Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Can you see past my beautiful face? I hope you can. This is Carlos Heredia, signing off. Carlos was a fantastic kid. Carlos was a great leader. He was a great friend. He was always focused on service. He loved church, seminary, Young Men's. Ever since he was a little kid, there's a couple of things that he always wanted. He wanted to go to BYU, and then he wanted to serve a mission. He served in Provo. After eight months, we got a call from his mission president saying that Carlos was not feeling well and he was going to come back early. He was having severe depression and anxiety while he was in the mission field. It was really hard for him because that's what he wanted to do since he was a little kid. So coming back was really, really hard for him. When he was in BYU, we used to Skype pretty much every Sunday, and he would say that he was having a tough time. But he said he was--he still liked it. He still wanted to be there. It's interesting because the Sunday before his passing, we were Skyping and we were making plans for the summer. He was planning all of that. And then the Tuesday after, we had a bishop, a good friend of ours--he called me. He said, "Can I stop by your house?" And he told us that Carlos had passed away that morning.
And as Patricia was trying to understand how did it happen, he told me that Carlos had took his own life.
It's devastating.
It changes your entire life. You know, it goes against everything you know. I think that the only thing that has helped us is the faith and the testimony that we have of the fact that we're going to see Carlos again. After that, you go on day by day, sometimes moment by moment, because sometimes you--"Is it something that I did? Is it something that I didn't do?" And you don't have answers to those questions, so it's very difficult. Sometimes it feels that you cannot do it. Sometimes the pain is so great that you cannot do it. You have to keep going. We have Samantha and Junior. They have to grow up.
Family will be there. Friends will always be there for you. But on your darkest moments, on the moments when you are on your own, when you don't have anybody, you cannot call anybody--it's the knowledge that I have that the gospel is real, Christ is real. No matter what kind of troubles you have in life, what tests, tribulations--the Atonement is real. We're still a family. This separation is just momentarily.
As a branch president, all of this experience has helped me to really relate to the members, to some of the trials and tribulations that some of the members go through. I can honestly say, looking at their eyes, that I love them and I know how they're feeling, because I think I know how they're feeling and that they're going to be able to overcome whatever difficulties that they have.
I used to think that suicide affects the people that come from dysfunctional families or have some big problems, big issues. But it could affect anybody. We need to learn as leaders of the Church--how can we prevent this? We need to learn how to talk about it. We need to understand that mental illness is just like having any other illness. And sometimes as a leader, you don't know how to help; you don't know how to react; you don't know what to do. So you may need help from a professional and work with a professional or through a professional to help the members of your congregation. But before you do that, you need to make sure that your members understand that it's OK to talk about it. And we have to make sure people feel that they belong. We've got to make sure our kids understand that that's a safe place for them and they can talk about it, especially for our youth. We've got to make sure that they feel safe with us. Anybody can suffer mental illness. We need to talk about this, not only at church, but also we need to be part of our communities and see how can we as a society, as a community, help people that are going through mental illness. [MUSIC PLAYING]