Mormons were the first Hippies

Sometimes as a missionary for my church I find myself having to teach people some and simple truths.

Joseph Smith was the first hippie. That is a scientific fact. He was a true prophet and he started a counterculture to the status quo of his day and age. He built an intentional community of like-minded individuals where they could practice their alternative lifestyles as they saw fit. They were hippies.

Mormons were the first hippies.

Under the Prophet's direction, they established a new community where the Prophet told us how to live and how to treat each other. It was beautiful. True, the Prophet did establish a new order of marriage, where he could marry many women, but like all true and great men, he found the current trend of one man to one wife to be limiting and not very with the changing times.

He did it. And then his predeccesors moved outside of the United States in order to practice their alternative lifestyle. They formed communities outside the mainstream America and built a system where people truly loved each other.

I am a 5th generation Mormon. I come from this line of counter-culture revolutionaries. And I am so proud of my hippie fore-fathers.

Pray for me,

- Elder Gandy