Likening the Scriptures Unto us with Author Laurisa White Reyes

Host Tanya interviews author Laurisa White Reyes about her writing background, from childhood through magazine and newspaper work to publishing 22 fiction books, and her shift to writing a Bible-focused book. Reyes explains her new Cedar Fort release, "The Kings of Judah and the Lessons They Teach Us," written to clarify 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles in plain English and connect the kings’ stories to modern prophetic teachings and contemporary application. She discusses why understanding historical context and storytelling matters for learning scripture, the value of reading multiple Bible translations, and her interest in theological studies and biblical languages. Reyes shares insights from King Josiah’s covenant renewal and King Manasseh’s repentance, reflects on leaving a spiritual legacy for family amid caregiving for her father with dementia, and notes where to preorder and find her books online.
laurisawhitereyes.com
00:00 Welcome and Introductions
00:32 Names and Family Traditions
02:06 Writing Career Origins
02:58 Turning to Novels
03:53 Old Testament Deep Dive
06:49 Why Stories Teach Us
10:41 Bible Upbringing and Translations
13:50 Learning Languages and Context
15:50 Move to Utah and New Office
17:43 Favorite King Josiah
21:27 Child Sacrifice and Idolatry
22:47 Manasseh Redemption Arc
23:52 Forgiveness vs Consequences
25:29 Why Scripture Copies Matter
27:40 Fall in Love with Old Testament
29:48 Next Writing Projects
31:33 Where to Buy the Books
33:13 Legacy and Family Testimony
37:58 How to Read This Book
40:08 Graphic Novel Plug
41:43 Storytelling and Closing

In a world full of uncertainty, how does one cope with unbearable loss and pain? A Christmas tragedy finds Steve and Maria struggling to find hope. With the love and support of family and friends, will they find peace as they walk through the fire of Uncertainty?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Welcome, welcome everyone. Today I am joined on Roundies, Rants, Raves, and Reviews with Larissa Reyes? Am I saying that correctly?

SPEAKER_00 0:48

It's actually Larissa. Larissa. And you probably will never meet another one with my same name. I never have. Yeah, Larissa and Reyes. Reyes, yes. Reyes.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah, no, that's all I have.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

It's actually I go by my full name, Larissa White Reyes. Larissa. My my my mother side of the family had a tradition going back a few generations that the girls were never given middle names. So that when they got married, our maiden names became our middle names.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

That was my mother-in-law's name. And my husband was it's funny because I love her middle name, it's Joy, but she always went by Ruth Hillstead Roundy. But I'm like, but I want Joy. And so I wanted to name our daughter, Angela Ruth Joy Roundy. And he's like, No, she doesn't need four. And I'm like, but I like it. I lost. So, but you're right.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

There is a generation where it you just he took out that middle, and it makes doing family history research difficult. It does. Women lose their names. So I thought, I'll make it easy on my daughters. My daughters didn't have middle names either. And one of my daughters is married, and sure enough, she kept Reyes as her middle name. So I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yeah, and now that's my author name. That I've done it for my author paid name. I'm like, it's just like I just did that same thing. So I guess I'm that different.

unknown 2:08

Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

It works. Well, Larissa, we are so excited to have you here. She is coming out with a new book, but she's got a long history of writing and her journey. So tell us how about yourself and how you got started in all this, and we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Oh my gosh. Thank you, Tanya. First of all, for having me. I'm really excited to be here and to talk to you in person. Finally, I've heard your name forever and the opportunity for me. You know, it's I always wanted to be a writer my whole life. I started writing stuff when I was a kid, and I studied creative writing in college. After I graduated college, I wrote for magazines, I wrote for newspapers, I was a book editor for several small presses. I I had my own newspaper column in several papers in California. I just loved to write. During that time, I was raising my five kids. So I would literally get up at like one o'clock in the morning to change diapers or breastfeed and then write for another two or three hours before I went back to bed. The older I got, that became difficult. So I switched and became a morning writer. But what really changed very early morning writer before my kids would wake up. And then when it was seminary years, I would do it while they were in seminary, you know, that kind of thing. And then something changed though for me in, I guess it was around 2005, 2006. Can't believe it was that long ago. I decided I wanted to get out of writing for newspapers and magazines, and I wanted to really live my dream, was to write novels. So I started writing fiction. My first novel was published in 2012. It was a middle-grade high fantasy book called The Rock of Ivanor. And since then, I've had 22 books published with different publishers, and most of them are fiction, middle grade books, young adult novels. As I mentioned to you before, I wrote for my kids. I wrote stuff that I thought my kids would enjoy reading. Well, my kids are all adults now, they're all grown up. So I've always had a passion for biblical history in particular. I'm fascinated with the Old Testament. And in fact, I hadn't mentioned this before, but I just started a theological studies graduate program online. Oh wow. One of my dreams is to get a degree in biblical or theological studies. So that I'm just starting that adventure. But anyway, I last year I decided to read the Old Testament beginning to end. I had only done so a couple of times in my whole life. And I decided last summer I got to Kings and Chronicles and realized how little I actually knew about the stories in those four books, two Kings and Two Chronicles. Because we in the church, we tend to, you know, we do our year-long study program, which works well, I think, with the New Testament, works well with the Book of Mormon, even church history. But the Old Testament is humongous. And so we tend to what I like to say, skip stones over the surface. And we never really get to deep dive.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

