LDS Podcast "Latter-Day Lights" - Inspirational LDS Stories
Popular LDS Podcast "Latter-Day Lights" gives members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints the opportunity to share their stories of inspiration and hope to other members throughout the world. Stories that members share on Latter-Day Lights are very entertaining, and cover a wide range of topics, from tragedy, loss, and overcoming difficult challenges, to miracles, humor, and uplifting conversion experiences! If you have an inspirational story that you'd like to share, hosts Scott Brandley and Alisha Coakley would love to hear from you! Visit LatterDayLights.com to share your story and be on the show.
LDS Podcast "Latter-Day Lights" - Inspirational LDS Stories
Life Lessons Learned From Reuniting 1,000's of Lost Families: Troy Dunn's Story - Latter-Day Lights
In this episode, Troy Dunn, also known as "The Locator", has spent most of his life helping people to fulfil one of their greatest wishes - being reunited with their lost loved ones.
Having spent many years on TV and in the limelight, Troy has remained a faithful member of the church, and shares several touching stories, unique insights, and valuable life lessons that he's learned along the way.
*** Please SHARE Troy's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***
To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/2HSelJmTL-o
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To LEARN more about the The Locator Foundation and how you can find a lost loved one or volunteer to help others, visit (direct link): https://www.thelocator.org
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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.
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 search for a lost loved one led one man on a 30-year path. That's helping others find peace by finding all the pieces. 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 have a really special guest for you guys Troy Dunn. Troy, how are you doing today?
Troy Dunn:I'm grateful to be here. Thanks for inviting me, Scott and Alisha.
Alisha Coakley:I just got to put it out there. I've been inviting you. You were like, when we knew we were going to do the show, I knew immediately. I was like I want to call Troy because I have loved every single talk you've given. I've known you since you were a bishop Well, maybe before you were even bishop back in Florida, I can't remember it was a long. I mean, I used to babysit for kids. Your kids were in my. Sunday school class. Yeah, we've been around.
Troy Dunn:I think, jennifer, my wife was a young woman's president to either you or your sips I can't remember who.
Alisha Coakley:It was to us. Yeah, she was, I don't know, she was president or just in the presidency or something, but anyway, we've been connected for a hot minute, so yeah. So I was like we have to have Troy come on at some point in the show, and so now it's here and I'm so excited.
Troy Dunn:Oh, thanks for having me. I'm so excited.
Alisha Coakley:Yeah, we the audience doesn't know this, but we spent a long time Troy and I, just you know talking before we started recording and poor Scott was left out because we had to catch up. But we're not going to leave Scott out of this episode. We're going to let him. We're going to let him chime in here, maybe a little bit. We'll see, it's okay.
Scott Brandley:I love your friend I love your show.
Alisha Coakley:And Troy and I loves, we love talking right Like we could just talk to anybody about anything forever, and so this might be like a six hour long show, I don't know oh great.
Troy Dunn:You just scared everyone off.
Alisha Coakley:No, well, troy, I know a lot about you, but our audience may not. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Troy Dunn:Okay, my name is Troy Dunn. I was born in Kansas. I went to a different school every year of my childhood, from kindergarten up to high school. I married my high school sweetheart, jennifer. We have eight children and six grandchildren I have. I feel like I'm 20 years older than my age just because life has been quite a journey, as I'm sure it is for everybody. We spent most of our life in Florida because we went to spring break there one time and fell in love with the state and decided to stay. So 28 years later we moved to Utah, where we are today, and yeah, I guess that's the short version.
Alisha Coakley:That is a very short version, right, and so I'm just going to, I'm just going to put you up on a pedestal here, troy, you have. You have had a very eventful life. You've not only been a speaker, you've had. You used to have tapes. We're going to date each other, like not date each other, but you know what I mean Like we're going to age each other here. Yes, you had talks on tape, right A long like yes a while ago.
Troy Dunn:I feel like I'm old enough. I usually just tell people I had talks on CDs but you had to take it down. Even another generation that tapes, and yes, because that tape.
Alisha Coakley:I had so many of your cassette tapes. You have been on TV. You've had your own TV show. You've been on TV shows, right, like Dr Phil, you know. I know I remember you mentioning once about you guys' relationship. You guys were like buddy buddy and he had some dogs or something like that. He had like these. Am I remembering this story? I feel like you mentioned Dr Phil had some, some like vicious dogs or what were they? Rottweiler, I don't know.
Troy Dunn:He had. Well, you might have read that in the tabloids. He does have a dog that has bitten people in the past, but never bit me when I've been at his house. So I don't have anything.
Alisha Coakley:No, not that they ever bit you, but I think that there was like a maybe you had heard about it and you were nervous, Like when you first were going to his house.
Troy Dunn:Everybody was told yes, everybody's told when you enter Phil's office or Phil's home, to never reach down and pet the dog.
Alisha Coakley:That's what it was. That's what it was.
Troy Dunn:Yeah, and I remember you being like oh yeah, because I love dogs, I have dogs. I've never been afraid of dogs, but Dr Phil's dog is one that you do not there you go. That's a weird thing for you to remember.
Alisha Coakley:I don't know why. Probably because when you speak you give these like very, you just have a way of like playing a movie out in people's heads, like you just know you're a great storyteller, that's what it is, and so I just got this visual and so you.
Alisha Coakley:you have done so much in your life, both on a volunteer basis as in your career, and you definitely have just you've tried everything. It feels like it feels like you're the person that takes risk and you just have so much good that you've put out there in the world. So I think it's amazing.
Troy Dunn:Well, can I counter that? Because as I get older and as you and I and Scott talked a little off the air before we started, you know, I'm in a chapter of my life where, having lived a lot of years and been through different phases of life, whatever that means for everybody else, I'm in this place where I really work hard to be completely authentic. And in my commitment to authenticity, one of the things that I try to dodge is anytime I fear that somebody is I don't know. I don't want, I don't ever want, to be perceived as somebody who has done more than others or is better than others. You know, everything about my life is as it is for your life and Scott's life and everybody else's life right, I'm a broken person who works hard to repair my parts. I'm only here today because of the atonement. I think that you know when you.
Troy Dunn:One of the concerns I've always had, both in the gospel and in the world itself, is that and not to take us down a reared rabbit hole. But so often messaging is created in such a way to really elevate and escalate people and then I feel like those who don't get elevated feel less than and I just want to make sure it's super clear that you know I go through difficult times in my marriage, like everyone else does. I go through difficult times as a parent, like others have done. I have made horrible choices in my life that have hurt others, that I've had to work back through and rebuild, and I feel like we're all on the very same path for the most part, with different experiences. But so often the messaging of the world is that there are some people who are doing this thing better than others, and I don't really necessarily subscribe to that. I really do think that we're all broken and they were all running, falling, getting up, running, falling, getting up, walking, falling, getting up, sometimes not getting up right away, laying there for a while and saying, do I want to get up again, stumbling forward, right.
