Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your hosts for today, John DeLin. It is October 2nd,

2023 and today we are covering the

story of the allegations of

Operation Underground Railroad founder and

sort of central

Target figure of the movie Sounder Freedom Tim Ballard. We're here to discuss the allegations and the rumors

that Tim has been excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

or the Mormon Church and it is a very difficult and sensitive issue to discuss and we're going to

be covering a lot of different features. Today we're going to be talking about a little bit of the

history of Mormon Church's communications, the current Mormon Church's policies on

excommunications. We're going to be talking about the ways the Church has handled some

excommunications in the press in the past. We're also going to be sharing the intelligence that we've

gathered from various credible sources along with some of the news media coverage that Tim Ballard and

his wife, Catherine, have already

generated and some statements, etc. And it's very sensitive because you know, at Mormon stories,

we often say that our focus is on systems not people and particularly our focus is on

informed consent and transparency within the Mormon Church or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

Saints. And we're much more concerned about the way the Church systemically can cause harm than

we are trying to ever call anyone out or shame them publicly. So I'm here today with Harado. Harado

is sort of like a partner in what I do with Mormon stories and he is helped with production of

this episode. Hey, Harado. Hi, John. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, I'm glad we're here. Yeah, I'm

super glad to have you here. And I should say also at the outset that we are revealing some new

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