Steve Bullock

Grant Stucki interviews Steve Bullock about his experiences with Jesus Christ and the peace that the gospel brings. 

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SPEAKER_00 0:09

Alright, everyone, welcome back to the High and Trans Award podcast. And thank you for tuning in. We really appreciate you loyal listeners, the loyal and the few. I know Bert Bear is probably there. Other than Bert, I don't know who else listens to this, but thank you for that. Um so today, and oh this is your host. Today is Bishop Stukey. I'm still looking for youth hosts um to replace Claire Stukey and Tyler Dougal. So if anyone knows some good youth and that want to do this, I'd love to have them. Uh but today I'm interviewing um Steve Bullock, our prior bishop. Steve, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on the podcast. Uh this was exciting. So thanks for joining us, and I appreciate you doing this. Um so with that said, well, we have a few questions we'll run through and maybe we'll branch into some other questions. But kind of the first question we ask everyone is you know, how would you answer the question of how did you convert to the gospel?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah. So it's been said that revelation usually comes more like the rising sun and less like turning on a light. And I feel like that's been the case in my life where it's been a very gradual uh increase in learning and experience and um light coming into my life. I remember, you know, when I was very young, I leaned on the light of the people that I trusted. So I leaned on the light of my parents, my grandparents, trusted church leaders, and I think that I felt and saw goodness in them and that I could trust them and that they had something that I should listen to and pay attention to. And so I kind of leaned on that. I remember when I got baptized when I was eight, I received my first set of scriptures, and I would try my best to read those scriptures at nighttime so I could still visualize in my head the nightstand, um, the night um kind of uh reading light that I would use and read the scriptures at nighttime, and I would um learn about the gospel and I would feel those principles were good. And that was kind of the beginnings of my testimony. As I grew into my teenage years, I tried to implement the teachings of the gospel in my life, and I saw good fruits that came from that, and I also made mistakes along the way. And so I learned the hard way that uh when you don't follow God's commandments or the counsels of prophets and apostles, that uh that can hurt, it can be painful. And so I feel like I learned both from seeing the good that came into my life from choosing the right, but also from the mistakes of uh sometimes choosing the wrong and feeling those negative effects. And then I think as I've gotten into my adult years, I feel like my testimony, unfortunately, has been strengthened most through really hard trials, right? Where I've been forced to rely upon God and that there was really no other way to get through those things, and that I had to receive very personal, specific direction uh for myself to get through certain things. And that's been a real testimony builder because I felt I've felt like it's gone from more general in nature to more specific between me and God. And as I've gone through life, I I feel like I continue to learn little by little. And I've I've I've known enough or I've learned enough by now that I know the learning's not done. I probably have a long, long way to go. And I I feel like one of my things recently is just trust the process, just trust that God has uh a process for me and my family and and other people, and that uh you gotta believe in that.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Yeah, I love it. I have a very similar experience going through those various phases in life and and that continual process of conversion, I think is what you're describing, which is uh great to hear. Um next question is kind of if if there's a is there a family history story that has inspired you in the past or something from family history that you've come across that's worth repeating?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Yeah, this is gonna be kind of a weird story to call out because I have many, many family history stories of faith promoting things and people having spiritual experiences and all this other stuff. But one of my favorite family history stories was a time when my grandpa asked, I guess, one of my other grandpas, to, when he was 12 years old, to go get a horse that was like two, three days ride away. Um, but he was only 12 years old. And so as I was reading the story, I I was trying to imagine a father asking their 12-year-old son to get on a horse by himself, travel two to three days, I assume just like sleeping on the ground and surviving and making do on his very own, getting a horse from, I think it was an uncle or something up the way, and then riding with that horse all the way back to their farm. You know, it was probably back in the 1800s or something, and so very, very early on the the frontier of America. And I guess the reason that I like that is just that we can do harder things than we we probably think we could do, like our capacity is is higher. And uh the I was just I've just always been impressed by the courage of my 12-year-old grandpa. Just, you know, I try and imagine some of my kids, they're 12 years old, doing something like that, and it's it's hard for me to believe. Right. So it's kind of a weird family history story, but I've always liked that uh because it's kind of an anecdote of how times have changed, or you know, about personal capacity or courage, or just uh you know having to deal with the the realities and of life and nature and and and fears and dangers out there.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Yeah. Yeah, that's that's a great story. I mean, it kind of reminds you just of like the Joseph Smith story where he's you know 13, 14 years old and receives revelation and has to do incredible things at such a young age. Yeah. Um, how about favorite scripture story? Is there I'm sure there's a lot, but is there one that kind of comes back to you and resonates with you?