Troy Dunn:I just think that's actually what's really happening behind the scenes for everybody, and I know that, having spent most of my career in television, I've got to know I have a lot of. I don't. I'm very I treat the word friend very sacredly, so I don't want to say friend, but I have a lot of acquaintances that are celebrities and that means I know their life behind camera, offstage or whatever it is, and I don't know why. I don't know why my brain process is this way, but it always startles me to see them in a bad place, or to see them struggling with something, or to get a phone call that something horrible is done or that they've done something horrible. I'm like, wow, could they?
Troy Dunn:I don't know how that happens in life, but I just feel like it's so critical that if we really do as Latter-day Saints believe, that there is only one way out of this and that's through the savior, then what that really is saying it's a nice way of saying, but what that's really saying is each and every one of us are bordering on being a train wreck, and, and and. Had there not been, had there not been an atonement, we'd be lost, like we would just be a pile of losers. Because the rules are so hard, life is so difficult that if it requires this amazing journey of great things happening, then we've all lost, we've all failed. So I think I'm overreacting, maybe, to just your really kind intro, but I just say, no, I do this everywhere I go. It isn't just because of anything kind that you said to me. It's just this phase of my life that I'm in where I just I want people to see me authentically for all that I am and all that I am not, and that's how I like to see other people and that to me, you know, my closest friends are people who I know their scars and I know their wounds. I know their imperfections. I, you know, if you visit, if you ever visit a friend in the hospital, you're going to see them at a very vulnerable place.
Troy Dunn:They're, you know, they're there with somebody else's gown on, they're not prepared, they're not dressed nicely. In most cases, if it's a female, they're not wearing hair and makeup, right, they're just right. They maybe have a tube hanging out of their body that's draining fluids out of their body, like. It's not a pretty sight, but you know what it is, it's real, it is really what's happening in their life in that moment. And if you can go to that hospital and sit by their bedside and love them and support them, even if they're not in a great place, even if their mindset is depressed or angry at God for what they're doing they're angry at God for what's happened to them or whatever it is If you can just sit and be with them in that space. You're not a doctor, so you can't fix them, you can't lift the blankets and sew something on and put in some. You can only sit with them and love them, and if you can do that in a physical hospital, my belief is that's really our role in loving and supporting others.
Troy Dunn:Because the truth is right, this, this earth that we dwell on, is kind of just a really big round hospital and there's just a lot of us on it, and some of us are dealing with what might be cancer, levels of suffering in our lives, and others might be just dealing with what we might consider, you know, a mild flu or a cold reaction. But still we need somebody that can come and sit by us where we are, as we are. That's a true relationship, that's a true friendship. That's ultimately what I think we all need, and I think to be a good friend of somebody, you have to create an environment where people around you feel like you could show up to the hospital and they would be okay, not doing their hair up and putting on an outfit. You could come to their home and they're not doing as we've done for years, shoving everything under the couch, so you can't tell that we've got a really messy house or you know, in business, oftentimes I'll meet somebody somewhere like, hey, let's meet at the parking lot at this place, we'll just ride together to the meeting.
Troy Dunn:I'm like we should take your car because mine's got trash on the floorboard and I haven't wiped down the dash in six months. But you know, when that friend can just hop in the car, we can just go. You're in a safe place. And I feel like the adversary doesn't ever want that to happen, doesn't want there to be a safe place for you to be authentic. And there's that fine line in the gospel, right, we show up on Sundays. We're in our best clothes. I mean, I didn't show up in this podcast in my t-shirt, but that's what I had on before I got dressed. You know, I put this on because I want to make sure I'm meeting expectations, right. Nothing against what you and Scott didn't tell me. You better show up, look and handsome.
Alisha Coakley:Yeah, I forgot to give you that.
Troy Dunn:And so you know, we show up in our Sunday best on Sundays, and our kids need to be the right behavior, and you know all of that. And I'm okay with the understanding that there's an environment where we all show up in our Sunday best. I just want to make sure that we are also creating places for each other where we can be in our Monday worst. Yeah, you know, and so I'm not a huge rant about finding your reaction, but I just, I just I'm just over. I'm just over people being something or not, or giving their story a haircut. So it's just all the pretty stuff, right? You know? We call that social media, right? Social media? You trim out all the ugly stuff and you just put up the pretty stuff, which is great. I don't know that I want to watch everybody's feed that goes. And today I'm depressed again and today, but maybe that's what it should be, Maybe we should be more authentic so that we know who's bedside to go sit at, you know? So anyway, sorry for the rant, that's. I just love authenticity so much.
Alisha Coakley:Well, you know, I like to think and I guess I don't know if I'm like authenticity is like the main thing of my focus, but I've really tried to be more balanced.
Alisha Coakley:You know, turning 40 this year and everything, I'm kind of. I'm kind of I'm living my life with and attached to everything. Yes, I'm writing a book and I have my book coaching and I have, you know, I can list off all these accomplishments and I practically threw my back out mopping the other day because I'm so out of shape and my kids have eaten cereal for breakfast and lunch and dinner for the last three days in a row and and and so I love that you're all about the authenticity, because I can totally respect that and I think I think that's all you were doing was you're just attaching your and you know, yes, you have had a lot of accomplishments and you have had a lot of downfalls and you've had a lot of struggles and you have a lot of real things happening in your life that are hard and ugly and messy, and and that's okay and that's okay.
Troy Dunn:That is exactly right. I just think it's. I think it's important to tell a whole story and not a half story. I mean it doesn't mean that people need to necessarily air their dirty laundry because everybody's got it and that's just a world of dirty laundry. But I think I think it's okay to let people know that we all have good days and bad days. We've all made good choices and bad choices and and you know, and I appreciate that your introduction for me today is to highlight my good choices you know we built a good business and we've helped a lot of families and, and we love doing that stuff. But beyond all that, there's just another family and marriage and parent and people struggling to, to, to overcome themselves.
Scott Brandley:Yeah, I would really like that, Troy, because it's hard to admit that you have flaws sometimes and you know, especially when you're on a podcast and we're over, we're, we're celebrating your accomplishments, it takes a lot of humility to just say like that's cool and thank you, but I'm, I'm just like you. I'm, I'm a normal person and I've got my flaws.
Alisha Coakley:I wouldn't say normal, I'm just joking. He's a little weird.
Scott Brandley:Okay, I'm a weird person with flaws right. But that that's cool because it opens up other people to to feel a lot more comfortable, because there was a little bit of celebrity there, right, Just because of some of the things you've done. That just takes that wall completely away and now we're on the same playing field and we can talk openly. So I really appreciate that. Yeah.
