For the past eight years, Colorado’s own South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been teaming up with Robert Lopez, co-creator of the Tony-winning Avenue Q puppet musical, to work on a new musical comedy, The Book of Mormon, about a pair of young Mormon missionaries whose faith is challenged in Uganda, writes the New York Times.

Lopez says he became interested in Mormonism at Yale because he “really liked the idea of the Bible as literature,” while Parker and Stone contend their ideas about Mormonism are more organic. “A lot of it is because we grew up in Colorado, right next to Utah,” Parker jokes. Adds Stone, “My best friend, when I was in sixth grade, was a Mormon.” To which Parker responds, “My first serious girlfriend was a Mormon. I remember going to family home evening at her house, and just being like, ‘What are you people doing?’ But in a good way.”