In this episode, Carl Hovey shares several difficult challenges that he has faced throughout his life, from his family losing their home and being forced to live in a tire shed, to his brother unexpectedly dying from cancer as a young boy, to being picked on and bullied to the point that he dropped out of school and left the church.
But God had a plan for Carl, and in his darkest moments, he was able to rediscover his hope and faith in ways that put him back on the path. And while everything isn't always perfect, by putting his trust in God he is continually finding ways to overcome his fears and strengthen his testimony.
*** Please SHARE Carl's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***
To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/WWUdZFeth1E
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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.
In this episode, Carl Hovey shares several difficult challenges that he has faced throughout his life, from his family losing their home and being forced to live in a tire shed, to his brother unexpectedly dying from cancer as a young boy, to being picked on and bullied to the point that he dropped out of school and left the church.
But God had a plan for Carl, and in his darkest moments, he was able to rediscover his hope and faith in ways that put him back on the path. And while everything isn't always perfect, by putting his trust in God he is continually finding ways to overcome his fears and strengthen his testimony.
*** Please SHARE Carl's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***
To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/WWUdZFeth1E
-----
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 the death of a brother, a longtime nemesis and years of pointing blame at others led one man to take responsibility for his life, while letting forgiveness heal old wounds. 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, Carl Hovey. Carl, how are you doing today?
Carl Hovey:I'm doing great, thank you.
Alisha Coakley:I'm super excited we have just a story full of miracles for our guest today. I can't wait to jump into it. But before we do any of that, Carl, why don't you tell us just a little bit about yourself?
Carl Hovey:Okay, well, my name is Carl Hovey, I'm married. I have a total of seven kids. We are a blended family. I have five kids of my own. I have three boys and two girls. My wife has one boy and one girl. I am a transmission mechanic, 35 years, and I own a. I like woodworking, fishing, yeah, things like that. I also want to mention that I do struggle with ADHD. I struggle with low self-esteem, I struggle with severe anxiety. I also struggle quite a bit with depression. I also was recently diagnosed with a heart condition known as obstructive HCM. So that's something that's new and we are looking into possibly starting a trial to see if a new medicine that's out there will help with this element. It is a hereditary disease, I guess, but it's something that I'm working through currently as we speak.
Alisha Coakley:Wow, I'm so sorry to hear that I don't. I've never heard of that before, but my dad has uh battled a lot of different heart heart issues too, and so it's it is never fun, so wow.
Carl Hovey:Yeah, we're learning about that and we'll, I guess, see where that goes. I'll try to be as proactive as I can. I try to be as proactive as I can. I try to be proactive with most things. Part of doing this podcast is trying to be proactive with my anxiety and my depression and all the stuff that I deal with. I need to get better at talking to people and letting people know what's going on in my life and not trying to fight these battles by myself.
Scott Brandley:Yeah Well, I think it's good you're taking an active role right In facing your fears and even this health issue that you're having. I mean that's good for you. A lot of people just pretend that it doesn't exist and don't do anything until it's too late.
Alisha Coakley:Yeah, ostrich themselves.
Carl Hovey:Since I started being more willing to share and let people know what's going on. It's been incredible. It's been way more awesome to go through these things with others than by yourself and trying to put on this show that everything's okay.
Alisha Coakley:Yeah, that makes sense. Well, and I love something that you had told us before we started recording was that you actually were inspired by one of our other guests. Is that right?
Carl Hovey:That is true. Yes, I was watching. I probably watched all your podcasts, I probably watched all the comeback, wow, and there was one guy in particular. His name was Larry Johnson. Hi, larry, he is a huge factor and a huge inspiration for me to be able to do this, because I struggle on a whole different level than most people do with anxiety. You might say it's crippling, I don't know, but it's very, very challenging for me and I'm hoping, by talking more about these issues, I can get much better at not being, you know, being so afraid when I'm around people especially, especially large groups of people.
Alisha Coakley:Yeah Well, I just love that. It warms my heart because I know Larry, he, you know he struggled with with his own anxiety and stuff like that too, and so it's just it's really neat to kind of like see and larry came. He was on the show a while ago, wasn't it about a year ago, scott yeah it was.
Alisha Coakley:It was a while ago, so just to see, like how, how he shared his story about a year ago and it still is producing good today. I'm so excited for you because I know parts of your story.
Alisha Coakley:Gosh darn, you guys were picking on me about being a cry baby and I'm already starting to tear up now but, you know, I do know parts of your story, and I just know that it's going to be so far reaching too that we're going to have someone a year from now who says I got to hear Carl and he was so inspirational to me, so I'm just gonna put that, yeah, I think I think what larry did by showing that it's okay to have these types of issues.
Carl Hovey:It's huge, especially especially for people like me. It's huge to know that you're not alone and other people are struggling.
Scott Brandley:So thank you, larry yeah, that's cool, and I remember talking to larry to try to convince him to get on the show and the thing that one of the main reasons he decided to do it was because he told me it's like if I can just help one person, then it'll be worth it. So that's really cool to have that come back right.
Carl Hovey:Well, he helped me and he'll be forever stuck in my mind. I'm sure.
Scott Brandley:that's awesome.
Alisha Coakley:Well, we'll make sure he gets that message. Yeah, thank you.
Scott Brandley:Yeah Well, I'm excited to hear your story. I mean, you've talked to Alisha about it, but I haven't heard it. But I've heard a lot of good things about it, so let's jump in. The floor is yours, my friend.
Carl Hovey:Okay, well, I appreciate the opportunity to be able to do this. So my story pretty much starts when I was four. We were living in West Valley and we were a pretty well-to-do middle-class family. We had a new home, six-bedroom home. We had new things, new furniture, new cars. I remember having nice meals around the kitchen table and you know, we had all the the nice new things. Um, my dad at that time had some money. I'm not really sure all the details of where he got the money from and how much money it was, but it was enough money to start an airplane business flying tours over the Grand Canyon.
Scott Brandley:Okay.
Carl Hovey:And, yeah, he took us up in that airplane once and I remember that's probably where my fear of airplanes came from. But my dad was the money side of things and his partner was the pilot and my dad bought the airplane and got the business rolling and got everything going, from what I understand, and his partner was the guy that was going to do all the tours. I'm not really sure how long that business went for. I don't know if it was six months or a couple of years. I don't recall talking to my dad about that, but what happened was is one day the pilot in the airplane disappeared, never to be found again. I talked to my dad before.
Carl Hovey:Like they crashed, don't know.
Alisha Coakley:Somewhere, or like he just like took off.
Carl Hovey:Don't know. My dad suspects he stole the airplane and bailed, but my dad didn't have the money to pursue it. He did let the police know that this happened but I don't know if the police couldn't find him or what happened there. My dad at this time because he went all in with his money, he was extremely broke. The irs was coming to you know, try to get all the money from him that he owed and taxes and stuff like that. So I think my dad did call the police and tell the police that he thinks that this guy stole these airplane. But I did ask my dad before he died if anything ever became of this guy in this airplane and my dad said he never learned anything about it. So my dad, to the day of his dying breath, never knew if he crashed and they never found him, or if he just stole the airplane and went somewhere else. So that is still a mystery. Wow, went somewhere else. So that is still a mystery. Well, so so now my dad is left with this uh, nine member family, seven, seven kids, and, well, my mom was pregnant, so it's actually six kids at the time. Um, the IRS was poking, trying to get money out of my dad and, I'm thinking, threatening to take the house. Um, I didn't again, I was four. I didn't have all these details, so I've learned a lot of this stuff later on.
Carl Hovey:Um, my dad was a member of the church. He's a converted member of the church. He didn't grow up in the church, but when he met my mom in his 20s, after he got back from the Marines, the Korean War, he met my mom and joined the church. My mom has always been an active member of the church and so he went into the bishop to ask the bishop for help and again, I don't know the details, but the bishop told him um, he needed to sell off everything that he had that was extra before they were going to step in and help him. And my dad took that as you're not going to help us then, and he left the church and got bitter. My mom stayed faithful and so, because of that, we continued to go to church and and do all the church things During this time.
Carl Hovey:I I say that we were homeless, but I don't know if that's really fair to say. We were kicked out. The IRS gave us a time that we needed to be out, but we had nowhere to go. The IRS gave us a time that we needed to be out, but we had nowhere to go. Turns out that in Grantsville we were living in West Valley. In Grantsville my mom had some aunts and uncles that owned a lot of property out on Burmester Road, a farming area, and they had a old tire shed that they decided to give our family. Now this tire shed was full of tires and tire equipment and just things like that, because the farmers were just using it for a place to put their tractor tires and stuff like that.
Carl Hovey:I'm thinking what happened was is while we were waiting to be totally kicked out of this house, my parents must have been going to Grantsville and trying to fix this tire shed up, cleaning it out and trying to fix it up so that we could live there.
Carl Hovey:They put a roof on it, they put some old doors in it.
Carl Hovey:They kind of mapped out three bedrooms one bedroom on one end, one bedroom on the other end and the living room kitchen and me and my brother's bedroom in the living room and then when people came over to visit they would have to sit on our beds as couches to talk to us.
Carl Hovey:That was the couches. I remember a lot of times I'd be falling asleep on my bed and there'd be somebody from the ward visiting and they'd be sitting on the edge of my bed talking to my parents and then in the middle of the house. So then in the middle of the house my dad had put a coal burning stove. This coal burning stove we only had cold water running to our house. So my dad took this coal burning stove and to get hot water to our house he took some copper piping and he wrapped that copper piping about 50 times around the stove pipe, going up to the ceiling, and then he ran the cold water through that as the stove was burning, and then that would warm the water up and that's where we got our warm water for washing our hands, taking baths and things like that.
