I discovered that Dr Lefgren is the president of the Heartland Research Group. The group has recently purchased a replica of an ancient Phoenician ship that non-Mormon Captain Philip Beale sailed around Africa, likely the same route that Lehi sailed to come to America. We’ll discuss more about John’s involvement with the Heartland Research group. Check out our conversation…

Copyright © 2022

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.

Starting Heartland Research Group

Interview

GT  02:15  Well, let’s move on to another topic. Now both you and I are wearing dark blue shirts that says Phoenicia on it. And you’re the president of the Heartland Research Foundation, right?

 

John  02:28  The Heartland Research Group.

 

GT  02:30  Research Group, okay. So, tell us how you got involved with that and then why you’re not just the same organization as, say, Rod Meldrum.

 

John  02:41  Well, I was the Sunbeam teacher in primary.[1]

 

GT  02:46  Okay.

 

John  02:47  A great calling. I had wonderful students. I enjoyed it. My wife and I taught that class for a year and a half, which meant I did not go to the high priest group meeting. And I was happy with my Sunbeam experience in terms of the faith of the children and their willingness to learn. It was all good. So, one Sunday, the primary had a different program, and I found myself going back to the high priest group. And we were reading the Book of Mormon.

 

GT  03:29  This is back in Pennsylvania, right?

 

John  03:30  In Pennsylvania, a typical group.

 

GT  03:34  Are you far from Susquehanna, I should ask?

 

John  03:37  Maybe two and a half hours.

 

GT  03:39  Okay.

 

John  03:40  Susquehanna is an important place for the youth to go and see. I’ve been I’ve been there many times. It was a funny experience for me, because we were reading the Book of Mormon account of the destruction of the Nephites. This is the account where General Mormon is listing all of his losses. You add them up, it’s 240,000 or something. It’s a big number. And I said, “I think this happened in Palmyra. I think this is a really wonderful thing that we are able to know where this happened.” There were some other members of the quorum, who are university professors and Ph.D. candidates in American history. And they jumped on me and said, “Boy, you got that wrong.”

John  04:39  I says, “How is that possible? It’s right here. I read it and I know where Palmyra is. I’ve been there.” And that’s where it started for me.

 

GT  04:48  What year was this, approximately?

 

John  04:50  That would have been about 10 years ago. I wasn’t any Book of Mormon scholar. I had done a lot of work on calendars. But it seemed really strange to me that we have a lot of confirmation concerning Palmyra, Moroni, and the destruction of the Nephites. And so, in my typical fashion, I sort of started. I said, “I’m going to look at this.” And that’s where it started.

 

GT  05:25  So, were you familiar with Rod Meldrum’s work?

 

John  05:28  Not too much. I knew that there was something–I had no particular contact there. I think if I had any origin, it was in the High Priests’ group meeting on a Sunday morning, when I was sort of pushed off to the corner saying that I don’t know what I’m talking about. And I went back to my Sunbeam class.

 

GT  05:51  They were all a bunch of Meso proponents?

 

John  05:54  At least the guy with the big voice was. (Chuckling) I’d say more than half didn’t want to even talk. So, that’s how it started. I then started a calculation in terms of feeding an army of a half a million. I found five armies that were a half a million people, warriors at five different times in history. And, in every case, there was a large riverbed basin, a large supply of food. You need 2000 calories per warrior. You need about, for sure, 2000 pounds of foodstuffs and other materials to put this army in the field. And you need to end, by the time you put a half a million men on a battlefield, you need nearly a million square miles. You just can’t do this in a small space. And the Mississippi River Basin is perfect. They take five years to get ready for the final battle. They were moving a million tons, easily, a million tons of food and war material on rivers. So, you need a big base. And, for me, that was that was it. You have the waters of the Great Lakes in one side. You have then the Mississippi and the Ohio River basins. I think that there were warriors there from Tennessee. This was a big fight, a very big fight. And those kinds of battles have been– those kinds of armies have been found in the past. If you go to China, put an army together in 200 BC, they’re all going to have the big rivers of China behind them. And it is for the Romans, too. Without the Nile, you don’t have the food to feed the army. You need all the rivers of Europe for a half million Roman soldiers to get ready to fight. So, I taught that this river connection, this water basin, two water basins, the Great Lakes water basin and the Mississippi water basin, would be sufficient to build up an army of a half a million. You’ve got a quarter million on either side, you know. Mormon has–go ahead.

