Latter-day Saint Commentary from the Pacific Northwest - Rocky Mountain Sunshine Podcast
Latter-day Saint Commentary from the Pacific Northwest - Rocky Mountain Sunshine Podcast
Jason Bringhurst
Jason Bringhurst shares uplifting messages of faith, has a little fun, and strives to add some sunshine to your day. Jason lives in Port Angeles, Washington, and gives a commentary podcast from a Latter-day Saint perspective. Latter-day Saints, Christians, and those of other faiths or even with no faith will enjoy this podcast. This is not an official podcast of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some may refer to members of The Church as LDS or Mormon. Add a little sunshine to your week by subscribing! Cheers from the PNW! Music: Pixabay. Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/support
2022 Update - Rocky Mountain Sunshine
https://anchor.fm/goyeforth Hello friends! I just wanted to give an update to our last episode where I asked you to stick around and that I would not hang up my podcasting hat just yet. I took some time to think about the show and what I wanted to do. I consulted my good friend I prayed a lot about it, I consulted with my wife, and also my good friend Shawn Rapier, multiple times. And I’ve come up with a new podcast called “Go Ye Forth”. It’s a 24-hour non-stop pun podcast.  Just kidding.  It’s actually a podcast where I speak with returned missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and hear about their experience as they served all across the globe. So there might be wee bit of Rocky Mountain Sunshine here and there, but for now, check out “Go Ye Forth” because I’ll be posting episodes there more often. So until next time, Cheers from the Pacific Northwest! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/support
Jan 7, 2022
1 min
One Year Anniversary - Ep. 54
I am happy that you are joining me today for the 1 year anniversary of the Rocky Mountain Sunshine podcast. How has a year already gone by? Crazy! Here are some statistics that you may find boring, but I’ll share them anyway. My top listened-to episode is still # 19 where I do nothing but talk about all the cars that I’ve owned. What this tells me is more of you like cars that you let on apparently. The majority of our listeners are in the USA but here are my top 10 outside of the U.S.: Australia #2 - Gu-day mate UK # 3 - Ellow Germany # 4 Guten talk Indonesia # 5 - Halo Netherlands # 6 - Goeden dag Saudi Arabia # 7 - Marhaban Canada # 8 Hello and Bonjour for the french Canadians Mexico # 9 - Hola And # 10 is Brazil France is # 19 _ Bojour mes amis! Why are you all the way down to # 19? Pourquoi es-tu au dix-neuf ? Estonia is #23.  “Tear-ah”.  You can do better Estonia!  #23? The Czech Repulic is my least listened to country, except for all the countries who don’t listen at all.  I’m looking at you Iceland! What else can I tell you about our listeners? 64% listen on Apple Podcasts. 5% on Spotify. It goes down from there to a variety of other podcast platforms. The age group that listens to the podcast the least is age 23-27.  Or as I call it, the age group that apparently does not like puns. They tuned out quickly. You must appreciate a good pun to be a listener. I have really enjoyed learning over the past year how to podcast. I got a lot of tips from my buddy Shawn Rapier along the way. He’s always a great resource and has helped. Tune if for more! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/support
Nov 1, 2021
19 min
Mayberry with Mat Hyder - Ep. 53
Today is a special episode where I have a guest. I have my good friend Mat Hyder joining me over zoom!  As an introduction, Mat was a former neighbor and ward member when I lived in Highland, Utah. We served in a bishopric together. He is a wonderful father who will soon have a missionary heading out. He is a pediatric nurse at Primary Children’s Hospital. He would visit often when my son Xavier was up at Primary Children’s for several months. Mat recently started a podcast that has nothing to do with medicine and has everything to do with Mayberry. He is also a faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s a fun episode, so without any further delay, let’s get into it! Welcome to the Show Mat Hyder! It’s great to have you on and even better just to have the opportunity to catch up! Mat and I were neighbors in Highland Utah, and Mat still lives in Highland and is probably trying to repair all the damage that I did. Isn’t it crazy how much the world has changed even since I lived there in Highland? We didn’t zoom much unless it was you zooming by on your motorcycle. So I was trying to think when was it that you moved into the ward in Highland?  Oh yeah… Well, I’m jumping the gun here. We’ll get into your podcast later, but first let’s get to know Mat. Let’s take it back a twitch. You talk about this a lot on your podcast but tell us about where you grew up. Where do you fit in with your siblings? Were you raised in the Church? What was it like growing up outside of Utah and being a member of The Church? Were you always active? Do you think it’s harder or easier for kids to grow up in the Church in Utah or outside of Utah? How is it that you became such a big fan of John Denver? I was guessing that you were leaving on a jet plane, you didn’t know when you would be back again. Or maybe you were heading to a country road, to take you home, you noticed some sunshine on your shoulder and thought, I should look up this John Denver guy! And now you are here, with little rocky mountain sunshine on your shoulders. Does it make you happy? I had the John Denver Christmas album with the Muppets. He was on with the muppets a little too often. I think he may have been a muppet who just went solo. Did you ever see him in concert? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/support