Troy Dunn:You know I, I you know as as people who know me know I'm I'm a big football fan. I've done talks about football, I've raised six sons that all play football, and my wife could coach football. She's so smart and so aggressive. You can't watch a game on TV with her without knowing there's going to be drama, because she gets very angry at bad calls. If they'd had girls high school football when she was in high school, she would have played and probably been the quarterback. And so I know that when we're preparing for, when we're preparing for for a football game, you like to know the enemy. Right, you scout the film, you watch their defense, you figure out their offense and then you're like, okay, well, based on that, I'm going to make these different choices. We were going to run a lot of passes, but because of the way their defense is built, we're going to actually run the ball more this time. Right, you just make, you make adjustments to give yourself the greatest chance of victory, and I feel that is the same way in life, and I feel like the adversary is that enemy that we must have some understanding of to some degree, so that we can prepare ourselves to give ourselves the greatest shot at victory ourselves, our marriage, our families. And you know you lose enough games. You start to go I got it. There's something's got to change. I got to change something, and the one.
Troy Dunn:The one thing that I feel like the adversary does really, really well, unfortunately, is he has weaponized the concept of isolation. When somebody is in a bad place, our society will oftentimes create a situation where they have to isolate. If you isolate because you feel like, oh, I can't tell my parents what I've done, because they'll kill me. I don't want the world to know what I've done, because they'll cancel me. I don't want to tell my employer what's happened, because they'll fire me. I don't want to tell my wife what's going on because she'll leave me, like it's all of these things that cause isolation, and in isolation, terrible, terrible things happen. We hurt ourselves, and you could take that just to the physical example. Right, if you injured yourself, isolation is the worst answer. You need to get to a hospital, you need to get to a doctor, you need to get to a loved one, you need to get somebody to tie a tourniquet. Whatever it is, the last thing you need is isolation.
Troy Dunn:Nothing fixes itself in isolation, and I think that the adversary is really good at isolating people at the time they most need their community. And the way he does that. His weapon of choice for isolation is shame. He causes people to fall into this self-created world of shame or he surrounds them with people who will shame them. You know, sometimes you have people around you who shame you, whether they realize it or they're not, and that creates isolation. And you know what happens in isolation At the very least, self-loathing. That's a terrible thing, but it happens.
Troy Dunn:Depression and in some sad cases, people take their own lives. People generally take their lives in a place of isolation, and the savior has taught us it's the opposite Reach out to people. That's why he wants those of us around people to know to reach out to them. That's why the Holy Ghost will say to you you know what? Why don't you give Scott a call, Alisha? Because I just think it's important for you to connect to him.
Troy Dunn:You may not even know why you feel the prompting, but you know what the savior knows Scott's isolating, he's isolating. We haven't seen him at church for a couple of weeks, or he didn't show up to the golf game, or he normally does this, or whatever. And you're like, okay, I'm going to reach out to him. I don't know why, but it's because there is a war going on for our souls, and one side wants us to isolate and die in our misery and our pain, and the other side wants us to heal from it and wants others to lift us and rescue us. And so that's what's happening. And so, through the spirit of authenticity or, as you say, balance, then more people heal, yeah exactly.
Alisha Coakley:Well, and I love that you brought up healing, because that is kind of what you're going to talk a little bit about today. Right, you're going to talk about how you've been in a position where you've been able to help some people heal who have felt alone in some cases Maybe they're not completely isolated but where they've had loved ones that they haven't been able to connect with or that they've lost touch with or that they've never even met right, and so I guess we're just going to turn the time over to you and we'll just see where this whole thing goes, if you want to kind of let us know. Where did that? Where did this whole journey start? You know, like your whole journey to get to the authenticity I guess is part of knowing who you are and where you come from, and so how did you get started in this pathway?
Troy Dunn:Wow, that's a big loaded question.
Alisha Coakley:No pressure.
Troy Dunn:I know, Wow. Well, at least people know now that the podcast is not scripted. So I grew up in a family that's three generations of adoption and grew up listening to my mom talk about the fact that she had a biological family out in the world somewhere She'd never met, didn't know anything about and was anxious to know more about. And in my young twenties I met a gentleman who was himself adopted and he told me that he gained a lot of personal closure by finding searching out and finding his biological family. I didn't even know that was possible, and when he told me that he had done it for himself, I begged him to help me, help my mom. And he said well, I'm not really a professional, but I'll give it a shot. And my mom had kept a shoebox under her bed for most of the life that I recall. She always had a shoebox under her bed stuffed with basically scraps of paper, little notes and things that she would gather on over her lifetime.
Troy Dunn:She was trying so hard to find her biological family as somebody who was adopted, and I brought the shoebox over to his house. I dumped it out on the dining room table. He spread it all out. Five, five and a half hours later he had found my mom's birth mother.
Alisha Coakley:It was that fast.
Troy Dunn:After her searching for decades. It was startling and he wasn't even. He didn't make a big deal about it, he was very quiet about it. He slid a little yellow sticky note across the table to me and I said what is that? And he said that is your mother's mother's phone number. And I mean my heart started pounding. I felt sweaty. I was like what, what do you mean? It's her phone. How could it be what? I don't even know what to do with this. And he laughed and he said you should call your mom. So I called my mom and I said mom, are you sitting down? And she said oh Lord, what is wrong, troy? And I said no, mama, nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong. But I'm holding a piece of paper with your mother's phone number on it, no-transcript, awkwardly quiet, like for a long, long pause on this phone call. She just was silent. After I said it. There was a moment where I thought did she hang up? Did she pass out?
Troy Dunn:I could hear her breathing still in the phone receiver. So I knew she was sitting there quietly, so I just let her sit, I just kind of waited and then she just began to sob, she burst into tears and this bellowing from her gut cry so hard, so heavy, and it got me very emotional and I sat, and now I was the quiet one, just kind of waiting for her to get to a point where she could take a breath. And she had questions and I gave her the answers we had, that we knew, and hung up the phone from that and I said to the kid that had helped I say kid because we were both in our early 20s. But I said to him you know, my mom can't be the only one who's missing a long lost family member. We should maybe, I don't know start a business or something that does this. And we did. We set up a. He was single, I was married with a young baby at the time. So we set up an office in his spare bedroom and we bought one desk used and we each sat on each side of it and and we started teaching ourselves how to do it more consistently and his job was mostly to do the searching and mine was to try to get the word out that we knew how to do this.