Scott Brandley:That's pretty clever.
Carl Hovey:Yeah, yeah, he was kind of an inventor, I guess. Uh, on the back of the house it had no bathroom. So my dad quickly built an eight by six I think it was bathroom on the backside of the house, put a bathtub in there, uh, a toilet and a sink and a window. The toilet was just like a regular toilet but when you flushed it it didn't go down no drains or anything like that. It went straight down into a big old hole that was dug in the ground and then it would be cleaned out every now and then and that's kind of our, our living environments.
Carl Hovey:My mom was fairly clean, I guess she was a clean person, so she was able to keep this really old house pretty clean inside. Um, even though our walls were just two by fours and, uh, wood panels, the floors were swept, the wood floor. The wood floor was similar to a wood floor you would expect to see in a 18, I don't know, 1850, 1870s home just a wood floor, no carpet. Over time we may have got some carpets, uh rugs from people to lay down here and there, um, but that's if, if there, if there were um carpet or anything like that, it was from the rugs and stuff like that, that, um that were put down and and this is in utah, where you do get snow and everything like that too, so it's not like you.
Alisha Coakley:You know down South where it's going to be warm all the time you guys had yeah.
Carl Hovey:Yeah, so it's, yes, it it. During the winters it would get below zero and during the summers it would get up to 90 degrees or so, and we didn't have air conditioning or heaters. Uh, our heater was our stove and our air conditioning was fans. Um, or the windows, or the windows being open. That was pretty much what we had to um deal with. Um, all of our clothes, our food, everything came from the church, or or church family members or church friends, neighbors. We never went and bought clothes from anywhere other than the DI, or we went to the Bishop's storehouse and that's how we got all of our clothes or hand-me-downs from other church members. Um, so, yeah, that's that, that's kind of our house, that's that's kind of our, our living environment inside the house, for right now it gets a little bit worse than that.
Carl Hovey:One of the things that I wanted to mention was when you live in this type of an environment and you're this poor and you're in a small town, my classes, or the amount of people that were in, say, my first grade, second grade, third grade, was only 30 kids. So the whole school was like 30 kids. So you, you knew everybody and everybody knew you, and so I was getting teased quite a bit and I think this is what brought on possibly some of my low self-esteem issues. We obviously weren't dressing the nicest. Um, I don't think that we stunk, but we obviously weren't dressing the nicest.
Carl Hovey:I don't think that we stunk, but you know, my mom kept things pretty clean, so I have to imagine that at least we didn't stink, but we were treated as though we did and we were avoided, we were shunned, we were teased, picked on and really during these years the only friend that I had was my brother. You know, I had three sisters that were older than me. I had one sister that was younger than me. We had a baby that was born, but then it was just me and my brother, my brother Neil, the one that ends up getting cancer, is he?
Scott Brandley:older or younger than you.
Carl Hovey:He was one year older than I, so I was trying to tag along with him and be his buddy and he was my hero and the cool dude. You know, he's the person that I always wanted to hang around and so to hang around and uh, so, so, yeah, we got. We got picked on quite a bit and, uh, it wasn't terrible. It wasn't like people were stealing our food and dumping milk on our heads and and punching us and tripping us and stuff like that. Um, but for me, you know, being left out. I would hear about birthday parties kids were having and somehow everybody was there but me. I never got an invitation and these things started building pretty bad self-esteem issues, I think, with the way that I thought. And there was this one kid I'm going to use his name, I'm going to say his name was John.
Carl Hovey:There was this one kid that I met when I was four and he was going to my church. He was going to my church and he was from a pretty I would call it wealthy compared to where I came from, but it probably more likely was upper middle class. Uh, he had all the nice things nice house, nice car, good looking kid that dressed nice. It seemed like most of the kids gravitated around him. He was in my church and he always had high positions, like the president of the deacon's quorum, president of the teacher's quorum, whatever. He seemed to be the go-to guy and most of the kids liked him, it seemed to me, and so I tried really hard to be his friend. I wanted to be his friend because I thought if I could be his friend he would be the one person that could convince all these other kids to be my friend and not pick on me and and accept me and. But it didn't happen. It didn't happen. In my mind it actually seemed like it went the other direction and I felt like he was doing the majority of the teasing and I felt like he was, uh, the biggest reason why everybody else was picking on me. And so I kind of started blaming him for everything and in my mind he was, he was actually doing all these things. In my mind I started putting all all the things that were going wrong on me, on this particular kid.
Carl Hovey:So anyway, time moves on. I think it's important that I kind of give the audience an understanding of who my parents were, what kind of parents I was dealing with. So I'm going to start out with my mom. My mom was a very passive woman who had a slight mental disability that few people ever knew she had. As a wife, she was submissive and controlled. However, when it came to her faith, my dad had no power. My mom was the reason I made it through the tough years and is the reason I embrace this gospel. She was solid her whole life with her testimony and she died a few years ago, never once questioning her faith. My mom spent the last years, the last five years of her life, actually telling my dad she's in charge and my dad saying OK, ok, OK and that was awesome Now my dad.
Carl Hovey:My dad was a Marine who served in the Korean War in 1953. 1953. I believe his parenting style came from this training and some abuse he had been going through as he was growing up. My dad was loud, he yelled a lot. He was a time bomb ticking. He was a doomsdayer. Everything was the end of the world person. He used a loud voice to intimidate. He used a leather belt and sticks to hit me and punish me and intimidate me. He used a very strong hand to spank me on the behind. That would leave welts and bruises. I learned to cry and submit quick and I also learned to lie so I wouldn't get punished. Now saying that his last 25 years of his life he rejoined the church and learned to control his actions and I learned about his life and we became really good friends, if not best friends. So that's a good story there.
Scott Brandley:Yeah, that's good to hear that.
Carl Hovey:You know, I love when people turn around and shows that people can change right yes, yes, but during, but during that particular time, with how abusive he was, it just made things harder with what we were going through.
Scott Brandley:Yeah, when you're young, right for sure when I was young I didn't.
Carl Hovey:I didn't have somebody I could go talk to and feel safe around and comfortable. I could go talk to my mom and feel safe around her, but because my mom had this slight mental disability and she was just so passive she didn't really say a whole lot. You know, she wasn't the type of mom to roll around on the floor with you or really grab you and hug you and stuff like that. She was there for you. I knew she loved me. Um, she loved all of her kids unconditionally. Nobody was better than anybody else in the house she made. She made us all feel that way. But I didn't really get the hugging and loving and the talking to, the explaining why things are going on and things like that. So most of my bringing up I had to figure things out on my own and come to my own conclusions and so anyway, um, I'm 11, my brother's 12. We got good enough at baseball that we both made the all-star team. I made the 12-year-old all-star team at 11 and actually was the shortstop. We had a baseball tournament in Salt Lake City and we were super excited to go to this game. Me and my brother were a couple of the two best players on the team and this was exciting. And when we got to the tournament we were just a little bit late and I remember telling my brother hurry, hurry, hurry, we're going to be late, we're going to be late. And he's like I'm not feeling good, I'm not feeling good. My mom picked up on this and started checking into it and he was starting to puke and get really sick and and I still was like hurry, come on, let's go, we're going to miss this game, let's go. So I started kind of going the direction of the baseball game, trying to encourage him to come along, and my mom's like, no, you just go to the game, you just go to the game, we'll be there shortly, we'll be there shortly. And I'm like, okay, well, you know, my brother was the whole reason I was going to this game. I was going to this game to have fun with my brother, plain and simple. I really didn't know a whole lot about baseball and winning and stuff like that. I just wanted to go play and have fun. This is, this was where I was at in life.
Carl Hovey:And, uh, the game started and I'm playing shortstop and he still hasn't shown up and I'm I've got most of my focus on where he is, and I remember one of the first plays the ball was hit to me and instead of throwing the ball to first base, I figured if I ran over to face first base I could get a better look or a better view of what's going on with my brother without leaving the game. I was super worried about what was going on there, but turns out we played the whole game and he never showed up. Um, he wasn't able to play in that game and so when I left the game I ran back over to the car to see what was going on and he was just so sick, so sick, and you know the the the car smelt like puke and he was. It was sad. It was sad for a lot of reasons, you know, um and I didn't know what was going on. I just figured he had the flu.
Carl Hovey:Well, the next day, um parents take him to primary children's hospital where we learned that he's got terminal bone cancer, and this is why he ended up being sick. And after we learned he had terminal bone cancer, my parents learned that he had terminal bone cancer. My parents came home and then we had a family meeting where we were told about this bone cancer, what it was all about and what we were to expect with the cancer. And still my brother is sick and I'm sure he's still unsure of what this really means. I'm unsure of what this really means.
Carl Hovey:When the meeting was over, I remember just being so sad because I kind of knew what death meant. But I, there was just a lot of things going on in my mind and I remember he went over to his bed and he was laying down and I went over to play with him. And that's when my dad told me to stop playing with him and leave him alone. And so I went back over to my bed, which is basically attached to his bed, it's just on the other wall and I just laid there looking at him and thinking you know, what can I do to? What can I do? You know, I didn't know what to do. And then I had this thought in my mind that I know what I can do. I can fix him. I'm going to fix him. Jesus is going to help me fix him. I'm going to pick my life up. I'm going to fix him. Jesus is going to help me fix him. I'm going to pick my life up, I'm going to start doing things better, I'm going to be so good. God is going to bless me and he is going to heal my brother, and I knew it was going to happen and my prayer was answered. This was going to happen, and so I went into overdrive trying to figure out things I could do to to to save my brother.