Oct 25, 2021
1 hr 8 min
Port Angeles Top 10 Tourist Attractions - Ep. 52
Have you already been to Port Angeles? So if you’ve ever been to Port Angeles, you most likely came here via car. There is a ferry that comes from Victoria in Canada, but I’m guessing most of our listeners don’t live in Victoria. Although there are worse places to live! So you get to Port Angeles, by car, and there is one highway that gets you here from Seattle or Portland. It’s the 101.  The 101 is a great highway, much of which is just a two-lane highway, so you just go the speed limit. People out here on the peninsula are just more patient drivers. You just go with the flow and you’ll get to the destination. You get out to Tacoma and Seattle and the aggressive drivers start to show up. As you drive out here you feel like you are leaving a lot of the city life behind, and you do. Silverdale will be your last stop for most of the big stores and that’s definitely the closest place to do much shopping other than the Walmart in Port Angeles. You’ll pass through Sequim, which looks like you should pronounce it Sea-qwim, but it’s Skwim.  Sequim bay is beautiful. There is a popular casino there. We kept hearing that they had great food at the restaurant, but my experience there would say otherwise. They have some live music, and we actually went and saw a cover band. So we have that going on. If you need anything from Costco, you’ll want to stop in Sequim. It’s only another 20 minutes to Port Angeles. Now I’ll give you a little hot tip. If you want to go somewhere for breakfast in Sequim, you want to go to the Oak Table. In fact, if you want to go to breakfast in Port Angeles, it’s worth the 20 minute drive to Sequim to go to the Oak Table. Just trust me. They have a german pancake that will knock your socks off. Just outside of Sequim, I think it’s called Carlsborg, is a Chevron station.  I get gas there, and they have the only self-serve diet coke fountain drink anywhere close that tastes good.  For some reason the other one or two around, and there aren’t many that have diet coke in a fountain drink, but those all taste off.  Something is not calibrated and nobody is bothering to fix it because apparently, I’m the only one who can tell the difference. Between Sequim and Port Angeles is a little restaurant that looks like a house. It does not look like much from the outside, and the inside seems like you’ve entered into a restaurant in the 70s, but if you have a hankering for some good crab cakes, this place won’t let you down. It’s called Dupuis, but I think the locals call it Dupees. The next stop down the road is the outskirts of Port Angeles. You’ll see the Deer Park Cinema. I suppose they are open. We haven’t been since before Covid hit. It’s the only movie theater anywhere near us. When you google things like closest theater near me, google always suggests Victoria, which is a one-hour ferry ride to Canada and is currently shut down due to Covid.  After passing Deer Park Cinema you go through an S-curve. It’s a dangerous place where there have been several accidents even since we moved here 3 years ago. They finally put a cement curb and median in the middle. I don’t know why it took so long. But as you go through this S-Curve you have one of my favorite views of the mountains in Port Angeles. It’s always picturesque unless there happens to be fog, which we do get sometimes. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/support
Oct 18, 2021
42 min
Boys' Life Magazine - I was a peculiar kid - Ep. 51
Welcome to the show, everybody! I’m recording from the lovely town of Port Angeles, Washington. I’m still on a high from General Conference. There were so many good talks and several which I definitely want to go back and study more. Well in today’s episode I take you way back to the early starts of my career in sales. I’m talking way back folks. So dust off your atari and sony walkman because we are heading to the 80’s. So let’s get to it! Do you ever think back to when you were a kid and just say to yourself, “Boy I was a weird kid!” No? That’s just me? I have these memories of things that I did, and I just shake my head. Like one day there was an ice cream truck driving through the apartments where we lived in Midvale, Utah.  I had no money, but I wanted an ice cream. So I rode my bike and chased him down. My bike’s name was Coyote 9 by the way. What? You didn’t name your bike? So I went up to the door of the ice cream truck to talk to the keeper of the ice cream. I asked if he’d trade me an ice cream for my watch.  Seriously! What was I thinking? Luckily he said, “No.”   I was in little league for a couple of years. I was really bad at baseball. I think that my mom and grandma probably wanted me to do some type of activity because I didn’t have siblings and I probably drove them crazy. So for a couple years I played for the red sox little league team in Midvale. For some reason, we had a fundraiser. I don’t remember why, but we sold chocolate bars. I remember asking my aunts and uncles if they wanted to buy a chocolate bar. I think my mom had some co-workers buy some. I even went door-to-door to some close-by neighbors selling them. I don’t remember the candy bars being very good but that was my introduction to selling. I picture myself like Russell, the kid from the movie “Up.” Reading from a book, “Good - afternoon. I - am - Jason - and - I - am - in - the - little - league. Will - you - support - our - team?” At some point, I started getting this magazine called Boy’s Life.  Did you ever get that magazine? Was there an equivalent for girls? I don’t know, but I really liked it. They had the 10-year-old boy’s interest dialed in. I read it from cover to cover.  For you youngsters out there, we had no youtube, no Disney Plus, nor google, so yeah, a magazine for boys was the bomb dot com. Tune in to hear the rest! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/support
