John L. Sorenson's life was celebrated in this video produced by The Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum (BMAF). The short biography reviewed the BYU professor emeritus' groundbreaking work on establishing an ancient American setting for the Book of Mormon.

Sorenson and wife Helen were honored Oct. 17 at the seventh annual Book of Mormon Archaeological Conference with the "Father Lehi" and "Mother Sariah" awards. BMAF board of trustee member Robert Starling created the video for the event. The video is made available on Mormon Times by permission.

"I always just thought I was a plodder," Sorenson said in response to receiving the award. "I guess that's my view of myself. I just kept plodding along, or slogging through the mud. And there's been a lot of mud to slog through."

Some of that mud was real mud in excavations in Central America. Other slogging has been persistence -- such as the more than seven years it took to have articles on Book of Mormon geography approved for printing in the LDS Church's official Ensign magazine. The articles, "Digging into the Book of Mormon: Our Changing Understanding of Ancient America and Its Scripture," appeared in two installments -- Part 1 in the Sept. 1984 Ensign and Part 2 in the Oct. 1984 Ensign.

"I'm doing my last book," Sorenson said. "At age 85 it ought to be my last."

The book is "Mormon's Codex: An Ancient American Book." Sorenson said the book will cover "at least 420 points at which the Book of Mormon has Mesoamerican material in it, material that could not possibly have been included by anyone except an ancient Mesoamerican writer of the fourth century A.D."

He said there was no publisher for the book yet, but hoped to find one soon.

"Finally there will be an answer to those who say, 'There's no archeological evidence of the Book of Mormon.' There will be hundreds of pages of it in spades."

"It is what it is," Sorenson said. "It is exactly what it said it is."

E-mail: mdegroote@desnews.com