Carl Hovey:But as his cancer progressed, he started distancing himself from me and then other emotions started happening inside of my head, like why does he hate me? Now I'm trying to just be his friend and he doesn't want me to be around and and gosh, what's what's going on? And at the same time, I'm seeing his hair fall out and I'm starting to see him get sick all the time and not wanting to do things. And then, about six months into this, we were told that they were going to have to remove. I thought they said they were going to have to remove his leg, and so I was worried that his he was going to not have a leg. And but turns out, from the knee to the ankle there's two bones and he had to have one of the bones removed, which was the main bone that had most of the cancer in it. So it was bone cancer was the main bone that had most of the cancer in it. So it was bone cancer. And so he had that bone removed and then he started wearing a brace from that point, so he had this brace on. He had this really bad limp.
Carl Hovey:He was sick, he was bald. I don't know the extent of his teasing that he took at church and at at school, but I did hear from time to time people calling him baldy and school, but I did hear from time to time people calling him Baldy and things like that. And he'd come home and he'd cry. And one time he actually ran away. He grabbed a whole box of oranges and took off across the field and we couldn't find him for a couple of days. And I just remember knowing that he did that because he was you know, he was super sad. Now my dad, um, he's trying to fix the situation too. I don't know exactly what's going on in his mind or my mom and dad's mind, um, cause I'm I'm still only 10, 11 and 12.
Carl Hovey:And my dad reads the book and he gets this idea that he can cure my brother's cancer if he changes our diet. So my dad gets rid of our fridge, cuts a hole in the floor of our house um, it was just plywood on top of two by fours and so it was like a shed basically so you could cut a piece of the floor out which was like a about a three foot by five foot piece of wood and then he put hinges on it and then our diet changed. He had a family meeting and he told everybody at the family the reason cancer happens is because of sugar and we need to cut out all sugars and we need to cut out all carbs and we need to basically go on a fruit and vegetable diet and that's it. And he asked everybody if we were okay with doing that. But really we had no choice. My dad wasn't asking us if we wanted to do it.
Carl Hovey:My dad was pretty much telling us we were going to do this, and so he got rid of the fridge, started buying boxes of fruits.
Carl Hovey:This is where that box of oranges comes into play, where my brother stole the box of oranges and went and ran away and was going to live on oranges and do whatever he was doing, but when we wanted food we'd lift this door in the floor and we'd always have bananas, apples, oranges.
Carl Hovey:They always kept it stocked with fruit and vegetables, but that's where we got our food. We lifted this hole in the ground and it was just cold enough under the house that it kept the fruit longer than not being down there. It was kind of a little cellar For milk. We would drink powdered milk from the church, so we'd mix it with water. My dad was growing wheatgrass and so he'd take wheat and he'd put it in water and as the wheat started sprouting, the water would start changing colors. This water was the water that we would drink. Water was the water that we would drink. This was called rejuvelac, so we would drink this water for our water and then the wheat would sprout. And then he would take that sprouted wheat and he'd put it in dirt and that dirt would grow wheatgrass which is chlorophyll.
Carl Hovey:Sometimes, when you walk into these smoothie places, you'll see these little wheat grass things on the wall my dad was growing this stuff in the acres, acres and acres, and then he would cut it off and then he would put it through a grinder, it through a grinder. And then, once a day, we were required to chew on this pulp for maybe an hour, half an hour to an hour, but then when we were done chewing on the pulp, my dad would be getting this pure chlorophyll ready for us to drink.
Carl Hovey:This is the nastiest stuff you'll ever drink pure green chlorophyll, so we would all have to take this shot glass of chlorophyll every day, and we did this for five years we ate. Our pancakes consisted of wheat that was just ground up with a hammer, I think, mixed with water, and then sometimes my dad would put a little bit of peanut butter on it, or sometimes a little bit of jam on it, and that was our pancakes, and that was pretty much cooked on the coal burning stove that was in the middle of the house. That was pretty much our diet. The whole family was on it for about five years. We did have we did have a lot of popcorn, but the popcorn didn't have salt on it. It had kelp, no butter, so it was just popcorn with kelp. Um, so, yeah, that's uh, wow.
Scott Brandley:So did that help your brother.
Carl Hovey:So this is where it's kind of sad and innocent and all that stuff. Yes, we were on this diet pretty close to perfect. However, I thought my mom was just taking me and going to get in a hamburger here and there, and I thought it was me who was sneaking over to the neighbor's house and getting some candy here and there. But it turns out we were all doing that and it turns out my mom was mostly the culprit. She was taking my brother even my brother with the cancer, and I did not know this, and I'll let you make your own decisions based off of what I did, but I was still 12, 13 years old and I bought into this thing that my dad was trying to do.
Carl Hovey:So I was trying to keep the sugar away from my brother. In fact, one time by this time I'm bigger than he is because of the cancer I think it slowed him down and I caught him with a piece of candy, and this hurts me to this day because I got the candy from him. I wrestled him down and I took that candy away from him and he was telling me why can't I just eat it? And I says you can't eat it, you can't eat it and I didn't share my feelings with him. You're going to die, you got cancer. You can't eat this. At the same time I'm eating it behind his back, but I wasn't about to let him eat it, because he's got to live and this is how he's going to live. So I remember taking the candy from him and not giving it back to him, and he was.
Carl Hovey:He was angry and sad at me and and in the moment it was worth it because he didn't know I was saving his life. But in hindsight, looking back, I should have just let him have the candy and just let him enjoy his life. He was dying, you know, he was, you know I guess we were trying to heal him and make him better but it just it just wasn't, I guess, going to happen, it wasn't in the cards or whatever. Okay, so we'll just move on to um. He's now about 15 years old and I turned 14 and we get jobs at Granger high school, which is a local high school in West Valley. Um, it's a summer job and we were told that my brother's cancer was in remission and he was going to heal. He didn't have cancer anymore and it almost seemed like that was the case because he was feeling really well and he seemed to be doing the things that he wanted to do. Me and him weren't really friends anymore because it seemed like he, during those couple years he kind of grew up and I kind of got. I felt like I just kind of got left to myself to just there you go, you're, you're kind of by yourself. I mean, cancer kind of robbed my opportunity to continue growing with my brother and share those relationships that we have and that we turned.
Carl Hovey:He turned 15 and I turned 14. We get this job. And he come over and he told me my back's hurting and I'm like your back's hurting and I'm like you got to keep working or you're going to get in trouble. And he's like I can't, man, I can't, I hurt, my back hurts so bad I can't, I can't stand up. And I'm like, well, go sit down then. And I'll just go tell him that you know you need to take a break. And so I go over to the boss and I tell the boss that he needs to sit down. His back's hurting, and the boss tells me that he's just lazy and he's trying to take advantage. And I said no, he's really not lazy and he's really not taking advantage. He's got cancer. And he calls me a liar and he tells me that's not the case. And I knew at this time my brother couldn't go on. I had enough discussions with him that day that he had gone as far as he could go. So I went and got him and we quit and we left and we never did return.
Carl Hovey:Six months later he died. He died of cancer, turns out, the cancer had got in his spine and that's why he was hurting and he couldn't stand up because the cancer was eating his spine. One of his vertebrae had collapsed. This caused the tremendous pain that he was experiencing. That day, and then the last two or three months of his life was probably the most challenging for everybody in the family, because we were in such a small house. My bedroom was part of his bedroom and the only thing that separated me from him was a blanket. That was my dad, hung up on the ceiling. Um, but as he progressed towards his final days, um, many things were happening that I believe um at least gave me PTSD, really, really bad, and that was watching what the effects of cancer does to people. Anyway, it was a very, very tragic part of this cancer thing, and so it was about January. No see, it was. It was Christmas.
Carl Hovey:My dad had sent us all into West Valley to stay with our grandparents, supposedly for Christmas break. I personally think my dad knew he was going to die. Come back to haunt me, because when we went there, we came back on a Sunday. The next Sunday, which was January 1st, we went directly to church. We didn't go home first, we went directly to church, and it was at church where the bishop came and took me out of primary and told me that my brother had passed, and so so the first thing that went through my mind was why wasn't I there? How come I wasn't allowed to be there? Why, you know, why wasn't I there? And is he really dead? I don't know. We got to go make sure, I guess.
Carl Hovey:Um, and then the really creepy thing is my did my dad killing? I? In my mind, I thought my dad sent us to west valley so that he could kill him. A mercy killing, I guess. I don't think that's the case. I think he just my dad knew that the time was coming. He was probably going to die because he was at that point, and I believe that's how it went down. But in my mind, at 14 years old, I wondered if my dad sent us away so that he could kill him.
Carl Hovey:And so, anyway, we drive to the house. I'm still kind of in shock, not knowing what to expect. We get there and there's about 30 people at the house and I walk immediately into the back room and I see that he's dead and I look at him and he's looking at the ceiling and he's gone and I, just in my mind, I was just like it really happened. He's gone, why. You know why did this happen. You know why did this happen. I went over and I gave him a kiss and I turned around and I walked out of that room and I was so mad at God. I was so mad. You promised me you were going to heal him.
Carl Hovey:I did all these things. I went to church. I treated people kindly. You took my brother, my friend. I had a hug from a friend, especially the popular ones at church. It was now it was. It was during that time I was so vulnerable. Anybody could have walked up and just spooked me off my feet. I, I. If it would have been a church kid, I probably would have just went and just spooked me off my feet. If it would have been a church kid, I probably would have just went to Stollard Church on a mission. But that didn't happen. It was the rough crowd or the other crowd come up and embraced me, grabbed me, told me they were sorry, brought me into their pack, showed me that life could be happy. And that's how, or one of the reasons, I gravitated towards, you know, the life of drugs and alcohol and cigarettes, and and that these guys were my buddies, they were intoxicating, they were, they were really friends.