 

GT  08:48  Well, I was just going to ask it, had you looked at other theories like Baja or Malay or anything like that? Meso?

 

John  08:56  No, for me it was, how do you feed a half million men? How do you put them in the field? And how do you organize them? And how do you get ready for this big battle?

 

GT  09:07  Did you ever considered what we would call the hemispheric model where North and South America…

 

John  09:11  Nope.

 

GT  09:11  It was all just the Mississippi River…

 

John  09:13  I was satisfied that Palmyra, Hill Cumorah was the place. So, it was a question of starting from there and then just branching out and seeing how do you put this thing together? And so, my training is in economic history. And I’ve done quite a bit of work on some famines. And so, my tendency was to look at the world, the world of history, and to see where can I find an ancient army that has–ancient armies that are in the field where we have 500,000 men?  And they’re there. They’re in India. Again, they’re in China. They’re in Europe. That’s what I was looking for.

 

GT  09:59  Okay.

 

John  10:00  It’s a big fight, requiring a lot of space. And if you can’t feed them, they can’t fight. And the fight is really, really complete in its detail. It’s really amazing. So, for me, that was it. I mean, there’s no place, I could see where this thing could fit into Mesoamerica that it would work.

 

GT  10:25  And so, how did you go to start the organization, the Heartland Research Group?

 

John  10:32  Well, I wanted to bring some new technologies. They are expensive. They come from Germany. Magnetometry census is a big leader in this area. They are good at what they do. They’ve been doing it for 60 years. And they have done some work in Ohio. I thought that would be interesting. We could cover a few hundred acres in one day. It was new for us. It was new for them. But we started there. It was expensive. So, by the time you put an expedition together on the first go around it’s $30,000. [They are] wonderful people, and the first money was…

 

GT  11:20  That’s a lot of money.

 

John  11:23  Well, if you’re not looking, you can’t find it. And we’re talking about a lot of land. Not thousands of acres, but millions. And there’s a lot of water. So, we’re looking for something that is in a small space, for sure. But you have to be able to manage, or at least begin the search someplace.

 

GT  11:48  Had you done any sort of fundraising like this before?

 

John  11:52  No.

 

GT  11:53  Because you know, $30,000…

 

John  11:55  Oh, that was my money.

 

GT  11:56  Oh.

 

John  11:58  That was my money.

 

GT  11:58  So, you just kind of chipped it in?

 

John  12:00  Sure did.

 

GT  12:01  Wow. And then how did you get other people involved?

 

John  12:05  You just start doing it, and other people come.

 

GT  12:10  Like Field of Dreams?

 

John  12:11  Everybody has their view. And, we have to be generous, of course, in the way we treat each other. Wayne May was really, really very much involved. I was in contact with him every day. He’s a good guy. He’s done a lot of work, a lot of work. And yet his friends, and we raised, over the three years, we raised about $78,000 from small donors $10, $20 a month. And then we went and found people who gave us more money. And so, we have, over the last six years, gone through about $700,000.

 

GT  12:55  That’s a lot of money.

 

John  12:57  It’s a lot of money. It’s crazy. It’s really crazy.

 

GT  13:00  Do you have full-time staff involved with this?

 

John  13:02  One guy.

 

GT  13:03  One guy? And that’s you?

 

John  13:05  That’s it. No, I mean, we got a lot of [people.] That’s wrong to say it that way. We have probably 150-200 people who are very talented.

 

GT  13:16  But mostly volunteers, right?

 

John  13:18  All volunteers, and all with different views, of course. We have had four expeditions. We’ve used some incredible technologies from Russia and from Germany.

