Marvelous Work and a Wonder® Testimonials

My full name is Jonathan Merritt Franklin but please just call me Jon. When I was a teenager, I chose to shorten my first name because it sounded cooler to me and it’s easier to say one syllable as opposed to three. I was born in the early 70’s in western Wyoming.

My middle name is also my mothers’ maiden name and she was also born in western Wyoming about 20 years before me. Her father was an old school farmer/cowboy with a heritage linked to the LDS (Mormon) religion. I don’t think his family (brothers) were particularly active because of being shunned for tobacco use and probably other things. I remember him as being kind and friendly and hard-working. When he came in from chores to visit, he would often fall asleep in his comfy chair involuntarily from exhaustion. When we were ready to leave he would always walk with us out to our car with a flashlight (not much light in a small rural town) to make sure we could see and would watch us leave until we were out of sight to ensure we got off safely. He was well liked and was a great fisherman. In his younger days he would play country and western on his guitar with friends and family at some of the local bars among other places. That was until my grandma said “no more” (to the bars anyway), because they had just had their first child (a Daughter) about 1939. He was slow to anger but if he did get there, then oh watch out.

My mother’s mother always seemed kind to me and was a great homemaker. She just loved to visit with us. As I remember back, I realize now that there was a deeply hidden pain in her face. She lost her own mother when she was a girl and being the only daughter, it was expected of her to make up the difference with housework, etc. I have to wonder if, secretly, the life she lived was really the one she wanted. If she was upset about someone, she would lash out with a passive/aggressive silent treatment. She also had a strong heritage in the LDS (Mormon) faith and is probably the reason my grandfather was strictly active all those years.

My father originally came from a protestant background, I think. His father and then later his family (including my father) were baptized into the LDS (Mormon) religion. My father’s father was a delightful man with a great sense of humor and had great love for his family. He could however become quickly annoyed at times and would utilize a harsh biting wit. He was a WW2 vet and I suspect that he had some degree of PTSD. I didn’t get to know him well because of distance. He was an Iowa boy and lived the rest of his life in northern Illinois.

My dad’s mother died when I was about 11. I didn’t know her well either for the same reason of distance. The few memories I have of her are that she was kind and hard-working. Her family lines came from norther Missouri and I was told moonshining was a part. Also, her father was named after Stephen A. Douglas if one knows that significance. She was strong and well loved by all. She lived out her life in a diverse and poor neighborhood in Rockford Illinois and her pasta sauce was the stuff of legends. Her first child was born out of wedlock well outside of her county (in Iowa) and the circumstance were a subject she would never talk about with anyone, not even my grandfather who loved her immensely regardless.

Both sides of my family are patriotic, proud and deeply religious. I was my parents’ first child and like all young parents they had their own plans and expectations for me. They wanted me to eventually attain to high leadership positions within their chosen (Mormon) religion. They are/were two staunchly religious young republicans. As an example, my father told me once that he really liked Nixon and my mother told me recently that she cried and was upset when Roe vs. Wade passed. I believe that by them having the beliefs that they did at that particular time made them feel as outsiders in what was becoming a more liberal/progressive world.

My father had a speech impediment since childhood (stutter) and it affected his social/economic status in the community. He was a factory worker and a janitor as trades. Right after I graduated high school he was laid off at the factory he had worked at for nearly 20 years at the time. He decided to go back to college and received a degree as a respiratory therapist but never pursued it as a career because of a lack of confidence due to his speech impediment. He loved cinema and musicals and I grew up loving both. He loved many different kinds of music and I have memories of waking up on Saturday mornings too him playing records (for instance Kris Kristopherson singing Sunday Morning Coming Down). I think he later blamed himself a little for my musical tastes, some of which he hated, because he had been the one to introduce me to Zeppelin, Hendrix, Joplin and such. He was a great writer and had a great talent for poetry and prose. He had always wished that he had been able to make more money or be more affluent in society and it was a source of anxiety and frustration for him up to the day he passed on.

