Steve: [00:00:30] hello. Welcome to this video call. It's suppertime. Elena and I are just having tea nap technically supper, In this conversation for the next hour or so, we're going to be exploring a whole lot of cool things that I think are very relevant right now, and then we'll also be increasingly relevant in the future. Part of the reason I was so excited to have separate time with Elena, I mean, it was like the first person who was like, Oh my gosh, this is a project you're doing.

I want to be a part of it. and I had already just tested the waters with Connor and my own mom. And so to have people just like. Instantly interested. It was really fun. Elena, however, in particular is one of the most fun guests I think I could have hoped to have. because. You're situated right now in this very interesting overlap between two cultural worlds, which are politically and culturally relevant for the, the like period of years they were in.

But then also at this particular moment in like the months of the world that are happening, we have this Corona outbreak in the Mormon church is all in the news for a million reasons. And so there are a whole bunch of very timely things that we can talk about to, in your life experience and then also in your history with church.

And so there's just a. Perfect variety of cool things for us to connect about. And also we haven't gotten to talk in like six months. So part of this is just fun for us to catch up. So with that, I'll let you meet. Delana say

Elena: [00:01:47] hi. Hi, I'm a speaker. I'm an activist. I'm a mom, I'm a fly Fisher. I'm a friend to Steve's.

Steve: [00:01:57] Mostly fly Fisher from what I can see on Instagram. yeah, so we met, because you did a Ted talk last year. so I, I guess it's so funny that technically we met by way of a video audition. So online video has always been our, our, like a means of connecting. and you had your Ted talk go up late last year.

that was just incredible story about. Your, sort of discovering and coming out and realizing what you wanted from your family life. It was very cool. now you're, living in Arizona and tell us a little bit about your life and what you're up to now.

Elena: [00:02:32] So I live in a suburb of Arizona. It's about 45 minutes outside of Phoenix, so about two hours to the nearest fly fishing spot for contact.

let's see. I have my four children. 50% of the time I split custody with my ex husband and his partner, and they actually live in the same neighborhood. So we live in a very. Typical suburban new bread. There's an elementary school right in the middle of the neighborhood. The high school junior high is right outside the neighborhoods.

So literally our kids just ride their bikes to our houses and to the schools and they're just everywhere. It's awesome. It's really great. Yeah. I live here with my amazing girlfriend and our grumpy attack cat, and yeah, we, I work from home and we have a really beautiful

Steve: [00:03:22] life. That's cool. That's cool. We were just talking before this, how nice it is that we get to kind of have a call and catch up that we'd both probably just be watching TV if we weren't doing this, and I think that's cool.

One of the most special parts of separate time is that instead we're going to get to spend our evening talking about some of the things that are on their mind lately. So the first one of those I want to dive into is what news have you seen about the Catholic church and sort of all the supplies that they are providing to people?

What do you think about the context around them?

Elena: [00:03:51] You said Catholic, do you mean Mormon?

Steve: [00:03:52] Oh, I definitely mean Mormon. Did I say Catholic? That's so strange that my brain did that. I don't know why I meant Mormon. Definitely.

Elena: [00:04:00] Yeah. So, he might've read different articles with me, so we can kind of both go there.

so right now what's actually affecting me most is not the supplies, but the missionaries that are out right now, everyone knows missionaries, the elders, the 19 year old boys and the in the white shirts and ties off. So up until. 48 hours ago, they were still knocking on doors, shaking hands, going house to house, proselytizing.

I'm like, are you kidding me?

Steve: [00:04:37] Even occurred to me that like that's a thing that's ongoing still too.

Elena: [00:04:41] And so we're recording this on Thursday and last Sunday. the missionaries get to call home once a week now, which is awesome. And so I have a nephew who is in the Philippines and he called home and we were like, what's going on?