As Greg stood in front of his Elder's Quorum one Sunday, he knew that many of them were going through really difficult trials. It was in this moment that he made the comment "I could probably swim 45 yards on my own, but with God's help I could swim the English Channel".
6 years later at the age of 52, he actually did.
Greg's story isn't merely a tale of athletic triumph; it's a journey of battling through the storms of addiction, business failure, health scares, difficult trials, and the quest for purpose.
Greg's reflections on the miraculous assistance he received, the significance of family support, and the life lessons that emerged from the depths of the English Channel encapsulate his 15-hour testament to human endurance, all anchored by an unshakeable faith.
*** Please SHARE Greg's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***
To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/i6FLlUdt4uQ
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To READ Greg's book "Called to Swim", visit: https://calledtoswim.com/
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Also, if you have a faith-promoting or inspiring story, or know someone who does, please let us know by going to https://www.latterdaylights.com and reaching out to us.
As Greg stood in front of his Elder's Quorum one Sunday, he knew that many of them were going through really difficult trials. It was in this moment that he made the comment "I could probably swim 45 yards on my own, but with God's help I could swim the English Channel".
6 years later at the age of 52, he actually did.
Greg's story isn't merely a tale of athletic triumph; it's a journey of battling through the storms of addiction, business failure, health scares, difficult trials, and the quest for purpose.
Greg's reflections on the miraculous assistance he received, the significance of family support, and the life lessons that emerged from the depths of the English Channel encapsulate his 15-hour testament to human endurance, all anchored by an unshakeable faith.
*** Please SHARE Greg's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***
To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/i6FLlUdt4uQ
-----
To READ Greg's book "Called to Swim", visit: https://calledtoswim.com/
-----
Also, if you have a faith-promoting or inspiring story, or know someone who does, please let us know by going to https://www.latterdaylights.com and reaching out to us.
Hi everyone, I'm Scott Brandley.
Alisha Coakley:And I'm Alisha Coakley. Every member of the Church has a story to share, one that can instill faith, invite growth and inspire others.
Scott Brandley:On today's episode we're going to hear how one man navigating the murky waters of addiction found the love of God while swimming the English Channel. Welcome to Latter-day Lights. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Latter-day Lights. We're so glad you're here with us today and we're really excited to introduce our guest, greg Mockett. Greg, how are you doing?
Greg Mockett:I'm well, thanks, glad to be here.
Alisha Coakley:Yeah, we're, glad to have you Glad you're here. So when you told me your story, I was like man, this is going to be a good one. So I'm just going to tell all of our listeners go ahead and sit down, get some popcorn, put your jammies on. You're going to want to stay tuned for this. You're going to want to be cozy. Grab the kids, grab the parents, grab the dog. It's going to be a good one today. I just I know it so very excited, thank you. Thank you. Yeah.
Scott Brandley:Awesome.
Greg Mockett:I'm excited as well.
Scott Brandley:How did you find out about the show, Greg?
Greg Mockett:I was just looking at podcasts and video the YouTube podcast and video cast and watching episodes. I do that at work. I have part of my job. I really have to think about what I'm doing and some of the things that I do at work. I don't have to think about what I'm doing and so I like to throw something on that's inspirational, instructional. So I've studied everything from Middle East conflict to various yes song, lighted lights and not other shows as well. So that's how I found out oh, we're glad you're hanging out with us yeah.
Alisha Coakley:That's fun? Yeah, absolutely so. Greg, why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, like where are you from, family job, like what kind of interests you have? Can you lick your own elbow? I don't think. I try. Well, let's see.
Greg Mockett:I was born in Macon Georgia 1965.
Greg Mockett:So I'm older than most dirt. I went to school, out of BYU. I left home at 17 from Florida. I was born and raised most of my life in Georgia and then teenage years from Florida. So I headed out to BYU on a short lived scholarship, suffered senioritis through my first semester of college and lost that scholarship, went on a mission after that ill-fated first semester and went to Oakland, california, and served the people there. I think my first area was in Napa. A lot of people put that on their bucket list as a place to go, so started there and then went straight to downtown Oakland. A little bit of a switch, very cool. Then I became a minister of society. I think it's how Brigham Young turned it. I was 27, 28, 29 before my wife decided mercably to go to the lost husband shelter and kicked me out.
Greg Mockett:She's 10 and a half years younger and 10 and a half times smarter and 10 and a half times better looking. So I did all right. Lesson in patience. We have six children, five daughters, and a caboose is a little tyrannosaur we call our son.
Scott Brandley:You know what I'm talking about.
Greg Mockett:We live in a small little house in a small little town in Utah that's getting bigger. We are active in the church and my wife is in the primary presidency and I conduct the music in Sacramento, which is interesting because I know nothing about music. My wife she was the young women's president at the time and she's in ward correlation and they're saying we can't get anybody to lead the music in Sacramento. She raised her hand, my husband will do it. So she was right. So the last three or four years I've led the music.
Alisha Coakley:Cool, nice.
Greg Mockett:That's kind of me from a surface level.
Alisha Coakley:So I'm going to throw my two cents in for music, Greg. One of the things that drives me nuts the most about sacrament sometimes is when people don't pay attention to the speed, like the tempo of the hymn, and then you're trying to like, come on, you can do it, you can sing a little faster.
Greg Mockett:Well, you'll be pleased to know, I'm a firm believer in the hundred plus, so you know they give you the tempo of the top of the hymn. So in fact I struggle sometimes when our organist decides to be slow. People see me up there going. Okay, let's move this along.
Scott Brandley:Well, that's good to know.
Alisha Coakley:All right, greg. Well, we are all excited to hear your story. It has a lot of twists and turns and dips and dives in it, and so we're very, very excited to hear more about your experience. Why don't you go ahead and take it away?
Greg Mockett:Okay, I'd be happy to. I'm going to start with what I call the call. I was an elder's quorum president and I guess it started in 2010,. Somewhere in September of 2010, I think this story starts in June I had a small quorum of elders in Spanish fork, september 2010,. I think is a rough start point for that, and by June I was wrestling with some issues for my quorum, my quorum, in my little quorum and by little I mean we were maybe 30 guys we had unemployment, underemployment, we had an elder in jail, we had a son of an elder in jail, we had drug addiction, alcohol addiction. We had a troubled marriage where an elder was concerned. His wife was going to leave him. It was just really rough. I was very concerned for them.
Greg Mockett:I don't know if you recall, but back a ways, the elder quorum presidency got to teach the first Sunday. It was going to turn my turn to teach and I honored and prayed on this for a week. In that week I went out to a rehab facility and visited and I had an elder call me at 2 o'clock in the morning I want to go for a drive, talking about his family and life and wife. This was heavy stuff and it was on my mind as I prayed about it. I felt very strongly that I need to give them a lesson about how we can do hard things. But it was very specific that it wasn't to teach that just we could do hard things. But there was a condition we could do hard things if we aligned with the will of God, in that we were guaranteed divine intervention, divine assistance and help.