My mother’s heritage, being deeply rooted in the LDS religion, was the driving force behind the direction she wanted her family to go in. She would often relay stories of how my great-great grandfather was blessed with extraordinary priesthood ability and was able to perform miracles. Sometimes her stories had a different and funny side to them like this one… One of my great great-grandfathers who was also a bishop at one time, got so drunk at a neighbor’s house partying late on a Saturday evening, that he couldn’t quite stand. Apparently, he still retained enough sense to remember that he had to give a lesson the next day in church. He proceeded, in that early morning, to drag himself (crawling) back home to prepare and did give his lesson

I think she wanted to use these stories as a motivator to get me to be obedient to her wishes for me to succeed as a Mormon and seek to attain to high positions within. Genealogy and family history are very important to her and so they became that way for me to.

Religion was deeply integrated into me, by them, when I was very young. On one occasion , as a toddler, I thought I saw Jesus Christ walking around and interacting with some children. I think they were embarrassed when I shouted out “Hey look there’s Jesus!”. They told me later that what I saw was actually a hippie with his kids. I was a wild boy with hyperactive disorder and I think I clashed with them a lot when I was young. For instance, I would often find ways onto the top of a building or the roof of my house and run back and forth and scare my poor mom half to death.

Our home until I was 5 was a small cramped apartment, so when we then moved to a home (78), I was excited that my world had expanded. I was outside as often as I could be. The outdoors then and also later was a place of calmness and peace for me as well as many misadventures and near misses.

I would play outside all day in the summer under the sun. I don’t remember sun burns or other problems. When I was thirsty, I found water at the hose bib or would hop up onto the kitchen sink and stick my mouth under the stream of cold running water. When I was hungry, I would sometimes raid the garden for peas or carrots or the like. When it started to rain, Iwould go in and watch the splendor of the lightning and listen to the thunder storm from the windows. I didn’t have tv when I was a little child so the world was my entertainment. I would play in the mud and make mud pies and such. I remember interacting with insects of all kinds without fear or much hesitation of picking them up. I remember pulling up dandelions or sometimes whatever flowers my mom was trying to grow. Playing with and throwing rocks, climbing up high into trees and playing with pinecones.

When I started riding a bike I would ride back and forth in the driveway for hours. Then when I graduated to the road I would ride around the town for hours. I had little fear and nearly got hit many times. I would go down to the vacant fields and ride around on the trails and over the culverts, that acted like jumps, for hours. There were slips, scrapes and bruises but I got bandages and ointment and I would be right back at it. Sometimes as I was out and about, I would meet up with other kids from the neighborhood and sometimes we would go over to each other’s houses to play. At that time, we had not divided ourselves into groups or cliques and every other kid you met was a potential playmate.

As time went by and brothers and sisters came, I found new companions for these adventures and new personalities to adjust to.

My mother harbored hidden pain and torment stemming from her childhood. Her brother and sister were several years older than her so she was often left to play alone. Growing up I remember sometimes she would play with us and it was great like she was just one of the kids. I remember playing dress up games like “cowboys and indians” and crafts. I also remember a time when she thought it would be fun for the boys to dress up as girls and the girls to dress up as boys. It was fun. But this was only once in a while and other times she would lock herself in her bedroom and be on the phone for hours. Despite her problems, I believe she tried her best to create a happy situation for her family but it didn’t always work out that way.

I remember in the late seventies that life suddenly became less fun and there were many fights between my parents that me and my younger siblings often ended up in the middle of. I sometimes would end up taking care of my siblings in the best ways I knew how while my parent’s attention was with themselves. Although I tried, I often failed in many respects. I was the oldest of seven children as a total. My dad sometimes would just want to disappear into his own little world and want to be left alone. He would just block everything and everyone out. He was also of the mind that housework was for women and children and would never help around the house. He had a very bad temper and corporal punishment (belt lashings) the normal way that he and my mother chose to deal with us. My mother, however, would utilize other means of punishment like withholding affection, gas-lighting and other mental/emotional torments.