Scott Brandley:Yeah.
Carl Hovey:None of the church kids were coming up to me, giving me hugs, telling me to come to church, telling me to come to this and come to that. In my mind I drew a picture that they were glad that this happened. Now Carl will be away. Two weeks after we buried my brother, I still gave church a chance and I was in the scouts and I was working on my Eagle Scout and I was a few months from getting my Eagle Scout and I was a few months from getting my Eagle. This popular kid, John, had already got his Eagle. Several of the kids already got their Eagles. I was really in my mind hoping that they would know my brother died and this would be when they would approach me and they would tell me I'm sorry, Sorry, this happened.
Scott Brandley:Right.
Carl Hovey:Come hang out with us, come to this birthday party, come do this. But I remember, sitting in this circle of about 10 kids. Nobody said a word, not even the teacher. There was no apologies. There was no, I'm sorry's. There was nothing in the teacher. There was no apologies. There was no, I'm sorry's, there was nothing.
Carl Hovey:And I'm sitting there in this scout room just kind of contemplating what I'm going to do from here when all of a sudden I get hit by something in my face. I'm like what in the heck? And I see this thing dangling out of the side of my cheek. What the heck is going on? And I hear this uncontrollable laughter going on. I'm like what the heck? And I reach over and I pop this eight inch straw out of my cheek inch straw out of my cheek. Turns out that John and his friend I won't give his real name, we'll call him Mike had taken a straw and a rubber band and decided they were going to have some fun and shoot me in the face with a straw. And I remember turning and looking and they were laughing so uncontrollably. I was so mad and so sad. I just I didn't even, I didn't even get up and walk away, I just took the abuse. I sat there and the teacher said something like you guys, stop it, you're going to hurt somebody, you're going to put somebody's eye out, and that was it. We moved on. We started doing scout things. They never come up to me, said that they were sorry, they never did anything, and I knew in my mind John is the one that shot that straw into my face, this kid that I've been trying to be friends with my entire life.
Carl Hovey:That day I got up and I walked away from the church to never return ever again. Not only that, but I vowed I would never pray, ever in my life. And I did exactly that. I walked away from everything. I walked away from getting my Eagle Scout. I walked away from baseball playing on the high school team that I was one of the best players at the time. I dropped out of high school. I was a straight A student, dropped out of high school and started living this life of partying and just. I didn't know I was wrecking my life because this life was so intoxicating versus the life I had just came from the church kids that I was growing up with. I never had to see them again, but for years and years and years after that, this John kid haunted me. Everything that ever happened bad in my life from that time forward was his fault. He was the reason I left the church, so he's the reason all these bad things are happening, and I literally hated this kid more than I'd ever hated anybody in my entire life for years and years and years.
Carl Hovey:Yeah, I'm partying and I'm having fun and this is a new life and all that stuff, but what nobody knew was inside of my head. What was going on inside of my head? I'm going to call it PTSD again. I'm not exactly sure what it was, but I started practicing dying. I started practicing for my turn to die. My brother was only one year older than I knew that my brother died when he was the day before his 16th birthday, so that's the first date I sent.
Carl Hovey:I knew the day before I turned 16 myself I was going to die too, or I was going to get diagnosed with cancer. My turn was coming. It was just a matter of time. This thinking and these thoughts turned into me actually laying in my bed, pretending like I was dead, pretending like I was laying in the casket, like he was pretending as I closed my eyes to go to bed for the night that they had just shut the casket door on my, on my face. I even remember sometimes trying to wiggle the bed a little bit, pretending that I was being carried to the gravesite.
Carl Hovey:Wow, these thoughts. I would entertain these thoughts for 10 years, every day, every night, every minute, every bruise, every scratch, every itch, every cold. Everything that ever happened to me in my body was always cancer. There it is, it's coming, it's showing up, and the longer that it it stayed around, the more I thought about it, the more I knew it was just a matter of time and it was always the worst case scenario. It was never the cancer that they could dig out of my arm. It was always the brain tumor that was going to make me die the most horrible, painful, excruciating, embarrassing death that could ever happen to a person.
Carl Hovey:And yeah, so this, this, this went on for years. I I didn't know that it was bad to do this. Mentally. It actually was a coping mechanism. It actually made me be able to handle and deal, and I thought, by thinking this way and thinking about this kind of stuff, that it was helping me deal with it. But I wasn't telling anybody that I was going through these thoughts and these problems. I was dealing with all this inside of my head by myself. I was dealing with all this inside of my head by myself, and so that that was five years that I did that and of course, I partied and I did a lot of things that I shouldn't have been doing, but none of it was church related. And I had quit praying for five years and I did that like clockwork. I mean I never prayed for five years and I did that like clockwork. I mean I never prayed for five years.
Carl Hovey:And then I want to share the first miracle that happened in my eventual return back to the church. I was 19 years old. I was living at my grandparents' house at the time we and three other kids, my best friends, had snuck downstairs in my bedroom, which was in the basement of my grandparents' house. At the time my grandma and grandpa and my sister were living at the house and my grandpa was a very active member of the church and he knew I'm sure he knew that I was doing some things, but he probably didn't know the extent of what I was doing.
Carl Hovey:And this particular night, at 19 years old, it's January, probably January 10th, I'm guessing. It's bitter cold, it's probably 10 below outside, so that's why we're downstairs in my bedroom. We had nowhere else to go, so we were drinking alcohol, doing drugs, smoking cigarettes. In my mind, because we were downstairs, I didn't think my grandparents could smell any of this stuff. Turns out they could. My grandparents came down, or my grandpa came downstairs and caught us right in the act and he looked at me for the first time with the devil in his eyes and he told me flat break, you know. He told me straight up get out, get out, that's all he said, and don't come back. Well, I was embarrassed and I was scared and I was high, and so I just got up and walked out of the house and my friends grabbed their coats. I didn't even think about that, I just walked outside. I was so afraid that I just went outside.
Carl Hovey:When we got outside, I realized really quickly how cold it was outside and I was like oh my gosh, what are? What are we going to do? Me, having some church experience, decide. I decide that I know how to break into a church, so I'm going to go break into it. We're going to go break into the local church and we're going to party there. My friends none of my friends were had any, any church experience at all. They never grew up in any religion or any church or anything like that. I'm the only one that had church experience. In fact, the other three kids didn't have any church experience either, of any kind. So we went over to the church and we broke in and we were playing basketball, with beer cans in the church and just you know, just partying and spilling beer everywhere and smoking cigarettes and things like that in the church.
Carl Hovey:And the night ended fairly quickly because we started getting scared, the police were going to show up and stuff like that. So that only lasted for about an hour. So we left, and when we left it's about one or two o'clock in the morning and my three friends bailed on me and I knew I didn't have a place to go and I asked them if I could come with them and they all three told me no and I begged them. They told me no, and so they just left me, and I begged them and they told me no, and so they just left me. They left me standing in the street by myself. So I'm, I'm, I can't remember, but I used to like to wear short cutoff shirts, and so I'm sure that's probably what I was wearing, freezing to death, knowing that the only place I really got to go is to my grandpa's house.
Carl Hovey:To my grandpa's house, and I was pretty sure that I could go, knock on the door and my grandpa would have forgiven me already and let me inside the door. But I go up to the door and I knock on the door and my grandpa answers the door with a little crack and I'm like can I come in? And he says I told you to leave, go away. And he shuts the door in my face like can I come in? He says I told you to leave, go away. And he shuts the door in my face.
Carl Hovey:And now I'm seeing a different side of my grandpa that I didn't really know existed, and so I knock on the door again and he refuses to answer the door, and so I stand around for five or ten more minutes and, and I'm cold, I'm starting to get scared, and so he wouldn't answer the door. So I figured if I went over to their bedroom door, grandma would hear me and grandma would come open the door for me. So I knocked on the, I knocked on the window and the window opened and my grandpa, from the window bedroom window tells me to go away, don't come back. And I'm like, so I try to give him the spill. He says no, he shuts the window. And again I'm standing there. So I make one final attempt. I go back to the door and I just start pounding on the door. And I just know that because he's been a member of the church his whole life, you know, the spirit will overcome him and he'll answer this door and he'll let me in. And so I pound on that door and and he opens the door and he says I told you to go away and I was dead serious. You are not coming back in my house, you need to go find a different place to stay tonight. And he shuts the door in my face.
Carl Hovey:And it was so sincere that I knew that I was in trouble. So I walked down the street about five or six houses and by the time I get down about that far, I'm so cold that now I'm starting to worry that I possibly could die. It is so cold I can't even stand it and I hadn't nowhere to go. I ran up to a friend of mine's, another friend of mine's and I climbed down into his little window and I knocked on the door. I knocked on the window. I thought I was knocking quietly because I was hoping he'd open the window and let me come in and spend the night in his bedroom because he was super cool he's not the type that turns anybody away and the window opens and there's a shotgun in my face and the guy turned out to be his dad. And the guy said you got about two seconds to get out of this or I'm going to blow your head off. And I was like I tried to give him the spill but he wasn't having it. He didn't know who I was. He thought I was robbing his house and he said get away. And I realized that fairly quick and I jumped out of that window and I ran away. And so now that made me scared to go to any other friend's house, thinking that I came pretty close to getting shot. So I ran back up to my grandparents' house and I didn't know what to do. So I wasn't.