Oct 11, 2021
23 min
The Gift of Tongues - Mission to France - Ep. 50
Welcome to the show, everybody! I’m recording from the lovely town of Port Angeles which is a wee bit wet right now. OK, who am I kidding? It’s been raining all day! But it’s OK because I had Ivar’s Clam Chowder for lunch. That makes it all better. I hope that you had a wonderful General Conference weekend. I know that it was a weekend that I was really looking forward to and I hope that you were able to get a lot out of the counsel we received. Do you speak a second language? Do you speak multiple languages? I served a French-speaking mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I served for 2 years. 2 months of that time was at the missionary training center or MTC in Provo Utah. It was hard. There is no getting around it. The days were rigorous. Language classes and gospel learning classes. I remember after the first two days we had surpassed the french that I had learned in three years at Middle School and High School. Not that I was that great at French. In fact, my french teacher, Monsieur Larson said that I shouldn’t take French my senior year because I would not be able to pass the class. I did struggle in the MTC trying to learn the language. I remember it seemed like the rest of my district was improving faster than I was. I would lay in bed each night and count to 100 in my mind in french. Quatre-vingt = 80 which translated says 4 twenty. So to count in French you also need to be good at math. 4 times 20 is 80. But that’s OK because 90 is quatre-vingt-dix which translates four twenty ten… can you see how a little confusing.  Un peut.  How about 97. Well that is quatre-vingt-dix-sept. Translated four twenty ten seven… Somehow I learned the numbers.  Oh la la. Tune in for the rest of the show! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/support
Oct 4, 2021
26 min
Funeral Crashing in Sugar City, Idaho - I'm so awkward - Ep. 49
Welcome to the Rocky Mountain Sunshine podcast where we share faith, have some fun, and strive to add a little sunshine to your day! I am your host, Jason Bringhurst. Welcome to the show, everybody!  I am recording from the lovely town of Port Angeles, Washington. We are situated directly across from Vancouver Island. Before Covid shut down travel from Canada, the ferry would run twice a day over to Victoria. It was about a 60 minute trip on the ferry. But it hasn’t run now since March of 2020. I imagine that has had a big impact on a lot of downtown businesses here. There is talk now of the vaccine soon to be available for children 5 and older. I hope that will help to curb this horrible pandemic. It’s gone on for so long now. Well, it’s times like these where a little humor can maybe lift your spirit a little, so stay tuned to today’s episode. If you enjoy laughing at some of the silly things I do, this is your episode! So let’s get to it! Do you have awkward things that happen to you? I seem to have a lot of awkward things that happen to me. It’s like I’m a magnet for something really weird to happen. I could probably have an entire year of episodes just on different weird things that have happened to me. Tune in for the rest! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/support
Sep 27, 2021
16 min
Oliver Cowdery and Jacob Gates - Ep. 48
Welcome to the Rocky Mountain Sunshine podcast where we share faith, have some fun, and strive to add a little sunshine to your day! I am your host, Jason Bringhurst. Welcome to the show, everybody!  I am recording from the lovely town of Port Angeles, Washington. Have I ever mentioned how nice it is here? I just do that on every episode in hopes that people will come visit! We live far away from pretty much everything.  There are things that I like about that, and things that I don’t. Nevertheless, it’s a great place. It’s a small town. There is one high school and it doesn’t even have its own football stadium. I recently visited the newly rebuilt high school where I attended in Midvale, Utah. If you’ve driven by Hillcrest High School, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s state of the art and looks more like a college stadium. Here in Port Angeles, the high school plays at a community field called “Civic Field.”  At one end it’s actually a baseball field, which is interesting because when the football makes its way to that end of the field, they are actually playing on the dirt of the baseball diamond. I went to my first high school football game this past week to watch and root for my son Gavin who plays in the band. I haven’t contributed many athletic genes to our kids' gene pool, but they are all great at music. Again, probably not from me. Well today I don’t talk about Port Angeles High School winning the football game, which they did, nor do I talk about BYU winning the game against our friends up north at the University of Utah, but they did… Yes, BYU won. I’m making sure that’s on the record since the last time they won was in 2009.  That’s all sand washed into the sea or some phrase that people would say in situations like this.  In today’s show, I talk about a relative of mine who knew Oliver Cowdery. So let’s get to it! Do you have pioneer ancestors who were members of the Church while Joseph Smith was alive? My great-great-great grandfather Jacob Gates knew Oliver Cowdery and the Prophet Joseph Smith personally. That always intrigues me when I think about it.  He saw Joseph Smith on his horse heading to Carthage, IL before the martyrdom. Tune in for the rest of the show! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/support