Troy Dunn:We went to a convention in Tampa, Florida, where it was a bunch of adoptees and adopted parents and birth parents and researchers and genealogists and getting together and and helping people find this, because it's not just it's not just for people who are like, oh, I'm curious to know where it came from. There are some of that, but for for most it's much, much deeper and and for others it's urgent. I mean, there's the American American Academy of Pediatrics will tell you there's 6,000 illnesses that are, or can be hereditary and nearly half of those can skip a generation. So even if you are adopted and have no interest, but you have children or you have grandchildren, those people don't have medical history, either because of your adoption, or if you're not adopted but you have a child in your home that you adopted, right, that child and your future grandchildren, they have medical issues that are at risk by not having your full family, family medical history. So for some people, that's their purposes for searching.
Troy Dunn:Anyway, we were at that event in Tampa. A woman named Lisa walked up to us. We'd been handing out these homemade business cards that I'm sure, Alicia's to you and remember this. Maybe Scott is too. But you used to be able to just print your own business cards right off your printer on the perforated paper with the track.
Troy Dunn:Yes, you'd have to tear the perforations off. Yes, and then you had the paper multiple times and then you pull the cards and they were terrible.
Alisha Coakley:They printed crooked, and they're, oh, they're, oh, they're much.
Troy Dunn:So we were walking around handing those out and a lady came up holding lunch and said my name is Lisa. I'm a producer for a brand new daytime national talk show called the Montel Williams show. Would you guys come on TV and grant a wish, reunite a family who's looking for somebody? And so we said sure, we didn't really know how that worked. We'd never done it before. I didn't even know I mean, I was, I was dumb enough. I was like do we get, do we have paid for this? And she laughed. She said no, no, you can't pay talk show guests. It doesn't make it authentic. There's that word again. And she said but we'll put up your 800 number and people want help, they can call you. We didn't, we didn't have any hundred numbers. So I said they're also, hypothetically speaking. If we don't have a toll free number, what would we do then? And she said well, that's really weird. You should get one for the next time. And my brain was like wait, did she just say next time? Like this isn't a once in a lifetime experience to get on national TV. We could do this more than once, right, kind of tucked that away, for like things I need to think about later and she said we'll put up your business number, but in the future you should have a toll free number. Well, we didn't have a business number either, but I didn't want to tell her that.
Troy Dunn:So we put my buddy's home phone number up on national television and the only thing we probably did right in that moment was we had hired an answering service and forwarded his phone to their answering service. And within a few days of the show airing, a very well dressed gentleman showed up at our house his house where we worked, and you know knocks on the door. And we go to the door. We're like, you know, tank tops and flip flops, and he's like is this the world headquarters for national low Peter? We're like, yep, and. And he handed us a large bill, a phone bill, and that threatened basically, if we couldn't figure out how to get a pay, there be litigation. And apparently the day that our show aired, our appearance on the Montel Williams show, they the answering service, in 24 hours, took 12,000 messages back in a time when it was a human being answering the phone and writing down messages and it was a dollar 50 message. So we owed him like $20,000 for one day of answering our phones and he thought we would be horrified. But we were just exhilarated to think that that my mom wasn't really the only one, that there really are lots of families seeking some form of healer healing enclosure.
Troy Dunn:So that was, that was the turning point for our, our life, life's work was we started hiring people and teaching them how to do what we did. I immediately went to Kmart and bought a VCR something very high tech at the time and a bunch of blank tapes, and we started recording every talk show on TV and then we would pause it on the credits. When the credits roll up the screen, we'd pause it and write down the names of all the producers and then we would call them one at a time, using information. For those of you who old enough to remember how the phones used to work call 411. You can ask for a number and we would call them up and we would say to them we can grant wishes and help families find long lost loved ones, and they don't even have to be related. It can be other reasons that people want to find somebody for their own personal healing enclosure, and I'm not exaggerating when I say literally. Nobody ever said no, at least back then, and we did hundreds of TV appearances on every network, on all the shows back in the day that would have been, I don't know, montel Williams and Mori Povich and Sally, jesse Raphael, and then they just kept escalating.
Troy Dunn:Right, then we were doing Good Morning America and the Today Show and 48 Hours, and then it was Oprah, and then it was Dr Phil, and then they offered us our own show and our show was called the Locator. It was surprisingly, since we're all a bunch of rookies. It was immediately a hit show. It was the number one highest rated show in the history of the network and that, by the way, that was my first show. Right, we did two more primetime shows after that, so three primetime shows. That first one is right now one of the top rated series on Hulu. If you have Hulu, you can look up the Locator and you'll see my black hair and you'll see no glasses, and anyway.
Troy Dunn:So we figured out something which was that at the end of the day, regardless of people's belief system, family matters, and it didn't matter whether people were older, young, white or black, male or female, rich or poor, famous or not famous, if there was a loved one missing from their lives. There was an intensity about fixing that and healing that, and that's why we say, as you said, alicia, in the opening you know that you can't find peace until you find all the pieces. So that evolved into 40,000 reunions and cases. We had a large team for that time. We did that for about 13 years. Never, ever, ever to this day, spent marketing or advertising dollars because the media told those stories so rapidly that we could barely keep up.
Troy Dunn:And after thirteen years of that, paul Allen, founder of ancestry dot com, called me, invited Jennifer and I to come up to Utah To meet him and tour the facilities at ancestry and hear about more about their mission and their purpose. And he bought he bought our company so that I became an employee of ancestry for three years. It was actually only a two year contract, but we were doing so much. My only job was to create media and tell more stories for them To accomplish their mission as well, and it's going so well. They gave me an extension on my contract state, a third year. At the end of the third year we started talking about a fourth year.
Troy Dunn:But at that same time my then seven year old daughter was diagnosed with cancer. And that was for me that was my time to back away, so, resigned from ancestry, took our Payments and left and kind of went to become, I like to tell people her roommate at the Ronald McDonald house because that's where we spent an awful lot of time on my very favorite cherries in the world now and Jennifer and I did our best to try to maintain some normality for the rest of all the children we had while getting this young lady through cancer. She's twenty four now, still battling cancer, still active tumors, still going through processes to try to Extend her life. She's an extraordinary young lady and the Lord's better. The world is better with her in it for sure. So that kind of got us to that point and the TV shows we started doing our own. We didn't chase that.
Troy Dunn:They came to us and that in itself, to be honest, was a bit of a surprise. Because you know I don't want to sound cynical but most people my age are a little cynical because you're too much. You know Hollywood's not super family friendly and I know maybe we should have run the breaking news banner first you that crawl on the bottom, scott. But they're generally not really family friendly and even when they pose to be family friendly, you still watch it and go. Who would let their kids see this or who would let this into their home? Because they sometimes and I'm not trying to Put a blanket statement over all of Hollywood I know some really great people out there who love the Lord and love family and and Don't support them.