Focusing on Zarahemla

Interview

John  13:36  Then we shifted after the first two expeditions in Ohio. Ohio is a big place and there are tens of thousands of mounds. Everywhere you look in Ohio, is full and rich in ancient history, in the ground. [It’s] really, really hard to understand. We’re talking the Book of Mormon has 1000 years of history, a million square miles. And if you’re looking for Book of Mormon evidence in that kind of space, it’s hard. So, after spending $120,000, I said, “I’ve got to focus.” I, then, took on the theory that Zarahemla was across the way from Nauvoo.

 

GT  14:31  Because that’s something Joseph Smith said?

 

John  14:34  No, God told Joseph Smith. It was not a throwaway line. It was part of our scripture. It’s in the Doctrine & Covenants.[2]

 

GT  14:43  Okay.

 

John  14:45  I think it’s a good place to start. The most confirming piece, for me, was Alma Chapter 2. This is probably the most complete battle account we have in ancient America, involving three armies. [There were] probably as many as, on the army side, 100,000-150,000. And on the civilian side, we have refugees or people who are–so, we have movements of people that are total movement of about 200,000. They’re going into Zarahemla for protection. This battle lasts for 36 hours. And it’s in a grid of five square miles. And we know they were crossing the river Sidon. And so that’s all useful. And there’s no other place where you can, I mean, it was a tight space, lots of people and a short time. And we have 200 verses of scripture. It is Alma’s own, it’s the battle of Zarahemla in 87 B.C.

 

John  16:14  It’s a firsthand account. He was the chief judge and the commander of the army. So, the detail of all that is still preserved, well preserved. Mormon/Moroni made sure that that battle report was given, as it was originally written. And that, for me, is probably the most important thing. We’re in the right place.

 

GT  16:49  Have you found anything that you can say is confirming of the Book of Mormon, yet?

 

John  16:53  Oh, yeah, lots.

 

GT  16:57  Give us some examples.

 

John  16:58  [There were] 10,000 firepits. The most interesting piece we are working on, we hope to bring it out of the ground that we think we have found the defensive wall of Zarahemla. That is at least four and a half miles, but maybe as much as 10 miles. Pieces of it are there. The LIDAR imaging of that space is remarkable. Yeah, there’s a lot there. We scanned with a German technology and then with a Russian technology, about 200 acres. We worked with the local landowners. They’ve been very cooperative, or at least the big landowners have been very fun. Very fun. It’s hard. It costs a lot of money. You get these pieces of equipment that are $120,000. You lease them. You’ve got six days. You bring in a crew. And before you know it, you’ve gone through $50,000. So, there’s a risk in all of this, of course. So about six months ago, maybe eight months ago, we shifted things. The Phoenicia has much less risk. It’s very real. It has a clear history. It allows us to be more effective with the use of our money and our time.

 

Buying Lehi’s Ship (The Phoenicia)

Interview

GT  18:33  And so, the Phoenicia, that’s the ship that went around Africa, almost ended up in Florida, and then headed back and circumnavigated Africa, right?

 

John  18:43  Yes, indeed. We bought that ship.

 

GT  18:47  Yeah.

 

John  18:48  And the very fact that we have it is a complete miracle. A complete miracle.

 

GT  18:55  And so, you think that the Phoenicia basically followed Lehi’s travels, as well as, Mulek’s travels from the Old World to the New World?

 

John  19:04  I don’t have anything except the experience of the experts. I know that Philip Beale demonstrated the reality of those two crossings. We have the ship, and we have Philip Beale.

 

GT  19:25  He’s your Columbus and your Lehi, all in one.

 

John  19:27  He is. He’s very genuine. And for anyone to imagine that they can improve on what he experienced, I think, is a mistake.

 

GT  19:39  So, you’ve bought that ship and you’ve got a museum there in Montrose, Iowa.

 

John  19:43  Well, we have the ship. We’re putting the ship together.

 

GT  19:45  Right.

 

John  19:46  It may be 15% together, but this is the largest artifact from the ancient world that has significance for the Book of Mormon. It’s 2600 years old. It’s coming out of the Mediterranean.

 

GT  20:08  Now, could you tell us a little bit? You said there was a ship found in France that Philip based his ship on?

 

John  20:16  For sure.

 

GT  20:17  Yeah. Tell us more about that story.

