(light music)
- When you came out, I felt like I was
- The only one.
- Yeah, I felt like we were the only ones.
You were the only gay person in Provo, Utah.
- I remember that, too.
- Which made me feel as a mom really really alone.
- [Stephanie] I believe that we can move the community
to better understand these kids and their families,
and that we can help them have a safe place to be.
A place where they don't have to leave their families
and move somewhere different.
- My name's Andrew.
I'm a theater student at UVU.
Most of my closest friends are gay and
I just think that this is a resource
and a support system that's vital here.
- I'm a trans-woman.
I've been in this area for five years out
and I've seen a lot of people be terrible
to other people and I want to try and change that.
- I had a very close friend of mine for a lot of years
who came out and I was his only support.
He had quite a hard time.
We're both brand new back from our missions
in 2011 going to BYU and I did my best I could,
but I don't know if I did as well as I could of,
so here I am.
- I think that Provo should be the best place
to grow up an LGBTQ child, because we
do community so well.
But it's the hardest place.
Suicide is now the leading cause of death
for young people in Utah.
And the suicide rate has tripled since 2007.
There was a period of 11 days where every single
day there was a LGBTQ suicide in Utah, last summer.
There's messaging that's telling these kids,
"You're not okay."
These are kids who feel like God doesn't love them,
their parents won't understand, their community
won't understand who they are.
The reason for Encircle is to keep youth alive.
I was raised right here in Utah county.
I grew up Mormon.
I got married in the Mormon temple.
I'm an attorney.
I have six children.
Been married for 20 years.
I guess you could say I'm the all-American Mormon (laughs).
At BYU I was a family science major
and back then I would have told you that
gay marriage would destroy the country.
I might have thought that it was evil to be homosexual.
But life changed and experiences changed me.
We spent a year prior to opening
trying to figure out how can we fit into our
community, rather than being something that
is butting up against the community and their beliefs.
We want to support who the community is,
meet them where they are, and help us all
progress and become better.
- So we have three main projects that we're gonna do today.
- We've been open for six months, and we've already
trained 350 volunteers.
A lot goes on every week at Encircle.
Monday nights we bring in speakers,
Lunch with Lisa is on Tuesday,
and the idea with that is to bring parents
to sit around the table and talk about their
children and the struggles they're having
and the successes they're having.
We have 11 support groups a week.
Anything from lesbian support group
to transgender support groups.
The idea behind Encircle is to give these
kids a safe space to be, so they can grow up
and have time to think about
"Who am I, who do I want to be?"
- I have great respect for Stephanie,
taking a tremendous risk, saying that I'm gonna
go walk with these LGBTQ people, I'm gonna go
out there and put a physical location together
in Provo as sort of a symbol of the house of healing.
It starts a lot of thoughtful discussions
where people then, perhaps like me and others,
are saying "I need to understand more about this issue.
"I can't just keep it in my nice, tidy box,
"and live in my bubble."
Prior to becoming an LDS bishop, I let other
people define for me what LGBTQ people were.
A wonderful mother posted a picture of her
teenage gay LDS son and she talked that
he committed suicide the day before.
I felt called from God to go serve these LGBTQ youth.
(drums)
- When I was running for student body president,
an account was made about me being gay
and how I shouldn't be president and the
caption says "Whatever you do, don't vote for
Michael Gay Walter, we don't want our school
being run by a faggot."
And I like remember seeing the screenshots
of what he had posted, and my heart immediately dropped,
and I'm like "why would anyone feel justified
"to say this, whatsoever."
(talking and laughing)
- There was a time when we were really worried
about Michael's safety
and when he would go out driving,
there was always the thought in my mind
that he might not come back.
And, I would text him, "Where are you?"
and he would say "I'm at Encircle,"
and I would instantly stop worrying.
That pit in my stomach would go away instantly,
I knew that he was safe.
I really feel like Encircle literally saved his life.
- We will never tell any of the youth who they should be.
(yelling and laughing)
We will never say, "You should stay in the church.
"You should leave this community."
Our approach is, you need to be who
you need to be to be whole.
And they need to look inside of themselves
and say "This is where I will find happiness
"and this is where I will be whole and complete."
(upbeat music)