And a lot of the parts of the Old Testament that we skip over a lot of the historical parts. And we skip over a lot of the stories and kings and chronicles. And so I just decided I'm going to write a book about all the kings of Judah and tell their stories in plain English so people can really understand that there would be no confusion. And then not only tell their stories, but use the words of our contemporary prophets and apostles to show how those stories, even though they happened two, three thousand years ago, still apply today. They're very applicable to us today. And I literally wrote it in three months. I wrote it in three months and sent it off to Cedar Fort. And I actually didn't expect to hear back from them, but I did. And they were very interested. So it's coming out in August with Cedar Four. And I'm so I call it my very first Bible book. I hope it will be the first of many.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

That is so exciting. And to be able to do it in that sort of time that definitely had some inspiration and some spiritual help, I am sure, along the way. I believe so.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Very cool. Well, we were talking a little bit earlier, and I love this idea of like, because you were talking about how we love history. And what is it people are missing when I mean I teach students, especially middle grade right now? I teach teaching high school is the same. Even teaching college classes was the same. They just wanted to know what's the answer and move on. Yep, I teach college also. I know what you mean. What is it they're missing when we I mean literature, especially and understanding stories and why do we need the history behind it? What is so important?

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Because uh the stories of we are human beings are natural storytellers from the beginning of human history, all history has been passed down through storytelling. It's the way we communicate. For example, just something very simple. If you were to go see a movie, for example, or read a really good book, and then you tell your friend, hey, I just saw this really cool movie, and they'll say, What's it about? You don't tell them in 30 seconds, you tell the whole story. You start at the beginning, you say it's about this person, and they did this, and they did this. If you go to the grocery store and somebody and they say, What did you do today? You don't just usually say, I just went to the grocery store. You usually tell the story. What happened to you that day? Who did you run into? It's the way humans connect with each other and it's the way we learn, it's the best way to learn. And the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and it's all told through stories. And so it's one thing to say, okay, so this happened, and you know, what do you think about it? How do you feel about it? It's hard to answer that question. How do you feel about how do you apply to me if you don't know how it applied to the people it actually happened to? You know, it's when you watch a movie, for example, whether it's a true story or not, what happens if you really love that movie is because you fall in love with the characters, you fall in love with the people and you get invested in the conflict. What happened to them? How did they overcome the conflict? Well, guess what? That's exactly what happens in the Bible with all the characters and the people and the prophets and the kings in the Bible, they all had stories to tell and they all had conflict. And if we just take the time to really understand each each one of them individually and what happened to that person, you get really invested, and then you can say, I can see the connection to my own life, I can see how that king story applies to me, and that was what I set out to do. That's so good.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah, I love as I mentioned before, I love history, and so but I just don't like taking a test. So I took AP history, AP, all those things and literature and stuff. But I loved understanding because my I think the one that really did it for me, besides my mother teaching us stories and reading us and all these things when we were younger, was my AP English teacher and my AP history teacher were teaching American Lit at the same time. And so we were following I could understand the history and what was going on culturally and what was happening that way. And then we were reading a book about it and seeing how that fit into it. And it just made me fall in love with the stories that historically are going on, but understand where they're coming from. And it's so interesting nowadays that we just want to hear this, you know, just tell me the answer and move on. But when we right, when we dive in and we're invested in what's going on and why and how and other things, we see people aren't that different. We're still human beings. We haven't changed. Three thousand years haven't changed with your king or you know, just now today.