Greg Mockett:But it was that key being aligned as I was giving that lesson. A lot of wonderful experiences in that lesson where I knew the Spirit was guiding me to talk to particular elders in that lesson. It was a beautiful experience for me. I don't know how much it impacted them, but at one point in the lesson I wanted to illustrate to them the degree to which God could help. I paused for a minute and this idea came into my head. I said hey guys, I could swim about 45 yards If I had to. I could go out and I could swim 45 yards, but if God wanted me to, I could get into the English Channel and swim across that.
Greg Mockett:There were some chuckles right. And the funniest thing happened as soon as I said it. The Spirit said you make that promise. And so I did. And so began a journey that would take six years, and most of that was me running as fast as I could away from that promise. So, all told, the time that I actually worked on this was probably about a year and a half out of that, those six years.
Alisha Coakley:So I'm just going to interrupt you for one second. For those who were like me, you think oh, swim the English Channel, no big deal, it's just a channel, it's just a skinny little river thing. Tell us a little bit about the facts of how many people can swim the English Channel. What makes it so hard and so dangerous and such a huge, impossible feat? You shared one thing about the English Channel versus Mount Everest, so tell the listeners why this is a big deal.
Greg Mockett:OK. Well, the reason it's a big deal and the funny part about the story is when I made the promise I was completely ignorant of any of this and I think if I had known any of this I probably would have second guessed making that promise. And the Lord knew that. I think he had me make that promise in front of those elders as witnesses and then gradually I learned more about what I had gotten into.
Greg Mockett:So the English Channel is at its shortest. Crossing is 21 and a half miles. That's from a little beach south or west depending on whether you're American or British, they tend to want to describe things differently there of Dover and it goes to a place called Cap Grinée in France. And the interesting part is you have some north-south currents there. So if you're a slow swimmer then you're going to be drifting north and drifting south and drifting north again throughout your swim. So the swim total for me was 35 miles. I think the physics works in the favor of just saying it's 21 miles and the currents do the rest. But the boat track was 35.
Greg Mockett:But this, in relation to the Mount Everest climb, is considered much more difficult. More people have died in attempting this English Channel swim and most people failed. In fact, the average channel crossing takes two attempts to make that happen. So anyway, I didn't know any of this. I didn't even know how far across it was. I didn't know how cold it was. It's 58 to 60 degrees best in that water, yikes. So when you think about tap water here in Utah, scott, it's about 55 degrees. I don't know where it is, where you're at. Let me show you.
Alisha Coakley:It's a little warmer in Texas.
Greg Mockett:I don't know, not right now, right now it's still chilly. We've got that Arctic, so what was the?
Scott Brandley:promise that you made to the elders.
Greg Mockett:That I would go and swim the English Channel. It was just given as an illustration of the difficulty in saying that God could support us in that sort of thing.
Alisha Coakley:So it wasn't like a bargaining thing, it wasn't like if you do this, then I'll swim. It was just I'm going to swim the English Channel Unilateral baby. There you go Wow.
Greg Mockett:Okay. So the English Channel, I think, didn't really dawn on me. It didn't really. I had no comprehension of it. So I think about a week after that I went out to the Spanish fork Reservoir. It's a little. I call it the cement pond in honor of the Beverly Hills. It's a reservoir that's completely made of cement barriers all the way around and they throw some sand down on it. I don't know if either of you've ever been out there and I decided to. I'll just swim across. And so I started out and hit it across and then, prophetically, about 45 yards in, I started seeing stars and I couldn't catch my breath and so I thought, I thought this was going to be the end. Honestly, I was truly afraid and I decided that I was going to roll over onto my back and try to catch my breath. And I was still seeing stars. I thought it was going to pass out, and so I started just kind of sculling my way on my back towards the closest side and I caught my breath finally and I just turned to a side stroke and started side stroking back to the beach and I thought you know, this is great, I can side stroke and I don't have to worry about my breath. I can breathe anytime I want. And so I started training to swim the English Channel by swimming side stroke.
Greg Mockett:And the funny part of that story is that the first one of my days out at Spanish Earth Reservoir, I think I went out maybe six, seven times. Sorry, I'm having a hard time with this thing. And then there was an event out at Deer Creek Reservoir it's a beautiful Reservoir up in Provo Canyon here in Utah and then I rented some swimmers. They were in I figured they were real swimmers because they were in neoprene, these wetsuit thingies that keep them warm. And I'm in my baggies which, by the way, that was one of the last lessons I learned in Spanish Oats Reservoir you can't swim distance in baggies or you will walk funny for the next week. So we're, I get up to to Deer Creek and the day of the event and I remember walking up to the table and it's like a running event.
Greg Mockett:They have the table and you have numbers and stuff, but they write your number in a black marker on your shoulder and on your cap and I'm sitting there looking at this guy. It turns out it's a guy named Josh Green. Josh is fantastic individual, Really does a lot for open water swimming in Utah and he didn't really pay attention to me and I wasn't really paying attention to him. I just asked him a question and I said, cause I'd gotten up to three miles in those seven or so sessions in Spanish Oats Reservoir and I thought three miles is that's a 5K, I'd signed up for the 5K. I should really probably be challenging myself.
Greg Mockett:So I said, can I sign up for the 10K? Hey, he just kind of looks happy, Cause I think he knew I was a side stroker and he's like you can do whatever you'd like, but make sure you have good boat support. And I didn't. I had my wonderful brother-in-law and I think it was his first time in a kayak. Just before the starting gun was supposed to go off he flipped over and took some people to get him righted. But at any rate, I was out on Deer Creek and doing the side stroke and the thing that people need to understand is that swimming is different from running. So a 10K is a decent run, but it is an official swim marathon. That's an equivalent of running the marathon distance and I had no idea 26 miles.
Alisha Coakley:right, like a marathon, running is 26 miles 23.6,.
Greg Mockett:I think is that oh 23.6,.
Alisha Coakley:okay, yeah, I knew it somewhere around there.
Greg Mockett:Yeah, no, you're basically spot on. So that swim I'd signed up for. It'd be like trying to go and do a marathon when you'd gone out and trained seven times. So I'm out on and I call this by first channel and the reason I call it that is not even in in preparing to be obedient. The Lord is with us Because he helped me to finish that swim and the only person left was my brother-in-law and as soon as he realized I was safe and I could probably put my feet down, he jetted for the dock and he was out of there getting the boat out. We were six hours on the water and the only person left in the event was Josh and I think he was a little perturbed and I kind of got the moniker of a side stroke bob in the swimming community so.
Greg Mockett:But I also realized I couldn't swim the channel and I probably ought to figure out how far across it is. So that's where training started to become more serious. I started working on crawl and being able to actually swim, and so I won't bore you with any details of the training process, but I would say that, in the things that I learned, you need to have a swim base of six miles a day, basically, so you need to be swimming, basically a swim marathon a day, and you need to do that for about a year before you attempt the channel. And then and the reason I share this is, I think I think Heavenly Father works with us in a specific way. I mean, he wants us to see him there.
