Two Brothers Two is the continuing story
of Sam and Luke and their two younger
brothers, Tommy and Joseph, 5,000 days in the making.
Watch Sam, Luke, Tommy, and Joseph
negotiate the journey of adolescence
on the road to young adulthood.
While they don't have it all, they do have each other.
And this is their story.
Chair out of the way.
Stand right up against--perfect.
That's exactly the spot.
When you get up in the morning, tell me what you do.
Get ready.
Tom, what do you want to do when you grow up?
Be a rocket scientist.
Do you believe in God?
Yeah.
Do you believe that you're going to heaven?
Yeah.
Tommy, tell me about your family: Luke, Sam, and Joseph
and Judy and Paul.
So which brother do you spend the most time with?
Luke.
Luke, why?
'Cause he's really fun.
I'm Tommy Nelson.
I'm just one bad dude.
What do you want to do when you grow up?
NBA player.
Where do you think you go after you die?
Heaven.
Are you kind of excited to go to heaven?
But I don't want to right now.
OK.
I have to ask you about girls.
No.
Ew.
You're gross.
Your mom's a girl.
I know.
She kisses too much.
I have to wait until I'm 25 to get married and 28 to kiss.
Do you think it's gross to kiss a girl?
But yet you're going to do it when you're 28.
I have to.
Do your older brothers pick on you?
Like, Luke makes fun of me.
Why
does Luke make fun of you?
I don't know.
Ask Luke.
I'm not Luke.
Tom, I've got to ask you this question every year.
What do you want to do when you grow up?
I want to be in the NBA.
Do you think that money buys happiness?
Yes.
You do get mad at times, right?
Yeah.
What makes you mad?
Brothers.
Like what?
When they hurt me.
Who do you get along with the best?
Probably Sam.
Is it safe to say he makes you the least mad?
Yes.
Would you take $1 million to never see your brothers again?
No.
If I was to ask you what you want to do when you grow up,
what would you say?
Be the best NBA player ever drafted,
but that's a bit of a stretch.
What makes you mad?
When my brothers are being mean to me.
Who is it now that gives you the most trouble?
Luke.
If I, like, miss a shot in, like, a basketball game,
he keeps going on and on about it.
Ten years from now, what are you most looking forward to?
Oh, going on a mission.
Do you think Sam's going to go?
Yeah, he says he wants to.
For a Mormon, going on your mission's a big deal.
So what is a mission?
You basically go somewhere around the world,
and you preach the gospel for two years.
So I read it and it's like, "Dear Elder Nelson,
you are hereby called to labor in the Chile Concepcion
Mission."
Yes!
Oh, my gosh!
I'm so excited for my mission.
So your parents decided to move across town.
Part of that decision had to do with Luke's football career.
We were thinking about Luke and how hard
he's worked for football.
If he had a chance to play in college,
he had to have a good senior season.
We talked about it a lot, like, the pros and cons
and everything.
We knelt down in prayer as a family,
and then we all kind of came up around the bed,
and we all felt really good about the decision.
In many ways you had the most to lose.
I was going to be eighth-grade ASU president,
but doing this for Luke is more important.
I went to Issaquah on the Eastside,
and I'm going to go play football for a year at Eastside
Catholic.
Luke tells the story about the family prayer.
Somebody prayed a lot longer than everybody else.
Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing.
No, no, it's beautiful.
Tell me what happened.
Luke was really moved by it.
Yeah.
It was just really cool, praying in the family.
Coming to a decision like that, it was just cool.
What's making you feel sad about it?
I'm not sad.
What is it?
I think it's because I'm so happy for Luke
that we could bond as a family like that.
Whiskers?
What?
Whiskers.
You can see them?
Yeah.
When you were a kid, we did this whole interview on kissing.
Really?
Do you remember that interview?
No.
I have to wait until I'm 25 to get married and 28 to kiss.
I said what?
I used to want to be an orthodontist,
but I read the Facebook book, and it
got me hooked on wanting to be a billionaire.
But we'll see.
Of course, when I was a little kid,
I was following what my parents were doing.
And then I get to, like, 14, and I
go to, like, youth conference.
And I see Luke, and I see what it's done for his life.
And now I'm up there singing.
I found out that God loves me.
And I feel like once you figure out that God loves you,
then everything else falls into place.
It sounds like Luke has had the most powerful impact on you
of all your brothers.
Is that accurate?
Yes, my favorite memories of all time
was when he, like, sent my mom a text saying that "Hey, I don't
have much school next week.
Wondering if you can send Tommy up
and we would have a blast," or something.
And so I got to go to college with him for a week.
Stayed up till 3:00 in the morning doing everything.
I mean, I really bonded with Luke that week.
And it was so fun.
I liked staying in the dorms with him.
And it was, like, the time of my life.
What is it that's bonded you and Luke?
I don't know.
I think it's mainly just him being an example for me.
"Luke, your mission call's sitting right here."
And I was like, "What?"
Let's open this baby.
The next two years.
I don't care where you go, dude.
Wow.
"Dear Elder Nelson, you are hereby
called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints.
You are assigned to labor in the Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission."
Cambodia!
Oh, my gosh!
And everyone gets so excited, and I'm just
kind of sitting there.
And I was like, "I don't even know where Cambodia is."
And it's like he was my best friend,
and now he's preparing to go to Cambodia.
And it's like, when I get a letter from him,
it's like, it's like I hang onto every word that he says.
And like, I don't know.
I've reread, like, all the letters that Luke sends.
It's a really powerful thing because every week I
send him an email about absolutely everything,
and he replies every time with an email just to me.
And it really helps me out.
I feel like Luke is, like, the definition of hard work,
especially with his football and everything.
He was a very long shot to end up playing BYU.
But he kept working hard, and he kind of believed in himself.
So you're training pretty hard to get this quarterback spot.
I've been doing a lot of training.
We do our training rain or shine.
A couple times it's been pouring down rain,
and it's like on a soccer field.
And then I go to a camp most every Saturday.
My quarterback coach talks about how
I'm a little bit too much of a perfectionist
because I hate not being able to do something,
because my goal is to be the varsity quarterback.
So you've got to beat out this other kid that's
trying too, huh?
I plan on it.
And I'm not going to go down very easily.
What's your greatest fear?
The thought of losing is the worst for me.
You know, being a quarterback was always my dream.
And when the season started, this kid my age
came back from a year-long injury, and he beat me out.
Throughout my life to that point,
everything that I worked hard for, I had seen the--I had
reaped the benefits of everything that I had worked
hard for.
And when I didn't get exactly what I
was expecting when I worked hard,
it was a foreign concept to me.
Like last year, I recognized pride is a big problem for me,
and I've been working on that a lot.
I know I would tell my Dad, I would be like--he'd be like,
"What if you don't get a spot?"
And I'd be like, "Dad, I can't afford to think like that."
And then I didn't get it.
If you want to succeed, you can't think that way,
but it'll make it a lot harder when you fail.
Tommy is the best man.
So also, if you could come up and give us a quick speech.