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Because whether or not the person in history was a king or a lowly shepherd, the stories are the same. It it the things that they experience, the lessons that they learn, the lessons we learn keep getting repeated over and over, generation after generation. We never really learn, I guess. You know, but it's true, it's true. And it's interesting that you mention the stories because uh one thing that I fell in love with about the Bible is my dad. I was raised LDS, very devout LDS family, but my father was a self-taught Bible scholar. He was a computer programmer for Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. And he helped write the computer programs that sent Voyager, Ulysses, Galileo out into outer space. So he was a brilliant man and he loved the Bible more than anything. And so the Bible was a topic of daily conversation around our dinner table and in the car, anywhere where we were. I was raised on listening to several evangelical pastors. I was raised listening to Pastor John MacArthur, who was a brilliant Bible scholar. I my first Bible was not the King James Bible. My dad felt it was too difficult for a child to read. So my Bible that he gave me on my baptism day was an American standard revised edition. So you can't read it, which I still have to this day. I still have my very first Bible that he bought me. And so I really appreciate it. I was raised to be very open-minded about religion and Bibles. In particular, there were many versions of the Bible in my home. So the the recent the first presidency recently announced, encouraged people to read more contemporary translations of the Bible, and I shouted hallelujah. It's about because as beautiful as the King James Version is, and it is very beautiful, it is almost 500 years old. And I won't go deep into it, but we talked about the importance of translation, and there's a lot of problems actually with the King James Version. There are much more accurate contemporary translations available, and so I'm thrilled that people in our church now feel like they can go outside of that little circle and read other translations that are in plain modern English. And there are different translations because translating an ancient language into modern English is not cut and dry. People think, oh, this word means that word. No, it takes committees to actually agree upon different translations. That's why there's different versions, is because words and phrases really don't have, not all of them at least, don't always have a direct translation into English. Yeah. Sometimes you kind of have to guess, sometimes you have to figure out the context. You're like, what did the author really mean by this? It's not easy to translate. So that's why I have I like to read various versions as well and compare and contrast them.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

I love that too, because we not only are we taking the history and the historical context, but we're taking which language, which version, and what the words mean. And you can really get a deeper story and you can get a deeper understanding. I was interviewing um Trina Boyce, who also Trina. I love Trina and her book. Oh my gosh. I was like, all these words and the Hebrew of them, and I'm like, man, I want to go study Hebrew now.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

I that's on my bucket list to do before I die, but I'm currently I've been trying to learn biblical Greek for the last year. I have tried two two other times to learn it in the past decade, and it's tough. I'm going to retake the course yet again.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

I'm just like, I'm really grateful for translators at this point because I'm like, I'm as much as I love it, I'm probably never gonna get to it. My ASL is about as all as deep as I'm gonna get the language anymore, I think. But to but do you write to translate those words is like it can mean this in this context and this in this context and the situations, and so not only understanding the culture is understanding what the words and stuff might mean to that, just like our idioms today. If we don't understand that language and the history and the culture, we aren't gonna understand what they're talking about in the stories and stuff either.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

And then imagine trying to read uh old English on top of that on top of it in the 1600s, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Like decode Shakespeare while also decoding, you know, his little everything else at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Although I will comment, I do use the King James version for all the references in my book because that's the one most of us are mostly used to. It's like that.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

I I like you know what I'm curious. I know the church church most people have the like, are we gonna start having booknotes to other versions and other words? And so when you hyperlink, you can go, okay, this version, besides the links to all the other scriptural things. Oh my goodness, kids. But it is incredible. I uh my mom she grew up in LA or Burbank there too.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

So oh yeah, okay. I lived in Burbank for a while, yes. I just moved from Southern California, just minutes from Burbank. I spent my whole life in that area, and I just moved to Utah two weeks ago. Oh, you've only been here for two weeks. Yeah, just two. I am surrounded by my dream to have an office of my own. I finally have a desk. It's the first time in my whole 32 years of marriage. I've actually had a real desk, a real office to write and to work. That was the agreement I made with my husband. Is if we move, I get an office. Get an office, I can close the door and say, I'm working.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

