In our first two episodes of the second season of Strangers No More, we explore the times and history around the Doctrine and Covenants 94 through 101.
With a much quicker pace than we had settled into for our first season, each episode is finished within 35 minutes, after exploring many topics around the Come Follow Me handbook suggested readings.
With the addition of Kate Mower’s segment, “Queering the Scriptures,” which allow for a deeper dive into the history of our canonized books, and Bradley Talbot’s “On The Record,” all of the hosts are learning and teaching one another at a rapid pace.
The first episode for our fall season is Zion is The Pure in Heart- Come Follow Me (Doctrine and Covenants 94-97) Strangers No More SNM S2 E1.
In this episode, the hosts discuss what it means to be “pure in heart.”
In our second episode of Season Two, a lively discussion starts about what kinship systems can mean after Maggie goes down a rabbit hole in a exploration of Doctrine and Covenants 99.
Be Still: Kinship & Murdock Family- Come Follow Me 2021 (D & C 98-101) Strangers No More SNM S2 E2 explores a bit of Murdock family history and extended kinship systems as they relate to polygamy.
As a show that speaks from a standpoint of LGBTQIA+ members in the Latter-days, the talk that Elder Jeffery R. Holland gave at BYU on August 23rd brought tears, confusion, and frustration into our midst. As a cast of four very different members of that particular community, we each reacted in our own manners to listening to and reading Elder Holland’s talk.
The result, for several days, was a need for distance from one another while we each sought guidance from God, on our knees, and while fasting.
The resulting production was a nearly hour-long discussion between all four cast members, recorded on the subsequent Saturday, that we recorded as our season two opener — special episode one.
We invite you to watch or listen to this episode (embedded below) at a time when you can appreciate the emotions that were felt when it was recorded.
We are sending out an abundance of love to all of you and hope that you will join us next week also as we begin our fall season of our Come Follow Me program that will feature not only the traditional class learning, as well as a segment from Bradley Talbot, “On The Record,” but also a segment from our new host, Kate Mower, (who is a historian), “Queering the Scriptures.”
Dennis will bring his convert energy and enthusiasm for the Gospel as we all will learn from one another. We will be attempting to keep season two’s episodes to a 30-minute timeline for the convenience of our audience.
Season Two Special Episode One
(Please excuse Maggie’s audio for the first 10 minutes of the episode-also we are always in search of an audio-video editor with experience-Maggie is a writer)
We have published our final episodes that were recorded this summer.
As a podcast and YouTube show, we stumbled a bit this summer, but we will be publishing content afresh in September with a new season and a slightely different format!
Producing a show from inspiration of revelation is an interesting concept. The producer (Maggie) and all of the hosts received revelation about a few significant changes in our show’s cast this summer and it took a bit to coordinate those revelations and understand what was happening.
We apologize for any confusion that spread to our audience this summer. We THANK YOU for sticking with us through those times and want to announce some big changes for the season ahead.
September will bring with it a new start for Strangers No More, with a slightly different format and a change in hosts!
We really appreciate Andrew Mair’s assistance in editing and hosting the first season. As his new job has added responsibilities, he has decided to leave as a regular host. We wish him all the best and have extended an invitation to him to join us for specials as he can.
Editing responsibilities have been transferred to Maggie Slighte, compiling the production and editing into one.
In September we will welcome our new host, a PhD Candidate in Romanian History, Kate Mower. Kate uses she/they/them pronouns and is allowing us all some important practice in using singular they/them pronouns!
We will be sharing a few short videos/podcasts of each of our Testimonies as an introduction for Season 2.
Please be on the lookout!
And finally, our logo has CHANGING slighte-ly 😊
Maggie has finished a new and updated logo for Strangers!
So much for the new
We’ve embedded the last episode from Season One below and invite you to please SUBSCRIBE and “hit the bell” so you are informed when we upload Season Two!!
Thank you so much for being a part of our Strangers family. We hope that your week ahead is full of the Love and Lighte of Jesus Christ.
This month has been intense over here in Strangers No More land!
After Maggie was involved in some recreational listening to other podcasts, she reached out to the Dialogue Podcast Network and within a week, we had joined up as part of the team!