Troy Dunn:The overall, you know, mission of Hollywood. They're not on team adversarial, say that, but oftentimes those folks are really just trying to make something that looks like it's family friendly and that's why they miss the mark, because they really have. They don't share those values. They don't, they don't embrace it and therefore they can't portray it. So when they came and asked, offered us to do a television series, I was shocked because I'm making. Why would they want what we do? Because what we do is just try to heal broken families. Who cares about that outside of our Christian universe? But you know, I don't know if they do care about that or they wanted the money from a hit show, but whatever it was, that's kind of what took us down that path. You know, covid hit and all TV production stopped.
Troy Dunn:I did my last Dr Phil appearance just a few days before everybody shut down in March of 2020. And and that was when I said the world's turned off all the cameras I'm going to stop trying to be this guy that's still trying to look like he's in his 30s with my colored hair. So that's why I let that go, and I fully intended I'd start my hair again as soon as I started TV production, but you know what happened? My high school sweetheart and wife of 35 years, jen, told me that my gray hair looked hot. It's like never colored my hair again. Anyway, decision made, yeah, and I'm sure that is not an accurate statement and I'm sure that's not an accurate statement, and I'm sure the world is.
Troy Dunn:I rolled, I'm just telling you that the girl that means the most to me. One Senate, so that's all it took. So during COVID, we use that time to launch a nonprofit foundation because, here's the weird.
Troy Dunn:Here's the weird problem Sometimes success can be its its own problem. And for us, having done years of hard work and hard work and hard work and hard work, for us, having done years of these hit television shows where we reunite families with long lost love, and just to be clear, for people have never seen our stuff, but I should give you a link. If anybody wants to watch a two minute clip, I'll send you a link and they can at least check it out. But Our, our work isn't just for adopted people. I mean, there's there's a limit limit list of people who are looking for people for different reasons.
Troy Dunn:We get a a lot of military guys who have come back and are dealing with PTSD and there's their, their, their therapists or their counselor have encouraged him to find somebody Pre battle who they can reconnect to again and re ground themselves again. There are people who we get a lot of sadly too many dying wishes, terminal illness Somebody gets diagnosed. If somebody were to say to you, alicia, or to you, scott Unfortunately I hate to break this to you, your time is limited you know people stop caring about the, the world around them, the world least stuff, and they start thinking wait a minute, hold on. Who do I want to say goodbye to? Who have I not apologized to? Who do I want to forgive or ask for forgiveness from they? They redemption starts to become a big thing, so we get a lot of those, a lot of people looking for best friends, a lot of people I'm surprised how many people we get who are grown up, former foster children, who are reaching out to find a former foster family that changed their lives or help them survive a difficult time in their life. Or I, just I, really I could just go on, and on, and, on, and on and on, and so what happens on these TV shows is Even though I am not currently producing a television series of any kind, all the old shows are finding a whole new life.
Troy Dunn:You know, as I said, we're on Hulu now and we're on Apple, apple TV, we're on Amazon Prime, and, and it's been translated into languages around the world. Like the last last report I saw, we were in 44 countries. I apparently speak a lot of languages. Props to the guy who does my voice in German, because I sound like Schwarzenegger and it's a, I will say, the guy who does my voice in French. I'm not that thrilled with that one. It's a little soft and witty for me.
Troy Dunn:But anyway, what happens is people see our show wherever they see it, and then they're like, hey, I would love to find a La La's family member myself, or that's what I'm needing in my life, or I want to give this gift to my mom, who's desperately been looking for our missing brother for 30 years, or you know, again, the dying wishes. So they jump on the Internet and they start to, and they start looking for me, and, because we don't have a business that does that, they fall into any number of social media pages that have my name on them and they start begging for help and and this, this thing grows. And so, with that part of why, we started our nonprofit, the Locator Foundation, what? So we could rebuild solutions for families. Because now what's happening is DNA has made it possible to uncover the unsolvable.
Alisha Coakley:Yeah.
Troy Dunn:But it doesn't take you to the end and it doesn't walk you through the process and it doesn't help you prepare yourself for what's going to happen when you make that call or how to make the call and all these things. So so we started the foundation, but the TV shows are running so fast and so frequently and are so popular on all the new digital platforms that we're drowning. We are literally not literally, we are figuratively drowning, Grounding in wish requests. Back, you know, back in the day when we had a fully functioning business and we're on TV all the time, if we fell 50 cases behind with requests, there was a price to pay. Somebody's head was going to roll.
Troy Dunn:What is going on? How do we have 50 people waiting to hear from us, you know, and not helping them? What's going on here? As of three days ago because that's the last time I logged in to check the list, because it's a little discouraging we had just crossed the waiting on our waiting list people who have gone to the locator foundation and said I need your help. I want your help, I'm trying to find somebody. We just crossed 4000 families on the waiting list.
Troy Dunn:It is insurmountable at this point and 98% of them can't pay a fee for that. So I spend most of my time now trying to raise funds so that we can grant as many wishes as possible, and I always have that dream that somewhere in the world there's some wealthy corporation, some wealthy family who will adopt us and let us just go crazy and help all these families. It doesn't happen, I think it only happens on TV. So we just inch it along a little at a time, and when we can solve a case, we do.
Alisha Coakley:So do you have the manpower to Awesome? Well, do you have the manpower to do the like? If you had the funds, would you have enough people that could actually do the research and help these families out? Are you kind of looking for help with all of it? You?
Troy Dunn:know, are you?
Alisha Coakley:looking for.
Troy Dunn:Well, we're always excited to meet new people who want to join the research team or the social media team, but at this point, yes, we have built a small army of genetic genealogists and skip tracers who follow the system that we've created to track down reunite families. So, yeah, we do have the resources are in place. We're in the process of building out an AI model so that we can even automate some of the process and to make it easier for people who are reaching out for help to actually guide them through a conversation that gets them to the point where they can be ready to be helped faster. So, yeah, we've got, we've built a. I mean, we built the Disneyland of missing persons. We just can't fund it.
Alisha Coakley:Wow, okay. Well, I have another question. We know from the plan of salvation that family is. One of the most vital parts of the plan of salvation is having that family linked together for time and all eternity. So I want to ask you, with all of these stories that you've seen and with the you know, yes, it's a business for you, but how has that helped you with your testimony, or has it, you know, like, have you had moments where you've just kind of been able to see the importance, like the real solid importance, or have you had any perspective on family and the plan of salvation and how Heavenly Father really views that?
Troy Dunn:Yeah, so I mean, first of all, I think I would say that my testimony of eternal families and the power of that is changed forever from this journey, in this process of connecting families and I don't know that, you know, when we played football. It's always funny to me that I look back at myself as a younger person playing football and praying before a game that we would win Right, and only as an adult where somebody said, well, are you suggesting that God loves one team more than another? And I say no, unless, of course, it's BYU. Then, yeah, he does. Does he love BYU more than the University of Utah? That's up to discussion at another time. But that's not right. We learn as we get older and wiser. There's this you pray for certain things that are more appropriate to pray for than having him choose one over another right.