We just turned a bedroom into a little podcast office in here as well for me. So it's like I feel you. It's great.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Like I've waited a long time for this. Yeah, when we've had kids and all the things that we share and the spaces that get taken over. Oh, yeah. My office was the dining table, my couch, my bed, anywhere I can put my computer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Many a master's paper was written on the living room floor with hyper scattered around. Exactly. I understand that. Well, that is so cool that you've just moved here. Yeah, my mom moved, she lived there too. And we I was talking to her the other day, and how she was raised, she was born LDS, but she never they did more active and stuff, and she was actually studying Catholicism. And she's always just been so spiritually minded, and she loved the stories and she loved learning and just was driven towards it. And and you know, how people are also driven spiritually to know who they are and where they come from. And the Bible gives us so many stories for that. Is there a particular story or two that stood out to you as you were doing your research that you maybe was your favorite, or something that maybe that we don't know that story, and it was like, how this is it? What did you find as you were going through this process?

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Well, aside from the fact that every story brought me very new insights that I never really thought about before, a couple that really stood out to me was, of course, my very favorite king was King Josiah. Oh King Josiah, of course, was near the end, and he was a righteous king. A side note, I'll say a lot of times we we I've heard people say, Oh, all the kings were except for King Josiah and King Hezekiah, they're all wicked. That's actually not true. While the kings of Israel, I think, tended to be more idolatrous and wicked. Most of the kings of Judah, while not all of them were really righteous, like King Josiah and Hezekiah, most were kind of like in between. There was only a couple of kings that were listed as truly being wicked and idolatrous, but most were just kind of in the middle, normal people, you might say, good and bad, which is what I thought was amazing, as they were just normal human beings. Many of them just made honest mistakes. Some of them did things they shouldn't do, others did amazingly brave, courageous things for their people. I love the story of King Josiah because his people had at some point along the line lost the law of Moses, the books of Moses. And his people, the Judahites, had fallen into idolatry over and over again. And when he was, he wanted to basically like reconstruct or remodel, you might say, the temple that had fallen into disuse under his father and grandfather. And while he his people were remodeling the temple, they found a book of the law. It had been buried somewhere and they found it. And he read the whole book. It was most likely the all the five books of Moses. He read the entire book out loud to everyone. He gathered everyone, he called the whole kingdom as everyone that could come king. Man, women, and child gathered around the temple, and he read it out loud. And everyone there followed his example and committed, made a covenant to God right there to follow the law. And it was a it's a beautiful story of how this covenant of righteousness followed them. Unfortunately, the wheels of history had already begun to turn, and they Judah's end was already in sight, and the next few kings kind of blew it, and they were eventually taken captive into Babylon. But I believe that, and I talk about this in the book, that it was that covenant that carried their identity as Israelites into Babylon, into their exile for the next 70 years. They kept their identity, and then when they returned 70 years later as a people and rebuilt the temple, they were still as a people keeping those that covenant. It doesn't mean they were always righteous. That doesn't mean that they always made the best choices, but we often in the church talk about being a covenant people, and they were a covenant people, and that's what got them through the next 70 years of exile and propelled them through the next 2500 years of history. I mean, it's amazing how that has stuck with them for millennia. So I love that story. And uh another story that really surprised me, Josiah's predecessors, King Manasseh and later Ammon, they were not only idolaters, but they actually sacrificed their own children to Baal. Um which was excuse me, let's say they caused their children to pass through the fires, which meant that they sacrificed their children. And that during that period of time, this is maybe a hundred years before the Babylonian exile. That the people began to follow the pattern of the Canaanites, and their idolatry led to child sacrifice. It was a lot of times we think, you know, God condemned Israel, condemned Judah because of idolatry and wickedness. No, he condemned them because of child sacrifice. And it's all throughout the Old Testament, even all the way back to Moses and Joshua. God warned the people of Israel, do not do what the Canaanites do. Do not sacrifice your children to their gods. Well, they eventually did. And that's what set the wheels in motion towards their end. But King Manasseh, I did not know this until I was really deep diving. King Manasseh sacrificed his children, but then he was captured and taken to a Babylonian prison for a while. And while he was in prison, he hit rock bottom and he repented and he pled to God for forgiveness. And when he was finally returned to his throne, he spent the rest of his life trying to undo what he had done, trying to teach his people that what they had done was wrong. Unfortunately, he was not very successful, but he tried. And I did not realize that. Absolutely beautiful story. And unfortunately, the the people themselves, the kingdom itself, did not change a whole lot over time. Eventually, they did have to pay the price, you might say, for what they had done as a people. History just kind of has a way of, you know, there are consequences to be had.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