I don’t ever remember being truly happy in church on Sundays. My dad was easily embarrassed by our childish ways so we sat in the back so he could try to keep us inline more discreetly by finger tap to top of head. I often would spend a couple hours or so with my face in the corner after we got home from church, because of my antics. Throughout the years that followed, the more I had to do with the religion, the less happy I was. However, I went anyway and tried to please my parents most of the time. I tried to “bear my testimony” once and it felt weird because I was saying the same repetitious/insincere things that the other kids were saying so I never did it again. I also, most times, would feel like a fool when I tried to pray about something. It felt like I was talking to the air or nothing at all so it was not done too often.

Church was the thing my parents relied most on to give them what they needed to help them become happy, but stemming from their own words with me on several occasions, I do not believe they ever found what they were really looking for there.

Growing up I was an awkward kid with a big mouth and hyperactive disorder and thick glasses and was sometimes the object of bullies. Because of this I learned to dish it out as well as I could take it. When in doubt, running away is what I did and I got good at it. I wonder if I hadn’t been so scared and tried to reach out more to these supposed bullies if I wouldn’t have made a new friend or two.

I had a few friends back then and one in particular, a fellow mutant I suspect that didn’t mind that I had big thick glasses. Jennifer loved when we would up to the library during recess and look at and laugh at some of the naughty pictures in the National Geographic. I don’t think she was LDS and I was sad that she moved that summer.

Even though I could run fast, I often found that I was unbalanced or lacked finesse when it came to sports. As a result, I didn’t participate in sports throughout school as much as some others did. Plus, our school system didn’t have programs for the only sports I did like, baseball and soccer. However, once I did have an experience that I think may have changed my perception and therefore my life a bit.

We were playing baseball and I remember for some reason I just wasn’t having the same anxiety that I would sometimes have. In fact, I was really having fun and enjoying the people I was around and I was really in the zone. I was up to bat and the pitch came down and I just let the bat swing. The bat made contact and that ball sailed up so high I could barely see it. As I was running to first that ball touched down behind the fence of a house behind the school and as all the bases had been loaded, we all ran home. I got so much attention for that and one of the older boys even said, ”Good job Jon that was awesome.” Even though that never happened again like that I think it was a pivotal for me to realize that even I had unknown potential.

Dealing with my mom at times could be very difficult. She wasn’t very diplomatic and would not always deal with certain situations in a way that would bring about a more desirable outcome. Often her way of dealing with situations was antagonistic and would only end up exacerbating already bad situations. On one occasion I learned the hard way to not rely on her or seek her attention for things that were better left for me to deal with by myself.

When I was in fifth grade, I had an argument about something I can’t even remember with a boy and his friend. He followed me into the restroom and confronted me as I was at the urinal. Later that night I felt like I needed my mother as just a calming listening ear but I would soon find out that was a bad idea. She was engaged in a tv show and I wasn’t that important. Just to get her attention and because of my sense of humor, I shouted at her that “some other boy was watching me pee” or something like that. Oh yeah, that caused a shit storm with her. I tried and tried to re-explain but her hearing was closed off and she was convinced that her boy had been sexually assaulted. The next day she went to the school and caused trouble about it. It was out of my hands and I don’t know exactly what occurred but that kid got some undeserved hell as these false allegations got out to the other students and he was harassed by some other boys in a homophobic way. One kid in my class, who was his friend, didn’t believe it though and came up to me and with anger proceeded to read me the riot act without even letting me get a word in edgewise and never spoke to me again. This was the start, I believe, of me losing almost all of my friends who just didn’t want to be mixed up with a troubled kid like me. Funny enough though, when I got to high school, I ended up sitting right next to this kid I had inadvertently accused of a falsehood and would dare say we became friends. He was a great person and never even brought up that event from years previous.