Troy Dunn:Mercy and justice and Rob and all that stuff. But I will say there's been countless times where we've had cases we were trying to solve with great urgency and sometimes they seemed insurmountable, unsolvable either not enough information, not enough time, whatever. And they solve. And I think to myself there's a whole research team working for us on the other side, I think, or like, these guys are clueless, they're never going to get it. So let's throw them a bone, let's make this piece of information appear that should have never appeared. And so it's in that journey that I realize that I believe the veil is very thin. I believe that these families on earth that we are trying to kind of stitch together where possible, that there's families on the other side leaning in and helping us do the impossible at times. And without a doubt, I know that the principle of families is a pillar of all that exists in the world because of the response I have seen. I mean, we've been doing this for 30 years and I don't know if there's another topic that can bring so many people into the same need. I mean, I have a lot of celebrity clients. They cry just as hard on the phone to me as an unknown individual from Topeka, kansas, who's desperately trying to find her mother before she loses her eyesight. For example, somebody who's somebody come to me who was had been diagnosed as going blind within like six months. It was some horrific scenario and she wanted to grab her mom's face and look her in the eye one time before she lost her eyesight. And that level of intensity and urgency is not any higher or lower than the celebrities, right? It's like this concept of family breaks through all the boundaries, breaks through all the borders, and the dying wishes are really what seal the deal for me, because at that point it doesn't matter who they are. I mean, I could say we've had very influential people come to us and people who maybe in the world's eyes, are insignificant, and they all want the same thing when they're told their life is coming to an end, they want to make sure that they've connected to the right people, and the idea of that is so powerful to me.
Troy Dunn:I think it's the one thing that frustrates Satan the most is his goal is obviously to tear down families. We can see that and, alicia, you talked about looking up to data and statistics. You can look up and we don't have to talk about them here because everybody knows them right. But divorce is on fire and suicide is on fire, and the definition of family is on fire, and the way people even define family anymore is on fire, like the institution of family is burning down. And so why?
Troy Dunn:Why, of all the things, why is any picking on personal fitness in the gym? Why is any picking on people who like carrots? Because there's nothing. There's nothing that can do more damage, more destruction, more impact in the eternal plan of salvation than if you can destroy the family, because the whole plan of salvation is built around family. So why shoot the branches when you can shoot the root of the tree? And that's what the adversary has been doing for generations and, as you can see, in some areas and in some places he's having a profound impact, he's making a difference, he's moving the needle, the statistics are going in his direction.
Troy Dunn:There's some places where I would say we're losing the battle. And so, for the few of us and it's not few, like I'm special, but I mean for those of us inside the gospel of Jesus Christ, where we recognize the power of family, we're all fighting to save it right. We're all trying. The proclamation of the family is a document stating that it's the greatest, most important thing in our belief system and our gospel. So I think that that element is really what this war is all about. It's really what all the fighting is about.
Troy Dunn:We can go into the nitty gritty details of all the different facets of the gospel and the war in heaven and the plan of salvation and the rewards and all of that, but if you just pull back at that 30,000 foot view, it comes down to family. And if we can build them and rebuild them and strengthen them and I don't mean we, I mean we, us then that's ultimately what the Lord wants for us in the eternities, and the adversary knows that. So all he has to do is focus all of his weapons and all of his artillery at anything that could tear out the foundation. Isolation is a big part of that, and divorce and suicide and all these things are all about ripping out the foundation of family. So being engaged in that work on any level is something that I'm sure will do one way or another. Even if nobody ever funds our foundation, we'll keep picking away at it for as long as the Lord leaves us on the earth.
Scott Brandley:So you've been doing this for 30 years. Do you feel like this is a calling that you have in life? Is this something you see yourself continuing to do for the rest of your life?
Troy Dunn:Well, calling is a very big word. I, I, I don't think it's any more my calling than it could be anybody else's, because it's just a choice to wake up and decide what to do. Is it something I'll do for the rest of my life, given the opportunity? Yes, given the opportunity to do it? For sure, I mean there's there's 4,000 families sitting on a waiting list. I could spend. It would take probably much of the rest of my life at the rate we're going to try to grant any and all of those wishes.
Troy Dunn:So, yeah, I'm grateful for it. I'm thankful that we all have to spend our days doing something. It's a beautiful way to spend a day, but I mean it's. I think it's like any cause you can choose, whatever cause you want to get behind and support and choose to make it your life's work. I, I know calling is almost like you know, you know a forward ordination or something. I think that we all have the freedom of choice, right? That's what CTR is all about. So I mean, our foundation is filled with volunteers. So I would say every one of those people who went to our website clicked on the tab that says volunteers and then clicked a category and said I want to be a volunteer for whatever social media, for research, for, et cetera. They've all chosen it to become what they do with their lives. You know, I mean.
Scott Brandley:I like that. So choosing it to be a calling, making a contact choice.
Troy Dunn:I think that's that can be true for everything that you might classify as a calling. I mean, if you get a calling at church, you choose to accept it or not accept it. It's not forced upon you. The life presents you with opportunities to choose to do something good and right and important, and the adversary wants to distract you, and he'll either distract you with shiny objects that take you in another direction, to keep you from doing that one thing that perhaps the Lord had hoped you might seize onto, or he'll tear you down to make you feel as if you're not worthy to do such a thing. You're not. If people only knew the truth about you, how could you possibly call yourself a podcaster, doing this podcast about this amazing topic so close to the Savior and the gospel, if they only knew these things about your past? If they only right Again, isolation to keep you from choosing a calling. So, at the end of the day, I think calling's, regardless of what they are, have to be chosen.
Alisha Coakley:Well you just hit a nerve on me, apparently, oh goodness gracious. So my question to you, because you have, in the time that I've known you, like I said earlier, you take the risk, you put in the work, you put in the research, you put in the resources. How, I guess, what kind of advice would you give to someone who maybe feels like they want to be a part of a calling, being a part of a purpose or something that's bigger than themselves? What would you advise them to do to actually get across that scary threshold? You know what I mean To actually dive in and to do something and to just have that faith that they'll have a team on the other side helping them out too.
Troy Dunn:I'm going to name drop and tell you that I spent a lot of years as a very close friend of a woman named Barbara Walters who recently passed away, and she is known for asking really intense questions. But yours take the cake. I'm going to call you Alicia Walters, you know. I think that, hmm, I think stepping into something that you feel is bigger than yourself is the greatest act of faith one can do, regardless of what that is.