And that's the thing, too, is it doesn't say that, yeah, he was forgiven, but it doesn't say the consequences were taken. Because there's natural consequences for action.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Consequences happened. Even like I said, even Josiah, who came later and the people made that covenant, it was it. I think it's a good example of how there's a difference between an individual person repenting of their sins and being forgiven of their sins versus a nation, a whole nation of people. The the wheels turn much slower. And there are consequences to a leader. If a leader misleads his people, that can be felt for generations to come. And we see that in the Book of Mormon as well.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

I think it's yeah, I mean it's not just grand scale, too. I mean, families, I mean righteous fathers and mothers, or the trajectory that you put them on with that, too. Can put a family in a direction for generations, just as much as the influence is felt for a very long time. And when you're doing that, I love that you talk about that forgiveness, that it doesn't matter what we've done. I mean how the atonement is so gracious to no matter where we're at. It also reminded me too about I mean losing the law. I mean, no wonder in the Book of Mormon, when Nephi's leaving and Lehi leaving, that it is so important that the Lord sends them back to get that. Because I mean, when Mulek, when they meet Mulich, and their people had lost their Hamla there, and they were so hungry to like, oh, you have this. Because they'd been telling the stories, they knew that there was something they were missing because the stories well.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Think about this that Josiah, when he found the law, Lehi was probably alive to see that. They were contemporaries, yes, and so copies of the law were rare at that point. They were probably just starting to make copies. In fact, during the exile, in the Babylon exile, is when scribes really began copying, making many copies of the law of the Bible, what we eventually call the Bible, because they knew what it was like to not have it. And they were meticulous in writing and copying things down. Thank goodness for those scribes way back then for doing that. So Lehi and Nephi, the copy on the brass plates that they brought, probably was one of those rare copies that had most likely recently within a decade or two, had been written down. And so you're right, it was God's God really understood how important that would be to try to keep them on track, how important the history, not only the prophets, but the history of their people.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

And the covenants and the stories that they could learn from this. I mean, look at King Benjamin versus King Noah. I mean, the parallels to the kings there, to the kings, the lessons were there for them as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Exactly. I mean, because Nephi quotes Isaiah all the time, and I Isaiah was a contemporary. Exactly. We tend to forget, we think linear, like, oh, this prophet lived here, we forget a lot of them overlapped. And uh it's I something I love about the Old Testament is we have to remember that the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament, that was Jesus' scriptures. That was Nephi's scriptures, that's what they read, that's what they believed in and held close to their hearts. And I fear that a lot of times, while of course, member, of course, as members of the church, we believe in the Bible, we believe in the Book of Mormon, but the Old Testament, I think, too often gets waylaid, but it was the first, it was the first testament, the first witness of God's love and glory, and the first witness of the coming of the Messiah. And so that's that's why I kind of have a life ahead of me. I my my goal ahead of me is to help members of our church fall in love with the Old Testament, not to skim over the surface, but to really deep dive and love it as much as as Nephi did and as much as Jesus did. And that's the thing, too.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Jesus taught them that all the time. He was like, Remember when this prophet he was always referring back to these prophets and to these stories to help teach, because that would have been their stories that they understood too.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Exactly. And so that's how he started his ministry was he went to his own synagogue where he grew up, and he read out of Isaiah a prophecy about the coming of the Messiah, and he said, Today this has been fulfilled in your hearing, and they're gonna say what that meant, and they didn't like it too much, they were not happy to hear that, but exactly. That's that was that was Jesus' scriptures.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Some beautiful stories in there. I know some of my favorite, especially the women of the Old Testament, have been so important to me in my in my life and what they have taught me. I've never thought about these kings as much, but you're right, there's so much for us to learn and apply to them. And they're doing it well, so you've got other work starting, hopefully, here. I'm the next project that you've got.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