 

John  20:19  I’ll tell you Marseilles is a city in France on the western Mediterranean coast. And Marseille is an older city than Rome. It’s a French city, but it’s older than the city of Rome. It has a long history of seafaring activity. And it has a port. It has a port today, an important port in France. In the mud of the port, in July 1993, there was a backhoe that was digging for foundations on a seaside project for a theater or something like that. And while they were digging, the backhoe hit these timbers of a shipwreck. It turns out that these timbers are 2600 years old. And they are the remains of a Phoenician ship with the remarkable Phoenician joint.  That was discovered in 1993. It takes time, of course, to sort this all out. But by 2000, it was clear that they had an ancient ship, that is 600 B.C. So, taking that design, Philip Beale faithfully reconstructs a ship that would have been very familiar to the Phoenicians and that’s where his story begins. We can connect every year, for the last 2600 years, to this ship. There is nothing made up here. It is as real as it can be. The original wreck is in the museum. People, anybody can go see it.

 

GT  22:36  In your museum in Iowa?

 

John  22:38  No, no, in Marseille.

 

GT  22:39  Oh, in Marseille, okay.

 

John  22:40  The original 2600 year-old wreck is in the Museum of Marseille. It’s a beautiful display. Anybody can go see it. It’s as real as it can be.

 

GT  22:54  As long as you happen to be in Marseille, France, right? (Chuckling)

 

John  22:57  Well, it’s an unusual artifact.

 

GT  22:59  Yeah.

 

John  23:01  It deserves protection, and it deserves public attention. So, without that, we don’t have that Phoenicia. With that, we can replicate using the same materials and methods. And that’s what Philip Beale [did.] Then, he sails that ship. He calls it the Phoenicia. It’s wonderful, very wonderful, because we can get as close as we possibly can, I think, to 600 BC, at the time when Lehi was alive. Jeremiah was alive. We come into the city of Jerusalem, at a time when the Babylonians are going to destroy the walls and burn the temple. [It was a] very destructive and very chaotic time in all of that part of the Mediterranean. This is where the Book of Mormon finds its origin. It’s really exciting, really, really exciting. The thing is that now this ship is in Iowa. You can put your hand on it, and it’s not small. It’s 40 tons. It’s big.

 

GT  24:20  And it could have supported, say 30 people from Lehi’s family.

 

John  24:24  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Now you’ve got to feed them. You’ve got to have water and everything else. And it’s not an easy thing to cross the Atlantic in a square-rigged vessel. But this is a strong ship. This ship is amazing. It’s all because of the technology that the Phoenicians had developed for the joints. It has 7500 joints. So, a force, a 120-ton wave [were to] come crashing down on this ship, it takes the blow, and it moves like that a little bit, but then it comes right back.

 

GT  25:01  So, is that your biggest evidence, then, would you say, is this Phoenician ship?

 

John  25:07  So, the evidence of anything, has to have a time and a place. The evidence of the Book of Mormon is immense. Of course, the time and place is, like, huge. And we are looking at maybe a 25-year period. We are looking at the time of Jeremiah, the time of Lehi. I want to be completely focused. It’s a narrow focus, because the truth is always brought out in its clearest definition, when you put limits on it. So, essentially, it’s a microscope, looking down on the ship to see what we can find out about how it… The crossing of the Atlantic is an important part of the Book of Mormon story, for sure.

 

GT  25:59  Right.

 

John  26:00  So, we get this, and the other parts, okay, let them follow…

 

GT  26:03  So, you proved that you can get it from Yemen, Oman, around Africa to Florida.

 

John  26:10  Exactly.

 

GT  26:10  Because Philip has done it.

 

John  26:11  Philip has done it. And nobody else can easily do it. But it can be done again. Philip is not going to do it again. It’s a very dangerous trip, in this type of craft, in this type of–it’s old, not in terms of the ship, but in terms of [the technology.] But Philip thinks that the Phoenicia was a stronger ship than the ships that Columbus had, certainly a lot better.

 

GT  26:39  Stronger than Columbus’ ship, that’s interesting.