My mother was very religious and held to staunch beliefs. Once as I was trying to secretly drink down a Dr Pepper that I had bought, she caught me and poured it out on the ground in front of me as she yelled at me. The word of wisdom was to be strictly observed in her household and she would often tell me I was bound for hell if I didn’t comply with her wishes. Sex was dirty to her and she let me know about it often through many awkward and tiring sex talks.

As I entered adolescence, life seemed to have become more difficult than before. Besides being socially awkward, my mom had become a hoarder and home life was even more difficult . As a result, I would often lash out at other kids as well as my own brothers and sisters. Of course, there was good times too but when I think back, the things I did that hurt other people seem to overshadow them. I remember in Junior High a bunch of us picking on a boy who was skinny and hitting him in the arm. The look on his face as he looked at me in the eyes as I was doing this to him haunts me to no end.

I went out for the wrestling team in eighth grade but I really didn’t like it much. I didn’t mind losing but when I did win, which didn’t happen too often, I didn’t like what I could see it did to the other person. I could see that they were sad or embarrassed and maybe they even had a family member watching. One who had expectations for them that wasn’t being met and they had to deal with their disappointment. Sports and winning were a very big deal where I grew up.

It became harder to relate to others except those going through the same kind of things as I was. I learned the art of avoidance and was able to avoid many potential fights as a result. I would either hang out in the library with the other nerds or behind buildings with what became the other stoners. Besides the fact that I had gone to church and even held some leadership positions as a young man, by the time I was about 16 I had become an agnostic and wanted nothing further to do with the religion. I did however have a safe place to go from time to time.

An elderly woman in the neighborhood had befriended me. She was also Mormon although she was a shut-in and she had a set of Book of Mormon tapes that I could listen to for hours on end in peace. I remember being blown away by some of the things I was hearing while listening to these tapes. These were things that weren’t taught much in Sunday school and when they were, it was tongue-in-cheek. For instance, I found it strange and funny that the story of the Rameumtom (found in chapter 31 of Alma) was something that my church unwittingly did every first Sunday. Sure, found some disparities and I don’t think I truly forgot because later in my life when I would be feeling particularly lost, I would go back and listen or read and wonder and try to understand.

I hate to admit it, but as strong as I think I am, I am often lead and influenced through peer pressure by others in ways that seem to change the way I see myself or my relationship to the world. One night after a church youth night I was with some others having fun and the girl next door was making out a little with her boyfriend on the lawn outside the church. When she looked up and saw me there, she said something jokingly about being surprised I was hanging out because she thought I was a goody-goody. This was a pivotal and surprising moment for me and from then on I was determined to give any and all no doubt that I definitely was not.

I was well on my way, and in fact, I never did live up to my parents/community’s expectations for me involving being a good Mormon follower.

My new point of view as a teenager was becoming a lot more liberal/progressive and I started to explore different philosophies and ways of thinking and read a lot of books. I started wanting to explore different ways of thinking, different forms of expression, philosophies, music, art, etc.

I once snuck out of my parents’ home at midnight during a power outage and happened to run into some other kids I knew who were doing the same thing. We hung out most of the night evading the police and even snuck into the high school through an open window and almost got caught. the adrenaline rush was thrilling. Later when I started driving, I would feel the same rush going insanely fast speeds at night.

By the time I was 16 I had little interest in the church I was brought up in. I still went though, to appease my parents and take the heat off a bit. It was easier to live a double life than to deal with a situation that I couldn’t control. My last year of high school I was a secretary in the priests Quorum and one day the bishop called me over to his house for a secret meeting. Turns out he wanted me to snitch on one of my friends, another priest in the ward, who he suspected may be into drugs and asked me if I knew anything. I lied to him and told him that I didn’t know but if he wanted to know something like that why didn’t he just ask the person directly. The meeting ended just like that and I could tell he was upset with me not playing along and ratting my friend out. I mark this as the time my ward stopped attempting to groom me and labeled me a bad seed. Even to this day if I happen to see anyone from my parent’s ward I still get “that look”.