Greg Mockett:And so after that August side stroke bob event, I talked to my good friend and then Bishop Taylor, and I told him I need to get back out to Deer Creek. I've got to at least get a 5K in where I'm, you know, at least swimming like a real swimmer. And so he took me back out in late September and I got a 5K in and I decided I needed the 10K by the end of the year. And so that December literally New Year's Eve, the pool Provo Pool Manager, that's back when it was over behind the high school there in Provo. She allowed me to even through free swim and program to have a lane on the far end of the pool and I did a 10 mile swim there and not a 10K but a 10 mile. So I had made a huge progress. And with that came Ubers. I thought this is going to be easy, I'll knock this out. So I didn't train very well and wasn't disciplined. I thought, well, let's just put this off swim season and start in.
Greg Mockett:June First swim is the Great Salt Lake open water marathon. We call it the G-Slow. At any rate, I'd signed up for that. It's a limited number of swimmers can sign up for that. The sign-ups usually on that New Year's Eve, so the day I did the 10 mile for the first time, I also did the sign-up for that Salt Lake swim in June and I literally really didn't swim again until like in May. And then it turns out I had to re-roof my house in that time period before the, so I didn't get any real training in and I went out to swim and it was a brutal swim. A brutal swim, beautiful swim. I mean people don't realize what beauty is out there.
Greg Mockett:We got started on the South end of Antelope Island and it's almost Caribbean, like in the water, and the water of course is very different. Right, I had Taylor yells from the boat and says can you really just float? And so I just laid on my back and did nothing. Yeah, but it also presents as difficult. It doesn't make the swim easier, it actually makes it harder. You're faster because you're more buoyant. But I remember one time Taylor handed me a drink and I went to take the cap off and so I have both hands up and just trying to tread with my feet right, which is no problem. You do that, you know, and so. But my feet got displaced slightly under me and back behind me and they shot for the surface behind me. So I'm diving forward into the water and.
Greg Mockett:I can't recover and I'm trying to hold the cap and the bottle and try to. So it's a different experience to swim in the salt lake, but we covered eight miles there.
Scott Brandley:What about the salt water? Does it get in your?
Greg Mockett:mouth.
Scott Brandley:The smell.
Greg Mockett:Yeah, so it doesn't stink. Lisa out in the middle, it's beautiful out there.
Alisha Coakley:Okay, so it's only by the shoreline that it's super stinky.
Greg Mockett:Right and it can be really bad. I don't know if you've seen Brinefly Scott. Have you ever been out there? They're so bad, brinefly. Oh, it's like a thick film of black or reddish black on the water and these are living little creatures that you're gonna breathe them in. Yeah, so I finished that swim. It was a miserable experience and at the same time beautiful. And when you're out in the middle there's black lava rock under the salt lake, really, and pure white sand is kind of intermingled into that black rock and it's like flying over the Rocky Mountains in a snowy but not quite snow capped period it's just gorgeous.
Alisha Coakley:Wow, that's really cool.
Greg Mockett:So, but anyway, I didn't really realize how much work this was gonna be until that point and I signed up again for the Deer Creek Swim. Again, I didn't get the discipline and do the things I needed to do and I actually popped and I don't know how to describe it any more than that both shoulders in that 10 mile swim at Deer Creek and it probably would have been wise to be towed back in. But at that point I had this idea that I needed to finish Now and so I suffered these injuries in both shoulders. I couldn't raise them any far, I couldn't raise my arms any farther than this went to the doctor and they said you could have surgery or you can do the physical therapy route. And we didn't have really any money.
Greg Mockett:My business was collapsing at this time and taking a lot of time and I kind of had this feeling that okay, how many bother you wanted me to do this. But now look what's happening to me and I was disregarding my own responsibility and this whole process and I was starting to develop, with the difficulty, I was starting to develop these fears of failure and for me that was a trigger and we talk about it on the introduction that navigating the murky waters of addiction, and that was me and that should have been added to problems in that old form pornography addiction and when I was eight years old I had a friend invite me to look at some things and within a short amount of time I was addicted as an eight year old. And so parents when and that was way before internet. So when parents are considering when to talk about some of these things early, talk about it early, and I couldn't really break this addiction for 35 years.
Greg Mockett:And in this process I developed this idea that I wasn't good. I wasn't a good person, I couldn't be good because only bad people looked at pornography. And so and I fought it. I fought it hard. I would say that most of my life I was not looking at pornography, but I could never get away. I could never disconnect or, in particularly anytime, things came up where I couldn't feel good about myself or I knew I was gonna fail or I had failed. Failure was my biggest trigger. And so here I am in the addiction recovery program. I promised my heavenly father that I would start with that, and that was when I was an Elders Quorum president. I was in a period of sobriety. So sobriety is not conquering addiction, it's putting it off. You're not healing.
Greg Mockett:I would say it's better than you know.
Alisha Coakley:Better than being in it right.
Greg Mockett:Exactly because at least you have an opportunity for some light. So and I'd gone on a business trip and I had come really close to just sliding to relapsing and I told Heavenly Father, okay, I must be an addict. I kind of told myself and anybody else who would listen if they ever found out that I wasn't an addict, and so I promised I would start going to these addiction recovery classes. And so I think part of what happened in that Elders Quorum meeting, when the Spirit said you do this, I was like, okay, I'm gonna go to the hospital. When the Spirit said you do this, you make that promise, I was in the middle of really trying to put my hands around step three, where you turn your life and will over to the Lord, jesus Christ and Heavenly Father and you let them drive. And so here I recognize it as the Spirit and I'm letting it drive, right, and this is a year removed from this and things are difficult. Now I'm injured and I was afraid, and so I thought if I just let it go away, then I wouldn't have to deal with it, and that's kind of the strategy I took.
Greg Mockett:And then the business failed all the way. I was having a hard time finding work, lots of things like this. And my wife bless her heart. She always wants to send me to the temple. You know, go find a good place to pray and ponder and come up with a good answer of why we're doing this. And I looked at her and I said I'm not gonna get an answer if I go to the temple. She said look at how my that's a great place, you know, you could feel the Spirit there. So I know, but I'm not keeping my promise to my Heavenly Father.
Greg Mockett:I'm not gonna get any direction and I felt the Spirit when I said that. I was like okay, and I looked at her and I said I gotta do this. She just well, don't look at me, you're the one who's making excuses. So it was back to training and then we're about a year and a half out. I knew one of the things I had to do was to actually set a date and actually get in, get it on the calendar, and so I'm training and I'm trying to get up to that six miles a day. And if you think about it, if you're trying to run a marathon every day, then you're, and I am so stupid. Lacea Scott, I am one of the dumbest people on this planet because I approach this thing as I'm just Greg. If I had approached it as okay, you're now an endurance athlete, I would have asked myself what training really looked like. What does nutrition look like? I'm just Greg, I swim six miles. I'll do it again tomorrow and my body starts to fall apart.
Greg Mockett:I think I'm still the only senior class.
Alisha Coakley:I was gonna say how old were you at this point.