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah, one of my favorite stories is Peter and Christ on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. This is after everything had happened, after the resurrection. Um and Christ came to Peter and said, Loveest mount thou me more than these. And I think these were referring to the fish that they were eating at the time. And he asked them three times, Lovest thou me more than these. And Peter was saying, Yes, of course, I love, I love, I love you. And then he kept repeating, you know, feed my sheep. And I feel like I love that story because again, I'm kind of a student of human nature. And if you think about it, these apostles had just witnessed probably the most epic three years of their lives following the Son of God around, seeing miracles, uh huge political turmoil, the crucifixion, resurrection from the dead. I mean, just unbelievable, amazing things. And after all that, you know, they're sitting around, I imagine it this way, and they're saying, Wow, that was amazing. And there's kind of a little bit of a pause, and everybody's like, You guys want to go fishing?

unknown 7:28

Right?

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Like back to what they were doing originally, right? Yes. And so I think that we all do that. We revert to our old ways, we revert to our old habits. Uh, we sometimes forget our responsibilities or our expectations or what God, you know, or our potential maybe what God has for us to do. And Christ, you know, could have been really mad in that circumstance and be like, I can't believe after all that I have done, all that you've seen, you would just go back fishing. He didn't say that. He sat him down very gently and explained to him, you know, do you do you love me more than these, more than these fish? And he was teaching them about priorities, uh, about uh placing the most important things first, and he did it in a super gentle, loving way. And so I just love that story.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Oh, fame. Definitely one of my favorite uh side note, it's also one of my favorite Lamb of God uh songs, you know, at the Sea of Tiberias, I think it's called, or something like that. It's just so good. That's an incredible um yeah, mm uh missionary story as well. President Chipman actually in our last kind of interview we had, he walked me through all of those verses and like pointed out every little verse that uh shows how Christ is kind of um pointing us towards a um kind of away from our worldly focus and more towards how to help people. And there's there's so many pearls in that chapter. But um, yeah, what a great story. Okay, next question is has there been a time where you've had a struggle or a trial or a conflict in your life and you felt kind of Christ walking with you metaphorically in that trial?