I was just debating I was debating, should I write a book for the New Testament for next year for our Come Follow Me Next Year New Testament? And so I was thinking, oh, maybe I'll write about the the miracles of Jesus and the lessons they teach us, but I haven't started it yet, and I don't know if I'm actually going to get it done in time for next year. That is on my to-do list, but I did start writing a book about dreams and visions in the Bible. There's many examples of dreams and visions, and I use them together because a vision is a dream, but you're awake. And some of them are very simple and straightforward, and some of them are very complex, like the the visions of Ezekiel and Daniel. Very complex. And so I thought that would be fun to write and describe these visions and dreams in plain English, so people can understand this is what they saw, and then utilize our modern day prophets and their words and the Book of Mormon and show how does the the vision of Ezekiel way, way back 3,000 years ago, does that have anything to do with us today? Yeah, and if it does, how? How can we apply that? What can we learn from it? So I've started working on that.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

That's exciting. I'm gonna do what my new readings list is. I'm gonna have lots of reading lists, but I know what I'm gonna be putting on my list there. I'm looking forward to reading this one, just about the kings and exploring that things. So cool. Well, where can we find your books? All of the ones that are from the past, and this one coming out soon and get reordering that.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Well, the good thing is it it is all my books are on Amazon and Cedar Fort's website, it The Kings of Judah and the lessons they teach us, is available for pre-order on Cedar Fort and Amazon. So you don't have to wait until the book is actually released next week. You can actually order it ahead of time. In fact, if you people order it ahead of time, that like boosts the algorithms or something and makes it more searchable, more easier to find for people. My other novels, you can read about them, they're all on Amazon, but I have a website, it's my full name. My I use my full name larisa whitereyas.com, and that's l-a-u-r-i-sa white, like the color, reyes r-e-y-e-s.com. All my books are listed there with links and all of that. And what was I gonna say about that? Oh, I forgot. I was gonna make a comment, but I don't remember what I was gonna say. But it's hard if you look for the titles on on Amazon. Sometimes it's hard to make them pop up. But if you type in my full name, all my books pop up. I find it's easier to find them under my name.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

I love it because Amazon now I can follow those authors. So whenever I have my favorite authors put things up, I can just pop right up in my feed for me. It's so amazing and incredible. Well, okay, so we've talked about all of these things and where to find them. Did you have any spiritual or significant experiences that when you were writing this that like touched you or helped you as you were writing and understanding?

SPEAKER_00 36:08

It's it's interesting that you asked that because I mentioned my father. So my my father, over the course of 40 years, wrote hundreds and hundreds of essays about the Bible. And I became his editor new new a number of years ago, and we've managed to get four collections published so far, and we're working on two more. I want to get the last two published before he passes away. He's 81 years old, and unfortunately, he has dementia, and I've become his full-time caregiver. And it's been, I basically took over his entire life a year ago. Had to take over his finances, take over his medical care, everything. And it's been really hard to see this brilliant man lose all so much. And so when I started writing this book, what really hit me was I feel like I was stepping into his shoes. I was following his journey. He's the one that instilled in me a deep love of the holy scriptures, of the word of God. And I feel such gratitude to him for that. My mother too, my mother also read the scriptures all the time. I have her scriptures. She passed away about six years ago, and I have her scriptures all marked up, and I remember have so many memories growing up and just watching her study the scriptures. So they really set a good example for me. And I I want to share that with my children. My some of my children no longer go to church or don't don't even believe in God, which is okay. I respect their choices and their beliefs, and they respect mine, but I kind of feel like I need to leave a legacy behind. I need to leave something in writing so that if not my children, maybe my grandchildren or my great-grandchildren, someday down the road will pick it up and say, Oh, grandma wrote this. I wonder what she thought about Jesus. I wonder what she thought about God in the Bible. And because the reason I started writing long ago when I was a kid, I was I was an avid reader, and it dawned on me one day, my baby brother had died. It really affected me deeply. And it occurred to me one day, I was probably 10 years old, that books last forever. Authors eventually pass away, that all the authors of the books I had been reading were long gone, but their books still lived on. And people read them. The Bible was written thousands of years ago, and we are still reading it today, still learning the lessons today. And I knew then that I wanted to be a writer because I wanted to write things that would outlive me, and so this book is in a sense part of my testimony, it's part of my witness of the divinity of the Bible and the importance of the stories that it tells us, because all of the stories in the Bible, the Book of Mormon, bring us to Jesus Christ. Everything points to him. And if that's the one legacy I can leave behind for my children and my future grandchildren, that's the legacy that's what I want to do. That's a long answer to your question. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

I think it's the best answer to the question is that the to leave that legacy in our testimony to enter our children. It is so important to enter our grandchildren and get you right and say I don't want my children. But they know what I believe and they know and understand where I wrote it and leave that behind. Just like the prophets the stories of those. I love that. Do you have any parting message for our re our listeners and viewers today? Anything that you still we need to know or understand before we go?

