A 10-minute video originally produced for the large number of journalists visiting Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Olympics has been updated and was posted on the Church’s Newsroom site on Friday to help counter persistent myths about the Church.
The Myths & Reality video was developed as a primer on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The topics in the video reflected the kinds of questions journalists were then asking —questions about polygamy, the Church’s openness, and whether Church members are Christian.
Former NFL quarterback Steve Young and former Miss America Sharlene Hawkes, both Mormons, talk the viewer through three major misperceptions the public has about the Church.
On the Newsroom site, click on the Video tab for links to download the video to share with your family and friends, create a link to it, or embed it in your blog or site.
I’m trying to find out if this is true or not. Brother Glen Potter, who works with us on Saturdays as a Sealer in the Salt Lake Temple, is in a high priest group leadership in Park City. The high priest group leader is Brother Doug Anderson, who is also employed in the Public Affairs for the Church, told the group leadership the following:
There was a senior couple in California who desired to serve a mission and as they submitted their application they requested to go to a warm climate. When the call came it was to the Ukraine! They were disappointed in the call and felt they could not go to that cold climate and refused the call. Reportedly, when one refuses a mission call they cannot be called again for at least a year. The following year they again put in their papers with the request to go to a warm climate. When the call came it was again to the Ukraine. They were quite upset about that and appealed to have the call changed. Their request went all the way to the First Presidency, who in their inspiration, indicated the couple needed to serve in the Ukraine, so they reluctantly accepted. After arriving there they were assigned to a penal institution and the Sister Missionary was working one day in a cleaning detail in the prison. She was murmuring about her duties and out loud said, “I don’t want to be here–I cannot understand these people and no one can understand English.” A rather disheveled bearded unkempt prisoner working nearby in the cleaning detail said, “I can understand English,” and as they conversed a startling discovery was made. Seventeen years before the senior couple’s rebellious son had left home, and they had not heard from him since that time. It turned out that the disheveled prisoner was their son who had been back packing and living on the streets in Europe all those years. In Russia he had photographed something which was forbidden and was thrown into prison where his parents, on their mission to the Ukraine, found him. They are in the process of trying to get him freed from confinement. Imagine the surprise and the joy of that most unusual reunion after so many years of estrangement. What a testimony of the inspiration of mission calls!