When I was about 17 I had met the girl I would later marry. We would often pass in the stairwell at school and I started smiling at her because there was just something about her. We started hanging out and soon became exclusive in all meanings of the word. I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch back then, by choice, and I thought it was funny that all she would have for lunch was a small bag of cool-ranch-Doritos and a can of Mountain Dew.

Even though we had fun together I was a horrible boyfriend and a couple times gave into temptation to romance other girls. I felt bad and broke it off with Becky partially because I didn’t think she deserved to be treated like that. After high school, I had moved away to Idaho and after a few months and a new perspective I was able to find a new peace. During that time, we would often communicate and our relationship grew. We got back together and I ended up following her to SLC, UT where she was going to cosmetology school.

Much to her parents dismay we got engaged/married, I was definitely not their first choice but later on after a few years we got along famously. They used to say that if me and Beck ever split that I was always welcome to stay with them. In fact, their exact words were, “Jon if you and Becky ever divorce, we sure will miss her!” They became my parents, so much more than just in-laws.

She moved in with me in my tiny apartment downtown (1994) and although sometimes things were rocky, we survived and grew together. Later we moved to Sugarhouse (1995) and then Holliday (1996). For the first 4 years we did not have children and this gave us some valuable time to get to know each other and adjust to our new life together.

We were not active in the LDS church at the time and I thought that what I did see of the place (SLC) was weird, especially on Sundays when everything just shut down. There was definitely a whole lot of an “us and them” way of life going on, on both sides LDS and non-members. Orem/Provo was even more weird to me in the same ways but about 3-times as much especially on Sundays watching the white-shirt-with-tie-parade as I call it. I remember being taken back by the amount of poverty and disparity what exists in what one of my devout cousins referred to as “the holy land”. The amount of focus on money and materialism especially by the members surprised me. I saw very little if any concern for the suffering of others. As soon as I found an opportunity to leave, I took it and at the end of (1996) we moved back to western Wyoming. It was a struggle for me at first to find work at that time but I eventually did. Times of going through the hardship of unemployment have been some of the worst for me.

A couple years before the turn of the century we had our firstborn. I had been inactive as far as the LDS religion goes for several years. while my wife was carrying our child, I started having thoughts like I didn’t know what I was doing and perhaps I should return to church to be able to raise my kid in the church so that maybe he would have a chance and not go to hell. Yeah right, no kidding. I became a lot more conservative in my views not unlike a couple of young republicans I had mentioned before. It didn’t take long to reactivate and become once again entrenched in the religion. I was soon bumped up to becoming an elder in the priesthood and was given a small job in the leadership. Me and my wife also got our temple recommends and, even though we had already been married civilly, we became endowed in the temple ceremony which for the most part was very confusing to me. One job became many and I was becoming overwhelmed. Between a full time job and helping family on the weekends and running as an EMT and then all those church jobs, I was starting to really lose my shit. All the good feelings from the start of going back were ending. I remember that me and my wife would often fight about the stupidest stuff after we would get back home from going to church.

We had our second child in 2000 and life was getting cosy. We began to have enough money that we could play a bit. I also remember we had more energy and would often go on little adventures with our kids like on one occasion that sticks out, driving up into the hills on a spring day with the new densely packed flowers popping out everywhere. We really enjoyed life with our little family and took great pride in our children and our way of life. Still, I felt like there was something I was missing. This was also, however, a time when I started to experience anxiety attacks that seemed to come out of nowhere and could be very frightening. I could not understand how this could be happening at times when everything seemed to be going right.