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yeah. In my early adult life, there was a time when I took a hard look at my faith. And I think that some people would have termed these types of periods like a crisis of faith, or or I don't kind of like that terminology because I think that throughout our whole lives, we're asked to take a hard look at our faith, or our faith is challenged, and we need to really decide whether we believe for ourselves what we've been taught or what we've experienced, or just re-evaluate. And so I feel like I went through um a moderate level of that at one point in my early adult life. And I feel like uh the thing, I feel like it was kind of like God was saying, what you built, what you had before, was great and it served as purpose during that time, and it kind of led you to this point, but we need to rebuild your testimony stronger, and we need to put those foundations in a little bit deeper. And the only way to do that is to have you go through this little bit of a challenge here. And so uh during that time I kind of scrapped everything that I felt like I knew and said, I'm gonna start from base floor and really figure out do I believe what I've been believing? Um, you know, is this true? Is this, you know, um the path that I should be walking in my life? And the things that I learned were remarkable during that time. So a few of them. The first that I learned during that time, well, a thing that I learned was just I realized all the unique doctrines that have been restored in this dispensation that answer some of the most difficult theological questions that people have wrestled with for thousands of years, uh, that really can't be found in other places. And that would be a whole nother discussion, and so I won't dive into any of those, but I really felt just how profound the truths are that we've received in this dispensation uh that would be hard to for me to make sense of life without some of those things. And so those were that was one piece of it. Um I also looked at the time at the science of happiness, so a little bit of a weird angle, but I kind of was looking at some secular sources and I found this remarkable consistency between this science that has really emerged over the last 20, 25 years and the findings of what brings true and lasting happiness in this life, and just how consistently that lined up with what we learned in the gospel and the principles that Christ teaches. And that was a huge testimony builder for me because I believe that I believe in a God that believes that wants us to be happy. Um, I I looked at a bunch of studies that just demonstrated how unique the outcomes are in our church. And um I guess what really helped me during that time was to see, and there are lots of organizations that have studied these things. The most recent one was Harvard came out with a global flourishing study, and there were lots of different things. But you know, like one of them was that within our church, um, according to the survey, members of our church feel loved by their mom and dad at greater race than any other religion. And there were lots of other aspects that they measured. But you know, I looked at some of these studies at the time, and the conclusion that I came to was our church is unique. This isn't just something that is middling the road of outcomes, middling the road of surveys, like very kind of consistent with whatever else is going on in the world. It's like, no, this is a peculiar thing that's going on uh within our church. And sometimes we don't realize that because some of us have been a part of it for our whole lives. And so that was a huge thing that I learned during that time. Um, you know, I went searching for truth in other areas, um, other philosophies and religions and practices, and I just felt I found them unfulfilling uh during that time. Uh I came to a greater appreciation for the messiness of life, like life's messy, people are messy, people are imperfect, right? And I was able to kind of grapple with that more. But more important than any of that, like all of those were important, but more important than any of that, um, I felt the spirit and had a personal witness that God knew me and the the witness of the truth to me specifically, I gained during that time in a stronger way than I ever had before. And that was obviously the most important thing of resolidifying my foundation and my testimony. But as I look back, I can see Christ and the atonement and God all through that process. And my testimony foundation is so much stronger than it was before that, that I'm actually very grateful that I went through that phase where I had to essentially tear my testimony down to ground floor and rebuild it all the way back up.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Yeah. Love it. That kind of reminds me of the many scriptures like John 10, 38, where Jesus says, you know, even though you do not believe me, believe the works that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I'm in the Father. Multiple times he people have a hang up with what he's saying, and he says, Well, if you don't believe my teachings, my you know, my verbal um cues to you believe the works, you've seen the miracles, right? And it's like I do that same thing in my life because I've had that same experience where I'm like, is this really you know true? Is it the right path? Am I you know leading my family in the right ways or something else? But every time I come back to like the fruits of and the works that the the church and Jesus Christ and his gospel has had in my life, and it's just undeniable that it's like brought peace and strength and joy into my life and the life of my family. It was pretty special. Um the next question is in regards to our ward, is there um anything that you uh love about our ward, whether it be unique or not unique? What is something about the Highlands Ranch War that kind of warms your heart?

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Yeah, I really appreciate how open and vulnerable and honest and real our ward feels. People feel safe to share where they are in life and what they're experiencing, and I don't feel like there are a lot of facades that are being put up or fakeness or masks that are going on. Um I feel like for the most part, people are just trying to be authentic and genuine. And that kind of goes along with the theme that I've had in my life recently of just like living in truth. It's just really, I feel like it's really important that that we live in truth. The scriptures term this as seeing things as they actually are or as they really are. And when we can do that, I think our growth just accelerates so much when we uh are able to be open and vulnerable and just honest and objective about um ourselves, about other people, about our circumstances, about where we're going and um you know how we can interact with God. And so I really appreciate that our award facilitates that type of growth environment where we are trying our very best, and nobody's perfect, right? And everybody has their weaknesses and um and whatever, but we're trying our best to have an environment of authenticity and genuineness and seeing things that they really are, living in truth. And so I really appreciate about appreciate that about our ward.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Same, totally agree. Next question is um, is there or what is a recent time that you felt the spirit? Um, I don't know, it's maybe a little bit of a strange question, but how would you answer that?

