This is Ashley Stone and you're listening to the Comeback Podcast.

Scott. Scott and Melissa this is our second interview with two people ever and the last one was two weeks ago so we are in for such a treat so thank you

guys so much for hopping on the podcast and sharing your story you guys have an incredible video that's made about your your

story and we'll link it so that people can watch it but I'm really excited to have you

guys on and I also kind of have a cold so if my voice is a

little scratchier than usual that is why. Yeah let's go ahead and start I'd

love to hear some background about you guys and then we can jump into your story.

Awesome. I grew up in Texas, my family are all members of the church on both

sides, huge families, all active. I was one of six kids.

Skipping fast forward to today.

Melissa and I have been married for about 18 years.

We have four kids there between the ages of 10 and 16.

They all four act like teenagers and we have two dogs and we're in the kind of home building and home design world and that's what we do professionally and I guess I'll let you introduce yourself.

I'm Melissa. I did not grow up in the church I just grew up with a Christian faith but kind of did it on my own my my parents ever went to church I just decided to go by myself and Scott and I met my freshman year college and he wasn't active at the time and I was just doing my own thing at the time and so we dated for four years, got married and then it wasn't until maybe 10 years later that kind of our story started to happen.

Yeah, I, when I was a teenager, you know, Texas, not Utah, the wards that we were in an inner city ward. There weren't a ton of youth. I think probably our entire youth program between young men and young women had maybe 15 people so like when I was Deacon age I think maybe there was one other Deacon and we were totally opposite. I love sports and hanging out and he didn't. So I didn't really have any friends that probably contributed to my like disinterest in the church. I'm pretty hard-headed and like stubborn and I guess you

could say I have a rebellious spirit is what my parents might say and my dad is like the opposite force and so we butted heads a lot about a lot of things

especially as I got older but I remember probably one of the battles was, you know, they would say things like, you have to spend the night at a member of the church's house three times before you could spend the night at one of your non-member friends' houses, and stuff like that.

And I just pushed back, and so we fought about a lot of those kinds of things.

And as I got to like 13, 14, I was getting into things with my friends I think I started

tried smoking cigarettes and I was just kind of wandering away and I think I was

rebelling for my parents in church probably was unintentionally a part of that rebellion and so

Remember my parents would always say you have to go to church or you'll be grounded and so I would go to sacrament meeting and then I would leave and just like walk to like subway or something and just sit and eat a sandwich and buy stuff on Sunday and like totally the bad kid.

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