Troy Dunn:I don't know that any of us will ever not have the same opportunity, which is to stand at the threshold of something that, as you stare up at it, you say this is bigger than me, and that might be your own diagnosis of cancer, that might be a calling in the gospel that you feel unworthy or prepared of. I don't know what kind of a life challenge it could be, but we'll all stand at that, and some of us may, maybe we'll stand at that threshold continuously. Because we continuously stand at that threshold, take a deep breath, remind ourselves that through God, all things are possible, leap forward with one step and then suddenly we're doing it and we're like, oh, this is now my new comfort zone. Well, guess what? I don't think the Lord loves comfort zones. But who am I to speak for him? It's been my personal mortal experience that the Lord does not love comfort zones.
Scott Brandley:I agree with that.
Troy Dunn:I would say that again. You know I like to turn everything back to football. To me, a comfort zone is timeout. It's that time during the game where somebody goes hey, you know what timeout, timeout and you come to the sideline, you gather around each other for a minute, somebody hands you a water bottle. You pull your helmet off. You're like, wow, this has been intense. You're like I know, just breathe, take a breath, get a drink of water. Here's an orange you can suck on. You know, get some energy back in you. Okay, are you good? All right, strap it back on, get out there and you turn around, you go back out and when you go back out, you're leaving that comfort zone and you're now moving to the next threshold where you're going to stand in another threshold and look up and go. No, I know, I thought the last one was bigger than me, but this one, whoa way, way bigger than me.
Troy Dunn:I cannot handle this and and again. I think that can be in the form of an opportunity, but it can also be in the form of a tragedy. There are no doubt somebody although they're prompting here, there's no doubt probably somebody watching our conversation on this podcast who is sitting in the midst of a tragedy. I don't know what that tragedy would be. It could be the sudden, unexpected, untimely loss of a loved one. It could be a health diagnosis, it can be a financial ruin. I don't know. I don't know what it is, but whatever that individual defines as a full blown, honest to goodness tragedy and there are tragedies that you stare at and you cannot see the other side it appears to be what now the rest of your life will be like. This tragedy now is will redefine me. It will redefine who I am. It is going to redefine how I find happiness, is going to redefine everything about my life. I will never be happy again. How could anybody be happy burying their child? How can anybody be happy losing the love of their life? How can right? How can? And when that hits you in that moment where you cannot see past the tragedy, where, as far as the eye can see, all the way to the horizon and beyond it's storm clouds. It's in that moment, that moment where we have the opportunity to say it's bigger than I can possibly imagine being able to handle, but I have faith that my father in heaven knows better and that he will walk me through this. There is sunshine on the other side and even if I can't see it and even if I don't want it, I'm going to walk forward. And in that moment, eternal growth happens.
Troy Dunn:Our eternities begin to change.
Troy Dunn:You know when I'm a huge fan of all 80s movies and Back to the Future is one of them and there's a moment in Back to the Future where he's holding a photo of his family and previously his siblings were fading away because of what was happening.
Troy Dunn:Right, he went back in time, things were changing and his family was fading out of the photo. And then he begins to correct some mistakes, changes, some things make some changes in life and they begin to fade back in and I feel like somewhere, somebody's holding a photo of your eternal family and mine, and there's moments and choices we make in our life where we start to see them fade out. You're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then we course correct. We leap into the unknown, we leap into that thing that we believe is bigger than us, and it begins to fill back in like yes, yes, yes, yes, you are now impacting eternity. Even as you sit here on this earth dealing with this insurmountable problem, the photo of your eternity is getting bigger and brighter and more beautiful, and that, as weird as that may sound, is how I perceive life.
Alisha Coakley:Wow, I love that whole analogy. See, you never fail to just offer the best perspective, and I'm like sitting here in tears.
Troy Dunn:It was not my intent to set you in tears and I'm sorry if I even let you inside my crayola crayon brain, but that's it's how I get through my challenges is I have to do that, I have to self talk myself. I have been to that brink, I have. I have sat laid face down on the floor of my walk in closet with the door shut, angry at Father in heaven, angry at myself, trying to not make the choice to say I should just be done with mortality. I've given it my best and my best wasn't good enough. Right, I've been there, I have sat in that moment. So I don't describe it as how I think it would be for others. I'm telling you how it is for me and I, I, I know that these things I am sharing with you will resonate with somebody who's in that place, because it's kind of like when you run into somebody who's from your hometown, you can be in a group of 10 people. You know, for example, I was.
Troy Dunn:I went to high school in Enid, oklahoma. I can walk into a meeting and if I see somebody wearing an Oklahoma shirt, I will inevitably, I will inevitably go oh, are you by chance from Oklahoma? And if they go? Yeah, yeah, I'll go really where at? If they say Enid, okay, we're done for 10 minutes. For 10 minutes, we are now going to talk about Enid high school. Did you have so and so as a principal? So and so for math? Did you love those Friday night football games when the team marches down Main Street all the way to the stadium and everybody's honking their cohort right?
Troy Dunn:We will connect at a level that nobody else in the room is going to connect on, because we have that in common and I want I want people who are sitting in a place of darkness and despair. I want to ruin the adversary's plan of isolating that person. I want that person to know that others not only have sat in that place that they're sitting in, but maybe sitting with them today, and we are in this together, no matter how hard it is, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how bleak the future looks, we can get through this and we will get through this, and there is no moment where you will be alone. None, none. We are actually doing the same thing. We're all doing the same thing, maybe at different times, but we're doing the same thing. So the adversary is a liar. You're not by yourself. You're not the only one that's experienced this. This isn't insurmountable. You can move past this. Life on the other side can be even better, which is soft, for some, impossible to comprehend, and that is where our faith kicks in.
Alisha Coakley:That was perfect. You did a great job answering all of that. I really do. I appreciate all of that and I love that you just went with whatever you're feeling led to share, because I do as you were speaking. I could feel it too. I could feel that there was something in that message there that I know I needed to hear, and I'm pretty sure that some other people needed to hear as well. So I really appreciate you and just your willingness to be open and to be raw and vulnerable and authentic. You are a great friend and a great inspiration, and even though you have your ups and downs and things like that, I know that the world is better with you in it too, troy. So do not let the adversary lie to you and tell you that you're not enough either. So you're doing amazing things and I'm so blessed to call you friend.
Troy Dunn:Well, you're going to make me get emotional, but thank you, what a wonderful platform you two have created here. I love that you've done this. I know that you've probably angered the adversary by creating yet one more channel for people to connect through and feel the Spirit, so I hope that the Lord continues to bless you, alicia, and you, scott, with all the many rewards that come from doing such a good thing with the right intent.