Carl Hovey:I was about five houses away from my grandpa's house and they the good old saying you know well, I'll just say this it was time to pray. Carl was going to pray for the first time in five years. It just was that moment. So I stuck my head between my legs. Of course I don't want anybody to see that I'm praying, because I'm too proud to let any of my friends know that I pray. I'm still mad at Heavenly Father, so I wasn't really sure how that was going to work. I pray. I was still mad at Heavenly Father, so I wasn't really sure how that was going to work out. But I was desperate. So I put my head between my legs and I said a prayer Heavenly Father, will you please have my grandpa answer that door and let me come in? I need your help Now.
Carl Hovey:When I was away from the church, I never stopped believing in God and I never stopped believing in the church really. But I was in payback mode and so I went back. I got and that was probably a 10 second prayer, maybe a 20 second prayer, but it was the first one I'd prayed in five years and I went back over to the house. I knocked on the door. Immediately the door opened. My grandpa said come on in, you can spend the night, but tomorrow morning you got to go see your dad. It was that quick, the courage to start praying again. I wasn't praying every day, I was only praying when I needed it, because I was going to continue partying and just start praying now, you know.
Carl Hovey:So that was step one, miracle number one so I get married at 20. I get married, but I get married to a girl who has no affiliation with any religion. She's not whatever. And that was okay with me, because I never planned on going back to church either, really. And so I got married and our first child turns out to be disabled. She's got cerebral palsy. She spent the first six months of her life in an incubator at Primary Children's Hospital. And again I thought to myself why God, why, you know, you kill my brother, send me a disabled child. This is, you're mean, you're like totally, totally mean, you're a horrible, you're a horrible person. Why do I deserve this? This is, this is not good. And so you know. So these thoughts start going through my mind again at a at a really high level. And so then she's born, and then, five years later, we have our second child. Our second child is healthy and everything goes good there. I decide I want to start kind of going back to church. I start putting my foot back into the church and I start going back to church. Uh, I start putting my foot back into the church and I start going back to church.
Carl Hovey:I meet a couple of guys that are just totally incredible people, in fact, so incredible. I got to mention their names. Um, jared Winter befriended me and took me to basketball and, you know, showed me that you can have fun and you can have friends and and this is good and cool. Then there was Russell Lewis. He was my home teacher. He was my age, he was a bodybuilder. I think he may have won Mr Utah once. He was a couple of years older than me and I just was impressed by this guy.
Carl Hovey:He was just cool and he was every week without fell for months and months and months. He showed up to my house to check on me. He showed up to share a gospel message. He showed up. He showed up and told me every time he left don't believe what I'm saying, just pray about the Book of Mormon and you'll get your answer, just trust me. And he'd say that all the time. And I used to think that's kind of weird, kind of an odd way to end our meeting or whatever, but it ended up sticking in my head.
Carl Hovey:There is one other person that I want to mention. He was an elder from California. His name was Elder Tapasoa. He ended up baptizing my wife. At the time, my wife was just going through the motions, but he ended up baptizing my wife. And during his lessons, which I was always involved with, he reconverted me, I think without him knowing.
Carl Hovey:So anyway, I try to start going back to church. I'm 26 years old, but my wife doesn't want to. She's bored. Her family, turns out, are all anti-Mormons, so they're telling me everything bad you can possibly think of. I'm just scaring me from trying to go to church.
Carl Hovey:But I got this disabled child now that I got to step up and take care of, and I got this infant baby I got to step up and take care of and I didn't want to have any regrets as these kids were being raised. So I wanted to get them in church and I wanted to go, but I had such opposition from my wife and my wife's parents about going to church it was nearly impossible to be able to go, let alone consistently go, to church. So that same year it's about April now my wife comes up to me out of the blue and drops a bomb on me. Um, I had no idea that there was really anything wrong.
Carl Hovey:I actually thought things were great because I was starting to go to church again. I quit smoking, I quit drinking, and she tells me that I'm boring, she wants a divorce and oh, by the way, I cheated on you last night and I'm in love with somebody else. Oh no, and that was hard. I was so dedicated to my family and so in it for the long run, and so committed I couldn't believe it. I was just beside myself. I was so yeah.
Alisha Coakley:Oh, sorry, and I imagine did you have any thoughts of like see.
Carl Hovey:I try to be good again. And now everything got suicidal. I got depressed my brother's death, my daughter being handicapped and what we went through to take care of her all the things that was going on there. Now my wife has cheated on me and wants a divorce, and I'm the type that she cheated on me. I knew it was over. I just couldn't see going forward. I knew it was over. So one night she leaves it's about seven o'clock at night, she leaves the house and she leaves with the kids and I decide I'm going to take my life.
Carl Hovey:I went and grabbed a gun and it was a good time to do it and I went to the place I was going to do it, which was at my house, and then, for whatever reason, I just knew I couldn't do it. I knew I couldn't do it for a lot of reasons. I wasn't about to do it and have my family come back and see me. I wasn't going to do it because I didn't know what happens to people that commit suicide when they get to heaven. I wasn't going to do it because I was chicken and I was just being a victim, being angry and mad and all that stuff, and I was so mad at God, and so I decided I was going to go upstairs and I was going to pray to my Heavenly Father and I was going to have a serious talk. And so I did exactly that and I kneeled on the bed and offered up I feel, one of the most heartfelt prayers I have ever offered in my life and I just had a talk with him and I told him I actually feel like I was submitting to him and saying OK, you win, just help me. That was kind of the gist of it.
Carl Hovey:I was, I was ready to just give in. You win, you're winning, you won the game. Just tell me what to do. Give me something to hold on, to, give me something that can allow me to do what I need to do with my family and get my life back on track. But I need something, and I think you know I need something and you know that you've given me more than I can handle, which you promised you would never do. That was it. And then there's something that happened that I talked to Alisha about, but I'm not going to talk about that. Basically, after that prayer, I walked downstairs and prayer I walked downstairs and right as I walked downstairs, my wife and the kids walked through the front door, so I thought that was pretty cool. I thought that was kind of God sent, if you will, that my wife leaves. I do what I did. I go upstairs, I pray, and as soon as I'm done, they walk in the house.
Carl Hovey:God needed 10 or 15 minutes with me alone and he set that up. So, anyway, the next day I come home, I'm I've just joined a softball team in in Murray, utah, which is about 30 miles from my home, something that I really wanted to do. I always played baseball, but I quit. And now I'm going back to do softball and I wanted to be early to my game and I wanted to get there and practice and meet the new guys and have fun. And I start driving with my baseball bat, in my baseball uniform and I'm headed to go play a game and all of a sudden I feel like I'm having a heart attack. I lose my breath. And it was serious enough. It was serious enough that I pulled over to the, to the side of the road, and I'm thinking to myself what's going on? Are you having a heart attack? I'm holding my chest, I can barely breathe and I've always worried about dying my whole life. So, okay, this is how I'm going to die. And then, all of a sudden, that feeling goes away and I have this overwhelming impression. It was so loud that I kind of describe it like somebody just said in my ear Carl, you need to get over to your grandpa's house now, and I was like what the heck? I'm going to my baseball game, I can't go over to my grandpa's house. And I started thinking about all this stuff. But it was such a clear you need to go over to your grandpa's house now that I knew that I would regret it if I didn't go over there. And so I quickly thought to myself and realized I could probably do both. So I just took off, probably breaking the speed limit, and headed over to my grandpa's house so I could figure out what's going on at grandpa's house and then get to my baseball game.
Carl Hovey:I get over to my grandpa's house, jump out of the truck, go up to the front door. The front door is unlocked. My dad never leaves the front door unlocked. It's there are three locks on his door. Well, there's actually four locks on the door because there's a screen door that's always locked. On the screen door is this rope with an attachment on it that makes it so somebody from the outside can't. Even if they open the screen door now, they can't get the rope off the door. And then he has a regular lock and a deadbolt lock on the main wooden door that he always keeps shut.
Carl Hovey:When my dad exits the house and comes back in the house, everybody or at least my parents they always go out the kitchen, which goes into the garage so they can hop in the car and go out the garage. And then, when they come back to the house, they go through the garage, they get out and they enter the house through the kitchen. They never go through the front door. So why, when I show up to the house, is the front door unlocked? The dead bolts are unlocked. The rope to the door is unlocked. It's open.
Carl Hovey:If it wouldn't have been open, I wouldn't have been able to get in the house, most likely because I don't have a key. There's no way for me to get into the house if they lock that front door. My dad has the code to the garage door and so I can't even get the garage door open. But anyway, I found it interesting that the front door was completely open, but this overwhelming feeling starts overtaking my body that something bad has happened. Now I'm thinking I'm going to go into the house and my parents are going to be dead. Someone broke into my house and killed my parents, and so I opened the door and, with caution.
Carl Hovey:I go into the house, I start looking around. There's no signs of my parents. I run down into their bedroom. They're not there. I'm kind of looking throughout the house. The only room I didn't look into was my grandpa's room. Throughout the house, the only room I didn't look into was my grandpa's room. I run outside and I'm screaming dad, mom, where are you, where are you? So now I'm just kind of thinking they're gone. It's not that big of a deal, even though I was feeling a little scared. I ran into where my grandpa would have been to see if they took my grandpa to the hospital. Well, I go into my grandpa's room and my grandpa's laying on the bed in this fetal position and he's shaking this rattle at me and I'm like, okay, this is weird. My grandpa is laying on the bed and my parents aren't here. Where are my parents? Why would they leave this old crippled man in his bed? You know my dad would never do anything like that.
Alisha Coakley:Um so that was kind of and at this point, sorry, I just want to make sure that the listeners know too, because I know, we know, but, um, at this point, your, your grandpa is, he's older. He's, you know, but at this point your grandpa is, he's older.