Greg Mockett:Yeah, at that point I think the swim, I was almost 52. So that would have I'm over 50 in this training and I don't know. At least you probably don't have sleep apnea. I probably never have. And, scott, I'm not gonna put you out, I'm not gonna put you on the limb.
Alisha Coakley:No, my husband's had it and it is scary, like my husband has it, and there are times where I'm just like, are you alive? Breathe? Yeah, it's insane.
Greg Mockett:So you had that. Yeah, I had sleep apnea and I had tried a couple of years before I tried the CPAP machine and it wasn't working. It would. Just it gets locked on your cheeks here and it just starts loving and so it wakes you up as much as the apnea did, and that gave me jaw pain when I tried to tighten up to prevent that. So I got rid of it. So I'm not getting the nourishment that I need. I don't have a special diet.
Greg Mockett:And I'm trying to do this and I'm not sleeping, I'm literally dying. And my doctor's telling me this and always sends me back to the temple and I remember sitting there in the celestial room and pacing temple and thinking you know, all these guys in lamblet's form, what's the point? The guys, the how of these problems. They don't have these problems, or at least not the same problems. They've all worked through their stuff. What do I have to prove? Why do I have to do this? Can I quit? And the spirit was like, yes, you can quit, but you're gonna have health problems. And I was like I really have health problems. You know I'm dying here. And it was just.
Greg Mockett:I won't go through the details, but what immediately transpired was the understanding that I needed to address things about my health, because the apnea and at least I'm sure your husband's doctor has spoken at some length on this that the apnea will kill you and if you're not addressing it. And so I have these things, I have to worry about health wise, and I've just never done it. And so I began that process of finding a solution to the sleep apnea and I began working for a process for nutrition and in that process I learned a lot of things about myself. There were some answers to Holly's prayers about my health and I really won't spend a lot of time on that. If somebody wants that story, go to my website, reach out to me, tell me you can't buy the book, so I'll send you the ebook or I'll give you a link to the audio books if you promise not to share them. So anyway. But the point is there were a ton of miracles in this process, but the greatest miracle and certainly back to a point I wanna make about how Heavenly Father deals with us yeah, I was at a point of pride and then I was a point at fear, and Heavenly Father wants me to know that he's there. Right, what's the point of making a promise just from the English channel and then physically preparing yourself to be able to do it without God? What message does that give anybody? What message does it give me With?
Greg Mockett:Failure is one of my huge triggers in life. I've started and shuttered many businesses that didn't work out. It's a big problem in my life. Here I am facing this monumental, one of the more difficult things a human can try to do A lot of fear. What does the Lord do? He decides that I need surgery. I have to undergo surgery.
Greg Mockett:I think it was March 31st. I was supposed to swim in August. The base is you're supposed to swim six miles a day for a year. I know that I'm not going to be able to breathe until the surgery is done. I know that if the surgery is done I likely will not be able to swim across the channel. I have to have the surgery. I have the surgery.
Greg Mockett:It takes about three weeks before you can build back up to the base. It's just incredibly hard to be out of the water for two weeks to three weeks and then try to go out and swim six miles. It just doesn't work that way. It took me time to recover or ramp back up. The morning after my first six-mile swim I'm putting my socks on. I realize that I've got bruises in both calves. I was like that's really odd. How do I have bruises in both calves? I look at my calves. There are no bruising. I can feel them very pointed and I put my fingers on each spot and I can feel my pulse underneath those bruises very painfully. I realize I have blood clots.
Alisha Coakley:Blood clots yeah, that's what I was just thinking.
Greg Mockett:I go back into my doctor and he says, greg, you've got blood clots, not just one, you have a lot. What are you doing differently? I had been taking heavy dose protein in order to repair and build muscle it had been doing great.
Greg Mockett:My body, I learned, does not process protein the proper way. I now have to be out of the water for another three weeks while we wait for the medication to break up those blood clots so I don't get a pulmonary embolism or something more exciting. I'm rolling into this summer swim season and I've lost a month and a half of not being at my base. Within a month of that, my daughter gets married. We have all the wedding events. I'm literally out of the water like two months out of the last, a month and a half out of the last four, little more than that. There's no way I succeed. I know that it is weighing on me tremendously. In fact, I knew that it was going to be a miracle if I succeeded. I knew it would be God. That did not mean I realized when we were over in England that Let me explain something really fast.
Greg Mockett:You don't set a date. I remember I told you I wanted to put it on the calendar. We did. We put it on the calendar. What you do is you call or email a boat captain that specializes in channel crossings. You have to be authorized by Channel Swimming Association or the CSPF or Channel Swimming and Pile Day Federation in order for the coast guard of Her Majesty's Coast Guard to support your swim, because that's the busiest natural shipping lane in the world.
Greg Mockett:Some flow Utah, it's over 50 out there in the middle of the shipping lane is not a good idea. The Coast Guard there for England will allow that, but they need to know who you are, that you're with a registered pilot or captain of a boat and that they're in communication with the Coast Guard and with those ships. It's also weather dependent. The channel can be extraordinarily continkers. It's not a friendly body of water. All the time when you set a date you're picking a tide, a neat tide, or a period of time when the high tide and low tide is the lowest difference, because that's going to have the least pull on you. It's kind of like five days.
Greg Mockett:I knew I was going to swim. A certain window we flew out to England and we're doing low training swims on the beach and in the Dover Harbor. Then it came time for the pilot to call and say it's time. You don't really get to psychologically brace yourself and say on the 17th of August I'm going to swim the English Channel. It's a little more troubling if you're an emotional wreck like I was at the time. The Channel swim had to be Heavenly Father's doing his success. I knew that After the pilot had told us we're going to swim that night, which was really the next morning. Monday morning it was Sunday We'd gone to church there in England. Wonderful experience. I was in a graveyard of all my Mock-It ancestors, which was fascinating. That the Lord sends me to a place that my family history is from. That's where the pilot calls me Really.
Alisha Coakley:While you're in or surrounded by your ancestors.
Greg Mockett:That is correct, wow. The point I want to make is that I woke up that Sunday morning we didn't have a call slot yet. We knew we were a slot one, but we'd get the best conditions on the tide we didn't know when. That's up to the pilot to figure out. We're going to church. It's a beautiful morning, absolutely sunny.
Greg Mockett:My friend Taylor, who's been with me on all my training swims, says that the first one in September when I tried to break out of my side stroke Bob-ness Taylor is with us in England and his wife and my wife, taylor, gets it into his head that he wants to take this long, meandering drive through the English countryside there in Kent before we go to church. All I have in my head is I need to take the sacrament. I need to make sure I'm 100% right with God. It was a desperate, very desperate need. I found myself being angry with Taylor for his touring the countryside.
Greg Mockett:We pulled in I think it was right at 9 o'clock. I bolted out of the car and ran straight into the chapel without anybody and realized they hadn't even started the meeting. They were probably going to be about five minutes late. Add that attitude and unkindness to lift the things I wanted to present to the Lord during the sacrament. The Lord has a way of making sure that you're sure that it's Him. I was not on my base and absolutely convinced that I couldn't make this work. We get into the swim later that night.