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yeah, I would say it was yesterday. So my college roommate, um Jeff Bednar, gave the BYU weekly devotional this last week. And so he's a professor at the BYU business school and was asked to give the weekly devotional at BYU, and it was really, really powerful. And you know, it was a little, well, I guess extra special for me just because I've known him for so many years. But the topic of his message was enduring trials that don't end. And it was a really profound message because it's a little bit different than sometimes we generally receive in the church. So there are lots of stories which are faith promoting and are helpful, but the stories we often hear in the church are something to the effect of I had this problem and I put forth some spiritual effort and had a little patience, and then it was resolved. You know, faith-promoting story, the end, right? And those are, I'm not trying to belittle those because those are very faith-promoting, and hopefully we've all had some of those where we have that resolution and we tie it out, and that is a piece of our testimony. But there are many circumstances in which there is no resolution, that the trial is going to last for our entire lives. And Jeff has had to go through several of those, one of which he put in his uh or talked about in his talk with some of the health challenges that he's had with some of his children, and how those required daily effort and daily care and daily attention, and that there is no end, there is no uh finality to it in this life, and that you need to kind of rest into that reality. And he kind of cited this, I think, really profound story where Christ um had just fed the 5,000, and he sent his apostles into a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee, and he went up to the mountain to pray. And it says that Christ came down from the mountain um around sunset in the evening, and the apostles were already out on the boat toiling in the midst of a storm that had already kicked up, and he saw them toiling. So the scriptures say that he saw them toiling at roughly sunset. And he but he didn't intervene, he didn't walk on the water until the fourth watch, which would have been roughly 3 to 6 a.m. And then he walked on the water and was able to help them amidst their toil. And so he kind of um made that analogy to some of these trials that we have to endure for very long periods of time, where Christ is near, he sees us, um, he's aware of what's going on, but sometimes he's going to let us toil for the entire night or our entire lives. And he won't come in until the fourth watch or right at the very end to make whole what uh is hurting or what's unfair or what's unjust in our lives. And I thought that was a really powerful analogy that uh even in the midst of our trials, we need to believe and feel and hope that Christ is there and seeing us and helping us. And I know that that's been the case for me and some of my um hardest personal trials in my life, but I've noticed that there's a pattern where usually the first thing that happens when I start crying out for help is that God will give me something, some feeling or sign or person to come into my life that, and basically the only purpose of that is to say, I'm aware, I'm aware of the situation, right? And there's but there's no resolution from it. It's just essentially like I I see you, and you're going to sit in this for a little bit, right? And then I sit in it for a while, toiling like the apostles were toiling in the water, and then usually what happens is I get a little bit of light, um, the next step, and then the next step, and then a little bit more light, and the path is never lit all the way to the end. It's little by little by little by little until I get to, you know, sometimes a resolution, or sometimes the next uh breathing place, right? Or resting resting area before before the journey continues. And so that was the last time the I felt the spirit, I thought it was really, really powerful, and I honestly recommend everybody to go watch that um BYU speech that was given.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Yeah. Well that's a powerful principle. Thanks for outlining that. Um my my thoughts there are um I I think that you're right. I mean um I think it would bring all of us a lot of comfort, you know, to know that Christ is there. It brings it's brought me comfort in my trials to feel that. And I I think it's pretty subtle sometimes. Like I'm praying because usually I'm praying for like a resolution, you know, like heal my whatever, like I had back surgery, heal this pain, take it away, or fix this problem at work, and I'm like focused on trying to hear the the answer, right? Like what is what is it that I need to do to fix this. But I think sometimes it's so subtle that like that just that peace and the presence of like I'm here, I'm with you, but we're not gonna fix this right now. You know, it's like right now I'm just walking with you, and you're gonna have to toil, like you're talking about. And I think um just recognizing that is so huge, you bring that up, and like sometimes maybe we just even just disregard that and think, okay, good, you know, there's peace, spirits here, but what is it? What's the what's the end point? So I I don't know. I but I do think you're right, and I think oftentimes there's a reason, right? There would be a reason he's letting us toil. He's clearly wants us to learn something, experience something. And it it's brought me great peace. And it's but it's taken me a while to get there to think, yeah, gosh, he's with me, but he's not gonna fix this right now.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Yeah, and I think I don't know, I've kind of described, I think that everybody experiences life a little different, and this comes at different points of our life, but there are times when I feel like I'm in the furnace of my life, right? And the scriptures talk about how the way that we are refined as gold or silver, right? And my understanding is the way that you refine gold and silver is you heat it up really, really hot in a furnace, and all the impurities kind of burn away. And I felt like the times when my who I am structurally, or my spirit or soul, or however you want to describe it, the times that that has actually fundamentally changed, um, almost like bending iron, like that's really hot to a new, a new state, a new permanently different state, has had the only way that that happened was in like extremely hot trials, right? And there was really no other way. If I look back, I have to admit that there was no other way that I would have become a new and different person if it weren't for getting heated up figuratively that hot for sure.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Yes. Um, all right. Well, our last question is if you could go in the future, let's say a hundred years, talk to your posterity, any advice, counsel, things you would give them?