 

John  26:40  It’s certainly more interesting and stronger than the Viking ships. These Phoenicians ruled the waves, and they had a great trading system, moving millions of tons of freight, millions of miles. The North Star was called the Phoenician Star. They were even sailing at night. They could steer and they could move. They knew the winds, and they knew how the waves worked, the currents. You don’t do that in one generation. [It was] amazing what they did. And it all fits so that we end up. We go from Jerusalem to Zarahemla. And Zarahemla is a Phoenician name. And that’s the city that Mulek and his people found. It all fits right there. So, the city of Zarahemla was founded by the people of Mulek. They were separated from the people of Lehi for 350 years. And, no, I think that there are at least 1000 different points in this ship that confirm the narrative of the Book of Mormon. Very powerful, very powerful.

 

 

Asking about DNA

Interview

GT  28:02  Yeah. Well, let me ask you. One of the big knocks, I guess, is the DNA issue. I attended one of the sessions at the FIRM Foundation, and I wish I could remember that guy’s name,[3] but he was talking about the Kennewick man. He did state that carbon dating dates him to 9000 BC, but he thought that the dating was wrong.

 

John  28:28  I have nothing to say about that. I don’t know anything about DNA. I’m not an expert.

 

GT  28:33  You’re not an expert.

 

John  28:34  I’ve read some things about it. But for me to make a comment, it would not be informed.

 

GT  28:39  Okay.

Building the Phoenicia Museum

Interview

John  28:40  I have spent a lot of time with Philip Beale. We have begun to understand better the Phoenicia. There are 200 people, institutions, governments, universities, museums, who have supported Philip Beale. They are all experts. And what Philip Beale has done is remarkable. The ship is in Iowa. We are putting it together, faithfully following the pattern that was given to us.  But it’s cut up in pieces. It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle. So, I mean, we do what we do with what we’ve got.

 

GT  29:21  So is that your biggest piece of evidence is just the fact that Philip was able to, essentially, recreate Lehi and Mulek’s travels to the New World?

 

John  29:30  Well, I think that is a huge piece of evidence. If we don’t get them across the Atlantic, we don’t have a Book of Mormon story. The neat thing about this Phoenicia is that it ties in so well to the Bible. And the history we have of Jeremiah—the Phoenicia is all connected with that, and then it’s all connected with the Mulekites, with the people of Mulek. So, we have the old and the new, connected by this ship. And that is a big thing. That is a very big thing. And it is of sufficient size—the detail is remarkable. There are many ways to look at it. But it fits the story, and it’s a complicated story. And it has a lot of twists and turns in it. But we are kind of in a tight frame of time and the space is enormous. But we have 25 years from the time the temple burns, until the time the people of Mulek become established in America.

 

GT  30:48  The temple in Jerusalem.

 

John  30:49  Yes, the first temple.

 

GT  30:50  Okay.

 

John  30:52  I think it’s marvelous. It’s really marvelous. It’s breathtaking, when you put your hand on it. Yeah, it’s all the timbers, all the joints, all the pieces from the ancient world, right there in front of you. You can’t argue with it. You cannot argue with it, and you can walk back 2600 years in time, and end up in Marseille, and look at the original. We don’t skip anything here and there’s no holes, there’s no gaps. It’s very real, very real. That, I think, is powerful.

 

GT  31:27  So, your main focus right now is building the museum in Montrose, Iowa, to house the [ship.]

 

John  31:33  Well, we’ve already gone through a quarter of a million dollars. And what we’ve done with that is remarkable, because we’ve involved, probably 150 people who have donated 3000 hours of labor. We have involved and have been connected now to hundreds of people in the Old World. All this is complicated and can be very expensive. So, we’re into this, probably a quarter of a million dollars of donated funds. And we are hoping to raise $2 million to build a museum. We are promoting and reaching out to many people in many ways. The ancient world is following us, the old people, the people in Carthage, the people in Morocco. The King of Morocco even knows Philip Beale, knows of the ship. Today, we are going to approach the King of Morocco and see if we can have his kingdom represented at the museum. We’ve been working on those contacts for six months. So, these are not easily done. We have universities in the United States that we’re working with. I imagine that the Phoenicia is going to easily take another $2-$3 million. But it won’t disappoint us. It will not disappoint. That’s my bet.