Greg Mockett:In the morning it's pitch black. It's 2 am. You need to understand. I also have a deathly fear of the ocean. I grew up in Florida. I can swim on alligators. I have done so, it's just not a problem. But sharks are a different story and the Discovery Channel was running ads for Shark Week the whole week before we flew to England. It's like come on.
Greg Mockett:So it's 2 am in the morning and I don't even know how I'm going to start my swim. I don't know if it's a beach, I don't know if it's a rock. I swim up to a cliff and put my hand against the cliff. It's a legal start as well in the channel swimming world. And so I've got all this internal going and I guess one of the deck hands for the pilot comes up to me and looking over the side and pitch black water and he says it's going to get a lot more turbulent outside the harbor. Could you have said anything better? I mean, could you? And then he looks at me and he sees that I haven't engaged in him at all and he says don't worry.
Greg Mockett:It won't be like that where you start.
Greg Mockett:And so, fortunately, fortunately, Paul, my pilot let me off in where I was going to swim short to a beach, and he puts a little spotlight onto the beach. So the only thing I can see are these gray little main cliffs they're the white cliffs of Dover, but they're gray in the pitch back black night and he's got the spotlight on the beach and I can see the beach and it's covered in rock, but little smooth, round rocks about the size of golf balls and I was like, ok, at least this is good. And the boat was going kind of doing this up and down thing, right, and moving with the swells and anyway, all my training I hadn't trained in the ocean. So I'm getting out and I've got these shark fears and I get my grease on and my goggles on over my cap and they get the lights hooked up. So I have a beacon on my back of my cap and a beacon on the back of my shorts as a safety precaution in case of fog, so that they can find me, know which direction I'm going in, and I'm walking towards the ladder and there's just this quiet resolve that I've got to do this and I couldn't let Holly down because it was so hard for her, so hard that I was doing this crazy thing that made no sense to her. She never, despite any of my prayers or hers, got any kind of witness that this was something I was supposed to do. And. But I owed her this. I put her through so much trouble. I owed her this, and I owed Taylor for investing in me, and I owed a handful of friends who, at the last minute, put up the money that needed to happen for this to transpire, and each of them angels.
Greg Mockett:And as I'm descending the ladder, I suddenly find myself with a calm but this realization that maybe the most important danger is the prop under the boat. Where's the prop? Is it in the center, is it on the sides? And how am I supposed to get in the water? And I thought your pilot is not going to let you go down this ladder without your safety in mind. So I get in the water and it's cold. It's so incredibly cold. And I thought I've trained in cold water. Why is this? And then I realized in all my training I had two methods of training for cold water. One was the bath tub with ice cubes. That proved helpful. The walking into cold water slowly and gradually, controlling my breath. You don't walk into the water off the back of a boat.
Greg Mockett:One minute you're on the boat and one minute you're in the water, and so I thought to myself Greg, you, idiot, you should have thought of this. So this just gives you an idea of how naive the whole journey has been. Even to stepping off the back of the boat, it was completely naive. So the swim gets underway. There are a lot of things that I could relate about swim, but there's one I really feel like that's important, related to the message that God is with us and when we're doing the things, when we're aligned with his will, when we're doing what he wants us to do.
Greg Mockett:About four hours into the swim, the weather had changed. The sea was not calm like it was in the little bay where I swam to shore and I am swimming just outside the light. They put a light in the water. There's lights under the water on the boat and then there's a spotlight that let the beach was now pointed down onto the water next to the boat, and I'm supposed to swim in the light. But every time I turn to look at the boat, that light shatters through all the droplets on my goggles and it's blinding. It's like somebody hitting you with their brights in a rainstorm while you're driving at night. You can't see and you have to just trust. And so I decided I would swim outside the light just about a little ways, and the weather started getting rough. The waves were, I'd say, two feet, maybe foot and a half to two feet, and that's not a big deal, except that it's the ocean and I hadn't really trained in waves, not like that anyway. And so it got bad. Enough that you know how physics you can have two waves meet at the top and it's twice the height, as if the waves had met, one down here and one high, one at the midpoint, one at the high, or they can meet at the bottom and so it can be deeper and higher than the normal wave height. I was getting dropped four feet. Coming through a crest, I could drop four feet, and then some I'd come through and it would be perfectly level.
Greg Mockett:And all of this was confusing to me because it's very hard to breathe and real swimmers learn to breathe on both sides. They breathe out this side, they breathe out this side, and so for them, if they missed this breath, they come back to the stroke and over here and catch it there, so they're literally a half second away from their next breath. I never developed the ability to breathe from both sides, so I was right side only and if I missed this one it was back here and then back out this side the next time around, and sometimes I was getting maybe one breath and five. And that's not only scary because you could drown right. Yeah, it's scary, but it's frustrating because when am I going to breathe, when am I going to get the next breath? And so I'm really struggling with this and I finally figure out a pattern. But in order for the pattern to work, I have to stay at a certain speed. If I break that speed, I break the pattern and I'm back into this confusing place of where am I going to get my next breath? At least I knew which of the next five breaths were going to be successful Because, as you can imagine, waves are breaking over your head at the same time.
Greg Mockett:It's not a rolling wave, but it's kind of a wave just kind of goes over you, not breaking like on the shore. So I'm singularly focused in this most trying part of the whole swim challenge at this point, and I'm singularly focused on breathing. I'm a little aware of the fact that the roles of the waves are coming from my left side because I'm having a harder and harder time getting my left arm out of the water and it's having to lift a tremendous amount of water on top of it. Well, we're about four hours, five hours into the swim and it's time for a feed every half hour. You go an hour before first feed and then half hours after that you get a feed and it's like a drinking bottle that you can squeeze. The valve on top is a one-way valve so you're not getting seawater in it while you have to bring it down to the tread or whatever.
Greg Mockett:Coming for a feed and Taylor yells from the boat you're doing great. I feel like you have no idea how hard this is. And Holly looks you're doing great. Honey, keep it up. Are they blind, you know?
Alisha Coakley:What are?
Greg Mockett:they.
Greg Mockett:You know, and I thought to myself I can't do, I can't keep this up. What are we? Four hours in? This is gonna go 16 hours. There's no way I can do this that long. And I'm letting that work in my thoughts. And if that thought's not there, then the thought is where's my next breath? Right or my shoulder's hurting, my left shoulder's starting to hurt now, and so it's. I'm into this process and I can't do this. I can't do this, and the next feed comes around. So I've gone a half hour and I decided that's it. I just couldn't do it.
Greg Mockett:And the idea was, if you tag the boat or you touch the boat or support your weight in any way by the boat, then your swim's done, and so I put my head down and swam for the boat and I got to the side of the boat and I smacked it hard. I was angry, I was frustrated, I was scared. I wanted the safety of the boat. And as I was swimming through the boat, everybody on the boat knew what I was doing. They were up there yelling and screaming, keep going, keep going, keep going, and then I hit the boat and so then I just kind of came back like okay, what's the process for getting back on the boat? And they're all yelling. None of them got the fact that I quit, and I finally heard one voice that said 10 more minutes, 10 more minutes or 12 hours away, at least 11.
