the hospitality, under the circumstance, was Christian. I had seen fanatical sectarian signs of ignorant and contentious sects painted on rocks all over America, particularly in desert places. I had gazed unmoved on them all. . .

“But before my mind’s eye, like an ineradicable mote, persisted the vision of that lost receding figure on the dreadful hill of Calvary who whispered with his last breath, ‘It is finished.’ It was not for himself he cried—it was for man against eternity, for us of every human generation who perform against the future the acts which justify creation or annul it. . . . if we possess great fortitude, each one of us can say against the future he has not seen, ‘It is finished.’

“At that moment we will have passed beyond the reach of time into a still and hidden place where it was said, ‘He who loses his life will find it.’ And in that place we will have found an ancient and an undistorted way.”

Gethsemane

The folks at “Scripture Central” have put together a remarkable video recreation of what the Garden of Gethsemane looked like at the time of Christ, based on archaeological research and discoveries of the past decades. It is well worth watching. I testify the Jesus is indeed the Christ, the risen Lord, our beloved Saviour.

Book Signing

If anyone is in Danville, Indiana, on June 21st, I will be signing books at The Authors’ Patch, a bookstore just across from the county courthouse. Their website is booksbycovalt.com and their Facebook page is The Authors’ Patch Bookstore. I am particularly interested in promoting my most recent book, Growing Up Tough, a fictional version of stories my father told about life as a kid during the Great Depression.

Remembering Hugh Nibley

It is perhaps a bit unorthodox to review a book before receiving and reading it, but this one is so exciting, I cannot resist. Not that the contents are unfamiliar. Substantial excerpts have been posted regularly by The Interpreter Foundation in their online journal, Interpreter, A Journal of Latter-Day Saint Faith and Scholarship (https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org) and for someone who was greatly influenced by Nibley, they are a delight. Paperback and Kindle versions are available now, but I am holding out for the hardbound, due out by June.

I first became aware of Professor Hugh Nibley as a high school student, a youth who loved history, mythology, and all things ancient. His articles in The Improvement Era magazine each month were eagerly anticipated. A few years later I was a freshman at Brigham Young University trying to decide whether to continue in Archaeology or switch to something else. Wandering around in an unfamiliar building, not quite in a fugue state, I looked up and saw that I was in front of Hugh Nibley’s office!

I knocked, he answered, and I went right in, asking about his work and advice concerning what I should study, as if he would know. Walls were lined with old books and desks were covered with ancient papyri he had been working on, work which I had interrupted. He was kind and patient, not particularly talkative, no doubt thinking about something Egyptian and wondering what this silly student was doing in his room and how to get rid of him. I don’t remember what was said, but after a short visit departed, thrilled by my brief contact with greatness.

We met two or three times more over the ensuing years, usually in the company of my late wife, who as a starving student had done housework for the Nibley family. She was very fond of them and they chatted of old times and about her great grandfather, inventor of the paperback book, a point of interest to the professor, who had read some of them during the twenties and thirties. We walked across campus together, two students and an aged teacher, he with his trademark rumpled hat, trench coat, and classic leather attaché case (a souvenir of World War II, captured from a fleeing Nazi officer when the youthful Sergeant Nibley was in army intelligence).  I did not say much on those occasions, hoping he did not remember me as the freshman who had barged into his office.

As for the book in question, Hugh Nibley Observed, it is filled with recollections such as these, only much better because they are from close friends, family, and colleagues, as well as a classic autobiographical sketch by the professor himself. There are reappraisals of his many scholarly contributions, of course, but the main focus is on his personality (delightfully witty and insightful), character (determined to do what is right, no matter what), and faith (humble and unswerving).

Professor Nibley was quite possibly the most intelligent man of our time, certainly one of the most—his IQ was estimated at something over 200, on a par with Aristotle. My scheduling was such that I never actually took a class from him for credit, but have watched or listened to recordings of his Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price courses dozens of times, as well as other talks, so I count myself as one of the thousands of students he influenced. His delivery was rapid and articulate, reciting from memory quotations in Hebrew or Greek or Latin or Arabic or any of a half dozen other languages. He usually, not always, provided translations. I also have read nearly everything he ever published, always well written, always informative and always interesting. His collected works fill two shelves in my office and related books much of a third. Now I eagerly await the arrival of this latest volume. The bookshelves will have to be rearranged.