Sep 20, 2021
16 min
Compassion and Kindness - We need more! - Ep. 47
Welcome to the Rocky Mountain Sunshine podcast where we share faith, have some fun, and strive to add a little sunshine to your day! I am your host, Jason Bringhurst. Welcome to the show, everybody!  I am recording from the lovely town of Port Angeles, Washington. Are you starting to get the fall vibes? We drove out to Ruby Beach on the coast on Labor Day and we are starting to see some of the leaves turning red and yellow. It was a stunning drive out there. It takes about an hour and a half to get to this particular beach on the coast. We are very close to the water of the strait of juan de fuca, but locals don’t consider that the ocean.  For a land-locked Utah guy, it looks pretty ocean-y to me. But I digress. Ruby Beach is on the coast, so it’s the real deal of ocean scenery. Well, in today’s episode I talk about compassion. It’s something that’s been on my mind, so let’s get to it! What do you think of when you think of compassion?  I’ll tell you what I don’t think of. Twitter.  I had been on Twitter for a long time, and it quite often got me down.  It wasn’t uncommon to see members of the church or former members of the Church argue about whatever the hot LDS-related topic was of the day. I uninstalled all social media to get away from it all for a week. I recognize some of the good that comes from it. Most of my family is back in Utah. It’s one way that I stay connected to them. I use it for our ward. I use it occasionally for my business and for this podcast. My dog Minnie even has an Instagram account. I made that more to have fun with my kids who gush over every picture we’ve ever taken of our little hairy friend. I’ll stop myself because I can hear Xavier in my mind correcting me and saying that she is not our friend but she is their sister. That’s the way they see our dog. I get disappointed looks if I ever refer to her as “the dog.”  Me: The dog needs water.  Xavier: She has a name! It’s Minnie! So after a week of being off of Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, I just never reinstalled Twitter.  You might say that I don’t like how people tweet other people. But I wouldn’t say something like that. Because that isn’t a very good pun. That doesn’t meet my high standards of puns, and they are very high standards, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you a thing or three! So back to this idea of compassion. I think it’s something that dare I say, is a little hard to find sometimes. More and more, I have really tried to tread lightly on social media. I try to avoid the unpleasant arguments and the unkindness that I see all too often. Every now and then, I feel like I need to chime in to set the record straight about a false accusation about the Church that I see by a friend on FaceBook. It is complicated when you have friends who have become bitter towards the Church.  I don’t want to unfriend them.  If they do nothing but bash the Church, I’ll probably mute them for awhile. It just gets tiresome. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/support
Sep 13, 2021
14 min
1965 Ford Mustang & Good Friends - Ep. 46
Welcome, everybody!  I am recording from the lovely town of Port Angeles, Washington where Covid is on the rise again. We are having a bit of a breakout here. It’s discouraging right as we are starting school this Thursday. I’m hoping we don’t get all shut down again. Like you, I just can’t wait until we get through this. Well, today I talk cars. Yeah, every now and then I talk cars. I talk about how I came to own a 1965 Ford Mustang. So let’s get to it! If you’ve listened to the show, you know that I’m into cars. In fact, if you want to go back and listen to an episode where I talk about every car that I’ve owned, check out episode 19. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hear about every car that I’ve owned, but it is one of our top listened to episodes. If I were going purely for numbers, I would quit my podcast and just start one on cars. But, that’s not what this podcast is all about. Then why are you talking about cars again? You might ask?  Well, that’s my business. haha.. . No, but sometimes a guy needs to have a little fun. This podcast has some fun to it every now and then. Well the were simpler times back in the 90’s. I was working for a company called System Connection. I was selling cables back when USB was a new thing. I had a small family, two children at the time, Julienne and Maggie, and a small home in Springville, Utah. Life was pretty good. My wife is a patient lady, and I got to looking at ebay, back in the day when the internet took forever to load a webpage, and looking at things on your phone was not a thing yet. But I found this sweet one owner 1965 Ford Mustang on an auction on ebay. It was technically the second owner, but the father was the original owner and then gave it to his daughter, so it was in the family still. Tune in to hear the rest! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rocky-mountain-sunshine/support
Sep 6, 2021
18 min
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