10: Spiritual Jenga with Tierza Askren

I’m about half through the podcast and I have to go do something else but I wanted to make some quick comments, and ask some questions.  

-  My family moved a lot when I was growing up, and in high school I framed it as something that helped me in the long term, because I got good at making friends.  But in a lot of ways this hasn’t really been the case because I move, and largely am unable to maintain the friendships I’ve made because even though people are usually happy to see me again the distance just makes having meaningful friendships difficult.  How did moving around so much affect you?

- Looking back on it I think I was more of the self-righteous companion on the mission rather than someone who had an overactive guilt complex.  But the guilt was there too.  

-  I also did the first discussion thing at the doorstep.  Ugh.  I wonder if the church really thinks that works.  I went to Phoenix.  

-  I liked BYU too.  It was a good experience for me overall.  

Tierza, I too really liked 2 Nephi (Isaiah and Jacob!), and the older I got, the more I disliked Nephi (for the same reasons you did: the guy has serious problems relating with other people).  I admit that it took me a while, though.  For a good long while I bought Nephi’s pious fraud — the faux rhetorical humility that he assumes when talking about himself, and the self-serving portraits of his brothers.  Man, that guy is annoying (as a character: thank goodness he never existed in real life, unless he represents an avatar of Joseph Smith).