Carl Hovey:He's like nonverbal, just about yeah. So let me I do. I did OK. So my grandpa is in the stage four of cancer. He used to be a six foot 200, 220 pound man. He's now under 100 pounds.
Carl Hovey:He, um, he, we believe the cancer has entered his brain, um, and possibly dementia. Because for the last couple of months, um, all he liked to do was shake rattles and mumble. We call it gooing and gang and mumbling. So when we'd go over to the house we'd sit down next to him. My dad would have him in a kind of a lazy boy type thing in the front room and all he'd do is grab this rattle and shake it at you like he wanted you to take it from him and play with him. And I remember asking my dad what's going on? Why does he act like a two-year-old all the time? What's going on? Why does he act like a two-year-old all the time? And my dad said he's. He's not really sure unless you know, maybe the cancer's up there, maybe he's got dementia, we're not sure. He just reverts into this baby-like condition and we're not sure what's going on. And uh, the other thing that, uh, let's see. So the other thing I wanted to mention with my grandpa before we go on, is that my grandpa is the one that baptized me and my brother. He gave me and my brother the aaronic priesthood and then, after my brother died, my grandpa gave me the Melchizedek Priesthood and he did that in a wheelchair. A few years before this experience. Then he got cancer and it turned into stage four cancer.
Carl Hovey:So anyway, I'm standing in this room and I'm asking grandpa, grandpa, do you know where mom and dad went? And he just looks at me and he's got this rattle and he's gooing and ganging and I'm just like, grandpa, do you know where mom and dad went? The reason I'm kind of saying this is because I got a softball game I got to get to. I've got this elderly man home in this bed that's four feet off the ground. He's gonna fall out of the bed. He's gonna try to get out of the bed. He's gonna hurt himself, burn the house down. But hey, I've got a softball game I got to go to and I didn't want to miss that softball game for nothing. And so I'm starting to get kind of selfish. Yeah, I'm going to leave this old man sitting here on this bed and I'm going to my softball game. I don't know where my parents are, but I don't care. And uh, so I'm standing there just staring at my grandpa and he just continues to shake this rattle and goo and ga, and I start getting a little frustrated. So I'm like, okay, grandpa, well, if everything's okay, I'm going to leave. And he just shakes this rattle at me. I'm like, all right, well, I'm going to go.
Carl Hovey:So I made the decision to leave my grandpa home alone.
Carl Hovey:I'm going to go. So I made the decision to leave my grandpa home alone and I turned to walk out of the door and as soon as I took one step, I heard somebody say Carl, don't leave, there's something I'm supposed to tell you. It sounded like a 30 year old man's voice. I turned around and my grandpa is sitting on the edge of his bed, straight up, and he's looking up at the right corner of the room and he says Carl, don't leave, there's something I'm supposed to tell you. And he turns and he looks at me and he turns and he looks back up at the corner of the room and he says Carl, don't leave, there's something I'm supposed to tell you. And so I'm standing there just kind of taking this in, thinking okay, okay, what's he supposed to tell me? You know, um, but this overwhelming feeling of just light is just in it, kind of in me, just kind of like I knew I was experiencing spiritual experience yeah and then he does it like one more time.
Carl Hovey:so he does this about three times. Carl, don't leave, there's something I'm supposed to tell you. And he looks back up at the right upper corner of his bedroom. Now, you have to remember that he's laying on his bed, and when he's laying on the bed, this is where he would be looking. When he's laying on his bed when he's laying on his bed. Um, so anyway, he's sitting now. His feet are off the floor, probably about a foot, and I know for me at 54, when I jumped that distance.
Carl Hovey:It kind of hurts a little bit Um, but he's 90, he's 87, dying cancer. And he just jumps off the bed. Boom Walks right past me at a fast pace, still saying in a 30-year-old man's voice Carl, hold on, or Carl, there's something I'm supposed to tell you, don't leave gets into the front room, he sits down into his couch and he sits with his back straight and like as if he's 30 years old and he starts digging through this box of toys and I'm thinking to myself, oh, what's he going to tell me? What, what? Now I'm pretty sure it's a spiritual experience and I'm not sure I'm ready to hear something, because I don't know that I want to go to the temple tomorrow and start paying tithing and do all this stuff.
Carl Hovey:And I wasn't ready for it. I wasn't ready for what he was about, ready to tell me, and so I was actually getting a little bit nervous that he was going to tell me something really significant and it would be like Joseph Smith. And now you know, and you have to do, and it was kind of cool, but at the same time it was scary because I had all these addictions and all these. This is all going on really quick inside of my mind. Yeah right.
Carl Hovey:So meanwhile he's digging through this box of toys, dug into this box of toys, and he says, carl, don't leave about three more times, as he's kind of looking at me and digging through the toys and at the bottom of the box he grabs this book and he pulls it up and it's the Book of Mormon. There was a Book of Mormon at the bottom of all these toys. And then he starts. He actually shows the Book of Mormon to me, kind of like this I don't know if you guys can see that or not and he starts going through the Book of Mormon, like this, and he gets to about the middle of the Book of Mormon and then he starts pointing on it and he's looking at me and he's saying Carl, there's something I'm supposed to tell you, there's something I'm supposed to tell you, but I can't remember what it was. Drops the book, falls back into the chair. His eyes roll back into his head. Drops the book, falls back into the chair, his eyes roll back into his head. And now he's back into this state that I remember that he always is and that he was.
Carl Hovey:When I first walked into that room he wasn't there anymore. He was incoherent. He actually reached back down and grabbed a toy and started shaking it at me and he was gooing and ganging like as if he wanted me to take the toy from him Like this. I was so shaken and overwhelmed as to what I had just seen and experienced. I turned around, I walked out the front door, got in my truck and I went to my softball game and I left my grandpa sitting in the chair and I didn't have a cell phone so I couldn't call my parents. Later on, after the softball game, I rushed home, I got on my home phone and I called my dad and before I could say anything, my dad says Carl, do you know how grandpa got in the front room? And I'm like, yeah, I need to talk to you about that. Is there any way that I can come see you guys in the morning, cause there's too much to tell you? And my dad said, yeah, you can, you can come over and we'll be ready for you, so that next morning I show up and, uh, the first thing I asked my parents is where were you guys last night? And my dad had informed me that he had earlier.
Carl Hovey:He left my mom home with grandpa cause they put grandpa out of bed and he bought this big old box of oranges and he couldn't lift it by himself and there was nobody around the store to help him lift it. So he thought that he could come home and he only lived five miles from Harmon's. He figured he could just come home, grab mom and take mom down to the store. Mom can help him lift the box of oranges into the car and they could race back home, take mom down to the store. Mom can help him lift the box of oranges into the car and they could race back home. He told me that he put grandpa to bed and this is something that's been happening for a year or two. Grandpa would always stay in bed and go to sleep and there was never any problems. So he just figured he could just leave and grandpa would stay in bed and think that they're home and he could go down and get the box of oranges and come back to the house. And uh, it so happens that he was only gone for 15, 20 minutes max and uh, I thought about this experience every day of my life since it's happened and you know many things have been said about how he was just trying to tell me that my parents had went down to the store and this and that and all that, but I've come to the conclusion that my grandpa and me, my 30 seconds after my mom and dad left the house and I left to go to my baseball game maybe 30 seconds after my mom and dad came back to the house, wow.
Carl Hovey:So that was my experience. That was my experience that I was really excited to kind of share with everybody as to how I got my testimony of the Book of Mormon, and so I try to work things out with my wife. We don't end up getting divorced right then. I try to work things out with my wife. After I had this experience, I did everything I could to keep my marriage together and we end up getting pregnant again and my third child is born two weeks early.
Carl Hovey:However, he's born and he can't breathe. He has a breathing tube in and he just wouldn't breathe on his own. They couldn't get him to breathe on his own. Nobody knew why they just had to have this breathing tube in because he wouldn't breathe on his own. And two weeks had passed and he still. They still couldn't get him to breathe on his own. I had received the Melchizedek Priesthood a couple of years earlier and I never have given a priesthood blessing. So I decided it was time, even though I was scared because it was up in a hospital setting where doctors were coming and going and and uh. But I decided that I was going to do this and my child was more important and and this is what I was going to do, so I give my child a priesthood blessing that he would heal and he didn't. And another week goes by. We're three weeks in and the doctors you know I'm expecting a miracle like today, like you know fixing you know, but it, but it didn't happen.
Carl Hovey:Um, I prayed for him to heal and it didn't happen. I'm being impatient and a week goes by and finally they've decided that they're going to do a tracheotomy on him. They got to get him home and they got to cut a hole in his throat. They told us all the pros and cons about the trach, but they gave us no choice. Whether it was going to happen or not, it was their choice, they were going to make it. It was their choice, they were going to make it and they let us know that at this point, parents don't have that choice anymore. If the doctor feels it's life or death, and we get to make that decision. At least that's how I interpreted what they were telling me. So I I was just sad and I was just like how am I going to take care of a disabled child with cerebral palsy, quadriplegic, two or three year old child and now a kid that needs 24 hour tension with a trach, that we have to clean this thing like three times a day and once they put the trach in, it has to be there for a year? This is my understanding.
Carl Hovey:I was so overwhelmed and I had to work a full-time job and my wife that wants to divorce me is the one that's going to stay home and do all this and I again here. I am just so overwhelmed with just all these things that are going on that, um yeah, I was just again almost back to rock bottom, just like one thing after another. So the surgery was set. It was going to happen at 12 o'clock noon I think it was a Friday and on Thursday I was working and I was going paycheck to paycheck, so I had to have, every hour, every bit of money that I could have, especially with the possible medical bills that could be coming in and stuff like that. So instead of just taking the day off and going up to the hospital, I find out exactly when the surgery is going to be and I time it so that I can be up there an hour early before my son goes into surgery.
