I was born in 1984. I grew up in a neighborhood where it's a pretty rough neighborhood. Ninety percent of my friends didn't know who their fathers were. Me and my brother actually sold drugs together.

8 Mile divides Detroit. It's an invisible fence. It's a box for some people to not explore and expand and grow outside of city limits. People almost fear crossing 8 Mile, and that fear is built up over generations. Even to this day, like even with my brother, he won't drive across 8 Mile. "Oh, I ain't going. How far is it? Oh, I'm not going that way." The history of Detroit for the last 50 years has been one of division: geographical boundaries, social boundaries, educational boundaries, ethnic boundaries, racial boundaries. All of these things have led to divisions that defeat the principles of unity that make it possible to be successful. My family has all of its roots here. So all of my aunts and uncles, everybody that I knew who was from the area, started out in the city of Detroit. Back in the '40s and '50s, Detroit was just a vibrant place, an exciting place to live. I was born at Sinai-Grace on 7 Mile and Outer Drive. I was raised over here on the east side. It was a middle-class neighborhood. It was mixed, but it was mostly black. Back when we were kids you would always see, regardless of the season, kids outside playing and parents chatting, raking grass, and, you know, regular neighborhood activity.

The racial thing was a real issue in Detroit, and so we talk about the white flight to the suburbs. It was very, very real. People would talk about, "A black family moved into the neighborhood, and now look." You know, it was that panic that they really believed that now their house wasn't going to be worth anything and that their whole life had been ruined. And then all of a sudden, during the '60s when the riots took place, then there was a great deal of fear of even being in the city, and they would just put those houses up for sale. And it was really sad, but I watched everybody in my family do that. And so I was just a child listening to the adults talk, you know, and you hear this. That was a big part of not only the deterioration of the neighborhoods; that was the beginning of the flight out of Detroit. People called it "white flight" because that's mostly who left at that time. They were moving across 8 Mile. And it's been a downhill battle ever since.

The elementary school and the middle school I went to have been closed since then. The high school recently closed, Kettering High. Now it seems like the neighborhoods are abandoned. You can go through a neighborhood and might not see one person.

The 8 Mile border is the border between Detroit and the suburbs, and historically it was the border between black and white. And it became the symbol of this racial divide, this economic divide, this social divide--divide in every sense of the word that you can imagine. To go across 8 Mile Road was, in some sense, to go to a different country or almost a different planet. You can see the change in the buildings, the change in the streets, the change in the way the buildings have been kept. It's plain to see. For a long time the perception of people on both sides of 8 Mile was that "it's us against them," you know? A lot of the people from Detroit were afraid to go across 8 Mile because they were afraid that they would be singled out and stopped by the police. A lot of people on the other side of 8 Mile were afraid to come over here because they thought that all Detroiters were criminals for the most part. And those in the white community had tremendous fears of crossing 8 Mile Road. All they ever see or know about being inside of 8 Mile is what they hear on the news about crime in Detroit, not knowing all the good-hearted people there--the people of faith, people who have hope, the people who are working to raise and develop and help their families--but simply on the basis of what they see on television every night. Initially, when we first moved here to Detroit, the ward boundaries did not extend into it. 8 Mile was the dividing line. There was actually a unit of our Church that covered 8 Mile and below, and there was a unit of our Church that covered 8 Mile and above. And a year after we had been here, there were changes made to the boundaries of the wards. The 8 Mile border was done away with. And so there was--you had the Detroit, the Detroit area branch mixing with these suburbs and the wards in the suburbs.

There's been kind of an admission, if you will, that the patterns of the past have failed us and we need to find a new way to work together, to be more engaged together. In the end, the answer was "This is what the Lord wants. And so, you know, overcome your fears, cross the 8 Mile Road, and let's go love our brothers and sisters and help them." We had heard a lot of things about Detroit, and we were a bit fearful. Then we got down and looked around downtown and realized, "Well, it's really not that much different than downtown Cleveland or downtown Salt Lake City," so, I mean, may not be quite so fearful. As we've gotten to know the people, we love it. But we've also learned that people in downtown Detroit have as big a fear of going north as we have of coming into the inner city.

Something as simple as providing rides for individuals. We would go out with the missionaries on a regular basis and meet investigators. And then some of those investigators would need a ride to the church, and so we would pick them up that Sunday. We would go home teaching and visit the homes of members. And we would find ourselves in the homes of people in Detroit where we would never, ever be for any other reason other than to be there as members of the Church, helping fulfill the obligation we have to lift our brothers and sisters. And that opened our eyes. And it opened the eyes of those into whose home we came as to who we really are and what our relationship and connection really is. Some of the most amazing people that I know now, that I call friend, are some of those people that I would not have known had they not done that. I think our ward really captures a nice balance of black and white. We, I think, have been very successful in a small scale in terms of kind of overcoming that divide. I do see a lot of help, a lot of arrangements being made so that we can all work together to get where we need to go. You go to the Belle Isle Branch, all right, which is made up of the richest part of Detroit, where the auto magnates live with their families--Grosse Pointe, along the shores of Lake St. Clair--and the poorest parts of the city of Detroit. And you see them coming together in a small building in inner-city Detroit and watch the gospel affect these economic boundaries and ethnic boundaries and racial boundaries and language boundaries and literacy boundaries and every other boundary you can think of. To watch them dissolve under the influence of the recognition "We are brothers and sisters, and we are here to help one another, and we can actually learn from each other." I think everyone needs the gospel in their life because until you really become a part of it, you never understand it. I've gotten over some prejudices I've had that I didn't recognize until I joined the Church. So, like, the world just opened up and here we are. So, yeah, I'm very grateful for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and more than that, the people that I've met along the way.