Mostly unknown to my wife I stopped going to church meetings in about 2002. I would instead go for long three hour drives on these beautiful sunny Sundays. I ended up getting another better paying job and they moved me to the evening shift. I just had the two kids then and I hardly got to see them or my wife. I was feeling disenfranchised, my pursuit of money was taking a toll on my emotional health. I soon turned to the same solutions I had turned to when I was a teen and young adult. I started smoking again and drinking and other means. I was really a shit father for the years that followed. Even though I made good money I just wasn’t there for my kids. I would spend a lot of time with friends hanging out and getting high. 2006 rolled around and I felt pressure to make even more money to make ends meet so I found one that paid more. I dealt with work pressures by increasing my alcohol intake. Sometimes I was funny and energetic but other times I was verbally abusive or would do things like kick in doors. I would often end up doing things in this state that put my life and others at risk. My wife was getting done with me.

In 2007 we had our third child. This was also the year my oldest went through corrective heart surgery, needless to say a very anxious time. I remember feeling emasculated because of my inability to pay for the big expenses of things, like this surgery, without the help of Medicaid.

Because it didn’t feel like things were going right in the world, I started to explore conspiracy theories that although they were remote or obscured back then, they have scarily become what seems to be mainstream accepted thought these days. Although through logic I have since been able to pull myself away from these unfounded theories, they seem to have endured through others until nowadays some people believe that they are fact. I remember listening intently to a lot of right-wing media and soaking up their hate drenched thoughts that would end up influencing my own alcohol fueled raging. I have since, and because of the MWAW work that I found, learned that it is easy for people to be misled and unduly influenced to believe many things that are not true for the end purpose of manipulation or material gain using methods of phycology or trickery. Even the non-religious, I have found, have their own influencers who even though they tout otherwise, act as priests of sorts and rely on their prestige and followers.

I was due for a change and probably would have been swallowed up by this if not for what happened next.

Just a few months after my last child was born, at the end of 2009, I received a phone call that my little sister had died under strange, mysterious and horrifying circumstances. It was like a sledgehammer to my chest. I immediately started crying uncontrollably and locked myself away from everyone. It felt like my heart was being crushed and pierced by hundreds of needles. I’ve never been the same since. I still used alcohol to deaden the pain but at the same time I was starting to see things from a different perspective. For instance, I started giving my loose change, every once in a while, to those charity cups you see in stores. Something I had never even considered doing before. I was taught to not take pamphlets, give away hard earned money or pick up hitch hikers among other things. I was taught that if people are going through tough times then they probably deserve it. I had never known any real pain like this and I was able to feel more empathy for others. It felt good to give something away like it doesn’t mean anything.

Me and my wife started talking like never before and I think it was helping to keep us together. She was a great help to me during this time and in the years that followed I was able to step in and be there for her as she lost her parents. She was still involved with the church to some extent and at the same time I was starting to look up things on the internet that she didn’t agree with. A lot of ex-Mormon stuff. I thought some of it made sense but other things sounded like just agro.

For example, I never could find any conclusive evidence that Joseph Smith Jr. had ever had sexual relations outside of his marriage with his wife Emma. Where were all these children from other women he would have had. Something didn’t seem right and I knew there was more to the story. A lot of this ex-Mormon stuff just seemed like a lot of hate and anger. My perspective was changing to be a lot more liberal than I ever was before. Once I was listening to a story on the radio about a gay couple who had adopted a child and when I heard the man talk about the love he had for his child, I knew in an instant that not only was it a great thing for gay couples to adopt children but that there was nothing wrong with being gay in the first place. This realization made me feel more at peace and I was able to view, for example, my brother-in-law who is gay with different eyes and start to treat him better. As I would talk about things like this with my wife, I would see the displeasure in her eyes and I knew there was a growing divide.

As a way to escape reality I would often escape into the world of video games, especially the ones that let you explore a world at one’s leisure. Even though I know that a lot of this is wasted time, it has however helped me to better understand, I think, some of the new concepts I have learned.