Greg Mockett:But I thought, oh, maybe the wave direction will change and maybe it will light enough a little and I'll be able to breathe better. I can do 10 more minutes. You don't learn all the details, right? I mean, I'm in the water, I'm face down, I see the boat and the water, boat, water, boat, water, boat, water. But the people in the boat see something different right.
Greg Mockett:And so long after the swim I'm talking to Taylor and he says why did you quit? I said, wait me, why did I quit? My arm was hurting, I couldn't breathe, I scared the death and you know it wasn't. Oh, and, by the way, paul had leaned over, very helpfully, over the rail. The pilot Now, and I said you don't know how hard this is he leans over the rail, he says he's a great conditions and I just shot every ounce of hope out of me. Taylor's asking me after this one says why did you quit? You were doing so well. I said that's just what you tell me to try and encourage me. He says no, I had GPS track going. You were swimming faster than you ever swam in your life. You were a hell of a wave You've never seen before.
Greg Mockett:We thought it was a miracle that you were still in it and the message there is that life is like that, addiction is like that, but if we're trying, we're doing so much better than we think we are. We just don't have the perspective, we can't see how well we're doing. So that in and of itself demonstrated miracles that I just wasn't even aware of. And so I turned and I headed back towards France and I'm swimming. What they meant was they were going to put the support swimmer in, which, by the way, is very disconcerting in England, because in America, an open water swimmer, we call the support swimmer a support swimmer. And in the first meeting with the pilot he says go and rescue swimmer.
Greg Mockett:And suddenly it dawned on me why the rules required that you had your support swimmer, because their job was to get you out of the water if something went wrong. So this guy we picked up on the beach in Dover. He was training for a swim and he said yeah, I'll come swim with you. So that's what they were doing. They were going to say Greg's alone, we're going to put somebody in the water with him. But they put him in the water outside of my view. They put him on my left side.
Greg Mockett:So I was like oh okay, well, and I had this thought. You know Steve agreed to this because, a we're paying him, but B he's never been in the open ocean before. He wants to take his crack at the English Channel later and I'm doing him a huge disservice If I quit now. He can't get his shot at swimming in the water. So I can go half hour for Steve, I can do it for Steve. So we're swimming along and probably 10 minutes I can't be more.
Greg Mockett:You lose track of time, but it felt like 10 minutes. And I'm looking over and the boat has stopped and I'm like do I keep going? Am I supposed to stop, you know? And I keep swimming and I see the back of the boat. Steve is climbing up the back of the boat. Our British rescue swimmer is not in the water. What's, what's, what gives with this? I thought, oh, these people, and it wouldn't let me quit. But they're letting this supposed British rescue swimmer back in the boat. And I had this thought if they don't care if I die, then why do I care if I die?
Alisha Coakley:Oh, my God.
Greg Mockett:And I've been swimming along and I realized that I was doing just fine again when I was worried about Steve and then it dawned on me. I haven't been involving my heavenly father, that's his swim, not mine, and I'm leaving him out of it. In fact it was kind of funny because I said and I realized I hadn't been talking to him for a long time when have you been? That was in my heart. Where have you been? You know what I've been going through? And the impression was that I've been here the whole time. It's you who have left me. And I just felt so strongly that I needed to reconnect and get back to why I was there, and that was to fulfill God's purposes. Why was he wanting me here? And I told heavenly father. I said you know I'm here. I don't believe that I'm here For whatever that counts for. I need your help and the spirit whispered back give me one problem at a time.
Scott Brandley:Wow.
Greg Mockett:And I said to my father.
Greg Mockett:Well, I have lots of problems, but I'm getting sick. So much stuff If I throw up I could drown and this will be over, and if we're doing this then it can't be over. So I need help. If you take the sickness away and I knew that I was getting sick from the salt and I knew that there wasn't much escaping salt and so in my mind I really needed heavenly father, to address this. There's nothing I could do.
Greg Mockett:And the next feed the bottle comes flying back out at me and it's thrown on a line. Taylor holds one into the line and he throws the bottle out. And this time they attached a little baggy the ziplock baggy on the tape to the bottom of the bottle and it had some little candies in it. And I wasn't thinking. If I had thought about it I wouldn't even try, but I squeezed down. You know you want to keep going as fast as you can, so you want to try and take 30 seconds or less on your feed. So I get that fluid in and then I open the baggy and I just pop the two gummies in my mouth and I'm chewing and chewing and chewing is getting stuck in my teeth. They have. Who in the world had this brilliant idea and I'm trying to spit these gummies out while swimming.
Greg Mockett:You know I'm trying to breathe and spit, and and then it occurs to me that I don't taste the salt.
Scott Brandley:And.
Greg Mockett:The gummies were stuck in my teeth, so it lasted for probably 10 minutes, maybe 15, and I was given a direct blessing and with the flavor of salt going away, that Triggering of, of that kind of wanting to retch I don't know if you've ever been in super salty water, but it gives you the feeling this one throw up, it's the taste that's doing that. I had also taken on a lot of salt water in my stomach and I was aware of that because of all those waves and trying to be able to handle that. But the first miracle on the water was the gummies and Steve, or a rescue swimmer, had brought the, the gummies, as a little snack for himself during that trip. I thought it was a great idea. Yeah, give me some of these. So my naive wife and swim manager Taylor decided that was a good idea and they sent it out. So so that was the first and I won't go through the rest. But there were four more miracles where I directly asked God for help with a specific problem and he answered by giving me a miracle and I had the audacity to ask God where he was. So lots of difficulties, lots of miracles. We have to swim about three hours longer because we missed the cap.
Greg Mockett:I Think first time that I realized I was getting close to France, there was a boat I can't stop for a feed. And there was another boat about the same size as the optimist, which gloriously was the name of my pilots boat, the optimist. And and so there was, and I could see a French flag flying from there and I was so exhilarated I thought I would crack a joke. And so I said to my team, when I, right before I grabbed the feet, said what's this? The French Coast Guard, you know, just kind of tried it and they, you know they, were worried, they're like, oh, he's, he's losing it and and More hallucinations. But when I saw that boat, I turned and Looked toward the coast and for the first time I could see the coast of France. And it wasn't just and only this tiny thin, you know, gray line on the horizon, it was a nice Smudgy, brown and green thick line and I, I was so thrilled and I remember Expressing gratitude to my heavenly father.
Greg Mockett:But we had a ways to go, because when it's the cap, we had to ride turns north until they would allow me to finish swimming into shore. And I remember the impression that Somebody else was driving the boat, if you know that, or driving the bus, if you know that expression. Right, because there was no such thing as time. Time was irrelevant. I couldn't, I couldn't tell you what a half hour was from an hour, from a day. I didn't feel cold anymore there. There was a long spell in there where I felt very cold, I didn't feel, I just felt. Like you know, I surveyed things. I thought, you know, I could probably go, I could probably go, and that was several hours, I could go, I could go until dark, you know, and about that time the boat stops again and they, my team, is yelling one more feed, one more feed, which means that somewhere in between that half hour and hour, you know, that's probably 40, 45 minutes out.