Bradley graduated from BYU (Congratulations Bradley!!!) and, not to be dissuaded by statistics, he had his first job that required his degree BEFORE he walked with that piece of paper. We are all so proud to know such a wonderful person who is not only driven to his own success, but feels called to teach us all in his spare time.
Bradley shared his successes as well as many other gems in these episodes.
Dennis has been taking literary agent to a missionary level, as he mixes his faith with his career, and he has been sharing his successes and trials in these recordings.
Andrew has been keeping things close to his vest, while sharing some critical lessons.
And finally, Maggie is still try to focus on finishing her first book, The Car That Ran on Prayers, but has been distracted by some recent new diagnoses. She shared about those in the following episodes.
Without further adieu, here are May’s first two episodes:
The residual of May’s episodes have been recorded and will be posted as soon as they are processed.
Please watch and set alerts on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform to find out when our next episode drops!
Thank you for joining us! We hope that your week ahead is full of the Love and Lighte of Jesus Christ.
“Just be patient and just keep trusting God. Things work out. Its on God’s timetable, not ours.” A quote from Andrew in this week’s episode of Strangers No More
Maggie comes out and shares her Hard of Hearing disability and requests more help and more members to add to our team to improve accessibility for all.
Andrew introduced the lesson and after having struggled with remembering the name of a hymn during the introduction, he quickly reminds himself and the audience what the name of that tune was.
When the Strangers get down to the lesson, “The Gathering of Israel,” Dennis gets carried away with a touch of gossip, before sharing “The Plan of Salvation,” as taught by his missionaries not that long ago.
In a revelatory explanation, Bradley shared how the Plan of Salvation is not only about us as individuals, but also relates to how we interact in relationships.
After the discussion of the lesson, Bradley shared some facinating insights about how “The Plan” is described throughout the Book of Mormon causing us all to reflect a bit.
Maggie shared how moving forward with the Gospel fills her life with love.
Watch below and you’ll see it all!
Download and share these images – No watermarks – All Gospel
Created from the talk “A New Normal,” from President Russell M. Nelson by Maggie Slighte for public distribution.
To study President Nelson’s talk (as Maggie challenges at the end of the show), here’s a link to the talk: A New Normal, October 2020.
Hi friendly Strangers! Maggie here, breaking the fourth wall. I have to express some humility here, and request a bit of assistance.
You see, the promptings for this show came from the Holy Spirit, to myself and a few others, but I’m not of the opinion that we have compiled our team completely as of yet.
The vision I received about this show has been one of inclusion and compassion, yet I’ve failed to express that same compassion for my own weaknesses.
In a desire to reach all, and having experienced multiple situations where the lack of accurate captioning made it impossible for me to comprehend a show, I set about attempting to make certain that all of our captions were accurate and there was a transcript to download.
The learning curve to provide such wasn’t that great, and I was able to learn the YouTube Studio and learned that I could start with their automated captions.
After a few weeks, I discovered that the process I was using was not one that was appropriate for my disabled hands. I was incurring a greater level of pain. So much so that I had stopped working on my book.
At the same time, I experienced an exacerbation of my mental illness that coincided with the anniversary of our collective trauma. The result was a disruption in The Force.
Well, at least a disruption in the bond that holds this show together. But as we have been reminded by our Apostles, that gold used to repair broken things, our broken vessels, our broken friendships, our trust, we can use that repair to make it all stronger than it had ever been before.
We are looking for more members of our team. We invite you to contact us at contact@Strangers-No-More.com if you would like to lend a hand.
This is a volunteer effort. Maybe even a ministry, if you will. But in our desire to be accessible to all, we need to respect our own limitations.
Although I NEED captions and transcripts, that doesn’t mean I’m the best person to provide that service. It would be nice if automated technology was a bit more inclusive and accurate. But I’m sure that is quickly on its way.
This week’s episode will be posted later today!
Sorry for the wait. It will have automated captions available, so please let us know of any glaring errors that we can go in and quickly edit.
Thank you for your interest!
We hope your weekend is full of the Love and Lighte of Jesus Christ!
We love you and so does God!