 

GT  33:11  Cool. Are you doing any other archaeological work in Iowa?

 

John  33:15  We’d love to. I would love to. We’ve started a number of things that should be followed up on, but you have to, of course, calculate what is the best use of time and money? And you want to get as much as you can out of the little that you have. So, the strategy now is to keep our focus on the Phoenicia, promote it, take it out to the world. We imagine that within a year or two, there will be tens of thousands of people coming. We have just made a deal for the purchase of a river boat that will take people from Nauvoo to Montrose so they can come and see the Phoenicia. We expect that within a year or two we’ll have 50,000-60,000 people from Nauvoo coming over the river. It will be a beautiful river ferry, 15 minutes. It comes right to the ship. It’s all magical. I mean, like, real magical. Now the Mississippi River, at that point where Nauvoo is, is beautiful. So, we’ll have a chance for people to experience that.

 

GT  34:35  Now. Can I ask you? It sounds like you have a way to get people from Nauvoo over to Montrose.

 

John  34:41  Two days ago we bought, or we agreed to buy the river boat, the ferry. It takes 50 people.

 

John  34:45  Because normally from Nauvoo to Montrose, you have to go through Keokuk, and how long of a drive is that?

 

GT  34:49  It’s 40 minutes.

 

GT  34:55  Forty minutes.

 

John  34:57  Or then you can go through Fort Madison.

 

GT  34:59  So, now you’ve got a…

 

John  35:01  We’ve got a beautiful ferry and a beautiful boat ride across the Mississippi in 15 minutes.

 

GT  35:08  So, you can, literally, travel from the Nauvoo Temple across the river..

 

John  35:12  Parley Street, just go right down to Parley Street. We’ll pick up the ferry and cross over, straight across to Montrose and then take a little shuttle to the Phoenicia. It will become a very, very popular thing, no doubt. We’ve had 1500, maybe 1700 people who came during this last summer, three buses, but mostly private tours, families. No one has left disappointed. No, this is something. We’ll tell the story as best we can. It’ll be as truthful as we can make it. If you want Book of Mormon evidence, come to the Phoenicia. It is certainly the biggest artifact and the biggest project going on in terms of Book of Mormon history, real Book of Mormon history, that I can imagine since the Restoration. It’s big. It’s a big idea. It’s a very important thing. And if you want to be a critic of the Book of Mormon, you’re going have to deal with what we’re doing. Find fault with it. You’re free, of course, to do that. But it is as real as it can be, in terms of true history, in terms of true sense of truth and it’s very powerful, very powerful. We’re happy to be a part of it, and Godsend. If God can’t bless us, we don’t want to be here. If he wants to take us down, then do it sooner rather than later. It’s completely in his hands, completely.

 

 

Heartlander Groups

Interview

GT  37:04  Now to my understanding, it seems like there’s three or maybe even four main groups. Can I call them Heartlanders? You’ve got Rod Meldrum’s FIRM Foundation, your Heartland Research Group, Wayne May, kind of his own man.

 

John  37:26  And God bless them all. God bless them all. The truth is going to come out of the ground. And that will happen regardless of what we do or how we do it.

 

GT  37:38  And then Jonathan Neville, I think he’s got a little bit of a variation on that, too.

 

John  37:41  And that’s fine. That’s fine. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

 

GT  37:48  You guys are all very supportive of each other.

 

John  37:50  I think that we have opinion that can vary, sometimes in a big way. We have styles that are different, approaches that are certainly different. And that’s fine. It’s fine. I mean, we have no orthodoxy. There’s no catechism.

 

GT  38:14  You don’t have to believe a certain way.

 

John  38:15  You don’t have to believe a certain way. We are free to do as best we can with what we’ve got. We don’t want to give offense to anyone. We pray for God’s hand in what we do. I mean, I imagine that none of us fully appreciate the true significance of the Book of Mormon. It’s beyond real. It is historical fact. These people lived and died in America. They had their problems, for sure. But this is from God. It is a witness of the restoration. There are great promises, for sure. And we all have a little bit to do. I imagine that this story will be told and retold by a million missionaries. I do.

