Christmas Bonus! I accidentally cut out a short segment about an LDS Cricket team in Pakistan, as well as LDS Armenian artists, and some artifacts from the School of the Prophets. So here’s a bonus episode with Dr Casey Griffiths discussing International Mormons in 50 More Relics of the Restoration! Check out our conversation!
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Islamabad Moroni’s
GT 01:10 Anything else?
Casey 01:13 Let me put in a couple more things. Another unique thing that’s in here and again, I focus on the global Church. It’s the Islamabad Moroni’s. So, you’re a sports guy.
GT 01:26 I am.
Casey 01:27 I think you like this. So, this was a cricket team in Pakistan called the Islamabad Moroni’s.
GT 01:32 Wow.
Casey 01:34 I found this in the Church History Museum. But I tracked down one of the players, the guy that founded the team has moved to Salt Lake and is there with his wife and kids. And I came over and interviewed them and they fed me dinner. But basically, there are Latter-day Saints in Pakistan.
GT 01:50 Wow.
Casey 01:51 And you know, Pakistan is a majority Muslim country.
GT 01:54 Right.
Casey 01:55 And so obviously, proselyting there’s a little bit complicated, but we do have missionaries in Islamabad.
GT 02:00 Really?
Casey 02:01 We have. In fact, we have…
GT 02:03 You keep hearing about Muslims. They will kill you if you join, especially a Christian Church.
Casey 02:11 Yeah. And this was one of those cases where these people were both were Christians that had converted to the Church. They weren’t Muslims. But I mean, Pakistan, and a lot of these Muslim countries have Christian populations. There’s a robust population of Christians in Egypt, which we typically think of as a Muslim country.
GT 02:32 Yeah, the Coptic Christians.
Casey 02:33 Yeah, yeah. And so, both of these people, I talked to the guy and his wife, and they were both converts to the Church. But I mean, proselyting is complicated.
GT 02:42 Because you don’t talk to Muslims, period.
Casey 02:44 Yeah, yeah. And this guy had served a mission for the Church, and so had his wife. His wife had served a mission on Temple Square.
GT 02:50 Oh wow.
Casey 02:51 But basically, they wanted a way to sort of let people know about the Church. But it’s sort of a friendly way. So, they came up with the idea of, “What if we put together a Latter-day Saint cricket team?”
GT 03:06 Oh my goodness!
Casey 03:07 So their logo literally is the angel Moroni that you would see from a Latter-day Saint publication and their shirt says Islamabad Moroni’s. I found out that there were actually different teams in different places around. There were the Anti-Nephi-Lehi’s.
GT 03:24 No way!
Casey 03:25 [There were] all these different teams that toured around Pakistan and would play cricket. And first of all, these guys love cricket. Like, it’s just really fun for them. But it was also a great missionary tool because people would come up and be like, “Hey, what is a Moroni? Tell me what that means.” And it was an opportunity for them to talk about the Church. And it was just kind of serendipity.
Casey 03:51 I had taken a picture of that, because I saw it in their catalog and said that looks really cool. And then, while we were writing the book, he moved to Salt Lake. So, I went up and spent an afternoon with him and his wife and his kids, and they fed me dinner. And I was sort of devastated when it didn’t make it into the first volume, but it’s in this book. It’s kind of an oddball story there. And then that’s linked to one other thing that I want to talk about.
GT 04:14 I’m surprised at Mary Jane because she’s like the India expert, right?
Casey 04:17 Yeah. Mary Jane’s done a lot of good stuff. Well, you’re thinking a Taunalyn Rutherford.
GT 04:21 Oh, ok.
Casey 04:22 She’s got a lot of stuff on India, but Pakistan, I don’t know if we’ve had anybody deal with it. I bet Taunalyn has done something, because she’s just so thorough.
GT 04:30 Okay.
Casey 04:32 But anyway, yeah, that was one story, that I’m thrilled to put in.
Armenian Mormons
Casey 04:37 Another one is a little further over but Armenia. Maybe you’ve heard about the Church in Armenia?
GT 04:44 A little bit, but all I know is Jaxon Washington served the mission there.
Casey 04:48 Jaxon Washburn served a mission there and he’s a great guy and he could probably talk to you about that. The Armenian Genocide, as you probably know, it’s one of the…
GT 04:59 That’s a big issue with Turkey.
Casey 05:01 It is an underreported, maybe under-discussed story, because I mean, it’s a genocide. It happens in the early 20th century, just hundreds of thousands, maybe more Armenians are killed. Well, a part of the story that people don’t know is that there were several branches of the church in Armenia at the time that genocide happened. And before the genocide occurred, they started to read the tea leaves and realize that things were getting dangerous for Armenians and especially Latter-day Saint Armenians. We’re a minority within a minority. And so, this family there, basically had to evacuate, and they escaped the Armenian Genocide. They came to Lebanon and stayed there for a couple of years, and then eventually emigrated to the United States.