SPEAKER_00 40:41

Well, if you're watching this, I promise the book is really short. I did that intentionally because how many people like to pick up 600-page books and read them anymore, right? But me too. I thought I'm gonna keep it. We're weird. It's the kind of book where it's literally it's less than 35,000 words, which the average novel is about 50 or 60,000 words. So it's a very short book, quick read. Each chapter is short, easy to read. And that was my intention is that you could learn a lot in a short amount of time with this book. So I encourage you to read it.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

And go with the text and put them side by side and go.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Like, I understand this now. I get this, yes, and have some really awesome conversations with your family.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

That would be an awesome thing. Sit around the dinner table and go, okay, what did we learn in a very short? You could do that at the dinner table, just in a dinner conversation.

SPEAKER_00 41:47

And it doesn't it while it goes really well with come follow me because we're studying the old testament, it doesn't have to be read only this year. It really is. I read it all the time, learn all the time, any any year.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

I love it. I was actually just thinking my parents when we were growing up, they had those old children's versions of the scriptures that had the pictures, the simplified there. Yeah, I love those growing up, and in fact, I always bought them for my kids and my grandchildren too. I was like, You're new guys, read these.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

There's you'll get the story. Absolutely. I remember growing up with these big blue hardcover Book of Mormon, illustrated Book of Mormon stories. Somewhere in my house. I don't think we have them anymore. I think I saw one stuff in my shed moving, and I thought, oh man, I wish my parents had kept those because some someday it would be fun to have those for future generations, but I don't have them anymore. But yeah, that what a great way to start learning.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Start age, it's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

Which reminds me, I'm gonna put a plug-in talking about illustrations. My dear friend Pablo Smith, who also just moved to Lehigh from California the same time we did. We were in the same stake. His book, it's a graphic novel of the Book of Mormon, is also coming out. I think it just came out with Cedar. Also things about that. That's your brilliant. Oh my god. Pablo and his wife Kristen are my friends. In fact, they're coming to dinner on Sunday because we all just moved here at the same time. And yeah, his book, it's I forgot the exact title, but it is the Book of Mormon graphic novel. He used to be one of the artists for SpongeBob. He's a brilliant artist, a wonderful man, wonderful family. Their son is a good friend of my son's. So they're both thrilled that they're both up here in Utah now. So had to put a plug in for Pablo. Well, we should get him on and talk about that too. That's definitely. He's a great guy. That is and I hope it will be the first of many graphic novels that he can publish.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

A lot of kids are into those nowadays, and I wasn't a big, I was never a comic book reader or anything else, but I have taken to really enjoying some of the well-done graphic graphic novel classics. And I think it used to be my kids, and I thought that my students wouldn't get as much not reading the actual text, but it was interesting. We were still having the same conversations, we were still having the deep thoughtfulness about it. So there is something to be said that these kids can get some things out of it. And it took a lot of kids back to the original text. They were like, No, I want to read what was actually there.

SPEAKER_00 44:29

It's like it all comes back to storytelling. Exactly. It's the story, it's not necessarily how the story it can be, you know, yeah, it could be a regular novel, it could be a nonfiction book, it can be a graphic novel. It's the stories that get us and connect with us.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Exactly. I love it. So exciting. Oh my gosh. Well, we're gonna have to get on and talk some more, and I'm only down here in paces, so it's time to get together too. You meet Trina, the rest of us.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

We'll just I haven't seen Trina in a number of years, but I'm I follow her on Facebook. She is awesome. I love her movie reviews. But it's amazing for her too.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

She's just here peering you to tattoo. She just moved here as well. She's here. She's from Salem, just like 10 minutes for me.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Oh my goodness, we're all coming here. We're all coming. We're just gonna be all congregating. We'll just have a little big reunion in my backyard. Like everything. That is important. Thank you so much. You are such a joy. I really appreciate what you do. So thanks for having me as your guest today. Of course.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

Anyway, we can share the message and the light and what we're all doing to help each other out is great. So everyone, check out Larissa White Reyes and go and find her book. It's coming out, and check out her other books, especially if you have youth, to tell their stories and help them get a joy and the love of reading. We'll check you out next time on Randy's Rants Raves and Reviews. Know you're loved.