Greg Mockett:And the pilot, paul, once again appears over the rail and says no more feeds. And my first reaction was that's not very nice, you know what if I?
Greg Mockett:want that other feed. And then it dawned on me that we must be so close to a half hour that it wasn't worth doing another feed. And so I put my head down and started swimming again, and I noticed that the shore had gotten much bigger, right, much taller on the horizon, and the boat stops again. And I was like, why did they stop? I thought we were going to be done by you know, and I hadn't. You can't think clearly, you have to really struggle to process at that point. And they're leaning over the rail and saying this is far as the boat can go. You have to finish the rest on your own. And so I once again was flooded with fears because all the while the boat was near enough that I could you know. If I needed to swim to the boat. I could swim to the boat.
Greg Mockett:But now there was a quarter mile of open ocean. Apparently it was too shallow for the boat to go, but I had to traverse that. And once again I saw Steve, the rescue swimmer, getting into the water and I realized I'll have somebody with me. So I turned and swam and I had a very great difficulty staying with the boat because my left arm was completely shot.
Greg Mockett:I could no longer lift it out of the water. My wrist stayed bent at this angle and so even when I went to spear into the water, the right hand would spear into the water and then I could create a push, a pull point and pull the water with my right hand, but I couldn't spear the water any longer with my left hand. I could push it into the water and then try to pull, and so naturally what's happening is I'm veering to the left. So now I have no boat reference to try and correct by. So the funny thing is that I realized that I'm not getting closer. I do alligator eyes, you know, kind of put your head up and look, not any closer.
Greg Mockett:Why am I not any closer? And then it occurs to me that I'm veering to the left and I'm never going to hit the shore, and so I had to pick a spot somewhere in my two o'clock If I'm just raising my head for a normal breath I had to be able to see something, and I picked what looked like a giant gray gun battery from World War Two that was up on the cliff over the beach and I worked my way in the shore with that and in your swim isn't over until the boat sounds. It's horn, and so they don't blow the horn. When you're standing up in shallow water. They wait for you to clear and you're supposed to raise your hands to let them know you're clear.
Greg Mockett:And I'm raising my hands. I don't care about this. Like, don't they see I'm out of water and Steve comes waiting up behind me and I go. He starts to come up toward me and they blow the horn. He's underwater half the time trying to catch up with me to get into shore, and he heard the horn, but I didn't hear it. I was deaf, I couldn't, because some French people had gathered on the beach and they had cowbells and white towels that they were. They were clanging the bells and waving the towels and I started trying to steer clear of them because you can't have any help Right, so I didn't want them to touch me until I got all the
Greg Mockett:way out of the water. So anyway. So Steve confirms for me that that the horn had sounded because that they had, as he said, they had honked the hooter. So I'm standing on the beach. I'm standing on the beach and I finally let out this guttural I don't know what you would call it. It had been pent up for six years. It was done, it was over. I felt like I had been released from the worst calling in the entire world. So I don't know how much more of the story you want.
Greg Mockett:There are some thumb things that lessons learned from the beach, from trying to get back to the boat after that, the trip back to Dover, hallucinations, all kinds of fun things that are part of the story.
Greg Mockett:But I think this is sufficient, probably to illustrate the primary point that you can be an isolated individual, perhaps surrounded by an ocean of indifference, and you have friends that they seem disconnected from you. They're on their own journey, they're on their own boat. The one person you can count on is your Father in heaven and your Savior Jesus Christ, and they are there. But for us to realize that and recognize that, we have to let them prevail. We have to stay on the journey, stay in that wilderness and do the things that we know are aligned with their will for us, and as we do that, we are guaranteed. This is not the promise I made to my elders' corn in June of 2011. That guarantee is a promise of having been safely transported across the channel by my Father in heaven and my Savior. We are guaranteed divine intervention, divine help and love as we are on this journey, and I'm not going to say that in the name of Jesus Christ, wow.
Scott Brandley:Wow.
Alisha Coakley:Greg, that was just so incredible I didn't even want to interrupt you there because I just kept thinking of all of these other lessons and these other analogies Just the fact that you accomplished that. How long did it take from the time that you got in the water to the time that you finished on the beach? How long was that that you were swimming? You know on the way back to Dover.
Greg Mockett:I'm leaning against the wall of the cabin, facing the back of the boat, watching France disappear and storm clouds coming, and Paul, the captain, leans up and hands up a piece of paper through the hatch it's not a hatch, but it's a small doorway and hands it up. I unfold it and it has 15, 39, 46. So that's the answer to your question. 15 and hour is 39 minutes 46 seconds.
Alisha Coakley:Oh my gosh, that is insane. I don't think I could even watch Netflix for 15 hours. I'm just like wow, oh man, how was that like with your wife? I'm curious, you know, what was that feeling for her watching you accomplish something this huge? Did you share with her afterwards, like where that moment of freedom happened to you, like were you able to talk to her about that?
Greg Mockett:or Well, we've talked often about the channel. I felt obligated and compelled to write this all down, and she and Taylor, taylor's wife Debbie, were invaluable resources to sort of fact check. We get impressions in our lives about what happened and what the facts or the details are, and that's our truth. But other people have other perspectives, and so it was really quite wonderful to gather those perspectives and to understand what it meant to them to participate in this as well. For Holly, I think it's best if she addressed that someday on her own. There is some small addressing of that in the book, but I would be entirely out of line to speak for her, except to say that she had opportunities to be led and taught of the spirit in this process.
Scott Brandley:So how you felt this experience has brought you closer to Heavenly Father in Christ.
Greg Mockett:Well.
Alisha Coakley:I think in my addiction.
Greg Mockett:I felt that I was not lovable, I was not a good person, I had no hope for eternal life, what's less anything in the celestial kingdom, and I was going through my life because I couldn't conquer my addiction. I was going through my life in the hopes that my wife and girls would be able to benefit from all the blessings of the gospel and that I would not somehow take that away from them in having given up. So that was how I felt about things, how I felt about myself. The channel that I had to cross was that God did love me, that he is involved in my life. That's the real channel, and I had to give him, me all of it, even willing to die. That's what.
Greg Mockett:I had to give and the blessings that continue to come from the channel have found me. The allegories and lessons, the opportunities to teach and to share and to testify, those things are all worth it. They're all. I have no way to describe that. My life is entirely different, scott, than the day I stepped into the water and my recovery was going well. I was well on the way to healing. In fact, through that whole period my recovery was strong. I did not have any relapse. Well, I take that back. I did have relapses because part of recovery and I think this is really important for people to understand who have addictions or loved ones in addiction One of the hallmarks of a true recovery is that you realize that your addiction is just one of the things that need to heal. And so then you go through the 12 steps for another weakness and another weakness and another weakness, and that process must continue. And, yeah, there were relapses in those other areas that I was addressing, but for the most part my recovery was really really strong through this whole process. So the channel was kind of like getting the Holy Ghost after being baptized.