At the beginning of 2014 even though I was starting to see the world differently, I still couldn’t find the answers to what was real and true. I was also suffering from crippling depression and alcoholism. My wife had come into enough money for me to get away from the job I was at which I was beginning to hate. We had talked about me taking some time off and among other things doing some things around the house. I had also decided to go back to church on a limited basis and had resigned myself to there just not being any answers to my questions. One day in February I was at work and for some reason was feeling unusually good. I remember thinking that perhaps I should keep my job and that I could start saving what I made and then open a business and maybe I could find a way to even help other people. The very next day working at the same place I was hit by some of the worst depression I have ever felt. I felt like I was spiraling down. That night I decided to quit my job. So, a week of not being employed I was at home alone and looking for something inspirational to listen to on youtube. I thought to myself that maybe I should listen to some talks by some of the Mormon prophets that I remembered from when I was a kid. I listened to a short of Benson talking and then right there on the suggestions of what to watch next was these words. “Ida Smith excommunicated for reading Sealed Portion…”.

This caught my attention because I remembered it being mentioned in The Book of Mormon and had wondered what it was about. I found it online for free and started browsing it a bit but felt skeptical so I decided to research who had written it. followed by what turned out to be a lot of false or assumptive propaganda about the author, Google brought up a photo of a man with long hair and a strange laced up linen shirt. Kinda like Jesus right? I laughed and said something like ”Ok, here we go. Wow. What have I got myself into here?” I decided to give it a chance anyway. I had some time to kill so why not give it a chance. If nothing else, it might be a good laugh. Long story short, I spent the next couple months or so reading my eyeballs out of their sockets. I was hooked on the information and it just blew me away. I watched the video shows, read as many daily blogs as I could and whatever else I could. My wife got really annoyed with me reading all the time and not getting much else done. That is until she started reading one of the books.

This work, the MWAW, has taught me many things that I can accept because they make sense. These common sense, amazing truths have and are explaining everything I ever wondered about the origin and meaning of The Book of Mormon. The Sealed Portion Explains many things which I had never even considered. Its book about the unfolding of the Bibles’ Book of Revelations explained every beautiful meaning behind this mysterious books’ misunderstood prose. The Autobiography of Joseph Smith helped me to understand the meaning and truth behind the events in his life with an extensive bibliography to boot. The Secret not Sacred book helped me to understand the meaning behind the temple ceremony that I had been a part of many years before and of which no one else had ever been able to explain. From all the books of the MWAW to the new and upcoming books of the Real Illuminati have helped me realize the reality of human existence and the true origins and purpose of religion in general. The Humanity Party has presented to me a plan that embodies the true and only form of government and economics that will work for the peace and unity of all people on earth. This work is information. Never have I been asked to give back to it except to simply consider.

Since finding this work my perspective may have changed but my everyday activities or behavior have been slower to change.

I am a lot nicer of a person and probably a lot more pleasant to be around, however I still struggle a lot. I’ve really struggled and there was been contention with some of the members of my family, and in the last few years, with their drama and situations that I often allow myself to get in with them. I have also been tested with situations involving them in which I have ultimately learned important lessons about myself and how I need to change in order to be happier.

So here I am now, still listening, still reading, still trying to learn new things every day. I would invite all of you to do the same. For me it has been mind-blowing and totally worth it. I hope to someday see your picture and read your story whomever you are, whatever your experience has been. I would urge everyone to not be afraid, think about it this way. What do you really have to lose by supporting the one/ones who have the only plan to eliminate worldwide poverty and save our world/us from itself/ourselves. I have found that those in my life who mock or deride me for my beliefs were always going to do so for some reason anyway. If not this, it would have been something else. But consider what you can gain for yourself by exploring this with an open mind. what will you find for yourself and how will it be helpful not just for you but for all of us together, united. As for me, of all the things that I have done so far in my life or of all the things that I can imagine that I will do with the rest of my life, I do not know of anything that could be as important as supporting this work in all of its forms. My admiration and appreciation to all of you.

Jon Franklin

jfhijmpi3@hotmail.com