James Catledge
speaker
208 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
James Catledge’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
path funnel if you will that were to take them down well we get we lock our bikes to the stop sign we're walking the sidewalk and and he basically outlines we're going to do this street this street and then the one behind them we're going home for lunch and i i i've been talking myself up to this guy pretty much non-stop he actually believes what i've been saying about my capacity my capacity is not nothing i am unproven but i've talked it up
So I make a decision after locking the bikes that I'm going to step into this and kind of own it. And I tell his name is Merrill Taggart. Okay. Merrill Taggart is from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Okay. And I, and I love, I come to love Merrill Taggart from this experience, but I told elder Taggart, that's what we call each other. Let me take the first door.
Now, this is all I can do to even say this out loud to him, but I feel I need to trap myself into this experience. And so I do. He says, are you sure? I don't mind showing you exactly, you know, which I said, no, I'm ready. I'm not ready. I'm filled with fear, not the fear of the darkness and the forest.
And I don't need knives, but man, I need courage because I've now trapped myself, which by the way, is a technique I've come to use throughout my life, trap myself psychologically into victory. And so he says, this would be, this would be interesting. Let's do it. We walked to the first door.
i'm praying to god on high nobody's home please don't answer whatever i'm even knocking softly please don't hear this in the back room don't answer the curtains move i know they're in there he knocks louder like the cop knock now he's knocking man he he wants them to open the door he's prepared jesus is here yeah right the jesus troops have arrived the door
so literally the lady opens with the lock you know the chain on pulls it open and i said uh we are mormon missionaries a long ways from home this is literally we're more this is not in the training we are mormon missionaries a long ways from home and we'd love to tell you why we've come so far from home And I just kind of left it like that. That's a solid opening. It's literally what I said.
And I remember her slipping the chain up thinking, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't open that door. She opens the door. She says, why don't you guys come in? Would you like a drink of water? And now I'm relaxing a little bit. I'm calming down. And he kind of takes over. And he kind of does the thing. And he's so eloquent. He's so good. You'd think he's 50 years old. He's so good at this.
Well, that was day one. trap myself and do it. And then I felt comfortable doing the rest of the doors. And I ended up having a fabulous mission, great experience and leadership, accountability, responsibility, and it changed my life. You know, I never put it together.
No problem. No, you've got nothing to sell that we would have a problem selling.
For sure.
Absolutely.
Now one other thing you'll like about recruiting Mormon missionaries is we're trained at the age of 19 when folks are busy getting their first bar experience and getting their first tattoo perhaps and which piercing do I want next. We are trained in nine o'clock accountability. At 9 p.m. we are to call our district leaders who are other 19 year olds like us but somehow they're in charge.
And by the way, we have in our pocket what they call the daily planner. It's a physical calendar, not a digital calendar. It's a physical calendar where we've marked all these units of activity that matter, high leverage activities that lead us to what we're after, which is baptisms. Mm-hmm. Well, people joining the church, that's what we're after.
That's literally what we call it. How many converts? So we are calling in at night. If we don't call in at nine o'clock, they call us. If they can't reach us, they drive their bicycles or their car over to find us.
We actually pay for the experience. That's wild. Yeah. It was so good for me. So good.
Yeah, yeah. That's such a good question. First of all, you think of the allowance and everything and what I had to do to get the allowance.
16.
And, and I, I just needed the money. I needed to earn my own money. Mom didn't have enough money for, for bills much less. And I liked nice clothes. I wanted to wear nice button-down shirts. IZOD was a popular brand when I was a kid. I wanted to wear the IZOD and the polo. And I just, you know, my mom was Winnie the Pooh and Tuffskins.
Your kids, your kids were all six were on the deck.
airplanes, pilots, beach houses, the whole thing, the whole thing.
Showing 21–40 of 208 · page 2 of 11
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