Casey 05:54 The matriarch of this family brought along with her this really unique style of lace creation, where, if you look at it, and there’s, there’s a good photo of this in the book, she creates these lace doilies through knots. So, it’s totally unique. It’s this art form that’s unique to that part of the world. But she emigrated to, eventually the United States, and then to Utah. And her descendants have kept all these crocheted [pieces.] She kept entering them in the Church worldwide art contest. And we’ve tracked down the family and interviewed them about their story. And, again, I mean, the objects in this book are an excuse to highlight stories. Right?
GT 06:34 Is it okay for me to use images from the book?
Casey 06:37 Oh, yeah, yeah. I’ll give you the images. I own them. And so I’m familiar with them. And the crochet work here is beautiful. She won the Church art contest several times. And the family is just really, really proud. And they’re also super proud of the fact that being an Armenian Latter-day Saint is not something you run into every single day. So, it’s linked to one of the biggest stories of the 20th century, what happened to the Armenians and tells the story of how they escape. There’s actually a really good online exhibit that the Church set up that tells the story of the Armenian saints and their escape from the genocide, where a lot of miracles happened. Hey, the right government official at the right time, opened the door, and they made it out before they would have faced serious, serious consequences for the likes of which it’s difficult for us to think about. So, I’m really thrilled that one’s in the book, too.
GT 06:38 Okay.
Casey 07:29 Some of these people, I’m happy that I can go back and say, “Hey, here’s the book. Your grandma’s story is going to be highlighted. She passed away a couple years ago. But I went back and actually found articles from the Church News that talked about these Armenian members of the Church where they had submitted this lace work to the Church in the 1930s, before they even made it to the U.S. Because they spent a fair amount of time in Lebanon, just trying to get visas to come to the United States. So, it’s really, really, cool story too. We’re proud to highlight as well.
GT 08:03 Cool. Is this going to be out before Christmas? Do you think?
Casey 08:07 This should be out in November is what I’m told. And like I said, this still has some stuff from early Church history.
GT 08:17 So this will be a good Christmas gift.
Casey 08:18 It can be. Hey, buy Volume 1 and Volume 2, for your Church history lover.
Pipes from School of Prophets
Casey 08:24 This volume does have some stuff from early Church history. Have you probably have interviewed Mark Staker?
GT 08:29 Twice.
Casey 08:29 Twice. So, he’s told you about the pipe fragments from Kirtland?
GT 08:33 Oh, no, but I saw that in there because those are like smoking pipes.
Casey 08:38 Yeah, yeah.
GT 08:39 I think he did mention that in my first interview.
Casey 08:42 Most people know the background where in the School of the Prophets. Brigham Young said everybody would take out a pipe and start to discuss the great things of the kingdom, and then put a chaw in their mouth and then pretty soon it was all over the ground. But another source says that when the Word of Wisdom was received, because sometimes we peddle this like, “Well, it was a suggestion.” But several men in Kirtland threw their pipes into the stove. Well, at the time, one of the main businesses was the ashery where they would collect ash from all over the community. They would refine it to make potash or pearl ash. Before they rebuilt the Kirtland Ashery, Mark Staker led a team of archaeologists that did a dig there, and they found all these pipe fragments, that must have just been leftovers from the ashery. And one of them has the name Johnson stamped on the stem.
GT 09:29 John Johnson?
Casey 09:30 Luke or Lyman Johnson were both parts of the School of the Prophets and participated. So, there’s stuff from early Church history. We also got a chance to do the Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon and this one. That’s a whole other story for a whole other day. But this one has a lot of great international women stories that are maybe a little bit further off the beaten path. I’m really proud of it because one of the things I feel is really critical is that we internationalize our story, right alongside Palmyra, Kirtland, and Nauvoo, we need to be talking about Bangkok, and Islamabad, and Nairobi, all of these places where the Church is experiencing new things. And the culture is becoming more rich, and we need to embrace that.
Casey 10:19 So I’m an American. I’m proud to be an American. But I also love my identity as a global Latter-day Saint that has this community. And I’ve been able to travel a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit. I’ve always been warmly embraced by the local saints, and I just really, really fall in love with these little communities they’ve built all over the world. So, that’s a big part of this book is to highlight these communities, and to try and use these objects to not just explain, “Hey, here’s what the religious life of the community was like,” but “Hey, here’s what a 1930s Dancehall in a weird Utah town looks like.” Or, hey, mothers and daughters passed on this unique form of Armenian lace to each other. And now it’s part of our Church culture too.
GT 11:05 That’s cool.
Casey 11:06 I hope it’s an anti-colonial narrative, because I know that’s the big thing right now is that the Church doesn’t colonize. The Church embraces these cultures and brings it into us in a sense, they’re colonizing us in the sense that they’re making us more rich and more diverse, and helping us appreciate just how great God’s family is everywhere.
GT 11:28 Yes, very cool.
{End of Part 2}
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