Also, if you haven’t had the chance to watch last week’s episode (yep, that was me who failed to put up a blog about it!), you can enjoy that below:
To be considerably honest, Becky Mackintosh wasn’t in the plans to be our first guest to interview. However, God doesn’t pay attention to our plans very often.
God didn’t pay attention to the Mackintosh family plan to be heterosexual. That wasn’t in the cards. Not for their entire family.
In 2012, Becky and Scott Mackintosh’s middle son, Sean, came out to his parents as gay.
After struggling to reconcile her love for her son with her love for the Gospel of Jesus Christ as is taught in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Becky decided to write a book sharing her journey with the rest of the world. The result is Love Boldly.
You have to read this book.
Within the pages of her book, you’ll find instructions for loving everyone. You’ll feel empathy. You might even cry. Especially when you get to the part where Becky’s husband and Sean’s father, Scott, shares his story.
The Mackintosh family was invited by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to make a video about their journey for The Church’s website. That video reached millions.
Two of those millions were our very own Bradley and Dennis.
Enjoy this episode. Please share it with your friends.
In this week’s episode of Strangers No More, Andrew gives us a parable from his days working with a winch. Or, perhaps, not working with a winch… Watch, and you’ll understand!
Bradley starts a discussion of how to understand when you are running faster, or laboring more than we have strength…
…and Andrew and Maggie trade a few giggles in this weekly episode centering on the teachings in the 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝐹𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑀𝑒 manual published by 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐋𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫-𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐒𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐬 for weekly scripture study, the hosts of Strangers No More discuss “That You May Come Off Conqueror.”
Maggie, Andrew, Dennis and Bradley all share in this episode, PLEASE subscribe to our YouTube channel and ring the bell, so you’ll be notified the next time a video drops!
Comment, share and invite your friends to watch and listen along!
As the one who had an opportunity to transcribe this episode (another volunteer position we would LOVE to fill with someone who wants to be a part of our effort…PLEASE contact@Strangers-no-more.com, seriously!)…there’s a LOT of laughter in these weekly episodes! Come and watch or listen…or just click play below! Thanks for watching!
And YES, there IS a transcription available for this episode…HERE!
AND the closed captions have been manually corrected!!
We hope your week is full of the Love and Lighte of Jesus Christ!
We love you and so does God!
Week 6, “Coming Off Conquerer: Come Follow Me 2021 Doctrine and Covenants 10-11” of Strangers No More
Are you alone right now? Do you have anyone who is sharing your desire to study the Come Follow Me curriculum at home?
If you are like many of us, including two of the “Strangers” on this show, you may find yourself alone and wanting to have more input or maybe you even want to laugh or smile while you contemplate your Testimony of Jesus Christ and how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came to be?
We have a solution for you: Come join us!!
We have a YouTube show that will go LIVE every Monday (God willing, please keep those prayers coming, He does listen!!) and for those who don’t have the time or the bandwidth to watch our smiling faces, we have also produced a podcast from each show for your listening pleasure!
We anxiously await your input and reactions on our social media pages! Thanks for your interest, see you there!!
Having been strangers to one another up to the last few months, we know we are also strangers to you! In the next few months, we will ALL get to know one another very well as we navigate the waters of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as contained in the Doctrine and Covenants in a ship that welcomes one and all.
Strangers No More was named by Elder Gong’s talk in October 2020, when he invited The Saints to “Live and Share the Gospel,” so there would be no strangers.
We take Elder Gong’s admonition seriously. We are LGBTQIA+ friendly, but also acknowledge other “strangers” that may not feel like they fit in on what some may refer to as “Mormon culture.” Some of those strangers might be: Unhoused people, disabled people, people of color, neurodivergent people, childless couples and single older adults. As representatives of many of these groups, we want all of you to know you are not alone.
Strangers No More for its hosts, is our Family Home Evening. As adults in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we often don’t have the opportunity to enjoy the extra Gospel study that a “family” home evening on Monday affords. So, as part of our studies, we will be recording them and sharing those thoughts with YOU, our audience.
Last week we also recorded a SPECIAL episode! You know those times when you’re in a Sunday School class and they brush a subject under the carpet? We promised in our intro that we would not do that, and as part of fulfilling that commitment, we have recorded a special “cringe” episode, discussing same-sex marriage. We have embedded it below!
Strangers No More 