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Or yeah, the only thing that came to my mind was to learn how to listen to the spirit because in a hundred years the world's gonna be very different, the challenges people are facing are we gonna be different, the culture, uh, etc. And I feel like at the end of the day, that's that's where we need to get to in our lives is a place where we are living by continual rev personal revelation. And scriptures talk about taking the Holy Ghost as your guide. And I feel like that just means that hopefully we're in constant um in constant touch with the spirit and everything that we're doing, and that that can be, I think it it moves beyond just choosing right from wrong over time. It moves on to um, I guess a couple days ago I re-listened to Elder Oak's Good Better Best talk on just kind of on a whim. I happened to cross it and I was like, okay, I'll listen to it again. I mean, I already have heard it many times and understand the concept, but you know, one thing he said in there that was kind of one of the punchlines was just because something is good doesn't mean it's worth doing. And that's always hit me really hard when I've heard that talk. That often the spirit, as we progress through life, is going to go from just helping us differentiate between good and bad, and helping us differentiate between good, better, and best, and being the most effective uh servants of God that we can be for his church and for our families and for the people around us. And so I think that that's really what it comes down to is if if my posterity can be in touch with the spirit and receive unique personal direction for themselves, then then everything takes care of itself after that.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Yeah. Yeah, I I mean I I mean it will be different a hundred years from now, different um trials, different technology, of course. But I do think like the scriptures show us that even though uh we have lots of advancements technologically, it seems like there's just a constant theme throughout human humanity and our history of just the world will always generate new distractions, right? New things to distract us from Jesus Christ, from God. Um I was teaching the Old Testament in seminary a couple years ago, and there's this not well-known story of Hosea and Gomer. I don't know if you remember this one, it's a pretty bizarre story. But God tells the prophet Hosea to marry this woman, Gomer, who's um very unfaithful, and she does horrible things and cheats on him, and he goes back to her and all this stuff. Um, but it's supposed to be kind of like uh almost like a metaphor, an allegory to us as people kind of being Gomer and we're unfaithful, and we're always looking for new gods, right? And new things, and God's always there just saying, Come back, I'm here for you. Like, and just that concept of um, I don't know what it is about us, but just the easily being distracted and like a celebrity or a technology or something, grabbing our attention and and putting all our energy into that and kind of being unfaithful to God or whatever that is, but but Him being there for us always and coming back and us finding peace again in our life. Yeah, I think you're right.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

There, a lot of human nature stays the same through time, it just manifests itself in different ways. And I've kind of seen that as lately I've taken some time to try and read some of the journal discourses. It's basically just like the church history in the early like 1850s and 1860s, like right when the saints had basically arrived in Utah. And it's just funny to read some of these talks where they're just basically talking about human nature, just the you know, the same same things that we deal with uh today, but just different versions applied into different uh, you know, like I guess one funny thing was, you know, Brigham Young was always a little bit weary or worried about the Saints prospering too much back when they arrived in Utah. So they had all this toil and Kirtland and Abu and got kicked out of homes and everything. And apparently they got to Utah and their society really flourished, and you know, a lot of people were prospering materially. And so he would say things like, you know, we have to be really careful that we're not being prideful about our possessions and all of you that have like five cows and a bunch of chickens, you think you're so rich, right? And it was just funny to like hear him describe what rich meant back then, and it was like having a bunch of cows and having, you know, some chickens and having like a little plot of land and stuff like that. And so it's a little bit of like things sometimes things are just like relative, right? But apparently people will get all super prideful and uppity because they had their five cows and their 20 chickens and they had their plot of land, and that was a real spiritual trial for them back in the day because they felt like they were better than other people, right? Yeah, and so it's it's different, it's different, but it's the same, right, throughout history.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

For sure. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to do this interview and kind of run through some of these spiritual experiences you've had and counsel for younger generations. Um I mean, I'll I'll just say uh to you personally that I'm so grateful for you in my life. You've been a tremendous mentor and friend and guide to me. And uh you're I don't know, I don't want to put you too much on the pedestal or make our listeners um shocked when you actually make a mistake in your life. But to me, you're one of those Captain Moroni type people that I look to to for strength, and just you're I think you just have a great heart and you're always willing to help and and help the people of our ward and your tremendous asset. But thank you for being I appreciate that. Yeah, thanks for having me on the