Carl Hovey:So I do exactly that I go to work, I leave work at about 10 o'clock, I get at primary children's hospital about 11 o'clock and before I go in, here comes another heartfelt prayer. I prayed in that parking lot for about 15 or 20 minutes. I didn't realize it, but I needed God to fix my son Once they put this trach in, I'm a goner, I'm done, I can't handle this. And so I prayed and I said in the prayer that if you'll heal my son, I will live this gospel till the day I die. And I promise, I covenant with you to this day. You fix my kid and this is what I will do Now what?
Carl Hovey:happened. What happens next? I don't know if it was because of the prayer or because of the blessing or because of both. I go into the hospital and I'm too late. They've already taken him to surgery. I was like, wow, you gotta be kidding me. And uh, so I'm just sitting there and I and I know the surgery's going on about a half an hour, maybe an hour has passed. Then all of a sudden the doctor comes out. I think the doctor's going to tell me that everything went good and you can go visit your, your child here in a second.
Carl Hovey:And the doctor comes over and he asked for me and my wife, um, and so we, we get together and he comes over and he kind of thinks and he goes and he reached up and he scratches his head and he looks at us. He says you know what? I have to tell you guys something he says I'm not a religious person, he said, but I had that knife and I was about ready to cut your son's throat and put this trach in, and I had this overwhelming voice tell me in my head or in my ear stop, don't cut his throat, give him one more chance. And he said him one more chance. And he said I quit, I didn't do the surgery, so your son is going back to his room. We're giving him one more day before we go through with this surgery. He says I, I just can't do it. That was at about 1230 or one o'clock on a Friday. At eight or nine o'clock that night we took my son home off the breathing machine to never have a problem again ever, wow, ever, oh, my God. So now we're going to fast forward 54 years I'm I'm or. 54 years, I'm 54 years old. This is the last one. Hopefully I can do this in 10 minutes.
Carl Hovey:I, like I said, I've hated this John guy for years and years and years and I'm now living in Grantsville. I know he's living in Grantsville. It's only a matter of time before we bump into each other. I'm thinking, and I hate this guy and I hire a mechanic to work for me. He's 24 years old, he's got an infant child, he's got well, he's got a one-year-old, I think at the time, and a five-year-old son, and he's got a child that's about ready to be born.
Carl Hovey:And he decides he's going to move to Grantsville and he moves to Grantsville, but he moves on completely the other end of Grantsville, from where I'm at, and in Grantsville there's about 20 bishops or there's two stakes, I believe, and two stake presidents, and what? 20 bishops or so? And we live in one stake and it turns out my friend lives in the other stake. But my friend has no affiliation with any churches or anything like that. He doesn't go to church. But because he was asking me questions a few weeks earlier about the church, I thought he was interested in the church.
Carl Hovey:So when he moved to Grantsville I decided to get ahold of his bishop and tell his bishop that a new family had moved into the ward and that it would be nice if he'd go over and visit them and proselyte them and all that stuff. It would be nice if he'd go over and visit them and proselyte them and all that stuff. And I tried to find the bishop but I couldn't figure out how to get a hold of this particular bishop. I didn't know how to do all that stuff. So I called Troy May, who's in my ward. He is the first counselor, the first counselor in the stake presidency in our stake, and he finds out who the the Bishop is and he gives me the Bishop's number and and the Bishop's name. And when I look at the Bishop's name and the number, I I'm shocked. The bishop turns out to be this bully that I've hated for 54 years John. I thought to myself how did such an awful, evil man become bishop?
Alisha Coakley:man become bishop.
Carl Hovey:And why is he the bishop of my friend? I was like you gotta be kidding me. Now I got to talk to him. The last person in the world I want to talk to is this guy. So I decide to do the right thing I guess religiously speaking or Christ-like speaking and I decided to text him. I sent him this text message that says there's a new family that lives there or lives at this address. I gave him the address. His name is blank. Her name is blank. They have two young kids and are having a third on Monday. She is a member, but not active. He is not a member. They are a very nice family and good friends of mine. I asked them if I could contact their ward and have them come visit them. They both said yes.
Carl Hovey:By the way, brother Troy gave me this number. I think they are hoping to find good friends in this neighborhood. They're from Tooele. Please, if you could find time, reach out to them. And so I texted that to this bishop. He texts me back and he says thank you. And then he says who is this? I'd like to be able to refer to them when I contact you.
Carl Hovey:Well, I thought about that for a minute when he said who is this? Because what I wanted to tell him was I'm a guy that's going to come over and whoop you here in about a minute. But I didn't. I just texted him back, carl Hovey. And then he texts me back and he says hey, carl, it's been a long time, how are you doing? And what went through my mind in the next 30 seconds was not very nice. It was like I was ready to give him everything I could possibly give him about how a disgusting person he is and how he ruined my life and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I decided to do something a little bit different. I'm going to read the text message that I sent him. I am kind of shocked to hear you are my employee's friends.
Carl Hovey:Bishop, my last memory of you was not real positive. If you remember, you were kind of mean to me back in those days. My last memory of you was a week after my brother Neil died and you and Mike shot a straw into my face that stuck in my cheek at Scouts. That was the last time I went to church for many years. I don't blame you for my decision or my decisions I made after that, but I definitely changed my opinion about who my friends were. You and Mike had quite the good time that day. John, I have been mad at you ever since that day yes, 40 years and I'm still angry at you Saying that I have found my way back to the church.
Carl Hovey:Eight years ago I went all in and my testimony of this church is very strong. I know the church is true and I know God loves me and because of this, I'm trying to forgive you. Recently, things have been happening that tell of this I'm trying to forgive you. Recently, things have been happening that tell me God is wanting me to forgive you. I saw you at the bank the other day Mountain America Credit Union, laugh out loud. You were standing right next to me and the teller said your name. Now you happen to be my friend's bishop. Hmm, anyway, there, it is Good to get that off my chest. Hope you are doing great and I really hope your family is great. Sounds like you are a good guy these days. That makes me very happy and God really does work miracles. I needed to tell you this for years.
Carl Hovey:When this straw incident happened, I always blamed you. I could be wrong. I was going in shock from my brother dying, but I did blame you. I'm sorry if I was wrong, but this is how I feel. So I get a text message about seven hours later, and this is in the morning, and the text message says this and I I asked him if I could share some of this stuff and he said it would be okay to do that. He even said I could share his name, but I decided that I didn't want to do that and anyway I am going to share his text message back. Okay, dear Carl, I must have fallen asleep before your text message came through.
Carl Hovey:Last night I was wakened by a notification on my work phone around 3 am and saw your read. Then my heart pounded anxiously through my chest as I read it and has been heavy ever since With all the energy of my entire heart and soul. I am sorry, so very sorry. I know sorry is just a word and forgiveness can be a process that takes time. I will work tirelessly for however long it takes to receive that from you. Truthfully, I do not have a recollection of this occurrence, but it doesn't surprise me the memory of the things I thought I used to need to do to be cool makes me shudder still today. Please know I have worked relentlessly with my own children and anyone I could influence to not be the person who I was, but to be the opposite. As far as I can see, it has worked out pretty good.
Carl Hovey:I love my Savior, jesus Christ, and trust in and rely on him for my daily bread, literally and spiritually. I trust in his atonement and strive to utilize it in all that I do. I am utterly imperfect at it, but I strive. It is through his atoning sacrifice that I hope to earn your forgiveness. As I work on that. I will give your friends all that I have. I'll make a visit today with much love and a sorrowful but hopeful heart. John Wow, I texted him back and I said that's all I needed. John, I forgive you 100%.
Scott Brandley:It's amazing.
Carl Hovey:And that was 54 years right, yeah, about 54 years of hating him. 54 years of hating him. But I have one small One, more small, um, what, uh, addition to this story. Um, we actually did go meet and talk and I got a chance to start a friendship with John and we've been texting and, and, uh, I feel like we're pretty good friends right now.
Carl Hovey:But just three days before this podcast, I decided I wanted to fast for the first time in my life and really fast the way you're supposed to do it and ask for help in doing this podcast and just ask for help, I guess, in general, or whatever. And so I did. I fasted all day Wednesday and when I got done fasting, I ended my fast with a prayer and then that was it. Then, the next morning, I decided I wanted to start waking up early and read some scriptures and do some things, without having to just jump up out of bed and go to work without getting some things accomplished that I want to start doing. And as I was sitting there, I got this overwhelming impression. It was crazy, overwhelming impression. It was crazy. I just prayed and fasted the night before and now, all of a sudden, I'm getting this impression that said to me John didn't do all these things that you're accusing him of, carl. And then the next 30 seconds was just visions of how John really was. John was not pushing me and kicking me and dumping milk on my head and stealing lunch money and stealing lunch and telling all these other people to stay away from me because I stunk, and telling all these other people to stay away from me because I stunk, and he wasn't not inviting me to his birthday parties and all these things. For all these years it turns out that I was using him as a villain, with what I was going through with my brother's death, the environment I was growing up in such poor conditions, the small amount of teasing that I was getting from probably other people. More often than not, I had poured everything onto him and I turned him into this huge, huge villain, or this huge outlet for all my stresses and all my problems that I've had for 54 years. And when I prayed and fasted, after 54 years, my Heavenly Father finally gave me one of the best miracles of all and that is not on my shoulders anymore.