Greg Mockett:I don't know if that makes any sense whatsoever. It was very, very much related and yet entirely different, and it's a foundational point. It tells me that I'm not a failure. It tells me that I am worth his time, that I mean something to him, that the people around me are in that same boat. They're worth his time and so they're worth my time. Does that? I don't know if that makes any sense, but maybe people arrive at that so much more naturally than I did. It just has become a change in my DNA. How's that? Is that better? I mean, is that a way that word that might make more sense?
Alisha Coakley:Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the scripture, like in the New Testament, where I remember in the scripture it talks about how, when you're converted, strengthen thy brethren, you can testify of Christ and you can have your testimony of everything of the gospel. But there truly is this power and conversion and it's in that conversion that you're actually able to strengthen others. I love that during one of the parts of your story you mentioned how you were struggling and you're like, why didn't you see me? Are you like I'm doing so horribly here? And they're like, are you kidding me? You've never swam this fast or you've never dealt with this type of temperature or this type of wave. Or like we're amazed to see how well you're doing in getting through all of this. And it didn't mean that you you know who still didn't want to quit, like it wasn't fun. But I think that that's part of conversion is that other people are able to see, like how strong we are, sometimes even more so than we can see it ourselves, because we're in the thick of it. You know, like we do have these obstructions in front of us, like we have the waves crashing down, we have all these other problems and one of the things that also stood out was it was it's pretty perfect timing, because I was just having this conversation a few hours ago with a friend about how and I don't know if you're this type of person, but I know for me I'm the type of person who I've got it, I'll do it, I'll figure it out myself.
Alisha Coakley:I don't want to rely on other people to get things done. I'm happy if they want to help, but most of the time I'm just, I'm just bossy and I just, I just want to control everything Right, like I. Just I like that control and I like knowing that I can depend on me to get stuff done. And and then that doesn't leave room for Heavenly Father. You know like I schedule so many things in in my day and I'm always taking on a new project. I'm always saying yes to this and yes to that and it's like hold on. You know like I I guess for me it's almost like swimming my own emotional busy schedule of an of an English channel. You know like I've got all of these feats against me and I, and they're all good things. It's like a great thing for me to want to accomplish, but ultimately, if I don't remember that my Heavenly Father is here by my side and that I can trust him.
Alisha Coakley:When you said that the Holy Ghost told you give me one problem, you know, it's like, like I've always, I've always said this, that that I think that Heavenly Father allows us to be in different places in our life because he trusts us. He trusts us to be able to get through them and and to learn from them and to experience them and to grow from them. But I do think a lot of times we, we can trust Heavenly Father in the grand, you know, general scheme of it, but the little things were like no, no, no, no, we got it, we got it, we can do this, we can do this. And he's just like just give me one problem, just give me one. And he's like let me, let me show you what I can do for you, let me show you what kind of gummies I can give you, right? And so I just sorry, I know I'm kind of blabbering, but, like I said, there was just so many things that popped out in your story that really resonated with me and I just I, I love that you, you were able to share.
Alisha Coakley:I'm really excited to read, you know, your book, what? What is that called? Is it published? Is it out yet? Are you still writing?
Greg Mockett:it. Yeah, we're self published. The book is called let's see if I can get that right Call it to swim. That's what it. There you go. Oh, I love that. And it's at the same name of a website called to swimcom. So I'm serious, if you know this. This book has a purpose. God made me write. I can tell you I loathe writing as much as I loathe swimming during their latter part of their training. I'm serious. If, if anybody wants the book and it's not in a place that they can buy the book, then there's a form on the in the website contact the author. Just send me your email address and I mean you don't have to say anything Just send me your email address. They please send the ebook and I'll send you a PDF copy and you can read it.
Greg Mockett:And maybe maybe it'll be useful to you, but anyway. So that's that's at call to swimcom.
Alisha Coakley:Well.
Greg Mockett:I can't wait to get it into read it.
Alisha Coakley:That's amazing, you know. I just, I have just loved having you on as a guest. Thank you so much.
Greg Mockett:We really really appreciate it. Thanks for allowing me to come.
Scott Brandley:I appreciate, I appreciate your story. I love the idea that sometimes God allows us to struggle so that we can grow closer to him, and a lot of times it's because of our own stubbornness, right, or just our own insecurities or fears or triggers, whatever the whatever the things are that stop us. He allows us to go through those things so that, ultimately, we can become closer to him through those challenges and trials. And I love your story because it just it's an extreme version of that. Right, like most of us aren't going to swim the English Channel to to find God or to strengthen our testimony or our faith in God, but I love it that you did, because through those experiences we can all learn a lesson. Yeah.
Greg Mockett:And.
Scott Brandley:I really appreciate you sharing it.
Greg Mockett:Yeah, One of the things about suffering is that I think in my case, the Lord wanted to prove that he was doing it. A lot of people say, oh, that's not fantastic accomplishment, you know, you should be so pleased about that, you know or they use a different P word you should be so proud of yourself. And I I tell them that I just got in the water and moved my arms and my legs and they chuckle and it satisfies them. But, God and I know.
Scott Brandley:Yeah, well, thanks, greg, thank you to Scott. Yeah, absolutely I appreciate it, Lisa.
Greg Mockett:thank you.
Scott Brandley:I'm going to thank everyone for for watching the podcast and for for for for watching and tuning in to hear Greg's story. And if you want to help us share it, go ahead and and do that five second missionary work. Hit that share button and let's get Greg's story out there. There's people that need to hear it. So let's do some sharing and get get this story out there.
Alisha Coakley:Absolutely, and we'll be share. We'll be sure to share the link for for Greg's book called to swim. If you guys want to have a little bit more in depth I assume you probably have a few more miracles maybe in that book or if you know some more details, definitely go pick yourself up a copy or, like Greg so generously offered, email him if it's something that you can't afford, um, and he's happy to to send you a downloaded copy, or whatever, of the book. So, uh guys, check the check the description for the link for that book called to swim and leave a comment. Let us know what your favorite part of the story was from Greg. Let us know, uh, what stood out to you, what kind of allegory in your own life, resignated as Greg shared the, the beautiful lessons that he learned from such a huge accomplishment and a huge struggle.
Alisha Coakley:Um, with that, I think that's all we have for today, guys. Um, scott and I, we just wanted to say thank you so much. We really appreciate all of your listeners, we appreciate you guys's shares, um and your comments and your loves and your likes and all of the good things. Um, we feel very, very blessed to be able to be in this position to to give others a platform where they can share their stories, and it's definitely something that, uh, I know personally has strengthened my own testimony, being able to hear from amazing members of the church like Greg. So we love you guys. Thank you so much for tuning in today Until next week. We hope you guys have a great one. See you later.
Scott Brandley:Okay, take care, see you guys.
Greg Mockett:Bye.