Words, words, words

Language is not only a key instrument of memory (in addition to visual, auditory, muscular, and other forms of memory), it is essential to the characterization and comprehension of the world around us. In a very real sense, we come to understand a subject only when we have learned the vocabulary, the language that describes it. This is true not only with mundane subjects like math, mechanics, or physics, but also complex matters of the heart and spirit. Understanding then leads to application. Right words have great power to help us focus our thinking, our minds, our lives, even our faith. The following recent talk is inspiring and well worth reading:

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/mckay-christensen_lay-hold-upon-word/

 

Best Wishes.

Remember

One of the key tools the Lord has given us to be able to return to Him is memory. We are encouraged over and over again in the scriptures to remember the blessings of the Lord, the commandments, our covenants, and so forth. One of the most moving such admonitions was given in the Book of Mormon by the prophet Helaman to his sons shortly before his death:

And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.    (Helaman 5:12)

Seeing what great importance God places on our ability to remember, it behooves us to take steps to improve and preserve memory whenever we can. That is one of the great functions of pictorial art and photography and even writing itself–preserving memory. Learning to focus, to concentrate on that which we wish to remember is also very important for our individual memory, as indicated in the following research:

https://journal.thriveglobal.com/what-all-that-multi-tasking-is-doing-to-your-brain-and-memory-ed55b0848027

Indeed, as we learned back in medical school, the brain really can do only one thing at a time. Trying to do many things at once requires rapid switching of neural networks, which become fatigued and sometimes confused and result in weakened memory. Better to do one good thing at a time, do it well, and have a clear memory of it. Let’s all make good memories, and remember the things that are important.

 

Best Wishes.

Going to Austria

A number of years ago, President Thomas S. Monson told the following story of two newly called missionaries:

Young missionaries always have an idea as to where they would love to serve. Usually it’s a faraway place with a strange-sounding name.

One day I was in the men’s suit department of a large store when I encountered two missionaries with their mothers. It isn’t difficult to spot missionaries or their mothers. The two elders were conversing, and one said to the other, “Where are you going on your mission?”

Came the reply, “I’m going to Austria.”

The first missionary responded, “You lucky dog, going to Austria! Those beautiful Austrian Alps, that wonderful music, those delightful people! I wish I were going there.”

“Where are you going?” said the missionary assigned to Austria.

“California,” came the answer. “You know, less than two hours away by plane. We go there every year for a vacation.”

I could see by the expression on the mothers’ faces and the near tears of one of the missionaries that it was time for me to intervene. “Did you say California?” I asked. “Why, I once supervised that area. You have an inspired call, Elder. Do you realize what you will have in California to help you? You’ll have chapels and stake centers that dot the land, and they’ll be filled with Latter-day Saints who can be inspired to be fellow missionaries with you in sharing the gospel. You are a very fortunate missionary to be going there.” I glanced at the other mother, who said, “Brother Monson, say something about Austria, quick!” I did so.

Young men, wherever you are called will be right for you, and you will learn to love your mission.

The rest of his talk can be found here.

Serving a mission in Austria was one of the great, maturing experiences of my life. Details are recounted in my memoir, All Enlisted. I loved Austria, but serving anywhere can and will be inspiring and life-changing, including the everyday service of Christian living. It is a privilege and joy to testify that Jesus is the Christ, that He lives, and that He speaks again in our day.

 

Best Wishes.

The Prince of Peace

The Prince of Peace

In the midst of the modern world’s turmoils there is one dependable source of peace for the world, for nations, for families, and for the soul. It is the Prince of Peace, our beloved Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. With Easter approaching, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has produced a lovely, short, and inspiring video message about the Savior. It is well worth watching:

https://www.mormon.org/?cid=HP_SU_2-4-2017_dPFD_fMORG_xLIDyL1-C_