Carl Hovey:I was so excited about what I found out. I went in and woke my wife up, told her about it called John. John agreed to meet with me and I told him I had to tell him something face to face. He was kind enough to meet me and just on Friday we spent two or three hours talking about all those years and everything that was going on. Turns out there were many, many days at school that he sat in the lunchroom by himself. Turns out there were many, many days he had insecurities, thinking people didn't like him. Turns out that we even joined a one-on-one basketball tournament together and I was his first game and I beat him and knocked him out of the tournament. He was so jealous of me. He said that I got to continue to go on in the tournament and he was done. I was so wrong about this guy, ornament, and he was done. I was so wrong about this guy.
Carl Hovey:The power in the story is that my attempt to seek forgiveness opened up the real truth and a weight has been lifted off my shoulders that has been burdening me for 54 years, my shoulders that has been burdening me for 54 years, and me and John now are set to have an incredible friendship for probably the rest of our lives, and I can't wait for the next chapter in this. It's awesome, it's incredible. So, anyway, that's, that's my story. That's kind of where I want to end it and, uh, I appreciate the time I've had to share this story and I'm just so grateful, um, for that opportunity or for this opportunity.
Alisha Coakley:Oh, carl, that was just absolutely incredible. I like normally I have all of these thoughts and these questions, but I was just sucked in the entire time. I just wanted to listen and listen and listen. Thank you so much for for sharing all of that and especially just the way that it ended. Like I know, in my own life I have, I have some some hard relationships that I just don't know how it's ever going to be better.
Alisha Coakley:You know, and hearing how it's almost so simple, right, like it it was two texts, you know what I mean.
Alisha Coakley:Like it was you opening up on one text and then him responding with sincerity and you know what I mean and just the spirit obviously was there during that text and it's like so simple and so profound and so life-changing.
Alisha Coakley:And so it's to me it's just inspiring to know that, like our heavenly father can change things like that, just like that, like decades of rough experiences, decades of lies, I love how he gave you that information of truth, like how what you really think was happening this whole time is not the truth, it's not the whole truth, that your brain was doing what it needed to do in order to protect you through your grief and through your hardships, and that's what our brains are designed to do like. That's the way Heavenly Father designed our brains so that we can control things that feel uncontrollable in some semblance of the word. And it may not be super, you know, fun, or even look very healthy, but it's something that helps you to get through. You know, and knowing that you no longer needed that, that you could have the truth, that you could be able to use that to look back and to see how many times Heavenly Father played a role in your life. I just think it's such a beautiful thing, and so yeah just thank you so much for sharing that.
Scott Brandley:Yeah, you know, it can set us free and a lot of times we hold. A lot of times we hold things inside and we we refuse to forgive someone because of what they've done to us and really we're just hurting ourselves. And it's hard to tell somebody that when they're going through it because they won't, they just won't listen to you and sometimes it takes 54 years to realize oh, forgiveness is real, you know and but it can be lifted in one instant, you know.
Scott Brandley:So I love your story because it shows the power of forgiveness and how it can happen, even after 54 years. Yeah, but I love the rest of your story too. I mean, you had a lot of really amazing things happen in there and I love. One of the things I love about the show is when people tell us their story, we're able to look backwards, because they tell us the story from the beginning to the end, right, alisha? Yeah, and it's so cool to see all the times God was in their life and they just didn't realize it until they did, and that's the inspiring part. Do you have any last thoughts to share, carl?
Carl Hovey:I do have a couple of things I want to say. Ever since I have been getting closer to my Savior and trying to do the things that are going to help me out in this life, I feel the things that are going to help me out in this life. I feel I have been noticing all these miracles that have been happening through my life that I didn't know were miracles. I heard it once said that miracles are best seen through the rearview mirror, and that is truly the case. I can look back on my life and all these things that I thought were curses or, you know, poor me things, they when I look at them, the way that I look at them. Now they were so many miracles were happening throughout my life and I did want to read just a couple of things because I wanted to make sure I got this last part right and my anxiety is going to make me mess it up. So I want to make sure I got this last part right and my anxiety is going to make me mess it up, so I want to make sure I end this okay. So the first thing I want to make clear is that, although I had some amazing, amazing miracles in my life and some might think it's because I left the church and I had to go through all these hard things and this is one of the reasons I got these miracles. I would give all those miracles, miracles back, even the miracle I had with my grandpa, um, to have went back and made that one choice to not leave the church, to not make that decision to leave the church and go the direction that I, that I went. I would give it all back to get that one day back.
Carl Hovey:And the last thing I wanted to say, and I'm going to read this I am proactive and I am working on myself, but still, to this day, I still struggle with low self-esteem, severe anxiety, depression, PTSD and ADHD.
Carl Hovey:Yet I'm very successful in many ways. I have a successful business, I have a nice home, nice things, I have a caring, loving, beautiful wife. My children all treat me awesome. The bottom line is we all struggle through life and I have learned that I need to own my past and I need to take control of my future. And I have a plan to do this and it starts and it ends with my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and his atonement for me and the choice I made nine years ago to serve Him for the rest of my life, which I have. Nine years ago I decided to go all in, using these experiences and these miracles that I've had as my foundation of my testimony to know I'm doing the right thing. I now have enough confidence to know that this church is true and for me it's undeniable, and I will live my life out as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, doing the best I can. I love that.
Scott Brandley:Awesome, that's so cool, carl.
Carl Hovey:Yeah.
Alisha Coakley:As you were saying that, as you were talking about just the things you struggle with, and the anxiety and the depression, and you know, like all of these things, I kept thinking of this phrase in my head, which is you don't have to let those things define you, but you can let them refine you.
Carl Hovey:Right, define you, but you can let them refine you.
Alisha Coakley:You can let them be the thing that sanctifies you, that purifies you, that helps to elevate you to that person that Heavenly Father really needs you to be for others, and so, while those might be things that you struggle with, just know that they are not you. They're just something that's happening to you.
Carl Hovey:They are not you.
Alisha Coakley:Thank you, they're not things that you're going to have forever either.
Carl Hovey:So Thank you.
Scott Brandley:Yeah, yeah, I was going to say something along the same lines. I think you having the guts to get on the show helps you to overcome a lot of the things that you deal with. I mean, the way that we get stronger is by focusing on our weaknesses, and you know so. I applaud you for having the courage and the strength to actually come on and share those stories. So thank you for doing that. I think that's going to be a good example for a lot of other people that struggle with those things. So we really appreciate you.
Carl Hovey:Thank Larry for pushing me over the edge.
Scott Brandley:I will for sure. For those of you that don't know, Larry's my brother-in-law, so I'll see him for sure.
Alisha Coakley:Well, and I have to say, carl, you did fantastic. I mean you, you expressed a little bit of a fear that maybe you would talk too fast or you would lose your place, but I just felt this peace exuding from you through your entire story and this confidence, and you were so easy to just listen to and to follow along with that. This is definitely one of our longer episodes, but it doesn't even feel like one of our longer episodes. It was just beautiful.
Scott Brandley:Well, thank you. I think the quality of the content makes a difference too. I mean, people are happy to listen to a longer episode if it's full of really good content.
Carl Hovey:Yeah, and I hope that it really good content, yeah, yeah, and I I hope that, uh, it helps some people. I, I really do, um, and that would be awesome. That would be a great, a great success and a great reward. Um, but again, I this is something I kind of need to do for myself in my healing process. It's a nice opportunity for you guys to have something like this so that we can do this, because this is going to help tremendously. So it is. I already know it is.
Alisha Coakley:I believe it too. Well, thank you so much, carl. I just loved having you on as a guest and and you know what I'm just going to say we should just have you on as a guest again, I'm sure you have more stories. I'm sure more things are going to happen in your future that are going to be, just you know, miraculous and beautiful and incredible and stuff like that, and so you know yeah. Open invite to come back.
Carl Hovey:Thank you yeah.
Scott Brandley:Well, thank everyone. I'd like to thank everyone else for coming on the show with us and listening to Carl's story, Cause without you guys, I mean, it wouldn't be near as fun right To do a podcast that nobody listens to. So, uh, we appreciate you guys coming on and and and really supporting us. It's really cool to get your feedback and and sometimes we get emails or or people post on YouTube and things, and it's cool to to see those. And sometimes we get emails, or people post on YouTube and things, and it's cool to see those, you know, get those thank yous or those connections, like you did, Carl, with Larry, and to see that we're actually making a difference. So, thank you guys for everything you do.
Alisha Coakley:Yes. So, carl, thank you for coming on here, thank you, our listeners. If you guys are tuning in and you're kind of feeling that little pitter-patter in your heart you're feeling inspired by Carl that maybe you have a story to share, scott, and I want to encourage you guys to reach out to us. You can either head over to latterdaylightscom and fill out the form at the bottom of the page, or you can email us directly. It's latterdaylights at gmailcom. That's where you can get in touch with us. You can comment too. Wherever you're listening to this, go ahead and leave a comment. We'll be able to see that comment and we can get in touch with you guys.
Alisha Coakley:But the world definitely needs more light, and if you have something that can light the world, then let us know. We would love to hear it and see if you would be a good fit for the show. So, with that, uh, make sure you guys do your five second missionary work. Hit that share button, get Carl's story out to others. Um, let the healing just continue to grow, let those ripple effects take place. Um, like I said, the the world definitely needs light and the story is absolutely full of it. So, so I think that's all we have for today. Be sure that you guys tune in for another episode of Latter-day Lights next Sunday and until then we hope you guys have a great week. Talk to you later.
Carl Hovey:Take care. Goodbye.
Alisha Coakley:Bye-bye.