Scott Brandley:Thank you. Thank you, it's interesting, but sometimes I feel like I do this because God wants to teach me something, and maybe that's kind of selfish, but I mean, I feel like I'm a pretty successful person and I do a lot of things right, but I'm really struggling with my calling right now in the church and I've been a bishop before right, and being an award mission leader is like 10 times harder and I'm really struggling with it. And I've learned some lessons from recent podcasts, including yours, and you know just, I don't have to be that perfect person all the time. I can have struggles, and it's okay, and I can tell people about it and and I can work through it. And I'm you know what I mean like I don't have to put that not facade, because I'm not. I'm not generally trying to hide something, but it's hard when people see you a certain way and then you're like, yeah, but I do have struggles behind that. So I really appreciate you being willing to open up about that, because that makes me feel like I can do that too.
Troy Dunn:That's awesome, you're almost giving me, giving me permission to do it, which is weird, but you know, it's some of the things that frustrate people the most when they find out some historical figure in the church you know was flawed or yeah, but did you know this about them or did you know that about them? I, I don't know if they're saying that to me as if they thought that would shake my testimony, but it actually only helps me double down because I realize oh wait, are you saying to me that the Lord can work with broken tools? Because if that's what you're telling me, I'm going to be his favorite new Crescent Wrench, because I'm a wreck.
Alisha Coakley:I love that. You said that you know and I I don't know why I'm thinking about this now, because I know we're starting to wrap up, but I just had this thought about you know, you've had probably a lot of success stories with finding lost loved ones, but I know that sometimes the happy ending isn't happy, right, Like sometimes people don't want to be found or they don't want to reconnect, or you find them and then you're like, oh my gosh, everything I thought they were is not, is not a thing. And did I just mess up and stuff? And so I don't really know if I have let me think, if I want to phrase this the right way. I guess what do you do in those circumstances? What, like, when you're trying to have something wonderful happen and it's and it falls short, you know, whether from someone else or just because your expectations were different than what reality is going to be.
Alisha Coakley:How do you? How do you keep moving forward and keep your faith?
Troy Dunn:Hmm.
Alisha Coakley:Geez Elise, this is your pop up question for me.
Troy Dunn:You know, I, I think perspective is, as it turns out, right as we all learn this as we get older. Perspective, it turns out is actually a big deal and it's it's if you've ever lost somebody, say to cancer and you tell somebody oh, you know, my mother passed with cancer, am I right? There's, there's going to be two perspectives in that moment for a lot of people. The first one is going to be the person you told was going to say to you oh, I am so sorry to hear that, but your perspective, because you were there, might be. You know what. It's actually a tremendous blessing. She was in such terrible pain and suffering and my father preceded her in death, so I'm actually thrilled that she was able to be done with this chapter and go to the next one. I'm selfishly sad that she doesn't come for Sunday dinner, but I'm so happy for her Right. Same situation, two completely different perspectives.
Troy Dunn:I know somebody who lost their home to a fire. I, I, I, I don't think I ever mean, but you know, it's not like it's really common, like cancer, everybody knows somebody with cancer, but who knows somebody whose entire house burned down? Very few people know somebody like that I know somebody like that and I remember them telling the story and me going oh my gosh, I can't imagine having our home burn down and losing everything, like literally everything. And his response was oh, one of the greatest blessings of my life. I went what he said?
Troy Dunn:We had gotten so caught up in consumerism and stuff and and all of a sudden we had no stuff, we just had us and our beliefs and the savior, and and one particular rock wall on the fireplace had fallen down during the fire and it actually covered their main photo album, and so the photos were saved, but everything else was lost. And he said we have become so simplified now. We have so few physical things we have to worry about manage, maintain, fix, repair, replace, upgrade. He said it is amazing we travel all the time. Now we don't obsess about things like his whole perspective was different. So I think we can't. I mean, this is no wisdom for me, right? This is an old bumper sticker. We can't control what happens to us. We can only control how we react to those things, and I think the thing that comes to each of us in maturity and experience in life is choosing how we react to things.
Alisha Coakley:Yeah, I love that. That's perfect, wow. Well, thank you, troy. Again, we really, really appreciate it. And to all of our listeners, guys, if you feel so inspired to head over to the locator. org, right, troy.
Troy Dunn:That's it.
Alisha Coakley:Yep, the locator. org, you guys can volunteer to help out and to choose to be a part of this purpose and this calling and to have something else added to your and right, have a little more balance on the on the side of good added to your, and I think that there's 4000 families who would appreciate all of all of the extra help that they could get. And I guess, before we officially wrap up Troy, do you have any last thoughts?
Troy Dunn:Well, I guess I'll go back to the one we began with, which is that you cannot find peace until you find all the pieces. And I think that applies whether you're looking for somebody, or you're looking for healing in a relationship, or you're looking for forgiveness, or you're looking for the Lord. I think that you cannot find that level of peace until you've found the pieces. And so what is it that you're lacking that could perhaps bring you a higher level of joy and satisfaction in life? Is it is that you're not really studying any scriptures? Is that you haven't really attended the temple in a long time? Is that you really aren't as forgiving in your heart as you want others to be towards you?
Troy Dunn:Is there a chapter of your life that is struggling with some level of hypocrisy? I mean, there's just so many things you can lovingly, being kind to yourself, take inventory of, but truly, I do believe it's not a slogan for us. It really is the way we try to build our lives that you really cannot find peace until you find all the pieces. So, taking the time to gather those up, and if you have, then look around you. Is it your children or your grandchildren, or a neighbor who also is lacking peace in their life. Can you help them gather up some pieces and put things back together and move forward? So that would be my parting thought is seeking peace.
Scott Brandley:Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you, Troy, for being on the show and taking your time and, you know, enlightening us with some of your thoughts and stories, and you know we really appreciate it. Yeah, you betcha.
Alisha Coakley:Yeah, all right. Well, thank you again, troy. We really, really appreciate it. We appreciate everything that you do and especially the work that you and your foundation are doing right now, and all of the volunteers and those who are with that affiliation. I just I think that is such a huge undertaking and I really hope and pray that you guys can see a lot of blessings for all of those efforts and that you'll be able to help put some more families back together and to our audience.
Alisha Coakley:Thank you, guys for tuning into another episode of Latter Day Lights. We love, love, love hearing from you guys. If you want to comment below and let us know what your favorite part of Troy's story was, or if you have a story yourself that you'd like to share and you want to maybe come and be in the hot seat with Alicia Walters and Scott Brantley, we would love to hear from you guys. I think that that would be so awesome. So be sure to head over to Latter Day Lights dot com or drop a comment and we'll be able to get in touch with you guys.
Scott Brandley:Definitely, and make sure you go share this story with others. Go hit that share button. Let's do some five second missionary work and get this story out there so we can help Troy and all of the volunteers to make some wishes come true. Till then we will. Till next week we will see you and for another episode, take care.
Alisha Coakley:Bye guys.