 

GT  39:28  So you’ve got a couple of websites. What’s the name? Because I know Phoenicia rocks is mostly about the boat, right?

 

John  39:37  Yeah, we’ve got Phoenicia.rocks, [which] is mostly about the boat and we’re not as good as we should be with these websites. These things get hard to control.

 

GT  39:48  What’s your website?

 

John  39:51  We have had two: Zarahelma.Site.

 

GT  39:54  Zarahemla.site.

 

John  39:56  That’s it. And then Phoenicia.rocks.

 

GT  40:00  Okay, is there one for the Heartland Research Group, specifically?

 

John  40:04  They’re both owned by Heartland Research Group. They’ve gone through different phases. And so, we try to get–we’ve been on Facebook. We’ve probably had 700,000 visits on Facebook over the last four years, five years. And we have an email blast that we try to send out two or three times a month. It’s not as well organized as it should be, for sure. I mean, we do the best we can and then we ask for God’s mercy. But he’s merciful. And we have not been disappointed. We’re very happy to be where we are, very convinced that it’s a true book, and that we can accept the Book of Mormon as the word of God. It’s a powerful witness, powerful witness, and like life and history in general. There’s many aspects to it. [There are] a lot of different people, different interpretations, I guess.

 

GT  41:19  And so, you can see videos on there.

 

John  41:21  Yes.

 

GT  41:23  Yuri Sanada, he’s been your Brazilian filmmaker, that…

 

John  41:30  He’s the filmmaker, and he’s not a member of the Church. He’s a great artist, and he has wonderful contacts in the Old World. They’re not going to come in because we’re Mormon, but they will come in because we are talking about the Phoenicia. And they want to promote the history of their people. And we welcome them, we welcome them. So, we’ll have Muslims. In our volunteers, we’ve had a number of faithful Methodists, who have come to work with us. They all like the Bible story. They know King Zedekiah. They know Jeremiah. They know the destruction of the First Temple. And [they’re] very supportive, I would say in many cases, they have been more supportive than others who are members of the Church. It’s amazing. So, we are humble. And finally, we’re poor wayfaring. So, we don’t have the money for this. But God is merciful. And He has blessed us, for which we are thankful.

 

GT  42:48  All right, well, is there anything else we need to know about the Heartland Research Group that you’d like to share?

 

John  42:53  Well, for sure! We want you to come to Montrose, Iowa. We want you to take a few hours out of your busy schedule. And we want you to help us put this thing together. We need to clean up a number of pieces of wood panels. So, some of it is sanding, some of it just scraping. The ship is going to come together. It has 7500 joints. It’s very complicated in its construction, beautiful in its form. It’s amazing how they were able to control these lines that–you know, if the ship is built right, it won’t cut through the water. And it will not float.

 

GT  43:41  Anymore.

 

John  43:42  Anymore.

 

GT  43:42  It did float.

 

John  43:44  So we have a number of well-trained people there. But we need help. If you’ve got some time, come on out and we’ll feed you. Everybody gets fed. We feed you and if you work more than a day, we’ll give you a bed that’s clean and we’ll let you rejoice in the discovery of truth. Come one hour, one day, one week, whatever. It’s very important.

 

GT  44:14  Well, cool. All right. Well, John Lefgren, I appreciate your hospitality and the amazing things. You’ve helped me to get to the FIRM Foundation Conference and the auction and everything and it’s been a lot of fun.

 

John  44:31  It’s been very fun. Thank you for taking the time to even give us your attention. It’s wonderful that you’re there. God bless you.

 

GT  44:37  Well, thank you.

 

John  44:38  God bless us all.

 

GT  44:39  I appreciate you for being here on Gospel Tangents.

 

John  44:42  Thank you. Good luck.

[1] Sunbeams are children aged 3-4.

[2] D&C 125:3

[3] His name was David Read, and he claims the Kennewick Man was a Nephite. He has a book titled, “Face of a Nephite.” It can be purchased at https://amzn.to/3UdJxrl

 

Copyright © 2022

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.